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One of the best essays I ever read at Anglia Polytechnic University was '“Good-Bye Boys, I Die a True American”: Homicide, Nativism, and Working-Class Culture in Antebellum New York City' by Elliot J.Gorn, J.A.H. Vol.74 Sep.1987. I have always been very interested in the works of Martin Scorsese, and it was about this time (early 90's) that I became aware that Scorsese had always wanted to do a film on the Bowery Boys and the Gangs of New York. I too was greatly inspired by this story and essay that I wanted to do a film on it. The only thing that stopped me was that I am not a big shot Hollywood director. However, I did win second prize in a Slough Writers Group film synopsis competition, judged by the Editor of Empire. My synopsis was based on this story and was called 'True American'.

The Murder of William Poole. Reproduced from George Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (New York, 1890), 50.

Title: TRUE AMERICAN

Genre: Historical mob epic

The Pitch: A low down dirty epic of nineteenth century New York street fighters.

William Poole. Reproduced from The Life of William Poole, with a Full Account of the Terrible Affray in which He Received his Death Wound (New York, 1855) facing page 35.

The Outline: The film opens with the huge spectacle of William Poole’s funeral. With hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets, New York has never seen anything like it. Ordinary people flood the streets to show their love for this extraordinary man, whipped up into a frenzy by the media, who have portrayed ‘Butcher’ Bill Poole as an heroic patriot, set upon by a mob of foreign immigrants. Meanwhile, Poole’s murderer, James Turner (and occasional narrator), is arrested by New York Police just miles away from the safe haven of Tenerife. Several months later, the trial begins, presided over by one Judge Cornelius Roosevelt, grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt. In a trial in which everyone has an agenda, not even the judge is immune...

The trial opens up a whole can of worms, each one of them ugly. It goes to very heart of the violence that daily throws New York into turmoil. William Poole was the chief muscle for the secretive Know Nothing political party, which was reacting against the corrupt politics of the Irish dominated Tammany Hall of John A. Kennedy. Amongst native Americans, resentment against immigrants is high, especially the huge flood of the Irish, who have cheapened labour and turned good neighbourhoods into slums, robbing the bread of ‘True Americans’ from their mouths. Street fights are the norm, and politics is corrupt, with the bigger muscle winning the poll. Opposing Poole is John Morrissey, a vicious champion street fighter and enforcer of Tammany Hall. It’s his men who kill William Poole, each with their own grudge to bear: John Hyer, Paudeen McLaughlin, and his nemesis James Turner. Poole is shot in the heart, but is such a giant of a man, that he doesn’t die till a fortnight later. His dying words: Goodbye Boys, I die a true American. Yet James Turner used to be his best friend. Was ‘Butcher’ Bill really so innocent and virtuous - or did he deserve his fate?

John Morrissey. Reproduced from The Life of William Poole, with a Full Account of the Terrible Affray in which He Received his Death Wound (New York, 1855) facing page 36.

How and why were nativist ideas and organisations in the period 1840-1860 different from those in the period 1890-1920s?

Since this is such a vast issue, I have decided to approach it by a systematic review of the evidence presented by the historians in the bibliography. They will be presented in what seems to be a logical order, with S.Thernstrom et al in The Harvard Encyclopedia providing the backbone of the argument. This method has been preferred to a thematic blow-by-blow account of nativism, which is, as John Higham’s work would suggest, far too various a concept to be reduced to a simplistic pro and contra argument per paragraph. It would be difficult to sustain such a process over the length of this essay anyway. An individual review of each work will convey the evidence in a much clearer way, allowing for a conclusion to make some simple contrasts between the two periods.
Thomas Kremm begins by questioning William Dodd’s conclusion that Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election “because he received the vast majority of the foreign-born votes in general, and the German-American vote in particular, in the crucial old Northwest” (1). The Republican party did indeed try to attract immigrant voters, getting influential ethnic leaders, such as Carl Schurz of Wisconsin, to campaign on their behalf. They were particularly eager to get the support of those who had been involved in the 1848 struggle to unify Germany, as they would be respected by their fellow countrymen. So far then, the Republicans would not seem to have been tainted with nativism - yet the link would seem to be implied in Kremm’s title.
He argues that the Republicans did not have the support of all immigrants, and not even all German-Americans as Dodd suggests. As he writes, they were “content to write off the
(1) Kremm p.69.

