USA > Wisconsin > A political history of Wisconsin > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
?
On the first day of July, 1841, a Whig convention was held in Madison and Jonathan E. Arnold of Milwaukee was nominated as a delegate to Congress. On the 19th of July a Democratic convention assembled at the capitol and ex-Governor Henry Dodge was named as the Democratic candidate. General Dodge was elected by 507 majority.
Speaking of Jonathan E. Arnold, the Hon. Joshua Stark, who practiced at the bar with him, says: "His intellectual gifts were of a high order, and by study and discipline he had acquired the ability to use them with great power. He was a master of logic, was graceful and polished in diction-able, however, with consummate art. to suit expression to the mental capacity and cui- ture of his hearers, and was grave, earnest and often impassioned as an orator." Mr. Arnold was a Whig until the final collapse of that party in 1852. Then his conservatism led him into the Democratic party, where he remained until the breaking out of the slaveholders' rebellion, when he joined the Republican party.
No sooner had the Whigs of the territory perfected a thor- ough organization of their party, as the result of their enthusiastic
.
.
18
32
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
meeting held in Milwaukee on the first of January. 1841, than the Democrats were invited to take action also along the same line, for although some initial steps had been taken looking to . a more compact organization and the drawing of party lines. there were some counties that stood aloof whose people regarded local issues as of more importance to thein than party divisions upon national politics. A meeting of leading Democrats was - held in Madison on the 14th of January and resolved to call a territorial convention of delegates on the HIth of February. Accordingly, in pursuance of the call of the Central Committee, a committee consisting of 134 delegates assembled at the capitol at the time designated, with Morgan L. Martin as the president. The Committee on Resolutions reported a lengthy platform, and the Democrats in the different counties were urged to perfect their local party machinery as speedily as possible and to be prepared to act in unison with the territorial Central Committee.
.
Note-Charles Dickens, the celebrated novelist, was traveling in this country at the time of this sad tragedy, and as society in America in 1836 was not as refined as it is in 1808, Mr. Dickens saw much to impress him unfavorably with our manners and customs, and summoned all his literary skill to turn it to the disadvantage of the new world.
-
..
·
CONSIN 1888-35
. .
CHAPTER IH.
POLITICS IN THE TERRITORY.
The dispute over the boundaries of Wisconsin was earnest, sometimes bitter, and continued from the organization of the ter- - ritory until the question was finally settled by the admission of - the State into the Union, and the lines were definitely fixed by the Congress. The Ordinance of 1787 (Article 5) provided that "there shall be formed in said territory not less than three nor more than five States": and it then went on to define the boun- daries of cach State, but not very clearly, and then it added this proviso, which opened the door for much controversy: ,"Pro- vided, * that the boundaries of these three States shall be subject so far to be altered, that, if Congress shall hereafter find it expedient; they shall have authority to form one or two States in that part of the said territory which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan." If it had been determined to carve only three States out of this Northwest territory, instead of five, there would have been no controversy, and had this been done, probably the State of Wisconsin would never have been heard of; but there were five States, and ours was the last one to be constructed; hence the angry and fruitless controversy. When Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan were admitted into the Union, each one was allowed a large slice of territory which did not properly belong to it by any fair construction of the Ordinance of 1787, and the result was that Governors Dodge and Doty contended that Wis- consin, as the fifth State, had been despoiled of a rich portion of her birthright, and all the Territorial Legislatures, and both con- ventions which met to frame a constitution, took the same view of it. The object of this alleged robbery on the part of our neighbors was to gain harbors on the great lakes, and no man
.
