• , " / 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. Thomas—"the old farm­ land. er"—offered a prayer in 1813: "From quack It is to newspaper trouble that we owe the lawyers, quack doctors, quack preachers, mad origin of what is probably the first almanac

^ Clarence S. Brigham, An Account of American ^ This paper, read at a joint session of the Almanacs and Their Value for Historical Study Southern Historical Association and the American (reprinted from Proceedings of the American Anti­ Studies Association in Chattanooga on November 9, quarian Society, October, 1925) ; George Lyman 1961, is an expanded version of material appearing Kittredge, The Old Farmer and His Almanack in the author's The Toadstool Millionaires, A Social (Boston, 1904), 57-61, quotation, 100. See, for History of Patent Medicines in America before example, Porter's Health Almanac, for 18,32 (Phila­ Federal Regulation (Princeton, 1961), 136-142. delphia) .

159 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 issued by a patent medicine proprietor, C. C. erally featuring angels, which heralded the Bristol's Free Almanacfc, for the Year 1843, merits of a Cherry Pectoral and other thera­ and of American Independence tfie 67tfi. peutic wares originated by James C. Ayer.' "Candid men will be pleased with candor," And from Philadelphia Dr. David Jayne dis­ wrote Bristol, "and in all frankness the pub­ patched an almanac that may well have come lisher of this Almanac will give in few words out every year for a century. Jayne's principal and plain style, the reasons for its appear­ products were vermifuges. Staring out at ance." A rival proprietor, jealous of the suc­ the reader from the early issues was a hor­ cess in New York City of Bristol's Sarsaparilla, rendous tapeworm. Some time during the had launched a competitive product and had fifties, the worm turned, assuming a different subsidized that first penny daily, the Sun, pose and presumably a more comfortable one, to exclude all of Bristol's advertising. Similar for he was to hold it unchanged for over efforts had failed with the Herald and the fifty years.** Tribune; indeed, Horace Greeley had sent Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Bristol a letter reporting how the Sarsaparilla the Ayer company was averaging $120,000 had cured "a young child dangerously dis­ a year printing some sixteen million almanacs. eased with tumors as well within as upon its During one year the total may have exceeded head." But the "oppressive monopolizing twenty-five million. In 1889, with the summit course" of the Sun had hurt Bristol's busi­ not yet reached, Ayer celebrated the purchase ness, and his almanac, issued from Buffalo, of some new printing equipment with a bound was an alternate "method of presenting the volume of its twenty-one editions for that claims" of his Sarsaparilla to the citizens of year, identical except that each was in a dif­ New York." ferent language, intended both for immigrant It was a method that worked well enough groups in the United States and for the export to deserve repetition the next year and wide­ trade. Thus the same jokes, the same medical spread imitation in the years that followed.' exhortations, could be read in Armenian and All the major patent medicine producers, in­ Burmese, in Turkish and Welsh. The Ayer cluding Bristol's bribing rival and many small publishing plant had equipment to print, fold, concerns, got into the almanac game." In and bind a hundred thousand almanacs a day, Pittsburgh, near the sources of Monongahela the presses consuming some twenty-five miles rye, David Hostetter made an eighty-proof of paper in the process. It was the company's Bitters which was promoted for half a century proud boast: "Second only to the Bible in by means of a green-covered almanac bearing circulation—is Ayer's Almanac."" on its cover St. George and the dragon." Over an equal span, there issued from Lowell, Close behind came Hosletter's United States Massachusetts, a yellow-bound almanac, gen­ Almanac for ifie Use of Mercfiants, IWecfianics,

' A complete file of Ayer's almanac for the years ^ On the question of origins I have been helped 1853-1924 is in the library of the State Historical by correspondence with Milton Drake of Riverdale, Society of Wisconsin. N.Y., who has compiled a Check-List and Census " The earliest almanac Drake has found is for 1847, of American Almanacs. although Jayne later dated his almanacs from 1843; ^ A copy of Bristol's Free Almanac for 1843 is in a 1938 edition is referred to in Standard Remedies, the New-York Historical Society, for 1844 in the 23:11 (October, 1937). The early worm appears Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress, in the 1850 edition in the Bella C. Landauer Collec­ while a complete file for the years 1843-1846 is tion of the New-York Historical Society; the later owned by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. worm was seen in editions 1859-1917, passim, in the An 1870 Bristol edition is in the New York Public American Antiquarian Society. A file of Jayne's Library. almanacs for the years 1850-1937 is also owned by ° A. B. & D. Sands, The Illustrated Family Recipe the library of the State Historical Society of Wis­ and Medical Almanac, 1850, in the New York Public consin. Library. 'American Druggist, 36:228 (March 29, 1900); " A file of the Hostetter almanacs, 1861 through Sidney A. Sherman, "Advertising in the United 1910, was examined at the offices of the Hostetter States," in the American Statistical Society Publica­ Corporation in Pittsburgh. A similar file for the tions, 7:5 (December, 1900). A bound collection same period is owned by the State Historical Society of Ayer's 1889 almanacs, with a two-page foreword, of Wisconsin. is located in the Peabody Institute Library, Baltimore.

160 YOUNG : PATENT MEDICINE ALMANAC

Farmers and Planters, and All Families. Dur­ ...•.•..••.,•.•,{,,. ing the last quarter of the century, according to the corporation's minute book, the annual AYEK'S printing ranged from ten to thirteen million copies.^" Statistics have not been found for iVMEKICAN ALMANAC other major proprietors who promoted their remedies with almanacs. St. Louis concerns 1881/^ alone, it was said in 1898, surpassed the twenty million mark." When Hostetter's almanacs are added to Ayer's, and when those of Jayne, Brandreth, Doan, Drake, Herrick, McLean, Miles, Radway, Schenck, Warner, Wright, the Chattanooga Medicine Company, are heaped on the pile, there certainly were printed each year from the 1870's into the 1900's at least one patent medicine almanac for every two Americans, not to mention those that went overseas.'" Each year conveniently before the Christ­ mas season, local druggists and general store­ keepers were shipped supplies of almanacs, often with their names printed on the cover. The almanacs were free, costing the merchant only the freight. Each year between Christmas and New Year, these almanacs were placed upon thousands of counters for millions of I'riii.isiiKii iiT X>:R. J-. c. A."irEK,

161 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING. 1962 nostrum almanac was a literary event. The and newspaper. Most of this was nonsense— same was true for Carl Sandburg in a town expensive, hazardous nonsense. Conditions out in Illinois. He and a brother and sister shared by most healthy people, like occasional read the Hostetter issues aloud to each other, heaviness of the eyelids and spots before the discussing the points of the jokes. Millions eyes, were turned into dire symptoms of dread of youngsters the nation over, destined for diseases. And dread diseases like cancer and futures much less literary, must have done like­ consumption were turned into simple variants wise." of a single all-encompassing ailment, be it bad What they found in the pages of the al­ blood, catarrh, or dyspepsia. Both sorts were manac was a pretty standard fare. There was amenable to the proprietor's sovereign specific "the man of the signs," or the "moon's man," or to his assortment of packaged remedies, or the "anatomy," as he was called,'' a stand­ depending on the almanac at hand. Proof of ing, nude figure with the skin of his abdomen efficacy was asserted by hundreds of testi­ laid back to show his bowels. Around him monials, some fictitious but most no doubt were the twelve signs of the zodiac, each genuine but misguided, from humble people linked by a line to that part of the body who believed they had been cured and who which its influence controlled. This "man of were, in effect, heeding the counsel an editor signs" dated back to medieval manuscript once gave: "If your brains won't get you calendars and, in the words of George Lyman into the papers, sign a 'patent medicine' Kittredge, "was a graphic summing up of the testimonial. Maybe your kidneys will.'"' whole doctrine of astrological medicine." At best patent medicines were a costly Patent medicine almanacs noted for each day placebo, curing a non-existent ailment created the moon's position as it moved through the by advertising. At worst, as with harsh lax­ zodiacal constellations in its unending heaven­ atives and nostrums containing opium and a ly tour. Also in the almanacs were the usual high percentage of alcohol, they were a direct astronomical data, the rising and setting of threat to health. Delay in consulting a physi­ the sun, the phases of the moon, the changes cian, often the consequence of reliance upon of season, the dates of eclipses, all this pur­ patent medicines, could turn a remediable chased year after year by many proprietors into an incurable disease. from an obliging astronomer in Massachu­ That many nostrum proprietors made or setts for thirty dollars." There was advice added to fortunes is doubtless one token of to the farmer and housewife, traditional lore the effectiveness of these textbooks they issued of a folk sort. There were sometimes cartoons, from year to year, however inaccurate their almost always jokes and jingles clipped from lessons on health. Perhaps the patent medi­ the daily and comic papers by members of cine almanacs also had another educational the office staff. Each small raft of wit or impact. They may have helped form social wisdom was floated in a vast therapeutic sea. attitudes during the late nineteenth century. For by far the greatest portion of the patent Or, at any rate, the points of view revealed medicine almanacs was filled with the pro­ in almanac humor may reflect the judgments prietor's promotion of his wares. and prejudices of the common men at whom In this advertising lies part of the almanac's the almanacs were aimed. It seems unlikely role as textbook. Certainly, for many Ameri­ that patent medicine proprietors, even in a cans, what reading they did about health and day long before the testing of consumer disease was nostrum advertising in almanac psychology, would have repeated year after year stereotypes offensive to the main body of their potential customers. If this assump­ tion be so, minority groups were indeed held in low esteem. " Mark Sullivan, The Education of an American (New York, 1938), 67; Sandburg, Always the Young Strangers, 227-229. '° Kittredge, Tfie Old Farmer and His Almanack, 54-61. " Toronto Star, cited in Arthur J. Cramp, Nostrums ^° Cantley, "Some Facts about Making Patent and Quackery and Pseudo-Medicine (Chicago, 1936), Medicines," 389. 197.

162 YOUNG : PATENT MEDICINE ALMANAC

"There has always been something sui may have had their image of minority groups generis in the American comic spirit . . .," formulated to some degree, almost certainly wrote Christopher Morley, "A touch of bru­ confirmed, by such a steady diet of unflatter­ tality, perhaps?" The faces of the Irish, the ing caricature. Occasionally almanacs alluded Jew, and the Negro in the nineteenth century to the threat to nativism of minority groups, were not kindly drawn in American graphic and, even while printing editions in their own humor. Thomas Worth's popular Darktown languages for earlier immigrant groups, al­ series for Currier and Ives, for example, more manac editors seemed to wonder if continued sympathetic than many sketches, nonetheless immigration was a good thing. An Irishman, treated the Negro with condescension and a Negro, a German, and a Chinese are cari­ burlesqued his ignorant though merry ways. catured in an 1872 Plantation Bitters alma­ Morton Cronin's content analysis of these nac, as if engaged in political campaigning. and other Currier and Ives prints reveals an The text below includes a forthright appeal to overwhelming emphasis on "the ludicrously nativism: "When everybody is as good as inept manner" in which the Negro performed everybody else if not more so, national dis­ the ordinary activities of life and the absurdity tinctions will be nowhere, and as citizens at of his presuming beyond his lowly station. large, all the World and his Wife (especially This derisive convention, doubly distilled, his wife), will be eligible to all offices every­ marked nostrum almanac humor.'" where." A Hostetter cartoon near the end The sons of Erin, in quip and cartoon, of the century depicted "The White Man" show up as pugnacious, stupid, dishonest, and following the Indian up to the land of the cowardly. Often the facial features were Great Spirit, and calling: "Make room for me. drawn with a simian cast, but hardly with I am the last real American. Emigration the bitterness displayed in the sketching of [sic] has put me in the same fix with your­ the Jew. Tramps, peddlers, or pawnbrokers, self."^" Jews were always after money and slow to Other kinds of minorities were the butt of yield it up. The Negro, too, was caricatured the cartoonist's often savage humor: suf­ unmercifully, with huge lips and monstrous fragettes. Mormons, phrenologists, city feet, a simpleton, shiftless, unkempt, and slickers, fat ladies, bald-headed men, absent- untrustworthy. Year after year, beginning minded professors."^ Almanac humor was as in the mid-eighties, the Hostetter almanacs raw and rasping as almanac pseudomedical printed one cartoon after another making the doctrines. presumably hilarious point that Negroes steal "They can talk about Shakespeare," wrote chickens and almost always get caught.™ a Collier's columnist, "but in my opinion old Again, influence is hard to reckon. Many Hostetter—and Ayer—had more influence on Americans, especially rural Americans, dur­ the national life than any of 'em.""'^ One is ing the late 19th and early 20th centuries. tempted to say sadly that it may be so.

^* Christopher Morley in foreword to William Mur- the Brandreth Annual Calendar for 1883, 1885, 1886, rell, A History of Graphic Humor (New York, 1933- and the G. G. Green IVit and Wisdom for 1883-1884 1938), l:ix; ibid., 108-110; 2:90, 105, 110-112; and 1887-1888, concerning the Negro. Henry T. Peters, Currier & Ives, Printmakers to the "" P. H. Drake and Co., Morning, Noon, and America People (Garden City, 1942), 23, and plates Night, a Medical and Miscellaneous Annual, 1872, 25, 132-135; Morton Cronin, "Currier and Ives: A in the Landauer Collection; Hostetter almanac, 1897. Content Analysis," in the American Quarterly, 4:327- -'For example: (suffragettes) Drake, Morning, 328 (Winter, 1952). Noon, and Night, 1872; (Mormons) Hostetter, 1872; '" Hostetter almanacs have cartoons or jokes re­ (city slicker) Hostetter, 1892; (fat ladies) Hostetter, flecting on the Irish, 1869-1909, passim; on the Jew, 1877; (baldheaded men) Hostetter, 1868; (profes­ 1881-1909, passim; and (more frequently) on the sors) Hostetter, 1903. Negro, 1869-1910, passim. Other almanacs, less ''' Cited in James J. Walsh, Cures, The Story of systematically checked, reveal a similar pattern, as Cures that Failed (New York, 1930), 48.

163 FEATHERSTONHAUGH AND HIS CRITICS

By HAROLD L. GEISSE

Tfie first of livo articles in litis issue about tfie Englisfi geologist tvlio first surveyed the lead and zinc lands of Wisconsin. To the French explorers the presence of lead was more intriguing than it had been to the Spanish, for while lead had been employed TN the American Midwest there are two by man from the time of the earliest civiliza­ -*- mineral-bearing areas in which lead and tion, the Spaniard was interested primarily zinc occur: an Upper Mississippi River in precious metals. He had lead mines at region comprising parts of Illinois, Iowa, and home, in Andalusia, as did the English in the Wisconsin; and a Lower Mississippi region Forest of Dean in Gloustershire. But to the containing several Missouri counties lying Frenchman the lead of the Mississippi Valley south of St. Louis and just west of the river. was an important revelation, since he was Frequently mineral resources are found in intent upon cultivating the good-will of the remote and rugged country where the conflict western Indians, and the lead was a com­ between mining and other land uses is negli­ modity as commercially desirable as the gible. However, when these resources occur Indian's furs and much more readily obtained. in areas where the land is suitable for various The commerce in lead soon wrought a drastic purposes, as in the case of the Mississippi change in the economic and social life of the Valley, troublesome rivalries arise. Indian in the lead-bearing region. Lead, lying exposed at the surface in Where Kaskaskia, Illinois, now stands the sporadic out-crops revealed by erosion, was French discovered a large Indian village which the first metal to attract attention in the they adopted as their center of operations. region. It was found in a country of open Mining began in the Missouri lead deposits, spaces and little forests, but with evidences with New Orleans as the market. Soon min­ of once heavy erosion and no glaciation. But ing communities flourished on the Missouri because of lead's high specific gravity and side of the Mississippi, and frontier Ameri­ because the metal-bearing country is a land cans drifted in from the South, some bringing of gentle slopes, it was not, in the earliest slaves. Under the Spanish and French sover­ days, transported any distance from its point eignties mining customs and practices in the of origin. Missouri country became firmly established. When the Upper Mississippi Valley lead de­ posits finally attracted attention, too, adven­ turers from Missouri moved to the Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin fields, bringing with them concepts of the rights, privileges, and EDITOR'S NOTE: In slightly different form this immunities of miners under the Latin juris­ paper was delivered before the Annual Meeting of prudence. In fact, Julien Dubuque, Iowa's the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Prairie du Chien, June 23, 1961. first white settler, had adopted Spanish

164 GEISSE FEATHERSTONHAUGH S CRITICS

citizenship because of its advantages to a product. Adaptations of these two concepts miner.^ were made as the feudal system developed in In 1803, through the Louisiana Purchase, Europe. In Germany the product of a mine the country west of the Mississippi came belonged to the territorial prince; in France under United States jurisdiction; the Illinois- the Crown owned all minerals. Monopolies Wisconsin region had come in by relinquish­ to mine were granted with payment of royal­ ment of the several colonies which had claimed ties to the Crown. In England the Crown ownership of overlapping areas of the Western declared its ownership of minerals wherever Country. To induce the signing of the Ar­ they were found, but enforced the claim loose­ ticles of Confederation by reluctant colonies, ly, frequently granting rights to mine, some­ each burdened with war-debt, it was agreed times indulgently tolerating mineral recovery, that those colonies claiming western lands often pledging the Crown's claims as security would surrender them for sale by the central for a loan. government, the proceeds to be used to dis­ In all countries the individual miner was charge the colonial debt. Thus, the area a privileged person, exploring for minerals which later was made into the sovereign where he would, sometimes even in church­ states of Illinois and Wisconsin came into the yards. He came and went as he pleased, was United States under a trust to sell the land free from servile tenure, exempt from military for the common good of all the colonies which duty and personal taxation. His tools and formed the Union. The agreement that was implements could not be seized for debt; he signed made this emphatic by the inclusion was granted special courts for the trial of of the clause "and for no other use or pur­ offenses or of civil suits in which he was in­ pose whatever.'"^ volved; and he had protection from local The lands of the two lead-bearing districts authorities, with whom miners traditionally were held by the United States, therefore, are prone to conflict.^ This license to the under differing tenures—one by purchase out­ miner had its origins in the eagerness of sov­ right and one by cession of the fee to facilitate ereigns for mineral development both as a the sale of the land to raise money to pay source of Crown revenue and as a contribu­ debts. This confused a situation that was in­ tion to public welfare. Tin, lead, and copper herently troublesome because of remoteness, were ingredients of bronze, of coinage-metal, the Indian claims to title, the conflicting in­ and of pewter-ware. The latter was very im­ terests of the settlers, and the random char­ portant to the people. The utility of base acter of the mineralization. metals extends back to remotest antiquity: Sovereign attitudes on minerals and mining lead has been utilized since from 2,000 to had developed differently in diverse societies, 4,000 years before the Christian Era, and but as yet the United States had developed no copper since a more remote time.* A recent basic legal rationale as to the relationship of undersea archeological investigation of a government to natural resources. In ancient ship which was sunk off the Italian coast in Greece the product of a mine belonged to the second century B.C. disclosed that the the state. Under Roman law property in land vessel had been equipped with lead piping, implied ownership of the minerals thereunder, lead sheathing, and a stone crucible for subject, however, to taxation of the mined melting lead so that repairs could be made at sea."

^ Public Land Commission, Committee on Codifica­ tion, The Public Domain (Washington, 1884), 374. Julien Dubuque was a French Canadian who settled in Prairie du Chien in 1785 and three years later persuaded the Fox Indians to grant him sole per­ mission to work the lead mines on the Iowa shore 'George Randall Lewis, The Stannaries (Harvard of the Mississippi. From his "Spanish Mines" in Economic Studies, New York, 1908), vol. 3 passim. Iowa, lead, smelted into pigs, was transported to * U.S. Bureau of Mines, Mineral Facts and Prob­ St. Louis where it was exchanged for goods to be lems (Washington, 1960), 429. used in the Indian trade. ° Paul MacKendrick, The Mute Stones Speak (New nbid., 68-69. York, 1960), 104 n.

165 cal survey of the lead lands, saying, "Few subjects connected with the duties of the Bureau open so many and so important national questions."" Considering the equivocal status of the science of geology at the time, this was a remarkable request. As a discipline, geology has attained a comparatively recent place among the sciences. In the latter part of the eighteenth century there had arisen a public fervor for the study of what was termed "natural philosophy." This was stimulated by the insistent discussion of certain of the Harper's Monthly, February, 1853 biblical traditions whose validity troubled This 1853 sketch of the lead region shows how mining the minds of men, e.g., the story of the deluge operations left the countryside denuded and eroded. and the account of creation. Natural philoso­ phy discussion groups sprang up and devel­ 'T'HE incentive of the pioneer movement to oped into corporate societies devoted to scien­ -*- the American West was mainly agricul­ tific study. In some measure these societies tural, and since the lead-zinc region lay in compensated for a curricular deficiency at the path of the surge of migrant home-seekers, the universities which were doing little to conflict between the miners and these in­ encourage science either by research or by truders was inevitable. It was also irrecon­ instruction. In 1807 the first of many national cilable. The miner was unconcerned about geological societies was formed in London," the condition in which he left his "diggins" but it was not until 1835 that the British when he moved on. He cut the trees for wood National Geological Survey was instituted." with which to smelt his ore, and since timber During the first half of the nineteenth cen­ was never plentiful in the lead and zinc terri­ tury the study of geology became a passion tory the incoming farmer found himself with­ among scholars, just as the study of physics out logs for a house, rails for fencing, or and chemistry has won the devotion of many fuel for a hearth." Precisely the same con­ and the attention of all in the decades of flict had arisen in the English mining districts. the twentieth century. Arthur 0. Lovejoy of According to Trevelyan, the fuel shortage in Harvard is quoted as saying that geology was England by the eighteenth century was so "in England the dominant and most brilliantly severe that few of the peasantry knew the successful science of the first half of the 19th comfort of a fire until relief came through century. recognition of coal as a fuel and through its Unusual as Lieutenant Colonel Abert's re­ distribution by the construction of canals.' quest may have seemed, it was acceded to, All interests concerned in the Mississippi and in his report to the Secretary of War in lead and zinc region were dissatisfied—the 1834 he advised that Mr. George W. Feather­ Treasury Department, the War Department, stonhaugh had been engaged to make the the Congress, the Territorial or State govern­ survey and that this gentleman's "known ments, and the citizens of the mining area. talents and industry . . . afford the most In 1833, therefore, the Chief of the Topo­ graphical Engineers, Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Abert, asked permission of the Secretary of War to spend $5,000 per annum on a geologi- "American State Papers: Military Affairs (Wash­ ington, 1860), 5:219. " Charles Coulston Gillespie, Genesis and Geology (Harvard Historical Studies, 1951: Torchbook Edi­ ° State Historical Society of Wisconsin Collections tion, New York, 1959), 20. (Reprint ed., Madison, 1903), 1:81, and ibid. (Madi­ ^Ubid., xi. son, 1900), 15:343. ^' A. O. Lovejoy, "The Argument for Evolution ' G. M. Trevelyan, Short History of England (New before 'The Origin of Species,' " in Popular Science York, 1942), 371. Monthly, 75:510 (1909).

166 GEISSE FEATHERSTONHAUGH S CRITICS solid grounds for anticipating that it will be asserted to be due to ignorance of the geologi­ executed in a manner highly creditable to cal structure and disregard for the commonest himself and to the government.'"'^ principles of mining engineering. He postu­ George W. Featherstonhaugh was a geolo­ lated that the lead-bearing veins extended far gist of English birth who had emigrated to north of where they were then being ex- the United States in 1807 at the age of twenty- ploited.'^ Lieutenant Colonel Abert, in his six. Twenty years later he had returned to report to the Secretary of War in 1835, said, Europe to study geology, mineralogy, and "The great interest . . . exhibited by an un­ paleontology, finally coming back to America paralleled demand for the proceedings ... is to lecture and practice his profession, in the no equivocal proof of the value placed upon course of which he had won considerable note it," meaning Featherstonhaugh's report.^" as a scientist." Featherstonhaugh was directed to pursue At the direction of the War Department, his studies further, this time going to the Featherstonhaugh journeyed to the Lower Wisconsin-Minnesota area via Green Bay. He Mississippi lead region, making geological reported on this trip in 1836. The report con­ observations en route and studying the lead firmed his formerly announced opinion that occurrences and mining practices. His report, the lead was in veins, and remarked that "the made to the Topographical Engineers, was ancient Wernerian notion that metals settled published by order of Congress in 1835. He into fissures from aqueous solutions is now evidently had been a disciple of the great exploded, and the more general opinion is Scottish geologist, James Hutton, who had that they have been inj ected from below. . . ."" published his Theory of Earth in 1795. Hut- His reference was to the ideas advanced by ton's work, though highly regarded, was couched in language that was "pedantic, prolix, and torturous."" Featherstonhaugh's report was all of these; it was, nonetheless, ^° G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Geological Report of an a notable discussion. Examination Made in 1834 of the Elevated Country In his report Featherstonhaugh averred Between the Missouri and Red Rivers (Washington, 1835), passim. that the lead and zinc ores were deposited by ^"American State Papers: Military Affairs, 5:713. injection from sources below, that the ore " G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Report of a Geological was in veins extending downward to unknown Reconnaissance Made in 1835 . . . (24 Congress, 1 session, Senate Document no. 333, vol. 4, Wash­ depth, that in nature they were like the tin ington, 1836), 72. deposits of Cornwall, England, and that it was probable that when the lead recoverable at the surface was exhausted, shafts could be sunk to lower levels. He commented on the disorder into which the countryside had been -*:'SV--Si thrown by the haphazard excavation of pits and the careless disposition of the waste material so that the whole country in which mining was pursued was impassable by car­ riage during the day or by horseback after dark. The streams, he said, were polluted, the country denuded of timber, and future efforts at mining by any ordinary method would be greatly embarrassed. All this he

"^"Ibid., 425. 18 WPA Biographical Sketch in Manuscripts Li­ brary, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Harper's Monthly, May, 18 " Gillespie, Genesis and Geology, 44. 'Weighing pig-lead in the mid-1860's.

167 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Professor Abraham Werner of Freiburg, Ger­ ments, bringing in the ore from below." He many, who, late in the eighteenth century, reported that lead was to be found even in propounded the concept of a world-enveloping what is known as the Lower Magnesian Lime­ ocean from the waters of which all metals stone, which is considerably below the depth settled into cracks in the lithosphere. The at which later geologists fixed the possible principal British opponent of this "Wernerian downward extension of mineralization, and notion" was Dr. James Hutton, previously re­ he said that the whole area rested on a base­ ferred to as Featherstonhaugh's mentor. The ment of hard, igneous rock, 2,000 to 4,000 conspicuous geological revelations of the Eng­ feet down.™ lish tin mines, where diminishing ore produc­ These views of Owen were acquiesced in by tion from placer-mining and increased demand two succeeding state geologists, Edward for tin had forced miners to attack the parent Daniels and James Gates Percival, both of veins in the underlying rock, had a profound Wisconsin, but the careful work of Percival effect on British geological thought and on was not completed when death terminated his mining methods. By the end of the eighteenth studies. century the Cornish miners were deep into the rock and the problem of pumping water T^HE decline of lead production which was out of the mines had been conquered. Feather­ •J- experienced during the 1850's caused stonhaugh envisioned the lead mines as widespread dismay in Wisconsin. Lead-mining destined for the same development, for he had was an important part of the economy. Daniels observed and been impressed by the associated had noted the recession and ascribed it vague­ ores. The zinc, however, was to attain no ly to "some powerful cause." He decried the prominence until later, since zinc, although prevailing public impression that the deposits it had been used in making bronze for at of lead were nearly exhausted.''^ Actually, least 2,000 years, had to await the discovery the drop in production was due to competition of a more abundant use to induce a demand­ from reactivated foreign mines, notably those ing market. in Andalusia, Spain, and to the decline of In 1839, dissatisfaction with the land policy the manufacture of pewter-ware. Red lead in the lead region resulted in Congress passing and white lead were being used in paints, but a resolution directing the President to initiate zinc was beginning to compete with them as a survey to determine "the location, value, a protective coating for iron. The Wisconsin productiveness and occupancy" of all mineral legislature was agitated by the slump in lead lands of the United States." Accordingly, production and actually debated the use of David Dale Owen, State Geologist of Indiana, state funds to sink deep shafts in the lead was engaged to make a hasty reconnaissance fields, an experiment "regarded by some per­ of the Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois lead sons as likely to produce valuable lodes of lands. He reported in 1840 that one could metal.'"''' Instead, the course was adopted of not define what descriptions were lead-bearing organizing a comprehensive geological study because of numerous geological indications to be made by a group of scientists. James that lead was to be found in every direction. Hall of Albany, New York, was engaged to He likened the region to the great lead- direct the investigation. Hall brought in J. D. producing areas of England, and, using sub­ Whitney, who, in 1854, had published a pre­ stantially the same language as Featherston­ tentious work on geology and minerals. To haugh, he stated that a convulsion of nature Whitney was assigned the task of studying the had heaved up the lower rocks and caused lead and zinc region. them to burst through the over-lying sedi-

^•'Ibid., 30. '^ David Dale Owen, Report of a Geological Survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota (Philadelphia, 1852), 62. '* David Dale Owen, Report of a Geological Explor­ '^ Edward Daniels, First Annual Report of the Geo­ ation of Part of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois . . . (28 logical Survey, 1854 (Madison, 1854), 40. Congress, 1 session. Senate Document no. 407, vol. "^ Josiah Dwight Whitney, Geological Survey of the 7, Washington, 1844), 3. State of Wisconsin (Madison, 1862), l:xiv.

