There is no place in the world where a man meets so rich a reward for good conduct and industry as in America.
—JOHN DUNLAP,
PHILADELPHIA, 12 MAY 1789
IN THE WAKE OF THE RATIFICATION of the Constitution, the United States ventured forth into a democratic experience without any road map and with a wary eye on the French version evolving across the Atlantic. By the time Andrew Jackson’s presidency was coming to a close, the republican ideal of equality for all had been put to the test on several fronts. Four overlapping spheres—broadly labeled citizenship, religion, language, and segregation—dominated political and social intercourse during this half-century. An increasingly multiethnic, multiracial population pushed at their interstices, forcing Anglo-Americans to attempt reconciliation between policy and practice.
The Constitution called for uniform rules of naturalization and of representation based on the population of the United States. It allowed for the regulation of commerce with Indian tribes, permitted the migration or importation of “such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit” until 1808, provided for equal legal jurisdiction in all the states over persons “held to service or labour,” and banned religious tests as the basis for holding public office. This appressed form of articulation is, in fact, the document’s only commentary on issues related to race and ethnicity. There appears to have been no need to make explicit in the actual Constitution that which its intended audience already understood: in practice there were limits to equality.
Despite its basis in the philosophy of natural rights, the Constitution did not create a polycracy. During the ratification process between November 1789 and December 1791, ten amendments emerged to address personal liberties in more specific language. Even so, the Bill of Rights did not anticipate areas of civil interaction that would require delicate negotiation in a diverse population, save for the proscription on an established religion in the first amendment. In practice, the socially vulnerable and the politically disfranchised—immigrants, indentured servants, redemptioners, Indians, and slaves—often remained marginalized or ineligible for the privileges of natural rights and their political corollary, equality, throughout the New Republic.
Between 1789 and 1836 the profile of the United States changed in fundamental ways. There was a fourfold increase in the total population, from 3.9 to 17 million. The number of square miles within its territorial jurisdiction—stretching from the Atlantic to the Rockies—doubled to 1.8 million, up from 889,000 at the end of the Revolution. This was accompanied by an administrative expansion as a dozen new states were admitted to the Union, encompassing Maine to Louisiana. Even as the majority of the American people were concentrated in rural areas, there was a dramatic increase in the residents of cities. The number of urban places with more than twenty-five hundred people jumped from twenty-four in 1790 to ninety in 1830. New York City’s population multiplied by six—easily taking the lead as the country’s largest—but Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans also grew during that period, though in less spectacular demographic proportions. Significantly, much of this was the result of in-migration rather than natural growth.
A federal law mandating an enumeration of the population was passed in 1790, and the census count began on August 1. Once the tally of all fifteen states was in, the population of the United States stood about evenly divided between the North, with 1,968,040, and the South, with 1,961,174. Because of a political compromise, enslaved blacks counted for only three-fifths of a white when determining proportional representation in Congress. The categories developed for the census to calculate this “three-fifths compromise” embodied a classification system in which everyone was measured against “white”—the designation into which 80.7 percent of the 1790 population fell.
While the dominant race of the United States may have been “white,” by no means was this homogeneous. The word encompassed much ethnic and linguistic variety—Irish, Scots, Welsh, Germans, Dutch, Swiss, French, Swedes, and Spanish as well as English. The composition of this foreign-stock population was determined by three surname analyses of the 1790 census completed in the twentieth century. Although not without error and controversy, the surname method is a rudimentary measure (in the absence of any better) that serves to document the diversity of the country’s Northern European roots. The very broadest generalizations point to the predominance of peoples from the British Isles (including Ireland) and Germany, with settlement patterns that were increasingly non-English the further south and west of New York City one went in the early national period. The regional dispersion of this population was focused on the Middle Atlantic states, partly a reflection of the preeminence of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York as ports of arrival. The most ethnic states in 1790 were Pennsylvania, with its large German element, and New York and New Jersey, where colonial Dutch settlement had been concentrated.
By contrast, the most “racial” states were Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas. The black population was ten times greater in the South than in the North in 1790. The North-South racial disparity is best illustrated by Massachusetts, which (with a population of 378,787) was almost as dense as North Carolina (with a population of 393,751), although the former had no slaves and the latter had more than one hundred thousand. The census established that 18 percent of the American population was enslaved and 42 percent of all slaves lived in Virginia. In addition, it counted 59,557 free blacks, or 12.7 percent of a total black population of 757,181.
Native Americans, on the other hand, were not considered citizens and therefore were neither taxed nor counted in the 1790 census. Under the Constitution, tribes were classified as foreign nations, and their relationship to the United States was diplomatic. It was 1820 before enumerators broke out figures for the 4,631 Native Americans who paid taxes within the borders of the United States and, by including a question on citizenship, counted some fifty-three thousand resident aliens.
The naturalization of foreign-born whites became one of the key issues to emerge during the era of partisan politics that began in the 1790s. The first Congress required only two years residency for citizenship. This entitled a propertied man to the vote but, in the wake of the French Revolution, it also gave many Americans pause. The European who had simply been a “colonist” before Independence was, in the period of the New Republic, reconceptualized as an “immigrant,” a word with increasingly pejorative connotations. It came to symbolize all that was the opposite of the Anglo-American ideal, a convenient scapegoat for any national ill. Restrictionist attitudes appeared, such as that expressed by Federalist Congressman Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848): “If some means are not adopted to prevent the indiscriminate admission of wild Irishmen and others to the right of suffrage, there will soon be an end to liberty and property.”
At the end of February 1794 Albert Gallatin’s Swiss birth was used to prevent him from taking his elected seat as a Senator from Pennsylvania on a residency technicality. With bipartisan support, the residency requirement was raised to five years in 1795 during a spate of Gallophobia. By the spring of 1797 attitudes had hardened further. The Federalists proposed a $20 tax on naturalization certificates, arguing that the United States needed to discourage immigration. Harrison Gray Otis declared that America could no longer afford to invite 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.” The tax was not passed; nevertheless, the following year Congress enacted four laws to suppress domestic dissent that had implications for those of foreign birth. Thereafter, ethnicity was a factor to a certain extent in determining political alignments: Anglo-Americans were typically Federalist, whereas Irish, Scots, and Germans were Democratic-Republicans.
The most severe of the alien laws was a Naturalization Act that again lengthened the residency requirement for citizenship from five to fourteen years and mandated the registration of all foreigners living in the United States. Combined with the Sedition Act, it effectively blocked those with European sympathies from influencing American elections. The first victim of the speech provisions of the Sedition Act was Irish-born Matthew Lyon, a naturalized citizen serving as a Republican congressman from Vermont. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for criticizing President John Adams in print. He served his term in the Vergennes jail, which he described in a letter to the Independent Chronicle in November 1798 as the “common receptacle for horse-thieves, money-makers, runaway-negroes, or any kind of felons.” Indeed there was an element of racism in the selective way in which the sedition law was put into effect. The Federalists called Lyons an “animal who apes a monkey,” who “talks and writes a gibberish between Wild Irish and vulgar American.”
Likewise, when Dr. James Reynolds of Philadelphia protested the Alien and Sedition Acts, he was actually prosecuted for “seditious riot.” Reynolds was a United Irish political refugee. Following a short but bloody uprising in Ireland in 1798 that had had French support, the British government banned these rebels from its territories. Hundreds, like Reynolds, sailed immediately from Belfast for New York or Philadelphia. But the American ambassador in London, the Federalist Rufus King, vigorously protested further banishment to the United States, and the leaders of the United Irishmen were imprisoned in Scotland instead. As he wrote to the American secretary of state, “I cannot persuade myself that the Malcontents of any character or country will ever become useful Citizens of ours.” King lived to rue these words. Once Thomas Jefferson took office, draconian anti-immigrant legislation was allowed to expire, restoring the five-year naturalization period and clearing the way for the emigration of the Irish political prisoners. Among them were the able lawyers Thomas Addis Emmet (1764–1827) and William Sampson (1764–1836), who encouraged Irish support for the pro-immigrant party of Jefferson.
Naturalization again surfaced as an issue during the Napoleonic Wars, but this time the United States was forced to defend its foreign-born. The Royal Navy boldly stopped American trading vessels and forcibly impressed former British subjects into service to replenish its ranks under the principle “once an Englishman, always an Englishman.” An estimated six to eight thousand citizens were impressed between 1803 and 1812 despite American efforts to protect them through trade sanctions and military force. Thirteen American ships sailing from Ireland were intercepted in 1812, including four still in Irish waters. At the same time, federal restrictions limited the freedom of English immigrants on the mainland who had maritime activities. New York City merchants of English birth, for example, were interned upstate at Fishkill, and a similar relocation occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, to prevent potentially subversive acts.
Suspicion of foreign-born loyalties was perennial. In 1835, in response to a suggestion by the New York Evening Post editor that immigrants be naturalized after twelve months in a state and six months in a town or ward, New York University professor Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872) wrote:
he would put the Foreigner, the moment of his landing, on the same footing with native American citizens no matter from what country he may come, no matter what his early habits, his character or condition, whether Hottentot or Turk, or Russian serf, or New-Zealand cannibal; the moment he sets foot on our shores, and simply signifies a wish to become a citizen, he is to be a citizen. He would in fact give foreigners of all kinds, not merely the protection, and instruction, and other advantages of citizenship, but the privilege also of electing our rulers; yes, and of being themselves preferred and elected over native Americans.
Immigrant entitlement during this period hinged not only on citizenship. While the federal Constitution guaranteed religious expression, some states continued to distinguish it from civil rights. In New York all naturalized citizens seeking political office were required to take an oath of loyalty. Other states, like New Jersey, Delaware, and North Carolina, restricted elective office to Protestants, a policy that excluded Jews as well as Catholics. Catholicism, in particular, presented a challenge to republican ideals. Early Catholic leaders were sensitive to their position as a barely tolerated minority, acutely aware of American Protestant suspicions about any foreign jurisdiction. Their immediate priority following the Revolution was to change the status of the American church from “mission” to “national” in order to remove any dependency on the Propaganda office in Rome. The connection with the Vatican was to be spiritual rather than temporal, given current political prejudices.
At the end of the eighteenth century association with the Pope—a “foreign prince”—was compounded by a rise in the number of foreign-born Catholics. In addition to French speakers who had been inherited from the Diocese of Quebec in the recently acquired territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, Irish immigrants had already begun to dilute what had hitherto been an English- and German-stock Catholic population on the eastern seaboard. This caused significant administrative problems because, although the understaffed church needed priests, many itinerant European clergymen refused to take direction from American church leaders. Irish priests in New York, French priests in Boston, and German priests in Philadelphia all caused internal dissent that reflected poorly on Catholicism in general at the very moment that Catholics were struggling to gain civil rights in various states as well as independent jurisdiction from Rome.
A new era of ecclesiastical structure or authority for the Catholic Church in the United States began with the selection of John Carroll (1736–1815) as its first Bishop in 1789. Based in Baltimore, Carroll took charge of an estimated thirty-five thousand Catholics, nearly two-thirds of whom were in Maryland (including approximately three thousand African slaves). The timing of Carroll’s appointment coincided not only with these image problems but with political upheaval on the Continent. The American Catholic Church was thus in a unique position to offer refuge to European religious orders, like the Sulpicians, who were threatened by the French Revolution. In the continued absence of a native-born clergy, the public face of Catholicism at the parish level during this period therefore continued to be foreign. Carroll insisted that European priests serving under him in America learn English as well as American laws and customs. With Carroll’s encouragement, a vernacular edition of the Catholic Bible was published by Mathew Carey in 1790. Nevertheless, by 1820 the consequences of a foreign-born clergy were being felt through a more traditional and conservative strand of practice appearing in the American church.
A critical turning point in the acquisition of civil rights for Catholics was the refusal of Fr. Anthony Kohlmann, a Jesuit from Alsace, to divulge the identity of a thief because he had received the information while hearing confession. This 1813 test case became the first free-exercise-of-religion litigation in American constitutional history and, in the words of legal historian Walter J. Walsh, the “jurisgenerative origin of the priestpenitent evidentiary privilege.” Arguing in New York’s Court of General Sessions, William Sampson, a Protestant lawyer from Ireland, darkly contrasted England’s history of Catholic discrimination with the protections promised by the American constitution. He concluded that providence had decreed this land to be “the grave of persecution, and the cradle of tolerance,” declaring, “every citizen here is in his own country. To the protestant it is a protestant country; to the catholic, a catholic country; and the jew, if he pleases, may establish in it his New Jerusalem.”
Sampson published the trial as The Catholic Question in America (1813), but minds and hearts were slower to change than the law. The problem with religious toleration was that by the second decade of the nineteenth century, Catholics from Ireland vastly outnumbered those of any other ethnicity. Their immigration became particularly significant to the rapid expansion of the Catholic Church in America after 1820. “Its growth here appears to me almost impossible,” Frances Kemble (1809–1893) noted,
for if ever there were two things more opposite in their nature than all other things, they are the spirit of the Roman Catholic religion, and the spirit of the American people. It’s true, that of the thousands who take refuge from poverty upon this plenteous land, the greater number bring with them that creed, but the very air they inhale here presently gives them a political faith, so utterly incompatible with the spirit of subjection, that I shall think the Catholic priesthood here workers of miracles, to retain anything like the influence over their minds which they possessed in those countries, where all creeds, political and polemical, have but one watch-word—faith and submission.
The United States was still culturally Anglo-Saxon, and soon, inherited racial attitudes toward the Irish surfaced that, combined with anti-Catholicism, resulted in the rise of virulent nativism. In 1827 the Society for the Defence of the Roman Catholic Religion from Calumny and Abuse, in response to what it felt was a libelous attack by the Gideonite Society in Philadelphia, published a fourth edition of Mathew Carey’s pamphlet Letters on Religious Persecution for free distribution. The parliamentary campaign for Catholic emancipation in Ireland in 1829 no doubt exacerbated nativist conditions in the United States, particularly in cities like New Orleans, where moral and financial support for Daniel O’Connell was very public among Irish immigrants. The backlash included anti-Irish employment ads such as those in New York protested by The Truth Teller, a Catholic weekly:
Wanted.—A woman well-qualified to take charge of the cooking and washing of a family—any one but a Catholic who can come well recommended may call at 57 John Street.
(Journal of Commerce, 8 July 1830)
Wanted.—A Cook or a Chambermaid. They must be American, Scotch, Swiss, or African—no Irish.
(Evening Post, 4 September 1830)
Passions were further aroused by the mob burning of St. Mary’s in New York City the following year and an Ursuline convent and school in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1834, as well as by the publication of sensational tracts like Samuel F. B. Morse’s Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States Through Foreign Immigration (1835) and Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (1836).
Not only was Catholicism perceived as “immigrant” in the 1820s and 1830s, it was also seen as urban. The confluence of cities, race, and ethnicity had ramifications when cholera struck the United States in 1832. Lack of understanding about its scientific causes led to an assumption of moral depravity, seemingly confirmed through accepted stereotypes of the urban poor—often African Americans or Irish living in crowded and unsanitary conditions—who were its principal victims. “Whether he was free or slave, Americans believed, the Negro’s innate character invited cholera,” wrote medical historian Charles Rosenberg in 1962. “He was, with few exceptions, filthy and careless in his personal habits, lazy and ignorant by temperament. A natural fatalist, moreover, he took no steps to protect himself from disease.” A similar profile was drawn of Irish immigrants, with the additional onus of supposedly having aided cholera in breaching the Atlantic divide. In September 1832, New Yorker Philip Hone confided to his diary,
they have brought the cholera this year and they will always bring wretchedness and want. The boast that our country is an asylum for the oppressed in other parts of the world is very philanthropic and sentimental, but I fear that we shall before long derive little comfort from being made the almshouse and refuge for the poor of other countries.
Underpinning relations with (not between) African Americans and Irish lay a widely accepted hierarchy of race that degraded the humanity of both groups. Nevertheless “whiteness” mattered—in the decennial census as we have seen—and in other legislation such as New York State’s suffrage extension in 1821 and again in 1826, which removed property qualifications and voting restrictions for all men except for blacks. This gave the Irish a ballot but little else; from this point until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the relationship of the two groups to northern Protestant Americans diverged considerably in the political arena. The abolitionist movement elevated the African American to a cause célèbre at the same time that Irish were denigrated by Whig elites. During the election of 1834, the New England Review called the Irish “the most corrupt, the most debased, and the most brutally ignorant portion of the population of our large cities” while the Journal of Commerce wrote that “Colored Persons” were “attached to our institutions, and are intelligent, and in many respects far better qualified to participate in our elections.” Nevertheless, compared to the average American, blacks and the Irish were on a par socially and economically. And, like the Irish, African Americans had developed religious congregations and institutions that set them apart from white Protestants, such as the A.M.E. Zion Church, established in 1796, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1816.
While the moral tensions inherent in perpetuating bondage in a democratic society were part of the new federal political discourse, it was pure economics that kept slavery alive in the United States after 1790. The invention of the cotton gin in 1792 resolved the impending crisis in the southern plantation system by facilitating a shift away from tobacco, rice, and indigo toward a more lucrative cash crop. Growing cotton was labor-intensive and, as it dominated the southern economy, the number of slaves nearly tripled—from more than seven-hundred thousand in 1790 to 2.3 million in 1830. Slavery was increasingly a southern institution, especially after New York (1799) and New Jersey (1804) joined the other northern states that had already outlawed it.
Fear in the aftermath of the 1791 uprising in Haiti led to the passage of legislation regulating slave imports, especially in southern states like the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland. Fear was also the genesis of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which gave wide latitude to masters in retrieving their human “property.” Under this law, African Americans could be convicted on oral testimony only and were not privy to trial by jury, rights which white ethnics enjoyed under the Bill of Rights. About ninety thousand slaves arrived in the United States between the end of the Revolution and January 1, 1808, the date after which Congress—under abolitionist pressures from Great Britain and New England—expressly banned the overseas slave trade. However, lax enforcement and the domestic sale of slaves to plantations in the new Louisiana Territory—as well as their intentional breeding for sale—allowed the slave trade to flourish during the early national period. As late as 1836, twelve thousand slaves from Virginia were sold further south when prices for prime field hands were nearing $1,200 to $1,300 in Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. A profitable adjunct to slave trading was slave hiring, which placed blacks in service and laboring work in cities and factory towns and on railroad and canal projects.
At the same time the number of free blacks in the United States increased, from 108,000 in 1800 to 386,000 in 1840. There was a concomitant drop in the number of white indentured servants in response to British restrictions on the emigration of skilled labor to the United States. Combined with relaxed—even fashionable—attitudes toward manumissions, this facilitated black entry into the northern economy, at least until Nat Turner’s slave revolt in 1831 when there was considerable retrenchment:
The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his fiendlike face when excited by enthusiasm, still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered with chains; yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man; I looked on him and my blood curdled in my veins.
This 1832 excerpt from Thomas R. Gray’s widely circulated version of Turner’s confession increased white fears and the imposition of legal restrictions became inevitable. Fanny Kemble, an English actress turned wife of plantation owner Pierce Butler, was horrified to learn about southern restrictions on basic rights. In December 1832 she recorded in her diary, “To teach a slave to read or write is to incur a penalty of fine or imprisonment. They form the larger proportion of the population, by far; and so great is the dread of insurrection on the part of the white inhabitants, that they are kept in the most brutish ignorance, and too often treated with the most brutal barbarity, in order to insure their subjection.”
The enforcement of these “black codes” encouraged freed slaves to move to the north, bringing them into direct competition for jobs with Irish immigrants, especially in the mid-Atlantic cities. There were race riots between the two groups in Philadelphia in 1832 and again in 1842. In addition, both peoples faced employment and housing discrimination; relegated to the lowest service-sector positions—such as cooks, servants, waiters, and day laborers—and to the cheapest-rent districts, Irish and African Americans were the victims of pernicious stereotyping. “I never hear an Irishman called Paddy, a colored person called nigger, or the contemptuous epithet ‘old beggar man,’ without a pang in my heart for I know that such epithets, inadvertently used, are doing more to form the moral sentiments of the nation, than all the teachings of the schools,” wrote Lydia Maria Child in 1841.
