• , " / I • I ) '^ri\S'}^'V;fjSK(:y.Mst!4:i Wisconsin I Magazine of History The Patent Medicine Almanac JAMES HARVEY YOUNG Featherstonhaugh ani His Critics HAROLD L. GEISSE Wisconsin's First Railroad Commission WILLIAM L. BURTON Greek Revival Moves Westward RICHARD W. E. PERRIN Water and the Law in Wisconsin A. ALLAN SCHMID Tke American Civil War Made Easy Published by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin / Vol. XLV, No. 2 / Spring, 1962 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., Director Officers WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE, President JOHN C. GEILFUSS, First Vice-President GEORGE HAMPEL, JR., Treasurer E. E. HOMSTAD, Second Vice-President LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., Secretary Board of Curators Ex-Officio GAYLORD NELSON, Governor of the State MRS. DENA A. SMITH, State Treasurer ROBERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State CONRAD A. ELVEHJEM, President of the University ANGUS B. ROTHWELL, Superintendent of Public Instruction MRS. SILAS SPENGLER, President of the Women's Auxiliary Term Expires 1962 GEORGE BANTA, JR. HERBERT V. KOHLER WILLIAM F. STARK JOHN TORINUS Menasha Kohler Pewaukee Green Bay GEORGE HAMPEL, JR. ROBERT B. L. MURPHY STANLEY STONE CLARK WILKINSON Milwaukee Madison Milwaukee Baraboo SANFORD HERZOG GERTRUDE PUELICHER MILO K. SWANTON ANTHONY WISE Minocqua Milwaukee Madison Hayward Term Expires 1963 SCOTT M. CUTLIP MRS. ROBERT FRIEND JOHN C. GEILFUSS WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE Madison Hartland Milwaukee Madison W. NORMAN FITZGERALD EDWARD FROMM MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE JAMES RILEY Milwaukee Hamburg Genesee Depot Eau Claire J. F. FRIEDRICK ROBERT GEHRKE DR. GUNNAR GUNDERSEN CLIFFORD SWANSON Milwaukee Ripon La Crosse Stevens Point Term Expires 1964 THOMAS H. BARLAND JIM DAN HILL MRS. VINCENT W. KOCH FRED L OLSON Eau Claire Superior Janesville Milwaukee M. J. DYRUD E. E. HOMSTAD MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERICK SAMMOND Prairie du Chien Black River Falls Madison Milwaukee FRED H. HARRINGTON GEORGE F. KASTEN CHARLES MANSON WILLIAM STOVALL Madison Milwaukee Madison Madison Honorary Honorary Life Members WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, Winnipeg PRESTON E. MCNALL, Madison MRS. LITTA BASCOM, Madison DOROTHY L. PARK, Madison MRS. LOUISE ROOT, Prairie du Chien Fellows Curators VERNON CARSTENSEN (1949) HJALMAR R. HOLAND, Ephraim MERLE CURTI (1949) SAMUEL PEDRICK, Ripon The Women's Auxiliary OFFICERS JIJRS. W. NORMAN FITZGERALD, Milwaukee, President MRS. JOSEPH C. GAMROTH, Madison, Vice-President MRS. MILLARD TUFTS, Milwaukee, Secretary MRS. ALDEN M. JOHNSTON, Appleton, Treasurer MRS. CHESTER ENGELKING, Green Bay, Assistant Treasurer MRS. SILAS L. SPENGLER, Menasha, Ex-Officio VOLUME 45, NUMBER 3/SPRING, 1962 Wisconsin Magazine of History Editor: WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD Wisconsin's First Civil Rights Act: A Research Query 158 The Patent Medicine Almanac 159 JAMES HARVEY YOUNG Featherstonhaugh and His Critics 164 HAROLD L. GEISSE Featherstonhaugh in Tychoberah 172 The American Civil War Made Easy 186 Wisconsin's First Railroad Commission: A Case Study in Apostasy 190 WILLIAM L. BURTON Greek Revival Moves Westward: The Classic Mold in Wisconsin 199 RICHARD W. E. PERRIN Water and the Law in Wisconsin 203 A. ALLAN SCHMID Readers' Choice 216 Accessions 228 Contributors 236 Published Quarterly by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published not assume responsibility for statements made by contribu­ quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 tors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin. State Street, Madison 6, Wisconsin. Distributed to members Copyright 1962 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. as part of their dues (Annual membership?, $5.00; Family Paid for in part by the Maria L. and Simeon Mills Editorial membership, $7.00; Contributing, $10; Business and Profes­ Fund and by the George B. Burrows Fund. Wisconsin news­ sional, $25; Life, $100; Sustaining, $100 or more annually; papers may reprint any article appearing in the WISCON­ Patron, $1000 or more annually). Single numbers, $1.25. SIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY providing the story carries Microfilmed copies available through University Microfilms, the following credit line: Reprinted from the State Histori­ 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Communica­ cal Society's Wisconsin Magazine of History for [insert the tions should be addressed to the editor. The Society does season ana year which appear on the Magazine^ . of human rights stemmed from this early law, which has since been enlarged to meet WISCONSIN'S FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS ACT. changing circumstances. From the text of the 1895 statute I traced it back to its introduction into the legislature. Identical bills were introduced in the Senate A RESEARCH QUERY and the Assembly simultaneously and referred to the Committee on Judiciary of each house. Once