Leaving the Old World to find better pastures

The country where many grew up and currently see is unrecognisable from the times when we were a child. For many it is also nothing like any more of what they hear from their grandparents.

Today America is facing a time again which many hundreds of years ago tried to escape. The America, that many oppressed people risked their lives to escape to, now more resembles the oppressed nations that those people fled.

Even Americans themselves start seeing that their beloved country which was going to be the free-haven of many good luck searchers, has become a country that continues to spiral into oppression and despotism.

How many of those Americans do remember the reasons of their ancestors to look for new pastures. How many do want to think about of the essence of the words of their founding fathers.

George Washington said,

“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”

Thomas Jefferson said,

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Christians or unbelievers, churchgoers or non-churchgoers, Federalists or Democrat-Republicans, northerners or southerners, to a man, America’s founders were men that feared God. That God often was also an initial point of departure. Lots of them had problems with the way the world was revolving in the Old World. They saw which problems there were in many churches and which battles were fought in the name of God. They were fed up with the struggle to survive and with the struggle for life and for faith. Many knew their Bible Words and took notice how apostles travelled from one place to another and did not mind to go on, when in one place the people did not want to hear about God. They do did not mind to go to other places to come at ease with God and their believes.

Fearing God they undertook a big adventure.

All the time they kept family values high. They took time to educate their children in the system in which they believed and in the Faith they wanted to work for.

When the great European migration began the new immigrants were confronted with the strange native inhabitants, with a total different culture and totally different believes. In certain instances the co-existence of Europeans and Native Americans was peaceful. In other cases, there were cultural clashes, leading to violence and disease. Alcoholic drinks (drugs) and weapons became the cause of many difficulties and lots of grieve on both sites.

Richard Warren, among 10 passengers in the lan... — Richard Warren, among 10 passengers in the landing party, when the Mayflower arrived at Cape Cod, November 11, 1620 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

102 English colonists (later referred to as the “Pilgrims“) with the believe in humankind and dreaming of the possibility to work together to make something beautiful, set sail in 1620 on the Mayflower. They landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts and strove with the idea that people can join together and agree to govern themselves by making laws for the common good.

In the 17th century, European powers had already successfully colonized some part of the world. England had a successful hold on North America and various other areas, including India, Spain had a large hold of South America and North America, and the Dutch had successful outposts in India. The French were beginning to colonize parts of North America, but did not have permanent settlements like the Spanish and British colonies.

In 1638, just 18 years after the Mayflower, the Swedes began their migration to America. Unlike the Pilgrim Fathers, the Swedes were not religious dissenters – they were an organized group of colonizers sent by the Swedish Government to establish a colony in Delaware. In 1655, the colony was lost to the Dutch.

Many Germans, around the year 1700, were fleeing their homeland to find an easier life in other European countries, the Western Hemisphere, and Australia due to extremely violent conditions. The Germans had found for many years, like the later Belgians their country repeatedly attacked by armies of various nationalities. Inhabitants of the southwestern part, especially, were constantly robbed and tortured. Entire villages were often burnt down and their inhabitants killed. During the flood of emigrants from Germany, its rulers tried to stop the flow, but to little effect. In fact, the flow increased, and in 1709 about 15,000 Germans left for Britain, and 3,000 crossed the Atlantic to New York. In 1745, there were an estimated 45,000 Germans living in Pennsylvania alone.

"The Landing of the Pilgrims."(1877)... — “The Landing of the Pilgrims.”(1877) by Henry A. Bacon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the mid-1840s, a wave of Swedish migration began with the landing of a group of migrant farmers in New York and continued up to World War I. During the colonial era most of the immigrants to the U.S. came from Northern Europe. Their numbers declined during the 1770s, but picked up during the mid 1800s. New arrivals came from several countries, but mostly from Germany and Ireland where crop failures caused many to leave their homelands. Other groups also arrived from the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, and Eastern Europe.

After the depression of the 1890s, immigration jumped from a low of 3.5 million in that decade to a high of 9 million in the first decade of the new century. Immigrants from Northern and Western Europe continued coming as they had for three centuries, but in decreasing numbers. After the 1880s, immigrants increasingly came from Eastern and Southern European countries, as well as Canada and Latin America.

A Tragic Fire — Immigrants who have successfully made it through their inspection at Ellis Island
wait for a boat to take them to Manhattan and the “Promised Land.”
October 30, 1912

By 1910, Eastern and Southern Europeans made up 70 percent of the immigrants entering the country. After 1914, immigration dropped off because of the war, and later because of immigration restrictions imposed in the 1920s. The reasons these new immigrants made the journey to America differed little from those of their predecessors. Escaping religious, racial, and political persecution, or seeking relief from a lack of economic opportunity or famine still pushed many immigrants out of their homelands.

You would think this escape would form the best ground to put away discrimination and to come to an open mind concerning different ways of thinking and different believes or different religions.

But there men overlooked something. Selfishness, jealousy, greed and the want for power took many in the same trap as their ancestors way back in the Old World.

You would have thought together the different nationalities would be able to come to a consensus and would be able to figure out a system were everybody had the freedom to live in equality. Strangely enough the United States became a country which by many Europeans would become known as the cradle of slavery and be known as the nursery of of race–hate.

The founders of the States to be United were aware that when in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Lots of those immigrants were brought up in a Judeo-Christian society, with the knowledge that all men were created in the image of God and that they had received a task to fulfil on this world.

And Elohim said,

“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth and over all the creeping creatures that creep on the earth.”

And Elohim created the man in His image, in the image of Elohim He created him – male and female He created them. And the Divine Creator blessed them, and Jehovah said to them,

“Bear fruit and increase, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over all creatures moving on the earth.”

And Elohim said,

“See, I have given you every plant that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed, to you it is for food. “And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to every creeping creature on the earth, in which there is life, every green plant is for food.” And it came to be so.
(Genesis 1:26-30 The Scriptures 1998+)

They believed it to be the best thing to hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Naturally they had seen in the Old World this would come not from itself, and they had to take measures to secure these rights. At that time many of them also knew their history and had heard about the many governments which brought countries to success but also to decline. They heard about the Roman and Greek empires and in their own regions of Charles the Fifth, the Dutch Glory, but also the oppression of the Duke of Alva and the Spanish troops.

They had heard about the French physiocrates and the colbertism (from Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), French minister of finance under King Louis XIV ). Many liked the slogan “Laissez faire, laisser passer”. The land was very rich and provided enough food to export and trade. But Colbert‘s idea was interesting for the use of those precious materials the people had found in many riverbeds. A “favourable balance of trade” in which goods were exported for gold, versus an “unfavourable balance of trade” in which gold would flow out of the country was chosen for, in the line of the ideas of Colbert who also intended to get rid of internal tariffs, and to tax the nobility, but failed.

The many immigrants had seen many governments ruling for such a long time having everybody in their power, they would not like that in their New World.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Please do find more about the history of immigration:

Republication from one of our old articles

Preceding articles

Judeo-Christian values and liberty

People of Faith for Obama video