The Black Hawk War not merely settled the Indian question so far as Wisconsin was concerned, but made the region better known, and gave an appreciable impetus to its growth. A series of Indian treaties in 1829, 1831, 1832 and 1833 extinguished the Indian titles and opened up to settlement a vast area of new land. The first newspaper, the Green Bay Intelligencer, began publication in 1833. In 1834 two land offices were opened, and by 1836, 878,014 acres of land had been sold to settlers and speculators. A special census showed a population of more than 11,000 in 1836. The new growth started a movement for a separate Territorial organization for that part of Michigan lying west of Lake Michigan, but this was not finally accomplished until 1836, when Michigan entered the Union. The new Territory of Wisconsin comprised not only the area included in the present state, but the present Iowa and Minnesota and a considerable portion of North and South Dakota.[1] Henry Dodge (1782-1867) was appointed its first governor by President Jackson The first Territorial Council met in 1836 at Old Belmont, now Leslie, Lafayette county, but in December of that year Madison was selected as the capital, after a contest in which Fond du Lac, Milwaukee, Racine, Green Bay, Portage and other places were considered, and in which James Duane Doty, later governor, owner of the Madison town plat, was charged with bribing legislators with town lots in Madison. In 1838 the Territory of Iowa was erected out of all that part of Wisconsin lying west of the Mississippi. The movement for the admission of Wisconsin to the Union was taken up in earnest soon after 1840, and after several years' agitation, in which Governor Doty took a leading part, on the 10th of August 1846 an Enabling Act introduced in Congress by Morgan L. Martin, the Territorial delegate, received the approval of President Polk. Meanwhile the Territorial legislature had passed favourably on the matter, and in April the act was ratified by a popular vote of 12,334 to 2487. The first constitution drafted was rejected (5th April 1847) owing to the articles relating to the rights of married women, exemptions, the elective judiciary, &c. A second convention, thought to be more conservative than the first, drafted another constitution, which on the 13th of March 1848 was adopted by 16,799 ayes and 6394 noes. The constitution was approved by Congress and signed by the president on the 29th of May 1848; the first state election had already been held on the 8th of May, and Governor Nelson Dewey and other state officers were sworn into office on the 7th of June. In the same year the free public school system was established, and the great stream of German immigration set in. Railway construction began in 1851. Wisconsin was a strong anti-slavery state. In 1854 one of the first steps in the organization of the Republican party (q.v.) was taken at Ripon. In the same year a fugitive slave named Glover was seized at Racine and was afterward rescued by an anti-slavery mob from Milwaukee; the State Supreme Court rendered a decision which declared the Fugitive Slave Law to be null and void in Wisconsin.
In 1856 a contested election for the governorship between Governor William A. Barstow (1813-1865), a candidate for re-election, and his Republican opponent, Coles Bashford (1816-1878), threatened to result in civil war. But the courts threw out “supplementary returns” (possibly forged by the canvassers) and decided in favour of Bashford, who was the first Republican to hold an office; with two exceptions Wisconsin has elected Republican governors ever since. The state gave its electoral vote for Lincoln in 1860 and supported the administration during the Civil War. The policy of the state to keep its regiments full rather than send new regiments to the front made the strength of a Wisconsin regiment, according to General W. T. Sherman, frequently equal to a brigade. The whole number of troops furnished by Wisconsin during the war was 91,379. In January 1874 a Democratic Liberal Reform administration came into power in the state with William R. Taylor as governor. At the legislative session which followed, the Potter law, one of the first attempts to regulate railway rates, was passed. The railways determined to evade the law, but Taylor promptly brought suit in the State Supreme Court and an injunction was issued restraining the companies from disobedience. In 1876, however, the Republicans regained control of the state government and the law was modified. In 1889 the passage of the Bennett law, providing for the enforcement of the teaching of English in all public and parochial schools, had a wide political effect. The Germans, usually Republicans, roused for the defence of their schools, voted the Democratic state ticket at the next state election (1890), with the result that George Wilbur Peck,[2] the Democratic nominee, was chosen governor by 30,000 plurality. The Bennett law was at once repealed, but not until 1895 did the Republicans regain control of the administration. It was accomplished then after a Democratic gerrymander had been twice overthrown in the courts. Since that time, however, the Republican party has grown more secure, and it has placed on the statute books a series of radical and progressive enactments in regard to railway rate legislation and taxation, publicity of campaign expenditures and a state-wide direct primary law (1905). In all these reforms a leading part was taken by Governor Robert M. LaFollette (b. 1855), who was elected to the United States Senate in 1905. Opposition to his political programme resulted in a serious split in the Republican ranks, the opposition taking the old name of “Stalwarts” and his followers came to be known as “Halfbreeds.” Governor LaFollette, however, could draw enough support from the Democrats to maintain the control of the state by the Republicans. Wisconsin had several times been visited by disastrous forest fires. One in the north-eastern counties (Oconto, Brown, Door, Shawano, Manitowoc and Kewaunee) in 1871 resulted in the loss of more than a thousand lives. Another serious fire occurred in the north-west in July 1894.
