CHAPTER TWO

Negro Suffrage Is Antislavery Work

THE IDEALISM of the Liberty party was broad enough to contain black suffrage. The denial of voting privileges stood as the most common form of legal discrimination practiced against black freemen and was a clear violation of the party’s egalitarian principles. Disfranchisement implied that blacks not only were undesirable members of their communities but were incapable of exercising the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. In addition, the attitudes that deprived blacks of the right to vote in the North mirrored those same principles that in the South reduced them to servitude. Remove this distinction, Liberty men insisted, and those undemocratic beliefs that justified both discrimination and enslavement would be weakened. Thus, the crusades against slavery and for black suffrage were linked, and in the inaugural issue of the Freeman, Sholes announced that the principle of “no political distinction founded upon color” would be the Liberty party’s motto in territorial politics.¹

Congress passed the act organizing the Wisconsin Territory in 1836. It entitled all adult white male citizens of the United States to participate in the territory’s first election and empowered the legislature to determine voting qualifications at all subsequent elections.² Although Wisconsin’s lawmakers made minor alterations in the suffrage law two years later, none showed a desire to enfranchise the territory’s foreign-born or free black residents.³

The suffrage question emerged as a political issue for the first time in 1844, when Governor James Duane Doty requested that the question of taking preliminary steps toward statehood be submitted to a popular vote.⁴ In response to the governor’s call, a mass meeting of foreign-born residents convened in Milwaukee to protest the law that excluded them from the polls and to demand that all white males living in the territory be allowed to participate in any statehood referendum. Stiff opposition to that demand surfaced in the lead region, where the population remained overwhelmingly native-born, and in several of the Yankee towns of the southeast.⁵

In early January, the Assembly Committee on Territorial Affairs took up the issue and reported a bill to permit all adult white males resident in the territory for three months to vote on the question of statehood and to participate in the choice of delegates to a state constitutional convention.⁶ After several days of skirmishing, William H. Bartlett, a Walworth County Democrat and abolitionist,⁷ moved to strike the word “white” from the committee report. The Assembly swiftly rejected Bartlett’s audacious amendment, twenty-one to five. It then passed the whites-only bill by an equally wide margin.⁸ In the Council, Edward V. Whiton, a prominent territorial Whig, similarly tried to purge the Assembly bill of its color distinction without success.⁹

Petitions favorable to black enfranchisement also came before the 1844 legislature. John C. Olin, another antislavery Democrat,¹⁰ presented one from a group of Milwaukee citizens that was referred to the assembly’s judiciary committee. As adjournment neared, the committee reported that it was inadvisable to legislate on the subject, and its request to be relieved from further consideration of the matter was approved.¹¹ Whiton again broached the subject in the council when he introduced a petition from “David Smith and 5 other colored men” asking that voting privileges be extended “to all persons holding Real Estate in the Territory, or taxable property to the value of one hundred dollars.” The tactic of the blacks and their advocates to introduce a property qualification almost succeeded. A select committee, headed by Whiton, drew up a bill corresponding to the petition, and several attempts to kill the measure failed. But after squeaking through a third reading, Michael Frank, an ardent Democrat and outspoken opponent of slavery, changed his vote and defeated it.¹² Frank’s reversal resulted from an unwillingness on the decisive roll call to link suffrage to a property qualification rather than from hostility to black voting. Because only two days remained on the legislative calendar, he also saw nothing to be gained by pressing the matter since the assembly undoubtedly would reject any proposal to enfranchise blacks.¹³

Black suffrage fared even worse at the 1845 legislative session, as several petitions were buried in committee.¹⁴ In the following year, the question provoked a sharp debate when a Prairieville Democrat moved to allow black participation in yet another proposed referendum on statehood. Moses M. Strong, a fiery, ambitious Mineral Point Democrat, denounced the proposal, insisting that arguments respecting the capabilities of blacks were irrelevant, and that he personally would forever be opposed to “nigger voting.” His real concern was that the South not be led to believe “that Wisconsin is favorably disposed to the abolition movement”; therefore all questions tainted with abolitionism, as black enfranchisement certainly was, ought to be avoided.¹⁵

