A famine in Ireland and a depression in Germany in the late 1840s led to an explosion of European migration to America. Five times more people landed in America in 1845-1855 than they had the previous ten years. Foreign born Americans climbed to represent 13% of the population.
The makeup of immigrants changed. Most were young, poor and many were Catholic. The naturalization process was simple. If you were a white male not from Asia or Africa, you could apply for naturalization after two years and be approved as a citizen with your wife and children under 21 in as little as five years.
In the big cities, the urban poor felt invaded by the flood of new groups. Gangs formed and patronage systems became political weapons to protect neighborhoods and help new residents find work, in exchange for their votes. There was a movement to slow the power of this growing voting block.
This was the origin of the American Party, known in the press as the ‘Know Nothings’. They recruited nativists with promises to reform immigration laws, extend the waiting time for naturalization/voting rights and helping preserve wages and jobs. They demagogued about the prospect of Catholic bishops selecting candidates for office.
Irish and German immigrants pictured as drinking and stealing elections
They took members from the fractured Whig party, which was teetering after the 1852 election. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska act knocked them over.
Stephen Douglas wanted federal support for rail lines to continue from his hometown of Chicago west through the Nebraska territories. The southerners wanted a Texas route. As a compromise to the southern senators, Douglas’s act destroyed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and threw the slavery question north of 36-30 open to popular elections.
The Free Soil Party opposed this effort vehemently. They were dedicated to limiting expansion only to free states. They were aligned with the new Republican party that emerged with the slogan “Free Press, Free Soil, Freemen.”
Democrats Douglas, Cass Buchanan & Pierce forcing the expansion of slavery issue on the nation.
The Commodore was a man without a party. He stayed relevant after leaving the Senate.
One method of the era was for politicians to respond to letters and make them public. Newspapers printed the letters and then offered their opinions, often twisting the remarks to their own ends without even printing the letters. It was a rash discourtesy to not answer a letter, and Stockton never backed down from a challenge.
Mr. Allen. M. Robinette, of Delaware, asked the following pointed questions of Stockton:
“1st, Are you in favor of any but the American born to hold office, elective or appointive?
2d. Are you in favor of an extension of the Naturalization Laws to a period of at least twenty-one years or a total repeal of the Naturalization Laws, as in the wisdom of the people may seem fit?
3d, Are you in favor of keeping the Bible, without note or comment, in our Public Schools?“
The Monmouth Democrat wrote “The Commodore replied promptly to these queries, and in a manner which wins applause from every true-hearted American. We place his letter before our readers, and promise ourselves the pleasure of referring to it again at no distant period.”
His letter:
“Princeton, Dec.6th, 1854—Dear Sir: I have received your letter of November 23d, and I thank you for the sentiments of friendly commendation which it expresses.
Though withdrawn from public life, nevertheless I am not insensible to emotions of gratification, when I find the principles of my past conduct the subject of just and generous appreciation. Yet it is with unfeigned reluctance that I comply with the duty of answering your letter, lest it should be construed into a desire on my part to reappear in the political arena. I have no such desire. The turbulence of political strife has no charms for me; my taste, inclinations, and happiness lead me to prefer the tranquility of private life.
But as I approved of the principles of the American party when in its infancy, I am unwilling that it should be believed now, when it exists in the vigor of manhood that I have become derelict to those principles, or that I can refuse on any proper occasion to avow myself to bo an American Democrat or shrink from the fraternal recognition of those who espouse my principles, no matter under what designation they may have formerly acted. No sir; the history of our country, since I first approved your principles, has only strengthened and confirmed the opinions I entertained at the period to which you refer.
To your first interrogatory, therefore, I answer and say—I am in favor of confining all executive and administrative functions of office to American-born. In relation to your second interrogatory, I answer that I am ia favor of an extension of the period of residence previous to naturalisation, to at least 21 years; or a total repeal of the naturalization laws, as the wisdom of the topic may seem fit. Demagogues should no longer be permitted to manufacture hordes of freshly imported aliens into voters to nullify the voice of Americans in the ballot box.
