Asylum for Mankind: America, 1607–1800 9781501722097

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. The Demographic Roots of Empire
2. The Creation of the Colonial Asylum
3. The Best Poor Man's Country
4. Immigration and the American Revolution
5. Land of Liberty: The Republican Challenge
6. Republican Immigrant Policies in the 1780s
7. Immigrants and Politics in the 1790s
8. Asylum of Liberty: The Legacy of the Eighteenth Century
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

''Asylum for Mankind"

'~sylum

for Mankind_,_,

Atnerica, 16 0 7-18 00

MARILYN

C.

BASELER

Cornell University Press ITHACA AND

LONDON

Copyright © 1998 by Marilyn C. Baseler All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1998 by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baseler, Marilyn C. "Asylum for mankind": America. 1607-1800 I Marilyn C. Bascler. p. em. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8014-3481-5 (cloth: alk. paper) I. United States- Emigration and immigration-History. 2. Immigrants-United States-History. I. Title. JV6451. 837 1998 325.73'09'032-dc21 97-53079 Printed in the United States of America Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Cloth printing

10987654321

For my family and in memory of David Nelson Case

Contents

Preface Introduction I.

The Demographic Roots of Empire

2.

The Creation of the Colonial Asylum

3· The Best Poor Man's Country

IX I

14 42 70

4· Immigration and the American Revolution

120

5· Land of Liberty: The Republican Challenge

152

6. Republican Immigrant Policies in the 1780s

190

7· Immigrants and Politics in the 1790s

243

8. Asylum of Liberty: The Legacy of the Eighteenth Century

310

Select Bibliography

333

Index

341

Vll

Preface

MY

INTEREST in American

immigration began in my first year of graduate school while searching for a paper topic for Bernard Bailyn's seminar in early American history. After unsuccessfully lobbying for a study of poor relief in revolutionary America, I accepted Professor Bailyn's recommendation that I examine, instead, the impact of the American Revolution on immigration. Professor Bailyn was absolutely correct in arguing that this project would lead me into fertile and untilled soil, but he was overly optimistic in claiming that postRevolutionary immigration was a more "manageable" topic than poor relief-in terms of producing a seminar paper in the nine weeks that remained of our thirteen-week semester. That semester was long enough, however, to reveal many unanswered, and often unasked, questions about America's immigrants-their numbers and experiences in the early republic and the ways in which these newcomers helped define not only the American people but also the nation itself. That semester was also long enough for me to catch a glimpse of a well-hidden, but incredibly rich, treasure trove of information about the American republic's first immigrant generation: naturalization records stored in the dusty attics and basements of courthouses scattered across the eastern states. As I uncovered more and more information on America's republican immigrants, I found that each country and city had its own distinctive migration pattern, ethnic profile, and immigrant experiences. It was soon obvious that more than one book was needed to do justice to the stories that were waiting to be told. "Asylum for Mankind" analyzes the promise of America that attracted so many voluntary immigrants both before and after the American Revolution and the disabilities and opportunity they experienced; it also examines that extent to which Africans arriving in chains subsidized the improved living standards of European immigrants. In focusing on the migration patterns, immigrant policies, and naturalization procedures that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this book provides the context necessary for understanding the lX

x

I

Preface

experiences and impact of the men, women, and children who emigrated to America in the first decades of independence. In the process individual immigrants were submerged. especially women and children-dependents who had no legal identity of their own and whose eligibility for "the rights of Englishmen" depended on the naturalization of their husbands and fathers. They will, however, be the focus of my next book on America's immigrants. My research and the writing of this book were made possible by the help and support of dozens of people in the academic community. Bernard Bailyn can always be counted on to ask the tough questions and to force me to aim ever higher. Stephan Thernstrom and Pauline Maier have provided me with moral support and sound advice for longer than I can remember. On my arrival in Texas, I discovered and enjoyed the support of many official and unofficial mentors and colleagues. Denise Spellberg, Ann Ramsey, Janet Meisel, Susan Burns, Aline Hclg, Michael HaiL and Howard Miller all deserve special thanks for helping me through the rough spots. Both Harvard University and the University of Texas at Austin have provided generous financial support. A grant from the Artemas Ward Foundation at Harvard funded my initial research; the University of Texas facilitated the writing of this book by awarding me a summer research fellowship in 1992 and a Dean's Fellowship in the fall of 1996. During my research trips I encountered many individuals who went far beyond the call of duty on my behalf. James Owens, director of the National Archives and Record Center in Waltham, not only helped me track down elusive records, but also was there with a set of jumper cables when my car battery went dead. Robert Plowman. former director of the National Archives and Record Center in Philadelphia. went out of his way to accommodate my needs, as did the wonderful people at Maryland's Hall of Records and State Library in Annapolis and at the Virginia State Library in Richmond. The clerks of Monroe and St. Lawrence County in New York were especially helpful in opening up their records to me. I must also thank the interlibrary loan librarians at Widener Library, who somehow managed to fill all my requests; Janice Donald Andersen of the Groton Public Library, who performed similar feats when I moved to Connecticut; and the people at the Connecticut College library, who have been so generous in granting me library privileges. My family also deserves recognition and thanks for allowing me to pursue my academic dreams. Although my husband and children often wished I had stayed at homeAhey always took up the slack during my absence and periods of mental abstraction-successfully handling domestic crises that ranged from grocery shopping to my son's broken jaw. I have especially enjoyed the enthusiastic and compassionate support of my daughter, Anne, who has always listened to me talk about "my immigrants" and whose common sense and computer savvy have helped me out of some incredible messes. My mother has been another able and