Marshall M. Strong, Racine’s Democratic councilman and no relation to Moses, scolded his namesake for using the “contemptuous epithet, nigger.” He too questioned the expediency of raising the subject of black enfranchisement, but he could see no better reason for excluding them from the polls than Norwegians, who were pouring into the territory in large numbers. These immigrants, Strong exclaimed, whom few in the Council adjudged unfit to vote, lived in “holes in the ground” and “huts dug from the banks of the earth,” and they were less intelligent, less civilized, and less familiar with American institutions than were blacks. He also denied that blacks were an inferior race, but even if they were, then all the more reason to grant them the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship as one means of raising them from their degraded state. Lastly, what Southerners might think of black voting in Wisconsin was unimportant. They had no more right to criticize or influence the actions of Wisconsin’s legislature than it had to meddle with theirs, although if granting Northern blacks the franchise indirectly weakened slavery, as some of its proponents claimed it would, then Wisconsin would be remiss if it failed to extend this measure of justice at home to assist the oppressed abroad.¹⁶

Despite Marshall Strong’s spirited defense, Wisconsin’s blacks again were denied access to the polls. Four Democrats and both Whig Council members supported the measure, while seven Democrats opposed it.¹⁷ Although no roll call was taken, it appears that all six positive votes came from southeastern councilmen, while the four southwestern district members voted as a bloc against black voting, suggesting that constituency more than party influenced the vote.¹⁸ Nevertheless, even if a Council majority had been obtained, the proposal would have failed in the assembly. Prior to the Council debates, an attempt to strike the word white from a suffrage bill under consideration in the lower house, on the pretense of enfranchising half-blood Indians, lost by a two-to-one margin.¹⁹

While the legislature made short work of attempts to include blacks among Wisconsin’s voters, the Liberty party struggled to secure a foothold in territorial politics. The major parties’ strategy of uniting against Liberty men, dismissing their party as irrelevant, or simply ignoring them, together with the loyalty of influential antislavery Democrats and Whigs, succeeded in reducing the already tiny Liberty vote in the spring and fall canvasses of 1844. Sholes chastised the apostates, warning that the only way to preserve and strengthen the faltering Liberty organization was to adhere uncompromisingly to its principles and candidates.²⁰ In February 1845, in an effort to tighten organization and discipline among the territory’s antislavery forces, he succeeded in bringing about the merger of the still nominally independent Wisconsin Antislavery Society and the Liberty Association, which adopted a proviso binding every member to vote only for Liberty party candidates.²¹

Reorganized, the Liberty organization began to make its presence felt in small but significant ways. By 1846, it had elected men to minor offices in several southeastern towns; in others it held the balance of power.²² Then, after Wisconsinites finally agreed to summon a state constitutional convention in October, the legislature boosted the party’s power when it apportioned convention seats on the basis of one delegate for every thirteen hundred residents, about one-fourth of whom were eligible voters. Since the southeastern counties of Walworth, Waukesha, Rock, Racine, and Jefferson would elect 51 of the 125 members, the Liberty vote could be pivotal in determining which of the two major parties captured many of those seats.²³

The Liberty party’s potential influence especially worried the Whigs, perennial underdogs to the Democrats in territorial politics.²⁴ If they stood fast and made a three-way contest out of the delegate elections, Democratic craftsmen almost certainly would forge Wisconsin’s constitution. If they tried to unite with disaffected Democrats, as they had on occasion in the past, formidable organizational obstacles would hamper their efforts. Finally, if they courted Liberty men in districts where they held the balance of power, some of their own party members doubtless would rebel. Without any clearly attractive alternative, and with nothing to lose, the Whigs decided to woo both Liberty men and Democrats where the opportunity presented itself and to otherwise shape their appeal to accommodate local concerns.

Leading the assault on Liberty loyalties was the urbane Rufus King, grandson of the renowned Federalist leader, only recently arrived in Milwaukee from his native New York where he had been allied with the antislavery wing of the state’s Whig party.²⁵ As the new owner and editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, King, a long-time supporter of black suffrage, urged its adoption in the future state of Wisconsin; he contemptuously dismissed laws that linked voting privileges to skin color as inconsistent with free institutions and democratic principles. Echoing the Liberty position, King insisted that slavery and racial prejudice stemmed from the same misguided beliefs, and until those beliefs were repudiated by the people of the North, the South could with justice dismiss their antislavery professions as hypocritical benevolence. “There is no more effectual mode of upholding slavery,” he wrote, “than for men in the free states to treat blacks as an inferior race.” And, quoting his longtime political associate and former Whig governor of New York, William H. Seward, King further argued that extending the vote to northern blacks would constitute the first act in a drama that would end “without injustice to the slaveholder, without civil war … in the sublime catastrophe of Emancipation.”²⁶ Following his lead, other Whig journalists in southeastern Wisconsin came out in favor of black political equality.²⁷

