Historical immigration questions about certain groups

[Ignacio Upton]

1. Why was the antebellum south considered to be more tolarent of the Irish than the north? I've read about Scarlett O'Hara being the daughter of an Irish immigrant, and I do know that some of the plantation owners here of Irish stock. The Knowing Nothing Party's southern swing also allowed for Catholics to join while the northern branch didn't. Did the tolarence of presence of already Catholic southern states like Louisania and Maryland (originally settled by Catholic Englishman, although it was majority Protestant by this time, it still had a large Irish Catholic population coming in) enable a degree of tolarance towards the Irish? Was the fact that blue collar industrial jobs that Irish Catholics had to compete for, less available due to slavery?

2. I can understand why the Irish were persecuted, given the historical dislike of the Irish Catholics that was ingrained into the minds of English or Protestant Orange Scots-Irish colonists. The Irish and Germans who came over before, during, and right after the Civil War were also stereotyped as poor, dirty, drunkards, in much the same way Hispanics are now for being "dirty." However, the Italians and Poles who immigrated a generation or tweo later, were considered part of a "seperate race" because they were from southern or Eastern Europe. How could the people who brought you Galaleo and DaVinci, or Corpernicous and Pulaski (a Polish cavalryman who fought with the Contintenal Army during the Revolutionary War, and has several counties in the south named after him) be deemed as inferior? The Italians and the Poles had already produced some of the greatest minds and soldiers from Europe, so the eugenics, WASP-supremacy crap doesn't make any sense.

[evlbstrd]

1. In the South, Irish Catholic immigrants were expendable.

For example, they would be sent in to clear swamps instead of slaves, who were considered property, and therefore, worth something.
In the North, they did compete for jobs. But there was also a strong anti-Catholic bias.

[Sammy Pepys]

2. The Know Nothings

As you might know, were very anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic...but they were also anti-slavery. So they had some decent popularity in the North for a time because of their abolitionist views (and the new Republican Party often sought ways to win their vote), but they splintered off to other parties like the Constitutional Union Party later on.

[JohnKleeb]

3. Hmm being Eastern European and Irish

I think the hostility towards the Southern and Eastern Europeans was also because of the Catholic, some cases Jewish, further more Southern and Eastern Europeans have a different look to them than most WASPs and further more spoke a different language. That's an interesting point though about Catholics and the South, Ive heard that New Orleans pre civil war had a huge Irish population and know of Maryland's settlement by Catholics. The interesting thing though that you bring up when it comes to the South and Irish Catholics is that while the North was intolerant to them, most Irish American immigrants fought with the Union during the war and the South was later home to groups like the KKK who hated the Irish because of their Catholicism and perceived drunkard image. Interestign questions that said.

[LostinVA]

4. Definitely mainly religious

[JohnKleeb]

5. Yeah I think so

I forgot to mention that many of them were Eastern Orthodox too. I think the religion aspect definely is why Eastern and Southern Europeans got a hard time plus they look different too, they tend to have darker hair, Southern Europeans have a different complexion than Northern ones, and if what I have read is right that even within the Italian immigrants there was hostilty from Italians to Sicilians because of the complexion.

[Ignacio Upton]

6. I forgot about the Sicilian factor

I suppose that if most of the Italians who came here were from Milan or Venice, then they wouldn't have had as much descrimination. Likewise, if the Hispanics who were moving here today, were from Argentina, Chile, or Uraguay (all majority "white" Latin American countries, where most people are European descent and/or have only a small amount of indigenous blood.) there wouldn't be as much racism towards Hispanics in general

BTW, the "Anglo-Saxon" standard of beauty isn't even representative all of WASPs, or at least all English people. There are a lot of British who have Roman or "hooked" noses similar to southern Italians/Sicilians or Jews.

[zeemike]

7. As a descendant of Irish immigrants

I can say that the irish were poor and dirty when they first arrived here because that was there state in there homeland. I have often heard them spoken of as wearing rags and having no sanitation about them.
And there is some truth to the drinking, because one of their good points was there ability to have fun and enjoy life no matter what miserable state they lived in.
The hundreds of years of suppression by the english did not kill there spirit at least.

[Ignacio Upton]

8. I know that they were also forced to drink more

America's alcohol consumption level was a lot higher in the 1800's than it is right now. The Scots-Irish were also the ones who founded America's whiskey indutry, mostly in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. The people who protested during the Whiskey Rebellion were mostly Scots-Irish settlers who had little money, and had to barter whiskey for food and clothes.

[JohnKleeb]

9. Right

I am not part Sicilian or Italian but I do know that Sicilians got more flack than people from Italy itself. In the former Czechoslovakia I think there is some similiarties to this, my grandmother who is Slovak was telling me that Czechs were considered the more cultured of the two ethnic groups and even in Slovakia there is division within division, Slovakia has the highest population of Roma, Gypsies.