The Irish Experience in America: Nativism, Argumentation, and Responses

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The Irish Experience in America: Nativism,

Argumentation, and Responses

Carleen S. Hardin

Faculty of Humanities: American Studies

University of Amsterdam

Student No: 11105054

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Title page illustration found at: Frank Knotts, “My Grandfather’s Father,” Delaware Right, last modified November 23, 2014, accessed May 23, 2016,

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Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank my professors in UvA’s American Studies program for helping me harness a new viewpoint on my homeland, one that enables me to have a more well-rounded understanding of America, and for challenging me in my writing and research abilities. You all have truly aided me in growing as a student and scholar.

Secondly, I want to thank my husband, William, for his consistent encouragement throughout the research and writing process. Although he had his own brilliant thesis to write on a topic wholly different from mine, he always had time to read, critique, discuss and praise my humble work. For the extent of our double-pursuit of master’s degrees, we were in it together, and together, we leave the Netherlands as better people.

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Abbreviations and Terms

The following is a list of abbreviations and a clarification of terms: 1. Anglo-Saxon American

a. A native-born American or an American of English descent 2. Irish

a. This term can connote either Irish immigrants or American-born Irish. Many times it will be the blanket term for people in the United States with Irish blood. 3. Irish American

a. This term will be used if and when it is necessary to distinguish between Irish immigrants and American-born Irish.

4. Irish Supporter

a. Mainly used in chapter three, this term refers to a non-Irish, non-nativist American. “Supporter” does not necessarily mean that he or she was actively propagating Irish causes or playing the role of advocate between the Irish and nativists. The way it is used in this thesis is to describe someone who is a native-born American, who holds no prejudice against the Irish and who speaks of the Irish in a positive manner.

b. One exception to the above statement is John Francis Maguire who was an Irishman, but did not live in America. He was an Irish MP and wrote a highly positive book on the Irish in America. He will be used as a primary source in chapter three and briefly in chapter two.

5. Native-born American

a. Synonym for Anglo-Saxon American or WASP (see below)

b. This descriptor does not necessarily denote someone who is nativist 6. Nativist

a. A native-born American who holds xenophobic and discriminatory views of immigrants

b. This term will not be used as a synonym for “native-born American.” Rather, it should be thought of, in regards to this thesis, as a clear and distinct term separate from “native-born American.”

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a. In this thesis, this term will mean the following: an image, depiction, or piece of rhetoric used to describe a group of people, mostly utilized to either excuse and support nativist sentiment or to counter it.

8. WASP

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List of Figures

Chapter 1: The Nature of Nativism in America

Fig. 1. “The Great Fear of the Period”...27 Chapter 2: Nativist Arguments Against the Irish

Fig. 1. “Romish Politics, Any Thing to Beat Grant”...34 Fig. 2. “The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things”...43 Chapter 3: The Irish Response to Nativism

Fig. 1. “Grand St. Patrick’s Day Procession in New York”...53 Fig. 2. “Coming to America; Returning for a Visit”...62

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Introduction

In 1787 the Founding Fathers of the United States established a precedence of equality and liberty in the Constitution that would appeal to millions over the course of the next two hundred years of American history. America was viewed as the “land of opportunity” and the home of free men. However, from the beginning equality, liberty, and opportunity were more idealistic than realistic. Nevertheless, the United States, with its ideals, still drew would-be immigrants to make the journey and call America their new home. Indeed, the growth of the country demanded and depended on “immigrants from other places” as historian Peter Schrag has postulated.1

Still, what immigrants found once they reached the shores was a place that was not truly free from discrimination. Not all men were treated equally, and not all men were free. In other words, there has always been a contradiction between the words of the Constitution and the reality of American society: instead of a place where “all men are created equal,” many found that there was already a standard practice of inequality, especially between races. Even still, despite the contradictions, more and more immigrants came, and they soon became an important element in the United States, whether in the expansion of country or in their contribution to the conglomeration that is American culture. Nonetheless, their place and role in the culture has often gone unnoticed or, more blatantly, ignored. Since America’s establishment as an independent nation, the predominant culture makers and benefactors were the white Anglo-Saxon protestants (WASPs). They have been the ones who create the guidelines for what it means to be American. The WASP has been the expected paradigm at which the foreigner should look in his or her attempt to assimilate, or to melt, into the greater American culture.

Yet, as Schrag too has questioned, was it ever possible for such a diverse land to be completely “integrated on ethnic terms?”2_{In honestly appraising the country’s history, one}

would have to say “not exactly.” For over two centuries attention has only ever been given to the differences between true Americans (e.g. WASPs and those who have discarded their previous identities) and outsiders who, if they really desire to become American, should assimilate, leave behind their old ways and adapt to the mainstream WASP culture. To some, that culture is what scholar Desmond King has called the “standard…condition of membership” in America.3_If

immigrants cannot meet the standard, then it may be best that they leave. Overly zealous 1 Peter Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010), 225.

2 Peter Schrag, “The Decline of the WASP,” Nation of Nations: The Ethnic Experience and the Racial Crisis, ed. by Peter I. Rose (New York: Random House, 1972), 192.

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nationalism coupled with harsh nativism has, historically, created an environment hostile to anyone new to America.4_{While these factors—nationalism and nativism—are certainly not}

unique to the United States, it is there that they have flooded the past century with xenophobic argumentation and stringent restrictionist sentiment. From the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s, to the eugenics fad in the 1920s, to Donald Trump’s 2015-2016 presidential campaign promise of building a “great, great wall” along the U.S. southern border to prevent illegal immigration, the same nativist strain has prevailed and repeated itself in various scenarios.5

So, how does the history of immigration fit into this context of prevalent nationalism and nativism? Each immigrant group—from the nineteenth century Germans and Irish, to the

twentieth century Asians and Latinos—seems to have passed through a wave of anti-immigrant reaction as they reached the shores of America. Then, once past the shore, each had to endure a campaign of nativism mainly comprised of WASPs distrustful of anyone unlike themselves, who spout fearful untruths about how the U.S. and its institutions are in danger from the consistent influx of immigrants.6_{We can see an example of this paranoia in the Declaration of Principles} of the Native American Convention of 1845:

It is an incontrovertible truth, that the civil institutions of the United States...have been seriously affected…and…stand in imminent peril from the rapid and

enormous increase of the body of residents of foreign birth, imbued with foreign feelings, and of an ignorant and immoral character.7

Such sentiment has been fairly common in America and shows, in essence, that the country has not been an overly friendly place for immigrants. To get a grasp of just how difficult it has been to assimilate or, more realistically, integrate into a culture that is not only foreign, but also full of 3 Desmond King, The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 6.

4 Nowadays, a great majority of nativist, nationalistic and even xenophobic attitudes tend to come from the conservative end of the political spectrum and from the southern states (which, as most know, tend to be more conservative). According to Schrag in Not Fit for Our Society, most “contemporary immigration restrictionists vehemently deny that they are either nativists or racists” (11). Both terms have a negative connotation, so of course “good Americans” would deny being titled by either one. Yet just as proponents of Jim Crow and white

supremacists denied the charge in the mid-twentieth century, so do many nativists now. 5 Donald J. Trump, presidential campaign announcement, New York City, June 16, 2015,

http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/.

