One day shortly after my arrival home, while walking along a street in Red Wing, I noticed a former professor of a university, who had been a captain in the Sixth regiment working in his shirt sleeves with a plane and helping to build a house. After saluting him I asked how he liked this kind of work, to which he answered that another professor had been appointed in his place while he was in the war, and being through with the service, he neither liked nor could afford to be idle. Having acquired some skill in handling carpenter’s tools in his youth, he said he found it easy to get work at two dollars a day, and meanwhile he could be on the look-out for a position as professor of mathematics at some college or university.

Here is the key to the greatness of this country: Labor is respected, while in most other countries it is looked down upon with slight. The former professor and Capt. Wilson was soon thereafter appointed state superintendent of schools, while, if he had remained idle and dependent upon his relatives and friends for assistance, too proud to work, he would most likely have been looking around for something to turn up to this day.

Another little incident, which occurred about this time may interest the Swedish reader. The great Gen. Sherman visited St. Paul, and a banquet was given to him at which I was present. During the conversation I asked about the Swedish Gen. Stohlbrand. “Do you know him?” Gen. Sherman inquired. “Yes, sir; he is my countryman, and we served in the same regiment in Sweden,” I said. “Then,” said he, “you may be proud of your old comrade, for a braver man and a better artillery officer than Gen. Stohlbrand could not be found in our entire army.”

At the same time the general told the following: Stohlbrand had served in his corps for some time with the rank of major, and performed such services as properly belong to a colonel or brigadier-general without being promoted according to his merits, because there had been no vacancy in the regiment to which he belonged. Displeased with this, Stohlbrand sent in his resignation, which was accepted, but Sherman had made up his mind not to let him leave the army, and asked him to go by way of Washington on his return home, pretending that he wished to send some important dispatches to President Lincoln. In due time Stohlbrand arrived in Washington and handed a sealed package to President Lincoln in person. Having looked the papers through the president extended his hand exclaiming: “How do you do, General!” Stohlbrand, correcting him, said; “I am no general, I am only a major.” “You are mistaken,” said Lincoln, “you are a general,”—and he was from that moment. In a few hours he received his commission and returned to the army with a rank three degrees higher than that he held a few days before.

The subject of the conversation thus being Swedish officers, several honorable deeds were told of some of them, among others, how Col. Vegesack, his regiment making a charge with leveled bayonets, and his color-bearer receiving a mortal wound, himself seized the colors and led his regiment to victory.

Soon after the close of the war a well-known lawyer and myself opened a law office in Red Wing, the name of the new firm being Mattson & Webster. I had successfully practiced law but a few months when it was announced that a new Swedish newspaper, to be called Svenska Amerikanaren, was to be established in Chicago. This enterprise was backed by a number of prominent Swedes of Illinois, who appointed me editor in chief without my knowledge or solicitation. At that time there was only one Swedish newspaper in this country, viz., Hemlandet, which was more of a church than a political paper, hence this was an open and large field for me. I accepted the appointment on condition that I should not move to Chicago, but simply help to start the paper and put it on a firm footing, and that I should be allowed to resign in case I found this kind of work unfavorable to my health, which had been very seriously affected by the hardships and sufferings of the war.

On September 18, 1866, the first number of the Svenska Amerikanaren was published. I quote from the article announcing my having assumed editorial charge of the paper as follows: “It shall be my ambition to so write as to advance the interest of the laboring people of our nationality, and to guide them in becoming good American citizens. I am one of that class myself, and during my residence in the settlements of the West I have learned to know their wants.” The paper was very favorably received both in this country and in Sweden, and, under the name of Svenska Tribunen, is still exercising a great and good influence among the Swedish Americans.

The following winter (1867) the legislature of Minnesota established a state bureau with the purpose of inducing immigrants to settle in the state, and I was appointed by Gov. W. R. Marshall to be secretary of the board of emigration, with the governor and secretary of state as ex-officio members; the Rev. John Ireland, now Catholic Archbishop of Minnesota, was also for a time a member of that board.

The St. Paul Press for March 14, 1867, contained the following concerning the new board:

“The state board of emigration, composed of Gov. Marshall, Col. Rogers and Col. Mattson, was organized yesterday, and a general plan of operation agreed upon. We learn that the board concluded that, with the limited means at their disposal, it was not advisable to employ agents to work in Europe, but to use every practicable effort to turn immigrants to Minnesota, after their arrival in this country. Efforts will be made to procure the publication of facts in regard to the state, in eastern and European journals; to make arrangements with railroads, more advantageous to emigrants than, heretofore and to afford them through interpreters and otherwise reliable information in regard to the best routes to the state from eastern parts. To give the emigrant a general idea of the characteristics of every locality in Minnesota, it is proposed to procure a map or chart of the state, showing its boundaries, streams, lakes, navigable rivers, timber and prairie sections, etc.”

