USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 20
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2II
GROUP CONFLICT
control of the government, it failed to pass a single measure to that effect. In 1854, a bill to exclude paupers was not con- sidered until the end of the session, and then referred to com- mittee where it died. A literacy amendment to the constitution was rejected, and an amendment requiring a twenty-one year residence for citizenship which passed, was defeated at the sec- ond vote by the next Know-Nothing legislature.99 Once reform, the essential feature of Know-Nothingism in Massachusetts, was assured, the party leaders attempted to jettison the anti- Catholic program. But the intolerance they had evoked could not readily be dispelled. Its influence persisted long after the death of the party it had served.
The Know-Nothings dissolved over the question of slavery, for the national party drew its strength from incompatible sources. In Massachusetts it was anti-slavery; elsewhere in the North it was unionist; in Virginia and throughout the South, it was pro-slavery.100 Lack of a unified program inevitably split the party. Despite their strategic position in Congress, they could unite on few measures. Finally, when the national convention adopted a pro-slavery plank in June, 1855, the northerners under Henry Wilson bolted and the Massachusetts Council on August 7 adopted an uncompromising liberal posi- tion. At the same time a section of the party broke away and met at Worcester in June, called itself the Know-Somethings
99 Cf. Debates and Proceedings in the Massachusetts Legislature . . . 1856, Reported for the Boston Daily Advertiser (Boston, 1856), 141, 343, 348; Bean, loc. cit., 322; Billington, op. cit., 413. Most of these measures were sponsored by the purely nativist branch of the Party, which declined in importance after 1854 and left the reformers in complete control (cf. Bean, op. cit., 248). To those overlooking the concrete accomplishments of the 1854 legislature, the Free- Soilers under Wilson seemed to have "captured" the Know-Nothing organization in 1855 (cf., e.g., Haynes, "Causes of Know-Nothing Success," loc. cit., III, 81) . In fact, true nativists like Morse had so little sympathy for Massachusetts Know-Nothingism that they charged it was "a Jesuitical ruse, gotten up for the purpose of creating a sympathy in favor of the church" (Morse, Foreign Con- spiracy, 31).
100 Cf. Bean, loc. cit., 324 ff .; E. Merton Coulter, William Brownlow . . . (Chapel Hill, 1937), 124 ff .; Scisco, op. cit., 137; Carman and Luthin, loc. cit., 223.
212
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
or American Freemen, and advocated an abolition platform and an end to secrecy. The nomination of Fillmore, a pro-slavery man in 1856, completed the break between the state and na- tional parties and a de facto coalition with the rising Republican party spontaneously formed. The latter nominated no candi- date to oppose Gardner for the governorship, and most Know- Nothings voted for Fremont.101 Thereafter the Know-Nothings in the state were absorbed in the tremendous growth of the new party, and Banks led the remnants to the Republicans in 1857-58 on his election to the governorship.102
Produced by the same reform impulse that fathered Know- Nothingism, the Republican party continued to express ani- mosity toward the Irish, "their declared and uncompromising foe." The defeat of Fremont in 1856 was laid at the door of the Irish Catholics, and confirmed the party's hostility to them. In retaliation, it helped pass an amendment in 1857 making
101 Cf. Billington, op. cit., 407 ff., 426; James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States ... (New York, 1893), II, 89 ff .; Bean, op. cit., 295-322, 339 ff .; Mann, op. cit., 50; Scisco, op. cit., 146 ff .; Wilson, op. cit., II, 423 ff .; Merriam, op. cit., I, 165, 173 ff .; cf. also Fred H. Harrington, "Fremont and the North Americans," American Historical Review, July, 1939, XLIV, 842 ff.
VOTE IN BOSTON, 1856
Presidential
Gubernatorial
Fremont (R)
7,646
Gardner (KN) 7,513
Fillmore (KN)
4,320
Gordon (Fillmore KN) 2,5II
Buchanan (D)
5,458
Bell (Whig)
1,449
Beach (D)
5,392
17,424
16,865
(Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser, November 5, 1856).
