Data Literacy for Social Studies, Immigrants to the United States, 1820-1860

We created this graph using a table from the 1860 U.S. Census to illustrate the significant increase in immigration to the United States from 1820 to 1860.  We compiled and visualized the data into graphs that can be viewed on these spreadsheets.  This first great wave of immigration, consisting mainly of Irish, German, and Jewish immigrants, could be attributed to a number of push and pull factors. First, an economic slump in England that prompted Parliament to modernize British agriculture by revoking common land rights for Irish farmers prompted thousands of Irish immigrants to seek opportunity in the booming American economy beginning in 1820. Then the Great Famine caused millions of people to flee starvation and the oppressive English policies that followed it between 1845 and 1860. Without capital and skills to purchase and operate farms, the Irish settled primarily in northeastern cities and towns, filling manual, unskilled, and often dangerous labor positions. Over a million German immigrants arrived in the United States during this same time period, whether to flee declining agricultural conditions, the repercussions of the failed revolutions of 1848, or to seek steadier economic opportunity. They used American ports and cities as temporary waypoints before migrating to growing cities like St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee to farm and practice trades. Jewish immigrants from Germany and parts of occupied Poland also increasingly moved to the United States during this time, but unlike other Germans, Jewish immigrants mainly settled in urban areas, working in retail, commerce, and artisanal occupations.  Of the numbers in this graph, the Census report notes that they were derived from arrivals by sea so,  “to arrive at the true immigration, these numbers should be largely increased for those who have come by way of Canada." At the same time, the report further explains, the numbers "should be diminished for return immigrants, and for the merchants, factors, and visitors who go and come repeatedly, and are thus enumerated twice or more, in the returns" (p, xix).