Verbal portraits of racial and ethnic groups in antebellum literature published before 1840 commonly focused on their inferior intelligence and moral capabilities rather than on extrinsic characteristics like appearance that would gain popularity at midcentury (the epitome being the simian depictions of Thomas Nast). The relationship of language to perceptions of the ethnic Other was critical, especially as Americans were defining themselves nationally in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. As the new nation rebuilt a commercial base in its port cities, colonial trading links were renewed. The demand for foreign luxury goods increased their quantity and visibility in American households. One of the consequences was a direct cognitive relationship between product and country of origin.
In other words, a product’s identification with specific ethnicity or race entered Anglo-American cultural discourse. Gallophobia, for example, did not preclude a taste for French style in dress or dance fashions. The recruitment of skilled workers from England for certain industries in the United States was independent of political Anglophobia. Immigrants from Staffordshire—with an established reputation for ceramic tableware—were the backbone of the emerging American pottery manufactories at Trenton, New Jersey, from 1832. The highly desired textile printing and metalworking techniques of Lancashire and Sheffield were transferred to Massachusetts and Connecticut factories through British immigrants, enabling Americanmade products to compete favorably with their English counterparts in the marketplace.
But by far the greatest commercial influence on perceptions of ethnicity was the post-war trade with China. The New York firm of William Constable and Company reaped enormous profits from the 1790–1791 voyage of the Washington, heralding a new era in American business. Not only did China become the basis of several mercantile fortunes but chinoiserie became pervasive in social circles with disposable income. Chinese silk, tea, porcelain, and opium contributed to Orientalism, especially among the upper classes. Tea became a necessity rather than a luxury, while the practical value of other items—such as china tea sets—was surpassed only by their value as curios. Although the Chinese presence in America was negligible at the turn of the nineteenth century, Chinese goods were already well established when the Siamese twins Chang and Eng first made appearances in Boston and New York in 1829. For the thousands of Americans who paid to see the brothers over the next decade, it was their first contact with Chinese people. The physical attachment of Chang and Eng, while startling, was nevertheless in keeping with exotic perceptions of China and the Chinese that were current in the early national period. Their duplication literally made flesh a much-admired Oriental art, as the following excerpt from the diary of Anne Gorham Everett in 1835 illustrates:
I read … a very curious account of the exactness of the Chinese. A lady wishing to match some beautiful china, which her husband had received from the East India Company, sent a plate to China to have some more made like it. In due time the plates arrived, and were unpacked; but every one looked as if it had a crack in it, and on examining the pattern it was found that there was a crack in the middle of it.
On the other hand, whereas by the late eighteenth century the word “Irish” in the marketplace was descriptive of good-quality, inexpensive linen, as well as salted herring and mackerel, by the early nineteenth century it had become a synonym for “barbarity.” Likewise, Fanny Kemble commented on how the blackness of slaves had been transformed into an even darker concept. Americans, she wrote, had “learned to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach.” In 1833 Thomas Hamilton, a Scottish traveler in the United States, remarked, “It has often happened to me, since my arrival in this country, to hear it gravely maintained by men of education and intelligence, that the Negroes were an inferior race, a link as it were between man and the brutes.” This went beyond skin tone, as the New York Irish schoolmaster Patrick S. Casserly grimly observed in 1832: “If a swindler, thief, robber, or murderer, no matter what his color or country commit any nefarious or abominable act, throughout the Union, he is instantly set down as a native of Ireland.” Descriptions of the Irish as lazy, unreliable, improvident, childlike, and foolish mirrored descriptions of blacks, creating a popular idiom that was deficient in the very virtues deemed necessary to good republicanism. These were familiarly summed up by the rubric “Paddy” or “Sambo,” “Bridget” or “Mammy”—the serving class of white America. In New York’s Sixth Ward successive mob violence by native-born whites in 1834 and 1835 targeted blacks and Irish equally, sparked by general trepidation over amalgamation (miscegenation) and foreigners.
Indians, on the other hand, were “noble savages” until at least the late 1820s. Rather than an inherently inferior people, Native Americans were perceived as victims of social, political, and economic circumstances who could be civilized. Why? Indian tribes had been defined as sovereign nations in the earliest treaties made by the United States and, unlike blacks and Irish, were not viewed as an exploitable or cheap source of labor. There were federal and religious attempts to transform tribes into yeoman stock by encouraging the adoption of cash agriculture, Anglo-American education, and political institutions. In 1790 Congress appropriated $20,000 for farming supplies for the Cherokees and in 1819 began annually endowing an Indian Civilization Fund with $10,000. The Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks were the first to respond well but their motives were practical: the need to avoid dispossession of their lands and “black” classification in an increasingly biracial southern society. One of the hallmarks of their successful acculturation was the acquisition of the English language. The Cherokee Phoenix, a bilingual newspaper founded in 1828, as well as eighteen Cherokee schools, clearly demonstrated this by the mid-1820s.
All foreign languages suffered in the rising sense of American nationality after 1790. The supremacy of English as the dominant tongue of the United States was settled by 1815. Giovanni Antonio Grassi, an Italian Jesuit serving as president of Georgetown University at that time, observed, “English is the language universally spoken, and it is not corrupted here as in England by a variety of dialects.” In fact, the appearance of books emphasizing accent elimination, such as John Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1818), hastened the adoption of an “American” English standard. Yet, by the early national period, English as spoken in the United States had already absorbed many ethnic words and inflections, particularly from the intermingling of German and Irish immigrants in the backcountry. This was most pronounced in Appalachia, where the one distinct variation of American English was already evident by 1800. Words like “chaw,” “ingine,” and “picter” were typical of the region’s so-called broad speech.
Unlike immigrants from the British Isles—among whom even these linguistic variations were still recognizable as English—communities who spoke a foreign language were marked off as different. There was natural attrition as immigration failed to replenish the supply of native speakers among the Welsh, French, and Swedes. But for others, abandoning their mother tongues was more difficult because its use was reinforced not only in the home and in the marketplace but also in church.
In the Middle Atlantic states commercial interaction with a rapidly expanding economy eroded the language faster, of necessity, so that the pulpit became the bastion of preservation, especially among the Germans of Pennsylvania and the Dutch of New York. As early as 1794 the Dutch Reformed Church of America began to adopt English, making religious services in Dutch obsolete by the late 1830s. In 1800 Lutheran Church authorities in New York favored English as the language of its official business just as fellow Germans on the western and southern frontiers began to adopt it too. Generally, urban congregations were more successful than rural ones in obtaining dispensations regarding language preference. Clergy trained abroad contributed to resistance to change, but compromises were inevitable as American-born generations pressed for religious services, Bibles, hymn books, and catechisms in English. Translation and dissemination were among the principal activities of the American Bible Society, formed in New York City in 1816. The acceptance of English by German and Dutch Protestants directly diluted a sense of ethnic identity and enhanced an American one.
On the other hand, minority religions retained foreign language services—particularly when multiple ethnicities made a common language more critical. Jews had Spanish, Portuguese, and German roots that made Hebrew integral to worship just as Latin took precedence over mother tongues in Catholic rituals. But Jews and Catholics were not immune to the influence of English. In 1824 the Sephardic congregation in Charleston, South Carolina, petitioned for bilingual services, “so as to enable every member of the congregation fully to understand every part of the service.” The issue was so volatile that the petition’s refusal led to a splinter Reform congregation that lasted for eight years.
Bishop John Carroll mused on the drawbacks of Mass in Latin: “It is an unknown Tongue, and in this Country, still more than in yours [England] either for want of Books or desirability to read, the greatest part of our Congregation must be entirely ignorant of the meaning and Sense of the publick Offices of the church.” For German and French Catholics—minorities within a minority religion—the vernacular assumed a great importance as a marker of identity as well as a source of interethnic friction with the increasingly more numerous Irish. National parishes, such as New York’s St. Nicholas founded by Germans in 1833, were one solution. Such linguistic independence had its limits as far as the church hierarchy was concerned, and Germans repeatedly had to capitulate on broader administrative matters.
There are always historical exceptions. Father Felix Varela (1788–1853), a Catholic priest and Cuban political exile, ministered in English to his New York Irish parishioners as well as publishing El Haberno—in the 1820s one of the first Spanish-language newspapers in America—to advocate for minority rights, religious toleration, and bilingual cooperation. Scholars continue to debate whether African Americans spoke a form of English learned from contact with white immigrants in the United States or a creole version brought from Africa and the Caribbean, such as the distinctive Gullah of coastal South Carolina and Georgia spoken since the mid-eighteenth century. And, in a rare example of the use of an indigenous language to acculturate to white norms, the Rev. Thomas Roberts of North Carolina oversaw a Cherokee translation of the American Sunday School Spelling Book (Sunalei akvlvgi no ‘gwisi alikalvvsga zvlvgi Gesvi), that was published in 1824 “for the benefit of those who cannot acquire the English language.”
Native American interaction with white settlers increased due to eastern population pressures after the American Revolution. Several treaties attempted to stabilize tribal boundaries, particularly with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix on the New York–Canadian border (1784), with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee nations at Hopewell, South Carolina (1785–86), and with the Creeks in Georgia (1790). The result was a nearly tenfold increase in the number of Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of the Ohio River during the 1780s. In the old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan) there were more than a dozen agreements made with tribes between 1795 and 1809. However, the provisions of Indian treaties were weakly enforced by the federal government and routinely violated by ambitious settlers. Governor William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) reported that many trespassing frontiersmen in Indiana Territory considered “the murdering of the Indians in the highest degree meritorious.”
Treaties with France (Louisiana Purchase 1803), Great Britain (1818), and Spain (Adams-Onis 1819) opened up further migratory possibilities to the west of the Appalachian Mountains and reopened the issue of Native American relations along a wide swath of territory from the Canadian border to Florida and Mexico. The migrants included not only New Englanders and southern planters but black slaves and foreign-born laborers, making the frontier the crucible of racial and ethnic interaction in the early nineteenth century. There is considerable anthropologic, folklore, and cultural geographic evidence that frontier settlers learned from each other and creatively adapted to a challenging natural environment. The Irish borrowed the log cabin from the Germans and, by the time they reached Indiana, had altered its design to suit domestic customs from Ulster. Both groups used Indian methods of hunting and forest pharmacology to survive in the wilderness. African Americans were frequently trappers and interpreters, negotiating the middle ground between white immigrants and Indian tribes. Yet once again, outside perceptions of the frontier inhabitants were colored. In 1801 William Strickland, an English farmer, declared, “none emigrate to the frontiers beyond the mountains, except culprits, or savage backwoodsmen … the outcasts of the world, and the disgrace of it.”
Like the opposition of “immigrant” to Anglo-American, “frontier” served to highlight the civility of life in the East. Well into the 1830s some Americans remained uncomfortable over the presence of the foreign-born in their midst. After remarking in his diary on the arrival of 15,825 passengers at the port of New York in May 1836, Philip Hone complained, “All Europe is coming across the ocean; all that part at least who cannot make a living at home; and what shall we do with them? They increase our taxes, eat our bread, and encumber our streets, and not one in twenty is competent to keep himself.” Throughout the early national period one of the solutions frequently proposed was the creation of colonies, particularly in the West. The impetus for this kind of segregation sometimes came from within an ethnic or racial group, and sometimes it was imposed from without.
One of the earliest colonization efforts was Gallipolis, founded on the LaBelle River in Ohio by French-Catholic immigrants in 1790. Several were in Pennsylvania: an Irish settlement begun in 1795 at Buffalo Creek and Slippery Rock in Butler County was flourishing fifty years later under the name Sugarcreek; in Cambria County, a mixture of Germans, Swiss, and Irish Catholics gravitated to Loretto after 1799; and at Silver Lake in Susquehanna County, Fr. Jeremiah F. O’Flynn erected a church in 1827 that shortly drew Catholics from rural public works projects to live in its vicinity. In northwestern New York, French, German, and Irish Catholics farmed several of the Black River Settlements. Bishop Fenwick started a Catholic colony at Benedicta in Maine in 1834, toward which he directed many of his Boston Irish parishioners.
Ethnic colonies were not exclusively Catholic. English political radicals founded Jacobin and Quaker communities in Pennsylvania in the 1790s. Wanborough and Albion, prairie colonies established in Illinois in 1818 by immigrants from Surrey and Hertford, were heavily promoted back home in England. In 1824 Mordecai Manuel Noah, the former American consul at Tunis, purchased fifty square miles on Grand Island in the Niagara River from the New York State Legislature. There he proposed a haven for Jews to be called Ararat, until such time as they could return to the Holy Land. Despite an elaborate ceremony in nearby Buffalo in September 1825, this Jewish colony never materialized.
The Irish leaders in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia petitioned Congress in 1818 to set aside lands in the Illinois Territory on easy credit for newly arrived immigrants from Ireland. Their argument was essentially a desire to protect the vulnerable and to guide the innocent:
They have fled from want and oppression—they touch the soil of freedom and abundance; but the manna of the wilderness melts in their sight. Before they can taste the fruits of happy industry, the tempter too often presents to their lips the cup that turns man to brute, and the very energies which would have made the fields to blossom make the cities groan. Individual benevolence cannot reach this evil. Individuals may indeed solicit, but it belongs to the chosen guardians of the public weal to administer the cure.
This appeal by the Irish Emigrant Association was rejected. In contrast, an attempt by the African Colonization Society to repatriate blacks to the west coast of Africa was modestly successful. Between 1817 and 1830, approximately 1,420 were resettled in Liberia. Although the movement was fraught with ideological conflicts—it was all too easy to see it either as deportation or as a method of Christianizing Africa—a total of twelve thousand eventually migrated from the United States under the auspices of the Society. Abolitionists in particular objected to colonization on the grounds that, by siphoning off the free black population, it strengthened the position of American slaveholding interests.
A far less idealistic colonization scheme was the United States government’s Indian reservation policy. Prior to 1815, Native Americans were pressured to yield their eastern lands either through sale or in exchange for land in the West, at the same time that private acculturation programs—typically run by Christian missionaries—were underwritten by Congress. Success had been qualified, as Rachel Lazarus reported to novelist Maria Edgeworth in 1824:
I lately saw another very sensible and well written letter from an Indian, in reply to one that made some enquiries relative to the situation of his tribe. He says they are fast advancing in civilisation, that exclusive of Missionary schools, they have established several for the education of their youth; that many of them have embraced the Christian Religion, and that there are among them several men of property, who cultivate flourishing farms which exhibit every appearance of neatness and comfort. He nevertheless deprecates the idea which appears to have been suggested of a free intercourse with the whites. He says, “do not force nature; we are improving, but we are not prepared to live among you, or to receive you among us; time has done a great deal, and may do a great deal more for us, if we are left to ourselves.”
Thereafter “removal” was added to the strategies used by Washington, D.C., to deal with Native Americans. “He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population,” President Andrew Jackson argued in 1830 on behalf of the Removal Act, “To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.” Once formally implemented by Congress, Indians were to be moved west of the Mississippi—either bought out or forcibly relocated—ostensibly to keep them out of harm’s way through isolation. John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) reckoned removal would permit a generation of Indians to become civilized enough for reintegration into white society. In reality, the policy was meant to appease the insatiable demands of white frontiersmen for Mississippi Valley land, which had been building ever since the signing of the Pickney Treaty with Spain in 1795.
The Indian Removal Act affected about seventy-three thousand Native Americans during the 1830s. The Cherokees resisted by suing the state of Georgia in two landmark cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Justice John Marshall decided in favor of the Indians, describing them as “domestic dependent nations.” President Jackson chose to ignore the Court, enforcing a dubious treaty that gave 7 million acres to the United States and removed fifteen thousand Cherokees under duress to Oklahoma in the winter of 1838–1839. Nearly four thousand did not survive the “Trail of Tears.” Likewise, Jackson took aggressive action against the Sac, Fox, and Seminoles when they proved uncooperative about removal. The Black Hawk War (1832) in Illinois and the Second Seminole War in Florida, fought between 1835 and 1842 under the leadership of Osceola, ultimately saw the triumph of federal policy.
In some ways Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) is the classic fulfillment of John Dunlap’s prediction in the epitaph that opens this essay. On the other hand, he was born and raised in the Southern backcountry, on the border of North and South Carolina, in an area whose native Waxhaw tribe was eradicated by smallpox and wars, then resettled in the 1740s by an influx of Germans and Irish. Its frontier days were waning even though it was still quite isolated from “civilization.” Jackson was also the son of immigrant parents from the north of Ireland, who spoke with a foreign accent and espoused Presbyterianism, a nonconforming brand of Protestantism. By the standards of the New Republic, was he truly an ideal American?
As defined by the Constitution of 1789, he was a native-born white citizen with the right to vote and freedom of conscience. But by then he was living in Nashville, beyond the western edge of the United States and outside its jurisdiction. When Tennessee was admitted to statehood in 1796, it drafted a liberal constitution that even extended suffrage to free blacks. Jackson, in his subsequent professional career, manifested the attitudes of (and accommodations commonly made on) the frontier. As a military officer, he fought alongside free African Americans in the battles of Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans, but never lifted a finger to abolish slavery. During the War of 1812, he also fought against the British with companies of Cherokees and Choctaws, the same tribes he would later dispossess while seventh President of the United States. Their clearance permitted a new generation of Irish and German immigrants to grow up on the settled frontier, just as Jackson had more than half a century earlier. Although Jackson was hailed by “the sons of his father’s land” at the St. Patrick’s Day 1828 banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in New York City, his presidency nevertheless marks the emergence of a bitter Scotch-Irish versus Irish rivalry in American ethnic history, mirroring the rural/urban and Protestant/ Catholic tensions already rife in the country. Jackson was a kind of new American for the nineteenth century, the complicated and anomalous result of the interplay of citizenship, religion, language, and segregation during the early national period.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
For general overviews of race and ethnicity in the Early National period, see Leonard Dinnerstein and David M. Reimers, Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration, 3rd ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1988); Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. Nichols, and David M. Reimers, Natives and Strangers: A Multicultural History of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Marcus Lee Hansen, The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951).
On the 1790 census and early republican demographics, see The Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (Stamford, Conn.: Fairfield Publishers, Inc., 1947); Peter D. McClelland and Richard J. Zeckhauser, Demographic Dimensions of the New Republic: American Interregional Migration, Vital Statistics, and Manumissions, 1800–1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Margo J. Anderson, ed., Encyclopedia of the US Census (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2000). For the twentieth-century surname analyses of the 1790 census, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909); American Council of Learned Societies, “Report of Committee on Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of the United States,” American Historical Association, Annual Report for the Year 1931 (Washington, D.C., 1932); and “The Population of the United States, 1790: A Symposium,” William and Mary Quarterly 41 (January 1984): 85–135, which includes revised estimates of the ACLS figures by Thomas L. Purvis; see especially Table II, p. 98, although these figures are disputed by Donald Akenson, pp. 102–119. Students should note that despite this lively debate, the U.S. Historical Census Data Browser for 1790 on the Web at http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgilocal/censusbin/census/cen.pl?year=790 is based solely on the controversial A Century of Population Growth (1909).
For a good summary of the effects of early restrictionist legislation, see James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956).
On the issues of image and language, see Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1986); John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776–1882 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil, The Story of English (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986); and John R. Rickford, “The Creole Origins of African American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence,” in Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh, eds., African American English, (London: Routledge, 1998).
For the history of ethnic and racial Catholics during this period, see John Tracy Ellis, Catholics in Colonial America (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1965); Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992); and Dolan, The Immigrant Church: New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815–1865 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); and Sister Mary Gilbert Kelly, “Irish Catholic Colonies and Colonization Projects in the United States, 1795–1860,” Studies (Dublin), Vol. 29 (1940), pp. 95–109.
On turn-of-the-nineteenth-century black history, see John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994). There is an electronic version of The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, VA as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray (Richmond: Thomas R Gray, 1832) on the Web at http://odur.let.rug.nl/_usa/D/1826-1850/slavery/confes01.htm.