The corrupt rivalship of parties for the purchase of foreign-born voters must cease. It never will cease, however, until the swarms of emigrants who monthly land on our shores shall cease to be offered in the political market to the highest bidder. In avowing the principle that Americans alone should rule America, I do not understand you to approve the disfranchisement of the foreign born who already possess the right to vote. The larger proportion of our adopted fellow citizens, at least the most intelligent among them, I believe are perfectly satisfied that the time has arrived when our naturalization laws should be altered or repealed. That portion of them which does not constitute the staple of political traffic, fully appreciate the dignity and high prerogative of sovereignty which they enjoy as American citizens.
True to the country of their adoption, they are unwilling to jeopardize its institutions to benefit future emigrants, even from the land of their own nativity.
To your third interrogatory, I answer.— Being a Christian people, it seems to me that to preserve our posterity in the faith of the fathers, we can do no less than to secure to our children always perfect freedom of access to the Holy Scriptures, without “note or comment.” While frankly expressing this opinion, I must say also, that I agree with you, that any connection between sectarianism, and politics, or between Church and State whether Protestant or Papist, would be dangerous to liberty, and hostile to the spirit and genius of the American Constitution.
You allude to my presentation of the petition (whilst in the Senate of the United States) in favor of the exclusion of foreign paupers and convicts. On that subject, I will only say, that had I deemed the season propitious, such was my sense of the dangers and evils of the importation of that class of foreigners, that I should have felt it my duty to propose a capitation import tax upon such emigrants, which would have ineffectually excluded them from, our ports. That such a measure of precaution has not more earnestly been urged upon Congress by the municipal authorities of our great cities, which are the chief sufferers from the influx of foreign paupers and felons, shows to what extent subservience to the foreign element has influenced the action of those entrusted with the public safety. Faithfully your obedient servant and friend
Robert Field Stockton”
The reaction was everywhere. Papers chimed in. They loved having a definitive statement to chew on. Most politicians wanted to tiptoe around the issues of the day. Not Stockton.
"He has no more idea of dodging the question than he would have of dodging' a bullet. He stands as straight up as the main mast of a man-of-war he answers as boldly as though he were hailing a boat at sea. In these days of evasion and equivocation, it is refreshing to find a politician who is not afraid to speak his mind.”- Richmond VA Post
He was equally frank regarding a letter to “Gentlemen from Toms River” earlier that year, where he defended limited intra-state monopolies to use private funds to underwrite infrastructure projects. He accurately predicted the chaos that eventually ensued in some states where railroads were built and failed regularly.
Democrat candidates had largely gone quiet. They knew that sentiments on the slavery issue were boiling over. Sparsely populated Kansas had become a war zone over the Nebraska Act. “Border Ruffians” supporting slavery rushed into Kansas from Missouri to be able to vote, and the Free State Hotel was set ablaze. The John Brown gang hacked five men in a slave-supporting camp to death in retaliation, “Bloody Kansas” was a precursor to the Civil War.
The first territorial vote in 1855 had voting rules that required Kansas residency, but pamphlets distributed by slavery advocates noted you did not need a house or property to vote. Thousands more votes were cast than Kansas had residents, and pro-slavery legislators were elected. A congressional inquiry confirmed the fraud. President Pierce did nothing about it.
Stockton, deemed a Democrat-American was too vocal for the times. James Buchanan was minister to Britain in the years before his nomination, and he largely stayed out of these issues. It would win him the Democratic nomination in 1856.
Stockton’s answers on immigration might interfere with the advantages the party had in the large cities. Almost every newspaper that commented on his letter acknowledged politicians used new arrivals to control local elections.
Stockton had his supporters within the Democrat party. His firm constitutional stance supported the party’s views on slavery. At their convention, as his name was brought up, he elicited excitement. A delegate from Virginia read his Trenton speech. “The shot was effective, the Candidate was dead as a doornail.” Doornails for brackets and hinges were bent back 90 degrees and folded making them non-re-unusable at a time when nails were often recycled. There was no coming back from being a doornail. Stockton was too frank to be a Democrat at this time.
The Southern American Party and remnants of the Whigs selected previous president Millard Fillmore who had signed the 1850 Compromise bills including the Fugitive Slave act. The Northern American Party and the Republicans held a joint convention in New York. Stockton was fourth in the voting. The Americans supported him, but the Republicans held out for John C. Frémont, Stockton’s subordinate in the California conquest. Frémont was unencumbered by previous recent public positions other than wanting a free California.
The weak Whigs and upstart Republicans would lose to the Democrats’ James Buchanan. Stockton stayed at the beach and removed himself from politics as the nation hurtled toward Civil War.