Migration to the Promised Land; The evolution of the American culture

Book Reviewed: Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics, by Michael Barone

This is an interesting book for anyone interested in American history. It is full of facts with statistical data and maps in its history right from the colonial days. Some of the results are surprising and the author makes special efforts to delineate the relationship between the migrations of a particular ethnicity to the political outcomes and shaping of American culture. The religious freedom and equal opportunities afforded to all races and nationalities have had implications in the future economic, political and social structure of this country. The nation started with slavery and then the civil war which changed the course of the country for better into a strong and powerful nation in the world. The social and political revolution was always in the works. Two of the most successful generals of the Yankee stock who imbibed Yankee values were Ulysses Grant and William Sherman. Grant abhorred the abasement of Mexicans in the 1846-48 war in which he served with distinction. William Sherman was appalled by the mores of Louisiana slaveholders when he was stationed there years before the civil war. Grants and Sherman's efforts to enforce the rights of southern blacks during reconstruction were cut short by the public outrage over heavy military spending and unsympathetic to the idea of treating blacks on equal terms with whites. But with the support of emerging German-Scandinavian population and the Scott-Irish led to the defeat of the conflicting American culture of slaveholders. The presidency was held without exception by slave holders and their sympathizers during the 60 years before the civil war. The civil war is the conflict of Yankee North America over the American culture of slave holders.

The remarkable thing about the period from civil war to WWII is not how many southern blacks and whites moved to the North, but how few did. Very few moved even though the economic incentives and formidable barriers to the movement were lessened. The facts disprove the theory that domestic American migration was primarily an economic phenomenon. For 75 years, the American majority in the North abandoned the reconstruction and let the white majority in the South to run their society without interference. The migration that did not happen shaped the nation as any other migrations, from overseas, that did occur.

The migrations from Europe, Africa and Asia created one of the greatest nations on earth, but such migrations also bought challenges and conflicts. Those who fought for the union, and those who chose confederacy had their own American dream, which resulted in conflicts of interest and civil war became inevitable. It is often said that America has become culturally diverse only in the past quarter century. But from the country's beginning, cultural variety and conflict have been a force in American politics and a crucial reason for our rise to power. The founding fathers used a simple formula of limited government, civic equality and religious tolerance amidst cultural diversity and periods of darkness in American history. This equation has worked to a large extent which essentially proves that the founders of this nation were great visionaries.