Essays by Theda Perdue and R. David Edmunds in Indians in American History: An Introduction, Frederick E. Hoxie, ed. (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1988) are helpful. See also Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970). Andrew Jackson’s Case for the Removal Act, First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1830, is reproduced in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1908, Volume II, by James D. Richardson, published by the Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1908. The full text of the landmark Supreme Court decisions Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) are on the Web at http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/two/cherokee.htm
For the Irish, see Essays in Scotch-Irish History, E. R. R. Green, ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1969; reprint Ulster Historical Foundation, 1992), especially essays by Maldwyn A. Jones, E. R. R. Green, and E. Estyn Evans; Earl F. Niehaus, The Irish in New Orleans, 1800–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965); Dennis Clark, The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations of Urban Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973); and essays by Walter J. Walsh and Graham Hodges in Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, Stephan Thernstrom, ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980) remains an excellent starting place for the early history of the English, Germans, Swedes, Jews, French, and Spanish in the United States.
Quotes from primary documents used in this essay are from the following: “Encouragement to Irish Emigrants,” U.S. Senate Doc. No. 449, 15th Congress, 1st Session. 1818; Giovanni Antonio Grassi, Notizie varie sullo stato presente della repubblica degli Stati Uniti dell’America (“Observations on the United States”), originally published in 1819, reproduced in The Annals of America, Vol. 4, 1797–1820, Domestic Expansion and Foreign Entanglements (Chicago and London: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968); Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1833), quoted in Walter Allen ed., Transatlantic Crossing (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1971); Samuel F. B. Morse, Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States Through Foreign Immigration, and the Present State of the Naturalization Laws (New York: E. B. Clayton, 1835); Bayard Tuckerman, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1889), as well as Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1936); Journal of Frances Anne Butler, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835); and Philippa C. Bush, Memoir of Anne Gorham Everett, with Extracts from Her Correspondence and Journal (Boston: privately printed, 1857). There are electronic versions of these last two on the Web at http://www.alexanderstreet2.com/NWLDlive/
From her home in Chelsea, Massachusetts, Sarah Cary wrote to her son, Samuel, in July 1792, casually expressing her thoughts on the subject of converting Native Americans to Christianity. In his address to Congress the previous year, President Washington had outlined America’s policy toward Indians, including “civilizing” efforts such as education and vocational training. With federal support and sociocultural blessings, much of this latter work continued that which had already been undertaken by missionaries from several Christian denominations. Unlike most of her contemporaries, however, Sarah Cary gently advocates respect for religious differences rather than proselytizing in the name of civilization. At the same time, she betrays a typical turn-of-the-nineteenth-century attitude toward “inherent” racial characteristics.
My Dear Sam, …
I answered fully, I think, your letter of March 27th, excepting only that part mentioning Richard Cary’s having attempted the conversion of the Indians to the Christian religion. Where, dear Sam, did you get such information? It is new to me. He was aide-decamp to Washington, and conducted with the greatest propriety during the late war. You have often heard me mention him for his pleasing address. There was always since my remembrance a Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, with how much success I am not able to tell, but I am rather inclined to believe very little; for I remember, about twenty-two years since, one Indian who was converted, and afterwards brought here by one of our clergy, and really so far civilized as to be introduced into our meeting-houses, where he actually preached several times, but, like poor puss in the fable, he could not disguise his natural propensities, one of which was the immoderate use of strong drink. New England rum, I am told, is a temptation the best of those poor creatures can never withstand, and which baffles all the eloquence of those who wish a reform among them. As to their religion, there are various accounts about it. Some say they worship the sun, and at break of day every person upward of twelve years old goes to the waterside until sunrise, then offers tobacco to this planet, and does the same again at sunset; that they acknowledge one Supreme God, but do not adore him, believing him to be too far exalted above them, and too happy in himself to be concerned about the trifling affairs of poor mortals. My dear Sam, is not the particular mode of their worship as acceptable to their Maker as ours? Why are we arrogantly to presume to dictate to any sect of people if they have not the advantages of Christianity revealed to them? Neither will the fruits of that holy religion be expected to influence their conduct. For wise purposes, no doubt, have our doctrines been withheld from them. The Judge of all the earth will do right. He is the great Creator of all, and doubtless receives with equal condescension the worship of the Pagan and the Christian. Do these sentiments agree with yours? …
Farewell, my dear boy,
and believe me to be
Yours most affectionately, S. Cary.
One of the earliest problems confronting the new American government was the settlement of its western boundary. There was some ambivalence about the validity of American title to the Northwest Territory under the Treaty of Paris (1783), so post–Revolutionary negotiations with Indian representatives ostensibly permitted white settlement between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. After the demise of the Iroquois Confederacy, however, this was contested, and warfare erupted again on the frontier. American forces under General Anthony Wayne (1745–1796) eventually defeated Miami, Shawnee, and Delaware resistance to U.S. sovereignty at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near Toledo) in August 1794. In anticipation of yet another round of negotiations, Secretary of War Timothy Pickering (1745–1829) wrote a long letter to General Wayne in the spring of 1795 with detailed instructions for what eventually became the Treaty of Greenville. His letter contains an implicit respect for the rights and intelligence of Native Americans that is a contrast to the patronizing efforts of subsequent federal and religious policy.
Source: Richard C. Knopf, ed., Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms … The Wayne-Knox-Pickering-McHenry Correspondence (Pittsburgh, 1959), pp. 393–403; reproduced in The Annals of America, vol. 3, 1784–1796: Organizing the New Nation (Chicago and London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), pp. 583–587.
The overtures for peace which have been made by the Indians northwest of the Ohio bear the appearance of sincerity, and viewed in connection with the events of the last year, it is hardly to be doubted that their overtures have been made in good faith. Taking this for granted, it becomes necessary to communicate to you the ideas of the President of the United States relative to the terms on which peace is now to be negotiated. To gratify the usual expectation of Indians assembling for the purposes of treaty and thereby facilitate the negotiation, it is thought best to provide and forward a quantity of goods. These will amount to at least $25,000, but are to be delivered only in case of a successful treaty: except such small portions of them as humanity may call for pending the negotiation. The residue are to be delivered to them as one of the conditions for their final relinquishment of the lands which the treaty shall comprehend.
Besides the goods, you will stipulate to pay them a sum not exceeding $10,000 annually, as a further and full consideration for all the lands they relinquish.
You will consider how the goods for the treaty should be distributed. Perhaps Indians of several nations will attend, who have no sort of claim to any of the lands we shall retain: yet being present they will expect to participate; and they must participate. In what degree can be adjusted with the chiefs of the tribes who were the true owners of the land. These alone (the true owners), if they can be ascertained or agreed on, are to enjoy the annuity, the share of each nation to be fixed if possible; and it is presumed they will agree on the principles by which your calculation will be governed. They will doubtless, as formerly, manifest their wishes to recover a large part of their best hunting ground as necessary to their subsistence; but the annuity is intended to compensate them for the loss of game, while its amount granted under the present circumstances will evince the liberality of the United States.
With respect to the general boundary line, that described in the treaty made at Fort Harmar January 9, 1789, will still be satisfactory to the United States; and you will urge it accordingly.
The reservations of diverse pieces of land for trading posts, as in the tenth article of the Treaty of Fort Harmar, and the strip six miles wide from the River Rosine to Lake St. Clair in the eleventh article, as a convenient appendage to Detroit, to give room for settlements, it is desirable to have retained for those uses. Some of the military posts which are already established, or which you may judge necessary to have established to preserve or complete a chain of communication from the Ohio to the Miami of the Lake; and from the Miami villages to the head of the Wabash, and down the same to the Ohio and from the Miami villages down to the mouth of the Miami River at Lake Erie, it will also be desirable to secure: but all these cessions are not to be insisted on; for peace and not increase of territory has been the object of this expensive war. Yet, the success of the last campaign authorizes a demand of some indemnification for the blood and treasure expended. Such a boundary line, therefore, as would formerly have been acquiesced in, for the sake of peace, will not now be proposed.
The Treaty of Harmar, as you have announced to the chiefs, is to be the basis of the new treaty. … All the lands north and west of this general boundary line to which, by virtue of former treaties with the western Indians, the United States have claims, may be relinquished excepting:
1. The lands which being occupied by the British troops and subjects, and the Indian title to the same being extinguished, were ceded by Great Britain in full right to the United States by the treaty of 1783.
2. Those detached pieces of land on which you have established or shall think proper to establish military posts to form or complete a chain of communication between the Miami of the Ohio and the Miami of Lake Erie, and by the latter from the Lake to Fort Wayne and thence to the Wabash and down the same to the Ohio.
3. The 150,000 acres granted to General Clarke for himself and his warriors near the rapids of the Ohio.
4. The lands in possession of the French people and other white settlers among them, who hold their lands by the consent of the United States.
5. The military posts now occupied by the troops of the United States on the Wabash and the Ohio.
The object of these reservations may be explained to the Indians. They are not destined for their annoyance, or to impose the smallest restraint on their enjoyment of their lands, but to connect the settlements of the people of the United States by rendering a passage from one to the other more practicable and convenient. These posts will also prove convenient to the Indians themselves, as traders may reside at some or all of them to supply them with goods. For these reasons some land about each of these posts, not less than two square miles, should also be reserved, together with a right of passage from one to another.
If the Indians are sincere, and desire to have our friendship, they cannot object to these means of useful intercourse, which will cement that friendship while they will afford a very necessary and important accommodation to the people of the United States, and in the way of trade to the Indians themselves. …
The treaties heretofore made with the western Indians have comprised a number of nations; and if there be any truth in their pretensions of late years their interests are blended together. Hence may result the necessity of continuing their former mode of treating. And their uniting in one instrument will save much time and trouble, and prevent tedious and perhaps inconvenient altercations among themselves about their boundaries which are often extremely vague. For instance, the chiefs of the Six Nations last autumn declared that their title to the lands between the Allegany and French Creek on the east and the Muskingum and Cuyahoga on the west was acknowledged by all the western Indians. But when I pressed them on this point to cede that tract to the United States, they confessed that the four most hostile tribes denied their right to it. I am well satisfied that whatever claim the Six Nations might formerly have to the lands westward of the Allegany, they long ago relinquished the same to the Delawares, and others of the present western Indians. The relinquishment of the country, therefore, to the United States by the Six Nations I consider as affording us but the shadow of a title to it.
The principal reasons given by the western Indians for not adhering to the treaties of Fort McIntonsh, Miami, and Fort Harmar have been these:
1. That the chiefs who treated were not an adequate representation of the nations to whom the lands belonged.
2. That they were compelled by threats to subscribe some of the treaties.
3. That the claim of the United States to the full property of the Indians’ lands, under color of the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain, was unfounded and unjust.
To prevent a repetition of such complaints you will use every practicable means to obtain a full representation of all the nations claiming property in the lands in question. And to obviate future doubts it may be expedient to get lists of all the principal and other chiefs of each nation to ascertain who are absent, and whether those present may be fairly considered as an adequate representation of their nation. The explanations and declarations of the chiefs on this point may be noted, and subscribed by them upon each list.
As they will be collected within your power at Greenville, it will highly concern the honor and justice of the United States that strong and decided proofs be given them that they are not under even the shadow of duress. Let them feel that they are at perfect liberty to speak their sentiments, and to sign or refuse to sign such a treat as you are now authorized to negotiate.
The unfortunate construction put by the first commissioners on our treaty of peace with Great Britain and thence continued by General [Arthur] St. Clair in 1789 has since been repeatedly renounced. The commissioners who went to Canada in 1793 were explicit on this head in their messages to the western Indians—copies whereof you will receive. As this construction grasped the whole Indian country southward of the great Lakes and eastward of the Mississippi as the full and absolute property of the United States, a construction as unfounded in itself as it was unintelligible and mysterious to the Indians—a construction which, with the use made of it by the British advisors of those Indians, has probably been the mainspring of the distressing war on our frontiers—it cannot be too explicitly renounced. At the same time you will carefully explain and maintain the preemption right of the United States. Some delicacy, however, will be required to state even this claim without exciting their displeasure. If the land is theirs (and this we acknowledge) they will say “Why shall we not sell it to whom we please?” Perhaps in some such way as the following it may be rendered inoffensive.
The white nations, in their treaties with one another, agree on certain boundaries, beyond which neither is to advance a step. In America, where these boundaries agreed on by the white people pass along the countries of the Indians, the meaning of the treaties is this: that one white nation shall not purchase or take possession of any Indian land beyond their own boundary so agreed on, even although the Indians should offer to sell or give it to them. The individuals indeed have often attempted to purchase and possess such lands, but being bound by the treaty of their nation, their purchases and possessions have no strength, and the other nation has a right to dispossess and drive them off.
So likewise the individuals of a white nation have not right to purchase and possess Indian lands within the boundaries of their own nations, unless the nation consents. For each white nation makes certain rules about Indian lands, which everyone of the people is obliged to follow. The most important of these rules is that which forbids individuals taking hold of Indian lands without the consent of the nation. When individuals do such things, it is because they wish to cheat not only the Indians but their own nation, which, therefore, has a right to punish them and take away the lands so unlawfully obtained. The United States has made such a rule, the design of which is to protect the Indian lands against such bad men.
… One great principle ought to govern all public negotiations—a rigid adherence to truth—a principle that is essential in negotiations with Indians if we would gain their permanent confidence and a useful influence over them. Jealousy is strongest in minds uninformed, so that the utmost purity and candor will hardly escape suspicion. Suspicions occasion delays, and issue in discontents, and these in depredations and war.
This constitution was adopted in May 1794 and published in the 1795 edition of the local directory, the New-York Register. The society met on the first Thursday of the month, but its seven-member Committee of Conference and Correspondence assembled every Friday evening to address the immediate needs of immigrant applicants looking for work or charity. It was unique in that it did not distinguish between foreigners as did other late-eighteenth-century Irish, English, and Scottish fraternal groups such as the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the St. George Society, and the St. Andrew Society.
Source: “The New-York Society for the Information and Assistance of Persons Emigrating from Foreign Countries,” New-York Register, 1795; collection of the New-York Historical Society, reprinted in America Begins in New York: The Peopling of New York City, A Teachers’ Resource Manual on Immigration (A New York City 100 Collaborative Project, 1998), p. 183.
It is certainly a fact, that emigrants from one country to another, are liable to numberless unforeseen disappointments—it is equally true, that change of diet, and confinement on board of vessels, together with difference of climate, often produce diseases, which sometimes prove fatal; nor will it be denied, that in some instances, a little friendly interference might rescue persons from being the victims of misfortune.
To those in affluent circumstances, who may wish for information, the Society can only offer their individual friendship, congratulate them on their safe arrival, and wish them success and happiness.
Those in middling circumstances, who may wish for information, the Society refer to their committee, who will always be ready to shew [sic] them any friendly office in their power.
But to the unfortunate, the sick, the friendless, and the needy, the Society address themselves in a peculiar manner. They request them not to suffer their spirits to droop; and assure them that upon application to either of the committee, their cases will be taken into immediate consideration.
Should any indigent person be so unfortunate as to arrive in a state of sickness, the Society have the happiness to inform them, that their Physician will always be ready to give them every necessary attendance, free of expence [sic].
Those who may wish for immediate employ, have an opportunity of applying to the Register of the Society, who keeps a regular entry of all applications for employ, as well as an account of applications for artificers, labourers, &c.
The republican tradition carried an implicit distrust of the Old World and old ways that soon put American ideals to the test. In a “new” country dependent for growth upon immigration, citizenship was taken seriously and the power to enact naturalization laws was reserved in the Constitution. The turmoil of the French Revolution increased the number of French émigrés in the United States. There was a concomitant rise in nativist sentiment based on the fear that foreigners, especially those with French sympathies like the Irish, might also be radicals. Congress responded in January 1795 by increasing the residency requirement for naturalization—from the two years mandated under the Act of 1790—to five years. This set a disturbing precedent that would be used again in 1798 to raise the term to fourteen years.
Source: “The Naturalization of Immigrants, 1795,” in John P. Sanderson, The Views and Opinions of American Statesmen on Foreign Immigration (Philadelphia, 1856), pp. 128–129; reproduced in The Annals of America, vol. 3, 1784–1796: Organizing the New Nation (Chicago and London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), pp. 581–582.
Any alien, being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States, or any of them, on the following conditions and not otherwise. First, he shall have declared, on oath or affirmation, before the Supreme, Superior, District, or Circuit Court of some one of the states, or of the territories northwest or south of the Ohio River, or a Circuit or District Court of the United States, three years at least before his admission, that it was, bon fide, his intention to become a citizen of the United States, and to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty whereof such alien may at that time be a citizen or subject.
Second, he shall, at the time of his application to be admitted, declare on oath or affirmation before some one of the courts aforesaid that he has resided within the United States five years at least, and within the state or territory where such court is at the time held, one year at least; that he will support the Constitution of the United States; and that he does absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty whatever, and particularly by name the prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty whereof he was before a citizen or subject; which proceedings shall be recorded by the clerk of the court.
Third, the court admitting such alien shall be satisfied that he has resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States five years. It shall further appear to their satisfaction that during that time he has behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.
Fourth, in case the alien applying to be admitted to citizenship shall have borne any hereditary title, or been of any of the orders of nobility, in the kingdom or state from which he came, he shall, in addition to the above requisites, make an express renunciation of his title or order of nobility in the court to which his application shall be made; which renunciation shall be recorded in said court. …
And be it further enacted, that the children of persons duly naturalized, dwelling within the United States, and being under the age of twenty-one years at the time of such naturalization, and the children of citizens of the United States born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States. The right of citizenship shall not descend on persons whose fathers have never been resident of the United States. No person heretofore proscribed by any state, or who has been legally convicted of having joined the army of Great Britain during the late war, shall be admitted as aforesaid, without the consent of the legislature of the state in which such person was proscribed.
America’s biggest international relations headache in the 1790s was France, where a new government refused to respect United States delegates or mercantile ships. There was growing consensus that war between the two countries was inevitable, and it was in this climate of fear that, on June 25, 1798, Congress authorized the Alien Act, the second of four restrictive laws passed in as many weeks. This act authorized the president of the United States—at the time John Adams—to deport any foreign-born national suspected of anti-American activities and to imprison anyone who defied such a deportation order for up to three years. In addition, provision was made to provide foreigners with a “license” valid for a certain period of years, subject to good behavior while in the country. Such broad executive powers were not expropriated without protest. Edward Livingston (1764–1836) of New York spoke out against the Alien Act during the congressional debates on June 21st, but the bill was passed over his objections. Although its implications were quite real for French and Irish immigrants, its provisions were never actually enforced.
Source: Edward Livingston, “Against the Alien Act,” Debates, 5 Congress, pp. 2006–2015; reproduced in The Annals of America, vol. 4, 1797–1820: Domestic Expansion and Foreign Entanglements (Chicago and London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), pp. 49–52.
The state of things, if we are to judge from the complexion of the bill, must be that a number of aliens enjoying the protection of our government, were plotting its destruction; that they are engaged in treasonable machinations against a people who have given them an asylum and support; and that there is no provision to provide for their expulsion and punishment. …
We must legislate upon facts, not on surmises; we must have evidence, not vague suspicions, if we meant to legislate with prudence. What facts have been produced? What evidence had been submitted to the House? I have heard, sir, of none; but if evidence of facts could not be procured, at least it might have been expected that reasonable cause of suspicion should be shown. Here again, gentlemen were at fault; they could not show even a suspicion why aliens ought to be suspected. We have, indeed, been told that the fate of Venice, Switzerland, and Batavia was produced by the interference of foreigners. But the instances were unfortunate, because all those powers have been overcome by foreign force, or divided by domestic faction, not by aliens who resided among them; and if any instruction was to be gained from those republics, it would be that we ought to banish not aliens but all those who did not approve of the executive acts. … it yet remains to show that any such plots have been detected, or are even reasonably suspected here.
… No evidence then being produced, we have a right to say that none exists and yet we are about to sanction a most important act; and on what ground—our individual suspicions, our private fears, our overheated imaginations. Seeing nothing to excite those suspicions, and not feeling those fears, I could not give my assent to the bill, even if I did not feel a superior obligation to reject it on other grounds.