33
34
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
can say now that the Federal Union is not stronger for it. Ohio began the trespass, and the others followed suit. If the deal had been a square one, as the territorial statesmen viewed it. : Wisconsin would have had the Upper Peninsula part of Michi- gan, a strip sixty miles wide along the north end of Illinois, . including the ground now occupied by the city of Chicago, and on the north the land upon which the cities of St. Paul, Minne- apolis and Duluth now stand! A magnificent territory truly, and it is no wonder that the first settlers in Wisconsin made earnest objection to the injustice of what they considered a shameful transaction. They did protest vigorously, but as all the other States had been admitted, and their boundaries fixed by the act of Congress, they had to submit .. and take what was left or con- tinne under territorial vassalage. As Ohio and Michigan nearly came to blows over their boundary line, so the Governors and the Territorial Legislatures of Wisconsin made it unpleasant for the people of Northern Illinois and the Congress of the United States. Governor Dodge issued proclamations and warned intruders off the disputed territory. He had local elections held in fourteen of the northern counties of Illinois, and. strange as it may now seem, the vote showed that the inhabitants preferred to be attached to Wisconsin. But under Doty's lead the Territorial Legisla- ture of 1843 - 1844 took up the subject of the "ancient" boun- daries, meaning thereby the lines supposed to have been fixed by the Ordinance of 1787. and addressed Congress in very plain and threatening language. The resolutions adopted by the Legis- lature informed Congress that if Wisconsin could not come into the Union with her boundaries fixed about as she wanted them. she "would be a State out of the Union," and carry on business . on her own account. The resolutions were undoubtedly written by Doty himself, as the style is precisely the same as that employed by him in IS40 in his celebrated manifesto published while he was a delegate in Congress, and intended to aid in the defeat of Martin Van Buren for the presidency. The humorous part of the whole proceeding was the attempt to bully Congress into an agreement to carry out a system of internal improvements as a compensation for the damage that had been done to Wisconsin's
.
·
1729710
35
A POLITIC.IL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
boundaries. These improvements contemplated a railroad across the State, making navigable the Fox, Wisconsin and Rock rivers, and the improvement of all the principal harbors on Lake Michi- gan. It is needless to say that Congress paid no attention what- ever to these imperious demands, nor to the belligerent attitude assumed by the Territorial Legislature, whose language was more defiant and less respectful towards the federal authorities than the decision of our Supreme Court ten years later. When Wisconsin adopted a constitution, after two trials, "republican in form"- having purged herself of contempt -- she was admitted into the Union "on an equality with the other States," and she has since proved her loyalty to the old flag and to constitutional liberty by sending 90,000 of her sons to fight in defense of the integrity of the nation!
A few important points should not have been overlooked by our territorial fathers in this boundary discussion. (1) The Ordi- nance of 1787 is practically in its essential features the same as the Ordinance of 1784, which was presented to Congress by Mr. Jefferson on the same day that Virginia relinquished her claim to her portion of the Northwest territory, for the government of the same. (2) The proposed Ordinance of 1784 contemplated the making of ten States. instead of five, and herein Nathan Dane, Richard Henry Lee and Manasseh Cutler improved upon the draft of Jefferson three years before. Had there been ten States, Wis- consin would not have been as well off as she is now. (3) Con- gress had complete and absolute control over the whole matter in dispute from the start. (4) Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Michi- gan, being admitted into the Union, and their boundaries defined by act of Congress, it would have been difficult and unprecedented for the Congress to have made any alterations afterwards. (5) Wisconsin has a magnificent area as the lines are now fixed, quite expansive enough for all practical purposes, considerably larger than either Indiana or Ohio. She possesses now more than one fiith of all the territory which was covered by the Ordinance of 1787.
A bitter and long protracted quarrel in the Democratic party during the years of 1843 and 1844 -- if Doty could be called a
-
.
36
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
Democrat-enlivened the life of the local Democracy, and fur- nished amusement for the Whigs and anti-slavery men. Judge James Duane Doty, who had been appointed Governor by Presi- dent John Tyler as a reward-for his work in helping to defeat Van Buren, got into a long controversy with the Legislative Assembly, and the Governor got the worst of it. When the Legislature assembled Doty refused to recognize it, for the reason, as the Governor alleged, that there was no money to pay its expenses, though the real reason undoubtedly was that Doty feared an official investigation into his conduct as treasurer of the funds appropriated by Congress to build public buildings at Madison. - After several vain attempts on the part of the Legislature to obtain recognition from the Governor and proceed with the busi- ness of the session, the Legislature addressed a memorial "To John Tyler, President of the United States," setting forth all their grievances at great length, and ended by saying: "For the rea- sons above set forth we respectfully, yet earnestly, request, your Excellency to remove James D. Doty from the office of Governor of the Territory of Wisconsin." This memorial passed the Council unanimously, and in the House there were only two votes against it. Henry Dodge, who had been removed from the office of Governor to make way for Doty, was then the territorial delegate in Congress, and he owed Doty no goed will. As soon as Dodge had received this memorial from the Legislature, he addressed an official communication to the President, praying for Doty's removal and assigning many weighty reasons therefor, none ci which had any effect upon Tyler. The Legislature adjourned from the tenth day of December to, the last Monday in January, 1843, when they found Governor Doty was still incorrigible and would hold no communication with them. The Legislature then adjourned until the 6th of March. when it was convoked by Doty's proclamation, but before it dissolved it fired the following part- ing shot at Governor Doty:
"Resolved, That the conduet of Governor Doty, in again refus- ing to meet the Legislature, after he has been officially iniermed that an appropriation has been made by Congress to defray its expenses, is another evidence of his violation of law, and utter
.
