Week 2.1 History 385 - !1Week 2.1 The Civil War and the Re.docx

Week 2.1 History 385 - !1
Week 2.1 The Civil War and the Reconstruction
History 385
Julie de Chantal
March to the Civil War
The armed conflict began with the attack on Fort Sumter in
April 1861. Prior to the attack on the
fort, seven states had declared their secession from the United
States and had formed the
Confederate States of America. They acted along the same
principle the colonies did during the
war of Independence. The Southern States declared their
independence from an oppressive
nation, here the United States instead of England.
There were 5 major causes for the secession of the Southern
states
• Slavery -> It is usually the first cause that comes to mind.
Indeed, some feared that
slavery would be abolished. However, slavery, in and of itself
was not the sole cause
of the conflict.
• Sectionalism -> the country was divided by different
economies, social structures,
and political values. Those divisions were profound enough for
the Southern states to
feel like they were not part of the same country as the Northern

states.
• Protectionism -> The South did not want to have tariffs
imposed on their exports.
The North wanted to protect its industrial economy from the
outside. Tariffs would
reduce competition from England for example but also reduce
England’s incentives
to import American cotton.
• States’ Rights -> this is a big one. States in the South felt that
the North was
infringing on their rights to self-govern.
• Finally, some Southern politicians saw the American
Constitution as compact,
similar to the contract that the Massachusetts Bay Company had
signed in order to
create the Massachusetts colony. For that reason, they felt that
all of these reasons
violated the compact hence that they could secede.
Ambivalence in Boston
People in the North did not see the conflict through the same
lens, and there was a lot of division
among factions of Northerners.
• Opposition to the Secession
• Industrialists were opposed to the war. This was somewhat
logical. People
who have a lot, and have a lot to lose, seek stability to preserve
their fortune.
Industrialists established in Boston did not want to lose their
access to cotton
from the South. They especially did not want the country to go

into a
recession due to the war
• Some members of the government called for a compromise to
avoid the
Secession and the War. They gathered 22,313 signatures in a
petition
favoring a compromise on slavery. They called themselves “The
Union-
Savers.” Governor Andrew, for example, felt that if he did not
go to
Washington to try to negotiate an agreement, he could later be
blamed for
not having done enough to save the Union.
• Neutrality
• African Americans were afraid that any compromise would tip
Boston in
favor of the South. Some feared that either slavery would
expand to the
North or that their personal liberties (right to vote, etc) would
be revoked.
They feared that the North would sacrifice African Americans
to preserve the
Union.
• In favor of the Secession
• Some of the abolitionists approved of the secession, but not
necessarily of

the war. For example, people like Wendell Phillips, who wanted
to get rid of
slavery, were happy at first. They believed that finally slavery
would be gone
and that the country could move forward toward true
civilization. Phillips
was mainly in line with the idea of self-control, rational mind,
although he
admired rash activists like Elijah Lovejoy and John Brown.
Historian Gilbert Osofsky argues that Phillips's nationalism was
shaped by a religious ideology
derived from the European Enlightenment as expressed by
Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. To Osofsky, the
Puritan ideal of a Godly
Commonwealth, through a pursuit of Christian morality and
justice, was the main influence on
Phillips' nationalism. Phillips favored fragmenting the Republic
in order to destroy slavery. He
sought to amalgamate all the American races. Thus, it was the
moral end which mattered most.
After Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, there was still a
question as to what would happen
and what Lincoln would do with the Southern states. Would
Lincoln simply rule the country and
not acknowledge the fact that many states have seceded? Would
he try to compromise with them
and make them come back?
After the attack on Fort Sumter, many came to the conclusion
that the war was eminent and that
there was nothing that they could do to avoid the conflict.
Reaction in Boston

Because the South fired first, many in Boston jumped to their
weapons to defend the cause.
Quickly, the governor called for volunteer troops to support the
war effort. The abolitionists who
were opposed to violence saw the conflict as a rebellion and not
a war caused by the North. As a
result, they could push their agenda a little more forcefully.
African Americans were less enthusiastic but promised to
provide 50,000 troops as soon as the
ban on Black troops were to be lifted.
Irish Americans were ambivalent. They were afraid that they
would be stuck in integrated
regiments (African American and Irish) if the Irish Regiments
were allowed again (remember
that the Know Nothing abolished Irish regiments during the
anti-Catholic period).
Quickly, the state shifted from an economy of peace to an
economy of war, prioritizing
manufacturing of weapons, uniforms, etc over civilian goods.
However, the shift was a long term
one and did not happen quickly enough to provide for soldiers
who enrolled right away. Ten days
after the attack, a group of 100 Bostonians organized the
“Massachusetts’ Soldiers’ Fund” to
solicit contributions to support the families of men recruited in
the military.
Troops
Most people thought that the war would be a short military

confrontation. Since the recruitment
slogan was “Peace in 90 days,” a number of men volunteered.
Students left colleges and
universities to enlist in the military. Those who could not enlist
for reason of age or disability
gave money to support the troops. Women hasten to help the
sick and the wounded. Within days,
the state sent troops to Washington, D.C., by water to avoid
having to deal with possible
sabotage of rail between Boston and the nation’s capital.
After the first 90 days, Americans had a weird impression that
the war would last a wee bit
longer. The battles were much bloodier and more soldiers were
wounded than expected.
In Massachusetts, the question of pay became a point of
contention. The state had to pay soldiers
from the time that they reported to the service until the day that
they were mustered into federal
service. Since the State government was not in session at that
time, the governor expended the
money to pay, expecting the legislature to ratify the expenditure
once back in session. Realizing
that the governor was pledging state credit, Boston banks
advanced voluntary loans to meet the
state’s obligations. A few weeks later, the Governor convened a
brief session to approve the acts.
However, recruitment also became more difficult than in the
first few months, and the governor
had to create incentives for Boston men to volunteer. The
legislature passed an act “in aid of
families of volunteers, and for other purposes,” that allowed
towns to use tax money to help the
wife and children of volunteers. (Remember that women are not

expected to work outside of the
home at the time). The state also pledged to reimburse up to $12
a month to towns for each
volunteers who received such allotment. Towns were still
forbidden to pay a bounty to the
volunteers themselves. (An enrollment bonus if you will)
At a personal level, Bostonians created organizations to support
families. They formed the
Soldiers’ Relief Society to hold communication between the
families and the soldiers, and to
provide them with sympathy, counsel, and aid. Because there
was no systematic distribution of
uniforms, women began to create packages for the soldiers. (See
in particular the image of the
“Soldiers face their First Christmas in the field.” Imagine
getting a care package for Christmas
when you are on the battlefield). Soldiers receive packages from
home with socks, mittens, food,
etc
Military of Massachusetts
The state of Massachusetts troops at the beginning of the war
was much better than in any other
Northern states. Militia units were well trained and well
equipped, and were the first to respond
to the call to arms. As soon as he could, Governor Andrew
asked for 4 regiments or about 3,000
men to report for active duty. The response of the troops was
speedy and efficient, and spoke to
the commitment of both the Governor and the people of
Massachusetts to the cause. It is

important to remember, though, that the militia, when there is
no real peril and no war, had few
soldiers and that they did not get a lot of public support. (The
militia at that time was almost
what we consider the National Guard today. It was a reserve
force at the service of the state).
If you remember when we talked about the vote, men had militia
obligations in the state.
However, as I mentioned, some men refused to fulfill their
obligations. They found ways to skip
on their duty to the state. Some were opposed to violence on a
religious basis—the Quakers for
example refused and still refuse active military service—or
because of moral principles—some
abolitionists for example. Both groups refused to enlist despite
the call to arms. They were
conscientious objectors.
Others, however, took their job very seriously and made the job
of the governor much easier. In
1851, Governor George Boutwell appointed Ebenezer W. Stone
as the State’s adjutant general.
Stone was a 50 year old clothing merchant who was well
established in the city. He had served in
the militia prior to becoming its commander. Stone was
determined to upgrade the militia to a
first class reserve force. He traveled around the state, inspected
local militia companies, certified
muster rolls, upgraded regulations and training manuals, and
replaced old flintlock muskets with
the new percussion rifles.
When John Andrew came to power, he appointed William
Schouler, a former whig newspaper
editor, turned politician, and the two (Boutwell and Schouler)

continued to upgrade the militia.
As the war became eminent, they stimulated recruitment,
inspected the armories, let out contracts
for uniforms and blankets. Then they planned the logistics of
how they would transport of troops
to the capital. By the time that the war was declared, the
governor responded immediately with a
well-trained, well equipped, and well organized militia.
When the order to report to Boston went out to the commanders
of the different regiments, all
regiments responded quickly. In the following days, General
Benjamin Butler, one of the
commanders, contacted his friends and worked his connections
in Washington to “let them
know” that a general should accompany the troops to the
capital. (He was hoping to be that
General hence he was nudging them in the “right direction”).
Benjamin Butler will become more important as we progress in
the class. He was originally from
Deerfield, New Hampshire. His father served under General
Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812.
He went to school at the Phillips Exeter Academy in 1827. His
mother moved to Lowell in 1828
where she operated a boarding house for the workers of the
textile mills. He followed her and
attended the public schools in Lowell. As an adult, he went to
Waterville College. He applied to
join West Point Military Academy but was not accepted. He
returned to Lowell where he clerked

to learn law. He was admitted to the Bar in 1840. He was a
successful lawyer and became a
politician in 1850.
Despite being of Yankee origins, he was a Democrat. He was
elected at the state legislature in
1852. In 1855, the Know Nothing had disbanded his militia
hence why he did not have a military
position anymore. In 1857, he was appointed by Jefferson Davis
(who would be the president of
the Confederacy) to the board of visitors of West Point. He
supported Davis in his nomination for
the Democratic party in 1860, but the nomination went to John
C. Breckinridge. Ultimately,
Governor Andrew signed the proper paperwork, and sent Butler
to Washington with his soldiers.
Making their way to Washington
As mentioned earlier, there was a lot of discussion as to how
troops should be sent to D.C. Some
proposed to send them by train which was risky considering that
Confederacy supporters could
break the rails to slow down the troops. Troops could also be
sent by ship to avoid the land
altogether. Massachusetts chose to do both ways.
The 6th Regiment from Boston was sent by railroad to the
capital on April 17th. The regiment
stopped in NYC and stayed overnight, letting the soldiers have
breakfast at the hotel on the 18th.
They then paraded down Broadway street that day. The next
day, April 19th, shortly before noon,
the regiment arrived at the President Street station Baltimore.
They boarded some horse drawn
railroad cars which took them in town to the Camden Street
station. Maryland was one of the

