"Anti-Catholic" was largely aimed at Irish Americans? That's pretty heavy. It seems like such a general term but it was aimed mostly at one group. "Anti-Asian" is shocking to hear/read also because it's not a widely used term here in California and hopefully nowhere else. I'm Catholic and of Asian descendent. If I lived in the 1800s, my life would be incredibly unpleasant and I probably wouldn't be living in the US even though I was born here. That is a life I don't want to imagine since everything I have and know now would be false.
The part about Maria Monk's, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (1836) was pretty interesting. Monk sounds somewhat of a crazy owman and the her demise sounds so depressing. She gets caught pickpocketing some guy and dies in jail for that crime. Sounds like the modern day crack addict, except without the crack and the addiction.
The extent of how Asians were excluded from being American is amazing. It took so much effort, power, and energy to keep them out of the US. The chapter is pretty long, and the amount of text about the Chinese Exclusion act goes on for awhile. All for the economic interest of white working men. Cheap Asian labor probably stimulated the economy very well but it wasn't enough to place them in a higher class of society. They were like the new African slaves.
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