North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century America by Charlotte EricksonReview by: Clyde WilsonThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 50, No. 1 (January, 1973), pp. 106-107Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23529499 .

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106 Book Reviews

on blacks and to maintain the status quo." The studies are factual, and the

Williams team has written interesting, often absorbing accounts of racial postwar conflicts. If there is any complaint about this small volume, it is its lack of any real depth on the riots; but, as the authors point out, the book is "an introductory work . . . and presupposed no extensive technical knowledge of the riots." Their

purpose, they say, is to give proper emphasis and clarity of presentation so "that

the general reader should be able to follow the narrative successfully." This they have accomplished.

The Knoxville riot stemmed from a white woman's death, coming after a

black male forcibly entered her bedroom in a robbery attempt. White mobs

quickly formed, and the ensuing looting and shooting were primarily of white

origin. The National Guard was called in to quell the disturbance in which

seven persons lost their lives. In Elaine, Arkansas, black sharecroppers formed

a union to end abuses of white landlords in the county. The sharecroppers armed themselves, and when a white man was killed outside one of the union

meetings, whites armed, and troops were sent in by the governor. Ultimately,

seventy-nine blacks were indicted for murder. The riot in Tulsa started when a

black male accidentally stepped on a white female elevator operator's foot. It

ended with 200 blacks and fifty whites dead and general looting and arson in

the black section of Tulsa. The Chicago riot, similar in some respects to the

urban race riots of the 1960s, followed the drowning of a black youth. A white

police officer refused to arrest a white person who had thrown a rock, knocking the black youth off a raft and causing the drowning. The riot lasted four days, and thirty-six persons were killed.

The authors conclude that blacks were the victims of these riots and that these were acts to instill fear in the blacks in order to subjugate the race. The

book is an addition both to the literature of the bloody period in America that

followed World War I and to the study of racial conflict in the United States.

Miles Wolff

Savannah, Georgia

Miles Wolff

Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in ISIine

teenth-Century America. By Charlotte Erickson. (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1972. Maps, introduction, illustrations, notes, index. Pp. viii, 531. $17.50.)

Indistinguishable from the native-born by language or religion, the British

immigrants of the nineteenth century have been overlooked by students of the

immigrant in America. Despite their "invisibility," they were, except for the

Irish and Germans, the most numerous group of newcomers; nor did they

necessarily blend into the American scene without significant difficulties. Their

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

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Book Reviews 107

low historical profile has now been altered by Charlotte Erickson, senior lecturer

in economic history at the London School of Economics.

Two thirds of her book is devoted to publication of a selection of letters written

by British immigrants to their relations and friends at home. The remaining one

third is allotted to introduction of the letters and to analysis of the British immi

gration based on the letters and other research. The letter writers, twenty-five families or individuals, are divided into three groups—agricultural, industrial,

and white-collar. Motives for immigration, movement within the United States,

economic adaptation, and cultural adaptation are examined for each group. The

principles of selection and methods of editing the letters are well described,

and possible omissions or distortions by the writers are suggested. Erickson

employs census returns, county histories, and a minute knowledge of British eco

nomic conditions to illuminate the family background, socioeconomic status,

and local circumstances from which the letter writers departed, as well as the

nature of the American communities in which they settled. However, the

letters used are limited largely to those available in Britain. Another limitation

is that most of the correspondents settled in the Midwest or Northeast. Only one wrote from south of the Potomac, and only two from west of the Missouri.

Much that .is interesting and not a little that runs counter to commonly held

notions of immigration is elicited here. The concrete cases presented and

analyzed increase available knowledge of the subject greatly. The only serious

fault that can be found with Erickson's work is that it attempts too much. Sure

ly the difference between 1820 and 1890 is large enough to render generaliza

tions about "nineteenth century immigration" questionable? Nevertheless, the

book is, on the whole, the kind of painstaking, competent performance that one

expects from British economic historians. Not only are the letters valuable for

the experiences of the immigrants, but they are perhaps even more valuable for

American social history—for those important but elusive details of everyday

life which enhance understanding of a past. For instance, one may find here

good clues to what life must have been like for immigrants or natives in a

frontier farming county of the Old Northwest. Erickson's technique, a skillful

selection of documents presented with careful analysis, could be productively

applied to many subjects of social history. Clyde Wilson

University of South Carolina/The Papers of John C. Calhoun

Clyde Wilson

English Defenders of American Freedoms, 1774-1778: Six Pamphlets Attacking

British Policy. Compiled by Paul H. Smith. (Washington, D.C.: Library of

Congress, 1972. [For sale by Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government

Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 20402.] Preface, introduction, notes. Pp. v,

231. $2.75.

Historians and political analysts are in debt to Paul Smith, a very tine scholar

on the American Revolution Bicentennial staff of the Library of Congress, for

VOLUME L. NUMBER 1, JANUARY, 1973

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