As far as my own observation goes, I have seen nothing like the state of things contemplated by the bill. Most of the aliens I have seen were either triumphant Englishmen or Frenchmen, with dejection in their countenances and grief at their hearts, preparing to quit the country and seek another asylum. But if these plots exist, if this treason is apparent, if there are aliens guilty of the crimes ascribed to them, an effectual remedy presents itself for the evil. We have already wise laws, we have upright judges and vigilant magistrates, and there is no necessity of arming the executive with the destructive power proposed by the bill now on your table. The laws now in force are competent to punish every treasonable or seditious attempt.
But grant, sir—what, however, has not been supported by fact—grant that these fears are not visionary, that the dangers are imminent, and that no existing law is sufficient to avert them, let us examine whether the provisions of the bill are conformable to the principles of the Constitution. If it should be found to contravene them, I trust it will lose many of its present supporters; but if not only contrary to the general spirit and principles of the Constitution, it should also be found diametrically opposite to the most express prohibitions, I cannot doubt that it would be rejected with that indignant decision which our duty to our country and our sacred oath demands.
The 1st Section provides, that it shall be lawful for the president “to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof, to depart out of the United States, in such time as shall be expressed in such order.”
Our government, sir, is founded on the establishment of those principles which constitute the difference between a free Constitution and a despotic power; a distribution of the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers into several hands; a distribution strongly marked in the three first and great divisions of the Constitution—by the first, all legislative power is given to Congress; the second vests all legislative functions in the president; and the third declares that the judiciary powers shall be exercised by the Supreme and inferior courts. Here then is a division of the governmental powers strongly marked, decisively pronounced, and every act of one or all of the branches that tends to confound these powers, or alter this arrangement, must be destructive of the Constitution. Examine then, sir, the bill on your able and declare whether the few lines I have repeated from the 1st Section do not confound these fundamental powers of government, vest them all in the more unqualified terms in one hand, and thus subvert the basis on which our liberties rest.
… By it the president alone is empowered to make the law, to fix in his mind what acts, what words, what thoughts or looks, shall constitute the crime contemplated by the bill, that is the crime of being “suspected to be dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” He is not only authorized to make this law for his own conduct but to vary it at pleasure, as every gust of passion, every cloud of suspicion, shall agitate or darken his mind. The same power that formed the law, then, applies it to the guilty or innocent victim, whom his own suspicions, or the secret whisper of a spy, have designated as its object. The president, then, having made the law, the president having construed and applied it, the same president is by the bill authorized to execute his sentence, in case of disobedience, by imprisonment during his pleasure. This, then, comes completely within the definition of despotism—a union of legislative, executive, and judicial powers.
… here the law is so closely concealed in the same mind that gave it birth—the crime is “exciting the suspicions of the president,” but no man can tell what conduct will avoid that suspicion—a careless word, perhaps misrepresented, or never spoken, may be sufficient evidence; a look may destroy, an idle gesture may insure punishment no innocence can protect, no circumspection can avoid the jealously of suspicion; surrounded by spies, informers, and all that infamous herd which fatten under laws like this, the unfortunate stranger will never know either of the law, of the accusation, or of the judgment until the moment it is put in execution …
… No indictment; no jury; no trial; no public procedure; no statement of the accusation; no examination of the witnesses in its support; no counsel for defense; all is darkness, silence, mystery, and suspicion.
But, as if this were not enough the unfortunate victims of this law are told in the next section that if they can convince the president that his suspicions are unfounded, he may, if he pleases, give them a license to stay. But, how remove his suspicions when they know not on what act they were founded? Miserable mockery of justice! Appoint an arbitrary judge armed with legislative and executive powers added to his own! Let him condemn the unheard, the uncaused object of his suspicion; and then to cover the injustice of the scene, gravely tell him, you ought not to complain—you need only disprove facts that you have never heard—remove suspicions that have never been communicated to you; it will be easy to convince your judge, whom you shall not approach, that he is tyrannical and unjust; and, having done this, we give him the power he had before, to pardon you if he pleases. …
Sagoyewatha (c. 1758–1830), also called Red Jacket, was a Seneca chief among the party of Indians who agreed to discuss Christian proselytizing efforts with Reverend Cram of the Boston Missionary Society at Buffalo Creek in 1805. Red Jacket had fought with the British against the Americans during the Revolution; subsequently, he met with George Washington and urged support for the United States. His tribe, the Senecas, were part of the Iroquois confederation of upstate New York (along with the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Tuscarora), whose tribal organization was matrilineal—a concept that was shocking to Europeans. Their thinking on religion was equally at odds with Western culture, albeit damningly logical, as this excerpt from Red Jacket’s speech illustrates.
Source: Red Jacket, “Against White Missions Among the Indians,” in A Library of American Literature, Edmund C. Stedman and Ellen M. Hutchinson, eds., vol. 4 (New York, 1889), reproduced in The Annals of America, vol. 4, 1797–1820: Domestic Expansion and Foreign Entanglements (Chicago and London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), pp. 195–196.
You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind, and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not only to us, but why did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?
Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?
Brother, we do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.
Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all, but He has made a great difference between His white and red children. He has given us different complexions and different customs. To you He has given the arts. To these He has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since He has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that He has given us a different religion according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for His children; we are satisfied.
Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.
Brother, you say you have not come to get our land or our money but to enlighten our minds. I will now tell you that I have been at your meetings and saw you collect money from the meeting. I cannot tell what this money was intended for, but suppose that it was for your minister, and if we should conform to your way of thinking, perhaps you may want some from us.
Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said.
Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey and return you safe to your friends.
The largest contingent of non—English-speaking people resident in eighteenth-century America were Germans. The language barrier fostered separate communal organization, including mutual aid associations established in Philadelphia (1764), Charleston (1766), Baltimore (1783), and New York (1784). Most of their membership was drawn from Germans who were craftsmen or merchants. At the turn of the nineteenth century there was a significant downturn in emigration from Germany, and the original mandate of these societies—to protect emigrants from exploitation—lost its impetus. In 1799 the United German Benefit Society of Philadelphia adopted bylaws to which it made a number of subsequent additions before ordering a bilingual printing in 1806. The following translation from the original German indicates that welfare fraud was the new preoccupation, as some members took advantage of the society’s full coffers to falsely claim sick benefits, running the risk of social ostracism if caught.
Source: United German Benefit Society, By-Laws of the United German Benefit Society: Agreed upon at Various Meetings (Philadelphia: Conrad Zentler, 1806), p. 2.
2ND APRIL 1799
With reference to sick members in certain cases
When a member reports sick, and is visited by a supervisor, who however becomes suspicious, or should another member of the Society express doubts, the Presidents or Vice-Presidents should be immediately informed. Some of the Presidents should have the authority to summon an appropriate doctor to visit the patient to determine whether the sickness or indisposition is genuine or not. One of the Presidents, and at least one supervisor, should be present. The doctor should deliver an opinion in writing, and date it. This should remain in the hands of the President until the next scheduled meeting. If the doctor is of the opinion that the patient is malingering, the supervisor should withhold the weekly payment specified in the ninth section of the Constitution. The President shall report the full circumstances to the next meeting of the Society, of which the accused member shall have received notice from the Secretary at least twenty-four hours prior to the meeting. The accused shall he present to defend himself, or be represented by a plenipotentiary. If he fails to appear after receiving the notification, he shall not be entitled to demand another opportunity to defend himself. If two-thirds of the members present agree, he shall be deemed unworthy to remain a member of the Society, and in accordance with the seventh section of the Constitution decreeing the fate of anyone who attempts to defraud the Society, his name shall be struck from the membership list, he shall be declared a cheat, and he shall forfeit everything he has contributed to the funds of the Society Treasury.
One of the major humanitarian efforts gathering force in the early nineteenth century was the movement to end the slave trade, spearheaded by Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1807 Great Britain, a longtime beneficiary of the trade’s profits, became the first country to abolish traffic in human beings. The United States quickly followed suit, enacting legislation to take effect on New Year’s Day, 1808. It prohibited the importation of slaves but did not make slavery itself illegal. This is an important distinction. The wording of the act was specific, creating a careful list of prohibitions to cover all conceivable possibilities for circumventing the law. It also indicates the extent to which other economic sectors such as longshore work—employing many white immigrants—would be impacted by the abolition of the slave trade.
Source: “Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves, March 2, 1807” (U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 2, p. 426 ff.); reproduced in Henry Steele Commager and Milton Cantor, eds., Documents of American History, vol. 1, to 1898 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988), pp. 197–198.
An Act to prohibit the importation of Slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and eight.
Be it enacted, That from and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eight, it shall not be lawful to import or bring into the United States or the territories thereof from any foreign kingdom, place, or country, any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, as a slave, or to be held to service or labour.
Sec. 2. That no citizen of the United States, or any other person, shall, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight, for himself, or themselves, or any other person whatsoever, either as master, factor, or owner, build, fit, equip, load or otherwise prepare any ship or vessel, in any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, nor shall cause any ship or vessel to sail from any port or place within the same, for the purpose of procuring any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, from any foreign kingdom, place, or country, to be transported to any port or place whatsoever within the jurisdiction of the United States, to be held to service or labour: and if any ship or vessel shall be so fitted out for the purpose aforesaid, every such ship or vessel, her tackle, apparel, and furniture, shall be forfeited to the United States, and shall be liable to be seized, prosecuted, and condemned in any of the circuit courts or district courts, for the district where the said ship or vessel may be found or seized. …
Sec. 4. If any citizen or citizens of the United States, or any person resident within the jurisdiction of the same, shall, from and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eight, take on board, receive or transport from any of the coasts or kingdoms of Africa, or from any other foreign kingdom, place, or country, any negro, mulatto, or person of colour in any ship or vessel, for the purpose of selling them in any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States as slaves, or to be held to service or labour, or shall be in any ways aiding or abetting therein, such citizen or citizens, or person, shall severally forfeit and pay five thousand dollars, one moiety thereof to the use of any person or persons who shall sue for and prosecute the same to effect. …
Sec. 6. That if any person or persons whatsoever, shall, from and after the first day or January, one thousand eight hundred and eight, purchase or sell any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, for a slave, or to be held to service or labour, who shall have been imported, or brought from any foreign kingdom, place, or country, or from the dominions of any foreign state, immediately adjoining to the United States, after the last day of December, one thousand eight hundred and seven, knowing at the time of such purchase or sale, such negro, mulatto, or person of colour, was so brought within the jurisdiction of the United States, as aforesaid, such purchaser and seller shall severally forfeit and pay for every negro, mulatto, or person of colour, so purchased or sold as aforesaid, eight hundred dollars. …
Sec. 7. That if any ship or vessel shall be found, from and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eight, in any river, port, bay, or harbor, or on the high seas, within the jurisdictional limits of the United States, or hovering on the coast thereof, having on board any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, for the purpose of selling them as slaves, or with intent to land the same, in any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, contrary to the prohibition of the act, every such ship or vessel, together with her tackle, apparel, and furniture, and the goods or effects which shall be found on board the same, shall be forfeited to the use of the United States, and may be seized, prosecuted, and condemned, in any court of the United States, having jurisdiction thereof. And it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, and he is hereby authorized, should he deem it expedient, to cause any of the armed vessels of the United States to be manned and employed to cruise on any part of the coast of the United States, or territories thereof, where he may judge attempts will be made to violate the provisions of this act, and to instruct and direct the commanders of armed vessels of the United States, to seize, take, and bring into any port of the United States all such ships or vessels, and moreover to seize, take, or bring into any port of the U.S. all ships or vessel of the U.S. wheresoever found on the high seas, contravening the provisions of this act, to be proceeded against according to law. …
Late in October 1810 Margaret Van Horn Dwight (1790–1834), the niece of the president of Yale University, was en route from New Haven, Connecticut, to Warren, Ohio. In her diary she recorded not only her observations of German immigrants but her very palpable fear of them. To her horror, the Sabbath forced her party to spend two particularly memorable nights at a “Dutch” tavern in Hanover, near Bethlehem in the German heartland of rural Pennsylvania.
Source: Max Farrand, ed., A Journey to Ohio in 1810: As Recorded in the Journal of Margaret Van Horn Dwight (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912), pp. 16–20; electronic version at http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/asp/NAWLD
I can wait no longer to write you, for I have a great deal to say—I should not have thought it possible to pass a Sabbath in our country among such a dissolute vicious set of wretches as we are now among—I believe at least 50 dutchmen have been here to day to smoke, drink, swear, pitch cents, almost dance, laugh & talk dutch && stare at us—They come in, in droves young & old—black & white—women & children—It is dreadful to see so many people that you cannot speak to or understand—They are all high dutch, but I hope not a true specimen of the Pennsylvanians generally—Just as we set down to tea, in came a dozen or two of women, each with a child in her arms, & stood round the room—I did not know but they had come in a body to claim me as one of their kin, for they all resemble me—but as they said nothing to me, I concluded they came to see us Yankees, as they would a learned pig—The women dress in striped linsey woolsey petticoats & short gowns not 6 inches in length—they look very strangely—The men dress much better—they put on their best cloaths on sunday, which I suppose is their only holiday, & “keep it up” as they call it–A stage came on from Bethlehem & stopt here, with 2 girls & a well dress’d fellow who sat between them an arm round each—They were probably going to the next town to a dance or a frolic of some kind-for the driver, who was very familiar with them, said he felt just right for a frolic—I suspect more liquor has been sold to day than all the week besides—The children have been calling us Yankees (which is the only english word they can speak) all day long—Whether it was meant as a term of derision or not, I neither know nor care—of this I am sure, they cannot feel more contempt for me than I do for them;—tho’ I most sincerely pity their ignorance & folly—There seems to be no hope of their improvement as they will not attend to any means—After saying so much about the people, I will describe our yesterday’s ride—but first I will describe our last nights lodging—Susan & me ask’d to go to bed—& Mrs W spoke to Mr Riker the landlord—(for no woman was visible)—So he took up a candle to light us & we ask’d Mrs W to go up with us, for we did not dare go alone—when we got into a room he went to the bed & open’d it for us, while we were almost dying with laughter, & then stood waiting with the candle for us to get into bed—but Mrs W—as soon as she could speak, told him she would wait & bring down the candle & he then left us—I never laugh’d so heartily in my life—Our bed to sleep on was straw, & then a feather bed for covering—The pillows contain’d nearly a single handful of feathers, & were cover’d with the most curious & dirty patchwork, I ever saw—We had one bedquilt & one sheet—I did not undress at all, for I expected dutchmen in every moment & you may suppose slept very comfortably in that expectation—Mr & Mrs W, & another woman slept in the same room—When the latter came to bed, the man came in & open’d her bed also, after we were all in bed in the middle of the night, I was awaken’d by the entrance of three dutchmen, who were in search of a bed—I was almost frightened to death—but Mr W at length heard & stopt them before they had quite reach’d our bed—Before we were dress’d the men were at the door—which could not fasten, looking at us—I think wild Indians will be less terrible to me, than these creatures—Nothing vexes me more than to see them set & look at us & talk in dutch and laugh—Now for our ride—After we left Mansfield, we cross’d the longest hills, and the worst road, I ever saw—two or three times after riding a little distance on turnpike, we found it fenced across & were oblig’d to turn into a wood where it was almost impossible to proceed—large trees were across, not the road for there was none, but the only place we could possibly ride—It appear’d to me, we had come to an end of the habitable part of the globe—but all these difficulties were at last surmounted, & we reach’d the Delaware—The river where it is cross’d, is much smaller than I suppos’d—The bridge over it is elegant I think—It is covered & has 16 windows each side—As soon as we pass’d the bridge, we enter’d Easton, the first town in Pennsylvania—It is a small but pleasant town—the houses are chiefly small, & built of stone—very near together—The meeting house, Bank, & I think, market, are all of the same description—There are a few very handsome brick houses, & some wooden buildings—From Easton, we came to Bethlehem, which is 12 miles distant from it—Mr W. went a mile out of his way, that we might see the town—It contains almost entirely dutch people—The houses there are nearly all stone—but like Easton it contains some pretty brick houses—It has not half as many stores as Easton—The meeting house is a curious building—it looks like a castle—I suppose it is stone,—the outside is plaister’d—We left our waggon to view the town—we did not know whether the building was a church or the moravian school, so we enquir’d of 2 or 3 men who only answer’d in dutch—Mr & Mrs W were purchasing bread, & Susan & I walk’d on to enquire—we next saw a little boy on horseback, & he could only say “me cannot english” but he I believe, spoke to another, for a very pretty boy came near us & bow’d & expecting us to speak, which we soon did; & he pointed out the school & explained the different buildings to us as well as he was able; but we found it difficult to understand him, for he could but just “english”—We felt very much oblig’d to him, though we neglected to tell him so—He is the only polite dutchman small or great, we have yet seen; & I am unwilling to suppose him a dutchman.
Church and state were officially separated by the Constitution, yet, by default, much early national education was denominational. In the absence of a formal school system, “education” was often only available through associations that used religious texts to teach reading and writing. Catholic and Jewish parents were naturally averse to having their children educated from the Protestant Bible and established their own schools as soon as practicable. Nevertheless, government financial aid to schools run by religious groups was not equitable, as a second petition by Congregation Shearith Israel to the New York State Legislature in 1811 illustrates. New York City was home to most of the country’s small American Jewish population before the middle of the nineteenth century. Shearith Israel had been a city institution since 1654, and its Sephardic synagogue on Mill Street was nearly eighty years old at the time this petition was presented. De Witt Clinton (1769–1828) wrote it for Shearith Israel and helped secure its approval in Albany, but success was short-lived. By 1825 New York would cut all public funding for schools.
Source: “Petition of the Trustees of the Congregation of Shearith Israel, 1811” in Alexander M. Duskin, ed., Jewish Education in New York City (New York, 1918), reproduced in The Annals of America, vol. 4, 1797–1820: Domestic Expansion and Foreign Entanglements (Chicago and London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), p. 282.
The Petition of the Trustees of the Congregation of Shearith Israel in the city of New York most respectfully represent:
That from the year 1793 a school has been supported from the funds of the said congregation for the education of their indigent children. That on the 8th of April, 1801, certain school monies were distributed among seven charity schools of the said city supported by religious societies. That the free school of the Roman Catholic Church and that of your memorialists were overlooked in this benevolent distribution.
That on the 21st of March, 1806, a law was passed placing the school of the former on the same footing as the others. That your memorialists also made application to the legislature, but did not succeed, owing, as they presume, to the pressure of business.
Your memorialists, fully persuaded that the legislature will look with an equal eye upon all occupations of people who conduct themselves as good and faithful citizens, and conscious that nothing has been omitted on their part to deserve the same countenance and encouragement which has been exhibited to others, do most respectfully pray your honorable body to extend the same relief to their charity school which has been granted to all others in this city.
In March of 1813 Fr. Anthony Kohlmann was subpoenaed to testify against two black men and a white immigrant couple accused, respectively, of theft and receiving stolen goods. Kohlmann was an Alsatian Jesuit assigned to New York City’s first Catholic parish, St. Peter’s, on Barclay Street. One of the thieves had confessed the crime to Fr. Kohlmann, and the priest was the intermediary in the return of the stolen property to its original owner, an Irish coppersmith. Called to the witness stand and sworn in, Fr. Kohlmann asked to be excused from answering questions that might reveal the identity of the confessor. The court had to consider whether he was entitled to such an exemption. The resulting examination was the first legal test of the constitutional right to freedom of religious expression. It was particularly sensitive because it involved Catholic immigrants whose loyalty many Americans already suspected. At a special session, counsellor William Sampson (1764–1836), an Irish Protestant exiled to the United States for political reasons, argued Fr. Kohlmann’s case with reference to the harsh penal laws Britain had instituted against Catholics in Ireland. The following is an excerpt from the decision of the court delivered by the presiding judge, De Witt Clinton, Mayor of New York City.
Source: William Sampson, “The Catholic Question in America: Whether a Roman Catholic Clergyman be in any case compellable to disclose the secrets of Auricular Confession” (N.Y.: Edward Gillespy, 1813; facsimile reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1974), pp. 111–114.
In this country there is no alliance between church and state; no established religion; no tolerated religion—for toleration results from establishment—but religious freedom guaranteed by the constitution, and consecrated by the social compact.
