On September 7, 1817, Edward Phillips of Shrewsbury in Shropshire, England, sailed from Liverpool on the James Monroe. He arrived safely in New York on October 17 and immediately headed for Philadelphia, where he found work. On March 18, 1854, Johann Bauer, born in Heidelsheim in Baden, Germany, left from Bremen for New York. He arrived safely on May 2, stayed with friends for two months, then left for Illinois, where he found work. The voyages of these two individuals, which nearly bracket the period studied in this book, illustrate one important characteristic of immigration from Europe to the United States during the antebellum period. The immigrants arrived after a long voyage on a sailing ship. Phillips' trip was forty days and Bauer's took forty-five. Although Bauer left almost forty years after Phillips, they both experienced voyages of similar length. Given the long trip, an individual only made the voyage if he or she expected the move to be permanent. In fact, neither of these men ever returned to Europe. Until the 1840s, immigration was almost always a one-way trip because the sailing ship was the sole means of travel across the Atlantic Ocean. Only then did steamships begin crossing the ocean on a regular basis. Until steerage was widely introduced on steamships in the late 1850s, however, the only passengers carried by these vessels were those sufficiently wealthy to pay for a cabin.