Henry Burby
2/16/16
HNRS 10201
Summery of Painter’s “The First Alien Wave.”
Because of its early dependence on black slavery, racism on the basis of skin color has a long and established history in America. However, there was a parallel system of racism against groups now considered white. At this time, racial identity was decided by religion as well as skin color, and religious hatred, the older of the two, ensured that Irish Catholics were treated similarly to the blacks. By 1840, protestant Saxon Americans, the dominant national group, were labeling the Irish “Celts” and grouping them with the oppressed nonwhites, despite their skin color. While many Protestant Irish had already immigrated to the USA, their common religion and lower numbers had allowed them to integrate fairly easily. Catholic Irish, however, had always been greeted as outsiders by both groups, and the huge wave of immigration after 1830 increased this tension massively. History explains the source of this intolerance.
America had inherited anti-Irish and anti-Catholic tendencies and laws from its English founders, many of which remained until nearly the mid 19th century. Parallels between American and British treatments of racial minorities were noted by several social commentators of the time. Gustave de Beaumont blamed poverty and oppression for Irish squalor, which he considered more severe then among the natives and black slaves of America. The popular Thomas Carlyle took the opposite view. He called their poverty a symptom of their status as a lesser race of savage, uncultured, lazy, uncreative animals. By the 1840s, Carlyle’s view had gained massive support in America, where two million Irish had already arrived. Many anti-Irish groups and newspapers formed, ideologically supported by popular intellectuals. Samuel Morse claimed that catholic European kingdoms were flooding America with Irish in an attempt to convert it. Henry Ward Beacher attacked Europe for trying to destroy American democracy. These men drew the support of the lower classes, and incited violence and arson against Irish immigrants.
Maria Monk’s pornographic “Confession” portrayed the catholic church as a haven for lechery and rape. The wildly popular book, and the numerous other publications it inspired, spurred anti catholic hatred to greater heights.
The late 1840s was a time of great uneasiness for the traditional western world in general. Massive sociopolitical unrest in Europe caused several revolutions of poor against rich, and attempts were being made to secure suffrage for poor men, and even women. Backlash against threats to the social order often took the form of racism. European unrest, poverty, and famine raised the number of immigrants from other European countries, as the number of Irish continued to grow. According to the first US censuses, nearly as many Germans fled danger in their countries. However, Germans were largely middle class, educated, protestant, domestic, and they settled larglyinthe Midwest. As a group, they seldom organized radically, unlike the Irish.
By 1855, the stereotypical “Paddies” overwhelmingly supported the democratic party, and were drunken, violent, lazy, poor, and criminal. Leading minister Ralph Waldo Emerson drew on these stereotypes. He showed the American willingness to discriminate against whites grouping the Irish, Hungarians, and Poles in with with the blacks, Chinese, and Native Americans, other races he considered hopeless. Anti-Irish attitudes were also spread via political cartoons, “Celts were compared unfavorably with Anglo Saxons.
Cartoons were also used to equate the Irish with the blacks. Abolitionists typically labeled the Irish as the northern white equivalent of the southern blacks. Pro-slave southerners usually equated the two even more closely, advocating the enslavement f both groups. Northerners advocated the emancipation of the Irish and the Blacks, seeing their situations as analogous. However, the urban Irish themselves opposed the comparison, and used their white skin color to gain an advantage over free blacks. They voted to allow slavery, and mobilized against blacks on several occasions, notably the several draft riots in the northeast. Irish nationalism also rose, countering British claims of genetic superiority by recasting themselves as the better race, and condemning the barbarism and violence of the Anglo Saxons. Outsiders also adopted this view, usually to attack the English, although their compliments usually portrayed the Irish as a quiet, race of simple primitives, with little common sense, who couldn’t stand up to the Anglo Juggernaut. Surprisingly, these view became popular with the Irish themselves, perhaps because, if they had to be a race, at least this one was preferable to Nast’s. some Irish rewrote their own history yet again, this time descended from pre-Christian Spanish nobility. regardless of stance, most Europeans saw the Irish as a race unfit to rule themselves. American racism, however, changed, pertly because religion was less of an issue. When compared with European religious wars and national faiths, America was remarkably tolerant. The separation of church and state kept one faith from gaining power, and kept religious violence from becoming traditional. Another difference was that Britain had been debating the Irish problem for hundreds of years, whereas in America, abolition was more pressing. There was still struggle, however, as shown by the rise of nativism in the 1840s
The rise of nativist organizations both in politics and on the street increased anti-Irish violence enormously. While Irish churches and houses burned, politicians began attempting to pass discriminatory legislation preventing immigrants from voting. However, these groups were usually formed spontaneously. With the rise of the Know Nothing party in 1850, nativism gained even more power and organization. The club, which was open only to at least second generation American protestants, advocated temperance and attacked corruption, but their main focus was the Irish Catholics. They advocated American nationalism, and celebrated the heroes of the revolutionary war. The Know Nothings raised mobs across America, attacking catholic figures and communities, killing nearly 100 in the 1844 Philadelphia riots alone. They also swept into political power, becoming governors, congressmen, and mayors in the 1854 elections. They presented numerous anti immigrant laws, though few were enacted. The Know Nothings were also popular in the south, though the issue of slavery drove the southern and northern halves apart in 1855. Nativism survived the split, but faded in power, ending the worst of the violence against Irish Catholics. Though they were still considered a separate race, their light skin gave them a considerable advantage over America’s other “Lesser Race,” the blacks.
