Municipal reform crusades adopted unabashed nativism against immigrant voters

Evidence

In the mid-eighties, as the movement to redeem the cities became an organized crusade capable of more than fitful protest, it displayed an unabashed nativism. George W. Curtis, a veteran of Tweed days, talked about the lack of patriotism in’“the ignorant, lawless, idle and dangerous overflow of all other countries.” New York’s reform mayor, Abram S. Hewitt, although elected by Tammany, launched into pointblank attacks on the immigrant menace, ultimately picking a celebrated quarrel with his Irish Board of Aldermen over the propriety of flying the shamrock flag at City Hall on St. Patrick’s Day. “America should be governed by Americans,’ he told the irate city fathers in 1888, and his supporters demanded that those who prefer another flag should go back where they came from.” — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 241

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes reader’s prior sources on anti-Catholic ‘immodesty’ panics: moral crusades often tag a foreign-other to the moral marker; also mirrors the manufactured-vs-real enemy question. — connects to: Reform could dismantle nativism’s political infrastructure without restricting immigration — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 691; Anti-Catholic and anti-radical nativism shared one core assumption of immigrant disloyalty; Immigrant communities serve as scapegoats for national change (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Catholic and anti-radical nativism shared one core assumption of immigrant disloyalty #expands (0.85)
• Immigrant communities serve as scapegoats for national change #expands (0.72)
• A common enemy war dissolved organized anti-immigrant nativism. #corroborates (0.70) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 79