ABSTRACT
The end of the Civil War is usually portrayed as a time of great triumph for New England, and particularly for Boston. Van Wyck Brooks famously described the “flowering of New England” in the decades leading up to and including the Civil War: “New England ideals and examples had a commanding influence wherever people cared for thought and writing, and eastern Massachusetts was hallowed ground for thousands of the rising generation.” With the war over it was “Boston’s hour of triumph,” for they “were the heirs of the Revolution and spoke for the liberal-world community.” 1 Another analyst comments that Boston’s “self-confidence [was] … revived by the Civil War, which seemed to renew the American vocation to act out of idealism; the nation followed where Boston led.” 2 This chapter will note the dominance of Boston’s elite figures in this era, with particular reference to Franklin Sanborn, whose formation of the American Social Science Association the same year as the war ended (1865) is emblematic of the new righteous zeal for reform. However, the chapter will also point out that neither the living conditions of the Yankee elite nor the ideas of their thinkers characterized most people of the time, and particularly not America’s immigrant populations. As Annie Sullivan’s family settled in western Massachusetts, they were as isolated from this idealism and self-confidence as if they lived a million miles away.