168 GEISSE : FEATHERSTONHAUGH S CRITICS

his report, for he complained of the stipend he was paid, brushed off Owen's report as inconsequential, and excoriated Featherston­ haugh. Of the latter he said: "His remarks on them [the lead deposits] and the geological structures of the district in which they oc­ cur . . . are characterized by extreme vague­ ness and evident want of even rudimentary knowledge of mining matters. In regard to the theory of the formation of lead veins, he has no doubt, apparently, that the ore was 'injected from below,' and the horizontal deposits he conceived to be 'lateral jets from the main lode after the manner that Mr. McCuUough has described the structure of the horizontal injections of trap-rock into the sandstone at Trotternish, Scotland.' " Whit­ ney quoted Featherstonhaugh on his expecta­ tion of more ore at greater depth, and said that the idea was "about as worthless rubbish Society's Iconographic Collection as could well be put together, neither describ­ An old lead mine with windlass, photographed in ing any facts which came under the author's 1949 on the Maplewood Farm near Platteville. observation nor giving any theoretical views worthy of a moment's notice except for their Whitney was undoubtedly an enthusiastic absurdity.""^ and dedicated student of geology. His educa­ Whitney's comments were incorporated in tion at Yale had been as a specialist in San­ Hall's report to the legislature in 1861, and in skrit, but after graduation he turned his at­ 1862 Whitney published under his own name tention to the sciences. Many scholars re­ directed their attention towards geology dur­ ing this period. (Percival was educated as a ^' Whitney, Geological Survey of the State of Wis­ physician and then turned to poetry and consin, 1:79-80. science.) Whitney's book. Metallic Wealth of the United States, was an ambitious attempt at an impossibly inclusive exposition, filled with pontifications which he later felt called upon to defend, such as: "There are no de­ posits of lead in the Mississippi Valley which can be considered as coming under the head of true veins," and, "If these rocks contained anything of value, the explorations would have long since revealed that fact." He ex­ ploited a theory of deposition from aqueous solutions under some mysterious electro­ chemical influences.^" He seems to have been particularly resentful of the current British theories regarding mineral occurrences. He was evidently in a bad humor when he wrote

'^Josiah Dwight Whitney, Metallic Wealth of the Society's Iconograpnrc (_oiieci:ion United States (Philadelphia, 1854), 63, 410. An interior view of a lead mine near Cassville, about 1900.

169 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 the portion of the report that he had prepared. in which there has been a dislocation of the His pessimism must have come as a consider­ rock on either or both sides of the fracture. able shock to a public imbued with expecta­ Throughout the succeeding sixty years, tion of a great mining potential in the south­ speculation on the presence, character, extent, western part of the state, and to a legislature and depth of the deposits became a favorite confident that deep shafts would reveal ore. occupation of geologists. Some of the most But inexorable influences were at work even eminent men in the profession studied the then to negate Whitney's contentions. He had situation and wrote learned discussions of its declared that the lead could not be produced aspects. The weight of opinion strongly sup­ profitably, that the scattered nature of the ported Whitney. The ores were said to be zinc made it problematical if any quantity derived from waters percolating from above was available, and that in any event it could or migrating laterally from distant places not be mined or smelted "even in case there and bearing solutions from which the metals is a demand for it.""" The Civil War created were precipitated. Few dared to differ with an imperative demand for zinc in arms and the celebrated Whitney, one-time state geolo­ ammunition and two young German chemists, gist of California—after whom the mountain Matthiessen and Hegeler, established a suc­ peak in that state was named—and after­ cessful zinc smelter at La Salle, Illinois. In wards professor of geology at Harvard. The 1860 there had been produced 226,000 pounds roll of reporting geologists read like a direc­ of zinc ore; in 1865 this had increased to tory of the profession. 4,198,200 pounds and by 1872 to 44,000,000 pounds.'*' Mining enterprises which had been IVTEANTIME the mining progressed, the abandoned in despair in the panic of 1857 -L'^-*- methods improved, and operations in­ secured a new lease on life in 1861. Frederick creased or relapsed with falling markets, as Merk has said that "In nothing did Wisconsin is the case of all mineral-producing activities. give more convincing proof of her prosper­ Zinc became one of the four metals of greatest ity . . . than in the mining boom which at utility in industrialized nations."" In 1893 that time marked her industrial life.'"" The a celebrated Austrian geologist, Dr. Franz applications of mining and smelting com­ Posepny, delivered an address on the genesis panies for charters forced the legislature to of ore deposits at a meeting in Chicago in enact a general law for incorporating such which, with tactful apologies to the venerable organizations."^ Whitney, still surviving in retirement, he The determination of the processes of na­ said: "The argument that the ores must have ture by which the deposition of ores has come from above because it has not been occurred in any particular place is of in­ possible to discover, in the Wisconsin region, estimable assistance in postulating the extent fault-fissures and eruptive dikes . . . seems of the occurrence and in reaching other con­ to me likewise inconclusive.'""" Posepny's clusions that may effect the business hazards paper produced a flood of technical dis­ of a mining operation. In relation to the cussions. lead and zinc deposits the issue of their In Wisconsin, the Southwestern Miners As­ genesis was sharply drawn. Percival had sociation issued a bulletin in 1900 saying that agreed with the concept of the intrusion of Whitney's opinion of 1862 that a search for the ores in veins following ruptures of the minerals at deeper levels was hazardous and rock known as "faults." A fault is a break foolhardy had given their industry a serious handicap.'" In 1906 Dr. H. Foster Bain wrote

"^^Ibid., 370. °° U.S. Geological Survey, The Geology of the '"Mineral Facts and Problems, 976. Upper Mississippi Lead and Zinc Region (Profes­ ^° Franz Posepny, "The Genesis of Ore-Deposits," sional Paper no. 309, Washington, 1959), 74, 77. in Transactions of the American Institute of Mining -' Frederick Merk, Economic History of Wisconsin Engineers, 1893, XXni:304 (New York, 1894). _ During the Civil War Decade (Madison, 1916), 111. *' Southwestern Miners Association, Lead and Zinc '^ Wisconsin General Laws, 1864, ch. 166. in Southwestern Wisconsin, ([Mineral Point], 1900).

170 GEISSE FEATHERSTONHAUGH S CRITICS a monograph reasserting that faults were not ress, though a definitive report was issued in to be found in the area and that the minerals 1959 under the designation "Professional had been deposited by circulating waters."" Paper 309." In the light of the abundant But the dialectic which had been going on technical data assembled and studied, it is for many years began to show the influence now known that the mineral possibilities of of the disclosures of mining operations. Min­ the area are far from exhausted and that ing activity had greatly increased in the second ores of various metals exist at depths hitherto decade of the twentieth century. Shafts were but little explored and possibly in some areas boldly sunk to greater depth, and it was found far beyond the delimitation previously re­ that the strata actually had suffered severe garded as the boundary of the metalliferous faulting. The protagonists of the theory of formations. Despite the prevailing depression lateral secretion of ore-bearing solutions began in the domestic lead and zinc industry, western to give way. In 1931 Professor Paul Abbott Wisconsin can be regarded as possessing a Schafer of the Montana School of Mines wrote natural resource that ranks with that of our that the Wisconsin lead and zinc regions were capacity to produce forest growth and with one of the last strongholds of the lateral the abundant water with which the state is secretionists. supplied. Energy spent in producing full During the depression of the 1930's it was development of these endowments would give insisted by some that our economy had to Wisconsin a sound and effective industrial reached maturity and that our natural re­ background. sources had been fully exploited. As inter­ The intrepid Featherstonhaugh, after his national relations became strained towards adventures in the lead and zinc frontier, de­ the end of the decade it was deemed wise to parted the United States in 1839 in favor of determine to what extent we could rely on his native England. There he gained some domestic sources of certain strategic metals, prominence in British affairs, but except for zinc being one of them. The United States two accounts of travels through the South and Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines Midwest, in both of which he voiced his not- were directed to subject the upper Mississippi too-favorable opinions of American political lead and zinc region to a relentless investiga­ and social institutions, he disappeared from tion and appraisal of its mineral resources. the American scene—a prophet without honor The study began in 1942 and is still in prog­ in the country of his temporary domicile.""

'- H. Foster Bain, Lead and Zinc Deposits of the Frontier of Mexico, with Sketches of Popular Man­ Upper Mississippi Valley (U.S. Geological Survey, ners and Geological Notices (2 vols., London, 1844), Bulletin no. 294, Washington, 1906), 128. and A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotar, with an '"' These books are Excursion through the Slave Account of the Lead and Copper Regions of Wis­ States, from Washington on the Potomac to the consin (2 vols., London, 1847).

Society's Iconographic Collection A modern zinc mine at Linden, Wisconsin, from a photograph taken about 1940. FEATHERSTONHAUGH IN TYCHOBERAH

The second of two articles in this issue about the English geologist who, turning traveler, recorded his impressions of the carried in his portable secretary a bewilder­ frontier social scene. ing array of brushes for his nails and teeth. He was, in 1837, making his second tour of the Wisconsin Territory and finding it, as he had two years earlier, a region in which every prospect pleased and only man was TN 1859 Lyman Copeland Draper, Secretary vile. He was also, judging by the observa­ -*- of the State Historical Society of Wiscon­ tions of those who were his hosts in both sin, received from the Board of Curators' Minnesota and Wisconsin, opinionated, ill- committee on the Picture Gallery an account­ tempered, and given to exaggeration. In ing of the acquisitions since 1857. These were short, he was the usual cultured English­ fifteen in number, the majority being portraits man of his time, making the usual disapprov­ of pioneer luminaries; the minority, of power­ ing American tour. less Indian chieftains decked out in shabby Featherstonhaugh was, nevertheless, a dis­ finery. Two canvases were scenic views, one tinguished scientist, a geologist whom twice of the Pecatonica Battle Field, the other of the United States government had asked to Madison's first white-man's structure, a log survey the mineral lands of the Upper and cabin erected on the shores of Lake Mendota Lower Mississippi Valley. This he had done by two Frenchmen and a gang of Winnebago expertly, and each time the government had as a home for Eben and Roseline Peck and published and given currency to his findings. also as an inn to lodge the workmen who Despite his jaundiced eye and despite the would soon build the new territorial capitol. distortions apparent in his later published The report, tendered by chairman George recollections of his American experiences, he Carpenter, was factual and unadorned. To remains a valuable commentator whom neither give it historical substance and to enhance the historian of American science nor the its readability. Draper, who was also editor social historian can well ignore. of the Society's Collections in which the report Of George William Featherstonhaugh's life appeared, decided to append excerpts from not much is known before 1826. He was a little-known book which had been published born in London in 1780, came to America in London in 1847 and which contained a in 1807, and the next year married a woman spritely account of an Englishman's sojourn of means. In 1826 he returned to Europe as a guest in the Peck cabin in May of 1837, where he studied paleontology, mineralogy, a scant month after its completion. It was and geology, and three years later, on return­ an editorial decision which Draper was to ing to this country, published a brilliant regret and for which, more than a decade^ article on "Geology and Its Progress." It was later, he was to make a public apology. probably this article which helped him soon The Englishman's name was Featherston­ afterward to secure the government appoint­ haugh, in itself sufficient to arouse derisive ment that brought him to Wisconsin and suspicion on a raw frontier even had he not eventually to the Peck cabin.

172 FEATHERSTONHAUGH IN TYCHOBERAH

In 1839 Featherstonhaugh went back to fresh fish, and meat. As to architectural England but returned to America again, this expectations, I was cautious enough, in con­ time as a member of a commission to deter­ sequence of my late experience, not to enter­ mine the boundary between the United States tain any very exalted ones, and therefore and Canada. Five years later he was made limited my anticipations to the larder of the British Consul at Le Havre and in 1848 best tavern of the metropolis of the territory, gained some distinction by aiding King where it was clear there must be something Louis Phillipe to escape to England during better than treacle and assafoetida. About the French social and political disorders of five miles from Mineral Point we called upon that year. He died in Le Havre in 1866, the governor. General Dodge, at a quiet after having published two books based on cabin he had built for himself in a small fragmentary notes jotted down in the course secluded valley, tolerably well wooded, and of his geological investigations. Excursion spent half an hour with him. This gentleman, through the Slave States (London, 1844), at that time the chief magistrate of the ter­ and A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor, ritory, was said to be a perfect western char­ with an Account of tlie Lead and Copper acter. I had seen him on horseback in the Regions of Wisconsin (London, 1847) .^ streets of Mineral Point, and was struck with It is from the latter work that the subse­ the appearance of his accoutrements, having, quent passages are taken. They begin on although dressed in plain clothes, immense the morning of May 29, 1837, as Featherston­ horse pistols staring out of his holsters. He haugh and a fellow geologist, Richard C. had been brought up on the frontiers, and Taylor, whom he had encountered in St. since his manhood had been rather notorious Louis, are on their way to visit Tychoberah, for his desperate feuds with various individ­ Land of the Four Lakes, forty miles distant uals, many of whom still surviving, he always from Mineral Point where Featherstonhaugh went armed, the invariable practice of bloods had spent a few highly disagreeable days. of his calibre being to fire immediately at While there he had witnessed a murder trial any hostile approach. presided over by a drunken judge, had been On taking our leave of his excellency, we domiciled in an apothecary shop reeking of passed some "diggings," with a few miserable asafoetida, and had trustingly acquired from huts erected near them, dignified with the a land speculator a set of elaborately engraved name of Dodgeville. From hence we pursued plans of the seven cities said to be flourishing our way across a rolling prairie, covered with in the vicinity of Tychoberah. charming wild-flowers, and then came to W.C.H. some woodland, where the country became somewhat hilly. Here, at noon, we were met TTAVING engaged a wagon, we took our by my acquaintance, Mr. Messersmith, who -*--*- places in it very early, and I turned my was on the lookout for us, and who conducted back, not unreluctantly, upon our late quar­ us to his farm-house, situated at the bottom ters, leaving my luggage to keep company of a little wooded dell, near a copious spring with the assafoetida until my return. We of delicious clear water. We were received were now bound to Tychoberah, and to those in the kindest manner by his family, and prairies and lakes whose beauty had been after partaking of a homely repast, served so much extolled to me. Madison City, too, to us with unceasing kindness, we set out was an attraction before us; in truth, we had on a long ramble to visit his diggings, which been so wretchedly off at our apothecary's, appeared to be very productive. On our that we were convinced any change would be return to the farm we were surprised by much for the better, and were ardently long­ a hurricane and a heavy storm, accompanied ing to see new faces in the shape of potatoes. with torrents of rain, in which we had to walk about four miles drenched through and through. We were glad to get back to our host's cabin, and repair our misfortune as ^ WPA biographical sketch in the Manuscripts Library, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. well as we could at a rousing wood fire. Mrs.

173 Vi^ISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Messersmith then gave us a cup of coffee, presented themselves. But that which crowned and we lay down whilst our clothes were the perfection of the view, and imparted an taken care of by the good lady. indescribable charm to the whole scene, from May 30. At the dawn of day I rose, the knoll where we stood to the most distant and, finding my clothes comfortably dried, point where the alternate hills and vales dressed, and went to the beautiful spring, blended with the horizon, was the inimitable where, having made my ablutions, I took grace with which the picturesque clumps of a stroll before breakfast; and, having taken trees, that sometimes enlarged themselves our cup of coffee and thanked our friends into woods, embellished this rural landscape for their very hospitable reception, we again from the hand of Nature. got into our waggon, and drove sixteen miles Here a thick grove hanging upon the over the prairie to the Blue Mounds, two slope of a hill, distinguished by its symmetry considerable elevations of rock, consisting of from its numerous companions, impended a silicious hornstone, resembling that which over the amenity of the valley beneath; whilst, I had seen in 1834 in the lead district of further on, a more robust line of dense foliage Missouri. The galena procured in this neigh­ betrayed the ample volume of some pellucid borhood is so very white and brittle, and stream whence it was nourished. Turn where contains such a superabundance of sulphur, we would, every object within the ample that upon breaking many of the cubes, I gen­ range concurred to cherish and to establish erally found crystals of pure sulphur within. more indelibly the pleasing impression caused We here found an old bachelor, named by the whole; whilst the softness of these Brigham, living in a log hut at this solitary attractions contrasted here and there so strik­ place, following, as everybody does in this ingly with the noble rock escarpments peer­ territory, the occupation of a miner. He ing out from the bluffs, that Nature might gave us a couple of hard-boiled eggs and be said to speak to you in a voice that must some stale bread, and charged us about ten be listened to, and to tell you that she had times what they were worth for them." here surpassed the most polished efforts of Pursuing our journey, at one p.m. we English park scenery, the most difficult of passed the military road leading to Fort all her achievements. America will justly Winnebago and Navarino," and soon after­ boast of this unrivalled spectacle when it wards got into one of the most exquisitely becomes known, for certainly it is formed of beautiful regions I have ever seen in any elements that no magic could enable all Eu­ part of the world. The prairie that had rope to bring together upon so grand a scale. hitherto been distinguished by a regular The aspect of this lovely country at once rolling surface, here changed its character, accounted for so great a population flocking and took the form of ridges somewhat ele­ to the lakes, on whose enchanting banks those vated, which frequently resolved themselves cities were founded of which we had heard into masses of gracefully-rounded hills, so much, and to which we were now advanc­ separated by gentle depressions, that occasion­ ing. Four noble lakes in the centre of a ally became deepened valleys. In these, some region of such unrivalled beauty must con­ of the heads of a stream called Sugar River, stitute perfection itself. Our expectations were a tributary of Rock River, took their rise. exceedingly raised; every moment produced In whatever direction our eyes were turned, a new excitement; the occasional glimpse of the most pleasing irregularities of surface the shy deer, with their elegant fawns, and the more frequent flushing of the prairie-hen from her nest, gave animation to the still beauty around us. Enraptured with all I saw, ' Ebenczer Brigham, a native of Massachusetts, was Dane County's first settler. He was a member I could not but occasionally reflect on the of the Territorial Council in 1836-1842, a state oddity of seven large cities, each capable of assemblyman in 1848, and for a number of years served on the Dane County Board of Commissioners. containing a population of half a million of See Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography. people, having congregated so close together. " A name formerly applied to a portion of Green There was Madison City, which was the Bay.

174 FEATHERSTONHAUGH IN TYCHOBERAH

metropolis. Adjacent to this was the City of a round tumulus, sufficiently high to over­ tfie Four Lafces. A short distance beyond this look everything around; and about 600 feet was the city of North Madison. Close upon east from it was a line of seven buffalo this again was the city of East Madison. mounds, each representing distinctly the head, Then there was the city of West Madison, the horns, neck, fore and hind legs, body, and city of South Madison, and, finally, the City tail of that animal. Each of these animal of tfie First Lafce. Of each of these I had mounds measured, from the nose to the tip a beautifully engraved plan, with all its of the tail, about 120 feet, of which the tail squares, streets, institutions, and temples. alone measured thirty-six feet. The figure The path we were upon was an ancient of the man was about 150 feet long, from Indian trail, holding its course steadily from one extremity to the other, the limbs twenty the waters of the Mississippi to Tychoberah, feet apart at the east, and all the parts stood or the Four Lakes; and, as if all things rare in bold relief, about six feet high from the in their nature had here gathered together, face of the prairie. To the left of the trail to enhance the interest which was inspired was a circle, about sixty feet in diameter.* by this romantic country, we came to some As we proceeded westward, we found other Indian monuments of a very remarkable mounds of a similar character; a few, how­ character. ever, differed from them, and appeared rather to take the form of a beaver, as others, in distant parts of the Wisconsin territory, •^ did that of a turtle. At one point near to 4K LAND. the trail, was a large animal mound, em­ bossed upon the prairie, betwixt a rampart of earth at least 200 yards long, and a vertical escarpment of incoherent sandstone, of the same quality with the friable sand-rock I had <^ c/y-'''#D AN WAR PATH. S seen on the banks of the Wisconsin, which ^^•^N,,^ —y y^-^ ANCIENT INDIA? underlies the metalliferous limestone. Featherstonhaugh's rough sketch of the effigy mounds From the great abundance of mounds, of discovered by him and Richard C. Taylor; reproduced various kinds, which exist in this fertile from A Canoe Voyage on the Minnay Sotor. territory, it is evident that it must have been in ancient times a favourite abode of power­ These were figures of animals and men, ful tribes, remarkable for their ingenuity. formed of the soil upon the surface of the We know that, having separated into tribes, ground, about six feet high, in alto-relievo, the buffalo, the turtle, the beaver, and other all of them perfectly distinct, and covered with a sod that appeared to be coeval with that of the prairie itself. Not one of them ' Featherstonhaugh, writing these passages a decade appeared to have been opened; and this cir­ later from field notes jotted down in his journal, cumstance, with the novelty of the spectacle, evidently used the published report of his traveling could not fail to detain me until I had companion, Richard C. Taylor, to refresh his memory. Taylor's account in The American Journal of Science examined, measured, and sketched these in­ and Arts, 34:88-104 (July, 1838), describes the teresting objects. They were very numerous, mounds in detail and gives the precise measurements which he and Featherstonhaugh took of them on and extended more than half a mile on each their return trip to Blue Mounds. Taylor placed side of our road, which, as before mentioned, the mounds as eighteen miles west of the Four was an ancient Indian war-path, leading from Lakes and seven miles east of Blue Mounds, possibly in present-day Section 6, Springdale Township, the waters of the Mississippi, in the direction Dane County. Both I. A. Lapham and Stephen D. of the Four Lakes, to Lake Michigan. At a Peet later credited Taylor with being the first to call attention to a mound resembling a human form. point very near to the trail, was the figure Peet concludes that since the effigies seen by Taylor of a man, amidst some oblong mounds, his lacked tails and the characteristic hump—a fact arms extended north and south, his head which Taylor also noted—that they were probably intended to represent bears rather than buffalo. lying to the west, and his legs to the east. See State Historical Society of Wisconsin Collections, East from this figure, about 200 feet, was IV: 365-368, and IX: 40^7.

175 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING. 1962 animals, became the totems or badges of the to be regarded as an Indian cemetery, placed Indians; and that, after their rude and simple near one of their great war-paths; whilst manner, they used them as heraldic symbols. those representing men may really have been Amongst the various Indian nations, of which so figured in honour of some conspicuous we have any knowledge, in the continent of warrior, whose tomb, thus situated, could America, we find its principal beasts and be seen and honoured by all who passed up birds selected by them to designate their and down the war-path." races, just as those objects in nature, the Having stopped to make the preceding lion, the eagle, the horse, have been adopted sketch of these interesting objects, the first in various parts of the old world; and it of the kind I had ever seen, we hastened on, deserves notice that the presumption that the as the day was drawing to a close, and we horse was not indigenous to America is had yet some distance to go to Madison City. strengthened by the fact that no Indian tribe For some time I had kept a good look-out for has ever taken that animal for its totem or some of the enterprising farmers, who must badge, and that no ancient name for it is to have come from great distances to this fertile be found in any of their languages. country, and was rather surprised that we That these mounds, whatever form has should hitherto have met with no one. We been given to them, are deposits of the dead, had not passed a single farm, and concluded has been proved upon numerous occasions. that, being an Indian country, the settlers Some of them, of all kinds, have been opened, had clustered round the great city we were and have uniformly been found to contain bound to, and had established themselves human bones. Nor is each mound the tomb of one individual, for bones are found dis­ tributed throughout, and in such a manner ° Effigy mounds opened in the Wisconsin area have as to shew that layers of bodies have been usually contained the remains of a single individual. placed side by side, then covered over with Examples of multiple burial have been found, but the burials do not occur in layers. Featherstonhaugh earth, and another layer deposited. I can here seems to be referring in general terms to burial speak with certainty of this, having been mounds seen elsewhere in his travels. It should also be noted that the trail he mentions may not present at the opening of more than one of have existed at the time the mounds were built, them. A collection of such mounds, then, is but may have been of fairly recent origin.

Taylor's careful elaboration of Featherstonhaugh's rapid sketch of the effigy mounds east of Blue Mounds was made several days later and was subsequently published in the American Journal of Science and Arts, July, 1838.

176 FEATHERSTONHAUGH IN TYCHOBERAH near that lake where the best fish abounded. 1 Fresh fish! prodigious varieties! cat-fish, • K pike, pickerel, salmon, trout, buffalo, perch! What anticipations for men who had for so many days been bolting pieces of tough fat bacon, cured 1,000 miles off. At length we came to a belt of open trees, and, passing through it, we reached the flat, marshy shores of the largest of the four lakes: we could see . almost entirely around it, and much did we look; but, alas! no vestige of human dwelling i was in sight. This considerably changed the current of our thoughts, and materially impaired the beauty of the prospect. Not being disposed to \ express all we felt, we reluctantly took to the .. woods again, along the margin of the lake, 1 ' ' in the hope to stumble upon some one or other. Night was gradually drawing her veil over every thing, and it became rather doubt­ y ful whether we should not have—in the language of backwoodsmen—to camp out. / k • Keeping, therefore, all my visions of fried U' ; fish in the background for a while, I felt for my box of matches, and, finding it safe, Nncic-ry s jMiuiusciipts Library turned my attention—as old Indian travellers A land promoter's fraudulent map of 1837, showing nonexistent cities on the shores of Fourth Lake always do—to the next best thing, a rousing (Lake Mendota). fire to lie down by. Black clouds were form­ ing in the horizon; we had been drenched This was Madison Cityf and, humble as thoroughly the day before, and it became it was, it concentred within itself all the urban pretty certain there would be another storm. importance of the seven cities we had come Groping our way, and occasionally jolting so far to admire, and to which, according over the fallen trees, we, at the end of an to our engraved plans, Nineveh of old, Thebes hour and a half, got to the shore of the third with its hundred gates, and Persepolis, were lake, having somehow or other missed the but baby-houses. Not another dwelling was there in the whole country, and this wretched second lake, where Madison City was supposed contrivance had only been put up within to be. We now changed our course again, the last four weeks. Having secured our and keeping to the north-west, and meander­ horses, we entered the grand and principal ing, and wondering, and shouting for my entrance to the city, against the top of which companion, who had got out of the waggon my head got a severe blow, it not being more to follow a small trail he thought he had than five feet high from the ground. The discovered, I at length gave up the attempt room was lumbered up with barrels, boxes, to proceed any further, and, selecting a dry and all manner of things. Amongst other tree as a proper place to bivouac near, had things was a bustling little woman, about as already stopped the waggon, when, hearing high as the door, with an astounding high my companion's voice shouting for me in cap on, yclept Mrs. Peck. No male Peck was a tone that augured something new to be in on the ground, but from very prominent the wind, I pushed on in that direction, and symptoms that went before her, another half- at length found him standing at the door of a bushel seemed to be expected. hastily-patched-up log hut, consisting of one My first inquiry was, whether she had any room about twelve feet square. fresh fish in the house. The answer was

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"No!" Inflexible and unwelcome word. No in torrents almost the whole night, and, not fresh fish! no large, delicious catfish, of having pitched my camp skilfully, it poured twenty pounds' weight, to be fried with pork, upon me from the unfinished roof as I lay and placed before the voracious traveller in stretched upon the floor, not daring to move quantities sufficient to calm those apprehen­ in the dark, lest I should pull some of the sions that so often arise in Indian lands, of articles of Mrs. Peck's museum upon me, or there not being enough for him to eat until break some of her crockery. he falls fast asleep. "Why, then," exclaimed May 31. With the first ray of light my alarmed companion, "what's to be done?" I jumped up from my uncomfortable berth, "I calculate I've got some salt pork," rejoined and, having procured some dry clothes from our little hostess. "Then, Madam, you must my carpet-bag, strode over the two hang- fry it without the fish," I replied. So to the gallows-looking fellows that were snoring near old business we went, of bolting square pieces me, and gained the door. The illusion was of fat pork, an amusement I had so often now dissipated, and I had completely awoke indulged in, that I sometimes felt as if I from my dream of the Seven Cities, wonder­ ought to be ashamed to look a live pig in ing how I could have ever thought it possible the face. Our landlady, however, was a very to have so deceived myself. Smart as I knew active and obliging person; she said she these western Americans were, I had not would make us as comfortable as it was thought them so systematically and callously possible for her to do, and "she guessed" she fraudulent as to cause engravings to be made had a little coffee, and would make us a cup of cities, with all their concomitant append­ of it. Whether it was acorns, or what it was, ages, in countries where not a human being puzzled me not a little; it certainly deserved was to be found, and where not a single tree to be thought tincture of myrrh, and, as we was cut down; and this for the purpose of drank and grimaced, dear Mrs. Peck, in her robbing their own countrymen. To rob sweetest manner, expressed her regret, that strangers might, from the prejudice of edu­ she had no other sugar for our coffee, they cation, be considered even meritorious; but having, "somehow or another, not brought to rob their own countrymen so remorselessly any with them." argued an absence of principle so universal Whilst we were at this repast, the thunder­ and total, that I do not know where it is to storm broke over us, and a deluge of rain be paralleled in history. came down, streaming through the roof in The all-absorbing passion for money, which various places. In the midst of the confusion the absence of those moral distinctions that two other vagabonds came in; one of them so much protect society from it in Europe a ruffian-looking fellow, who said he was has established in the American mind, has, a miner, on his way across the Indian country with this class of men, obliterated every sense from Milwaukee; the other, a stupid, boorish, of that feeling that naturally inclines men to dirty-looking animal, said he had not tasted obey the divine injunction of "doing unto any thing for two days, having lost his way others as ye would they should do unto you." on the prairie; and, having been overtaken If a smart man cheats any one, no part of the the preceding night by a very heavy rain, disgrace of knavery falls upon him; and if whilst making his way up a coulee or vale, one smart man cheats another smart man, had been afraid to lie on the ground, and he receives the most unbounded admiration; had passed the whole night sitting on a so that these smart fellows, having no motive fallen tree. Fortunately, there was pork enough whatever to be commonly honest, at last for us all, and when our landlady had put become callous, and forget even the nature the frying-pan to bed, she did the same to of justice, living only to carry out their own us by the act of blowing the candle out. base and selfish manoeuvres. The vender of Where she stowed herself was her own secret. cities spoken of . . . took no particular pains Choosing a place between two barrels, I lay to conceal from me the atrocious nature of down, and drew my cloak over me; of sleep the occupations he had followed, and was there was very little to be had, for it rained hardy enough, in an argument with me, to

