US immigration

-DR

where nativist protestnats mounted a campaign to "save the Bible in the Schools"
=> one of the rallies in Kensington broken up by "Irish agitators"
=> led into a "firefight, leaving several Protestants killed"

Next morning the Natve American newspaper says
'the bloody hand of the Pope has stretched forth to our destruction"
called on the readers" to arm. Our liberties are now to be fought for"
=> several hundred protestants march to Kensington
gun shots + arson
2 catholic churches + a convent set on fire + martial law for a week to cool things down

Also issues over:
-more relaxed catholic attitude to sabbath
-"temperance enthusiasts" not liking Irish saloons + German beer halls
"seein them as dens of vice and corruption"
=> beer halsl were community houses, especially on Sundays when whole families whiled away the time, but this in itself caused offence to strict Protestant Sabbatarians

Saloon/beer hall became hq of Democratic Party "to which immigrant Catholics largely gravitated"
"these people were seen as a credulous mass of foot soldiers, doing the sinister bidding of the Pope, his priestly officers and their corrupt political lieutenants"-DR

2/3 of St Louis
"soon they translated this into votes and influence"

"for many established Americans however, mass immigration was turning the (American) dream into a nightmare"-DR
=> previous settlers had been mainly Britsih protestants, threat posed to them by newcomers

"many middle-class Americans also regarded the newcomers as riff-raff, teetering on the edge of poverty, alcoholism and crime"

Revd Horace Bushell, leading Conneticut minister, "if you will glance over the catalogues of our colleges and universities, the advertisements of our merchangs and mechanics, you will almost never find and Rish name among them, which shows that they do not rise to any rank among us"
but if you look to almshouses + prisons "there you will find their names in thick order"

"the most sensitive issue was religion"-DR
most Irish + many Germans Irish Catholics
"their lifestly threatened the widespread sense of America as a protestant nation"

DR says "a daily flashpoint was the schools" between catholic immigrants + protestant WASPS

school day began with readings from King James Bible + protestant hymns + prayers
=> Catholics demanded rigth to use Douai Bible w. papal annotations
or to sned their children to church schools
"to militant Protestants, the drive for Catholic education showed that these immigrants were not ready to become true Americans"-DR

"for years evangelicals had campaign aginst demon drink"
=> now went further, inspired by Neal Dow, mayor of Portland Maine who had pushed law banning sale of alcohol in Main legislature
nicknamed the 'Napoleon of temperance'

DR says this decades "saw the spectacular rise of an explicitly anti-immigrant political movement"

mostly in the northeast

so-called Main Laws
"not simply an anti-immigrant measure but Irish and German Catholics, whose economic and social lives were often built around the saloon and the beer hall, were leading opponents"
=> "many advocates of prohibition saw the liquor-trading immigrant as their prime target"

Maine Temperance Watchman:
complained tha the Irish 'come here with all their vicious habits and grovelling tastes uncontrolled, and they think they can make money at this thing"

democratic corruption in NY

Started out as a secret society with masonic-stly lodges

was "a fringe movement for several years"-DR

membership of nothings "surged" from 50k to >1mil.
=> elections that autumn, Know Nothing candidates to power in Massachussetts + state legislatures of most of New England

Also became the "main opposition to the Democratic Party" in the rest of the country, including South, displacing the Whigs

There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery, most often joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election

each member had to be "a native born citizen, a Protestant, born of Protestant parents, reared under Protestant influence, and not united in marriage with a Roman Catholic"

"Keep America Protestant - that was essentially the Know Nothings' motto"-DR
=> did not want an end to immigration, but to "control its political consequences":
-wanted to ^ period for immigrants to become citizens to 21 years
-bar Catholics from holding office

"The European who would drink fom the fountain of liberty should leave American politics to Americans"-Thomas Whitney, a NY leading nativist

by six former officers of the Confederate army

"the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan", according to Albert Stevens in 1907
Allen Trelease says there was little formal organisation

main goal became to target RECONSTRUCTION -> not immigration

outlawing the importation of Asian contract laborers, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own countries

Chinese Immigration banned from this time
the "yellow peril"

helped to revive "the nativist passions of the 1850s about immigrants as an alien threat to American values"
Italians stereotyped as criminals, Jews as crooks
"The flood gates are open... The sewer is choked, the scum of immigration is viscerating upon our shores" - one NY newspaper

