Scotch-Irish migration, augmented by individuals and whole communities direct from Scotland, set in strongly toward the New World and continued unbroken for generations. Finding the coastal region in the possession of the earlier arrivals—English, Dutch, and Swedes—the Scotch were usually forced to the frontier, where their remoteness, their conditions of life and their tense struggle for existence made still weaker the ties that bound them to the Old World. Even less than the Puritans of New England did they have reason to profess loyalty to King George and their number, embracing about one-sixth of the colonial population, made them formidable.
Like the Scotch-Irish immigrants, the Germans, except for a few scattered adventurers, appeared late upon the American scene; not until William Penn opened wide the doors of his colony in the latter part of the seventeenth century did they migrate in large numbers. Most of the Germans were also forced into the interior, where they maintained their separate language, press, religion, and schools, manifesting a serene indifference to all efforts to Anglicize them. If they felt no active hostility toward London, they had no special reason for taking the side of George III against their neighbors and they were not to be ignored for in 1776 they numbered at least two hundred thousand.
The French Huguenots were other late immigrants; the seventeenth century was drawing to a close when Louis XIV revoked their charter of toleration—the Edict of Nantes—and harried them from his land. Having followed commercial pursuits principally at home, most of the Huguenots continued in those vocations on their arrival in the New World. As merchants they were keenly alive to the competition of Englishmen in the American markets. As people of substance and education alien to English traditions, they furnished more than their share of political leadership in the movement that overthrew British dominion.
Perhaps equally numerous in America were the native
