Religious motives are often mentioned as a cause of the emigration to the United States. This was certainly true for the first colonists that emigrated from England to North America. In many cases it was religious and political persecution that drove these people to emigrate. Also in Sweden, religion and faith had some importance.Sweden was, according to its Constitution, a Christian country with a State Church, the Church of Sweden. It was the only church to which Swedes could belong and it was (is) an Evangelical Lutheran church.America became the country of freedom in this field. In the United States there was no "State Church" or compulsion to belong to a specific faith. For the Europeans, including Swedes, who had no possibility of practicing their own faith, the United States became the Promised Land.The Bishop Hill Colony founded in 1846 in Illinois, arose from the lack of religious freedom in Sweden at the time. However, one has to distinguish the period prior to 1858-1860, from the period thereafter when compulsion in religious matters was largely abolished in Sweden. The emigration of Erik Jansson and his followers took place before this dividing line in the Swedish freedom of religion.Sweden adopted a new Church Act on January 12, 1726, the so-called Konventikelplakatet (The Conventicle Article) which banned all pious meetings outside the control of Church of Sweden, such as Bible reading and prayer meetings in people’s homes headed by laymen. The intention behind the Conventicle Article was to stop the different Christian revivalist movements that grew up during the 18th and 19th century. The article was debated at several Parliament meetings but was not abolished until 1858. A religious meeting that was not headed by a parish minister from Church of Sweden was still not allowed during the regular hours of public worship without special permission. However, this last restriction was abolished on December 11, 1860. Then it became possible to hold religious meetings during regular hours of public worship, but not so close to a church that they disturbed the regular church service.All Swedish citizens had to belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden. However, foreigners who belonged to a different denomination were allowed to do so if they exercised their religion in seclusion.Nor was it possible for Swedes to leave the Church of Sweden. Apostasy from the Church of Sweden involved penalties like banishment, loss of the right to inheritance and loss of civil rights. This naturally brought a heavy pressure to dissident religious people. These punishments were abolished in 1860.The revivalist movements around 1860 were such a strong force in the society that they couldn’t be prevented and a few Free Church movements were officially approved. Laws adopted in 1860 and 1873 also gave Swedish citizens the prerogative of leaving the Church of Sweden provided that the person in question at the same time entered another, officially approved, communion.However, we have to remember that the mass emigration from Sweden didn’t begin until the 1860’s, in other words after when it was allowed to leave Church of Sweden, under the conditions mentioned above. The religious freedom that was in force in the United States naturally attracted many people. The Free Churches were after 1858/1860 consequently allowed to carry on with their religious activities in Sweden (often with the aid from the American Free Churches) so it wasn’t the lack of religious freedom that drove the Swedish emigrants to the United States. There is no direct connection between Free Church districts and large emigration areas. The numbers of emigrants are not necessarily higher in the typical Free Church districts. Jönköping Län in Småland, with many Free Church movements, had indeed large emigration, but this area also had serious social and economic problems.In other areas with large emigration, like Halland, Dalsland, Värmland and Öland, the Free Church movements were not very dominant.
The Temperance Movement
The temperance movement has had some influence on the emigration. The Swedish temperance movement, organized as a resistance movement, grew in size during the 19th century. The movement had in the 1840’s about 100,000 members in different local associations. A victory for the movement was the ban of peasant household distillation in 1855. Thereafter the only legal distillation was the one made under the auspices of the Government. The work of the temperance movement was certainly, from time to time, regarded as an intrusion in people’s personal life. It was common that parish ministers were engaged in the temperance question but they received criticism for this and therefore perceived this as a persecution when they received few votes in the Church elections. At times also, the Church authorities regarded the parish ministers’ involvement in the temperance question as a division of the congregation member’s interest in the Church and which they had no desire to encourage. Emigration could be the solution of this kind of problem for the parish ministers. This was the case for Parson Paul Esbjörn (1808 - 1870), one of the leaders of the Augustana Synod. Paul Esbjörn emigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1849.An important circumstance for the temperance movement was of course that the Good Templar movement, for example IOGT, worked from the United States to Europe.
