Immigration

Although not as extensive as it would be later in U. S. history, immigration was important to revolutionary and early national periods. Perhaps as many as 300,000 immigrants arrived in what became the United States from 1761 to 1820. Before independence, many European immigrants came to North America as indentured servants. After 1776, bound white labor seemed to contradict the ideals of republicanism, and the number of bound servants as immigrants declined. Ethnically, in the years before and immediately after the Revolutionary War (1775-83) many immigrants were ScOTS-lRlSH, although large numbers of Scots, English, and Germans also arrived. In the 1790s and early 1800s the same groups continued to immigrate to the United States, but there were also increased numbers of Catholic Irish and refugees from the French Revolution (1789-99).

Whether driven from their home countries by hard times and oppression, or attracted by the idea that North America was the land of opportunity, immigrants could achieve the same status as native-born denizens through the process of naturalization. Parliament’s Plantation Act of 1740 allowed all non-Catholic aliens to become English citizens if they paid a small fee, resided in a colony for seven years, received the sacraments at a Protestant church, swore allegiance to the king, and declared that they were Christians. Special provisions were added for Jews and Quakers. Concerned with the loss of population to the colonies, Great Britain shifted its policy in 1773 by ordering governors to disallow any laws within the colonies for naturalization. When the revolutionaries declared their independence, they included a statement that King George III had obstructed the “naturalization of foreigners,” and discouraged immigration. After 1776, naturalization fell into the hands of state legislatures, which passed a variety of laws, usually encouraging early citizenship. In some cases, however, states created new categories, granting immigrants only partial citizenship rights. The entire process became more uniform when the Naturalization Act of 1790, passed by the First Congress, establishing a two year waiting period before an immigrant could apply for citizenship. In 1795, under pressure from the Federalist Party, the period of residence was extended to five years. At the height of anti-French feeling from the XYZ affair (1797-98), the Federalists in 1798 managed to increase the waiting period to 14 years. In 1802, when Thomas Jefferson was president, the Democratic-Republican Party reduced the waiting period again to five years.

As suggested in the various shifts in naturalization law, immigration was a political issue from the very beginning of the United States. Not only did the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) blame the king for limiting immigrants, but also subsequent state laws were written in part to punish immigrants who might have been Loyalists. During the 1790s, the nature of the immigrant changed. Many were political exiles from Ireland or France. These individuals were often Catholic, and hence they were often suspect as agents of the pope. They also frequently espoused republican principles. In 1797, Federalist politician Harrison Gray Otis declared that he did “not wish to invite hordes of wild Irishmen, nor the turbulent and disorderly of all parts of the world, to come here with a view to disturb our tranquility, after having succeeded in the overthrow of their own Governments.” Within this context the Federalist Party sought to make it more difficult for an immigrant to become a citizen.

Immigrants faced other difficulties. While some immigrants achieved success, such as Albert Gallatin and Samuel Slater, others struggled to get by. They often clung to their own ethnic group, both in cities and in the countryside. Prejudice, especially against the rising numbers of Catholics, appeared. Nativist crowds, for example, might parade with a “stuffed paddy” to mock the Irish, or harass a Catholic Christmas celebration, as they did in New York City in 1806. In short, although mass immigration awaited future decades, there were, by 1812, important precedents for later developments.

See also Alien and Sedition Acts; riots.

Further reading: Marilyn C. Baseler, “Asyl-um for Mankind:” America, 1607-1800 (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); Maldwyn Allen Jones, American Immigration, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).