What has Sweden done for the United States? / 9 (1903) Author: Lars P. Nelson With: Hugo von Hofsten Table of Contents / Innehåll | << Previous | Next >>
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name and fame of Gustaf Adolph is inseparably associated; and glorying in that memory, we
will also remember that when during the long struggle he sometimes feared that liberty of
conscience could never be established upon an enduring basis in Europe, his thoughts turned to
America as the country where his cherished ideal of human society, so far in advance of the
civilization of the age in which he lived, might become a glorious reality.”

AXEL OXENSTJERNA Prime Minister and Chancellor of Sweden, 1611-1654.

The treaty of peace of Westphalia which terminated the Thirty Years’
War is one of the great historical mileposts in human progress, and not only
the Protestant world, but Christendom as a whole, is under lasting obligation
to the men and the nation
who contributed to that
peace and compelled the
making of that treaty; and
of all the human agencies
which were employed and
worked out that result,
Gustaf Adolph and the 83,000
Swedes who laid down their
lives on German battlefields
during eighteen years of that
horrible war, are entitled to
the first consideration. The
peace of Westphalia consists
of two treaties, one between
Sweden and the Austrian
Emperor, signed at
Osnabrück, and one between
France and the Emperor
signed at Münster. The two
together make the famous
compact designated in history as “The Peace of Westphalia,” but the article
that has made this peace famous—made it the “cornerstone of our modern
civilization”—appears only in the Swedish treaty. It is the fourth article,
and it stipulates that the peace treaty of Augsburg of 1555, which established
liberty of worship for the Lutherans, shall be left inviolate and confirmed,
and its provisions and benefits shall also be extended to the Reformed Church
(the Calvinists), so that the three churches—the Catholic, Lutheran and
Reformed—shall have equal rights, equalitas exacta mutuaque.

This principle of religious toleration, of liberty to worship God according
to the dictates of men’s consciences, was insisted upon and put into the treaty

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