By supporting black voting in Wisconsin, Whigs in the southeastern counties hoped the territory’s Liberty men would follow the precedent set by their party in New York, which had promised to back any candidate or party adopting a prosuffrage stand in a vote to revise the Empire State’s constitution that same year.²⁸ Whigs also publicized an appeal of New York’s blacks asking voters to champion candidates, irrespective of party, pledged to fight for equal suffrage.²⁹ Then they asked, would Wisconsin’s abolitionists waste their ballots, stubbornly adhering to a party with no prospect of success, or would they unite with Whigs in support of commonly held principles to help bring about electoral reform?³⁰

Although the offer to merge seemed attractive, Liberty men greeted it with skepticism. They not only were reluctant to disband their organization, as the Whigs demanded,³¹ but many undoubtedly agreed with the Democrats, who dismissed Whig pronouncements as insincere and hypocritical.³² So, in February, at their territorial convention, they resolved to oppose any constitution that failed to enfranchise Wisconsin’s blacks and pointedly reminded both Whigs and Democrats of their past indifference, which made present signs of approval from either party highly suspect. Liberty activists thus rejected union with the Whigs and resolved to place their own men in nomination.³³ In mid-March, however, they abruptly changed course.

Probably after consulting with other Liberty leaders, Sholes now urged party members to dispense with partisanship and cooperate with Whigs and Democrats friendly to “EQUAL RIGHTS AND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.”³⁴The reasons for this shift are unclear, but King’s courtship and the example of New York’s party men seem to have caused rifts among Wisconsin’s abolitionists. Liberty men had always placed their principles above strict party loyalty, and doubtless this made it difficult for many to ignore the opportunity to work with others favoring black equality. Self-interest likely played a role too. Constitution-making was serious business, and the convention could be expected to chart Wisconsin’s direction for years to come. Like all residents, Liberty men had a stake in its work, and some understandably might be unwilling to subordinate every issue to the free suffrage question. Finally, Liberty chieftains knew their party would not win any convention seats and at best could expect only to influence the outcome of a few contests in the southeast. So to minimize party strife, they dropped partisanship in favor of trying to influence Whigs and Democrats in antislavery districts to endorse black voting rights, while otherwise they remained warily neutral and kept a watchful eye on events that led up to the September election.³⁵

The ensuing campaign justified their caution, as the Whigs clumsily attempted to manipulate the suffrage question to their advantage. In Dane County, they initially spurned a proposed whites-only suffrage plank and easily passed a resolution that advocated the enfranchisement of all adult males. But, under pressure from the county’s Democrats, who included a whites-only article in their platform, Whig spokesmen timorously backed off and denied that the resolution placed their party on record in favor of black voting.³⁶ In Racine County, Democratic leaders attempted to undercut the influence of antislavery men by nominating a slate of candidates to run without the benefit of a platform. Sensing an opportunity, Racine’s Whigs joined angry Democrats and a handful of Liberty men in selecting a nonpartisan “People’s Ticket” pledged to “universal suffrage without invidious distinctions on account of religion, birth, or color.” The coalition quickly foundered, though, when three of the six Democrats placed on the ticket declined its nomination after being warned they would be drummed out of the party if they persisted in their mutiny.³⁷ In Democratic Milwaukee, the Whigs attempted a similar union that met with the same result.³⁸

Walworth, Waukesha, and Rock County Whigs, who competed fairly evenly with the Democrats, put up straight party tickets and baited Liberty men by embracing equal suffrage. Elsewhere in the territory, Whigs usually ignored the question; only in closely contested Waukesha County did the Democracy openly espouse black voting. In the western counties, where party organization remained undeveloped, candidates ran as independents and gave no consideration to the matter. Grant County alone had forty candidates competing for its eight convention seats, and many of them were known to be antagonistic to black rights.³⁹

