c-span history. for information on her schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. announcer: this year, c-span is touring cities exploring american history. next, a look at our recent visit to galveston, texas. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. announcer: the first land grant for galveston came about in the 1830's a guy named michele minard, and some of his other investors. they actually had someone lay out the plots for the city of galveston and began selling a lot from the late 1830's. so galveston is officially founded as the city in 1839. what was attractive about galveston is it was a national harbor. it was the only one between veracruz mexico and mobile, alabama.

there was a nash -- a natural entity to bring in goods and people to go into texas and the middle part of the united states. the industry. the availability of ports and the easy access from the gulf of mexico. and it really created an entire community that followed for 100 years. as the 19th century maritime world changed, the ships became larger and their cargo became much larger. but what became important for galveston is that it was bringing in all of the cotton from the central part of the state and some of the other states around us and shipping it out of here. so, as that shipping became so important they needed to get bigger vessels in here, and closer into the harbor in order to load them up with this cargo, -- cotton. by the late 19th century, cotton was the largest and most common thing shipped out of the port of galveston. and it was the thing that created the wealth for the city

and the wealth of the state of texas for a long time. oil really was not -- it was a 20th century activity and industry. and of course, it is closely tied to texas today. galveston it is more closely tied to what now occurs offshore. and those platforms and things that are used offshore are brought into galveston today to be repaired and cleaned and taken back out. but there is not a lot of immediate drilling around galveston island. it is mostly a working port to support the industry that is offshore. immigration into galveston is one of the overlooked stories of our texas history and early american history is that without this port and its availability for 150 years we would not had settlement in the united states and early in texas. the early, i am talking about pre civil war, 1830's, 1840's, you had groups of europeans,

mainly germans coming into the port of galveston and as a group settling in different parts of the state of texas. if you had been here in the 18450's german was the most popular line which. it is hard for people to think about that -- german was the most popular language. you can see in galveston if you go to the garden, you can see what became the center for the german entertainment and social life. you can go to st. joseph church, the first german catholic church in texas and you can see where they worshiped and where they actually were educated and how they spent their lives in galveston. but the height of immigration was the late 19th and early 20th century. up tioo 1954, when it was no longer a port of entry for immigrants. but the story of that is that back-and-forth between -- what became of the state of texas

managing immigration and eventually the federal government doing immigration. but it became a place where in order to push immigrants away from new york and the congestion in the north east and bring them into the central part of the country. in the early part of the century was a formal program to bring jewish immigrants enter the part of the country. that continued for a while and was very successful and really brought a lot of development to communities in texas. but all the way up into kansas we see those immigrants who came to the port of galveston. the interesting thing about immigration here is that is wasn't they -- they pull a boat and they jumped off. immigration was heavily regulated and created around a number of things in the nation's history that we wanted to prevent or invite to protect the people. in the late 19th century immigration was heavily inspected.

so you might arrive on a ship. you travel for a couple of months and weeks and your travel with the family or by yourself. you land here, and you look at this island, which was a barrier island, pretty flat. no trees. and you might have thought, what is this place going to be that i have come to? then you would go through inspections, a health inspection. if you did not pass that for some reason, and there were lots of ways that you could fail that you would be sent to a quarantined station or perhaps then you would be -- stay there until your well. or you could be returned to where you came from. there is a lot of process involved. and a lot of angst coming in. and a lot of points of being checked as you came in for health reasons as well as what you were bringing and your ability to earn a wage in your ability to bring something to this new place you were landing. well i think today we forget that there is this connection to how we developed in the country

and in the state of texas, in particular. we really think of it as being a 20th century state andd area with large cities in length. but if it were not for the gulf coast, if it not for this transportation and the vaiiabity of ships, we would not exist. in galveston, you have to think about it as being the point of creation in texas for what we see as a modern state and a modern part of the country. announcer: find out where c-span and cities tour is going next online at c-span.org/cities tour. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. announcer: you are watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. next on american history tv, a

portion of a seminar recover this weekend on the closing of the civil war in 1865. it was held at longwood university in virginia and cohosted by the university and appomattox courthouse national historical park. topics from the session recorded sunday included the surrenders of alabama and indian territory, confederate immigration to brazil and the war's legacy. this is about three hours. host: i want to go ahead and introduce our first speaker. he's a historian. , award-winning author. he has a degree in history from st. vincent college and a masters in historic preservation from middle tennessee state university. in murfreesboro, tennessee. he has worked at nine different historic sites, most recently and currently at richmond national data field park. he has written two books and i