Class Antagonism
It is questionable how much social injustice influenced the emigration. Sweden has never been a feudal society as many other European countries. There was of course a lower stratum of society, a lower class who felt hatred towards the upper class. However, the awareness of the affiliation to this lower class was at the time still not yet waked and turned into a class struggle and class solidarity.Still, that the American laborers were treated better than the European attracted many to emigrate. Besides, the prospect to work one's way up in the United States was better than at home. Further, farm laborers in Sweden saw the changeover to industrial work as a social retrogression. As a peasant proprietor in the United States they regained their social position.
Suffrage
The old Parliament of Sweden, the Riksdag of the Four Estates (Ståndsriksdagen), was abolished in 1866. Instead Sweden adopted a Bicameral Parliament (Två-kammarriksdagen). The members of the Second Chamber (Lower Chamber) were directly elected by the people entitled to vote (voters) while the members of the First Chamber (Upper Chamber) were indirectly elected by the members of the Swedish Landsting and by larger cities. [Landsting is the second level of political administration in Sweden.]The lack of universal suffrage in the elections for members to the Second Chamber during the era of mass emigration didn’t really have any impact to the emigration. The political awareness had not wakened at the time. That didn’t happen until the end of the emigration period.Only men had the right to vote but this right was restricted to wealth and income. To be entitled to vote men needed an annual income of at least 800 SEK or be in the possession of a real property of a value of at least 1,000 SEK or a tenancy of an agricultural property of a certain value. Further, men had to be 21 years old (or older) to vote and paid tax during the last ten years. Only 20% of the adult male population owned the right to vote in 1866. However, due to general income increases about 60% owned the right in 1908. Universal suffrage for men was adopted in Sweden in 1909. The voting age was set to 24 but restricted to men who had paid tax during the last three years and done their national military service (conscription). Universal suffrage for women was adopted on May 24, 1919. The first general election when women were able to vote was held in 1921.The voting age was now set to 23 for both men and women. The demand for men’s fulfillment of national military service was abolished in 1924.Sweden had from 1921 universal suffrage for both men and women for the Second Chamber.800 SEK in 1873 was equivalent to about 37,500 SEK in 2010. (Source: The Royal Coin Cabinet).Kronor is the name of the Swedish currency and it is abbreviated SEK. See also the Swedish Monetary System.
National Military Service - Conscription
A proposal was put forward in the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag) in 1812 to resort to a universal conscription service for men called Beväringen or Beväringsinrättningen. The Swedish wars during the first decade of the 19th century had shown the great need of replacement soldiers for the regular standing army. Beväringen was to be a complement and reinforcement of the regular professional army. The act was adopted in the Parliament on October 27, 1812, and the conscription service was to be universal which meant that all able-bodied men fit for military service had to undergo a minimum military training in the armed forces. In 1820 the service time for the draftees was set to 12 days which had to be effected during the first year.For some reason, the hiring of substitutes was allowed, i.e. to pay someone to do the service in his place. This right to avoid conscription made it very unpopular since only wealthy had the possibility of doing so. In 1860 the possibility of hiring substitutes was replaced with a right to redeem conscription. Instead of hiring someone the eligible men paid a commutation fee directly to the Army. This right was abolished in 1872 and from then everyone called up had to do the military service.The conscripts only had to do 12 days of military service per year. However, the service time for conscripts was increased to 30 days (divided into two years) after the Crimean War (1853 - 1856) in the parliament meetings 1856-1858.In 1885 the age classes for conscription were increased from 5 to 12 years of which the last age classes (ages 27 – 32) were assigned to the newly established Landstormen (Veteran Reserve). The military service age was in other words extended 21 - 25 to 21 - 40 years of age. The service time was at the same time extended to 42 days divided into two years. In 1892 a new Army Act was adopted in the Parliament. The liability to conscript service was now increased to 12 years in the Beväringen and 8 years in the Landstormen (in total 20 age classes) and the service time was increased to 90 days. The photo to the right shows soldiers in uniform m/1860 with cap m/1865, most likely Jönköping Regiment (Infantry). The image