The Flood Begins (immigration to the US)

Read the following article and answer the questions that follow.

The Flood Begins
New Yorkers reading the October 15, 1825, edition of the Daily Advertiser probably paid little attention to the following story:
A vessel has arrived at this port with emigrants from Norway. The vessel is very small, measuring as we understand only about 360 Norwegian lasts, or forty-five American tons, and brought forty-six passengers, male and female, all bound to Ontario County [New Yorki, where an agent, who came over some time since, purchased a tract of land. . . . [The] voyage [lasted] fourteen weeks; and all are in good health.'
The story did not give the name of the ship, which was the Restoration. The event, reported so un-dramatically, marks the coming of almost a million Norwegians to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the history of Norwegian immigration to America, the Restoration is as important as the Mayflower was to English immigration two centuries earlier. The passengers on the Restoration were in the vanguard of millions of northern Europeans who added their bodies and their futures to the greatest human migration in history—the arrival of millions of immigrants in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In the one hundred years between 1815 and the outbreak of World War I, more than 20 million immigrants traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to America. And, just as the ocean does not move in a steady stream but in a series of waves, so too did immigration to America, but the series* of waves became larger and larger. The first of these waves began shortly after Napoleon's defeat and continued until the American Civil War. In those years most of the immigrants came from the British Isles and northern Europe—from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
The United States was growing after the end of the War of 1812, and its growth went on for decades. Huge tracts of land, much of it acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, stood ready for settlement. A nationwide canal-building effort, highlighted by the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 (through which an immigrant arriving in New York could travel, via the Great Lakes, as far west as Minnesota), made the new lands easily accessible. And new modes of travel—the steamship and the railroad —made getting there even easier.
Politically America became more receptive to new immigrants as well. Beginning in the 1820s voting requirements were gradually relaxed until, by the era of President Andrew Jackson, the so-called universal suffrage (the right of every white male citizen to vote) became the law of the land. Since immigrants did not have to wait long to become citizens, politicians, especially in the large eastern cities, began to see the newcomers not as aliens but as new voters.
America was ripe for settlers. But even so, what was it about America that so attracted the people of northern Europe that millions of them severed ancestral ties to come and make their fortunes in the New World? The interpretations vary widely. But Swedish immigrant Hans Mattson, writing after a long and distinguished career in his adopted country, probably summed up the feelings of his fellow immigrants best:
Much has been said about the causes of emigration. These are numerous, but the chief cause I have found to be that people of the Old World are now being aroused to the fact that the social conditions of Europe, with its aristocracy and other privileges, are not founded on just principles, but that the way to success ought to be equally open for all, and determined, not by privileges of birth, but by inherent worth of man. And here in America is found a civilization which is, to a large extent, built on equality and the recognition of personal merit. This and the great natural resources of the country, the prospects of good wages, which the new continent affords, and in many cases religious liberty, draw the people of Europe, at any rate from Sweden, to this country.2
Mattson was quite eloquent in his reasons for the huge migration from Europe to America. Generalities like these often serve to describe broad trends. Yet immigration to America was almost always the result of a personal decision made, millions of times over, by individuals who were trying to fulfill their hopes and dreams. Often these people could not give a clear, logical reason for uprooting themselves from a way of life that had persisted for their kinsmen as far back as anyone could remember. The reasons for coming to America given by Gustaf Unonius, who left Sweden in 1841, typify those of the masses of people who also came, faced with the same dilemmas:
I had within me the bitter discontent and sense of injustice one so often feels in youth towards one's position and the conditions under which one lives, when desires one feels to be just are not fulfilled as rapidly as one feels oneself is entitled to demand, when one is unjust both towards oneself and towards others, and everything one believes to be in the way of one's success in life—the government, the social order, and society itself—gets the blame, and one seems to see something rotten in it all. One longs for a change—a desire for something, one knows not what... 3
As anybody knows who has ever visited there, Scandinavia is beautiful, parts of it breathtaking. The large lakes of Sweden, the narrow fjords of Norway, and the enormous brooding forests of both countries are a refreshing delight to the eye. However, for people attempting to support themselves, these scenic beauties are evidence of nature's stinginess in Scandinavia. Three quarters of Norway is barren, and only three percent of it could be cultivated in the nineteenth century. To land-starved people, the stories of vast expanses of cheap, fertile land in America seemed incredible. When the reality sunk in that such lands actually did exist, the effect was explosive. Over the course of a century, Norway and Sweden each sent a million emigrants to America—not particularly large numbers compared to more populous countries like Germany and Ireland. However, the Scandinavian countries had such small populations (in 1850 Norway had 1.5 million people, Sweden 3.5 million) that the effect was staggering. Some districts lost so many young people to America that they had trouble functioning.