Preface

I

x1

enthusiastic supporter. She not only accompanied me on some tedious road trips, but was also willing to be put to work once we arrived. My thanks also go to my father and his green thumb; Beverly and Chuck, for their hospitality (and Chuck's expertise); my brother for his occasionally wise advice; Karin, who always knew what I was going through; Torbj¢rn, who has promised to promote my book in Norway; my barnebarn, Danny, Fallon, Emily, Sarah, and Jack; and Pat and Ray. MARILYN C. BASELER

Austin, Texas

''Asylum for Mankind"

Introduction

IN

THE 1870s a group of French citizens celebrated the centennial of the American Revolution by commissioning a statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World." The statue was presented to the United States to commemorate the success of the American Revolution, but its primary purpose was to remind the French of the links between the two nations and to promote the reestablishment of republican government in France. In America, promotional tours and contests were organized to raise the $300,000 needed to build a pedestal for the huge French statue. During these fund-raising campaigns, Emma Lazarus, the daughter of a prominent Jewish family in New York City, wrote the poem "The New Colossus," which transformed the French statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World" into the American Statue of Liberty welcoming the oppressed. By the middle of the twentieth century, Americans believed that their statue was indeed crying,

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.'

The commitment of the United States to serve as an asylum for the oppressed and a land of opportunity for the world's "huddled masses'' has recently come under attack from two different directions. Americans who fear the consequences of serving as a refuge and place of new beginnings for those who have suffered from economic as well as political and religious repression have worked to narrow the parameters of the American asylum. Policies have evolved that 1 Liberty Enlightening the World (New York: Illustrative Press Bureau, 1886); John Higham, "The Transformation of the Statue of Liberty," in Send These 10 Me: .Jews and Other Immigrants in Urban America (New York: Atheneum, 1975), 78--87, "The New Colossus," in Send These to Me. 78.

I

2

I

Introduction

require foreigners seeking sanctuary to prove narrowly defined political harassment, rather than generalized misery produced by an oppressive government or a failing economy. Excluded from the right of asylum are foreigners who hope simply to end generations of poverty and fear for themselves and their children. More recently, laws have been passed that limit the rights of immigrants, most notably by denying legal immigrants access to the social services that are funded, in part, by the taxes they pay. As some Americans are questioning their obligation to serve as an asylum, very different groups are arguing that the United States has never been a land of opportunity for the oppressed. Modern historians are reexamining the filiopietistic myths that have obscured and misrepresented the roots of the American republic. Efforts are being made to rescue previously hidden victims from historical oblivion-the men, women, and children whose enslavement or exploitation generated American prosperity and underwrote the political liberty enjoyed by propertied white males. However, these studies have often tipped the scale too far in the opposite direction. Too narrow a focus on the suffering and immiseration of America's victims distorts their lives as well as those of their putative oppressors. So, too, does the tendency to accept, with little question, the charges made by or on behalf of the "underclasses" while rejecting as self-seeking and spurious evidence generated by the "better sort." Difficulty in comprehending the context in which these events and experiences took place compounds the problem. Actions that violate twentieth-century sensibilities were not necessarily repugnant to the men and women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the ideas and ideals that shape possible courses of action available to people separated by more than two centuries are just as divergent. This book analyzes the genesis and eighteenth-century definition of the United States as an asylum for liberty and land of opportunity and the extent to which immigrants were able to realize the promise of America. Emma Lazarus transformed the meaning and purpose of the French statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World"; her words also distorted and oversimplified American immigration policy. After declaring independence Americans were forced to define the status of aliens and their place in a republican society. The regulations and policies that were hammered out in the quarter century that followed were compromises that ended often bitter battles among Americans holding different political beliefs and priorities. Compromises reached during the first decades of independence remain at the heart of America's immigration and naturalization policies today. The debates and conflict that shaped alien policies in the 1780s and 1790s reveal not only the different republican visions of the revolutionary generation but also the contradictory principles and impulses embodied in the American asylum.