is published with the consent of Anders Thorstensson.The only legal possibility the authorities in Sweden had to prevent emigration was the general prohibition for conscripts to emigrate to other countries without permission. It is considered to be a connection between avoidance of conscription and emigration. Every time the military service time for conscripts was extended the number of emigrated 20-years old men increased, at least temporarily. It wasn’t that difficult to obtain permission to leave the country though. During the second half of the 1800’s the authorities were generally generous with the permissions. However, at the end of the 1800’s fulfillment of conscription was needed to get permission to emigrate. Without a such exit permit you couldn’t get a moving certificate from the parish minister and thereby not be able to buy an emigrant ticket through an emigrant agent. The Police Departments in the Swedish emigrant ports checked that the regulations were followed and that the emigrants were legal emigrants.The only possibility for eligible men to avoid conscription was illegal emigration. Normally they then went to Copenhagen in Denmark, Oslo or Trondheim in Norway and from there to the United States. It is however, not known how large this illegal emigration was.Between 1682 and 1901 Sweden had a standing professional Army organized within a system called the Allotment System(Indelningsverket). From 1812 to 1901 Sweden also used a conscript system alongside the standing army called Beväringen, as mentioned above. In 1901 both the standing professional army and the Beväringen was abandoned and Sweden instead introduced an army and navy entirely based on a Universal Conscription System called Allmän Värnplikt. In a way Beväringen was a forerunner to the National Service System.The draftees were according to the Universal Conscription Act to undergo a military training for 150 days followed by three compulsory military refresher courses of 30 days each between the second and the fourth year, in total 240 days. In 1914 it increased to 340 days.Every Swedish man was obliged to register for Universal Conscription the year they reached the age of 21. In 1914 the age was lowered to 20 years old. The first draftees received their calling up notice for the new Universal Conscription Service in the spring of 1902.The training of the soldiers in the Conscription System was now held over a longer period of time compared to Beväringen. Each year, a fixed number of new recruits were drafted for military training. When one set of recruits finished their training period a new set of recruits was drafted. Every able-bodied Swede between the ages of 18 (first 21, then 20, later 18 years old) and 30 were liable to do military service.The Swedish Conscription System was inactivated on July 1, 2010. The armed forces thereafter are now based on a system with enlisted soldiers and officers contracted for a specific time (contractual employment) or until further notice.
Years of Famine
Sweden had two hard years of famine in the 1860’s; 1867 and 1868. Worst off were the Norrland provinces and Dalarna and Värmland. The summer of 1867 was cold very wet and the following summer had a devastating drought. The shortage of seed for sowing was extreme and in some places up to a third of all livestock had to be slaughtered. The drought of 1868 primarily hit the southern half of Sweden. The two preceding years were also troublesome; there were poor crops in most places. This meant that the margins were already narrow when the famine struck in 1867; the stores were simply empty. Thousands of people had to hit the roads to bigger cities begging. These years of famine speeded up the emigration to the United States. It has been estimated that about 100,000 Swedes emigrated between 1868 and 1873. See also Regions of Sweden, Map of Swedish provinces
Push and Pull Factors
The early research of the Swedish emigration has explained the emigration by the term “push”; it was something that pushed people to emigrate. People wanted to get away from something — the so-called Push Factor. The early researchers have listed reasons like overpopulation in the countryside, unemployment, years of famine at the same time as it was a boom in the United States and a possibility of getting homestead land (Homestead Act of 1862). Today the historians are more uncertain of the reasons. There was no unemployment during the major parts of the emigration era. In some places there was even a shortage of laborers. There was for long periods of time boom and economic expansion in Sweden with rising wages beside shorter periods now and then.Today the historians believe that it was something that pulled the emigrants to the United States rather than something that pushed them — the so-called Pull Factor. The big country in the West attracted many by its possibilities and not just economical. There was also a personal freedom that they believed they didn’t have in Sweden. However, it is probably a combination of the Push and Pull Factors that forms the background to the mass emigration.