It is essential to the free exercise of a religion, that its ordinances should be administered—that its ceremonies as well as its essentials should be protected. The sacraments of a religion are its most important elements. We have but two in the Protestant Church—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—and they are considered the seals of the covenant of grace. Suppose that a decision of this court, or a law of the state should prevent the administration of one or both of these sacraments, would not the constitution be violated, and the freedom of religion infringed? Every man who hears me will answer in the affirmative. Will not the same result follow, if we deprive the Roman catholic of one of his ordinances? Secrecy is of the essence of penance. The sinner will not confess, nor will the priest receive his confession, if the veil of secrecy is removed: To decide that the minister shall promulgate what he receives in confession, is to declare that there shall be no penance; and this important branch of the Roman catholic religion would be thus annihilated.
It has been contended that the provision of the constitution which speaks of practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of the state, excludes this case from the protection of the constitution, and authorizes the interference of this tribunal to coerce the witness. In order to sustain this position, it must be clearly made out that the concealment observed in the sacrament of penance, is a practice inconsistent with the peace or safety of the state.
The Roman catholic religion has existed from an early period of christianity—at one time it embraced almost all Christendom, and it now covers the greater part. The objections which have been made to penance, have been theological, not political. The apprehensions which have been entertained of this religion, have reference to the supremacy, and dispensing power, attributed to the bishop of Rome, as head of the catholic church—but we are yet to learn, that the confession of sins has ever been considered as of pernicious tendency, in any other respect than its being a theological error—or its having been sometimes in the hands of bad men, perverted to the purposes of peculation, an abuse inseperable [sic] from all human agencies.
… The question is not, whether penance may sometimes communicate the existence of an offence [sic] to a priest, which he is bound by his religion to conceal, and the concealment of which, may be a public injury, but whether the natural tendency of it is to produce practices inconsistent with the public safety or tranquility. There is in fact, no secret known to the priest, which would be communicated otherwise, than by confession—and no evil results from this communication—on the contrary, it may be made the instrument of great good. The sinner may be admonished and converted from the evil of his ways: Whereas if his offence [sic] was locked up in his own bosom, there would be no friendly voice to recal [sic] him from his sins, and no paternal hand to point out to him the road to virtue.
The language of the constitution is emphatic and striking, it speaks of acts of licentiousness, of practices inconsistent with the tranquility and safety of the state; it has reference to something actually, not negatively injurious. To acts committed, not to acts omitted—offences of a deep dye, and of an extensively injurious nature: It would be stretching it on the rack so say, that it can possibly contemplate the forbearance of a Roman catholic priest, to testify what he has received in confession, or that it could ever consider the safety of the community involved in this question. To assert this as the genuine meaning of the constitution, would be to mock the understanding, and to render the exception broader than the rule, to subvert all the principles of sound reasoning, and overthrow all the convictions of common sense.
If a religious sect should rise up and violate the decencies of life, by practicing their religious rites, in a state of nakedness; by following incest, and a community of wives. If the Hindoo should attempt to introduce the burning of widows on the funeral piles of their deceased husbands, or the Mahometan his plurality of wives, or the Pagan his bacchanalian orgies or human sacrifices. If a fanatical sect should spring up, as formerly in the city of Munster, and pull up the pillars of society, or if any attempt should be made to establish the inquisition, then the licentious acts and dangerous practices, contemplated by the constitution, would exist, and the hand of the magistrate would be rightfully raised to chastise the guilty agents.
But until men under pretence of religion, act counter to the fundamental principals of morality, and endanger the well being of the state, they are to be protected in the free exercise of their religion. If they are in error, or if they are wicked, they are to answer to the Supreme Being, not to the unhallowed intrusion of frail fallible mortals.
We speak of this question, not in a theological sense, but in its legal and constitutional bearings. Although we differ from the witness and his brethren, in our religious creed, yet we have no reason to question the purity of their motives, or to impeach their good conduct as citizens. They are protected by the laws and constitution of this country, in the full and free exercise of their religion, and this court can never countenance or authorize the application of insult to their faith, or of torture to their consciences.
The disruption of transatlantic trade caused by the War of 1812 was more than a minor inconvenience to Captain Paul Cuffe (1759–1817), a Massachusetts entrepreneur of mixed African and Wampanoag Indian blood. It cut off vital commerce with a fledgling colony of freed slaves on the west coast of Africa. In the summer of 1813 Cuffe sent a petition to the president and Congress asking for permission to trade with Sierra Leone. American Quakers such as Cuffe had been working with London’s African Institution for a number of years to effect cultural and economic change in this unique British colony. Their goal was to substitute ivory and spices for human beings in international trade. Cuffe believed his peaceful and benevolent mission warranted an exception to wartime restrictions about trading with the enemy. Despite passing the Senate, his petition failed in the House, and it was 1815 before Cuffe could implement his planned voyage to Africa outlined below.
Source: Rosalind Cobb Wiggins, ed., Captain Paul Cuffe’s Logs and Letters, 1808–1817: A Black Quaker’s “Voice from within the Veil” (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996), pp. 252–253.
To the Presedent [sic] Senate and House of Representativess [sic] of the United States of America the memorial petition of Paul Cuffe of Westport state of Massachusetts respectfully showeth that your memorialist actuated by motives which he conceives are dictated by that philanthropy which is the offspring of Christian benevolence he is induced to ask the patronage of the Government of the United States in affording aid in the execution of a plan which he cherishes a hope may ultimately prove beneficial to his bretheren [sic] of the African race within their native climate. In order to give a compleat [sic] view of the object in contemplation it may not be considered trespassing too much upon your time to premiss [sic] some of the leading Circumstances which have led to the present application.
Your memorialist being a decendant [sic] of Africa and early instructed in habits of solicity and industry has gratefully to acknowledge the many favours of bountifully Providence both in preserving him from many of the evils to which people of his colour have too often fallen into, but also by blessing his industry with such a partion [sic] of the comforts of Life as to enable him in some degree not only to communicate but to relieve the sufferings of His fellow creaters [sic]. And having early found implanted in his head the principles of equity and Justice he could not but view the practice of his bretheren [sic] of the African Race in selling their fellow creatures into a state of slavery for life as very inconsistent with that Divine principal, and his mature age having been greatly [instructed or levelled, both crossed out in original] in the abundant Labours of many pious individuals both in this country and in England to produce a termination of the wrongs of Africa by prohibiting the slave trade and also to improve the condition of the degraded inhabitants of the Land of his ancestors. He conceived it a duty incombent [sic] upon him as a faithful stward [sic] of the mercies he had received to give up a portion of his time and his property in visiting that country and affording such means as might be in his power to promote the improvement to civilization of the Africans. Under these impressions he left his family and with the sacrafice [sic] of both time and money visited Sierra Leone and there gained such information of the country and its inhabitants as enable him to form an opinion of many improvements that appeared to him essential to the well being of that people.
These he had an oppertunity [sic] of personally communicating to several distinguished members of the Royal African Institution in London and he had the satisfaction at that time to find that his recommendations were approved by the celebrated philanthropists the Duke of Gloscester, W. Wilberforce, T. Clarkson, Wm Allen and others and has since Learned that the Institution have also so far acceeded [sic] to his plans as to make some special provisions to carry them into effect. One of these objects was to keep up an intercourse with the People of Coulour [sic] in the United States in the Expectation that some persons of reputation would feel industry sbriety [sic] and frugality amongst the nations of that country. These views having been commincates [sic] by your petition[er] to the People of Coulour [sic] in Baltimore and Philadelphia, New York and Boston they with a Zeal becoming so important a concern have manifested a disposition to promote so laudable an undertaken [sic]. And several family whose characters promise influences have come to a conclusion if proper ways could be open to go to Africa for a Temporary residence in order to give their aid in promoting the objects already adverted to your petitioner still animated with a sincere desire of making the Knowledge he has acquired and the sacrifices he has all ready made more permanently useful in promoting the Civilization of Africa solicits your aid so far as to grant permission that a Vessel may be imployed [sic] if liberty can also be obtained from the British Government between this country and Sierra Leona [sic] to transport such persons and families as may be inclined to go, as also some articles of provisions together with implements of husbandry and machinery for some michanic [sic] arts and to Bring back such of the Natives productions of that country as may be wanted. For Altho pecuniary profit does not enter into calculations in the object in contemplation nor does it afford any very promising prospects yet without a little aid from the trifling [sic] commerce of that country the expenses would fall too heavy upon your petitioner and those of his friends Who feels disposed to patronize the undertaking. Your petitioner therefore craves the attention of Congress to a concern which appears to him Very important to a portion of his fellow creaturs [sic] who have been Long much excluded from the common advantage of Civilized life and prays that they will afford him and his friends such aid as they in their wisdom may think best.
With much respect
I am your ashured [sic] friend
Paul Cuffe
Westport 6 mo 16 1813
In 1818 John Walker’s (1732–1807) A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language was published, including his “Rules to be Observed by the Natives of Scotland, Ireland and London, for Avoiding their Respective Peculiarities.” At nearly eight hundred pages, Walker’s dictionary obviously met a popular need among immigrants who were self-conscious about their speech. Its emphasis on accent elimination also supported the supremacy of an accepted standard of English pronunciation, advocated as early as 1789 by Noah Webster. “American” in the new century emphasized uniformity rather than the regional variations of English that distinguished Scots, Irish. and Cockneys, among others. As immigrants interacted in the American crucible, a universal style of deliberately enunciating English words contributed to a common tongue throughout the backcountry and the West.
Source: John Walker, A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (New York: Collins and Hannay, 1819), p. 9; Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 50015 (New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A. A. S., 1981).
RULES TO BE OBSERVED BY THE NATIVES OF SCOTLAND, FOR ATTAINING A JUST PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH
That pronunciation which distinguishes the inhabitants of Scotland is of a very different kind from that of Ireland, and may be divided into the quantity, quality, and accentuation of the vowels. With respect to quantity, it may be observed, that the Scotch pronounce habit, hay-bit; tepid, tee-pid; sinner, see-ner; conscious, cone-shus; and subject, soob-ject: it is not pretended, however, that every accented vowel is so pronounced, but that such a pronunciation is very general, and particularly of the i. This vowel is short in English pronunciation, where the other vowels are long; thus, evasion, adhesion, emotion, confusion, have the a, e, o, and u, long; and in these instances the Scotch would pronounce them like the English; but in vision, decision, &c. where the English pronounce the i short, the Scotch lengthen this letter by pronouncing it like ee, as if the words were written veesion, de-cee-sion, &c and this peculiarity is universal. The best way, therefore, to correct this, will be to make a collection of the most usual words which have the vowels short, and to pronounce them daily till a habit is formed. See Principles, No. 507.
With respect to the quality of the vowels, it may be observed, that the inhabitants of Scotland are apt to pronounce the a like aw, where the English give it the slender sound: thus Satan, is pronounced Sawtan, and fatal, fawtal. It may be remarked too, that the Scotch give this sound to the a preceded by the w, according to the general rule, without attending to the exceptions, Principles, No. 83; and thus, instead of making wax, waft, and twang, rhyme with tax, shaft, and hang, they pronounce them so as to rhyme with box, soft, and song. The short e in bed, fed, red, &c. borders too much upon the English sound of a in bad, lad, mad, &c. and the short i in bid, lid, rid, too much on the English sounds of e in bed, led, red. To correct this error, it would be useful to collect the long and short sound of these vowels, and to pronounce the long ones first, and to shorten them by degrees till they are perfectly short; at the same time preserving the radical sound of the vowel in both. …
But besides the mispronunciation of single words, there is a tone of voice with which these words are accompanied, that distinguishes a native of Ireland or Scotland, as much as an improper sound of letters. This is vulgarly, and, if it does not mean stress only, but the kind of stress, I think, not improperly called the accent. For though there is an asperity in the Irish dialect and a drawl in the Scotch, independent of the slides and inflections they make use of, yet it may with confidence be affirmed, that much of the peculiarity which distinguishes these dialects may be reduced to a predominant use of one of these slides. Let any one who has sufficiently studied the speaking voice to distinguish the slides, observe the pronunciation of an Irishman and a Scotchman, who have much of the dialect of their country, and he will find that the former abounds with the falling, and the latter with the rising inflection; and if this is the case, the teacher, if he understands these slides, ought to direct his instruction so as to remedy the imperfection. But as avoiding the wrong, and seizing the right at the same instant, is, perhaps too great a task for human powers, I would advise a native of Ireland, who has much of the accent, to pronounce almost all his words, and end all his sentences, with the rising slide; and a Scotchman in the same manner, to use the falling inflection: this will, in some measure, counteract the natural propensity, and bids fairer for bringing the pupil to that nearly equal mixture of both slides which distinguishes the English speaker, than endeavouring at first to catch the agreeable variety. For this purpose the teacher ought to pronounce all the single words in the lessen with the falling inflection to a Scotchman, and with the rising to an Irishman; and should frequently give the pauses in a sentence the same inflections to each of these pupils, where he would vary them to a native of England.
Most Irish emigrating after the end of the Napoleonic Wars had some skills, and those who traveled directly to the ports of Philadelphia or New York were able to afford the higher passage fares to American rather than Canadian ports. John Doyle had both advantages, as well as entrée via an established network of Irish social and occupational links: he joined his father, who had fled Ireland in the wake of the 1798 rebellion nearly two decades earlier. Thus he was immediately able to find work upon arrival in 1817 and within several months had saved a substantial sum of money. A financial panic in the United States in 1819 would cause a sharp reduction in the number of Irish emigrants crossing the Atlantic, from twenty thousand in 1818 to ten thousand in 1820 and only six thousand in 1821. In this letter written home to his wife in Ireland, Doyle expresses—perhaps with the enthusiasm novelty engenders—the various ways in which an Irishman experienced “freedom” from the oppressiveness of British colonial regulation.
Source: John Doyle, January 25, 1818, reproduced in William D. Griffin, The Book of Irish Americans (New York: Times Book/Random House, 1990), pp. 119–120.
Oh, how long the days, how cheerless and fatiguing the nights since I parted with my Fanny and my little angel. Sea sickness, nor the toils of the ocean, nor the starvation which I suffered, nor the constant apprehension of our crazy old vessel going to the bottom, for ten tedious weeks, could ever wear me to the pitch it has if my mind was easy about you. But when the recollection of you and of my little Ned rushes on my mind with a force irresistible, I am amazed and confounded to think of the coolness with which I used to calculate on parting with my little family even for a day, to come to this strange country, which is the grave of the reputations, the morals, and of the lives of so many of our countrymen and countrywomen …
We were safely landed in Philadelphia on the 7th of October and I had not so much as would pay my passage in a boat to take me ashore … I, however, contrived to get over, and … it was not long until I made out my father, whom I instantly knew, and no one could describe our feelings when I made myself known to him, and received his embraces, after an absence of seventeen years. … The morning after landing I went to work to the printing … I think a journeyman printer’s wages might be averaged at 7 ½ dollars a week all the year round … I worked in Philadelphia five and one-half weeks and saved 6 pounds, that is counting four dollars to the pound; in the currency of the United States the dollar is worth five shillings Irish … I found the printing and bookbinding overpowered with hands in New York. I remained idle for twelve days in consequence; when finding there was many out of employment like myself I determined to turn myself to something else, seeing that there was nothing to be got by idleness … I was engaged by a bookseller to hawk maps for him at 7 dollars a week. … I now had about 60 dollars of my own saved … these I laid out in the purchase of pictures on New Year’s Day, which I sell ever since. I am doing astonishingly well, thanks be to God, and was able to make a deposit of 100 dollars in the bank of the United States.
As yet it’s only natural I should feel lonesome in this country, ninety-nine out of every hundred who come to it are at first disappointed. … Still, it’s a fine country and a much better place for a poor man than Ireland … and much as they grumble at first, after a while they never think of leaving it … One thing I think is certain, that if emigrants knew beforehand what they have to suffer for about the first six months after leaving home in every respect, they would never come here. However, an enterprising man, desirous of advancing himself in the world, will despise everything for coming to this free country, where a man is allowed to thrive and flourish without having a penny taken out of his pocket by government; no visits from tax gatherers, constables or soldiers, every one at liberty to act and speak as he likes, provided he does not hurt another, to slander and damn government, abuse public men in their office to their faces, wear your hat in court and smoke a cigar while speaking to the judge as familiarly as if he was a common mechanic, hundreds go unpunished for crimes for which they would surely be hung in Ireland; in fact they are so tender of life in this country that a person should have a very great interest to get himself hanged for anything.
In the early nineteenth century there was a good market for descriptive guides to the various American states. The Picture of New-York and Stranger’s Guide through the Commercial Emporium of the United States—all 357 pages plus a map—was published in 1818. In addition to the expected capsule entries on the state’s cities and towns, there were sections on the laws governing servants and slaves or public nuisances such as “blowing horns,” as well as an annotated list of the various religious and ethnic societies available for membership. It contains a lengthy entry for the Shamrock Friendly Association, a relatively new Irish organization that had just published a helpful pamphlet that was being widely circulated in Europe.
Source: The Picture of New-York and Stranger’s Guide through the Commercial Emporium of the United States (New York: A. T. Goodrich & Co., 1818), pp. 182–183; Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 45335 (New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A. A. S., 1981).
Shamrock Friendly Association, was formed in 1815, for the purpose of befriending emigrants on their arrival in the United States. This is done by giving them useful information, and procuring them employment. The society is composed chiefly of the natives of Ireland; but their views are not confined to country, politics, or religion. It is enough that the applicant is a stranger, to engage their attention. They have already procured employment for upwards of 1,200 individuals in various parts of the country. Having a regular correspondence and connexion with most of the Irish societies in the union, they are enabled to act at a distance with great effect.
During the last year, the society published a useful pamphlet, entitled “Hints to Emigrants from Europe who intend to make a permanent residence in the United States.” It has been republished in the United States and in Europe; and contains valuable information, which ought to be known by every stranger on his arrival here:—It considers, “1st, what relates to his personal safety in a new climate; 2d, his interests as a probationary resident; and 3d, his future rights and duties as a member of a free state.” On the most interesting and important subject to the generality of emigrants, viz. employment, it gives the following correct information:
“Industrious men need never lack employment in America. Labourers, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, stonecutters, blacksmiths, weavers, turners, farmers, curriers, tailors and shoemakers, and the useful mechanics generally are always sure of work and wages. Stonecutters now receive in this city (New York) 2 dollars a day, equal to 9 shillings sterling; carpenters 1 dollar and 87½ cents; bricklayers 2 dollars; labourers from 1 dollar to 1 and a quarter; others in proportion. At this time (July, 1817) house carpenters, bricklayers, masons and stonecutters are paid 3 dollars per day in Petersburgh, Virginia. The town was totally consumed by fire about a year since, but it is now rising from its ashes in more elegance than ever Mechanics will find employment there for, perhaps, two years to come.”—“There are not many of the laborious classes whom we would advise to reside or even loiter in great towns, because as much will be spent during a long winter as can be made through a toilsome summer, so that a man may be kept a moneyless drudge for life.”—“Men of science, who can apply their knowledge to useful and practical purposes, may be very advantageously settled; but mere literary scholars, who have no profession, or only one which they cannot profitably practice in this country, do not meet with much encouragement; in truth, with little or none, unless they are willing to devote themselves to the education of youth.”
This institution is conducted by a president, two vice-presidents, secretary, assistant secretary, treasurer, and a committee of superintendance, consisting of four members, who are elected annually.
After Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the Creeks in 1814, settlers clamored for land in Alabama, which was officially declared a territory in 1817. That year Congress sold a large tract to the Society for the Olive and the Vine, a group of French immigrants who had persuasively argued the benefits of domestic cultivation of this produce. Likewise, in 1818 the Irish societies in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh combined to petition Congress to set aside a portion of land in the Illinois Territory. They believed that because the land was remote and uncultivated, it was not prime real estate and therefore poor Irish immigrants might be permitted to settle there on extended credit (a twelve-year mortgage at $2 per acre). The French endeavor was abused, as Hezekial Niles’s editorial explains, and led directly to the denial of the Irish petition, even though the reason Congress cited was opposition to the creation of “ethnic political units” rather than concerns about management oversight. Niles went on to offer his opinion of the wisdom of ethnic colonies in general.
