American Historical Ephemera & Early Photography Online

"American Republican Manifesto." Unsigned manuscript detailing a staunch nativist view of American immigration and politics. N.p., n.d. [ca 1845]. 4pp, approx. 8 x 12 1/2in. (creasing at folds, toning).

The manifesto opens with a clear statement of intent: "When our Fathers considered that their rights were invaded, & their liberties in danger, they united in their defence against aggression, & published a Manifesto of their intentions to the world. We, citizens of the United States, to whose keeping patriot sires have transmitted the inestimable boon of Civil Liberty and Independence, considering that our rights are invaded, & our liberty is in danger, unite in the Holy Cause of their defence; and imitating our patriot sires, publish our intentions to the world....Americans, rule yourselves: proclaim to the minions of Europe your determination to be free...." The author(s) then continues, echoing verbiage from the Declaration of Independence, to establish the ways in which the current nation was supposedly impeded by immigrants in its drive to live up to the nation's founding ideals. The document reads, in small part: "We set the seal of condemnation to the monstrous absurdity that our country is, de jure, the asylum for all the paupers, ignoramuses, & felons of Europe. We deny the inference, that filling our Almshouses with foreign paupers, will increase our wealth - our Prisons with imported felons, our safety - or, that our morals can be purified by an assimilation of our rising generation, with the crime, vice, ignorance, and mendacity of Europe. These dogmas, the root of the evil, are of foreign growth & origin....Wherefore, we proclaim to all men - The Tree of Liberty was planted by the hands, & watered with the blood of our Fathers; no foreign severingknife [sic] shall mar its fair proportions...we proscribe no man for his opinions...; but we do denounce, in the strongest terms, all persons who...shall attempt to lay sacrilegious hands on our birthright...."

The "American Republican" party of the 1840s was a nativist political party that was a forerunner to the Know-Nothing movement (formally the American Party) of the 1850s. The name "Republican Party" was also later adopted by the anti-slavery Republican Party, formed in 1854, which was a distinct entity. The primary platform of the American Republican Party in the 1840s was based on nativism, specifically anti-immigrant and anti-Roman Catholic sentiment. Party members sought to restrict immigrant political power, including by advocating for longer naturalization periods and allowing only native-born citizens to hold office. The manuscript offered here resembles in style and content an "American Republican Manifesto" broadside produced by the American Republican Party, ca mid-to-late 1840s (American Party Broadsides, 1844-1855, The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky), and may predate it.