6 The Ordeal of Assimilation: A Documentary History of the White Working Class, eds. Stanley Feldstein and Lawrence Costello (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974), 143; Alexander Deconde, Ethnicity, Race and American

Foreign Policy: A History (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 69.

7 Declaration of Principles of the Native American Convention, Assembled at Philadelphia, July 4, 1845, in Ordeal

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unexpected prejudice, we need to look at the immigrant experience in the U.S., a nation of nations that is reluctant to accept outsiders.

One experience that is an excellent case to study, in regards to the relationship between nativism and immigration, is that of the Irish, specifically those who came to the U.S. out of the Great Famine in the nineteenth century. During the timeframe in question, 1840 to 1870, the Irish were the second largest group of immigrants, numbering over 2.1 million, according to the Bureau of the Census.8_{However, during the Great Famine and its aftermath, approximately 1847}

to 1854, the Irish overshadowed every other immigrant group, including the Germans.9_{In these}

eight years alone, an astounding 1.2 million Irish arrived, most of them being refugees as we can reasonably deduce.10_{Indeed, the Irish were one of the first substantial waves of mass}

immigration to America. This period of the Famine migration was, essentially, the first time WASP Americans would be tested, on a large scale, regarding their attitudes towards and treatment of immigrants. The sheer vastness of the Irish immigration and the obvious potential the group had to impact American society was not overlooked and, as we will see, was not taken lightly by any means. Stigmas and stereotypes were created by nativists in response to Irish immigration and were designed to keep the Irish at the bottom of society.

Therefore, I feel that one of the most succinct methods for studying the case of the Irish is to look at how nativist Americans treated them and how the Irish responded to such treatment. While negative stereotypes can reveal some truth about whom they are attached to, they also expose a lot about those who create them. Nativists needed excuses, or valid arguments, for their discrimination against the Irish, and so they searched for evidence that they could exploit. Needless to say, they found proof that the stereotypes and stigmas were not completely

unfounded. So, I believe that analyzing common nativist argumentation as well as the ways the 8 Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States1789-1945: A Supplement to Statistical Abstract of

the United States (Washington D.C.: United States Department of Commerce, 1949), 34,

https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/HistoricalStatisticsoftheUnitedStates1789-1945.pdf; Patrick Blessing, “Emigration to the United States,” The Irish in America: Emigration, Assimilation and Impact, ed. P.J. Drudy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 14. For comparison, here I provide the numbers of two other significantly large immigrant groups during the same time period (1840-1870): the Germans and the Britons. The German group was comprised of over 2.2 million immigrants, essentially only 100,000 more than the Irish. The British group was the third largest and was made up of about 1.3 million immigrants, according to Bureau of the Census (14).

9 Again, for the sake of comparison, during these same years, 1847-1854, a little over 847,000 German immigrants came to America. The number of British immigrants during these few years was even less significant when compared to the Irish: only around 353,000 Britons made the Atlantic voyage during this time (Bureau of the Census, 14).

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Irish and their supporters rebutted those arguments, presents the clearest and most laconic way to understanding nativism in the nineteenth century in relation to Irish immigration and the

acceptance of the Irish in America.

Current literature on the subject of Irish immigration in the nineteenth century has two different poles. At one end of the spectrum, the Irish are discussed as victims (negative), while at the other end, the Irish are examined as active contributors (positive). In other words, scholarship on Irish immigration, generally, can gravitate towards the two different poles, playing up two separate and very real sides of the story, depending on the author. Historians such as Kerby A. Miller, Oscar Handlin or David H. Bennett have portrayed the Irish as victims of discrimination, exiles from their homeland or helpless in light of the overwhelming amount of American

nativism. Then, there are historians like Dennis Clark or Christian G. Samito who focus primarily on the positive contributions made by the Irish in America, almost downplaying the harsh realities of nativism the Irish inevitably encountered along the way. However, it is more rare that a scholar of Irish immigration combines the two positions thus presenting a more complete idea of the situation. Out of my research between the two poles came the desire to merge both sides of the story, answering the unasked questions of each side. On the negative end where Miller, Handlin and Bennett are located, the question that begs to be asked is “Were the Irish able to successfully cope with the nativism they encountered?” Subsequently then, the question that arises out of the positive end belonging to Clark and Samito is essentially, “Did the contributions of the Irish help them to cope with nativism?” So, in putting these two inquiries together—“Were the Irish in nineteenth-century America able to cope with nativism, and did their contributions help them to do so”—we have a two-part research question that, by addressing and answering it, will present a fuller picture of the Irish experience in America.

In order to answer this research question fully, there are a few sub-questions that need to be investigated in this thesis, namely: 1) What was the nature of nativism in the United States? 2) How was nativism geared specifically toward the Irish, and which common stereotypes and arguments did nativists use to support and excuse their discrimination against the Irish? 3) How did the Irish and their outside supporters react to nativism and which contributions of the Irish were emphasized in response? I believe that discovering the answers to these questions will, in turn, help us answer the overarching research question.

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For the three main questions to be investigated thoroughly, each one will be analyzed in its own specific chapter. In chapter one, “The Nature of Nativism in America,” we will look into not only the history of nativism in America, but also the main factors that contributed to nativism toward the Irish specifically—race, socioeconomic status, and religion. The Irish, due to the ambiguity surrounding what “white” meant, were often placed into an abstruse racial category somewhere between black and white and even typically characterized as ape-like.11_Further,

because of the Irish’s poverty and Catholicism, nativists viewed them as a burden to society or as a people unable to become “good” American citizens.12_{To get a glimpse of how potent nativism}

was in America in the nineteenth century, we will look at the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s, whose formation was in direct response to the massive wave of Irish immigration. By briefly studying the Know Nothing Party that, in the words of an unknown contributor to The

Irish-American, “aim[ed]...at destroying the political privileges guaranteed to the adopted citizen,” we

will be able to understand the degree of nativism that was prevalent in American society.13

Moreover, in this chapter we will discuss the effects of stigmas and stereotypes on immigrant groups, and what the common themes of nativist rhetoric were.

Then, in chapter two, “Nativist Arguments Against the Irish,” the most generic

stereotypes/stigmas and rhetoric comprising nativist arguments will be analyzed. In general, the two broad categories under which many nativist argumentation lie are “not worthy of

citizenship” and “a problem to be solved.” We will look at how the Irish were portrayed in different ways under these two categories, specifically, as the following: ignorant and foreign, undemocratic, possessed of conflicting loyalties, pauperish, diseased, criminal, and job thieves. These negative stereotypes encompass some of the most common ones that consistently occurred regarding the Irish, and they comprised common arguments and evidential support for

discrimination. By studying such stereotypes, we will see how biased they can be.