By August, Liberty leaders had seen enough. Although a few eastern Whigs publicly embraced black suffrage, Sholes explained, they did so only where Liberty strength forced them to. When combined with Democratic hostility and the opposition of the western counties, he continued, it was apparent that the principle stood no chance of receiving either party’s endorsement. Consequently, Liberty partisans would accomplish nothing except the destruction of their organization by voting for Whigs or Democrats, and until one of them endorsed the Liberty program to destroy slavery “beyond all doubt” they would continue to go their own way.⁴⁰

The Democrats rolled to an astounding victory as a result of the weakness and poor organization of the Whigs and the failure of King and his accomplices to win over the Liberty party. One hundred three Democrats and a mere dozen Whigs were elected to draw up Wisconsin’s constitution. Ten successful Independents joined them, six of whom represented Grant County and leaned toward Whiggery. As expected, the Liberty party failed to elect any of its candidates.⁴¹

On October 5, 1846, the delegates chosen to hammer out a state charter convened in Madison. Four days later, the committee on suffrage recommended adopting an article to restrict the vote to adult white males. Supporters of black enfranchisement instead moved to submit the question to the territory’s electors as a separate item, along with the proposed constitution, an idea copied from New York’s convention. Referendum backers argued that this would keep the people’s attention focused on the constitution itself, limit the impact of the suffrage question, and maybe even undo the territory’s abolitionist party by seeming to commandeer its main issue. Although the proposal went nowhere at first, its possible benefits appealed to a number of delegates.⁴²

Ten days after the whites-only article was reported, Charles Burchard, a Waukesha County Whig and the lone dissenting member of the suffrage committee, called for the enfranchisement of all adult males without reference to color.⁴³ His proposal drew a harsh response from extreme anti-black delegates, especially Edward G. Ryan, a brilliant but temperamental Democratic lawyer and later state supreme court justice, who pointed to New York and alleged that blacks there led sordid lives and lacked the virtues necessary to be responsible citizens or members of the nation’s political family. Moreover, if Wisconsin embraced full political equality, it would become a common destination for legions of runaway slaves, an eventuality to avoid at all costs and a clear violation of sacred decrees that whites and blacks must always remain separate.⁴⁴ Other delegates seconded Ryan’s position. They condemned Liberty men for constantly promoting free suffrage against the wishes of most of the territory’s white residents and for threatening to withhold support for the constitution and statehood to advance their unnatural scheme. Rather than indulge this handful of annoying abolitionists, Moses M. Strong, the former councilman, proclaimed that he “would give them war—war to the knife, and knife to the hilt.”⁴⁵

In his reply, Burchard reminded his fellow delegates that blacks already possessed the franchise in several Northern states, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, and none of them had been overrun by fugitives. In fact, he continued, blacks in those states had shown themselves to be fully competent to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship; to justify withholding the ballot from them simply because of the color of their skin was “a terrible, damnable doctrine.” Instead, Wisconsin’s representatives had a moral and political responsibility to write a colorblind constitution. To do less would violate the principle laid down by the nation’s founders, one that formed the basis of America’s institutions: “All men are born free and equal.”⁴⁶

Although a defender of black suffrage, Burchard carefully disclaimed having any friendship for social equality, that is, a “mingling of the races.” It “was scarcely to be looked for and repugnant to the feelings of men and… divine providence.” Instead, he had taken up the cause of the blacks in spite of those feelings, solely from a devotion to republican ideals and a desire to extend to them a measure of justice.⁴⁷ Moses Gibson, a Fond du Lac Whig, stated the case more plainly. Whether or not a white man wanted “to commingle, intermarry, and eat and drink” with blacks was irrelevant to the question of civil and political rights. According to Gibson,

The whole system of a republican government [is] opposed to depriving Negroes of the right of suffrage—the whole principle of republican institutions from foundation to capstone is opposed to infringing upon the natural rights of any man, and he could not, therefore, vote for depriving this portion of citizens of the right of voting.⁴⁸

Warren Chase, a Democrat and leader of the Fourierist community in Ceresco (Ripon), made the case for Burchard’s amendment on both principled and political grounds. Not only was equal suffrage just and right, he submitted, but its confirmation would eliminate the only issue distinguishing the Liberty party from the Whig and Democratic organizations and bring about its disappearance. Other representatives, whether or not they approved of Burchard’s position, agreed that enfranchising blacks would kill the antislavery party, but fearful of local reaction, they preferred a referendum.⁴⁹

