1. Unregulated immigration and its opponents, from colonial America to the mid-nineteenth century

Colonial British North America was a melting pot for northern and western Europeans, with a majority white population from Great Britain. Colonial authorities encouraged immigration because of a need for labor. Immigration, both bonded and voluntary, supplemented the slave trade as a labor source. The same economic logic was present after the United States was founded in 1789, but, amid unregulated massive immigrations from northern and western Europe, suspicions based on race, nationality, and religion grew about the suitability of the immigrants for American citizenship, as did fears about their negative impact on American life. Thus, from the start, Americans looked in different directions when considering immigration. Immigrants were economically beneficial, yet too many of them were thought dangerous in variety of ways. In fear of immigrant political power, the American Party emerged in the 1850s, arguing unsuccessfully for extension of the period necessary for residence to become a citizen and vote.

Orestes Brownson For and Against America

The compatibility, or lack thereof, between Catholicism and American citizenship is continually raised by Catholic political theorists. With each new political crisis we face as a nation, proponents and opponents trot out their arguments in an attempt to prove that Americanism continues to nourish, or poison, the Body of Christ. This argument has been raging for nearly 200 years, and today an important contributor to this conversation is often overlooked: Orestes Brownson. While in his magnum opus, The American Republic, he spoke eloquently of America’s providential and Catholic mission, in 1870 he confided in Isaac Hecker that he had lost all hope for America and saw her as a corrupting influence on the Church in America. In this essay I explore Brownson as for and against America, showing how his later book, Conversations: Liberalism and the Church, reveals a consistency between his apparently contradictory stances.