A HALF CENTURY OF EXPANSION AND DISTRIBUTION, 1850-1900.
While the immigration movement from Norway and Sweden was
well-established by 1850, and certain to expand, it was numerically
unimportant when compared with that from some other countries of Europe.
In 1849 the influx from all Scandinavia was slightly more than one
per-cent of the total immigration from Europe. Yet the rising stream
had, by 1850, worn for itself a clear and definite channel from eastern
ports like New York and Boston to such gateways to the Northwest as
Chicago and Milwaukee; and through these it continued to flow out over
the wilderness of the upper Mississippi Valley extending north of the
Missouri and Illinois Rivers and west of the Great Lakes. For more than
a half century there have been relatively few variations from this
course, tho in the later decades, with an increase in the proportion of
skilled laborers among the incoming thousands, certain eastern cities
have detained a considerable percentage.
No other marked change in the character and quality of the immigrants
has developed since 1850, nor have any new motives appeared, except in
the case of the Danes, to be discussed later. In a word, the
Scandinavian immigration since 1850 is simply the earlier Scandinavian
immigration enlarged in numbers, with broader and deeper significance.
The areas of interest in emigration in Europe gradually extended to
every part and every class of the three Northern kingdoms; and the
localities attractive to Scandinavians in the United States, expanded
until eight contiguous States in the Old Northwest and the Newer
Northwest showed each a foreign-born population of Northmen numbering
more than thirty thousand. In the State of Minnesota they now reach
close to a quarter of a million.[147]
[147] After 1850 the book of Frederika Bremer, _Homes of the New
World_, is credited with large influence in Sweden among
the better classes. See McDowell, "The New Scandinavia",
_Scandinavia_, Nos. 5-8.
The total recorded Scandinavian immigration, according to the statistics
of the United States, from 1820 to 1912, is in round numbers 2,200,000.
According to the statistics of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which may be
disregarded for inaccuracy before 1850, the total falls about 142,000
short of this figure, a difference which may be easily enough accounted
for by persons leaving those countries for a more or less indefinite
stay in other parts of Europe, before starting for America.[148] The
American statistics in later years have sometimes shown larger numbers
than the Swedish, but the discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that
a great number of emigrants from Finland have passed through Sweden on
their way to America and therefore are counted as Swedes.[149] The
totals by decades with the percentages of the whole immigration for the
decades, is as follows:[150]
Per cent
Denmark Norway Sweden Total Sc. of immig.
1820-1830 189 91 280 .2
1831-1840 1,063 1,201 2,264 .4
1841-1850 539 13,903 14,442 .8
1851-1860 3,749 20,931 24,680 .9
1861-1870 17,094 109,298 126,392 5.2
1871-1880 31,771 94,823 115,922 242,516 8.6
1881-1890 88,132 176,586 391,733 656,451 12.5
1891-1900 52,670 95,264 230,679 378,613 9.8
1901-1910 65,285 190,505 249,534 505,524 5.7
[148] Nelson in his _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 253 ff., gives
some careful and excellent tables of statistics compiled from
official publications of the United States and of the three
Scandinavian kingdoms. Too much reliance should not be put upon
the earlier figures derived from either source. It will also be
noted that the European figures are in many cases given in even
fifties and hundreds, which savors of estimates rather than of
exact statistics. Nelson, p. 244, declares that these foreign
statistics, so far as they go, are more reliable than the
American.
[149] Sundbärg, _Sweden_ (English Translation), 132; Sundbärg,
_Bidrag till Utvandringsfrågan från Befolkningsstatistisk
Synpunkt_, 34 ff.
[150] The statistics of Norwegian and Swedish immigration were
combined down to 1868, but for convenience here the combination
is continued to the end of the decade. Statistical Abstract of
the U. S. (1912), 110.
The fluctuations of the annual immigration have been very great, as an
inspection of the accompanying chart and the tables in Appendix I, will
readily show. The addition of other lines to this chart indicating the
fluctuations in the numbers of immigrants from Germany and Ireland,
demonstrates that these rather striking variations were chiefly caused
by conditions and prospects in America, rather than by circumstances in
Europe. In 1849 the total immigration of Norwegians and Swedes passed
2,000, and even reached 3,400, but the terrible scourge of cholera in
that year under which so many of the Scandinavians in the West fell,
caused a falling off of more than half in 1850. After the panic of 1857,
the Danish immigration fell from 1,035 to 252 in one year, while the
total from the Northern lands fell steadily from 2,747 to 840 in 1860.
