Inventing America's First Immigration Crisis: Political Nativism in the Antebellum West

Luke Ritter

book: Inventing America's First Immigration Crisis

Open Access Published by Fordham University Press 2020

Inventing America's First Immigration Crisis

Political Nativism in the Antebellum West

Luke Ritter

In the series Catholic Practice in North America

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823289875

Overview
Contents

About this book

Why have Americans expressed concern about immigration at some times but not at others? In pursuit of an answer, this book examines America’s first nativist movement, which responded to the rapid influx of 4.2 million immigrants between 1840 and 1860 and culminated in the dramatic rise of the National American Party. As previous studies have focused on the coasts, historians have not yet completely explained why westerners joined the ranks of the National American, or “Know Nothing,” Party or why the nation’s bloodiest anti-immigrant riots erupted in western cities—namely Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis. In focusing on the antebellum West, Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis illuminates the cultural, economic, and political issues that originally motivated American nativism and explains how it ultimately shaped the political relationship between church and state.

In six detailed chapters, Ritter explains how unprecedented immigration from Europe and rapid westward expansion reignited fears of Catholicism as a corrosive force. He presents new research on the inner sanctums of the secretive Order of Know-Nothings and provides original data on immigration, crime, and poverty in the urban West. Ritter argues that the country’s first bout of political nativism actually renewed Americans’ commitment to church-state separation. Native-born Americans compelled Catholics and immigrants, who might have otherwise shared an affinity for monarchism, to accept American-style democracy. Catholics and immigrants forced Americans to adopt a more inclusive definition of religious freedom.

This study offers valuable insight into the history of nativism in U.S. politics and sheds light on present-day concerns about immigration, particularly the role of anti-Islamic appeals in recent elections.

Why have Americans expressed concern about immigration at some times but not at others? In pursuit of an answer, this book examines America’s first nativist movement, which responded to the rapid influx of roughly 4.2 million immigrants between 1840 and 1860

Author / Editor information

Ritter Luke :

Luke Ritter, Assistant Professor at New Mexico Highlands University, received his Ph.D. in American history from Saint Louis University. He specializes in the history of immigration, nativism, and religion in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. Ritter received the William E. Foley Research Fellowship in 2019, the Environment in Missouri History Fellowship in 2016, and the Filson Fellowship in 2013. He is the author of numerous articles published in the Journal of American Ethnic History, American Nineteenth Century History, the Journal of Early American History, and the Missouri Historical Review.Luke Ritter, Assistant Professor at New Mexico Highlands University, received his Ph.D. in American history from Saint Louis University. He specializes in the history of immigration, nativism, and religion in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. Ritter received the William E. Foley Research Fellowship in 2019, the Environment in Missouri History Fellowship in 2016, and the Filson Fellowship in 2013. He is the author of numerous articles published in the Journal of American Ethnic History, American Nineteenth Century History, the Journal of Early American History, and the Missouri Historical Review.

Reviews

Katie Oxx, St. Joseph’s University:
Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis is a much-needed addition to scholarship on nativism in the United States that concentrates on its manifestations in the Trans-Mississippi West. Ritter illuminates regional distinctions and contexts that historians—myself included—have all too often overlooked in ‘flyover’ scholarship that implicitly or explicitly claims that nativist expressions in northeastern cities are representative of the movement writ large. By probing unique and regional primary sources, Ritter attends to the broader contexts of increasing immigration, expansionism, and evangelicalism as well as the particular media and strategies employed by nativists to illustrate how their ideologies circulated in the urban midwestern United States. Crucially, by concentrating on those regional distinctions, Ritter is able to give immigrants agency, whether as early settlers of rapidly growing cities and neighborhoods, mobilizers against Sunday laws, or co-creators of a distinct and more inclusive—if also necessarily more generic—civil religion. What’s more, in Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis, Ritter illuminates the deep contradictions in nativist strategies and how they drove its adherents to become precisely what they mistakenly feared immigrants inherently were: insular, anti-democratic, and violent. Last, this text is a trenchant reminder that current global and national ideologies are as much as—if not more than—trope as trend. Students and scholars in American history, religion, and political science (to name just a few) will find Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis a necessary and key addition to their library.

Maura Jane Farrelly, author of Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620–1860:
Luke Ritter provokes his readers to consider the surprising origins of our modern-day understanding of church–state separation, rightly seen by many as essential to ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ and ‘tolerance,’ in the sometimes rabid intolerance of the nativist movement in antebellum America. To do this, he invites scholars who have focused primarily on nativism in the Northeast (and only recently in the South) to turn their eyes west. It was in the West, he tells us, that rank religious bigotry was transformed into a higher ideal that is used by advocates on both the left and the right to defend religious freedom today.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
Chapter 1 The Valley of Decision Open Access Download PDF	9
Chapter 2 Culture War Open Access Download PDF	31
Chapter 3 The Power of Nativist Rhetoric Open Access Download PDF	60
Chapter 4 The Order of Know-Nothings and Secret Democracy Open Access Download PDF	82
Chapter 5 Crime, Poverty, and the Economic Origins of Political Nativism Open Access Download PDF	105
Chapter 6 From Anti-Catholicism to Church-State Separation Open Access Download PDF	148
Epilogue. The Specter of Anti-Catholicism, New Nativism, and the Ascendancy of Religious Freedom Open Access Download PDF	174
Notes Open Access Download PDF	185
Index Open Access Download PDF	251
About the Author Open Access Download PDF	255

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 288
Keywords: Donald Trump; Nativism; Anti-Catholicism; Know-Nothing Party; American Party; West; German; Irish; Immigration; Immigrant

eBook

Published: November 23, 2020
ISBN: 9780823289875