37
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
disregard of the duties of his station, and of the wishes and inter- ests of the people."
'The case against Doty was carried into court, but owing to the law's delay. no judgment was ever obtained against him. Doty was openly and repeatedly charged by the Legislature and by Governor Dodge with conniving with others to defraud the territory, and it cannot be said that he ever cleared himself of those serious allegations.
In 1844 the vote against statehood was more decided than ever before, being "yes." 1.503 and "no." 5.343.
In 1844 President Tyler finally removed Doty and appointed Nathaniel P. Tallmadge in his place. Tallmadge was an old New York politician of variable politics, beginning life as a Whig, and ending his political career as a Tyler man. He was graduated at Union College and trained as a lawyer. He was conspicuous in the New York Legislature and finally got elected to the United States Senate. from that State. He was a man of high character and fine ability. He held the office of Governor of the territory less than one year, giving way to Henry Dodge, who was . appointed again by President Polk, so that Dodge enjoyed the distinction of being the first and the last territorial Governor of Wisconsin. Governor Tallmadge resided at Fond du Lac, after he retired from the gubernatorial chair. where he practiced his profession. He died at Battle Creek, Mich., in 1864. Not being a resident of the State when he was appointed Governor, his appointment was not well received by many of the Democrats in the territory, who were of the opinion that Wisconsin could furnish men who were perfectly competent and willing to fill all the offices from the highest to the lowest.
There was not much anti-slavery agitation in Wisconsin during the territorial epoch until 1843. Not having the privilege of vot . ing for President in the exciting "Hard Cider" campaign. of 1840 when William Henry Harrison (Whig) defeated Martin Van Buren (Democrat). there was no show of hands by the Liberty · party in Wisconsin, and it is only guesswork how many votes James G. Birney would have pelled in the territory if ar. electoral ticket had been in the field. When it is remembered. that the (4)
3S
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
Whig and the Democratic parties did not draw the party lines very strictly in the territory until 184t. it is not strange that the little handful of Abolitionists in the territory should be slow in organizing. But the leaven was at work leavening the whole lump. If they were debarred from active participation in national politics, they were still American citizens, and intensely interested in public affairs. Many of the pioneers had been active in the ranks of the Liberty party in the States from which they came. and were quietly doing missionary work in Wisconsin among their neighbors. In the Icad mines the sentiment was decidedly for slavery, that section of the territory having been mostly settled by emigrants from the slave-holding States, and a few slaves had been imported to work in the lead mines. The Milwaukee Courier of May 24th, 1843, then in editorial charge of J. A. Noonan, gives an account of a debate on the Abolition question at Potosi lasting . two evenings, the anti-slavery side being maintained by Rev. Mr. Mathews and Joseph Mills, and the pro-slavery side being argued by C. K. Lord and Rev. Mr. Mitchell of the Methodist church. At the close, the meeting, which was very large, decided in favor of the pro-slavery side, the defenders of Abolition getting only 4 votes. The Courier adds that "the people out there are making poor use of their time in attending Abolition meetings," and it advised them to keep away.
..
