Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration

Holzer (director, Hunter Coll. Roosevelt House Public Policy Inst.; The Presidents vs. the Press) explains how nearly 10 million immigrants moved to the United States during the 30 years before the Civil War and influenced the political landscape and outcomes. They not only changed the country’s demographics but demanded reforms to voter registration, to give them the right to vote. The majority, 90 percent, settled in the north and voted strongly against the Civil War and destroyed Lincoln’s Whig party. Nonetheless, on July 4, l864, Lincoln signed an act into law to establish the office of the U.S. Immigration Commissioner to encourage further immigration and ban indentured servitude for periods longer than one year. During the Civil War, immigrants had become a significant portion of the Union army, with more than 200,000 German and l50,000 Irish serving. But Lincoln also ruled that immigrants could not be immediately drafted at the time they migrated. Instead, they had to first declare that they renounced allegiances to any other country before being enlisted.