The Civil War disturbed comparatively little the conditions favoring
Scandinavian immigration, for the Northwest was never in danger of
invasion, and nominal prices for farm produce ranged higher and higher.
Furthermore, the Homestead Act of 1862 gave new and cumulative impetus
to the immigration which sought farming lands.[151] So from a total of
850 in 1861 (the statistics of Norway show 8,900 emigrants for that
year, and those of Sweden, 1,087), the numbers gradually increased, in
spite of the war, to 7,258 in 1865. The panic of 1873 did not affect the
Scandinavian movement so immediately and seriously as might at first
thought be expected, probably because the Northmen were seeking farms in
the West, and also because the farmers as a class are about the last to
feel the effects of financial crises like that of 1873. As the
depression deepened, letters from America to Northern Europe lost their
tone of buoyancy and enthusiasm; the eastward flow of passage-money and
prepaid tickets almost ceased. At the same time a series of good crops
in the three Scandinavian countries caused a rise of wages about 1873,
doubling them in some instances.[152] Consequently the current of
immigration lost force and volume for several years, the totals
dropping, in round numbers, from 35,000 in 1873, to 19,000 in 1874, and
to 11,000 in 1877.
[151] _United States Statutes at Large_ (1861-2), 392 ff.
[152] Young, _Labor in Europe and America_, 676,--quoting and
summarizing from a report to the Secretary of State
by C. C. Andrews, United States Minister to Sweden,
Sept. 24, 1873.
After the high-water mark of 105,326 in 1882, reached during the revival
of business from 1879 to 1884, the totals did not again fall below
40,000 Scandinavian immigrants per year, until after the industrial and
financial stagnation of 1893 to 1896; 62,000 in 1893 became 33,000 in
1894, and 19,000 in 1898. With the prosperity of the first years of the
new century in the United States, the number again passed 50,000,
reaching another climax in the 77,000 of 1903.
In general, the variations of the curves for the three nationalities
under discussion have been nearly co-incident, as for example the high
points in 1873 and 1882, and the low points in 1877, 1885, and 1898. The
Danish immigration did not rise proportionately with the other two,
especially in 1903, probably because of the democratizing of
land-ownership in Denmark, and because of the remarkable improvement in
methods of cultivation in the course of the nineteenth century.[153] No
such decided improvements took place in the other peninsular kingdoms.
[153] J. H. Bille, "History of the Danes in America", _Transactions of
the Wis. Acad. of Sciences, Arts, and Letters_, IX, 8 n., citing
H. Weitemeyer, _Denmark_, 100.
Another feature of the fluctuation is entitled to some consideration. In
proportion to the population of those nations, the emigration from
Norway and Sweden since 1870 has been very large, and such drafts as
were made in the years 1882 or 1903 could not be expected to keep up.
The periodicity of the ripening of a good "crop" of eligible emigrants
for the great American West seems to have been since 1877 from five to
eight years. In this connection it is a noteworthy fact that the
population in each of the Scandinavian kingdoms, notwithstanding the
great emigrations, has steadily tho slowly increased since 1850.[154]
For the last decade of the nineteenth century, the figures for the
increase were, Denmark, 16.6%, Norway, 10.6%, Sweden 7.3%, United States
20%.[155] In this statistical distribution, account must also be taken
of the Scandinavians of the second generation, born in this country of
foreign-born parents, since this element, racially speaking, is just as
much an alien stock, with its inheritance of tendencies, temperament,
and passions, as were the original immigrants. The census of 1910
enumerated among the foreign-born and the native-born of specified
foreign parents:[156]
Native white having
Foreign-born both parents born Total
white in specified country
Danes 181,621 147,648 329,269
Norwegians 403,858 410,951 814,809
Swedes 665,183 546,788 1,211,971
--------- --------- ---------
1,250,662 1,105,387 2,356,049
To these must be added still another group, made up of those persons
having a father born in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, and a mother born in
one of the other two countries, in other words, persons of pure
Scandinavian descent. The number of such in 1910 was 72,152. It does not
include, be it noted, those persons of equally pure Norse blood whose
parents, one or both, were born in the United States. The minimum number
of Scandinavians, then, in the United States in 1910, who must be taken
into account in all calculations and estimates of power and influence
exercised by that factor of the population, is 2,428,201. If it were
desired to bring the estimate up to date, the immigration of 1910-1913
and an approximation of the increase of the native-born, would have to
be included, and the grand total of persons of pure Northern stock
would not be far from 2,700,000 at the present time (1913).
