USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 18
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19 Cf. Dissertation Copy, 347, 348; Billington, op. cit., 43 ff., 69 ff., 79. For the religious press in general, cf. Frank Luther Mott, History of American Mag- azines ... (Cambridge, 1938), II, 60.
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intolerance. Thus the Congregationalists urged their minis- ters to labor "in the spirit of prayer and Christian love ... ," and even the Christian Alliance and Family Visitor, founded "to promote the union of Christians against Popery," failed to print "a single article or paragraph of any description against . . Catholics." 20 Arguments were aimed against Catholicism, not against Catholics, just as they were against Methodism, or by the Orthodox against Unitarianism and by "Christians" against transcendentalists.21 When Beecher became too vio- lent, the Boston Courier and the Boston Debating Society, both non-Catholic, denounced him. For though some preferred one sect to another, the predominant feeling among Bostonians of this period was that "wherever holiness reigns, whether in the Protestant or Catholic communion. . .. wherever there is a pious heart . . there is a member of the true church." 22 Indeed, such men as Channing cared little for the particular sect in which they ministered. Their "whole concern was with religion, not even with Christianity otherwise than as it was, in . . . [their ] estimation, the highest form of religion. . >> 23
Those who recognized distinctions between the sects gener- ally felt that more important were "the grand facts of Chris- tianity, which Calvinists and Arminians, Trinitarians and Uni- tarians, Papists and Protestants, Churchmen and Dissenters all equally believe. ... We all equally hold that he came . . . to save us from sin and death, and to publish a covenant of grace, by which all sincere penitents and good men are as- sured of favour and complete happiness in his future everlast- ing kingdom." 24 In that vein, Holmes' "Cheerful Parson" affirmed,
20 Cf. the complaints on this score in Boston Catholic Observer, March 1, 1848 ; also Billington, op. cit., 177, 86.
21 Cf., e.g., Darling, op. cit., 29; Clarence Hotson, "Christian Critics and Mr. Emerson," New England Quarterly, March, 1938, XI, 29 ff.
R. C. Waterston, "The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven," a Sermon .. . (Boston, 1844), 13 ; cf. also Frothingham, op. cit., 48; Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel, December 29, 1830, ibid., February 26, 1831.
23 Frothingham, op. cit., 6.
24 Richard Price, Sermons on the Christian Doctrine as Received by the Different Denominations of Christians . .. (Boston, 1815), 8.
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Not damning a man for a different opinion, I'd mix with the Calvinist, Baptist, Arminian, Greet each like a man, like a Christian and brother, Preach love to our Maker, ourselves and each other.25
And even the more conservative Baptists granted that "the various erring sects which constitute the body of Antichrist, have among them those who are beloved of God. . . . " "Wherein we think others err, they claim our pity; wherein they are right, our affection and concurrence." 26 In this ro- seate scheme of salvation there was room even for Jews, and from Bunker Hill, a poet proclaimed:
Christian and Jew, they carry out one plan,
For though of different faith, each in heart a man.27
Government action reflected the community's attitude towards immigrants. They were still welcome. The state had no desire to exclude foreigners or to limit their civic rights; on the contrary, during this period it relaxed some surviving restrictions.28 Since the care of aliens was charged to the Commonwealth, the problem of poor relief aroused less hos- tility within Boston than outside it.29 Yet nowhere was pau- perism transmuted into a pretext for discrimination against the Irish. Legislation aimed only at barring the dependent, the insane, and the unfit, and shifted to newcomers part of the cost. The function of the municipal Superintendent of Alien Passengers, under the act of 1837, was merely to pre- vent the landing of persons incompetent to maintain them-
25 Cf. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Holmes of the Breakfast Table ... (New York, 1939), 17.
26 Minutes of the Boston Baptist Association . .. 1821 (Boston, n.d.), 13.
27 Cf. Morris A. Gutstein, Aaron Lopez and Judah Touro . . (New York, 1939), 98.
28 Cf. Massachusetts Commissioners of Alien Passengers and Foreign Paupers, Report . . . 1851 (Boston, 1852), 14; also Edith Abbott, Historical Aspects of the Immigration Problem . . . (Chicago, 1926), 622, 739 ff .; Cork Examiner, July 6, 1853; Massachusetts House Documents, 1828-29, no. 25; ibid., 1829-30, no. 8; Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1852, no. II.