178 FEATHERSTONHAUGH IN TYCHOBERAH attempt to justify his practices. "Men," said character, containing an elderly squaw, with he, "that keep a bright look-out are never only one eye, as hideously wrinkled and taken in; it is only fools that take themselves frowsy as she could well be. Whilst I was in, and they are of no account." standing near to these creatures, the men It is fearful to reflect what will be the came up, and I soon saw that the young condition of society here when honesty retires American was the cavaliero of the fat squaw, altogether from the field of action, and leaves and that the couch where she was lying was fraud, smartly perpetrated, to be the principal their bower of bliss. This fellow, having a feature in all transactions; how much is to canoe, agreed, for a dollar, to take me out be apprehended from the future, when the upon the lake, and down a channel that con­ generations of men, that will have no good nects the fourth with the third lake, and examples before their eyes, may abandon thence to Madison City. Accordingly, getting even the intention to be respectable. into a badly-constructed log canoe with his fat beauty, we paddled off. Having now fully made up my mind that I was in an Indian country as wild and un­ After visiting various parts of the lake, settled as any I had yet visited, I hastened to and being more than once nearly upset from the shore of the lake to espy what truly the awkward management of this youth, at turned out to be the nakedness of the land, whom the squaw laughed heartily, we entered not a vestige of any human being or habita­ the channel which connects the two lakes. tion being to be discerned. Rambling, how­ It was about three miles and a half long and ever, along the lake-shore, picking up unios about forty feet in breadth, and we found and anadontas, I came upon a wigwam, the current so very strong at the entrance, inhabited by a squaw of the Winnebago that we shot down it with great rapidity, the tribe, and learnt from her that her mate shores on each side being, for the greatest was a French Canadian, and was fishing part of the distance, a swamp very little from a canoe a little lower down. Thither raised above the level of the stream. At I hied, and having found him, engaged him, length we came to a piece of ground where with the assistance of his squaw, to procure a part of the band of Winnebagoes had their us a mess of sunfish. This being accom­ wigwams. Three horrible-looking frowsy she- plished, I sent them to Mrs. Peck, and follow­ savages were eviscerating fish, which they ing my messenger to Madison City, requested were curing by fire on some stakes. Their her to prepare them for our breakfast. No matted, coarse, black locks stood out at right time was lost in doing this, and we made angles, like the strands of a mop when it is a very hearty meal without putting her to twirled; scarce any thing was to be discerned the trouble of preparing us any coffee. Sally­ in their lineaments that was human, and more ing out again, I walked across a tongue of loathsome and disgusting objects I never land which separated this from the fourth beheld. Every thing about the wigwams was lake, and soon reached its shore, from whence in keeping with their revolting and odious I had a view of an extremely beautiful sheet persons; ordure and dead fish in the last of water. stage of corruption made a perfect pestilence around, amidst which they moved in the most Advancing along, I found more signs of contented and philosophic manner. Alecto, humanity: two men were cutting some poles Megara, and Tisiphone, the far-famed furies, down; the one a Canadian, the other a some­ must have been beauties compared to these what desperado-looking young American, hags. I just stayed long enough to purchase with cropped hair. Near to the lake I observed from them a fine alligator gar (Esox osseus) other poles laid aslant upon a fallen tree, form­ for the sake of its skeleton, and then came ing a sort of shed, and looking beneath, beheld away. Just as we were starting, one of these a youthful Winnebago squaw lying down on she-devils, wanting to visit the one-eyed squaw a filthy blanket, thoroughly drenched with we had left behind, strode into our canoe, the rain of the preceding night. She was and a pretty inside passenger we had of her. pursy and immensely fat, but had some good The canoe itself was a wretched, tottering features. Near to her was a bower of a similar

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The Peck Cabin on Third Lake (Lake Monona), painted by Mrs. E. E. Bailey and reproduced in volume VI of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin's Collections (1872). The present ownership and location of this oil painting— one of several depicting Madison's first dwelling—are not known. affair, imperfectly hollowed out of a small first French adventurers gave them. Estab­ log, and wabbled about in such a doubtful lishing themselves where fish is plentiful, they manner that we had been several times near never change the site of their wigwams, at the upsetting in crossing the lake. In this "dug­ entrances to which they throw down the en­ out"—for that is the expressive name they trails and offal of their fish. They have thus go by—I had taken my seat on the bottom become notorious amongst the other Indians near the prow, with my face towards the for the filthy existence they lead. I learnt stern, holding the sides with my hands; thus from our hostess that the young Adonis, in situated, this she-monster, clapping herself whose canoe I had been, had deserted from immediately in front of me, and seizing a the American garrison at Fort Winnebago, paddle, of which she seemed a perfect mis­ had been apprehended, flogged, his head tress, most vigorously began to ply it. At shaved, and then drummed out of the fort first I was amused by her motions; but, alas! to choose his own mode of life. He had my satisfaction was of short duration, for wandered about until he fell in with this warming with the exercise, every time she band of Indians, and, rejected by his own raised her brawny fins to propel the canoe, race, had found refuge and a mistress amongst she at each stroke almost bobbed a particular the savages. part of her person into contact with my nose, As soon as we had taken a good recon­ when such lots of unknown odors came from naissance of the country around, and packed her that I soon became wretchedly sick at up the unios, and other fresh-water shells my stomach, and was delighted when we I had collected, we bade adieu to the little arrived at dear little Mrs. Peck's paradise. inhabitant of Madison City and turned our These Howchungerahs, or Winnebagoes, faces to the prairie again. It had been part well deserve the name of "Puants," which the of my plan to strike across the country to

180 FEATHERSTONHAUGH IN TYCHOBERAH a branch of Rock River, being desirous of to the editor of the Baraboo Republic express­ examining the remains of an ancient city ing his indignation at Featherstonhaugh's which I had heard a great deal about, and "puerile, bombastic, and flippant" account to which the name of Aztalan had been given. and calling on Mrs. Peck to refute the "bluster­ This had been described as of large dimen­ ing Scotch John Bull." Mrs. Peck, writing sions, having archways and casements made with a pen less polished but certainly as well with brick and mortar, as if a city had in honed as that of her onetime guest, enthusi­ ancient times existed here, built of cal y canto, astically complied, and on April 19, 1860, like those which Cortez found when he ad­ the Republic printed her version. vanced into Mexico. But having spoken with The unexplained factor is why Draper various Indians well acquainted with the waited thirteen years to rectify in print what country, who declared they had never seen he himself termed a "thoughtless blunder." or heard of any thing of the kind, or indeed Certainly he must have seen the Republic any thing but some mounds near the supposed articles when they appeared; or, if not, the locality, and considering the small success disapproving comments which were carried I had had in my researches after modern by newspapers throughout the state. His cities, I gave up my intention of looking up hesitancy was not for want of an outlet, for this ancient one. It would have taken up at Volume 5 of the Collections had been issued least two days to reach the mounds, and in 1868. Perhaps, when assembling material being without a guide in a region where there to be included in Volume 6 in 1872, he was neither road nor inhabitants betwixt yielded—as even the best of editors are some­ the lakes and them, we inclined more willing­ times wont to do—to the accumulated pres­ ly to the supposition that it was quite as sure of others' opinion. On the other hand likely that the whole affair was a poetical he may even have been swayed in his decision speculation got up to establish a modern by a personal visit from Mrs. Peck herself, Thebes upon the ruins of the older one for who, resolute and redoubtable, continued to the purpose of selling the lots. . . .° operate her farm at Baraboo until her death in 1899. In the following, only those portions of Mrs. Peck's newspaper article which pertain directly to Featherstonhaugh's visit are given.

W.C.H. A S might be expected, not all readers were -^*- pleased with Featherstonhaugh's descrip­ tion of his stay in Madison or at Draper's inclusion of it in the dignified Collections TV7HILE on the eve of a hundred mile which had hitherto tended to present rather '' journey to the North, on business, I rose-colored rememberances of pioneer days. received a request from you to describe some Among those whose resentment took active of the incidents that transpired during our form was an amateur archeologist, W. H. first settlement in the first house in Madi­ Canfield of Baraboo, to which community son . . . and also to refute the scurrilous the Peck family had moved in 1840 and abuse of myself, as issued in the last Report where once again Roseline Peck enjoyed the on the Picture Gallery of the State Historical distinction of being the first white female Society. I have now returned, and will en­ settler. On March 8, 1860, Canfield wrote deavor to state facts, in as condensed a form as possible, as I have frequently been called upon before, during the last twenty years, on the same subject, when sundry newspapers ° G. W. Featherstonhaugh, A Canoe Voyage up the had selected and published old Featherston­ Minnay Sotor; with An Account of the Lead and haugh's squibs. But, as I then did not deem Copper Deposits in Wisconsin, etc. (London, 1847), 2:85-104. it essential, considering the source from

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of butter, and jars of plums and cranberries collected from Blue Mounds' thickets.' All these were carried to Madison when we moved, besides a good load of potatoes (poor starved Featherstonhaugh, I wonder he lived through his entertainment at our house). I also made six more bed-ticks, to be filled with grass or hay as occasion required, as we fetched but four feather beds with us. We started from Brigham's place, at the Blue Mounds, on Thursday, the 13th of April, after dinner, with our teams, I riding an Indian pony. We traveled about seven miles, where some person had made a claim, and had laid about five rounds of logs towards a cabin. We camped therein that night with a tent over us. The next day, the 14th, we pushed on—a more pleasant day I never wish to see; but I had a severe headache before night. We pitched our tent on a little rise of ground, within three miles of Madison; spread down our beds, and rested comfort­ ably, till near 3 o'clock on Saturday morning, when we were awakened by a tremendous wind storm, and howling of wolves, and Society's Iconographic Collection found snow five or six inches deep which Mrs. Roseline Peck, first white woman in both Madison and Baraboo. The Society's Museum owns continued to fall until after we arrived in an oil painting made by John Gaddis from this Madison. photograph. Well, now, here we are at Madison, on the 15th, sitting in a wagon under a tree, with whence they sprang, and also knowing at the a bed-quilt thrown over my own and little time that there were numerous old settlers boy's head, in a tremendous storm of snow at Madison that were knowing to the con­ and sleet, twenty-five miles from any inhabi­ trary, I concluded to let them have their own tants on one side (Blue Mounds), and nearly fun. But as they are now put forth at this one hundred on the other (Milwaukee). What late date, as permanent history, I deem it is to be done? Go into the buildings with a duty to myself, as well as to the public, no floors laid, and nothing but great sleepers to state facts. laid across to walk on? No; I must have ... On the 15th of April, 1837 (not on the the buildings painted with lime, and floors 14th, as represented in beautiful history), we laid first—only one saw-mill in the Territory, arrived there [i.e., at Madison], and as we and that way up in the Wisconsin Pinery, were well aware what our business would be and not completed, and of course no lumber; when settled, we provided ourselves accord­ but there lies a pile of puncheons—just build ingly, and purchased at Mineral Point over me a pen under this tree, and move in my one hundred dollars worth of groceries (as stove, and we will crawl in there. Sure I have the bills now to show), among the enough, we soon had it completed, and a fire items were one barrel of pork, two of flour, built. one of crackers, one of sugar, half barrel dried fruit, one box of tea, and as good a sack of coffee as was ever brought into the State (old Featherstonhaugh's acorns and tincture ' Eben Peck, a Vermonter, was married in 1829 of myrrh, not withstanding), besides a half to Roseline Willard Peck of Middletown, Vermont. In 1832 the Pecks moved to Middlebury, New York, barrel of pickles, put up by myself, also a tub and in 1836 to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin.

182 FEATHERSTONHAUGtl IN TYCHOBERAH

Some two weeks from this time, or about that same door in her possession over twenty the first of May, on a pleasant day, there years, and surely they could have described were about fifteen men arrived from Milwau­ it without going to London for its dimensions. kee, to look a road through, and see Madison. Why, their tall, venerable ex-Mayor [Col. A. Among the number were A. A. Bird, the two A. Bird] at that time needed only to make Pixley's, merchants, and Col. Morton of the a very polite bow when crossing our threshold, Land Office—but I cannot enumerate names. to call for the wherewith to renew the inner Well, we had a spacious dining-room—under man. But recollect this was one of the kitchen the broad canopy of heaven—where I spread doors, opening afterwards into a dining-room; tables for them. A portion of the party, the there were three other outside doors to the hired men, set out on their return the next buildings. day. We immediately sent a team to the other Second. Featherstonhaugh says: "The side of Fourth Lake, where there had been room was twelve feet square." If they will some hay put up by a party of half-breed measure the ground, they will find it to be French and Indians, and got a load of it, twenty-four feet long and eighteen or twenty with which we filled our bed-ticks; we then wide—the same length of the dining-room, laid down puncheons in one end of one of and situated immediately back of it—wherein the buildings, spread down our beds, built they used to dance cotillions, three set at the a fire of chips (hewn from the logs) at the same time. The other two buildings were other end between the sleepers, tacked three joined on the northeast and southeast corners or four sheets of bed-curtains around the of the kitchen, leaving a passage, where after­ walls, and there they rested; and they staid wards was erected a frame dining-room, in with us three or four days, enjoying them­ which many a weary traveler and hungry selves hunting and fishing around the lakes, wight was fed. In describing the old house, and looking at the country; and then left do not imagine, friend C, that I consider it for Mineral Point, or perhaps Galena; and beneath my dignity to have lived in the one in eight or ten days Bird returned, accom­ above represented, for I have lived in worse panied by Judge Doty, Ebenezer Brigham ones since; I only wish to inform you of the and others. truth. Judge Doty observed, "Why do you not Third. He said "no male Peck was on move into your house?" "Why, my dear the ground." Now, my husband and little son sir," I replied, "I must have it plastered with were both present. I cannot be mistaken— lime first." Said he, "we do not know as as we had but two arrivals previous, I well there is a lime quarry within a hundred miles recollect every particular. Mr. Peck hitched of you, and you need not expect to live in Featherstonhaugh's horse, and waited upon this pen until there is one found and burned. him and his associates into the house. I also No, no, you must move in; we will help daub remember the laugh we had next morning at up the kitchen part on the outside with mud, seeing them with a little hammer breaking and when the lime is found, you can finish pebbles on the shore of Third Lake to find the inside to suit you." So at it they went mineral in them; and finally, old Feather­ (only think. Governors, Esquires and Mayors, stonhaugh packed a large, round boulder, or in prospective, daubing cabins!), and by "hard-head," to the house, and procured a night we were all comfortably situated in the large hammer and broke it open—but no kitchen. And this is the room in which, a mineral. Poor man, he must do something week subsequently, the great Scotch-born and as a geologist. But if he should call on us at English-bred Featherstonhaugh was enter­ the present time, there would be some truth tained. in his statement, as one male Peck—the son— And now I will inform you of the errone- has gone to Pike's Peak, and the other—the ousness of their selections from old Feather­ husband—the last reliable information, but stonhaugh's squibs: once, that I got from him was by a letter First. "The door, or entrance," he says, received by a citizen of Madison, some six or seven vears after he left, stating that he "was five feet high." Now, Madison has had

183 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 had a wife and five or six children in at Blue Mounds until grass started. I guar­ Texas. , . . s antee I could manufacture better coffee from Fourlfi. "High cap," and "half bushel." parsnips and catnip than some of the crack ... If the little history of Madison could not hotels of the present day do from the imported have been written without meddling with the article, judging from the insipid stuff I drank caps and petticoats of its first ladies, and also the last time I was there; and as for their selecting from the verdant brain of an old butter, 0 whew! gray-headed idiot, trash concocted and cock- Seventh. He says, "two boorish, ruffian, neyized in London, then it had better ever hang-dog looking fellows sat on a log through remained a blank. the previous night in a tremendous thunder Fifth. "Bolting pork," "no fresh fish." shower, and entered the house in the night." About twenty years ago, I perused Feather­ "Previous," very true, and the rain was all stonhaugh's original report, and in it he gives over, and a more beautiful night than the us credit for having fine fish next morning; one subsequent, no one would wish to see; but our would-be-correct historian does not and as for its raining through the roof into even allow us this digression from his slang. his face, it's all gas. I guarantee that not one True, he had fish for breakfast, for Mr. Peck drop of moisture touched it, unless he be went out early and procured fish of some troubled with the glanders, for I stood in the Indians at the outlet of Fourth Lake. The doorway watching flights of pigeons until original also said that he (Featherstonhaugh) late in the evening, and no clouds were to be had bolted pork at Mineral Point until he seen. And as for two other boors, I saw none was ashamed to look a live hog in the face. except himself; perhaps those were what he History omits that place, as well as a meal saw when he looked into my glass, considering procured at Blue Mounds. History had better himself one, and his shadow another. give his whole abuse of the whole country Eighth. Putting "the frying pan to bed." or none. He accused me of using the term Here I am completely nonplussed—a mystery "calculate;" that is generally applied to beyond my comprehension. Friend C, ex­ Hoosiers, and surely I am not one. plain it if you can. It seems though, that Sixth. He says he did not know whether blowing the candle out, put them all to bed. the coffee was made of acorns or tincture Ninth. His "lodging between two bar­ of myrrh, and he grimaced. I think he must rels." If a bed with over thirty pounds of have been born with his face awry, or been fresh geese feathers, laid on a good, back­ very much troubled with worms or the gout, woods bedstead, with plenty of clean bedding, or perhaps reflections continually flitted was not good enough for his majesty, then he across his memory of the many nauseating ought to have carried his accomodations, with remedies he had been accustomed to swallow, blanket on his back, as many a better man that he could not avoid drawing his face has done. Squire Seymour purchased the same askew, and of course kept it in a continual bed when we left Madison; if he owns it yet, grimace, for there was a perfect sameness on I presume he will permit our Historical his hideous countenance whilst he remained Society and the public generally to examine there, unless my memory is very treacherous. it for their own satisfaction. If there was anything I took pride in, it Tenth. "Museum," "gimcracks," "crock­ was in making good coffee, and it is the first ery." In the original, Featherstonhaugh says and only complaint that I ever heard of our "gimcrack;" history glosses it a little, and table, or its fixtures. Ask some of the old says "museum" and "crockery," and in an settlers of Madison in regard to this subject. extract published in a Madison paper not long True, we had no cream, as our cow was left since, he says, "he dare not stir for fear of coming in contact with some of little Mrs. Peck's gimcracks." I wish he had, and got ' According to Lyman Copeland Draper, Eben bumped hard enough to have rattled all the Peck went either to Texas or New Mexico and was pumpkin seeds out of his pebble-cracked supposed to have been killed by Indians while crossing the plains. See Collections, VI:344. brain. But as all the barrels, boxes, and

184 FEATHERSTONHAUGH IN TYCHOBERAH

crockery were at one end of the room, and his head and bed at the other, there was no danger. But he stayed there two nights and bolted pork, gratis, some time, and if he had got nothing but a crust given to him in kindness at that time, he ought to have been thankful. . . . Now, we were well aware when he left this country, what his report would be, for he was entertained at Mineral Point for some length of time; as he professed to be a geologist, and was supposed to be a gentle­ man, they were anxious to have him report as favorably as possible; for at that time they were heavily taxed on mineral—they gallanted him around in their carriages—informed him of the resources of our beautiful Territory— publicly dinnered him, and finally he returned their compliments by trying to swindle them out of their mines—John D. Ansley's copper mines in particular;" but finding them too much for him, he left in a huff, and pro­ ceeded to England to get appointed by the British Government one of the Commissioners to run the then disputed northeastern bound­ ary line between Maine and New Brunswick. And there, in London, is where he groaned and brought forth the great document about Society's Iconographic Collection the great seat of government of Wisconsin; Victoria Wisconsiana Peck Hawley, first white child to be born in Madison, September 14, 1837. and by giving Americans and Yankees fits generally, so tickled their monarch's ear that at our house, and talked the Featherston­ he got the appointment, and what fool could haugh matter over. Ansley observed that not, under the circumstances, with such in­ he had expended nearly a thousand dollars ducements? entertaining him whilst in the country, and After he left Wisconsin, Squire Ansley, with he would also expend another to have him some friends, met other friends of Madison cowhided if he ever crossed our Territorial lines again. . . . And now . . . you must be satisfied with " At some point in his travels Featherstonhaugh this short answer to your request. At some acquired extensive holdings in Calumet County future time, I may probably give you ten where in 1839 his son, George William, Jr., came thousand little incidents in regard to the to live and to act as agent for other land holders. The younger Featherstonhaugh had been sent at the hardships and privations endured in taking age of six to England for schooling and later studied the lead in a frontier settlement. And, as one engineering at West Point where he was a classmate of Edgar Allen Poe. He built a palatial stone house foot is in the grave and the other soon will near Brotherton, Wisconsin, and after several years be, I hope they will let me alone in the future, of living as a country squire entered politics. He was with putting frying-pans to bed, and decoc­ elected to the last Territorial Legislature and was a delegate to the second constitutional convention. tions of acorns, tincture of myrrh, half bushels, In 1850 following a trip to Europe, he mysteriously gimcracks, museums, bolting pork, etc., in my lost his wealth and lands and moved to Milwaukee where he gradually became a dissolute literary hack. retirement, poverty and glory. . . ." His health failing, he moved to Gurnee, Illinois, subsisting on a pittance from English relatives until " Roseline Peck, "Beginnings of Madison," in his death in 1900. See Milwaukee Sentinel, August State Historical Society of Wisconsin Collections, 14, 1911. VI: 347-355.

185 The Civil War Centennial has not gone unnoticed on the other side of the Atlantic, as this article from Britain's best known magazine of humor amusingly attests.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MADE EASY

/^NE hundred years ago last April the they are not very U. Far to the north a ^^ Americans began their Civil War. It is, curious object breaks the skyline; it is Presi­ as anyone interested in education in Georgia dent Lincoln's stovepipe hat; he has come will have noticed, still going on, and thus to Gettysburg to make an address; he thinks qualifies as a Hundred Years' War, a great it will be a good one; take about three-and- event in the history of any nation. It is im­ a-half hours; he hopes Mr. Everett, just now portant that Englishmen should know enough rising to introduce him, will make it snappy. to hold their own in conversation with any Your attention is distracted. Down the celebrating Americans they happen to meet. road towards you is marching an army; they We can not hope to cover all the complexi­ are singing a rousing song full of geography: ties of the war in so brief a survey. (It was, for instance, fought between North, South, "Bring the good old bugle boys Democrats, Republicans, Confederates, Fed­ Across the wide Missouri. erals—both called "Feds"— Secessionists, We've captured Harper's Ferry and Abolitionists, Johnny Rebs, Damn Yankees Mine eyes have seen the glory. and the Army of the Potomac.) Instead we So we'll march, marcli, marcfi against propose to provide the reader with a detailed the foe historical reconstruction of a single day on Down the Mississippi to the gulf of Mexico." which several interesting things were happen­ ing, in the hope that he will be stimulated to They start in on the chorus for the eleven find out more for himself. thousand and eightieth time since they left You are standing, on a fine morning in Atlanta. The general at their head winces. 1863, in the Shenandoah Valley, whistling He wishes they would start looting again. some tune you can't get out of your head. At least it keeps them quiet. General Sher­ All around you spreads the majestic pano­ man has a sensitive ear. rama of the U.S.A., though at the moment Further off there is a dull boom. It is the last shot being fired at Fort Sumter. For thirty-six days a storm of shot and shell has rained on the fort, but not a man has been hurt, not even a goat. The officer in charge Text and cartoons reproduced from Punch, January 25, 1961, by special permission. of the bombardment is worried. He knows

186 THE CIVIL WAR MADE EASY

Lincoln crossing the Potomac.

he is in disgrace. Perhaps he will be dis­ Away to the East there is a faint clink; missed the service. Suddenly he cheers up. the Governor of North Carolina is having If he is dismissed he can go home. He likes a drink with the Governor of South Caro­ it at Cape CanaveraL lina. General Grant is also drinking. He Nearby in the town of Frederick Barbara pulls out a map and glances at it. Yes, Lee Frietchie is doing her washing. The town is well to the north, thrusting north, and he seems very quiet. She wonders where every­ (Grant) well to the south, thrusting south. one has gone, but it looks like a good drying No wonder the war is taking so long; they day. She goes and hangs the old flag out will never meet at this rate. Morosely he of the window. It had got very dirty. peers westwards out of his tent. Thank Nearer still an old Indian is sitting. He heavens the West is still too wild to have any­ is waiting for the third battle of Bull Run. thing to do with this. The first two (like all other battles in this Along the road towards you comes an war) were draws, but he hopes the next one elegant journalist in the wake of Sherman's will decide the series. He is going to wait army. It is Russell of The Times, cor­ a long time. His name is Sitting Bull. respondent to both armies. He finds this Suddenly, over the horizon, wheels a squad­ war very confusing. Where, he asks you, ron of cavalry, magnificent in a swirl of are Yorktown and Tlconderoga? What­ dust. They would look just fine on a wide ever became of John Paul Jones and all screen, galloping down to bring the war to that tea? Why isn't Paul Revere riding? a happy conclusion. Unfortunately there are And what about Bunkers Hill? You tell cavalry on the other side too. Stalemate. him to let Burgoynes be Burgoynes. He Sherman's army is still marching past. This looks disheartened, but you cheer him up appears to be a Pioneer Company; they look by introducing him to an old soldier who restive, and only one of them is singing. His can remember the Alamo. name is Walt Whitman. Himself he is singing. Far out at sea two ponderous shapes are Far to the north the stovepipe hat is lean­ steaming towards each other. They are called ing forward. Mr. Everett has now been the Monitor and the Merrimac, the first speaking for an hour and three-quarters; ironclads, and somehow remind you that in President Lincoln realizes that he will have a hundred years the Prime Minister will to shorten his address; he bends forward have had an American ancestress. Far to the and starts to cross out. north the stovepipe has disappeared. Mr.

187 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Everett is nearing three hours, and Presi­ KEY TO MAP dent Lincoln is looking for a piece of paper (1) Abraham Lincoln. President o£ the on which to scribble the remnants of his U.S.A. Honest, but prepared to fool oration. He thinks there may be an old some of the people some of the time. envelope in the sweatband of his hat. (2) Ulysses S. Grant. Set a fashion for success­ To the South a spirited southern belle is ful generals becoming Republican presi­ talking to a gentleman with a small white dents. Took a short time between drinks. beard on a pillared portico. You can not (3) William Tecumseh Sherman. Foiuid the hear what they are saying because of the Lost City of Atlanta and then marched noise of the darkies singing and the dancing through Georgia. at Charleston, but they are probably fixing (4) Zouave and Scottish regiments in Union the details of the uniform of the Ku-KIux- Army, privately raised at start of war Klan to while away the time until Clark and equipped by theatrical costumiers. Gable rides over for his mint julep. The The Zouave influence on orthodox uni­ singing sounds more spiritual than the danc­ form trousers was persistent. ing. Not far off John Brown is capturing (5) Gettysburg. Scene of bloody battle and the Post Office at Harper's Ferry, unaware speech of model brevity by Lincoln. that this is an offence against the U.S. mails. (6) Matthew Brady, photographer, getting He feels soulful, and decides to read Uncle near, but not too near, the War. Tom's Cabin again when he gets home. In (7) Here privates S. Crane, A. Murphy, and the middle distance Lee is learning to pro­ J. Huston won the Red Badge for courage. nounce Appomattox; he finds it difficult (8) The "General"—locomotive stolen by to drawl. He decides to take lessons from Union spy James Andrews, but recovered by Rebel Buster Keaton. that fellow Booth, who is so handy with Hamlet. (9) Sherman's march to the sea. Troops sang same song whole way, sparking It is drawing towards dusk. The evening Sherman's outbiust "AVar is . . . all hell." hush is broken by a wild burst of cheering (10) Grant biting other Union generals at from the North. Mr. Everett has finished Lincoln's suggestion. his oration in five-and-a-half hours, and (11) New Orleans. Captured for the North Lincoln his in three minutes flat. The by an admiral with the winning name crowd are cheering their heads off. They of David Glasgow Farragut, of Spanish had never expected to get home for supper. origin. Lincoln feels pleased. He thinks he might (12) Southern belle waiting to become litera­ retire down here. He could lay out a pretty ture. little golf course just over there, he thinks. (13) The "Trent Affair." Two Confederate commissioners abducted from British mail-boat by U.S. Navy. Nearly brought Britain into war. Early example of brinksinansliip. (14) Fort Sumter. Opening shots of war oc­ curred here, before credit titles. (15) T. J. Jackson. Southern General. "Stone­ wall." "Old Hickory." A hard man. (16) Nathan Bedford Forrest. Southern Caval­ ry commander. Said, "I get there fastest with the mostest," an inspiration to hostesses. (17) Robert E. Lee. Southern General. Being on tile losing side only had a small tank named after him (cf. Sherman, Grant) but was compensated with a Mississippi steamboat. (18) President Jefferson Davis. Southern poli­ tician not elected for second term.

