John P. Bigelow

In his first term as mayor, Bigelow faced a major crisis. Cholera swept across the city at an alarming rate. It 1849 alone, it killed over 5,000 people out of a population of 130,000, or approximately 4 percent of the city's citizens.[6] In response to the epidemic, the mayor blamed the deaths on "palpable indiscretions in diet, or intemperance." He also claimed that most—if not nearly all—of the deceased had been Irish immigrants. By subtracting the number of the city's Irish immigrants from its total population, he argued that Boston's mortality rate had not necessarily increased from the preceding years, nor was it decidedly different from that of small towns. What differentiated Boston from these small towns, Bigelow wrote, was "its throng of disabled mariners, destitute strangers, and reckless and dissolute persons from every clime." He asserted that the city had all of the necessary resources—clean water, proper sanitation, and an aggressive police force—to combat the causes that had led to the cholera outbreak. He predicted that Boston would not suffer nearly as badly as other major American cities.[9]

Mayor Bigelow earned praise for his efforts to reduce the outbreak of cholera. On August 15, 1849, the Boston Evening Transcript, published an article which highlighted the mayor's actions to remove the infirm to hospitals and educate those who lived in the vicinities of the outbreak about its prevention. As a result of Bigelow's leadership, the article concluded that he was entitled "to the respect and gratitude of our citizens." He had become "a model mayor."[10]

Bigelow's seemingly successful efforts in combating the city's cholera epidemic had enhanced his political profile, which led some of his supporters to nominate him to be his party's candidate for governor. Most party insiders, including the incumbent governor's supporters, were not amused. Bigelow published a note on September 11, 1850, stating that he had not been informed of his supporters' efforts and that he would not place his name into nomination, regardless of whether or not the incumbent placed his. Instead, he offered his full-fledged support to his party's nominee.[11]

To fully appreciate the rapid transformation which Boston underwent in the mid-nineteenth century and to rightfully evaluate Bigelow's performance as mayor, it is important to emphasize how the Irish diaspora reshaped the City of Boston's societal structures. The Reverend Theodore Parker rather aptly commented that in a single decade the city had turned into "the Dublin of America."[12]

While Bostonians had previously accepted new immigrants with open arms, particularly during the first influx of Irish in the 1820s, by the late 1840s and early '50s they had come to detest the "Famine Irish." In 1847 alone, more 37,000 new immigrants arrived in the city, most of whom came from Ireland. Previously, the city had been accepting, on average, only 5,000 new immigrants. The ships bringing the thousands who arrived in Boston Harbor on a daily basis came were euphemistically dubbed "coffin ships." The perception was that these Irish immigrants were weak and poor, starved and miserable, disease-ridden and confused.[12]

Bostonians had been willing to support the Irish, as long as they had stayed in Ireland. Now that they had come to America's shores—and to the City of Boston particularly—Bostonians were incensed. Their reactions could be violent and inflammatory. The "Boston Daily Advertiser" wrote, "The increase in foreign-born pauperism in our midst is an evil."[12]

Anti-Irish forces had a powerful spokesman in Mayor Bigelow, who argued that the invasion of immigrants to Boston was causing the city's widespread drunkenness and violence. He claimed that sympathetic judges were not handing down tougher sentences, charging that the Irish had easy access to pardons because their supporters included the city's influential, lenient, and more charitable members. Mayor Bigelow suggested that the city's powerful elites were siding with the Irish criminals over the innocent citizens of Boston.

Simon Schama in his book Dead Certainties characterizes the city of Boston during this time period as being in "trouble," and Mayor Bigelow as being "much given to jeremiads about the decay of morals and collapsing of good order occasioned by the new unwashed in his city".[13] In response to the increasing Irish immigrant population, Bigelow once remarked, "Foreign paupers are rapidly accumulating on our hands." He told sympathetic taxpayers that large numbers of Irish immigrants were "aged, blind, paralytic, and lunatic immigrants who have become charges on our public charities." He further complained that they were living in "filth and wretchedness" and "foul and confined apartments."[12]

That the new Irish immigrants could be blamed for nearly all of the city's ills was not lost on its native citizens. When one of the most well-known Boston Brahmins, George Parkman, disappeared, the police instinctively assumed that Irish immigrants were the culprits. City Marshal Francis Tukey was particularly suspicious of the allegation that on the night of Parkman's disappearance, an Irishman had paid for a one cent toll with a twenty dollar bill. As it turned out, another prominent Bostonian, John White Webster, was tried, convicted, and executed for the disappearance and murder of Parkman.

