ON DECEMBER 6, 1841, Henry Dodge presented himself in the national House of Representatives, and the next day he took his oath of office as delegate from Wisconsin Territory. The delegate’s position was the highest elective office in a territory; the holder was the liaison between his constituents and territorial legislature and the national Congress. He received their petitions and memorials and laid them before the House, usually on what was known as “petition day.” Although he had no vote, he could introduce bills in the House and speak on them, and was expected by virtue of personal or political influence to get action on them. Perhaps in part because of the lower compensation (eight dollars per day in service and eight dollars for every twenty miles of travel to and from the capital), the position was rated below that of the governor, who received $2,500 annually. That the office was not without influence and distinction is evidenced by the subsequent elevation of the three delegates who sat in the Twenty-seventh Congress: Henry Dodge; his son, Augustus C. Dodge from Iowa Territory; and David Levy from Florida Territory. Each of the three, when his territory achieved statehood, was elected to the United States Senate.1
The Twenty-seventh Congress had already held one session, called for May 31 by President Harrison before his sudden death. For the first time, the Whigs had a majority in both houses. But a majority was no guarantee of harmony, and the special session had adjourned in bitter conflict on September 15. Two of the measures it had enacted were of economic importance to Wisconsin. One was the bankruptcy law, to take effect February, 1842. The other was permanent prospective pre-emption, a piece of frontier legislation that for years squatters all along the frontier had begged Congress to enact. Briefly, it gave citizens with little or no other land the right to settle on 160 acres, build dwellings and make improvements, and subsequently buy the tract at the minimum government price, with a maximum period of twenty-one months within which to make payment. Action on this distinctly western item had long been pressed by Benton and the Democrats, and, ironically, it finally triumphed in the Whig administration but only when combined with a plan, vigorously promoted by Clay, for distribution of the proceeds of public land sales among the states. The same act granted to each territory upon admission to the Union 500,000 acres of land to be used for the support of internal improvements.
The December session at which Henry Dodge took his seat was a stormy one, stretching out for months and becoming the longest session up to that time, due mainly to continuing disputes between President Tyler and his former Whig supporters over fiscal and tariff policy.2 As a westerner and as a stalwart Democrat, Dodge viewed the proponents of tariff protection, of a national bank, and of distribution as one and the same crowd—the conservative Whigs. Yet on one item in the tariff bill he was in accord with the protectionists. He protested vigorously on the floor of the House the proposed reduction of the import duty on lead from three to two and one-half cents per pound. In his speech he stressed the “infant industry” theme, the need to protect “hardy pioneers” in their efforts to earn a livelihood, and the importance of lead should war break out. Dodge of Iowa added his endorsement of the higher duty, and it was retained in a compromise tariff measure that was eventually enacted.
In the controversial atmosphere Dodge was unable to enlist government assistance in many of the ways desired by his energetic Wisconsin constituency. The most he could do was to lay their problems in the form of petitions and memorials before the House, and this task he performed assiduously. His efforts brought a small reward in the final appropriation bill of the Twenty-seventh Congress, when, in a measure for the protection of commerce on Lake Michigan, he obtained $30,000 for construction of a harbor at Milwaukee. Compared with the $250,000 he had advised his constituents to request in his message of November, 1838, it was a mere pittance. To this beginning, by the time he left his delegate’s post, he had added $60,000 for harbor construction at the three lower-lake ports of Milwaukee, Racine, and Southport (Kenosha), and $10,000 for highway construction. One among the some forty petitions presented by the new delegate on the first petition day after taking his seat begged for ending the unsatisfactory system of leasing mineral lands and opening them to sale, with pre-emption rights. Probably no law was more ardently desired by Dodge and his mining associates, but it was not until a year after he left Washington that the authorization was finally enacted.3
In obtaining measures for liberalization of local government he was more successful. In 1843 Congress permitted the Wisconsin legislature to provide by law for the election of sheriffs, judges of probate, justices of the peace, and county surveyors, and, in the same act, cut the terms of Wisconsin council members to two years and of house members to one. A year later the legislature was authorized to reapportion the representation in the two bodies whenever the rising population made it necessary; the same act transferred—if the legislature should so enact—justices of the peace and general militia officers from appointive to elective status.4
Dodge showed great devotion to duty during his Washington service, and the people he represented were well served during his three and a half years at the seat of power. One aspect of service to his constituency, as Dodge conceived it, was to discredit Tyler’s appointee in the Wisconsin governorship. “I shall keep a good Look Out while I am here and will make D[oty] a heavy weight for Tyler to carry before I am done with him,” he declared. The delegate was resourceful in finding methods. He called for a submission from the Treasury Department of all papers relating to the expenditure of the $40,000 for the Wisconsin capitol—a request which served as a reminder of an unexplained use of public funds. Dodge enjoyed a triumph over Doty when the Senate rejected a treaty Doty had negotiated with the Sioux for the purchase of their lands between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The new legislation empowering the legislature to transfer certain county offices from appointive to elective positions happily served a double purpose. Dodge, as well as Doty, had declared himself in favor of extension of popular rights, and gleefully he pointed out to John P. Sheldon that in the strongly anti-Doty Wisconsin legislature such a law could readily be repassed over the governor’s possible veto, and thus “cripple Doty’s patronage.”5
Although Doty’s Sioux treaty was decisively rejected by the Senate, another northern Indian treaty negotiated the following year was more kindly received. The white man’s lust for minerals reputedly lying in the soil of the Chippewa Indian country on the southern Lake Superior shore could no longer be curbed, and in the summer of 1842 Robert Stuart was appointed to negotiate the purchase of the country. At La Pointe, site of an American Fur Company post, on October 4 the Chippewa nation sold their remaining territory, approximately as far west as the present Minnesota border. The Senate approved the terms, and before June 17, 1844, when the United States appropriated to the Chippewa tribesmen certain amounts to be paid annually, as well as $75,000 in debts owed by the Chippewa to traders, the rush to the copper country was on.
