USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The story of the Irish in Boston, together with biographical sketches of representative men and noted women > Part 7
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And yet it is to these very immigrants, who are thus inveighed against here, that New England owes what she now prizes as the most precious relic of her grandmothers, - the spinning-wheel of the past, - now rising from garret-graves throughout the breadth of the land, to bless with its shadowy memories the hearthstones of the present.
At the time of the Revolution there were many Irishmen in Boston; enough to form a Tory company, - the Loyal Irish Vol- unteers, - and to send many recruits into the patriot ranks as well. Individuals, like Knox, Cargill, and Malcom, rose into public notice as representatives of their race; others, like Crean Brush, and the " mean-looking Irishman," mentioned in connection with the " horred Massacre" of March 5, 1770,1 were so rare as to prove the rule of Irish worth by forming the needful though unwelcome exceptions. Catho- lics then began to avow themselves, and to claim the right to worship.
Immediately after the war was over Irishmen appeared and took their share in the liberty and prosperity of the town. In the Boston Directories for 1789 and 1796, the only ones extant bearing an earlier date than 1800, occur many names that must be readily recognized as Irish. Some of the more noticeable are Thomas and John Barry, Michael Burns, John and Owen Callahan, Daniel Carney, Patrick Connor, Jeremiah Driscoll, Patrick Duggan, Patrick Lyons, Michale Mahoney, Patrick O'Brien, Patrick Welch, Flynn, Foley, Hurly,
1 See Drake, p. 779.
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Kelly, Lynch, McGee, McCarthy, Murphy. Here and there a name like Patience Callahan shows a curious mixture of Puritan and Irish. Sarah Malcom, the widow of Captain Daniel Malcom, kept a board- ing-house on Ship (now North) street. Claude de la Poterie, Roman Catholic priest, vice-prefect, and missionary apostolic, rector of the church in South Latin School street, lived in Oliver's lane. Crowley & Clark were tobacconists in Market square (now Faneuil Hall square). John Boyle and his son were booksellers. Christian
Gullagher was a "limner," i.e. a portrait painter. Patrick Kenny was a comedian. Anna McClure was a schoolmistress. Neil & Getty kept an Irish linen store on Hanover street. James Sullivan was attorney-general, and his son William, then twenty-two years old, was in practice as a lawyer. Thomas Welsh, the patriotic physi- cian, was at this time a member of the school committee.
No sooner did Irish citizenship thus fairly appear and claim an independent existence of equal rank with the other nationalities in a country which has ever styled itself, and with truth, as the asylum of the oppressed of all lands, than the old British instinct began to assert itself in the form of a persistent denial of the fitness of Irishmen for political activity of any kind.
In the wars between England and France, our commerce suf- fered impartially at the hands of either; and the exasperated state of public feeling was gradually overcoming the horror of war from which the surrender of Yorktown had relieved us. The war party in the national councils was divided into two hostile camps: one was for war with Great Britain, and these were called Democrats; the others, the Federalists, were for war with France.
Now, the immigrants of this time were, with very few and insig- nificant exceptions, exiles from Great Britain. The unsuccessful rising in Ireland in 1798, the rigid censorship of speech and press that preceded and followed it, the vengeful memory of civil war and conquest on the one hand, and among the insurgents the bitterness of defeat, furnished weighty reasons for many an exodus from the land of sorrow. Such immigrants naturally took the Democratic side, and the rapid increase of that party, due to such accessions,
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formed the basis for active anti-alien action on the part of the Federalists. In 1795 the period of residence prerequisite to citizen- ship, which by the first naturalization act was only two years, was extended to five; and in 1798, taking advantage of the strong war feeling against France and the apparently unassailable supremacy of their party, the Federalists pushed the residence-period to fourteen years. This policy was not, of course, likely to attract many immi- grants to the Federalists' side ; the foreign-born citizens, with natural unanimity, took refuge in the ranks of the Democrats; and as their political existence depended on their activity, they turned out to be valuable recruits to the party of which they are to-day no incon- siderable portion. The accession to the presidency of Thomas Jef- ferson, in 1800, paved the way to the naturalization act of 1802, which reduced the period of residence to five years, insured fresh reinforcements of aliens, and formed the Democratic policy in regard to naturalization.