On October 22, before taking up Burchard’s suffrage article, the convention defeated a proposal to refer the issue to the people as a separate question by a fifty-one to forty-seven vote.⁵⁰ Delegates from the western counties unanimously opposed the measure. They were joined by a number of representatives from the divided eastern delegations and five others from predominantly foreign-born Washington County.⁵¹ Although Democrats dominated the convention, partisanship seemed unimportant in the balloting. Rather, as the record of the debates suggests, a delegate’s perception of his constituency’s attitude probably counted most, although principle did influence some votes. Charles M. Baker, a Walworth County Democrat, summed up the feelings of several members when he expressed personal sympathy for free suffrage, but he knew his constituency opposed it. Thus, he felt obliged to respect that sentiment. For his part, Burchard voted against the measure because it needlessly encumbered the constitution and provided ambitious delegates instructed to support black suffrage with an opportunity to dodge the issue directly. Marshall M. Strong, for one, had been an outspoken advocate of black enfranchisement since 1844 but, eyeing a seat in the United States Senate, now lamely explained in opposition that he “had … changed his views on the subject.”⁵²

The delegates took up Burchard’s proposal to enfranchise all adult males on the following day, and any illusions he may have harbored respecting the strength of prosuffrage sentiment were rudely demolished when it was rejected ninety-one to twelve.⁵³ Five of the favorable ballots came from the tiny Whig delegation and included that of Rufus King’s close political associate John Tweedy. Alexander Randall, a young, aspiring political adventurer who a few days earlier had made a forceful speech against excluding blacks from the polls, stood prominent among the handful of prosuffrage Democrats. Still, most delegates, motivated by personal prejudice and the perceived antagonism of the electorate, as well as by Strong’s admonition that black enfranchisement would condemn the constitution, wanted nothing to do with it. As one member intimated, the convention’s work hardly seemed worth endangering for the sake of a few blacks.⁵⁴

Despite these setbacks, the friends of free suffrage persisted. On October 26, Randall introduced yet another proposal to submit the question to the people.⁵⁵ Two weeks later, Moses Strong successfully tacked an amendment onto Randall’s resolution, designed to make it “as obnoxious as he could,” that declared blacks eligible for all state offices if they were awarded the vote. Since the articles relative to office holding opened all elective positions to qualified voters, his amendment was needlessly provocative. Yet many delegates voted for it simply to forestall further debate on the question and get on with other business.⁵⁶ Finally, on the last day of November, Randall’s proposal passed fifty-three to forty-six. The margin of victory came from seventeen eastern county representatives who had been either absent or in opposition when the question first came to a vote.⁵⁷ The latter group included Burchard, who now realized that a referendum was the best that could be obtained, and three Democrats who represented predominantly immigrant constituencies, in apparent retaliation against the successful efforts of western members to raise the residency requirement in the proposed suffrage article from six months to one year.⁵⁸ By contrast, the antireferendum coalition remained largely intact, losing only the six votes but picking up two others from representatives who earlier had cast proreferendum ballots. So, for motives ranging from principle to expediency to revenge, Wisconsin’s voters would be given an opportunity to express themselves on the merits of black political equality.

In mid-December the labors of the convention came to an end. Popular debate quickly indicated that the proposed constitution had many enemies.⁵⁹ Whigs and commercially minded Democrats, including Milwaukee’s Democratic postmaster and political boss, Josiah Noonan, denounced the article prohibiting banking and paper money. Marshall M. Strong, who had resigned from the convention in protest over a provision recognizing the rights of married women to retain independent ownership of their property, added his voice to the forces opposing ratification. Still other men objected to the clause that exempted the forced sale of forty-acre homesteads, not exceeding $1,000 in value, in civil cases arising over the inability of a person to repay a contracted debt. Liberty partisans scorned the obnoxious suffrage article excluding blacks and denounced the representatives who had espoused it. Some eastern Whigs also condemned the anti-black clause, with Rufus King once remarking that bad as the banking article was, “Still more glaring and reprehensible is the … course pursued by the majority on the vital question of the Right of Suffrage.”⁶⁰