A second Indian act approved by the Twenty-seventh Congress attempted to bring peace to the Stockbridge, the troubled tribe that had migrated from New York to Wisconsin and had taken up land on the eastern short of Lake Winnebago. The allotment act of March 3, 1843, permitted members of the tribe to divide their lands and to become United States citizens. But a furious controversy developed within the tribe between those who would accept citizenship and those who would not, and Congress three years later repealed the act without, however, settling a complicated jumble of property rights that had developed, or attaining the hoped-for peace among the “Last of the Mohicans.”6
Dodge’s campaign to discredit Doty in the eyes of all persons and parties appeared headed for success. The real test, of course, was its effectiveness in convincing President Tyler that he had erred in replacing Dodge with Doty. It was the good fortune of Doty’s detractors that the supporters who had urged his appointment upon Harrison and Tyler were gradually falling away from the Tyler camp, and they greeted each alienation enthusiastically. Yet the President was silent. About a year after Doty took office his good friend Tallmadge wrote him from Washington, “You have been kept advised, no doubt, of the efforts with the President to remove you. I have had a very full conference with him on the subject, and cannot, for a moment, persuade myself there is any danger.”7
On December 6, 1841, the same day that Dodge took his seat in the national Congress, the Wisconsin legislature assembled for its ninth session. Whereas the national body in which Dodge was introduced was overwhelmingly Whig in complexion, the joint body to which Doty presented his message had a Democratic ratio of twenty-three to sixteen. In the house the figures were seventeen Democrats to nine Whigs; in the council there were six Democrats and seven Whigs. Nominal party alignment, however, was not of crucial significance, since Democrats and Whigs frequently co-operated to block Doty’s proposals and to seek his removal from office.
Before the session opened hostile Whigs and Democrats had marshaled their respective forces and laid plans to thwart the unwanted executive. William S. Hamilton in southwestern Wisconsin and young John H. Tweedy on the eastern border of the territory outlined the program of Whig resistance. In Iowa and Grant counties a mass meeting considered the most effective way to force Doty’s removal. So long as he was governor, the members declared, “the Whigs cannot contend with success as a political party.” At the same time, on the other side of the territory, Democrat J. A. Noonan was conniving to block Doty’s nominations for office when they should come up for consideration in the upper house. Tweedy of Milwaukee was so thoroughly anti-Doty, said Noonan, that he might not work with the governor, and if so, and if the six Democratic councilmen would “pull straight,” the governor’s hands would be tied. That was, Noonan added, if Martin, who had sat in the council since 1838, could be depended on in critical matters to hew to the party line.8
That the executive branch of the government was determined to assert itself was apparent as Doty unfolded his program before the joint session. Plunging into the subject that was to become identified as his “pet project,” he urged advancement to statehood. The advantages of such action had been increased, he reminded his hearers, by the recent Distribution Act of Congress, and he cited the benefits in land grants and a share of profits from land sales promised by the measure. Continuing on the subject of finances, he excoriated the legislature for permitting a debt of $39,000 to accumulate. Had all laws been submitted to Congress for approval—as he interpreted the Organic Act to require—such a situation would not have developed. Another debt whose legality he questioned was underwriting the issuance of $100,000 in bonds for Byron Kilbourn’s project to build a canal connecting the Milwaukee and Rock rivers. He condemned the proliferation of corporations, “petty aristocracies” of doubtful validity, formed to aid speculation. Even village charters granted powers which he believed legally resided in the executive and legislative departments and hence could not be delegated. Cautiously approaching the explosive subject of banks and currency, he recommended that the lawmakers look towards securing a sound monetary system based on specie and notes convertible into specie. To lessen the unfavorable trade balance, he counseled greater industry and economy and an increase in domestic manufacturers and spoke particularly of wool raising, which he thought should be exempt from taxation. He strongly recommended the improvement of the Fox-Wisconsin and Rock rivers, the building of a railroad from Milwaukee to the Mississippi, and the extension of macadamized roads. He recommended extension of public education to all levels, reorganization of the militia, removal of Indians from the territory, and declared that public officials should be required to reside at the seat of government.9
The two houses referred the points in the governor’s long message to appropriate committees, and a week later Moses M. Strong addressed a “counter message” to the council. Elected to fill a vacancy in that body, the Mineral Point lawyer took on the mantle of Democratic leader in the battle of party and legislature against the Tyler-appointed governor. His violent and vituperative attacks on the Doty message and the governor’s “slight aberrations from the democratic track,” point by point, left no doubt that the fight would be waged as remorselessly and viciously in Madison as in Washington. During the course of the session Doty prevailed over the opposition on two items in his program that he regarded as vital. One was his revocation of Kilbourn’s authority to issue a new series of territorial bonds—the Rock River Canal project had never met with legislative enthusiasm, and a select committee upheld the governor’s drastic ending of official encouragement. The other victory was Doty’s veto of a joint resolution authorizing the secretary of the territory to borrow from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars at interest rates up to 7 per cent to meet legislative expenses. This procedure the governor heartily condemned, and recommended instead issuance of what was, in effect, territorial scrip in small denominations, redeemable in specie when Congress should make the necessary appropriations. To this common-sense proposal, the majority of the legislators consented. However, the legislature overrode Doty’s vetoes of the business and village corporate charters which they had granted.10