It is to her alien party, and especially to her Irish foster-sons, that America owes the glorious history of the War of 1812. Foster, who had been the British Minister at Washington, and who had done his best to avert hostilities, on his return testified in Parliament that the war with America had been kindled by the Irish exiles; and that among the members of Congress who voted for war were six who had been known as members of the Society of United Irishmen.
This war was very unpopular at the North, and particularly so in New England. Toward the end of the year 1814, representatives of the anti-war feeling met in convention at Hartford, Conn., and passed a series of resolutions full of the most ominous resentment at the national government, and almost threatening secession. They recommended that " naturalized foreigners should be debarred from membership in Congress and from all civil offices under the United States."
After their adjournment, however, the brilliant close of the war so overwhelmed all opposition and seized upon the hearts of the people, that the delegates to the convention were most heartily ashamed of their work, and dropped the rebellious agitation like a
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hot potato. So it has been nearly always in the history of our country thus far: whenever the storm of hatred and prejudice seemed almost ready to drive back into the sea the foreigners that sought refuge on our shores, some great national crisis has arisen that has given them, strangers and friendless as they were, an oppor- tunity to show how stubbornly they can fight and how bravely they can die for a flag that is ready to protect them in freedom.
The hostility to the Irish sometimes took a religious phase, but it is undeniable that no very bitter or long-continued opposition has been manifested against, say, the French; while against the Irish the excitement has run so high that on more than one occa- sion the peace of the city has been seriously threatened by it. Curiously enough this rancorous feeling culminated in open outrage just about one hundred years after the earlier Irish immigrants, finding themselves rather coolly received in Boston, formed a society for their own enjoyment, and for the succor of unfortunate kindred.
On Sunday, June II, 1837, occurred the famous Broad-street riot. An Irish funeral procession, going along East street, met a fire company returning from a fire in Roxbury. A contest began about the right of way, in which, at first, the funeral people had the best of it, and took possession of the engine-house. The firemen went to the churches and sounded an alarm of fire, to which the other companies responded, and now drove the Irish through to Purchase and Broad streets. They sought refuge in their houses, but their assailants followed them, breaking their windows and smashing furniture. The air was full of flying feathers and straw from the beds which had been ripped up and emptied into the street. Some of the tenement-houses were completely sacked, the occupants fleeing for their lives. The mayor of the city, Samuel A. Eliot, was early on the scene, but with the scanty police at his disposal could do little to control the disturbance. He took immediate steps to call out the military. The National Lancers, a cavalry company recently organized, were all well known and easily reached, and in about two hours after the beginning of the riot the mayor entered Broad street with about eight hundred men, the Lancers heading the
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column. The riot was speedily quelled; but the people were so excited that a military patrol was maintained all night, and sentinels were posted at the churches to prevent false alarms.
At the official investigation, the blame for beginning the disturb- ance was equally divided between the firemen and the Irishmen. It was estimated that over fifteen thousand persons were concerned in the disturbance. No lives were lost, but there was a great deal of pretty tough fighting, and a considerable amount of property destroyed. One fireman was stretched senseless near Liverpool wharf, and the rumor that he had been killed added fury to the riot. Several of the " native Americans " were brought before the court and held in three or four hundred dollars. The forbearance of the Irish on previous occasions, as, for example, on the occasion of the burning of the Catholic convent at Charlestown, had led the people to look to them for unusual self-control in such matters ; though few men of any nation could be expected to look with calmness on the desolation of a not too comfortable home and the reckless and causeless abuse of countrymen and friends.