Among the Democratic editors, only Christopher Sholes forthrightly supported both the constitution and black political equality. In an address to Liberty men, he claimed that despite the whites-only suffrage article, the democratic principles embedded in the proposed charter represented “one step towards a practical and universal recognition of the grand principle of human brotherhood” and would hasten the inevitable triumph of equal rights. James C. Bunner of the Racine Advocate also gave a terse, guarded endorsement of black suffrage.⁶¹ The remainder of the Democratic press extolled the controversial document and worked feverishly to counter the opposition of Whigs, Liberty men, and contumacious Democrats. When they mentioned the black suffrage proposition at all, it usually was in tones of thunderous condemnation.⁶²

On April 6, 1847, Wisconsinites trooped to the polls and soundly rejected the constitution 20,233 to 14,116. Black suffrage fared no better. Only 69 percent of the men registering an opinion on the constitution bothered to cast a ballot on the question, and they defeated it 15,959 to 7,704.⁶³

To no one’s surprise, voters in the southwestern counties of Grant, Iowa, and Lafayette repudiated black enfranchisement overwhelmingly, 6,216 to 205. Further east, in the lakeshore counties of Washington, Milwaukee, and Manitowoc, strongholds of foreign-born citizens, nearly 2,500 ballots were counted against black voting rights and only 700 in favor, with most of the prosuffrage support coming from the city of Milwaukee, which still boasted a significant Yankee population.⁶⁴ Dane and Green counties in southcentral Wisconsin, which were the destination of increasing numbers of foreigners and which lay contiguous to the lead district and remained under its influence both politically and socially, also provided heavy antisuffrage majorities.⁶⁵

Prosuffrage sentiment was concentrated largely in the southeastern counties of Racine, Walworth, and Waukesha. Those Yankee enclaves accounted for 44 percent of the pro-black vote, while Fond du Lac, Dodge, and Jefferson counties, likewise settled mainly by natives of New York and New England, but lately joined by many Germans, also gave small majorities in favor of the proposition.⁶⁶

An analysis of the 1847 referendum returns and the 1848 governor’s contest furnishes insight into the partisan responses to the suffrage question (see tables 1 and 24).⁶⁷ True to their party’s principles, Liberty men overwhelmingly favored black political rights. At its peak between 1847 and 1848, the party had won the allegiance of just over one thousand men, virtually all of whom recorded prosuffrage ballots. Whigs furnished about half of the prosuffrage total, Democrats almost a third. The higher level of Whig support coincided with the party’s response to race-related issues in other Northern states and with the editorial favor a few southeastern newspapermen evinced.⁶⁸ A handful of nonaligned men also seem to have contributed votes friendly to the proposition. As anticipated, more Democrats than Whigs opposed black voting, the former recording approximately three-fifths of the antisuffrage ballots, although proportionately, only slightly more Democrats expressed anti-black opinions.⁶⁹

Among the nearly eleven thousand men who abstained on the suffrage question, Democrats outnumbered Whigs two to one. In part, the abstention rate can be attributed to the roll-off phenomenon common to referenda, particularly when a proposition is submitted on a separate ballot. This was the case in 1847. Other nonvoters, unable to reconcile the principle of political equality with their racist attitudes, chose to take no position on the question. Finally, the greater Democratic abstention rate might have been the result of the reticence of most party leaders and editors.⁷⁰

The black suffrage debates and popular vote graphically illustrated that most white men did not consider the issue important enough to abandon traditional party ties or readjust values, whatever they thought about blacks or slavery. Indeed, the debates revealed that racist attitudes prevailed even among supporters of black enfranchisement. Edward Whiton summed up this seeming contradiction when he observed that it was not a question of whether all of the human race were of

the same common stock…. An answer to that question would in no manner change the rights of the parties concerned … if it were conceded that though they were black, they were nevertheless men … [then] they were entitled to all the privileges of the elective franchise as other men.⁷¹

Marshall Strong had said much the same thing when he earlier alleged that Norwegians occupied a lower rung in the scale of humanity than Wisconsin’s blacks but nonetheless deserved the franchise.⁷² In short, political and civil rights were perceived as quite distinct from personal beliefs, and the dilemma confronting many Wisconsinites was whether blacks were entitled to political equality in spite of their alleged inferiority. The 1847 referendum demonstrated that in most cases racist attitudes prevailed over egalitarian principles.

