Dual citizenship and the perceived loyalty of immigrants

This survey experiment examined national majority group members’ reactions to immigrants’ citizenship status with a focus on dual citizenship. A sample of 779 participants ( nFinland = 174; nNetherlands = 377; nGermany = 228) was used to examine whether immigrants’ citizenship status affects trust towards immigrants, willingness to accept immigrants in strategic positions, and support for immigrants’ social influence in society. Perceived group loyalties were expected to mediate these relationships. Compared to national citizens, dual citizens were perceived as having lower national loyalty and higher foreign loyalty. Compared to foreign citizens, dual citizens were perceived to have higher national loyalty but equally high foreign loyalty. Higher national loyalty was further associated with higher trust, acceptance, and support, whereas higher foreign loyalty was associated with lower trust, acceptance, and support. These findings are discussed in relation to societal debates on dual citizenship and the limited social psychological research on this topic.

“All of That Class That Infest N.Y.”

Ryan Keating’s work examines the linkages between national loyalty and ethnic identity, turning to the subject of Irish American immigrants. Looking at Irish-American communities in Connecticut and Wisconsin, Keating surveys their response to the infamous 1863 New York City draft riots. People of Irish descent faced severe discrimination and hardship. Their ethnicity and Roman Catholicism caused many non-Irish to doubt their loyalty and assimilation into American life. The many Irish migrants among the rioters was were taken as “evidence of broader ethnic disloyalty,” writes Keating, which “symbolically and intrinsically linked these events to larger issues surrounding the loyalty of Democrats.” Keating shows, however, that there was widespread disapproval of the rioting among Irish-Americans in other communities. It indicates both the complexity of their responses to the war’s divisive issues and the lack of a monolithic character to Irish immigrants living in America. They were eager to demonstrate their national loyalty through such means as military service. Keating argues that their identities became as deeply entwined with their communities and adopted nation as with a common Irish heritage.

Loyal to the Union

Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai explores perceptions of national loyalty held by college-educated northern men during the war. His work draws on the writings of a group of New England graduates, whom he labels the New Brahmins. He highlights how their sense of moral duty as educated elites, along with their commitment to the Union, compelled them to enlist into the army. Focusing on McClellan’s leadership, the controversy of emancipation, and the election of 1864, Wongsrichanalai shows how these men viewed military and political issues through nonpartisan lenses. Holding military success and union victory as the priority, these soldiers were quite critical of partisan devotionand unquestioned support of the government. According to the author, the New Brahmins reflect an understudied northern honor or nationalism, in which elite young officers pursued the greater good of society without fear of individual consequences.

Connecticut Copperhead Constitutionalism

Matthew Warshauer examines the Democratic Peace Movement in Connecticut to explain partisan perspectives on national loyalty. Warshauer argues that the state’s anti-war Democrats consistently stressed the importance of the Constitution, rather than the Declaration of Independence, as the litmus test of loyal citizenship. This ideology of Constitutionalism, emphasizing the power of the states and the limits of federal authority, was the core component of their vocal opposition to emancipation, conscription, and other wartime Republican measures. In studying their ideology, Warshauer also speaks to other important themes, including the development of the anti-war movement outside of the Midwest, the debate over alleged Democratic secret societies, Republican rhetoric of Democratic treason, and the vital political connections between the home front and battlefield.

“Dedicated to the Proposition”

Melinda Lawson explores the meaning of national loyalty through the writings of abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, anti-slavery Congressman George Julian, and President Abraham Lincoln. The author stresses that elite men were moved by notionsof “duty,” compelling them to uphold moral principles in their civic roles. Lawson’s work suggests the challenges men of antislavery conviction faced in a slaveholding republic where the Constitution nurtured the “peculiar institution.” Theirs was not a national loyalty of blind allegiance to the Constitution and the laws. Instead, each of the three held as sacred the ideals of liberty and equality written in the Declaration of Independence. This chapter traces how each man navigated the complicated duties of a true patriot through disunion and war.

“Deeds of Our Own”

In this essay, Thaddeus Romansky addresses expressions of national loyalty among African-Americans who joined the Union army. African-Americans both in and out of slavery were stigmatized and thought by many to be incapable of loyalty and citizenship. Military service, however, opened a way to take agency in achieving emancipation while laying claim to the status of loyal men in American society. Focusing on military protests of abusive treatment by white officers, Romansky contends that black soldiers saw the loyalty of their military service as entitling them to equal and fair treatment in the ranks. The author characterizes these protests as reflecting the internalization of broadly held notions of rights, liberty, and resistance to tyranny that formed the core of republicanism. In other ways, however, the sensitivity to claims of equality stemmed from long-suffered racial discrimination. Thus notions of loyalty were complicated by the issue of their race.

The White Frontiersman, Manhood, Domesticity, and Loyalty

Chapter two focuses on what might be considered the foil to the Indian: the white frontiersman. Specifically in the figure of Daniel Boone, the white frontiersman portrays a complementary ideal of white manhood to the Indian male, an ideal that may appear safer in terms of racial purity, but, like the contradictory dynamic of the Indian male body's potential for attraction and repulsion, possesses a threat of perceived regression into wild or savage conditions. On one hand, Boone represents a shining ideal of white manhood, yet his adoption by the Shawnee demonstrates a permeability of racial and national identification. While the Boone figure is fully reclaimed by writers and biographers for the American cause, other white frontiersmen might remain solidly on "the other side." Simon Girty, for example, represents that a white man can be "lost" to the Indians, and thus, white settlers and citizens must be on guard to protect their sense of racial and national "loyalty." This chapter, along with the previous one, lay the groundwork of the fantasy and ideology important for the remainder of the book.