Early U.S Irish and German Immigration Push and Pull Factors

1. Section 6.3 Immigration

2. AnteBellum Period • Antebellum is a Latin word that means “before the war.” In American history, the antebellum period refers to the years after the War of 1812 (1812–15) and before the Civil War (1861–65). • The development of separate northern and southern economies, westward expansion of the nation, and a spirit of reform marked the era. • Antebellum Era was marred by violence against millions of enslaved Black people — as well as battles that the U.S. fought against other countries. • A demand for labor and a supply of immigrants in search of economic opportunity coincided in the Antebellum period. • Antebellum Reforms Powerpoint Video https://slideplayer.com/slide/8658536/

4. An Immigrant Nation • From the 1820s to the 1840s, Germans and Irish were the two largest groups of immigrants to the United States. • The Germans and Irish were frequently subjected to anti-foreign prejudice and discrimination. • Ultimately, the Germans and Irish assimilated into U.S culture and society and became two of the most successful immigrant groups in the country. • The United States, as an immigrant nation, has always faced the challenge of incorporating new demographic groups into its society and culture. • Throughout the history of the United States, this has resulted in fierce national debates over what it means to be an American. • Successive waves of immigration diversified the country from its origins in white, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, while enlarging and expanding upon the definition of the term American.

6. Irish Immigration • 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. • 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.

7. 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.

8. Despite these challenges, the Irish were resilient and assimilated effectively into US culture and society. • They lived in both rural and urban areas, settling the western frontier, working the land as farmers, and establishing a major presence in cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. • They built powerful political machines in major metropolitan areas, the most famous of which was undoubtedly Tammany Hall in New York City.  • These political machines, typically run by the Democratic Party, helped recent immigrants assimilate into American society by providing them with training, employment opportunities, and sometimes even cash handouts, in exchange for their votes at election time.

9. William “Boss” Tweed, fourth-generation Scottish-Irish, was the most infamous of the Tammany Hall political bosses; he dominated the politics of New York City from the mid-1850s until his arrest in 1871 on charges of embezzlement, corruption, and fraud. • Though Tweed was certainly guilty of these charges, there is no doubt that Tammany Hall and other political machines like it performed a valuable service in helping recent immigrants, especially the Irish, to assimilate into US culture and society. • By the mid-20th century, the Irish had become one of the most successful, prosperous, and well-educated immigrant groups in the country. Boss Tweed, 1870

10. German immigration • From the 1820s to the 1840s, Germans were the second largest group of immigrants to the United States after the Irish. • They came to the United States seeking political and religious freedom and greater economic opportunities than could be found in Europe. • In 1848, when revolutions erupted in the German states of Europe, Germans became the largest immigrant group to the United States. • At first, Germans faced discrimination from Americans. • The Espionage and Sedition Acts made it a crime to aid the enemy (Germany) or criticize the government’s conduct of the war, and in October 1917, Congress began censoring America’s many German-language newspapers, which included over 50 papers in Iowa. • Like other states, Iowa established “Councils of Defense” in all 99 counties, tasking them with securing the food supply and rooting out seditious activities.

11. One of their first activities was to ban the instruction of German in public schools. • Collection committees coerced large sums from German-American neighbors. • Houses, businesses, and even livestock were painted yellow to mark their owners as disloyal. • Schools and communities burned German books. • The Babel Proclamation, issued by Iowa Gov. William Harding in May 1918, forbade the speaking of all foreign languages in public. Grandparents accustomed to speaking German to children and grandchildren via telephone party lines were suddenly arrested.  • German families altered their last names. • Berlin in Tama County became Lincoln, while the town of Germania in Kossuth County became Lakota.

12. Although Germans created settlements in nearly every state of the Union, the so-called German belt stretches from Pennsylvania to Oregon, all along the North and Midwest.  • Many of the Germans who settled these areas were farmers who developed innovative techniques such as crop rotation and soil conservation.  • Other Germans settled in metropolitan areas, pursuing education, establishing industrial enterprises, and later entering the ranks of the middle and upper classes. • Today, over 50 million Americans have full or partial German ancestry, making German-Americans the largest white ethnic group in the United States.

13. Push factors are the reasons why people left their country • Pull factors are the reasons why people moved to the United States of America in search of freedom, safety, stability and new opportunities

14. Irish Migration to America

16. German Migration to America

18. Facing Prejudice • Many immigrants from other countries still to this day face prejudice because they have a different culture and English is not their nativelanguage. • Almost every new group of immigrants to the United States faces the challenge of learning English and adopting the clothes, customs, and attitudes of their new home. • Some face prejudice from people who were born in the U.S. and who are native speakers of English. • Sometimes, the prejudice can even come from Americans whose parents or grandparents were themselves immigrants. • Immigrants have often worked so hard to become American that no one would ever know they were not native-born. • All immigrants bring their own traditions to America, yet they adopt American traditions, too. This is what helps to make American culture so diverse.

