GIBBSVILLE, Wisconsin — During demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, last month, protesters tore down the statue of Civil War soldier Hans Christian Heg along with Forward, an 1893 monument commemorating progress in Wisconsin. While attempting to film the demonstrations, Democratic state Sen. Tim Carpenter was beaten up by the crowd. This violence, on the evening of June 24, was spurred on by police arresting a protester who had walked into a restaurant with a baseball bat and bullhorn.
The protester had been taking part in the protests over the police killing of George Floyd, and the reaction by his peers seemed to confirm one of the main critiques of the protests: a penchant for indiscriminate destruction driven in part by historical ignorance.
The Heg statue, which was sculpted by Norwegian American Paul Fjelde and dedicated in 1926, had stood for nearly 95 years. Heg moved to Wisconsin from Norway with his parents in 1840. As a Union soldier, he became a colonel and commanded the 15th Wisconsin Volunteers, a unit composed mostly of men with Scandinavian heritage. He died in 1863 from wounds suffered at the battle of Chickamauga in Georgia.
In response to the destruction of the statue, Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil hopes to name a post office in Muskego after Heg. “Adding his name to his childhood home’s post office will help inform ignorant citizens of what he fought for and his work to fight injustice,” said the Republican representative.
Today, Heg’s grave can be visited in the small town of Norway, Wisconsin, about 650 miles away from where he fell fighting for the Union. His grave in the cemetery of Norway’s Lutheran Evangelical Church is surrounded by the graves of others who have served in America’s armed forces, including many of Heg’s comrades from the 15th Wisconsin.
Two other statues of Heg, identical to the one in Madison, were put up in the 1920s. One stands just down the road from his grave. The other stands in Lier, Norway, Heg’s birthplace. Though his legacy has been forgotten by some, many in these towns still honor his memory.
“Every odd-numbered year, [the people of Lier] have a memorial service,” said Marilyn Canfield, president of the Norway (Wisconsin) Historical Society. “The local school takes part. They have a band. They have speakers, usually someone from the American Embassy.” Canfield believes that Heg rightly deserves this honor. “He came from nothing, he was a poor, young man, and he worked all of his life to make a living for himself and his family, and he wasn’t afraid to stand up for what he believed,” she said.
Heg grew up in a Norwegian immigrant community south of Milwaukee in Muskego. As a teenager, he worked alongside his brother at the Northern Light, the first Norwegian-language newspaper in America. Later, during the Gold Rush, he went to California with three friends to pan for gold in 1849. When his father died in 1851, Heg returned to Muskego to take over the family farm and provide for his younger siblings. He married shortly after.
It was at this time that Heg began getting involved in politics. He became a member of an abolitionist society and fiercely aided in its work to oppose slavery. His participation in the abolitionist movement and work with the new Free Soil political party highlights his strong beliefs about the importance of freedom. In large part, this was because of where he came from.
Heg’s family “came here for religious freedom because the sect that they were in was frowned on. The ministers didn’t like it; it was an evangelical offshoot,” Canfield explained. “He was always interested in local government because they didn’t have governmental freedom in Norway at the time. They had first been under Danish rule, and then they were under Swedish rule, so it was very important for them to have a voice in their government.”
Local Wisconsin writer Steven Fortney published the 1998 novella Heg, about the soldier’s life. One of the things that impressed Fortney about Heg was his work as a prison commissioner before the Civil War. “He was the first Norwegian American to be elected to statewide office; the prison commissioner was an elected position in those days,” Fortney said. “So, what he did was to inaugurate a number of prison reforms: teaching the men trades, working with the men to get them rehabilitated so that when they left prison, they would not necessarily return. This became a very famous movement, and people from all over the country came to the Waupun prison to look at his methods.”
In 1861, two years after being elected as prisoner commissioner, the Civil War broke out. Since other immigrant groups, such as the Irish and the Germans, were organizing units to fight in the war, Wisconsin’s Gov. Alexander Randall asked Heg to form one composed of Scandinavians. Heg took this duty seriously and wrote several appeals to the men of his community to take up arms and fight for the Union. “The government of our adopted country is in danger,” he wrote on Oct. 5, 1861. “That which we learned to love as freemen in our old Fatherland — our freedom, our government, our independence — is threatened with destruction. Is it not our duty as brave and intelligent citizens to extend our hands in defense of the cause of our country and of our own home?”
During Heg’s time leading the 15th Wisconsin, he saw action in multiple battles, including Island No. 10, Perryville, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga. At Perryville, Heg had his horse shot from under him and later, with his troops, helped take a Confederate cannon.
Many were saddened by Heg’s loss after he died from wounds suffered at Chickamauga. “The State has sent no braver soldier, and no truer patriot to aid in this mighty struggle for national unity, than Hans Christian Heg,” wrote the Wisconsin State Journal in 1863. Fortney wonders what the future might have held for Heg had he survived the war. “The Norwegian American community felt the loss keenly because here was a man who had already won a statewide office, who was very skilled politically, and who died far too early,” he said.
Yet his death on the battlefield did not tarnish the power of his legacy. For years after, Heg was held up as a hero for many, especially in the Norwegian American community. He embodied the ideals of America: hardworking, diligent, civic-minded, and enthused with a love of freedom and a willingness to sacrifice for its cause.
Heg’s story is representative of the experiences of many immigrants to America at the time. As Fortney explained, “The story was, with so many Norwegian men for all practical purposes, [that they] stepped off the boat when they got here and into a blue uniform.”
The ignorance of the protesters tearing down Heg’s statue further highlights the importance of historical knowledge and education. “Here is a man who basically gave his life in combating slavery, and for some reason, they decided to tear that statue down and destroy it,” Fortney lamented. “And the irony of that is of course that the people that did that had no idea of the history of the man whose reputation they were destroying by destroying the statue.”
Heg’s own words to his wife during the Civil War proved prophetic. “You may be a widow,” he wrote, “but you will never be the widow of a coward.”
Leif Le Mahieu is a journalist whose work has appeared in outlets such as WORD and Religion Unplugged.
