Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

Click on the title to examine the digitized book

Sanderson, John P. Republican Landmarks. The Views and Opinions of American Statesmen on Foreign Immigration. Being a Collection of Statistics of Population, Pauperism, Crime, etc. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co., 1856.

John P. Sanderson. Republican Landmarks. The Views and Opinions of American Statesmen on Foreign Immigration. Being a Collection of Statistics of Population, Pauperism, Crime, etc. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co., 1856. Title page.

A firm nativist, Sanderson sought not only to restrict immigration into the United States, but also to forbid immigrants from holding political office.

Read a passage from the book

Yet, with all these evils flowing from the unguarded admission of foreigners, evils of every class and character, affecting all the relations of life, there is no disposition among the native born Americans to discourage the immigration of moral and industrious Europeans. On the contrary, they rejoice in being able to furnish them an asylum from oppression, and a home in which they may enjoy all the blessings of liberty; but they neither feel nor feign any attachment or regard for the criminals and adventurers who have left their own country for their country’s good. They gladly welcome to their country every honest and industrious man in Europe, with this exception, that they do not come to rule America, but to be content to let those rule who are to the manor born. “We do not propose,” is the language of a recent address of the American State Council of Georgia, “to shut our doors on the world, but that we continue to be the asylum of the oppressed of all nations. Let the victims of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny come. What we mean to say is, that with our consent they shall not rule the land.”

All that is desired of foreigners is to lay aside their national peculiarities and prejudices, to deport themselves with becoming modesty and propriety, and, instead of at once mingling in political broils, and attempting to regulate and control public affairs, mind their own private business. No American finds fault with them for remembering the country of their birth. All they would have the foreigner do is to study to become a good and useful citizen, making himself acquainted with the principles of the government, imbibing the spirit and genius of its institutions, assimilating himself to its manners and customs, and, in a word, to fear God and honor the country of his adoption. Alas! there are, however, too many of the immigrants from the Old World who do not thus conduct themselves after their arrival in this country, and hence the prevailing sentiment now extant among the native citizens, in favor of restricting, by law, the power and privileges of aliens to within prudent limits. No such general feeling would probably now exist, had the foreigners been content with a rational exercise of the privileges which are so freely by law conferred upon them; but, instead of enjoying these in that becoming and unassuming manner which would do them most credit, and exerting themselves to the utmost to lay aside their nationality, and assimilate in character, habits, manners and associations with the native born, they have formed clans, and organized into bands, whose misconduct is but the too frequent cause of disorder and tumult in our large towns and cities. Nor is this all. Instead of refraining from participating in political and religious controversy, they have been the most active in introducing it on both subjects. They have not been satisfied with the rights of citizenship and the protection of American laws, but demand office as a right, and even insist upon the political proscription of Americans for resisting their demand. Need we, then, wonder that they have become obnoxious?