Answer:
Step-by-step explanation:
From the 1820s to the 1840s, approximately 90 percent of immigrants to the United States came from Ireland, England, or Germany. Among these groups, the Irish were by far the largest. In the 1820s, nearly 60,000 Irish immigrated to the United States. In the 1830s, the number grew to 235,000, and in the 1840s—due to a potato famine in Ireland—the number of immigrants skyrocketed to 845,000.^2
squared The Great Irish Famine, as it became known, resulted from a five-year blight that turned potato crops black. Between 1845 and 1850, one million Irish died of starvation and another two million fled the country.^3
Recent Irish immigrants, especially Irish Catholics, were frequent targets of xenophobic—anti-foreign—prejudice. The arrival of so many Irish Catholics almost doubled the overall number of Catholics living in the United States. Anti-Catholic prejudice was still very common at this time, and many Americans perpetuated stereotypes of Catholics as superstitious and blindly obedient to the Vatican in Rome. Many questioned the loyalty of Catholic immigrants to the United States, fearing that in time of war, their loyalty would be not to their country but to the Pope. Catholicism was viewed as a threat to democracy, and many feared that it would undermine the strength of Protestantism in the United States