The Last Letter Home Read online

  He had sent his oldest boy, Johan, on an errand to Klas Albert’s store—Persson’s Store, as they called it in Center City—and now and then he glanced down the road. Why was the boy so slow in returning? Finally he spied him down by the old log cabin. As soon as Johan saw his father he began to run. Karl Oskar reined in his team: Why suddenly this hurry?

  Before the boy had gained the field he began shouting: From the son the news reached the father: War had broken out.

  Johan was excited and short of breath. In Center City he had read a poster on the bulletin board of the parish meetinghouse. The Southern rebels had stormed Fort Sumter and shot down the Union flag. The slave states had begun warring against the North. A great many people had gathered at Persson’s Store, all talking about the war. The boy of fifteen was proud to have carried this message; he panted for breath as he repeated it.

  Karl Oskar let the team rest and sat down heavily on the harrow. To him the news was not unexpected. He had long feared war would break out. It had been an uneasy winter, full of anxiety and uncertainty. Now spring had come and with it outbreak of war. And as war finally had come, at least he was relieved of the worry about its breaking out.

  Last fall he had been one of those who helped elect Abraham Lincoln, himself a settler’s son. The men of the ax and the plow had placed Abe in the President’s chair: They trusted him. Karl Oskar had thought: Old Abe won’t have a war, if he can help it. He is sure to make peace with the slave states. He also wants what is best for the South—the best of both North and South—they must remain united. He wants the people of the New World to settle their differences peacefully, not with bloodshed. In the Old World the English, French, Russians, Austrians, and Turks had recently fought bloody battles. But over there kings and warlords had always driven their people to death, and people had meekly endured it. But Honest Abe—himself born in a settler’s cabin—is not going to ape leaders who have ruined the Old World.

  But now the slave states had inveigled each other to attack the Union. The flag had been shot down! What could the President do now? What must they all do? The one attacked must defend himself.

  Johan was standing beside the harrow, keyed up, waiting eagerly and with apprehension: “Do you think, Father, the rebels are coming all the way up here?”

  No, his father didn’t think so; the boy mustn’t be afraid. The Southern rebels would never come as far north as Minnesota. Long before they got halfway they would be killed on the battlefields. And he told his boy to go on home and finish cleaning out the sheep pen, a chore he had started in the morning. He must tell Harald to help him, there was great hurry, the sheep manure was to be spread on the oat field before seeding.

  Johan looked disappointed but obeyed reluctantly. He had expected his father to unharness the team and come home and forget about the sheep pen. He had in some way expected a reward for bringing the message of war. It was unfair, on a day like this, to have to shovel sheep dung.

  A swarm of mosquitoes buzzed around the horses and bit them in the groins; the animals stamped with their hind legs, rattling the harnesses. Karl Oskar remained sitting, squinting at the sun, his thoughts disturbed, pondering. War! Never could a war have started at a more inopportune moment. But whatever happened, he must plant the spring wheat today. A new crop must grow; people would need bread next year also.

  He resumed harrowing but row after row with each furrow he was pursued by the question: How many men in America must now leave their daily chores and go to war? He did not stop harrowing until the dinner hour. Kristina, his wife, had already set the table as he entered the kitchen, and he sat down to eat with his family.

  Johan repeated to his mother and brothers and sisters what he had read on the poster in Center City. This last year in school he had learned English quite well and could read it almost fluently.

  Kristina listened with great calm. A change had come over her these last years; nothing disturbed or frightened her.

  “War is punishment for our sins,” she said. “We can only ask God to have mercy on us.”

  Karl Oskar said, “Those armies of the South can do us no harm up here. They’ll never get here!”

  “I mean: May God have mercy on the people in the South and the people in the North!”

  He protested that the rich slave owners in the South had started the war. They alone were to blame, and they alone ought to suffer. If one were attacked by a criminal must he suffer the same punishment as the attacker?