[154] For Denmark, the increase has been about 1% per year since 1870;
Sweden shows a slightly smaller increase, falling as low as
¼% in 1890; Norway has a still smaller average increase than
Sweden, estimated by Norwegian authority "1865-1890, .65%". The
same writer adds: "The Norwegian race, in the course of the
fifty years from 1840 to 1890 must have about doubled itself,
which is equivalent to an annual growth of about 1.4%." Norway,
103; _Statesman's Year-Book, 1900_, 491, 1047, 1050.
[155] _Supplementary Analysis of 12th Census_, 31-33.
[156] These figures are drawn from the tables in the _Census Reports,
1910, Population_, I, 875 ff. The statistics generally deal
only with white persons, thus excluding blacks and mulattoes
of the Danish West Indies.
The distribution of this vast company to the different States of the
Union is a consideration of primary importance. The detailed analysis of
the motives, processes, and results of the occupation of the
Northwestern States by the children of the Northlands, belongs in later
chapters.[157] The reasons why the stream flowed to the north of Mason
and Dixon's Line are a combination of climate and a fear and hatred of
slavery. If the movement from Scandinavia had begun fifty years earlier,
before the anti-slavery agitation became acute, the New Norway and the
New Sweden of the nineteenth century, would doubtless still have been in
the North and probably in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, for very much the
same reason that the Western Reserve was a New Connecticut.
[157] See chapters VIII-X.
Desiring ownership of good agricultural land above all else, and finding
after 1835 that the best and cheapest was to be found along the
advancing frontier west of a north-and-south line drawn through Chicago,
the men from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark followed their distant cousins
of New England and the Middle States in the great trek into the
Any-Man's-Land of the fertile upper Mississippi Valley.[158] For more
than two decades after the Civil War, tho slavery no longer existed in
the South, that region was still in the depression and uncertainty of
the post-bellum industrial disorganization, and hence unattractive to
immigrants of any class. So the tide continued to run high in the
Northwest and spread wider and wider because of the traditions of two
generations, and because of the attracting power of the Scandinavian
mass already comfortably and solidly settled there.
[158] The "line which limits the average density of 2 to a square
mile, is considered as the limit of settlement--the frontier
line of population". _Eleventh Census, Report on Population_,
I, xviii. See R. Mayo-Smith in _Political Science Quarterly_,
III, 52.
The first States of the Northwest into which the Norwegians and Swedes
penetrated, as has been described above, were Illinois and Wisconsin;
and in the censuses of 1850 and 1860 Wisconsin held first place in the
number of these aliens, showing an increase from 8,885 to 23,265.[159]
In 1850, Iowa, in the "far west," ranked fourth, with 611. Minnesota,
which then stretched away to the Rocky Mountains, had 4 Swedes, 7
Norwegians, and 1 Dane.[160] By 1860 Iowa was passed by Minnesota which
then had 11,773, and thenceforward the Scandinavians were to keep close
step with the westward march of the frontier. In 1870 Minnesota took
first place, with 58,837, a position which the State has continued to
hold. In 1890 she had within her borders 236,670 foreign-born Northmen,
and enough of the second generation to make her Scandinavian population
466,365, or about one-fifth that of Denmark or Norway. The order of
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa held good for 1870 and 1880,
but Wisconsin and Illinois changed places in the reports of 1890 and
1900. The Dakotas, as one Territory, received their first Norse settler
in 1858, but when the census of 1880 was taken there were 17,869, and in
1890, when the Territory was divided into two States, the Scandinavian
contingent was more than 65,000 strong.[161] Nebraska illustrated in a
similar manner the widening overflow of the steady stream out of the
European North; her population of Scandinavian birth which numbered only
3,987 in 1870, grew by direct entry of immigrants, and by the secondary
movement of early immigrants out of the middle Northwest, to 16,685 in
1880, and to 40,107 of foreign-born in 1900. According to this last
census, Nebraska counted 38,914 native persons of foreign-born
Scandinavian parents, showing that the second generation did not fall
much behind the first in the habit of frontier-seeking.[162]
[159] For the tables illustrating this discussion, see Appendix.
