In the short space of this volume, details of the loyal services of companies made up wholly or in large part of Swedes and Norwegians must be omitted, and the laurels won by such men as General Stohlbrand, who was made a brigadier by President Lincoln himself,[170] Colonel H. C. Heg,[171] Colonel Mattson,[172] and Lieutenant Colonel Porter C. Olson,[173] must be passed by with mere allusions.
The Fifteenth Wisconsin Regiment of Volunteers, consisting of about 900 men, whose organization was decided upon at a mass meeting held in the Capitol at Madison, in September, 1861, was made up almost entirely of Norwegians and Swedes, some of whom had been in the United States less than a year. Hans C. Heg, one of the early leaders of the Norwegian immigration into Wisconsin, was appointed colonel of the regiment and began organization at Camp Randall, near Madison, in the following December.[174] The roster of officers indicates plainly their origin, including such names as Rev. C. L. Clausen, Thorkildson, Hansen, Grinager, Skofstad, Ingmundson, Tjentland, and Solberg.[175] The regiment left for the front in March, 1862, and participated in the operations of the next three years in Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Georgia. It was mustered out at Chattanooga in February, 1865, having lost about 300, quite one-third of its total enlistment, from deaths in battle or in the hospitals, including Colonel Heg, who was killed at Chickamauga.[176] Its record is summed up by the military historian of Wisconsin who states that it was “one of the bravest and most efficient regiments that Wisconsin sent to the field.”[177]
Besides this Scandinavian regiment, there were several others in which the Norse element was large. Company C of the 43d Illinois Regiment was made up of Swedes, serving under Captain Arosenius. It was organized in the spring of 1862 and mustered out in the fall of 1865, with an honorable record of services faithfully and uncomplainingly performed.[178] Company D of the 57th Illinois Regiment, which served from the autumn of 1861 to July, 1864,[179] and Company D of the 3d Minnesota Regiment, which was mustered in at about the same time,[180] were composed of Scandinavians. A sprinkling of Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes appears in the lists of many of the regiments of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and many of these men rose to the ranks of commissioned officers.[181] The Adjutant General of Minnesota in 1866 estimated that of the enlistments from that State, at least 800 were Norwegians, 675 Swedes, and 25 Danes. “In numerous instances the nativity of the soldiers is omitted; and it is not easy to count correctly all the names in such publications; hence it is fair to estimate that 2,000 Scandinavians from Minnesota enlisted under the Stars and Stripes.... One-eighth of the total population of the State enlisted under the Union flag; while at the same time one out of every six Scandinavians in Minnesota, as well as in Wisconsin, fought for his adopted country.”[182]
Everywhere the story of their services in the army is creditable, and it is not strange that the survivors are proud of their war records as the badge of loyal Americanism. They did not go into the war for mere love of adventure, nor for love of fighting, for men in large numbers do not leave their families and their half-developed farms for flimsy and temporary reasons. They loved the new country they had made their own, with a love that was measurable in the high terms of sacrifice, even to the shedding of blood and to death. The stock out of which Gustavus Adolphus made brave and effective soldiers had not degenerated through lapse of time nor through transplanting.
Though John Ericsson was in no wise connected with the regular Swedish immigration movement, nor with Swedish settlement in the Northwest, the United States owes him too large a debt for what has sometimes been called the salvation of the Union through the agency of his “Monitor”, to warrant the omission of his name from among those Swedes who served American freedom during the Civil War.[183]
[CHAPTER VIII.]
Economic Forces at Work.