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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS 1790-1865
HANDLIN
Gc 974.402 B65ha 1132120
M. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01105 8960
HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
FROM THE INCOME OF THE HENRY WARREN TORREY FUND
VOLUME L
HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES
I. The Suppression of the African Slave- Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870. By W. E. B. DuBois.
II. The Contest over the Ratification of the Federal Constitution in Massachusetts. By S. B. Harding.
III. A Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina. By D. F. Houston.
IV. Nominations for Elective Office in the United States. By F. W. Dallinger.
V. A Bibliography of British Municipal History, including Gilds and Parliamen- tary Representation. By Charles Gross.
VI. The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest. By Theodore C. Smith.
VII. The Provincial Governor in the Eng- lish Colonies of North America. By Evarts Boutell Greene.
VIII. The County Palatine of Durham. A Study in Constitutional History. By G. T. Lapsley.
IX. The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies. By A. L. Cross.
X. The Administration of the American Revolutionary Army. By L. C. Hatch.
XI. The Civil Service and the Patronage. By Carl Russell Fish.
XII. The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts. By C. A. Duni- way.
XIII. The Seigniorial System in Canada. By W. B. Munro.
XIV. The Frankpledge System. By William Alfred Morris.
XV. The Public Life of Joseph Dudley. By Everett Kimball.
XVI. Mémoire de Marie Caroline, Reine de Naples. Edited by Robert Matteson John- ston.
XVII. The Barrington-Bernard Correspond- ence. Edited by E. Channing.
XVIII. The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent. By Albert Howe Lybyer.
XIX. The Granger Movement. By S. J. Buck.
XX. Burgage Tenure in Medieval England. By Morley de Wolf Hemmeon.
XXI. An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs transacted in the colony of New York from 1678 to 1751. By Peter Wraxall. Edited with an introduction by Charles Howard McIlwain.
XXII. English Field Systems. By Howard Levi Gray.
XXIII. The Second Partition of Poland. By Robert Howard Lord.
XXIV. Norman Institutions. By Charles Homer Haskins.
XXV. Robert Curthose, Duke of Nor- mandy. By Charles Wendell David.
XXVI. Bismarck's Diplomacy at its Zenith. By Joseph Vincent Fuller.
XXVII. Studies in the History of Medieval Science. By Charles H. Haskins.
XXVIII. The Origins of the War of 1870. New Documents from the German Ar- chives. By Robert H. Lord.
XXIX. The Monroe Doctrine, 1823-1826. By Dexter Perkins.
XXX. The Franco-Russian Alliance, 1890- 1894. By W. L. Langer.
XXXI. Fur Trade and Empire. George Simpson's Journal ... together with ac- companying documents. Edited by Fred- erick Merk.
XXXII. The Schleswig-Holstein Question. By Lawrence D. Steefel.
XXXIII. The Presbyterian Churches and the Federal Union, 1861-1869. By Lewis G. Vander Velde.
XXXIV. The Influence of the Commons on Early Legislation. By Howard L. Gray.
XXXV. The National Workshops. By Don- ald Cope Mckay.
XXXVI. Franz Joseph and Bismarck before 1866. By C. W. Clark.
XXXVII. The Caracas Company, 1728- 1784. By Roland D. Hussey.
XXXVIII. Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention Policy of 1878. By Dwight E. Lee.
XXXIX. The Fronde. By Paul Rice Doolin. XL. French Foreign Policy during the Ad- ministration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726- 1743. By Arthur McCandless Wilson.
XLI. The Genesis of Napoleonic Imperial- ism. By Harold C. Deutsch.
XLII. The Diplomacy of the Balkan Wars, 1912-1913. By Ernst Christian Helm- reich.
XLIII. Lord Ellenborough, Governor-Gen- eral of India. By Albert H. Imlah.
XLIV. The Emperor Claudius. By Vin- cent M. Scramuzza.
XLV. Robert Dale Owen: A Biography. By Richard William Leopold.
XLVI. Sea Power and British North Amer- ica, 1783-1820. A Study in British Colonial Policy. By Gerald S. Graham. XLVII. Constitutional Thought in Six- teenth-Century France. A Study in the Evolution of Ideas. By William Farr Church.
XLVIII. The Reign of King Pym. By J. H. Hexter.
XLIX. A Wavering Friendship: Russia and Austria, 1876-1878. By G. H. Rupp.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS 1790-1865
A STUDY IN ACCULTURATION
BY OSCAR HANDLIN
INSTRUCTOR IN HISTORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
VE
RII
TAS
CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1941
COPYRIGHT, 1941 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A.