Border states (neutral state in the war), and was equally divided
between loyalties of the South
and of the North. One minute, people would sing “Dixie” in the
Street, the next they would sing
the national anthem.
As the last three companies were brought across the city, they
were attacked by a pro-secession
mob. They were pelted with rocks and stones. Some people fired
their pistols at them. The troops
fired back into the crowd and cleared a path with their bayonets.
As a response a number of
Confederate sympathizer shut down the President Street Station,
destroyed the railroad bridges
into the capital and cut down all of the telegraph lines. From
that point on, all troops had to be
taken to the capital by sea. Around 5 pm, officials in
Washington began to worry about the 6th
Regiment but a train arrived in the Washington station with the
soldiers in it. Some residents
rushed to take care of the wounded soldiers. They hosted the
Regiment in the Senate Chambers
where the soldiers took in as much rest and food as they could
before finally being mustered into
federal service. The rest of the regiments arrived in
Philadelphia on the 20th of April
Learning that the road between Philly and Washington through
Baltimore had been closed,
Butler took the troops on a railroad to the Chesapeake Bay, and
them put them on a ship to
Annapolis. In Annapolis, his troops repaired the railroad tracks,
and made sure that the
locomotives were working properly. They were ultimately
welcomed in the capital and quartered
in the rotunda in the Capitol building.

Medical care
One of the first things that the people on the homefront realized
was that the government was
woefully unprepared for the number of casualties of the war.
The government had recruited
doctors and surgeons, but at the time it only required the people
who applied to have “evidence
of a regular medical education.” They also required these
applicants have “strict temperance
habits and good moral character.” (You can see the priorities
here, little concern about
performance in education but an emphasis on good character). A
number of the doctors recruited
were incompetent butchers who only wanted to perform surgery.
In order to improve the conditions, the Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston opened a full
wing to treat soldiers and constructed a new section to take care
of them when the troops came
back home. Individual physicians in the city promised their
services to soldiers and their families
left back home free of charge. The Massachusetts Homeopathic
Medical Society and the Boston
Obstetric Society pledged the same.
A side note is important here.
The entirety of the medical corps of the U.S. and Confederate
armies was composed of men only
at first. All of the doctors, nurses, and orderlies were men. The
argument in favor of an all-men
corps was that the war was too violent for women’s

sensitivities. Officials felt that the gore,
blood, and wounds of the soldiers would be offensive to women.
Furthermore, having women in
the medical field would put wounded soldiers in a vulnerable
position. As the war went and the
number of injured soldiers increased, women were progressively
included in the medical
professions. They fulfilled the duties of orderlies, but were
called nurses.
A Black Regiment
Massachusetts had more soldiers than it could send to the front
at first. Within two weeks of the
call for troops, the state had reached the quota required by the
federal government. The Secretary
of War reminded Governor Andrew not to send too many, as
they wanted to stagger the entry of
soldiers in the war. A few weeks after the entry into the war,
Boston’s Black leaders lobbied to
create a Black regiment in the city. In 1859, Governor Banks
had vetoed a bill to allow Black
residents of the state to serve in the military. (They opposed the
idea of Black men carrying
weapons.)
Starting in Spring 1861, members of the Black community
lobbied more intensively to repeal the
law. With John Andrew, as the new governor, they hoped that
the state would finally repeal it and
allow Black men to enlist. While waiting for the decision of the
state, other members of the
community organized the Black drill society in Boston, and they
petitioned the government to
remove the word white from the militia laws.
In September 1861, Black men were finally able to enroll in the

Navy but only for menial tasks.
They were not considered to be soldiers nor sailors, nor were
allowed in combat. This position,
as non-military personnel, justified their low pay and their
inability to receive any promotions.
The War Department also refuses to allow Black men to enlist
at a national level. Based on the
biases against Black men (return to David Walker’s Appeal),
they feared that Black men would
not follow orders, that they would turn against their
commanders, etc.
In Summer 1862, Black Bostonians proposed to create a
Regiment at the state level which would
be commanded by Black officers. Andrew refuses, as he could
only conceive of troops being led
by white men. However, he convinced George Luther Sterns to
create a committee to collect
money and to recruit Black soldiers. The Emancipation
Proclamation, which freed the slaves (I
will come back to this in a few minutes), authorized the
formation of a Black regiment in 1863.
Sterns was a merchant, an industrialist, and an abolitionist. He
was put in charge of recruiting
two infantry regiments the 54th and the 55th.
What is important to remember is that since it was the first
Black regiment, the 54th Regiment
was seen as a social experiment. It was the ultimate test to show
if African Americans could be
soldiers, let alone great soldiers. A large number of people

wanted the regiment to fail since, if it
succeeded, it would prove that Black people were not savages
nor required white guidance. If
you push this logic further, it would also challenge racial
hierarchy, and mean that slavery was
based on prejudice, instead of a civilizing mission.
In February, Governor Andrew contacted Francis G. Shaw, an
abolitionist who was a descendant
of one of Boston’s important families, to ask if he would allow
his son, Robert Gould Shaw, to
take the command of the regiment
Robert Gould Shaw
Robert Gould Shaw was born in Boston on October 10, 1837. He
was part of a prominent family
in the city. During his teen years, he travelled to Europe where
he studied. From 1856 to 1859, he
attended Harvard University and joined the Porcellian Club
(really really really elite Brahmin
club) but withdrew from the University before graduating. Prior
to taking the command of the
54th regiment, he was a captain with the 2nd Regiment. When
he came back to Boston to take on
the regiment, he met with his second in command Colonel
Norwood Hallowell, who was the son
of Philadelphia Quaker. (In the movie Glory, released in 1989,
Matthew Broderick plays Robert
Gould Shaw).
The response to recruitment for the 54th Regiment was not as
enthusiastic as officials had
imagined. Several Black Bostonians felt that the whole thing
was a publicity stunt. African
Americans had already been humiliated when they attempted to
enlist and did not want to face

the same humiliation again. Many were determined to stay out
of the war. They were especially
concerned with how the Black soldiers would be treated once
out of Boston (and especially in
the South). They could be captured and treated as runaway
slaves.
The Regiment used all sorts of tactics to recruit but especially,
they promised a bounty of $100
for recruitment. It was a large sum of money at the time!
(Remember that wives of soldiers
received $12 a month from the town to support their entire
families). By Spring 1863, the
community was finally behind the Regiment and the soldiers
were enlisting more easily. Shaw
trained them at Readville, a few miles south of the city. In
May, the regiment paraded in the city,
looking sharp and crisp.
There were a few issues though.
• They did not receive uniforms at first. Shaw pressured the
state to receive the
appropriate material and weapons necessary for their soldiers.
• Then Black soldiers received a lower pay than white soldiers
from the federal
government.
• white privates were paid $13 a month + $3.50 for clothing
allowance
• Black soldiers were paid $10 a month minus $3 deducted in

advance for
their uniform.
Governor Andrew was behind Shaw to fight against the
injustice, writing to Charles Sumner:
“For God’s sake, how long is the injustice of the Government to
be continued toward these men.”
President Lincoln even tried to explain to Frederick Douglass
(major Black leader at the time)
that the low pay was a concession that the federal government
made so that there could even be a
Black regiment. This obviously did not resolve the situation.
For the most part the Black soldiers were given menial tasks
(justifying their low pay grade), or
stationed where white soldiers had been decimated by typhoid,
typhus, yellow fever, or malaria.
The unhealthy garrison duty, in combination with the
inadequate medical care, contributed to the
soldiers’ greater mortality rate which was about 40% higher
than white soldiers in the Union
Army. That gave even more ammunition to the Governor who
continued to fight against the
discriminatory practices of the Army.
On July 18, 1863, the regiment participated in the assault
against Charleston, South Carolina.
Their objective was to capture Fort Wagner on Morris Island.
They attacked the fort, and after 2
hours of fruitless attack, they retreated. Nearly half of their men
and ⅓ of their officers, including
Shaw, died in combat. Shaw is commemorated in front of the
Massachusetts State House in
Boston.

