![]() ![]() Although Germans did not depend on potatoes nearly as much as the Irish, crop failures led to higher food prices. The blight had likewise damaged potato harvests on continental Europe, and those in Germany were no exception. One in seven Irish people starved to death. For a peasant people utterly dependent on the potato for their diet (Irish adults ate more than 10 pounds of potatoes per day and little else), the results were catastrophic. Between 18, a deadly fungus or blight attacked Ireland’s potato crop, laying waste to harvests. The Irish and Germans came to the United States because of difficult economic conditions in their homelands. In all, foreign-born residents in the United States amounted to a staggering 14.5 percent of the total population – a percentage that has never since been eclipsed. Immigrants from Scandinavia, England, and Scotland made up approximately 16 percent. Those from Germany, not yet a unified state, accounted for nearly 32 percent. The Irish, under direct British rule since 1801, accounted for nearly 40 percent of this migration. Between 18, more than 4.3 million newcomers, predominantly Germans and Irish, resettled in the United States. ![]() Immigration during the antebellum years surged as never before. Augustine was destroyed in the 1844 Nativist Riot. Nevertheless, their temporary political successes foreshadowed an even larger movement to come. Nativist candidates roundly failed to win office throughout the rest of the decade as the economy improved and debates over Texas annexation and war with Mexico dominated newspapers. These victories proved temporary, however. That same year, New York City’s James Harper, a wealthy and ardent anti-Catholic and publisher, won the race for mayor on antiforeign issues. After a riot between Protestants and immigrant Catholics, Philadelphians elected three nativist candidates to Congress. Yet in 1844, nativism appeared to reach new heights. In 1834, a Protestant mob in Charlestown, Massachusetts, burned down a Catholic convent over rumors that nuns were being abused within its confines. Only in 1821 did the state of New York accord full citizenship rights to Catholics. Catholic immigrants, in particular, especially in the Northeast, faced discrimination by Protestants who feared the Pope secretly encouraged immigration to subvert U.S. Indeed, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 had been signed into law by President John Adams largely due to Federalist concerns that immigrants from revolutionary France and Ireland might support Jeffersonian Republicans. ![]() The antiforeign sentiment, also called xenophobia or “nativism,” that swept across the United States in the early 1850s had a long history. Use this Narrative alongside the Chapter 7 Introductory Essay: 1844-1860 to explore reactions to increased immigration in this time period. ![]()
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