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Immigration and Social Reform

Chapter 13

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New Americans

• In the 1840’s and 1850’s, about 4 million immigrants arrived in the U.S.

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Increase in Immigration

• Effect of market revolution—industrial jobs

• Most notable in Northern cities

• In the 1840’s and 1850’s, most immigrants to the U.S. came from Ireland and Germany.

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Irish Immigration

• Potato Famine of 1845-49

• Mostly poor

• Most Catholic• Clustered in laborer

and domestic jobs.

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German Immigrants

• Political Unrest and poor economic conditions

• 1840 potato blight/famine• Faced some

discrimination because they formed their own communities and practiced their old world traditions

• clustered in skilled trades.

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• Those with money bought farms in the Midwest.

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Chinese Immigration

• Gold Rush drew many Chinese workers• By the mid 1860s Chinese workers made up 90

percent of laborers building the Central Pacific Railroad

1852 photo

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New York Tenement

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New York Tenement (Slum Housing for Irish)

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Urban Life of Free African Americans

• ½ of all free African Americans lived in the North (mainly cities)

• Faced discrimination worse than Irish and Germans faced

• Lead antislavery movement

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The Union Movement

• By the 1830s, the skilled craft workers were being undercut by industrialization.

• Workers organized trade unions and formed city-wide “General Trades Unions.”

• The local groups then organized the National Trades Union.

• The trade union movement was met with hostility and most collapsed during the Panic of 1837.

• Early unions included only skilled white workers.

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Urban Politics

• Immigrant workers had a large role in shaping urban politics

• White immigrants could vote after a short period of time in the U.S.

• A new form of political organization developed in the cities called political machines. – Used the immigrants to become very powerful.

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Tammany Hall The most famous big city political

machine

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Boss William Tweed