  “Punishment belongs to God,” explained Kristina. “A Christian is not allowed to go out and kill.”

  “Isn’t he allowed to kill a murderer and criminal?”

  “No. He mustn’t kill any human being.”

  “But I’ve the right to defend myself. A murderer must blame himself if he gets killed!”

  “If someone is killed, is it therefore necessary to kill others?” Kristina replied. “Can it help the dead one if other people die?”

  Karl Oskar and Kristina had had many discussions about the South and the North and could not agree. Now he replied, as he had done many times before: If one couldn’t defend oneself against an attacker, no person in the world could live in peace in his home. And the slave states had attacked because the presidential election last fall hadn’t gone the way they wanted.

  “They want to govern themselves, as we do,” she said. “Why can’t they?”

  “It ruins the Union,” he explained. “The rebels have broken the laws of the Union.”

  “But the people of the South don’t like them. They don’t want to obey the same laws as we. Why must they? Why must they be forced to obey?”

  Karl Oskar could not make Kristina understand that the slave power in the South was criminal. Hadn’t they not long ago read in their paper Hemlandet about the Souths plan to murder President Abraham Lincoln, the most honest man in North America? The slave owners had conspired to prevent him from occupying his office. For a long time they had planned this deed, and hired the assassins. When Father Abe was to ride the steam wagon to the government house in Washington, the murderers were to turn over the wagon and crush him against the rails. Such was their intent; he was never to reach the presidential chair alive. Praise be God, the conspiracy was discovered in time, Abe was warned, and guards were posted along the whole line of the railroad and he arrived unharmed in Washington. This fully proved that the slave powers instigated murders. And murderers could not be endured in this country.

  Kristina looked at him across the table: “And now they must go to war, the men . . . ?”

  It was half a question, but he did not reply this time; he looked down at his plate.

  She had something more to say to him but she couldn’t quite get it out now—there was one more question she would have liked to ask him: Are you going?

  The next morning, Tuesday, Karl Oskar drove single-horsed to Center City to do jury duty. He tied his horse and walked up the steps to the meetinghouse, which also served as courthouse, where he met Mr. Thorn, the Chisago County sheriff, a tall, well-built man. The sheriff said there would be no sitting of the court today because war had broken out.

  Mr. Thorn was a Scotchman. Karl Oskar knew him as an honest and capable person and he had helped elect him sheriff. In Sweden the farmers were never allowed to elect their sheriff; there they must accept whoever the Crown sent them, however badly he might treat them. A Crown sheriff in Sweden was a puffed-up, vain person, a magistrate wearing gold-plated buttons and uniform cap, who cursed and ruled. He threatened and frightened and no one dared do anything but obey. Mr. Thorn on the contrary was a helpful, kind man who neither ruled nor swore at people. And if he had done so he would not have lasted long in his office. There was a great difference between a sheriff in Sweden and a sheriff in America; here the settlers were his equals.

  “Old Abe has called for troops,” said Mr. Thorn.

  He showed the Swedish settler a big placard nailed to the meetinghouse wall. Yesterday Abraham Lincoln, the Presid
ent of the Union, had sent this proclamation to all the Northern states; this poster concerned each and every citizen.

  Karl Oskar began to spell his way through the poster. He understood most of the English, and what he didn’t understand the sheriff explained to him.

  Southern rebels had conspired to get possession of fortresses and war matériel from the Union. The laws of the nation must be enforced and therefore the booty must be recaptured. Lincoln, in his capacity as President, urged all loyal citizens to hasten to the defense of the Union. He asked for 75,000 men to enlist immediately.

  The tall Scotchman already knew Lincoln’s proclamation by heart. He spoke with great feeling—those scoundrels in the slave states had besmirched the flag, they had shot at the thirty-two stars in the Union flag. The thirty-second and last star was that of Minnesota. These Southern bandits in shooting at their flag thus, had actually fired at the people of this very county; it was as if they had tried to murder him, Karl Oskar, his friends, and fellow settlers.

