During this period the immigrants were almost wholly from the United Kingdom and Germany, with the Irish in the lead, as we have seen. There were also considerable numbers of French, who outnumbered the Germans in some years in the early part of the period, and small contingents from various other nations, particularly the Scandinavian countries. It was natural that the ties of relationship, language, etc., should put the United Kingdom at the head at this time, and conditions in Ireland were such as to make emigration a very welcome means of relief. The Irish tended to linger in the cities, where they went into domestic and personal service, or to go out into the construction camps. The Germans and Scandinavians, on the other hand, tended to move westward into the interior, and colonies of these races were becoming numerous in several of the middle western states. The Germans of this period were mostly farmers from the thinly settled agricultural sections of the old country, and the great attraction which the United States had for them was the ease with which good farm lands might be secured in this country.[77] Most of the agitation about immigration, as has been intimated, centered round the Irish, but there was also some feeling against the Germans. This was augmented by the decided clannishness of these people. There were many German societies and newspapers, and a strong and ill-disguised movement to form an independent German state in Texas, or elsewhere on the continent, which was not calculated to endear them to the native American. Up to the year 1842 the total immigration did not reach one hundred thousand annually, and for the next three years it fell below that figure again.[78] During the last half of this decade, however, certain events occurred in Europe which vastly increased the immigration current, and brought the matter more forcibly to the notice of the American people than ever before. These were the potato famine in Ireland, and the political upheavals of 1848 in various nations of Europe, particularly in Germany. The result of the latter occurrences was to leave a large number of middle class liberalists in Germany in a very undesirable situation, in spite of the partial success of the revolution. The way out, for them, was emigration. This is one of the best examples in history of the political cause of emigration, though even here economic motives were also concerned. A tremendous emigration followed, reaching its climax in 1854, when 215,009 immigrants from Germany reached this country. These were mainly persons of good character and independent spirit, as might be expected from the causes of their departure. Considerable numbers of Bohemians also emigrated at this period, similar in character to the Germans, and actuated by similar motives and conditions.