General Butler took some of the regiments men under his
command. In the following months,
the regiment was reformed and the Governor lobbied to be able
to form a cavalry regiment with
the elite of the different regiments already existing. By
December 1863, the 5th Regiment
Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry, the only Black
cavalry of Massachusetts, was formed
in Boston.
More on the military
The attacks on the Massachusetts regiments and the attacks on
Fort Sumter galvanized the
support in the city. You have to remember that people in
Massachusetts expected some 90 days
of conflict at the most. People on the home front jumped into
action to help support the troops.
Throughout New England, the number of men enrolled in
college declined substantially.
• Harvard University 443 to 385 enrolled -> with a drop of 56%
of those set to
graduate in Spring 1861 were sent to the war
• Yale University 521 to 438 enrolled
• Willams College 238 to 182 enrolled
• Amherst College 220 to 212 enrolled
• Dartmouth College -> 35% of their students sent to the war
• Brown University -> 50% sent to the war
• More than 24% of all Harvard graduates from between 1841 to
1861, and 23% of

Yale’s graduates fought in Lincoln Armies.
The Brahmins, in particular, encouraged their young men to
apply for commissions as officers.
Men from different origins applied for commissions and enlisted
as soldiers. The army overall
was a great equalizer for the city’s population. (Remember the
highly divided social structure
where people did not mingle outside of their class). At war, men
fraternized, notwithstanding
their class. Women, notwithstanding their class, felt grief in the
same way. The war allowed for
more interclass mixing than ever before.
While many Bostonians were convinced that the Union would
win a clear victory, the news of
the first defeats destroys the morale at home. Fortunately,
though, Massachusetts regiments saw
little action in the first months of the war. In August, the
governor received another call for
troops.
Among those troops were some Irish soldiers.
When the Massachusetts Regiment was attacked in Baltimore,
Irish Americans leaders sponsored
a meeting in which they pledged allegiance to the government
and offered their service to
preserve the Union. If you remember well, the Irish regiments
had been abolished in 1855 during
the Know Nothing movement. At the time Thomas Cass, who
was the former commander of the
Columbian Artillery, one of the dismantled regiments, proposed
his regiment be reactivated.
Cass was born in 1821 in Queen’s County Ireland. He was

brought to the United States by his
parents at 9 months. At age 21, he married and became the
owner of vessels trading with the
Azores Island and held stocks in a towboat company based in
Boston. He became active in city
politics and was a School Committee member when the war
broke.
He was appointed Colonel by the Governor, and began to recruit
for the 9th Regiment
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the Glorious 9th. He started
with the old regiment’s base and
continued to recruit at the Columbian Association armory on
Sudbury Street. Companies from
Boston took in Irishmen from Salem, Milford, Marlboro, and
Stoughton. After training for part
of the summer on Long Island, the regiment returned to Boston
to get its flag from the governor.
Toward the end of 1861, the governor allowed for the formation
of a second Irish regiment.
The heroism, patriotism, and the backing that the soldiers
received from the public led to a wave
of tolerance in the city. The tolerance went so far as to see
Harvard confer an honorary degree
upon Bishop John Fitzpatrick.
If you remember, following the election of the Know Nothing,
the city instituted a policy which
required children to read the Protestant Bible on a daily basis.
During this wave of tolerance, the
city changed the policy and came to a compromise. Children

would still be required the reading
of the Bible however, they could also read from any Bible that
was accepted by their clergy (i.e.
the Catholic Bible). The Irish elite also convinced the state to
allow Irish soldiers to practice their
religion and allowed for Catholic priests to be commissioned as
chaplains in the 9th and 28th
Regiments.
Casualties of the first half of the war
During the first years of the war, and especially during the
second year, the North suffered many
casualties. Already in 1862, Lincoln felt that the Union might
be forced to draft soldiers. All of
the troops so far were volunteer troops recruited either for a
period of one or three years. When
the idea of the draft was discussed, many opposed it.
Governor Andrew rejected the idea of the conscription. He felt
that the men from Massachusetts
would enlist voluntarily, and he felt that the draft would be
against the spirit of the Constitution.
Instead, he asked Bostonians to organize rallies to recruit more
men. Every day in August 1862,
shops closed at 2:00 pm, the church bells rang, and people went
into the street to work on
recruiting. Within three months, the state had fulfilled its quota
again.
On September 17, 1862, several Massachusetts Regiments
participated in the Battle of Antietam,
one of the major battles of the Maryland Campaign. They
suffered massive casualties. Across the
Union, nearly 23,000 men died and 12,000 were wounded. It
took a long while for the reports to
reach the Northern public, as military record keeping was

neither accurate, nor efficient. Military
commanders did not keep an official record of casualties. They
had no proper hospital lists, no
methodical burial records, or grave registrations. Parents and
wives tried to get news from their
sons, but they hit a brick wall. It is only when the trains brought
back the wounded and the dead,
or when the local newspapers printed the names of those who
died, were wounded or missing
that the news reached the families.
Draft Riots
From that point on, Bostonians’ opinion about the war
darkened. In March 1863, the federal
government passed a conscription law which required all male
citizens to be drafted according to
the need of the state. Some could avoid the draft
• Black men were dispensed from the draft since they could not
enlist until the creation
of the 54th Regiment
• Rich people could pay $300 to get find a substitute. People
paid a total of $1.085,800
to avoid the draft.
The exemptions sent the message that the white working class
was canon fodder and that the
government did not care about them. There were riots all over
the country, including in Boston,
especially opposing Yankee and Irish. Because of the
segregation of the neighborhoods within

the city, very few African Americans were involved in the riots.
The riots mostly involved Irish
and Yankee. They sometimes included women and children who
wanted to protect their men
from being drafted. The Boston riots did not cause as much
trouble the NYC riots, but reflected
the issues already in place in the city in terms of class and
ethnicity.
Home front
Now that we have talked about the different regiments and the
ways in which recruitment was
done; how did the war change the life on the home front?
Women’s Role
If you remember, we spoke about women’s roles prior to the
war. Women were supposed to stay
in the private sphere, and rule over the domestic realm. At the
beginning of the war, this was still
possible. The number of men recruited was relatively small and
women could remain in the
home and support themselves with any savings that the family
had. Working-class women were
not restricted to the private sphere, due to their need to work.
At the beginning of the war, women took on tasks reserved to
women, for example in creating
care packages, tailoring uniforms, or knitting socks. Those were
usually individual initiatives or
initiatives done through aid societies. As the war progressed
and more men enlisted, however, the
need to fill the jobs that men left behind emerged.
For example, some women took on jobs at the Watertown
arsenal, where they worked at filling
ammo cartridges on an assembly line. You can see by the way

that they are depicted that they
were well dressed, possibly even middle-class women. Women
took on positions as school
teachers, secretaries in government offices, book keepers in
commercial venues, clerks in stores.
Those were all positions which were still considered men’s
positions at the time.
In 1861, government officials created the US Sanitary
Commission to help with the distribution
of clothing, food, and medicine to the crops. The sanitary
Commission sent women to act as
nurses, as I mentioned earlier. Women like Dorothea Dix and
Louisa May Alcott took on those
positions.
Dorothea Dix
Born in Hampden Maine (April 4, 1802), she grew up in
Worcester MA. At age 12, she took
refuge at her grandmother’s home in Boston to escape from an
abusive and alcoholic father. As a
young woman, she opened a school in Boston which was
patronized by wealthy families. She
established another school in 1831, but had a mental breakdown
in 1836. She traveled to Europe
to recuperate (women were often sent abroad when they
suffered mental illnesses, thinking that
isolation would help them!). After coming back, she pioneered
the reform of treatment, and
lobbied for more funding for mental illness treatment
(psychology and psychiatry). During the

Civil War, she was appointed Super intendant of the Army
nurses by the Union Army.
She set guidelines for the candidate nurses:
• 35 to 50 years of age
• plain looking
• They were required to wear unhooped black or brown dresses,
with no jewelry or
cosmetics.
She wanted to avoid sending vulnerable, attractive young
women into the hospitals, where she
feared that they would be exploited by the men (doctors as well
as patients). She cared for both
Union and Confederate soldiers without regards of their
allegiance. Her program recruited close
to 3,000 women to work as nurses under her supervision
Louisa May Alcott
Born in Germantown PA, Nov 29, 1832. Her father Amos
Bronson Alcott was a transcendentalist
in Boston. He was part of the circles which included Emerson
and Thoreau. In 1843-44, her
family moved to a utopian commune in Concord, MA, called
Fruitlands. They attempted to
survive in the commune but failed due to poor planning (did not
plant the crops in time). They
moved to a new family estate in 1845. Throughout her youth,
she received education from people
like Hawthorne, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller (all
transcendentalists).
She was poor, but of the middle class due to her and her
family’s education and background. She
worked as a teacher, a seamstress, a governess, and a domestic

servant before she became a
writer. During the Civil War, she served as a nurse. However,
she caught typhoid fever and was
treated with a compound which contained mercury (as many
compounds did at the time). She
was sent back home to recuperate, and was not longer able to
serve the Union. In 1868, she
published the book “Little Women” which depicts the story of
the March sisters whose father
was a chaplain in the war. She published several sequels to the
series in subsequent years. She
died at age 55 of a stroke.
More changes on the Home front
Merchants continued to make money throughout the war.
However, they prioritized war
production over civilian goods. Since civilians still needed
clothing and shoes, merchants turned
to the production of ready-made clothing and shoe. Due to the
large volume of clothing made at
once (requiring less work), the prices dropped. With lower
prices, the working-class bought
ready-made clothing in larger quantity.
Photography went through a lot of improvement during the Civil
War, especially in Boston.
Daguerreotype were introduced in 1839. They were a silver-
plated copper sheet which was
treated with fumes to make its surface sensitive to light. The
sheets were then placed in a camera,
exposed, and then developed with chemicals. The time of
exposure was really long, and forced

people to stand in really stiff positions and not smile. By the
beginning of the war, photography
was already less expensive and took less time to process.
In the 1860s, soldiers and their loved ones created such a
demand that the “carte de visite,” a
small photo of about 2.5 inches x 4 inches, became really
popular. Soldiers could leave photos
behind and bring photos of their loved ones with them (Hence
why we have a lot of photographs
of Union soldiers, in particular).
Growth of Boston as a city
Despite the war, the city officials still pushed for the expansion
and growth of the city. During
the War, Bostonians develop a taste for all things French.
Second Empire architecture was
favored in the construction of new buildings. (As the Second
Empire style evolved from its 17th
century Renaissance foundations, it acquired an eclectic mix of
earlier European styles, most
notably the Baroque, often combined with mansard roofs and/or
low, square based domes.)
The South End was finally completely filled and became the up-
and-coming neighborhood. For
years, the tide had left the sewage dumped into a basin exposed
to sun and open air. People at the
time described it as “nothing less than a great cesspool.” For
that reason, the city decided to fill
the Back Bay, eliminating part of the diseases with the
elimination of the pooling of sewage.
(epidemics due to poor sanitation were still extremely common
at the time).

Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862
Another push for development came from the Morrill Land
Grant Act of 1862. The idea of
federal land grants to the states to build agricultural schools had
been on the mind of many
politicians prior to the Civil War. During the war, the
conditions came together to allow the act to
go through. Most opposing states had left the Union to form the
Confederacy, and since the
federal government faced a dire need of money, the Morrill
Land Grant Act came to the rescue.
Under the grant, each eligible state received a total of 30,000
acres (120 km2) of federal land,
either within or contiguous to its boundaries, for each member
of congress that the state had as of
the census of 1860. (Massachusetts had 11 seats in the House +
2 senators)
The land or the proceeds from the sale of the land were to be
used to establish and fund
educational institutions which taught the following fields:
• Military tactics (ROTC)
• Agriculture
• mechanical arts (engineering)
• liberal arts
Massachusetts used the land as follows:
• Creation of UMass - Amherst (as the Massachusetts
Agricultural College)
• It used the money selling land from Back Bay to create the

Back Bay Lands fund
where
• ½ of the money was used for construction
• the other half was used for education
• 50% put in Massachusetts School Fund
• 20% given to Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology
• 12% for the construction of Tufts
• 18% to Amherst College, Williams College, and Wesleyan
Academy
• to receive money, all of these schools had to provide
scholarships to students
• The state also granted a block of land to the Boston Society of
Natural History for the creation of a museum and a block to
create
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Following the state initiative with the grants, private
institutions also participated in the
construction. The Boston Water Power Company, for example,
invested in a plot for the Museum
of Fine Arts.
The end of the Civil War
Toward the end of the war, 1864-1865, there was an increased
sense of dissatisfaction among
people living in the city. The war had claimed a number of
lives, and no one knew when it would
end. Throughout the war, Boston’s population increased
substantially (especially during the two
last years). Since Massachusetts was a huge industrial center for
the Union, industries required a
large number of workers who flocked to the state. Cities around

Boston boomed during the war
(for example with the production of ammunition in Watertown,
uniforms in Lowell, navy ships
on the North shore, etc). Skilled workers’ salaries increased due
to the demand. As a
consequence, there was a steep rise in inflation on essential
goods.
Black Bostonians were dissatisfied with the hypocrisy of the
city. Racism and discrimination
increased overall in Boston. Tensions between working-class
Irish and working-class Black
workers increased as well.
In 1864, the presidential election opposed two Northerner
candidates, Abraham Lincoln and
George B. McClellan, who was from Philadelphia, and had been
a general for the Union Army.
He had failed to garner Lincoln’s trust, was insubordinate, and
was deriding of him. Although he
ran as a Democrat, he lost his support when he decided to
repudiate the party’s platform. As you
can imagine, Bostonians were divided on the election. If you
remember, Yankees voted mainly
for the Republican party and Irish voters for the Democratic
party.
By the end of 1863, Abolitionists in Boston and around the
nation pressed for an amendment to
abolish slavery. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, he did so as a measure of

war. Captured slaves were seen as contraband of war. (Don’t
forget that people in the U.S. see
slaves as property, not as people!) The Union Army could seize
the contraband and prevent it
from being returned to its owner. The Emancipation
Proclamation only applied to a small portion
of the slaves in the Southern states (which were technically part
of another nation). Since the
Abolitionists knew that the Proclamation was a war measure,
they continued to push for the
abolition through a constitutional amendment
In April 1865, it became clear that the war was coming to an
end. Lincoln had made Ulysses
Grant the military commander of all Union armies. Sherman’s
March and his policy of scorched
earth had annihilated the South. The Union had won several
decisive battles. On April 9, 1865,
General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and his other generals
surrendered in the following
days. On April 14th, John Wilkes Booth killed President
Lincoln in the Ford Theater. He died on
April 15 and his Vice president Andrew Johnson became
president.
Reconstruction
Even prior to the end of the war Lincoln had planned for the
Reconstruction of the nation
through different policies. Before we bring this back to Boston,
I would like to give you an
overview of what happened during the Reconstruction.
There are three phases to the Reconstruction which lasted from
1865 to 1877.
• The Presidential Reconstruction, led by Lincoln and Andrew
Johnson. Both

presidents wanted to bring the nation back to normal as quickly
as possible.
• The Congressional Reconstruction began in 1866 when
Congress took control of the
Reconstruction. This period is a tug-of-war between Johnson
and members of
Congress where each branch overturned decisions made the
other branch of
government.
• The Radical Reconstruction began when a large number of
Racial Republicans took
control of Congress in 1868. The Radical Reconstruction
spanned from 1868 to
1877. (Most Radicals came from Massachusetts, while the
moderate Republicans
came from other states). This was the period where most
Bostonians were active in
the Reconstruction.
Context of the Reconstruction Nationwide
When facing the Reconstruction, both Presidents and the
Congress had to address four major
questions:
• What should they do with the slaves?
• What should they do with the seceding states?
• What should they do with the intelligentsia and politicians of
the South who rebelled
against the Union?
• How could they rebuild the nation?

Presidential Reconstruction
As I mentioned, Lincoln had already made a plan for when the
war would be over. Considering
that the Southern states had seceded, he hoped to reintegrate
them quickly in the Union. For that
reason, he drafted what he considered to be fair conditions for
their readmission. He required that
10% of the voters in the states pledge allegiance to the Union
and that they ratify the 13th
Amendment.
13th Amendment
On April 8, 1864, a year before the end of the war, the Senate
approved the Thirteenth
Amendment, and on January 31, 1865, the House of
Representatives approved it. Charles
Sumner (Boston) and Thaddeus Stevens (Pennsylvania), wanted
the bill to be even more radical
than the version that was ultimately approved.
Here is the text of the Amendment:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, or
any place subject to their jurisdiction. The following section
enforces the law.
As States surrendered, they ratified the Amendment. For
example, Virginia Feb 9, 1865,
Louisiana Feb 17, 1865, Tennessee — April 7, 1865, ratified it
before the war was over. Other
states followed. The last state to ratify the 13th Amendment was

Mississippi. March 16, 1995,
Certified on February 7, 2013. (Not a mistake!)
After Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson devised his own plan.
Johnson never acknowledged that
the Southern states had seceded. He kept Lincoln’s conditions
for readmission, but with the
caveat that he would not allow for high ranking Confederates to
pledge an oath of loyalty to the
Union. Without the oath, most high ranking Confederates would
be stripped of their political
power and rights (no right to vote). He had hoped that this
political power would go from the
hands of the planters to the plebeians who he always
represented.
Because he wanted to favor the white working class and small
farmers, Johnson also opposed
any type of aid to or even voting rights for African Americans
offered by the North. He feared
that African Americans would side with their former masters
against the white working-class
(which usually worked for the planters as overseers or in menial
jobs, just above those of slaves).
He also feared that, if they received help from the government,
former slaves would become
richer than the white working-class, hence would break the
racial hierarchy.
Reaction of the South
As you can imagine the reaction of the South to the abolition of
slavery was rather violent. On
one hand, ex-confederate officers formed what became known
as the Ku Klux Klan as a secret
society. The organization became a terrorist organization,
intimidating or committing violence

against Black communities in the South. On the other, Southern
governments passed the Black
codes in order to limit movement, work, families, etc of former
African American slaves.
Freedmen’s Bureau
As a response, the North put in place the Freedmen’s Bureau. In
1863, Bostonian Samuel Gridley
Howe was the guiding force behind the Freedmen’s bureau. He
was born in Boston 1801, his
father was a ship owner. He attended Boston Latin School. His
father was a Democrat who
refused to let his son study at Harvard University. He felt that
the university was “a den of
Federalists.” In 1818, he had him enroll at Brown University in
Providence, RI. Howe was a
trouble maker but managed to graduate in 1821. He went to
Harvard Medical School, and
graduated in 1824.
After graduation, he sailed to Greece and joined the Greek
Army as a surgeon (he was fascinated
by the Greek Revolution). He returned to the States in 1831, and
began to work for the blind. He
founded what became the Perkins institution in 1832. In 1848,
he worked with Dorothea Dix to
found the Massachusetts School for Idiot and Feeble-Minded
Youth.
In 1863, he was appointed to the American Freedmen’s Inquiry
Commission. He traveled to the
Deep South and to Canada to investigate the condition of

emancipated slaves. (He went to
Canada because of the number of former slaves who established
themselves in the British
Dominion through the Underground Railroad.) With his data in
hand, he worked to establish the
Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865 to help freed slaves.
What kind of work did the Freedmen’s bureau do?
• It solved daily problems (getting clothes, food, water, health
care, jobs)
• It helped reunite families, perform marriages to officiate non-
official ones (slaves
could not enter contracts hence could not marry)
• at first, the Bureau tried to force Black women to work before
they realized
that ex-slaves attempted to reproduce gender roles seen in the
North and in
the South, with the husband as the primary breadwinner and the
wife
remaining in the private sphere. After realizing that the former
slaves wanted
to conform to this ideal of femininity, the Bureau allowed for
exceptions, if
the woman was married and if she had children to take care of.
Otherwise,
she was at risk under the Black codes of being arrested as a
vagrant if she
was unemployed.
Education
One of the most important pieces of the Freedmen’s Bureau was
to create an education system
similar to those seen in the North. Prior to the emancipation,
slaves were not allowed to read or