[160] Gronberger, _Svenskarne i St. Croixdalen_, 3 ff.
[161] Sparks, _History of Winneshiek County, Iowa_, III.
[162] See Appendix I.
In the rush of gold-seekers into California after 1848 were many Danes
and Swedes, who gave that State in 1860 fifth rank as to the number of
Scandinavians; by 1890 these numbered about 42,000, of whom the greater
part were of the two nationalities just named. Another frontier region
which gained from the Danish immigration between 1850 and 1860 was the
Territory of Utah, for the Mormon missionaries seem to have been
particularly successful in Denmark, and nearly every convert became an
immigrant. Quite in advance of their invasion of Dakota, more than 2,000
Danes had settled in the Mormon Territory, and ten years later Utah
counted nearly twice as many Scandinavians as Nebraska, seven-tenths
being Danes.
The increasing density of this Scandinavian population in certain
localities,--what might be called its vertical distribution--is strikingly
illustrated in both urban and rural communities. Chicago had barely
emerged from the Fort Dearborn stage when the first Scandinavians walked
its streets. Yet within two generations there were found inside of her
wide-stretching borders more than 100,000 Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes
of foreign birth, and enough of the second generation to give her more
than 190,000, so that the city at the head of Lake Michigan was next
after Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Christiania,--the largest Scandinavian
city in the world.[163] By a similar calculation, Minneapolis would rank
sixth or seventh.
[163] _Svenska Folkets Tidning_, Jan. 1, 1896, estimated the totals as
follows: Swedes, 100,000, Norwegians, 62,000, and Danes, 35,000!
Rockford, Illinois, received the first of its signally prosperous
Swedish colony about 1853; by 1865 the city had 2,000 Swedes.[164] The
census of 1910 credits Rockford with 10,000 foreign born Swedes, and a
total of Swedish parentage reaching close to 19,000. One of the
west-central counties of Minnesota, Otter Tail, counted (1900) more than
half of its 45,000 population of pure Scandinavian blood of the first
and second generation of immigrants. Polk county, newer and farther
north in the same State, reveals almost sixty per-cent of the same sort
of population in a total of 35,000. For some of the still newer and more
sparsely settled counties even larger percentages might be obtained.
[164] Kæding, _Rockfords Svenskar_, 27, 35.
A closer analysis of the tables of population reveals some further facts
as to the distribution of the different nationalities. The Swedes are
the most numerous in Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, and
Kansas; the Norwegians predominate in Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South
Dakota, and nearly equal the Swedes in Minnesota where each passes
200,000. The Danes are strongest--they can hardly be called a very
important factor in any State--in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois,
and Nebraska; in each State they have more than 25,000. Another feature
of this varying density of the three groups has to do with the cities.
Chicago, Rockford, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth account for a large
proportion of the Swedes of Illinois and Minnesota, and represent the
later rather than the earlier stages of distribution. Outside of the
cities mentioned, the Norwegians in Minnesota outnumber the Swedes by
some 52,000. In North Dakota, the Norwegians are 72% of the foreign-born
Scandinavian population, in South Dakota, 56%, and in Wisconsin, 60%,
while in Illinois the Swedes are about 70%, and in Michigan and
Nebraska, 63% and 59% respectively. The Danes reach their highest
percentages of the Scandinavian foreign-born in Utah, 50%, in Nebraska,
34%, and in Iowa, 23%. Large numbers of the later immigrants, especially
of the skilled Swedish laborers, have found occupation in New York and
Brooklyn, Boston and Worcester, Hartford and Providence. These have
raised the proportion of the Swedes in the United States living in
cities of more than 25,000, to 36%, while only 28% of the Danes, and 19%
of the Norwegians were similarly located in 1900.[165]
[165] _Census Reports, 1900, Population_, I, Tables 33 and 35.
