Old and New New Englanders: Immigration and Regional Identity in the Gilded Age

Two. New Ireland, New France, New England: The Place of Immigrants in American Regionalism

38 two New Ireland, New France, New England The Place of Immigrants in American Regionalism Most scholars of American regionalism have treated it as the exclusive province of the native born, assuming that only those born in this country could have a particular identification with, or interest in, one of its regions. Many of those scholars contend that regionalism is not merely native born, but nativist. They read the regionalist’s investment in the history, culture, and folkways of a particular place as a form of hunkering down in the presence of aliens.1 Some have suggested that nativism is the driving force behind most, if not all, regionalist movements.2 But few scholars go this far, with most focusing instead on the nativism of specific regional cultures. One of the regional cultures most frequently cited for its overt hostility to immigrants is Gilded Age New England. There waves of newcomers encountered a Yankee community that prided itself on its Pilgrim, Puritan, and Revolutionary heroes, its republican ideals, and its cultural attainments. The result, in many cases, was a virulent nativism that left its mark on an array of Yankee regionalist cultural productions, including fiction, town restorations, local and regional histories, Puritan statuary, Old Home Week celebrations, and the colonial revival movement. The scholars who have studied these phenomena (they include Dona Brown, Joseph Conforti, and John Seelye) do not always agree in their conceptualizations of regionalism.3 For example, whereas some see New England regionalism as a recovery project, others stress its reliance on invented traditions. But all of them view nativism as New Ireland, New France, New England • 39 a primary motivator of regionalist sentiment and cultural expression in the post–Civil War period. Yet, while fear of the immigrant has certainly been a driving force behind regionalism—in Gilded Age New England and elsewhere—there is another side to the story. Our tendency to associate regional identities with the native born has blinded us to the participation of immigrants in regionalist sentiment and expression. Accordingly, regionalism should be viewed less as a tool of nativist hegemony and more as an object of contestation and sometimes even collaboration between natives and newcomers. Some signs suggest that this is beginning to happen. A growing number of scholars have explored the regional histories of particular immigrant groups.4 But we still do not know much about how or why immigrants came to identify with American regions. What benefits did they see in calling themselves westerners or southerners? Did claiming a regional home in America strengthen or break down the boundaries that separated them from other groups? Did it help or hinder their struggles for nationhood back in the old country? And finally, how did immigrant regionalists view their nativeborn counterparts? In this chapter I argue that regional identity became a contested idea in Gilded Age New England, not only for the region’s Yankees but also for two of its largest immigrant groups, the Irish and French Canadians. I show that all three groups were similarly divided on the question of the relationship between race and regionalism. On one side were those I call racial regionalists , who viewed regional identities as a function of, and buttress to, racial ones. Among the most energetic advocates of this position were the region’s leading Irish and Brahmin historians. The two groups were bitter rivals, as is evident in the conflicts between the founding members of the AmericanIrish Historical Society (AIHS) and the Brahmin historians Henry Cabot Lodge and John Fiske. During the early years of the AIHS, it clashed with the Brahmin historians over issues ranging from the use of the term ScotchIrish to the legacy of the Puritans. But their main object of struggle was New England’s past. The Irish historians rightly complained that the Brahmins’ work on the region was filled with filiopietism, regional exceptionalism, and racial chauvinism. But, as I will argue, the same biases characterized much of the AIHS’s work on New England. Indeed, in their basic assumptions about regional and racial identities, the Irish and Brahmin historians were more alike than they cared to admit. Both groups of scholars saw New England as merely one battleground in a worldwide struggle among the races. Their preoccupation with that larger conflict prompted the Brahmin and Irish 40 • old and new new englanders historians alike to claim for their race the lion’s share of the...