Poor economic conditions, societal stresses, and political turmoil plagued England in the seventeenth century. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children departed for British colonies in America. The prospect of a reformed Church and a better life motivated over 20,000 “Puritans” to sail to the new Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England between 1630 and 1643. Like other settlers, they carried with them distinctly English economic and cultural assumptions. These assumptions strongly influenced the way in which they interacted with the “New World” and its inhabitants. Independence introduced another “Newcomer” to the American scene: the United States citizen. By embracing equality, Americans began rejecting the coercive and unequal relationships of pre-Revolutionary society. Optimism abounded regarding mankind’s, and especially Americans’, ability to improve themselves and the world. Citizens tirelessly banded together in countless associations, societies, and reform movements. This same confidence fueled the religious “Awakening,” or revivals, that swept the nation in the early 1800s. Waves of immigration continued to alter the economic and cultural landscape. The United States welcomed over twenty million newcomers between 1880 and 1910. Their arrival evoked a complex and often hostile response from the “natives” already living there. Although they maintained their language and other cultural elements of their homeland, first generation immigrants also began the process of ‘becoming American,’ a process usually completed by their children.