188 THE CIVIL WAR MADE EASY

THE UNION

THE Wl'HE NOT CONFEDERACY CERTAIN

189 WISCONSIN'S FIRST RAILROAD COMMISSION:

A CASE STUDY IN APOSTASY

By WILLIAM L. BURTON

/^ RANTISM and temperance, the Tweed nation attention turned toward the Middle ^-^ Ring and Darwinism, feminism and West, for never before in the United States financial panics—all of these and more made had corporations of any kind been subjected the decade of the 1870's one of the most to such restrictive and specific legislation as exciting periods in American history. And that passed by Midwestern lawmakers. When much of the drama inherent in the post-Civil in 1874 Wisconsin passed the most drastic War era was to be found in the various of the several legislative assaults on corporate farmers' protest movements, of which the power, it, perhaps more than any other state, most significant was the Patrons of Husbandry became the center of attraction. or, as it was better known, the Grange. Few laws in Wisconsin's legislative history Granger legislation in Granger-controlled have been described in such conflicting terms states became a hallmark of the times. In as has the Potter Law of 1874. On the one Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, and hand it has been damned as a cunning at­ several other states, the politically powerful tempt to thwart the wishes of a reform politi­ farmers were convinced that many of their cal party; on the other hand it has been troubles (a combination of low farm prices, praised as a none-too-successful first phase high prices for machinery, and high freight of a long, evolutionary, political process which rates) were directly or indirectly caused by culminated in the present Public Service Com­ the major railroads connecting Western mission. As it so often does, the truth seems farmers with their Eastern markets. In order to lie somewhere between the extremes. to alleviate at least one of these agricultural difficulties, several Midwestern states sought TN the post-Civil War decade, Wisconsin's to impose railroad legislation by means of a -*- political history followed a pattern similar commission composed of three or more mem­ to that of the nation as a whole. The Republi­ bers. can party dominated state elections by the There was nothing novel in the idea of then-standard procedure of "waving the regulation by a commission; several Eastern bloody shirt" in order to keep the Democrats states had experimented with such measures in their place. But, as the excitement of the for many years. But what was new at this war receded and the troubles of Wisconsin time was the power given to the newly estab­ farmers increased, new tensions appeared in lished railroad commissions by Granger- political affairs. Prohibition, the tariff, cur­ controlled legislatures. Indeed, some of the rency reform, corruption in government, and Granger legislation was no less than an attack above all, the regulation of railroads, became on the very foundations of classical economics burning questions with which state politicians and the doctrine of laissez-faire. All over the had to cope. By 1873 the problem of railroad

190 BURTON : FIRST RAILROAD COMMISSION regulation had become the most important condemned the incumbent state officials, they political issue in the state. Political campaign­ did not establish a separate political party. ing in that year saw both major parties devot­ Instead, the Reform convention disbanded ing much time and effort to the matter of and the Reformers joined forces with the government control of railroads. Democrats. This combined group then agreed The Republican party made railroad legis­ to drop party labels in the coming campaign lation the chief plank in its platform. In and run a Reform ticket. unequivocal terms the party pledged itself to The platform of this political amalgam was work for the establishment of a railroad com­ based primarily on a "throw the rascals out" mission and at the same time stated its belief theme. Corruption was the principal enemy that the state would be within its constitutional which the conventioneers pledged themselves rights if it regulated the operations of rail­ to fight; what to do about the railroads was roads within its borders. Some Republicans a question the Reformers tried to avoid. had been making similar statements for many Resolutions condemning the recent rate in­ years; the popular Republican Governor Cad- creases caused great excitement among the wallader C. Washburn had consistently urged delegates but were not passed, a failure to the creation of a board of commissioners and act which led at least one prominent Republi­ state regulation of railroad rates. However, can organ to make the charge that the Reform the dynamics of reform develop slowly, and convention was under the control of rail­ the Republican party as a whole had not sup­ road officials.'' When the Reformers con­ ported railroad regulation. But by 1873, structed the railroad plank in their platform, when the Republicans convened in Milwau­ they fell back upon the old principle that kee, the tide of public opinion was too strong to be ignored and virtually the entire party platform was devoted to some phase of the railroad question. ^ Wisconsin State Journal, September 25, 1873. "Leading men of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Rail­ After Wisconsin Republicans had demon­ way Company were in the private boxes at the side strated their willingness to campaign on this of the platform and behind the scenes," editorialized issue, added publicity was given the matter the Journal, "and fixed things to their liking." by a state Grange convention which called for severe restrictions on the railroads and denounced them as grasping monopolies. Then the railroads themselves added to the furor by announcing rate increases. To say the least, the increases came at an inopportune moment: both Republican and Democratic papers throughout the state castigated the railroads and called on their respective parties to bring the "rapacious" railroads to heel. When, a month following the Republican con­ vention, the Democrats also convened in Mil­ waukee, the state was in an uproar. Already convening in the city when the Democrats arrived was a conglomerate group of self-styled Reformers. These ardent poli- ticos were an admixture of Democrats, Liberal Republicans, and "other electors friendly to genuine reform.'" Although they roundly

Society's Iconographic Collection ^ American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Cadwallader C. Washburn, photographed about 1863 Important Events (New York, 1883), XIII: 775. as an ojjicer of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry.

191 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 competition would cure what ailed the state's major piece of campaign literature circulated transportation system. In a mild statement by the Democrats returned to the corruption reaffirming the right of railroad owners to theme, spread a few rumors about Washburn a fair return on their investment, the platform in a desperate effort to discredit him, and advocated the construction of competing lines made no mention of railroads." and ended with the assertion that the state The results of the November 4th election did have the right to control the railroads. came as a surprise to both parties and as The ensuing campaign of 1873 was re­ a shock to Eastern political observers. William markably free from personal invective. The R. Taylor and the entire slate of state candi­ Republicans had nominated for governor the dates on the Democratic-Reform ticket were incumbent Washburn, a man so respected by swept into office. Taylor received a majority the Democrats that they seriously considered of 15,411 votes over his opponent; almost nominating him on their own ticket. The 10,000 votes of this majority came from Democrat-Reform gubernatorial nominee was Milwaukee. The vital significance of this William R. Taylor, president of the Wisconsin area provided a moral for the outcome of the Agricultural Society, a prosperous farmer election. Washburn had been attacked early and lumberman who had the respect of many in the campaign by Milwaukee's German- Republicans. At its outset the campaign was language press which denounced the Gover­ based on issues, not personalities, and the nor as a friend of Temperance in a city noted issues were clearly presented to the voters. for its brewing industry." Candidate Taylor, Republican candidates ran with railroad regu­ who carried the city by a large majority, was lation and the creation of a railroad commis­ reported to have circulated letters in Milwau­ sion as their major objective. Democrat- kee proving his opposition to Temperance.' Reform candidates based their campaign on Thus, despite all of the campaign furor over the elimination of corruption—an issue that more important issues, it appears likely that had greater national than local importance. a relatively minor point was the deciding When Governor Washburn opened his cam­ factor in the election. Observers from both paign with a demand for strict pro-rata rail­ political camps agreed that Temperance turned road fare control and the establishment of out to be the most important issue in this a railroad commission, the chairman of the 1873 election." But while the state waited for Democratic State Committee denounced these the new legislature to convene, the defeated proposals as ineffective and expensive. Thus Radical Republicans continued to agitate for the Republicans alone appeared to be con­ the creation of a state railroad commission, ducting a campaign in sympathy with the as they had been doing for several years. majority of Wisconsinites, who clearly wanted railroad regulation.' nPHE Wisconsin legislature of 1874 was an Not until late in the campaign did the -*- interesting assemblage of party represent­ Democrats begin to harangue the railroads. ation. In the Assembly, forty-one Republi­ This change of emphasis from corruption to cans comprised a minority group facing a railroads was quite obviously based on the collection of fifty-nine Democrats, Free trend of public opinion and not on political Traders, self-styled Liberals, and variations conviction.' The Democrats offered no specific of each. In the Senate, the Republicans were as a remedy for the problem; they simply cried out against the situation in general and demanded some kind of control. The last " Broadside in the George H. Paul papers. "Milwaukee Herold, October 23, 1873. ' George H. Paul to E, E. Chapin, Columbus, Wis­ consin, November 1, 1873. " Wisconsin State Journal, November 5, 1873; ° Each party accused the other of seeking the Milwaukee Sentinel, November 6, 1873; American favor of Grangers, and the accusation seems to be Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important correct in both instances. Events, Wll: 776; Madison Daily Democrat, Novem­ ^ Wendell A. Anderson to George H. Paul, La ber 5, 1873. Historian Solon Buck agreed with the Crosse, October 1, 1873, in the George H. Paul sorrowing Republicans that the "unholy alliance" papers, Manuscripts Library, State Historical Society of whiskey and railroad interest was responsible for of Wisconsin. the defeat of the Radical party.

192 BURTON : FIRST RAILROAD COMMISSION

able to muster a slim majority of one. The more heavily populated southern and eastern counties tended to send Democratic represent­ atives to Madison, while the predominately rural counties remained true to the Republi­ can party. It is not accurate to describe the 1874 legislature as a "Reform legislature". Most members of both the Assembly and the Senate were either regular (Radical) Republi­ 'i-*- cans or regular Democrats." Republican members of the legislature were determined to meet their campaign promises by sponsoring a series of proposals designed to create a railroad commission. Bills were introduced in both houses with great regular­ ity (as many as four a day) to place restric­ tions on the railroads and establish a regula­ Society's Iconographic Collection tory commission. On February 7, 1874, a Senator Robert L. D. Potter, who introduced the bill was introduced in the Senate that was bill creating the Railroad Commission in 1874. destined to find its way into history books as the hallmark of that legislative year. Unable to agree on the many proposed bills Senator Robert L. D. Potter introduced a for railroad regulation, the Senate and As­ "Bill to regulate and establish passenger and sembly created a joint select committee to freight tariffs on Railroads in this State, study the question. The five-man committee, and to create a board of Railroad Commis­ consisting of three Democrats and two Re­ sioners".^" His bill proposed to establish publicans, gave a majority report recommend­ rates for Wisconsin railroads lower than the ing the passage of Assembly Bill 466A.^^ This existing schedules and establish a three-man hill, entitled "A bill relating to railroads, ex­ regulatory commission empowered to lower press and telegraph companies in the state rates still further and to make reports on the of Wisconsin," was a drastic measure, lower­ financial status of the railroads. In both its ing railroad tariffs, providing criminal prose­ rates and in the powers granted to the com­ cution for railroad officials violating the law, missioners Potter's bill was less radical than and creating a commission empowered to several others introduced at this session, in­ regulate express and telegraph companies as cluding bills introduced by Democrats. Serious well as railroads." Assembly Bill 466A was doubt is thus cast on the theory subsequently a Democratic bill and was opposed by Re­ proposed by several historians that the Potter publicans as being too radical. bill was an underhanded Republican trick Senate and Assembly records for 1874 indi­ aimed at ending agitation for railroad regu­ cate that 466A passed and the Potter bill lation by sponsoring a bill so radical that (2065 or 115S) was discarded. But the law neither party would support it." is called the Potter Law. What is the reason for this apparent discrepancy? Chapter 273 " Legislative Manual for the State of Wisconsin, of the laws of 1874 is entitled "An act relating 1874, 454-471. to railroads, express, and telegraph companies " Ms. Senate Bill 206S, Secretary of State, General in the state of Wisconsin"." In the text of Records, Wisconsin Legislative Bills, 1870, in the Archives Division of the State Historical Society of the law, there is no mention of either express Wisconsin. " For the traditional view of this sequence of events, see Edward A. Fitzpatrick, Wisconsin (Mil­ waukee, 1928) ; Frederick L. Holmes, ed., Wisconsin (Chicago, 1946) ; H. Russell Austin, The Wisconsin "Assembly Journal, 1874, 103; Senate Journal, Story (Milwaukee, 1948) ; Ralph G. Plumb, Badger 1874, 92. Politics, 1836-1930 (Manitowoc, 1930) ; and Emanuel " Archives Division, State Historical Society of L. Philipp, Political Reform in Wisconsin (Milwau­ Wisconsin, MS. Assembly Bill 466A, drawer 166. kee, 1910). ^^ Laws of Wisconsin, 1874, 559.

193 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 or telegraph companies. The only resemblance Potter Law came from the farm counties the law bears to 466A is the title; everything while the most opposition came from the else is changed. railroad stronghold—Milwaukee. And Mil­ The manuscript bills reveal what actually waukee was also the Democratic stronghold. happened. After the committee bill 466A had We can only conclude, then, that the Potter been approved by the Assembly, it was sent Law was just what it seemed to be on the to the Senate. The senators excised every surface—a reform measure largely the work provision relating to express and telegraph of the Republican Party and designed to companies, pasted a copy of the Potter bill placate the angry farmers of Wisconsin.'" over the remaining sections and returned Wisconsin Republicans did claim credit for the emasculated hill to the Assembly. With the Commission after it was established, while the deadline of adjournment rapidly approach­ leading Democratic newspapers claimed that ing, the lower house accepted the changed the law was not severe enough. bill and, after agreeing with the Senate on As for the pertinent features of the Potter a few minor changes, enacted it into law. Law itself, they may be summarized under the For all practical purposes, the Potter bill following areas: had won out over the bill of the select com­ mittee. 1. Railroads in the state were divided into Recorded votes on the bill reveal the source three classes. Class A included the of party support. In the Senate, fourteen Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Rail­ regular Republicans, two liberal Republicans, road, the Chicago and North Western nine Democrats, and one Reformer voted for Railroad, and the Western Union Rail­ the bill; three Democrats and two Republicans road; class B included the Wisconsin voted against it, giving a 26-5 majority.'" Central, the Green Bay and Minnesota, In the Assembly, thirty regular Republicans, and the West Wisconsin; class C included seven liberal Republicans, twenty-nine regu­ all other roads. lar Democrats, one Reformer, one Free 2. Passenger rates were set for each class, Trader, and one Independent voted for the ranging from three cents per mile for measure; voting against the bill were seven class A to four cents per mile for class C. regular Republicans, five regular Democrats, 3. Freight rates were established for each and two liberal Republicans. Thus it is quite of several different classifications of obvious that an overwhelming majority of freight. the members of each major party voted for the bill. 4. Justices of the Peace were given legal jurisdiction to enforce the law, with Contrary to what has become the traditional power to impose fines on violators. analysis of the Potter Law, i.e., that it was a scheme whereby the Republicans proposed a 5. A Commission of three men was given measure so radical that it would not pass and the power to ascertain railroad construc­ would discredit the whole movement to regu­ tion costs, net earnings, classify freight late the railroads, the sequence of events and rates, and require lengthy reports makes it quite clear that: (1) it was the from each of the railroads in the state." Republican Party which first and most con­ sistently agitated for railroad regulation and EMOCRATIC Governor William Taylor a regulatory commission; (2) the Democratic- D was empowered to appoint the three Reform Party adopted railroad regulation as commissioners. One indication of some of a cause that was already popular; (3) the most radical bills presented in the state legis­ lature in 1874 were sponsored hy Democrats, " There remains some doubt as to the real author making the Potter Law seem mild in com­ of the legislation. There is some evidence that parison; and (4) greatest support for the Senator Potter, who gave his name to the law, could not have written the bill. See Emanuel L. Philipp, Political Reform in Wisconsin (Milwaukee, 1910), 202. ^'' Senate Journal, 1874, 518. " Wisconsin State Journal, March 21, 1874.

194 BURTON : FIRST RAILROAD COMMISSION

Collection The three members of the Wisconsin Railroad Commission (left to right): John Wesley Hoyt, a Republican; Joseph H. Osborn, a Liberal Republican; and George H. Paul, a Democrat. his political debts can be seen in the fact that and freight fares. Thus the battle was joined. he asked the state Grange to recommend a Governor Taylor threw his support behind candidate for one of the positions. The the commissioners and the law with a blister­ Grange suggested the name of Joseph H. ing attack upon the two major roads. Taylor Osborn, who resigned his post as state pur­ informed the railroad executives that in order­ chasing agent for the Grange in order to be ing their agents to collect illegal fares they "available". Osborn received an appointment were forcing the agents into acts of criminal to fill a three-year term on the commission. disobedience. The railroad presidents, declared The other two commissioners were George H. Taylor, ". . . have set up another law than Paul, editor of the Milwaufcee News (an that of the state.""* Public opinion, as meas­ organ of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. ured by the state's newspapers, was solidly Paul), and John Wesley Hoyt, former secre­ behind the Governor and against the deliberate tary and manager of the Wisconsin State disobedience of the railroads. Since the rail­ Agricultural Society, who had spent a year in roads could not be prosecuted until com­ Europe studying commission regulation of plaints were lodged by citizens against specific railroads. The political loyalties of the three violations of the law, Governor Taylor urged varied; Osborn called himself a liberal Re­ citizens to make complaints, and forms printed publican, Hoyt was a regular Republican, for that purpose were given wide distribution. and Paul was a Democrat. It did not take long for the struggle to At the very moment the new commission reach the courts. Railroad practice called for came into existence the major railroads in passengers paying the legal maximum fare Wisconsin were embarking upon a deliberate to be forcibly expelled from a train if they plan to violate the Potter Law. Their object refused to pay the railroad's own fare. A was to check both the determination of the Jesse Hinkley, seventy-three, of Fond du Lac, state to enforce the law and the constitu­ after having been thrown off a Milwaukee tionality of the statute. The Milwaukee Road train for refusing to pay more than the legal fired the first shot of the campaign when it fare, signed a complaint and lodged a suit published a new schedule of fares, higher than those permitted under the Potter Law, on the day before the law went into effect. The first official act of the three commis­ ^'First Annual Report of the Railroad Commis­ sioners of the State of Wisconsin (Madison: Atwood sioners was the publication of legal passenger and Culver, 1874), 17. Hereafter cited as the Report.

195 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

respondents in the state, and newspaper readers all over the Midwest and the East followed detailed accounts of the various court battles. Horace Greeley's New Yorfc Tribune attacked the railroads and supported the constitutionality of the Potter Law, while the Nation denounced the "barbarous" law ;;••'£«.:••• :•••.«>••••. in no uncertain terms."' President James Come, Farmers and Business Men who do busi­ Campbell of the Chicago and Superior Rail­ ness at Hammond Station, and. express yourselves on the Railroad Question, at the Town Hall, road, journeying abroad to secure financial over McGovern & Deneen's store, Thursday, July backing for his company, found London 2, 1874, at 5 o'clock P. M. bankers no longer making loans to American railroads. Western "granger laws", particu­ Reproduction of a poster announcing a railroad protest meeting at Hammond Station, Wisconsin; larly the Potter Law of Wisconsin, had made in the Society's Iconographic Collection. the market too uneasy."" Railroad stocks on the New York Stock Market went up or down according to the apparent success or lack of against the railroad for $25,000. Before long, success of the companies' court fight in Wis­ suits were filed against agents throughout Wis­ consin against the Potter Law."^ consin.'" A test case decided in the Madison In the Wisconsin courts the railroads relied Municipal Court found an agent guilty of heavily on the Dartmouth College Case as a selling a ticket at a price above the legal fare, basis for their claim that the Potter Law thus setting the pattern for lower court deci­ violated the sanctity of a contract;"' railroad sions all over the state. Railroads counter­ attorneys also insisted that the law con­ attacked by refusing to let trains stop at any fiscated private property without just com­ station where an agent had been convicted of pensation and without due process. But court violating the Potter Law. At the same time, decisions consistently went against the roads. the two principal railroads made plans to check After their defeat in the municipal courts the constitutionality of the law in the state the railroads went to a circuit court, where Supreme Court. again they met judges favorable to the law. At this time of crisis, Luther S. Dixon, Finally, on September 15, 1874, the Supreme Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, retired. Court of Wisconsin gave its verdict. A large Governor Taylor was gravely concerned over crowd of interested spectators, including the the replacement. To meet the "irrepressible Governor, heard the new Chief Justice read conflict' that was at hand, the Governor felt through a forty-page judgment fully sustain­ that the primary qualification for the office ing the Potter Law."' The administration had would be the right attitude toward the con­ stitutionality of the Potter Law. Before he appointed Elisha G. Ryan to fill the vacancy. Governor Taylor ascertained Ryan's opinion ''^ New York Tribune, September 5 and 16, 1874. on the railroad question."" The eventual ap­ " Wisconsin State Journal, July 14, 1874. pointment of Ryan virtually guaranteed vic­ ^New York Times, July 17 and 23, 1874. ^ In the Wisconsin courts the railroads relied tory to the state in the subsequent court heavily on the precedent of the Dartmouth College battle. case which in 1819 had held that corporation char­ ters are contracts and thus come under the protection The legal struggle in Wisconsin had national of the first article of the Constitution, which forbids and even international repercussions. Chicago a state to pass a law impairing the obligations of a contract. (State Attorney General A. Scott Sloan and New York newspapers had special cor- had forseen this argument and prepared a case in which he cited many instances when charters had been altered despite this precedent, and he also insisted that the railroads had grown so large and powerful that they of necessity had to come under state control.) Railroad attorneys furthermore " Wisconsin State Journal, May 21-23, 1874. claimed that the law confiscated private property ''"William R. Taylor to George H. Paul, Madison, without just compensation and due process. June 11, 1874, in the George H. Paul papers. °° Report, op. cit., 33-72.

196 BURTON : FIRST RAILROAD COMMISSION won a complete victory over the railroads, Then, too, as the November elections drew whose stock promptly dropped several points closer the commissioners dropped all official in the market. business and turned to campaign work."' The three men circulated campaign literature, T¥THILE the legal battle went through the while Commissioner Paul, who was chairman '* courts, the three commissioners were of the State Democratic Committee, was having troubles of their own. Commissioners responsible for organizing and directing Paul and Osborn compiled legislative histories party activities. Since no state administrative of the state's railroads, while Hoyt divided offices were at stake, both parties concentrated his time between a sickbed and tours of their attention on the Potter Law, which was inspection."" The commissioners enjoyed a major campaign issue. The Republican friendly relations with the small railroads, Party, basing its fight on support of the but associations with the two big railroads Potter Law, won the election. State Senator were often less than cordial. Osborn had Potter was re-elected, and the head of the little confidence in the honesty of the Mil­ Democratic Party admitted that the law's waukee Road officials, while President Alex­ popularity was responsible for his party's ander Mitchell of that same road had little defeat."" Results of the 1874 election indicate affection for the Board of Commissioners. that the voters of Wisconsin were solidly in The Supreme Court decision, however, altered favor of the Potter Law. the tone of the big roads. In a letter to What happened next is the most surprising Governor Taylor, President Mitchell an­ link in the whole chain of events. The Re­ nounced that the roads would start obeying publican-controlled legislature of 1875 prompt­ the "ill-advised, hasty, and reckless" Potter ly examined the Potter Law and began a Law, but that Wisconsin would be the loser series of amendments that left the commission because the railroads would invest no more unchanged but altered the rates in favor of capital in the state until the law was repealed."' the railroads. In part, at least, these changes Commissioners Osborn, Paul, and Hoyt were the result of the work of the three com­ found their job far from easy. Being pioneers missioners themselves. Commissioner Paul, in the field, they had to feel their way through whose Milwaukee newspaper consistently and many a legal and procedural snarl with little vehemently attacked the whole commission or no precedent to guide them. To add to idea, had some peculiar conceptions of the the many difficulties of coping with the normal position he held. In a letter to President tribulations of such a position, the three Mitchell of the Milwaukee Road, Paul ex­ commissioners found themselves with two pressed his personal opinion on the eve of additional foes to face—their own doubts the new legislative year. "It gives me great about the Potter Law and the commission pleasure to assure you," he wrote, "that the idea, and state politics. Each of the three Governor and at least two of the commis­ commissioners had doubts and reservations sioners (Osborn and Paul) favor great altera­ about his own position. All three men be­ tions in railroad legislation the present winter, lieved that the law had deficiencies and they and that a fair compromise of sentiment, labored for its revision or repeal. The cor­ based upon justice and reason, is not impos­ respondence of the three commissioners—and sible. Much is due to the conciliatory disposi­ they appear to have been quite frank in their tion manifested by you for whatever is ac­ letters to each other—reveals the extent of complished in this direction.""" Some of their discontent with the Potter Law. Paul's friendly attitude toward the roads may

'•"' George H. Paul to J. H. Osborn, Madison, Octo­ ber 24, 1874, in the J. H. Osborn papers, Manuscripts ^*J. H. Osborn to George H. Paul, Madison, Octo­ Library, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. ber 16, 1874, in the George H. Paul papers. ^''Report, op. cit., 79-80. The roads also announced ^" Madison Daily Democrat, December 4, 1874. that they would remove hundreds of cars from service *° George H. Paul to Alexander Mitchell, Milwau­ and discharge many employees. kee, December 10,1874, in the George H. Paul papers.

197 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 have been based on favors extended to him by tremendous activity in the field of railroad and his family by the railroad managers. regulation all over the Midwest. Illinois, Iowa, Despite a law to the contrary, the Paul family Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other states all received free passes on the railroads. established commissions with considerable As a result of their experience and investi­ power. The farmers began to enjoy a tempo­ gations the commissioners lost faith in the rary return to prosperity, and the railroads original Potter Law and commission struc­ conducted a tremendous propaganda cam­ ture. From control of the railroads in the paign to show that the strict legislation caused interests of Wisconsin farmers and lumber­ them financial hardship and was unfair and men, the attitude of the commission changed discriminatory. By 1876 a reaction set in all to the promotion of fares high enough to over the Midwest; Wisconsin kept in step assure a fair return to investors in railroad with her section. Then, too, the results of stocks. The commissioners' report for 1875 the national election in 1876 indicated that condemned the Potter Law and recommended conservative Republicans had firm control of a return to more conservative practices. their party. And that is precisely what happened. The In later years, calm analysis of the railroad Republican legislature of 1876 promptly at­ legislation of the "Granger era" proved that tacked the Potter Law and completely emascu­ the railroads' charges were groundless. Rail­ lated it. The old rate schedules were dis­ roads in the Midwest continued to show a carded and the regulatory commission was healthy profit, continued to expand, and con­ stripped of virtually all its powers and re­ tinued to attract investors all through the years duced to one elected official. The experiment of stringent regulation."' Wisconsin, the state with reform had ended; thenceforth for sev­ with the strictest law of all, actually led all eral decades the Wisconsin Railroad Com­ other Mid-western states in terms of railroad mission played only a minor role in state profits. Wisconsin legislators, however, im­ politics. pressed by railroad propaganda, by the re­ ports of their own commissioners, and by the TVTHY did the Republicans suddenly aban- conservative trend in neighboring states, '' don a position of many years' standing? turned away from the mandatory rate sched­ The best answer seems to be supplied by look­ ules and a commission with power. Not until ing once again at the national and regional after the turn of the century and the days of scene. The years 1873-1875 had been marked the Progressive Party did Wisconsin return to a strong Public Service Commission.

"' See Charles R. Detrick, "The Effects of the Granger Acts," Journal of Political Economy, IX: Society's Iconographic Collection 237-255 (March, 1903), for an excellent analysis.

Chicago and North Western train at a northern Wisconsin siding about 1870.

198 AU photos by the author William Kuehnenian house in Racine, built about 1853 far Eli Cooley, Mayor of Racine.

GREEK REVIVAL MOVES WESTWARD:

The Classic Mold In Wisconsin

By RICHARD W. E. PERRIN ters of classic antiquity had already been spurred by eighteenth-century archaeological finds, and great American sympathy was aroused for everything Greek when the Greeks waged their war of independence against the Turks in 1821-1828, reminding the American HE architectural period called "Greek people of their own struggle for freedom just T Revival" extended roughly from 1820 to a few years earlier. Nothwithstanding the term 1860. At the opening of the nineteenth cen­ "Greek Revival," the architects of the time tury, American architecture was divided into seldom tried to build replicas of Greek temples, two main streams. The first was the so-called but simply used Grecian forms as an inspira­ Federal or Post-Colonial style which flourished tion to be studied, their beauties to be ab- in the large. Eastern seaboard trading centers "where English commerce kept English mem­ ories green".^ The other was the Classic ^ Talbot Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture in Revival movement. Essentially Roman in the America: Being an Account of Important Trends in American Architecture and American Life prior beginning, especially as interpreted by Thomas to the War between the States. (Oxford University Jefferson, these classic forms were gradually Press, London, New York, Toronto, 1944), 9. - Fiske Kimball and George H. Edgell, A History Grecianized, largely due to the work of the of Architecture. (Harper and Brothers, New York architect Benjamin Latrobe." Interest in mat­ and London, 1918), 545.