102 Cf. Fred H. Harrington, "Nathaniel Prentiss Banks ... ," New England Quarterly, December, 1936, IX, 645 ff. The "straight" American party nominated candidates in 1857 and 1858 but received a meager vote and then expired (Bean, op. cit., 362-365). Gardner's personal popularity helped them in the former year but in the latter they received less than 2,000 votes.
VOTES FOR GOVERNOR IN BOSTON
1857
1858
Republicans
4,224
6,298
Know-Nothings
4,130
1,899
Democrats
5,17I
6,369
13,525
14,566
(Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser, November 4, 1857; Boston Daily Courier, November 3, 1858).
213
GROUP CONFLICT
ability to read the state constitution in English and to write, prerequisites to the right to vote; and in 1859, another, pre- venting foreigners from voting for two years after naturaliza- tion.103
Though the restrictive legislation affected all foreigners, the venom of intolerance was directed primarily against the Irish. Waning group consciousness among the non-Irish gave promise of quick acculturation, and similarities in economic condition, physical settlement and intellectual outlook had left little room for disagreement. In fact, the Irish found all others united with the natives against them. A Negro was as reluctant to have an Irishman move into his street as any Yankee,104 and though the Germans distrusted the Know-Nothings and re- sented the two-year amendment, liberal principles led them into the Republican party.105
v Indirectly, the Know-Nothing movement revived Irish na- tionalism. In Boston, nationalist activities first assumed the guise of the Irish Emigrant Aid Society, whose innocuous title concealed a secret revolutionary club, ostensibly aimed at organizing a liberating invasion of Ireland. Though some hot- heads spoke of chartering ships to transport an army of Irish- Americans across the Atlantic, most recognized the obvious futility of such efforts. By and large, they hoped to organize politically, to support anti-English parties in America, to pre- pare for the Anglo-American war that would free Ireland, and to mobilize support against Know-Nothingism.106 That the last motive, presumably incidental, was in fact primary, was clear from the movement's exclusively American character: it had no counterpart in Ireland. While expanding rapidly
103 Cf. Bean, op. cit., 367-372; Bean, loc. cit., 323; Charles Theo. Russell, Disfranchisement of Paupers ... (Boston, 1878), 8; Massachusetts House Documents, 1857, no. 114; ibid., 1859, no. 34.
104 Cf., e.g., the petition of the residents of Elm Street (Bean, op. cit., 206).
105 Cf. Ernest Bruncken, German Political Refugees in the United States (s.l., 1904), 45 ff.
106 Cf. the illuminating report of Consul Grattan to Crampton, Boston, No- vember 23, 1855, British Embassy Archives, F. O. 115/160; also Rowcroft to Crampton, November 12, 1855, ibid., F. O. 115/160.
214
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
throughout 1855, the organization had little ultimate success. The clergy opposed it, cautious prosecution of would-be libera- tors in Cincinnati checked its growth, and internal quarrels finally dissipated its strength.107 But failure did not end the quest for a fatherland. So long as the Irish were unaccepted in Boston, they looked back across the ocean. There was "always . some machination to draw money from the pockets of the deluded lower order of Irish. . . The Fenian
>> 108 Brotherhood emerged after 1859 and despite ecclesiastical dis- approval grew in secret until it held its first national conven- tion in Chicago in 1863. Its "centres" in Boston were numerous and active.109
Moreover, the Irish persisted in their opposition to reform. With Brownson, they believed Know-Nothingism "an imported combination of Irish Orangism, German radicalism, French Socialism and Italian . . . hate" and regarded Republicanism as its pernicious successor.110 After 1856 they consistently sup- ported the conservative Democratic party, voting for Buchanan and Douglas.111 Although the violent phase had passed, the bitterness of conflict and antagonism remained. Out of it had grown a confirmed definition of racial particularism: the Irish were a different group, Celtic by origin, as distinguished from the "true" Americans, who were Anglo-Saxon, of course.112 Once aroused, hatred could not be turned off at the will of those who had provoked it. The Springfield Republican sanely pointed out that "the American party, starting upon a basis of
107 Cf. Grattan to Crampton, January 21, 1856, ibid., F. O. 115/172; Grattan to Crampton, March 4, 1856, ibid., F. O. 115/172; Abbott, Historical Aspects, 475, 476; Citizen (New York), August 25, 1855, Febuary 9, 1856.
