Immigration: Face of America HTY-110

Government they left behind.’’ The writer urges Germans to unite to defend themselves from xenophobic Know-Nothing hostility.

Immigrants, Catholics, and progressive Protestants were alarmed by the rise of the Know- Nothings. Frequent brawling occurred in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere between anti-Catholics and Catholic workers. As Catholic immigration began to wane in the 1860s, the Know-Nothings and the American Party gradually disappeared. Yet, the 1850s are remembered for pervasive and intense anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic senti- ment in the growing urban centers of the United States.

IMMIGRATION AND THE CIVIL WAR

The Know-Nothing movement and the American Party eventually fizzled out and, in 1856, a new two-party system already had begun to consolidate. The new Republican Party of the mid-1800s remained open to immigration as industrializing and growing cities were in need of laborers. The Republicans were supported by progressive, business-oriented firms from the Northeast, wealthy farmers, and others who benefited from the process of industrializa- tion and the construction of railroads. The Democrats, who had emerged some thirty years

On the cover of its Jan. 20, 1866, issue, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicted a purport-

edly raucous and emotional occasion, ‘‘Irish Emigrants Leaving Their Home for America—The

Mail Coach from Cahirciveen, County Kerry, Ireland.’’ In 1866, according to the U.S. Department

of the Treasury, 116,000 German immigrants and 131,000 British or Irish immigrants came to the

United States—some three-quarters of the total who arrived that year, continuing pre–Civil War

immigration patterns. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-2022.

Chapter 2 • Immigration and America’s Expansion in the 1800s

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