Irish and other Catholic vote as irrevocably Democratic” (2).To gain the votes of non-Catholics, Republican leaders found it useful to indulge in the old prejudice against Catholicism, linking popery with tyranny. Indeed, they could do this very well, for the Democrats and Douglas were seen as responsible for the 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act, which ended the Missouri Compromise, and threatened the expansion of Slavery westwards. The Republican party was an anti-slavery coalition which wanted to break the dominance of the Democratic party in Congress after the collapse of the Whigs. They could imply that because Catholics voted Democrat, they must therefore also support slavery. There was also the fact that “non-Catholic immigrants, especially German Forty-Eighters, hated the Roman Catholic Church for its intense opposition to European unification movements” (3). This creates the strange irony that by voting for the Republican party, they did nothing but help the division of America.
There is further evidence that sectionalism was not the major factor in the Cleveland election; it does not explain why people voted as they did. For instance, it would be very wrong to say that all Catholics, or even a majority, in Cleveland supported slavery, as Kremm points out: “German-born Democrats were one of the first groups to stage a massive rally to oppose the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Bill” (4). Since they were Northerners, it was only natural that they should oppose slavery. Therefore, they voted Democrat for other reasons than the Southern race problem. They voted Democrat because that party had always courted immigrants in the Northeast. There were not many Catholic immigrants in the South, so there was very little bias against Catholics in the party. Catholics were not seen as part of the race problem. The evidence suggests however, that there was a race problem in the North, which effectively worked against Irish Catholics. They did not
(2) Kremm p.71.
(3) Kremm p.82.
(4) Kremm p.81.
3

have to labour under the institution of slavery sure enough, but they were discriminated against. For example, Kremm notes that in Cleveland,”owing to the alliance between native and foreign-born non-Catholics, the editors of the Leader generally ignored alleged German-American desecrations of the Sabbath” (5).
However, Kremm’s conclusions do rely on statistical evidence to a certain extent; one must always be wary when dealing with such evidence, especially when one has already had experience of using the complex Pearson’s Product-Moment Coefficient of Correlation. One must ask how reliable the formula developed by the editor of the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph and Advocate is. Still, it would seem that the Republicans were successful in using Nativist terminology to gain votes in Cleveland. William Gienapp’s article would only seem to give further support for this argument, and to explain why the Republicans adopted this strategy.
However, as Gienapp comments, historians are not united on this issue: ”Eric Foner and Richard H.Sewell have advanced the most forceful critique of the ethno-cultural interpretation of the early Republican party” (6). Gienapp goes on to criticize Dale Baum’s evidence, which supports Foner’s and Sewell’s view. Reading Gienapp, one is made greatly aware of the rapidity in which political parties rose and fell in the 1850’s. S.Thernstrom et al put it most succinctly when they write of the Know-Nothing party: ”a nativist political movement that rose spectacularly in the early 1850s only to vanish just as rapidly” (7). With the collapse of the Whig coalition, party politics were in a flux in America. There was a great need to effectively counter the dominant Democrat party. Yet, by 1860, the most powerful party in the country was the Republican. It did not start that way, as Gienapp writes: ”the new anti-slavery Republican party made so little headway initially that seasoned political observers predicted it would soon

(5) Kremm p.85.
(6) Gienapp p.530.
(7) Thernstrom et al p.738.
4

disappear” (8). Instead, it was the nativist American party that vanished without trace.
The Republican party began that process whereby it consumed and took over another coalition which had made a big impact for a while in American politics. As a result, many nativist ideas were sewn into the political package that emerged out of it. At first, it would seem puzzling to anyone with a vague idea of American history why the Republicans would want to embrace racist ideas as they were fighting slavery. Indeed, they might not have wanted to do so - but that was where the votes were. Salmon P. Chase recognised this in his bid to win the Ohio Governorship. Gienapp noted that “Chase, the former Free Soil leader in Ohio, was the foremost advocate of a nativist-Republican coalition” (9). Chase won by a thin margin in 1855. However, many of those in the Ohio Republican party also had strong links with the American party. In states where the Republicans ignored or opposed the Know-Nothing movement (such as Pennsylvania) they fared disastrously. A New York conservative, Pierce, put the issue quite succinctly: ”The people will not confront the issues we present... They want a Paddy hunt and on a Paddy hunt they will go” (10).
Quite a lot depended on Republican leaders vocally supporting nativism. Seward lost the Republican nomination in 1860 because he had opposed nativism in New York, and had a reputation for being friendly to Catholic immigrants. Lincoln was much quieter about his dislike of nativism. It could be that the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856, Frémont, may have lost support because of the slurs of Catholicism directed against him. In 1860, it was the turn of Douglas to receive this treatment, with even the Democrat party at pains to deny his Catholicism. Gienapp wrote that “a widespread belief that a presidential candidate was tainted with Catholicism was politically fatal (and would be for over a century thereafter)” (11).