19. U.S. Immigration Timeline • The United States has long been considered a nation of immigrants. • Attitudes toward new immigrants by those who came before have vacillated between welcoming and exclusionary over the years. • Some, including the Pilgrims and Puritans, came for religious freedom. • Many sought greater economic opportunities. • Still others, including hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans, arrived in America against their will. • There are 8 major events that have shaped the turbulent history of immigration in the United States since its birth:

20. White People of 'Good Character' Granted Citizenship • January 1776: Thomas Paine publishes a pamphlet, “Common Sense,” that argues for American independence. “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe,” he writes. • March 1790: Congress passes the first law about who should be granted U.S. citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows any free white person of “good character,” who has been living in the United States for two years or longer to apply for citizenship. Without citizenship, nonwhite residents are denied basic constitutional protections, including the right to vote, own property, or testify in court. • August 1790: The first U.S. census takes place. The English are the largest ethnic group among the 3.9 million people counted, though nearly one in five Americans are of African heritage.

21. Irish Immigrant Wave • 1815: Peace is re-established between the United States and Britain after the War of 1812. Immigration from Western Europe turns from a trickle into a gush, which causes a shift in the demographics of the United States. This first major wave of immigration lasts until the Civil War. • Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish—many of them Catholic—account for an estimated one-third of all immigrants to the United States. Some 5 million German immigrants also come to the U.S., many of them making their way to the Midwest to buy farms or settle in cities including Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

22. 1819: Many of newcomers arrive sick or dying from their long journey across the Atlantic in cramped conditions. The immigrants overwhelm major port cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston. In response, the United States passes the Steerage Act of 1819 requiring better conditions on ships arriving to the country. The Act also calls for ship captains to submit demographic information on passengers, creating the first federal records on the ethnic composition of immigrants to the United States. • 1849: America’s first anti-immigrant political party, the Know-Nothing Party forms, as a backlash to the increasing number of German and Irish immigrants settling in the United States. • 1875: Following the Civil War, some states passed their own immigration laws. In 1875 the Supreme Court declares that it’s the responsibility of the federal government to make and enforce immigration laws.

23. Chinese Exclusion Act  • 1880: As America begins a rapid period of industrialization and urbanization, a second immigration boom begins. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants arrive. The majority are from Southern, Eastern and Central Europe, including 4 million Italians and 2 million Jews. Many of them settle in major U.S. cities and work in factories. • 1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act passes, which bars Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. Beginning in the 1850s, a steady flow of Chinese workers had immigrated to America.

24. They worked in the gold mines, and garment factories, built railroads, and took agricultural jobs. Anti-Chinese sentiment grew as Chinese laborers became successful in America. Although Chinese immigrants make up only 0.002 percent of the United States population, white workers blame them for low wages. • The 1882 Act is the first in American history to place broad restrictions on certain immigrant groups. • 1891: The Immigration Act of 1891 further excludes who can enter the United States, barring the immigration of polygamists, people convicted of certain crimes, and the sick or diseased. The Act also created a federal office of immigration to coordinate immigration enforcement and a corps of immigration inspectors stationed at principle ports of entry.

25. Ellis Island Opens • January 1892: Ellis Island, the United States’ first immigration station, opens in New York Harbor. The first immigrant processed is Annie Moore, a teenager from County Cork in Ireland. More than 12 million immigrants would enter the United States through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. • 1907: U.S. immigration peaks, with 1.3 million people entering the country through Ellis Island alone. • February 1907: Amid prejudices in California that an influx of Japanese workers would cost white workers farming jobs and depress wages, the United States and Japan sign the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Japan agrees to limit Japanese emigration to the United States to certain categories of business and professional men. In return, President Theodore Roosevelt urges San Francisco to end the segregation of Japanese students from white students in San Francisco schools. • 1910: An estimated three-quarters of New York City’s population consists of new immigrants and first-generation Americans.

26. New Restrictions at Start of WWI • 1917: Xenophobia reaches new highs on the eve of American involvement in World War I. The Immigration Act of 1917 establishes a literacy requirement for immigrants entering the country and halts immigration from most Asian countries. • May 1924: The Immigration Act of 1924 limits the number of immigrants allowed into the United States yearly through nationality quotas. Under the new quota system, the United States issues immigration visas to 2 percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States at the 1890 census. The law favors immigration from Northern and Western European countries. Just three countries, Great Britain, Ireland and Germany account for 70 percent of all available visas. Immigration from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe was limited. The Act completely excludes immigrants from Asia, aside from the Philippines, then an American colony. • 1924: In the wake of the numerical limits established by the 1924 law, illegal immigration to the United States increases. The U.S. Border Patrol is established to crack down on illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican and Canadian borders into the United States. Many of these early border crossers were Chinese and other Asian immigrants, who had been barred from entering legally.

