"America for Americans!" / The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon

by John Philip Newman

A third attribute is the individuality of the citizen, out of which comes the collective man, our national life. We have exalted the individual; the American citizen is a republic of one. Whether we have fifty millions, or ten millions, or a million, whatever may be the ratio of our population, the Government recognizes the individuality of the citizen as paramount. As God is the center of the universe, and Christ the center of the church, so the citizen is the center of this Government. All its laws, all its administrations, all its soldiers in the army, all its guns in the navy, are for the protection of the American citizen. Wherever he wanders, whether in Africa, or Europe, or Asia, or Germany, or Ireland, or Cuba, or Mexico, the American citizen must and shall be protected. [Applause.] It is difficult for men coming from Europe, where men are contemplated in masses, to realize the potency of individuality; but it underlies our free institutions.

Fourthly, he is an American, whether native-born or foreign-born, who accepts the bold venture of the fathers to segregate public education from the teachings of the church. It was a bold move in political science. There is no authority under the Constitution of the United States, there should be no authority in the constitution of any State, there should be no authority in the municipality of any part of the country, to impose religious instruction upon the childhood of America. You and I may tremble in the presence of this tremendous fact, this daring project in the science of statecraft, but then you must remember that, according to the organic law of our country, we know no class but citizens, we know no obligation but protection, no duty but the welfare of the people. In all the nations abroad there is the combination of secular and religious instruction. Arithmetic, geometry, geography, physiology, must be taught under the sanctions of religion. But in this country public education is separated from sectarian religious teaching. We may pause in the presence of such a fact. We know that intelligence is almost a boundless power. Intelligence has produced as much evil as it has good; the greatest monsters who have damned humanity have been men of the highest possible culture, and the men who are sowing the seed in this country of discord are men of sublime intellects and polished education. And therefore the founders of the Republic recognized the duty of the individual citizen to add home instruction, instruction in the church, instruction in the Sunday-school, to sanctify this intelligence. Whenever they expounded constitutional law, or spoke in behalf of the perpetuity of our institutions, they never failed to give pre-eminence to private virtue and public morality; nor did they hesitate to say that this virtue in private life and this morality in the public society must flow out of that religion which we esteem divine.

Those great men ventured on another and a desperate mission, the segregation of State from Church. In the nations of the old world these are allied. The Czar is the head of the church. Victoria is the head of the church. The King of Germany is the head of the church. The Hapsburg, of Austria, is the head of the church. The Sultan is the head of the church. But here we have no earthly head of the church. To the individual Christian Christ is the head of the church. This is fundamental in our Government. Here we have "a free church in a free country." Christianity had been supported by thrones in the old world. Religion had been enforced by armies and navies. The great cathedrals, and what are called the church livings, had been maintained by a tax imposed upon people who did not believe the creed taught, and did not observe the forms of worship practiced. In our organic law it is stated that Congress shall not legislate on the subject of religion. Religion shall be free. Here the Mohammedan may rear his mosque and read his Koran. Here the Brahmin may rear his pagoda and read his Shasta. All religionists may come and worship here, but their worship shall not infringe upon the worship of others nor work injury to the body-politic. The Typical American should set his face against all seeming alliance of Church and State. We say to the Holy Father, live in peace. Stay in Rome. Live on the banks of the Tiber. If you come here, you must be an American citizen, rejecting your doctrine of temporal power. You may come and be naturalized and be a voter, but we can have no temporal popes here. [Applause and laughter.] So we say to our countrymen that come from dear old Ireland, the best country in the world to emigrate from, [laughter], to the Italian, to the Spaniard, to the German, you may belong to the church of the spiritual pontiff but you must renounce all allegiance to temporal pontiffs. I hold that under our laws of naturalization, that it is the duty of every cardinal, every archbishop, every bishop, and every priest, every monk, Franciscan or Jesuit, to solemnly renounce before God and the holy angels, all political allegiance to the Pope as a temporal prince, who to-day is seeking to re-establish diplomatic relations with England and other European nations in recognition of his temporal sovereignty.