Finally, chapter three, which is entitled “The Irish Response to Nativism,” will reveal how the Irish and their supporters countered nativism by emphasizing their involvement in American society. In reaction to nativists who generally depicted the Irish as not worthy of 11 David R. Roediger, Wages of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 1991), 133-134.

12 Although the Irish’s Catholicism can sometimes be construed as the only reason for nativism toward the Irish, it was not the sole factor of Americans’ nativist sentiments. In fact, I do not believe that it was even the most

important one. Instead, I feel that the basis for nativism toward the Irish was merely the idea that they were wholly different from the WASP population and its culture. The Irish’s Catholicism, in that case, was only one piece of the puzzle. It was the overall foreignness of the Irish that frightened nativists.

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citizenship and as a problem to be solved, the Irish and their outside support rendered them as worthy of citizenship through their military service, their understanding of democratic and republican ideals, and their whiteness. Furthermore, the Irish used their involvement in the industrial and infrastructural growth of America, and in politics to show that they were beneficial to American society. Through consistent emphasis on positive Irish contributions to society, along with the fact that later and “stranger” immigrant groups overshadowed the old issues with the Irish, they were able to prove that the commonplace stereotypes were wrong and that they had something good to offer their adopted country.

Ideally, by the end of this thesis, we will have come to a firmer comprehension of nativism in the U.S. and its relation to immigrant groups, namely the Irish. Historian John Higham claims that there are repetitive patterns in America’s history regarding negative attitudes towards immigrants that seem to transcend time, place, and ethnic group. Essentially, nativism in America never disappears. It simply is disguised differently depending on the era of time and the state of the nation culturally and ideologically.14_{Therefore, it is my belief that through looking at}

both negative stereotypes exploited by nativists as argumentative excuses for their

discrimination, and the positive portrayals and helpful contributions of the Irish, we will discover that such factors reveal not so much a unique experience of the Irish alone, but a generalized one that every immigrant group in America has faced. In essence, we see that the Irish are

representative of the immigrant experience in the U.S.

Before this thesis continues further, I would like to mention some limitations, or hindrances, that I encountered while conducting research. Firstly, regarding the geographic dispersion of the Irish, there is much emphasis in Irish American studies placed upon the Irish in the Northeast, although there is some scholarship on the Irish in other parts of the country. Because the scope and space limitations of this thesis, it was necessary for me to constrain my research to the regions with the highest percentage of Irish Americans, the Northeast and the South. It was a common pattern of settlement for the Irish to stay in or fairly near the port cities where they disembarked. The majority of the Irish came into the U.S. through ports in the Northeast (e.g. New York City, Boston) and stayed in that region. Ergo, the most succinct way I found to study the Irish was to analyze mainly those in that particular location, although I do mention the Southern Irish at a few points in this thesis. Secondly, a significant limitation in my 14 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 4-5.

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research was the fact that Irish immigrant letters are not abundant, or at least, they are not abundantly available to the public. Most of the Irish immigrant letters I used for background information and a few direct quotes came from compilations such as Immigrant Voices: New

Lives in America, 1773-2000, edited by Thomas Dublin, or from extensive studies such as Kerby

A. Miller’s expert exposition, Emigrants and Exiles, in which can be found a considerable amount of immigrant letters and other such valuable primary source material. Because of this limitation, it was deemed unwise to rely on immigrant letters alone for the Irish reactions toward nativism that were examined in this research. In addition, a problem that was encountered with Irish immigrant letters was the fact that many of the writers do not necessarily mention specific encounters with nativism or their responses to nativist attitudes in America. Thus, it seemed more reliable to utilize other primary source material, such as newspapers and nativist literature, in the analysis of positive and negative portrayals of the Irish.

So now, let us begin the examination of nativism towards the Irish and their responses to it in the hope of obtaining a clearer picture of the Irish American experience.

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Chapter 1: The Nature of Nativism in America

Americans have had a love/hate relationship with immigration. Amongst these vacillating citizens, there has existed a fantasy of America being a haven for those who want a better life. They believe that America, in its abundant state of wealth and resource, is a place where immigrants can come and play their part in America’s “manifest destiny” and fulfill their own aspirations to prosperity. This vision is lacking in truth and substance, however. For one, such prosperous aspirations that are and have always been characteristic to the United States are fading from view due to economic decline, a lack of ample job opportunities, and the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Yet even if fulfilling the once-vibrant objectives of affluence and success were still likelihoods in American society, the delusion that the United States warmly welcomes immigrants from all nations could not withstand the truth of the matter. The fact is that Americans repeatedly build walls around themselves, socially and culturally, to keep strangers out.15_{Nativism has been widely adopted in every generation of Americans up}

until the present day, and its patterns have been highly repetitive despite changing ideals, political stances, and centuries. The single definition that may be the most concise for the term “nativism” comes from Higham’s work Strangers in the Land: “intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e., ‘un-American’) connections.”16_{Higham then goes on}

to specify his definition, which will aid us in understanding the importance of the term: Specific nativistic antagonisms may, and do, vary widely...but through each separate hostility runs the connecting, energizing modern nationalism. While drawing on much broader cultural antipathies and ethnocentric judgments, nativism translates them into a zeal to destroy the enemies of a distinctively

American way of life [emphasis added].17

In other words, nativism is the ideology that America needs protection of its values and ideologies from an invasive un-American group.18_{Indeed, the crux of the nativism issue in}

America is the prevalent and recurring sense of needing to preserve the norm or the status quo, to

15 Perhaps, I should also say Americans physically build walls around themselves or desire to (i.e. Donald Trump). 16 Higham, Strangers in the Land, 4.

17 Ibid.

18 David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 12.

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the point that immigrants are seen as enemies—strangers who need to be kept out or kept down, the “devils beyond the city gates” as scholar Darrin M. McMahon has put it.19

In the following chapters, there will be a discussion about how nativism specifically affected the Famine Irish and how they responded to it. I believe that analyzing negative portrayals of the Irish, common nativist rhetoric, and Irish reactions to nativism can best accomplish this goal. First, though, we need to briefly look at the framework within which the Irish were placed by nativists, or the main components by which they were classified, by asking what were the most pertinent factors comprising American nativist sentiment toward the Irish? What composed the grading system in which the Irish were found wanting? What caused native-born Americans (mainly WASPs) to harbor nativism and even xenophobia towards the Irish newcomer? I believe that it is important to mention, before explication goes any further, that every factor to be mentioned has a basis in fear.20_{Every prejudice contains some form of fear}

stemming from physical, social, or cultural difference, or from a threat to one’s wellbeing, be it physical, emotional, or social. Understanding this simple fact can help us comprehend more clearly the nature of nativism in the United States.