199 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 sorbed and then, in the construction of new buildings, largely to be set aside and replaced by invention.'' While hardly a period of serious experimentation, Greek Revival never­ theless had in it some of the seeds of con­ temporary architecture.* Of the style it has been said that young America took old Greece to its heart, and the Greek Revival came closer to being the national style than has any other mode before or since." Greek Revival came at the time of the great westward population surge over the mountains into the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi and the prairies beyond. Never a stereotype, even in its earlier and more sophisticated Eastern forms, the style became more versatile as it moved into its new en­ vironment. The special local variation in Wis­ consin was the development of brick, field stone, and quarried-rock buildings, enhanced with wood trim, quite different in character from those found elsewhere. For example, while many a courthouse in the Middle West was done with four Doric columns and an octagonal cupola, the Iowa County Court- First Presbyterian Church in Racine, designed by Lucas Bradley and built in 1851.

house at Dodgeville certainly has a character all its own. Built in 1859, the walls were made of tooled local limestone with carved stone doorways at front and side, probably taken from Edward Shaw's Modern Architec­ ture, published in 1855. Handbooks such as Shaw's and others by Asher Benjamin and Minard Lafever were used regularly by Wis­ consin's early builders, but changes were made as dictated by climate, new materials, and new ideas. The result was an indigenous type of Greek Revival different from that of any state of the Old Northwest." Curiously enough, there also seems to have been some fusion

^' Hamlin, op. cit., 88. * George Nelson, "The Individual House," in Talbot Hamlin, ed.. Forms and Functions of Twentieth Century Architecture (Columbia University Press, 1952), III: 9. ° Walter A. Taylor, "Protestant Churches," in ibid., 111:330, 333. " Rexford Newcomb, Architecture of the Old lowa County Courthouse in Dodgeville, viewed Northwest Territory. (University of Chicago Press, from the northeast. Chicago, 1950), 126.

200 PERRIN : GREEK REVIVAL

1871 and 1892 it was the home of Judge Dyer and later of the Taylor family. The house was restored, and owes its present excellent state of preservation to the efforts of Mr. and Mrs. William Kuehneman. At Cooksville, in Rock County, stands another exceptionally fine house which demonstrates the fusion of Federal and Greek Revival influences. This square, vermilion brick, two-storey building with hipped roof and one-storey wood gabled wing was built in 1848 for Daniel Lovejoy, first merchant of Cooksville. From 1852 to 1875 it was the Jonathan Clark house in Cedarburg, viewed home of the Duncan family and from 1911 from the southwest. to 1941 was owned and occupied by Ralph Warner. This house, also, is one of the finest of Federal and Greek Revival elements, thus of its time, definitely reflecting the Wisconsin bringing back together in terminal form some­ vernacular. thing of both major styles of the early nineteenth century. Added to this architec­ Near Cedarburg, in Ozaukee County, the tural amalgam were the skills and predilec­ Jonathan Clark house exemplifies the best tions of the various European ethnic groups of the very simple field-stone farmhouses in settling in Wisconsin at about that time. abstracted Greek Revival style which at one time dotted the southeastern Wisconsin coun­ tryside. Among the finest of relatively few UITE the most distinguished surviving survivals, the Clark house has excellent lines Q Wisconsin church building in Greek and many interesting details. The walls are Revival style is the First Presbyterian church laid up of coursed field stone with quarried at Racine. It was built in 1851 and designed limestone blocks at the south gable end. by the architect Lucas Bradley. Not very Tooled limestone quoins, lintels, and sills add much is known concerning this obviously much to the appearance of this house. A stone talented man, except that he was a native of plate over the front door gives the date of New York state and that before arriving in building as 1848. Jonathan Morrell Clark, Racine in 1846, he had practiced architecture the builder, had come to Wisconsin from New in St. Louis for twelve years. No records were kept of his work, which seems to have been ended in 1886 by failing health.' Built of local buff brick, Bradley's Racine Church is most impressive with its Doric distyle recessed portico and Ionic colonnaded wooden octa­ gonal tower, reminiscent of London spires by Wren and Gibbs. It is possible, although not certain, that Lucas Bradley was also the architect of the Kuehneman house at Racine, which easily ranks among the finest of the "temple" type houses produced during the late Greek Re­ vival period. Porticoed in Doric tetraprostyle, this two-storey building flanked by somewhat lower wings, was probably built about 1853 for Eli Cooley, Mayor of Racine. Between

' Racine Sunday Bulletin, October 23, 1960. Duncan house in Cooksville, built in 1848.

201 Jersey, making the journey on foot, as it is said. He died a relatively young man, but his family remained in the house until 1870, when it was sold to the widow Catherine Doyle. The Doyle family, in turn, lived in it until 1939 when it was purchased by the present owner, Mr. Joseph Schneiker, to whom this house owes its restoration and excellent state of preservation. Sawmills, flour and gristmills sprang up in nearly every sizeable nineteenth-century Wis­ consin community, particularly where a creek or river afforded ready water power. Many of these mills were frame buildings, but the best of them, architecturally, were the stone buildings of which, very unfortunately, only a few have survived. Usually, Greek Revival treatment was the rule but, again, in the Halfway House or Dunkel Inn at Brookjield, Waukesha County. Wisconsin manner. The Cedarburg Mill, built in 1855, is an outstanding example. Situated The plank roads connecting the settlements on Cedar Creek, this grist and flour mill is of early nineteenth-century Wisconsin were a five-storey, grey limestone structure of fine studded with stagecoach inns. Whether built proportions and great dignity. Its builders, of frame, brick or stone, the style was usually Frederick Hilgen and William Schroeder, were Greek Revival—again with local variations known for the high quality white flour they and adaptations. Of the few survivals, the milled here, which at peak capacity ran to old Halfway House or Dunkel Inn in Brook­ 120 barrels a day. The mill has some very field, Waukesha County, is an excellent ex­ interesting Dutch doors equipped with orig­ ample of merged Greek Revival and Post- inal handwrought iron strap hinges and door Colonial influences. Believed to have been latches as well as some exceptionally fine rim built around 1845, the Halfway House is an locks. The roof lines, windows and cornice exceptionally handsome building. Much of are simple Greek Revival in treatment. This the framing timber was found to be black building is deteriorating and needs restorative walnut, from which it may be assumed that treatment if it is to survive. this now valuable cabinet wood at one time was so plentiful in Southeastern Wisconsin that it could be used for such ordinary pur­ poses. Greek Revival came to an end with the Civil War. The speed, speculation, and ex­ ploitation of the post-war reconstruction period overwhelmed the refined, gracious tradition of ante-bellum Greek Revival. Ostentation became a new ideal in design. Effect and construction came to be regarded as wholly separate things." Together with ris­ ing romanticism the way was thus opened for Victorian eclecticism, the predominant archi­ tectural fashion of the latter nineteenth- century.

Cedarburg Mill on Cedar Creek. ^' Hamlin, op. cit., 334.

202 WATER AND THE LAW IN WISCONSIN

By A. ALLAN SCHMID use of water, did violence to the riparian doctrine of equal rights for all. In another respect the act upheld the doctrine well. The milldam owner neither polluted nor lessened the available water: he merely diverted it over his millrace to turn his mill, then re­ T^HAT unimpeded travel by water was vital turned it to the stream undiminished in quan­ -•- to a frontier economy was recognized by tity and quality. the Northwest Ordinance when it stated that However, the Milldam Act violated the all navigable waters leading into the Missis­ established concept of the free passage of sippi and the St. Lawrence were common navigation on streams, less by changing the highways and were to be forever free. Cer­ wording of the concept than by altering its tainly such freedom of movement was im­ interpretation. The act allowed dams to be portant to early Wisconsin, all of whose built without a permit and without state northern waters and portages accessible by supervision, on non-navigable streams only. canoe were in use in 1787.' Previously the courts had defined non- But as Territorial Wisconsin became settled navigable streams as those which would not and as the farmer replaced the fur trader, float a saw log. But since this narrow defini­ water policy changed accordingly. A century tion of non-navigability would have limited ago when Wisconsin was a leading producer the freedom of milldam builders and also of wheat, mill sites for water power were restricted their contributions to economic de­ valuable; communities grew up around them. velopment, the saw log test was ignored in In recognition of the changing economic con­ practice. Milldams were built on many siz­ ditions which resulted, the Territorial Legis­ able waterways which would have been navi­ lature in 1840 passed the Milldam Act, grant­ gable under the saw log test. This new inter­ ing water-use preference to those riparian pretation was finally made official by the owners who built milldams on non-navigable Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1908 when it streams. Under this act riparians were em­ reasoned that the old saw log test of navi­ powered to flood the lands of other riparians gability was not intended by the Territorial higher upstream and so could destroy the Legislature, since a stream incapable of float­ water power potential of the upper land. In ing a saw log would also be incapable of fur­ addition, the act permitted the taking of land nishing sufficient water power to warrant for flowage purposes without requiring that a mill." the mill owner resort to condemnation pro­ In a new country not yet penetrated by rail­ ceedings, leaving the upper riparian with no roads, the Milldam Act suited the needs of recourse except to sue for damages. Thus, isolated communities, and although the dams at an early date Wisconsin, by allowing cer­ were built for private interests, they were im­ tain riparian owners special privileges in the portant to the economy and as such were

^ Louise Phelps Kellogg, The French Regime in ^ Allaby v. Mauston Electric Service Compcmy, 135 Wisconsin and the Northwest (Madison, 1925). Wisconsin 345 (1908).

203 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Civil War, the rise of lumbering ushered in a new era of dam construction to facilitate log driving and to power saw mills. Wiscon­ sin's basic water policy, rooted in the North­ west Ordinance and embodied in the Con­ stitution of 1848, favored the free passage of boats, and to protect navigational interests legislative permission was required before a navigable stream could be dammed. All dur­ ing the lumbering period this permission was granted liberally, with no supervision of the dam's construction or maintenance, and with­ out any comprehensive state policy." An examination of the times provides some explanation for the lack of official regulation. At the end of the Civil War decade Wisconsin was still a frontier society with only a third of its land in agriculture, the rest chiefly in timber.' In such an economy it was possible to permit dams to be erected without super­ Photo by Ray TetElaff vision, since to do so was to encourage the Suggestive of castle and moat is this old mill at economic growth of undeveloped areas. As Thiensville. Justice William Henry Timlin observed, the policy of freely granting permits by special acts lent impetus to the development of new blessed with the public interest and were industries, to the establishment and growth granted special privileges. By 1848, when of villages and towns, and to the general Wisconsin attained statehood, there were economic welfare of the state." Practically more than 100 grist and flour mills run by all of these grants to private interests were water power; in 1879 the number exceeded to "improve navigation," and the constitu­ 700.' Nevertheless, in the 1860's and 1870's tionality of the powers conferred depended the state's gristmills made little progress,* upon whether such improvement resulted. and as transportation improved and the flour­ But, because some dams may hinder rather ing process became more complex and ex­ than aid navigation, the "improvement" was pensive, the rural mills were unable to hold often more fiction than fact. Almost all the their own. As the milldam era drew to a close, grants, when challenged, were upheld by the the law responded and in 1911 the Milldam State Supreme Court, even though the Court Act was amended. The interpretation of a stated frankly in the case of Marion v. navigable stream reverted to the previous Southern Wisconsin Power Company that "it definition, and construction of dams was is proper to reflect that during the history of limited to streams not navigable for any pur­ our state the legislature has authorized the pose whatsoever." construction of innumerable dams upon our With the passing of the gristmills, a new public waters, which while ostensibly for the economic force succeeded them, requiring purpose of promoting navigation, were in further changes in policies relating to the reality for the purpose of promoting private use of water. Shortly after the close of the enterprise."

' Wisconsin Blue Book (Madison, 1958), 102. ° Daniel J. Dykstra, "Legislation and Change," in * Frederick Merk, Economic History of Wisconsin the Wisconsin Law Review, 530 (May, 1950). During the Civil War Decade (Madison, 1916), 67- ' Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, 74, 130-140. V1I:901. ^ Adolph Kanneberg, "Wisconsin Law of Waters," " Water Power Cases, 148 Wisconsin 124, 142-143, in the Wisconsin Law Review, 363 (July, 1946). (1912).

204 SCHMID : WATER LAW

In the early days of lumbering, the only that "The narrowness of their political goals methods of transporting logs were by means is evidence of the lumberman's lack jf any of logging sleighs or on floatable streams. profound economic or political philosophy. Logging railroads came at a later date. But Like most Americans of their class, they throughout the lumbering period, it was the regarded government as a stimulator of busi­ state's policy to permit the free use of streams ness and the servant of the enterprising man.'"" for the floating of logs to the mills." Numerous The lumbermen thought that the government special acts were passed permitting the erec­ could best serve them by extending assistance tion of flooding dams behind which the logs for river improvements while otherwise keep­ were impounded, to be flushed downstream ing hands off. And on both the national and when the water was released. In the further local scene lumbermen agitated constantly for interests of the lumber industry, statutes of publicly financed river improvements. Ac­ limitation were passed, limiting the time in cording to Fries, "Influenced by such pressure which an action had to be initiated in order groups and yielding to the spell of lush post- to recover damages the dams caused to build­ ings, fences, soil, and cattle along the stream bank. ° Adolph Kanneberg, "Our Water Rights, How A look at the lumberman's attitude tov/ard Present Laws Define and Explain" (Mimeograph, the role of government during this period may Madison, 1928). be helpful in an understanding of the evolu­ ^"Robert F. Fries, Empire in Pine: the Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin, 1830-1900 (State Historical tion of water laws. Robert Fries points out Society of Wisconsin, Madison, 1951), 226-227.

Society's Iconographic Collection A turn-of-the-century view of the Eau Claire River, looking upstream towards the piers of the "head boom" of a log-sorting works. Logs, entering the boom to the right were identified by their brands, pushed into pockets containing similarly branded logs, then sent downstream to the next sorting works.

205 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 war economic expansion. Congress after 1865 dams. Adolph Kanneberg has said that "the appropriated increasing funds for Wisconsin time had come when the legislature no longer lakes and rivers. Government engineers re­ had the time to study each application for peatedly surveyed logging streams and super­ a permit, and that in consequence it had be­ vised the deepening of harbors and channels, come imperative to enact a general dam act the removal of obstructions, and the develop­ to be administered by a state commission or ment of flowage control."" other agency.'"" However, the lumbermen, well aware that To this end. Governor James 0. Davidson the improvements which benefitted lumbering in 1909 sent a special message to the legisla­ were detrimental to steamboat traffic, looked ture urging that authority to grant dam per­ upon the river improvements as a mixed mits and to supervise their construction and blessing. They feared that the government maintenance be placed in the hands of an might construe their dams, piers, and booms administrative agency, since the special fran­ as obstructions to navigation and so order chise system failed to protect the public.'" As their aval. a result, the legislature appointed an interim committee to study the problem of dam legis­ 13 Y the turn of the century a new economic lation, and in its report the committee stated -*-' development—hydroelectric power—had that there was a state-wide demand to en­ supplanted the lumber industry in the area courage full development of all underdeveloped of dam construction. In 1907 the Wisconsin water power in order to stimulate commer­ Valley Improvement Company, and in 1911 cial growth." the Chippewa and Flambeau Improvement Davidson's successor. Governor Francis Company, were granted the perpetual right to Edward McGovern, continued the plea for construct reservoirs at the headwaters of the general control,'" and in 1911, despite opposi­ streams named in the laws.'" Although the tion from the owners of water power rights, legislature still spoke in terms of improving the legislature passed a measure designed to navigation, its real object was to benefit the furnish supervision of the state's waterways.'" expanding hydroelectric industry which in In the fall of that year the need for regulating the years 1900 to 1909 had more than doubled dam construction was made dramatically the annual increase of horsepower produced apparent when the Hatfield Dam failed and in the previous decade.''' its waters swept down upon Black River Falls, Accompanying hydroelectric development destroying a large portion of the city."" was a rapid increase in the state's population Nevertheless, in January of 1912, the 1911 and in the amount of land devoted to agricul­ act was declared unconstitutional on the ture. There was also an increased public in­ ground that it failed to provide adequate terest in conservation and recreation which compensation to dam owners whose rights the was reflected in legislative policy" and which act abolished, and although McGovern called would later bring the recreational and hydro- a special session of the legislature, no substi­ power interests into open conflict. tute law was enacted. A subsequent law, Both the growth of the state and the in­ enacted in 1913, was also declared unconsti­ creasing complexity of dam development tutional because it gave the right of appeal signaled the end of the era of permits freely to certain specified parties while denying it granted for the construction of unsupervised to others without an apparent valid basis for

"/6;W., 56. '" Kanneberg, loc. cit., 2. ^•-Wisconsin Laws (1907), Ch. 335; (1911), Ch. ^"Wisconsin Senate Journal (1909), 271-272. 640. ^''Report of the Interim Committee (1910), 1, 2, 3. '" Minority Report of the Wisconsin Interim (Com­ ^"Wisconsin Assembly Journal (1911), 24-37. mittee on Water Power, Forestry and Drainage, ^"Wisconsin Laws (1911), Ch. 652. (1910), 246-248. "'' Natural Resources Committee of State Agencies, ^^ Report of the Interim Committee (1910), 246- The Natural Resources of Wisconsin (December, 248. 1956), 138.

206 SCHMID : WATER LAW such classification."' But before the Court of natural scenic beauty is a public right rendered its decision, the legislature repealed which could not be violated. As amended in the 1913 law and enacted the Water Power 1929, the water power law specified only that Law of 1915, giving the Public Service Com­ a dam permit was not to be granted if public mission jurisdiction in the granting of per­ rights in the stream were violated. Had the mits for dams."" Public Service Commission interpreted this The 1915 law provided that a dam permit provision literally, the recreational interests would be granted if the Public Service Com­ would have been favored, since any dam is mission found, after public hearings, that the by nature an impediment, interfering with dam in question would not obstruct existing some particular public use of the stream in its navigation, violate other public rights, or natural state. endanger life, health, and property. Unfortu­ In order to avoid such a literal interpreta­ nately, the statute failed to define what was tion, the water power interests, headed by the to be included in the term "public rights." Dairyland Power Cooperative, succeeded in The preservation of natural beauty such as further amending the water power law in a waterfall, for example, was not specified as 1947."" The amendment provided that the a public right. However, the increasing in­ economic need of electric power for the full terest in conservation and recreation con­ development of agriculture and industry was tributed to the passage of Chapter 523, Laws to be considered along with other public of 1929, which declared that the enjoyment rights. It further required the Public Service Commission to weigh the recreational use and scenic beauty of the artificial reservoir against that of the natural river. Another part

^ State ex rel Owen v. Wisconsin Minnesota Light and Power Company, 165 Wisconsin 430 (1913). "^Wisconsin Laws (1915), Ch. 380; now found in Ch. 31, Wisconsin Statutes. 'Wisconsin Laws (1947), Ch. 124.

..JijM',- Society's Iconographic Collection A partial view of ruins caused by the flood at Black River Falls on October 6, 1911.

207 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 of the amendment provided that a dam per­ who lived over an artesian basin in Wash­ mit could not be denied on the ground that ington County. "^ The defendant allowed his the proposed dam would violate public rights well to flow freely, with intent to injure his in fishing and scenic beauty if the local county neighbor. The Court, refusing to enjoin the board approved the dam by a two-thirds vote. defendant, said that it was his water to do It was a provision which favored the hydro­ with as he pleased, and declared the artesian electric interests, since local people, feeling well law unconstitutional on the grounds that that a dam would contribute to their com­ there was no public interest sufficient to munity's economic growth, usually were in sustain the use of the police power."" Though favor of it, even though some public uses the Court did not so state at the time, a later were lost. observer has pointed out that while the law The opposing conservation interests did purported to affect all artesian wells in the not give up the fight. Virgil Muench of the state, it had originally been passed to cover Izaak Walton League brought suit which the specific situation in Washington County, resulted in the 1952 Supreme Court ruling a conclusion that may be justified by the fact that the provision of the law giving county that the bill had been introduced by Assem­ boards the right to approve dam permits was blyman Philip G. Duerrwaechter, the sole unconstitutional."' In the judgment of the assemblyman from the district in which the Court, the delegation of power to the county properties of the two contending farmers boards enabling them to rule on the public were located."" use aspects of dam applications was an abdica­ The result of the Huber v. Merlcel decision tion of the trust whereby the state holds was that Wisconsin has one of the narrowest navigable waters for the public. The follow­ underground water laws in the nation. This ing year the hydroelectric interests success­ narrowly conceived doctrine, which was to fully countered with compromise legislation form the basis of many conflicts in the years which again gave county boards some voice following the Court's decision, gives the owner in the granting of dam permits."" Whether of the surface land an absolute property right the 1953 legislation provides a workable com­ in all the water he can draw from his land, promise between the hydroelectric interests even to the detriment of his neighbor's use and the recreationist probably can not be and needs. ascertained, since the era of hydroelectric dam Except for an unsuccessful attempt in 1937 construction is largely over and the best water to pass legislation prompted by another dis­ power sites have already been developed. pute over artesian well water, there was little interest in underground water legislation until IVTO long history of conflict surrounds the 1944, when lack of rainfall and increased -*- ^ evolution of the laws controlling under­ water consumption brought new problems. ground water in Wisconsin, and it was not In that year, falling underground water levels until 1901 that the legislature passed a caused engineers in several important Wis­ statute affecting its use."" This law, providing consin communities to worry about the future that any owner of an artesian well who allowed of their water supplies. At Green Bay, water it to discharge more water than was reasonably department officials, forced to lower their necessary was liable for damages if the dis­ pumps, considered drawing on the bay itself. charge materially affected the flow in neigh­ In Wauwatosa the static level of underground boring artesian wells, was declared unconsti­ water dropped about forty-two feet in the sum­ tutional in 1903 after the Supreme Court mer of 1944, while in previous years it had heard the case of Huber v. Merkel, two farmers

'"Huber v. Merkel, 117 Wisconsin 355 (1903). "•' David Leo Uelmen, "The Law of Underground " Muench v. Public Service Commission, 261 Wis­ Water; A Half-century of Huber v. Merkel," in the consin 492 (1952). Wisconsin Law Review, 491-515 (May, 1953). '"Wisconsin Laws (1953), Ch. 627; now Section """ Kenneth Hostak, "Wisconsin Ground Water 31.06 (3), Wisconsin Statutes (1955). Law—A New Era," in the Wisconsin Law Review, '•^Wisconsin Laws (1901), Ch. 354. 318 (March, 1957).

208 SCHMID : WATER LAW

A Variety of Wisconsin Dams

(Top left) Mill and dam at Fall City, Dunn County, in 1897.

(Top right) Ruins of an old mill wheel on Spring Brook, Delton, 1895.

(Center) Milwaukee River dam at Milwaukee, photographed about 1885.

(Bottom right) Chippewa Falls Power Plant of the Nortfiern States Power Company.

(Below) High water passing the dam at Kil­ bourn (Wisconsin Dells), on October 10, 1911. (All photos from Society's Iconographic Collection)

209 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 fallen at the rate of no more than ten to ground water problems around particular fifteen feet. Greater consumption and an in­ metropolitan areas grew in intensity. In creasing number of shallow draft wells dug August a Fox Valley Conference of Mayors for individual householders or real estate concluded that the diminishing water supply developments contributed to the problem. had become an economic problem for Green Following a meeting of officials in charge Bay and other cities and that some form of of all public supplies depending on ground regulating water use and of seeking other water, a Ground Water Resources Committee sources of supply might become necessary. for Wisconsin was formed in October, 1944. Public awareness of similar problems on the This committee helped sponsor two bills re­ national scene was heightened when Wis­ lating to ground water which were passed by consin newspapers carried stories with such the 1945 legislature, both introduced by Alfred headlines as "New York Wells Run Dry: City Ludvigsen, assemblyman from the Wauwatosa Faces Drought Until 1952." By September, area. The first was the high capacity well 1949, the mounting concern was beginning act, which gave the State Board of Health to take effect on the legislature again. A the power to issue permits for the construc­ resolution was drawn for the Legislative tion of new wells drawing in excess of Council's consideration to create a special 100,000 gallons per day."" In granting the subcommittee on conservation affairs which permit the Board of Health had to determine would be especially directed to investigate whether the proposed withdrawal would ad­ water conservation measures. Thereupon, a versely affect the availability of water to any Legislative Council Committee on Conserva­ public utility. Since no protection was given tion was set up, and in January of 1950 about other users, the major purpose of the law 100 persons from all over the state attended seems to have been to protect a municipality a hearing on water resources. The issue hav­ from private wells in or near its boundaries."' ing been raised as to why the high capacity The second law enacted by the 1945 legislature well law protected only municipal wells, a authorized an appropriation for an investiga­ Waupaca farmer stated, "When we farmers tion of the water supply by the Geological seek a permit to sink a well to escape drought, Survey. then we find out we can have and use the By September, 1947, the underground water water only if it does not interfere with problem appeared to have abated and the utilities. Have they got more right to the Milwaukee Journal reported that the drop in water than the landowners?""" But not all of the water level would probably not resume the testimony during the hearings favored a because war production was over and because change in the state's water law, and the Legis­ of the high capacity well law. This optimism lative Council Subcommittee made no recom­ was to prove short-lived. In June, 1949, a mendation other than to suggest greater co­ Milwaukee County Survey of Social Welfare ordination among the state agencies dealing and Health Service warned that Milwaukee with water. In line with this recommendation, County should be worrying about the per­ the Conservation Commission in March, 1950, manence and safety of its ground water sup­ in a report to Governor Rennebohm, proposed plies, and in July the Green Bay Press-Gazette a state licensing and regulation system to noted that "An unusual volume of public dis­ cover all agricultural, air-conditioning, and cussion currently about the conservation of other types of industrial wells and to require Wisconsin ground water suggests the possi­ compulsory reports on their annual water bility of water conservation legislation in Wis­ pumpage, it being the Commission's convic­ consin in the years ahead.""" Meanwhile, tion that pumpage reports should be cen­ tralized in a single agency. Meanwhile, the water crisis showed no signs "" Wisconsin Laws (1945), Ch. 303; now Wisconsin of abatement. In January, 1951, the Milwau- Statutes, Section 144.03 (6), (7), and (8). "^ Interview with Ernest Bean, former Wisconsin State Geologist, and with Harvey Wirth, State Board of Health, December, 1958. =- Green Bay Press-Gazette, July 5, 1949. •'•'' Milwaukee Journal, January 18, 1950.

210 SCHMID : WATER LAW kee Journal reported that hundreds of Mara­ thon County farmers were hauling water to their homes and barns because their wells had run dry. In March, Senator Clifford Kruger of Merrill sponsored a resolution de­ manding a genuine investigation of under­ ground water resources which would recom­ mend what should be done to conserve them. In Green Bay, which for several years had been experiencing water supply troubles, the situation had become serious. As early as December, 1949, Harold Londo, Green Bay Water Department Superintendent, had pre­ dicted that "Piping of Lake Michigan water to the Fox River Valley communities may not be far in the future.""* In August, 1951, a consulting engineer recommended that the Society's Iconographic Collection city continue limited use of its wells while In 1888 this artesian well at the corner of Bluff and augmenting the supply with water drawn from Wisconsin streets in Prairie du Chien produced a the Big Suamico River. Either plan would flow of 30,000 barrels of water daily. prove expensive: the Suamico River com­ bination plan was estimated at $1,892,000; Town of Empire, where it sank three wells, the Lake Michigan plan at $5,230,000. That the deepest of which was 210 feet. Trial tests something had to be done was indicated in a on two of the pumps produced 300 and 350 1953 Geological Survey report which stated gallons per minute. However, the pumping that the water levels would continue to decline test affected several nearby farm wells and as long as the rate of pumping continued to on the Robert Croft farm an artesian well increase."" ceased flowing altogether. When the farmers Contemplating the eventual use of Lake protested to the city, the tests were stopped, Michigan water, the 1953 legislature enacted the well was capped, and the city fire depart­ a law authorizing municipalities to acquire, ment carted water to the farmers, "who were own, operate, and finance water supply and so angry they threatened to boycott Fond du transmission facilities beyond their corporate Lac and its merchants.""" limits. The law also allowed cities to obtain Immediately the Town of Empire passed their water supplies from locations as far as ordinances which in effect prohibited Fond thirty miles beyond their corporate limits. du Lac from pumping water in the town. Under the sanction of this law Green Bay Suit was also brought against the city to stop finally solved its water problem by building further testing or pumping. The Supreme a pipe line to Lake Michigan. Court, however, upheld the old Huber v. Like Green Bay, Fond du Lac also experi­ Merkel doctrine and declared the town enced a serious underground water crisis as ordinances unconstitutional,"' indicating at a result of growing needs and geological prob­ the same time that this was perhaps not a lems. In 1956, in an effort to tap a new source good rule and suggesting that the legislature of supply, the city bought four acres and might wish to change it. secured an option on 1,100 acres more in the Although Fond du Lac won its case in the courts it declined to develop its wells in the Town of Empire on the advice of consulting

"* Green Bay Press-Gazette, December 15, 1949. "'" W. J. Drescher, Ground Water Conditions in Artesian Acquifers in Brown County, Wisconsin (U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 1190, "' Fond du Lac v. Empire, 273 Wisconsin 333, and 1953.) companion case, Menne v. Fond du Lac, 273 Wis­ "»Milwaukee Journal, April 30, 1957. consin 341 (1956).

