Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"Their Shoes Yet New" : The Immigrant Image In The Baltimore Riots Of 1812 And The Disagreement Over Nationality, John K. Dunn Jr

Honors Theses

This paper examines the ways in which immigrants were characterized in Baltimore immediately following that city's Riots in 1812. It finds that the "native" majority used the immigrant image in an attempt to determine the criteria of nationality. That image was not settled, however, and rather constituted a discussion between interested groups about the relative importance of ethnicity in the years before Jacksonian democracy. It also concludes that the peculiar conditions and social divisions of Baltimore directly contributed to the Baltimore Riots and that the riots provided an opportunity for prevalent stereotypes to surface.