TIPPING POINTS
During the nineteenth century, America would face more challenges than a charitable God would have allowed to settle on a new nation. One idea many Americans could agree on was the concept of protectionism, keeping foreign companies and foreign goods from these shores when it impacted American manufacturers and farmers. The nation had expanded considerably since the days of the Revolution. President Jefferson had made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, greatly expanding our holdings in the West. It was a shrewd move. Though the price tag was a considerable $11,250,000, more than half went to paying down the American debt to France—which we owed anyway. By 1840, the nation had grown in other ways. From the thirteen original colonies of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island, we were now twenty-six states. Vermont joined the new nation in 1791, followed by Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas, and Michigan.
I chose 1840 because it was a watershed year in terms of mass hysteria. To populate the West, to man the factories, to expand and operate the growing transportation systems, immigration was essentially unrestricted. Quotas and bans did not exist until 1862, when Congress passed a law barring American ships from carrying Chinese immigrants.8 Which isn’t to say that there were no laws against foreign people and faiths: during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, laws were passed in many colonies that forbade Catholics from voting or becoming lawyers or teachers. It was an early form of separation of church and state, except that the only church being separated was Catholic.9
Prior to 1840, there had been sporadic violence against Catholics—mostly against property, since the angry Protestants still believed in the biblical commandments. For example, in 1834, a hysterical mob burned the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. The thinking was that if you burned the nests, the birds would fly. Often, they did—but just to another state.
By the end of the 1830s, the bubbling resentment of unchecked immigration exploded into full-blown mass hysteria with “idol-worshipping” Catholics as the target. A slew of local and even national political parties were formed and began winning elections. The broad platforms were simple: no more Catholic immigration. But the oppression went deeper than just religious differences: The Germans and Irish were singled out for special hate. For the Germans, there was lingering resentment over the imported German soldiers, the Hessians, who fought alongside the British during the Revolutionary War. Never mind that most German colonists tended to side with the Patriots;10 mass hysteria doesn’t bother with reality. The Germans who came from Catholic regions faced extra discrimination. Lutherans could be tolerated in certain circumstances; Papists could not. The Irish, on the other hand, were resented not just because of their faith but because of their numbers. Irish immigration levels had been rising steadily during the early 1800s due to terrible conditions at home, which would culminate in the Irish Potato Blight of 1845.11
The twin prongs of Catholic immigration gave rise to conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Pope Pius IX was an antiprogress theocrat12 bent on subverting the United States by flooding it with a new voting bloc more loyal to Rome than to Washington, D.C.13 Irish immigrants, especially, were also portrayed as undereducated, lower-class drains on state welfare systems and were accused of being responsible for a jump in crime rates nationwide.
From 1840 onward, anti-Catholic hysteria, based on absolutely no facts, just supposition, became an operating system throughout the general population and their state and national legislatures. Like slavery, it was legal, institutionalized fear and loathing. All those mythical qualities of tolerance and acceptance that the left goes on about simply did not exist. They never did. And the panic only got worse as immigration increased.
As for the Chinese, in fairness to American citizens, the press was filled with accounts of the Opium War of 1840, which came as a result of England smuggling large amounts of opium into China in exchange for Chinese silver and treasures, which caused economic chaos in that nation.14 That resulted in the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, which humiliated the ancient nation by turning it into a colonial empire divided among Britain, France, Russia, Japan—and the United States. Many Americans believed that Chinese immigrants came here seeking revenge and also to spread the deadly scourge of opium. Again: mass hysteria requires only fear, no facts.
Throughout 1854, political candidates who opposed immigration secured victories throughout New England, as well as mayoral seats in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Anti-immigration extremist candidate positions included barring immigrants from taking jobs, prohibiting—in San Francisco, of all places—Chinese immigrants from testifying against whites in legal proceedings, and requiring public schools to conduct daily readings from Protestant Bibles. Meanwhile, anti-Catholic fervor continued to grow until it was so great that when Jesuit priest John Bapst of Ellsworth, Maine, protested the use of Protestant Bibles, he was tarred and feathered.15
In 1855, a new political party sprang up that provided a national umbrella for what had previously been disparate anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic parties. The party was formally known as the American Party, but since members, when queried about its activities (a mix of secret meetings, secret passwords, and knocking codes) and its agenda were instructed to reply “I know nothing,” followers quickly became known as the Know-Nothings.
Confrontation between Know-Nothing mobs and Irish and German immigrants came to a head during summer elections in Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville was a stronghold for the Know-Nothings since the population was around one-third immigrants, significantly larger than nearby locations.
