Blanton Winship

Blanton Winship

Blanton C. Winship (born November 23, 1869 in Macon , Georgia , †  October 9, 1947 in Washington, DC ) was an American governor of Puerto Rico and a military lawyer . He served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps in the US Army and was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and the First World War .

Life

Winship graduated from Mercer University in 1889 and earned a doctorate in law from the University of Georgia in 1893 , where he also played football for a year . In the Spanish-American War, he joined Georgia’s first volunteer infantry . After the war, he joined the US Army as a Judge Advocate , where he stayed until 1914. He then began teaching law at the Army Service School at Fort Leavenworth . When the First World War broke out, he fought in France and led several campaigns. For this he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star . After the end of the war he turned back to military law and was Judge Advocate General in the Army from 1931 until his end of service in 1933 .

In 1934, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him military governor of Puerto Rico. In his new office, Winship was supposed to suppress the independence movement that had gained momentum since the 1932 elections and some violent excesses. He also fought against a new minimum wage law that would double the hourly wage of workers on sugar plantations from 12.5 cents. Despite the controversial passage of the law, nearly two-thirds of the island's textile factories had to close because they couldn't afford the increase. Winship was also critical of many policy decisions made by US Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes regarding Puerto Rico. Aid payments to the island were much lower per capita than those on the mainland or in Hawaii . This lack of spending contributed to the poverty and unrest in Puerto Rico.

On Palm Sunday , March 21, 1937, Winship banned a nationalist parade an hour before it was scheduled to begin in Ponce . When the march started anyway, the Ponce massacre resulted in 17 dead, more than 200 injured and 150 arrests. The event even caused a stir in Washington, where John Bernard , Congressman for Minnesota , denounced the incident in a speech to the House of Representatives on April 14. A grand jury was unable to prove Winship's fault. However, the lawyers were appointed by the governor, which may affect their judgment in his favor. Following the investigation, the law allowing prosecution against public officials was repealed, leaving Winship immune from further prosecution. A second body of the American Civil Liberties Union also failed to come to a clear guilty verdict against Winship, as it criticized both nationalist militancy and repression. As a result of these events, many Nationalist Party leaders were charged with insurrection and, following a hung jury , six of them were sentenced to imprisonment.

The following year, Winship moved the 40th anniversary celebration of the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico from San Juan to Ponce, seen as a direct response to last year's protests. During the celebration on July 25, 1938, Ángel Esteban Antongiorgi attempted an assassination attempt on the governor; he was able to fire several shots before the police killed him.

After a charge by New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio , Winship was dismissed from office on May 12, 1939, and William D. Leahy was appointed as his successor. In his time as governor, the union of many political factions in Puerto Rico in 1940 ensured strong profits for the newly founded Popular Democratic Party .

In World War II returned Winship to active duty back. He set precedents for military tribunals in the United States by participating in the Military Commission established in July 1942 to bring Nazi saboteurs arrested to justice. In 1944, at the age of 75, he retired as the oldest Army officer. In addition to his two medals, he was honored by renaming the Judge Advocate building at Fort Gordon "Winship Hall".

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1. ^ History of the University of Georgia by Thomas Walter Reed; Chapter XVII: Athletics at the University from the Beginning Through 1947 (English)
2. ↑ Five Years of Tyranny ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Shortened text of Vito Marcantonio's speech (English)  

Web links

• Blanton Winship in the database of Find a Grave (English)