Nativism is the idea that a certain group of people can be identied as original to, or the rightful heirs to, a geopolitical territory; consequently, “natives” claim the privilege of deciding who belongs and who counts as an “outsider” based on supposed foreign connections. The case could be made that nativism in this sense is universal. Nativist movements stress the interests of the locally born as a priority over nonnative, or foreign-born, people (for example, “Americans First”). Political nativism describes the coming together of nativism—the belief in inheritance—and a nativist movement—the reemphasis on “natives rst”—to induce measurable political changes. At its core is the innate human desire to feel at home. What people need to feel “at home” varies across time and space but oen entails economic stability and some combination of uniform behaviors, values, religious beliefs, language, or race. It must be noted that nativism does not always entail racism, although the intensication of race-based ideas and acts oen corresponds to a rise in political nativism. Nativists fashion themselves as protectors of local attributes against perceived foreign threats in their midst and are oen willing to take extreme actions.America’s rst nativist movement responded to the rapid inux of roughly . million European immigrants between   and  . Immigrants com-posed up to  percent of the total population of the United States. These gures do not take into account second-generation immigrants—that is, children born to immigrant parents on American soil. Most of these newcomers were German or Irish. Not only did they speak different languages, but they also harbored diverse cultural customs and ideas, approached politics in alternative ways, and worshipped within different religious traditions. While the vast majority of white Americans born on American soil worshipped in Protestant Christian churches, approximately percent of all Irish immigrants aaswere Catholic, while more than percent of Germans were as well.