Know Nothing Movement Vs. Anti-Chinese Campaign

In his book, Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 1890-1924, Roger Daniels explores the true history of American nativism in a time period where immigrants entered the country in greater numbers than ever before, or since. Instead of focusing on politics or economic growth at the turn of the twentieth century, Daniels instead discusses the social context of the time and the treatment of immigrants and minorities. Born in New York City and educated at both the University of Houston and UCLA, Daniels holds a Ph.D. in History, is the Charles Phelps Taft Professor at the University of Cincinnati, and has written several books on the matters of race and ethnicity.

Immigrants began moving to the United States in the 1850s in search of new freedoms and opportunities. They were soon viewed as threats by the American people because they could potentially take away job opportunities from native born Americans. Additionally, the morality and capabilities of these foreign people were unknown. As a result, new social and economic policies that favored “real Americans” were enforced. These affected a large group of foreigners, including Jews, Catholics, Italians, southern Europeans, and the Chinese. (Fry 1)

Benjamin Franklin once said “In short, unless the stream of their importation could be turned...they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have, will, in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language, and even our government will become more precarious.” Written in a letter in 1750 by our very own Founding Father Benjamin Franklin in regards to the high volume of migrating Germans into the colony of Pennsylvania. To many readers they could easily expect these words from nativist, but hearing it from one of the most influential people in history it conveys a lot about the shaping of the United States and where its roots of nativism started. Nativism is defined as 'a policy favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants'.

Immigration through out the late 1800’s and early 1900’s created nativism throughout the United States. Millions of immigrants flocked to the United States trying to find a better way of life to be able to support their families. Industrialization in the United States provided a labor source for the immigrants. Native born Americans believed immigrants were a “threat to the American way of life” (ATF chapter 11) Social and economic fault lines developed between natives and immigrants, through out the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, going unnoticed until the late 1920’s when the Sacco and Vanzetti case brought awareness of issue to much of the United States.

American citizens despised the Chinese workers because they worked very hard and followed instructions for very little pay, as stated in a speech given by a German immigrant on the Chinese exclusion act he said “It is almost impossible for a poor white servant girl to find employment in a white family. No! The mistress of the house wants a Chinaman. Why? He is very handy. She can say, ‘John Chinaman, do this’, and John does it, and John never says a word”. The white immigrants assumed that the Chinese were doing this to spite them and steal the jobs the white immigrants and American citizens thought they were entitled to. Another example of Americans and white immigrants accusing the Chinese of taking

The main problem with the immigrants was that they were voting for Republican candidates. In the same year Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts to limit the ability for immigrants to vote. The Alien and Sedition Acts were four laws, three of them combined to require that immigrants wait fourteen years for citizenship and allow the President to deport or jail immigrants he considered undesirable without trial. The fourth law, the Sedition Act, allowed fines or jail or any person criticizing the government. The Alien and Sedition Acts outraged Federalists and Republicans alike. These Acts also angered Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the Acts made the government stronger than the states. Jefferson and Madison come up with a scheme to make the state's stronger than the federal government by using the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions to their advantage. The Resolutions introduced the concept of Nullification, Nullification allowed the states to strike down any federal law that the states thought unconstitutional or even if they just didn’t like it. If this was allowed then the states would be more powerful than the government which was something that Jefferson and Madison wanted. The scheme fails when the U.S. Constitution calls for a Federal Government that is supreme over state

After years of enduring a devastating potato famine, Irish-Catholics were forced to flee to America to begin a new life for themselves and their families. A sudden spike in Catholic immigration caused major concern for the Protestant settlers who thought the new arrivals would tarnish the culture they so carefully established. The Catholic religion was beginning to spread throughout America and anti-Catholicism groups and organization formed and made it their mission to destroy the Catholic Church with violence by burning churches, massacres, destroying property, and other systematic discrimination. One well known group was the Know-Nothing party. Know-Nothing party is a byname of the American Party, a U.S. political party that flourished in the 1850s. The Know-Nothing party was an outgrowth of the strong anti-immigrant and especially anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that started to manifest itself during the 1840s (Know-Nothing party,

The 1840s and 50s experienced a massive escalation in the number of immigrants from Europe especially from Ireland, and Germany, arriving on U.S shores in densely populated urban areas (Arenson, 2011). Most of them afterward became vigorous in domestic politics, much to the aggravation of old-stock, authentic Americans. The consequence was a renaissance in the formation of “nativistic” societies (small, indistinct, anti-foreign and anti-catholic organizations), some which banded together in the early 1850s to form the American Party (Arenson, 2011). Commonly referred to as the “Know-Nothing,” the party rode a wave of racial intolerance as well as racism into the mid-1850s.

After the American Civil War, immigration has played a critical role that was seen as a problematical threat on religious, cultural, economic, and political aspects. Due to immigration from Europe, the United States population increased exceptionally in which has allowed a diverse view or perspective in Nativism and Racism. Both of these ideologies have various differences with definite degrees being successful during the elements of American history. Elements contained by immigrant groups or policies such as the “Jim Crow Laws” or “Ku Klux Klan” have significantly reformed patterns within America’s settlements.

These people are now known as nativists. They believed immigrants posed a threat to the economy and wanted laws to restrict immigration. They got their wish in 1882 when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act (a law that banned Chinese immigration for ten years). The law also stated that the ones already here could not become

In the late 19th, early 18th, century immigration became very prominent in America. Immigrants from around the world began to flood into America each one seeking something different, but it wasn’t always easy. Most immigrants faced many challenges, some negative and others positive. In fact, most immigrants fled to America for all the positive attributes it had to offer compared to the country they were previously living in.

In the decades before the Civil War, there was a growing anti-immigration atmosphere in response to the population boom brought on by European immigrants. There was a fear that these new immigrants were either immoral, ‘not good enough’ due to race or religion, corrupt, or stealing jobs from the hard-working ‘native’ Americans. A new political party, members called ‘Know Nothings,” was formed, in an effort to regain control of the population. Some methods they wanted to use were requiring the ability to read and write in English in order to vote, banning certain types of people from holding political office, and making the process of becoming an American citizen more difficult. This party had some mild success in the Northeast, particularly in Massachusetts, but they fell out of favor and vanished shortly before the Civil War.

     The other aspect is that the new immigrants were just walking all over American rule and not caring about laws and things. It states in Document F “We must rid our minds of the notion that America is some kind of world

In conclusion, this paper shows of how the Whigs were created and how they fell apart. The Whigs are actually from England, but a man named Henry Clay created the American Whig Party. They had a Jeffersonian economic agenda and they rose from programs regarding tariffs, internal improvement along with the banks. However, the Whigs were a short-lived party. Whigs saw themselves as independent thinkers and they also didn’t hesitate to turn against each other. These issues along with a new party on the rise would end the life of the Whig Party. This party was known as the Republican Party. The creation of the Republican Party came from people who were against slavery. They also believed in higher education, banking, building railroads, creating

Unless you are a full-blooded Native American, you come from a family of immigrants. However, those who arrived pre-reconstruction were not confronted with the issues of the ones arriving after. Our domestic policy did not have room for “different” people who can change us. “New Immigrants,” arriving in the late 1800s and early 1900s faced many judgments due to their different beliefs, suffrage, and diverse cultures.