~ HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE Noel Ignatiev Routledge NewYork London Published in 1995 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Copyright © 1995 by Noel Ignatiev Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish became white / Noel Ignatiev. p. em. ISBN 0-415-91384-5 1. Irish Americans-Cultural assimilation. 2. Irish Americans-Politics and government. 3. Afro-Americans-Relations with Irish Americans. I. Title. E184.I6I36 1995 973'.0491'62-dc20 95-31047 CIP The Irish, who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro.... Sir, the Irish-American will one day find out his mistake. - Frederick Douglass, May 10, 1853 Passage to the United States seems to produce the same effect upon the exile of Erin as the eating of the forbidden fruit did upon Adam and Eve. In the morning, they were pure, loving, and innocent; in the evening guilty. - The Liberator, August 11, 1854 The Irish are the blacks of Europe. So say it loud- I'm black and I'm proud. - The Commitments, 1991 CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI INTRODUCTION 1 SOMETHING IN THE AIR 6 II WHITE NEGROES AND SMOKED IRISH 34 III THE TRANSUBSTANTIATION OF AN IRISH REVOLUTIONARY 62 IV THEY SWUNG THEIR PICKS 92 V THE TUMULTUOUS REPUBLIC 124 VI FROM PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY TO WHITE REPUBLIC 148 AFTERWORD 178 NOTES 189 INDEX 229 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Cartoon, Edward W.Clay,lithograph, American Sympathy and Irish Blackguardism (New York, 1843). 4 Cartoon, "Irish Emigrant" in Diogenes, Hys Lantern August 21, 1852,p. 68. 33 Cartoon, "Different Specie-s" in Diogenes, Hys Lantern October 23, 1852, p. 158. 61 Broadside, woodcut with letterpress, Results of Abolitionism (n.p., ca. 1835). 91 Frontispiece illustration to Life & Adventures of Charles Anderson Chester (Philadelphia, 1850). 122 Illustrated title page, A Full and Complete Account of the Late Awful Riots (Philadelphia, 1848). 147 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Theodore Allen many years ago introduced me to the notion of the white race as a socially constructed category; he also suggested the topic of the book, and commented on the finished manuscript. Stephan Thernstrom, the advisor to this project when it was a dissertation, extended me the respect of allowing me to proceed at my own pace, even when it must have seemed I was barely moving forward. He served as the critical reader in my mind, forcing me to examine and defend my assumptions. Although we disagree about many things, he never once sought to impose his views on me; his comments were invariably directed toward strengthening my own argument, and his fairmindedness will always be a model to me in my own teaching. Alan Heimert, David Roediger, Alex Saxton, and Werner Sollors were encour- aging and helpful from the beginning. They all read the entire manuscript, and made useful comments. I was fortunate to have the regular company of people who were interested in what Iwas doing and who never (well, hardly ever) showed boredom with my monomaniac passion, and instead were always available to discuss it with me and allow me to talk out my ideas. These people, John Garvey, Loren Goldner, Jim Kaplan, Peter Linebaugh, Kate Shea, and Steve Whitman, constituted for me something of a standing committee on the Irish question. Iver Bernstein, John Bracey, Peter Coclanis, Mary Connaughton, Brenda Coughlin, Emily Cousins, Jeff Ferguson, Ferruccio Gambino, Herbert Hill,Carolyn Karcher, Joel Perlmann, Theresa Perry, Marcus Rediker, Adam Sabra, Ray Sapirstein, Kevin Van Anglen, and Ted Widmer all contributed in various ways, either helping me develop my ideas, reading parts of the work-in-progress, or providing me with criticism, research materials, and other kinds of support as I required. Kerby Miller generously shared with me an unpublished paper he wrote many years ago on the origins of Irish-American attitudes toward the Negro. Cecelia Cancellaro, editor at Routledge, and Adam Bohannon, editorial and production manager at Routledge, were encouraging and helpful in getting the book to publication. To any I have omitted, I apologize. I am not sure that haVingso many friends willing to talk with me about the project helped me get it done more quickly, but I am sure their participation made it a better work. Its errors of fact or judgment, .,. XI •.••• like its profits and labors, are mine. The staffs of various libraries provided assistance in the patient, generous tradition of their trade. I am particularly indebted to Nat Bunker of the Acquisitions Department at Harvard's Widener Library, and Phil Lapsansky at the Library Company of Philadelphia (without whose help it is difficult to imagine either my own or any of the recent books on nineteenth-century Philadelphia getting written). During the years I worked on this project, except for the last, I was a gradu- ate instructor in the Program in History and Literature at Harvard. The freedom to develop my own courses of instruction, the friendship of colleagues, and the students who challenged me made it quite simply the best teaching job in the world (except for the money), and I am grateful. To the Whiting Foundation, which provided me with a fellowship that allowed me to take this project over the top, I am grateful as well. When I was a boy, my father, Irving Ignatin, used to speak to me of Harry Levin (who wrote The Power of Blackness). "Do you know how smart he must be," he would ask, "to be a professor of English at Harvard with a name like Harry Levin?" (That was a long time ago.) By the time I got to Harvard, my father no longer had all his wits. Every time I saw him, he would ask what I did for a living. On hearing me explain my duties as a graduate student and teaching fellow, he would invariably ask, "And for this they give you money?" When I think of some of the things I did earlier to earn my bread, his skepticism strikes me as quite reasonable. My mother, Carrie Ignatin, supported me loyally through my years of labor on this project, as she did on everything I ever undertook. She sent me news- paper clippings and every scrap of material she came across that had to do with relations between Irish- and Afro-Americans, some of which have found their way into the final work. Both my mother and father died before I finished this book, but their marks are on every page. To their memory it is dedicated. Lux aeterna. ~ XII .,. INTRODUCTION o biologist has ever been able to provide a satisfactory definition N of "race"-that is, a definition that includes all members of a given race and excludes all others. Attempts to give the term a biological foundation lead to absurdities: parents and children of different races, or the well-known phenomenon that a white woman can give birth to a black child, but a black woman can never give birth to a white child.! The only logical conclusion is that people are members of different races because they have been assigned to them. Outside these labels and the racial oppression that accompanies them, the only race is the human. I'll be examining connections between concepts of race and acts of oppression. "By considering the notion of 'racial oppression' in terms of the substantive, the operative element, namely 'oppression,' it is possible to avoid the contradictions and howl- ing absurdities that result from attempts to splice genetics and sociology. By examining racial oppression as a particular system of oppression- like gender oppression or class oppression or national oppression-we find further footing for analyzing ...the peculiar function of the 'white race' .... The hallmark of racial oppression [is the reduction of] all members of the oppressed group to one undifferentiated social status, a status beneath that of any member of any social class" within the dominant group.2 It follows, therefore, that the white race consists of those who partake of the privileges of the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded from it. This book looks at how one group of people became white. Put another way, it asks how the Catholic Irish, an oppressed race in Ireland, became part of an oppressing race in America. It is an attempt to reassess immigrant assimilation and the formation (or non-formation) of an American working class. 2 .,.. HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE The Irish who emigrated to America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were fleeing caste oppression and a system of landlordism that made the material conditions of the Irish peasant comparable to those of an American slave. They came to a society in which color was impor- tant in determining social position. It was not a pattern they were famil- iar with and they bore no responsibility for it; nevertheless, they adapted to it in short order. When they first began arriving here in large numbers they were, in the words of Mr. Dooley, given a shovel and told to start digging up the place as if they owned it.