211 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

engineers, who reported that such wells might grown, and the early growers found that yields fail during a period of critical drought. In­ could be increased if the beds were kept stead, Fond du Lac decided in January of covered with sufficient water to prevent their 1958 to get water from Lake Winnebago. drying out. The statutes governing this prac­ The city also considered asking for the right tice provided only that the dam owner was to pipe water from Green Lake, a highly de­ liable to damages if the land of others was veloped area, but dismissed the idea because overflowed. Adolph Kanneberg speculated in of the likelihood of resistance from property 1928 as to the constitutionality of the Cran­ owners.'"* berry Act, since cranberry production is a private enterprise possessing few character­ A MONG the first users of surface water to istics to endow it with a public interest suf­ -^~*- get special legislation to aid the growth ficient to allow the flooding of private lands." of their industry were cranberry producers. However, cranberry growing was important Laws passed as early as 1867 allowed cran­ enough to the economic development of cer­ berry land owners to build dams on their tain counties to receive special treatment. own land to raise a head of water to flood the From 1900 to 1909 water supplies from beds."" For many years cranberries were wild small streams were adequate in the Cranmoor fruit picked by Indians and sold to jobbers, area. But in 1931 and 1932, Cranmoor but in the drought year of 1893 a disastrous growers, faced with severe losses because of fire destroyed the bogs in the Cranmoor area a drought, sought water from the Wisconsin of Wood County, the center of cranberry cul­ River and on October 6, 1933, the Cranberry ture.'" Thereafter domestic cranberries were Water Cooperative was formed to pump river water through a system of ditches to the Cranmoor reservoir and thence to the cran­ berry marshes. Cranberry grower Clarence Searles states that the increase in cranberry acreage after 1933 can be attributed to the fact that the growers felt that now they had a reliable water supply." The present-day water diversion law, in whose passage the cranberry growers played a part, was born in 1935 following a series of years of scant rainfall. Governor A. G. Schmedeman, concerned lest the gradually falling lake levels in 1934 adversely affect the tourist industry in the coming year, was of the opinion that dams would have to be built under the supervision of the Conservation Department if water levels were to be main­ tained.'" In line with this thinking Assembly­ Zl^hJ^^^&i man Alfred Ludvigsen in January, 1935, re­ SoLiLt\ s [njrugi.ipliiL CoUeLtion quested the Legislative Reference Library to Harvesting cranberries in Central Wisconsin. prepare a bill relating to the relief of low water levels in navigable rivers and lakes. Ludvigsen—personally interested in such legislation because Waukesha County, which he represented, had many dying lakes normal-

^ Green Bay Press-Gazette, January 8, 1958. ^^ Wisconsin Laws (1867), Ch. 40; now Wisconsin Statutes, 94.26 to 94.32 (1955). '" This account of cranberry culture is taken from the testimony of Clarence Searles, Wood County "" Kanneberg, loc. cit. cranberry grower, in connection with Public Service '"'Docket 2-WP-984. Commission, Docket 2-WP-984, 208-210. '^ Sheboygan Press, September 6, 1934.

212 SCHMID : WATER LAW

ly fed through local drainage—felt that sur­ sizes were built for water conservation, others plus water not needed to maintain levels in for recreation, wildlife, and fish culture. A the lakes of one watershed should be diverted former state WPA administrator recalls that to raise the levels of lakes in others." The during this period many marshes which had original draft of the bill provided that appli­ been drained caught fire during the drought cations for water diversion permits were to and to stop the fires the WPA built dams to be filed with the Conservation Commission conserve rainfall, catch surface runoff, and which was to hold a hearing to determine if hold up the water table.'" In 1937 the legisla­ the diversion was in the best interests of ture created the Water Regulatory Board to conservation. If such were found to be the supervise the many dams which had been case, the application was to be filed with the built by the WPA. The board adopts regula­ Public Service Commission which automati­ tions covering the operation, maintenance, and cally issued the permit. repair of dams and other works under its At the same time, Ludvigsen introduced a supervision in the interest of drainage con­ substitute amendment, drafted with the help trol, agriculture, conservation, and irrigation. of Adolph Kanneberg of the Public Service The WPA also provided funds for several Commission, on whose suggestion a section diversion projects, among them one in Sawyer was added allowing surplus water to be County which in 1937 was authorized to divert diverted for the purpose of agriculture or surplus water from the north fork of the irrigation with the consent of riparian owners Chippewa River into Round Lake.'" Other damaged thereby. This provision, inserted in lake diversions were authorized in 1937, the interest of the cranberry growers who 1938, and 1939, but few lake restorations were accustomed to flood their bogs to ward have been made since. off frost and to facilitate harvesting,''" now In the dry years of the 1930's only a few governs diversions for irrigation, though a farmers had begun to irrigate their lands. substantial use for this purpose was not anti­ In 1934 there were only seventy-eight, irrigat­ cipated at the time. Ludvigsen's amendment, ing 1,400 acres; twenty years later there were which was adopted by the 1935 legislature as 545, irrigating over 18,000 acres. Important 'Section 31.14 of the Wisconsin Statutes, factors in this astonishing growth were the placed the administration of the law under development of a sprinkler irrigation pipe the Public Service Commission and excluded which was both light in weight and portable, the Conservation Commission. and the need for supplementary irrigation The passage of the water diversion statute for the quality vegetable cultivation con­ coincided with two forces present in the centrated in the central sand portion of the 1930's: the increasing interest in the recrea­ state. tion industry, and the availability of federal As irrigation became widespread, new prob­ relief funds for public projects.'" In 1934 lems arose, and by 1949 some observers began the federal government, through the Federal to notice that the present water law failed Emergency Relief Administration and its to meet the new situation. 0. I. Birge of the successor, the Works Progress Administration, Wisconsin College of Agriculture said that began the construction of drainage control "Beyond question, irrigation in some form dams in streams and ditches within the drain­ is the next step on a large number of our age districts."" About 280 dams of various farms. What we need is to regulate with­ drawal of water and put on the books legal recognition of irrigation, establishing what the farmer can use, how much and when."""

•" Interview with Alfred R. Ludvigsen, December 12, 1958. '•' Kanneberg, "Wisconsin Law of Waters," loc. cit., 373. ""^ Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1935. *' Interview with M. W. Torkelsen, State Planning •" Wisconsin State Planning Board, The Cutover Board, December, 1958. Region of Wisconsin, (Bulletin No. 7, January, 1939), "Docket 2-WP-298, June 21, 1937. 2, 14. ''° Milwaukee Journal, February 6, 1949.

213 WISCONSIN MAG.4ZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Stories of conflicts between farmers and such a permit had been made and granted as fishermen over the use of water were being of March 24, 1950, despite the fact that there heard, the fishermen fearing that water diver­ were over 350 irrigators in 1949. An explana­ sion for irrigation would dry up small streams tion of this seeming anomaly is offered in an and harm fish life. In September of 1949 article by Glenn Coates showing that the the press carried a story of costly irrigation Public Service Commission's replies to re­ pumping engines ruined by sand poured into quests for information regarding water rights them at night in a north central county."' were evidence that the Commission itself was Recreationists grew increasingly sensitive at uncertain of the effect or even the validity of what they regarded as attempts by the College the statute."' As enacted, the statute provides of Agriculture to encourage further irriga­ the Commission no specific direction in the tion."" granting of permits other than to state that Another incident added to the demands water is not to be diverted to the injury of that the water diversion statute be clarified public rights in a given stream. There is no and brought up-to-date. A court action was provision permitting the communal benefits instituted by Assistant Attorney General Roy of irrigation to be weighed against any losses Tulane for the state against Prosser and in other public rights, as was the case in the Powell, two potato growers who had dug legislation affecting dams. Yet this law— irrigation pits in the bed of Spring Brook written long before large-scale irrigation was Pond. The action grew out of a complaint even dreamed of—remains the sole legal to the Public Service Commission by certain guide to the issuance of irrigation permits. Antigo residents, who contended that the It was in this setting that the Public Service potato growers' upstream diversion contri­ Commission in 1950 requested an opinion buted to the stagnant condition of their swim­ from the Attorney General to clarify Section ming pond. The case was settled out of court, 31.14. Although the importance of the sub­ largely through the efforts of Glenn Coates, sequent opinion lay in its affirmation that all then a research assistant in water law at the irrigation from a stream required a permit,"" University of Wisconsin, who found that it was not until 1956 that the Commission from a geological standpoint Spring Brook, required permits form all irrigators. In that which fed the pond, was a reflection of the year, George Steinmetz, the recently appointed ground water level in the area. Any water chairman of the Commission, asked its legal withdrawn from the brook would be replaced counsel for information concerning the law as from ground water and so would have small it embraced the use of surface water. On effect on the downstream flow. To satisfy learning that the Commission had not been the Public Service Commission, the potato following the Attorney General's 1950 inter­ growers had only to remove their wing dams pretation, Steinmetz had notices sent to all from the sides of the pits which were located known agricultural irrigators, informing them in the middle of the stream and restore the of the necessity of obtaining permits before channel around the pits."" they could legally irrigate from a stream. Although the legislation of 1935 required The Commission also ruled that the water permits before water could be diverted to could only be used on land defined as that maintain lake levels or for agricultural and which touched the stream and which had irrigation purposes, only one application for come down from the original government patent in a continuous chain of title—a nar­ row definition which restricted the amount ^'- Milwaukee Sentinel, September 14, 1949. of land which could be irrigated. To soften "^ Wisconsin State Journal, April 13, 1950. '"•^ Glenn R. Coates, "Present and Proposed Legal the effect of this administrative ruling, the Control of Water Resources in Wisconsin," in the Wisconsin Law Review, 256 (March, 1953). Regula­ tion of pits is not specifically mentioned in the statutes. By administrative riding pits are not con­ sidered surface water and are so outside the Public Service Commission's jurisdiction; neither are they "'Ibid., 259. considered wells, a fact which places them outside ""Book N. 39, Opinions of the Attorney General the jurisdiction of the State Board of Health. of Wisconsin, 1950, 564-565.

214 SCHMID : WATER LAW

legislature in 1957 allowed water to be used ore be weighed against the public interest in on any land contiguous to riparian land."" the recreational use of a stream which might be damaged by a diversion of its water. A BRIEF summary of the contemporary Since territorial days the concept that the -^~*- scene indicates that the laws regulating public interest is not limited to any one use Wisconsinites' use of their water resources of water resources, but must be a compromise are still in the process of evolution. In 1957 among many uses—all contributive to the the Farm Bureau introduced a comprehensive public benefit—remains a concept forged in water bill which failed of passage. Instead, conflict. Wisconsin's policy regarding the the legislature appointed a water study com­ use of its waters has changed as the usage mittee which suggested several new bills to of its streams has evolved, from the days of be considered in 1959. In that year two bills gristmills to sawmills to hydroelectric dams were passed which are indicative of the con­ to the multiple usages made of water today. tinuing force of two important interests: the Since some laws still in force did not and public interest in the recreational use of water, could not anticipate the increased, present-day as reflected in an amendment to the water need for water for irrigation, for burgeoning diversion law prohibiting the irrigation from municipalities, or for an expanding industry, trout streams without the approval of the the evolutionary process whereby law and Conservation Department; and the public in­ economic realities overtake one another will terest in economic growth as expressed in a probably continue. Also continuing will be special water law permitting the use of water the positive use of the law to support and in the mining of low-grade iron ore, often encourage the development of Wisconsin's called taconite.^' This latter law borrows a resources. principle from the evolution of the water power laws in that it requires that the public ""Wisconsin Laws (1957), Ch. 436. '"''Wisconsin Laws (1959), Ch. 126; Wisconsin interest in the development of low-grade iron Assembly Bill No. 68 A, 1959.

•sn <-.:- ,•:• -} ,r*

.••••fc,.'.,

This beautifully composed photograph, taken in the vicinity of Chippewa Falls about 1908, shows a log driving crew in their bateaux.

215 teaders' choice

essay, shows how clearly Turner's ideas were foreshadowed by earlier writers—in Benjamin GENERAL HISTORY Franklin, for example, who implied the exist­ ence of the West as a "safety-valve" for The West: Contemporary Records of Amer­ labor and particularly by an anonymous 1840 ica's Expansion Across the Continent: 1607- writer in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, who 1890. Edited with an introduction by BAYRD wrote in strikingly Turnerian terms of the STILL. (Capricorn Books, New York, 1961. creation of a new American character through Pp. iv, 279. Illustrations. S1.65.) the frontier experience. The usefulness of this excellent collection This is an imaginatively selected, paper- would have been increased through the addi­ bound collection of original readings on the tion of an index. Although documentation history of the American West. In relatively is supplied at the end of the book, the failure brief selections. Professor Bayrd Still of New to include full citations with the selections York University presents a number of familiar themselves or to use numbered notes some­ writers on the West such as Timothy Flint, times makes their identification burdensome. Frances TroUope, and Mark Twain, but he has also collected an extensive amount of fresh CHARLES N. GLAAB material from magazines, the accounts of little University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee known travelers, emigrant guides, and impor­ tant but often ignored theorists of the West such as William Gilpin. Quite naturally, con­ sidering his extensive work in American urban Daniel Morgan: Revolutionary Rifleman. By history, and quite properly. Still, in his inci­ DON HIGGINBOTHAM. (University of North sive introduction, emphasizes the importance Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1961. Pp. xi, 239. of urbanism in the development of the West. $6.00.) Many of the selections, notably George Flower's account of town building on the One might conclude, from their perform­ southern Illinois frontier and Henry Ward ance of recent months, that biographers of Beecher's account of a visit to Chicago in Revolutionary War generals are almost as 1855, illustrate this theme. industrious as their Civil War counterparts. With reservations imposed by modern Biographies of John Sullivan and Nathanael scholarship, Still tends to accept Turnerian Greene have appeared in the past several conceptions of the West and summons up months, and now we have a study of Daniel evidence accordingly. Robert Baird, among Morgan, one of the most intriguing of the others, offers testimony on the adventurous- second rank of Revolutionary military char­ ness, independence, roughness, and other acters. peculiarities of character of the population What we know of Daniel Morgan's life on the frontier. An interesting section of the story begins in 1753 when, at about eighteen book on "A Meaning for the Westward years of age, he appeared in Winchester, March," which includes Turner's most famous Virginia. In a very short time he earned a

216 READERS CHOICE reputation as a wagoner and frontier rowdy, of Representatives, where he faithfully sup­ participated in General Braddock's ill-fated ported the Federalist party. Too ill to run march on Fort Duquesne and in some of the for re-election in 1799, Morgan retired to Indian fighting of the ensuing year, and by his mansion, joined the Presbyterian church, 1775 had acquired family, farm, and slaves. made out his will, and waited for the end The most interesting part of his life—and which came in 1802. that to which the major portion of this In the preparation of this study the author biography is devoted—was Morgan's career has done a thorough job of research, drawing as an officer in the Revolutionary army. In on widely scattered sources. Morgan emerges the fall of 1775 Morgan, in command of a as a man who could well be the prototype of rifle company, headed up the Kennebec River the American frontier hero: personally cou­ toward Quebec with Benedict Arnold's expedi­ rageous; a natural leader who never lost the tion. The mere fact that he survived the common touch; a man of action who was ordeal of that march is sufficient testimony proud, hot-tempered, adventurous, industrious, to his courage and stamina; in addition, and loyal to family, friends and country; and Morgan performed heroically in the unsuc­ innocent of education or cultural interests. cessful American assault on the city, was To balance the picture, the author has pointed taken prisoner, and later exchanged. In com­ out that Morgan was also sensitive on matters mand of an independent corps of 500 rifle­ of rank, persistent in his attempts to collect men, Morgan in 1777 was transferred to the back pay and expenses, and capable of har- northern army under Horatio Gates. At Free­ rassing state and national legislatures until man's Farm and Bemis Heights Morgan and he received the horse and medal they had his riflemen, reinforced by a detachment of promised him. light infantry under Henry Dearborn, and assisted by troops under Benedict Arnold, This book is written in a style which re­ bore the brunt of the fighting which ended flects its subject—direct, unadorned, and the British drive toward Albany and led to rapidly paced. The casual reader of Revolu­ Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga. tionary military history will find some of the battle descriptions need supplementation by In 1779 General Washington established other reading for full understanding, and a a new and larger unit of light infantry, and map of the action at Quebec would have Morgan had his heart set on commanding it. helped considerably. All things considered, When the coveted honor went instead to however, this is as good a biography of Anthony Wayne, the proud and sensitive Morgan as we are likely to see. Morgan promptly submitted his resignation, but Congress persuaded him to take a fur­ lough instead. RICHARD A. ERNEY Morgan returned to duty in the southern State Historical Society of Wisconsin army in the fall of 1780. His military career came to a brilliant climax at the battle of Cowpens, where he met and utterly obliterated Gifford Pinchot, Bull Moose Progressive. By a force under Banastre Tarleton and proved MARTIN L. FAUSOLD. (Syracuse University beyond any shadow of doubt that he was Press, Syracuse, 1961. Pp. vii, 270. $4.50.) one of the Revolutionary Army's best field commanders. This book concentrates on the most impor­ After Cowpens, Morgan's rheumatism over­ tant part of Pinchot's career, the years 1910 whelmed him, and he left the army to recover to 1917. The author wisely deals somewhat his health. During the summer of 1781 he summarily with the overworked Ballinger- joined the army with which Lafayette was Pinchot affair and focuses on Pinchot's in­ defending Virginia against Cornwallis, but volvement in the Progressive Party. Molding once more poor health forced him to leave his story around the correspondence in the the field before the final victory at Yorktown. Amos and Gifford Pinchot Papers, Professor After the Revolution Morgan threw himself Fausold gives a straightforward narrative of into a variety of business activities which Gifford Pinchot's activities in the rise and fall included milling and speculation in western of the Progressive Party. He describes Pin­ lands. In 1794 he marched into Pennsylvania chot's turn towards practical politics in 1910, with the army President Washington hastily his support of La Follette for the 1912 nom­ summoned to deal with the Whiskey Rebel­ ination, his abandoning of La Follette for lion, and in 1797 he won election to the House Roosevelt, the 1915 senatorial campaign and

217 WISCOIMSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Roosevelt's abandoning of the Progressive serting Roosevelt to continue the fight for Party. Although essentially it is a sad story, domestic reform. At the end of the book one there is some poetic justice in the tale of how can almost feel the sense of relief with which (to use George Mowry's phrase) the "in­ Pinchot must have greeted American entry decent haste" with which Pinchot and his into the war and the opportunity it afforded supporters dropped La Follette for Roosevelt him to turn away from the problems of in 1912 was repaid by Roosevelt's eventual domestic reform and concentrate on a great betrayal of their cause. crusade upon which both he and Roosevelt In his introduction, as a justification for could agree. his study of Pinchot, the author states: "Per­ haps no American represented the total 1901— HARVEY LEVENSTEIN 1917 span of the progressive movement as University of Wisconsin well as did Gifford Pinchot." The idea of one man representing a movement as variegated and heterogeneous as the progres­ sive movement is in itself a somewhat shaky Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma one, but to say that Gifford Pinchot comes Goldman. By RICHARD DRINNON. (University close to being this man is very dubious. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961. Pp. vii, 349. Rather, it would appear that Pinchot could Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. be approached more fruitfully as representa­ $5.95.) tive of a particular type of progressive—a single-issue reformer. Pinchot's inordinate Richard Drinnon has written a good biog­ concern over conservation above all else, his raphy of a fascinating woman whose life firm conviction that his particular reform was glorifies the indomitable human spirit and the necessary basis for all other reform, and condemns the systematic oppressions of the zeal with which he pushed it marked him modern bureaucratic society. In 1885 Emma as more of a particular type of progressive Goldman, age sixteen, left Russia for the than as a representative of the whole move­ United States to escape a palling environment ment. and a tyrannical father. Already inclined Because it concentrates on the period when toward rebellion, she soon plunged into the Pinchot of necessity had to broaden his world of sectarian anarchism and after a horizons and take a stand on other national brief apprenticeship emerged as America's issues, the book tends to miss this aspect of most versatile, articulate, and notorious Pinchot's personality. Thus Pinchot's con­ anarchist. A brilliant orator, she mounted a version from a single-minded conservation thousand platforms during the 1890's and the expert to a politician is described but never early twentieth century to advocate the really explained. Likewise, the relationship brotherhood of man, the sexual and spiritual in Pinchot's mind between conservation and emancipation of woman, and the virtues of general progressive reform after his conver­ the new European drama. An able organizer sion is hinted at in excerpts from his cor­ and tough fighter as well, she battled injustice respondence but never fully developed. Yet and suppression of opinion wherever she en­ this relationship is probably the most im­ countered them. Her influence touched scores portant aspect of Pinchot's thought for the of prominent Americans, people as different historian of the progressive movement. as Roger Baldwin and Margaret Sanger; and Still, Fausold's approach, which emphasizes her friendships covered an international span Pinchot's role in the Progressive Party, has its from mild dissenter to dedicated radical. merits. Although it adds little to the picture When a determined government finally de­ of the behind-the-scenes machinations within ported this resourceful rebel in 1919, it forced the party given by Mowry in his study of Emma Goldman into a tragic search for a Roosevelt, it does bring into focus the dilemma home. The implacable terror of the Bolsheviks into which Roosevelt's post-1912 shift to shattered her expectations for the Russian the Right threw Bull Moose reformers. In Revolution. During the Twenties and Thirties, Gifford Pinchot's case the dilemma was she wandered through England, Canada, and resolved by his intense personal devotion to France, denouncing the tyranny of Com­ Roosevelt. In the end, whereas others, such munism and Fascism, eking a livelihood, and as his brother, were able to leave Roosevelt ever pining to return to America. A brief ray and support Wilson in 1916, it was this factor of hope, the anarchist revolution in Spain, which prevented Gifford Pinchot from de­ was quickly eclipsed by internal weaknesses

218 READERS CHOICE and international politics. In 1940 Emma Goldman died in Canada while aiding early victims of domestic wartime oppression. In describing the development of this vital, compassionate, and occasionally obtuse wom­ an, Mr. Drinnon demonstrates an admirable talent for biography. Her loves and friend­ ships (particularly the basic relationship with Alexander Berkman), her life in prison, and her charm all glow from his pages. Deeply sympathetic toward Emma Goldman's life­ long effort to keep means congruent with ends, Mr. Drinnon also traces her intellectual growth with skill. But in attempting to pro­ vide a setting for her life, the author fails in ways which damage the rest of his work. Innumerable ex cathedra judgments upon sub­ Mvstic ^c.lp^[t, M'.shc, Connecticut jects ranging from imperial Russia to Thomas Macdonough at Plattsburg Bay, 1814. Freudian psychology clutter his pages. The intricate process of suppressing dissent ap­ plain and its connecting waterways represent pears either as a list of petty injustices or, a navigable invasion route from Canada deep in the case of the hysteria during and after into New York. From the primitive quarrels the First World War, as a centralized opera­ of the Algonquins and the Iroquois through tion directed by the federal government. Both the struggle for empire of the French and the are seriously misleading. Mr. Drinnon quib­ English to the fratricidal Revolution and War bles over peripheral issues, such as a court of 1812, the belligerents had recognized the decision upholding the draft law; he displays importance of the control of this water system. incomplete knowledge of the Homestead The author handles this span of history by strike; he overemphasizes Emma Goldman's dividing his account into four major sections. role in producing the law of 1903 against In the introductory passage, he briefly covers alien anarchists; and he misrepresents the the period 1603-1754—a time of raids and popular myth of 1918 and 1919 which linked counter raids by the English, the French, Lenin with the German government. and their Indian allies. When the two em­ If the reader is able to concentrate upon pires clashed in 1755, the lake warfare moved Emma Goldman, he will discover a sensitive beyond the category of harrassing forays. A and carefully, if self-consciously written biog­ captain of the Royal Navy outfitted a fleet raphy, worthy of its exciting subject. on the waters of Lake Champlain and armies operated on its shores. But the character who ROBERT WIEBE captured the imagination in the French and Northwestern University Indian War was a raider—Robert Rogers. Some of the most dramatic adventures of Navies in the Mountains. By HARRISON BIRD. Rogers and his Rangers took place in this (Oxford University Press, New York, 1962. vicinity. Pp. 361. $6.50.) The largest section of the book is devoted to the Revolutionary War. Beginning with In Navies in the Mountains, Harrison Bird, Ethan Allen's seizure of the dominant Fort former Curator of the Fort Ticonderoga Mu­ Ticonderoga in the spring of 1775, and cul­ seum, recounts the military history of the minating in the defeat of "Gentleman Johnny" Lake Champlain region. Beginning with the Burgoyne in the fall of 1777, there is much intrusion of the French explorer Samuel de action in this area. While many of the famous Champlain in the first decade of the seven­ figures of the time participated in these teenth century, Mr. Bird concludes with the events, Benedict Arnold was conspicuous, for defeat of the British invasion in 1814. it was this brilliant but erratic soldier who "Upon no account are you to suffer the built the first American fleet on these waters enemy to gain ascendancy on Lake Cham­ and who carried the battle to the English. plain." These instructions, given to a young Control see-sawed in the first two years. American naval officer in the War of 1812, After Saratoga the lake region became a no- strike the keynote of this book. Lake Cham- man's land for the remainder of the war.

