Description

Easton Press leather edition of Terry Coleman's "Passage to America: A History of Emigrants From Great Britain and Ireland to America in the Mid-Nineteenth Century," a COLLECTOR'S edition, one of the LIBRARY OF AMERICAN HISTORY series, Illustrated with Period Photographs, published in 1988. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has decorative paper end leaves, satin book marker, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition —except for a blank attached bookplate on second blank page. COLLECTOR'S NOTES is included. Terry Coleman is a distinguished British journalist and historian. He has reported from eighty countries as a foreign correspondent and interviewed eight British prime ministers from Harold Macmillan to Tony Blair. In 1988, he was named Journalist of the Year. Between 1846-1855, more than two million men, women and children abandoned the British Isles. Whole families and groups of families emigrated together. The average number was 500-700 passengers on a steamer of 800 tons. In 1847, It is estimated that one in six of all who sailed died. These ten years saw by far the greatest emigration from the U.K. to America. The Irish were "shovelled out" by absentee landlords and famine; the English went west to escape poverty and slums. Sea-sick, homesick, herded like cattle, dying like flies, they poured across the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York. They were swindled, robbed, insulted, sexually abused, and terrorized at every stage. Making brilliant use of original diaries and letters, newspapers and prints, Coleman gives us an intensely vivid account of this heroic and historic exodus. An emigrant's manual warned its readers they would be "as captive in their vessels as Africans in a slave ship," the only difference being that "the slaver had a greater interest in keeping his cargo alive." Hundreds of poor people, from the 'driveling' idiot of ninety to the babe just born, were huddled together without light, without air, wallowing in filth and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart, living without food or medicine, many dying without the voice of spiritual consolation. Government control over these unscrupulous shipping companies was negligible. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was big business, with plenty of cold-hearted advocates. Upon arrival some took to America immediately, and America to them. Young ANDREW CARNEGIE was one. At 13, he came to New York and soon started as a messenger boy for $2.50 a week. Fifty years later, he was the owner of an iron-and-steel combine that dominated American industry. In the Foreword, Coleman wrote: "This book does not set out to be a history of emigration. It is the story of emigrants---who they were, and why they left, and how and what happened to them." 317 pages, including Sources, Bibliography, Appendices, Occupations of Emigrant to the U.S. in 1852, and an index. I offer combined shipping.