Source: Hezekiah Niles, “Editorial,” Niles’ Weekly Register, August 8, 1818; reproduced in The Annals of America, vol. 4, 1797–1820: Domestic Expansion and Foreign Entanglements (Chicago and London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), pp. 495–496.
Among the splendid fooleries which have at times amused a portion of the American people, as well as their representatives in Congress, was that of granting, on most favorable terms to certain emigrants from France, a large tract of land in the Alabama Territory to encourage the cultivation of the vine and olive, passed the 3rd of March 1817.
This tract contains 92,000 acres, and was sold at $2 per acre, payable without interest, in fourteen years—in truth, much better than a mere gratuity of so much land considering the license of selection, and which could not, at this time, probably be purchased of the proprietors for less than $2 million. What was honestly intended as a common benefit to a number of unfortunate persons is understood to have immediately entered, like banking, into the benefit of a few; and I am told that one man’s gains by this peculation are estimated at from $500,000 to $1 million.
The act of Congress by which this grant was made contains many provisions to prevent, the public munificence from being converted into a private monopoly. And one of our objects in referring to it is to excite some member of Congress to a rigid inquiry to ascertain if the letter of the law has been satisfied, seeing that its spirit has been violated—in order to a reclamation of the immunities granted, if justice requires it.
So much, indeed, has the beneficence of Congress been abused, that two or three of the oldest and most respectable members told me, when at Washington last winter, that there was nothing against which they should hereafter be so much upon their guard as those acts called liberal—and one of them observed he never had voted for any law that was intended by him as an advantage to a class of people which he had not sincerely repented of, because the advantages designed for all had uniformly been perverted to the benefit of a few scheming individuals; and he instanced a series of speculations “too tedious to mention.” It was the abuse of the Alabama grant that caused the rejection of the petition of the Irish Emigrant Associations for the laying off of a tract of land in the Illinois, though everybody felt satisfied that their design was an honest one.
By the way, however, I very much question the policy of any act of government that has a tendency to introduce and keep up among us a foreign national language or dialect, manners or character, as every large and compact settlement of emigrants from any particular country must necessarily occasion. Though some have seemed almost ready to quarrel with me for the often-repeated assertion, I still assert and will maintain it, that the people of the United States are yet wretchedly deficient of a national character, though it is rapidly forming, and in a short time will be as the vanguard of the national strength. Its progress, however, is retarded by the influx of foreigners, with manners and prejudices favorable to a state of things repugnant to our rules and notions of right, since few enlightened men may be called citizens of the world; but most men’s ideas are narrowed to the spot or country, with its habits of thinking and of acting, where they received their education, which it requires at least the mixture of a generation to remove.
These prejudices extend as well to the religious as to the political supremacy of certain poor, weak, and miserable individuals; and considerably prevent an exercise of the right which man has to worship God after the dictates of his own heart, and are at open war with the power that he has, in its liberal sense, to manage all his own concerns in his own way. To lessen the force of prejudices so hostile to our free institutions, it is important that those subject to them should be cast into the common stock of the people; in which, if they do not get more expanded ideas and fall in with the general habits of the nation of which they are members, their scattered condition will measurably forbid them from retarding the growth of a general feeling—or at least, prevent a powerful action against it.
These remarks might be illustrated by many well-known examples; but the case does not require it at present, and would be to travel from the point that is now aimed at. I am notoriously the friend of all persons seeking happiness in this land of liberty, and designing to lay their bones among us; and would afford to them every facility that they may become Americans, indeed—but it is only upon the condition of their becoming so that I wish the presence of any. I most sincerely despise the creature that, rioting in his ease possessed here, adheres to those institutions which drove him from his country. If any love a king better than freedom, let them lick his feet “at home” as long as his majesty will condescend to suffer it—but it is knavery, or folly, in a man who voluntarily takes up his abode in America, this “despicable country,” to be always telling us of the roast beef and happiness that he left. And it ought to be resented by advising him to go back again as quickly as possible—adding that we will cheerfully part with him.
Jesse Torrey (1787–1834), a Pennsylvania junior physician, wrote an essay in late 1816 that advocated the gradual emancipation of slaves and “a colonial asylum for free people of colour.” However, unlike most of his contemporaries who were promoting Africa as a haven for former slaves, Torrey’s own observations led him to the conclusion that they would prefer to remain in the land of their birth—perhaps in the American West or South—rather than be exiled to a foreign country. He reported that a freed female servant—“a little shaded with a yellowish tint”—told him her fathers did not come from Africa, “and (said she) if they (the Americans) did not want us, they had no need to have brought us away; after they’ve brought us here, and made us work hard, and disfigured the colour, I don’t think it would be fair to send us back again.” Torrey’s conscience was also sparked by scenes such as one he witnessed in Washington, seven years after the overseas slave trade had been abolished.
Source: Jesse Torrey, A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States: Proposing National Measures for the Education and Gradual Emancipation of the Slaves, Without Impairing the Legal Privileges of the Possessor, and a Project of a Colonial Asylum for Free People of Colour: Including Memoirs of Facts on the Interior Traffic in Slaves, and on Kidnapping, 2d ed. (New York: Ballston Spa, 1818), pp. 63–66, 69–70; Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 45881 (New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A. A. S., 1981).
AMERICAN INTERIOR SLAVE TRAFFIC
On the 4th day of December, 1815, (the day on which the session of congress commenced,) being at the seat of government of the United States, I was preparing to enjoy the first opportunity that had occurred to me, of beholding the assembled representatives of the American Republic. As I was about to proceed to the building where the session was opened, my agreeable reverie was suddenly interrupted by the voice of a stammering boy, who, as he was coming into the house, from the street, exclaimed, “There goes the Ge-Ge-orgy men with a drove o’niggers chain’d together two and two.” What’s that, said I—I must see, and, going to the door, I just had a distant glimpse of a light covered wagon, followed by a procession of men, women and children, resembling that of a funeral. I followed them hastily; and as I approached so near as to discover that they were bound together in pairs, with ropes, and chains, (which I had hitherto seen used only for restraining beasts,) the involuntary successive heavings of my bosom became irrepressible. I have since heard an intelligent gentleman, from Scotland, describe a similar affection. He affirmed, that on his arrival upon the coast of the United States, (in Chesapeake Bay,) he first view of the slaves brought his heart into his throat. I have also been told by a gentleman, who holds a seat in the senate of the United States, that “a drove of manacled slaves, was to him, an insupportable spectacle, which he generally endeavored to avoid;” and by a representative, (since deceased,) from one of the slave states, who was himself a possessor of slaves, “that he never could bear to see slaves manacled and fettered with bolts and chains, nor families torn asunder and sold to the slave traders, and wondered how any one could be so inhuman as to do such acts.” Overtaking the caravan, just opposite to the old Capitol (then in a state of ruins from the conflagration by the British army,) I inquired of one of the drivers (of whom there were two) “what part of the country they were taking all these people to?” “To Georgia,” he replied. “Have you not, said I, enough such people in that country yet?” “Not quite enough,” he answered. I found myself incapable of saying more, and was compelled to avert my eyes immediately from the heart-rending scene! I walked along some distance before them, down Pennsylvania Avenue, and, on turning round, observed that they had left that street, (as if the spirit of PENN had repelled the contact of such a tragedy with his name,) and directed their course towards the Potomac bridge. At the same moment an African passed by, driving a hack; and beholding his brethren,
Trembling, weeping, captive led [Homer]
extended his arm towards them, and exclaimed, “See there! an’t that right down murder? Don’t you call that right down murder?” On uttering to him indistinctly, that I did not know, he renewed his request to be answered and I replied, “I do not know but it is murder.”—These expressions instantly reminded me of the frequency of murders and deaths, not only of slaves, but of white and free black men, resulting from despotic slavery, and particularly from the slave traffic. …
With these mournful spectra and many more equally shocking, flitting in succession before me, and the black procession still in view, the pleasant anticipations which I had been indulging but fifteen minutes previous, became totally reversed. Returning pensive towards my lodgings, and passing by the Capitol, I thought—Alas! poor Africa—thy cup is the essence of bitterness! This solitary magnificent temple, dedicated to liberty—opens its portals to all other nations but thee, and bids their sons participate freely of the cup of freedom and happiness; but when thy unoffending, enslaved sons clank their blood-smeared chains under its towers, it sneers at their calamity, and mocks their lamentations with the echo of contempt!
The Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America was established in Boston in 1787, with a charter granted by a British association that predated them by a century in the mission of preaching Christianity to the indigenous peoples of New England. The American Society focused on tribes “interspersed among the white inhabitants, or in their neighborhood” rather than on the western frontier. Thus, in the following report accepted in November 1818, the work of the society’s missionary, Rev. Mr. Sergeant, at New-Stockbridge, Maine, is described in some detail. Sergeant was paid $50 a month and had been working among this tribe for at least twenty years, encouraging husbandry as a means to Christianizing. As early as 1798 the society had translated the catechism into the language of the Stockbridge Indians and underwritten its printing and distribution.
Source: Report of the Select Committee of the Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America (U.S.: 1818), pp. 19–20; Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 45750a (New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A. A. S., 1981).
STOCKBRIDGE INDIANS
The Rev. Mr. Sergeant continues to perform the duties of his permanent mission. It must be gratifying to the Society to be presented with examples of intellectual, as well as of moral and religious improvement among the native inhabitants of the wilderness. …
After divine service, Mr. S. “catechized the young people in their own language.”—A meeting for prayer among the Indian women was, upon invitation, attended by two of our missionary’s daughters, who brought the following report to their father. “We found about 20 Christian females collected; a psalm was first sung, after this a prayer by one of their women in their own language, which we did not fully understand; after this we read a chapter out of the Bible; the Bible was then handed to an aged Indian woman, who, putting on her spectacles, looked over the chapter, gave the contents in her own language with much ease and apparent intelligence; a psalm was then sung in their own language. Four prayers were made in all.”—“With much pleasure”—observed the visitants—“we contemplated the privilege they enjoyed in making use of their Bible and Psalm books, the gift of the benevolent Societies.” They expressed, with sensibility, their impressions on this occasion, particularly that “of the great benefit of reading the Scriptures of truth.” “Here was a number of our fellow creatures, apparently in the exercise of a humble Christian spirit, whose hearts were cheered and warmed by meditating on the Word of God and the instructions of the Gospel of Christ. A considerable number have bowed at the foot of the cross, and, as we have reason to hope, understandingly united themselves to the Church of Christ, entirely forsaking their wicked habits of drinking, and becoming industrious. We have reason to believe the Lord has been pleased mercifully to hear and answer the prayers of this feeble band of female persevering sisters in the cause of the glorious Saviour, that he has fulfilled his gracious promise, that the wilderness should blossom as the rose.”
At a conference meeting, a female, who by desire had expressed her religious sentiments and views with great seriousness and pertinency, said, in conclusion, “I take the greatest comfort when I am alone, and have no interruption in meditating on the great and glorious things of religion.” Our missionary here notes: “The young woman, who delivered the above, has more than common talents, spoke in her own language, but it is correctly translated. She understands better than she can speak in English—has read her Bible through several times.” … Mr. Sergeant visited the Oneida Indian village, where his children kept a Sunday school; and, though it was a rainy day, found, to his surprise, between 30 and 40 children collected. This village of about 20 families, and upwards of 50 children, has been grossly neglected. “They generally understand and speak a little English, are very industrious, and have made considerable progress in civilization, but there is not one professor of religion among them” They had been “much inclined to work or play on the Sabbath;” our missionary “observes with pleasure, that this Sunday school has put a stop to their profaning the Sabbath.”
… By communication from him of 11 Sept. last, it appears, that so many of the Indian children have gone from New Stockbridge to White River, that, for this season, a school would be supported in part only from the Society’s grant.
The present state of this mission is, on the whole, apparently encouraging; and we may unite our hopes with our prayers, “that a remnant,” at least, of this forlorn people, “may be saved.”
A little twenty-seven-page drama published in 1819 offers an epistemological illustration of the ways in which many Americans viewed Indian assimilation. In it, a Cherokee girl called Catherine Brown is sent by her parents to study at Chickamauga, a Christian missionary school in Brainard, Massachusetts. In scene 4, the headmaster of the school listens while twelve Indian chiefs discuss the importance of white culture and education to their future. The dramatic choices made by the play’s anonymous author reveal how historical fact was being massaged in popular culture. “Cherokee,” although clearly a southeastern tribe without New England ties, connoted “civilized” because by this time they had made certain accommodations in response to white incursions of their territory. Nevertheless, the Cherokees had proved one of the more difficult tribes to displace. But Catherine Brown’s father surrenders when he comes to reclaim his daughter: “We must go as soon as we can—the white people determined to have the country. They steal our cattle, hogs, sheep, they get all they can—we no want to quarrel—rather live in peace—so we go—let them have the land.”
Source: Catherine Brown, the Converted Cherokee: A Missionary Drama, founded on fact, written by a lady (New Haven, Conn.: S. Converse, 1819), pp. 16–20; Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 47525 (New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A. A. S., 1981).
SCENE FOURTH
Twelve Chiefs in Council at Mr. Hicks.’
The king is placed on a rug, at one side of the room, with his back supported with a roll of blankets; Mr. Hicks is by his side, on the same rug. The other Chiefs are placed in chairs in front of the King. They are all deep in thought, when Mr. Hoyt enters. At length Mr. Hoyt is discovered by Mr. Hicks, who beckons to him. Mr. Hoyt advances. Mr. Hicks takes him by the hand, without rising.
MR. HICKS (to the King). This is Mr. Hoyt the Missionary from Chickamauga.
KING. (Takes him by the hand without rising.) Welcome, sir—we are friendly to you—sit in council with us.
(Each Chief in his turn, takes Mr. Hoyt by the hand without rising.)
MR. HICKS. Take a seat with us, our good brother.—
(Sits on a chair and Mr. Hoyt sits down.)
(The Council is then opened by the King.)
KING. My Chiefs—This Council is called for the purpose of talking on the importance of having Missionaries and schools, in our several nations. Let brother speak his mind to brother, and let us see if our sons and our daughters, cannot be made equal to the children of white men.
SECOND CHIEF. My brethren—When I was at the great city of Washington, and had a talk with the President our father, I saw the great men of the land; I heard their talks: They put me in mind of the stately trees, of the forest that look so noble, and whose branches extend far and wide, to shelter the more humble trees, that grow within their reach. I thought, what makes these men so noble? I found it was education. I saw their women: They would appear by the side of our women, like the rose—the honeysuckle—and the ivy—by the side of the cowslip, the daisy, and the snowdrop. I thought, what makes these women so conspicuous? I found it was education. I thought our sons and daughters might be made like them.
THIRD CHIEF. When I have been looking at our young men, and seeing them bounding like the Antelope, over the mountains, and through rivers, in search of prey, and in quest of pleasure; I have thought, why cannot they be tamed? Although their fathers set them the example, we are tired of the chace [sic]—we admire cultivated fields, and our land can be made equal to the gardens of white men. Our daughters are sprightly as the larks—their voices are shrill as the Linnet’s—clear as the running brook, and soft as the Nightingale’s. I am for schools.
FOURTH CHIEF. Educate bad men and you make them worse. Look at the white traders—how they cheat us. They give our men strong water, that makes them foolish—then they get away their lands and take their cattle. If we have schools, let us have such schools, as will make our children better people.
FIFTH CHIEF. Look at the Senecas—see the Oneidas—there are the Wyandots—yonder is the Stockbridge tribe—all, all, forsaking Indian ways, and learning the religion of the good white men, and for the hunting chase, are making beautiful their cornfields.
SIXTH CHIEF. Many moons ago, several brothers of mine traveled through the country: We went to Washington—to New-York—tarried three days in New-Haven, and thus we went on from city to city, until we arrived at Boston: We saw great men, and beautiful women: We looked at their cotages [sic]: Once in a few miles, they had houses to worship in—to worship the great spirit, who is the giver of all good. It grieved us to think that beautiful country was once ours, and we obliged to wear the name of savage: Let us be savage no longer.
SEVENTH CHIEF. Let us not move to the Arcansas [sic], and sell our lands here—Let us invite schools and Missionaries. Let us build houses for our women and children—Let us work on our lands; and very soon our country will be beautiful, and very soon, at our approach—instead of “there comes the savage,” we shall receive the friendly hand, and the great man’s bow.
EIGHTH CHIEF. At Chickamauga there is a school—there are Missionaries—the children are happy—they love to work—they read and write—the Missionaries are good to them—they clothe them—they feed them—but they are full—they cannot take more children—we must have schools in our own settlements—we must have them thick.
NINTH CHIEF. My brethren—I would not wish to be considered as an opposer—but let us be considerate—can our young men be tamed? See how they skip like the Rein-Deer, across the plain—See them climb the mountains—Look at our young women—How gay they are, no birds in the forest so gay—They go beyond the Peacock—I wish to be considerate—I am agreed if all are agreed—Let us be considerate.
TENTH CHIEF. My mind is fixed—No girl in our nation is so fine as Catharine Brown—Her father is a great warrior—is rich—allows her as much wampum as she chooses—He sent her to Chickamauga—She is now modest—pleasant—charming as a bright summer’s morning.
ELEVENTH CHIEF. Take a young tree—Place it by your door—Trim it every day—You can make it stand straight as an arrow, or you can make it bend to the north, to the south—to the east, to the west, just as your mind is—It is so with our children. Not long since, some of our young men shook hands, and all agreed not to drink any more—not to be wild—agreed to invite schools—They said they were tired of Indian ways. If fathers, mothers, and young men, walk in the good way—the young women, will soon follow—I am agreed.
MR. HICKS. My brethren—you already know my mind on the subject. Nothing but a conviction of the utility of the proposal, would have made me consent to part with my darling son. Leonard, my beloved son, has gone far away to receive a christian education. Before this time he has reached Cornwal [sic], in Connecticut. There is in that place, a school—which has the charge of youth of many nations, kindred and tongues. There the good men preach—and there the good men pray. There the good women clothe them—young and old are doing what they can to educate Indians and heathen. They are friendly to Indians—let us be friendly to them.
KING. (Arises and makes a bow to Mr. Hoyt.) Brother, will you give us a talk—we are ready and willing to hear your talk. (Sits down.)
MR. HOYT. I perceive, brethren, you are all anxious to have learning and religion introduced in your several nations. This belief affords me much satisfaction. We have long believed you to be men as well as ourselves; that you have minds equally capable of improvement, and souls susceptible of endless felicity. We shall rejoice to see you civilized, and evangelized. There is no enjoyment, nor any privilege, which is in our possession, but that we wish you an equal share: we are willing to do you all the good we can. You have many friends living, at the north, who all wish you happiness here, and hereafter. When your friends have been informed of the cruelty, deceit, and wickedness of the white men that surround your border; when we have been told how these abandoned men would intoxicate and demoralize your people, and steal your cattle; and when your characters have been misrepresented by them, to your disadvantage, we have mourned and wept in compassion to you. And when, by constant and repeated abuse, they make “your poor men wretched, and induce your rich men to move away,” still farther from the light of the gospel “our hearts sink within us, and we feel constrained to weep—we seek where to weep; we enter our closets and weep there.” Think not, my brothers, that all white men are your enemies. No; many gentlemen and ladies, of the first respectability in the United States, lay your case deeply to heart. They ask themselves where, and what should they have been, had they not been instructed and enlightened—they then say, as we would wish others to do unto us, let us do even so to them; and upon that principle they are making great exertion to promote your welfare, and it will be highly gratifying when they are informed you have so much anxiety on the subject.
(The king then arises, and gives him the friendly hand.)
