So you need someone to end the page?
Yes indeed.
And for that, I give you the next update!
Part Twenty-Six: Demographic Effects
Reform from Religion: While the Second Great Awakening had mostly already run its course, the political ramifications of the movements it created were only beginning. During the middle of the 19th century, the idea that the world needed to be reformed to achieve the Second Coming of Christ spawned a number of unitopical movements[1]. One of the earliest movements was abolitionism, which was prominent in the 1840s and 1850s. Later in the century there would be many other campaigns surrounding particular issues, such as the moderation[2] movement that advocated banning the production and sale of alcohol that was moderately successful in the southern states. The 1870s and 1880s also saw a rise in nativism and anti-Catholicism as a reaction to the rise in immigration of Poles and Italians after the Piave War[3].
Census of 1860: Though the nation had been growing throughout its history, the United States census in 1860 showed many remarkable changes in the past decade. First was the sheer increase in the population of the United States. The first official national census in the state of Cuba since the state was added to the Union showed that the island held a population of over one million people. That population statistic led to an increase in seven electoral votes in Cuba, bringing the votes for Cuba to ten, the same number of votes as was given to Georgia and Maryland. Adding in the incorporation of Cuba, the population of the United States had grown by over ten million in a decade for the first time in its history. The country now held almost thirty-five million people.
With the increase in population, many cities had flourished. In the south, New Orleans and Pensacola continued to take in immigrants from South America, Further along the Mississippi, the area around the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers had greatly increased in population since 1850, with Saint Louis and Cairo doubling in population. Other cities in the Old Northwest including Chicago and Cincinatti also experienced large influxes of people.
California Gold Rush: In California, the population had grown to over one-hundred and fifty thousand by 1860. The majority of this growth was immigration, with the Mormon settlement in the east of the country and immigrants from Mexico in the south. However, California was not finished growing. The gold rush that occurred during the first half of the 1860s would almost double the population. Immigrants from not only the United States but South American countries such as Chile and Bolivia and a few from the Far East flocked to California.
In 1863, the Californio majority became worried about the number of Americans entering their country, claiming that the immigration was diluting California's religious and linguistic identity. The California legislature passed a bill restricting American-owned gold mines, and thus much of the American immigrants, to the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. While there were some protests, few plots owned by American immigrants were west of those mountains, so there was not much displeasure among the Americans. Another consequence of the California Gold Rush in the 1860s would be the San Xavier Purchase, in which the remainder of what is now Colorado was purchased from California after the local population called for the area to join the United States.
[1] Single issue campaigns
[2] The temperance movement
[3] Not sure if this is what the war will be called, but La Guerra Piavare sounded nice in Italian
