Immediatism

I M M I G R AT I O N

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In-dians. Edited by William C. Sturtevant et al. Vol. 15: North-east, edited by Bruce G. Trigger. Washington, D.C.: Smith-sonian Institution, 1978. A useful and authoritative account by an anthropologist.

Zitomersky, Joseph. French Americans—Native Americans in Eighteenth-Century French Colonial Louisiana: The Population Geography of the Illinois Indians, 1670s–1760s. Lund, Swe-den: Lund University Press, 1994.

Raymond E. Hauser

ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL. On 4 July

1836 the State of Illinois began construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal to connect Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. But the panic of 1837 soon forced Il-linois to abandon work. Under the leadership of Gover-nor Thomas Ford, however, Illinois devised new methods of financing and resumed construction. On 23 April 1848 the first boat passed through the canal.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal was profitable from its opening, and despite the growth of railroads, tolls ex-ceeded its operation expenses until 1879. Traffic dwindled in the twentieth century, but sections of the canal stayed open until 1930. Of all North American artificial water-ways, only the Erie Canal outranked it in importance. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ranney, Edward. Prairie Passage: The Illinois and Michigan Canal Corridor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Redd, Jim. The Illinois and Michigan Canal: AContemporary

Per-spective in Essays and Photographs. Carbondale: Southern Il-linois University Press, 1993.

Paul M. Angle /a. e. See also Canals; Erie Canal; Lakes-to-Gulf Deep Waterway.

ILLINOIS FUR BRIGADE, one of several trading

expeditions sent out annually, between about 1816 and 1827, by the American Fur Company from its headquar-ters at Mackinac, at the confluence of Lakes Michigan and Huron, in Michigan Territory. The brigade, usually num-bering ten or twelve bateaux loaded with trade goods, made its way down Lake Michigan and through the Chi-cago portage and Des Plaines River to the Illinois River. There it divided into small parties that spent the winter bartering with the Indians for furs. In the spring the bri-gade reassembled and returned by water to Mackinac. In 1828 the American Fur Company sold its Illinois interests to Gurdon S. Hubbard, the brigade’s commander. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lavender, David. The Fist in the Wilderness. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964.

Stevens, Wayne Edson. The Northwest Fur Trade: 1763–1800. University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 14, no. 3. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1928.

Paul M. Angle /t. d. See also American Fur Company; Fur Trade and Trapping;

Indian Trade and Traders.

IMMEDIATISM. The drive to end slavery at once,

known as immediatism, had its origins in British aboli-tionists’ frustration in the 1820s with Parliament’s gradual approach to abolishing slavery in the West Indian colo-nies. The American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison adopted the concept when he founded the antislavery newspaper the Liberator in 1831 and helped to establish the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Using as a model the conversion experience of the Second Great Awakening, Garrisonian abolitionists wished to convert Americans to a belief that slaveholding was a sin. A sinner, once aware of his or her sin, should cease sinning im-mediately. Supporters of immediatism rejected moderate approaches to ending slavery such as colonization or po-litical reform and demanded total emancipation and equal rights for black Americans. Most Americans did not sup-port immediatism because it threatened too many eco-nomic and racial interests and because it seemed rash. Garrison believed that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document. Some of his supporters even called for a secession of free states from the Union. Once imme-diatism proved ineffectual, Garrison’s argument that po-litical action would compromise abolitionist principles was rejected by some abolitionists, who by the late 1830s were entering the political arena.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kraditor, Aileen S. Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Gar-rison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834–1850. New York: Pantheon Books, 1969.

Mayer, Henry. All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. The best biography of Garrison and his philosophy of immediatism.

Stewart, James B. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

Timothy M. Roberts See also Antislavery.

IMMIGRATION. Except for some 2.5 million Native

Americans and Alaska natives, the 281 million persons recorded in the 2000 census are immigrants and their de-scendants. Some 70 million immigrants have come to what is now the United States, beginning with the Spanish set-tlers in Florida and New Mexico in the late sixteenth cen-tury. The United States only began counting immigrants in 1819, so the numbers before that time are problematic.