Immigrants in 19th Century America: a comparison in the experiances of the irish and chinese
...finition, places a significant amount of responsibility in the hands of a citizen. Namely the citizen must possess a strong “moral and intellectual character requisite to participate in the American experiment in popular sovereignty” (Knobel, 162). Being of the racist, domineering nature, not too uncommon of Europeans at the time, Franklin may have viewed non-Anglo-Saxons as simply not being adequately intelligent or moral to be granted such a powerful role in determining the policies that would affect him and his fellow “native” Americans. This feeling was probably heightened by the fact that most European immigrants (with the exclusion of the French) had no experience with even limited popular sovereignty. Considering this, some feared that non-Anglo-Saxons would not be able to responsibly conduct themselves in the land of such freedoms, and would therefore only serve to break down American character. “Liberty and lawlessness are with them one and the same thing” decried Frederick Saunders (140), when referring to the Irish immigrants. This is because “Romanism (Catholicism) is diametrically opposed to Republicanism,” proclaimed Thomas Whitney (144). It was held that the Catholic Church promotes in its followers an attitude of being docile and obedient servants who must quietly follow the orders of a leader the people played no role in appointing. The American system of government, contrarily, relies on active and participatory citizens to speak out and vote with a critical mind for the policies that will best suit himself and his fellow citizens. In the Roman servant, these critical thinking skills would not have been well developed. Thus the Catholic was deemed by Dale Knobel to be “servile, uneducated, [and] unaccustomed to self-government” (167). This paranoia was extended even further with regard to Catholic immigrants. It was held that most of them were not only were subjects of their former monarchs (a status they renounced upon receiving American citizenship), but also remained a loyal subject of the Pope despite their new status as citizens of the American republic. Thus, giving these Romanist subjects a vote would be like giving a vote to the Pope himself. Blowing their fears out of proportion (as American tend to do sometimes) Lyman Beecher warned that “a tenth part of the suffrage of the nation, thus condensed and wielded by the Catholic Powers of Europe, might decide our elections, perplex our policy, inflame and divide the nation…and throw down our free institutions” (136) As is very often the case in history though, political and cultural tensions only escalate into acts of violence once financial woes are brought into the picture. Thus while the German Catholics who settled in the mid-west may have been called “Palantine Boors” by Ben Franklin (72), they were largely left alone to their self-sufficient communities and there was no record of violence towards them. But with the waves of Irish settling in the cities and taking jobs for lower wages (thus undercutting the salaries and job opportunities of Americans already living there) the situation was different. This disdain for the (stereotyped) political and religious views of the group culminated with the economic hardships it was thought they had brought about, and manifested itself in many disgraceful acts of violence. The most exemplary act of this was the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Boston. Digging deeper of course these economic problems arose out of the industrialists’ policies and not the Irish, however the latter was a much simpler and more accessible target. Like the Irish on the East coast, the Chinese immigrants in the West were willing to work for relatively low wages. This brought much resentment from the working class Americans, who had lived in the country for some years already and felt economically threatened by this new competition (but much joy to industrialists and other elites who were able to increase their profits off the more efficient labor). This led to brutal violence and fear mongering perpetuating the downward spiral of persecution. Samuel Gompers proclaims that “in order to gain control [the Chinese immigrant] will work so cheaply as to bar all efforts of his competitor” (275). These attitudes only encouraged stronger racism, and therefore lower wages from employers. The deeper issue underlying all of this of course was the very origin of racism itself. The author of this paper would argue that this mode of thinking largely originated in Europe among the upper echelons as ...