On the statehood proposition, the two houses disagreed and ended by tabling a bill providing a referendum on the subject; on tax reforms, they flatly refused to follow executive recommendation for changes. On the matter of appointments, which Doty used in promoting the establishment of an administration party in Wisconsin, the struggle for power had tragic consequences. In nation and territory the political turnover swept clean most appointive offices, and each nomination for replacement raised a furor in the Wisconsin council akin to the storm in Washington over Doty’s own confirmation. When the council asked by resolution for a list of officials not reappointed, with reasons for their removal, he tartly replied that the executive was not bound “by law or courtesy” to communicate the information, and added a sarcastic comment on the number of long-continued officeholders in Wisconsin. By narrow margins he managed to get his former capitol commissioner associates, Bird and Morrison, named sheriff of Dane County and territorial treasurer; his brother-in-law, Barlow Shackelford, district attorney for Dane County; and other political and business associates and followers assigned to posts of high and low degree. But week after week the nomination of sheriff of Grant County was bitterly contested, until February 11, 1842, when a hot argument on the floor of the council chamber between young Charles Arndt of Green Bay and James Vineyard of Platteville led to a blow by Arndt and a fatal pistol shot by Vineyard. The horror-stricken legislators voted the expulsion of the assailant, and, leaving Vineyard’s fate to the courts, soon brought the stormy session to a close.11
It is ironic—in view of Doty’s diatribes against excessive legislation and big spending—that the seventy-six-day session of 1841–1842 was the longest and most expensive held up to that time. The squabbling between legislative and executive branches accounted for many wasted hours; no legislation had been completed by December 27, when the body recessed for ten days, and not until January 21 was the first bill enacted into law. The new financial expedient of territorial scrip solved the problem of territorial expenses for the current session, but, whether by design or through negligence, in passing the deficiency measure in the summer of 1842, Congress threw in a restriction that embroiled the Wisconsin legislature and governor in even greater controversy. The appropriations act of August 29, liquidating the outstanding debt of the territory, contained the confusing clause, “No session of the Legislature of a Territory shall be held until the appropriation for its expenses shall have been made.” But in the Iowa Territory appropriation earlier in the summer Congress had declared “that the Legislative Assembly of no Territory shall, hereafter, in any instance, or under any pretext whatever, exceed the amount appropriated by Congress for annual expenses.”12
What Congress intended the legislature to do was everybody’s guess. The question was discussed in Washington on the floor of the House that winter without arriving at a conclusion. Throughout Wisconsin Territory discussion raged over what the legislators should do when December arrived. Governor Doty interpreted the wording as a prohibition on convening until an appropriation should be made, and refused to budge from that stand. To the legislators, the statement meant a continuation of deficit spending, and most of the members assembled on the first Monday in December, 1842, as required by territorial law, and proceeded to organize and choose officers. The September election had made many changes in the body and produced a Democratic majority in the council. Strong was elected its president, and Albert G. Ellis of Green Bay, another administration Democrat, became speaker of the house. In response to the message that both houses were ready to hear the governor’s address, Doty replied that, “not conceiving they had an authority to convene,” he had no communication for them. The frustrated members had no alternative but to adjourn, after setting January 30 as the date to reconvene. Before then Congress passed an appropriation measure; the legislators convening on that date were completely ignored by the governor, who by public proclamation called a special session (limited by law to thirty days) to meet on March 6, leaving nothing for the legislators to do but to go home. Even when they reassembled on the assigned date the perverse executive refused all communication with the lawmakers until they conceded that they were holding a “special,” rather than an “adjourned,” session.13
The series of delays did not make for harmony between the co-ordinate branches. The governor had no desire to meet the hostile legislators and was sure that their convening was unnecessary. As he wrote Senator Woodbridge, “Indeed, I do not think that the circumstances of the country require a session during the coming year, and we should be glad if Congress would make no provision on the subject.” His salary was on an annual basis, but to the legislators, no session meant no pay, and they besieged Congress with appeals for mileage and compensation for their two unrecognized journeys to Madison.
