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Nativism: Anti-Immigrant Backlash
The surge in immigration led to America’s first organized anti-immigrant backlash in the 1850s. The ideology favoring those born in America and opposing immigrants was known as NATIVISM.
Opposition to immigrants was influenced by many differences between the existing US population and the newcomers:
Religion: Most Americans were Protestant and strongly prejudiced against the Catholicism of most new immigrants. Many Protestant Americans still saw the Pope as the Antichrist and viewed Catholics as religious terrorists out to subvert American democracy. A popular children’s game was “Break the Pope’s Neck.” The requirement that all public school students say Protestant prayers led to the creation of Catholic parochial schools in the United States.
Racialism: With Britain supplying only a minority of new immigrants, differences of language, culture, and ethnicity set the new immigrants apart. Many Americans were ethnocentric, believing their own culture the best, and not wanting it “polluted” by foreign ways. Under 19th-century racial theories, many saw the new immigrants as belonging to a separate and inferior race.
Radicalism: Significant numbers of Second and Third Wave immigrants were socialists or attracted to forming labor unions. Both these political tendencies were taboo during the nineteenth century.
Rural Resentment: Most nineteenth-century Americans lived on farms in the country and disliked the growth of cities that accompanied the entrance of immigrants. They shared Thomas Jefferson’s belief in a rural ideal for America, and looked on cities and poor immigrants as alien and threatening to American social order.
Economic Resentment: Immigrants were seen as stealing jobs from “real Americans,” driving down wages, and increasing unemployment. Large and frequent riots between Nativist Protestant and Irish Catholic workers in East Coast cities in the middle 19th Century resulted in the creation of the first professional police departments.
Know Nothings
The most influential 19th-century nativist group was the American Party, popularly known as the “Know Nothing Party” because its members pledged secrecy and responded to questions about their party by saying, “I know nothing.” The Know Nothings purported to defend Protestantism against Catholicism. They sought to limit elective office to the native-born, require 21 years of naturalization to achieve citizenship, and greatly restrict immigration.
The Know Nothing Party successfully elected six governors and several congressmen. In 1856, the party ran former U.S. President Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate, winning 22% of the vote.
The popularity of the Know Nothing Party faded with the Civil War, as Irish-Americans displayed valor fighting for the Union.
“The Yellow Peril”
Although Asian-Americans only comprised 0.002% of the US population by 1900, a strong nativist backlash portrayed them as a growing threat. Widespread anti-Chinese prejudice in the West led to riots and mob violence by the 1880s. Despised for their “foreign ways” and different race, the Chinese were also resented for being used as “scabs” during strikes.
State and local laws were passed discriminating against Chinese workers and shopkeepers. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which stopped Chinese immigration. Racial prejudice against Chinese-Americans kept them from being allowed to become U.S. Citizens until 1943.