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Swiss, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes, the
Dutch, the Flemish; that the independence of this
country was not achieved by Anglo-Saxons only and
their descendants, but would not have been and
could not have been achieved without the patriotism,
the ready sacrifice and the unflinching valor of these
same races; that without them even the declaration
of independence might never have seen the light, and
certainly the adoption of our constitution and the
Union of our States would not have been
accomplished ; that the vast empire of the old Northwest
would not have been conquered for the Union and
freed from Indian savagery but for the unerring rifle
and unflinching courage of the frontiersmen, largely
composed of the descendants of these same races,
and but for the hosts, which these same teutonic
nations sent over during the middle and latter part
of the 19th century would not have been changed
in the short space of a century from a howling
wilderness into one of the most highly cultivated and
civilized regions on this globe’s surface; and that
the land beyond the Mississippi without those hosts
would only have begun to be colonized, and those
sparkling gems in the sisterhood of American States,
Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and your own
Swedish-American empire Minnesota, would still be
in a territorial condition.
#■
And, last but not least: that the terrible conflict,
the ’war of the secession, would not have been decided
in favor of the North, the Union would not have
been preserved and human slavery would still exist
south of Mason and Dixon’s line and maybe north
of it, but for the hundreds of thousands of Teutons
i
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