CHAPTER III — THE GREAT IN-GATHERING

1820 — 1924: the major century of immigration; ancestors of most of today’s Americans arrive from throughout Europe, at first predominantly from Western Europe and then from Southern and Eastern Europe. The African slave trade winds down and ends, but legal racial apartheid ramps up a decade after the Civil War. Indigenous peoples are forced onto reservation lands. As the Industrial Revolution gains strength, immigration from Asia begins; US expands through wars and purchases taking in people and land to the Pacific Ocean, Caribbean islands, Pacific islands, and Alaska, places that had been controlled primarily by Spain, Mexico, England, Russia and Native tribal groups. Westward migration takes place throughout this period and former enslaved people from the South begin moving north. The Civil War wrents the nation. Chapter mid-point is 1865.

During this chapter, the nation’s population, diversity, wealth and place in the world all dramatically expand. This chapter falls into two distinct sections, before and after the Civil War. While the slave trade slows, slavery itself thrives as the offspring of enslaved become enslaved. Indigenous tribes are continually pushed off their land to make way for the flow of European farmers arriving and spreading westward.

In 1830, the Indian Removal Act leads to the forced movements of tribal groups, primarily in the Southeast, to west of the Mississippi River including the infamous Trail of Tears.

Texas, largely Mexican, was annexed in 1845 which led to the Mexican American War which ended in 1848. This brough Texas and New Mexico into the US and Hispanic residents were given US citizenship and Mexican Indians became American Indians. During this period, the US gained the Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest from Britain.

Through 1894, there more than 40 Indian wars, a series of small scale battles that effectively moved most Native Americans onto reservations. In 1898, the US won the Spanish American War and gained Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba and the Philippines. Cuba became independent in 1902 and the Philippines gained its independence from the US after World War II.

In the Aftermath of the Civil War, Constitutional amendments were passed abolishing slavery, granting citizenship to all persons born in the US or naturalized, establishing equal protection of the laws, that Representatives be apportioned counting everyone in a state except Indians on reservations, and declaring that voting rights can’t be denied or abridged by the US or any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

This chapter will cover those who came from throughout the world during this great century of immigration, 1820 to 1924. This century, characterized by industrialization and urbanization and punctuated by the Civil War, saw 36 million immigrants flow to the United States.

About two-thirds, 22.4 million, came between 1881 and 1920, and the decade 1901 to 1910 alone saw 8.8 million immigrants, almost a million every year. While it was generally older stock European Americans who settled the western frontiers, newer immigrants tended to stake their fortunes in the new urban and industrial frontiers.

From 1820 to 1914, 30 million came from Europe, including 5 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.5 million Italians, 2.6 million Poles, 2.6 million English and 2 million Jews (at first mostly from Germany and then from Poland and Russia).

In addition, 2.2 million crossed over from Canada, 900,000 crossed from Mexico and other parts of Latin America, 370,000 were Chinese and 275,000 were Japanese. Others included Scandinavians, Greeks, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, Hungarians, Russians, Austrians and others from Eastern Europe.

The stories of each of these and other immigrant groups, and the change in immigration patterns over time of these groups would be told in this segment of the Museum. And the further geographical expansion of the nation to include ever more peoples would be covered.

This period ends with a series of restrictive immigration laws including the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s and the Immigration Act of 1924.

This chapter reports the story of Ellis Island. From 1892, when it opened, until it stopped functioning as a reception center in 1932, some 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island. While these stories are told in countless ethnic museums as well as site-specific museums, with Ellis Island being the most prominent, nowhere is the full story of this period told in a full and comprehensive manner.

NOTE: The material herein is based largely on two books that tell part of this story, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann, and Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Ideas and material from both authors are presented here to give readers a sense of the story. Leading scholars would be expected to develop a detailed outline of the Museum’s story following the establishment of the Museum.