Another famous case that occurred during Bigelow's tenure as mayor was the Shadrach Affair, which ignited a political and cultural firestorm of controversy, primarily because it involved the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Passed by the US Congress and signed by President Millard Fillmore, the law allowed federal marshals to capture slaves who had run away to non-slaveholding states, such as Massachusetts. That year, a slave, Shadrach Minkins, had escaped into Boston, where he came to reside and earn a living as a waiter. In February 1851, federal marshals arrested Shadrach. However, a group of 100–200 local blacks, most of whom were members of the Boston Vigilance Committee, forcibly freed Shadrach from Boston's courthouse, and Minkins fled to Canada.

Shadrach's escape was a political embarrassment to Mayor Bigelow. The U.S. Marshall had accused both the mayor and City Marshal Tukey of refusing his request for additional police officers to guard the courthouse, where Shadrach was detained. Bigelow was forced to defend himself against these accusations. He claimed that the U.S. Marshall had not requested security and that he, the mayor, had actually requested that Tukey send additional police to the courthouse in order to prevent disorder and chaos.

The uproar resulting from Shadrach's escape was intense. In response to the outrage, Fillmore issued a proclamation that the citizens of Boston, including the mayor, obey the law and aid in the recapturing of Shadrach. Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who hailed from Massachusetts, was particularly embarrassed by the event. In a March 10, 1851, letter to Bigelow, Webster excoriated the mayor's handling of the crisis and demanded that the mayor's office and the citizens of Boston be "ready to discharge the duties incumbent upon them, by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, faithfully and fearlessly, under all circumstances, whenever called upon by the proper authorities."[14]

Anti-slavery forces applauded Shadrach's escape, but they were distressed by the knee-jerk reactions of Massachusetts' politicians, including Mayor Bigelow. The Liberator wrote several scathing editorials, blasting Bigelow's decision to cave in to the wishes of the president, his secretary of state, and the slave-holding politicians of the south. In one article, the newspaper wrote, "they plump themselves down upon their knees . . . explain 'Great is Fillmore, and Webster is his prophet, we have deserved it all,' and hold up their cheeks, both sides at once, to be smitten and spit upon."[15]

That the Mayor of Boston would be hostile to the freedom and liberty of a slave seems contradictory to understanding the history of relations between the North and the South in ante-bellum America. However, "the year 1851 still found the bulk of Boston respectability solidly arrayed against the 'fanaticism' which proposed to disregard the fundamental fact of private property in the interests of an impracticable ideal."[16]

The mayor and the citizens of Boston would be tested once again only a few months later. In April 1851, another fugitive slave, Thomas Simms, was captured by authorities in a hotel where he was working as a waiter. This time, Mayor Bigelow acted promptly and forcefully, writing to the colonel in charge of the state militia, "Now therefore, I command you that you cause one or more companies of your Regiment armed and equipped with ammunition, as the law directs, and with proper officers either attached to the troops or detailed by you to parade at said Boston on this and every subsequent day and night until further orders from me at Faneuil Hall." After being incarcerated for several days, Simms was escorted by more than 100 police officers to a boat in Boston harbor and returned to his master.[17]

The reactions to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 intensified after Bigelow's terms as mayor. Over the course of the next three years, sentiment grew so heated that Anthony Burns, the last escaped slave to leave Boston under the law, cost the city more than $40,000 and the life of one police officer.[16]

Relations between Mayor Bigelow and Secretary of State Daniel Webster did not improve after the Shadrach Affair. In 1850, Bigelow had been scheduled to meet with George Thompson, a famous British abolitionist, who was holding a meeting at Faneuil Hall. When protesters interrupted the meeting by cheering for Webster, the police, acting under instructions from the mayor, did nothing to stop the disturbance. The incident became known as the Bigelow-Tukey Riot.

A year later, when Daniel Webster petitioned the Boston Board of Aldermen to hold a reception at Faneuil Hall, his permit was denied. Mayor Bigelow and members of the Board all feared that a disturbance similar to the one that had erupted the year prior would occur. A political backlash quickly brewed. To resolve matters, Bigelow formally sent a committee to Webster to personally invite him to speak at Faneuil Hall. Webster promptly declined the invitation, arguing that it was no longer convenient for him to attend. In that year's elections, Bigelow was defeated, no doubt because of his handling of the Shadrach Affair and his public rebuke of Webster.[18]