1.1 The Framework for Nativism

One of the most infamous factors comprising nativism of the mid-nineteenth century was race. This one component perhaps has had the most emphasis placed upon it in cultural studies of America. It is no new piece of knowledge that American race relations have been delicate at the best of times and horrific at the worst. However, race prejudice has played a significant part in nativism towards immigrants. Historically, the bigger the difference between old stock

Americans and any given group of immigrants, the more it was assumed that the immigrants were incapable of assimilating, as if the difficulty was an inherent one. Indeed, to quote Higham, “racial nativism became…a more significant factor in the history of immigration restriction, and a more precisely formulated ideology.”21_{Race became a factor that shaped not only the obstacles}

of the immigrant’s assimilation into American society, but also American attitudes towards and 19 Darrin M. McMahon, “Fear & Trembling, Strangers & Strange Lands,” Daedalus 137, no. 3, 2008: 6, accessed February 15, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40543793.

20 If one merely glances a bit into the history of nativism, he will see a persistent thread of paranoia in nativist rhetoric. Use of words such as “enemy,” “dangerous,” “alien,” “intruder,” “brute,” “vicious,” “wretched,” or “immoral” demonstrate this.

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perceptions of the immigrant, and federal immigration policies. Being white like the Anglo-Saxon was the prime standard of what it meant to be a “real American.” If an immigrant did not fit the bill, according to WASPs, then he was and would always be a non-meltable element in the human conglomeration of America that J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur called the “new race of men.”22_{What is difficult and strange in the case of the Irish was that their skin color did not}

differ much, if at all, from Anglo Americans. The Irish may have had the same skin color as the Anglos, but their racial origins (the Celts of ancient Ireland) were assumed dissimilar and, as many nativists proclaimed, not of the same caliber.23_{So, the concept of race was not as simple as}

skin tone like it would be in the mid- to late-twentieth century. Still, it was an absolute. In fact, race was thought to be so fundamental that at one point, according to E.H. Mullan, immigration officers at Ellis Island were trained to recognize an immigrant’s race simply by glancing at her face, acknowledging the foreignness in “physique, costume and behavior.”24_{No doubt that this}

surface perusal by immigration officers created unfair or untruthful assumptions of the immigrant in question before she had even opened her mouth.

After race, one of the most important factors of American nativist feeling during the time period being examined was an immigrant’s class, or socioeconomic status. Americans have been throughout their history more receptive to outsiders with skills and/or a decent amount of wealth, and more apt to reject literally or socially, immigrants with “pauper” status, who, if not merely ostracized in American society, were officially deported back to their homeland on the expense of the state.25_{The idea that poor and unskilled immigrants put a strain on citizen taxpayers and}

federal aid is an old one. Americans have often preferred—if at all—immigrants with a similar 22 Donald F. McHenry, “Captive of No Group,” Foreign Policy 14, (1974): 143, quoted in Deconde, Ethnicity,

Race and American Foreign Policy, 193; J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

(London: for Thomas Davies, 1782), 34, Kindle edition.

23 Although, historically, it has been assumed that the Irish and English were from completely different racial and ethnic origins, there is evidence now that suggests that the Anglo-Saxons of England and the Celts of Ireland, Scotland and Wales are more closely related than previously asserted. DNA testing has now shown that all of these groups share common ancestry. Moreover, depending on the region in Ireland, there are deviations in Irish blood that render similarities to that of the Anglos, which could possibly be traced to the Anglo-Norman invasions of Ireland which began in the twelfth century (Sykes 163). For more information on the differences and similarities between the Celts and Anglo-Saxons, see Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain

and Ireland (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), and Nicholas Wade, “English, Irish, Scots: They’re All

One, Genes Suggest,” New York Times, last modified March 5, 2007, http://nyti.ms/1OWEff5.

24 E.H. Mullan, “Mental Examination of Immigrants, Administration and Line Inspection at Ellis Island,” United

States Public Health Reports, May 18, 1917, in Ordeal of Assimilation, 52-53.

25 Boston Daily Advertiser, May 16, 1855, reprinted in the Citizen 2, May 26, 1855: p. 332, and Jun 9, 1855: p. 361, in Ordeal of Assimilation, 57.

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culture to the United States and those with easily marketable skills that would contribute to the growth of the economy, not the draining of it. With America’s Puritan work ethic and capitalistic roots, its citizens put much value on enterprising individuals and the dream that anyone can work their way to the top if he or she was diligent enough.26_{Repeatedly, however, throughout U.S.}

history, the reality of the influx of poverty-stricken immigrants has frustrated Americans’ ideals regarding immigration and who was “worthy” to become an American citizen. Further, for about the past two hundred years, job availability has time and again shaped nativist sentiment,

especially in times of recession, with American workers anxious that immigrants were taking American jobs at very low wages. Native-born Americans would simply not work for such degrading pay and could not compete with it. So, with poor and possibly desperate immigrants coming into the country in an almost uninterrupted stream, Americans saw themselves as forced into an unbalanced competition for work.27_{The bitterness that this generated, in turn, created}

prejudice against those immigrants who were unskilled, very poor, and grabbing up American jobs.

Finally, in addition to race and socioeconomic status, religion has consistently been an imperative ingredient in American nativism. Catholicism was abhorred and distrusted in America from the very beginning. It was as if anti-Catholicism was embedded in the nation’s roots, and in a very real way it was. England, since the Reformation, had been heartily anti-Catholic despite the fact that some of its monarchs still favored the religion. It was this anti-Catholic strain in English society that, along with other components, suddenly made it acceptable for a very traditional culture, where precedent meant everything, to favor the beheading of the king, Charles I, and the declaration of a totally new type of government under the protectorate of the strictly Puritan and overly pious Oliver Cromwell.28_{Cromwell’s reign brutally stamped out the}

26 Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. Nichols and David M. Reimers, Natives and Strangers: A Multicultural History

of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 88 and 103; Judith L. Goldstein and Margaret E. Peters,

“Nativism or Economic Threat: Attitudes Toward Immigrants During the Great Recession,” International

Interactions 40, no. 3 (July 2014): 377, accessed February 15, 2016,

http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8cb9dd49-0335-4db1-afc1-d6b25ebe94bd %40sessionmgr4005&vid=4&hid=4109.

