Week 23
The second largest group of European immigrants who came to America in the 19th century were the Germans. Why did they come? First of all they came to the United States to escape economic hardship. Rapid population growth due to improved nutrition and improved medical care left many farmers with plots too small to feed their families. And crop failures made things worse. Then at mid-century that was revolutionary upheaval. The failure of the German Revolution of 1848 crushed hopes for democratic reform, prompting political refugees (known as "Forty-Eighters") to flee. And there was serious religious persecution. Germany was divided almost in half by northern Lutheran Protestantism and southern Roman Catholicism. Many Germans found themselves living in states that persecuted their Protestant or Catholic faith. And there was antisemitic violence. Outbursts against Jews caused many German Jews to flee to America. Then there were many attractions in America. In the great expansion to the US west nourished by the Homestead Acts, immigrants could easily qualify for s Homesteader's farm, an almost unbelievable gift for European Germans who had been living on other people's property their whole lives. Land developers advertised widely in European newspapers. The U.S. offered vast tracts of fertile land, made even more accessible by policies like the Homestead Act. And there was economic opportunity in the exploding American industrial growth. Growing American industries needed skilled tradespeople and laborers. Letters from earlier settlers describing success in America—often published in German newspapers—inspired friends and family to follow. And it was now easier to get to America than ever before. The new steamships were faster and cheaper than any transatlantic travel in the past.
REQUIRED READING FOR THE WHOLE YEAR OF COMING TO AMERICA
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING
Once We Were Strangers: A German Immigrant Family in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest,
University Press of Kansas,
ISBN 978-0700636280