One of my first and most pleasant duties as secretary of the board was to secure aid for the settlers along the Minnesota river. This locality had suffered from drought the previous year, and the settlers, most of whom were Swedes, Norwegians and Finlanders, were almost entirely destitute, and had no grain left for seed. Having secured an order from the government in Washington for provisions from the commissary department at Fort Ridgely, and being furnished with a letter of credit from our own state, I left for the stricken territory in the beginning of April, passing through the counties of Redwood, Renville, Yellow Medicine and Chippewa. At New Ulm several hundred sacks of flour were purchased, and at Fort Ridgely large quantities of provisions were taken out of the United States military stores. Agents were appointed to distribute these among the people, seed wheat and corn were shipped there from the South, and the settlers were thus relieved.

Soon after my return to St. Paul the board of emigration was again called together, and I was authorized to appoint Swedish, Norwegian and German agents and interpreters to meet our emigrants in New York and Quebec, and be their guides and protectors on the journey through the country to our state. Temporary homes were also secured until the commissioners in the service of the board could get work for those who wanted to work out, and direct the rest to the interior of the state, where they could settle on government land or buy cheap land from private parties.

Arrangements were made with newspapers in different languages for publishing articles written by myself and others, which contained descriptions of Minnesota and its resources. Pamphlets and maps with more detailed accounts, were printed in Swedish, Norwegian and German, and distributed in the respective countries, on board the ocean steamers, at the railroad stations and at other convenient places. I was the author of nearly all of this literature, in which great pains were taken to describe everything in detail; how the chests or boxes ought to be made and marked before leaving the old country; what articles ought to be taken along; what kind of provisions were most suitable; what measures ought to be taken with reference to cleanliness and behavior during the long and tedious journey, etc. On my visits among our western farmers years afterwards I have often seen pamphlets in Swedish and Norwegian with my name as author standing in the little bookshelf side by side with the Bible, the prayer-book, the catechism, and a few other reminiscences from the old country. I also spent some time attending to the needs of the emigrants in the sea-ports and in Chicago, made arrangements with railroad companies for securing better accommodations and even free tickets for hundreds of emigrants, who would otherwise have been compelled to part with their companions before reaching their place of destination.

While performing my duty as secretary of the board of emigration I also acted as land agent for one of our greatest railroad companies, whose line went through Wright, Meeker, Kandiyohi, Swift and Stevens counties, and near Lake Ripley, in Meeker county. I purchased some eight hundred acres of land for myself, on which I made extensive improvements and spent some time as a farmer.

In the above-named localities there were only a few widely scattered families when I went there in 1867, while it is now one continuous Scandinavian settlement, extending over a territory more than a hundred miles long and dotted over with cities and towns, largely the result of the work of the board of emigration during the years 1867, 1868 and 1869. The board of emigration did not show partiality toward any portion of the state, but did all its work with a view to the interest of the whole community. Our efforts, however, in behalf of Minnesota brought on a great deal of envy and ill-will from people in other states who were interested in seeing the Scandinavian emigration turned towards Kansas and other states, and this feeling went so far that a prominent newspaper writer in Kansas accused me of selling my countrymen to a life not much better than slavery in a land of ice, snow and perpetual winter, where, if the poor emigrant did not soon starve to death, he would surely perish with cold. Such was at that time the opinion of many concerning Minnesota. I would be more than human if I did not, in recalling these incidents, point with pride and satisfaction to the condition of the Scandinavians in Minnesota to-day, but will return to this further on.

The position which I held enabled me to be of service to countrymen in more ways than one. Thus the interests of the church were by no means neglected, and I think my readers will excuse me for inserting the following lines from the minutes of the eighth annual council of the Swedish Augustana Synod, held in Berlin, Ill., June 13, 1867:

“Whereas, The same conference reports that Col. Mattson has offered to procure sites for churches, parsonages and burial grounds for Lutheran churches in the new Scandinavian settlements in Western Minnesota,

“Therefore Resolved, That the synod express its thanks to Col. Mattson, and request him to get deeds on said property to be given to the different churches of the Augustana Synod, as soon as they are organized at the different places.”

It has always been admitted that during those years the emigrants destined for Minnesota received better care, guidance and protection than was ever accorded to a like class before or after that time. It is also acknowledged that the state received great benefits in return by being settled by a superior class of emigrants from the northern countries. As for my own share in that work, although my efforts were sometimes misunderstood and I myself blamed, as any one will be who has to deal with newly-arrived emigrants, I felt much pride and satisfaction in the work, knowing that not only the state, but the emigrants themselves, and even the serving and laboring classes remaining in the old countries, were very greatly benefited thereby. While laboring hard for immigration to Minnesota my chief object was to get the emigrants away from the large cities and make them settle on the unoccupied lands in the northwest, where the climate was suitable to them, and where it was morally certain that every industrious man or family would acquire independence sooner and better than in the crowded cities of the east. I never attempted to induce anyone to immigrate, but tried to reach those only who had already made up their minds to do so, and the only people that I ever induced to leave their mother country were a number of poor servants and tenants among my own or my parents’ acquaintances for whom I myself paid partly or wholly the cost of the journey.