In war, an army rests securely in its camp by day, and sleeps peacefully in its tents during the night, trusting confidently in the vigilance, fidelity and courage of the pickets at the front, who never sleep. So the railroad train, crowded with passengers or loaded with valuable freight, rushes along over hills and through valleys, while in the cab at its front sits its pickets, the engineer and fireman, sleepless and alert. Those who ride as passengers place implicit confidence in the vigilance, the courage and the resources of the pickets in the cab. They talk and laugh, read or sleep, never thinking of danger, because they know that watchful eyes are on the track, and that everything that human foresight, care and skill can do to avert disaster, will be done. None of them, perhaps, fully realize the mental and physical strain the men in the cab endure. But when the invisible but ever-present perils of the track take tangible form, and the engineer and fireman at their posts of duty, and faithful to its trusts, even when they look death in the face, are hurled over the embankment or against an obstruction, then all realize the constant dangers they face, and applaud the faithful heroism of their daily life.
To talk to you of your duties and responsibilities is, however, unnecessary. You understand them far better than do I, and the history of railway operations in this country shows how intelligently and faithfully you discharge them. I come before you, not to lecture or instruct you, but at the request of your local committee, to meet and welcome the chief officers of your organization. I very cheerfully do this. In Atchison, where so many of your fellow-craftsmen live, and in this State, which in a few years will have more miles of railway within its limits than any other State of the Union, the representatives of any large body of trainmen will always meet with a cordial welcome. I hope your visit will be an agreeable one, and that you will return to your homes carrying with you only pleasant memories of your brief sojourn in this always hospitable city, and of those whose acquaintance you formed while here.
THE SWEDES IN KANSAS.
Address delivered, July 5, 1886, at the celebration of Independence Day, by the Swedes of Lindsborg, Kansas.
Mr. Chairman: When I received the invitation to attend this meeting I did not not think of “the day we celebrate,” nor of what might occur here, nor of what I could say to you if I came. The invitation to address an assemblage of Scandinavian people broke down the barriers of time and place, and awakened recollections of a body of men, born on the Scandinavian Peninsula, who, nearly a quarter of a century ago, were endeared to me by the strong ties of common hardships, privations and dangers. For nearly three years the Kansas regiment I had the honor to command, tented, marched and fought by the side of a regiment of Scandinavians. And when the brave but unfortunate commander of that regiment, Col. Hans C. Heg, was mortally wounded at the battle of Chicamauga, I succeeded him in command of the Brigade. I speak from personal knowledge, therefore, when I say that the Scandinavian people who have immigrated to this country, and sworn allegiance to its Constitution and its laws, are thorough Americans. I have seen their loyalty and devotion tested in the fiery furnace of battle, and by the most arduous and trying campaigns. I know, also, something of the work the Scandinavian people have done in developing the resources of this fair young State. Our census returns and our agricultural reports, in telling the story of the wonderful growth and prosperity of those sections of Kansas in which the Scandinavian settlers are located, tell, also, the story of their industry, their enterprise, and their thrift. And so, when I received your kind invitation to attend this meeting, my inclination to accept it, as I wrote Professor Swensson, was very strong. I wanted to avail myself of such an opportunity to acknowledge two important facts concerning Scandinavian Americans—first, the sturdy courage and splendid patriotism I had seen illustrated, by them, during our late civil war; and, second, that as citizens of Kansas they had done their full share in making this a great, prosperous, law-respecting commonwealth. This duty I gladly discharge. With reverent gratitude I recall the services of the men from the Scandinavian Peninsula who mustered under the flag of the Fifteenth Wisconsin, and with admiring wonder I look around me and see the substantial evidences of your industry, energy and enterprise.
One hundred and seven years ago, after the Americans had carried the British works at Stony Point, the Commanding General, Anthony Wayne, sent to Washington a letter which read: “Dear General: The American flag waves here.” That was all. But it told all. To-day the American flag waves here and everywhere, from the Northern lakes to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And wherever it waves it is the symbol of peace, order, education, progress, and freedom. It is the flag of sixty million people, and dear to them, one and all, because it is the flag of a Republic where each man is the equal of every other man, in rights and privileges as well as in duties and responsibilities. It is your flag as it is my flag—mine by birth, yours by adoption. You have a right, therefore, to celebrate the anniversary of our National Independence. The impulse which led you to leave the land of your birth and establish homes in the new world, was that love of Freedom and faith in Humanity which is the soul of the great Declaration. Thousands of men of your race and blood have fought and suffered and died for the flag of this Republic. Their services and sacrifices and your own choice have made you heirs to the common heritage of American citizenship—individual liberty and security, a fair chance to work and win, the sovereignty of electors, and the protection of just laws. No government can give more than this, and no fair-minded and independent man expects or asks more of any government.