write by fear that they would challenge the South’s social
hierarchy. After the emancipation,
Northern missionaries and philanthropists went to the South to
found schools. The American
Missionary Association was particularly active in founding
schools. A number of teachers from
Boston went to the South to teach, and a large number of the
new Southern schools were
modeled after schools in Boston (curriculum, schedule,
pedagogy, even down to the furniture).
The freedmen’s bureau was not only established in the South.
There were branches all over the
United States. There were several branches in Boston, a branch
in Brookline, Cambridge,
Concord, Dorchester, Framingham, Jamaica Plains, Newton,
Roxbury, West Roxbury to name
only those who were in very close proximity. Even Harvard had
a Branch.
The reason for their presence is simple, between 1865 and 1877,
a considerable number of
former slaves migrated to the city seeking better opportunities
and better treatment.
Migration
After the Civil War, Boston found itself in an interesting
position. Except for the War, textile, and
leather industries in the suburbs, Boston did not have large
industries. At the time, people could
not commute daily between Boston and the North or South
Shore (for example living in Boston

and working in Lowell).
As a result, the competition for low working-class jobs was
fierce. When African Americans
came to the city, they challenged this already difficult situation.
They entered a segregated space
where their options were limited. Most found menial and non-
specialized jobs, for example
domestic work for women, janitorial or dock work for men. Of
the 177,840 people living in
Boston in 1860, 40,000 people were part of the working class.
11k were domestics, 9k were daily
laborers, and 7,9K were clerks. The rest did piece work or odd
jobs.
Let’s continue with the Reconstruction.
In 1866, during the mid-term election, Radical Republicans take
control of Congress. Here, I will
be skipping a bit of the action to get the bigger lines of the
Reconstruction. Most of what
happened took place in the South and did not affect the city.
However, what you have to
remember is that Bostonians were hardliners against the South.
They were the radicals who
wanted the South to pay for what it had done. Even the
Methodist Ministers Association of
Boston, who met two weeks after Lincoln’s assassination, called
for a hard line against the
confederate leadership. At the meeting, they resolved:
“That no terms should be made with traitors, no compromise
with rebels.... That we hold
the National authority bound by the most solemn obligation to
God and man to bring all
the civil and military leaders of the rebellion to trial by due
course of law, and when they

are clearly convicted, to execute them.”
Let that sink for a second… that piece was resolved by the
Methodist Ministers Association!
That being said, due to the rise of the Black Codes, the Radical
Republicans knew that the South
would never give African Americans the vote if they could help
it. To counter this refusal, the
federal government had to take measure to ensure equality. In
1866, Radical Republicans
proposed the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Sumner had
tried to abolish the word “white”
from the naturalization laws in place but without success. The
14th Amendment gave citizenship
to anyone born in the United States (Birthright citizenship,
notwithstanding one’s race).
In 1868, the 14th Amendment passed both Senate and the House
of Representatives.
Here is the text of the first section of the Amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the
State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person

within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws.
Finally, they also passed the 15th Amendment, which gave
African Americans the vote, in 1870.
Here is the text of the Amendment:
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of
race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.
Ultimately, the Reconstruction ended with the election of 1877
and what we know as the
Compromise of 1877. Through the Compromise, Rutherford B.
Hayes was elected as a
Republican candidate under the condition that he appointed a
Democrat to his cabinet and
fulfilled a few more conditions. Among was to pass a law where
the federal government would
promote and be an active part of the industrialization of the
South
The problem with the 15th Amendment
There is a large problem with the 15th Amendment for suffrage
associations in the United States.
If you remember well, we spoke about how the Abolitionist
movement in the 1830s and 1840s
had created a space for women to speak about their own rights
alongside Black rights. Women
had assimilated their condition to that of African Americans in
the nation: They were not free,
they belonged to their husbands, they had no political rights,
and so on and so forth.

When the push for the Black vote began after the Civil War, two
factions of the suffrage
movement emerge.
• On one side, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
pushed to add the term
“sex” as a non-discrimination clause in the 15th Amendment.
Their understanding
was that if they did not seize the opportunity to do so at this
specific moment in
history, they might not be able to secure the vote for another
100 years (they were
almost right). They believed that they should prioritize the
white middle-class
women’s vote over the Black working-class men’s vote for
example. They even
disparaged Frederick Douglass who could not believe how racist
they were.
Douglass highlighted the fact that Black men were lynched in
the South and that
white women were not. He believed that this should be a
justification as to why
Blacks should get the vote first. In 1869, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony split from the National Suffrage Association to form
the National Woman
Suffrage Association (NWSA), which opposed the 15th
Amendment and continued
to advocate for a federal amendment to get the vote.
• On the other hand, Bostonians formed a different association.

Lucy Stone, her
husband Henry Blackwell, Josephine Ruffin, and Julia Ward
Howe supported the
15th Amendment. They were fervent abolitionists who believed
in equality. They
understood the importance of passing the 15th Amendment at
this juncture. They also
understood that if they wanted to secure women’s right to vote,
they could create an
alliance with Black men, as a quid pro quo, to secure the vote
later. They created the
American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) which opted
for a state by state
campaign instead of a federal Amendment.
Week 2.3 !1
Week 2.3 The Progressive Era
History 385
Julie de Chantal
Return on the Gilded Age
As we saw in the last module, the Gilded Age was an era of
excesses, industrialization, and
urbanization. It was an era where white middle-class reformers
saw the exploitation of workers
and of city dwellers, and began to push for reform across the
board. As we discussed, the
Massachusetts legislature and Boston city officials were ahead
of the curve. The progressive
nature of the state made it such that both governments pushed
for reform in the industry (for

example with the labor laws), in electoral politics (with the
abolition of the poll tax), and at the
city level (with the city beautiful movement). During the
Progressive Era, other reformers, such
as Theodore Roosevelt, Jane Addams, and later Woodrow
Wilson, pushed for reform in their city,
state, and at the federal level.
Context of the Progressive Era
So what exactly was the Progressive Era? The Progressive Era
was a period starting around 1890
and ending with the end of the First World War and the
negotiation of the peace treaties around
1920. It was a period where reformers pushed back against the
ills and the excesses of the Gilded
Age (industrialization, urbanization, immigration). These
reformers want to better their cities,
state, and the country to fit their ideals.
Reformers were for the most part WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon,
Protestant). They were from the
middle-class and the elite. They were especially educated. A
large portion of these reformers
were nativists and racists. (The Progressive Era is considered
the nadir of race relations in the
United States). Because the Progressive Era was the nadir of
race relations, progressive reform
transcended the boundaries of race. Middle-class and elite
African Americans develop what
historians described as the “politics of respectability.” The
politics of respectability meant that if
the Black middle-class encouraged working-class African
Americans to behave like the white
middle-class, they could possibly gain respect, which in turn,
could eventually curb white
discrimination against Black communities. The politics of

respectability was particularly used in
Boston as the Black Brahmins became more and more vocal on
the national scene.
During the Progressive Era, Women, who were expected to stay
in the private sphere, played an
important role in the reform movements, especially in terms of
the settlement house movement,
suffrage, temperance, and the Women’s movement.
Role of women in the reform movement
As you may remember, women, in the 1890s, were not yet able
to vote. The suffrage movement
had pushed for the vote, albeit unsuccessfully. During the
Progressive Era, the emergence of the
New Woman challenged the ways in which women were
perceived and how they could act.
Week 2.3 !2
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal which emerged in the late
nineteenth century. The New
Woman had a lot more autonomy than her predecessors. She was
a suffragist. She had access to
higher education. (I will get back to this in a few minutes). The
New Woman also left the dress
of her ancestors behind (for example the corset) to wear
something more suited to her active
nature. (she especially wore the shirtwaist).
Side note: there is a difference between the terms suffragist and
suffragette. The
suffragist was usually less radical. She pushed for legal method

to get suffrage. The
suffragette was seen mainly in the UK context. She was more
radical, broke away from
playing feminine roles and traditional women’s roles. The
suffragettes were not against
using violence to get the vote (some even used bombs in the
UK).
In terms of her activities, the New Woman could ride a bicycle,
cross gender boundaries, or be
self-sufficient without the help of a husband.
Boston Marriage
She could also be in what many at the time called a “Boston
marriage.” The term came from the
publication of Henry James’s novel The Bostonians in 1886.
The novel was based on the long-
term relationship of two women who lived together and
supported themselves without the help of
husbands.
These relationships were not necessarily romantic relationships,
but could be. It is important to
know that women used romantic language to speak to each other
in the 19th century without
necessarily being in a romantic relationship. For that reason,
from a historical perspective, it is
hard to tell if these women were romantically involved or not.
However, it is important to
understand that these relationships were seen as acceptable, but
rarely discussed.
If the New Woman married, she could delay having children. As
you can see from the graphs,
during this period, age of first marriage rises and number of
children per women declines (this is

a national phenomenon).
Bachelor culture
Urbanization also offered men the ability to live on their own
without the help of women. They
could eat sitting in restaurants, have their laundry done, tailors
could sew for them, cobblers
could make their shoes, etc. These services available in the city
could replace women’s duties in
the home. I would like to point out that a large number of these
services were provided to men by
immigrants who had recently settled in the city.
Creation of a culture of the city
During the Progressive era, we can see the emergence of a city
culture. Vaudeville, for example,
emerged in the 1880s. Vaudeville performances were made up
of a series of separate and
Week 2.3 !3
unrelated acts, grouped together on a common bill. Acts could
be popular and classical
musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals,
magicians, strongmen, female and male
impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act
plays or scenes from plays, athletes,
lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. It was not a freak
show, but could include freak
show acts, it was not a burlesque but could involve burlesque
acts. In Boston, Vaudeville had to
be quite tame as to not offend the conservative middle-class and
elite.

