A government of limited powers 11but across the nation. The improvement in the economic and social status
of the descendants of the former slaves, particularly since the 1950s, can be
counted as a considerable achievement, but inequality between the white and
black population is still embedded in American society. In 2004 28 per cent
of the white population had had a college education, but only 17 per cent of
the black population had a university degree. The median family income for
whites was $55,938, for blacks $34,608.
As westward expansion continued in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, with the continuous creation of new states, the balance of power be-
tween North and South that had been established by the Constitution was
endangered. The problem of whether the new states would be slave or free
dominated the politics of the era. If slave, they could be expected to side
with the South; if free, to align themselves with the North. The holocaust of
the Civil War, the effects of which have not been fully eradicated even today,
was the result of the inability to find an acceptable formula to deal with this
problem.
Westward expansion, the filling of the vacuum beyond the frontier, provid-
ed that seemingly endless supply of cheap land which was, particularly in the
period after the Civil War, the engine that made possible mass immigration
into the United States. Between 1865 and 1920 over 28 million immigrants
entered the United States, and in six separate years between 1905 and 1914
the yearly migration exceeded 1 million people. The changing composition
of the immigrant population over the years meant that concentrations of
particular national groups built up in particular areas, and in particular cit-
ies. The choice of the motto of the United States, E Pluribus Unum (Out of
Many, One), which applied to the union of the states, could hardly have been
more fitting, although those early Americans could not have conceived of
the extent of the diversity that was to characterise the American popula-
tion. It has been variously estimated that in 1790 between 60 and 80 per
cent of the population of the United States was of English or Welsh stock,
with up to 14 per cent of Scottish and Irish stock. Germans at that date ac-
counted for the only sizeable group of non-British or -Irish origin, and they
were concentrated in Pennsylvania. In the early nineteenth century there
was an influx of Irish and Germans; but after the Civil War, when the re-
ally heavy immigration began, the emphasis changed to immigrants from
southern and eastern Europe. In the peak year of 1914 over 73 per cent of the
1,218,000 immigrants were from these parts of Europe. In 1790 82 per cent
of the population of the state of Massachusetts was of English stock. By 1920
two-thirds of the population of the state were immigrants or the children of
immigrants, and the Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews, together with a number
of minor groups such as Lithuanians, Greeks, Armenians and Syrians, far
outweighed the ‘old-stock’ inhabitants.
At the end of the nineteenth century the expansive movement within the
United States overflowed into a relatively mild episode of imperialism, as
a result of which Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines were acquired.