U.S. Has History of Banning Dangerous Immigrants

     In the early part of the 20^th century an increasing number of Americans grew concerned about violent immigrants from Eastern Europe who harbored messianic beliefs about anarchism and communism.  This fear was inflamed when an anarchist (Leon Frank Czolgosz, a home grown terrorist whose parents had immigrated to Ohio) assassinated President William McKinley in 1901.

     After World War I, with a devastated Europe suffering economic and social upheaval, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Eastern Europe headed for America.  It is said that there were over 150,000 anarchists and communists in the United States by 1919 (which represented only 0.1% of the overall population, a small but dangerous minority).

     A series of bomb explosions in 1919, including a failed attempt to blow up the Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, lead to a vigorous campaign against the communists. On New Year’s Day, 1920, over 6,000 people were arrested and put in prison.  In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 which severely restricted immigration (new immigrants admitted fell from 805,000 in 1920 to 309,000 in 1921-22).  The 1921 act was made even tougher by the Immigration Act of 1924.  The purpose of this act was “to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity,” and, among other things, outright banned the immigration of Arabs.

     These tough immigration acts lasted until 1965 when they were replaced during the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Secrets of American History

A brief look at the often overlooked stories of American history from colonial times to modern times, stories such as, the original Emancipation Proclamations, the plot to kill Martha Washington, terrorism in the Civil War, America’s plan to invade Canada in 1930, a planned coup against the president, and many others hidden tales.

Terrorism in the Civil War (New York City 1864)

The threat of terrorism is nothing new in American history. In 1864 the 814,000 people of New York City faced a terrorist threat by Confederate agents angered over the Union army’s ravaging of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The plot was formulated by Robert Martin, a Confederate officer who had once served under the famous Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan. Martin, with six others, planned to set fire to large hotels on Election Day, November 8, 1864, while Southern sympathizers would simultaneously begin an uprising similar to the Draft Riots of 1863 among the large teeming immigrant population living in poverty around the slum of Five Points. The Draft Riots of July 1863 shut the city down for three days as rioters burned, looted and killed. Union troops marched straight from the battlefield of Gettysburg to put down the riot. Some 118 people died.

Missing their target date by two weeks, the terrorists struck on November 25, 1864, planning to set New York ablaze with an incendiary mixture of sulfur, naphtha, and quicklime that bursts into flame when exposed to air. Over a dozen buildings were set on fire in a four hour period. The incendiary mixture did not perform as predicted and all of the fires were quickly extinguished.

New Yorkers were outraged by the attack. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper called it “The most diabolical attempt at arson and murder of which there is any record in the history of our country.” The New York Times called the plot “one of the most fiendish and inhuman acts known to modern times.”

None of the Southern agents were ever apprehended.


Link to: Secrets of American History



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