27 Thomas R. Whitney, A Defense of the American Policy, As Opposed to the Encroachments of Foreign Influence (New York: De Witt and Davenport Publishers, 1856), 308-310, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006514820. 28 “Interregnum (1649-1660),” The Official Website of the British Monarchy, accessed February 24, 2016,

https://www.royal.uk/interregnum-1649-1660; Blair Worden, “Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate,” Transactions

of the Royal Historical Society 20, (2010): 57-58, accessed February 24, 2016,

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Catholic revolts in Ireland.29_{Cromwell’s stringent anti-Catholicism was destructive in Ireland to}

the point that the phrase “‘curse of Cromwell’ became a permanent byword for savagery and defeat” as historian Kerby A. Miller has revealed.30_{That destructive and intolerant mindset viral}

in Puritan English society towards Catholics—and indeed anyone holding different beliefs other than that of strict Puritanism—made its way to the colonies of America where it grew deep roots. Over time anti-Catholic propaganda exacerbated the intolerance in the colonies and taught Americans to distrust the Catholic Church. According to Boston journalist Elizabeth Lev, whole cities like Boston were built by Puritan settlers upon “granite columns of anti-Catholicism,” undisturbed until the Famine Irish disembarked and unsettled the status quo.31_{To be a Catholic}

in Protestant America was almost a stain upon one’s character, a scarlet letter marring outside opinion, determining one’s status in society. Catholicism was seen as incompatible with American liberty and institutions or even democracy itself. To Protestant Anglo Americans, Catholics would always be divided in loyalty, their main allegiance lying with the Pope. They were seen as spies for Catholic foreign powers who wanted to gain control of America through the Church. Essentially, it was assumed that if you were Irish, you were also Catholic and therefore, in the words of nativist Thomas R. Whitney, “of inferior mind” and unfit to be a true American.32_{All in all, to be a Catholic was close to treason, and the religion was rebuffed with}

29 Deep down the English could not let monarchy go. After Charles I’s execution in January 1649, Parliament abolished the office of king and made the United Kingdom a republic. However, Cromwell was made Lord Protectorate, and later parliament asked him if he would become king. (Thankfully, he turned it down.) After Cromwell’s death, they asked his son to succeed Cromwell’s position and rule England. Yet in the end, a pseudo monarchy would not do it for the Britons. A monarchial society was so entrenched in them that they restored the previous royal line and put the son of the hated Charles I, Charles II, back on the throne. See “Interregnum (1649-1660)” at the link above in note 15.

30 Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 21. Cromwell’s brutality was not the only element comprising Irish hatred of the English. William of Orange’s victory over James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 cemented the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland and created an atmosphere of hostility between Irish Catholics and the Anglo Protestants who now ruled them. After Cromwell’s victory in Ireland several years previous, Catholics were barred from owning property and family lands were confiscated and given to the English. Although Jacobites had hoped to recover ownership of their confiscated lands under James II, William III’s success over the Catholic king defeated those hopeful notions. This is a big reason why the Irish detested their English overlords. In short, the Irish Catholic subjugation that was begun by Cromwell was firmly rooted and reinforced by William III. For more information on the influence of William of Orange and the Battle of the Boyne on the Emerald Isle, confer “The Battle of the Boyne, 1 July 1690,” BBC

History, accessed June 18, 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/battle_of_the_boyne, and Peter Berresford Ellis, The Boyne Water: The Battle of the Boyne, 1690 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1989).

31 Bennett, Party of Fear, 35; Elizabeth Lev, “Boston, the Kennedys and the Dignity of Life,” Boston Pilot (Boston, MA), September 11, 2009, accessed February 24, 2016, http://www.thebostonpilot.com/article.asp? ID=10826#.

32 Whitney, Defense of the American Policy, 65-66; James Anthony Froude, “Romanism and the Irish Race in the United States: Part I,” The North American Review 129, (1879): 520-525, accessed February 24, 2016,

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vehemence and oftentimes violence by the native-born population, as was seen in the Philadelphia riots of 1844 with churches being burned to the ground, and, in the words of historian David H. Bennett, “priests and nuns…terrorized” and “Irish refugees…fleeing with their belongings.”33_{“Popery” or “Romanism” was shunned at every turn and the Irish along with}

it. By simply being Catholic, the Irishman’s road to integration in American society was made much more difficult as it encountered such harsh nativist impulses.

As we now see, such elements—race, socioeconomic status, and religion—provided the general framework that nativists would use to apply their negative sentiments onto immigrants as each new wave came to the United States.

1.2 The Know Nothings

Time and time again in American history, there have arisen particular groups of nativist thinkers and xenophobic expounders predominantly during times of high immigrant influxes. Perhaps, however, the most infamous nativist movement in America, besides that of the Ku Klux Klan, was Know Nothingism in the mid-nineteenth century.34_{At the core of the Know Nothings was}

the American Party, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant political party, that, given these specifications, found in the Irish an easy target for their nativism. No one foreign-born or Catholic, and no one with foreign-born parents or even grandparents could join the secret order, and their main devotion was to elect into political office only those whose ancestors were bona fide native-born Americans. So narrow were the Know Nothings in their selection of members that one of the questions of the order’s examiner, listed in the document “Examiner’s Duty,” was “Were any of your ancestors in this country during the Revolutionary War?”35_{It seems that only}

(New York: The Author’s Publishing Company, 1879), 7, 19, 141, 151-152, 166-167, and 186,

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008625307; Lawrence McCaffrey, “Ireland and Irish America: Connections and Disconnections,” U.S. Catholic Historian 22, no.3 (2004): 3, accessed February 24, 2016,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25154917; Scott W. See, “‘An unprecedented influx’: Nativism and Irish Famine Immigration to Canada,” American Review Of Canadian Studies 30, no. 4 (2000): 435, accessed February 24, 2016,

http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=8541721&login.asp? custid=uamster&site=ehost-live; Thomas D’Arcy McGee, A History of Irish Settlers in North America, from the

Earliest Period to the Census of 1850 (Boston: American Celt Office, 1851), 143,

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005998066. 33 Bennett, Party of Fear, 56-57.

34 Although the Know Nothings were notorious, they still do not compare to the Ku Klux Klan, whose atrocities in its heyday went way beyond xenophobic treatises and literature. The Know Nothings indeed provoked riots and fights at times, but it seems that the evidence points to the fact that their frustration with immigrants still had limits. 35 Higham, Strangers in the Land, 4; “Examiner’s Duty”: Examiner’s questions for admittance to the American (or Know-Nothing) Party, July 1854, American Party Collection, “American Memory,” Library of Congress, accessed

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those persons whose family trees stretched back before the Revolution to the original American colonies were good enough to be a part of the bigoted organization, or indeed, good enough to be true Americans.

The Know Nothing party had its roots in the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, a secret society that eventually grew into the Native American Party of the 1840s whose basic goal was to stem the tide of immigration in order to “diminish foreign influences,” according to Bennett.36

The organization’s premise was based in the fear that foreign influence would overcome that of native-born citizens, that America would eventually succumb to the foreigner, and that the country’s WASPish tinge would be washed away. For the Native American Party, immigrants generally represented a group of people who were ignorant, immoral, and/or possessed of evil foreign sentiments detrimental to “American Liberty.” In the words of the Address of the

Delegates of the Native American National Convention, the “unblushing insolence” of foreigners

produced a “blight” on American institutions.37_{In short, immigrants were nothing more than}

enemies who represented danger—danger to American institutions, to America itself, and to native-born citizens in general.38_{It was this fear of dangerous foreign influence and intrusion that}

prompted every piece of nativist legislature from then until the twentieth century when immigration was essentially halted in 1924. Eventually, when the Native American Party evolved into the American Party, otherwise known as the Know Nothings, the movement had contingents all over the country.39

It can certainly be argued that the Irish were the most hated of the immigrant groups during the middle of the nineteenth century, especially by organizations like the Know Nothings. To be sure, the Irish and the Know Nothings found in each other the perfect enemy. On the one hand, the Famine Irish were Catholic, poor, and, despite the highly despised presence and influence of modern Britain on the Emerald Isle, foreign to progressive and democratic culture. On the other hand, the Know Nothings, and groups like them, were Protestant, mostly middle to upper class (although the organization did have some working class members), and the

February 17, 2016, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(mcc/062)). 36 Bennett, Party of Fear, 53-54.