When the session actually got under way, the lawmakers retaliated. Strong resigned the presidency of the council, rather than acknowledge that the session was a “special” one. Mute evidence of controversies that reverberated from the tin roof of the capitol appears in some of the enactments: fixing the session on the first Monday in December “in each and every session”; requiring that in cases of removals the governor notify in writing the individual removed and the supervising office with reasons for the action; creating the position of superintendent of territorial property, the officer to be elected by joint ballot of the two houses, and empowering him to take over the duties of the librarian and the commissioner of public buildings and to prosecute vigorously the territorial suits; and authorizing a change of venue in criminal cases under certain conditions—a law that permitted the transfer of the trial of Vineyard, whom Strong was defending, from Dane to Green County. Some acts of consequence were passed: a revision of county government, a law equalizing the territorial tax, and a provision for the election of certain county officers as permitted by the recent congressional act. Quarrels and disputes over all manner of things—use of firewood, assignment of capitol space, duties of minor officials, removals from office, expenses of the session—resulted in the passage of eight acts and joint resolutions over the governor’s veto, some of them by unanimous vote.14
At the end of his first year in office Doty had been highly optimistic of holding the political coalition together and making Wisconsin a state. Although his struggle with the legislature had been severe and Whig members had given no real help, yet, he assured Tallmadge, he had overcome the opposition and “you may consider our party now firmly established.” He concluded, “we shall certainly form a State govt. within a year.” The political advantages to be derived from statehood had not been lost on other partisans. A Democratic newspaper editor in Southport thought the time was auspicious, and advocated shelving the two party leaders and setting up a state government party. The popularity of the theme would carry the candidate for the delegacy and end “the disgusting personal warfare between Dodge and Doty factions.” C. C. Sholes’s proposal apparently did not get off the ground, but Moses M. Strong took up the idea and, in a forty-four-page committee report in December, 1843, out-Dotyed Doty in advocacy of statehood. The subject had become politically hazardous, as a Washington observer was quick to see, and he implored Doty, “For God sakes don’t get up any State Government, or boundary movement, during these days of revolution.” The governor, too, saw the danger of admission to the Union before a proper balance should be established in Washington. Craftily he continued the promotion, gloating over the discomfiture of his opponents who found, he declared, that “they cannot mount it [statehood] as a hobby without getting on behind me,” and, in 1843, “I believe I have succeeded in bluffing off the Locos again on the State govt. question. It is at all events placed in such a condition that they cannot carry it without our consent.”15
Although the governor may have been a step ahead of his tormentors on the statehood question, he must have admitted to losing ground in some other respects. The Whigs had never been wholeheartedly behind him, and on May 19, 1842, their Madison organ, the Express, in a cutting announcement, withdrew its support of the executive. A subsequent editorial held up his political straddling to scorn. “A political Chameleon, his color changes with every movement of the Captain [Tyler], and every man he meets in the Territory. To one he is a Whig, to another Democratic, to another Tyler, and to a fourth, a no-party man.” In October, 1842, a new sheet, the Wisconsin Democrat, trumpeted that party’s Locofoco doctrine from the capital city, and vied with the Whig Express in denunciation of the governor. For a short time Doty countered with control of the Madison Enquirer, a Tyler paper edited by Harrison Reed, who had recently left the Sentinel, and David Lambert, a North Carolinian recently arrived in Wisconsin. This attempt by Doty and his friends to establish in Wisconsin “a third [Tyler] party” through patronage and political sheets failed. Tyler’s inability to find acceptable solutions to the banking and currency questions and his courting of old Democrats weakened Doty’s efforts. The Enquirer soon suspended publication, and when Reed left Milwaukee, the Sentinel ceased its enthusiastic endorsement of the governor’s course.16
The raucous Wisconsin press left no doubt of journalistic determination to drive a wedge between legislature and executive and to unseat Doty. Other agencies worked less openly towards the same goal, operating with a thoroughness and coordination worthy of a higher objective. The governor found his recommendations ignored, his prerogatives diminishing, his supporters fading away, his detractors elevated. The Secretary of War removed two Indian agents in Wisconsin without consulting the governor; a member of Congress secretly warned the new territorial secretary against the governor, and promised assistance if trouble should arise. Dodge’s son, Henry L. Dodge, was elected sheriff of Iowa County; Vineyard was acquitted in court of the charge of manslaughter of Arndt in the council chamber; the objectionable Noonan was appointed postmaster at Milwaukee. Politically, Doty was no asset to the party credited with sponsoring his appointment. The proportion of Democrats to Whigs in the legislative assembly, which from 1840 through 1842 had been twenty-two or twenty-three to seventeen or sixteen, in 1843 rose to twenty-seven to twelve, and in 1844 to twenty-nine to ten.17
United in their determination to oust Doty from office, the forces of opposition fell apart in their choice of a prospective successor. The Democrats had various possible candidates, each with his drawbacks. Dodge was the most obvious choice, should he wish to vacate his post in Washington to return to the Wisconsin governorship. But the “old war hero” theme had little appeal to the rising generation or to the newcomers thronging to the territory. The suggestion of the Southport editor to ditch both Dodge and Doty and center politics around issues, rather than persons, probably reflected a widely growing sentiment. Ben C. Eastman, a New England lawyer recently arrived in Platteville, was one who voiced his contempt of the petty monarchies he found around him, such as those erected by the two leaders. A rival prospect for the governor’s office was Moses M. Strong, who was much in evidence and ambitious for office. But Strong was not really liked or trusted by his party, as he discovered to his chagrin when he sought nomination for the delegacy in 1845. Strong proposed that Judge Irvin be recommended to Tyler as a possible replacement for Doty, probably in the vain hope that the President might take interest in elevating a fellow Virginian to the office. George W. Jones, too, was available, but his name did not evoke much enthusiasm. Morgan L. Martin of Green Bay was both well known and popular, but his political friends always suspected him of an undercover understanding with Doty. As for the Whigs, they had no favorite son or big name to offer. At each election for delegate they proposed a new candidate. Never strong enough to elect their man, nevertheless they always offered a serious challenge. In 1843 they put up George Hickcox of Grant County who lost to Dodge by a vote of 3,184 to 4,685.18
