In 1924, in the hysteria following World War I, the United States took steps to dramatically reduce immigration. In Strangers in the Land, John Higham discusses the story of how this came about. He also discusses the experience of the immigrants. And his starting point is the concept of nativism.

I. THE TERM "NATIVISM"

A) ORIGIN OF THE TERM

On p. 4 Higham says that the term was first coined about 1840. It was coined by the critics of the anti-foreign parties that arose in New York after 1835, and evolved into the Know-Nothing agitation of the 1850s. The members of these parties, themselves, at first called their organizations "Native American parties," and then the "American Party." They called their philosophy "Americanism." They said they were for "the principle of nationality." They were for the native born Americans, as opposed to foreigners and immigrants.
 

B) DEFINITION

According to Higham, page 4, these Americanists feared that "some influence originating from abroad threatened the life of the nation from within."

He then goes on to say that nativism should be defined as "intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e., "un-American) connections." And he explains that typically someone sees or suspects a failure of assimilation, and then fears disloyalty on the part of some foreign or allegedly foreign group. Nativism also involves a conception of what is "un-American." Fear and hostility to foreigners in general is called xenopbobia.

II. AMERICA BEGINS AS A HOMOGENEOUS NATION

The United States grew out of the colonization of North America by the English, the Scots and the Welsh, or the British. Before the Revolution there were the 13 British colonies. So the United States emerges out of English or British colonialism. America began as an English colony. Most of the people were English, Scots and Welsh. Of course there were some Dutch in New York and Scots-Irish and Germans in Pennsylvania. But for the most part America began as a homogeneous nation of English and British people. The English and British are also called the WASPS, or white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The English were the Europeans who got here first, so every other group that came after the English, after 1607, has had to contend with and conform to the English or the WASPs. The English were the dominant group.

III. THREE SOURCES OF NATIVISM

A) ANTI-CATHOLICISM

Higham explains that there were three sources of Nativism. First, the colonists and early Americans were British. They had British attitudes and prejudices. One of these was an intense dislike of Catholicism. This grew out of England's own experience in the Protestant reformation. Recall that in the 1500s Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and established his own national church, the Church of England or Anglican Church. He, as king, was head of the Church of England. After the Revolution of 1776, Anglicans in America called themselves Episcopalians. For a century the English Parliament struggled with the Stuart kings, who were Catholic and claimed to rule by divine right and apostolic succession. In the revolution of 1688 Parliament overthrew the Catholic Stuart king, James II, and passed an act stating that henceforth only a Protestant could inherit the throne and be ruler of England. For centuries England was also a rival to Catholic Spain and Catholic France. In numerous wars England fought against Spain and France. The English colonies in America were wedged between the French Catholics in Canada and the Spanish in Florida and Mexico. The Americans inherited from Britain a strong dislike, even a hatred, for Roman Catholicism. The vast majority of Americans in 1776 and 1790 were Protestants, so that America began as a largely English or Anglo-Saxon and Protestant nation.

To put it simply, one element of American nativism traditionally has been Protestant dislike for Catholicism and Catholics. To state it bluntly, one element of nativism is Protestant bigotry and intolerance against Catholics, understanding that traditionally Protestants were the vast majority and Catholics were a numerical and cultural and religious minority.

Now today all of that is behind us, but in the 1700s and 1800s and even well into the 1900s there has been a strong streak of Protestant nativism in this country. As late as 1960 John F. Kennedy, our only Catholic president, had to assure Protestants that if elected president he would not take orders from the Pope in Rome.

B) FEAR OF FOREIGN RADICALISM

On pages 7 through 9 Higham describes a second source of nativism, which was fear of foreign radicalism. This began when the Federalists in the 1790s began to fear the impact of the French Revolution. It revived again after the Revolution of 1848 in Europe, and again after the uprising in Paris in 1871. It intensified in the 1870s when immigrants established a Socialist Party in America, and grew in response to labor unrest such as the Great Railway Strike of 1877, the Haymarket Incident, and the industrial violence and sabotage of the Molly Maguires in the coalfields of Pennsylvania.
 

C) AN ANGLO-SAXON RACE

The third source of nativism was the notion of an Anglo-Saxon race. This term Anglo-Saxon referred to the Germanic or Teutonic tribes that had invaded the British Isles and overthrown Roman rule there after 350 A.D.. They were called Angles, Saxons, Jutes and so on. In time Americans and Americanism became identified with this Anglo-Saxon race. To be an American, a true American, was to be Anglo-Saxon.

IV. 1790-1870s AMERICA WAS CONFIDENT ABOUT IMMIGRATION

From the 1790s until well into 1870s America had a conficent attitude toward immigration, for the most part. According to Higham there were several reasons for this.

A) BELIEF THE IMMIGRANTS WOULD ASSIMILATE

First, initially America was confident in the ability of the Anglo-Saxon race to absorb and assimilate the immigrants. In time they would shed their foreign ways, customs, languages and religions, and become Americans. But to the WASPs, what "become American" really meant was to become like them, to become like the Anglo-Saxons. Immigrants were supposed to imitate the WASPs. And as long as the number of immigrants was relatively small, and this assimilation seemed to be happening, immigration was okay. But after the 1870s, and as time passed, the amount of immigration increased and assimilation seemed to be happening less. By 1871 1 in 3 employees in manufacturing and mechanical industries was an immigrant.

B) IMMIGRATION IS ECONOMICALLY BENEFICIAL

Of course the immigrants were also valuable as a supply of labor and a consumer market to buy the goods being turned out by American agriculture and industry. In the 1860s and 1870s 25 of the 38 states took official action to promote immigration. Immigration was seen as economically beneficial.
 
