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."