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NATIVISM
Although the United States has always portrayed itself as a sanctuary for the world's victims of
oppression and poverty, anti-immigrant sentiment—known as nativism—has pervaded most of the
nation's history. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when much of America contained few
inhabitants, colonists sought desperately to attract immigrants from Europe. In fact, the Declaration of
Independence complained that King George III had "endeavored to prevent the population of these
States" by "obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners" and by "refusing to pass others to
encourage their migration hither."
America's outlook toward immigration began to change after the Revolution. Realizing that most
immigrants supported Thomas Jefferson's Republican faction, Federalists in Congress attempted to
suppress the newcomers' political activity in 1798 by passing the Alien Acts, which curtailed the rights of
unnaturalized immigrants. In the 1830s, however, nativists began focusing their attacks on Catholic
immigrants, asserting that America's republican form of government could not be sustained with a large
Catholic population. These Protestants insisted that republican governments require a virtuous, educated,
and independent electorate, and they perceived Catholic immigrants to be superstitious, ignorant, and
dominated by their priests. Such anti-Catholicism had a long history in America. The Puritans had
journeyed across the ocean to escape the Church of England's "Romish" trappings, and southern
colonists were known to have enjoyed a parlor game called "Break the Pope's Neck." So when
pamphleteers such as Samuel F. B. Morse began linking immigration, which Americans had considered
beneficial, with Catholicism, which most saw as a threat, American nativism found a larger audience.
Early nativists tried to transform their crusade into a political movement, but their principles initially
influenced the workplace more than the ballot box. Artisans and laborers often complained that
immigrants depressed wages because the newcomers would work for less pay than native-born workers.
The frequency with which employers used immigrants to replace striking workingmen only deepened the
animosity toward newcomers. Employers also practiced nativism: many help-wanted advertisements of
the period ended with the proviso "No Irish Need Apply."
Aided by this persistent economic nativism, anti-immigrant sentiment soon entered politics. One of the
first nativist political organizations, New York's Native American Democratic Association, nominated
inventor Samuel F. B. Morse for mayor in 1836. He captured only 6 percent of the vote, but in 1844 a new
nativist group, the American Republican party, elected six congressmen and dozens of local officials in
New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nativism reached its political zenith ten years later with the meteoric
rise of the "Know-Nothings." This secret fraternal organization, which sought to curtail the political power
of Catholics and immigrants, probably derived its name from its members' pledge to feign ignorance if
queried about the group.
The dramatic rise in immigration resulting from the Irish potato famine and German economic distress,
disputes between Protestants and Catholics over the use of the Protestant King James Bible in public
schools, and a disgust for conventional political parties that peaked after passage of the KansasNebraska Act attracted more than 1 million members to the Know-Nothing party. By the end of 1855, the
American party (as the Know-Nothings renamed themselves) had carried elections in a dozen states and
elected more than one hundred congressmen. Many believed they would elect the next president, but
divisions over the slavery issue drove many of its northern members into the new Republican party.
Know-Nothings tried to attract new members by promising that the group would promote sectional
harmony, but their 1856 presidential candidate, Millard Fillmore, carried only Maryland. This embarrassing
performance hastened the party's decline, and by 1860, the Know-Nothings had disappeared.
Although no nativist political organization comparable in size to the Know-Nothings appeared after the
Civil War, nativists often found that the existing parties were willing to enact their proposals. A central item
on the Know-Nothings' agenda, a law banning the immigration of paupers and convicts, passed Congress
in 1882. Registration and literacy tests for voters (which Know-Nothings had supported as a way to
prevent immigrant voting) also became common.
By the late nineteenth century, however, antiradicalism had replaced anti-Catholicism as the cornerstone
of nativism. Many believed that immigrants brought European radicalism with them to America, and they
especially blamed the newcomers for fomenting the labor unrest that characterized much of the period.
The role immigrants played in the communist, socialist, and anarchist movements also helped convince
many Americans that unless the country restricted immigration, radicals from abroad might soon
dominate the United States.
The first laws enacted to restrict immigration affected only Asians. Congress prohibited immigration from
China for ten years starting in 1882 and banned it permanently in 1902. President Theodore Roosevelt
concluded a "gentle man's agreement" with Japan in 1907 that excluded immigrants from that country.
Efforts to restrict non-Asian newcomers soon gained momentum as well. Northwestern Europe had
provided most of America's immigrants in the nineteenth century, but by 1900 a majority hailed from
Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Italy. Reinforcing their racial prejudices by misinterpreting findings made in
the new field of genetics, many Americans concluded that immigrants from these countries lacked the
intelligence and motivation that purportedly characterized northwestern Europeans, so the "new
immigration" provided renewed impetus to the nativist movement.
The aftermath of World War I gave restrictionists more ammunition. Fear of foreign agitators (especially
communists) reached epidemic proportions and culminated in the red scare that swept the United States.
The Ku Klux Klan also revived at this time, and the group's new agenda, which added anti-Catholicism,
anti-Semitism, and antiforeignism to the traditional hatred of blacks, attracted 5 million members. The
labor movement called for immigration restriction as well, arguing that the newcomers' willingness to work
for substandard wages depressed the earnings of all laborers. Finally, many feared that with immigration
having fallen off because of the war, millions of refugees would now flock to America and spoil the
prosperity of the Roaring Twenties.
Congress responded to these pressures by passing the National Origins Act (1924), which reflected
prevailing prejudices by setting immigration quotas that blatantly discriminated against southern and
eastern Europeans. For example, the law (as eventually amended) permitted 65,721 immigrants from
Great Britain annually, but only 5,802 from Italy and 2,712 from the Soviet Union. Asians were almost
completely excluded. The movement to restrict immigration, initiated nearly a century earlier, had finally
achieved its goal.
It is difficult to assess the extent to which nativism still pervades American society. Organized nativism as
epitomized by the Know-Nothings or the Klan has no great following. Yet this may reflect the lack of largescale immigration to the United States, because the quota system set up in the 1920s remains intact
today, and attempts to prevent illegal immigration reflect public support for this system. Contemporary
outbreaks of hostility toward Asian-Americans, motivated in part by the impression that Japan has
surpassed the United States economically, also indicate that nativism continues to influence American
thought. Whatever the case, it is clear that though immigration played an important role in almost every
period of American history, nativism pervaded its past with equal persistence.
Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism
(1938); John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 2nd ed. (1963).
- Tyler Anbinder
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