The Palatines were so called because their original home was in what was known as the Palatinate. This was a section of Germany lying on both sides of the Rhine from Cologne to Mannheim. It was divided into two parts, the upper and the lower, from the latter of which most of the immigration came. The position of this country brought it into close relations with the spirit of the Reformation, and large bodies of the population became Protestant, both Reformed and Lutheran. The rulers of the Palatinate, the Electors Palatine, swung back and forth between Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Roman Catholicism, and since each successive ruler wished his subjects to conform to his religious views, the miserable people suffered accordingly. Both of the two great wars between 1684 and 1713, the War of the Grand Alliance and the War of the Spanish Succession, had borne heavily on the Palatinate, which had long been the object of Louis XIV’s most covetous desire. The second ruthless devastation which the country experienced during the latter of these wars reduced the people to the lowest pitch of misery and desperation. Meanwhile their ruler, John William, was trying to force the whole of the people back into Catholicism. “To the people already suffering from the intolerable hardships which the cruelest of wars had thrust upon them, this persecuting spirit of their prince came as the last impulse to break off their attachment to the fatherland and send them to make new homes in distant America.” Thus began the great exodus, from a combination of political and religious causes, in entire harmony with the spirit of the age.
The Elector Palatine resisted the emigration, and adopted various measures to check it, among them an edict threatening death to all who should attempt to emigrate. As usual, such efforts were powerless to check a natural movement. The first detachment to leave was apparently a small band which, after many wanderings, settled in New Jersey in 1707. In 1708 a small company came to London and asked to be sent to America. They were sent to New York at public expense, and were furnished with farm implements; nevertheless, they fell into want and had to be aided by the colonial council. The next year about thirteen thousand Palatines arrived in London by way of Rotterdam. They were, for the most part, absolutely penniless, and in rags. England responded nobly to the burden thus cast upon her. Queen Anne allowed ninepence per day each for their subsistence, and they were housed in army tents set up in vacant lots, and in barns and warehouses. This piece of benevolence is said to have cost England, in public and private expenditures, the sum of £135,000. Some of these refugees were sent to Ireland, but large numbers of them eventually found their way to America. A large shipment arrived in the Carolinas in 1709.
The largest detachment, however, was a body of three thousand who arrived in New York, from England, in the early summer of 1710. This is said to have been the largest body of immigrants to have arrived in this country at one time during the colonial period. They have been characterized as perhaps the most miserable and most hopeful set of people ever set down on our shores. In spite of their poverty, they manifested a stern and determined spirit in their fight for their faith and home. To the shame of the New York colonists, it is recorded that they were welcomed with privation, distress, fraud, and cruel disappointment. They were cheated and oppressed by the heartless and rapacious settlers, to whom their helplessness made them easy victims. It was by such practices as these that New York diverted many streams of immigration from her territory to that of her neighbors, particularly Pennsylvania.[[14]]
The second great stream of immigration during the colonial period was composed of the Scotch-Irish, who were for a long time called merely “Irish.” Neither name denominates them accurately, as, in the words of Professor Commons, they “are very little Scotch and much less Irish.”[[15]] They are in fact the most composite of all the people of the British Isles, being a mixture of the primitive Scot and Pict, the primitive Briton and Irish, and a larger admixture of Norwegian, Dane, Saxon, and Angle. They were called Scots because they lived originally in Scotia, and Irish because they moved to Ireland.
James the First resolved to make Catholic Ireland a Protestant country, and with this in view dispossessed the native chiefs in Ulster, giving their lands to Scottish and English lords on condition that they settle the territory with tenants from Scotland and England. Thus about 1610 many people from Scotia moved to Ulster, and from that time on were called Irish, though there was only a slight trace of Irish blood in their veins. It was nearly a century later that conditions arose which began to predispose them to emigration in large numbers. In 1698, on the complaint, from English manufacturers, of Irish competition, the Irish Parliament, a tool of the British crown, passed an act totally forbidding the exportation of Irish woolens, and another act forbidding the exportation of Irish wool to any country save England. The linen industry was also discriminated against. These acts nearly destroyed the industry of Ulster, and aroused great discontent. Next the people were compelled to take the communion of the established church in order to hold office, which practically deprived them of self-government, as they were unwilling to renounce their native Presbyterianism for political ends. Soon after, their hundred-year leases began to run out, and when the land was auctioned off the low-living Irish could offer higher rents than they, and consequently they lost much of their land. The ensuing large emigration was thus the result of dissatisfaction due to an interesting combination of economic, political, and religious causes.
It is said that in 1718 forty-two hundred of the Scotch-Irish left for America, and that after the famine of 1740 there were twelve thousand who departed annually. In the half century preceding the American Revolution, one hundred fifty thousand or more came to America. They were by far the largest contribution of any foreign race to the people of America during the eighteenth century, and constituted a strong element in the army at the time of the Revolution.
At the time of the arrival of the Scotch-Irish in America, the lands along the Atlantic coast were already well occupied, and they were compelled to move on into the interior. The traditional religious exclusiveness of Massachusetts and the well-settled character of the country prevented them from settling in the eastern portions of that colony. Consequently they chose as their destination New Hampshire, Vermont, western Massachusetts, and Maine, and most of all Pennsylvania and the foothill regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. They were by nature typical pioneers, and gradually pushed their way into western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They were the one race sufficiently unified, endowed with the spirit of liberty, and scattered throughout the colonies, to serve as the amalgamating force binding all the other races into one—the American type.[[16]]
During the whole of the eighteenth century, up to the time of the Revolution, representatives of these two races continued to arrive in increasing numbers. The Palatines, though less numerous than the Scotch-Irish, seem to have attracted more attention. The general attitude of the colonists toward these immigrants was one of welcome, or at the least of toleration. This was natural under the conditions of the time. It must ever be borne in mind that the distinguishing feature of the situation in this country during the colonial period was a superabundance of fertile soil, rich in a variety of natural resources, and a scarcity of men. That is, the ratio between men and land was low. Hence there was a great demand for settlers, and newcomers were believed to be, and were, an asset to the community. A certain degree of rivalry and jealousy between the colonies, leading them to covet a rapid increase in population, contributed to this sentiment.
At the same time, there can be no doubt that there was a decided preference for colonists over immigrants. This was partly due to a natural race prejudice, but it was augmented by the character of the immigrants at that time. Considering the nature of the conditions which led to emigration from both Ireland and Germany, it is not surprising that a majority of the newcomers were characterized by extreme destitution. As might also be expected from the frightful shipping conditions which then existed, many of them arrived in wretched condition physically. The voyage was long, the ships were small, poorly ventilated, shockingly overcrowded, and totally unprovided with adequate provisions for sanitation, cleanliness, and culinary facilities. It seems to have been the expected thing that a large part of every shipload of immigrants, particularly of the Palatines, should arrive in a prostrated condition.
There is a record of one ship which made the voyage in 1731 on which there was such a scarcity of food provided for the passengers that they “had to live on rats and mice, which were considered dainties. The price on board for a rat was eighteen pence, and for a mouse an English sixpence. The captain was under the impression that the passengers had considerable money and valuables with them, and, believing that he might profit by it, he endeavored to reduce them to a state of starvation. He succeeded too well, for out of the 156 passengers only 48 reached America.”[[17]]