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| A timeline showing forces behind immigration and their impact on the immigrant experience. |
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| Click the time period you'd like to explore. |
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It is six years since the United States won the
War of Independence. America is becoming, in Thomas Paine's words, "the asylum for the persecuted
lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe."
The first Census is underway and of the 3.9 million people counted, the English are the largest
ethnic group. Nearly 20% are of African heritage. German, Scottish and Irish residents are also
well represented. Census takers didn't count Native Americans.
The early Congresses could do little to affect immigration - the Constitution gave that power to
the states. However, Congress was given the authority to ban the slave trade after 1808 - which
it did - and the authority to establish rules for naturalization.
In 1790 it passed the first Naturalization Act, which stipulated that "… any alien, being a free
white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States...."
In the early years of the republic, immigration was light - 6000 people a year on average, including
French refugees from the revolt in Haiti. By 1806 the flow of immigration was reduced to a trickle
as hostilities between England and Napoleon's France disrupted Atlantic shipping lanes.
The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain slowed immigration even further.
With peace re-established in 1814, immigration from Great Britain, Ireland and Western Europe
resumed at a record pace. Major port cities of this era - New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
Charleston - were overwhelmed with newcomers, many of them sick or dying from the long journey.
Congress responded with the Steerage Act of 1819, requiring ship captains to keep detailed
passenger records and provide more humane conditions for those on board.
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