The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Quakers and other persecuted

religious sects, among them

Mennonites and Moravians from

the Rhine Valley. The first sub-

stantial influx of immigrants into

New York after it became a royal

colony consisted of French

Huguenots. Immigrants more

readily risked the dangers of

migration when the alternative

to remaining in Europe was

persecution.

Early in the eighteenth

century, hordes of Scots-Irish

settlers from northern Ireland

and Scotland descended on

Pennsylvania. These colonists

spoke English but felt little loy-

alty to the English government,

which had treated them badly

back home, and less to the

Anglican Church, since most of

them were Presbyterians. Large

numbers of them followed the

valleys of the Appalachians south

into the back country of Virginia

and the Carolinas.

Why so few English in the

Middle Colonies? Here, again,

timing provides the best answer.

The English economy was

booming. There seemed to be

work for all. Migration to North

America, while never drying up,

slowed to a trickle. The result

was colonies in which English

settlers were a minority.

The intermingling of ethnic

groups gave rise to many preju-

dices. Benjamin Franklin,

though generally complimentary

toward Pennsylvania’s hard-

working Germans, thought

them clannish to a fault. The

already cited French traveler

Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur,

while marveling at the adaptive

qualities of “this promiscuous

breed,” complained that “the

Irish... love to drink and to

quarrel; they are litigious, and

soon take to the gun, which is the ruin of every-

thing.” Yet by and large the various types managed

to get along with each other successfully enough.

Crèvecoeur attended a wedding in Pennsylvania

The Middle Colonies: An Intermingling of Peoples 73

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

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VIRGINIA

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YORK

N.H.

MASS.

NEW

JERSEY

Long Island

PENNSYLVANIA

NORTH

CAROLINA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

GEORGIA

CONN. R.I.

English

Germans and Swiss

Scots-Irish

African Americans

Dutch

Scottish Highlanders

French

MAINE

(part of Mass.)

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Ethnic Groups of Eastern North America, 1750Although this chapter retains the historical
convention of referring to the coastal Atlantic as “English colonies,” the ethnic composition of the
region was much more complicated. To be sure, people of English ancestry predominated in New
England, the Chesapeake region, and the Carolinas. But the Hudson River valley remained chiefly
Dutch, and southeastern Pennsylvania remained German. Much of the western frontier was
populated by English-speaking people of Scottish and Irish ancestry. And in parts of Virginia and
the Carolinas, slaves of African descent were in the majority.

Scandinavian and Dutch settlers outnumbered
the English in New Jersey and Delaware even after
the English took over these colonies. William Penn’s
first success in attracting colonists was with German