New England elite families were top of people trying to "close the open door"
-> tried to traced roots back to pilgrim fathers

leaders of Immigration Restriction league included:
-Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
-A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard

wanted to decrease immigration + not allow them full citizenship

future immigrants must read US constitution then write down twenty words from it, in any language
=> President Groover vetoed it

DR says same justification as Jim Crow

"but comparable levels of animosity were often evidenced towards Europeans as well"-DR

lynched 2 years later -> nobody charged

His trial, and lynching two years later, attracted national attention and became the focus of social, regional, political, and racial concerns, particularly regarding antisemitism

Appeal failed to the supreme court in April 1915

preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism and nativism
=>according to Thomas R. Pegram

directed exclusively at white Protestants; it opposed Jews, blacks, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern European immigrants such as Italians

At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men
=> dropped to about 30k by 1930 bc of internal divisions + criminality

"two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers," says historian Brian R. Farmer

Emphasised that South had been hard done by in reconstruction
-> endorsed by Woodrwo Wilson
led to the founding of the 2nd KKK

Madison Grant, a leader at one point
this book was a favourite of Adolf Hitler, DR says "not suprisingly"

celebrated what called 'the Nordics' as the global elite
'the Nordics are... a race of... above all rulers, organisers and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant character of the Alpines'
he advocated the sterilization of 'worthless race types'

DR points outt hat there were many Irish-Americans who wanted immigration restrictions as well as those of British descent (Lodge, Walker, Grant)
=> satirized by Finley PEter Dunne with his stereotypical Irish-American character Mr Dooley

Jacob Riis:
'the once unwelcome Irishman has been followed in his turn by the Italian, the Russian Jew, and the Chinaman, and has himself taken a hand at opposition... against these later hordes'
But Riis said they got what they wanted with corruption in politics -> taking control in places like Boston + New York

the most sweeping immigration act the United States had passed until that time. It was the first bill aimed at restricting (as opposed to regulating) immigrants, and marked a turn toward nativism. The law imposed literacy tests on immigrants, created new categories of inadmissible persons, and barred immigration from the Asia-Pacific Zone

9k arrested + held without trial
but "it became evident that fears of revolution became unfounded"

according to Chester L. Quarles
=> not a huge nativist reaction

Lots of Irish to USA

Irish Catholics were primarily unskilled workers who built a majority of the canals and railroads, settling in urban areas

brings many intellectuals + activists as asylum seekers to USA

in People of France, the German states, the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Italian states, Denmark, Wallachia, Poland, and others

extended U.S. citizenship to approximately 60,000 Mexican residents of the New Mexico Territory and 10,000 living in California. An additional approximate 2,500 foreign born California residents also become U.S. citizens.

attracted 100,000 would-be miners from the Eastern U.S., Latin America, China, Australia, and Europe. California became a state in 1850 with a population of about 90,000.

resulted in lower fares and greater immigrant mobility.

also farming improvements in Southern Europe and the Russian Empire created surplus labor. Young people between the ages of 15 to 30 were predominant among newcomers.

DR says some "guest workers" -> Italians especially liked to come to USA for short amount of time to earn money

"but the majority of immigrants did settle, making city centres like Lower Manhattan even more cosmopolitan"

reporter Jacob Riis wrote that in alleys + courtyards could find:
-Italian
-German
-French
-African
-Spanish
-Bohemian
-Russian
-Scandinavian
-Jewish
-Chinese
-Arab
"the other thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community"-Riis
instead he said there was a "queer conglomerate mass of heterogeneous elements"

But DR says "the Union was only skin deep"
=> were America's new working class + some became "ardent socialists" e.g. Jewish Garment workers in NY
but "most had little sense of class consciousness"
bc they "lived in their own little ecthnic commuities" -> Italian-Speaking Catholics/Greed Orthodox rather than as a unified working class

after 5 years become naturalised citizens -> voters
-> much keener to keep their jobs + avoid a police record than "to agitate for a left-wing utopia"
"Mass immigration was a major reason for socialism's failure to take root in America ata time when it was flourishing in Europe"-DR