Cf. the source of petitions for repeal of the State pauper laws, Massachu- setts Senate Documents, 1847, no. 109.
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selves, unless a bond be given that no such individual become a public charge within ten years, and to collect the sum of two dollars each from all other alien passengers as a commuta- tion for such a bond.30 All the subsequent changes in the law only modified it to conform with a decision of the Supreme Court.31 Attempts to extend these restrictive provisions failed, partly because of the pressure of shipping firms which profited by the immigrant traffic, but primarily because successive administrations recognized that, "The evils of foreign pauper- ism we cannot avoid," and it is "wise to avail ourselves of the advantages of direct emigration which increases the business of the State." 32
In the two decades after 1830, however, the differences so tolerantly accepted impinged ever more prominently upon the Bostonians' consciousness. The economic, physical, and in- tellectual development of the town accentuated the division be- tween the Irish and the rest of the population and engendered fear of a foreign group whose appalling slums had already destroyed the beauty of a fine city and whose appalling ideas threatened the fondest conceptions of universal progress, of grand reform, and a regenerated mankind. The vague discom- forts and the latent distrusts produced by the problems of these strangers festered in the unconscious mind of the community for many years. Though its overt manifestations were com- paratively rare, the social uneasiness was none the less real.
Thus pauperism aroused some resentment among those who
30 Ordinances of the City of Boston Passed since the Year 1834 . . . (Boston, 1843), 3, 4; Hart, op. cit., IV, 143 ff .; Edith Abbott, Immigration. Select Docu- ments ... (Chicago, 1924), 105 ff., 148.
31 Cf. Norris v. City of Boston (7 Howard's U. S. Reports, 283, XVII, 139 ff.) ; Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1847, no. 109; ibid., 1848, no. 46; Peleg W. Chandler, Charter and Ordinances of the City of Boston together with Acts of the Legislature Relating to the City . .. (Boston, 1850), 25 ff .; Charter and Ordinances of the City of Boston together with the Acts of the Legislature (Boston, 1856), 34 ff.
32 Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1852, no. 7, p. 7. For the influence of shipping firms, cf. Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1847, no. 109, p. 5; Boston Board of Trade, Second Annual Report of the Government . . 1856 (Boston, 1856), 3.
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saw Massachusetts overwhelmed by a rising tax bill; 33 and indigent artisans continually complained that Irishmen dis- placed "the honest and respectable laborers of the State; and . . ,from their manner of living . work for much less per day ... being satisfied with food to support the animal exist- ence alone . .. while the latter not only labor for the body but for the mind, the soul, and the State." 34 Above all, as the newcomers developed consciousness of group identity and spon- sored institutions that were its concrete expression, they drove home upon other Bostonians a mounting awareness of their differences, and provoked complaints that "instead of assimilat- ing at once with the customs of the country of their adoption, our foreign population are too much in the habit of retaining their own national usages, of associating too exclusively with each other, and living in groups together. These practices serve no good purpose, and tend merely to alienate those among whom they have chosen to reside. It would be the part of wisdom, to ABANDON AT ONCE ALL USAGES AND ASSOCIATIONS WHICH MARK THEM AS FOREIGNERS, and to become in feeling and custom, as well as in privileges and rights, citizens of the United States." 35 The inability of the native-born to under- stand the ideas of their new neighbors perpetuated this gap between them, rousing the vivid fear that the Irish were "a race that will never be infused into our own, but on the contrary will always remain distinct and hostile." 36
That fear was the more pronounced because the Catholic Church in these years was a church militant, conscious of its mission in the United States, vigorous and active in proselytiza- tion and the search for converts. In the strategy of the hier- archy, and in their own minds, immigrants played a clear rôle
33 For evidence of this complaint, cf. American Traveller (Boston), August 5, 1834; American, October 21, 1837; Abbott, Immigration, 112 ff .; Edith Abbott, Historical Aspects of the Immigration Problem . .. (Chicago, 1926), 572 ff., 758 ff .; Massachusetts House Documents, 1836, no. 30, pp. 9 ff.