KING. I give you this friendly hand, and you may tell your people that we are friendly. We thank you for your good talk—we believe all you say. I shall delegate some of my best men to go with brother Hicks, and visit the city of Washington immediately. They must pray the good President, our father, to send us instructors; and you must beseech your good people to send us missionaries. (Each chief then arises, and advances to Mr. Hoyt and gives him the friend hand.) (Exit Mr. Hoyt. …)
False expectations of the promise of America led to many disillusioned immigrants. Vast tracts of land were available for settlement, but that powerful lure often lost its impetus in the face of frontier trials, making even the bleak conditions in the Old World rosy by comparison. A thirty-two-page anonymous pamphlet published in 1819 directly challenged Morris Birkbeck’s (1764–1825) account extolling the virtues of an English colony in Illinois that had appeared in two books the previous year. The pamphleteer wrote, “if I only prevent the destruction of one valuable family, or of an individual, it will afford me great consolation.” He included a pessimistic multistanza poem, entitled “An Address to the British Before They Leave Their Homes,” which satirically advised postponing emigration until the impossible happened: “When fields of corn spontaneous spring From woods and miry bogs, / And emigrants are all content To feed on snakes and frogs … When vile moschetoes [sic] cease to bite And bed-bugs disappear, / When Yankees find good malt and hops, And brew good English beer …”
Source: Anonymous, Clear and Concise statement of New-York and the surrounding country: containing a faithful account of many of those base impositions which are constantly and uniformly practiced upon British emigrants by crafty, designing, and Unprincipled adventurers (New York: Printed for the author and sold by John Wilson, 1819), pp. 24–26, 28; Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 47640 (New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A. A. S., 1981).
If it had been in the power of the legislative authority of England to have kept their mechanics, their farmers and labourers at home, America at this instant would have presented a very different face; but the more distress you have in Great Britain, the more numerous will be the persons desirous of emigrating to some spot where they hope to improve their circumstances; and this they are falsely led to believe will be happily realized when they can accomplish their darling wish of visiting this extensive territory. It is thus that simple men build castles in the air; they figure to themselves the advantages of having a farm of their own; and many of these persons, when they set foot on American soil, become an easy prey to the artifices of speculating knaves, who are prowling about after all new comers, or any other credulous customers who may fall in their way. I wish to put a plain common case which is occurring daily, relative to farms and farmers: this in some measure will elucidate a part of the policy of the American government in their endeavours to bring immense woodlands and other vast barren swamps into a state of some cultivation. In any state, for instance, you may obtain a grant of from one hundred to any number of acres of land, say at a rate of from one to two dollars per acre, paying down a deposit of one third, and entering into bond to pay the remainder in five, six, or seven years: the purchaser then starts full of animation to his wonderful estate, and takes possession of an immense wood, very likely twenty or thirty miles from any turnpike road, and ten or twenty miles from any house or human being. If this gentleman farmer can raise a dog to accompany him to his new freehold, his dog and himself find work enough to employ a regiment of soldiers for seven years, to clear and cultivate a sufficient quantity of land to support a moderate family. Some men, however, have been hardy enough to smile at difficulties, and by a natural determination of character, the sturdy fellow sets to work in real earnest with his axe and spade, and if he can luckily employ labourers who can do without wages for a few years, he may by great exertion and constant, hard, slavish application, get rid of every shilling of his money, and clear or improve a sufficient portion of his farm to produce a few potatoes, some Indian corn, &c. &c. upon which his little establishment entirely subsist; but the time at length arrives when the bond becomes due, and the proper officer serves the panic-struck gentleman with a notice to pay up his arrears for his land and taxes by a certain day: the poor fellow is very likely unable to raise a single dollar; when, behold, a writ is issued, and the estate is advertised for sale, under an execution from the sheriff, and the poor man is totally ruined: all which we see in the New-York papers as common as any other advertisement. These are what we call farmers for the United States; the man seldom gets any thing for his many years slavish and miserable exile. The state merely returns him the money which he paid originally, but all the improvements generally go to the next buyer. It may readily be perceived that if men of large property take a similar course and establish as extensive colony, it is very probable that in the course of thirty or forty years they might form very decent estates and important settlements in some parts of these wild, woody, and unexplored regions, reaching as they do from the very rising to the setting of the sun; and any man, or set of men, who want only to work for posterity, or the American government, and who are disgusted with all social order, let them come to America without loss of time: here they will find the greatest scope to indulge in the rural sport of hunting the rattlesnake, or of getting out of his way; and here also they will find sufficient laborious employment for generation after generation, for ages yet to come. They must leave every thing in the shape of comfort behind them, and bid an eternal farewell to all polished, refined, or even civilized society, to mingle in future with cannibals, wild beasts, or the parchment-skinned, true-blooded Yankee, whom you can distinguish from the rest of the human race, by his meagre jaws, which look like a dried bladder, with small eyes, and remarkable strait hair.
… I conclude by stating, that I have seen many of our countrymen who have been thus grossly abused, and who have vainly traversed thousands of miles upon this continent, in search of what they left at home, who after years of comfortless, unsocial existence, have excited the greatest commisseration [sic], and numerous friends have subscribed to enable them to return to the hospitable shores of Britain, which they had left much dissatisfied, in pursuit of those blessings they were obliged to go back to find.
In 1819 Missouri petitioned Congress to be admitted to statehood. Its location caused intense debate over the extension of slavery into the new western territories. That debate was literally in black and white terms: northern states were abolitionist, southern states were slave. Public opinion in the north led to legislative resolutions such as those passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly that December, strictly instructing their congressional representatives in Washington to vote against the admission of any new state that would permit slavery or indentured servitude. Pennsylvania had been the first state to make slavery illegal (1780), and in 1817 Philadelphia’s free black population had expressed its support for abolition by protesting African colonization schemes. The Missouri Compromise in 1820 temporarily settled matters: no restrictions were placed on slavery in Missouri, Maine was admitted as a free state to keep the sectional balance, and slavery was prohibited in all western areas north of 36° 30′ latitude.
Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly, Resolutions relative to preventing the introduction of slavery into new states (Harrisburg, Penn.: 1819); Early American Imprints, Second Series, no. 49056 (New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A. A. S., 1981).
The State and House of Representatives of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, whilst they cherish the right of the individual states to express their opinions upon all public measures proposed in the congress of the union, are aware that its usefulness must in a great degree depend upon the discretion with which it is exercised. They believe that the right ought not to be resorted to upon trivial subjects or unimportant occasions, but they are also persuaded that there are moments when the neglect to exercise it would be a dereliction of public duty.
Such an occasion as in their judgement demands the frank expression of the sentiments of Pennsylvania, is now presented. A measure was ardently supported in the last congress of the United States, and will probably be earnestly urged during the existing session of that body, which has a palpable tendency to impair the political relations of the several states; which is calculated to mar the social happiness of the present and future generations; which, if adopted, would impede the march of humanity and freedom through the world, and would affix and perpetuate an odious stain upon the present race: a measure, in brief, which proposes to spread the crimes and cruelties of slavery, from the banks of the Mississippi to the shores of the Pacific.
When measures of this character are seriously advocated in the republican congress of America in the nineteenth century, the several states are invoked by the duty which they owe to the Deity, by the veneration which they entertain for the memory of the founders of the republic, and by a tender regard for posterity, to protest against it adoption, to refuse to covenant with crime, and to limit the range of an evil that already hangs in awful boding over so large a portion of the union.
Nor can such a protest be entered by any state with greater propriety than by Pennsylvania. This commonwealth has as sacredly respected the rights of other states, as it has been careful of its own. It has been the invariable aim of the people of Pennsylvania to extend to the universe, by their example, the unadulterated blessings of civil and religious freedom. It is their pride, that they have been at all times the practical advocates of those improvements and charities amongst men, which are so well calculated to enable them to answer the purposes of their Creator; and, above all, they may boast that they were foremost in removing the pollution of slavery from amongst them.
If, indeed, the measure against which Pennsylvania considers it her duty to raise her voice, was calculated to abridge any of the rights guaranteed to the several states; if, odious as slavery is, it was proposed to hasten its extinction by means injurious in the states upon which it was unhappily entailed, Pennsylvania would be amongst the first to insist upon a sacred observance of the constitutional compact. But it cannot be pretended that the rights of any of the states are at all to be affected by refusing to extend the mischiefs of human bondage over the boundless regions of the west, a territory which formed no part of the confederation at the adoption of the constitution; which has been but lately purchased from an European power by the people of the union at large; which may or may not be admitted as a state into the union at the discretion of congress; which must establish a republican form of government, and no other; and whose climate affords none of the pretexts urged for resorting to the labor of natives of the torrid zone. Such a territory has no right, inherent or acquired, such as those states possessed which established the existing constitution. When that constitution was framed in September, seventeen hundred and eighty seven, the concession that three fifths of the slaves in the states then existing should be represented in congress, could not have been intended to embrace regions at that time held by a foreign power. On the contrary, so anxious were the congress of that day to confine human bondage within its ancient home, that on the thirteenth of July, seventeen hundred and eighty seven, that body unanimously declared that slavery or involuntary servitude should not exist in the extensive territories bounded by the Ohio, the Mississippi, Canada and the lakes. And in the ninth section of the first article of the constitution itself, the power of congress to prohibit the migration of servile persons after the year eighteen hundred and eight, is expressly recognized nor is there to be found in the statute book a single instance of the admission of a territory upon the conditions of such admissions.
The Senate and House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, therefore, cannot but deprecate any departure from the humane and enlightened policy, pursued not only by the illustrious congress of 1787, but by their successors, without exception. They are persuaded that to open the fertile regions of the west to a servile race, would tend to increase their numbers beyond all past example, would open a new and steady market for the lawless venders of human flesh, and would render all schemes for obliterating this most foul blot upon the American character, useless and unavailing.
Under these convictions, and in the full persuasion that upon this topic there is but one opinion in Pennsylvania
Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, That the Senators and Representatives of this state in the congress of the United States, be and they are hereby requested, to vote against the admission of another territory as a state into the union, unless “the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude, except for punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall be prohibited; and all children born within the said territory, after its admission into the union as a state, shall be free, but may be held to service until the age of twenty-five years.”
Resolved, That the governor be and he is hereby requested, to cause a copy of the foregoing preamble and resolution to be transmitted to each of the senators and representatives of this state in the congress of the United States.
Joseph Lawrence,
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Isaac Weaver, Speaker of the Senate.
Approved—The twenty-second day
of December, one thousand eight hundred
and nineteen.
William Findlay
Harrisburg, December 28th, 1819
In late June 1821 Catharine Sedgwick (1789–1867), a Massachusetts novelist and social reformer, was traveling by barge on the western section of the as-yet-unfinished Erie Canal in upstate New York. Not far from Niagara Falls, near the Canadian border, she encountered a group of Irish families and made note of them in her diary. Until the middle of the 1830s, emigrating from Ireland via British North America cost less than half the passage to the United States. While most Protestant Irish from Ulster often settled in Ontario, Catholic Irish walked across the border, to settle in northern New York cities such as Rochester or in towns along the construction path of the 360-mile canal, where foreign-born workers were much in demand. Both groups practiced chain migration, living frugally in order to finance the passage of kin out of Ireland as quickly as possible.
Source: “Diary of Catherine Maria Sedgwick, June 1821,” in Mary E. Dewey, ed., Life and Letters of Catherine M. Sedgwick (New York: Harper and Row, 1871), p. 130; electronic version at http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/asp/NAWLD
Here, on the margin of the river, were encamped seven families of Irish emigrants, making in all fifty. They had entered the country at Quebec, and expressed great satisfaction at having arrived within our territory. One poor woman, with John Rogers’s complement of children, and one sick one in her arms, hoped to find her husband in Mercer, in Ohio. In another tent was a poor man with ten children, whose wife had fallen a victim to the hardships of the passage. He looked quite dispirited. I asked him how they liked our country. “Och, ma’am, and we could not miss liking it,” said he, “we find the people so free and hospitable.” One sweet pretty girl, niece to the woman who had died, had, like Abraham, come out from her country, and kindred, and friends, and without, I believe, the incitement of a special call so to do. I asked her how she could leave them all. “Sure it is, ma’am,” said she, “if it thrive well with me, they will all come after.” The poor Irishers! they do all come first or last. This pretty girl was a Protestant, so I thought I could not give a better ‘God-speed’ to her pilgrimage than by bestowing on her my Testament. She received it as if she had some notion of its value.
On a visit to the German areas of Pennsylvania in October 1825, Duke Carl Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1792–1862) spent several days in Bethlehem. Located about fifty miles north of Philadelphia, he found it “friendly and quiet,” a place where the “residents live in great harmony, as in a single family, and who appear to have completely accepted the same conventions, through similar upbringing and constant living together.” Education was one of the keys to its stability and ethnic culture. The duke visited two schools in the area and in his diary described circumstances completely opposite to those Margaret Van Horn Dwight had chronicled fifteen years earlier. The perceptions of each were strongly influenced by their ability with the language. Dwight was repulsed by what she could not understand, but Duke Bernhard took “no small delight that I was allowed to converse the entire day in German and that I heard such proper and pure German spoken, which, as a rule, is not often the case in America.”
Source: C. J. Jeronimus, ed., William Jeronimus, trans., Travels by His Highness Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach Through North America in the Years 1825 and 1826, (New York: University Press of America, 2001), pp. 207–208.
Sixty boys are educated in this [boarding] school [in the village of Schoneck]; forty of these live in this building, the other twenty live with their parents in the village. This school was also established for children of parents who do not belong to the [evangelical Herrnhuter] brotherhood, and is respected by everyone. I immediately noticed the great cleanliness that prevailed throughout the entire building. The school is divided into four classes and accepts children at the age of eight years. The teachers are primarily German or at least speak this language, for it is taught to the boys on the insistence of the parents. The school has a small natural-history collection which was in very good order, and also a collection of eggs from the local area, which had been collected by the students. The students sleep in two large halls; two adults also sleep in each. They eat together, and every afternoon they go on an extended walk, accompanied by their teachers. In addition to the usual school subjects (and the English, German, and French languages), the students learn drawing, music, and double-entry bookkeeping. For music instruction, there was a pianoforte in each class. One chapel is available for the religious services of the school. The boys all appeared very healthy, lively, and open, and were kept very clean. The building also had a seminary for those young people who wished to dedicate themselves to the clergy. This currently numbered five students. The seminarists were required to finish their education in the common theological seminary in Upper-Silesia. …
… [In Bethlehem] we found about one hundred young girls between the ages of eight and eighteen at this [large girls] school, for the most part very attractive, who receive a very careful education; in addition to the school curriculum, they also receive instruction in art, music, and the preparation for all manner of feminine tasks. They make extremely fine embroidery and tapestry, as well as particularly handsome so-called flower-bands. They are separated into four classes; each class has a pianoforte. I heard that they perform their morning and evening prayers in song. After dinner they have no instruction other than music and female chores; later, they go for a walk in a large garden located in a valley behind the building. They have a pianoforte in the chapel as well, which also serves for a concert hall. They sleep in large halls, attended by their supervisors. There is great cleanliness everywhere, and the girls have a healthy appearance. The convention in European boardinghouses, where all the girls wear the same attire and where the classes are distinguished by different coloured armbands, is not followed here; the girls dress themselves rather the way they see fit. Furthermore, there are students here from all parts of the United States; there are even several from Alabama.
With the first issue of The Liberator on New Year’s Day, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) began what would be more than thirty years’ presence in the abolitionist movement. He used the newspaper—which had a circulation of three thousand at its peak—to argue the moral reasons for his opposition to bondage, convinced that they would ultimately prove more effective than either force or the law. A white Bostonian, Garrison’s militant tone was not appreciated in the American South, where Georgia put up a $5,000 reward for bringing him to trial there.
Source: William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, 1:1, January 1, 1831 (reproduced in Henry Steele Commager and Milton Cantor, eds., Documents of American History, vol. 1, to 1898 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1988), from William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1889), pp. 224 ff.
TO THE PUBLIC
… During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free states—and particularly in New England—than at the south. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among slave owners themselves. Of course, there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birth place of liberty. That standard is now unfurled; and long may it float, unhurt by the spoilations of time or the missiles of a desperate foe—yea, till every chain be broken, and every bondman set free! Let Southern oppressors tremble—let their secret abettors tremble—let their Northern apologists tremble—let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.
… Assenting to the “self evident truth” maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights—among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Park-Street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My conscience is now satisfied.
I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm, tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.
It is pretended, that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence,—humble as it is,—is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years—not perniciously, but beneficially—not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God, that he enables me to disregard “the fear of man which bringeth a snare,” and to speak his truth in its simplicity and power. …
Emigration to Liberia was still a polarizing issue in the 1830s. To some it was anathema, to others, such as the Philadephia pamphleteer Mathew Carey (1760–1839), it was the most realistic, humane, and practical option under the circumstances. He believed that freedom did not counterbalance immutable white prejudices against black people, declaring, “I speak of things as they are—not as they might or ought to be.” In the April 1832 preface to the second edition of his Letters on the Colonization Society, Carey appealed specifically to the reason of abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) and Benjamin Lundy (1789–1839), both opponents of African colonization. He wrote, “such being [the] situation [of freed blacks] in this country, surely they ought to long as eagerly for a settlement in the land of their ancestors, as the captive tribes of Israel hungered for a return to the land of Canaan.”
Source: Mathew Carey, Letters on the Colonization Society: with a view of its probable results … the origin of the Society, increase of the coloured population, manumission of slaves in this country … addressed to C. F. Mercer (Philadelphia, Penn.: Young, 1832, 2d edition), excerpt from the preface.
There are three strong points of view in which this subject may be considered, which must gain for colonization the zealous and efficient support of every man, white or coloured, who is not under the dominion of inveterate and incurable prejudice. I omit other important points which might be mooted.
I. The colony has arrested the progress of the nefarious and accursed slave trade in its neighbourhood; destroyed some slave factories, and liberated a number of slaves who were on the point of being transported across the Atlantic, subject to all the horrors of the passage, and, if they escaped with life, to the horrors of perpetual slavery; and there cannot be a doubt that at no distant day the trade will be annihilated on the whole of the western coast of Africa.
II. It has been the means of securing the emancipation of hundreds of slaves, in various parts of the United States, who are now in a genial climate, enjoying the luxury of freedom with all its attendant blessings; and, from the present disposition of the citizens of some of the slave states, particularly Virginia, there is no doubt that thousands will be emancipated as fast as means of transportation can be procured.
III. It has commenced spreading the blessings of civilization, morals, and religion among the natives in the neighbourhood of the colony, whom it has taught to depend on honest industry in the cultivation of the soil, instead of the demoniac operation of setting fire to towns and villages, for the horrible purpose of seizing the wretched fugitives flying from the flames, which was their former occupation.
Now I freely appeal to Mr. Garrison, and Mr. Lundy, the most formidable opposers of colonization, and to their friends, and beg them to lay their hands on their hearts, and answer in the presence of their Maker, if any one of those objects does not repay tenfold the sacrifice while the whole have cost?
Among the objections—how easy to make plausible objections!—offered to the colonization plan, one is, that considering the immense number of the coloured people in this country, about 2,400,000, it is impossible to make any serious impression on them by emigration, especially as the colony at present, after twelve years existence, contains but 2,000 souls. Let us examine this objection.
The annual increase, as I have shown, is about 60,000. The expense of the government, or the society, will probably be $25 per head for all the emigrants large and small (taking into consideration those who pay, or whose masters will pay their passage), or about $1,500,000 per ann. for that number. This sum, provided the subject were cordially taken up by the state legislatures and congress, would not be attended with the slightest difficulty. Indeed, if encountered with the zeal which its importance demands, twice the sum could be easily raised. But then the objectors emphatically demand, how shall we provide for the transportation of such a number!
It appears from Walsh’s Sketches of Brazil that in the year 1828, there were no less than 43,000 slaves received in the single port of Rio de Janeiro—and it is fairly presumable that an equal number were received at the Havanna and other ports—making, with those that died on board, at least 100,000 ravished from their native land in one year. If the wretches engaged in that nefarious traffic could find means of transporting 100,000 human beings in one year across the Atlantic, surely this powerful nation could, to accomplish the great objects in view, and to rescue itself by degrees from the odious stain of slavery, accomplish the conveyance of 60, or even 100,000 to a land where they will be “lords of the soil.” 60 or 70,000 persons have emigrated in one year from Great Britain and Ireland.
