Morgenthau telegram to the U.S. Secretary of State, September 3, 1915
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), United States
Year
1915
Item Detail
Telegram from Ambassador Henry Morgenthau to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, September 3, 1915
Context
On September 3, 1915, U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr. cabled the State Department from Constantinople, reporting mass atrocities against Ottoman Armenians and asking the Secretary of State to convene a small group of prominent Americans to raise emergency relief funds. The response was extraordinarily fast: within thirteen days, on September 16, 1915, an ad hoc committee met for the first time in New York City. That meeting gave rise to the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, which was reorganized in 1919 as Near East Relief. The telegram is the founding document of the American humanitarian response to the Armenian Genocide, and one of the earliest examples in U.S. history of a diplomatic dispatch directly initiating a sustained civilian fundraising effort.
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Morgenthau named several individuals he wanted involved, including Cleveland H. Dodge — both Dodge and James L. Barton would go on to lead NER for its first fifteen years.
