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- What has Sweden Done for the United States?
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by the Swedish delegates, Johan Oxenstjerna (son of the Chancellor) and
Johan Adler Salvius. They were the chief representatives of the Protestants,
and the Emperor and all the Catholic delegates from Austria, France, Spain
and Italy had to submit and consent to the incorporation in the treaty of this
great principle, much as it was against their will to do so. Both on the
battlefield and in the councils of state Sweden wrought for the oppressed; she
sent her statesmen to plead with the mighty, and her soldiers to fight with
their armies, with equal success. The world can never repay her for the
great sacrifice of human lives which she laid upon the altar of humanity in
the Thirty Years’ War.
The death of the King, November 6, 1632, prevented him from realizing
his plan of American colonization, but he left it a legacy to his Secretary of
State, the famous chancellor, Axel Oxenstjerna, by whom the project was
carried out and the American Colony established.
* *
*
After the death of Gustaf Adolph, his daughter Christina—then only six
years old—was proclaimed Queen, and a regency, with Oxenstjerna at the head,
was appointed, which carried on the government during the Queen’s minority.
It was during this period, and under the direction of the Chancellor, that the
Swedish Colony on the banks of the Delaware was founded in 1638.
Ten expeditions in fifteen ships were sent by Sweden to America from
1637 to 1654, during the time that Oxenstjerna, as Prime Minister and
Chancellor, ruled Sweden. His instructions to Governor Printz—who was sent
out in 1643—says an American author, Edward Armstrong, “are minute and
exhibit great knowledge upon the river, combined with great shrewdness and
practical good sense. They form the most important State paper yet
discovered relating to the settlement upon our shores, as connected with this period of
our annals.”
William Penn has been much praised for his treatment of the Indians,
but few people know that Penn’s Indian policy was originated by Axel
Oxenstjerna, and that Penn merely adapted it from the Swedes, who had
practiced it for more than forty years before Penn came into the country. When
Minuit landed on Christina Creek with the first expedition he immediately
sought the Indian chiefs who were in possession of the shores of the river,
and bought and paid liberally for the land he wanted, on which to settle the
colony. His orders from the Swedish Government were “to buy the land from
the Indians and perfect the title by immediate settlement on it, and live in
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