It has been asked how shall provision be made for such a number in Liberia? they will perish for want of sustenance.
Can there exist any fear on this subject, when the soil of Liberia produces two regular crops a year, with the most imperfect culture?
In the episodic street violence or “mobocracy” of Jacksonian America, one of the clearest examples of undisguised nativism was the burning of the Ursaline Convent just outside Boston in 1834. The Ursalines were an order of Roman Catholic nuns, predominantly Irish women, who opened a boarding school in Charlestown in 1826. Their presence and purpose were little understood by locals, and on August 11, 1834, a group of vigilantes burned down the nuns’ complex of buildings in response to rumors that anticipated the subsequent Maria Monk controversy by two years. Irish workers in nearby Lowell, Worcester, and Providence threatened retaliation but were dissuaded by Bishop Benedict J. Fenwick of Boston. New Yorker Philip Hone (1780–1851), an upper-class Protestant, recorded his take on events in a diary entry that summer. Set beside Irishman Mathew Carey’s comments to Bishop John Hughes of New York written four years later, both excerpts force reflection upon the equities of the justice system at the time. A seventeen-year-old—who got caught up in the night’s events without premeditation—took the fall for eight others acquitted at the trial.
Source: Bayard Tuckerman, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1889), pp. 110–111; Mathew Carey, Letters on Irish Immigrants and Irishmen Generally (Philadelphia, March 12, 1838), p. 3.
PHILIP HONE, AUGUST 22, 1834
A most disgraceful riot also occurred on the night of Monday, the 11th, at Charlestown, near Boston. The populace having been deceived by illdesigning persons into an erroneous belief that a young lady was confined against her will in the Ursaline Convent, a highly respectable seminary under the charge of the Roman Catholics, made an attack upon the convent, a noble ediface near Charlestown, and the other buildings belonging to the sisterhood, and burned them to the ground with all the valuable furniture, desecrated the cemetery, and committed every species of outrage. This act has caused great excitement in Boston. A meeting was immediately held in Faneuil Hall, at which the most distinguished citizens of all parties attended. Resolutions were adopted reprobating in the strongest terms the unworthy conduct of their neighbors. The Mayor presided, and all the magistrates assisted in the proceedings. Large rewards were offered for the apprehension of the persons concerned in the riot. The venerable Bishop Fenwick of the Catholic Church succeeded in casting the holy oil of his eloquence upon the furious waves which were about rising in his excitable congregation, and the consequences were less serious than at first apprehended. The active and prompt measures which were adopted led to the apprehension of several of the ringleaders, who await their trial.
MATHEW CAREY, 12 MARCH 1838
I do not mean, except merely en passant, to touch on the fanatical and antichristian hostility which imprinted an indelible stigma on the escutcheon of Massachusetts, by the atrocious destruction of the convent and desecration of the chapel in Charlestown; the cowardly and felonious attack at midnight on a party of highly-interesting and defenceless females, whose sex ought to have been an Ægis to protect them, and whose pursuits are an honour to human nature; the disgraceful mockery of the trial, and the acquittal of the ruffianly incendiaries; or the no-less-disgraceful result of the abortive attempt to procure the indemnification of their losses, which justice loudly demanded from the legislature of the state. And I shall pass over various minor outrages, resulting from the same spirit of persecution which are highly discreditable, and would amply justify severe castigation. My object is to consider and refute the prejudices, which in a greater or less degree attach to the Irish, merely as Irishmen, wholly independent of the ferocious rancour engendered by fanaticism, the base-begotten progeny of perverted religion.
Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872) wrote a series of letters to the New-York Observer under the pseudonym of “Brutus” in 1834, which he then collected and published in pamphlet form the following year under the title Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States. At the time Morse was Professor of Painting and Sculpture at New York University—where he was experimenting with an electric telegraph system—as well as president of the National Academy of Design. He was politically active with the Native American Democratic Association and his “nativism” is clearly evident in his writings of the period, including Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration, and the Present State of the Naturalization Laws, which was also published in 1835. Morse saw emigration as a European conspiracy to undermine American democracy, and he was paranoid about Catholicism and Jesuits in particular: “How is it possible that foreign turbulence imported by ship-loads, that riot and ignorance in hundreds of thousands of human priest-controlled machines, should suddenly be thrown into our society, and not produce here turbulence and excess? Can one throw mud into pure water and not disturb its clearness?” Morse unsuccessfully ran for Mayor of New York City in 1836. The following excerpt concludes chapter 5 of Foreign Conspiracy.
Source: Samuel F. B. Morse, Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States (New York: Leavitt, Lord & C., 1835 reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1977), pp. 57–58.
Another weak point in our system is our laws encouraging immigration, and affording facilities to naturalization. In the early state of the country liberality in these points was thought to be of advantage, as it promoted the cultivation of our wild lands, but the dangers which now threaten our free institutions from this source more than balance all advantages of this character. The great body of emigrants to this country are the hardworking mentally neglected poor of Catholic countries in Europe, who have left a land where they were enslaved, for one of freedom. However well disposed they may be to the country which protects them, and adopts them as citizens, they are not fitted to act with judgement in the political affairs of their new country, like native citizens educated from their infancy in the principles and habits of our institutions. Most of them are too ignorant to act at all for themselves, and expect to be guided wholly by others. These others are of course their priests. Priests have ruled them at home by divine right; their ignorant minds cannot ordinarily be emancipated from their habitual subjection, they will not learn nor appreciate their exemption from any such usurpation of priestly power in this country, and they are implicitly at the beck of their spiritual guides. They live surrounded by freedom, yet liberty of conscience, right of private judgement, whether in religion or politics, are as effectually excluded by the priests, as if the code of Austria already ruled the land. They form a body of men whose habits of action, (for I cannot say thought,) are opposed to the principles of our free institutions, for they are not accessible to the reasonings of the press, they cannot and do not think for themselves.
Every unlettered Catholic emigrant, therefore, that comes into the country, is adding to a mass of ignorance which it will be difficult to reach by any liberal instruction, and however honest, (and I have no doubt most of them are so,) yet from the nature of things they are but obedient instruments in the hands of their more knowing leaders to accomplish the designs of their foreign masters. Republican education, were it allowed freely to come in contact with their minds, would doubtless soon furnish a remedy for an evil for which, in the existing state of things, we have no cure. It is but to continue for a few years the sort of immigration that is now daily pouring its thousands from Europe, and our institutions, for aught that I can see, are at the mercy of a body of foreigners, officered by foreigners, and held completely under the control of a foreign power. We may then have reason to say, that we are the dupes of our own hospitality; we have sheltered in our well provided house a needy body of strangers, who, well filled with our cheer, are encouraged by the unaccustomed familiarity with which they are treated, first to upset the regulations of the houshold [sic], and then to turn their host and his family out of doors.
Colonization projects reached an apotheosis in 1836. That year, as dictated by the Treaty of New Echota, the Five Civilized Tribes began to relocate west of the Mississippi under Congressional order and federal supervision. The variety of controversial words that can be used to describe this internal migration of Native Americans ranges from the benevolent concepts of colony or reservation to the more malevolent transplantation and forced removal embodied in the retroactively applied name, “Trail of Tears.” All reflect the difficulty Americans still faced in reconciling their legal, moral, and humanitarian responsibilities to the Indians in the face of relentless western expansion. Under President Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), Congress appropriated half a million dollars in 1830 for removal expenses and in 1834 set aside present-day Oklahoma as a special Indian Territory. Despite the Supreme Court’s recognition of Native American rights in The Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the final part of this plan to separate Indians from the white population was presented by Jackson to Congress on December 7, 1835.
Source: Andrew Jackson, “Removal of Southern Indians to Indian Territory,” excerpt from his message to Congress, December 7, 1835; reproduced in Henry Steele Commager and Milton Cantor, eds., Documents of American History, vol. 1 to 1898, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988), pp. 259–261.
… The plan of removing the aboriginal people who yet remain within the settled portions of the United States to the country west of the Mississippi River approaches its consummation. It was adopted on the most mature consideration of the condition of this race, and ought to be persisted in till the object is accomplished, and prosecuted with as much vigor as a just regard to their circumstances will permit, and as fast as their consent can be obtained. All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians have failed. It seems now to be an established fact they can not live in contact with a civilized community and prosper. Ages of fruitless endeavors have at length brought us to a knowledge of this principle of intercommunication with them. The past we can not recall, but the future we can provide for. Independently of the treaty stipulations into which we have entered with the various tribes for the usufructuary rights they have ceded to us, no one can doubt the moral duty of the Government of the United States to protect and if possible to preserve and perpetuate the scattered remnants of this race which are left within our borders. In the discharge of this duty an extensive region in the West has been assigned for their permanent residence. It has been divided into districts and allotted among them. Many have already removed and others are preparing to go, and with the exception of two small bands living in Ohio and Indiana, not exceeding 1,500 persons, and of the Cherokees, all the tribes on the east side of the Mississippi, and extending from Lake Michigan to Florida, have entered into engagements which will lead to their transplantation.
The plan for their removal and reestablishment is founded upon the knowledge we have gained of their character and habits, and has been dictated by a spirit of enlarged liberality. A territory exceeding in extent that relinquished has been granted to each tribe. Of its climate, fertility, and capacity to support an Indian population the representations are highly favorable. To these districts the Indians are removed at the expense of the United States, and with certain supplies of clothing, arms, ammunition, and other indispensable articles; they are also furnished gratuitously with provisions for the period of a year after their arrival at their new homes. In that time, from the nature of the country and of the products raised by them, they can subsist themselves by agricultural labor, if they choose to resort to that mode of life; if they do not they are upon the skirts of the great prairies, where countless herds of buffalo roam, and a short time suffices to adapt their own habits to the changes which a change of the animals destined for their food may require. Ample arrangements have also been made for the support of schools; in some instances council houses and churches are to be erected, dwellings constructed for the chiefs, and mills for common use. Funds have been set apart for the maintenance of the poor; the most necessary mechanical arts have been introduced, and blacksmiths, gunsmiths, wheelwrights, millwrights, etc., are supported among them. Steel and iron, and sometimes salt, are purchased for them, and plows and other farming utensils, domestic animals, looms, spinning wheels, cards, etc., are presented to them. And besides these beneficial arrangements, annuities are in all cases paid, amounting in some instances to more than $30 for each individual of the tribe, and in all cases sufficiently great, if justly divided and prudently expended, to enable them, in addition to their own exertions, to live comfortably. And as a stimulus for exertion, it is now provided by law that “in all cases of the appointment of interpreters or other persons employed for the benefit of the Indians a preference shall be given to persons of Indian descent, if such can be found who are properly qualified for the discharge of the duties.”
Such are the arrangements for the physical comfort and for the moral improvement of the Indians. The necessary measures for their political advancement and for their separation from our citizens have not been neglected. The pledge of the United States has been given by Congress that the country destined for the residence of this people shall be forever “secured and guaranteed to them.” A country west of Missouri and Arkansas has been assigned to them, into which the white settlements are not to be pushed. No political communities can be formed in that extensive region, except those which are established by the Indians themselves or by the Untied States for them and with their concurrence. A barrier has thus been raised for their protection against the encroachment of our citizens, and guarding the Indians as far as possible from those evils which have brought them to their present condition. Summary authority has been given by law to destroy all ardent spirits found in their country, without waiting the doubtful result and slow process of a legal seizure. I consider the absolute and unconditional interdiction of this article among these people as the first and great step in their melioration. Halfway measures will answer no purpose. These can not successfully contend against the cupidity of the seller and the overpowering appetite of the buyer. And the destructive effects of the traffic are marked in every page of the history of our Indian intercourse. …
George Templeton Strong (1820–1875) was a sixteen-year-old undergraduate at Columbia University when he recorded these observations of Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York in December 1836. Earlier that year the Ancient Order of Hibernians had been founded to protect the Church, the priest, and the Mass during a period of anti-Catholicism in the City that had begun with the burning of St. Mary’s on Grand Street in 1831. Strong exhibited an odd mixture of fascination and repulsion/curiosity and skepticism about this “foreign” religion that was garnering so much civic attention. On this occasion he heard the preaching of Frenchman John Dubois (1764–1842), Bishop of New York since 1826, who presided over a diocese that included not only Manhattan but all of New York State as well as parts of New Jersey, with a combined total of eight churches, eighteen priests, and 185,000 parishioners. The Shea boy with whom Strong shared a pew that morning was most likely the son of Columbia University English professor James Shea and brother of John Gilmary Shea (1824–1892), later to become the historian of the American Catholic Church.
Source: Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds., The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 1, Young Man in New York, 1835–1849 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952), pp. 43–44.
December 15, Thursday. Thanksgiving Day, and no college, of course … Having a curiousity today to witness the Catholic services, I determined to go up to St. Patrick’s to see High Mass performed by Bishop [John] Dubois. On my way up I met Blatchford; he turned round and we walked to the Cathedral together. After standing for some time near the door, little [Charles Edward] Shea came in and offered us a seat in his pew, which we were very glad to accept. At a little before eleven, the services began. The high altar was very magnificently arrayed with three immense wax candles some six feet high and a great deal of tinsel and frippery besides. At last, in came the bishop, six or seven priests, and as many of the little boys in surplices, one of them with a censer. The bishop was very splendidly arrayed; he had his crosier in his hand, very richly gilt, and his hat—I forget the name—on his head; he is a very venerable looking old man, but was ornamented in rather a ridiculous manner. The priests were very richly dressed also.
The services began by a sort of recitative from the bishop, with responses from the choir. Every time they passed in front of the altar they kneeled or rather performed a sort of genuflexion [sic], not quite kneeling. There was a good deal of incense burning and the whole scene was soon wrapped in smoke, very expressive of its real nature. At last Dr. [John] Powers ascended the pulpit and proceeded to give a sermon. He spoke very loud and with a great deal of gesture, and withal rather indistinctly. It was a strange sort of political, metaphysical, doctrinal, begging affair. He talked about the advance of mind and the progress of free principle, the beauties of “our adopted country” and the sweets of liberty, the tender mercies of Mother Church and the lies of the heretics concerning her doctrines. The Roman Church, he said, was not a persecuting church; the heretics advocated destructive principles—and the civil authority condemned them to be burned. Holy Mother Church was very sorry to burn them, but still she was compelled to burn them, and so did it, though most reluctantly—such seemed to be the main body of his discourse. He concluded with an appeal to the pockets of his auditors, in behalf of the Orphan Asylum. Then came the ceremonies of Mass—a great deal of chanting, genuflexion [sic], etc. There was a crazy, or tipsy Irishwoman in front of us who created quite a sensation while the bishop was busy with the chalice. She sung out at the top of her voice: “Jest pass the brandy and water along here, will you?”
December 16 … Shea told me today that the collection taken up yesterday at St. Patrick’s amounted to $456, which he thought very large. I should think it rather small.
Everyone was talking about Maria Monk in 1836. With the help of the Rev. J. J. Slocum and the New York publisher Howe & Bates, her “memoir” appeared under the provocative title Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, as exhibited in a narrative of her sufferings during a residence of five years as a novice, and two years as a black nun, in the Hôtel Dieu at Montreal. The Hôtel Dieu was a Canadian free hospital for the poor with an attached Roman Catholic cloister. Monk alleged that the cloister was connected by underground passage with the nearby Seminary of St. Sulpice, in order to facilitate nightly sexual visits by the priests with the nuns. The progeny of these illicit encounters were allegedly smothered and their bodies disposed of by a mixture of lime and sulphuric acid. In the nativist climate of the mid-1830s this was sensational “evidence” against Catholic perfidy. William Stone—with a copy of the Awful Disclosures in hand, the permission of the Bishop of Montreal, and the full cooperation of the nuns—personally conducted a thorough three-hour search of every nook and cranny of the Hôtel Dieu. Stone came to the firm conclusion that Maria Monk was not only an imposter but in fact a prostitute who once resided in Montreal’s Magdalen Asylum for fallen women. His report was published in the New York Commercial Advertiser (October 8, 1836) as The True History of Maria Monk.
Source: William L. Stone, The True History of Maria Monk: A Reprint of the Famous Report of Her Charges (New York: The Paulist Press, 1936), pp. 6–8, 37–39.
Of the verity or falsehood of the truly “Awful Disclosures” of Maria Monk, I had formed no definite opinion previously to entering the province. Indeed, I had not read the book in any other manner than by an occasional and very cursory glance at a few of its pages; still I read much from and of it, and heard much more; and I am constrained to confess that, although at times a partial believer, and at others a skeptic, as to the truth of her fearful revelations of hypocrisy, lust, and blood, I was rather a believer than otherwise during the earlier part of my Canadian visit … my prejudices against the Catholic faith were strong. Its monstrous corruptions in the old world were notorious. The work of Maria Monk I knew to have been written by one of our most estimable citizens, a gentleman of character and approved Christian piety, who had taken every pains, as he supposed, to record the exact truth. I knew, from his own lips, that he was a religious believer of all that he had thus written. I knew that other intelligent and pious gentlemen had, by repeated examinations, endeavored to detect the girl’s imposture, if impostor she was, without success. I knew that these men, and multitudes of others, were firm believers in the truth of her revelations. … A variety of incidents, moreover, had been communicated to me as facts, while on the way to Montreal, which had materially strengthened the impression upon my mind, arising from this formidable array of circumstances, until I had almost arrived at the belief that, after all, there might be more of truth in the tale than I had been willing at first to admit.
I soon ascertained, however, that such was by no means the opinion of the citizens of Montreal. … Such a city of skeptics, in all that pertained to the disclosures of the wronged frail one, was never before seen. Nay, more: so perfectly absurd and ridiculous did the people with one accord consider the whole affair, that they seemed to look upon the intelligent denizens of the United States as laboring under a widely-extended monomania! There was but one voice upon the subject; Protestants and Catholics, those of every and all denominations, born and bred upon the spot; men of intelligence and unquestionable piety; those who had passed the open gates of the Hôtel Dieu; or looked from their casements over its frowning walls every day of their lives—were all stubborn unbelievers. …
… Again, as to the births and murders of children. In the first place, the whole tale is improbable, both as to the numbers of nuns and infants. Do murderers cluster in numbers to perpetrate their butcheries, and thus purposely furnish the means of conviction? Would they be so foolish and so mad as to keep a written record of their murders? And would so many mothers consent to strangle their own offspring? Can a woman forget her sucking child? It is not so! The voice of indignant nature rises up to proclaim the falsehood. And, moreover, as to the number of novices and infants, Miss Monk states that, on a certain occasion, she discovered a book in the Superior’s custody containing the record of the admissions of novices, and of the births of infants who were murdered. About twenty-five of these pages were written over, containing about fifteen entries on a page. “Several of these pages,” she says, “were occupied with the records of the murdered infants; and all the records were either of admissions or births.” Now we will allow twenty pages for the records of admissions of novices, and five for the births of murdered children. With fifteen entries on a page, twenty pages will give us the number of THREE HUNDRED admissions in two years. Now there are but thirty-six nuns in all, and seldom more than four or five novices or postulants. Again, as to the infants, if we allow five pages to have been devoted to these records of births, we have SEVENTY-FIVE births during the same period. Now, as I have already said, there are but thirty-six nuns; more than one-half are “past age.” Certainly not more than fifteen of them could, “in the natural course of human events,” become mothers. Taking Maria’s statements, therefore, as correct data, each of these fifteen nuns—striking the average—must have given birth to two and a half children every year. A most prolific race, truly! What nonsense, and how great the popular credulity to swallow it!
… I will, therefore, now close this protracted narrative, by expressing my deliberate and solemn opinion, founded not only upon my own careful examination, but upon the firmest conviction of nearly the entire population of Montreal—embracing the great body of the most intelligent Evangelical Christians—THAT MARIA MONK IS AN ARRANT IMPOSTOR, AND HER BOOK, IN ALL ITS ESSENTIAL FEATURES, A TISSUE OF CALUMNIES. However guilty the Catholics may be in other respects, or in other countries, as a man of honor, and professor of the Protestant faith, I MOST SOLEMNLY BELIEVE THAT THE PRIESTS AND NUNS ARE INNOCENT IN THIS MATTER.