108 Lousada to Russell, September 8, 1864, British Consular Correspondence, F. O. 5/973.
109 Cf. Jeremiah O'Donovan-Rossa, Rossa's Recollections . . . (Mariner's Harbor, N. Y., 1898), 271, 272, 381; "Proceedings . . . , " British Consular Correspondence, F. O. 5/973; E. Wells to Lousada, ibid., F. O. 5/973; Boston Pilot, November 21, 1863.
110 Cf. Bean, op. cit., 257.
111 Cf. references to Irish-American and Boston Pilot, 1856-1860, Dissertation Copy, 397, ns. 301-303.
112 Cf., e.g., "The Anglo-Saxon Race," North American Review, July, 1851, LXXIII, 53, 34 ff.
215
GROUP CONFLICT
truth . . . has gone on, until [it] ... denies to an Irishman . . any position but that of a nuisance. . . . >> 113 Group con- flict left a permanent scar that disfigured the complexion of Boston social life even after the malignant growth producing it had disappeared.
113 Springfield Daily Republican, July 10, 1857.
CONCLUSION
The energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all the European tribes . . . will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new literature, which will be as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the smelting-pot of the Dark Ages. . . .
THE crucible of civil war defined and clarified the position of all elements in Boston society. Republicans and Democrats, Free-Soilers and Whigs, all approved of the objectives of the struggle for union and, after the firing on Fort Sumter, turned their energies towards achieving them. Bostonians now wak- ened to a realization of the importance of foreigners. The demand for men was enormous. Particularly after the three- month volunteers trickled home, the community leaders faced the necessity of utilizing the most fertile source of new recruits - the immigrant groups. Soon after the fighting began, Gov- ernor John A. Andrew wrote to the Secretary of War:
Will you authorize the enlistment here . .. of Irish, Germans and other tough men . . . ? We have men of such description, eager to be employed, sufficient to make three regiments.2
That Germans supported the war and eagerly flocked to the colors was not surprising in view of their attitude towards abolition and their membership in the Republican party.3 In- deed, by 1861 distinctions of national origin had little influence upon the reactions of Germans, Englishmen, Scots, Frenchmen, and Jews. These participated in the community's effort as a matter of course. The four years of struggle merely reaffirmed their secure position in the city; and whatever new prob-
1 Quoted from Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Henry Gabriel, Course of American Democratic Thought ... (New York, 1940), 45.
2 Henry Greenleaf Pearson, Life of John A. Andrew Governor of Massachu- setts 1861-1865 (Boston, 1904), I, 205.
3 Cf. Dissertation Copy, 400.
21 7
CONCLUSION
lems they faced were not burdened with memories of old con- flicts or with unforgotten resentments of social and economic segregation.
But Irish aid was less expected. They had opposed Lincoln, favored slavery, fought reform, and upheld the Democratic party and the South. Moreover those who now called for their help were the very men who, for the preceding six years, had sponsored restriction of Irish rights and privileges. "We hear on all sides the sound of disunion . .. ," John C. Tucker had openly warned, "Supposing it should come, and that Massachu- setts stood alone, can she ... expect that these men, who she is now about to proscribe, will rush to her assistance?" 4
Yet stronger ties bound the Irish to the Union. The guns that roared across Charleston Harbor roused an echo of con- tradiction in the Church's social policy. Complete acceptance of lawfully established government was basic to the thinking of all Irish Catholics; that was at the root of their complaint that abolitionists were revolutionaries, and helps to account for their complete conservatism after 1848. But in April, 1861, there was no doubt as to which section was revolutionary. The issue was not slavery, but unity, and the Church in Boston agreed with Archbishop Hughes that "It is one country and must and shall be one." 5 The very logic of its political theory ensured obedience to the government in power and transferred loyalty to Washington.