1132120
To MY MOTHER AND FATHER
Flotte 5.00
FOREWORD
Not of the mighty! not of the world's friends Have I aspired to speak within these leaves; These best befit their joyful kindred pens -
My path lies where a broken people grieves. . . . 1
THE origins of a social process of any importance must be sought "in the internal constitution of the social milieu." 2 The character of the environment - the community in its broadest sense - is particularly important in the study of the contact of dissimilar cultures. It is the field where unfamiliar groups meet, discover each other, and join in a hard relationship that results in either acculturation or conflict. As such, the qual- ities of the environment subtly condition all the forces involved and often exercise a determining influence upon their evolution.
Only by considering immigrant adjustment on the local scale can the influence of the milieu be given full weight. Com- prehending that, the practical sociologists heretofore most directly concerned with these matters have produced a num- ber of excellent community studies. But since restrictive leg- islation has pushed the immigration problem into his sphere, the historian now faces the primary obligation of analyzing it. In the study of the community, however, he meets peculiar difficulties. Lacking the sociologist's or anthropologist's direct access to the subject by questionnaires or observation, he must piece together his story from widely diversified sources, and, tethered within the limits of that which is known, impale upon a rigid page the intimate lives and deepest feelings of humble men and women who leave behind few formal records.
1 From the introduction to a projected epic, The Emigrants, by Thomas D'Arcy McGee (cf. Poems ... [New York, 1869], 130).
2 Charles Elmer Gehlke, Émil Durkheim's Contributions to Sociological Theory (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, LXIII, New York, 1915), 70.
viii
FOREWORD
Between 1790 and 1865, thousands of these humble men and women transferred their residences to Boston. This study describes historically their settlement in the community. From a consideration of the society the immigrants 3 found on arrival and the society they left behind, it attempts to explore the basic factors influencing their economic, physical, and intellec- tual adjustment, and seeks in the character of that adjustment the forces promoting or discouraging group consciousness and group conflict.
This work thus extends into a "relatively unformulated field of social science." Working in a poorly charted field, I was fortunate to draw upon the friendly guidance and stimulating advice of Arthur Meier Schlesinger, who has in his own work done much to widen the scope of the historical discipline and to break down the parochial boundaries between the various social sciences. Mr. Schlesinger suggested the subject of the doctoral dissertation 4 of which this study is an outgrowth and carefully criticized each step of its progress. Only those who have profited similarly from his guidance can truly appreciate the impelling drive that comes from his conscientious teaching and from the stimulus of his vigorous scholarship. More im- portant, contact with a deeply human personality revealed the realm of history that transcends immediate questions of tech- niques and the accumulation of material, and lies in the sphere of the understanding.
At the close of a long task it is good to remember the assist- ance from many sources that lightened the inevitable drudg- eries of research. Much of this work was carried on under scholarships and fellowships offered by the Department of History and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Har- vard University for which I am deeply grateful. The criticisms
3 "Immigrant" refers, in this study, to persons of whatever nationality who transferred their residence to Boston from outside it, though primary attention is directed to newcomers from Europe.
4 Submitted at Harvard University in June, 1940. The revisions consisted largely of a drastic reduction in the documentation. Two copies of the Dis- sertation Copy to which reference is made in the notes may be consulted in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
ix
FOREWORD
of many kind friends clarified a host of problems. Paul H. Buck read the entire manuscript twice, and Hans Rosenberg, David V. Glass, and Samuel J. Hurwitz let me profit from their opinions on various sections. The late Marcus L. Han- sen was free with his advice in a field of which he was master. Robert D. White assisted me with the drawings. George O'Brien helped me find my way in the Irish materials; Father J. P. McAvoy allowed me to use the Brownson papers; Father J. Sexton made available the files of the Pilot in St. John's Ecclesiastical Seminary before those were microfilmed; and the custodians of all the libraries mentioned on page 252 cheerfully allowed me to use their collections.
And I owe a particular debt to Mary Flug Handlin for devoted collaboration.
Cambridge, Massachusetts September, 1941
O. H.
CONTENTS
I. SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
3
II. THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
29
III. THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
59
IV. THE PHYSICAL ADJUSTMENT
93
V. CONFLICT OF IDEAS .
I28
VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
I56
VII. GROUP CONFLICT
184
CONCLUSION
216
APPENDICES
223
TABLES
225
NOTE ON THE STATISTICS OF IMMIGRATION INTO BOSTON
248
NOTE TO TABLE XIII
249
ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTE ON SOURCES
25I
INDEX
269
ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1. Tenements in Stillman Street
109
Fig. 2. Plan of Rear of 136 Hanover Street
109
Fig. 3. Rear of 136 Hanover Street
109
Fig. 4. Probable Original Condition of Half Moon Place .
