Those Damn Immigrants . . . Again

Immigrants have been a favorite American scapegoat for racists who wish to reach beyond their time-honored target—people of color.  Waves of anti-immigration sentiment flooded the country in the 1840s (largely against Irish Catholics), in the 1880s (largely against Chinese) and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (largely against eastern and southern European Catholics and Jews).  In the 1920s, anti-immigrant fever had Congress passing two discriminatory laws that close the gates to the undesirable.  Today, bigotry rides high again.

Bigots assume a patriotic stance by pointing to the night George Washington crossed the Delaware and allegedly said “Put none but Americans on guard tonight.”  But this fable makes little sense. Would the first commander-in-chief issue an order that would further divide his country, and especially his ragged, freezing army that included thousands who were not Protestant, who were not white, and who did not come from England?  In Washington’s boat that night was Oliver Cromwell, who fought bravely at Princeton, Brandywine, Monmouth, and Yorktown—one of eight thousand volunteers of African descent.

The British faced a multicultural “rabble,” Irish, “motley crew” that had no respect for law and order, and lacked proper uniforms and military training.  Who were they?  In Carlisle, Pennsylvania seven of the first nine companies to sign up for the patriot cause were almost entirely Irish and two were largely German.  In Charleston, South Carolina, twenty-six Jews living on King Street joined up to form “The Jews’ Company.” Many blacks also joined the British after Lord Dunmore offered them freedom and a musket.

During Valley Forge’s terrible winter, Washington’s soldiers survived because local German immigrant farmers provided food for the ragged troops, and German and Moravian women volunteered to serve as nurses.  His encampment had so many Irish soldiers they won the right to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day – after Washington warned them to avoid “rioting and disorder.”  And Washington’s disheartened, freezing men were whipped into an army by Freidrich von Steuben, a German whose barking orders had to be translated from German to French to English.

Irish immigrants not only provided thousands of foot soldiers but also fifteen hundred officers, including twenty-six Generals. General John Sullivan, the son of Irish immigrants, stood with Washington at Valley Forge, and another of his trusted officers was Christian Febiger, a Danish immigrant. Still another was General Johann de Kalb, a giant of a man from Germany, who served under General Horatio Gates.

Major Cosmo Medici of Italy survived forty-one months of battles and eleven months as a prisoner of war.  Poland’s Thaddeus Kosciusko became a general, a personal friend of Washington and a war hero.  After the war he returned home to lead his own people against Russian tyranny.  Count Casmir Polaski saved the patriot forces at Brandywine, formed a “Polish Legion” staffed by officers from France, Germany and Poland, and became “the father of the American cavalry.”  His chief officer was Colonel Michael Kovats, a Hungarian, whose soldiers were largely came from Germany and Hungary.

African Americans helped Ethan Allen capture Fort Ticonderoga and served alongside whites and Native Americans in Francis Marion’s guerilla forces in the Carolinas.  “No regiment is to be seen in which there are not negroes in abundance,” reported a captured Hessian soldier.  At Bunker Hill, Peter Salem, a black sharpshooter, brought down Major Pitcairn, the British commander, and another, Salem Poor, was cited for battlefield bravery by Captain William Prescott and thirteen of his officers.

A host of “foreigners” bore arms in defense of the new republic— soldiers and sailors from Spain, Cuba, France, Mexico and Puerto Rico.  Louisiana’s Spanish Governor Bernard de Galvez sent food, guns and medicine across his border to the patriots. During the siege of Savannah, seven hundred black soldiers from Haiti helped stem the British assault.

Even unwanted aliens helped.  Of the approximately thirty thousand Hessian mercenaries hired by the British, many changed their mind. A third deserted while still in Germany, and others surrendered the first chance they had.  When Hessian prisoners were taken on a tour of Pennsylvania’s fertile fields, many volunteered to stay as farmers.  One was Private Kuster, an ancestor of U.S. General George A. Custer.

Immigrants from many lands—Europeans, Africans, Hispanics and Native Americans—fought and died so the United States of America might live.  The British learned this to their sorrow.  When he surrendered at Yorktown, a shaken Lord Cornwallis ordered his band to play “The World Turned Upside Down.”