34 Cf. Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1847, no. 109, p. 4.
35 American (Boston), October 21, 1837.
36 Mayor Lyman (Inaugural Addresses of the Mayors of Boston . [Bos- ton, 1894], I, 195) .
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in this process of redemption: they had been carried across the waters by a Divine Providence to present an irrefutable ex- ample of fortitude and faith to their unbelieving neighbors, to leaven the dull mass of Protestant America and ultimately to bring the United States into the ranks of Catholic powers.37 No figure was more insistently, clearly, and admiringly drawn in immigrant literature than that of the humble Irishman in every walk of life who succeeded in converting his employer, friend, or patron.38 Though Bostonians could not do without the Irish servant girl, distrust of her mounted steadily; natives began to regard her as a spy of the Pope who revealed their secrets regularly to priests at confession.39 The growth of Catholicism in England warned them that a staunchly Protes- tant country might be subverted. Meanwhile, close at home, the mounting power of the Oxford movement in the Episcopal Church, reflected in the estrangement of Bishop Eastburn and the Church of the Advent (1844 ff.), and a growing list of widely publicized conversions lent reality to the warning of Beecher and Morse that Catholics plotted to assume control of the West.40
Before 1850, the potential friction inherent in these fears broke out only infrequently and sporadically. Incepted by irresponsible elements, these spontaneous brawls were always severely criticized by the community. Indeed, they were only occasionally directed against aliens, more often involving neigh- borhoods or fire companies. The rowdies singled out no special
Cf., e.g., Boston Catholic Observer, February 16, 1848; Thomas D'Arcy McGee, History of the Irish Settlers in North America . .. (Boston, 1852), 71; Billington, op. cit., 291.
38 Cf., e.g., Ellie in Agnes E. St. John, "Ellie Moore or the Pilgrim's Crown," Boston Pilot, June 30-September 1, 1860.
Cf. James O'Connor, "Anti-Catholic Prejudice," American Catholic Quar- 39 terly Review, January, 1876, I, 13.
40 Cf. Billington, op. cit., 118 ff., 263; William Wilson Manross, History of the American Episcopal Church (New York, 1935), 283 ff .; Boston Catholic Observer, July 24, 1847; S. F. B. Morse, Foreign Conspiracy against the United States (s.l., n.d. [186-]), 26, 3, 29; S. F. B. Morse, Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States ... (New York, 1854), passim; Louis Dow Scisco, Political Nativism in New York State (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, XIII, New York, 1901), 21.
