TO THE COMPILED ENTIRELY FROM OFFICIAL DATA: WITH AN INTRODUCTORY REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS AND EXTENT OF AND AN APPENDIX CONTAINING THE NATURALIZATION AND PASSENGER LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES, AND EXTRACTS FROM THE LAWS OF THE THE NEW YORK! ASTOR, LENOX AND Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, BY WILLIAM J. BROMWELL, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and for the District of Columbia. SAVAGE & MOCREA, STEREOTYPERS, PREFACE. To the citizens of the United States the following History of Immigration is respectfully submitted, in the belief that it will prove to them an acceptable offering, since, by the aid of the facts contained therein, they may accurately determine the elements which have contributed to the unexampled growth of the American Republic. As to the question of the good or bad effect resulting to this country from immigration, the author earnestly disclaims the desire to promulgate any opinion which he may entertain; he has, in the compilation of this history, embodied facts only: and, he leaves it to the enlightened understanding of the people of the United States to arrive at just conclusions from the premises therein presented. The Statements contained in it have been compiled, entirely, from official documents :: First, and chiefly, from the Annual Reports on Immigration prepared at the Department of State, and by the Secretary communicated to Congress in compliance with a requirement of the Passenger Act of March 2, 1819. Secondly, from Passenger Abstracts transmitted to the Secretary of State by Collectors of the Customs, and on file in the Department, yet not embraced in the Annual Reports on Immigration, because not received until those Reports had been completed and laid before Congress. Thirdly, from such custom-house records as furnished immigration statistics never communicated to the Secretary, or which, if ever communicated, are now missing from the files of the Department. The facts thus accumulated, and exhibited in the tables which follow, contain all the available official information of importance in possession of the country relative to its immigration. Fifteen months have elapsed since the compilation of this work was begun, and almost every hour not employed in the discharge of official duties has been devoted to the task. Even a cursory examination of the published Reports on Immigration, to be found in the Executive Documents of Congress, will show the extent and intricacy of the author's labors. The first Report, embracing returns for the year ending September 30, 1820, consists of literal copies of passenger manifests containing over ten thousand names, to each of which are affixed the corresponding age, sex, occupation, and country of birth; thus presenting in detail, and without classification, more than fifty thousand items, forming a book of about three hundred pages. In the present work, recapitulations of that Report are given, occupying only four pages. The subsequent Reports, although more condensed than the one mentioned, are quite voluminous. Many of them are without method, have no recapitulations appended to them, and, as published, contain numerous typographical as well as clerical errors. Even the Reports for the last three years, which have been prepared with great care, and which are much more perfect than those preceding, have been recapitulated anew in order to embrace additional information, and to secure a systematic classification. In conclusion, the author remarks, that, from the commencement of this work to the completion of it, he has been mindful of the fact, that, to the general reader it can not prove attractive; and the only encouragement he has received to prosecute the task and to finish it, has been derived from the consideration that a history of Immigration, exhibiting the number and sex, age, occupation, and country of birth, of passengers arriving in the United States, so far as the same is officially known, would, if presented to the public in the present form, never become obsolete, nor be supplanted by another work of a similar kind, but would exist as a book of reference so long as the American People shall feel an interest in a subject which so vitally concerns them. |