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Across America on an Emigrant Train By Jim Murphy Soft Cover 1993
Across America on an Emigrant Train By Jim Murphy Soft Cover 1993 150 pages Indexed.
THE UNITED STATES went through monumental changes between 1850 and 1900. The Civil War was fought, putting an end to slavery and forging the independent-minded states into a powerful union. Settlers pushed westward. A transcontinental railroad was built to link the East to the West Coast, opening the door to swifter travel. And a great wave of people left their homelands overseas to start a new life in America. In fact, the second half of the nineteenth century saw over sixteen and a half million people settle in the United States, making this one of the largest voluntary emigrations in the history of the world.
There were many reasons for emigrating. Famine and economic depression drove some people to seek a new beginning; others were fleeing slavery or repressive governments. Still others wanted to live where they could practice their religion openly and without fear. Each person or family had a compelling reason for leaving-but this does not account for why the United States was such a magnet for them. In general, people want some assurance that what they are traveling to is, in some way, better (or at least not worse) than what they are leaving behind.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8
In 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson journeyed from Scotland across the Atlantic and then by train across the United States to join the woman he loved in Monterey, California. Murphy has drawn from the writer's journal to provide a fresh, primary-source account of transcontinental train travel at that time. Choosing by necessity the cheapest passage, Stevenson traveled with other newcomers to the U.S. who had not yet reached their final destination. He describes his companions, the passing countryside, the interior of the railroad cars, and daily life aboard a train. Into these journal entries, Murphy has woven meticulously researched, absorbing accounts of the building of the railroad and its effect on the territory it crossed: the disruption and destruction of Native American life, the slaughter of the buffalo, accidents, the development of the Pullman car, the towns that quickly came and vanished as the construction crews moved on, the snowsheds built to protect the trains in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Abundant, carefully selected period photographs, engravings, and lithographs are every bit as intriguing as the text. Appended is a lengthy bibliography with some original source material. This work supplements Leonard Everett Fisher's more extensive Tracks Across America (Holiday, 1992); it is a readable and valuable contribution to literature concerning expansion into the American West.
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