With 1867 came a fresh impulse to emigration. Besides the newly granted right to emigrate freely, the disastrous war with Prussia in 1866 gave added reasons for going, while in the United States the Civil War was over and everything invited the settier.
The earliest colony of Bohemians was in St. Louis, where in 1854 they had already established a Catholic church, and this city has always remained an influential Bohemian centre.
More important, however, was the movement to the states further West—the largest numbers scttling in Wisconsin, later Iowa, later Nebraska and the two Dakotas, though a considerable settlement also grew up in Cleveland. In general, however, in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois land was already too dear for the newcomers, and they continually settled further west as the years went on In the early days they either went overland from the Eastern ports or up the Mississippi River. One of the reasons for so many Bohemians as well as Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, and Belgians being attracted to Wisconsin was undoubtedly the attitude of that state toward immigration. A fact that is easily forgotten in the present state of feeling in regard to immigration is the eager and official solicitation of immigrants that was carried on for years by various states. Wisconsin, like many