Education of Women
Considering all of these, the only piece missing to the puzzle is
the increase in education for
women. This access to education could explain why
Massachusetts was at the forefront of the
reform movement prior to the Progressive Era. As we discussed
in past lectures, women who
lived in Boston had access to education up to a certain level
through the city’s public schools.
However, higher education was still restricted to men only.
During the first half of the century,
some colleges opened for women.
For example:
• Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina was founded
in 1772
• Oberlin in Ohio opened in 1833 (this is where Lucy Stone
enrolled)
• Mary Lyon helped in opening Wheaton Female Seminary in
Norton, MA in 1835
prior to founding Mount Holyoke College in 1837.
• Wesleyan College of Macon, Georgia, was founded in 1839
• Bridgewater State University was opened in 1840 as a normal
school. It’s first class
admitted 21 women and 5 men for teachers’ training. (A normal
school usually
focused on teachers’ training)
• In 1848, a group opened the Boston Female Medical School to
train female doctors.
The school closed its doors in 1874.
• Auburndale Female Seminary (now Lasell College) opened in
1851 by Edward

Lassell who was a professor of Chemistry at Mount Holyoke.
The college is located
Auburndale, MA.
• Salem State College was also opened with the intention of
training women at its
foundation as Salem Normal School in 1854. It became
coeducational in 1892.
• Boston State college was founded in 1852 as a Girls’ high
school, and became a
Normal school in 1872.
• Vassar College 1861 (relationship with Yale University)
• Massachusetts College of Arts and Design opened 1869 and
allowed men and
women
From the Gilded Age on, more colleges opened for women:
• Wellesley College chartered 1870, opened in 1875
(Relationship with MIT)
• Smith College chartered in 1871, opened in 1875
(Relationship with Amherst
College)
• Radcliffe College opened in 1879, chartered in 1894
(relationships with Harvard)
Week 2.3 !4
• Gordon College opened in 1889 in Wenham, Massachusetts
admitted men and
women of different ethnicity to train them as Christian

missionaries.
• Carney Hospital Training School for Nurses (Labouré College)
was founded in 1892
in South Boston
• Tufts had been opened in 1852, but received its first class of
women in 1892.
• Simmons College opened in 1899.
The study of sociology, economics, psychology, and
anthropology gave future reformers the
tools that they needed to understand their world better and
attempt to act on it. The development
of social work as a university discipline, using those discipline
as a scientific background, gave
the framework necessary for the reform movement to become a
professional movement.
Caveat: if women, especially middle-class women, who were the
ones getting into private
schools, but were supposed to stay in the private sphere, how
did they carve themselves a
position in the public sphere with the reform movement here?
Extension of the role of women through the public sphere using
their role as
women
Women, and especially the New Woman, justified their role in
the public sphere as reformers
through the extension of their role in the home to the street and
to the city. For example,
reformers would argue that if the street was dirty, their house
was dirty. If the poor was suffering,
their home was suffering. This helped frame the Settlement

House movement.
Settlement House Movement
The movement emerged in London, England. in the mid-19th
century. The Toynbee Hall was
opened in the East End of London in 1883. The Toynbee Hall
was seen as community of
university men living together in a home. It acted as a bridge
between people of all social
backgrounds who wanted to focus on working toward a future
without poverty. In 1887, The
Women’s University Settlement was opened by representatives
from the Women’s Colleges at
Oxford and Cambridge. Most of these institutions offered
shelter, food, activities, and access to
education (especially higher education) to their residents.
The most popular settlement house in the United States is the
Hull House founded by Jane
Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889 in Chicago. Addams and
Starr had studied at Toynbee
Hall and brought the concept across the ocean. The mission of
the Hull House, however, was not
to give higher education to their residents. They only offered
shelter, food, activities, English and
history classes, mostly to immigrant women had just arrived in
the city. They also took on tasks
that other organizations did not do. For example, preparing the
dead for burial or taking in
women who were fleeing domestic abuse. The Hull House had
an Americanization mission,
where they helped immigrants assimilate to the American
culture. Quickly the movement picked
on in other cities.

Week 2.3 !5
Settlement House in Boston
In 1891, William J. Tucker, a professor at the Andover
Theological Seminary, opened the
Andover House in the South End of Boston. Tucker believed
that the foundation of the residence
on Rollins Street would simply “bring about a better and more
beautiful life in its neighborhood
and district and to develop new ways (through study and action
in this locality) of meeting some
of the serious problems of society.” He worked with Robert A.
Woods who was a social worker.
Woods took over as head of the house. The mission of the house
was “designed to stand for the
single idea of resident study and work in the neighborhood
where it may be located…” It was a
religious mission but the founders made it such that the tone
was educational and not
evangelistic.
Their goals were as follows (According to the City Wilderness,
a book on the Andover house)
• to rehabilitate neighborhood life and give it some of that
healthy corporate vitality
which a well-ordered village has
• to undertake objective investigations of local conditions
• to aid organized labor both in the way of inculcating higher
aims and in the way of
supporting its just demands
• to furnish a neutral ground where separate classes, rich poor,
professional and

industrial, capitalist and wage earners, may meet each other on
the basis of common
humanity
• to initiate local co-operation for substantial good purposes
• to strive for a better type of local politics, and to take part in
municipal affairs as they
affect the district
• to secure for the district its full share of all the best fruits of
the city’s intellectual and
moral progress
• to lead people throughout the city to join in this aim and
motive.
• Its aim is to work directly in one neighborhood, indirectly
through the city as a
whole, for the organic fulfillment of all the responsibilities,
whether written down or
implied for the well being of the community that attach to the
citizen in a republic.
Mission of the Andover House
The Andover House operated on several fronts.
Housing
it conducted studies on housing conditions in the city, and
testified before several commissions
to advocate for city involvement in the construction, and to
secure laws on housing. They
especially lobbied for the enforcement of the building code
since they did not want a second
Great Fire.
Streets and Sanitation

It acted as a center to receive the complaints of residents in the
neighborhood on sanitation issues
(debris in the street, sewage issues, etc),
Week 2.3 !6
Playgrounds (A number of settlement houses get involved in the
playground reform nationwide).
In the case of Boston, they cooperated with the various city-
wide endeavors for parks and
playgrounds. They helped to secure the Ward Nine playground.
They also “endeavor[ed] to
secure the adequate use of the playground by providing
direction of groups of children and
young people.” (i.e. they trained people to play in playgrounds
since playgrounds are a new
concept at the time). They also maintained vacant lot
playgrounds.
Public Schools and education
They “cooperated with neighborhood public schools through
visitation, meetings with teachers,
conferences, work for backward children, etc.” (backward
children could be students with
disabilities or immigrants here). A resident at the Andover
House acted as home and school
visitor. Furthermore, the manual added that “The head residents
has long interested himself in the
development of the idea of industrial education, pointing out the
present waste of years between
the age of 14 and 16 in the case of working children, and served
as temporary secretary of the
state commission on industrial education.” -> this points to a
change in the perception of

education and the emergence of the vocational and technical
education that we know today.
Labor
They established relationships with trade unions, and the head
of the house acted as treasurer of
the relief committee of the Central Labor Union in 1893-1894.
Unions cooperated with the house
to secure the Dover Street Bath house (Bathhouses are used by
anyone who does not have indoor
plumbing in the city. They were especially important for
working class people who rarely had
indoor plumbing in their apartments). They organized
conferences on labor matters, arbitrated in
times of strike, and acted as an intermediary between unions
and government (city & state). They
also developed an interest in women’s work and helped form the
Women’s Trade Union League.
Suffrage movement vs anti suffrage movement
The suffrage movement was part of this reform movement. As
you may remember, Lucy Stone,
Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe had founded the
American Woman Suffrage Association
in 1869. Their organization emphasized a state by state strategy
to secure the vote. For that
reason, they present petitions to the state legislature every year
until 1880. They had the support
of reformers, editors, politicians, educators, and church people.
Even after all of these attempts,
the state does not do anything to support the vote of women. In
1879, though, the suffrage
associations thought that they had made a breakthrough.
Partial suffrage
With the temporary support of the Republicans, who controlled

the state, suffrage associations
secured the right for women to vote for and to serve on their
local school committees. The
Republicans recognized the stake women, as mothers, had in the
education of their children.
However, this new privilege was also a tactical maneuver from
the Republicans party. They
hoped that middle-class Yankee women would help fight the
growing voting power of Catholic
immigrants and working-class men in local communities. The
bill to pass women’s suffrage in
school committee only required a simple majority hence passed
it without any difficulty.
Week 2.3 !7
The Members of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage
Association (The MWSA) moved to take
advantage of the victory of 1879. They worked to secure
additional partial suffrage at the city
level, and played down their demand for a state wide vote. Their
argument this time was that
women could clean up city politics, combat boss rule, and
restore municipal order which had
been upset by industrialization and immigration. As you can
imagine those women were mostly
middle-class Yankee women whose families had been in Boston
or in the state for many
generations.
The new strategy, however, was a disaster. In Boston, they had
crafted an alliance with the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Catholic
Loyal Women of America. After

they failed to reclaim the Republican Party’s support for more
rights, they turned to the
Democratic party. As you can imagine, the Democrats did not
like the women’s nativist stance.
As a result, their activism elicited the strongest anti-suffrage
movement in the city and in the
State.
The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further
Extension of the
Suffrage to Women (MAOFESW)
The MAOFESW was formed in 1895 to defeat a state
referendum on whether or not women
should vote in municipal election. Women who had the right to
vote in the school elections could
vote in the referendum, and overwhelmingly voted yes to the
question. However, only 4% of
them cast their ballot. The anti-suffragists used the low turnout
to prove their point, that women
were not interested in gaining suffrage.Yet, even if the
referendum did not secure the vote for
women, several organizations were reinvigorated in their fight
for suffrage, and began to push
even more for a state law.
Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government
The Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government
was formed in 1901 by Pauline
Agassiz Shaw, Maud Wood Park, and Mary Hutcheson Page to
“...to promote a better civic life,
the true development of the home and the welfare of the family,
through the exercise of suffrage
on the part of the women citizens of Boston.”
The President, Pauline Agassiz Shaw, was an interesting
woman. She was born in Switzerland in

1841 to Louis Agassiz, who was a professor of biology and
geology. Her father visited Harvard
in 1847 and they moved to Boston in 1850. In 1860 at age 19,
she married Quincy Adam Shaw,
who was a Boston Brahmin and a business magnate who worked
in the mining industry (Quincy
Adam Shaw was the uncle of Robert Gould Shaw, who
commanded the 54th Massachusetts).
After her marriage, she used her new found wealth and social
capital in the city to help the poor.
She founded the first Trade school, the North Bennet Street
Industrial School in the North End.
She introduced kindergartens in the public school system. She
also opened several child care
centers in the city (the idea was that Child Care centers, if ran
properly would help make up for
the shortcomings of the working class).
Week 2.3 !8
Her organization, the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for
Good Government, showcased the
push for protestant reform in the city. They especially addressed
issues of poverty, prison reform,
and suffrage. Instead of aligning themselves with the anti-
Catholic leagues and the WCTU, they
sought support in colleges. They also looked at how the British
suffragists were leading their
campaign in England to gain the vote and used several of their
strategies. For example, they used
a door-to-door approach to the immigrant neighborhoods and
handed out Yiddish and Italian
flyers to rally the immigrant vote.