Religious motives are often mentioned as a cause of the emigration to the United States. This was certainly true for the first colonists that emigrated from England to North America. In many cases it was religious and political persecution that drove these people to emigrate. Also in Sweden, religion and faith had some importance.Sweden was, according to its Constitution, a Christian country with a State Church, the Church of Sweden. It was the only church to which Swedes could belong and it was (is) an Evangelical Lutheran church.America became the country of freedom in this field. In the United States there was no "State Church" or compulsion to belong to a specific faith. For the Europeans, including Swedes, who had no possibility of practicing their own faith, the United States became the Promised Land.The Bishop Hill Colony founded in 1846 in Illinois, arose from the lack of religious freedom in Sweden at the time. However, one has to distinguish the period prior to 1858-1860, from the period thereafter when compulsion in religious matters was largely abolished in Sweden. The emigration of Erik Jansson and his followers took place before this dividing line in the Swedish freedom of religion.Sweden adopted a new Church Act on January 12, 1726, the so-called Konventikelplakatet (The Conventicle Article) which banned all pious meetings outside the control of Church of Sweden, such as Bible reading and prayer meetings in people’s homes headed by laymen. The intention behind the Conventicle Article was to stop the different Christian revivalist movements that grew up during the 18th and 19th century. The article was debated at several Parliament meetings but was not abolished until 1858. A religious meeting that was not headed by a parish minister from Church of Sweden was still not allowed during the regular hours of public worship without special permission. However, this last restriction was abolished on December 11, 1860. Then it became possible to hold religious meetings during regular hours of public worship, but not so close to a church that they disturbed the regular church service.All Swedish citizens had to belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden. However, foreigners who belonged to a different denomination were allowed to do so if they exercised their religion in seclusion.Nor was it possible for Swedes to leave the Church of Sweden. Apostasy from the Church of Sweden involved penalties like banishment, loss of the right to inheritance and loss of civil rights. This naturally brought a heavy pressure to dissident religious people. These punishments were abolished in 1860.The revivalist movements around 1860 were such a strong force in the society that they couldn’t be prevented and a few Free Church movements were officially approved. Laws adopted in 1860 and 1873 also gave Swedish citizens the prerogative of leaving the Church of Sweden provided that the person in question at the same time entered another, officially approved, communion.However, we have to remember that the mass emigration from Sweden didn’t begin until the 1860’s, in other words after when it was allowed to leave Church of Sweden, under the conditions mentioned above. The religious freedom that was in force in the United States naturally attracted many people. The Free Churches were after 1858/1860 consequently allowed to carry on with their religious activities in Sweden (often with the aid from the American Free Churches) so it wasn’t the lack of religious freedom that drove the Swedish emigrants to the United States. There is no direct connection between Free Church districts and large emigration areas. The numbers of emigrants are not necessarily higher in the typical Free Church districts. Jönköping Län in Småland, with many Free Church movements, had indeed large emigration, but this area also had serious social and economic problems.In other areas with large emigration, like Halland, Dalsland, Värmland and Öland, the Free Church movements were not very dominant.
The Temperance Movement
The temperance movement has had some influence on the emigration. The Swedish temperance movement, organized as a resistance movement, grew in size during the 19th century. The movement had in the 1840’s about 100,000 members in different local associations. A victory for the movement was the ban of peasant household distillation in 1855. Thereafter the only legal distillation was the one made under the auspices of the Government. The work of the temperance movement was certainly, from time to time, regarded as an intrusion in people’s personal life. It was common that parish ministers were engaged in the temperance question but they received criticism for this and therefore perceived this as a persecution when they received few votes in the Church elections. At times also, the Church authorities regarded the parish ministers’ involvement in the temperance question as a division of the congregation member’s interest in the Church and which they had no desire to encourage. Emigration could be the solution of this kind of problem for the parish ministers. This was the case for Parson Paul Esbjörn (1808 - 1870), one of the leaders of the Augustana Synod. Paul Esbjörn emigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1849.An important circumstance for the temperance movement was of course that the Good Templar movement, for example IOGT, worked from the United States to Europe.
