The Hyphenated Americans (1899)
Uncle Sam: "Why should I let these freaks cast whole ballots when they are only half Americans?"
1899 cartoon hostile to immigrants voting in the United States. Cartoon shows Uncle Sam seated at left, looking displeased. A row of men are lined up to place ballots in a ballot box. Each of them is split down the middle, one side dressed in stereotyped European garb, the other in contemporary US fashion. They are labeled "Irish-American", "German-American", "Italian-American", etc.
Calling a person a "hyphenated American" was an insult suggesting divided loyalties, especially in time of war. It was used from 1890 to 1920 to disparage Americans who were of foreign birth or origin, and who displayed an allegiance to a foreign country through the use of the hyphen.
The term "hyphenated American" was first used in print in 1889, and was common as a derogatory term by 1904. During World War I the issue arose of the primary political loyalty of ethnic groups with close ties to Europe, especially German Americans and also Irish Americans. Former President Theodore Roosevelt in speaking to the largely Irish Catholic Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall on Columbus Day 1915, asserted that,
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all ... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic ... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
President Woodrow Wilson regarded "hyphenated Americans" with suspicion, saying:
"Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready." ~ Wikipedia
Title: The Hyphenated Americans
Subtitle: "Why should I let these freaks cast whole ballots when they are only half Americans?"
Source: Wikimedia
Creator: J. S. Pughe (d. 1909)
Published: "Puck" magazine
Date: August 9, 1899
The hyphenated freaks are half-witted people who speak of "real Americans" without referring to Native Americans. Those are the ones who should not cast even a half-ballot.
Ah yes, the hypocritical anti-immigrant rhetoric has been part of the United States for far too long.
Leave it to Woodrow Wilson, renowned racist and elitist union buster, to say such rubbish and not understand a single thing on how our economy is strengthened by immigrants. Guys like DeSantis and Abbot are just recycled Wilson-wannabes.