138 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
The national population expanded significantly
in the first half of the nineteenth century, from
5.3 million in 1800 to 23 million by 1850. In the initial
decades that growth was primarily a result of internal
reproduction, but subsequently the population
grew even faster owing to a robust wave of European
immigration. From 1840 to 1860, over 4 million
people entered the United States, chiefly from
Germany and Ireland.
These two immigrant groups came from very
different circumstances. The Irish potato famine
killed over a million people and drove a million more
to seek opportunities in the United States, Canada,
and Australia. Without money or education, most
took low-wage and unskilled manufacturing jobs in
the emerging industrial centers of the Northeast,
especially Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
By contrast, German immigrants to the United
States were often refugees of the failed European
Revolutions of 1848 seeking greater political and
religious freedoms. Many of these “Forty-Eighters”
were skilled and educated, and made significant
contributions to American science and culture.
Two maps in this chapter were the result of
innovations introduced by German surveyors,
engineers, and lithographers (pages 132
and 142).
German immigrants were also more likely
than their Irish counterparts to seek out farming
opportunities in the Midwest. This quest was
stimulated by innumerable guidebooks in the 1850s
advising immigrants on everything from cultural
assimilation to promising occupations. The guides
encouraged them to take up land further west if they
hoped to recreate their home communities. Over time
these chain migrations produced rural and urban
German settlements throughout the Upper Midwest
and in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee.
This richly colored map was part of that immigrant
literature. At first glance, it shows prospective
emigrants a range of destinations that awaited them
THE GEOGRAPHY OF IMMIGRATION
Gotthelf Zimmerman, “Auswanderer-
karte und Wegweiser nach
Nordamerika” [Emigration Map and
Guide to North America], 1853