Many of the homesteaders who were pushing the Indians onto reservations were brand-new Americans. They were ambitious immigrants from the Old World. But immigrants came in all sorts and varieties, and some were the strongest supporters of freedom and equality in America. One such man was Carl Schurz , who had grown up in Germany. He wrote: "It is one of the earliest recollections of my boyhood: one of our neighboring families was moving far away across a great water, and it was said that they would never again return. And I saw silent tears trickling down weather-beaten cheeks, and some hardly able to speak. At last the train started into motion, they gave three cheers for America. And I heard many a man say, how happy he would be if he could go with them to that great and free country, where a man could be himself, and where nobody need be poor, because everybody was free ."

In 1849 Carl Schurz came to America. He settled in Wisconsin, studied law, heard Abraham Lincoln debate Stephen A. Douglas, and became a big Lincoln fan. When Lincoln was elected president in 1860, he named Carl Schurz ambassador to Spain. Then he asked Schurz to come home to fight in the Civil War and made him a general.

After the war, Schurz became a newspaper writer, an editor, a U.S. senator, and secretary of the interior . He worked to conserve the wilderness and to be fair to Indians when hardly anyone thought of those things. Like many American immigrants, Schurz had fallen in love with the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the guarantees of the Constitution: "If you want to be free," he said, "there is but one way. It is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors."

Most immigrants knew America was a land of freedom, but some, like Michael Pupin from Yugoslavia, didn't know much else about it. Pupin sold his sheepskin coat to get money to come to the New World. "Why should anyone going to New York bother about new clothes?" he said, "was not New York much farther south than Pancevo, where I had been raised? And when one thinks of the pictures of naked Indians so often seen, does not America suggest a hot climate? These thoughts consoled me when I parted with my coat."

The population of Europe doubled between 1750 and 1850. All those extra people needed food, homes, and jobs—and there just didn't seem to be enough of them in Europe. Many Europeans came to America because they were hungry. Others came for religious freedom. Protestants came from Holland and France; Jews came from Germany, Poland, and Russia; and Catholics came from England, Ireland, and Italy. Some twenty-six million immigrants landed in the United States in the half century after the Civil War . One of them, Bianca de Carlie, sailed from Italy. Here is what she said when her ship docked at Ellis Island in New York: "A thousand times during the last day or two I put my hands on my passport and papers which I kept wrapped in a handkerchief under the front of my dress. This was just to make sure they were there. One of my companions said, 'Signora, you are very foolish! When you keep your hand inside your dress, you are telling everyone that your papers are there!' Now I know it was silly, but we heard so many stories about others who were turned back because their papers were not in order ."

When eighteen year-old Leon Fouquet headed for America, he didn't say why he left his home in France, but it's a good guess that if he'd stayed he would have been drafted into the army. He recalled: "When our ship left Liverpool, England, there were many nationalities on board, but I was the only Frenchman. When the ship anchored at Queenstown, the Irish seaport, it took on a number of Irish immigrants. When many of them crowded into our room, so offended were my senses I realized I must rush up on deck to the open air . At last the stairs were empty and I started up. At the same time a sick man started down. The poor fellow could not control his stomach and out it came—right down on me."

At last the sixteen-day voyage was over. . "Land! Land!" Fouquet cried out, "Hurrah! Hurrah for America, my free country! I was jubilant. Everyone on board was jubilant. Oh, how relieved I was as our ship, the Tariffa, entered the port of New York during the night on 15 June, 1868 ."

Jacob Riis was a Danish boy who read cowboy books about America. So when he sailed for New York he expected to be confronted by buffaloes and cowboys. The first thing he did when he arrived was to take half his money and buy a gun. Later he said he was surprised to find New York "paved, and lighted with electric lights, and quite as civilized as Copenhagen." A friendly policeman saw his gun tucked in his belt and advised him to leave it home. Riis noted, "I took his advice and put the revolver away, secretly relieved to get rid of it. It was quite heavy to carry around."

Like many immigrants, Jacob Riis was very poor. It took him seven years to get a good job. It was as a newspaper reporter. He wrote about what he knew—the life of the poor in America's cities. Then he learned about photography. Most photographers took pictures of beautiful scenery or prosperous people. No one was taking pictures of the poor. Riis did . He showed exactly how some people had to live. His books helped get laws passed to make things better .

Jacob Riis and Carl Schurz were reformers. Some Americans, who had been here for a long time, had forgotten the nation's founding ideals. But the immigrants had come here to find freedom and opportunity in a land that said all men are created equal. They cherished America's ideals.