Part One:
Two of the following three essay choices will be submitted via email. Several rules govern your essay writing. First, if you quote or paraphrase readings or lectures, make sure to provide a simple source citation within the text of your writing. You are expected to use the testimonies from the assigned website readings as illustrations or examples of your main points. Additionally, you will use five terms listed below in each of your essays; underline them as you use them. Two to three pages for each essay, double-spaced.
Terms: Americanization; “asylum theme”; indenturers; American “Wake”; “push”/”pull”/”passage” (one term); ethnicity; nativism; assimilation; “Great Famine”; Federalist Party; Know Nothing Party; Homestead Act, 1862; Immigration Restriction League; “hyphenates”; other terms that fit into these narratives.
Question Choices:
Many immigrants came to America as “indenturers”. Their experiences, however, would vary considerably depending on their origin and circumstance, where they settled, and what they faced after having worked off the terms of their contracts. Your task is first to explain what being “indentured” meant. For example, the first Africans to be brought to America were originally considered “indentured”. Yet their fate would be very different from the whites who also came as “indentured”. (Dinnerstein goes to considerable length to show the evolution of the concept of “slavery” in the American colonies.) What did being indentured mean to those who settled in Virginia and the southern colonies, versus those who came as indentured and settled in the northern colonies? Finally, use testimonies for each of the groups of immigrants you present.
Define the differences in the “push”, “passage”, and “pull” factors of three different immigrant groups which come to America between 1607 and 1830? Use testimonies from the various websites provided in the first weeks of readings which illustrate individuals from these groups. Also, are there any testimonies which present how the resident Anglo-Americans feel about subsequent groups which came to America , especially after the Revolution? (For example, what does Benjamin Franklin think about German immigrants and their presence in Pennsylvania?) (Remember the dates for your response, nothing beyond 1830.)
When we reach the 1840s, we see the arrival of two new large groups of immigrants. First are the Germans who will move through the East Coast and settle in the Midwest. Then the Irish will also come at this same time. Unlike the Germans, however, the Irish will settle in cities along the East Coast of the country. Your job is to describe what makes these two groups so different from one another. Why are the Irish so different from other groups that have arrived by this time period? In the readings, what are some of the “native” American fears being presented over the Irish presence in America? And by the way, who is Maria Monk? Once again, use testimonies.
Part Two:
The second part of the midterm is for you to select four of the following pairs of terms and answer the following questions:
#1, What does each term mean;
#2, What relationship do you see that each term shares with the other in the pair.
Each response should be no less than a page each, double-spaced.
Maria Monk – Samuel Morse
Americanization – “Hyphenates” (c. 1880)
Democrat-Republican Party – Federalist Party (c. 1800)
William Moraley – Gottfried Duden
Puritans – Quakers
indenturers – slaves
Northern Whigs – Southern Whigs (1840s)
“old” immigrants – “new” immigrants
