1790-1900 : American Expansion and Pressure to Limit Immigration

In 1775, the American colonies were united by shared traits : small, privately-owned businesses; villages not relying on British trade, growing or making nearly everything they needed, most created by family groups of several generations; a rural population, with 80% owning the land they lived on and farmed; English language, laws and Protestantism. After 1700, the Industrial Revolution led some colonists to move to cities, as in England. Poor jobless English young people who couldn't afford passage to America used indentured service as their ticket out of poverty. Similarly, 60,000 British convicts were transported to British colonies in Georgia in the 1700s, most only guilty of being very poor and jobless. ~~~~~ There was little immigration from 1770 to 1830. The foreign-born in the US bottomed around 1815, at about 1.4% of the population. Most of the immigrants who had arrived before the American Revolution were dead, with almost no new immigration thereafter. ~~~~~ Large scale immigration resumed in the 1830s -- British, Irish, Germans, Central Europeans and Scandinavians, attracted by cheap farmland. Artisans and skilled factory workers joined the growing industrial sector. Unskilled Irish Catholic workers built canals and railroads, settling in urban areas or new northeast textile mill towns. The population doubled by births every 25 years and pushed the US frontier to the Pacific by 1848. ~~~~~ Nearly all population growth up to 1830 was internal, so 98.5% of the population was native-born. The first significant Catholic immigration in the 1840s during the Irish Famine shifted the population from 95% Protestant to 90% by 1850. Before the Civil War, American dislike of immigration became political anti-Catholicism, directed at the Irish and Germans. The Catholic Church was viewed as hostile to American values. Catholics and German Lutherans became Democrats. Protestants joined the new Republican Party. They all supported the Civil War. Available records -- the 1850 census was the first that asked about birthplace -- show that immigration totaled 8,385 in 1820, rising to 23,322 by 1830, and to 599,00 by 1840. By 1850, immigration jumped to 1,713,000, including 781,000 Irish, 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British, and 77,000 French. Failed 1848 revolutions saw many European intellectuals and activists lured by land, relatives, freedom, opportunity, and jobs in the US. ~~~~~ But, with westward expansion, America was about to experience a new immigration pattern. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War and gave US citizenship to 60,000 Mexican residents of the New Mexico Territory and 10,000 living in California. In 1849, the California Gold Rush pulled 100,000 prospecters from the eastern US, Latin America, China, Australia, and Europe. California became a state in 1850. Of the 23,054,000 Americans, 9.7% were immigrants, a high exceeded only by the 1607-1641 initial immigration. ~~~~~ After 1880, technology intervened. Large steam-powered ships replaced sailing ships, yielding lower fares and greater immigrant mobility. Farming advances in southern Europe and Russia created surplus labor. Young people, 15 to 30, became the largest immigrant group. This third wave of US immigration was a true flood, with 25 million Europeans arriving. Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, and other Slavic speakers were the bulk, among them 2 to 4 million Jews, adding to the tiny minority of the original middle colonies. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the 1880-1930 immigrant wave created the US industrial labor pool for steel, coal, automotive, textile, and garment production. America became an economic giant. But, urban enclaves, numbers, and American antipathy toward foreigners, led to anti-immigration organizations. By the 1890s, Americans -- still Protestant, northern European, multi-generation native-born -- declared immigration a serious danger to health and security. Congress acted, passing the first severe immigration laws, with no hint of "That's not who we are." Tomorrow - 20th century immigration issues.