Young Patrick A. Collins and Boston Politics after the Civil War

Abstract: This article focuses on involvement of in Boston politics during first decades after Civil War, a period when first began to organize and exert some political influence in city. community leaders cooperated with Yankee leadership of Democratic Party during these decades, receiving a certain amount of patronage in return and nomination of several respectable Irishmen for political office. Although it was not until beginning of twentieth century, after service in U.S. Congress and diplomatic corps, that Patrick Andrew Collins was elected mayor (1902-05), his political significance dates back to 1860s and 1870s. The article considers nature of his leadership in that era. It was Irish, notably ambitious young men like Patrick Collins, who made two-party system viable in Massachusetts during era of Reconstruction. As a young man, Collins joined Fenian movement (founded to overthrow British rule in Ireland). This work led him into politics. He was quickly elected a state representative and then a state senator. As a legislator, Collins worked to ease restrictions on practice of religion for Catholics in state institutions and to earn public money for Catholic charitable institutions. With rapidly increasing number of voters in Boston in 1870s, their vocal assertion of their rights, and strong political organization, were beginning to be recognized as a power to be reckoned with. Collins was central to these developments. Editor's Introduction: The have played a defining role in Massachusetts history. According to 2000 census, nearly 35 million Americans claimed ancestry, almost nine times population of Ireland itself. Nearly 25% of Massachusetts residents make this claim, highest of any state and double national average. Why Boston? Historian James M. Bergquist writes, If Baltimore was seen as a city dominated by Germans, Boston was clearly in hands of Irish. By 1855 about 30% of Boston's population was Irish-born, and only 1% German-born. In early nineteenth century Boston had not been a prominent port of entry for European immigrants. However: The famine years in late 1 840s brought large numbers of most impoverished to New England. Many of them had come by way of Canadian maritime provinces or by way of New York. During famine immigration, poorest and most desperate migrants came in lumber ships to Saint John, New Brunswick, and then traveled down coast to Boston and other cities. The lowly state of by 1 850s made them special targets of nativist [anti-foreigner] attacks. The city served as a point of distribution for immigrants going into interior New England, especially those who were becoming workforce of textile mills . . . But lack of easy connections to West (in comparison with other port cities) left many stranded in Boston. The arrival of so many at mid-century crowded them into tenements, concentrated in city's North End, with poor health conditions and high infant mortality.1 During first decades after Civil War, voters played an increasingly important role in local politics of Boston. Though they continued to experience poverty and discrimination, they began to establish themselves socially and economically. Not all Boston immigrants were poor and not all were Catholic or Irish; but in middle of nineteenth century, a huge gap existed between two identifiable groups that were competing in Boston politics: native-born Americans and mass of immigrants. There were differences within each group, but there was a fundamental social, economic, religious, and political gap between two populations. Hostility towards those lumped together as the Irish was real. There were those, such as John Fitzpatrick, Roman Catholic bishop of Boston during Civil War, who attempted to ameliorate conditions of immigrant community. …

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