Introduction

I

3

America's obligation to serve as a refuge is deeply rooted in European history. The Protestant Reformation was a major force in formulating the American asylum, as it set in motion the people, ideas, events, and rivalries that generated the concept of the newfound lands as a refuge. French Huguenots were the most persistent, and the English Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay the most successful, in establishing Protestant sanctuaries in the New World. The willingness of victims of religious persecution to search out a new home in the American wilderness is evidence of the severity of their treatment in the Old World and the steadfastness of their faith. The willingness of European governments to sanction such undertakings is far more complex. Martin Luther's actions triggered almost two centuries of warfare in Europe, as Protestants and Catholics battled for the right to define the one true faith. In the second half of the sixteenth century Philip II of Spain used American treasure to finance his dream of a universal Christendom, united once again under God's vicar at Rome. A century later, French monarchs embarked on a similar program. The Catholic counteroffensive increased the number of religious refugees and transformed several European countries into asylums for persecuted Protestants. Offers to serve as a refuge for the victims of "papist" oppression were, at the official level, largely pragmatic. Believing that people, and especially skilled workers and men of property, were the true wealth of a nation, European governments had been recruiting valuable subjects from rival countries for centuries. The militance of the counter-Reformation increased the attractive power of countries that offered asylum to the victims of religious persecution. Europe's religious refugees also looked to the New World for sanctuary. During the sixteenth century, French Protestants were powerful enough to win the official and financial backing necessary to send out several Huguenot expeditions. These attempts to create a Franco-American refuge failed, victims of the New World environment, Spanish and English hostility, and the waning of Huguenot influence in France. Ultimately France would join Spain in restricting emigration to prevent the creation of overseas centers of dissent. Religious and political dissidents in seventeenth-century England were more successful. In the first half of the century, while English Puritans were preparing sanctuaries in America that would shield them from the wrath of God and the Stuart kings, Charles I chartered a Catholic refuge in Maryland. This new colony was designed not only to protect English Catholics from their intolerant Protestant brethren, but also to assert the prerogative power of the English monarch against his Puritan parliament. Throughout the seventeenth century, Stuart kings increased religious toleration in their American colonies to exercise disputed royal rights, to protect their dissenting and Catholic supporters from parliamentary persecution, and to increase the demographic base of English wealth and power.

4

I

Introduction

As European colonizers adopted different imperial strategies, the role of the New World as a refuge for the victims of religious, political, and economic oppression gradually devolved on the British colonies of North America. As heretics, political dissidents, and nc 'er-da-wells were excluded from the Spanish and French empires, England increasingly relied on its American colonies to relieve various social, demographic, and political pressures in the British Isles. The early promoters of English colonization had promised that their new settlements would both siphon off and rehabilitate England's "redundant" and nonproductive population. Orphans were gathered off the streets of London and sent to Virginia; "vagabonds and beggars" were similarly transported to the New World to be transformed, in Gregory King's words, from those "Decreasing the Wealth of the Kingdom" into productive subjects. 2 Subversive elements of British society also were encouraged or forced to emigrate to America. Jacobites and prisoners of war were exiled to the colonies under various conditions of servitude; British convicts were given the option of escaping the hangman's noose by agreeing to labor in America. The American colonies also became part of England's imperial labor market, a place of last resort, where men unable to find employment at home could indenture themselves to laborhungry colonists. At the end of the seventeenth century, England also began to promote its American colonies as a refuge and land of opportunity for the oppressed and discontented subjects of European rivals. While England continued to underwrite the emigration of social liabilities, growing fears of depopulation led officials to formulate policies designed to settle British North America with "people not her own." 3 English officials seduced Protestant settlers from rival nations by promises of free land, economic opportunity, religious toleration, easy naturalization, and the "rights of Englishmen" as guaranteed by the British Constitution. To fill the expanding colonial labor market with non-English subjects, the crown also granted charters to slavers and financed the transportation of foreign-born Protestants to New York, Carolina, and Georgia, while encouraging colonial proprietors and officials to do likewise. In advertising its American colonies as a refuge for both foreign and domestic malcontents and misfits, England hoped to build a prosperous and powerful empire without expending its own human capital. By offering America as a refuge for ''those whom bigots chase from foreign lands" 4 and Europe's "huddled masses," England also could enhance its 2Gregory King, Natural and Political/ Observations and Conclusions upon the State & Condition of England, 1st pub!. 1696, in George E. Barnett. ed .. Two Tracts bv Gregory King (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1936). 31. 'The phrase is by William Penn and is quoted in Walter Allen Knittle, Early Eighteenth-Century Palatine Emigration: A British Government Redemptioner Project to Manufacture Naval Stores (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Company. 1937). 27. 'Quote, from the English poet James Thomson's 1735 description of British America, in Richard Koebner, Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 95.

Introduction

I

5

own status as an asylum without having to incorporate hordes of impoverished refugees into English society. Policies that promoted the removal of England's social and political liabilities to the New World and the settlement of foreign-born Protestants were presented in terms that gave British America a regenerative gloss. Indentured servitude and emigration were depicted as mechanisms that gave the unfortunate and the depraved an opportunity to better themselves. The Transportation Act of 1717, which set up the machinery for transferring convicts from England to America, often was described as a humanitarian reform that would rehabilitate the vicious while transforming England's social liabilities into productive colonial subjects. This image of British North America received its ultimate definition at the hands of St. John de Crevec