To reach America, the Irish spent five to ten weeks packed in dank ships' holds with little heat or sanitation. On the worst ships, some of which had once been slave ships, half of the immigrants died on board. Those who survived faced a new challenge -- adapting to a bewildering, changing America. "We are a primitive people, wandering in a strange land called the Nineteenth Century," one immigrant wrote to his family.

The 1840s and '50s were years of great change and expansion in America. Small farmers settled the Midwest and slave plantations spread across the Mississippi. Canals and new railroads finked these new territories with the great cities growing in the East. Increased trade and the spreading. industrial system changed the way Americans worked and lived. In 1790 America had only 24 towns of 2,500 or more residents, and none larger than 50,000. By 1860, Boston and Philadelphia had grown dramatically, while Chicago and Detroit and other new cities were springing Lip. New York became the nation's largest city, with more than a million residents, nearly half of them immigrants or their children.

New York City symbolized the dynamic forces changing America. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 helped shift the flow of trade to New York. Goods from across America were brought to New York to be shipped around the world. New manufacturing sprang Up; by 1860, garments made in New York had replaced homemade clothing in most parts of the nation.

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