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

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1 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 un-naturalized 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 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 disgust for conventional political parties that peaked after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act attracted more than 1 million members to

2 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 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 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

3 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 large-scale 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. HAYMARKET SQUARE AFFAIR The Haymarket affair began when a bomb exploded among a squad of policemen at a workers' rally in Haymarket Square, Chicago, on May 4, Since May 1, a loosely organized national strike for the eight-hour day had been gaining momentum in Chicago. On May 3 strikers had come to the support of an already-existing strike at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company; police had fired on the crowd and four people had been killed. The Haymarket rally, organized by a small anarchist group, was one of many called to protest the killings. Only thirteen hundred people attended, and most left when it began to rain. About three hundred remained when 180 police arrived and demanded that they disperse. Suddenly a bomb exploded among the policemen, killing one and wounding many more, including seven who died later. The police responded with wild gunfire, killing seven or eight people in the crowd and injuring about a hundred, half of them fellow officers. The Haymarket bombing triggered a national wave of fear; public officials, civic leaders, the press, and some union leaders joined in equating foreign birth with anarchism and terror. In Chicago hundreds of socialists, anarchists, and other radicals were rounded up. Eight anarchists (all but one of them German immigrants) were indicted for conspiracy, though none was charged with throwing the bomb. After a conspicuously biased trial, seven were condemned to hang; the eighth was given a long prison sentence. The convictions were upheld in September 1887, and the executions set for November 11. On November 10 one of the condemned men, Louis Lingd, hanged himself; a few hours later, Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two of the men's sentences to life imprisonment. The remaining four, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel, were executed on schedule. On June 26, 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the three survivors, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neebe. This action, though applauded by many, was also widely criticized and probably contributed to Altgeld's defeat for reelection. The nativistic fear of immigrants and radicals aroused by Haymarket lingered for years, preparing the ground for further red scares in the future.

4 ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress in 1798 in preparation for an anticipated war with France. Interpreting the prominent participation of immigrants in the Republican opposition party as evidence of a relationship between foreigners and disloyalty, Federalists championed tighter restrictions for foreigners and critics of their policies. The Naturalization Act of 1798 increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, required aliens to declare their intent to acquire citizenship five years before it could be granted, and made persons from "enemy" nations ineligible for naturalization. The act consequently deprived Republicans of an important source of political support. Aliens were specifically affected by two other acts, which authorized their deportation if they were deemed "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" and their wholesale incarceration or expulsion by presidential executive order during wartime. Under the Sedition Act, even the rights of American citizens were curtailed by prohibiting assembly "with intent to oppose any measure... of the government" and made it illegal for any person to "print, utter, or publish... any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government. Armed with these statutes, Federalists attempted to suppress Republican opposition on the basis of ideological differences most successfully prosecuting newspaperman Thomas Cooper and Republican congressman Matthew Lyon. These controversies provoked the first probing of the constitutional limits on free speech, the press, and the rights of an organized political opposition. When Thomas Jefferson became president, enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts ended. The sedition and incarceration provisions of the acts, however, were resurrected during later wars IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION LEAGUE This organization was founded in 1894 by a group of Boston lawyers, professors, and philanthropists who were alarmed by the large number of immigrants entering America each year. The league urged that immigrants be required to demonstrate literacy in some language. In theory a literacy test would not discriminate against the people of any particular race, creed, or color. But in reality it would keep out many of the "new" immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe whom league members considered inferior beings, likely to become criminals or public charges if admitted. A literacy bill was passed by Congress in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it. In 1917, however, as wartime hysteria fed American xenophobia, another literacy bill was passed over by President Woodrow Wilson's veto. After 1917, as key members lost interest or passed away, the Immigration Restriction League declined in influence. KU KLUX KLAN There have been three Ku Klux Klan movements, which, despite a clear line of descent and strong family resemblances, were separate from one another in time, organization, and purpose.the first Klan flourished during the Reconstruction era and was