The rejection of the constitution did not diminish Wisconsin’s desire for statehood. At the behest of Governor Henry Dodge, a special session of the legislature met in October and scheduled an election for delegates to a new convention that would assemble in mid-December. The Whigs hoped that hostility to the continuing Mexican War, President James K. Polk’s veto of a much desired rivers and harbors bill and widespread dissatisfaction with the unseemly behavior of many Democrats at the first meeting would help boost their representation.⁷³ In September, their spirits were raised when John Tweedy bested Moses M. Strong in the race for Congress to become the first Whig to win a territory-wide election. Anticipating defeat, Tweedy had absented himself from the territory on personal business during the campaign. Moreover, late in the contest, Beriah Brown, the sharp-tongued editor of Madison’s Wisconsin Democrat, distributed a broadside throughout the western counties in which Tweedy, by virtue of his support for black suffrage at the convention, was characterized as “the champion of the abolitionists” and an enemy of the Union. Not to be outdone, an industrious Grant County Whig circulated a leaflet that described Strong’s resolution to allow black office holding as evidence of his support for black equality, concealing, of course, his motive for introducing the measure.⁷⁴

Tweedy’s unexpected victory gave the territory’s Whigs ample reason to rejoice, although astute political observers noted that many eastern Democrats disliked Strong intensely and decided to sit out the election rather than vote for him.⁷⁵ Indeed, the most noteworthy aspect of the congressional election was the precipitous decline in voter participation. Sixty-four percent of the eligible electorate had participated in April’s vote on the constitution, fewer than 40 percent bothered to cast ballots for a territorial representative. So Tweedy’s success resulted more from Democratic apathy and disaffection rather than from a sudden conversion to Whiggery.

Nevertheless, in a campaign that was a model of propriety compared to the first one, the Whigs improved their standing significantly, electing twenty-three of the sixty-nine delegates to the second convention.⁷⁶ This air of decorum carried over into the convention itself, which was far more disciplined and workmanlike than its predecessor. Although sharp debates were common, delegates showed a marked willingness to compromise on disputed points by removing or modifying the objectionable features of the first document, and subordinating partisanship to their desire to shape a suitable constitution.⁷⁷ That reasonable atmosphere extended to discussions of the black suffrage issue.

Two weeks after the start of the convention, a motion to remove the word white from the proposed suffrage article was rejected without debate, although supporters mustered a respectable twenty-two votes in its favor.⁷⁸ Experience Estabrook, a Walworth County Democrat, then recommended that the state legislature be empowered to enfranchise blacks at its discretion. Territorial lawmakers already possessed this authority, he explained, and his proposal would permit the state to act just as expeditiously whenever the people requested the change. Moreover, a grant of legislative authority would avoid troublesome referenda and the time-consuming procedures necessary to amend the constitution. Estabrook also remarked that he had upheld the whites-only clause in deference to popular opinion, but if a majority came to favor the abolition of “this odious distinction,” it should not be held in check by constitutional prohibitions. Majority rule was the true issue indeed, others acknowledged, adding that many men favored eradicating the color line in voting booths due to their democratic principles and not because they were abolitionists.⁷⁹

Opponents of Estabrook’s measure turned his majoritarian principles around and asserted that democracy would be poorly served if the convention should in any way countenance black suffrage, given the recent expression of popular opinion. It was more important to fashion an acceptable constitution, they maintained, than to encumber it with provisions likely to bring about its rejection.⁸⁰

After some confusion, the delegates voted down Estabrook’s amendment by a slim thirty-five to thirty-four margin.⁸¹ Once again, party affiliation played a minor role in the decision of individual delegates to support or oppose the measure. The Whigs split fourteen to nine in favor of the proposal, while the Democrats voted twenty-three to twenty against it.⁸² All nine opposition Whigs and sixteen of the twenty-three antisuffrage Democrats represented areas that had returned heavy antisuffrage majorities in April. A few Democrats from prosuffrage districts, like Augustus C. Kinnie from Sugar Creek in Walworth County, bucked “the expressed opinion of their particular constituents,” insisting that they “should be governed by the will of the … whole territory” rather than local prejudices. Several members from closely divided areas probably followed their own personal predilections and cast negative ballots.⁸³ The prosuffrage vote followed a similar pattern, with most members strictly adhering to home sentiment. A handful of Whigs and Democrats, most notably Rufus King and James T. Lewis, ignored local opinion and voted in favor of black suffrage.⁸⁴