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group. In 1814 West Enders rioted against Spanish sailors, in 1829 against Negroes and Irishmen, and in 1846 against some drunken Irishmen in Roxbury; but these were no more sig- nificant than the countless feuds between North Enders and South Enders, or between truckmen and sailors, details of which enlivened many a police dossier.41
The Broad Street riot was exceptional only in size. On June II, 1837, a collision between a volunteer fire company and an Irish funeral procession led to an outbreak, quelled after an hour or so by the militia. Caused by hot-headed, unruly firemen, proverbially a disruptive factor, it in no way reflected the feeling of the community. The firemen were immediately repudiated, and partly as a result of the affair, Mayor Lyman took the first steps towards replacing the volunteer system with a paid fire department.42 A less permanent result was the establishment by the disbanded firemen of the American, the first anti-Catholic paper in Boston which for somewhat less than a year attacked alternately the Irish and the "paid patriots" who replaced them.43
Because it served for many years as an argument throughout the country in the propaganda for and against Catholics, the Charlestown Convent fire received a greater degree of notoriety than any other riot.44 This disturbance grew primarily out of the failure of the school and the rural community in which it was located to adjust themselves to each other. To the labor- ers who lived nearby, the convent was a strange and unfamiliar
41 Cf. "Boston as it Appeared to a Foreigner at the Beginning of the Nine- teenth Century," Bostonian Society Publications, Series I, IV, 117, 118; Joseph E. Chamberlin, Boston Transcript ... (Boston, 1930), 37 ff .; Minutes of the Selectmen's Meetings, 1811 to 1817 . . . (Volume of Records . . . , XXXVIII), Boston City Documents, 1908, no. 60, p. 113; Boston Pilot, September 12, 1846; Arthur Wellington Brayley, Complete History of the Boston Fire Depart- ment . . . (Boston, 1889), 185, 186; Edward H. Savage, Police Records and Recollections .. . (Boston, 1873), 65, 66, 110, 257.
42 Chamberlin, op. cit., 48 ff .; Brayley, Complete History, 197 ff .; State Street Trust Company, Mayors of Boston ... (Boston, [1914]), 15.
43 Cf. American, October 21, 1837, March 17, 1838.
44 There are numerous short accounts of this affair; but the best, though differing in interpretation from that offered here, is in Billington, op. cit., 68 ff.
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institution, with which it was difficult to be neighborly or to follow the customary social forms. In addition, Catholicism meant Irishmen and for non-Irish laborers the convent was a symbol of the new competition they daily encountered. Rebecca Reed's lurid stories of life in the convent and the bickering of the Bishop and the Charlestown Selectmen over a cemetery on Bunker Hill provoked a sense of irritation that came to a head with the appearance and disappearance of Elizabeth Har- rison, a demented nun.45 The refusal of the Mother Superior to admit the Charlestown Selectmen to investigate the pur- ported existence of dungeons and torture chambers until the very day of the fire inflamed the forty or fifty Charlestown truckmen and New Hampshire Scotch-Irish brickmakers who led the curious mob; and her threat that, unless they with- drew, she would call upon the Bishop for a defense contingent of 20,000 Irishmen precipitated the holocaust.46
After the initial excitement, every section of public opinion in Boston greeted the fire with horror and surprise. Bostonians had not disliked the school; many had actually sent their children there. There is no evidence that the residents of the city had any connection with the plot; not a voice was raised in its support. The press condemned the absence of adequate protection, and deplored the "high-handed outrage." Bos- tonians asserted that "The Catholics . . . are as ... loyal citizens as their brethren of any other denomination." A mass meeting at Faneuil Hall expressed sympathy with the unfortu- nate victims of mob action and, resolving "to unite with our Catholic brethren in protecting their persons, their property,
45 Billington, op. cit., 71 ff .; Shea, op. cit., III, 462, 463 ; Charles Greely Lor- ing, Report of the Committee Relating to the Destruction of the Ursuline Convent ... (Boston, 1834), 8. Miss Harrison's disappearance was probably not important. In 1830 a rumor spread by the New England Herald (Vol. I, no. 28) that "a young lady, an orphan has lately been inveigled into the Ursuline Convent ... after having been cajoled to transfer a large fortune to the Popish massmen" was ridiculed and had no repercussions (cf. United States Catholic Intelligencer, April 24, 1830).
