True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism

At the end of the twentieth century, the concept of “citizenship” was the hot topic among some of the most prominent historians. In True Faith and Allegiance, Noah Pickus analyzes the terms of citizenship and the tensions that were and are aroused by those who have it and those who want it. Whom shall the United States welcome? Why? When? How should we treat newcomers? What are our expectations? Pickus goes over these points carefully and shows how in three periods in American history—the Federalist era, the Progressive years, and the latter part of the twentieth century—Americans clashed over how actively, and in what ways, citizens should help foreigners become part of us. As anyone familiar with American history knows, there have always been ambivalent feelings about arriving immigrants as well as tensions between citizens and newcomers as to the proper terms for admitting the latter to citizenship. Even as part of the British Empire, colonists vented their spleen on the Scots-Irish, whom they dispatched to frontier areas, and Huguenots, who were believed to lack the ability to become decent citizens. In fact, over the centuries race, religion, ethnicity, economics, class, gender, and regionalism have affected how different individuals and groups viewed immigrants. In schizophrenic fashion Americans have always glorified the immigrants of yesteryear, who, along with their progeny, would be hailed as some of the finest citizens our country has known, while denouncing the contemporary immigrants in their midst. The “wild Irish” and the French radicals were seen as lacking the necessary characteristics for citizenship in the 1790s, and during the next two centuries American citizens feared that any, or all, of these groups might undermine the fabric and values of our society: Asians, Catholics, Jews, Slavs, Italians, and Mexicans, to name just a few.