Nobody Remembers the Vast Immigrations of the Early 1800’s.

Nobody Remembers

Funny isn’t it? The topic of immigration is not being talked about much…only Donald Trump brings it up. And he hasn’t said much about it lately.

But, that doesn’t mean the immigrants aren’t still flooding our country. Nobody knows how high the illegal number is, but the consensus seem to be around 40 million.

This has happened once before, when the nation was flooded by immigrants….but back then, there WAS no free food stamps, free housing, free educations…welfare. The immigrants that came to America, believed in holding their own.

Not surprisingly it was climate change that brought massive immigration to America back in the early 1800s.  There was a very hard winter, of 1825–6, 1826-7, and 1829-30…in Europe. The last years the coldest ever recorded. People were starving, and the price to America by ship was cheap. Europe groaned from a heavy tax burden, which fell as usual upon the poor. Americans on the other hand, only paid on $12 dollars a year in taxes. Not only were the wages higher, but you could spend the money you made on your family.

But…because of the “bankers” printing endless money,  unemployment was high. John Quincy Adams recorded in his diary of April 24, 1819:

“In the midst of peace and partial prosperity we are approaching a crisis which will shake the union to its center. “

The news didn’t reach those in Europe sailing for America. Tens of thousands of immigrant continued to arrive, to find no work and rising hostility. One observer, Emanuel Howitt, wrote that “the Yankees now (1819) regard the immigrant with the most sovereign contempt…a wretch, driven out of his own wretched country, and seeking a subsistence in this glorious land. “

John Quincy Adams, who headed the State Department announced its policy lines in the Niles Weekly Register:

“The America Republic invites nobody to come. We will keep out nobody. Arrivals will suffer no disadvantages as aliens. But they can expect no advantages either. Native born and foreign born face equal opportunities. What happens to them depends entirely on their individual ability and exertions, and on good fortune.”

And it was in those years, that the United States was Europeanized, with the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish.

It’s quite a different story now…..not only is the European family lines dying out, but so is the republic they built.

When someone asked Ben Franklin what the delegates in Congress had come up— with he said, “We gave you a republic, if you can keep it. ”

Will the new ‘immigrants’ to America’s want to keep the Anglo-Saxon’s historical republic? Or will they choose…what they are running from: socialism, and tyranny?

Nobody…Wonders.

October 15, 2015 Posted by Joyanna Adams | American History, Uncategorized | American History, immigration | Leave a comment