About the Presenter
Cody Nager is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab. He received his doctorate in history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His manuscript, Determined to be American: Regulating Migration and Citizenship in the Early American Republic, 1783–1815 investigates how the new nation’s precarious international and domestic position shaped debates over migration which divided Americans into political parties supporting different visions for the nation’s future.
Free and enslaved migrants forced Americans to confront a panoply of political leanings, economic circumstances, and ideologies. Selecting the “right” immigrants would strengthen the nation while picking the “wrong” ones would lead the nation to ruin. Throughout the Early Republic, Americans evaluated and reevaluated migration politics forming the core of debates over migration policy that continue to this day.