In the later 19th century, French-Canadian Roman Catholic immigrants from Quebec were deemed a threat to the United States, potential terrorists in service of the Pope.
His well documented narrative touches on the issues of cross-border immigration; the Nativists fear of the Other; the rise and fall of manufacturing in the U.
S.; and the construction of race and ethnicity.. hiStory prefigures events as recent as yesterday\'s news.
Vermette shows how this little-known episode in U.
S.
Vermette also discusses what occurred when the textile industry moved to the Deep South and brings the Story of emigrants up to the present day.
Vermette discusses the murky reception these cross-border immigrants met in the USA, including dehumanizing conditions in mill towns and early-20th-century campaigns led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Eugenics movement.
He traces individuals and families, from the textile barons who created a new industry to the poor farmers and laborers of Quebec who crowded into the mills in the post-Civil War period.
Vermette\'s groundbreaking study sets this neglected and poignant tale in the broader context of North American history.
Books and newspapers floated the conspiracy theory that the immigrants seeking work in New England\'s burgeoning textile industry were actually plotting to annex parts of the United States to a newly independent Quebec.
In the later 19th century, French-Canadian Roman Catholic immigrants from Quebec were deemed a threat to the United States, potential terrorists in service of the Pope