One of the city’s newspapers, the Louisville Daily Journal, was instrumental in boosting the Know-Nothings’ cause. Editor George D. Prentice’s editorials clanged with inflammatory statements, such as “Another anti-American candidate proclaimed that the Germans and Irish shall vote even at the cost of a fight half a mile long,”16 and “Until the light of Protestantism shone in the world there was no religious freedom.”17 And finally, on the morning of the summer elections, “Let the foreigners keep their elbows to themselves today at the polls. There’s no place for them in the ribs of natives.”18
On Monday, August 6, 1855, Louisville citizens went to the polls to elect a governor, a congressman, and a variety of judicial positions. The day started out ugly as pockets of Know-Nothing supporters gathered. When former congressman William Thomasson confronted one of the mobs, seeking calm, he was attacked from behind and brutally beaten. The day devolved into further chaos in the afternoon, when an unknown assailant fired shots into a crowd, killing a policeman and at least one civilian.
In the early evening, rioters set a brewery on fire, as well as several houses occupied by Irish tenants. Anyone attempting to flee was shot. As night fell, the shootings, burnings, and beatings escalated. It was only the intervention of Mayor John Barbee, a Know-Nothing himself, that prevented a German church from being destroyed.
By the time Mayor Barbee got the streets under control, at least twenty-two people had been killed, more than one hundred businesses had been vandalized or looted, and an entire block of Irish homes had been burned. While police arrested a handful of rioters, ultimately nobody was convicted in connection with the events of August 6, a day that would become known as “Bloody Monday.”
As I mentioned earlier, mass hysteria cannot sustain itself if the movement is based on fear rather than reality. The colonies had legitimate grievances against England. The war was fought and won, and the nation had a good basic foundation. The anti-immigration extremists had only paranoia.
Now, before you jump to the obvious progressive talking point, the difference between immigration then and now is that the people who came to our shores wanted to become Americans. They did not want to establish a wing of the Vatican in Washington, they di
d not seek to put opium dens on every street corner. While there were enclaves of immigrants, they wanted their children to learn English, to become Americans. That is not the case today, even among many leftist Americans who prefer diversity over unity. In these times, fearing onslaughts from the left wanting to erase our borders, language, and culture is not paranoia. It’s survival.
By 1860, the Know-Nothings had ceased to exist as a party, but they had established a working framework for mass hysteria, a beachhead in the American psyche that morphed with devastating effect.
SWELLING THE RANKS
As elections tend to do, the voting in 1856 brought up deep divisions within the Know-Nothing party—and thus, the nation—regarding regional attitudes toward slavery. With the demise of the Know-Nothings, the antislavery factions joined the Republican Party—yes, you read that correctly—while the proslavery supporters aligned themselves with southern Democrats. This shift occurred just one year before the Civil War, and the rift was almost immediate. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 and flung down the gauntlet when he said, “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free.…”19 Despite his victory, Lincoln was not even close to being a majority president: he had won just 40 percent of the popular vote, and only 180 of a possible 303 electoral votes. Just six weeks later, South Carolina showed a rare instance of agreeing with Lincoln and left the Union. Within two months they were followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
One does not have to wonder what the Internet would have made of an instantly “failed” presidency. Anti-Lincoln hysteria was all over the press, spoken of in the streets and in homes. Before secession, the South already considered Lincoln’s party “Black Republicans,” and they weren’t alone in their open hatred of the new president. In addition to the Deep South, there was antagonism in many of the border states, especially among Democrats and conservatives. Then there was the full-on enmity from the Democratic Party of the North and the antislavery radicals within the Republican Party. Europe was split but the English press was genuinely united in bashing the sixteenth president from the left and the right. In 1862, even after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which would become effective on the first day of 1863, the Times of London found cause to be cynical: “Mr. Lincoln proposes that every slave in a rebel State shall be ever after free, and he promises that neither he, nor his army, nor his navy will do anything to repress any efforts, which the Negroes in such rebel states may make for the recovery of their freedom. This means, of course, that Mr. Lincoln will, on the 1st of January next do his best to excite a servile war in the states he cannot occupy with his army” (emphasis added).20
The New York Herald was more blunt. That newspaper was known for its pro-Know-Nothing, antiblack, anti-Catholic, anti-Republican screeds, such as an 1860 Election Day editorial that warned, “If Lincoln is elected to-day, you will have to compete with the labor of four million emancipated negros [sic].… The North will be flooded with free negroes, and the labor of the white man will be depreciated and degraded.”21
Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861. Nearly a month before, the Confederate States of America had been formed, with West Point graduate Jefferson Davis as its president. The inevitable Civil War began swiftly, on March 4, when Southern general Pierre Beauregard opened fire on Union forces at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
Both sides needed soldiers. In the South, men young and old could not volunteer fast enough. In the North, it was a different story. In New York in particular, the antiwar sentiment was strong.
It’s difficult to imagine that 157 years ago, what is now the maddeningly “progressive” city of New York did not view the Civil War as a civil rights cause. The city relied on southern cotton for its textile industry, and its ports were a major hub for cotton exports. The scourge of slavery was a remote concern.
