To me, brought up, ever since my boyhood, under the American system, the importance of the civil officers in Sweden seemed to be greatly at variance with the progress made in the elevation of the people in general. I will only take one example: The provincial governor (Landshöfding) and his immediate subordinates of a little province of the size of half a dozen of our counties, appears with much more pomp and style than any of the governors of our great states; and I have no doubt that such a governor considers his office to be more important than that of the governors of some of our states, each of which has a population larger than that of the smaller kingdoms of Europe.
[ CHAPTER X.]
The Importance of the Scandinavian Element—A Swede Elected Secretary of State in Minnesota—False Rumors of Indian Depredations—The Northern Pacific Railroad is Built—Trip to Philadelphia—The National Convention at Indianapolis—Delegation to Washington—A Swedish Colony in Mississippi Moved to Minnesota—The Second Voyage to Europe.
Politically the Scandinavians in America had exerted no particular influence beyond that they had generally been counted upon as loyal to the Republican party, and a few of them had held county offices and been members of the state legislatures in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The honor of first bringing out a Scandinavian for a state office belongs to F. S. Christensen, a young Dane, who, in the summer of 1869, was editor of Nordisk Folkeblad in Rochester, Minn. One day he called on me and asked if I would be candidate for secretary of state, providing the Scandinavians of Minnesota should nominate me, to which I readily assented. A few weeks later a Scandinavian convention was held in Minneapolis and resulted in designating me as their choice for secretary of state. At the Republican state convention held in St. Paul in September that year, I was nominated almost unanimously by the whole Republican party. Being called to the platform after the nomination, I accepted the same in a brief speech, which at the time attracted much attention as echoing the sentiments of our people in the west. I therefore regard it of sufficient importance to quote it here:
“Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention:
“Allow me to tender you my hearty thanks for the honor you have conferred upon me by this nomination. I feel doubly gratified for the very large majority you gave me. The time does not admit of any extensive remarks upon my part, yet so much has been said lately regarding the Scandinavian element, that the subject, perhaps, requires an explanation from me; and, as the chosen representative of the Scandinavian people of this state in the present campaign, I am authorized to express their views, and I do so from a thorough knowledge of them. It is true that we have left our beloved land; we have strewn the last flowers upon the graves of our forefathers, and have come here to stay, come here to live, and come here to die. We are not a clannish people, nor do we desire to build up a Scandinavian nationality in your midst. You have known us here for many years; you have seen us come among you unacquainted with your language and your customs, and yet I know that you will bear me witness how readily and fraternally we have mingled with you, learned your language and adopted your ways, and how naturally our children grow up as Americans, side by side with yours. We have been cordially received in this great west by your own pioneers, and have become prosperous and happy. Yes, we love this great country of freedom, and we wish to be and remain Americans.”
Being elected a few weeks later by a large majority, I assumed the duties of secretary of state on the 1st of January, 1870. As secretary of state I was still a member ex-officio of the board of emigration, and had charge of all its work and correspondence, which amounted often to a hundred letters a day.
In the month of June following, rumor came to the capitol of a new Indian outbreak on our western frontier. It was said that Indians had come in the night and committed depredations, and quite an alarm was caused all along the frontier; the bloody massacre of 1862 was still fresh in the memories of our people, and while the state authorities did not believe this rumor, we deemed it necessary to take measures at once for pacifying the people by protecting the frontier. Therefore I started out at once with several hundred stand of arms, with ammunition and authority to organize the settlers into militia companies and commission officers for the same. Selecting a few friends for company and aids, we went by rail as far as Benson, Swift county, thence by ox teams northward, following the frontier settlements to the northern portion of Otter Tail county. Four companies of militia were organized and officers duly appointed, the last being in Otter Tail county, with a Swedish count, Ragnar Kalling, as captain. This prompt action stopped the panic, and all has been quiet since that time. The rumor of the Indian depredation proved to have originated with some settlers who, in the disguise of Indians, had tried to scare away a Norwegian from a claim which he had taken from another man.
During this year one of the greatest railroad enterprises in the world was commenced, namely, the building of the Northern Pacific, extending from Lake Superior to the Pacific coast, a distance of over two thousand miles. The celebrated financier Jay Cooke, of Philadelphia, who had acquired a great reputation as the financial agent of President Lincoln’s administration during the war, was at the head of the enterprise. The Northern Pacific Company had received a government grant of many millions of acres of land along the proposed railroad, and it required millions upon millions of dollars to build the road. One of the important financial questions with Jay Cooke was how to derive a revenue from the sale of lands, and how to get settlers and communities started along the line of the road. So ignorant were the people of this country about the region lying within the limits of the Northern Pacific railroad that it was generally supposed to be either barren or too far north for successful agriculture; yet that very region has since proved to be the greatest wheat producing country in the world. Mr. Cooke himself had been all over it with a small party, under the escort of United States cavalry, on an exploring tour, and he was perhaps the only man of that day who foresaw the future greatness of the Northern Pacific region.
Late in the fall of 1870 I received a letter from Mr. Cooke, in Philadelphia, inviting me to come and spend a week with him and talk over the new Northwest. Upon the advice of ex-Gov. Marshall, who had spoken of me to Mr. Cooke, the then Gov. Austin and other prominent men, I repaired to Philadelphia, and spent some days at Mr. Cooke’s palatial residence near that city. He had also for guests a delegation of French and German bankers, who had just arrived from Europe. Mr. Cooke impressed me as one of the greatest and noblest men I had ever met. His enthusiasm and eloquent arguments carried everything before him. The millions were raised, largely in Europe, and the road was built, as we all know. The result of my conference with him was my permanent engagement, at a salary more than twice as large as that I had from the state, to repair to Europe in the spring as agent of his enterprise, with headquarters in Sweden, my special duties being to make known in the northern countries of continental Europe the resources of the Northern Pacific, particularly the park region in Minnesota. I was also requested by Mr. Cooke to draw up a general plan on my return home for the disposal of the company’s lands, which I did, and that plan was adopted for the guidance of its land and emigration officers and agents.