219 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

In the concluding section, the same bellig­ the Civil War, and a variety of searches for erents resumed their struggle for the region. spiritual solace in a rapidly changing world When a veteran British force started down are all reflected in these letters. To some the shoreline of Lake Champlain, the only degree, then, they are less specifically Welsh significant obstacle was a makeshift fleet com­ and more generally American than the names manded by thirty-year old Thomas Mac­ of the writers, addressees, and destinations donough. That this young officer had clearly would indicate. understood his order (quoted earlier) was This probably would be the case in any demonstrated by the resounding victory he group of immigrant letters presented in Eng­ won over the auxiliary invasion fleet. With lish translation, but this collection, including this, the military history of the Lake Cham­ some originally written in English, suffers plain area came to an end. from some disabilities. Most of them are The author has chosen to tell this story indicated plainly in the preface. Many of the in a popular vein. Indeed, at times, Mr. letters were taken from Welsh newspapers Bird's facile pen runs away with him into the and from the periodicals of dissident religious realm of purple prose. The scholarly reader groups. In what manner and how accurately will be disappointed by the small bibliogra­ they were edited before publication in the phy and the lack of footnotes; but he will nineteenth century remains a mystery to the be pleased by the excellent maps and the modern reader, and how many were written appendix devoted to detailed descriptions of "to order" persists as a question. the various types of naval craft. More than that, Mr. Conway divulges that The Oxford University Press has presented he has excised further and, the Welsh lan­ a handsome book; and Mr. Bird has provided guage being what it is, that he has had to a story which entertains as well as informs. rephrase some passages in order to ensure their comprehensibility. His excisions con­ EDWARD M. COFFMAN sisted of materials not relating to the United University of Wisconsin States, theological arguments, reminiscences of times past in Wales, and "bardic" expres­ sions. It is not difficult to see how the Welsh The Welsfi in America. Edited by ALAN flavor might have disappeared by the time CONWAY. (University of Minnesota Press, this book was in print. Minneapolis, 1961. Pp. 341. $6.00.) The necessity of turning to the notes in the back of the book to determine if a given The intrinsic worth of the raw materials of letter was first written in English or Welsh, this book make it one not to be dismissed whether it was taken from a manuscript or lightly by anyone interested in the story of a printed version, or if it was translated and immigrants in nineteenth-century America. edited in the nineteenth century or the It is a collection of letters written by Welsh twentieth, and by whom, adds nothing to the immigrants located in various places and pur­ book. A curious system of ending the first suing many different occupations during the run of note numbers with number 99 on page time this country was expanding physically 171 and starting a new series of 97 note and economically almost beyond the wildest numbers on page 172 is baffling enough, but fancies of its founders. the actual printed notes at the back of the The editor points out in the book's preface book are printed in this double series with that the Welsh language is dying out, and with no explanation of the reason and no indica­ it many of the social and cultural character­ tion, except in the numbers themselves, of istics that once set the Welsh clearly apart where one set ends and the other begins. from other nationalities in Great Britain, Unless the reader is sharp-eyed, he can easily America, and elsewhere. It is thus of interest confuse the vital information about one letter with the same material for another letter. to note the "American" tone of these letters, even those written early in the nineteenth- One cannot cavil at the introductions pro­ century and early in the careers of the Welsh vided by the editor, a substantial one at the immigrants in this country. beginning and shorter ones before each chap­ The westward movement of population, the ter. They provide ample context for the opening of new farming territories, Indian letters and could stand on their own as a difficulties, the exploitation of mineral wealth, collection of essays about the Welsh in Amer­ the building of an industrial economy, the dis­ ica. Indeed, one is tempted to feel that Mr. ruption of the federal union, the grimness of Conway has produced two books, one called

220 READERS CHOICE

"The Welsh in America" and the other, and relatively advanced culture by another "Edited Letters of Some Welsh Immigrants which was slightly more advanced techno­ in America." Both are entertaining and in­ logically and politically. In each case, we formative. feel, it was not the quality of generalship which lost the war for the Indians, but the GLENN E. THOMPSON better supply and communications systems Slate Historical Society of Wisconsin of the whites, and their sheer numerical superiority. Though on occasion Mr. Josephy reveals The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American some unfamiliarity with tribal names and lo­ Indian Leadership. By ALVIN M. JOSEPHY, JR. cations (i.e., on page 126 we read of Pontiac (Viking Press, New York, 1961. Pp. xiv, 364. sending war belts to the "Arkansas Indians Illustrations, bibliography, maps, index. in the Southwest") the book is largely ac­ $5.95.) curate from an anthropological point of view. It is one which I recommend to both the scholar and the general reader interested in In this book Mr. Josephy, since 1960 man­ Americana and the American Indian. Should aging editor of American Heritage magazine, the reader happen to be of American offers us the life stories of nine outstanding Indian descent he or she will find little of American Indian leaders. The nine great the usual "white man's bias" in this work. Amerinds selected for biographical treatment are: Hiawatha (Iroquois), King Philip (Wampanoag), Pope (Tewa of San Juan JAMES H. HOWARD pueblo), Pontiac (Ottawa), Tecumseh (Shaw­ University of North Dakota nee), Osceola (Tallassee group of Seminole), Black Hawk (Sauk), Crazy Horse (Teton Dakota), and Chief Joseph (Nez Perce). Of A History of American Medical Ethics, 1847- the nine, all but Hiawatha were involved in 1912. By DONALD E. KONOLD. (State His­ Indian resistance to the White man. The torical Society of Wisconsin for the Depart­ biographies are in chronological order, be­ ment of History, University of Wisconsin, ginning in the late prehistoric period with Madison, 1962. Pp. vi, 119. Notes, bibliog­ Hiawatha and ending with the death of Chief raphy, index. $3.50.) Joseph in 1904. The stories of these men, representing dif­ This short book of six essays is a complete­ fering aboriginal cultures and different times ly documented, factual account of the strug­ and places, present a fascinating composite gle of the traditional "regular" practitioners picture of American Indian leadership in the of medicine to control the activities of igno­ period of Indian resistance to the seizure of rant, unethical doctors and quacks who the continent by the whites. Nor are the flourished everywhere in our new pioneer stories merely in vacuo historical sketches, country before the era of scientific medicine. for Josephy has skillfully woven in pertinent It takes us up to 1910 and the epoch-making data on the history and cultural background report of Abraham Flexner on medical edu­ of each of the tribes involved. Consideration cation, the final results of which resulted in is also given to the forceful personalities of the death of about eighty proprietary and in­ other leaders involved with each of the efficient medical schools which turned out protagonists. This illuminating data on the licensed physicians, since any graduate of power structure of the tribes and tribal com­ any school was then automatically licensed. binations sets the stage for the tragic stories Nearly forty-five pages of references show of the nine men who went down fighting for the enormous amount of research which went a way of life in which they believed. into the seventy-five pages of text, and in In a manner which is fortunately becoming many places the latter is so condensed that it more common in "Indian histories" of late, is little more than a catalog of events. the Indian side of the struggle is fairly pre­ Key figures in this perennial fight are sented, and the characteristic motivations and only mentioned by name, so that we get little means of dealing with crises typical of each idea of their personalities and their dedication cultural grouping are clearly depicted. The to the great task of raising standards of edu­ result is a stirring, though sometimes bitter, cation and purifying the practice of medicine. commentary on the displacement of a proud Such figures as Nathan Smith, Oliver Wendell

221 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Holmes, and William Osier probably had more place "in the American heritage." Rather influence than the preachings, legislation, and than a definitive study. President James codes of ethics of the American Medical As­ Buchanan is (by the author's admission) a sociation. "concise account" of Buchanan's career. He Until 1880, the majority of physicians still emphasizes Buchanan's forty years of public believed in bleeding, purging, and puking. service prior to the presidential election of Any semblance of scientific medicine had yet 1856 and purposely condenses Buchanan's to be seen. Quacks, cults, and patent medi­ Executive term (1857-1861)—stating that cines were in the saddle. Over-drugging was these years have been described "very fully" so rife that Holmes made the remark that by other notable scholars. Homeopathy had proved a great benefit to Heretofore, little was known about Buchan­ mankind as it showed that people recovered an's early political life, especially his educa­ as well without medicine as with it. He fur­ tion at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, ther suggested that if all medicines were his formative years in Lancaster, his transition thrown into the sea, men would benefit but from a Federalist to a Democrat, his activities it would be bad for the fish. as envoy to Russia, and his role as "wire­ At the turn of the century, when the puller" in the factional rivalries and machina­ "noble" profession became a million-dollar tions of Pennsylvania politics. As the first business, the problem of ethics became even attempt to fill this void Klein's work merits more acute. This has been one of the most consideration. Too quickly, however, the important reasons for the decline in esteem chapters degenerate into mere recitation of of the entire medical profession. However, "the facts," virtually devoid of meaningful during the same period, owing to the profes­ analysis. Klein capably relates "what" Buchan­ sional activity, progress in the fields of pub­ an did—but not "why". Aloof from his sub­ lic health has made great strides forward. ject, the author fails adequately to demon­ Mr. Konold's book is extremely restrained strate Buchanan's political and emotional and entirely free from comment, as was un­ growth from the Dickinson College rascal to doubtedly his intent. A further volume should the Chief Executive of 1861 who acknowl­ do more than merely catalog the struggle edged "no master but the law." In treating between 1912 and the present time to main­ Buchanan's relatively successful efforts at tain ethical standards. More and more the amalgamating rival Pennsylvania politicians American Medical Association, realizing the futility of codes of ethics, has shifted its energies to social and political ends, whether for the good of the people or not being the question.

HUGH P. GREELEY Madi. Wi

President James Buchanan: A Biography. By PHILIP SHRIVER KLEIN. (Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania, 1962. Pp. xviii, 506. Illustrations, bibliography. $7.50.)

Shamefully neglected by American histori­ ans, James Buchanan is usually thought of as the doughface president who failed to pre­ vent the Civil War. Since George T. Curtis published his two-volume documentary biog­ raphy in 1883 there has existed a need for a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of "Old Buck". Unfortunately, with the publica­ tion of Philip Klein's President James Buchanan, this need still exists. Several years in embryo. Professor Klein's Society's Iconographic Collection biography attempts to reconsider Buchanan's President James Buchanan.

222 READERS CHOICE into his own political machine, the reasons was anathema in the South or why Douglas for this success are never defined. Why did withdrew after sixteen ballots. The subsequent many Pennsylvania politicians come to ac­ fight between Douglas and Buchanan for con­ cept "Old Buck" as their spokesman? Too, trol of the Democratic party in the years why did Buchanan switch from a Calhoun to 1857—1861 is discussed but the author only a Jackson partisan in 1828? And, in 1831, implies that the real basis might be Buchanan's "the very time that there was so much talk unwillingness to honor a pledge (made in about Buchanan for a Cabinet post or Buchan­ 1856 to secure Douglas' withdrawal) not to an for the vice-presidency," the very time seek the 1860 nomination. Buchanan "had no desire to leave the United Though Professor Klein has primarily sum­ States [for] the political scene was so excit­ marized current acceptable scholarship in re­ ing," why did Buchanan abruptly accept the gard to Buchanan's presidential career, he diplomatic mission to Russia? On these and does effectively refute historians who criti­ other points President James Buchanan is cize Buchanan for his acceptance of the silent. Lecompton Constitution. He demonstrates Other than ascribing Buchanan's domestic that Buchanan's approval was founded in the intrigues to the game of power politics, Klein logic of law. offers no significant analysis of local issues. President James Buchanan is the product He mentions Pennsylvania's opposition to the of several years research in relevant manu­ Second Bank of the United States but not ihe scripts (some hitherto unused) and recent derivation of this opposition. Klein fails to secondary materials. But though the author discuss the economic demands of Pennsylvania has "seen the documents" he has not posed and their relation to popular support either for Federalists or Democrats. There is no the appropriate questions. He has failed to attempt to delineate the nature and motiva­ penetrate the enigma of "Old Buck." tions of Buchanan's constituency. Documentation in President James Buchan­ WILLIAM G. PAUL an is uneven. Often there is a noticeable University of Wisconsin absence of proof. Klein states that Buchanan's two years at Dickinson College endowed him with respect for law, a learned respect for Black feet and Buffalo: Memories of Life property, and a respectful attitude toward re­ among the Indians. By JAMES WILLARD ligion—meaningful observations, but without SCHULTZ (APIKUNI) . Edited and with an any supporting data. Other lapses in docu­ Introduction by KEITH C. SEELE. (University mentation relate to the program and member­ of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1962. Pp. xvi, ship of Buchanan's "amalgamation party;" 384. Illustrations, notes, map, index. $5.95.) the Pierce administration's Cuban policy; Buchanan's cabinet selections; and Buchanan's As a trader in 1877, James W. Schultz first differences with Lewis Cass over "popular came in contact with the Pikunis (better sovereignty." known as the Piegans), the southernmost Klein summarizes "Old Buck's" responsi­ subtribe of the Blackfeet whose range cen­ bility for the misnamed "Ostend Manifesto" tered in the present state of Montana. He but does not discuss why Buchanan sought the learned their language, married a woman of annexation of Cuba. In this regard President the tribe, and became skilled in one of the James Buchanan fails to mention the feud activities at which they excelled—that of between Buchanan and the ambitious New storyteller. His wife, Jessie Donaldson Schultz York politician William L. Marcy—a feud (he remarried after the death of his first which Polk noted in his diary, which Marcy wife), carried out his own intention at the aggravated in 1852 by preventing Buchanan's time of his death in 1947 of assembling the nomination for the presidency and which tales in the present book to form his thirty- matured with Marcy's handling of the Ostend eighth published volume. Most of the tales report. had previously appeared in magazines and Also, Klein devotes merely a half page lo newspapers. the Democratic presidential convention of Some of the tales are autobiographical and 1856. Thankfully, he recognizes that Southern­ cover the author's experiences with the In­ ers demanded the nomination of either Pierce dians and as a guide in the region that he- or Douglas—not Buchanan. However, Klein came Yellowstone National Park. Others are does not adequately explain why "Old Buck" legends, anecdotes, and adventures learned

223 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 from the Blackfeet. They are entertaining control. It was his only design, he reported and narrated by a participant skilled in con­ at one time, " 'That his Majesties Interest veying the spirit of the life of the Indian at and the Acts of Trade, may be inviolably this period and this is the chief value of the Maintaind.'" The task he set for himself book. The specialist in the tribal culture, was not easy. Sandwiched between countless and perhaps the regional historian, will find defeats in attempting to enforce the laws of some original data of value, though checking trade, he had two striking successes: first, he against other more scientific studies is re­ secured the revocation of the Massachusetts quired. The editor, Keith C. Seele, has skill­ charter in 1684 which broke the backs of fully and unobtrusively indicated some of the Saints and prepared the way for centraliz­ the alternative accounts and minor discrep­ ation under Sir Edmund Andros and the ancies in names, places, and dates. Dominion of New England; secondly, he con­ tributed largely to the Navigation Act of 1696 which shored up the colonial policy DAVID A. BAERREIS and detailed means for its enforcement. University of Wisconsin Neither of his successes endeared him to Americans; and his personality and character, along with quick responses to several oppor­ Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, tunities to improve his own position at the 1676-1703. By MICHAEL GARIBALDI HALL. expense of the colonists, compounded the dis­ (Published for the Institute of Early Ameri­ like already provoked by his devotion to can History and Culture by the University of duty. Despite his inability to get along— North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1960. Pp. even with some crown officials such as Gov­ xi, 241. $5.00.) ernor Lionel Copley of Maryland—Randolph curiously saw his future in America and con­ Between the Restoration of Charles II and stantly hoped to fashion a career in the the death of William III, a British colonial colonies satisfying to the crown and to him­ policy emerged and took hold in America. self. His perseverance against such dis­ We have had institutional histories explain­ couraging odds is hard to explain. In fact, ing the policy and the colonists' reaction to Randolph's motivation, in light of his con­ it, but we are shy on books which detail the tinued difficulties, is the toughest problem careers of men who planned and attempted Mr. Hall attempts to solve. He suggests that to carry out the policy. Edward Randolph Randolph derived motivation from a supreme was one of these, and no one in the latter confidence in the Tightness of what he was quarter of the seventeenth century tried harder doing and went on to generate "from his own than he to determine the colonies' economic activities a new concept of what London's and political status within the empire. More colonial policy could be." Randolph emerges as more than a devoted civil servant; he was than twenty years ago Charles M. Andrews a formulator of colonial policy and has won pled for a new life of Randolph since he, like a place in history because of it. Scholars of many scholars of colonial America, was dis­ the period will probably accept the explana­ satisfied with the memoir by R. N. Toppan tion, but they will doubtless conclude, too, and A. T. S. Goodrick which appeared with that Randolph's extreme and stubborn conduct their edition of Randolph papers at the turn in America was a personal exaggeration of of the century. This earlier attempt to pull the colonies' inferior status within the empire, together the life of Randolph suffered for and that enforcement of London policy might several reasons, particularly its New England have been more successful in more moderate focus, its authors' disinterest in relating hands. Randolph's career to British politics, its long and undigested quotations, and its Mr. Hall has dug into Randolph papers pseudo-seventeenth-century type. Michael G. all the way from London to California and Hall has answered Andrews's call and an­ has seen much material that escaped his swered it very well. predecessors. Although the bulk of Randolph's From his first visit to Boston on the King's time in America was spent in New England, business in 1676 to his death in Virginia in his activities in the middle colonies and South 1703, Randolph, whether in America or Lon­ receive proper attention for the first time. don, directed his tremendous energy and He was about as unpopular there as in the administrative talent toward subjecting the North and found Southerners as lighthearted colonies to the crown's economic and political about the laws of trade as New Englanders.

224 READERS CHOICE

Hall has something new to say about of the historian. While letters and diaries do Randolph's role in the Dominion of New not always present the most dramatic pictures England. Although Secretary of the Council, nor highlight the most vivid moments, they he had less to do with its administration than are probably closer to truth. The fiction one might think, since Andros frequently writer lops away the routine, the ordinary, ignored his suggestions and worked behind but the soldier scribbling his letter home closed doors with a small group of councilors. mingles the dull with the gold. Influence or not, when the Massachusetts James Newton writes well but without people overthrew the Dominion, Randolph was excitement. His letters hold interest but no a prime target, next in importance to Andros thrill. Neither does he have an eye for the himself. selection of amusing or fascinating details The revolutions of 1689 had a significant described by some other Civil War soldiers. impact on the colonial system. Hall tells us. John Brobst in Well, Mary, without the bene­ Although no master plan emerged in the fit of much education or power of orthogra­ 1690's, still a pattern is discernible, showing phy, makes the reader chuckle, sigh, breathe compromises in settlement representing both the folksy side of the war. Nothing in Brobst imperial and colonial interests. It may be smacks of formal history. In Undismayed, that he does not give the colonists sufficient the story of Samuel Eaton, chaplain of the credit in contributing to these changes, for Iron Brigade and father of a Beloit College the rebellions helped to rescue the idea of president, the reader sees both home front representative government in Massachusetts, and camp in letters the father wrote to his New York, and Maryland where it had been family and the answers mother and children either eliminated or abused. returned. There is pathos, sympathy, patri­ One may quibble with some of Mr. Hall's otism, and the empty vastness of war. statements such as his calling the Pennsylvania But an editor works with such letters as charter a "pure proprietary type." Also the he has. And Mr. Ambrose has done his best colonial world into which Randolph sailed with Newton's jottings. This soldier never in 1676 was not the apparently peaceful one makes his comrades glorious heroes. The of 1660 which he describes, but the America 14th managed just not to run, or they ran of King Philip's War, Bacon's Rebellion, off in one direction and the enemy in another. and, a year later, Culpeper's Rebellion at They seldom knew just what was going on. Albemarle. These aside, this is a needed book From Pittsburg Landing Newton wrote his and will be extremely helpful to historians parents, "If you get hold of a paper with the and readers of the early period who for some perticulars of the battle in it I wish you time have wanted a perceptive study of would send it down here. All we know about Randolph's vital role in a critical era of the battle is what we saw & that wasn't much, American colonial development. so I would like to see a paper if possible to see what we did do." He found fraterniza­ DAVID S. LOVEJOY tion everywhere: "Our pickets are getting to University of Wisconsin be quite sociable with those of the enemy: it is quite a common occurence for them to meet half way without arms to drink a cup of coffee together, and have a long talk over STATE AND REGIONAL matters and things in general. It very often happens too that the rebels do not go back A Wisconsin Boy in Dixie: the Selected Let­ again, preferring to stop with our men until ters of James K. Newton. Edited by STEPHEN they can be sent north." E. AMBROSE. (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1961. Pp. xviii, 188. Illustrations, Newton's approach to the war is quiet, notes, index. $4.50.) dispassionate. He seldom dwells on the wounded, the starving, the victorious, though Of the thousands of books swirling over at Vicksburg he comments, "I know a great the cataracts of the Civil War, the best are many ladies in town who have not had a new those that contain personal reminiscences of dress of any description since the war broke soldiers. They record day-by-day life in the out. The sutlers are not allowed to bring army, the fears, joys, and experiences of dry goods down the river." real people seeing the war in the light of their The letters are footnoted for the buff who own times and not in the magnified hindsight likes to follow the progress of battle and

225 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 general, and contain maps and a roster of From this book La Follette's faith in the ulti­ Company F. Notations, however, add little mate wisdom of the people becomes readily for the general reader who may flounder over apparent, and forms a striking contrast to the location of Camp Hamilton on page 3 McCarthy's cynical regard of the people as until the explanation arrives on page 5. a herd to be pushed into a stampede. After the war Newton remained in the Although there is a large portion of truth South to administer the Amnesty Oath. The in this book, the reader should be cautioned family he lived with did not call him a Yankee that it is not the whole truth. It should be but a Western man. "The people down here remembered that the Autobiography was a all make a difference between the western campaign document, written and published troops, and those of the east; it seems as in its first edition with the express purpose tho' they have more of a respect for those of aiding La Follette in his try for the 1912 of the west. . . ." Newton, soon returned to Republican presidential nomination. This does a life of teaching, perhaps had his moment not alter its basic characteristic, however. It of glory here. It is unfortunate that all his was, and remains, a testimonial to democracy letters are not more revealing. by one of its great champions. From its pages erupt the crash and clatter of battle against entrenched privilege end corrupt special in­ DORIS H. PLATT terests. It is a battle which may never end, State Historical Society of Wisconsin and all who join it should be familiar with the principles and tactics of La Follette. As Nevins points out: ". . . the lessons he in­ La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Nar­ stilled still need pondering." rative of Political Experiences. By ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE. With a foreword by Allan Nevins. (University of Wisconsin Press, Madi­ JofiN C. COLSON son, 1960. Pp. X, 349. Index. $1.95.) State Historical Society of Wisconsin

The University of Wisconsin Press has per­ John M. Munson Michigan History Fund formed a distinct public service by its re­ Publications. (Michigan Historical Commis­ publication of this important book. As Allan sion, Lansing, 1960-1961. $1.00 each; .50^ Nevin says in the introduction to this edition, to teachers.) it is astonishing that the Autobiography should have been out of print for so long. A wave of historical pamphleteering has More than that, it is unfortunate, and its un­ swept over high school teachers of history in availability has constituted a disservice to our the past ten years. Most deposits have been people. The Autobiography is not just La treasure trove, especially valuable in telling Follette's story of his life—actually, there is America's story at the state and local level. very little of that—but it is a political testa­ These junior and senior high school paper­ ment of great worth. Certainly, in its exposi­ backs—easy to handle, inexpensive, and au­ tion of the democratic principles of Progres­ thentic—are excellent supplementary materials sivism it bears study today when democracy to any history text. is inflicted with sustained and massive attacks In the vanguard was Wayne University from extremist elements of the Left and the Press of Detroit, with sixteen booklets issued Right. to commemorate the city's 250th anniversary It is particularly appropriate that re­ in 1951. These stories of Pontiac's Siege, publication should come at this time when furs, fire. Frenchmen, and industry were many historians profess to see a more or less patterns for many booklets to follow. In direct connection between the senior La 1955-1956 the State Historical Society of Follette and Joseph R. McCarthy, and call the Wisconsin issued sixteen Chronicles of Wis­ latter the heir of La Follette progressivism. consin, followed in 1957-1958 by six Men David A. Shannon has ably disposed of this of Wisconsin. The Buffalo and Erie County notion, but a reading or re-reading of the Historical Society's nine Adventures in West­ Autobiography reduces the concept to its basic ern New York History (1960-1961) have a absurdity. (The fact that McCarthy was once slightly larger format and type face than other a Democrat may have confused some of his pamphlets. Both of these Societies prepared scholarly critics, and led them to believe that their material with a pupil audience in mind. he knew something about Progressivism.) Not to be overlooked is the fine Historical

226 READERS CHOICE

Llandbook Series issued by the National Park war to life for younger readers. Service over the past seven or eight years, Eugene T. Peterson's Conservation of Mich­ consisting of thirty-two titles of from forty igan's Natural Resources (1960, 30 p.) gives to sixty pages each, lavish in maps, drawings, an excellent resume of commercial fishing and photographs. Many are about the Civil and hunting and reminds the reader that the War, and most sell for 25 cents apiece. His­ first state wildlife act was passed in Michigan torical society pamphlets must be financed in 1859, providing a closed season for deer, by special or private funds—a necessity which turkey, and partridge. The extinction of the often limits the number of drawings or the Michigan grayling is lamented, but the pamph­ elaborateness of the lay-out. On the other let ends on the high note of the state motto, hand, this same restriction should insure care "If you seek a beautiful peninsula, look about in preparing booklets for a predetermined you. audience. Michigan in the War of 1812, by Fred C. In 1960-1961 the Michigan Historical Com­ Hamil (1961, 48 p.) dwells on the stupidity mission issued five pamphlets, all reprints of generals and the fruitless sort of fighting from Michigan History, and all financed by that went on in the disorganized territory. the John M. Munson Michigan History Fund More material on Michilimackinac, in the which has already provided five filmstrips, light of the present retoration, might have manuals, and several books for schools. These added to the pupil's desire to see the place pamphlets are announced to be for junior where action happened. Emerson F. Gree- high pupils. Michigan's White Pine Era, man's The Indians of Michigan (1961, 48 p.) 1840-1900, by RoUand H. Maybee (1960, is one of the better booklets in the series as 56 p.), is filled with lively reminiscences and it brings the story down to the present. does hold interest for these pupils, although it These excellent pamphlets suffer in being might have gained by comparing Michigan's reprinted from an adult magazine without lumbering folklore with that of other Mid­ adequate revision for junior high readers. western states. However, Frederick D. Wil­ This omission makes them less attractive in liams' Michigan Soldiers in the Civil War vocabulary and interest level for such readers. (1960, 44 p.) uses an overly difficult vocabu­ Nevertheless, the pamphlets are at hand and lary for junior high school pupils and places many a teacher will bless their accessibility. too much emphasis on battle accounts. There is little of camp life, the home front, nursing, DORIS H. PLATT or personal accounts—items that bring the State Historical Society of Wisconsin

BOOK REVIEWS: Ambrose, ed., A Wisconsin Boy in Dixie: the Selected Letters of James K. Newton, reviewed by Doris H. Platt 225 Bird, Navies in the Mountains, reviewed by Edward M. Coffman 219 Conway, ed.. The Welsh in America, reviewed by Glenn E. Thompson 220 Drinnon, Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman, reviewed by Robert Wiebe 218 Fausold, Gifford Pinchot, Bull Moose Progressive, reviewed by Harvey Levenstein 217 Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676-1703, reviewed by David S. Lovejoy 224 Higginbotham, Daniel Morgan: Revolutionary Rifleman, reviewed by Richard A. Erney 216 Josephy, The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Leadership, reviewed by James H. Howard 221 Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biography, reviewed by William G. Paul 222 Konold, A History of American Medical Ethics, 1847-1912, reviewed by Hugh P. Greeley 221 La Follette, La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences, reviewed by John C. Colson 226 Michigan Historical Commission, John M. Munson Michigan History Fund Publications, reviewed by Doris H. Platt 226 Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo: Memories of Life Among the Indians, reviewed by David A. Baerreis 223 Still, ed.. The West: Contemporary Records of America's Expansion Across the Continent, 1607-1890, reviewed by Charles N. Glaab 216 227 ACCESSIONS

Museum

IFTS to the Society accessioned by the and an Italian Beretta machine-pistol. Model G Museum point up a gratifying mutuality 1938. Mr. M. M. Harrington, Wausau, gave of interest between the body of donors and a U.S. Navy Mark 2 knife. Mrs. Edith Jones, the Society in preserving materials in certain Oak Ridge, Tennessee, presented a Philippine special areas, such as arms and military his­ type of utility bolo knife from the South Seas. tory, the period of the Civil War, railroads, From Mrs. Helen Anschuetz Mueller, Madi­ medicine and pharmacy, costumes, and domes­ son, the Society has received the uniform and tic life. the clarinet of Charles C. Chittenden, a prin­ From Mr. Ben C. Reynolds, formerly of cipal musician with the 11th Wisconsin Volun­ Madison, now residing in Florida, the Museum teer Infantry during 1861—1862; from Miss has received two Civil War carbines, a shot­ Alice Doyle, Oregon, a Civil War period ar­ gun, bayonets of British, German, French, and tilleryman's shoulder cape; from Mrs. Robert American origin, a German sword, two signal L. Reynolds, Madison, a black wool cape worn cannons or "yacht starters," a WWI steel by her grandfather, Laurence A. Curtis, dur­ helmet, and a doll baby carriage. The Misses ing the Civil War; from Mr. Reginald C. Ruth and Mary Allen, Lake Geneva, gave a Golden, Madison, the uniform clothing, boots, French bayonet of 1878, and a pewter drink­ and bootjacks belonging to Harvey B. Mann, ing cup used by Dwight Allen, Company C, Captain of Artillery, during World War 1; 22nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, through­ from Mrs. H. J. Schubert, Madison, the boots, out the Civil War. Mr. Fred M. Benkovic, spurs, boot pullers, and bootjack, used by Milwaukee, donated two different models of her husband, an Infantry Staff Officer, in Cavalry carbine slings and a canteen, all of WWI; from Mrs. William E. Orvis, Mountain the Civil War period. Mr. William Sebald, Lakes, New Jersey, the uniform worn by her Manawa, gave a caliber .58 paper-cartridge at the U.S. Army School of Nursing during World War I. musket round. Mrs. Anna Redmann Fuoter and Mr. Donald Fuoter, Ray, North Dakota, Personal uniform clothing of donors, who presented a Prussian sword of 1860 and two have served in the Armed Forces during Bunte stick-candy glass jars. Sister M. WWII or in the Korean Conflict were received Theophilus Voreck, Beaver Dam, has presented as follows: from Mr. Walter S. Dunn, Jr., personal military equipment and souvenir Madison, his WWII combat boots; from relics memorabilic of the life-long association Mr. John M. Rosebush, Appleton, his U.S. of Philip J. Zink with the Wisconsin National Marine Corps camouflage suit; from Mrs. Guard, with which he served in the Spanish- Mildred Chase Lloyd, Madison, her uniforms American War and Philippine Insurrection, and insignia worn in service as a Captain the Mexican Border Service, and in WWI as in the Women's Army Corps, WWII; and Lieutenant Colonel, 127th Infantry Regiment, from Mr. George W. Burchill, Madison, his 32nd Division. Col. Zink had been elected to "working greens" uniform as a Lieutenant, the Wisconsin Assembly in 1927. Mr. Alden Junior Grade, Line Officer in the U.S. Navy M. Johnston, Appleton, donated a Roth-Steyr during and after the Korean Conflict. Mannlicher automatic pistol acquired by him An extensive collection of military materials during service with Battery F, 149th Field was presented by Colonel Herbert P. Schowal­ Artillery Regiment, 42nd or "Rainbow" Divi­ ter, USAR (ret.), West Bend. Numbering sion in the U.S. Occupation of the Rhineland some hundred items in all, the greatest propor­ in 1918-1919. The Wisconsin National Guard, tion being personal and uniform clothing, all Camp Douglas, through the Adjutant General in good condition and well classified, this of Wisconsin, has furnished a magazine for fine acquisition will be of immeasurable aid the Browning automatic rifle, the scabbard toward completing the Society's reserve collec­ for an Ariny fighting knife, and a quantity tions in military uniforms and habiliments for of machine gun metallic belt links. The West both World War I and II. Inasmuch as Mr. Point Museum at the United States Military Schowalter served as an enlisted man (Master Academy, West Point, New York, has donated Sergeant, Ordnance) during WWI, the uni­ two U.S. Rifles, caliber .30, M-1 (Garand), form items dating from that period are Gov-

228 ACCESSIONS

This rare double goffering, or "gauffering," iron came to America in the late eighteenth century with Mrs. Mary KelUe of Scotland. It is, however, probably at least 300 years old, since such irons were in use in Elizabethan times, when they were used to shape stiff neck ruffs. They were nicknamed "Tally" irons because they originated in Italy. To operate them, the rods were heated separately and inserted in the **i4#^»a,- hollow tubes, as shown in the photograph. The fabric to be ironed was then pressed down upon the heated tubes. Most such irons are single, and the rods vary in diameter from %" to 1%". The sturdy base supported the device when pressure was exerted on the heated irons. The candle socket on the model pictured here was probably used more to provide light than to heat the irons.