46 Billington, op. cit., 81, n. 85; Benj. F. Butler, Autobiography and Per- sonal Reminiscences . . . (Boston, 1892), III; Darling, op. cit., 165, n. 79.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
and their civil and religious rights," recommended a reward for the capture of the criminals and compensation to the con- vent, as did similar meetings under John Cotton in Ward Eight, under Everett at Charlestown, and under Story at Cam- bridge.47 A reward of $500 offered by Governor Davis resulted in the arrest of thirteen men, the trial of eight, and the convic- tion of one. The life imprisonment sentence for the one of whose guilt there seemed to be no doubt was far more signif- icant than failure to convict those who might have been innocent.48
The convent, reestablished in Roxbury, failed "because of lack of harmony among the Sisters." 49 But the legislature was petitioned for compensation repeatedly in the next twenty years. Despite persistent reluctance to grant public funds for religious purposes, $10,000 was voted in 1846, but rejected by the Ursulines.50 The rise of Know-Nothing sentiments thwarted further overtures, while anti-Catholic activities of city rowdies and the circulation of Six Months in a Convent somewhat balanced expressions of sympathy. But these antagonisms were more marked outside than within the city. None of the anti-Catholic papers founded after the publication of that scur- rilous book were published in Boston.51
Occasional manifestations of hostility in the next few years were restricted in scope. The Montgomery Guards, the first Irish military company, were attacked in 1837 by the rank and file of the Boston City Guards who refused to parade
17 Cf. Billington, op. cit., 69, 81-85, 86, 108; Loring, op. cit., 2, 6, 16; Amer- ican Traveller, August 15, 19, 1834; [H. Ware, Jr.], An Account of the Con- flagration of the Ursuline Convent ... by a Friend of Religious Toleration (Boston, 1834), 3; Chamberlin, op. cit., 44 ff .; Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel, Au- gust 16, 1834; ibid., August 23, 1834; Crawford, Romantic Days, 22.
48 Cf. Ware, op. cit., 10; Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel, August 23, 1834; Billing- ton, op. cit., 86, 87; Loring, op. cit., 4.
49 Robert H. Lord, "Organizer of the Church in New England," Catholic Historical Review, July, 1936, XXII, 182.
50 Cf. Billington, op. cit., 89, 110, n. 27; Documents Relating to the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown (Boston, 1842), 21, 22, 31; "Anti-Catholic Movements in the United States," Catholic World, March, 1876, XXII, 814; Boston Pilot, February 18, 1854.
51 Cf. Boston Pilot, April 16, 1853; Billington, op. cit., 92 ff.
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with an Irish company to uphold "the broad principle . . . that in all institutions springing from our own laws, we all mingle in the same undisguised mass, whether native or natural- ized." Although the native militiamen complained that "the press . . . condemned our conduct with . open-mouthed language of wholesale reprehension . the very next year the same newspapers severely criticized the Irish soldiers who were finally disbanded in 1839.52 In 1844 the reaction to the school quarrels in New York, to the riots in Philadelphia, and to the defeat of the national Whig ticket by the Irish vote, produced a short-lived nativist branch of the Whig Party. Although the American Republicans under T. A. Davis gained the mayoralty in 1845, it was only on the eighth ballot, in an election fought primarily on the issue of the local water sup- ply.53 Nativism declined steadily thereafter. An attempt to revive it in 1847 failed so disastrously, that the Boston Catholic Observer could triumphantly proclaim nativism dying.54
Nativist fears failed to develop more significantly because the Irish before 1845 presented no danger to the stability of the old society. They were in a distinct minority and, above all, were politically impotent. In 1834 the Irish claimed no more than 200 voters in all Suffolk County, and in 1839, no more than 500, while in 1845 less than one-sixth of the adult male foreigners in Boston were citizens.55 Only a few had secured the right to vote, or took an interest in politics; their opinions were still a matter of private judgment, with no influence upon the policies of the community. The old inhabitants, as in- dividuals, might look down upon their new neighbors as unab-
52 Cf. American, October 21, 1837; Boston Pilot, February 3, 17, 1838, Oc- tober 12, 1839.
53 Cf. State Street Trust Company, Mayors of Boston, 17; Darling, op. cit., 327-329; William G. Bean, Party Transformation in Massachusetts . . . (MS., H. C. L.), 228 ff.
