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- What has Sweden Done for the United States?
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country, exhausted by the expenditure of blood and treasure in the Thirty
Years’ War, was brought to the verge of bankruptcy by the disastrous
conclusion of the reign of Charles XII. We cannot, therefore, but admire the
liberality of Sweden toward the descendants of the colonists whom, in the
days of her power and prosperity, she sent forth to America, but whose
spiritual necessities she was anxious to
provide for even in times of her own
deepest depression.”
* *
*
 |
Section of the signatures of the Declaration
of Independence. |
Coming down from the early colonial
to revolutionary times in 1776, we find
one of the sons of the Swedish colonists
sitting as judge in Upland County,
Pennsylvania. John Morton, signer of the
Declaration of Independence, was the
great-great-grandson of Mårten
Mårtensson, who arrived in the colony from
Sweden with Governor Printz, in 1643.
Morton was born in 1725, was well
educated, became a member of the assembly
of Pennsylvania and its speaker in
1772-1775. Soon after his entry into political
life he attended the Stamp Act Congress
in New York, in 1765. He was high
sheriff of the county in 1766-70, and
in his later years president judge of
common pleas, and a judge of the Supreme Court, as well as a member of the
Continental Congress from its beginning, in 1774. On the question of
separation from Great Britain the Pennsylvania delegation was divided. Franklin
and Wilson voted aye; Willing and Humphrey no; Morris and Dickinson
were absent. Taking his seat in the delegation late in July, Judge Morton
showed his patriotism and courage by casting his vote for the Declaration,
thus committing his state to the revolution and offending a number of his
friends who were royalists. This enstrangement weighed upon his mind in
his last hour, and he sent a message to his old friends to this effect: “Tell
them they will live to see the day when they will acknowledge that my
signing the Declaration of Independence was the most glorious service I
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