Last Best Hope of Earth

Tag: Germany

  • The Mass Immigration of the 1840s

    five_points_new_york_city_1852
    Photograph of the Five Points Neighborhood of New York City. Photographer Unknown.

    In the mid-1840s, the last major famine in European history would take place in Ireland. This famine would have significant ramifications for America, as it would lead to a massive wave of immigrants.

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  • America in 1848

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    John Calhoun.

    In 1848, when word spread to America that a revolution was breaking out in France, President James Polk wrote: “The great principles of popular sovereignty which were proclaimed in 1776 by the immortal author of our Declaration of Independence, seem now to be in the course of rapid development throughout the world.” James Knox Polk to Richard Rush, April 18, 1848, quoted in Michael Morrison, “American Reactions to European Revolutions, 1848-1852,” Civil War History 49 (June 2003): 117.

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