Similar mob violence occurred at other periods in the history of the city. These outrages were not countenanced by the better class of Bostonians, but, unfortunately, they were so fierce in design and so relentless in execution that their traces will always remain as blemishes in the city's bright record. About the year 1837 a com- pany of naturalized Irishmen, and men of Irish descent, organized a militia company, and took to themselves the name of "The Mont- gomery Guards," after the famous Revolutionary general of that name, whose Irish blood did not bar him from the friendship of Washington nor from the devotion of American soldiers and people. On Septem- ber 12, 1837, a brigade inspection was held on Boston Common, under Gen. J. L. C. Amee. The brigade comprised Major Hoppin's bat- talion of artillery, in three companies ; the National Lancers, attached to the Second Regiment of Infantry ; the Pulaski Guards, attached to the Third ; and the ten companies of Colonel Smith's regiment of light infantry. One of these ten companies was the Montgomery Guards. Prejudice and race antipathy had risen to such a height that the mem-
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bers of many of the other companies of the regiment had deliberately planned to march off the field if the Irish company appeared on parade. They did, of course, appear; and, in accordance with the agreement, no sooner had the regiment formed upon the parade- ground than the privates and non-commissioned officers of one of the anti-Irish companies, called the City Guards, left the field, under the leadership of a sergeant, in disobedience to the commands of their officers and in gross violation of military discipline. This dis- graceful example was followed by other companies, the Lafayette Guards, the Washington Light Infantry, and a large portion of the Fusileers, and of the Mechanic Riflemen. ,The commissioned officers, and in some cases a part of the warrant officers and privates, stood to their posts; but three companies entire and portions of the others were sufficient to give to the mutiny an aspect of previous concert and of determined insubordination not at all reassuring to the friends of good order. The deserting companies marched through the streets to their quarters with drum and fife, playing " Yankee Doodle," and company standards flying beside the United States flag.
In the afternoon, when the companies were dismissed, the Mont- gomery Guards with the others left the Common and proceeded to- wards their armory near Faneuil Hall. They were followed by a mob who pelted them with stones, coal, and sticks of wood all along their line of march. Not the least reprisal was attempted by the Guards, but keeping their ranks and marching steadily through the spiteful shower of missiles, they reached their armory, and from there quietly dispersed to their homes, having set an example for self- restraint and devotion to duty that put the " natives " to shame.
Governor Everett, who on the preceding St. Patrick's day had attended the centennial of the Charitable Irish Society, and knew some little of the worth and antiquity of Irish citizens' service, issued a proclamation denouncing in strong terms the conduct of the City Guards and their imitators, and expressing warm approval " of the exemplary behavior of the Montgomery Guards under the trying cir- cumstances in which they were placed in the course of the day."
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Of the forty members of this company, thirty-two were native- born, and only eight were naturalized. It is more than probable that it contained the sons of Irishmen whose fathers had fought in the battles of the Revolution. The Lafayette Guards and the Columbian Artillery Company afterwards became known as Irish organizations ; and the latter, after its disbandment, formed an association which was the nucleus of Company A of the Irish Ninth. Such is the irony of history.
The organization of nativism in America was un-American in every particular. Nominations were made by secret meetings of per- sons unknown to the great majority of the members, and voted for on pain of expulsion. It was a secret, oath-bound fraternity, whose real objects and even whose name were not revealed to its own members till they had reached the higher degrees of initiation. During a cer- tain investigation this regulation caused witnesses who were members to reply constantly "I don't know," and suggested the name by which the movement has since been called. The name of the association was said to be " The Sons of '76; or, the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner." At first, selections of the best candidates were made from either party, and as they were secretly communicated to the members and universally balloted for by them, the results were the despair of the political calculator. In New York City the election of 1843 had gone to the Democrats, and the fight had been for years so close, so desperately contested, and so various in result, that the feeling between partisans was exasperated and bitter; and the victors, as a home-thrust to the vanquished, gave the lion's share of the city patron- age to foreigners. The next year brought an " American " victory, in which the vote stood 24,510 " American," 20,538 Democratic, 5,297 Whig. In Philadelphia riots between the natives and the Irish led to the burning of two Catholic churches and the cracking of the Liberty bell. In 1845 New York and Philadelphia gave native majorities. In 1847 the American party in New York City was invisible. In the same year, in Boston, an assembly of all the lodges in the neighborhood was arranged to meet, on the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, in the midst of a crowded settlement of Irish on Fort Hill. Warned
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and exhorted by their clergy, " followers of an Italian prince " though they were, the Irish remained that day within their humble homes, and allowed the insulting procession to have its unpatriotic holiday, without furnishing them the opportunity they sought for marring the peace of the city.
