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Most 18th century immigrants were peasant farmers -- the poor, huddled masses of Emma Lazarus' famous poem. Some, though, elevated the quality of life in the colonies. The Huguenots and their descendants -- Paul Revere among them -- maintained a tradition of craftsmanship and provided the colonies with many of their physicians. Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed not only the new capital of Washington but also the badge for the Society of the Cincinnati -- which was one of the earliest uses of the eagle as the symbol of America. Royalist political refugees from the French Revolution turned up as dancing masters in the salons of Philadelphia.
In the early years of the new American republic, however, immigration was modest. Apart from slaves, only about 4,000 foreigners entered the U.S. annually between 1800 and 1810. One reason for the laggard pace was Britain's Passenger Act of 1803, which raised the cost of transatlantic tickets and served to discourage a brain drain of talented workers who might carry with them England's industrial secrets.
The U.S. government did not begin to record immigration data until 1820. A decade later, the nation's population was around 13 million, of whom only 500,000 were foreign-born. But by then the century's great tide of immigration had truly begun, primarily from Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia. Profoundly influencing this exodus were the so-called America letters -- glowing accounts of life in the New World by recent voyagers that became as popular in Europe as best-selling novels. In Ole Rynning's America Book (1838), the U.S. is described as a classless society with high wages, low prices, good land and a nonrepressive government.
Ads by shipping firms and land-speculation companies also beckoned peasants from the Old World to the New. Midwestern states, beginning with Michigan in 1848, set up their own immigration agencies and offered special inducements to newcomers, like voting rights after only six months' residency. In the Dakotas a poetasting huckster promised women that the territories were prime land for husband hunting: "There is no goose so gray, but, soon or late,/ Will find some honest gander for a mate."
In one key respect, emigrating to America was different from moving from one country to another in Europe. The newcomers would face hostility and prejudice from native-born Americans. But in the eyes of the law, once they became ! citizens they were fully equal to those whose ancestors had sailed aboard the Mayflower. In the words of Marcus Hansen, the pioneering historian of U.S. immigration, "The immigrant was to enjoy no special privileges to encourage his coming; he was also to suffer no special restrictions." With that goal in mind, Congress in 1818 rejected requests from Irish societies in Eastern cities to set aside certain frontier lands for colonies of indigent Hibernians. America was not to become "a patchwork nation of foreign settlements."