And he is a true American citizen, whether foreign-born or native-born, who maintains, as an American institution, the Holy Sabbath-day. He can call it Sunday, after the old pagan god, but he must rest on the seventh day, rest from toil, rest in the interest of the dignity of labor, rest as discount upon capital, rest for intelligence, rest for compensation, rest for domestic happiness, rest for pious culture. The seventh day of every week should be consecrated to cessation from labor and devoted to physical and mental repose. It should not be a day of recreation to be spent in riotous living and in brawls, but a day peaceful, in harmony with the institutions of religion and the dominant sentiment of the country. Our fathers consecrated the Sabbath, and had you the patience to hear and I, the time to read from Franklin, from Jefferson, from Washington, touching the Sabbath, in recognition of it as indispensable to the welfare of our body politic, you would be confirmed in this great truth. The danger to-day is that we are becoming un-American in cutting loose from the Sabbath-day as a day of rest and of worship. I cannot invoke the civil law to do more than to say that it shall be a day of rest. I cannot invoke the civil law to say that that man shall worship here or worship there, or worship at all, but I can invoke the civil law to say that it shall be a non-secular day; not a day for the transaction of business, but a day on which the laboring man shall walk out under God's free skies and say: This is my day, the day of a freeman. [Applause.] The tendency is to transplant a European Sabbath here; the German with his lager, and the Frenchman with his wine, and the Irishman with his shillalah. [Laughter.] No, no, gentlemen, stay on the other side of the great deep. We don't want these things or this day on this side of the broad Atlantic.

There is another attribute that belongs to the true American citizen—the recognition of Christianity as the religion of our country. Webster, our greatest expounder of constitutional law, did not hesitate to declare that Christianity—not Methodist Christianity, not Roman Catholic Christianity, not Presbyterian Christianity—but Christianity as taught by the four Evangelists, is the recognized religion of this land. Recognized how far? So far that its ethics shall be embodied in our constitutional and statutory law; so far that its teachings of the brotherhood of mankind shall be accepted; so far that its lessons of fraternity, equality, justice; and mercy shall be incorporated in the law of society. Those beautiful moralities that fell from the lips of the divine Son of God have been incorporated in the laws of the land, and that with few exceptions. Our chaplains for the army and navy and for Congress are in recognition of this. On that sacred book the oath of Presidential responsibility is taken. And this Thanksgiving Day, appointed by the President, is a monument of proof. These point to Christianity as the dominant religion of the land, not to the exclusion of the Jew, not to the exclusion of the Greek, not to the exclusion of the Mohammedan, not to the exclusion of the Brahmin, but permeating society with its principles.

Then, citizens, the danger which comes from this foreign population is to be met in this way, first, to hold that this country is for Americans who are clothed with these seven attributes.

I do not exaggerate the danger when I remind you that there are great movements among the peoples of the earth, as never before. Remember that the population of Europe has increased twenty-seven millions from 1870 to 1880, and at this rate of increase Europe can send to us two millions of immigrants a year for the next hundred years. Our foreign-born population is said to be seven millions, and their children of the first generation would make fifteen millions. In 1882 immigration reached the enormous figure of eight hundred thousand, and at the present rate of immigration it is said there will be in the year 1900, fourteen years from now, nineteen millions of persons of foreign birth, and with their children of the first generation there will be forty-three millions in this land of foreign born. Now the question, and a serious one, is, Who are those that come? I have said some are noble, some are true, some are easily transformed into the Typical American. But then we are to remember that most of the foreigners who come here are twelve times as much disposed to crime as are the native stock.

Our population of foreign extraction is sadly conspicuous in our criminal records. This element constituted, in 1870, 20 per cent. of the population of New England, and furnished 75 per cent. of the crime. The Howard Society of London reports that 74 per cent. of the Irish discharged convicts have come to the United States. I hold in my hand the annual rum bill of this country for the last year. It is nine hundred millions of dollars! I ask myself, Who drinks this rum? Native Americans? Some! [Laughter.] Some drink a good deal. [Renewed laughter.] But let us see the danger that comes to us from inebriety among our foreign population.