In the eastern and southern portion of the territory which had been preempted by men from the older Northern States, the feel- ing against slavery was strong, even among the old line Whigs and "Hunker" Democrats, as they were called, but they voted the regular party ticket because slavery was intrenched in the Constitution, and they believed in obeying the laws. In 184-4. when it was proposed to annex .Texas, which was capable of making five States as large as Ohio, and in which slavery had already secured a permanent foothold, the free North began to enter indignant protests against the admission of any more slave States. That presidential campaign was a very exciting one. almost as much so as the one that had preceded it in which the Whigs had been successful for the first time since they elected John Quincy Adams by such a close shave in the House of Repre-
·
.
39
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
sentatives in 1824. James K. Polk of Tennessee, a slaveholder. was the nominee for the presidency on the Democratie ticket, and he and his party were both unqualifiedly committed to the scheme of annexation. . The slavehoklers were almost solid for Polk because they believed that Texas would eventually be carved into five separate States, and that would enable them to keep control of the United States Senate, and counterbalance the new free States that were likely soon to be admitted from the Northwest. Henry Clay was the nomince of the Whig party, and while he and the Whig party were as pro-slavery as the Democrats, it was known that in the North many Whigs were to be found who were against the admission of any more slave States, and as the annexation of Texas, if it should be consummated, was sure to involve us in a war with Mexico, as it did, they were violently opposed to it, and their defection threatened Mr. Clay's candidacy. To appease this feeling of opposition in the North in the States that Mr. Clay hoped to carry, he was induced to write a public letter concerning the annexation of Texas, and that letter destroyed his chances of an election. Horace Greeley, of The New York Tribune, then the most widely circulated and influen- tial Whig newspaper in the country, was of the opinion that the chances were all in favor of Mr. Clay's election up to that tinie, but that epistle turned the tide against him and Greeley threw up the sponge. The result was that Polk was elected, Texas was annexed, we had war with Mexico, which ended by Mexico ced- ing New Mexico and California to Uncle Sam, and inaugurating a controversy that was the cause of the repeal of the Missouri compromise, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Civil War of 1861-5. and the emancipation of 4.000.000 of slaves. All this was not done in a day. The people of Wisconsin entered heartily into the discus- sion of national affairs during the Polk-Clay presidential election. and parties became more compact and coherent. The anti-slavery sentiment began to manifest itself where it had before been with- out form and void. An Abolition Society was formed in Racine county in 1840 and a Territorial Anti-slavery Society in 1842. but it attracted little notice at the time. In 1843 E. D. Holton
.
.
8
1 40
A POLITIC.IL. HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
was elected sheriff of Milwaukee county before its separation from what is now Waukesha county, over William A. Barstow, after- ward Governor of the State, and the alert Democratic Milwaukee Courier of that date declared that its candidate for sheriff had been beaten by Abolition votes. The admission of The Courier encouraged the Liberty men, and they held a territorial conven- tion at Madison in the fall and nominated Jonathan Spooner as their candidate for delegate to Congress. Spooner thought more of the Whig party at that time than he did of the Liberty party, and he took the stump against his own candidacy and succeeded in keeping his vote down to 153, against 4.685 for the Democratic, and 3, 184 for the Whig candidate. Then there was a lull until after the election of Polk in .1844. In 1845 E. D. Holton was nominated as the Liberty party candidate for delegate to Con- gress, but he only received 790 votes. In 1847 Charles Durkee was nominated for Congress, but only got a few more votes than Holton did two years before. The Liberty men were without the aid of an organ and the Whig and Democratic papers con- tinued to pour hot shot into "the friends of liberty." The Mil- waukee Sentinel of February 26, 1845. in a labored editorial, tried to show that the Liberty men who had voted for their own can- didate for President in 1844 really threw away their votes and might have elected Clay and thus prevented the annexation of Texas, and averted war with Mexico. The Abolition vote would have carried New York for Clay, and that would have insured his election. "The guilt of annexation," said The Sentinel, "if it is accomplished. must rest upon this self-styled Liberty party. They could have cast their votes so as to prevent annexation. * * In the future let it be known by its true name. the Pro-slavery party. It uttered long and bitter denunciations against the Whigs. and lent its aid to the locofocos, the open and unblush- ing advocates of annexation." This admission that the anti-slav- ery element, by whatever name, already held the balance of power in some of the Eastern States, greatly encouraged the Abolitionists to persevere in Wisconsin, and they worked on with renewed zeal and energy. They soon established The American Freeman at Waukesha as their organ, and in 1846 the vote for equal suffrage
-
-
.