The attempt to provide for future black enfranchisement without having to secure a constitutional amendment continued despite the defeat of Estabrook’s resolution. George Gale, Walworth County’s leading Whig, proposed that the legislature submit the suffrage question to the voters every four years. Upon gaining popular approval, blacks would be authorized “to vote for all offices, and be eligible for all offices that [are] elective.” The office-holding clause was included in good faith, Gale noted, and not “for the purpose of making the subject odious,” as Moses Strong had done in the previous meeting.⁸⁵

After removing the extraneous office-holding stipulation and empowering the legislature to extend the vote to blacks at any time, subject to popular consent, Gale’s amendment passed thirty-seven to twenty-nine. Five Democrats who had voted against Estabrook’s proposal switched their stance and helped carry the measure, while only two delegates who had favored it, including Gale, who was upset with the changes made in his compromise formula, moved into opposition.⁸⁶ Louis P. Harvey, former editor of the Whig Southport American and now a Rock County representative, probably provoked the Democratic shift when he warned that the revised article “went to the utmost limits of concession,” and further modification or rejection would instigate a renewal of the agitation.⁸⁷ After deleting the words “colored suffrage” to make the substitute more broadly acceptable, it was adopted overwhelmingly. In its final form the article read:

That the legislature may at any time extend by law the right of suffrage to persons not herein enumerated; but no such law shall be in force until the same shall have been submitted to a vote of the people at a general election, and approved by a majority of all the votes cast at such election.⁸⁸

Rufus King introduced the only other black rights issue to come before the convention when he requested that the judiciary committee consider incorporating into the Wisconsin bill of rights an article that prohibited all state and local officials from offering official assistance “for the arrest and imprisonment of any person claimed as a fugitive from slavery.”⁸⁹ King’s proposal closely resembled the policy of state noncooperation in the rendition of runaway slaves that Massachusetts and Pennsylvania had enacted into law following the 1842 decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania; however, his wish to include it in Wisconsin’s bill of rights represented a sharp break with precedent.⁹⁰ Edward Whiton, now a well-known champion of black equality and one of the most respected lawyers in the territory, backed King and argued that the article was both constitutional and proper and was worthy of the convention’s serious consideration. Although the judiciary committee adopted the resolution, it issued no recommendation and the matter died.⁹¹

On February 1, 1848, Wisconsin’s second constitutional convention adjourned. Popular discussion of the proposed charter suggested that most people were satisfied with its work.⁹² Only the Liberty party broke through the chorus of praise to condemn “the God-dishonoring, liberty-hating, man-crushing document” for harboring the “infamously black word white.”⁹³ But little other opposition surfaced, and Wisconsinites ratified the second constitution 16,759 to 6,384. On May 28, 1848, President Polk signed the bill admitting Wisconsin into the Union.⁹⁴

Although the new state’s blacks failed to win political equality, they still possessed greater legal rights than their fellows in most other Northern states.⁹⁵ They were allowed to accumulate property, serve on juries, hold public and private meetings, petition the legislature, testify against whites, send their children to public schools, pursue any occupation, and marry whom they chose. And since blacks were excluded from the polls and ineligible to serve in the state militia, they also were exempt from the poll tax payable in labor from all male citizens and from service with local road crews.⁹⁶ Moreover, by confronting Wisconsinites with the incongruity between their republican professions and their racial prejudices, Liberty men, along with like-minded Whigs and Democrats, made future black enfranchisement a less cumbersome process than it otherwise might have been.⁹⁷ Still, both blacks and abolitionists were disappointed in the convention’s refusal to adopt equal suffrage. Marginal political support and the defeat of the principle epitomized the frustration Liberty enthusiasts experienced throughout the North in the years before statehood. Whigs and Democrats treated them seriously only when their votes could spell the difference between victory or defeat; otherwise they were met with indifference or scorn.

Yet, the Liberty party’s real importance lay in devising a convincing legal and constitutional method of abolishing slavery, which in modified form would be embraced by succeeding antislavery coalitions. And in states such as Wisconsin, where most residents disapproved of slavery as a matter of principle, even if they failed to sustain it in practice, it was hoped that changed circumstances eventually would bring about the triumph of Liberty ideals. In the year Wisconsin joined the Union, events appeared to be moving in a favorable direction.