  Mr. Thorn had his duties as sheriff and because of this, sadly enough, he was forced to stay at home. Otherwise he would already have hearkened to Old Abe’s call and enlisted. As he said this he glanced at the Swede beside him in a way that could not be misunderstood.

  Twice Karl Oskar read through the presidential proclamation very carefully while he barely listened to the sheriff. Mr. Thorn kept fingering his badge of office as he poured out his bitterness over the insult to the flag; such an insult could be washed off only in blood.

  Karl Oskar untied the halter chain and harnessed his horse to the wagon. He made some purchases in Klas Albert’s store where today the customers elbowed each other. Then he drove back home again; with no court he had nothing more to do in Center City.

  And today he wished to be alone to gather his thoughts.

  Twenty-two thousand Minnesotans had last fall voted for Old Abe to be President. He himself was one of them. Those 22,000 considered the settlerson Lincoln one of them, indeed, the foremost of them. He was wiser, more capable, and more honest than anyone else. A man’s worth meant everything in the settlers’ republic, and that was why the boy from the log cabin had risen to the highest office in North America. In Sweden it was only required that a man was born in the royal palace and slept in a golden cradle to reach the highest pinnacle in the nation; his ability counted for nothing.

  And those who had chosen Honest Abe had confidence that he would preserve the Union.

  But the President couldn’t do it single-handedly. Now the Union was threatened and now the people of the North must gather round their elected leader. Today Old Abe called upon all loyal citizens: Help me save the Union!

  Karl Oskar assured himself that he was a loyal citizen in the country that had received him and his family and opened a new home for them. The presidential proclamation was directed to him; he had read it carefully: The United States are threatened! You are one of those who elected me President! Now you must help me! Help me against the rebels! Help me save the Union! I have confidence in you: Come!

  Old Abe was calling him. Being a citizen he was called on to shoulder his duties. For an honest man there could be only one reply to the call.

  But as Karl Oskar approached his claim he looked over his land and the fields his hands had wrested from the wilderness and this acted as a serious reminder: here lay his earth waiting for the seed. Regardless of what happened his fields must be planted. This must not be put aside for anything; if a crop were to be harvested in the fall, seeds must be put in the earth in the spring. This rule of nature must not be altered even by a war. Therefore he must wait for a while yet. He was simply forced to wait. Sowing came first. People must have food next year also. Old Abe, born in a tiller’s cabin, wouldn’t he understand this?

  —2—

  Minnesota, the youngest state of the Union, was the first to reply to the President’s call: on the very day it arrived the Republican governor, Alexander Ramsey, offered in a telegram to Lincoln the first regiment of volunteers. And the Minnesota settlers were proud that their state was first. They were seized by an immeasurable anger and bitterness over the insult to the flag at Fort Sumter and several thousand of them were at once ready to sacrifice their lives in battle. Volunteers streamed in in much greater numbers than anyone had counted on. One regiment after another was trained and equipped at Fort Snelling and readied for the war.

  Old Abe had asked for 75,000 men. He received in reply a song from the mouths of all the people in the North:

  We are coming, Father Abraham,

  Six hundred thousand strong . . .

  In Hemlandet Kristina read about this great joy over the war which had seized people’s minds, and she was profoundly perplexed. She had thought that if people needn’t go to war except of their own free will there wouldn’t be any wars. But her thoughts and feelings had been entirely wrong. Up here in the North no one was forced to go; nothing happened to those who stayed home. Yet they took off, people rushed to the battlefields of their own free will. Of their own free will they went out to kill and be killed. Not only that, they were happy and joyous and exhilarated to be able to kill and be killed. They couldn’t get away fast enough, these volunteers who in their eagerness stepped on each other’s heels at the recruiting places; people were jubilant because they would have an opportunity to kill their neighbors.

