From Town to City: Boston in the 1820s
The belief in the unbroken quality of Boston's history from the Revolution to the 1840s, a pillar of Brahmin historiography, has proved surprisingly durable. The fact that Boston underwent an official change from town to city in 1822 has been noted, but with little attention paid to its possible significance. Lucius Beebe dismisses the change as inconsequential, describing Boston in the next decade as still "an almost pastoral community." After acknowledging its rapid growth in the 182os and the progressive administration of Mayor Josiah Quincy from 1823 to 1828, Roland Stromberg goes on to describe Boston of the 183os as "an overgrown village, where everybody likely enough knew everybody else, and nobody escaped the scrutiny of the collective eye." Oscar Handlin writes that "there had been no disruption in the essential continuity of the city's history" during the half-century prior to the Irish migrations of the late 1840S. According to Martin Green, only with the coming of the Irish and industrialism were Boston's "communal hopes of earlier times . . . spoiled."'-