Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/32

18 conquering armies of farmers and mechanics to take possession of these rich grounds, and raise them to the importance which they would have reached fifty years ago, had it not been for the ban of slavery. So it will be in Tennessee, in Carolina, in Kentucky, and Texas. Foreign immigration, which, before the late war, almost exclusively settled in the free North, will henceforth pour into the South as well. The United States, by the successful termination of the war against rebellion, have indeed increased the attraction of this country for the immigrant, and there is not the least reason to doubt that the great Republic will in the future become more than ever the favorite land of the immigrant. And New York City is the main gateway through which the vast tide of emigration enters, and New York State the great thoroughfare over which it pours to be diffused over the Union.