| Governors of Wisconsin | ||
| Territorial. | ||
| Henry Dodge | Democrat | 1836-1841 |
| James Duane Doty | Whig | 1841-1844 |
| Nathaniel P. Tallmadge | ” | 1844-1845 |
| Henry Dodge | Democrat | 1845-1848 |
| State. | ||
| Nelson Dewey | Democrat | 1848-1852 |
| Leonard J. Farwell | ” | 1852-1854 |
| William A. Barstow | ” | 1854-1856 |
| Arthur McArthur[3] | Republican | 1856 |
| Coles Bashford | ” | 1856-1858 |
| Alex. W. Randall | ” | 1858-1862 |
| Louis P. Harvey | ” | 1862 |
| Edward Salomon | ” | 1862-1864 |
| James T. Lewis | ” | 1864-1866 |
| Lucius Fairchild | ” | 1866-1872 |
| C. C. Washburn | ” | 1872-1874 |
| William R. Taylor | Democrat | 1874-1876 |
| Harrison Ludington | Republican | 1876-1878 |
| William E. Smith | ” | 1878-1882 |
| Jeremiah M. Rusk | ” | 1882-1889 |
| William D. Hoard | ” | 1889-1891 |
| George W. Peck | Democrat | 1891-1895 |
| William H. Upham | Republican | 1895-1897 |
| Edward Scofield | ” | 1897-1901 |
| Robert M. LaFollette[4] | ” | 1901-1906 |
| James O. Davidson[5] | ” | 1906-1911 |
| F. E. McGovern | ” | 1911- |
- ↑ Wisconsin, as the last state to be created wholly out of the old North-West Territory, was the loser in boundary disputes with neighbouring states. As originally planned, Wisconsin would have included that part of Illinois west of a line running across the southern end of Lake Michigan; and the inhabitants of this tract actually voted to join Wisconsin, but Congress paid no attention to their demands, and this strip of land, including Chicago, became a part of Illinois. After the Toledo War (see Toledo, Ohio), to recompense Michigan for her losses to Ohio the northern peninsula, geographically a part of the Wisconsin region, was given to Michigan. Finally a larger tract of land E. of the Mississippi, which include St Paul, part of Minneapolis and Duluth, was cut off from Wisconsin on her admission to the Union to form with other land farther west the new Territory of Minnesota. See “The Boundaries of Wisconsin” in vol. xi. of Wisconsin Historical Collections.
- ↑ Peck (b. 1840) was a printer and then a journalist, founded in 1874 at La Crosse the Sun, which in 1878 he removed to Milwaukee, and was the author of many humorous sketches, notably a series of volumes of which the hero is “Peck's Bad Boy.”
- ↑ Lieut.-Governor; succeeded Barstow, who resigned during a contest with Bashford.
- ↑ Resigned to become a member of the United States Senate.
- ↑ Lieut.-Governor: elected governor in 1906 and 1908.
