To date, Germans represent the largest group of immigrants to the United States, and over a quarter of Americans claim German ancestry. Since 1820, when official immigration records began to be kept, over seven million German immigrants have been registered. Germans immigrated to America primarily for economic reasons, but some Germans also left their homeland in search of religious or political freedom. They were also encouraged by their friends and family who had already found a new life in the United States. The immigrants faced a long and arduous journey before finally reaching American soil. Once they arrived in America, they typically settled in their own communities and entered the workforce as skilled workers, purchased small farms, or started their own businesses. German Americans faced opposition from Native Americans, especially in the 1840s and 1850s when anti-immigration movements arose. Despite the adversities that German-American immigrants faced both on their journey to their new home and in the hostility of other Americans once they arrived, the Germans were successful in their search for opportunity and freedom in America and left a cultural legacy long-lasting. The Germans who immigrated to the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century were economical. Many Germans wanted to leave their homeland in search of prosperity in America. At the turn of the century, however, the Napoleonic Wars broke out across Europe. They brought hard times to people across much of Europe. Additionally, the wars made sea travel dangerous, thus slowing immigration across the Atlantic (Brownstone and Franck 139). When Napoleon was defeated in 1815, a new wave of German immigration occurred in the mid-1850s (Daniels, American Immigration 174). Party members were to be American-born Protestants who believed in “resistance to the insidious policy of the Church of Rome and all other foreign influences against the institutions of our country, holding all offices as the gift of the people…none except native-born Protestant citizens ” (175). The Know Nothing movement died out in the 1860s, in part because it sought to avoid what turned out to be the biggest political issue of the time: slavery (Hoobler and Hoobler 53). In 1856, the Republican Party published its antislavery platform in both English and German in an appeal to gain German votes (53). In the 1860 election, Lincoln won a close election with strong German support in key states (53). Despite this opposition, German immigration to America remained strong until the end of the nineteenth century.