By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

In 1914 the Massachusetts Commission on Immigration issued a report titled The Problem of Immigration in Massachusetts (there is a copy in the Society’s collections, and you can also view it here on Google Books), but it is not what you might think. The “problem” is not how to prevent immigrants from entering Massachusetts or how to deport immigrants already residing in the Commonwealth. Rather, it is how to ensure proper care and treatment of new immigrants to the state. The report outlines the commission’s findings on the current living and working conditions of immigrants residing in Massachusetts and suggests ways in which the government can improve their lives.

Immigration has been a hot button issue since the early days of the Commonwealth, but the government has not always played a kindly role. In the 17th century, laws were enacted to discourage non-Puritan and non-English immigrants from settling in the colony. The government began encouraging the immigration of other ethnic and religious groups to aid the state’s growth in the 18^th century, but by the 19^th century the continuing influx of immigrants fueled a growing anti-immigrant sentiment and the rise of nativist parties in the state. This history makes the contents of this early-20th-century report even more striking

The commission identifies two main goals, “the welfare of the State and the welfare of the immigrant,” but actually focuses chiefly on the latter. Particularly remarkable is the section on education, which shows sensitivity to preserving traditional cultures in immigrant children who are assimilating. The commission recommends that teachers adopt a method that ensures “that the immigrant child shall not, through his Americanization, lose respect for his parents and for the traditions which they revere.” It also recommends offering more educational opportunities for older children and adults through evening classes, even suggesting “lectures in the various languages…to inform the immigrant about labor laws, sanitary regulations and other things he needs to know immediately upon arrival.”

Protecting immigrants from exploitation, scams, and unsafe conditions is a strong theme of the report. At the time immigrants often fell prey to negligent landlords, medical charlatans, “shyster lawyers,” and phony bankers. The commission recommends government oversight to prevent people from taking advantage of immigrants, especially those just arrived in the United States. The overall content of the report presumes two key beliefs: that the immigrant deserves to be welcomed and given the opportunity of a decent standard of living, and that the Massachusetts government has an obligation to protect and foster them.

If a modern-day Massachusetts Commission on Immigration issued a report on “The Problem of Immigration in Massachusetts,” what would it say? How might it be similar and how might it be different from this 1914 report? Share your comments below!

By Elaine Grublin

As evidenced in this 1798 cartoon, politcs in America have always been contentious. To mark Election Day the MHS offers a retrospective of items from our blog and across our website related to American electoral history. 

From the Beehive:

Terrorism No New Topic to Presidential Elections (6 November 2012)

“The Inveteracy of Party Spirit is however indeed allarming at present.”: Press and Partisanship in the Election of 1796 (31 October 2012)

Historian Ray Raphael on that Flummoxing Electoral College (28 September 2012)

Election Days Past (2 Nov 2010)

Our Newest Arrival: Abigail Adams on Election of 1800 (27 May 2010)

From Collections Online:

Leverett Saltonstall and the Election of 1876

The American Party (the Know-Nothing Party) comes to power in Massachusetts in 1855

The Gerry-Mander. A new species of Monster which appeared in Essex South District in Jan. 1812

GOP campaign mugs of Richard M. Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (Just for fun.)

And with all the attention political ads have given to female voters in this year, it seemed appropriate to point back to Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Victory Parade : Instructions for Marchers. 

^{The image above is “Congressional Pugilists”, a political cartoon depicting Matthew Lyon fighting with a federalist opponent on the floor of Congress early in 1798.}

By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

As another election season draws to a close, there is mounting concern over the state of American party politics with vitriolic and panic-stricken ads, headlines, and pleas for support dominating the media. We rush to declare an election “the nastiest ever” as we consume the negative ads and media distortions. Meanwhile, all sides assert, as Abigail Adams did to her son, John Quincy, in the late fall of 1796, “at no period has our National interest been in a more Dangerous, or difficult situation than the present.”

In the forthcoming Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 11, John Adams faces off with Thomas Jefferson in the nation’s first contested presidential election, following the retirement of George Washington in 1796. While this contest predates modern electioneering practices such as party conventions and stump speeches, much of it sounds familiar to the modern reader. Abigail complains, for instance, that Democratic-Republican newspaper editors falsely attack John for supporting “hereditary” government, and that “by such false and glaring absurdities do these misirable Beings endeavour to deceive and delude the people.”

Still, Abigail remained fearful of what might happen if the country made the wrong choice. “I feel anxious for the Fate of My Country,” Abigail wrote, “if the Administration should get into Hands who would depart from the System under which we have enjoyed so great a share of Peace prosperity and happiness, we should soon be involved in the wars and calamities which have deluged other Nations in Blood, we should Soon become a devided and a misirable people.”