Most potential emigrants became convinced of the truth of what they heard about America through
so-called America letters which were written by settlers in the New World to friends and relatives back home. In fact, it was just such a letter from Cleng Peerson—a Norwegian who, until his death in 1865, acted as a kind of pathfinder for Norwegian settlers—that attracted the Restoration group, or "sloopers" as they came to be called, to America. On December 20, 1824, Peerson wrote:
I am letting you know that I have arrived, happy and well, in America. After a journey of six weeks, we reached New York. . . . We stayed there for five days and then took the steamboat William Penn for Albany, where we arrived in twenty-four hours. This was a distance of 150 miles. . . . The price for each of us was $2—and we also received free board.
    Later we went to Troy and then westward, through the great [Erie] canal, two hundred miles to Salina Salt Works, working our way. ... I made my way overland to Geneva, where the land commissioner lives, to buy land for myself and for you as previously agreed. . . .
     I am already building a house, twelve by ten ells [an ell was roughly equivalent to a yard], which I hope to finish by New Year's day. We then expect winter to go on for a couple of months, and that will be a good time to haul wood from the forests. When I was in Rochester I bought a stove for $20, fully equipped with pans, pots for meat, a baking oven, and other things—so we shall not need to build a fireplace. ... I have five acres of land ready for sowing and planting in the spring. I have a cow in Farmington which cost me $10, and I have a few sheep.4
    	     Chatty letters like these, full of the day-to-day details of settling in the New World were copied and re-copied and carried from one part of Norway to another. In an age without television or radio, these words from afar served to inform people of what life would be like for them should they decide to try to make a new life for themselves in America. In mountainous Norway, where people tended to be isolated from each other and a knowledge of the outside world was difficult to come by, these letters had a dramatic effect.
There were no books or pamphlets to guide those who might be interested in leaving Norway-America letters served this purpose instead. Often the writers of letters back home were aware that their accounts of life in the New World would be passed from hand to hand, from village to village, and read by many of their interested countrymen. One such letter writer whose narratives were addressed to a wide audience was Gjert Hovland, a Norwegian who arrived in New York in 1831 and joined the slooper settlement in upstate New York. In a letter of 1835, Hovland gave this account of how he and his family were faring in America:
We are in the best of health, and . . . both my wife and I are exceedingly well satisfied. Our son attends the English school and talks English as well as the native born. Nothing has made me more happy and contented than that we left Norway and came to this country. We have gained more since our arrival here than I did during all the time I lived in Norway, and I have every prospect of earning a living here for myself and my family. ...
I do not believe that any who suffer oppression and who must rear their children in poverty could do better than to come to America. But alas, many who want to come lack the means, and many others are1 so stupid as to believe that it is best to live in the country where they have grown up even if they have nothing but hard bread to satisfy their hunger. . . . We lived [in Norway] altogether too long. Nor have I talked with any immigrant in this country who wished to return.5
After only three years in the slooper settlement, Hovland set his sights for greener pastures—the vast expanses of land in the American West. Land there was much cheaper than in the East, which had been settled hundreds of years earlier. In an 1835 letter to Norway, Hovland described the trek that he anticipated making:
Six families of the Norwegians who had settled in this place sold their farms last summer and moved farther west in the country to a place called Illinois. We and another Norwegian family have also sold our farms and intend to journey, this May, to that state, where land can be bought at a better price, and where it is easier to get started. . . . The United States owns an untold amount of land, which is reserved by law at a set price for the one who first buys it from the government. It is called public land and is sold for $1.25 per acre. . . . Whether native-born or foreign, a man is free to do with it whatever he pleases.
This is a beautiful and fertile country. Prosperity and contentment are almost everywhere. Practically everything needed can be sown or planted here and grows splendidly, producing a yield of many fold.. . .6
After settling in Illinois, Hovland became more convinced than ever that America was the Promised Land for his many fellow countrymen seeking a better way of life for themselves. In a letter of 1838, he described Illinois as a new Canaan, but he warned those thinking of coming to America that their task would not be easy:
I suppose that people are emigrating in great numbers from Norway now, and every emigrant has a different attitude. . . . Anyone who wants to make good here has to work, just as in all other places in the world. But here everything is better rewarded. This fact repels many people, though anyone with common sense ought to know that in time life rewards each as he deserves. Therefore, it seems to me all who take a notion to visit this country had better consider the matter carefully before they leave their homes, nor should they enter upon the venture frivolously or intoxicated by greed for material things.7
Letters like those that Hovland sent back to Norway encouraged thousands to emigrate to America. Even more influential was the first book written for prospective emigrants, A Tru^e Account of America for the Information and Help of Peasant and Commoner, written by Ole Rynning. Rynning came to America in 1837, and settled in Illinois, about seventy miles south of Chicago. He wrote his book while recovering from frostbite, and it was published in Norway in 1839. The effect was electrifying, as an eyewitness who lived in Rynning's hometown in Norway related:
For a time I believed that half the population of Snaasen had lost their senses. Nothing else was spoken of but the land that flows with milk and honey. Our minister, Ole Rynning's father, tried to stop the fever. Even from the pulpit he urged people to be discreet and described the
hardships of the voyage and the cruelty of the American savage in the most forbidding colors. This was only pouring oil upon the fire.
Like Norway, Sweden in the nineteenth century was ripe for large numbers of its population to emigrate, and America letters had their effect there also. As late as the middle of the nineteenth century, less than ten percent of the Swedish population worked in industry, while eighty percent earned their livelihood in agriculture in a land that could barely support them. Not surprisingly, when news of the fertile, cheap lands in America spread through the Swedish countryside, many people became caught up in "America fever."
Prior to 1840 very few America letters were sent to Swedish newspapers. Swedish law, until that time, prohibited emigration, and the few Swedes who had gone to America—mostly sailors who had jumped ship—were not anxious to let Swedish authorities know where they were. After the law was repealed, however, emigration began in earnest, including many Swedes of the middle class—students, merchants, civil servants, and intellectuals.
The America letters sent back to Sweden were much like their Norwegian counterparts. Many of them were printed in Swedish newspapers, and they soon became popular features. In an 1849 letter John Johansson gave his countrymen a glimpse of America as a paradise on earth:
No one need worry about my circumstances in America because I am living on God's noble and free soil, neither am I a slave under others. On the contrary, I am my own master, like the other creatures of God. I have now been on American soil for two and a half years and I have not been compelled to pay a penny for the privilege of living. Neither is my cap worn out from lifting it in the presence of gentlemen. There is no class distinction here between high and low, rich and poor, no make-believe, no "title sickness," or artificial ceremonies, but everything is quiet and peaceful and everybody lives in peace and prosperity. . . . The Americans do not have to scrape their effects together and sell them in order to pay heavy taxes to the crown and pay the salaries of officials.9
As the Norwegian and Swedish American letters demonstrate, the greatest attraction America held for the potential emigrant was the happy combination of cheap land, plentiful opportunities for work, and—most important—a young, democratic society, something almost unknown in the aristocracies of Europe. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era had brought a taste of democratic ideas to Europe, but with Napoleon's downfall, the reforms made in the countries he conquered were revoked, and repressive regimes were once again installed.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the German states, which supplied the greatest number of emigrants to America in the early part of the nineteenth century. By the outbreak of the Civil War, Germans made up over thirty percent of America's foreign-born population. German immigrants to America were farmers, craftsmen, intellectuals, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Like Scandinavia, Germany experienced its bouts of America fever, which were inspired both by accounts German immigrants to America sent back home and by popular American novels by authors such as James Fenimore Cooper, whose hero,  Natty Bumppo, roamed the American forests unhampered by human laws.
The most influential of the German writers about America was Gottfried Duden, whose book about Missouri, which first appeared in 1829, went through three editions. Duden's book made America sound like the Garden of Eden, an image that must have had a strong appeal to his hard-pressed readers. In one section, after describing how he had set up his own farm in Missouri, supporting himself and his family very well on hunting and modest farming, Duden wrote:
After the household is once organized in this fashion and the first necessaries supplied, then the whole family lives carefree and happily without a single piece of ready money. . . . For taxes alone is ready money needed. But these taxes are so unimportant that one scarcely thinks of them. Land acquired from the government is entirely tax free for the first five years. . . .10
To live without taxes and without cares—that was a vision of paradise. And to millions of northern Europeans, whether German, Scandinavian, Dutch, or French, that vision, repeated over and over again by countrymen who had made the journey to America, worked like a magnet, drawing them across the Atlantic.

What were the 3 things that affected the growth of the US after the War of 1812?

How was America more receptive to new immigrants after the 1820's?

 What was the chief cause of emigration according to Hans Mattson?

 What were the personal decisions Mattson describes as reasons to emigrate?

What were the reasons to come to America as described by Gustaf Unonius?

What was it about Norway's physical geography that made people want to leave?

Norway and Sweden sent over far fewer people than Germany, but the impact of that migration was far greater in Norway and Sweden, why was this the case? 

What were "sloopers?"

What were the "American letters?"

What effect did these American letters have on the people of Norway?

What did Gjert Hovland say about what he had gained in America?

What is meant by Promised Land?

What did Hovland say about work and rewards in America?

What did Ole Rynning say about America, and what effect did it have on his Countrymen?

What efforts were taken to discount Rynnings claims?

What was the American Fever?

How did Sweden prevent the flow of emigration prior to 1840?

What was the greatest attraction America held for the potential emigrant?

What type of Germans immigrated to America?

How did Gottfhed Duden's book describe America?