37 Address of the Delegates of the Native American National Convention, Assembled at Philadelphia, July 4, 1845,

to the Citizens of the United States (Philadelphia: 1845), 2-4, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009572813. 38 Bennett, The Party of Fear, 54.

39 Ibid, 115-116; Thomas J. Curran, “From ‘Paddy’ to the Presidency: The Irish in America,” The Immigrant

Experience in America, eds. Frank J. Coppa and Thomas J. Curran (Boston: Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co.,

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champions of modern American society, industry, and economy.40_{A great illustrative}

juxtaposition of the two groups is a poem written by mysteriously obscure author Samuel R. Phillips entitled Know Nothing: A Poem for Natives and Aliens.41_{In this poem there are two}

voices—that of the Know Nothings and that of the “Know Somethings” who can be deductively symbolized as the Irish. The Know Nothings deride the idea of having people from “despotic lands” coming to America to mooch upon the graciousness and tolerance they find once past the shores. The paranoia of nativism pokes through the lines of this poem, mockingly so, as the Know Nothing despairs of being ruled by Rome through the growing number of Catholic immigrants. To the Know Nothing, there are barriers, natural and political, for a reason: to “forbid the banns of union ‘twixt the old world and the new.” As if God had ordained such stark division between nations, who are after all “one blood.” Comparatively, the Know Something praises the work of immigrants, especially the Irish. Although America is his adoptive country, the Irishman is American nonetheless by contributing to it in a positive manner. He spills his blood for the country, pays his taxes, builds the nation’s infrastructure, and yet cannot garner much respect from any corner simply because of the Irish stereotype. Indeed, Phillips places the Irish on a pedestal as people who proudly toil and create industry that only benefits the economy. In this poem, to scorn immigrants is to “know nothing” while the immigrants, portrayed as more open, more tolerant, and even more liberal than native-born Americans, are the ones who “know something.”42_{This poem is merely one model of immigrant portrayal. Repeatedly and in}

different varieties, both sides—nativists and immigrants—made comparisons meant to knock the other side down a notch, attempting to elevate themselves in the process.

1.3 Unwelcome Strangers

Despite the nativism that seems to permeate parts of America even today, it would be hard to find someone who whole-heartedly thinks that nativism is or ever was a positive aspect of a culture or beneficial for natives or immigrants alike. What can nativist sentiment hope to 40 Ibid, 106-107.

41 The author has conducted much research so as to discover who exactly Samuel R. Phillips was, but nothing of substance has been found. From the way he writes in Know Nothing, it does not seem that Phillips was Irish. But, of course, there is no way of firmly qualifying that. All that was found was his year of birth, 1824, and his year of death, 1880.

42 Samuel R. Phillips, Know Nothing: A Poem for Natives and Aliens (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854), 3-8, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009602597.

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accomplish? Certainly not a national reputation for egalitarianism. Rather, nativism reveals the societal anxieties, warranted or not, of native-born Americans and shows that Americans feel that the “uniquely American culture or way of life needs to be protected against ‘foreign’ influence” as scholar Benjamin R. Knoll avers.43

Nativism creates a polarized society in which a great battle is constantly (and

theoretically) being waged between “us” and “them,” between the “natives” and the “strangers.” Outsiders are often seen as a threat to American culture and so much more so when the group of outsiders is completely different from the hegemonic majority in America, and this was

definitely the case for the Irish. Americans would not have borne well those straggly, pauperish, barely post-feudal Catholics with a thick brogue and an eternally burning beacon of love for Eire, no matter the circumstance.

As such things do today, anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic nativism toward the Irish could only have done one thing: build up walls. These walls did not just separate native-born Anglo American society from that of the Famine Irish, but they also forced the Irish into the modes of self-defense and self-protection, inhibiting them from easily doing the one thing nativists wanted them to do, which was assimilate. In the case of the one who is shoved into the corner and bullied there, defense mechanisms seem to be the only viable option left to him to escape (psychologically at the very least) the hostile environment surrounding him.

By hurling nativist sentiment at the outsider, the native-born forces the outsider to cope in their new environment in ways that may not be approved of by the native-born. This, in turn, can potentially create even more nativist feeling in the native-born and unintentionally confirm prevalent stereotypes of the outsider. Such was the case for the Irish. For instance, their

persistent clannishness stemmed partly from the fact that they had to stick together. They were unwelcome in most Anglo American society and so had to fend for themselves, creating their own aid societies, volunteer fire departments, or various kinds of leagues, and living with and among other Irishmen and –women. These enclaves, mostly in the cities of the Northeast where the majority of the Irish settled, served to form a buffer zone around the Irish, and in them, some of their culture was preserved. To the native-born, these tight groups of Irish immigrants and their stubbornness in “slough[ing] off characteristics not native to the United States,” as historian 43 Benjamin R. Knoll, “Assessing the effect of social desirability on nativism attitude responses,” Social Science

Research 42, no. 6 (2013): 1588, accessed February 24, 2016,

http://ac.els- cdn.com.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/S0049089X13001154/1-s2.0-S0049089X13001154-main.pdf?_tid=9b0ceeca-daff-11e5-9c5a-00000aab0f27&acdnat=1456322885_b5887099a2fc1ac0e62461cdfb78367d.

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Christian G. Samito has stated, revealed their seeming inability to assimilate, and the

overcrowded and disgusting slums in which the Irish lived proved their pauper status.44_Changing

surnames and accents, social habits, and “even their religion” as Miller puts it, was another way of coping for the Irish, anxious as they were to keep nativist sentiment at bay.45_{Yet despite}

alienating themselves from outsiders or changing their identity, the Irish could never escape the stigma that was stamped upon them.