Everything awaited Tyler’s reaction. The President could not have failed to be well informed on the governor he had appointed for Wisconsin Territory. The Senate debate over the Sioux treaty, the vetoes, and the hassle over the opening of the legislature had all been blazoned in the country’s newspapers. At the time of the delayed legislative opening a Wisconsin joint committee had memorialized Tyler to remove Doty from office, and Dodge, in presenting the request, had added his own recital of the governor’s derelictions and misdemeanors. Still the President made no move, probably swayed by the support his administration had received through the columns of the Sentinel and Enquirer. Doty’s friends at court were few, but they were influential. More than one observer believed that Doty was a special favorite of Webster and would stay in office so long as “black Daniel” remained in Tyler’s cabinet. Another staunch friend was Senator Tallmadge, who assured the President that the vitriolic charges against Doty were without foundation, and begged that this “able and faithful officer” be retained.19
The tenuous situation changed abruptly in May, 1843, when Webster resigned from the cabinet. From that time on, Tyler moved with more decision. For Doty, the change suggested the wisdom of withdrawal before drastic action forced the move. Political influence had placed him in office, and a shift in political trends could quickly ease him out. As his successor he looked to the man with whom he had been so intimately associated, Nathaniel P. Tallmadge. That summer the New Yorker visited Wisconsin, where he began investing extensively in lands in the vicinity of Fond du Lac. During his visit Doty broached the matter of Tallmadge’s taking the governorship, should Tyler make the offer, and repeated the proposal in correspondence during the winter. The senator demurred, but finally on May 5, 1844, wrote from Washington that “it had recently been intimated” that he might have the appointment, if he cared to take it. Therefore, he would accept Doty’s proposal to send his resignation to Tallmadge, to be used if Tyler actually offered the position.20
Doty had survived his third legislative session that winter of 1843–1844, a session uneventful save for great agitation over statehood, as all parties pushed for action in time for the approaching presidential election. When the session ended, Doty moved his family to Taycheedah, at the southern end of Lake Winnebago. From his farm home there on May 30 he respectfully informed Tyler that he was not interested in reappointment when his term expired. Two weeks later the President presented Tallmadge’s name to the Senate to become governor of Wisconsin when Doty’s term should end on September 13. The nomination was immediately and unanimously approved.21
That Tyler, when the break with Webster came, should take steps to relieve himself of the troublesome Doty was no surprise to anyone. That Tyler should wish to send Tallmadge, who had often given him needed support in Washington, to distant Wisconsin, and that Tallmadge should wish to go, seemed more difficult to understand. However, Tallmadge had reasons to look to new pastures, for he was involved in political disputes in New York which made his re-election as senator from that state far from certain. On the positive side, Wisconsin was a frontier politically as well as economically. It was fast building up a population from eastern states, and would undoubtedly enter the Union as soon as the political skies cleared. Admission would create congressional openings, and the heavy Yankee emphasis pointed to the possible election of a seasoned Empire State politician as Wisconsin’s first United States Senator. In 1844 statehood seemed imminent, and the politically ambitious Tyler and Tallmadge sought to take advantage of the developing opportunities.
Tallmadge had been a leader of more than ordinary stature in New York state and in Washington. Born in Chatham, New York, in 1795, he graduated at age twenty from Union College in Schenectady, studied law and was admitted to the bar, established a law practice in Poughkeepsie, and served several years in the state legislature. The Democratic party, of which he was a member, was divided into two groups, one dominated by the party machine known as the Albany Regency, led by Martin Van Buren, and the other, a city-based Tammany group. Tallmadge belonged to the latter faction, and in 1833, over the objections of Van Buren, and again in 1839, when Whig strength was growing in the state, Whigs and the Conservative Democratic faction in the legislature succeeded in electing him to the United States Senate. There he became a recognized leader of the Conservative Democrats standing for moderate protectionism, the repeal of the Specie Circular, state banks, and expansion of the credit system.22
Conciliation and co-operation might have been the watchwords of the new administration in Wisconsin. Neither an authoritative ex-army officer accustomed to directing his militiamen or his mining crew, nor an ex-judge expounding the law and pronouncing sentence, Governor Tallmadge had been a lawmaker, and perhaps this experience gave him a greater understanding of the role of the third co-ordinate branch of government. Moses M. Strong credits him with the absence of “any disposition to assume anything like dictation,” and, in making recommendations with exhibiting “deference to the recognized superior knowledge of the representatives.” The new executive’s message before the joint session was well calculated to disarm any uneasiness about a dictatorial “foreigner” in their midst. He praised the territory, its resources, its people—“God forbid that jealousies and dissensions should spring up amongst them.” Without making specific proposals for action, he touched upon points deserving attention: internal improvements, suffrage, prospective statehood, the territorial debt, education, agriculture. Although Strong questioned whether Tallmadge was Whig or Democrat, no struggle between legislator and executive erupted. The governor’s numerous appointments to minor offices were quickly confirmed, and bills that passed both houses received his signature without protest. Payment of arrearages of the previous session out of appropriations for the present was voted; the residence qualifications of voters for delegates to the coming constitutional convention agreed upon; a flood of incorporation acts passed. The two houses even took occasion, by joint resolution, to decide the official spelling of the name of the territory: it was not to be the “Wiskonsan” that Doty had vainly tried to popularize, but “Wisconsin.”23