As in Louisville, Catholic laborers from Germany and Ireland had been pouring into the city for nearly half a century. These workers competed with free blacks for the lowest-end jobs the city had to offer. Then as now, Democrats at the time saw an opportunity: immigrant laborers, especially the Irish, would swell their voting ranks if offered something of value. During the period leading up to the Civil War, that something was running protectionism up the flagpole. For an Irish worker, the choice was clear: vote Democrat and protect your job from going to blacks—or, as some New York publications portrayed them, a subhuman whose criminality was bred in his bones.
From 1861 through the following year, resentment and opposition to the war grew to a point just shy of mass hysteria… and then the tipping point was reached. The Conscription Act of 1863 declared that every male citizen between twenty and forty-five was eligible to be drafted into the Union army. As the New York Irish viewed this, they were being asked to fight on behalf of the very threats to their jobs. Making matters worse, since blacks were not considered citizens, they were exempt from military service. That would soon end, however, when the pool of white males dropped precipitously and there was a large black population eager to serve.
There was also another group exempt from military service, and this fired up slow-burning resentment among poor immigrant citizens in regard to the upper classes. Any man who could pay a three-hundred-dollar fee could purchase a deferment.
On July 12, 1863, the draft board selected the first round of names without incident, primarily because the selection process was done quietly. Draft officials believed there would be less opposition if men learned of their conscription results through newspaper accounts as opposed to hearing their names in a town square or hall. Officials selected 1,200 men that day.
In New York, when firefighters learned how many of their brothers would be going to war, they were furious. Many of their number had already volunteered for service when the first call for men went out on April 15, 1861. But service had never been compulsory. Not only would public safety be compromised, but their own lives would be at risk due to thinned ranks being replenished with inexperienced and unfit men. At dawn on July 13, hundreds of firefighters assembled in city streets. At the head of this mob were firefighters of the “Black Joke,” a volunteer fire department named after a warship from the War of 1812. I talked earlier about the cognitive dissonance of mass hysteria. I doubt the men were aware of the irony that they were the namesakes of one war about to violently protest another.
The mob of around five hundred men stormed the draft headquarters on Third Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street, smashing the drum that contained potential draftee names, destroying the records of those already selected, and—in another ironic touch—burning down the draft building. When other firefighters arrived, the mob did not let them combat the main blaze but did allow them to keep it from spreading.
Perhaps it was the fire, perhaps it was the sheer numbers, but the mob had gone from anger to hysteria and would not be mollified. There was also encouragement from outsiders. The rioters were goaded by female supporters, whom one observer characterized as “low Irish women, stalwart young vixens and withered old hags egging their men on to mischief.” Police superintendent John Kennedy arrived and attempted to restore order. The mob beat him mercilessly. The armed police officers Kennedy had brought with him found themselves outmanned and overwhelmed. What would have passed for “mission accomplished” in the days of the Sons of Liberty now could not be contained. Almost immediately, the rioters sabotaged telegraph lines, cutting off communication. Not only did that confuse efforts to contain them, it allowed rumors to flourish. The primary media was the noise of the mobs and smoke rising from the fires it set. Hysteria spread among the general citizenry.
During the next two days, gangs roamed the streets, targeting what they saw as a cause of the war. They beat and killed black citizens as well as whites sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. The Colored Orphan Asylum was set on fire by crowds screaming “Burn the niggers’ nest!”22 Mercifully, all 237 children inside escaped. The media, w
hich had played its own role in stirring the pot against Lincoln, against the war, and against the draft, was not spared. Henry Raymond, who owned the pro-immigration, pro-abolitionist New York Times, personally manned one of three Gatling guns the paper had set up as the riots broke out. The guns’ presence turned aside the mob, which was angry but not suicidal. The New York Tribune, however, which held similar political views, stupidly created barricades using bales of newspaper, which the mob set ablaze. Luckily, those fires were extinguished before they could get out of control.
After these institutions had been destroyed, new if marginally related targets were needed. The Brooks Brothers clothing store served several symbolic purposes. Not only did it cater to wealthy patrons—the sort who could buy their way out of military service—but it was also a supplier of Union army uniforms. On the second day of rioting, the company’s store on Broadway and Grand Street was ransacked. (As a sidebar to show how things change: After the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, the Brooks Brothers tower across the street refused to fall. Fire fighters expected it to, but they kept working in the pit, searching for survivors, knowing that at any moment that big black building could fall on them. It did not. Reviled a century and a half ago, it is now part of the symbol of our national resilience. Things change.)
As the rioting continued through the second day and into the third, the mob chose targets less for political reasons and more for punitive ones. In much the same way that Occupy would one day trash restaurants that wouldn’t let them use the bathrooms, bars were attacked for refusing to serve liquor to rioters already drunk with power and portable supplies of liquor. Businesses suspected of employing blacks were vandalized. A pharmacy once owned by black abolitionist James McCune Smith—the first man of his race to own such a business in the United States—was destroyed.23
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