Through a Glass, Darkly: Antebellum American Whiggery, Catholicism, and the Ideological Roots of Nativism
Keywords:
Catholics, Whigs, intolerance, nativism, morality, bourgeoisAbstract
Antebellum American nativism was a choice. This article demonstrates that the sectarian violence and disorder of the 1840s and 1850s was not simply a vague, latent, inevitable anti-Catholic bigotry that sprung forth in reaction to the rising wave of Irish Catholic immigration. Instead, it was one option, dependent upon cultural, social, and moral changes occurring on both sides of the Atlantic. There is a good bit of historical irony in this conclusion because Whigs and Catholics shared many concerns about human nature and public order. However, the poverty and intemperance of many Irish immigrants, as well as their attachment to devout Roman Catholicism, and the bourgeois pretensions of American Whigs, drove many to view the Irish as socially and culturally unacceptable.
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