(8) Gienapp p.530.
(9) Gienapp p.538.
(10) Gienapp p.540.
(11) Gienapp p.546.

Elliott Gorn portrays a fascinating picture of popular nativism in his discussion of the events surrounding the murder of Butcher Bill. His real name was William Poole, and he became a nativist hero when he was murdered in a New York drinking establishment. Hundreds of thousands of people turned up for his funeral procession. In real life, however, he was far from heroic, and lived a life of loathsome violence. Yet, as Gorn writes, this is why he may have been respected so much by fellow members of the working class. He was a tough man who did not let work grind him down. He was famous in the underworld, where rivalries between Irish and Nativists were common. Indeed, Poole’s argument that night had started with an Irishman called Morrissey. The incident was portrayed in nativist fashion by newspapers and pamphlets, so that “Poole’s murder proved that a fifth column of Irish threatened to subvert American democratic institutions” (12). These thugs were very much involved in politics, using their muscles for and against Tammany Hall. Naturalization was still carried out by the states, and this could lead to corruption, as Thernstrom et al noted: ”Local managers in both political parties herded recently arrived immigrants to court to see that they got naturalization papers in time to vote in the next election” (13). In New York, Catholics were hated for the political power they had managed to gain in this way.
A big change occurred in the 1890s when immigration came wholly under federal control (1891). In 1890, the federal government assumed sole jurisdiction at New York port, and built the depot on Ellis Island. For the first time, immigration could be controlled nationally, so Congress became the institution where nativism flourished. John Higham went as far as to call this decade the ‘Nationalist 90s’. As he writes,”To reformers, the immigrants were the sources of municipal squalor and corruption, to workingmen a drag on wages, to militant Protestants the tools of

(12) Gorn p.395.
(13) Thernstrom et al p.740.

Rome” (14). Yet one might be forgiven for thinking that nothing had changed, for he goes on to write about the American Protective Association and anti-Catholicism.
It is puzzling to read that Americans were apparently frightened of a bogus popish plot in 1893. One thing to note though, was that the scare was greatest in Midwestern rural areas. Previously, anti-Catholicism had flourished in the cities. However, the cities were becoming increasingly secular, especially by the 189Os, so the Catholic issue was not as important as it had once been. Catholics were now seen as respectable members of society. Fervent nativism of this kind had geographically moved to rural areas, and would eventually reach other regions, including the South.
Another difference was that, beginning in the 1890s, a new sort of immigrant was arriving, mainly from southern and eastern Europe. Apart from Italians and Jews, many of these people were unfamiliar. For example, Higham commented that the Americans had no Slavic stereotype. However, they were soon characterised by their involvement in labour unrest. For example, in 1897 there was a massacre of United Mine Workers Union members in Pennsylvania which included Hungarians and Poles. Italians and Jews were subject to more attacks and ridiculous conspiracy theories because of old stereotypes. There was an incident in New Orleans in 1891 where Italians were lynched because they were suspected of murdering a superintendent. The Mayor said: ”We must teach these people a lesson that they will not forget for all time” (15).
The Republican party attracted restrictionists to its ranks. With William E.Chandler as chairman of the Senate’s first standing committee on immigration, stiffer controls were imposed. In 1894 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge took up the idea of the literacy test (which would ban all immigrants who could not read or write). The Immigration Restriction League arose in Boston. Yet, like later attempts to