IIO
Fig. 5. Half Moon Place in 1849
IIO
Fig. 6. View of Half Moon Place
III
Fig. 7. Burgess Alley, North View
III
Fig. 8. Burgess Alley, South View
III
Fig. 9. Entrance to Burgess Alley
III
Fig. 10. Plan of a Cellar in Bread Street
II4
Fig. II. Bedroom "B" in Fig. 10
II4
CHARTS
A. Distribution of the Working Population of Irish, Massa- chusetts, and New England Nativity, 1850 63
B. Percentage Distribution of the Working Population of Se- lected Nativities, Boston, 1850 63
C. Wages and Cost of Living, 1830-1864 . 9I
D. State Paupers in Massachusetts, 1837-1858 I23
MAPS
I. Distribution of the Irish in Boston, 1850, by Streets . 95
II. Distribution of Non-Irish Foreigners in Boston, 1850, by Streets . 97
III. Colored Population of Boston - 1813 . IOI
IV. Colored Population of Boston - 1850 . IO3
TABLES
I. Boston Industries, 1845 . 225
II. Population of Boston and Its Environs 226
III. Expenditures for Poor Relief, City of Boston, 1815- I866 227
IV. Prison Commitments . 228
V. Passengers Entering Boston by Sea, 1821-1865 229
VI. Nativity of Bostonians, 1850 . 230
VII. Nativity of Bostonians, 1855 · 231
VIII. Nativity of Residents of the Boston Area, 1860 232
IX. Nativity of Bostonians, 1865 . 233
X. Nativity of Members of the Boston Repeal Asso- ciation 234
XI. Advertisements by Bostonians for Information in the Boston Pilot, 1841-1864 235
XII. Negro Population of the Boston Area, 1754-1865 236
XIII. Distribution of Occupations by Nativity, Boston, 1850 237
XIV. Average Number of Persons per Occupation of Each Nativity Group in Boston, 1850 . 239
XV. Laborers in Boston, by Nativity, 1850 . 240
XVI. Domestic Servants in Boston, by Nativity, 1850 240
XVII. Number of Employees in Boston Industries Employ- ing One Hundred or More Workers in Any Year between 1837 and 1865 . 24I
XVIII. Correlation of Tuberculosis with Housing and Nativ- ity, by Wards, Boston, 1865 24I
XIX. Distribution of the Population of Boston by Age Periods, 1800-1855 242
XX. Nativity of the Parents of Children Born in Boston, 1863-1865 242
XXI. Paupers in the Metropolitan Area, 1848-1860 243
XXII. Nativity of Inmates of the Deer Island House of In- dustry Remaining on December 31 of Each Year 243
xviii
TABLES
XXIII. Nativity of All the Inmates in the House of Correc- tion during the Year Ending December 31 . . 244
XXIV. Nativity of Arrests and Detentions by the Boston Police Department, Year Ending December 31, 1864 244
XXV. Amount Paid by the State for the Support of Lunatic State Paupers in Suffolk County, 1838-1859 . . 245
XXVI. Orphans Supported at St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum, Boston 245
XXVII. Boston Marriages by Nativity, Three-Year Period, 1863-1865 246
XXVIII. Boston Voters, 1840-1858 247
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
CHAPTER I
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
There is a city in our world upon which the light of the sun of righteousness has risen. There is a sun which beams in its full meridian splendour upon it. Its influences are quickening and invigorating the souls which dwell within it. It is the same from which every pure stream of thought and purpose and per- formance emanates. It is the city that is set on high. "It cannot be hid." It is Boston. The morality of Boston is more pure than that of any other city in America.1
THE Boston merchants who with their allies masqueraded as Indians and flavored the waters about Griffin's Wharf with the fine strong tea of the East India Company were scarcely aware that in protecting their immediate interests they were destroying the foundations of their prosperity. Few realized that the impending breach between the Crown and its colonies was to widen steadily in the following two years, and lead in- evitably to separation; and even fewer foresaw the full eco- nomic implications of separation. There was a blustering bravado about these men, a feeling of self-confidence, en- gendered by years of smuggling in defiance of royal officials, which enabled them to speak bravely enough of independence. But all too soon, they understood that they themselves would suffer most thereby.
