Carl Sandburg called Galesburg “a piece of the American Republic” in his autobiography Always the Young Strangers. As he walked to work, read the newspapers, delivered milk or shined shoes in the Union Hotel, he heard the accents of different nationalities as well as the nasal voices of the New Englanders who founded the town. The latter owned most of the businesses, factories and large Victorian houses. Most of them voted Republican.

There was the drawl of the English and Scots-Irish who had been in this country just as long as the New Englanders. They had come by way of Kentucky and Tennessee. They voted Democratic and had done so since before the Civil War.

There were other groups who had come across the Atlantic Ocean and they spoke different languages. Swedish immigrants had come to Galesburg a decade after its founding and they kept coming for several more decades. Gradually, they became business owners and began to participate in local and state politics. Many of them had served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

The Irish came and many of their daughters became school teachers. There was only one French family in Sandburg's neighborhood. Italians arrived and began selling fruits and vegetables from handcarts. There were two Chinese men who laundered and ironed the household linens of other people.

The children of all those immigrants knew there were differences. They called one another nicknames which would not be approved today. If a swear word preceded the nickname, then it was likely a fight would develop. They mocked one another's accents. Carl could do a pretty good imitation of an Irishman. The Irish boys could imitate the Swedish greenhorns just as easily. Their audience laughed until their sides hurt.

Over time, things would change. A Swedish Lutheran boy would marry a Irish Catholic girl and the blending would begin. The children couldn't speak the language of their grandparents.

By the 1890s Galesburg was a town of nearly twenty thousand population. Carl pondered in his mind why so many had come to this place. Of course, there was the chain of relationships that encouraged one family to follow another to Galesburg. There were the letters with glowing descriptions of the prospects for jobs on the railroad. He asked himself if life had been so hard in the places where they came from. During the depression years of that decade, was life so much better here? He was about to come of age and become a full citizen with the right to vote. What was patriotism? It was said America was a “free country,” but what did it mean?

Sandburg spent his life writing about those questions as well as many others. His epic poem, The People, Yes, dwelt on many of those questions.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.