Class Antagonism
It is questionable how much social injustice influenced the emigration. Sweden has never been a feudal society as many other European countries. There was of course a lower stratum of society, a lower class who felt hatred towards the upper class. However, the awareness of the affiliation to this lower class was at the time still not yet waked and turned into a class struggle and class solidarity.Still, that the American laborers were treated better than the European attracted many to emigrate. Besides, the prospect to work one's way up in the United States was better than at home. Further, farm laborers in Sweden saw the changeover to industrial work as a social retrogression. As a peasant proprietor in the United States they regained their social position.
Suffrage
The old Parliament of Sweden, the Riksdag of the Four Estates (Ståndsriksdagen), was abolished in 1866. Instead Sweden adopted a Bicameral Parliament (Två-kammarriksdagen). The members of the Second Chamber (Lower Chamber) were directly elected by the people entitled to vote (voters) while the members of the First Chamber (Upper Chamber) were indirectly elected by the members of the Swedish Landsting and by larger cities. [Landsting is the second level of political administration in Sweden.]The lack of universal suffrage in the elections for members to the Second Chamber during the era of mass emigration didn’t really have any impact to the emigration. The political awareness had not wakened at the time. That didn’t happen until the end of the emigration period.Only men had the right to vote but this right was restricted to wealth and income. To be entitled to vote men needed an annual income of at least 800 SEK or be in the possession of a real property of a value of at least 1,000 SEK or a tenancy of an agricultural property of a certain value. Further, men had to be 21 years old (or older) to vote and paid tax during the last ten years. Only 20% of the adult male population owned the right to vote in 1866. However, due to general income increases about 60% owned the right in 1908. Universal suffrage for men was adopted in Sweden in 1909. The voting age was set to 24 but restricted to men who had paid tax during the last three years and done their national military service (conscription). Universal suffrage for women was adopted on May 24, 1919. The first general election when women were able to vote was held in 1921.The voting age was now set to 23 for both men and women. The demand for men’s fulfillment of national military service was abolished in 1924.Sweden had from 1921 universal suffrage for both men and women for the Second Chamber.800 SEK in 1873 was equivalent to about 37,500 SEK in 2010. (Source: The Royal Coin Cabinet).Kronor is the name of the Swedish currency and it is abbreviated SEK. See also the Swedish Monetary System.
National Military Service - Conscription
A proposal was put forward in the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag) in 1812 to resort to a universal conscription service for men called Beväringen or Beväringsinrättningen. The Swedish wars during the first decade of the 19th century had shown the great need of replacement soldiers for the regular standing army. Beväringen was to be a complement and reinforcement of the regular professional army. The act was adopted in the Parliament on October 27, 1812, and the conscription service was to be universal which meant that all able-bodied men fit for military service had to undergo a minimum military training in the armed forces. In 1820 the service time for the draftees was set to 12 days which had to be effected during the first year.For some reason, the hiring of substitutes was allowed, i.e. to pay someone to do the service in his place. This right to avoid conscription made it very unpopular since only wealthy had the possibility of doing so. In 1860 the possibility of hiring substitutes was replaced with a right to redeem conscription. Instead of hiring someone the eligible men paid a commutation fee directly to the Army. This right was abolished in 1872 and from then everyone called up had to do the military service.The conscripts only had to do 12 days of military service per year. However, the service time for conscripts was increased to 30 days (divided into two years) after the Crimean War (1853 - 1856) in the parliament meetings 1856-1858.In 1885 the age classes for conscription were increased from 5 to 12 years of which the last age classes (ages 27 – 32) were assigned to the newly established Landstormen (Veteran Reserve). The military service age was in other words extended 21 - 25 to 21 - 40 years of age. The service time was at the same time extended to 42 days divided into two years. In 1892 a new Army Act was adopted in the Parliament. The liability to conscript service was now increased to 12 years in the Beväringen and 8 years in the Landstormen (in total 20 age classes) and the service time was increased to 90 days. The photo to the right shows soldiers in uniform m/1860 with cap m/1865, most likely Jönköping Regiment (Infantry). The image