Writing to his wife in December 1796, John Adams noted, “The Inveteracy of Party Spirit is however indeed allarming at present. There have been Manœuvres and Combinations in this Election that would Surprize you.” Adams, however, should not have been so surprised. In his own Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787–1788), a work repeatedly held up as proof of his “undemocratic” principles, Adams noted the “natural and unchangeable inconvenience in all popular elections.” Candidates were likely to be of near equal merit, and voters of good faith would be nearly evenly divided. Therefore, elections would turn on which candidate “has the deepest purse, or the fewest scruples about using it” to win over those whose votes were for sale. So as we shake our heads at yet another political ad, we can take a bit of comfort that it is just another part of one of America’s oldest political traditions.

By Judith Graham, Adams Papers

Louisa Catherine Adams’ (LCA) only known writings about the period of her daughter and namesake’s final illness in St. Petersburg are eloquent in their brevity and starkness. In a second, shorter version of “The Adventures of a Nobody,” a memoir begun in 1840 and composed largely in diary form, LCA wrote: 

3 [30] August [1812]: Went into the Country with my sick Child.

9 [September]: Took my Babe back to the City in Convulsions Dr  Simpson and Galloway both attend the Babe

12 [15 September]: My Child gone to heaven

To assuage her grief, LCA on 22 October began to keep her Russian diary. “I have procured this Book with a view to write my thoughts and if possible to avoid dwelling on the secret and bitter reproaches of my heart for my conduct as it regarded my lost adored Child whose death was surely occasion’d by procrastination,” LCA explained, needlessly blaming herself for the loss. In her despair LCA wrote on 5 Dec. that her daughter’s death was a blow that left her “only desirous of mingling my ashes with those of my lovely Babe.”

In a 30 January 1813 letter, Abigail Adams, writing as one who early in life “had also been “call’d to taste the bitter cup”—a reference to the loss of her own daughter, Susanna, in infancy—offered her daughter-in-law consolation. When LCA replied on 4 April, her self-reproach was again evident: “I have the horrid idea that I lost my darling owing to a fall which I had with her in my arms in, which I did not percieve that she had met with the slightest injury but which is said to have been the cause of her death.” By 14 August of that year LCA could report relief of a kind. “What wonderful changes have taken place since I last took up this book even my health and spirits are so much amended that I scarcely know myself,” she wrote in her diary, and she thanked “the Almighty disposer of events for his great mercy in having raised me up and comforted me.” She would “ever put my trust in him for in heaven alone can I find consolation and I look forward with the hope of soon being reunited to my Angelic Babe—”

But on 7 February 1814 she wrote, with her usual forthrightness, “Mr Adams gave me Dr [Benjamin] Rush’s work upon the deseases of the Mind to read. . . . I confess it produced a very powerful effect upon my feelings and occasion’d sensations of a very painful kind since the loss of my darling babe I am sensible of a great change in my character and I often involuntarily question myself as to the perfect sanity of my mind.”

LCA gradually regained her confidence, showing remarkable resourcefulness and nerve on her 2,000-mile journey from St. Petersburg to Paris, 12 February to 23 March 1815, to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams (JQA), who had been negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. In “Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France” she reflected on her bitter experience in Russia: “In Petersburg for five long years I had lived a Stranger to all, but the kind regards of the Imperial family; and I quitted its gaudy loneliness without a sigh, except that which was wafted to the tomb of my lovely Babe— To that spot my heart yet wanders with a chastened grief, that looks to hopes above—”

An edition of Louisa Catherine Adams’ account of her demanding and eventful life—her childhood, courtship and marriage, and the years with JQA on his diplomatic missions to Prussia and Russia and during his periods of service as Massachusetts and U.S. senator, U.S. secretary of state, and U.S. congressman—has been prepared at the Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, and will shortly be published: Diary and Autobiographical Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams, ed. Judith S. Graham, Beth Luey, Margaret A. Hogan, and C. James Taylor, 2 vols., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

For JQA’s description of the death of his daughter, please read, Louisa Catherine Adams: A Father Reflects on the Death of his Infant Daughter.

By Nancy Heywood, Collection Services

On 15 September 1812, John Quincy Adams (JQA), then serving in St. Petersburg as U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Russia, and his wife, Louisa Catherine Adams (LCA), suffered a huge loss—the death of their only daughter. Thirteen-month-old Louisa Catherine, named for her mother, had been unwell for weeks. She experienced extreme discomfort due to teething (in his diary, JQA stated she was cutting seven teeth at the same time), had dysentery, and was feverish. JQA sought out the best medical treatment for his daughter in St. Petersburg. The standard medical practices at this time, bleeding and the deliberate creation of boils, were based on the assumption that infections and toxins could be removed from a person by drawing out bodily fluids; however, rather than providing relief, these techniques usually only weakened the patient further.