All was not as harmonious as this peaceable session might suggest. Tallmadge’s position was far from secure, and every politician in Wisconsin knew it. The victory of Democratic candidate James K. Polk of Tennessee over Whig Henry Clay in the presidential election of November, 1844, was the signal for ambitious Wisconsin Democrats to clinch a victory for their party in the territory. Matthias J. Bovee, a former member of Congress from New York recently removed to Eagle in Milwaukee County, spelled out details to the President-elect: “Our political friends will ask from the democratic Administration to have the Offices of our Territory filled with persons residing in the Territory, and not have them sent among us from abroad. Genl. Dodge will be our Man for Governor, and he will recommend, those who are to receive appointments for the various offices to be filled in this Territory. Such politicians as N. P. Talmadge [sic] and Co. we do not want to rule over us. My rule has always been and ever shall be to give Pensions to the Soldiers who fought the battles of our Country. … ” A friend of Tallmadge’s informed the governor of the maneuvers of Moses M. Strong: “The plan is, as I understand, to get you removed, and Gov. Dodge restored to the Executive Chair. This will enable Strong to be the loco candidate for Delegacy. That there is now active and extensive movements on foot, in different portions of the Territory, to effect this object I have not the slightest doubt.”24
The governor was not blind to the gathering storm, but he overestimated the influence of his past record in national party circles, particularly with the President. When news of Polk’s victory had reached him at Taycheedah, he credited the narrow margin of success to the Conservatives in New York, the implication being that he and his friends there deserved consideration for their help. As late as the end of March, 1845, he was still banking on the President’s recognition of that support to retain his Wisconsin governorship. He wrote his approval of the inaugural message to Polk, trying to curry favor by mild comments on a tariff for revenue and on slavery (“In regard to Slavery, I am content to leave it to the wisdom of Providence”). In conclusion, he modestly reported on his success in restoring harmony among the Democrats of Wisconsin.25
In the meantime, rank-and-file party members in the territory were working to secure his removal. Wisconsin would become a state soon; its citizens would cast their votes at the next presidential election; and every staunch Democrat made it his business to ascertain that the majority of that vote would be of the Locofoco brand. Influential citizens with friends at the seat of power, elective and appointive officials, and just plain party men joined in the barrage of appeals to the President. Before the legislature adjourned, twenty-seven Democratic members signed a petition to Polk recommending that no one who was not a Wisconsin citizen be appointed to important offices. The practice was “unjust, anti-republican, degrading to our self-respect,” they asserted.26
As soon as Polk assumed office he began a ruthless proscription of officeholders. On April 8, 1845, he appointed Dodge governor of Wisconsin Territory, to hold office at the pleasure of the President. When the Congress convened in December, the Senate received the nomination and on February 3, 1846, confirmed the appointment. Continuing the reversal, Polk reinstated George W. Jones in the post of surveyor general for Iowa and Wisconsin; appointed George H. Walker in the land register’s position in Milwaukee in place of Paraclete Potter, and made Pascal Bequette (Dodge’s son-in-law) receiver of the land office at Mineral Point. John Catlin was made territorial secretary in place of George R. C. Floyd. A sharp contest for appointment to the office of United States attorney for Wisconsin between Moses M. Strong and William P. Lynde was settled in favor of Lynde.27
Dodge’s elevation had opened the position of delegate in Congress again, and in the strongly Democratic Wisconsin, the party nomination virtually decided the choice. Strong bent every effort to win the coveted post. He canvassed the strongholds of the territory to influence convention delegates in his favor over a formidable array of competitors. When the convention met in Madison on June 25, 1845, his opponents showed unexpected strength. Three contenders, D. A. J. Upham of Milwaukee, Francis J. Dunn of Iowa County, and Morgan L. Martin of Green Bay, held the lead from the start, and on the eighteenth ballot Martin triumphed. A month later the Whigs convened at the same town and selected James Collins of Iowa County as their candidate. A third group, dedicated to the overthrow of slavery, met and selected Edward D. Holton of Milwaukee as their leader. On September 22, the voters decided in favor of Martin by a vote of 6,803 to 5,787 for Collins and 790 for the Liberty Party candidate, and in December Martin took his seat in Congress.28
On January 6, 1846, Governor Henry Dodge addressed the joint session of the Wisconsin Legislative Assembly. In more than one sense it was a moment of triumph. The executive, a majority in both houses, the major appointive officers and a large segment of those in lesser positions were all members of his party and, furthermore, they were in political accord with the chief executive of the nation and both houses of Congress. The five-year struggle since he had been deposed from his high office was ended. It had been a many-faceted struggle: of Dodge versus Doty, of lead region versus eastern lake residents, of Democrats versus Whigs, of radical faction versus conservative Democrats. Enmeshed in the struggle was the contest of legislative branch versus executive for supremacy. It had reached into the affairs of wilderness Indian agencies, village post offices and justice courts, the county, the legislature, the Congress, and the Presidency. It had involved many big questions of the day: the tariff, money and banking, government attitude towards private enterprise, internal improvements, extension of the franchise, the role of the executive, the advancement to statehood.
