The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States

by Kevin Kenny

A powerful analysis of how regulation of the movement of enslaved and free black people produced a national immigration policy in the period between the American Revolution and the end of Reconstruction.

Today the United States considers immigration a federal matter. Yet, despite America's reputation as a "nation of immigrants," the Constitution is silent on the admission, exclusion, and expulsion of foreigners. Before the Civil War, the federal government played virtually no role in regulating immigration, and states set their own terms for regulating the movement of immigrants, free blacks, and enslaved people. Insisting that it was their right and their obligation to protect the public health and safety, states passed their own laws prohibiting the arrival of foreign convicts, requiring shipmasters to post bonds or pay taxes for passengers who might become public charges, ordering the deportation of immigrant paupers, quarantining passengers who carried contagious diseases, excluding or expelling free blacks, and imprisoning black sailors. To the extent that these laws affected foreigners, they comprised the immigration policy of the United States.

Offering an original interpretation of nineteenth-century America, The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic argues that the existence, abolition, and legacies of slavery were central to the emergence of a national immigration policy. In the century after the American Revolution, states controlled mobility within and across their borders and set their own rules for community membership. Throughout the antebellum era, defenders of slavery feared that, if Congress gained control over immigration, it could also regulate the movement of free black people and the interstate slave trade. The Civil War and the abolition of slavery removed the political and constitutional obstacles to a national immigration policy, which was first directed at Chinese immigrants. Admission remained the norm for Europeans, but Chinese laborers were excluded through techniques of registration, punishment, and deportation first used against free black people in the antebellum South. To justify these measures, the Supreme Court ruled that immigration authority was inherent in national sovereignty and required no constitutional justification. The federal government continues to control admissions and exclusions today, while some states monitor and punish immigrants, and others offer sanctuary and refuse to act as agents of federal law enforcement.

By revealing the tangled origins of border control, incarceration, and deportation, distinguished historian Kevin Kenny sheds light on the history of race and belonging in America, as well as the ongoing tensions between state and federal authority over immigration.

Genres: History, Law, 19th Century, Nonfiction, Politics, American History

337 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 28, 2023

About the author

Kevin Kenny is Professor of History and Glucksman Professor in Irish Studies at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University in 1994, where his dissertation won the Bancroft Award. He taught at the University of Texas from 1994 to 1999 and at Boston College from 1999 to 2018. His first book, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (Oxford University Press, 1998) examines how traditions of Irish rural protest were transplanted into industrial America. His second book, The American Irish: A History (Longman, 2000), offers a general survey of the field. A third book, Peaceable Kingdom Lost (Oxford University Press, 2009) analyzes the unraveling of William Penn’s utopian vision of harmonious co-existence between Native Americans and European colonists. Professor Kenny’s latest book, Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2013), examines the origins, meaning, and utility of a central concept in the study of migration, with particular reference to Jewish, African, Irish, and Asian history. He is also editor of Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2004) and he has published articles on immigration in the Journal of American History and the Journal of American Ethnic History among other venues. His latest book, The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Oxford University Press, 2023), explains how slavery shaped immigration policy as it moved from the local to the national level in the period from the American Revolution through the end of Reconstruction.

Reviews

[César Hernández · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply researched and remarkably thorough, Kevin Kenny's "The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic" adds immensely to the academic literature on the early regulation of migration in the United States. Even as a migration scholar interested and familiar with migration regulation during the period that Kenny focuses on, I found myself underlining and flagging passages throughout. I learned a lot from this book and expect to be coming back to it for many years to come.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway! I'm glad I did, because it's not the sort of thing I would have found on my own as it's certainly a more academic read not really targeted for lay folks at all. Incredibly thorough, definitely dry at times but that's just a function of the audience, of which I am not generally a part of. Fascinating look into its subject, and it feels like this advances the scholarship as well (not that I would personally know). I certainly learned a lot from it and found it fascinating to look at the mental and legal contortions put forth by a nation desperate to keep hold of slavery by any means necessary.

[Mal Hardesty · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Declaration of Independence begins with the 'self-evident' truths that all men are created equal and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.'. Less well-known is the list of twenty-seven grievances against George III that follows. One of these grievances concerned immigration."

The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Kevin Kenny analyzes the United States legal cases that have be used to police the movement of people within country's borders. This book focuses on the movement of Black enslaved people in the first section and the wave of Chinese immigration in the late 19th century. This book uses legal cases to understand the policing of the movement of people and their citizenship status in the United States. I really enjoyed this book and if you like legal history, this would be a great book for you. As always, thank you for listening.

[Jason S · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really fascinating book that shatters many myths about early American immigration and about how regulation of movement by states was an essential part of the fabric of slaveholding states. One of the better histories I have read in 2023.