Sublime

Alexander Hamilton—himself an immigrant and, in the twenty-first century, an emblem of American mobility—had reservations: “The influx of foreigners must…tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities.”

Congress failed to act on Hamilton’s manufacturing report. In Washington’s view, it didn’t “comport with the temper of the times,” but he still availed himself of every opportunity to promote American manufacturing.9