An
American-educated lawyer, Vahan Cardashian became the pioneer of the
Armenian Cause lobby in the United States at the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Cardashian
was born on December 1, 1883, in Caesarea (actual Kayseri). He lost his
father at an early age, and, after elementary education at a local
Armenian school, he attended the French lyceum and the Talas American
College. In 1902 he immigrated to the United States and attended the law
school at Yale University from 1904-1908. In 1907 he married Cornelia
Alexander Holub, a women rights advocate. Meanwhile, he published
several books, A Brief Commentary on the Eastern Question, The Ottoman Empire of the Twentieth Century, and Actual Life in Turkish Harem.
After
graduation he went into private practice. Cardashian took a job as
adviser of the Ottoman embassy in Washington D.C. in 1911 and general
counselor of the consulate in New York. He was designated head of the
Ottoman Chamber of Commerce and, in 1915, high commissioner of the
Ottoman exhibition at the Panama-Pacific Universal Exposition in San
Francisco. At the Exposition, he learned that his mother and sister had
perished in the Armenian Genocide. He did not abandon his post, but
started a secret campaign of letter-writing to inform American officials
of the ongoing annihilation. He had already warned Secretary of War
Lindsay Garrison in July 1914:
"I
have information, bearing on the program of the Turkish Government, to
be put into operation in the event of Turkey's being involved in the
European War with reference to all the native and foreign Christians in
Turkey . . . Unless some powerful restraining forces are brought into
play from without, you can rest assured that the Turk, with the
opportunity for untrammeled action, such as he now believes to enjoy,
will perpetrate upon helpless humanity the most ghastly horrors of his
entire loathsome career."
When
the Ottoman embassy discovered Cardashian’s backdoor work, he was
fired. In early 1916, he sued for divorce from his wife. At the end of
the war, Cardashian relied on his diplomatic and high society contacts
to spearhead a lobbying effort, to which he committed his own personal
resources. To reach beyond the Armenian American community, he founded
the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia (ACIA) in
December 1918. He gathered there some of the most prominent names of the
day in American politics: James W. Gerard, former ambassador to
Germany, who was the driving force of the ACIA along with Cardashian and
the chairman of its Executive Board; Charles Hughes, 1916 presidential
candidate of the Republican party; William Jennings Bryan, former
Secretary of State; senator Henry Cabot Lodge (Massachusetts); and many
others.
Cardashian’s
tireless efforts included tours, letter campaigns, a flood of
editorials in various newspapers, memoranda to the highest rank of
officials, and many books and pamphlets. The ACIA advocated for
American recognition of the Republic of Armenia and an American mandate.
It had 23 branches in thirteen states.
In
the end, the ACIA efforts were fruitless, as the isolationist majority
in the Senate, ironically headed by Lodge himself, rejected the American
mandate over Armenia in May 1920. A few months later, the independent
republic collapsed, and the Armenian Cause took another direction.
However, Cardashian did not calm down. In 1924 he created the American
Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty (ACOLT) and led a successful
campaign to block the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne by the U.S.
Senate. The ratification was rejected by the Senate in January 1927,
citing Turkish failure to execute the Arbitral Award of President
Woodrow Wilson as the main cause.
Exhausted
and penniless after a two-decade long crusade for Armenian rights,
Vahan Cardashian passed away on June 9, 1934, at the age of fifty-one.
He was buried in Cedar Grove cemetery in Long Island. The legacy of the
lone crusader for the Armenian Cause is a remarkable example for future
generations.
