A historian considers how Lincoln wrestled with immigration debate in his time
Abraham Lincoln faced a nation divided, and not just by the Civil War.
A national battle over immigration had already been raging for decades with the arrival of millions of Europeans.
The Republican president may be best known for his mission of emancipation, but he also sees immigration as the key to keeping the country afloat with so many men at war. Hundreds of thousands of German, Irish, and other foreign-born soldiers also helped the Union army win.
Why we wrote this
The current immigration debate in the United States is just the latest episode in the country’s history. President Abraham Lincoln – best known for the abolition of slavery – had a mixed record on immigration but defended the “right of ascension” of newcomers.
Yet Lincoln’s record on immigration is mixed. He signed a law in 1862 that restricted Chinese labor. But Lincoln also championed a law reducing immigration barriers – the last such law in a century. His Homestead Act offered land in the West to U.S. citizens and future citizens as well – but at the cost of increased displacement of Native Americans.
More broadly, the president believed that anyone talented, ambitious and willing to work “had the right to go as far as the American experience allowed,” says Harold Holzer, author of “Bring Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration.”
As America’s debate over who belongs here continues to rage, the Monitor explored Lincoln’s immigration legacy with Mr. Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College and the Manhattan borough’s new historian. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
How does the Lincoln-era debate over who to let in compare to today’s debate over immigration?
America still seems to be involved in the question of who should enter the country. Who should be encouraged, or who should be discouraged, or who should be banned, or who should be expelled. This has been going on for centuries, since the founding of the republic.
If you look today at the responses we hear from some anti-immigration forces about endangering Americans — creating a distinct culture, replacing us, fear of being replaced — all of this has been heard before.
This happened when the Irish started coming in the 1840s, and then the German Protestants in the late 1840s. …Then in the 1890s, when the Eastern and Southern Europeans came, as well as the Jews, there was exactly the same type of resistance and fear. Same with anti-Asian immigration laws.
Early in his political career, Lincoln, along with other Whigs, accused Democrats of persuading ineligible Irish immigrants to vote for their cause. What then was the merit of these allegations of electoral fraud?
As little merit as they have today. Have there been occasional incidents? I’m sure there were. And Lincoln himself fell into this kind of ugly trope during the election… to the Senate in 1858. We have a letter from him, in which he reports to his campaign colleagues that he saw “about 15 Celtic gentlemen”… who had just arrived in the city, and perhaps detectives should be hired to see if they were coming here to vote illegally.
On the other hand, he was already in favor of voting for non-citizen immigrants in municipal elections earlier. Because he believed that they were taxed in services, that they participated in municipal culture and that they should therefore have responsibilities, obligations and rights.
I wonder if you can talk about the evolution of Lincoln’s support for immigrants and how that relates to his anti-slavery work.
There was a relationship.
He identified very early with the Whig party. [It included] a lot of Easterners are anti-immigration as part of the Big Tent Whig, I suppose. And the reason is that immigrants’ first stops in the United States were the Eastern cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia. And this is where nativism reared its ugly head, as most Irish arrivals joined the Democratic Party almost as soon as they arrived, and for good reason. The Democrats were courting them. The Democrats contacted them and promised to guide them in their establishment in the city.
So, Lincoln and the Whigs were wary of these new Democrats, of anyone who joined the Democratic ranks. But at the beginning, there was a riot in Philadelphia, a really heinous anti-nativist riot, with victims. …And Lincoln and other Whigs quickly dissociated themselves from mob violence and emphasized that there must be a recognized and universal system for accepting immigrants and adding them to citizenship.
You should also know how easy it was to become a citizen. …At that time, we arrived in the country, there were no walls, no [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]no discouragement. America wanted people, it needed people. Beyond this detrimental resistance, they simply entered. They signed papers. Five years later, they could return to apply for citizenship and gain the right to vote.
Regarding the kinship with the anti-slavery movement: When nativism became a significant force in American politics, it evolved into a full-fledged political party known as the American Party, or more informally as the Know-Nothing Party. They presented a presidential candidate in 1856, who did very well. They elected a governor of Massachusetts. They elected officials in Illinois. They were a force to be reckoned with. And Lincoln, at this time, was helping to organize the fledgling anti-slavery Republican Party. And he needed the biggest tent he could open to swell the ranks of this brand new organization. Thus, the Whigs, who no longer had a party, were encouraged to join the new Republican Party.
He suggested that if there were anti-slavery forces within the Know-Nothing movement, and there were, they would also be welcome to join the Republican Party. So, at the same time as he was creating an anti-slavery coalition, he was not singling out nativists for their past sins.
To what extent did merit – versus humanitarian concerns – factor into Lincoln’s immigration ideals?
I don’t think it was a merit-based system because most of the candidates were entry-level positions.
Yes, there were contracts. There were all kinds of difficulties. But there was an opportunity. And Lincoln ensured that the Homestead Act, which offered free land in the West to people who wanted to settle and farm it, extended to immigrants as well, presenting a huge opportunity.
So it wasn’t so much based on merit. It was opportunity based. Lincoln always believed in what my late friend Gabor Boritt, who recently passed away – a great historian himself an immigrant from Hungary – called the “right to rise.”
Lincoln believed that anyone who wanted to work, had talent, ambition, and, above all, was willing to do the work had the right to go as far as the American experience allowed. And I think he eventually came to believe that this extended to black people as well… especially once they fought for their own freedom in the Union Army.
How did foreign-born troops contribute to victory in the Civil War?
Lincoln realized early on that the manpower advantage…was going to be amplified in the Union Army, because of the foreign-born population. And what Lincoln did immediately and so brilliantly was encourage the enlistment of citizens born in Ireland and Germany.
With the Irish, it was a great political adventure, because they were Democrats. At first, he could not be sure that they would fight under his command, as commander in chief, to restore the union.
The Germans were mostly republican and mostly anti-slavery. It was a more natural choice. But he also encouraged foreign-speaking regiments to enlist.
At the time, military code required soldiers to speak English. They kind of ignored him and recruited.
If he were running the White House today, how might Lincoln address our deep political polarization on immigration?
I would like to believe that he would be perplexed and disappointed that we are not trying to create a path to citizenship and encourage immigration. I think the idea of wandering bands of masked people – picking up people who work here, who go to school here and who live here – would be abhorrent to him.
America had no tolerance for criminals seeking new criminal opportunities in the United States. And if you read some of the anti-immigration editorials, it really feels like they could have been written yesterday: we will collect the “waste” from Europe’s “sinks” if we open the doors. But this turned out to be false. Irish and German immigrants gained a foothold in the United States and enriched the culture.
Maybe he’d turn the new ballroom into an immigration center. It’s my dream.
