Ever since the Age of Discovery, Europeans have viewed the New World as a haven for the victims of religious persecution and a dumping ground for social liabilities. Marilyn C. Baseler shows how the New World's role as a refuge for the victims of political, as well as religious and economic, oppression gradually devolved on the thirteen colonies that became the United States.

She traces immigration patterns and policies to show how the new American Republic became an "asylum for mankind." Baseler explains how British and colonial officials and landowners lured settlers from rival...