“On liberty and equality”

This chapter argues that Scandinavian immigrants’ desire for land ownership and social mobility laid bare the discrepancy between their egalitarian ideals and a white racial reality after the Civil War. With abolition achieved in 1865, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish ethnic leaders in America quickly withdrew active political support for freedpeople’s economic opportunities. Instead, they regularly interpreted discussions over race and ethnicity through an Old World colonial mindset where white Scandinavians were perceived as more deserving of political and economic opportunities than other minority groups in the New World.