To put it simply, the Irish were no better than refuse to the American nativist. They were a people not wanted in the Old World and certainly not wanted in the New. Nativist author Henry George described the United States as a garbage dump to which Europe would ship all their undesirables, their nuisance population—criminals, paupers, or anyone who was a “drain” on their society. This author questioned the Irish’s inability to “make a living for themselves in their own country,” as if the fault of Irish poverty was to be laid solely at their feet: “The Irish peasant is forced to starve, to beg, or to emigrate; he becomes in the eyes of those who rule him mere human garbage.”46_{Indeed, the Irish were seen as hardly better in America. As native-born}

citizens from time to time watched immigrant ships unload their impoverished, care-worn, and sickly human cargo in American port cities, the frustration over immigration and particular types of immigrants only grew. Nativists and worn out port city officials had had enough of the malevolence of “the disease and pauperism arriving…almost daily from abroad” as New York mayor, Fernando Wood, stated in wearied words.47_{Being a pauper would of course induce the}

immigrant to lean upon the arm of American charity and the almshouse, and essentially rest upon the shoulders of the taxpayers, which was in many Americans’ views unthinkable. Still, native-born concerns were not totally unqualified. For example, in 1856 the foreign population in the United States was around a tenth of the size of the native born population (2.24 million

immigrants compared to 21.03 million natives) yet immigrants comprised half of the total

44 Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society, 25; Christian G. Samito, Becoming American Under Fire: Irish Americans,

African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship During the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

2009), 21; Bennett, Party of Fear, 77; Thomas J. Curran, “Assimilation and Nativism,” The International Migration

Digest 3, no. 1 (1966): 17-19, accessed January 15, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3002916; Oscar Handlin, The

Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951), 134-139.

45 Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 325.

46 Henry George, Social Problems (Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1883), 148-149,

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009558246.

47 Samuel C. Busey, Immigration: Its Evils and Consequences (New York: De Witt & Davenport Publishers, 1856), 68-70, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011601352.

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amount of paupers in the country.48_{Where was the self-pride, work ethic, and diligence in the}

immigrant that could propel him into the ranks of hard working Americans? In the case of the Irishman, often it was concluded that he could not possibly possess any of these traits because more often than not, he stayed in the slums, stayed poor, and stayed too “Irish.” The fate of the Famine Irish was habitually spoken of like it was undeniably settled, as if there were innate inabilities, laziness, and tendency toward alcohol that kept them poor.49_{Even the Irish bishop of}

Nebraska and Wyoming said of Irish immigrants himself, that “in the great cities of the East, Irish newcomers sink daily until they become the scum of the population, without money and without friends…from this position they can seldom rise. If they go West, their prospects are scarcely any better.”50_{His statement of the Irish with no money or friends is sadly too true.}

American nativists looked upon the Irish as a problem to be dealt with, and like all garbage, an issue to slough off somehow, ridding American shores of the immigrant deluge.51

1.4 Stigmas, Stereotypes and Responses

Nativists desired immigrants to quickly and fully assimilate, creating a seamless transition into American society and leaving the waters of societal normalcy as undisturbed as possible. Yet more often than not, the transition for immigrants was not without complications, and nativists’ unrealistic standards were frequently not met. This failure on the part of immigrants ultimately created intense defensiveness among nativists, generally revealed in nativist literature and rhetoric. Why would they fight tooth and nail for tighter borders, stricter immigration policies, and longer waiting periods for naturalization? Why would they consistently refer to immigrants in degrading and dehumanizing terms? To protect what they thought was encroached upon and threatened—American institutions, the racial status quo, American jobs. Here is a glimpse into the fear nativists held and a portrayal of immigrants as dangerous to the Republic:

48 Ibid, 107-108.

49 Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 283.

50 “Against Irish Immigration,” New York Times, Jun 21, 1885, http://proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/docview/94411826? accountid=14615.

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Figure 1. “The Great Fear of the Period, that Uncle Sam May be Swallowed by Foreigners.” Lithograph,

White & Bauer between 1860 and 1869. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Accessed April

7, 2016, https://www.loc.gov/item/98502829/.

In this print called “The Great Fear of the Period, that Uncle Sam May be Swallowed by Foreigners,” an Irishman on the left and a Chinaman on the right are literally consuming Uncle Sam. Here you see reflected the racially tinged social anxieties regarding immigrants. Two immigrants who were considered racially inferior to Anglo-Saxon Americans are illustrated as a threat to America, that if not contained could do much damage to the country. At the end of the cartoon, the Chinaman is finally consuming the Irishman. Since the Chinaman was considered by American society as even more inferior than the Irishman, this outcome is perhaps the most dangerous one. Then, with the statement at the very bottom that is dripping with irony—“The problem solved”—could reveal that this scenario is the exact opposite of what many Americans (mainly nativists) truly wanted: for these racially substandard people to be gone from the U.S.

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Ultimately, nativists, with all their racist rhetoric and purposefully skewed images of immigrants, wanted to protect what they believed was rightfully theirs. By what they thought were actions and attitudes of protection, nativists belittled whole groups of people who benefited the country in more ways than they damaged it, and they continually underestimated what immigrants could offer. Stigmas were created, racial profiling was put in place, and

discrimination was normal, even expected, and because of these mechanisms, immigrants were left to their own devices in forming a new life in the New World. How did the Irish deal with the nativism projected toward them? How were they to integrate, potentially assimilate, and become “American” through the onslaught? There were few options. As was stated previously, defensive coping mechanisms may have marginally worked, but often they backfired, further cementing stereotypes and stigmas. One option was that the Irish could simply emulate the oppressor in his oppressing, harboring prejudice and lashing out against those who threatened the Irish (mainly blacks), displacing some of the ire heading their way onto others.52_{However, another option the}

Irish could and did utilize in fighting back against the discrimination and prejudice of nativists was defending their image.

Public images have always played a big part in how outsiders see a particular person or a group of people. They can seemingly determine and perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice, but more often they merely reflect the stereotypes and prejudice that already exist and become the argumentative tool nativists use in excusing the continuance of their discrimination. In the case of the nativist, the question is, what was their goal in exploiting immigrant stereotypes, stigmas, and the unfortunate facts? It seems that such exploitation was often done to portray the Irish in such a way as to garner support for nativist causes (e.g. restrictionist legislation, tighter

citizenship laws). A good summation of the general type of scenario nativists conjured up was the nativists portrayed as “libertarians” and “their adversaries [aka immigrants] as enemies of freedom,” according to Bennett.53_{In any case, it boiled down to the idea that the immigrant—and}

particularly the Irishman for our situation—was unfit for American ideals, institutions,

citizenship, and the title of “American.” The central theme amongst nativist literature was that the immigrant was the enemy, and as such should be portrayed accordingly to inform the public of just what a menace he was. More often than not, terms such as “enemy” rarely occur in 52 Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 147-150; Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 2009), 1, Kindle edition.

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nativist writing. However, it is what is unsaid in the literature—the coded phrasing—that speaks the loudest and reveals the underlying abhorrence of the immigrant. Repeatedly throughout nativist literature one sees that the authors of the literature deny prejudiced sentiment even as they accuse the immigrant of being a nuisance to society and call for stricter legislation.54

Common immigrant descriptors and Irish descriptors specifically, peek through subtleties such as “lazy,” “pauper,” “ignorant,” “Romanist,” “underbidding,” and even something as supposedly innocent as “foreigner.” Although the language of nativist literature is coded and (sometimes) subtle, it is not coded enough to hide the negativity associated with the wording.55

Nonetheless, even though the Irish often bore the brunt of nativist sentiment in America, it would be incorrect to assume that the Irish were defenseless, helpless, or lowly people. Of course, looking at it from a twenty-first century point of view might produce such optimistic notions about a seemingly downtrodden group. Although the Irish were pushed down, they did not stay down. They were not content to be passive. They came up with ways of their own to defend themselves against the consistently negative arguments and sad realities used against them. While at times class struggle and racial tension rather confirmed the negative stereotypes, they aimed to create positive self-portrayals and argumentation in direct opposition to nativist rhetoric and propaganda. What the Irish wanted in this was to prove themselves worthy, to show their merits in a land to which they may not have wanted to come in the first place, but one that they would now nonetheless fight to be a part of. They would strive to show that the children of Eire were more than what the stereotypes disseminated, that they were hard working, loyal, religiously dutiful, and worthy of citizenship.

