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Scandinavians, like most people, had many reasons to join the Union army, foremost was their support for President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. When the war began, most immigrant groups in the United States supported the Democrat Party. The nascent Republican Party formed as a coalition of former Whig Party, Free Soil Party, and American Party members. The influence of the former American Party, which was an unapologetically anti-immigrant party, on the Republicans turned off many new immigrants, but not Scandinavians, who mostly lived in rural areas far from the ethnic strife in larger cities.  Scandinavians supported the anti-slavery platform of the Republican Party because they saw it as a cultural and economic threat to their existence as small farmers, but also on moral grounds as evidenced by the anti-slavery resolutions that were adopted by most of the Lutheran synods of the time. <ref> Blegen, p. 419</ref> Scandinavian support for Lincoln and the Republicans was visible in the 1860 and 1864 presidential elections when their votes helped Lincoln carry the upper Midwest by a large margin. <ref> Hokanson, pgs. 60-64</ref> The Lutheran churches played a big role in influencing Scandinavian support for the Union, but the Scandinavian language newspapers played an even larger part.