The first Scandinavian to enter the field of State politics was James D. Reymert, a Norwegian, who represented Racine County in the second constitutional convention of Wisconsin in 1847, and later in the Assembly of that State, first from Racine County and then from Milwaukee County in 1857.[360] He was also a candidate for presidential elector on the Free Soil ticket in 1840.[361] The son of a Scotch mother, and receiving part of his education in Scotland, he was better prepared than other Norwegians for taking part in politics, and for the work of editing the first Norwegian newspaper in America, _Nordlyset_--"The Northern Light"--which appeared in 1847 as a Free Soil organ.[362] In the constitutional convention he was not active in the debates, tho he advocated a six-months' residence as a qualification for voting, saying, "as to foreigners, the sooner they were entitled to vote, the better citizens they would make."[363] For one provision of the Wisconsin constitution he was personally responsible: Article VII, section 16, which directed the legislature to establish courts or tribunals of conciliation.[364] But in spite of the command, "The legislature shall pass laws" for these courts, no such law was ever passed in Wisconsin. [360] _Journal of the Second Convention_, 18; Tenney, _Fathers of Wisconsin_, 249; Langeland, _Nordmændene i Amerika_, 94-96; _Wisconsin Blue Book_, (1895), 141, 173. [361] Langeland, _Nordmændene i Amerika_, 96. [362] _Ibid._, 95. [363] _Journal of the Second Convention_, 31, 129. [364] _Ibid._, 422, 638; Poore, _Charters and Constitutions_ (2nd ed.), 2037. Down to the close of the Civil War the Scandinavians exercised very little influence in State politics. Here and there one or two of them appeared as members of conventions or of the legislatures, but even in Wisconsin the number rarely went above two in a single session of the legislature.[365] By 1870 many of the Norwegians and Swedes were well-to-do, while others who had served in the Civil War returned to their homes with the prestige conferred by honorable service in that great struggle. Furthermore, the suspicion with which foreign-born citizens had been viewed was greatly reduced, if not dissipated, by the highest evidence which any man can give of his patriotism and loyalty to his adopted country. No one might thenceforth deny them any of the rights, privileges, and honors of the political gild. Accordingly the number of them elected to the legislatures in the Northwest after 1870 increases noticeably both in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and in the Dakotas, where rapid material development and growth of population furnished unusual political opportunities which the Norwegians and Swedes were not slow to improve.