Florence Luscomb was one of the activists who did the door-to-
door canvassing. She was born in
Lowell in 1887, and moved to Boston with her mother when her
parents separated. After
accompanying her mother to women’s suffrage events to see
Susan B. Anthony speak, she
became a suffragist. She was one of the first 10 women to earn
an architecture degree from MIT
in 1910. Despite her degree in-hand from MIT, she could not
find an internship (she had to ask
12 firms before one even considered her application seriously!).
She became a fervent activist for
the vote, using the tactic of neighborhood canvassing. Why do
you think that the Boston Equal
Suffrage Association for Good Government did not associate
with the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union? (think about who drinks and who does not
in Boston at the time).
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
The organization was founded in 1873 in Ohio. It quickly
became a national movement. The
WCTU aimed to end the manufacturing and sale of liquor, and
agitated against the use of
tobacco. They attacked a number of social issues, labor,
prostitution, public health, sanitation,
and international peace, but did so through an evangelical
approach. They were nativists,
especially against Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and promoted the
Americanization of immigrants.
They believed that alcohol limited one’s ability to climb up the
social ladder. They opened a
chapter in Boston in the late 1870s. Boston reformers also form
the Anti-Saloon League. The
Anti-Saloon league was mainly a men’s organization while the
WCTU was a women’s

association. As you can imagine, both organization promoted
nativism to some extent.
Push for Americanization
As I mentioned in several of the blurbs above, reform
organization pushed for the
Americanization of immigrants. They wanted to “convert”
immigrants, if you will, to the
American way of life through language, culture, and history
courses. Some of them did so
through food.
In the 1890s, Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards pioneered work
in “sanitary engineering” and
domestic science. She is considered to be the scientist who
invented home economics as a
science. Her idea was to apply scientific principles to the home.
Richards was born in 1842. She was the first American woman
to obtain a degree in Chemistry
which she earned at Vassar College in 1870. She was then the
first woman admitted the MIT,
where she earned a second bachelors in chemistry in 1873. She
continued her studies and would
Week 2.3 !9
have gotten a Masters in Chemistry, had the university not
refused to grant an advanced degree
to a woman.
Richards especially worked on applying science to homemaking,
for example with the idea of
home sanitation. She worked from the premise that women were

responsible for the home and
for the proper nutrition of their family. For that reason, she
promoted teaching women basic
scientific knowledge to help them in their duties. For example,
she wrote a book called The
Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning in 1882. In 1885, she wrote
Food Materials and Their
Adulterations which leads to the state to pass the Pure Food and
Drug Act in Massachusetts
several years before the federal government passed its own law.
Richards promoted the use of
gas over cooking oil and coal heating in the home due to the
risk of pollution in the home, and
created the field of home economics to promote the use of
efficient home management
techniques.
In 1890, she founded the New England Kitchen of Boston at 142
Pleasant Street. The New
England Kitchen aimed to teach poor women how to prepare
inexpensive, nutritious, and
delicious foods. She used accessible ingredients, portioned
meals (prior to the advent of home
economics, women “winged it”), and standardized practices in
the kitchen. She published several
books for the homemaker to use to improve their homemaking
skills, and helped modernize the
kitchen through her experimentations on efficiency. She created
the first Public School lunch
programs in the city 1894 with the idea to provide nutritional
meals at low price to poor students
through the New England Kitchen. The idea was taken on by
Harry S. Truman in 1946 to create
the national school lunch programs.
Cooking as a way to Americanize people

So how was cooking a way to Americanize people? What is
American food anyways? Reformers
developed the idea that immigrants needed to reduce their use
of spices, since it made them “too
fiery.” For example garlic, dill, hot spices, paprika, which were
not commonly used in the United
States were suspected of agitating people. In New England,
especially in Boston, bland food
(cabbage, potatoes & root vegetables, beef, pork, chicken, and
dairy) made up for the bulk of
one’s nutritional intake daily.
The clam chowder became the quintessential Boston/New
England food during the Progressive
era. Prior to the Progressive Era, the clam chowder was seen as
a poor people’s food. If you think
about it, clam chowder does not require much. It is usually
made of clams, potatoes, onion,
celery, milk or cream, and some flour as a thickening agent (it
was often thickened with oyster
crackers, invented in 1828, instead of flour). In Boston, it was
especially popular due to the
availability and low cost of the catches in the port, and the need
for Catholics to abstain from
eating meat on Fridays. In the Progressive era, reformers use it
as an Americanization too since
they believed that milk appeased people. It was also an
extremely efficient food: it was cheap,
nutritious, and delicious. As a result, the chowder became
associated with Boston and New
England, and adopted across classes as a “refined” food in the
late 19th century.
Week 2.3 !10

African Americans in Boston
During the Progressive Era, African Americans in Boston
became especially vocal against the
rise of Jim Crow in the South. People like Josephine St. Pierre
Ruffin, Frederick Douglass,
William Monroe Trotter, and others used the radicalism of the
abolitionist legacy to justify their
voice in the public arena. As with the abolitionists though, most
of the civil rights activism which
took place in the Progressive Era was based on the work of a
biracial coalition, which regrouped
elites from both races. We will see more about this coalition in
the upcoming weeks. You have to
keep in mind though that racism and segregation are still
present in Boston, even if the leaders of
the community are especially vocal at a national level. They
used Boston as an example of
liberalism but this reputation is not true for most African
Americans living in the city. They are
the ones who confront Jim Crow on a daily basis, especially
with the arrival of migrants from the
South.
Roxbury Fire of 1894
Despite all of the reform and the efforts to enforce the city’s
laws, the city remained in bad shape
throughout the Progressive Era. In 1894, the neighborhood of
Roxbury was partially destroyed in
a fire which started at a Boston Beaneaters’ game. On May 15,
the Beaneaters played the
Baltimore Orioles. The ball park had been built in 1871, but
enlarged to host the new stands in
1888. After the end of the third inning, attendees noticed smoke
coming from under the right
field bleachers. Reports after the fire said that a small group of

men saw the fire, and could have
stomped it out, but that a policeman told them to leave it alone,
and that he would take care of it.
As you can imagine, things did not go as planned.
When Beaneater right fielder Jimmy Bannon saw flames through
the stands, he ran to put it out.
A gust of wind fed the flames, and Bannon was driven back.
Soon, the right field bleachers
caught fire. From there, the outfield fence caught fire, and ran
to the left field bleachers,
engulfing them as well. Fans stood in the middle of the field to
avoid the flames. Observers later
said that district fire chief Sawyer, present at the game, refused
to call in the alarm until it was
too late to prevent the spread of the fire from the bleachers to
the grandstand and out into the
surrounding neighborhood. The buildings that backed on Berlin
street were soon burning. In an
hour, twelve acres had burned, 200 buildings had been
destroyed, and 1900 people were
homeless. The neighborhood had to be rebuilt, this time, with
more care and precaution.
So where does that lead us?
During the Progressive Era, the reform movement is led by
middle-class white Anglo-Saxon
Protestant, educated people. Women especially played an
important role in the reform
movement. The New Woman, a younger and more educated
woman, pushed for the vote. As you
saw, the reform movement, even with its scientific approach,
does not resolve all of Boston’s
problems. However, it pushed boundaries and helped the city
lead progressive reform
nationwide.

