Politics and Ethnic Diversity

Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

During the early years of the republic, ethnic politics focused primarily around issues of slavery and the subjugation and removal of American Indians from lands desired by ruling elites for settlement and development. However, the influx of millions of Irish Catholics during the 1840s and 1850s made immigration a volatile political issue for the first time in the nation's history—a phenomenon that persists to this day. During this period, the American Party (the Know-Nothing Party) emerged.

The Know-Nothings called for restrictions on immigration and for increasing from five to 21 years the required length of residency before an immigrant could apply to become a naturalized citizen. In the 1856 presidential election, the Know-Nothings nominated former President Millard Fillmore as their candidate, but Fillmore only managed to win Maryland. The Know-Nothings disbanded over the next several years as the nation diverted its attention from immigration to the more pressing issues of slavery and the Civil War.

Following the Civil War, the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution conferred American citizenship, and consequently the right to vote, to African Americans. Black voters overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party over the next 70 years, largely because “Lincoln freed the slaves,” and Republicans in Congress supported Reconstruction efforts to ensure blacks their rights in the south. Several blacks won election to public office in the south during Reconstruction. Pinckney Pinchback, the son of a mulatto slave mother and white slave master father, became the nation's first African American governor when he briefly served as governor of Louisiana from December 1872 to January 1873.

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