The presence of Henry Dodge before the lawmakers that January was an evidence of victory for him and his party. Yet, few questions had been settled; a surcease from strife was not at hand. The split in the party was as wide as ever; the contest for personal recognition, for political ascendency, and for control of agencies of government was still sharp. Old grievances had been brushed aside, rather than resolved, and with the coming of new people holding different concepts of government and of the exploitation of the country’s resources came a flood of fresh demands. As Wisconsin approached statehood, these floods of demands pressed to the forefront, making the framing of the constitution a time of re-examination of social and economic needs.
1 Pelzer, Henry Dodge, 158–171. For brief biographical information on congressmen mentioned in this chapter, see Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1961 (Washington, 1962).
2 United States Statutes at Large, 5: 440–449, 453–458; Oliver P. Chitwood, John Tyler, Champion of the Old South (New York, 1939), 206–236; Elbert B. Smith, Magnificent Missourian: The Life of Thomas Hart Benton (Philadelphia, 1958), 176–181. The pre-emption and distribution acts are discussed in detail in Benjamin H. Hibbard, A History of the Public Land Policies (New York, 1924), 156–196.
3 Congressional Globe, 27 Cong., 2 sess., 106, 754, appendix, 668–669; United States Statutes at Large, 5: 552, 619, 662, 668, 748; 9: 37–38; Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 169–170.
4 United States Statutes at Large, 5: 630, 670–671. On March 23, 1843, Governor Doty signed into law the territorial act providing “for the election of Sheriffs, Judges of Probate and Justices of the Peace”; Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 381–382; Laws of Wisconsin, 1842–1843, pp. 9–13.
5 Dodge to Jones, January 14, June 14, August 12, 1842, December 15, 1843, in Salter, ed., “Letters of Henry Dodge,” 561–564; Dodge to Sheldon, January 27, 1843, in the John P. Sheldon Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library; Smith, Doty, 256–262.
6 United States Statutes at Large, 5: 612, 645–647, 707; 9: 55–56. For a sympathetic account of the Stockbridge and their problems, see Schafer, Winnebago-Horicon Basin, 55–76.
7 Tallmadge to Doty, May 15, 1842, in the Doty Papers.
8 “Extra Whig Meeting,” broadside, November 2, 1841; Hamilton to Tweedy, October 10, 1841, in the Tweedy Papers; Noonan to Martin, October 23, 1841, in the Martin Papers. Slightly different figures on party representation in the legislature, 1840–1844, are found in the Southport Annual Register, December, 1844 (a pamphlet in Records of the U. S. House of Representatives, 28 Cong., R.G. 233, N.A.), and in Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 358. The Milwaukee Sentinel, September 7, 1841, temporarily under the control of the Democratic editor Clinton Walworth, described the predicament of Whigs in Wisconsin Territory: “There seems to be two parties of Whigs in the Territory—Doty and Anti-Doty Whigs—both claiming to be Democratic Whigs—a claim which imputes to the opposite side of the Whig party Federalism. Which is the Democratic portion of the Whig party, it is difficult to determine. Doty sticks to it that he is a democrat—if he be a democrat his friends must, of course, be democratic whigs. The Sentinel [formerly] advocated the interests of this party, but according to the Journal it did not justly and worthily represent the principles and feelings of the mass of the Whigs of Wisconsin… .”
9 Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 299–314.
10 Laws of Wisconsin, 1841–1842, pp. 24–26, 73–74; Wisconsin Council Journal, 1841–1842, pp. 117–120. Many pages of the council and house journals deal with the canal issue. See also Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 318–320, 332, 340–341. Strong’s speech, in pamphlet form, is in the Strong Papers.
11 For conflicts over appointments, especially the Arndt-Vineyard affair, see Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 346–347, 375–376, 380–385; Smith, Doty, 269–272; Duckett, Frontiersman of Fortune, 51–54. Attempts by Doty’s opponents to block his appointments can also be traced in Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 315–317, 325, 329, 335.
12 United States Statutes at Large, 5: 480, 540–541. A communication of the Governor of Wisconsin, December 30, 1842, reviews the dates, amounts expended, and congressional appropriations of the nine sessions, beginning in 1836; Records of the U. S. House of Representatives, 27 Cong., 3 sess., R.G. 233, N.A.
13 Congressional Globe, 27 Cong., 3 sess., 236–237; Wisconsin Council Journal, 1843, pp. 124–127. The Records of the U. S. House of Representatives for the Twenty-second and Twenty-ninth Congresses, R.G. 233, N.A., contain protests against the governor’s actions and petitions for payment. Many of these documents are printed in Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 367–378 passim. The conflict is reviewed in Smith, Doty, 278–281, and Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 387–401.