the bills reached their respective com­ mittees, the information about them became skeletal. I discovered the slight changes that TN tracking down themes in Wisconsin his- were made in each bill and the chronology •*- tory, I struck a snag in the form of an of the bills' progression through each house, unanswered question: Why did Wisconsin but I needed more data than the legislative pass a civil rights act in 1895? Some of you journals provided. might be able to throw some light on this query; I could certainly use your help. I have I ran into more of the same in the news­ done a little investigating but to date the papers. One Madison paper thought the bills results have been negligible. to be so insignificant that they were only A year or so ago, a friend of mine sent me mentioned as part of the legislature's calendar. a copy of an article he had written on the No news story, no editorial, no column, no Negro in Pennsylvania. One of the unanswered letters to the editor. I checked back quickly questions in the article was the origin of civil among the Negro newspapers on microfilm rights laws in Northern states. I knew that which we have in the Society library. Nary in 1883 the United States Supreme Court had a mention of Wisconsin in the forefront or declared the major parts of a federal civil backwater of civil rights activity. rights statute unconstitutional. I knew also Somewhat discouraged by this first peek that shortly after the decision, Northern states at the press, I began to look at the men who began to pass their own civil rights statutes. had introduced the bills. Both of them were Wisconsin followed suit in 1895. from Milwaukee. Senator Richard Austin What I did not know is why these states came from the fifth district and was well acted, since there were few Negroes in the known and highly respected in the city. North in the late nineteenth century and they German-born Reinhardt Klabunde was a fresh­ were largely without political power at the man assemblyman from the ninth ward, a state level. What organizations, if any, liquor dealer by occupation. Austin's fifth sparked the legislation? What were the district did not include Klabunde's ninth ward, issues? What did people say about the bills? and the greatest concentration of Negroes in I wondered why Northerners, who were by Milwaukee were in two wards which neither that time tired of the "Negro Question" and man represented. Nothing about the two men, were primarily concerned with other things except their Republican party affiliation, than civil rights, pushed these laws through seemed to fit together. state legislatures. The place to begin such My questions are still unanswered, and new an inquiry, I thought, was Wisconsin. ones have cropped up, but the search and At first it was easy. I located the 1895 research are far from over. There are still statute; it was comprehensive and complete. sources to be explored: the state archives, It guaranteed to all persons regardless of contemporary manuscript materials, and more race or color "the full and equal enjoyment" newspapers, to name a few. It is a good bet of inns, restaurants, barber shops, public that something will turn up. Maybe you have conveyances, and like establishments. It some information about the passage of this penalized anyone who was convicted of in­ act and the men who were interested in it. terfering with this right with a fine or im­ If you can help, I would like to hear from prisonment. For the first time, I realized that you. Wisconsin's outstanding record in the field L.H.F., JR. 158 THE PATENT MEDICINE ALMANAC By JAMES HARVEY YOUNG T^HE patent medicine almanac, during the dogs and yellow fever, good Lord, deliver -*- second half of the nineteenth century, us!" A similar hostility to quackery marked was a sort of informal textbook for educating the many health almanacs, issued by physi­ the American people. It was ubiquitous, and cians, that began to appear in 1817 and had it stayed around twelve months a year. In­ a vogue lasting past mid-century.^ fluence is hard to reckon, but the nostrum During these same years, patent medicine almanac certainly played a role of some proprietors were pioneering in American com­ significance in influencing social attitudes, merce, the first businessmen to exploit goods especially of Americans at the grass-roots.^ bearing brand names in a market as large as Begun in the 1840's, patent medicine al­ the nation, the first to employ in their adver­ manacs owed much to their ancestors, the tising a wide variety of psychological lures. eighteenth-century almanacs of men like It was not typical of their usual venturesome- Nathaniel Ames, Benjamin Franklin, and ness that they did not adopt the almanac Robert Thomas, but the breed was destined to sooner than they did. Perhaps they were too decline. These American stalwarts of the En­ busy placing their advertising in the nation's lightenment helped bring to our shores the burgeoning press, the new penny dailies of new scientific spirit, rejected astrology, con­ the cities, the village weeklies of the hinter­ demned quackery.