is published with the consent of Anders Thorstensson.The only legal possibility the authorities in Sweden had to prevent emigration was the general prohibition for conscripts to emigrate to other countries without permission. It is considered to be a connection between avoidance of conscription and emigration. Every time the military service time for conscripts was extended the number of emigrated 20-years old men increased, at least temporarily. It wasn’t that difficult to obtain permission to leave the country though. During the second half of the 1800’s the authorities were generally generous with the permissions. However, at the end of the 1800’s fulfillment of conscription was needed to get permission to emigrate. Without a such exit permit you couldn’t get a moving certificate from the parish minister and thereby not be able to buy an emigrant ticket through an emigrant agent. The Police Departments in the Swedish emigrant ports checked that the regulations were followed and that the emigrants were legal emigrants.The only possibility for eligible men to avoid conscription was illegal emigration. Normally they then went to Copenhagen in Denmark, Oslo or Trondheim in Norway and from there to the United States. It is however, not known how large this illegal emigration was.Between 1682 and 1901 Sweden had a standing professional Army organized within a system called the Allotment System (Indelningsverket). From 1812 to 1901 Sweden also used a conscript system alongside the standing army called Beväringen, as mentioned above. In 1901 both the standing professional army and the Beväringen was abandoned and Sweden instead introduced an army and navy entirely based on a Universal Conscription System called Allmän Värnplikt. In a way Beväringen was a forerunner to the National Service System.The draftees were according to the Universal Conscription Act to undergo a military training for 150 days followed by three compulsory military refresher courses of 30 days each between the second and the fourth year, in total 240 days. In 1914 it increased to 340 days.Every Swedish man was obliged to register for Universal Conscription the year they reached the age of 21. In 1914 the age was lowered to 20 years old. The first draftees received their calling up notice for the new Universal Conscription Service in the spring of 1902.The training of the soldiers in the Conscription System was now held over a longer period of time compared to Beväringen. Each year, a fixed number of new recruits were drafted for military training. When one set of recruits finished their training period a new set of recruits was drafted. Every able-bodied Swede between the ages of 18 (first 21, then 20, later 18 years old) and 30 were liable to do military service.The Swedish Conscription System was inactivated on July 1, 2010. The armed forces thereafter are now based on a system with enlisted soldiers and officers contracted for a specific time (contractual employment) or until further notice.
Years of Famine
Sweden had two hard years of famine in the 1860’s; 1867 and 1868. Worst off were the Norrland provinces and Dalarna and Värmland. The summer of 1867 was cold very wet and the following summer had a devastating drought. The shortage of seed for sowing was extreme and in some places up to a third of all livestock had to be slaughtered. The drought of 1868 primarily hit the southern half of Sweden. The two preceding years were also troublesome; there were poor crops in most places. This meant that the margins were already narrow when the famine struck in 1867; the stores were simply empty. Thousands of people had to hit the roads to bigger cities begging. These years of famine speeded up the emigration to the United States. It has been estimated that about 100,000 Swedes emigrated between 1868 and 1873. See also Regions of Sweden, Map of Swedish provinces
Push and Pull Factors
The early research of the Swedish emigration has explained the emigration by the term “push”; it was something that pushed people to emigrate. People wanted to get away from something — the so-called Push Factor. The early researchers have listed reasons like overpopulation in the countryside, unemployment, years of famine at the same time as it was a boom in the United States and a possibility of getting homestead land (Homestead Act of 1862). Today the historians are more uncertain of the reasons. There was no unemployment during the major parts of the emigration era. In some places there was even a shortage of laborers. There was for long periods of time boom and economic expansion in Sweden with rising wages beside shorter periods now and then.Today the historians believe that it was something that pulled the emigrants to the United States rather than something that pushed them — the so-called Pull Factor. The big country in the West attracted many by its possibilities and not just economical. There was also a personal freedom that they believed they didn’t have in Sweden. However, it is probably a combination of the Push and Pull Factors that forms the background to the mass emigration.
