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and is destined to become an important place for our
Swedish Lutheran church, and a residence of four years
has thoroughly convinced me that no other state in the
whole union will be so thickly populated with Swedes
and their descendants as Minnesota.” People who
judged Minnesota by the rocky hills along the
Mississippi to St. Paul, or up the Minnesota to Carver, or up
the St. Croix to Stillwater, and pronounced the state a
“humbug,” were not acquainted with the real Minnesota.
He urged the Galesburg Swedes to consider the following
advantages of Minnesota: a climate like that of Sweden
and the most healthful in the United States; plenty of
good land; an already considerable Swedish population;
concentration in a single state would insure the
maintenance of Swedish churches and schools.
Louis Lybecker, of St. Louis, Missouri, who had heard
of the Galesburg movement, was most enthusiastic about
Minnesota. [1] “My knowledge about Kansas,” he wrote,
“is such that from the bottom of my heart I never want
to think of it. What is a home for us Nordboer without
summer, without snow, without woods and water? Are
we used to an endless prairie with its eternal monotony?
No; we feel at home when we find ourselves surrounded
by a herrlig nature, of evergreen forests along a lake
or river. Then we can say ‘New Sweden.’ Let us found
a colony in southwestern Minnesota, or near our
countrymen in that state. Let us not forget the north. I
have never been in Minnesota, but it seems to me it is
the right place for Swedes. Within a few years the road
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