The second immigration of importance occurred a few years later when a large number of Germans were forced over here by the failure of the Revolution in Germany in 1848. These Germans were very different from those who migrated to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century. Many of them were from northern Germany and were Nordics, including individuals of some culture and distinction. They settled in certain cities of the West, notably in Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Saint Louis. For the most part, however, they took up public land and became hard-working farmers. They did not in the mass improve the population already here intellectually, racially, or physically, and they impaired our national unity, at least for the time being, by the introduction of their own language.
At the end of the period here considered there were in the United States more than one and a quarter millions of German-born, of whom about one-fourth were Roman Catholics. This church, which in 1790 controlled not one in a hundred of the population, could in 1860 count upon one in every nine of the Whites.
Outside of the Irish and Germans, who were preponderantly Nordic, there was not much immigration of importance. The census of 1860 enumerated 4,138,697 foreign-born persons out of a total of nearly 27,000,000 Whites. England, Scotland, and Canada accounted for most of those who were neither Irish nor German. Thus at the end of this period the racial unity of the United States was still virtually unimpaired.
The French in the old Northwest Territory were negligible in number, amounting to but a few thousands. The number of Mexicans in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico when we took over those countries was but a few thousand more. These Mexicans considered themselves Spanish; but as a matter of fact, the veneer of religion, language, and culture was very thin, and racially most of them were at least seven-eighths Indian. The same condition prevailed in California in 1846; the number of Mexicans being even smaller than in Texas.
Many of the original Colonial charters granted by the English kings provided for a north and south boundary by latitude, but the western boundary was often defined as the "South Sea," and not unnaturally many of these boundaries overlapped. After the Revolution, the original colonies were induced to cede to the Federal Government their indefinite and conflicting claims to the western lands. This general and important cession of territory had two results: it gave the impoverished Federal Government lands which could be sold for its own benefit, and it led to the establishment of communities which looked to the Federal Government for everything they needed, which in itself was a long step toward unity of government.
In 1787 the western boundaries of New York and Pennsylvania were fixed as they are at present, and out of the country south of the Great Lakes, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi was erected the Northwest Territory under the special guardianship of the Federal Government.
This "Northwest Territory" had been seized during the Revolution by an extraordinary group of adventurers and frontiersmen under General George Rogers Clark. Thereby the Thirteen Colonies were in physical possession of these districts south of the Great Lakes when the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783. Without such actual possession of the Old Northwest, it would have remained part of Canada, an outcome which would have limited the growth of the United States westward or, more probably, have led to another war. The reluctance of the British authorities in charge of the outposts in this territory to surrender their forts in accordance with the terms of the treaty, and their alleged backing of the Indians, were among the causes underlying the War of 1812.
As population increased, new States were created in succession out of this territory—Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), and Wisconsin (1848).