LINCOLN AND THE UNION: A STUDY OF THE EDITORIALS OF EMIGRANTEN AND FJEDRELANDET BY ARLOW W. ANDERSEN The decade preceding the Civil War saw the forces of compromise weakening and the strength of extremists gaining . The spirit of sectionalism prevailed in every major political and social development. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, intended to be a boon to slaveholders, was all but nullified in effect by the enactment of personal liberty laws in Northern states, by moral resentment on the part of many who were not out-and-out abolitionists, and by active countermeasures well exemplified in the mysterious workings of the Underground Railroad. Adding considerably to the growing sectional tension was the financial crisis of 1857, when the industrial North bemoaned Buchanan's unhelpful Democratic administration while the Cotton Kingdom congratulated itself upon its economic stability. Yet the South, despite its vaunted soundness, suffered constant emotional disturbance throughout the decade. The election of 1860 was to determine not only the future of slavery in the United States but the very existence of the nation. In its deeper implications the contest was to decide whether the promised land of the immigrants would break with the cultural progress of the western world and the trend of the age. With Germany and Italy approaching national unification and with Great Britain on the verge of making further concessions to democracy by extending the franchise at home and granting dominion status to Canada abroad, a dissolution of the American Union would have run contrary to the prevailing western principle of national consolidation . Nationalism and democracy were on the march. 85 86 ARLOW W. ANDERSEN Thus the government at Washington could hardly accept the founding of an independent nation on its southern border. The election campaign of 1860 found four presidential aspirants in the field. Unable to agree, the Democratic party suffered a disastrous split. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky carried the hopes of the Southern wing, committed to the view that slavery must be protected even at the cost of secession. Stephen A. Douglas retained the support of Northern Democrats, who trusted that popular sovereignty would prevent national disruption. A third candidate was John Bell of Tennessee, representing the Constitutional Union party, which feared war and advocated conciliation. The choice of the Republican party fell judiciously upon Abraham Lincoln. His "house divided" speech was no less prophetic of bloodshed than Seward's earlier prediction of an "irrepressible conflict," but Lincoln was less known and had created fewer political enemies. In the critical campaign days, when the fate of the nation hung in the balance, Emigranten, then the only secular Norwegian-American newspaper being published, continued to support the Republican cause.1 Established in 1852, this four-page weekly had at first presented the "Independent Democratic" point of view, then, after 1854, the Republican viewpoint. Well qualified as editor was Carl Fredrik Solberg , in charge of the paper from 1857 to 1868. He made the journey from Norway in 1853 with his father, who for a time directed the Oleana colony of Ole Bull in Pennsylvania. Upon the failure of the Oleana experiment the younger Sol1 Fœdrelandety the second paper of the war period, appeared in 1864. Two religious journals, Kirkelig maanedstidende (Monthly Church Times) and Norsk luthersk kirketidende (Norwegian Lutheran Church Times), are not included in this study, though they are not without significance as organs of opinion on American public affairs. The first represented the Norwegian Synod, while the second, less clerical, opposed the state church tradition. Both were founded in 1851. See Carl Hansen, "Pressen til borgerkrigens slutnung" (The Press till the Close of the Civil War), N orsk-amerikanernes jestskrijt , 14 (Decorah, Iowa, 1914) ; also Theodore C. Biegen, Nonoegian Migration to America: The American Transition , 302 (Northfield, 1940). LINCOLN AND THE UNION 87 berg migrated in 1856 to Rock Prairie, Wisconsin. A native of Christiania, he had received his higher education in Denmark and was admirably suited to pioneer immigrant journalism.2 Once having accepted the editorial responsibility of Emigranten , which was published in Madison, Wisconsin , he proposed to bring Norwegians more actively into politics. Scarcely a month had passed since Chief Justice Taney had handed down the momentous...
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Feb 13, 2006
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