Mythology, traditions and history - The Clan Macfie Society

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immigrants from Maryland and Virginia, but the secret arrangements•by Napoleon with Spain
made the future of Louisiana uncertain. The role of Jefferson in obtaining, by purchase, this
great area for incorporation into United States opened up a floodgate after 1803.
There was trouble with Mexico over Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California.
When these areas were incorporated into the United States of America, by 1850, another route
to the Pacific was created. From 1855 Slovenes, Lithuanians and Greeks came through Gulf
ports. When mining was developed in Arizona some Scots, Welsh and Irish immigrants were
added to the rapidly growing population in California.
In general, as Dr. Jones 1 points out the Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Finns and
Russians landed on the Atlantic coast.
Rowland Berthoff 2 points out that from 1865 the State governments of the southern states
were opposed to immigration, despite the fact that farmers wanted them to replace the "lazy
negro". The Southerners, he contends, prided themselves on an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and
particularly opposed imports of Mediterranean labor, but few immigrants came to them from
the north of Europe or from Britain. Berthoff and Harrison Johnson agree that the former
Confederate States had only 2% of their population of "foreign birth" whereas other states had
percentages up to 20%.
Harrison Johnson 3 made a study of the intended destination of immigrants coming through
Gulf ports for the years 1855-1878. These immigrants had planned to settle from North
Carolina and Kentucky to the Mississippi River in a number of 33,294; 11,799 had planned to
settle to the west of the river. (This is what had happened elsewhere; when immigrants moved
from Europe most persons settled in established areas while the second and third generations
moved to new areas.) Of the 35,1314 persons whom Dr. Harrison studied 18% planned to
remain in Tennessee, approximately the same percentage wise as planned to settle in Louisiana.
Routes to the Pacific
Thus far we have noted the appearance of members of our clan in the Atlantic States, or
roughly, on the eastern side of the Alleghenies, with a few movements over the Cumberland
Gap to Kentucky acid Tennessee.
Louis B. Wright points a fanciful picture concerning western migration. He assumes, that
the members of the Board of Trade, in London, sat around a table examining the eastern sea
board on the American continent. They drew a long line along the crest of the Alleghenies and
declared that this was the "Proclamation Line". Everything to the west of this line would be an
Indian Reservation. Those whites who had moved into this area were to be ordered to move
out, and no permits would be considered for the Europeans and colonists who decided that they
would like to "move west". (The Atlantic Frontier, Colonial American Civilization, 1607-
1763).
1 Jones, M.A.; American Immigration, Chicago, 1960
2 Berthoff, Rowland T.; Southern attitudes toward Immigration, 1865-1914. J. of South. Hist.
17, 1951, pp. 328-360
3 Johnson, Harrison; Op. cit. pp. 165-166