Thirty million Europeans emigrated to the USA in the 19th Century to realize their American dream. But the continent was settled at the expense of its original inhabitants.
The United States is always seen as the land of dreams and unlimited possibilities. Our starting point for this account of the settlement of America’s eastern seaboard by European pioneers is Florida, where the Spaniards first settled in the early 16th Century.. Their legacy today is 50 million Americans who speak Spanish as their first language -more than in Spain itself. But it was the largely Protestant British who made up the second wave of immigrants. They founded Jamestown in Virginia and settlements in Massachusetts and pushed northwards into Canada. While the southern states largely lived from the proceeds of slavery, the northern states developed into booming industrial centers that would ultimately defeat them in the civil war. It was here that the American dream of dishwasher to millionaire originated.