HIST 625: Corridor to Revolutions Research Resources

Anti-Catholicism and nativism

• Broad Street riots (native-born Protestant firemen vs. Irish immigrants), June 11, 1837. Preceded by more than a decade of nativist confrontations with Irish immigrants, and followed by more

Boston in the Civil War

• Irish Catholics and and Know-Nothings
• Debates in newspapers
• Pro-slavery Pilot vs. republican newspapers
• Newspapers printed on Washington Street

Draft riots: newspapers gave voice to opposing ethnic groups  

Boston Bellamy Club, 53 State Street. Launched December 1, 1888. 25 men and Capt. Charles E. Bowers meet at 61 State St., to spread the causes/views of Charles Bellamy’s Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1888, a critique of the injustices and society of industrial capitalism, argues for a utopian society focused on cooperation. First Bellamy-ite club in the US, reflecting popularity of Bellamy’s book, which encouraged the formation of Nationalist Clubs across the US.

Immigration Restriction League. Founded May 1864 by Prescott F. Hall, Charles Warren, and Robert DeCourcy Ward. Now at site of 428 Exchange Building. Not interested in utopian socialism of Bellamyites. Saw the working classes as ignorant and saw growing immigrant population as socially inferior and threat to “the American race.” They held public lectures, published anti-immigrant literature and lobbied federal officials, had ties to Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge so linked to restrictive federal immigration legislation of 1921 and 1924. Headquarters in Boston (53 State Street/Exchange Place) until it ended in 1921. Bellamyite Club also at this space.

Lavery, Colm. “Situating Eugenics: Robert DeCourcy Ward and the Immigration Restriction League of Boston.” Journal of Historical Geography 53 (July 2016): 54–62.

Ludmerer, Kenneth M. “Genetics, Eugenics, and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46, no. 1 (January 1, 1972): 59–81.

O’Connor, Thomas H. Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

Patai, Daphne. Looking Backward, 1988-1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

Quinlin, Michael P. Irish Boston: A Lively Look at Boston’s Colorful Irish Past. Guilford, Conn: Globe Pequot Press, 2005.

Solomon, Barbara Miller. “The Intellectual Background of the Immigration Restriction Movement in New England.” The New England Quarterly 25, no. 1 (March 1, 1952): 47–59.

Tager, Jack. Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001.