to assimilate into the predominant culture have always been a part of American life. The colony established by Roger Williams in what was to become Rhode Island was exiled there from Massachusetts Bay because Williams' followers refused to conform to the majority way of life. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay sought a land in which they could exercise religious freedom but extended such freedom only according to their own narrow interpretation. Williams' brand of Puritanism did not fit in with what the leaders had in mind, and he was therefore exiled to another part of the New World in order to avoid corruption of the pure ideal.
As exploration and settlement expanded across the continent, new settlers were able at first to immigrate to the New World without extensive conflicts. In fact, immigration was encouraged, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, to provide the labor necessary to build a new nation. During this period, the developing slave trade also added to the population by forcibly importing immigrants who could be kept under tight control.
During the 1820s, large numbers of Irish and German immigrants began to join the influx, causing the first real concern among the resident population. A significant number of these new immigrants were Catholic, unlike the primarily Protestant, Anglo-Saxon majority in America. Teresa O'Neill observes, "Catholics' loyalties, [current residents] felt, were to church first and to country a distant second" (58). This Protestant bias against Catholicism remained a source of discrimination to the extent that the election of the first Catholic president in 1960 was a significant breakthrough.
The German immigrants even spoke another language, making them an even more obvious threat to the established order, and both groups formed their own communities, causing members of the resident population to fear that the arrival of too many of these immigrants would turn the Unit...