Books

Uncivil Boston

A city divided during the Civil War.
By William Fowler Jr.

Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield, by Thomas O'Connor, Northeastern University Press, 1997, 296 pages, $26.95

In Boston, history is all around us. We feel it under our feet as we walk the Freedom Trail. We see it aloft in the towering spires of the Old North, Park Street, and Old South Churches. At nearly every turn we glance it in ubiquitous green-tinged plaques embedded in walls and buildings. We see it in the sculptured faces of statues dotting our parks and avenues. Is there any city in America with a richer past? Is there any city in America more concerned about its past?

Riches, though, can be a burden, and at times we seem to sag under the weight of our own history. Writers and historians, of which this town has always had an exportable surplus, have thrived weaving tales about Boston's past. Lamentably, such attention has often sunk into hagiography and silly celebrations of a grand, but illusory, bygone time. What a relief in this low forest of pines to spot a towering Tom O'Connor. In recent years O'Connor has chronicled the history of the Irish in Boston, but with this book he returns to a topic he first engaged nearly three decades ago in Lords of the Loom (1968)-Boston in the Civil War.

If we judge this town's role in that great war by the monuments standing around us, we must conclude that Bostonians were violent in their opposition to slavery, devoted to the principles of racial equality, fiercely loyal to the Union, and unswerving supporters of Lincoln. Alas, as O'Connor demonstrates, bronze and stone can portray a false image.

On the eve of the Civil War, Boston was one of the nation's most important commercial and financial centers. Having weathered the Panic of 1857, Bostonians were looking ahead eagerly to progress and profits. A hopeful sign occurred in October 1858 when the senator from Mississippi, Jefferson Davis, took the podium at Faneuil Hall. He hailed a packed house of the town's most prominent citizens as his fellow "countrymen, brethren, and democrats" and extolled the new tranquillity that had come to characterize the vexed relations between North and South.

O'Connor does not let us miss the irony of that speech, nor does he allow us to forget the incredible moral indifference displayed by Davis's audience, sitting in "the Cradle of Liberty," applauding an apologist for a despicable and evil system. The men in Faneuil Hall needed Southern cotton, cultivated and picked by millions of slaves, "to feed their factories, load their ships, and sustain their banks." Davis's audience held power, but not principle. From the same stage, Boston's abolitionists, men like William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Remond, spoke with the force of righteousness. Neither Davis nor his audience could fathom the depths of commitment these people brought to their cause.

Rhetoric surrendered to war in April 1861. But O'Connor's focus is not the fighting. "My main interest" he writes, "is not so much in the military events of the war, but about how battlefield events touched the lives of people on the home front-how they changed their lives, disrupted their homes, altered their work habits, reshaped their political allegiances."

The war swept through every corner of Boston. O'Connor touches on politics, women's rights, industrial activities, philanthropy, and literature. Not surprisingly, however, given his previous work, he is most powerful and persuasive when he discomforts us with his analysis on race (i.e., blacks versus Irish).

Nearly a third of Boston's population consisted of Irish immigrants, almost all refugees from the famine. Unwanted and unpopular with the Anglo establishment, they were persecuted by virulent nativists. Nonetheless, with the encouragement of the Catholic Church they became citizens and vocal patriots. Conservative by nature, the Irish cleaved to the Union with a passion common to converts. There could be no question that they would fight to preserve the nation. On the other hand, they were not inclined to favor abolitionism. Upper-class abolitionists had never had much interest in the plight of the Irish. Furthermore, given their low economic status, the Irish community quaked at the notion of millions of free blacks competing against them for unskilled jobs.

Boston's black community had no ambivalence about abolitionism and the Union. They supported both with a fierce passion. While only a small minority in the city, barely 2,000 people, the community was visible and influential. Gathered around their churches and concentrated in a neighborhood on the back side of Beacon Hill, many black Bostonians had been vocal abolitionists. They had resisted the Fugitive Slave Act, struggled against segregated education, and stood with their white abolitionist comrades denouncing slavery.

In January 1863, Abraham Lincoln settled the debate over slavery. His Emancipation Proclamation, while not abolishing slavery everywhere, did in fact make abolition inevitable. This action, coupled with a general war weariness, drove Boston's Irish ever more tightly into the hands of the opposition Democratic Party. The proclamation also provided Governor John Andrew, an antislavery Republican, with an opportunity to raise a regiment of black soldiers-the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. On May 18, 1863, the newly massed troops marched through Boston to begin a voyage that would take them to their destiny in South Carolina. At a spot marked today by Boston's most famous monument-Augustus Saint-Gaudens's tribute to the regiment-the soldiers paused and saluted the governor who had earlier proclaimed, "I stand or fall as a man and magistrate with the rise and the fall in history of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment."

The calamity that awaited the Fifty-Fourth at Battery Wagner brought untold grief to Boston families. Yet Bostonians rejoiced that the Union had been preserved. Still, as O'Connor notes, the legacy of the war for Boston was mixed. Driven by continental expansion, Southern Reconstruction, and industrialization, the locus of the nation's economic and political power was shifting west and south. Sensing these new directions, some Bostonians followed the new opportunities. For those who remained at home, however, not much changed. O'Connor perceives that the Irish were the biggest gainers. Wartime service had proven their loyalty and allowed them to edge closer to social and political acceptability. Women made some marginal gains in status, but these were quickly erased in a postwar reaction. Ironically, the one group that had the most to gain actually achieved the least. Black Bostonians had entered the war with the "highest expectations" and left it with the least results. Ostracized socially, segregated on "Nigger Hill," and denied skilled jobs, Boston's black community was left to wonder at its abandonment.

Unlike most Civil War histories, O'Connor's work does not reverberate to the sound of bugle and drum. There are few heroes and heroines and no gallant charges. What we hear instead are the voices of people struggling to make sense out of the greatest cataclysm ever to strike our nation.

William Fowler Jr. is chairman of the history department and co-editor of the New England Quarterly.

Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women

by Jeffrey Benedict Northeastern University Press, 1997

Rape, gang rape, assault-for these crimes against women, athletes are routinely getting off the hook, says Benedict, former research director at N.U.'s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. He offers evidence that male athletes commit more crimes against women than their peers. Based on interviews with athletes, coaches, team officials, victims, and attorneys, the book addresses such controversial issues as race, class, the sexually permissive lifestyle of many athletes, the consensual-sex court defense, and the sports industry's indifference to athletes' criminal behavior.

Management Across Cultures: Insights from Fiction and Practice

by Sheila Puffer

Blackwell Publishers, 1996 Business and Management in Russia

by Sheila Puffer and Associates Edward Elgar Publishing, 1996

In Management Across Cultures, Puffer, an N.U. business professor, combines managerial writings with fiction to provide insights into the cross-cultural experience. The short stories outline problems that individuals and families confront while working outside their home countries, while the business articles provide real-life examples and practical advice. Business and Management in Russia includes articles and case studies designed to help readers understand Russian business as that country moves toward a market economy.