For normally, before 1763, Boston functioned as an integral part of the British imperial system, subsisting largely by rea- son of her position as purveyor of rum to Africa and of slaves to the West Indies in the great triangular traffic. This had been the keystone of her economy ever since John Winthrop had warned her to "look out to the West Indies for a trade." 2
1 Bronson Alcott in 1828 (Odell Shepard, Journals of Bronson Alcott [Boston, 1938], 15).
2 In 1641. Quoted by Samuel Eliot Morison, Maritime History of Massachu-
4
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
All her commerce was concentrated in it; she had not even the "bread trade" with which a fertile back country had en- dowed New York and Philadelphia. Even Boston's industry, consisting either in the conversion of West Indian sugar into rum or, to a considerable extent, in the manufacture of naval stores to outfit ships, was involved directly or indirectly in this commerce. With the possible exception of fishing, there was but one other important source where the Boston mer- chants might seek profits - in the evasion of duties accepted elsewhere. That smuggling was an activity of long standing in the Bay Colony finds ample confirmation in the plaintive re- ports of John Randolph.3 But after 1763 the attempts to introduce the "new colonial system" inordinately stimulated such enterprises; as Boston's position in the trade with the islands weakened, merchants shifted to the principal alterna- tive open to them.4
Reforms in the collection of revenue and revision of duties downward, however, rendered even illicit profits precarious, and drove the traders into the hazardous course of revolution.5 The independence that followed destroyed the city's principal occupations. Commerce languished under hostile British leg- islation, while sharply curtailed imports and an efficient customs service rendered smuggling both unprofitable and impractica- ble. By a series of acts culminating in that of 1788, the Eng- lish reserved the trade of their colonies for their own bottoms. The rejection by Congress of Article XII of Jay's Treaty nullified the few British concessions and completely eliminated the possibility of reviving trade with the West Indies. For
setts, 1783-1860 (Boston, 1921), 12. On this trade, cf. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763-1776 (New York, 1918), 22 ff.
3 Cf. Robert Noxon Toppan, Edward Randolph . .. a Memoir (Publications of the Prince Society, Boston, 1898-1909), I, 78, 134 ff., III, 79; cf. also George Louis Beer, Old Colonial System, 1660-1754 . . . (New York, 1912), II, 269, 284, 285; Schlesinger, op. cit., 40 ff.
4 Cf. George Louis Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765 (New York,
1907), 220 ff., 277 ff .; Schlesinger, op. cit., 57 ff.
5 Beer, British Colonial Policy, 228 ff .; Schlesinger, op. cit., 592 ff.
5
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
some time vestiges of commerce with the French and Spanish islands persisted, but, because of the turmoil of the war years 1791-1815, always sporadically and uncertainly. The prohibi- tion of the slave trade and, finally, the abolition of slavery in the British possessions, removed an essential commodity and ended any hopes that might have remained for the restora- tion of the triangular traffic.6
Independence also destroyed Boston's share in the direct trade between England and the North American continent. The Orders in Council of 1783 limited imports from America to naval stores and a few other commodities. The government of Massachusetts retaliated with prohibitive duties on English shipping. But since no other state did likewise, commerce merely shifted to other American ports. As a result, the English could boast that "the 600,000 tonnage of shipping usually employed in that trade are now entirely English bottoms whereas before they were nearly one-half American." 7
The resultant decrease in Boston's business threatened to continue indefinitely.8 But the ways of commerce were full of providence and eventually the merchants recouped their losses in new markets. Profits from privateering and from neutral trading tided them over while they vigorously pursued the quest for unknown trade routes. Venturesome Boston skippers, pushing their boats down the South Atlantic and through the Straits, traced the first of these and founded the great China trade. Although New York and Salem had made contact with the Orient in the 1780's, trade had been handicapped at first by
6 For the revolutionary period and the years following, cf. Robert A. East, Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, no. 439, New York, 1938), 49 ff .; Samuel Flagg Bemis, Jay's Treaty, a Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (New York, 1923), 23, 258; Theodore Lyman, Jr., Diplomacy of the United States . . . (Boston, 1828), II, 2, 12, 59 ff., 310 ff .; Morison, op. cit., 174, n. I.
7 Dublin Chronicle, January 12, 1792; cf. also Brief Examination into the Increase of the Revenue, Commerce, and Navigation of Great Britain since the Conclusion of the Peace in 1783 (Dublin, 1792), 50; Bemis, op. cit., 22, 24, 25; Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, Massa- chusetts, 1630-1880 (Boston, 1881), IV, 202.