5 all but exclusively southern in its membership and concerns. Its objective was to perpetuate white supremacy following emancipation and the conferral of civil and political rights on blacks. It was founded at Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 as a social fraternity, but rapidly became a local regulator or vigilante organization similar to others at the time. Perhaps intrigued by its secrecy, disguises, and unique name (derived from a Greek word for "circle" or "band"), former Confederates including Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest converted the Klan in 1867 into a paramilitary force to oppose the Republican state government under William G. Brownlow. The order quickly spread across the South in the spring of 1868 as other Republican state governments came into being under the Congressional Reconstruction acts. A similar group in southern Louisiana called itself the Knights of the White Camellia. Klansmen were drawn from every walk of life, but the leaders often were from the landholding and professional elite. After a brief flurry of practical joking and pretending to be ghosts, the Klan emerged as a terrorist group dedicated to defeating the Republican Party and keeping blacks in "their place" socially and economically. Most southern counties saw little of the Klan, but others were overrun by it for months or years at a time. It tended to thrive where the two parties or races were relatively evenly balanced; in such places, terrorism was most apt to change election results. In the worstaffected counties, disguised night riders ranged the countryside on a regular basis, dragging people from their homes, whipping, shooting, or otherwise assaulting them, destroying their property, or driving them away. Most of the victims were black, but white Republicans were also targets. The Reconstruction Klan was largely rural; its victims fled to the towns for safety. It was also predominantly local, differing from place to place and with little or no central control. Members went their own way and few dared stop them. Most southern whites sympathized with the Klan's objectives if not its methods, and those who liked neither were often intimidated by it. As a result, few southerners opposed it, and the Klan often paralyzed the law enforcement process. In a few states, such as Arkansas and North Carolina, white Republicans organized militia units and broke up the Klan. In most states, however, federal intervention was required, in the form of congressional legislation, military arrests, and trials in federal courts. By these means the Klan was virtually destroyed in Around the turn of the century the Klan, and the Confederate "lost cause" generally, took on a retrospective romantic appeal for southerners that had been lacking amid the suffering immediately after the conflict. This appeal was greatly stimulated by Thomas Dixon's 1905 novel, The Clansman, and D. W. Griffith's 1915 motion picture based on it, Birth of a Nation. The second Klan was born in that environment in 1915, which encouraged the superpatriotism of World War I. After the war its membership and geographic range expanded dramatically. During its heyday in the early 1920s this Klan numbered over 3 million members nationwide, and it won political power in Indiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and a number of other states. Unlike its predecessor it was mainly an urban phenomenon, reflecting the demographic changes in the nation. It drew members and leaders from all ranks of white society, but chiefly from lower-middle-class people, largely religious fundamentalists who felt threatened by a national drift away from the small-town Protestant culture they had

6 grown up with. The 1920s Klan fed on a variety of frustrations and fears: fear of the immigrants who were entering the country in large numbers, of communists and other radicals spawned by the Russian Revolution, of blacks who were moving into northern cities in increasing numbers, of Jews and Catholics who were rising in the economic and social order, and of labor unions demanding a larger share of the pie for their members. Some of these Klansmen resorted to violence as in the days of old. But, in a membership exceeding 3 million, the vast majority were nonviolent. They marched in parades, paid dues, and bought regalia (this Klan was, for some of its organizers, a financial bonanza). They voted for Klan-endorsed political candidates and attended rallies where crosses were burned. (The original Klan did not burn crosses; the idea seems to have originated in Dixon's novels.) The organization dwindled away in the late 1920s, the result of its own legal, financial, and political excesses, though a remnant persisted until its final disbandment in Only two years later the third Klan emerged. It was fueled by the fear of communism abroad and at home, but the civil rights movement provided its major stimulus. Organized in many parts of the country, it is primarily southern- and urban-based. Membership is still drawn disproportionately from undereducated people with relatively low social and economic status. The peak in membership came during the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s, when it approached seventeen thousand. The modern Klan is small, chronically fragmented, and prone to internal conflict over matters of policy and persona] rivalry. Groups differ in their readiness to embrace violence. Some have accumulated substantial arsenals and have even manufactured and sold weapons to raise funds. They have sometimes forged alliances with like-minded organizations, as happened in 1979 when North Carolina Klansmen briefly formed a United Racist front with the state's tiny Nazi party. Klansmen have also had ties to such white supremacist organizations as the National States' Rights party, the Aryan Nations, and the Skinheads. For all their power to make newspaper headlines, the three Klans historically failed to accomplish their major objectives. The first did not end southern Reconstruction in the 1870s; that was more nearly the work of organized rioters and Red Shirt campaigners. The second did not significantly deflect the nation's progress toward a pluralistic, democratic society in the 1920s. And the major effect of the third on the civil rights movement was to hasten the triumph of that cause when the Klan's violence helped mobilize public support for passage of landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

7 Answer the following questions below using the above article 1. Why did Protestant s feel that Catholics didn t meet the requirements of a Republican government? 2. How did Artisans and Laborers feel about immigrants? 3. What did No Irish Need Apply mean? 4. In 1855 the Know Nothing Party renamed themselves, what was their new name? 5. What two types of laws became common in 1882? 6. What was the Gentle man s agreement 7. How did Americans feel about the New Immigrants from Poland, Russia, Hungary and Italy? 8. Many feared the Roaring Twenties would be harmed by immigration, how? 9. What was the Haymarket Square Affair about? 10. The Immigration Restriction League urged that immigrants display literacy in some language, why? 11. What is xenophobia? (use a dictionary to define this) 12. What type of people were members of the Klan in the 1920 s? 13. What inspired/caused the third version of the Klan to appear in 1946? 14. What three major objectives did the Klan fail to accomplish