In the subsequent chapters, common nativist arguments against Irish immigrants will be examined, as well as the reactions of the Irish and their supporters against nativism. In this way 54 For an example of this, see Address of the Louisiana Native American Association to the Citizens of Louisiana

and the Inhabitants of the United States (New Orleans: D. Felt & Co., 1839), 3,

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001749290. The writer states in regards to foreign naturalization, “We have… endeavoured [sic] in its discussion to adopt the utmost calmness, and mildness consistent with truth, and to divest our minds of every feeling of prejudice, or passion.” Then, almost the same breath he spouts highly negative words with a prejudiced tinge. For instance, a few pages over on page eight he says, “…we see the dreadful deterioration of manners and morals within the last few years in the United States, amongst our own countrymen, upon the broad, natural and inevitable basis that ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ It is then that we tremble for the blood bought liberties of our native land, and the purity and perpetuity of our hallowed institutions.”

55 It seems that the art of subtlety was most often utilized by political organizations who were trying to get people on their side or pass tighter legislation, or who, in other words, had some important goal to accomplish and could not afford to alienate native-born citizens. The less a body of nativists had to lose, the more it seems that subtlety was cast aside.

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we get both sides of the story: the nativist perspective and the Irish perspective. The types of media that will be applied in this examination are newspapers, nativist treatises, letters, and cartoons. Because of the widespread influence of such media, excepting letters, it is easy to gauge the general attitude of the country at that time—roughly 1840 through 1870—towards Irish immigrants. Further, the common nativist arguments against the Irish to be looked at will fall into general categories delineated as such: first, who the Irish were innately, as in their traits or natural abilities; second, who they were socially; and third, who they were civically. These categories encompass nearly every type of nativist argumentation against the Irish. As we will see, nativists tended to speak of them as a problem to be solved or an enemy to be vanquished, but never really human. The Irish and their supporters on the other hand, in response to nativism, were prone to present proof that portrayed the Irish as a people with something to offer, despite the disadvantages many of them began with. Ultimately, and unknowingly, in choosing the United States as a refuge during the Famine, the Irish chose all that came with it—the hardship, discrimination, and nativism. Yet in the end, in spite of all the stereotypes, stigmas, and negative argumentation, the Irish immigrants’ side of the story seems to have prevailed.

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Chapter 2: Nativist Arguments Against the Irish

Nineteenth-century American nativists did not hide their contempt for foreigners. Perhaps some of the more self-conscious nativists tried to sugar coat their sentiment or deny that their feelings were racist or xenophobic, even as their words were meant to expose immigrants’ detrimental flaws—flaws that nativists assumed would mean the breakdown of the American nation. Still, these sorts of veils were thin at best. Nativist words can never really be considered tolerable in the end, no matter how one tries to disguise them. In this chapter, we will dig into some of the common nativist arguments against the Irish, discovering the themes of these arguments and how these arguments were disseminated. When one reads through nativist literature, one picks up two major themes amongst the nativist language. The first is that the Irish were not worthy of

citizenship for several reasons, which will be examined below. The second theme in nativist literature to be discussed, and one that reverberates through American history about other immigrant groups, is that the Irish were a problem to be solved. They were either a drain on society or a threat to it—both a parasite and an intruder.

2.1 Not Worthy of Citizenship

One of the biggest fears of nativists in the nineteenth century was the idea that the Irish, one of the largest immigrant groups of the first half of the century, were unfit to be citizens. Indeed, to nativists, the Irish were not even deemed worthy to think of claiming the supposedly coveted title of American citizen simply because they did not meet nativist standards. The most pertinent failings of the Irish, in the eyes of staunch nativists, were the following: they were not

assimilable, they were Catholic, they had no understanding of true democracy, and they were disloyal to the United States. The Irishman was, in the words of philosopher Horace M. Kallen, merely “a lower and outlandish creature” compared to native-born Americans and because of this he surely could not ever really know how to be an effective American citizen.56_{His clannish}

ways, his post-feudal mindset, his strange brogue, his poverty that literally hung about him like rags, and his history of being over-lorded by the British all presented the Irishman as being non-assimilable. What is more, as Schrag puts it, “the stresses, violence, and insecurity brought by the shift from the agrarian economy and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the 56 Horace M. Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 86-87, 94.

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industrial, urban nation that rapidly replaced them” were attributed in part to the immigrants and their foreign ways.57_{Of course, hindsight proves that that was simply not true. Such an enormous}

transition would include upsets even without the factor of an immigrant influx. Still, for the Irish, the conversion from a mostly rural existence, scraping by on the small plots of land on which they were unskilled tenant farmers, to a sprawling urban environment in which they had little to no practical skills to offer would have been very difficult indeed. We can easily deduce that along with that difficulty would come what the Ordeal of Assimilation calls “cultural

disorganization” as they tried to make a life for themselves in a new urban environment.58_Some

results of this disorganization were increased criminality, pauperism, and cultural/ethnic

enclaves, all of which, we will soon see, reinforced nativist thinking that the Irish were incapable of assimilating into their new environment. Little did nativists or native-born Americans realize that time and patience are often a large part of the solution. Yet, nativists expected foreigners to drop their foreign ways as soon as possible, never understanding that those “foreign ways” were part of the immigrants’ identities—forsaking their ways so quickly would have been almost as challenging as physically changing the color of their skin.59

2.1.1 Ignorant and “Foreign in Feeling”

Nonetheless, nativists saw many foreigners, including the Irish, as “victims of social oppression or personal vices, [who were] utterly divested by ignorance or crime, of the moral and

intellectual requisites for political self-government,” as it is stated in the Address of the

Delegates.60_{Because they were born some place other than the United States, and because of}

dynamics outside of their control, like generational poverty or social oppression at the hands of a colonizing overlord, it was purely mind-boggling to nativists to think that immigrants (unless they were from England perhaps) could have the natural ability to appreciate self-governance or to sensibly participate in politics. According to the Address of the Delegates, they were “foreign in feeling, prejudice and manner, yet armed with a vast and often controlling influence over the policy of [the] nation,” and therefore dangerously unfit to be true Americans.61_{Considered fatal}

57 Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society, 7. 58 Ordeal of Assimilation, 3.

59 Ibid, 74.

60 Address of the Delegates, 4. 61 Ibid, 5.

The Irish Experience in America: Nativism, Argumentation, and Responses