Irish Immigrants, Free Blacks, and the Balance of Power in Antebellum Washington, D.C.

This paper explores the volatile 1850s in Washington, D.C., when an influx of Irish immigrants disrupted the traditional balance of economic and political power in the city. Because it was a slave city and a government town, Washington did not develop a white working class of the size and vitality of other Northern cities. But an 1850s federal building blitz (driven in part by a desire to firm up the wobbly Union with unifying public projects) attracted thousands of immigrant workers – Washington’s foreign-born population grew at 1.5 times the national rate. The city’s new immigrants, particularly the Irish, gave local white elites an economically viable alternative to free black labor, and political leaders initiated a crackdown on black life that discouraged black migration to the city – by 1860, blacks had dropped to an historically-low 19% of the city’s population. Meanwhile, white immigrants took advantage of an 1848 revision of the city’s voting law that decoupled voting from property ownership, and they thrust themselves into local politics and public spaces. Their presence triggered a takeover of city government by the Know Nothing party, which for three tense years infused local politics with unprecedented partisan drama and violence. The local white elite, scrambling to reassert control over the city, joined forces with the Irish to oppose the Know Nothings, in part by linking the Know Nothings to the abolitionist movement. This cross-class alliance solidified as the Civil War brought an influx of newly-freed blacks into the city.