202 C. F. Adams Two and fifty years ago, when, in the summer of 1848, Wisconsin first took shape as an organized political organization, — a new factor in man's development, — human evolution was laboring over two problems, — nationality and slavery. Slavery — that is, the owner- ship of one man or one class of men by another man or class of men — had existed, and been accepted as a matter of course, from the beginning. Historically the proposition did not admit of doubt. In Great Britain, bondage had only recently disappeared, and in Russia it was still the rule ; while among the less advanced nations its rightfulness was nowhere challenged. With us here in America it was a question of race. The equality of whites before the law was an article of political faith ; not so that of the blacks. The Afri- cans were distinctly an inferior order of being, and, as such, not only in the Southern or slave states, but throughout the North also, not entitled to the unrestricted pursuit on equal terms of life, liberty and happiness. Hence a fierce contention, — the phase, as it presented itself on the land discovered by Columbus in 1492, of the struggle inaugurated by Luther in 15 17. Its work was thus, so to speak, cut out for Wisconsin in advance of its being, — its place in the design of the great historical scheme prenatally assigned to it. How then did it address itself to its task ? how perform the work thus given it to do ? Did it, standing in the front rank of progress, help the great scheme along ? Or, identifying itself with that reac- tionist movement ever on foot, did it strive with the stars in their courses ? Here, in the United States, the form in which the issue of the future took shape between 1830, when it first presented itself, and 1848, when Wisconsin entered the sisterhood of states, is even yet only partially understood, in such occult ways did the forces of development interact and exercise influence on each other. For reasons not easy to explain, also, certain states came forward as the more active exponents of antagonistic ideas, — on the one side Mas- sachusetts ; on the other, first, Virginia, and, later, South Carolina. The great and long sustained debate which closed in an appeal to force in the spring of 1861 must now be conceded as something well-nigh inevitable from fundamental conditions which dated from the beginning. It was not a question of slavery ; it was one of nationality. The issue had presented itself over and over again, in various forms and in different parts of the country ever since the Constitution had been adopted, — now in Pennsylvania ; now in Ken- tucky ; now in New England ; even here in Wisconsin ; but, in its most concrete form, in South Carolina. It was a struggle for mas- tery between centripetal and centrifugal forces. At the close, slavery
