Orestes Brownson, 1803-1876, was born in Vermont, raised Calvinist and later Catholic convert. As an antebellum political activist, he saw the two-great political parties, Whig and Democrat as nearly equally balanced in most regions of the country. But he also saw immigration as introducing both parties to bidding for the “foreign vote,” which he saw as truly ruling the country.
Prewar Immigration Fears
“[Brownson] explained that from the years 1820-1845 the flow of immigration into the country had been principally Catholic, and hence sufficiently conservative in nature to exert a wholesome moral and religious influence on the country. But since 1845, and especially since 1849, the character of the immigration has been entirely different.
The reaction to the revolutionary movement on the continent of Europe that began in 1849 had poured a still larger immigration onto our shores in which an infidel and anarchical element predominated, and which currently seemed likely to predominate.
He confessed that he was opposed, not to the coming of such to our shores, but rather to their ready admission into the bosom of American political society. He feared that the support such an element would bring into the filibustering, ultra-democratic fanatical tendencies of some of his countrymen would only tend to undermine genuine republicanism as it was conceived in the minds of the Founding Fathers.
He simply did not believe that such immigrants were entitled to political citizenship since they were “to a fearful extent banded together in secret societies, affiliated to the terrible secret societies of Europe, and directed by foreign demagogues and revolutionists, such as Kossuth and Mazzini.” Such immigrants showed no intention of becoming quiet, orderly and loyal American citizens. Hence, Brownson concluded:
“As an American citizen and as an American republican, we cannot but be opposed to their naturalization, and a fortiori as a Catholic; for they are the worst enemies of the Church in this country, are hand and glove with the [anti-immigrant] Know-Nothings taken generally and may be regarded as the real instigators and the most effective supporters of the Know-Nothing movement. Know-Nothingism is no Yankee invention, no American production, but a combination of Irish Orangeism, German radicalism, French socialism, and Italian astuteness and hate.”
In speaking of “Italian astuteness and hate,” Brownson was of course referring particularly to the notorious apostate priest Alessandro Gavazzi, who with the dregs of Italian and German revolutionists fomented the “Bendini Riots” through the country on the occasion of the visit of Archbishop Bendini to the United States in 1853. When, on this tour, he reached Cincinnati, an organized attempt was made to hang him and destroy the cathedral there.
Brownson emphasized that American citizenship is a boon or a grant, not a natural or indefeasible right. As it is the right of every sovereign society to open or close to whom it will, so it is the right of every nation to close its political citizenship, if it sees proper, to all foreign-born immigrants that might prove a danger, or that it would bring no advantage to it.”
(Orestes A. Brownson. A Definite Biography. Thomas Ryan. Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 1976, pp. 470-471)