(14) Higham p.77.
(15) Higham p.91.
7
introduce the literacy test, Congress faced a number of problems. The general fear was that they would lose votes if they attacked immigration too harshly. This fear certainly constrained Lodge a decade later. The literacy test was also prone to presidential vetoes (Cleveland and Wilson). So, for a long time, nativism did not achieve very much in Congress.
The Republican party was hindered from going any further because it feared the loss of business support. Big business opposed any restriction to the supply of cheap labour, whilst the American Federation of Labor was all for restriction to protect its members. As Higham writes, “because both alignments cut across party lines, neither the Republican nor the Democratic party could serve as a nativist vehicle” (15). Rather, it was the country that was divided by nativism. In the Far West, nativists were against Chinese-Japanese immigration. Then the South realised the extent of the new southern and eastern European immigration.
The South believed that an influx of new immigrants would only make the race problem worse. Immigrants were only slowly arriving in the South, but they were very noticeable. The victories of the 1898 Spanish-American war and America’s new imperialism awakened nationalism in the South, to the extent that they could feel an identity with the North. In Tallulah, Louisiana five Sicilians were murdered because they served blacks. South Carolina in 1909 abolished its immigration bureau and forbad its officials from encouraging immigration.
Progressivism helped end anti-Catholicism for several years. However, as the years passed and progressive promises were not being fulfilled, people began to get impatient. So, ironically, progressivism aided the rise of religious xenophobia after 1910. The idea was that the Pope stood in the way of all social improvement, and was responsible for the failure of progressivism. In Aurora, Missouri, Wilbur Franklin Phelps founded The Menace (1911), a hugely popular

(15) Higham p.164.

anti-Catholic weekly. Again, this was a sign of the increase of nativism in rural areas.
In 1911 the Immigration Commission released its report. It turned out to be moderately restrictionist and endorsed the literacy test. However, it was not completely acted upon, for 1912 was an election year. Of all the candidates, Theodore Roosevelt offered the most positive approach to immigrants. He was influenced by Frances Kellor, the woman who did so much for the Americanization process in that decade. Yet the First World War offered the restrictionists their best opportunity.
Attorney General Gregory was at the forefront of anti-Radicalism. He saw the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World union as pro-German. Indeed, in 1917 he ordered the internment of all German aliens in the I.W.W. The new immigration law allowed for deportation. This was extended in 1918 at the request of the Justice and Labor Departments to allow deportation of any alien who belonged to a radical group. For the first time, political beliefs became grounds for deportation. This encouraged restrictionists to believe that they could purify American society by this method. And by 1920, the enthusiasm for Americanization was beginning to die out, so “the old drive for the rejection of the immigrant passed all previous bounds” (16).
This process of restrictionism was started by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Lucy Salyer gives a very interesting account of how Chinese immigrants were forced to go to court to prove their right to enter America, and how court procedures were bent because the judges had a prejudice that Chinese lied. However, not all judges were against Chinese immigration, as Supreme Court Judge David J.Brewer proved in his dissenting opinion in the 1904 United States v. Sing Tuck case. He thought that racial prejudice lay behind the court’s ruling: “if this be... a government of laws, and not of men, I do

(16) Higham p.263.

not think it should be enforced against American citizens of Chinese descent” (17).
In conclusion, nativist ideas in the 1850s were much supported by the Republicans in order to gain the votes of native Americans and non-Catholic immigrants. The 1890s nativist ideas were very much affected by the fact that the federal government had sole control over immigration policy. Therefore, Congress became the debating ground. Yet this time, elements of both parties were for and against immigration. Congress split over geographical lines, with an increase of nativism in the South, Far West, and rural areas. For the first time in the South, European immigrants were attacked as a new wave of immigration came in from southern and eastern Europe. However, both Higham and Gorn mention that economic factors, such as depressions, may have also affected the strength of nativist feelings at certain times (18).
(17) Salyer p.114.
(18) Gorn p.394 & Higham p.77.

Bibliography

Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War by William E.Gienapp,
J.A. H. Vol.72 Dec.1985.

“Good-Bye Boys, I Die a True American”: Homicide, Nativism, and Working-Class Culture in Antebellum New York City by Elliot J.Gorn, J.A.H. Vol.74 Sep.1987.

Cleveland and the First Lincoln Election: The Ethnic
Response to Nativism by Thomas W.Kremm, Journal of Interdisciplinary History No.8 1977.

Strangers in the Land: A Study of American Nativism 1860-1925 by John Higham.

Captives of Law: Judicial Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws, 1891—1905 by Lucy Salyer, J.A.H. Vol.76. June 1989.

Naturalization and Citizenship in The Harvard Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups edited by S.Thernstrom.

Gangs of New York - visit the official page for the film

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Bill the Butcher - Frances Carle's page on William Poole

William Poole – read the Wikipedia entry

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