As the war unfolded, more practical reasons drew the ranks of common Irishmen along the same path as the Church in
The grandest cause the human Race on earth can ever know.6
Lack of sectional feelings among the immigrants focused their devotion upon the national government; and the bounties that surpassed the average annual earnings of the common laborer
4 Cf. William G. Bean, Party Transformation in Massachusetts with Special Reference to the Antecedents of Republicanism ... (MS., H. C.L.), 370.
5 Cf. Der Pionier, August 13, 1862.
James Donnelly, "Song to Colonel Corcoran," Boston Pilot, July 20, 1861.
218
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
rendered patriotism exceedingly profitable. In addition, Great Britain's southern sympathies, clear from the start, encouraged Irish hopes of a war with England in which the United States together with a resurgent Ireland would humble both Saxon and slaveholder. To some extent, therefore, enlistment became a Fenian tactic. "Centres" flourished in every Irish regiment and optimistic liberators sought to acquire in action against the Confederacy, skill for a further struggle. A common Anglo- phobia thus allied Irish nationalists and American unionists.7
The government was quick to take advantage of Irish feel- ing.8 Group consciousness now proved no barrier, but actually an aid to united action. An Irish brigade was organized and Maegher was advanced to the generalcy on the basis of dubious military qualifications but of undoubted popularity among his countrymen. Boston alone mustered two regiments. The Co- lumbian Artillery, banned by the Know-Nothings seven years earlier, emerged from its disguise as a fraternal organization, and under its old commander Thomas Cass furnished the nu- cleus of the Ninth Massachusetts Regiment. The Twenty- Eighth Regiment, also almost exclusively Irish, was formed later. In addition, Irish units joined other regiments and Irish leaders like P. Rafferty and B. S. Treanor became agents to recruit their compatriots.9
The war quickened understanding and sympathy. Serving with their own kinsmen and their own chaplain under their own green flag, assured of complete religious equality, the Irish lost the sense of inferiority and acquired the sense of belong- ing.10 They were no longer unwanted aliens. In the armies of
7 Cf. Marcus Lee Hansen, Immigrant in American History . . . (Cambridge, 1940), 143.
Cf. Edward Dicey, Six Months in the Federal States (London, 1863), II, 8 280 ff.
9 Cf. James Bernard Cullen, Story of the Irish in Boston . . . (Boston, 1890), 105-107; Daniel George Macnamara, History of the Ninth Regiment .. . (Bos- ton, 1899), 4, 5; Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, Compiled ... by the Adjutant General (Norwood, 1931), I, 616; Dissertation Copy, 403, 404.
10 Cf. William Schouler, History of Massachusetts in the Civil War (Boston, 1868), I, 230; Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines . . . , I, 616, 617;
219
CONCLUSION
the field men of all nativities fought a common battle. Living together, they came, for the first time, to know one another, and knowing each other, they insensibly drew closer together. A Boston volunteer noted in 1863 the strange celebration of St. Patrick's Day by Maegher's Brigade, but the following year found him joining the festivities.11 And a visiting Englishman noted, "You cannot go through the camp and say - 'There is the sedate Yankee - there the rollicking Irishman' - all seem subdued together into the same good behaviour." 12
At home, too, antagonisms became less bitter. The com- munity needed the Irish and therefore cultivated their favor. The government relaxed its discriminations against them. On the recommendation of the governor, the two-year amendment was repealed and the foreign-born regained their full civic rights, with the result that Irish politicians advanced to munici- pal office in ever larger numbers.13 At the same time other institutions became more tolerant. In 1861 Harvard University conferred the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon Bishop Fitz- patrick, the first time a Catholic divine was so honored.14 By 1862 Bible reading had paled as an issue. The legislature revoked the law making it compulsory, and the Boston School Board declared its "public schools . .. unexceptional to all denominations and to all of every creed, by the liberality, equality, and just regard for the religious faith of all our citi- zens." 15 It was not long before the City Hospital decided that "Patients may be visited by clergymen of their own selec- tion, and where there is a wish for the performance of any par-
