Two Mobs of Jacksonian Boston: Ideology and Interest

Abstract

THE 1830s were a decade of heightened concern with order and disorder in the United States. Immigrants, arriving in large numbers, threatened the basic homogeneity cherished by many Americans. These newcomers crowded into decaying urban sections like Boston's North End and Fort Hill. Poverty, crime, and disease were on the rise. Sectional tensions were evident, and they were exacerbated by the agitation of the abolitionists. Mob of various motivations-religious, ethnic, and ideological-was increasing. Mayor Samuel A. Eliot of Boston noticed a spirit of violence abroad in the city and in the nation.' In America, an ideal of order has coexisted with a reality of disorder.2 The nation was born of revolution (the very essence of disorder), yet its people have continually prized order and regularity to temper the flux and uncertainty of their lives. Historians have thus far only described such tensions. To explain them,