 

C). CONFIDENCE IN ASSIMILATION AS AN AUTOMATIC PROCESS

Furthermore, according to Higham, in the period of confidence, from 1790 to the 1870s, there was the belief that American nationality was emerging from a melting pot that functioned automatically (p. 21). Oliver Wendell Holmes said "we are the Romans of the modern world, the great assimilating people." De Witt Clinton, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman glorified the fusion, through immigration, of a mixed and still developing people (p. 21).

D). AMERICA AS RUFUGE AND SANCTUARY

In addition, Americans believed the American system of political democracy and a republican form of government (an elected president rather than a hereditary monarchy) was superior to the decadence and the class-ridden feudalism of Europe. Americans believed that their revolution had been in the service of a world-wide cause. America was the asylum, the refuge, the sanctuary for people in Europe fleeing oppression and tyranny (p. 22). Thus America had a duty, a mission, to keep her doors open and accept immigration from oppression. Of course America's image of the Europeans was that they were wretched refuse and poor, huddled masses, yearning to breath free.
 
 

E) THE AMERICAN SENSE OF SUPERIORITY

Higham is at pains to make the point however that America felt a sense of superiority to Europe. In fact this attitude of superiority has been a part of American culture for more than 200 years. Even the Puritian colonists of New England felt their religion and society was morally superior to the corruptions of the Church of England. From its very origins American Protestantism has portrayed America as an Errand in the Wilderness, as a City on a Hill, as a beacon of light in the world of darkness, showing the way to all the rest of humanity. All this feeds into manifest destiny, and the notion that the Americans are God's chosen people and America is God's chosen country. This creates a missionary attitude. However at worst this attitude of superiority can become arrogance and conceit and intolerance.
 
 

V. SUMMARY ON MEANING OF NATIVISM

In summary, nativism is antipathy against foreigners and suspicion of their disloyalty. In the 19th century this was closely tied to anti-Catholicism. It is also important to realize that the attitude of nativism can change over time and take on new targets or scapegoats. As older immigrant groups settle down and become first and second generation Americans, newly arriving immigrant groups become the new targets of nativist hostility. Once it was the Irish and the Catholics. Today it is the Mexicans and the Haitians and the Central Americans. Also, nativism tends to rise and fall, to ebb and flow. It goes through periods of expansion and contraction. Most of the time it lies beneath the surface. We should think of it as dormant, latent, residual. However it can erupt above the surface in response to anxieties or crises or social conflict. On page 24 Higham refers to ethnocentrism as the cultural subsoil in which nativism grows.

STEREOTYPES AND THE ETHNIC TOTEM POLE

Both John Higham and Milton Gordan make the point that throughout much of our history, certainly down to World War II, America was a kind of layer cake. Or we could describe it as a pecking order or totem pole.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS

Of course the English, the WASPs were at the top. And the WASPs had certain stereotypes of the other ethnic groups.

THE GERMANS

The group next down from the WASPs was the Germans. Like the Anglo-Saxons, they too were of Germanic or Teutonic origin. The Germans are cousins to the English. And most of the German immigrants were also Protestant. There had been a large influx of Germans in 1848 and in the 1850s. However the Anglo-Saxons associated the Germans with beer drinking and card playing, and they didn't refrain from fun on Sunday.

THE IRISH

A bit further down were the Irish. The English detested the Irish, in part because they were Catholic. Religion set the Irish apart from the WASPs. The WASPs stereotyped the irish as rowdy, ne'er do wells, who were impulsive, quarrelsome, and drunken. On page 26 Higham talks about roughneck Irish gangs fighting with the middleclass WASPs. And he says that in middle-class American eyes, the Irish were inferior not only because they were rowdies but because they were poor.

THE POLES, HUNGARIANS AND SLAVS

The Poles, Hungarians and Slavs of Eastern Europe were stereotyped as brutes. They were called "Hunkies," and considered fit for the dirtiest, heaviest work in the coal mines, steel plants and meatpacking. Large numbers of Slovaks and Czechs settled in western Pennsylvania, and many Poles, Serbs and Croatians in Chicago. The Slavs were Christians, but some were of the Eastern Orthodox faith. The Poles in particular received a reputation for being big and strong, but dumb.

THE ITALIANS

Lowest down on the totem pole, among Christian European immigrant groups, were the Italians. Not only were they Catholic, but they received a reputation as cut-throats and criminals. In the twentieth century this would develop into the stereotype about the Sicilians and the Mafia. The rise of Al Capone in Chicago did a great deal to plant this stereotype in the public mind.

THE JEWS

The WASPs perceived the Jews through the stereotype of the Shakespearean character Shylock, someone who was greedy and deceitful (Higham, p. 27). During the Civil War the Jews were accused of being mercenary and unscrupulous, and of disloyal profiteering. In the 1870s it was said that they were self-assertive. Supposedly they were tasteless barbarians rudely elbowing their way into genteel company. On p. 27 Higham describes how in 1877 the wealthy Jewish banker Joseph Seligman was refused admittance at a hotel in Saratoga Springs, then a resort spot for the wealthy. The Jews were set apart by religion. The Catholics were at least Christians. The Jews however were not even Christians. And while the German Jews were highly assimilated, after the 1880s the Russian and Polish Jews began to migrate in substantial numbers. Many of them spoke Yiddish, and faithfully observed the Jewish sabbath on Friday. Some particularly anti-Semitic Christians began to use restrictive covenants in the sale of homes and property, whereby a person buying the property would have to agree contractually never to sell it to a non-Christian.