The wholesale dealers in liquor are estimated at sixty-five per cent. foreign born, and the brewers seventy-five per cent. Let us take Philadelphia, that old Quaker city, the City of Brotherly Love, that city that seems to be par excellence the city of the world, and here are the figures: There were 8,034 persons in the rum traffic, and who were they? Chinamen, 2; Jews, 2; Italians, 18; Spaniards, 140; Welsh, 160; French, 285; Scotch, 497; English, 568; Germans, 2,179; Irish, 3,041; Africans, 265; American, 205. I suppose we will have to mix the Africans with the Americans, and the total would be 470 Americans, and then there were persons of unknown nationality in the rum traffic, 672; the sum total being 8,034. Of this number 3,696 were females, but out of the 3,696 all were foreigners but one. There was one American woman in the rum business, and I blush for my country. Yet there were 1,104 German women, and 2,548 Irish, and of the whole number of the 8,034 engaged in the liquor traffic of that city, 6,418 had been arrested for some crime. [Applause.] We are bound to look at these facts. Are we a nation of foreign drunkards?

Then there is another danger—the tendency of emigrant colonization. I suppose it is known to you that New Mexico is in the hands of foreigners—in the hands of the Catholic Church. It is also a fact of Congressional report that 20,557,000 acres of land are in the possession of twenty-nine alien corporations and individuals, an area greater than the whole of Ireland. I would have no part of this country subject to any church. I would have no foreign language taught in the public schools to the exclusion of or in preference to the English language. I would have no laws published in a foreign language, whether for the French of Louisiana or the Germans of Cincinnati. [Loud applause.] I would utter my solemn protest, and that in the hearing of all politicians, especially those men who want to be Presidents and can not be Presidents, and those who hope to be ere long—I would utter my solemn protest to-day against what is known as the "Irish vote" and the "German vote." [Applause.] We do not want any "foreign vote." Down with the politician that would seek an "Irish vote" or "German vote." [Great applause.] All we want here is an American vote. I would not vote for any man for President who would stoop so low as to bid for the German vote or the Irish vote. [Continued applause.] The other safeguard is an extension of the term of residence required for naturalization. Some say make the term twenty-one years. What is the term now? Five years. I read from "Revised Statutes," section 2165 and 2174, that a person applying for citizenship must be a resident of the United States at least five years, and one year within the State or Territory wherein the application is made, and that during that term (I wish I had all the judges here to-day) and that during that term he is to give satisfactory assurance to the court that he has behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same. "A man of good moral character!" what a sublime utterance, and how infinite. I would be glad to know what judge takes the pains, when a hundred of these foreigners apply just on the eve of the election, that they may qualify themselves to vote, what judge inquires whether they are men of good moral character? Yet such is the provision of the law of the land. We have assumed the authority to limit suffrage. We say that women shall not vote, which is a great mistake. [Sensation.] You are not up to that. [Laughter.] My wife is as competent to vote as I. On all moral questions, especially the temperance question, I would trust the women ten times before I would the men. It is an abuse of the very genius of our Government to proscribe the Chinese. We say the negro may vote because his skin is black. We say the Dutchman, the Irishman, the Italian may vote, because his skin ought to be white, but the Chinese can not vote because his skin is yellow. The word "white" is used in the statute of limitation. We say to the young American who graduates with the highest honors at eighteen, you must wait three years longer before you can stand with the Irishman with his brogans and the Teuton with his lager and vote for the rulers of your native land. I would have the term of naturalization extended, some say till the foreigner has been here twenty-one years. Extend the term to ten years, fifteen years. Say to all persons who come to this country from foreign lands, that after 1890 they shall remain here fifteen years to become indoctrinated in our free institutions, learn the seven attributes of the American citizen, and then be prepared to love America for America's sake. [Applause.]