The Role Of Immigrants In The 19th Century

They say that America is the melting pot of the world. Certainly, many different people from many different countries, and with very different worldviews came to America and made it their home. But perhaps some of those people, and indeed, some of their cultures, melted easier than others. Almost all immigrants struggled with assimilation, but the promises of a new life, and the cruel reality of their old one, made immigration worth it for many. America offered practically free land in the Louisiana purchase and the California and Oregon. High wages, and later, gold, stimulated immigrants to pursue their fortunes in America. And above all, America supposedly had peace. Wars, famines, and revolutions rocked the world, but in the early to middle nineteenth century, America stayed relatively peaceful. Immigrants frequently found their monetary dreams realized in America, but when times got hard they often met ridicule and discrimination from people there. Although large numbers of Germans, Irish, and Chinese immigrated to the United States during the mid-1800’s, the three groups received radically different receptions to the New World. Although the bulk of Irish immigration to the
Many went directly to the United States via New York or Boston, but up to 100,000 Irish took the cheaper “timber ships” to Canada (3). Immigrants suffered deplorable conditions in almost all routes, but these were the worst. Captains crowded as many people as possible onto their typically small ships, and passengers very had little room or fresh air. Food, water, and other supplies often ran low, compounding the passengers’ problems (6). Diseases like Cholera and Typhus ran rampant, and mortality among immigrants going through Canada could have reached 30-40 percent (3). Irish immigrants who traveled directly to the US fared slightly better, but they still faced many of these same