The spirit of the leaders of this movement, many of whom were in other things worthy of all respect, is well shown by the following " Address " to the native Americans of New York, signed "J. T. B.," and printed in the editorial columns of the Boston "Courier," Oct. 31, 1844. The author was Joseph T. Buckingham. Extracts only are here given :-
In the plentitude of that generosity which has induced us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, . . we have warmed into life the torpid viper and the fanged adder, that already begin to show their teeth and spit their venom upon our dear and blood-bought privileges, our sacred and most cherished insti- tutions. Already the foreigners . . . attempt to control our legislators, to nominate our magistrates, and to brow-beat our voters at the ballot-box; and if any of them are too diffident or too ignorant to talk to us in the tone of defiance and domination, they sell their votes to the more enlightened and crafty demagogue, and perjure their souls at the command of profligate leaders. Give to them freely all the advantages which your children enjoy - pay them liberally for their labor - help them to acquire property by enterprise and industry- and when, like your children, they have lived among you twenty-one years, let them exercise your common privilege of admission to the ballot-boxes.
The unsuccessful risings and the dreadful famine in Ireland, between 1846 and 1850, sent crowds of emigrants to America, and politics soon began to feel the impetus of their addition to Demo- cratic ranks. Much was said in nativist circles about " the greed and incapacity of foreign-born citizens for office." The periodic Catholic scare reached one of its maxima. On the crest of this rose another wave of the anti-Irish excitement, which Boston felt severely. Political associates were taunted with the alliance of "Irishmen fresh from the bogs of Ireland," who were " led up to the desk like dumb brutes, their hands guided to make a straight mark," and to " vote down intelligent, honest native citizens." In 1851, under
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Mayor John P. Bigelow, the Charitable Irish Society respectfully de- clined an invitation to participate in the Railroad jubilee procession, "for causes and from feelings best known to themselves," most probably on account of the disagreeable position that they would be placed in if they accepted and appeared in the parade.
The next year Benjamin Seaver was elected mayor, and the "Traveller " shortly afterward contained an announcement that the Catholic priesthood, on the ground that the Irish had put him in office, would shortly demand, among other revolutionary and dangerous things, that the Catholic priests should visit the city in- stitutions at South Boston and Deer Island. Mild as that measure seems to us to-day, it was undoubtedly dangerous and revolution- ary in the eyes of the ill-balanced cranks of the time. One of the especial bugbears of the Know-nothings was the project of selling the jail lands on Leverett street to the Catholics: prop- erty was to be run down by the building of a Catholic church in that locality, and possibly there were other dangers; at any rate, it was as effective for the Know-nothing politician as a red rag for a bull.
After two terms of Mayor Seaver came two terms of Jerome Van Crowninshield Smith,1 a Know-nothing sachem, whose adminis- tration wore out the patiences of the city. The expenses of the ten months, January-October, 1855, were $12,586, including over $2,500 for carriage-hire and refreshments ; and in addition a little item labelled " Probable amount due at Young's Hotel," amounting to $1,500. The expenses for this single year were greater than for both of Seaver's administrations, and the city debt was increased nearly one million of dollars. The people were justly incensed at the abuse of a government which made such great pretensions as to " morality, temperance, and religion : " a large meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, and from this agitation sprang the citizens' movement, which has since taken a very important part in our political history.
The American faction nominated Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, a good
' His initials used to be translated Jerome Vaccinating the Children Smith, on account of an unpopular regulation as to vaccination in the schools.
