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A NEW HAMPSHIRE YANKEE IN KING OSCAR'S COURT EVADENE BURRIS SwANSON During the decades after the Civil War, the appeal of free farm lands offered by the Homestead Act of 1862 was one of the most powerful stimuli for emigration from Swe• den. In the process of leaving the old country to secure the land, the individual followed specific regulations and acquired three sets of legal documents, many of which are still found among cherished family records. The first, permission to emigrate (flyttningsbevis), was obtained in Sweden and served as a kind of passport. The naturalization papers and proof of land ownership were the two American sets essential for security in the new country. The last might be the deed, the homestead cer• tificate of registration, or a paper issued by a railroad com• pany which had conveyed the specific land involved. Be• cause the records were so extremely important, it was quite natural that lawyers commanded great respect among the farmers both in Sweden and America. President U. S. Grant selected one as minister to Sweden and Norway in 1869, Christopher Columbus Andrews, who served in this office in Stockholm for eight and one-half years at a time when immigration to the American Middle West was flour• ishing. Andrews was born in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, in 1829. He studied law as an apprentice to a Hillsboro lawyer and at Harvard University and began his law practice in Mas• sachusetts. He moved first to Kansas in the 1850's and then in 1857 finally settled in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a fast-grow• ing town on the edge of settlement. He attained the rank of 18 brigadier general in the Civil War. He had met Grant in military duty, and was forty years old when he packed his trunks and took his bride off to the Swedish capital. The official dispatches Andrews wrote to Washington which are preserved in the National Archives, and his Recollections edited by his daughter and published in 1928, give a vivid description of his life in Stockholm. They con• stitute the chief sources for this account. Since Andrews had himself experienced the pangs of moving from New England to the frontier, he felt most sympathetic with the problems of the Swedish pioneer-to-be and he at once be• gan serious study of ways to help them. In his first dispatch to Washington reporting a conversa• tion with Prince Oscar in 1869, he notes that emigration was their chief topic. "The Prince remarked the United States were taking too many of their people. I told him no people emigrated more than Americans themselves—that they were always going west from the older states; that emigration denoted enterprise and life in the country from which the emigrants went." Andrews immediately assessed the role he should play in this mutual problem of the two countries: "It is not my place to be an emigration agent. Expect to use proper discretion in the matter. But if peo• ple ask information of me concerning the resources of the United States, I cannot decline in proper cases to give it." Correct reporting on American conditions was a primary responsibility of the diplomatic representative. Andrews was disturbed about a critical account in Aftonbladet, Oc• tober 29, 1869, of an emigrant union's activities. Tickets sold by contract in Stockholm took people only to Hastings, Minnesota, and not the promised destination of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. But one who did get to St. Croix Falls wrote: "It is the most disagreeable place on earth. All the roads came there at an end. There were only three or four dirty houses, everywhere else mountains and forest . Indians roamed everywhere." He advised Swedes to stay in Sweden. Another man in the same group reported 19 St. Croix Falls "disillusioning—not as Count Taube said in his book." Many people in the Hastings area were "plan• ning to return to Sweden . found that here is no better than in Sweden. I advise no one to come here although everyone does as he pleases." Andrews had confidence that if good sturdy farmers could be found, willing to migrate, they would be happy in America and he instructed the consuls in Gothenburg to send the land office reports not to agents but directly to peasants and agricultural schools. He felt it quite within the privileges of the agents to fly the United States flag over their offices. He noted there were in Sweden eight native emigration agents, all in Gothenburg, bonded for $16,000 by the Swedish government for "faithful dealings." He heard that one promoting Swedish settlement on the Aroostook River in Maine received hundreds of letters and needed pamphlets for distribution. He wanted to prepare a list of fifty common English expressions, a basic vocabu• lary for agents to distribute. Andrews wished that the provisions of the Homestead Law could be circulated throughout Europe in the native languages. In 1871 he noted that Stockholm newspapers refused to take an advertisement carrying provisions of the Act which had been submitted by the emigration agent sent by the State of Nebraska. A year later he heard of similar action in Finland. The Finnish authorities were prohibiting newspaper advertisements concerning passage of emigrants to America and the Governor-General of Fin• land issued a decree prohibiting bills or posters with such references on the streets. One of the most important reports on conditions in America during the time of Andrews' service in Stockholm came from official "Washington, from Count Lewenhaupt, the Swedish representative there. Here was the appraisal of the situation not from the casual stranded homesick im• migrant but the King's representative concerned for the welfare of the people. Andrews read this in 1871 and ana- 20 lyzed it carefully. He noted that an incorrect version cir• culating in Norway and officially communicated to the Storthing said United Kingdom instead of United States in one instance, and had given the impression that immigrants were unwelcome. He dispatched a complaint to Count Wachtmeister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs: "I certain• ly need not assure your excellency that both the people and the government of the United States estimate very highly the immigration from Sweden and Norway. ... I hasten to request that you will have the kindness . to place the matter before the Norwegian public in its proper light." Andrews sent a thirty-eight page translation to the Secre• tary of State, Hamilton Fish. He objected to the statement that no homestead land was available within ten Swedish miles of the railroad, wanting this to read one Swedish mile (the equivalent of 6.6 American miles). The report mentioned cheating of immigrants in Chica• go ". unprincipled Swedes and Norwegians who have not succeeded in procuring themselves any more advantageous occupation than that of cheating their country men ... last summer one family was robbed on the way to St. Paul . Illinois has the best lands," the report continued, "but immigrants without means must go to western tracts of Minnesota or Kansas. In Minnesota one meets with Swedes and Norwegians on all railroad trains. Some go to Kansas to look for land, while others on the contrary are going from Kansas to Minnesota for the same purpose. The great• est part of them are young laborers returning toward the East, and the more wealthy States where wages are some• what higher, in order to earn needful money for purchase of land. ... In Minnesota the nearest neighbors of the set• tlers are the Indians. These live, however, on a friendly footing . it happens very often that an Indian presents himself with a venison steak in order to have it exchanged for a cup of coffee." After dealing with specific points, Andrews concluded: "The spirit of the report appears to me to be excellent. Taken together I think Americans could not regret its ex• tensive circulation in Sweden and Norway. Count Lewen• haupt states that a majority of emigrants from these king• doms prosper in the United States." One reason that relations were touchy on immigration issues at the time of Andrews' arrival was another bit of legislation of the Lincoln administration not as well-con• sidered as the Homestead Act. In 1864 as a war measure to relieve the shortage of civilian labor, companies were permitted to advance passage in return for work commit• ments. The King of Sweden, Charles XV, recommended to his subjects that "they not thoughtlessly abandon their father• land" and many other [European countries expressed vio• lent distaste for this measure. The law was repealed in 1868, but Andrews must have had to cope with much un• derlying suspicion because of it. The evils of steerage passage alarmed people on both con• tinents. The New York Commissioners of Emigration found that a German ship sailing from Hamburg on November 2, 1867, with 544 passengers had only 436 surviving when they reached New York. Andrews wrote: "We must try and promote the comfort and welfare of these poor people in some degree if we can." He presented to the Swedish gov• ernment the Secretary of State's proposal for a treaty to protect the emigrants on the voyage. When he received no response from the government he felt they feared it would appear to be encouraging emigration. He was informed by a Norwegian source that there was no specified measure• ment for boats and number of passengers. If overloading or other irregularity was suspected, the government inves• tigated. He reported a delay of departure of one hundred seventy-five emigrants from Gothenburg in November 1869. A naturalized American named Berglund was prevented from taking them to the United States via Lubeck and Hamburg because he was not an authorized agent.

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