The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

Unlike many presidents before and after, President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed immigrants and supported their efforts to become Americans. Serving between 1901 and 1909, Roosevelt viewed the country as a nation of immigrants brought together by the promise of American progress, a vision epitomized by Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play The Melting Pot.

Meacham next provides a brief summary of anti-immigration rhetoric in America. He traces it as far back as 1798’s Alien and Sedition Acts, signed by President John Adams to limit the political activities of immigrants and to give the federal government extraordinary powers to imprison or deport noncitizens. Anti-immigrant sentiment cooled to a large extent until the mid-19th century, when a surge in immigration followed a series of 1848 revolutions across Europe. This era saw the rise of the Know Nothings, a far-right nativist political party. As slavery and secession became the dominant issues in America, anti-immigrant movements receded, only to spring up again in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act, signed by President Chester A. Arthur in response to racist labor anxieties directed toward Asian immigrant workers.

Roosevelt’s attitudes toward poverty and immigration were shaped by his time as New York City’s police commissioner from 1894 to 1897.