27. Mexicans Fill Labor Shortages During WWII • 1942: Labor shortages during World War II prompt the United States and Mexico to form the Bracero Program, which allows Mexican agricultural workers to enter the United States temporarily. The program lasts until 1964. • 1948: The United States passes the nation’s first refugee and resettlement law to deal with the influx of Europeans seeking permanent residence in the United States after World War II. • 1952: The McCarran-Walter Act formally ends the exclusion of Asian immigrants to the United States. • 1956-1957: The United States admits roughly 38,000 immigrants from Hungary after a failed uprising against the Soviets. They were among the first Cold War refugees. The United States would admit over 3 million refugees during the Cold War. • 1960-1962: Roughly 14,000 unaccompanied children flee Fidel Castro’s Cuba and come to the United States as part of a secret, anti-Communism program called Operation Peter Pan.

28. Quota System Ends • 1965: The Immigration and Nationality Act overhauls the American immigration system. The Act ends the national origin quotas enacted in the 1920s which favored some racial and ethnic groups over others. • The quota system is replaced with a seven-category preference system emphasizing family reunification and skilled immigrants. Upon signing the new bill, President Lyndon B. Johnson, called the old immigration system “un-American,” and said the new bill would correct a “cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation.” • Over the next five years, immigration from war-torn regions of Asia, including Vietnam and Cambodia, would more than quadruple. Family reunification became a driving force in U.S. immigration. • April-October 1980: During the Mariel boatlift, roughly 125,000 Cuban refugees make a dangerous sea crossing in overcrowded boats to arrive on the Florida shore seeking political asylum.

29. Amnesty to Illegal Immigrants • 1986: President Ronald Reagan signs into law the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which grants amnesty to more than 3 million immigrants living illegally in the United States. • 2001: U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) propose the first Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would provide a pathway to legal status for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally by their parents as children. The bill—and subsequent iterations of it—don’t pass. • 2012: President Barack Obama signs Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which temporarily shields some Dreamers from deportation, but doesn’t provide a path to citizenship. • 2017: President Donald Trump issues two executive orders—both titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”—aimed at curtailing travel and immigration from six majority Muslim countries (Chad, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia) as well as North Korea and Venezuela. Both of these travel bans are challenged in state and federal courts. • 2018: In April 2018, the travel restrictions on Chad are lifted. In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court uphold a third version of the ban on the remaining seven countries.

30. California Gold Rush of 1849 • The California Gold Rush was sparked by the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848. • As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000 (compared with the pre-1848 figure of less than 1,000). • Miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold during the California Gold Rush. • A total of $2 billion worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during the Gold Rush, which peaked in 1852. 

31. Gold rush: Discovery at Sutter’s Mill • On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, Californiawhile he was working to build a water-powered sawmill. • Days after Marshall’s discovery at Sutter’s Mill, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War and leaving California in the hands of the United States. • At the time, the population of the territory consisted of 6,500 Californios (people of Spanish or Mexican descent); 700 foreigners (primarily Americans); and 150,000 Native Americans (barely half the number that had been there when Spanish settlers arrived in 1769).  • Sutter had enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and makeshift militia to defend his territory and expand his empire.

32. Effects of the California Gold Rush: Gold Fever • Though Marshall and Sutter tried to keep news of the discovery under wraps, word got out, and by mid-March at least one newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were being turned up at Sutter’s Mill. • By mid-June, some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had left town for the gold mines, and the number of miners in the area reached 4,000 by August. • As news spread of the fortunes being made in California, some of the first migrants to arrive were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru and even China. • When the news reached the East Coast, press reports were initially skeptical.  • Gold fever kicked off there in earnest, however, after December 1848, when President James K. Polk announced the positive results of a report made by Colonel Richard Mason, California’s military governor, in his inaugural address. 

33. The ’49ers Come to California • In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, men left their families and hometowns; in turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or businesses and caring for their children alone. • The men who traveled to mine gold were known as the ‘49ers (since this happened in 1849) • To accommodate the needs of the ’49ers, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune. • The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, prostitution and violence.

34. San Francisco, for its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier. • The Gold Rush undoubtedly sped up California’s admission to the Union as the 31st state. • In late 1849, California applied to enter the Union with a constitution that barred the Southern system of racial slavery, provoking a crisis in Congress between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians.  • According to the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Kentucky’s Senator Henry Clay, California was allowed to enter as a free state, while the territories of Utah and New Mexico were left open to decide the question for themselves.

35. California's Mines After the Gold Rush • After 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. • Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as skill and hard work. • The average daily gold find for an independent miner working with his pick and shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848. • As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. • The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region’s landscape. • Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, it had reached its peak by 1852, when some $81 million was pulled from the ground. • After that year, the total take declined gradually, leveling off to around $45 million per year by 1857. • Settlement in California continued, however, and by the end of the decade the state’s population was 380,000.

36. Environmental Impact of the Gold Rush • New mining methods and the population boom in the wake of the California Gold Rush permanently altered the landscape of California. • The technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region’s landscape. • Dams designed to supply water to mine sites in summer altered the course of rivers away from farmland, while sediment from mines clogged others. • The logging industry was born from the need to construct extensive canals and feed boilers at mines, further consuming natural resources.  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxekRM5-uMU