14 Doty to Woodbridge, January 4, 1843, in the Woodbridge Papers, Burton Historical Collection; Laws of Wisconsin, 1843, pp. 6, 17, 36–54, 65–68, 76; Duckett, Frontiersman of Fortune, 59–60; Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 402–406, 409–415.
15 Doty to Tallmadge, February 23, 1842, December 14, 1843, in the Tallmadge Papers; Doty to Woodbridge, January 14, 1843, in the Woodbridge Papers, Burton Historical Collection; A. S. Porter to Doty, June 2, 1842, in the Doty Papers; C. C. Sholes, Southport, to Martin, April 10, 1842, in the Martin Papers. The legislative committee report, dated December 18, 1843, by the chairman, Moses M. Strong, is available in pamphlet form in the Strong Papers; it is summarized in Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 432–437.
16 Madison Express, May 19, October 20, 1842; Dodge to Noonan, March 9, 1842, in the Josiah A. Noonan Papers. Information on the establishment, editors, and politics of early newspapers may be found in Ada T. Griswold, comp., Annotated Catalogue of Newspaper Files in the Library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 2d ed. (Madison, 1911). References to the establishment of a Doty (pro-Tyler) newspaper in Wisconsin are found in David Lambert to Willie P. Mangum, August 26, 1842, in Henry Thomas Shanks, ed., The Papers of Willie Person Mangum (5 vols., Raleigh, 1950–1956), 3: 382–383; F. Randall to Tweedy, February 3, and J. E. Arnold to Tweedy, February 5, 1842, in the Tweedy Papers; Wisconsin Enquirer, February 12, 1842; Milwaukee Sentinel, July 13, 1841.
17 George W. Hopkins to George R. C. Floyd, February 21, 1844, in the George R. C. Floyd Papers; Wisconsin Council Journal, 1843, pp. 4–5; Southport Annual Register, December, 1844 (a pamphlet in Records of the U. S. House of Representatives, 28 Cong., R.G. 233, N.A.). These harrassments are described in further detail in Smith, Doty, 280–286.
18 Sholes to Martin, April 10; Eastman to Martin, June 23; Andrew W. Doig to Martin, December 29; and Martin [draft of letter] to George W. Clinton, November 14, 1842; all in the Martin Papers; Strong [draft of letter] to Dodge, December 12, 1842, in the Strong Papers; Jacob M. Howard, February 5; D. Hugunin and others to Doty, August 18; and Tallmadge to Doty, October 12, 1843; all in the Doty Papers; and Tallmadge to Tyler, February 14, 1843, in the Tallmadge Papers. For the election of 1843, see Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 419–420.
19 Doig to Martin, December 29, 1842, in the Martin Papers; Tallmadge to Tyler, February 14, 1843, in the Tallmadge Papers. The memorial, dated December, 1842, may be found in Records of the U. S. House of Representatives, 29 Cong., R.G. 233, N.A., and, together with Dodge’s letter to Tyler, in Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 396–398. It should be noted that the memorial was drawn up during a session the legality of which was disputed.
20 Tallmadge to Doty, October 12, 1843, May 5, 1844, in the Doty Papers.
21 Doty [draft of letter] to Tyler, May 30, 1844, in the Doty Papers; Smith, Doty, 293–295; Senate Executive Journal, 6: 343. Doty’s message of December 4, 1843, dealing mainly with statehood and territorial boundaries, is published in Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 413–433.
22 Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, 179, 200, 221, 233, 238–240, 250, 257, 395. For local opposition to Tallmadge, see a clipping from the Utica Observer, March 19 [1839?], and an unidentified clipping [1840?], in the Tallmadge Papers.
23 The resolution on orthography is found in the Laws of Wisconsin, 1845, p. 121; the quotation is from Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 457.
24 Bovee to Polk, December 2, 1844, in the James K. Polk Papers, Library of Congress; M. M. Jackson to Tallmadge, December 16, 1844, in the Tallmadge Papers.
25 Tallmadge to Robert J. Walker, December 9, 1844, March 30, 1845, in “The Annexation of Texas,” Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 6 (October, 1924), 91–92; Tallmadge to Polk, March 30, 1845, in the Polk Papers, Library of Congress.
26 J. S. Fisk to Martin, January 14, 1845, in the Martin Papers; Bovee to Polk, March 15; Elisha Morrow to Polk, March 17; and members of the Legislative Assembly [to Polk], February 20, 1845; all in Records of the Department of State, R.G. 59, N.A.; Levi Blossom to James B. Spencer, January 18, 1845, in the Polk Papers, Library of Congress.
27 Polk’s commission to Dodge, April 8, 1845, and James Buchanan’s notification to Dodge, April 8, 1845, in Records of the Department of State, R.G. 59, N.A., and published in Bloom, ed., Territorial Papers, 27 (Wisconsin), 439–440; Senate Executive Journal, 7: 10, 25, 41, 51, 72; Milo M. Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk (4 vols., Chicago, 1910), 1: 56–59. The Polk Papers, Library of Congress, for the early summer of 1845, contain a number of letters from aspiring or disappointed Wisconsin office seekers. See also Nelson Dewey to Martin, January 13, and Noonan to Martin, April 30, 1845, in the Martin Papers.
28 Duckett, Frontiersman of Fortune, 70–76; Strong, Wisconsin Territory, 479–481.