Climate, particularly the mean temperature, has also played considerable
part in the choice by the immigrants from Northern Europe of the sites
for their new homes, though it is an open question whether they would
not have been established where they were and when they were even if
the climate were different. Certain it is that the few Icelandic
settlements are situated in the extreme northern part of Minnesota and
North Dakota, and in Southern Manitoba.[166] South of them come, in
order, the zones of densest Norwegian population, 49° to 42°, of the
Swedish, 48° to 40°, and of Danish, 44° to 38°. The three nationalities
thus occupy relatively the same latitudinal position in America as in
their homes in the Old North.[167]
[166] These are of course enumerated as Danes. Pembina County, in the
extreme northeast corner of North Dakota had in 1900 1588 Danes
(Icelanders). The movement from Iceland began about 1870. See
R. B. Anderson in _Chicago Record Herald_, Aug. 21, 1901.
[167] G. T. Flom, "The Scandinavian Factor in the American
Population", _Iowa Journal of History and Politics_, III, 88.
Summarizing the matter of location, the great bulk of the Scandinavian
immigrants went into the Northwest, 78% of them during the first fifty
years of the movement, and about 70% of the total. Out of the
immigration of the different nationalities, 81% of the Norwegians are in
the Northwest, 60% of the Danes, and 59% of the Swedes, the percentage
of the last being brought down, in comparison with the Norwegians, by
the fact that nearly 100,000 Swedes are found in Massachusetts, New
York, and Pennsylvania.[168]
[168] _Statistical Atlas of the Twelfth Census_, Plates 69, 71, 73,
76; _Iowa Journal of History and Politics_, III, 76.
The Civil War occurred before the numbers and expansion of the Norse
element of the country's population had much passed a promising
beginning; the 75,000 present in 1860 could not be expected to play any
large and leading rôle. Yet the one dramatic and heroic chapter in the
whole story of the progress of the Scandinavians in America is that
dealing with their part in that great struggle, in which many hundreds
of them gave their strength and their lives for the unity and safety of
their adopted country no less bravely and no less cheerfully than did
the native-born American. The men from Thelemark and Smaaland and the
sons of Massachusetts and Michigan were inspired by the same fine and
pure motives; they hated slavery and loved the flag under whose folds
they realized their hopes and dreams.[169] By temperament, by religion,
by education, by tradition, men of Norse parentage were fitted to
participate in upholding a cause so essentially right and high.
[169] Mattson, _Story of an Emigrant_, 60, 94. Here is printed, in
translation from _Hemlandet_, a stirring appeal "To the
Scandinavians of Minnesota!;" _Fædrelandet og Emigranten_,
September 29, 1870.
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.
[170] Osborn, "Personal Memories of Brig. Gen. C. J. Stolbrand",
_Year-Book of the Swedish Historical Society of America_,
1909-10, 5-16.
[171] Dietrichson, _Det Femtende Wisconsin Regiments Historie_, 26.
[172] Mattson, _Story of an Emigrant_, 59-93.
[173] Anderson, _Norwegian Immigration_, 112-127.
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]
[174] Enander, _Borgerkrigen i de Forenede Stater_, 106; Dietrichson,
_Det Femtende Wisconsin Regiments Historie_, ch. i.
[175] Dietrichson, "The Fifteenth Wisconsin, or Scandinavian,
Regiment," _Scandinavia_, I, 297 ff.
[176] Nelson, _History of Scandinavians_, I, 166.
[177] Quiner, _The Military History of Wisconsin_ (ch. xxiii,
"Regimental Histories--15th Infantry"), 631.
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]
[178] Johnson and Peterson, _Svenskarne i Illinois_, 143-149.
[179] _Ibid._, 155-161.
[180] Mattson, _The Story of an Emigrant_, 59-93.
[181] _Ibid._, 62.
[182] _Annual Report of the Adjutant General of Minnesota_, 1866, II;
Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 303-304. Similar
figures for Iowa are in Nelson, II, 67.
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]
[183] Church, _Life of John Ericsson_.