JQA’s long diary entry for 15 September 1812 includes this passage: 

The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away— Blessed be the name of the Lord— At twenty-five minutes past one this morning, expired my daughter, Louisa Catherine, as lovely an infant as ever breathed the air of Heaven— … Her last moments were distressing to me and to her mother, beyond expression. (From John Quincy Adams diary 28, 1809–1813, page 413) 

The weeks leading up to young Louisa Catherine’s death were stressful for JQA. Following the advice of two doctors, Dr. Galloway and Dr. Simpson, who thought the infant might benefit from fresh country air, JQA made arrangements for his family to move to Ochta, about 7 miles northeast of St. Petersburg. JQA’s diary indicates that he traveled back and forth between the two locations, sometimes making more than one trip each day. Both doctors made frequent visits to check on the young patient. On 8 September, Dr. Galloway “ordered a blister between the shoulders” of young Louisa Catherine. Then, both doctors recommend that JQA and LCA bring their daughter back to St. Petersburg, which they did on 9 September. Two days later, on 11 September, Dr. Gibbs, a surgeon, lanced one of the infant’s gums. 

Understandably, JQA was distracted as he did his best to fulfill his duties during this time.  On 10 September 1812 JQA wrote: 

The agitation of mind occasioned by her illness, is so great that I have neither time for the ordinary occupations of my life, nor recollection of its common incidents. I have had in the course of the few last days several visitors, but have hardly the remembrance of their names, or of the occasions of their visits. (From John Quincy Adams diary 28, 1809 -1813, page 411)

JQA’s diary indicates the toll the baby’s final days took on the whole family. On the afternoon of 13 September, an exhausted and distressed LCA temporarily left her daughter’s side and went into a different chamber. JQA describes how he alternated between checking on his wife and checking on his daughter, who at that time was under the care of a nurse and LCA’s sister, Catherine Johnson. According to JQA’s diary, 14 September was a particularly grueling day for all involved. LCA returned to her daughter’s side, but by evening all hope was gone. Catherine fainted (JQA states that for forty-eight hours she “had scarcely for an instant moved from the side of the Cradle”) and LCA “was suffering little less than her Child.” Young Louisa Catherine died early on the morning of 15 September.  

After a funeral service in St. Petersburg’s English Factory Church on 17 September 1812, the infant Louisa Catherine Adams was buried at the Lutheran Cemetery on nearby Vasilevsky Island. Two hundred years later she is still remembered—on 15 September 2012 the Consul General of the United States of America in St. Petersburg will host a ceremony in that cemetery to unveil a new memorial stone for Louisa Catherine Adams.

For some of JQA’s wife’s writings about the death of her daughter, please read, Louisa Catherine Adams: A Mother Reflects on the Death of her Infant Daughter.

By Anna J. Cook, Reader Services

Last week, New Yorker essayist Michelle Dean published a piece on the diaries of mystical nature writer Opal Whiteley, “Opal Whiteley’s Riddles.” Originally appearing in the Atlantic Monthly beginning in March of 1920, Opal’s diaries were both popular and controversial as a piece of literature. Whiteley presented the diaries as a product of her childhood spent in the Oregon wilderness;  skeptics were dubious that a six-year-old child could have developed such an distinctive voice and wide-ranging, fantastical vision.

Though Whiteley was born and raised in Oregon, the story of her diary has deep Boston roots in the patronage of Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery Sedgwick, a wealthy and influential Boston Brahmin, who supported Whiteley during a laborious editing process (the diary had survived only in fragments). Because of the disputed nature of Whiteley’s work, Sedgwick gathered extensive materials related to her life and writing which eventually became part of the Ellery Sedgwick Papers here at the Massachusetts Historical Society.  In addition to the Opal Whiteley materials in the Ellery Sedgwick papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society also holds a copy of the original 1920 edition of The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart (which can also be read full-text online at the Internet Archive) and a poster advertising one of Opal’s nature lectures, given in 1917.

Before traveling to Boston in search of a publisher, Whiteley – as the self-described “Sunshine Fairy” – put herself through the University of Oregon by giving public lectures on the natural world. It was these lectures – developed into a book she titled The Fairyland Around Us – which Whiteley initially approached Sedgwick about publishing in September of 1919, at the encouragement of Henry Chapman from The Youth’s Companion, a popular American children’s magazine. While Sedgwick declined Fairyland, in the course of their conversation he discovered Whiteley had kept a diary during her childhood and expressed interest in seeing this original source material.

Note: Those interested in consulting Ellery Sedgwick’s research material on Opal Whiteley should consult the finding guide and contact the library in advance of their visit, as the collection is in offsite storage.