Week 2.3 !11
Discussion this week
For our discussion this week, you will read two pieces
published by reformers in The Bostonians.
They are pieces aimed at Reformers living in the city. When
reading these pieces, think about the
context of reform in Boston in the late 1890s.
Week 1.4 Irish Immigration and the Anti-Catholic Tensions
History 385
Julie de Chantal
So far we have seen that Boston changed dramatically in the
first years of the 19th century.
Charles Bullfinch and other developers filled in the coves
around the Shawmut Peninsula to
increase the size of the city. They also developed communities,
for example on Beacon Hill. We
have also explored how City Officials addressed questions of
infrastructure, enacted regulations
to protect Bostonians (against fires for example), and laws to
foster development both on a
personal and city level (education).
The industrial development led to the creation of the working
class. The city became
increasingly stratified, especially in terms of class divisions, as

it diversified. We have finally
seen how the population of Boston becomes more radical while
still maintaining a certain
conservative side.
Today, we will look into Boston best and worst time.
• We will first look at the economic context of the city, in
particular the Panic of 1837.
• We will look at the Irish experience in the migration, and then
how they settle in the
city,
• We will look into the push for urbanization.
• This will ultimately lead us to the march toward the Civil War
and its impact on
Boston.
Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 is a period of deep economic recession which
followed a period of economic
growth (between mid-1834 and mid-1836). During this phase of
economic growth, inflation was
rampant in the United States. The price of the land, cotton and
slaves all rose at the same time. A
lot of the American financial system was tied to England and
Europe. In the mid-1830s, English
merchants still purchased a lot of cotton coming out of the
United States and invested large sums
of money in the American industry. They especially invested in
the construction of transportation
systems (canals, railroads), financed the expansion toward the
West, and invested in the
development of the American infrastructure.
At some point in 1836, the Bank of England realized that the

monetary reserves of the country
had dropped substantially over the years (possibly due to the
fact that England had to import a lot
of its food due to poor harvests). In response, the Bank of
England raised interest rates from 3%
to 5%. Because of the ways in which the markets were linked
together, Banks in the United
States were forced to do the same and to raise their interest
rates. When the financial centers in
New York and in Boston raised their interest rates and cut down
on lending, they triggered the
economic crisis. As a result, the demand for cotton plummeted
by 25% in one month (February
to March 1837). Since cotton was a source of revenue for the
country, the effects were felt right
away. (Cotton revenues had served to finance a large portion of
the infrastructure and to
stabilized the US dollar.)
Banking system in the US
You have to remember that the banks in the United States were
not centralized at the time. There
was no Federal Reserve nor protection against bank failure.
(Both of these will be invented
during the Great Depression of the 1930s). There were also no
trade barriers between countries.
Congress attempted to restructure the banking system at the
times but failed to do so. President
Andrew Jackson, for example, vetoed the bill to recharter the
Second Bank of the United States,
which was a federally authorized national bank. The bank

handled all fiscal transactions for the
U.S. Government, and was accountable to Congress and the U.S.
Treasury. The second attempt
to regulate the system, through the Specie Circular of 1836,
mandated that all western land
purchased from the government be bought only with gold and
silver coins. (To curb speculation
on the land). The effect of these two policies was to transfer
money in gold and silver away from
the nation's main commercial centers on the East Coast (Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia).
With lower monetary reserves in their vaults, major banks and
financial institutions on the East
Coast had to scale back their loans, which was a major cause of
the panic in the financial
markets.
Effect on Boston
As we discussed last week, Boston was a major banking center
in the United States. A large
portion of the middle-class jobs in Boston depended on a
healthy financial market. Following the
panic of 1837, ⅓ of the workers were unemployed with these
numbers increasing until the winter
of 1842-1843 (at the height of the Irish migration).
Political Power
The antebellum era (pre-Civil War era) is often considered to be
the golden age of American
Participatory democracy. Limitations on white man’s suffrage
(suffrage = vote) gradually
disappeared. The payment of poll taxes was replaced by
property tests (property ownership).
Massachusetts still had the $1.50 poll tax, but it was minimal
and virtually guaranteed suffrage to
any white man. During the antebellum period, more people

participated in political activity
(voting, attending political rallies, discussing politics) than at
any other time in history (even
today).
Yet Boston’s white elite sought ways to control the democratic
system and to eliminate a large
proportion of potential voters. For example, polls closed at
sunset which made it impossible for
Boston workers who lived in Cambridge to make it home and
vote before the polls closed. Only
those who could leave work early or during the day (i.e. people
who controlled their own
schedule or could afford to take time off) could vote.
Registration laws and residency
requirements affected the number of people who voted. Property
tax qualifications made it such
that a portion of men over the age of 21 could not vote since
they did not own a home.
Voter registration dropped from 21% of all men over 21 in 1845
to 19% in 1855. Avoiding taxes
or service in the militia obligations were major incentives not to
register to vote. Apathy and
cynicism also played into some folks decision not to register
since they clearly understood that
they had no say in city or state politics which was still
controlled by the elite.
Parties
At the end of the 1830s, two major parties emerge: the
Democrats and the Whigs. Outside of

Boston, politics was usually controlled by the newly rich, the
non-traditional elite, mostly
composed of self-made men. In Boston, however, the Brahmins
and their Irish counterparts
(there were a few prominent Irish Catholic men in Boston at the
time) still controlled the political
system. Both Whigs and Democrats were divided over the
question of tariffs but not in terms of
ideology about democracy.
Whig Party (1833-1854)
Leaders: Henry Clay (based in Kentucky) and Daniel Webster
(based in Boston).
The Party’s founders chose the “Whig” name to echo the
American Whigs of the 18th century
who fought for independence. The Party was originally formed
in opposition to the policies of
President Andrew Jackson (in office 1829–37) and his
Democratic Party. Whig leaders saw him
as a dangerous man on horseback, a reactionary to modernity. In
particular, the Whigs supported
the supremacy of the US Congress over the Presidency. They
were proponents of Jefferson’s
tradition of compromise, checks and balances, and territorial
expansion. They favored national
unity, support the creation of a federal transportation network,
and the investment in domestic
manufacturing. They were in favor of a program of
modernization, federally controlled banking,
and policies of economic protectionism to stimulate
manufacturing.
• Economic protectionism: they want to put in tariffs (taxes on
importation or
exportation which restrict free trade) in place to protect
business interests.

They promoted an education reform to put in place a system of
universal public education. As
you can imagine, the party’s platform appealed to
entrepreneurs, large planters, reformers, and
the emerging urban middle class, but had little appeal to farmers
or unskilled workers. Many
active reformers supported the party because its leaders voiced
an opposition to Jackson’s Indian
Removal Act which led to the removal, relocation, and death of
thousands of Native Americans.
The Party was especially popular in Boston.
Democratic Party
Emerged in 1830 from former factions of the Democratic-
Republican Party founded by Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison. In the 1830s, it was the party of
Andrew Jackson who was a war
hero from Tennessee. The Democrats shared Jefferson’s
commitment to the concept of agrarian
society (yeoman farmer, or people who owned their land and
lived from their agricultural
production). They feared the concentration of economic and
political power. They believed that
government intervention in the economy only benefited special-
interest groups and created
corporate monopolies that favored the rich. They were
proponents of small government. They
did not impose tariffs, instead, they favored laissez-faire, which
in turn favored cotton planters in
the South. They sought to restore the independence of the

individual—the artisan and the
ordinary farmer—by ending federal support of banks and
corporations and restricting the use of
paper currency, which they distrusted. They opposed education
reform since they felt that public
schools undermined parental responsibility. They also felt that
public schools would undermine
freedom of religion by replacing church schools. They promoted
an aggressive policy toward
Native Americans (Indian Removal Act). As you can imagine,
they were extremely unpopular in
New England. Most of their supporters lived in the South or on
the frontier.
Boston’s political system
Prior to 1822, the town was run by a Board of Aldermen, whose
members were elected for 1-
year terms. In 1822, the city was incorporated, and the new
charter made it such that a mayor led
the city council. The citizens of Boston voted to change the
official name from the “Town of
Boston” to the “City of Boston” on March 4, 1822.
The city government, however, is still rudimentary. The whole
city budget is of approximately
$249,000 (1822 dollar value, approximately $4.5 million today).
Most of social services
(welfare, hospitals, etc) were provided by charities and other
private organizations. The Public
School system cost approximately $45,000 per year, covering 29
elementary schools, and the
3,827 students enrolled. There was no organized fire
department. Residents of Boston took care
of the engines, received a small compensation, and were exempt
from militia duty. There was an
organized police force of constables, but there was not enough

officers to police the city
appropriately. The frustration at the city for not enforcing laws
and not answering the qualms of
the Bostonians often led to rioting. In the 1830s, Boston
probably won the title of “mob town,
with its 147 riots in 1835 alone. Between 1830 and 1860,
historians estimate that approximately
1000 people died in rioting in Boston.
Arrival of immigrants
The arrival of immigrants challenged the already fragile
equilibrium in the city. A large number
of immigrants arrived in the city between 1830 and 1860. Most
of them were French Canadians,
French, Polish, Italians, Germans, Lebanese, and Irish. A large
number of those immigrants used
Boston as a port of entry to move to another location. For
example, French Canadians settled in
Lowell, Holyoke, Springfield, etc. Polish immigrants came to
the Pioneer Valley. The Irish
remained in Boston for the most part. In order to understand
what happened and why they stayed
in Boston, we have to examine the circumstances of their
arrival.
Background of Ireland’s difficulties with Great Britain
The potato blight, a fungus-like infection, attacked the crops in
Ireland during the 1840s. Facing
starvation, a number of people left Ireland to come to America.
Although the effect of the potato
blight is undeniable, the reality is a bit more complicated than
that.
Since the Act of Union in January 1801, Ireland had been part
of the United Kingdom. The
executive power was in the Hands of the Lord Lieutenant of

Ireland and Chief Secretary for
Ireland who was appointed by the British Government. Irish
voters sent 105 representatives to
the House of Commons and the Irish representative peers
elected 28 of their own to the House of
Lords (senate if you will). By the end of the 1830s, the power
was concentrated in the hands of
the landowner elite.
Although Ireland had representatives, the British government
still wondered how to govern the
country properly. UK Prime Minister at the time, Benjamin
Disraeli, pointed to 3 major issues in
governing Ireland:
• Absentee landlords (aristocracy was not on site)
• starving population
• alien Church (remember that the Church of England is led by
the king or Queen of
England while the Catholic church is led by the pope)
Restrictions imposed on the population
In addition, the cotter system impoverishes the population. In
this system, peasants rented a
home (simple habitation) and 1 ½ acres of land to grow
potatoes, oats, flax, etc. The land was
held on a year-to-year basis and the rent was often paid in labor.
The rented land was often of
poor quality, and could not be used for other purposes. Yet,
there was a lot of competition for the

Week 2.1 History 385 - !1Week 2.1 The Civil War and the Re.docx

Week 2.1 History 385 - !1Week 2.1 The Civil War and the Re.docx

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Week 2.1 History 385 - !1Week 2.1 The Civil War and the Re.docx