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man in a bad cause, and resorted to the old-fashioned tricks, and falsehoods, and insults to bring contempt upon their opponents. The Boston " Bee " was perhaps the most virulent. November 28 it contained this editorial : "It is currently reported that the self-con- stituted, dark-lantern clique of sixty, in making up their ticket for Mayor and Aldermen, waited upon t John, Bishop of Boston,1 and consulted His Holiness. . t John urged the claims of two or more on the Aldermen list, remarking that if they were upon the ticket he would pledge the entire Catholic vote of Boston for the Committee's tickets. . This is nothing new. Some few years since during the season of the Whig ward and city committee . a committee was appointed to wait upon ; John and get him to suggest some names that would be acceptable to the Irish voters. . This is the manner in which the American citizens of Boston have been treated by the Whig party and [the citizens' committee ] are now endeavoring to gain the ascendancy by the same contemptible means."
On the same day the " Post," a Democratic paper, contained the following in regard to the citizens' ticket : "This will be opposed by the Protestant Jesuits, a thoroughly drilled phalanx which a Loyola could have gloried in; bound together by oaths ; working by politi- cal machinery the most perfect ever worked; and which, however much shattered in other States, remains tight and strong and in sound order in Massachusetts. This fact should be looked full in the face. It counsels thorough organized effort on the part of those in favor of the citizens' ticket."
The contest was close and exciting, the undeniable worth of the Know-nothing candidate making the defeat of his party difficult; but the result was the election of Alexander H. Rice, one of the best mayors Boston ever had.
It was in this year that the Columbian Artillery, an Irish com- pany, voluntarily disbanded to escape persecution at the hands of the State Government; they subsequently organized as the Colum-
1 Rt. Rev. John Bernard Fitzpatrick, died 1866; son of Bernard Fitzpatrick, one of the early members of the Charitable Irish Society.
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bian Associates, and, as mentioned elsewhere in this chapter, formed a point of beginning for the Ninth Regiment.
The anti-slavery contest now rose into prominence and ensured the total wreck of the so-called American party. In the national election they were almost completely buried, receiving as their share of the two hundred and ninety-six electoral votes only the eight votes of Maryland. Their strength in New Hampshire sank from thirty-two thousand in March to a little over four hundred in No- vember. Popular attention was soon turned towards the restive South, and in the tornado of civil strife which soon burst upon our distracted country, many Irishmen won citizenship on the field of battle, rallying and falling around the green flag that, alas! can never wave but in a foreign fight. No five years' probation then - only the bloody ordeal of the cannon, the rifle, and the bayonet; and not a few of Erin's sons entered upon citizenship and immor- tality together. Let us hope that in that fierce flame the Know- nothing stubble was totally consumed.
There are other pages to which we would gladly turn, - glimpses of neighborly kindness - "good deeds in a naughty world," shining encouragingly from salient points in Irish and American history. But such occurrences, overbalancing as they do the most disheartening items of the preceding account, are not in the same sense exclu- sively a portion of Boston's history. The most recent and most valuable token of this generosity is the noble support which America is giving to the Home Rule agitation, not only in money, which is of course indispensable, but also in moral encouragement, where Boston's influence is freely and effectively bestowed. One cannot but remember the earnest sympathy of Ireland with the American colonies in the darkest hour of their need; we venture to add an instance of this mutual regard immediately connected with the pre- revolutionary excitement in Boston.
At the town-meeting of March 12, 1771, about a year after
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the "massacre " in State street, a letter "from that celebrated Patriot, Dr. Lucas, of Ireland,1 owning the Receipt of one transmitted him by a Committee of this Town together with the Pamphlet rela- tive to the horred Massacre in Boston March 5, 1770 - was read and attended to with the highest satisfaction." Dr. Joseph Warren, Samuel Adams, and two others were appointed a committee to reply to this letter. This distinguished Irishman was a physician of high professional standing, and a patriot whose services to Ireland and to liberty everywhere will make him long remembered. His opinions were so radical that he was twice exiled by the English government, and his writings were burned by the common hangman. He repre- sented Dublin in Parliament from 1761 till his death, November 4, 1771. He established the " Freeman's Journal," which has ren- dered, and still renders, yeoman's service to the cause of Irish liberty.
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