American Immigration
Colonial America and the
early United States
depended upon
immigration -- and not
only the grisly
immigration of Africans -but of thousands of white
European immigrants
who came to America as
“indentured servants” to
provide the labor for
colonies and a nation
growing at an incredible
pace.
Most were English, but many were Irish or
Scottish, along with a few Germans. They worked
as house servants, apprentices to artisans, but
most were the hands and backs to work the
nation’s growing farms of wheat, corn and
tobacco.
This generation of immigrant did momentous
work, but did nothing to upset the established
Anglo-Saxon culture; indeed, it reinforced that
culture by creating a working class to serve the
upper classes, just as existed in England.
The First Wave
In 1820, 8,385 people emigrated to the US (6,000 from
the British Isles). In 1854, the peak of the ‘first wave’
reached more than 427,000 (half from Germany, one
quarter from Ireland).
The
Potato
Famine
Failure of the potato crop in 1845 began a series
of bad harvests that drove many peasant
farmers of Catholic, southern Ireland toward
starvation. Unable to pay rents, many were
driven to live in hillside burrows or to rely heavily
upon British charitable organizations for survival.
The response of thousands of
Irish was to leave their hungry
country, give up on farming, and
travel to Britain or the United
States to seek jobs in the
booming textile mills, railroads,
and mines.
The
overcrowded
ships became
known as
“Coffin Ships”
Unlike the indentured servants of the colonial era, the
Irish were not called for in the America.
And unlike those indentured servants, the Irish often
came with entire families; this changed the
character of immigration to the United States, as
many mouths to feed meant a willingness to work at
any job whatever.
Between 1846 and 1854, more than 1,300,000 Irish came to
America. This represents one half of all US immigration.
So, the Irish became the “diggers” of
a nation busy carving the earth,
creating canals, railroads and mines.
Their poverty forced the Irish to rent in the meanest
neighborhoods of the eastern cities. The tenement
rowhouse was the typical dwelling. Overcrowded and
poorly ventilated, the tenement would be the first home for
many immigrants for many generation.
The Irish, forced by poverty to live in tight, noisy quarters,
to raise livestock in the backyard, to leave their children
alone while all adults worked, were seen by the AngloSaxon population as dirty, lazy and uncivilized.
Anglo-Saxon Americans appreciated the labor of
the Irish, but were suspicious of the Roman
Catholic church, concerned about the Irish
penchant for games and relaxation in their off
hours, and condemning of the Irish love of drinking
and riotous behavior.
A stereotypical view of the Irish arose of a dull
witted drunk, more interested in beating heads than
in becoming useful American citizens.
The first group to endure strong
nativist sentiment was the Irish.
Discrimination and fears over competition for
jobs
Condemnation of drunkenness
Condemnation of gang violence
Past Anglo-Saxon prejudice against the Irish combined with the strange features
of their lives (Catholicism, open use of alcohol, urban living and poverty) to mark
them as weak, ignorant and unfit for the blessings of the United States.
Fears of Catholicism
As the Irish, even in the face of
discrimination, worked to build the nation
and gradually become economic and
political successes, the anti-Irish, antiCatholic sentiment in the United States
grew.
The American Party, called the “Know
Nothings”, ran former president Millard
Fillmore on an anti-immigration platform in
the 1856 presidential election.
Thomas Nast, himself an immigrant, used
his position of influence as the cartoonist for
Harper’s Weekly to warn Americans about
the dangers of the Catholic Church and the
evils of Irish dominated political machines
such as the Tammany Hall Democratic
machine of “Boss” William Tweed.
As the number of foreign
born in the United States
increased, Anglo-Saxon
America came to distrust the
democratic process, fearing,
somewhat validly, that the
immigrant vote was
controlled by corrupt political
machines.
In part, the Progressive Era
reforms on American
democracy were inspired by
an anti-immigrant impulse as
much as a desire for fair
democracy in the United
States.
German Immigration
Beginning in 1840’s, desperate German émigrés
fled revolution and destruction in their homeland.
Between 1846 and 1855 more than 970,000 came
to America.
Like the Irish, German immigrants came to
the United States under severe stress and
often came with entire families.
Unlike the Irish, many Germans had
money with which to purchase land and
a will to farm. The Germans became
vital to the effort to pioneer the eastern
prairie of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa
and Nebraska.
Germans brought parts of their culture with them
(language, Lutheranism, educational systems) and had a
major impact in the United States, especially in western
cities.
The enjoyment of alcohol, fun-filled sabbath days, and
joyous celebration of Christmas were held against the
Germans by the more Puritan inspired Anglo-Saxons.
German immigrant,
Thomas Nast, created
the traditional image of
‘Santa Claus’
Chinese farmers
China in the 19th century was a land of
past greatness, with a mass of poor
peasants and a small group of wealthy
merchants and nobility.
China had lost the initiative of world
leadership in all areas and settled into a
complacent isolation.
Beginning suddenly in 1854, with
13,000 arrivals, Chinese looked to
America as an opportunity to earn the
money needed to purchase land for a
farm in China. Between 1854 and 1882,
more than 200,000 emigrated.
Chinese immigration was unique as a
“male only” affair.
In 1868, the Burlingame Treaty established
less restrictive Chinese immigration.
Not all Americans were pleased.
The Chinese in the United States
The most different of immigrants
The Chinese built the
Central Pacific
Railroad.
Chinese
frequently filled
two roles in the
towns of the
American west:
laundry service
and keepers of
the opium dens.
The Irish in America survived their era of discrimination and
even flourished with political power in the nation’s largest
cities. The Chinese were another story.
Their different looks and desire to remain
separate from white society combined with the
claims from white workers that the Chinese were
driving down wages and taking away jobs to
make the Chinese a target of discrimination and
violence.
Even as the Chinese were the major force
behind the completion of the Central Pacific
Railroad and filling other important roles in
the economy of the growing western United
States, they were being harassed and made
the focus of violent nativist agitation.
Even after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
ended large scale Chinese immigration, the
Chinese suffered threats and violence, as in
the 1886 Seattle riots.