·
. A POLITIC.IL. HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 41
was nearly 8,000, which was regarded as a semi-abolition vote. In 1848, the State having been admitted into the Union, they placed a full State ticket in the field, with Charles Durkee as their candidate for Governor. He polled but 1.134 votes. But there was a portentous cloud in the political sky no bigger than a man's hand that was soon to develop into a cyclone. John Quincy. Adams had been censured for presenting a petition to the House of Representatives from some Massachusetts Quakers, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, but he stood up manfully for the inalienable right of petition. although he stood almost alone. The French ship Creole, laden with slaves for the island of Cuba, was obliged to seek shelter from a violent storm in one of our seaports. and Congressman Joshua Giddings, of Ohio, introduced resolutions in the House declaring that as the slave trade had been forbidden by our laws, and was there- . fore illegal, consequently the slaves on board the Creole were free and entitled to their liberty. This incident so outraged the slave- holders in Congress that they refused to pass the resolution, but · censured Giddings for his temerity instead. The attack upon free speech caught the attention of two Wisconsin newspapers at least, The Milwaukee Sentinel, then a stalwart Whig organ, under the editorial management of the late Judge Jason Downer, which ventured to say that the Giddings censure was an attempt to abridge the liberty of speech, but the Democratic Milwaukee Courier denounced Giddings as "a groveling-minded man. intent on infamous notoriety." It heartily approved of the rough treat- ment which Giddings had received. Other papers in the territory took the same view of it. Mr. Giddings immediately resigned his seat, went home to his constituents (the grand old Nineteenth Ohio Congressional district, that afterwards gave the country James A Garfield), and he was reelected by an overwhelming majority.
The anti-slavery party still lacked the stimulus that was soon . to be given it by the arrogance and indiscretion of the slave power. The infamous Kansas-Nebraska act had not been passed; Senator Summer had not been beaten almost to death with a club in the hands of "bully Brooks," of South Carolina, for having spoken,
.
42
A POLITIC.IL. HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
in the Senate, of slavery as a "barbarous" institution: the Fugitive Slave act had not been passed: the Dred Scott decision had not been written; the doctrine of squatter sovereignty had not been adopted as a Democratic tenet: the great debate on the extension `of slavery between Lincoln and Douglas had not aroused the people of the North like a fire-bell ringing at midnight; Uncle Tom's Cabin had not been published and the Republican party had not been organized.
,
CHAPTER IV.
THE TERRITORIAL. DELEGATES AND THE DEFEATED CANDIDATES.
The delegates in Congress from Wisconsin during the terri- torial epoch were a group of men who were noted for their natural ability, practical acquaintance with the West and its needs, and they were all men who had received a good education. George W. Jones had been a delegate in the Twenty-fourth Congress (1835-6) from a portion of Michigan, and after the admission of that State he had been recommended to represent Wisconsin as a person "possessed of integrity and weight of character," and he was elected with little opposition. But before his term expired he acted as the second for Jonathan Cilley, a -member of Con- gress from Maine, in a duel with William J. Graves, of Kentucky, in which the former was instantly killed. They fought with rifles at eighty yards' distance, and three shots were exchanged, the third proving fatal. The duel was one of the most senseless and atrocious ever recorded in this country, and shocked the moral sense of the whole country most profoundly, the people of Wis- consin being especially scandalized by the fact that their delegate in Congress was a party to the "honorable" murder. A com- mittee of the House of Representatives appointed to enquire into the cause of Mr. Cilley's death, reported in favor of expelling Mr. Graves, the murderer, and censuring Messrs. Jones and Wise, the seconds. The subject was finally laid on the table, after much contention, but the incident gave rise to the passage of an act against dueling which remains on the statute book to the present time. This disgraceful affair had the effect to defeat Mr. Jones at the next election, and James Duane Doty was elected in his place. "The odium of the Graves-Cilley duel." says one historian, "was a great embarrassinent to Mr. Jones, and cost him many votes." Mr. Jones was subsequently United States Senator from Iowa.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.