54 Boston Catholic Observer, August 28, June 19, July 24, 1847; Bean, op. cit., 232 ff.
55 Cf. Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel, January 18, 1834; Boston Pilot, Novem- ber 9, 1839; George H. Haynes, "Causes of Know-Nothing Success in Massachu- setts," American Historical Review, October, 1897, III, 74, n. I.
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sorbable incubi, but the still powerful tradition of tolerance stifled their accumulated resentments. The dominant group took no step to limit social and political rights or privileges until the ideals of the newcomers threatened to replace those of the old society. At that moment the tradition of tolerance was breached and long repressed hostilities found highly inflam- mable expression.
The crisis came when, after a decade of efforts in that di- rection, the Irish acquired a position of political importance. After 1840 their press insisted upon the duty "to themselves as well as to their families" of naturalization and a rôle in the government. Politicians sponsored societies which aided the unknowing and stimulated the indifferent to become citi- zens, and professional agents drew up papers, filled out forms, and rapidly turned out new voters for the sake of fees and political power.56 Between 1841 and 1845, the number of qualified voters increased by 50 per cent, then remained stable until 1852, when it grew by almost 15 per cent in two years, while in the five years after 1850, the number of naturalized voters increased from 1,549 to 4,564. In the same period, the number of native voters grew only 14 per cent.57 Perennial political organizations flourished with every campaign and further mobilized the Irish vote.58
The coherence and isolation of Irish ideas facilitated political organization. And Irish leaders, consciously or unconsciously, encouraged group solidarity and the maintenance of a virtual Irish party. Though the Irish vote was not yet used to serve corrupt personal interests,59 both those who aspired to gain public office in America through the support of a large bloc
56 Cf. Boston Pilot, February 19, 1853; Dissertation Copy, 367.
57 Cf. Josiah Curtis, Report of the Joint Special Committee . . . 1855 . . . (Boston, 1856), II; "Report and Tabular Statement of the Censors," Boston City Documents, 1850, no. 42, p. 12; Billington, op. cit., 325, 326.
58 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, July 8, 1860.
5º The only instance of devious Irish politics in this period came in the elec- tion of John C. Tucker to the legislature in 1860 (cf. E. P. Loring and C. T. Russell, Jr., Reports of Controverted Elections . . . 1853 to 1885 . . . [Boston, 1886], 89 ff.).
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of voters, and those who hoped to return as liberators to the Emerald Isle, directed their energies toward activizing their countrymen. These efforts were so widespread that one of the most far-sighted Irish leaders complained that Irish political influence was being "fatally misused" and warned that "keep- ing up an Irish party in America is a fatal mistake, and . . . I will seek to induce them rather to blend and fuse their interests with American parties, than cause jealousy and dis- trust by acting as an exclusive and independent faction . a man has no right to interfere in American politics unless he thinks as an American. . . . " 60 But such views were rare.
With the political mobilization of the Irish in Boston, toler- ance finally disappeared. The possibilities of Irish domina- tion were the more startling because the political situation in Massachusetts, 1845-55, permitted a coherent, independent group to exercise inordinate influence. The unity of the old parties was crumbling as dissatisfied elements demanded new policies to meet the problems of reform, particularly those posed by slavery.61 Although all, including the most conserva- tive Abbott Lawrence, agreed on the ultimate desirability of reform, they were divided as to the methods of attaining it. Within each political party a restless group contended that the forces of good must prevail immediately, even at the expense of failure in national politics. Their insistence upon imme- diate, unequivocal action destroyed the coherence of the old alignments and yielded to the unified Irish the balance of power. For four years the reformers found these foreigners square in their path, defeating their most valued measures. In the critical year of 1854 this opposition drove them into a violent zenophobic movement that embodied all the hatreds stored up in the previous two decades.
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