In exchanging the rocks and snows of Sweden for the broad prairies and rich soil of Kansas, you have not only benefitted yourselves, but you have benefitted the State. I do not depreciate your native land. I know something of its history and its resources. Compared with the vast areas of the United States, the Scandinavian Peninsula is not a large territory. It includes less than three hundred thousand square miles; it has a population not exceeding six million; and its sterile soil yields grudgingly. But amid its rocks and snows a singularly hardy and energetic people have lived and worked since the dawn of civilization. From the bleak and barren hills of this Peninsula came the earliest forms of constitutional government. There, too, is found not only the oldest aristocracy of Europe, but the sturdiest, most prosperous and well-educated people. For of the Swedes, not one in a thousand is unable to read and write, and the common people are the owners of nearly the whole of the landed property in the Kingdom. This Peninsula, too, is rich in historic names. Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII justly rank among the greatest rulers and soldiers the world has ever known. Among statesmen, Oxenstiern deserves his world-wide fame; and among artists, there is no name brighter than that of Thorwaldsen. In literature, the writings of Tegner, Fredrika Bremer, Carlen and Bjornson are as familiar to English-speaking people as to the Swedes. The mystic philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg has interested and entertained the students of all countries. And among singers, what land or age has ever produced voices so rich in melody as those of Jenny Lind or Christine Neillson? At our Centennial Exhibition, in 1876, I spent many delightful days in the Swedish department, and I remember with still vivid interest its unequalled specimens of wood-carving, and the paintings in which the effect of moonlight on the water was reproduced with such marvelous fidelity and skill. The fair-haired people of the Scandinavian Peninsula have indeed stamped their impress upon the history, the literature, the arts, the industries, and the laws and government of the whole civilized world, and always the influence exerted by their teaching and example has been wholesome and beneficent.
We are interested now, however, in the Scandinavian people in America, and not those remaining on the Peninsula. The census of 1880 shows that there are 440,262 Scandinavians—Swedes, Norwegians and Danes—in the United States, and of these 194,337 are Swedes. The census of Kansas also reveals the fact that 11,207 of our citizens are of Swedish birth. This county of McPherson has within its limits the largest number, or 2,117; Saline county has 1,636; and Riley, Osage, Republic and Clay have each over 500 citizens of Swedish birth within their limits. That they make good citizens is a fact universally acknowledged. Wherever they have settled, improvement and prosperity abound, and schools and churches multiply. They are, too, thorough Americans. They do not want to go back to the bleak, snow-clad hills and the vast forests of their native land, nor do they bring with them to this country that distrust of rulers and of law which arrays them against our government as if it was a natural enemy. They do not figure largely in politics; they prefer to attend to more material and personal concerns—building homes, conducting business and manufacturing industries, establishing schools for their children, erecting churches, and accumulating property. They do not, however, neglect the duties and responsibilities of the citizenship they have assumed; they study to discharge these, not as aliens, but in the true spirit of American individuality and patriotism. Hence, in exchanging the rocks and snows of Sweden for the soil and sunshine of Kansas, our Swedish citizens have, as I have said, benefited not only themselves, but the young State with whose fortunes they have linked their own.
There are some foreigners whose coming to America is a public disaster. These are the men who, degraded and embittered by the oppression of despotic governments, confound liberty with license and lawlessness, and can see no difference between the President of the United States and the Czar of Russia. The tolerance of our laws, the liberality of our system of government, allows such freedom of speech and of action that these men, abusing and outraging the liberty they are permitted for the first time in their lives to enjoy, at once array themselves as enemies of all law and all government. They cannot comprehend the fact that laws are as necessary to the human race as the air we breathe. They cannot understand the difference between an arbitrary despotism and a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The red flag they unfurl is the flag of the robber and the murderer. Their cry for liberty is the cry of the wolf in the forest seeking for his prey. It is no wonder that public indignation is intensifying against these miscreants, and that the demand for laws that will deal with them promptly and sternly, is swelling into a popular clamor. Less than a quarter of a century ago more than two million men rallied around their country’s flag, and cheerfully offered their lives that the Republic might be preserved. It is a glorious banner—the brave old flag of the stars and stripes. It is the flag of Yorktown, and Gettysburg, and Chicamauga, and Vicksburg, and Appomattox. Every man who lives where it floats is a freeman and a sovereign. It is the symbol of the only real Republic on the face of the earth. It is the flag of the only government where every man is free to do whatsoever he pleases as long as he does not invade the rights and freedom of his fellow-man. It is the banner of the Nation that opened this rich and beautiful land as a free gift to all—native and foreign-born alike. And any man, no matter where he was born, who seeks to degrade this glorious old flag, or to substitute in its stead the red flag of the robber and the anarchist, ought to enjoy, for an indefinite period, the liberty of the penitentiary.
I am glad to say that the Swedish settlers in the United States have never been accused or suspected of either sympathy or affiliation with the wretches who flaunt the red flag, and affect to believe that all government is tyranny, and property is robbery.