The second of these facts is that such additions to population as there were, while containing a number of diverse elements, were predominantly English, and that those who were not English were almost wholly from races closely allied to the English. These were principally the Dutch, Swedes, Germans, and Scotch-Irish, which with the English, as Professor Commons has pointed out, were, less than two thousand years ago, all one Germanic race in the forests surrounding the North Sea. “It is the distinctive fact regarding colonial migration that it was Teutonic in blood and Protestant in religion.”[48] This Protestantism was important, not so much because of the superiority of one form of religion over another, as because of the type of mind and character which Protestantism at that day represented. It stood for independence of thought, moral conviction, courage, and hardihood. The English element, then, was sufficiently preëminent quickly to reduce all other elements to its type. As a result of the character of the migration assimilation was easy, quick, and complete. While it was said that every language of Europe could be found in Pennsylvania, this diversity was short-lived. “No matter how diverse the small immigration might have been on its arrival, there was a steady pressure on its descendants to turn them into Englishmen; and it was very successful.... The whole coast, from Nova Scotia to the Spanish possessions in Florida, was one in all essential circumstances.”[49] Such, then, was the American people at the time of the Revolution—a physically homogeneous race, composed almost wholly of native-born descendants of native-born ancestors, of a decidedly English type, but with a distinct character of its own. This was the great stock from which the people of the United States grew, and upon which all subsequent additions must be regarded as extraneous grafts. CHAPTER III 1783 TO 1820 With the beginning of the life of the United States as a separate nation, all strangers arriving at her shores, whencesoever they came, are to be classed as immigrants. From this time on colonization may be dropped out of the reckoning, and all increments of population from foreign sources be considered under the head of immigration.