F. Spencer Baldwin, "What Ireland ... ," New England Magazine, March, 1901, XXIV, 80, 82.
11 Cf. Charles William Folsom, Diary, 1861-1864 (MS., B.P.L.), III, March 17, 1863 ; ibid., IV, March 17, 1864.
12 Robert Ferguson, America during and after the War (London, 1866), 109, IIO.
13 Cf. the lists in Municipal Register Containing the City Charter . . . 1866 (Boston, 1866), 58 ff., 105 ff., 173-184; also, Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1861, no. 2, p. 23; ibid., no. 102 ; Der Pionier, May 23, 1861.
14 Boston Pilot, July 27, 1861.
15 Boston Pilot, February 1, 1862; "Report of the School Committee, 1863," Boston City Documents, 1864, no. 50, p. 42.
220
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
ticular religious rite, it shall be indulged when practicable." 16
Furthermore, the loyalty of the Irish in the crisis drew them more closely into the city's life. Colonel Corcoran was en- thusiastically received by the city governments of Boston and Roxbury, while Patrick Gilmore, whose "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" was sung everywhere, became the most prom- inent parade-leader in the city.17 The war had provided an issue on which the Irish did not menace, indeed supported, the existing social order and its ideals. And after 1865 pressing problems arising out of the new industrial system and out of a newer type of immigration continued to join the interests of the two groups.
By the end of the century, they were so interdependent that Henry Cabot Lodge, representative of a new generation of native Bostonians, could rise in the Senate and declaim:
The Irish spoke the same language as the people of the United States; they had the same traditions of government, and they had for cen- turies associated and intermarried with the people of Great Britain. They presented no difficulties of assimilation.18
That the Senator was inaccurate was less significant than that, though he knew it, he nevertheless felt the necessity of speak- ing as he did. His generation had grown up in a city which had already outlived its vigorous commercial youth and the leisurely life attending it. These new Bostonians had not ex- perienced the terrific shock produced by an unexpected influx of swarms of impoverished peasants. They had not witnessed the transformation of a neat, well managed city into a slum and disease ridden metropolis. Even the bitterness of the desperate, violent, Know-Nothing assault upon alien ideas and attitudes was outside their ken. Instead, their most formative years witnessed a great social conflict that tried the loyalty
16 "Proceedings at the Dedication of the City Hospital," Boston City Docu- ments, 1865, no. 55, p. 95.
17 Cf. Boston Pilot, September 6, 1862; John Tasker Howard, Our American Music ... (New York, 1939), 583.
18 "Speech of Henry Cabot Lodge on Immigration," 60 Congress, I Session, Senate Documents, no. 423, p. 3.
22I
CONCLUSION
of the Irish and found them not wanting. Mutual interests arising from the new post-war problems further overshadowed the old differences and furnished a basis for cooperation, if not for social equality.
For, though the Irish acquired a secure place in the com- munity, they remained distinct as a group. Prejudice against them lingered for many years.19 They never merged with the other elements in the city and consistently retained the charac- teristics originally segregating them from other Bostonians. Even while supporting the Union, their opposition to reform, their dislike of Lincoln, and their hatred of the Negroes, aboli- tion and the emancipation proclamation, shown in the draft riot of 1863, demonstrated that the basic divergence emanating from the nature of their adjustment to Boston society still existed.20 Depressed to the status of helpless proletarians by the conditions of their flight from Ireland and by the city's constricted economic structure, driven into debilitating slums by their position as unskilled laborers, and isolated intellec- tually by their cultural background and physical seclusion, the Irish felt an insuperable barrier between themselves and their neighbors. As social circumstances dictated, these differences lent themselves to either cooperation or conflict; but so long as they persisted, they stimulated and perpetuated group con- sciousness in both immigrants and natives and left the com- munity divided within itself.