  The Lord’s commandment was: You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself! But it seemed they hated those neighbors in the South since they were in such a hurry to kill them. This desire of man to kill his own kind must be a curse of the original sin, which would cling to him to the end of time. War was punishment, war was caused by the original sin.

  It said in Hemlandet that God took part and fought in the Civil War; fortunately he had decided to be on the side of the North. Eight hundred rebels had for two whole days bombarded Fort Sumter which was defended by one hundred men, but not a single one of the defenders had been killed. Thousands of shots had been fired but not a single Union soldier had fallen—this was a miracle that had taken place in the fort. And this miracle proved that God fought on the side of the Union troops.

  How could they print such rot! wondered Kristina. God must have created the Southerners as well as the Northerners and he couldn’t be on either side in the war, for he couldn’t fight against his own creation, his own handiwork. He could only be against the war itself.

  Karl Oskar felt the Union must be kept intact whatever the cost. But she replied that if the people in the South didn’t want to belong to the Union, why not let them go? Weren’t they fighting for the right to govern themselves, the same as the people up here in the North? It was senseless; both sides fought for the same thing! Both sides wanted to rule themselves! Why fight over it?

  They could easily have come to an understanding if they had said to each other: We will leave you in peace if you leave us in peace! In that way the people of the South as well as the people of the North would have saved their lives.

  It wasn’t that easy, explained Karl Oskar. For only through war could the enslavement of the Negroes be abolished. No, said Kristlna, however deeply she felt for the black ones she could not believe that a mass slaughter of other people was the right way to help them. It could not be God’s will that people killed each other by the thousands to liberate some from slavery. To keep your neighbor as a slave was a grave sin, to kill a neighbor was graver.

  They could not agree. But the inhabitants of their new country had begun to shed each other’s blood, and each new issue of the paper told about it. In the settlements they read only of the Civil War, but each paper printed a comforting assurance: The North was many times stronger than the South, therefore the North must win. The North would win the war before the summer was over.

  They sowed their seed and the kernels sprouted and came up. They planted the potatoes in the furrows and the potatoes returned in rows of dark green stalks. Even in this war spring the black earth fruited with wheat, cor
n, rye, oats, and root crops. This year too the earth promised the nourishment that would sustain people’s lives.

  Summer came and it remained quiet and peaceful in the settlements round Lake Chisago. The thunder of the Civil War rumbled so far away it could not be heard up in Minnesota. Several regiments had left for the battlefields and more were prepared in great hurry. But the void after the soldiers left was not great enough to interfere with daily life; it went on without interruption, each one attending to his chores, no one disturbed in his daily work.

  But the war did not go the way the papers had predicted. Everything happened except what was supposed to happen. The war went very badly for the North. Union troops lost one battle after another and were forced to one withdrawal after another. And Northern soldiers fell in unbelievable numbers, their bodies lay stacked in great piles on the battlefields. It was said they fought valiantly but had poor weapons: a soldier could consider himself lucky if he had been given a gun that was no more dangerous to him than to the enemy. Besides, the Union troops had incompetent generals. But the setbacks were not blamed on them as much as on the competent generals of the South.

  And after Fort Sumter no more miracles took place to prove that God was fighting on the side of the North. The rebels had the upper hand from the beginning and kept it. Lincoln named a new general to have full command of the North’s forces, but it didn’t help, since the South hadn’t fired any of theirs.

  By the end of the summer, when the Union troops already should have won the war, they suffered a great defeat at Bull Run, Virginia. When the papers announced this severe defeat a shock of fear hit the people of the North: Suppose we lose the war?

  It seemed the end of the fight was near, but a different end than the one so surely predicted in the spring.

  In April Lincoln had asked for 75,000 men, and 600,000 had volunteered. All had been convinced that this great army would be sufficient to win the war. But the inexperienced volunteers had first to be trained and equipped and it was a long time before they could be used in the field. And then came the defeats—and now more soldiers were needed.