8 Cf. Morison, op cit., 30 ff.
6
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
the absence of a commodity for which there was a demand in China. But on August 9, 1790, the Columbia, captained by Robert Gray, returned from a three-year voyage in which she had circumnavigated the globe, with the news that furs, which brought so high a price in the river marts of Canton, could be acquired for trifling trinkets along the coast of Oregon. This discovery effected a revolution in Boston's economic prospects; by 1792 a new triangular traffic was well established. Carry- ing cargoes of copper, cloth, iron, and clothes, ships left the city each autumn, arriving at the Columbia River the follow- ing spring. There they remained from eighteen to twenty months, bargaining their wares for furs. Then they were off across the Pacific, generally stopping at the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) for sandalwood, or at California to make illicit deals with the Spaniards. In Canton, they disposed of their stock, and, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, returned with Chinese teas, textiles and porcelain. Bostonians rushed into this enor- mously profitable trade so quickly that among the Chinooks and other West Coast Indians "Boston-men" soon became syn- onymous with Americans.9
At about the same time, the foundations were laid for a new triangular trade with Russia in which Bostonians ex- changed West Indian sugar for linens and iron. This business developed such proportions during the troubled period of the continental blockade, when the Czar permitted "the free ad- mission of nankin in Russian ports," that Bostonians declared John Quincy Adams' mission to Saint Petersburg "of the ut- most importance to the commerce of the United States, and the most honorable appointment abroad that is in the gift of our government. . . >> 10
Although commerce with China and Russia lasted through-
9 Ibid., 43 ff., 50-71; Edward G. Porter, "Ship Columbia and the Discovery of Oregon," New England Magazine, June, 1892, VI, 472 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 204 ff .; La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Voyage dans les États-Unis d'Amérique fait en 1795, 1796, et 1797 (Paris, An VII [1799]), III, 17.
10 Independent Chronicle (Boston), April 4, May 27, 1811; Morison, op. cit., 154, 155; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 223.
7
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
out this period, it encountered serious obstacles arising out of the fact that Boston was never more than an entrepôt. All the essential commodities of this trade were drawn from far-off ports as accessible to other cities as to Boston. Based upon the enterprise and initiative of Boston merchants rather than upon the city's advantageous position or natural resources, this commerce had no permanent or durable roots. The pros- perity arising from it was superficial and temporary, confined largely to those immediately engaged in it. Its uncertainty became especially apparent in the 1820's when Chinese ex- ports shifted almost exclusively to tea, for which New York was a better market than Boston, and in the thirties when the supply of northwest furs began to fall off.11 To some extent, cheap textiles from the Merrimac replaced otter skins from the Columbia, but Lowell and Lawrence could not compete with Manchester and Birmingham. Thereafter Boston's posi- tion declined steadily and only the extension of the ice trade to the Far East in the same decade saved the Boston merchants from complete collapse.12
A staple product for export, or a wide New England market for imports, alone could firmly ground the roots of trade in Boston's economic life; and both depended upon the back country. But while the hinterland of the other great ports - New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans - con- stantly expanded, Boston's was contracting. Trade with the backwoods of Connecticut and Massachusetts whence had come a limited number of agricultural staples, and, to a certain extent, with the Maine and New Hampshire forests from which were drawn the timber and naval stores for old and New Eng- land, had never been important as compared with the triangular traffic, and had declined after 1790.13 The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 immediately diverted the produce of large
11 Morison, op. cit., 275; R. B. Forbes, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston, 1844), 27.
12 Forbes, op. cit., 28; Morison, op. cit., 280 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 221 ff. 13 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, op. cit., V, 167.
8
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
sections of western Massachusetts to New York and ultimately established a link between that city and the fertile plains of the trans-Allegheny west which all the subsequent efforts of commercial Boston proved incapable of breaking.14 Geograph- ically, Boston could not profit by the use of canals. The only rivers in Massachusetts that might be used advantageously were the Connecticut, the Blackstone, and the Merrimac. But the first two would benefit Hartford or Providence, and, in- directly New York; the third, Portsmouth.15 Even the advent of the railroads, despite Boston's pioneer rôle, brought no solu- tion. Contemporaries soon pointed out that "Boston is not a thriving, that is, not an increasing town. It wants a fertile back country, and it is too far removed from the western states to be engaged in the supply of that new and vast emporium. . >> 16
Bostonians had not failed to realize that "the city is derived from the country" and ever since 1791, when they projected a canal to Worcester, Massachusetts legislators had sought to extend the back country.17 The Erie Canal forced upon the state the realization that "some decisive measures are neces- sary to facilitate the intercourse between Boston and . . . Albany," and a railroad was recommended.18 But not until
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