19 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, August 10, 1861, June 21, 1862.
20 Cf. Lewis Hayden, Grand Lodge Jurisdictional Claim ... (Boston, 1868), 50; Dissertation Copy, 408; Boston City Documents, 1863, no. 75; ibid., 1864, no. 6, pp. 31-34; Edith E. Ware, Political Opinion in Massachusetts during the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York, 1916), 103.
APPENDICES
TABLE I BOSTON INDUSTRIES, 1845 *
Average No. of Employees per
Establishment
No. of Industries
No. of Estab- lishments
No. of Em- ployees
Value of Products
I-IO
98
837
4,764
$ 7,994,356
II-25
2I
79
1,453
1,768,197
26-50
IO
35
1,228
1,267,475
51 and over
4
II
807
1,741,400
Unclassifiable
II
?
1,866
1,085,954
TOTAL
144
962
10,118
$13,857,382
* This table is derived from statistics in John G. Palfrey, Statistics of the Condition of Cer- tain Branches of Industry in Massachusetts for the Year Ending April 1, 1845 . . . (Boston, 1846), 1-8, 43-48, 243, 248, 258-261. These statistics give the total number of employees and the total number of establishments in each industry. From this the average number of em- ployees per establishment in each industry was computed. The column headed "No. of Indus- tries" gives the number of industries in Boston, Charlestown, Brighton, Chelsea, Cambridge, Brookline, and Roxbury, in which the average number of employees per establishment falls within the range indicated in the first column. The third and fourth columns give, respectively, the total number of establishments and the total number of employees comprised in these in- dustries, while the last column gives the value of the products they produced. Unclassifiable industries are those in which the number of establishments is not given because, like the shoe industry, they operated by homework.
TABLE II POPULATION OF BOSTON AND ITS ENVIRONS *
I790
1810
1820
1830
1840
1845
1850
1855
1860
1865
Boston (proper)
18,038
32,896
43,298
61,392 §
85,475
99,036
II3,72I
I26,296
133,563
141,083
Islands
282
519
277
292
325
530
1,000
1,300
East Boston
18
. .
1,455
5,018
9,526
15,433
18,356
20,572
South Boston +
354
6,176
10,020
13,309
16,912
24,92I
29,363
Roxbury
2,226
3,669
4,135
5,259
9,089
18,364
18,469
25,137
28,426
Dorchester
1,722
2,930
3,684
4,074
4,875
7,969
8,340
9,769
10,717
Brighton ±
608
702
972
1,425
2,356
2,895
3,375
3,854
Charlestown
1,583
4,954
6,59I
8,783
11,484
17,216
21,700
25,065
26,399
Brookline
484
784
900
1,04I
1,365
2,516
3,737
5,164
5,262
Chelsea
472
594
642
770
2,390
6,70I
10,15I
13,395
14,403
Cambridge
2, 115
2,323
3,295
6,073
8,409
15,215
20,473
26,060
29, II2
West Cambridge #
1,064
1,230
1,363
2,202
2,670
2,68I
2,760
.
* Derived from Carroll D. Wright, Analysis of the Population of the City of Boston as Shown in the . . . Census of May, 1885 (Boston, 1885), 8 ff .; Massa- chusetts House Documents, 1837, no. 19, pp. 9, 10; United States. Census, Aggregate Amount of . .. Persons . .. According to the Census of 1820 (s.l., n.d. [Washington, 1820]), 7; Massachusetts House Documents, 1842, no. 48, pp. 1, 3, 5; Massachusetts House Documents, 1831, no. 10, pp. 1-6; Report and Tabular Statement of the Censors May I, 1850, Boston City Documents, no. 42, 59; Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census . . . (Washington, 1864), xxxi; Francis DeWitt, Abstract of the Census of . . . Massachusetts . . . 1855 . . . (Boston, 1857), 32-50.
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