(rift of Mrs. H. H. Willard, Mazomanie.

Sterling silver travel appointments were fashionable in the late nineteenth century when this collapsible cup was made. Gift of the Misses Alice and Bettina Jackson, Madison.

229 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 ernment Issue, whereas the military habili­ Nixon 1960 campaign button; Wisconsin ments of the WWII period are chiefly of com­ Democratic Party Headquarters, Madison, a mercial origin, although correct as prescribed Gaylord Nelson 1960 campaign button and for service use. This latter group is essentially six varieties of 1960 Kennedy, and Kennedy- a complete impedimenta of clothing, acces­ Johnson campaign buttons. The Bureau of sories, and personal equipment of the Ameri­ Engineering at the Wisconsin State Capitol can Army Officer. A representative group has transferred to the Society a leather of souvenir or "trophy" items running to cushioned curved oak arm chair used in the some thirty pieces includes an Italian carbine, Assembly before 1904, and three turn-of-the- a German KAR 98 rifle, German bayonets century three-lamp lighting fixtures, originally and Nazi knives and daggers, German field for gas, converted for electricity. and dress caps and helmets, and miscellaneous German field equipment. N connection with the implementation of Additional materials of military origin or the National Railroad Museum at Green association were received from the following I Bay accessions to the Museum continue to be donors: a Civil War flute, Mr. Laurence P. received. Mr. Henry C. Jones, Bethlehem, Richmond, Dayton, Ohio; a Civil War fife, Pennsylvania, gave two fine scale models of Mr. Harry Wheeler, Richland Center; an railroad engines; the Chicago Milwaukee St. American flag of the Civil War period, Mrs. Paul & Pacific Railroad, two oil-burning Verna W. Post, Dodgeville; a Civil War camp signal lanterns, three electric marker lanterns, chair. Dr. F. L. Smith, Rochester, Minnesota; a switch semaphore, and a number of alarm a Spanish-American War snare drum, Mr. torpedoes and warning fuses; the Green Bay Elmer Ziegler, Madison; the Selective Service and Western Railroad, an electric table jack, System medal awarded to the late William A. a telegraph sounder, two kerosene lanterns, Titus of Fond du Lac, Titus Estate;' a Red a marker lantern, rail-car door latches, Arrow (32nd Division, Wisconsin National sealing bands, and keys, and an air-hose Guard) shoulder patch insignia, Mrs. Earl coupling; Mr. James S. Watson, Madison, Rueter, Columbus; and, from the papers of a National Railroad Museum fund-raising Mr. Edward Hunter, deposited with the Mass drive button; the Railway Express Agency, Communications History Center at the So­ Chicago, Illinois, a Wells Fargo & Co. Express ciety, his United Nations War Correspondent's sign; Mr. M. M. Harrington, Wausau, a identification arm patch, miniature American, quantity of railroad baggage tags of brass United Nations, and South Korean flags for with leather straps, chiefly for internal rail­ identification, souvenir Republic of Korea road use; and from Mrs. M. M. Harrington, war flag and a Communist "Red Liberation Wausau, a telegraph-blank holder, a box of Army" battle flag, and a Mao Tse Tung badge WWII V-Mail letter sheets, a date stamp, a worn by students at the North China People's train-order clipboard, five different ticket Revolutionary University, outside Peking. punches, and three car seals. Donors of materials of political association were: Mrs. Mary Thom Derber, Appleton, From Mrs. Ralph Axley, Madison, the a Lincoln-Johnson campaign flag and a Lin­ Museum received a physician's stethoscope; coln mourning flag; Mrs. Clarence A. from Mrs. W. T. Stephens, Madison, a ginger Richards, Rhinelander, four Teddy Roosevelt cannister (featured in illustration in the Wis­ campaign handkerchiefs; Member of Congress consin Magazine of History, Winter, 1961- James Hughes, West De Pere, a William Gibbs 1962) ; and from Mr. William H. Lewis, Madi­ McAdoo (Secretary of the Treasury, 1913— son, an ornate drugstore advertising lamp and 1918) Memorial bronze medal and two Demo­ a counter scale. cratic National Convention (San Francisco, Acquisitions for the Numismatic Collec­ 1920) badges; Mrs. Helen Raab, Wisconsin tions—of rare occurrence in recent years— Dells, a number of anti-third-term slogan appear to have been stimulated by current buttons from the 1940 presidential campaign; exhibits and attendant publicity. Mr. Don Miss Claire E. Booth, Urbana. Illinois, a Anderson, Madison, has donated four fine specimens of the 1936 Wisconsin Territorial Centennial Commemorative half-dollar; Dr. Herbert S. Zim, Tavernier, Florida, gave a ^ For a heart-warming sketch of Mr. Titus, see four-denomination set of Hudson's Bay Com­ the article by Paul Vanderbilt, "Grandma and Grand­ pa on the Porch," in the Wisconsin Magazine ot pany "Beavers" used in the Indian fur trade History, 40: 45-49 (Autumn, 1956). in Eastern Canada a century ago, and a

230 ACCESSIONS

Ibis silver mustard pot of English manufacture is lined with a blue glass dish in which dry pow­ dered mustard was mixed for each use. The pot was used in Miss Alice Jackson's home in the 1890's.

Gift of Miss Alice Jackson, Madison.

.rmAkutlhlJ-": -* ».i^.*"'

Professor Frank R. Horlbeck of the University's department of art history has dated this hand-carved boxwood "healing stone" to fifteenth-century Eng­ land, where it was heated and then held in the hand. The piece is about 4%" by 2%", or slightly larger than pictured here. Professor Horlbeck has suggested that it was possibly part of a triptych or a diptych, or the sole panel of a small icon.

Gift of Mrs. Mary R. Drummond and Mrs. Ellen Harriman, Stoughton.

Chip-carved wooden St. Nicholas, used for molding huge Dutch cookies for Christmas. A rich, spicy dough was pressed firmly into the floured pattern, forming a fourteen-inch cookie.

Acquired from Glen Ridnour, Monroe.

231 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962 quantity of ancient and medieval coins repre­ included a christening coat, baptismal gown senting the Mediterranean Basin, Arabia, and slip, a dress, several jackets, a number Ethiopia, Italy, the Low Countries, and the of Windel Kissen, or baby wrappers, a pillow­ British Isles; Miss Mary Sinclear, Madison, case, several stockings, a number of bibs, gave a U.S. 1848 half-dime; and from the and a pair of child's shoes. William A. Titus Estate, a State of Georgia Additional items of clothing were received Confederate Treasury note, and two pieces of from the following donors: man's clothing, Japanese paper currency, issued pursuant to Mr. Richard Williams, Madison; a little boy's military proclamation, WWII period. suit, Mrs. Lauretta M. Moulton, Kewaunee; Especially welcome to the collections have the two-piece pink damask gown worn by Mrs. been fine select furniture pieces dating from William Freeman Vilas to the inaugural ball just a century ago. From Mr. Holger 0. of President Stephen Grover Cleveland, on Jacobsen, South Milwaukee, we have received Wednesday, March 4, 1885, Mrs. Calvin a matching suite in carved mahogany consist­ Welty, Evansville; woman's clothing, Mrs. ing of a loveseat and a pair of sidechairs, Harriet Chamberlain Loose, La Crosse; a a "Lady's Rocker" and a "Gentleman's Arm­ wedding gown of the 1890's, Grace Episcopal chair" matching as to upholstery and carved Church Guild through Mrs. H. J. Noyes, mahogany, and a carved walnut, marble- Madison; a wedding gown of 1915, Mrs. A. topped table, all pieces being in the Louis XV J. Johnson, Madison; a little boy's dress, 1870, mode, and having originated in Wales, in the Mrs. Helen Dailey, Madison; woman's cloth­ British Isles; and from Mrs. Dola Decker, ing of the 1890's, Mrs. Len Trachte, Madison; Brookfield, a spool bed, a cherry commode, a linen coat dating from the Revolutionary several candleholders, a kerosene lamp, and War period, Mrs. Ruth P. Richmond, Madi­ a number of sidechairs and rockers, including son; two woman's dresses, Mrs. Carl Mueller, the little sidechair and the low nursing or Oconomowoc; a "Juliet" cap, Mrs. John W. sewing rocker previously featured in illustra­ Winn, Madison; a Knights Templars uniform tion in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, of 1900 and a pair of driving gloves, Mrs. Summer, 1961. Lowell Hall, Madison; Chautauqua and Lyceum costumes, Mrs. R. 0. Bowman, Lodi; An aggregation of domestic effects number­ a Rabbinical shawl and a child's coat, Jeanne ing some fifty items in a dozen categories Michael, Madison; a dress and other clothing came to the Museum from Miss Florence belonging to Mrs. Frank (Mae) MacRavey, Wendt, Horicon. These larger accessions with Mrs. A. F. MacRavey, Madison; handmade wide variety in composition are always help­ natural linen stockings and a quilted plush ful in filling gaps in the reserve collections, lamp mat, Miss Calista Mary Miles, Eau especially in fields characterized by extreme Claire; a Dolman wrap and a fan, Mrs. Bess numbers of different sorts, types, and vari­ Fricke, Los Angeles, California; and from eties. Miss Wendt's gift included materials Mrs. Edward T. Fairchild, Madison, a wom­ dating from a brief span of years bracketing an's bodice of 1802, the wedding bonnet worn the turn of the century: two woman's dresses, by Margarita (Peggy) Fries for her marriage eight splendid lady's hats (two of which were to Christian Endres in 1802, a baby's dress of modeled and illustrated in the Wisconsin about 1805, a hand-sewn pale blue silk bodice Magazine of History, Summer, 1961), a num­ worn by Helen Elizabeth Chew Edwards about ber of china and art glass pieces, several 1849, and—all dating from about the middle kitchen and pantry utility items, a gas-lamp of the Nineteenth Century—a calico bonnet, lighter with original pack of wax tapers and a quilted silk bonnet, a bonnet veil, a Dotted a number of kerosene lamps, globes, chimneys, Swiss day cap, a "Bertha" collar, two waist- and shades, a child's rocker, a baby's bathing cinchers, and a "Merry Widow." tub, a toy wagon and several cast-iron toys, a doll stroller and a number of bisque dolls, several games and puzzles, two souvenir CCESSIONS to the Museum for the col­ medals, and a Buescher B-flat cornet, com­ plete and in excellent condition. From Miss A lections of Archeology and Ethnography Marie Louise Schoenleber, Milwaukee, the were received from the following donors: Museum has received a fine collection of Sergeant Major Michael Kosenski, 187th In­ baby's clothing dating from 1888, a "Lotto" fantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, game of the 1890's, and white wool knit hose Fort Campbell, Kentucky, a Woodland Indian from the trousseau of Emma Thaede Schoen­ belt, a Chippewa bandolier and a catlinite leber, 1860. Among the infant's clothing are pipebowl with wood stem, a Sioux pipe bag. Plains Indian woman's moccasins and leggings

232 ACCESSIONS and child's moccasins; Miss Calista Mary a man's intricate vest pocket watch hook in Miles, Eau Claire, a wicker basket obtained the form of a ruby-eyed, gold-plated snake, from Indians of the Stockbridge Tribe at a comb, button hook, shoe horn, and clothes Augusta, New York in 1814; Elsa Fauerbach, brushes, all in silver, two silver-capped pomade Madison, Plains Indian beaded belt, pouch, jars, an encased collapsing cup in silver and and legging strips, all said to be of the Black- a silver-capped pressed-glass toothbrush hold­ foot Tribe; and from Daniel G. Newhall, er, both for traveling, two brass candle sticks Madison, pairs of men's and women's Eskimo and a brass snuffer, all from Holland, silver mukluks of seal skin. egg cutter, mustard pot, salt dish with spoons, A number of select items desired for the and salt and pepper shakers, napkin rings, one collections have been acquired by purchase in cloisonne and three in silver, a silver toast or exchange from specialists. From Mr. Lewis rack, a desk set in silver and a portable type­ H. Gordon, Jr., Minneapolis, Minnesota, we writer, an iron dustpan, a preserving jar, have obtained a British Paget Cavalry Car­ a glass vegetable shortening jar, and two bine dating from the period of the Napoleonic pairs of Italian castanets in European walnut. Wars; and from Mr. Glen H. Ridnour, Mon­ A number of domestic items were also re­ roe, an Indian fur trade gun bearing the ceived from the following donors: a roller mark of the Hudson's Bay Company, a fire towel bar, the Fred J. Wiedenbeck Estate; a alarm bell, a U.S. five dollar gold piece, an turned wooden sugarbowl, Mrs. Ida A. example of Pauline Pottery, a Confederate McGillivray, Spokane, Washington; a pastry States military belt buckle, and the unusual wheel, Mrs. E. J. B. Schubring, La Jolla, betty lamp by Henry Boker, previously fea­ California; a German table-edge fixture serv­ tured in the Wisconsin Magazine of History ing as a rest for fine hand needlework, Mrs. (Winter, 1961-1962). E. W. Freda, Los Angeles, California; and The accessions during this past period have a homespun linen towel, Lyle R. Piepenburg, been especially rich in the little treasures Niamey, Niger, West Africa. Donations of of the women, things decorative or utilitarian, toys, or including toys, were received by the once used, then lovingly preserved, and finally Museum from these individuals: a toy thresh­ deposited with the Society for ultimate safe­ ing machine and a shotgun, Mr. Sylvester keeping. Mrs. Carl Johnson, Madison, gave Pfefferle, Milwaukee; a child's wagon, Mr. a clear pressed-glass bowl in very small hob­ Lee Hammersley, Madison; a mechanical dog nail pattern; Mrs. Galen A. Fox, Clearwater, toy and a coffee grinder, Mr. and Mrs. E. C. Florida, a set of English Luster cups and Jones, Fort Atkinson; two German bisque- saucers, wedding gift to Lydia Stillwell Phelps head dolls, a child's rocker, and two pairs of in 1823, and the three tiny handmade shell­ baby shoes, Mrs. A. W. Asmuth, Milwaukee; back teaspoons in silver, wedding gift to a diabolo game made under the German Anne Vandevere Stillwell in 1800, illustrated patent about 1900 and a woman's watch in the Wisconsin Magazine of History (Win­ necklace inscribed: "Joseph H. Terry, U.S.N., ter, 1961-1962) ; the Misses Mary and Mar­ Aug. 28, 1833," Mrs. Vernon Carstensen, garette Morse, Viroqua, an American silver Madison; a set of building blocks, Mrs. plate crumb set, a number of pieces of Amer­ Francis D. Hole, Madison; and from Mrs. ican glass, a Bavarian saucer, two English Charles P. Vogel, Milwaukee, two woman's china plates, an English semi-porcelain bowl straw hats, a man's fine black beaver hat by Henry Alcock, a small American ironstone with leather case, a boy's sailor in Leghorn platter, an ironstone vegetable dish by Alfred straw, protective touring goggles, and a num­ Meakin, England, an ironstone soup plate by ber of souvenir and commemorative medals, James Edwards, England, and two Chinese chiefly associated with World War I and porcelain bowls, redecorated in England in immediately following. a green over-all transfer; and from Miss Gifts of photographic equipment were re­ Alice F. Jackson, Madison, numerous items, ceived from Mr. James Fosdick, the M. E. either belonging to her late sister, Bettina Diemer Estate, and Mr. Charles Manson, all Jackson, to herself, to her parents, or from of Madison. Mr. Gerald Arts, Madison, gave the family home, including: a Russian linen a meat-mincing hatchet patented in 1911; sideboard runner, Roumanian and Norwegian- Mr. Arthur M. Vinje, Madison, a home dis­ American embroidery, two child's thimbles, pensing case for Humphrey's Homeopathic a child's ring and pin, both in gold, lady's Specifics and a sample of the first tapestry watch chain, veil clip, and pins, a class pin. carpet made in the United States by Walter M. Dick, Newark, New Jersey, in 1846; Mrs.

233 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

Frank Dresen, Sauk City, a 1917 Wisconsin of Garfield, Polk County, presented by S. J. automobile license plate; and Miss Adelheid Saden, River Falls; an account of the build­ Kriedemann, Milwaukee, a pair of plain gold ing and dedication of St. Anthony's (Catho­ wedding bands, two lady's costume rings, lic) Church on the Menominee Indian Reser­ bracelets, a necklace, and several brooches, vation, Neopit; minutes, 1908-1914, of the a pair of fancy white cotton knit stockings, Social-Democratic Party, Two Rivers, pre­ two placecard and napkin holders, a man's sented by Miss Bernice Zander, Two Rivers; gold watch and chain, encased meerschaum papers, 1922-1957, of the Western Wisconsin pipe and cigar holder, and a cast iron hang­ Schoolmasters' Club, including correspond­ ing kitchen matchsafe. ence, special reports, and directories, pre­ sented by Everett Walters, La Crosse; papers, 1949-1960, of the Wisconsin Association of Veterans in Education, consisting of cor­ respondence, rosters of members and officers, and financial reports, presented by George H. Manuscripts Stockton, Madison; papers, 1881-1892, of the Wisconsin Farmer's Alliance - Baraboo Alliance Number 65. including two secretary's Services for microfilming and photostating all books and miscellaneous resolutions; papers, but certain restricted items in its manuscripts 1899-1954, of the Wisconsin Federation of collections are provided by the Society. For details write Dr. Josephine L. Harper, Head, Women's Clubs, including correspondence, Maps and Manuscripts Library. minutes, financial reports, and a history of the organization, presented by Mrs. George W. Shores, Milwaukee; papers, 1892-1951, of the Wisconsin State Dental Society, includ­ Organizational Papers. Papers, 1908-1957, ing presidential papers, files of the Executive of the American Country Life Association, Secretary and the Executive Council, and including correspondence, financial reports, records of annual meetings, presented by the and minutes, presented by the American Coun­ Wisconsin State Dental Society; papers, 1949- try Life Association and by David Lindstrom, 1959, of the Wisconsin State Practical Nurses Urbana, Illinois; papers concerning the Con­ Association, including correspondence, min­ gregational Church, Spring Green, on the oc­ utes, reports, and regulations, presented by casion of its eighty-fifth anniversary; papers Mrs. Anita N. Spera, Kenosha, and Miss concerning the Congregational Community Josephine Balaty, Madison; papers, 1943- Church, Lone Rock, on the occasion of its 1959, of the Wisconsin Society of Professional seventy-fifth anniversary; minutes of a Demo­ Engineers, including minutes of annual meet­ cratic Club organized in 1863 in the Cottage ings, financial reports, and lists of officers and Grove area, presented by Harry E. Wheeler, directors, presented by Cass F. Hurc, Madi­ Richland Center; records of the Evansville son ; miscellaneous records of the United Pres­ Baptist Church, including those of the church byterian Church of Yorkville, presented by treasurer, the Ladies Benevolent Society, and Miss Edith McEachron, Sturtevant. the Women's Missionary Society, with a sub­ scribers' list dated 1866; minutes book, 1886- 1891, of the Lake Side Literary Society of Microfilm. The Civil War diary, 1863, of East Troy, presented by the Stewart School Elisha Dean, 7th Regiment Wisconsin Volun­ Potawatomi Junior Historians, Mukwonago; teers, describing army life in Maryland and papers, 1848-1951, of the West Wisconsin Virginia and duties as an ambulance driver; Conference of the Methodist Episcopal correspondence, 1855-1865, of Frank M. Church, consisting of conference minutes and Crandall, 6th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, records, correspondence, 1899-1951, of the describing campaigns in Maryland and Vir­ conference's Historical Society, histories of ginia; journal, 1862-1879, kept by Dr. James Methodist churches in the conference, and DeKoven recording the history of St. John's miscellaneous reports, records, and biogra­ Hall and Racine College, and describing phies of ministers, presented by the Methodist Bishop Jackson Kemper and other Episcopal Episcopal Church-West Wisconsin Confer­ clergymen in Wisconsin; records, 1902-1959, ence; papers dealing with the history of the of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church of including church covenant, christening of Coon Prairie, near Westby; history of Oak children, and confirmation of adults; extracts, Grove School, 1906-1950, District 4, Town 1861-1862, from the papers of William J.

234 ACCESSIONS

Hardee, Confederate general; extracts, 1862- by-laws, records of meetings, and reports, 1865, from the papers of Jebez L. M. Curry, 1946-1959, of the Wisconsin Surgical So­ educator and representative to the first Con­ ciety; minutes and baptismal records, 1847— federate congress; letters, 1813-1865, from 1909, of the Yorkville Associate Presbyterian Bishop Jackson Kemper concerning the affairs Congregation, Yorkville. of the Episcopal church; correspondence, 1858-1866, between Bishop Jackson Kemper and ministers within his jurisdiction relating Miscellaneous. Historical sketches written by to appointments, transfers, and work of the Mrs. Duncan C. Allison describing border church; papers, 1719-1825, of Henry Knox, incidents in Kansas in 1855 and shortly after army officer and Secretary of War, consist­ the Quantrill raid of August 21, 1863, pre­ ing of correspondence with his family. Revo­ sented by Mrs. W. A. Sumner, Madison; cor­ lutionary War associates, government offi­ respondence, 1854-1863, of John A. Bryan, cials, and land speculators, and including Menasha land speculator, including references financial accounts, maps, and Waldo family to economic conditions in Wisconsin as af­ papers dealing with Maine lands; diary, fected by the Panic of 1857, presented by Mrs. 1909-1944, kept by the staff, concerning St. John Hausman, Seattle, Washington; diaries, Francis Hospital, La Crosse; minutes, 1930- 1911-1912, kept by Carrie Chapman Catt, 1957, of the Advisory Council to the Luther containing observations made on her trip Hospital School of Nursing, Eau Claire; around the world, presented by Miss Mary papers, 1856-1863, of William Harmon Gray Peck, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, and Macomber, chiefly describing his work as a Mrs. William H. Lough, New Rochelle, N. Y.; mill hand in Winnebago County in 1856; papers, 1911-1915, 1950-1958, of Walter B. minutes, 1943-1953, of the Executive Board, Cockerill, missionary to Nyasaland, British Rural Schools Association of Wisconsin; Central Africa, 1914-1915, relating to a native records, 1856-1956, of the St. John's Lutheran uprising (Chilembwe's) and including cor­ Church, Madison, including finances, bap­ respondence with a Scottish historian, George tisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials; Shepperson, who published a history of the extracts, 1862-1864, from the papers of uprising in 1958, presented by Mr. Cockerill, Thomas Jenkins Semmes, member of the Con­ Milton Junction; papers, 1826-1871, of John federate senate, including letters from Alex­ G. Davis, Democratic Congressman from In­ ander H. Stephens, Braxton Bragg, and Jeffer­ diana in the 1850's, including correspondence son Davis; collection of manuscripts gathered dealing with politics, land, and family affairs, by Mr. and Mrs. Silas L. Spengler, Menasha, presented by David J. Mack, Madison; manu­ including papers relating to Charles A. Grig- script letter, June 13, 1890, from William H. non, 1827-1855, Solomon Juneau, 1836- Herndon explaining Lincoln's religious views, 1852, Elisha Morrow, 1837-1849, and several presented by the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Civil War soldiers, 1861-1864; papers of the Committee; translation from the German of United World Federalists, including minutes a diary, 1848-1850, kept by I. O. Krohnke, of the Midwest Regional Council, 1950-1960, immigrant who settled near Sheboygan, in­ the Provisional Regional Formative Commit­ cluding a daily account of the first year of tee, 1954, and the Midwest Regional Assembly, settlement; an historical and economic survey 1957-1959; papers, 1741-1906, of Micajah of Arkansaw, Wisconsin, written about 1916 T. Williams, Surveyor General of the North­ by Calista Mary Miles, Eau Claire, and pre­ west Territories and Ohio's acting canal com­ sented by Miss Miles; letter, November 3, missioner, consisting of letters, notebooks, 1961, from Ozaukee County Judge Charles L. and accounts relating to Ohio canals, 1821— Larson describing a Norwegian settlement in 1833, correspondence, including letters ex­ Ozaukee County ca. 1853—1910, presented by changed with Byron Kilbourn, 1826-1843 Judge Larson, Port Washington; papers, and with Increase A. Lapham, 1836-1842, 1919-1947, of Franz Rickaby, poet and col­ and personal and business papers; minutes, lector of ballads, including a sketch about 1941—1959, of the Wisconsin Association of Rickaby by Vachel Lindsay and Rickaby's Presidents and Deans of Liberal Arts; three journals, 1919, of a trip from Michigan to volumes of the Executive Council minutes, North Dakota in search of ballads, presented 1921-1958, of the Wisconsin Bankers Associa­ by Mrs. Lillian Rickaby Dykstra; history of tion; records, 1910-1945, of the Tenth Dis­ the Dousman Hotel at Prairie du Chien, by trict, Wisconsin State Nurses Association; Fred A. Schrader, giving details of construc­ tion and operation.

235 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1962

WILLIAM L. BURTON, a native of Moundsville, West Virginia, C-ontnllyutoiii... received his undergraduate de­ gree in history and political HAROLD L. GEISSE is a native science from Bethany College of Chilton, Calumet County, A ' in West Virginia. After a and a graduate of the high ^^^1^^^ period of high school teaching school of that city. He majored in Virginia he entered the in political science and eco­ graduate school of the University of Wiscon­ nomics at the University of sin, where he received the M.S. and Ph.D. Wisconsin, from which he has degrees in history under the tutelage of the received the B.A. and LL.B. late Howard K. Beale. Mr. Burton currently degrees. His interest in geology stems from teaches history at Western Illinois University. his work as president of the Wisconsin Valley Electric Company and as an officer of the Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company and the Northern States Power Company of Wis­ A. ALLAN SCHMID, assistant consin. In his work in connection with the professor of agricultural construction of dams on the Wisconsin River economics at Michigan State and elsewhere, Mr. Geisse made a constant University, was born in Daw­ study of the character of the rock structures son, Nebraska, in 1935. He with which he had to deal, and thus gained received the B.S. degree from a wide knowledge of the geology of Wisconsin the University of Nebraska in and northern Michigan. He became intrigued 1956 and did his graduate with the various theories advanced to explain work at the University of Wisconsin, where the occurrence of lead and zinc in the Missis­ he held a research assistantship from 1956 sippi Valley and with the strange prescience to 1959. He attained the M.S. degree in 1957 of the first geological investigator of the and the Ph.D. in land economics, general region, George W. Featherstonhaugh. The agricultu ral economics, and regional planning article contained in this issue is the result of in 1959. Mr. Schmid is married and has two his studies. children

RICHARD W. E. PERRIN, whose article on Greek JAMES HARVEY YOUNG is pro­ Revival architecture in Wisconsin is one of fessor of history and chairman a series on the state's architectural history, is of the department at Emory acting director of the Department of City De­ University in Atlanta, Georgia. velopment and director of the housing autho­ He received his B.A. degree rity in Milwaukee. For further biographical from Knox College and his information about Mr. Perrin, see the Sum­ M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from mer, 1960, issue of the Magazine. the University of Illinois, where he worked with the late J. G. Randall. His teaching and research interests have cen­ tered on social, intellectual, and medical HE annual meeting of the Society's Board Americana. Last year Princeton University T of Curators and membership has been an­ Press published his book. The Toadstool nounced for Green Bay on June 21-23, 1962. Millionaires, A Social History of Patent Medi­ Registration will open at the Hotel Northland cines in America before Federal Regulation, at 3:00 P.M. on June 21. Besides the com­ which was recently awarded the first Edward mittee and business meetings there will be a Kremers Award by the American Institute series of programs devoted to such diverse of the History of Pharmacy. Mr. Young is topics as aspects of rural and urban history, currently at work on a sequel, concerned with Wisconsin birds of historical interest, the American medical quackery in the twentieth Green Bay Packers, and Frederick Jackson century. He spent the academic year 1961- Turner. Professor Ray Allen Billington of 1962 doing research for this study, holding a Northwestern University will address the mem­ Social Science Research Fellowship and a bership at the Annual Awards Banquet on grant from the U.S. Public Health Service. June 22.

236 TTiis Summer Visit Historic Wisconsin

Circus World Museum • Baraboo The "old days" of the circus come to life in this museum, dedicated to recapturing the true flavor of the greatest of American amusement enterprises. Old Wade House • Greenbush Pre-Civil War Wisconsin in the days when stagecoaches rumbled over rough, plank roads, bearing the tide of western migration is presented here. Museum of Medical Progress • Prairie du Chien The medical history of Wisconsin, from the army surgeon to the modern medical practi­ tioner, is told in the reconstructed hospital of Fort Crawford. Stonefield • Cassville The history of farming in Wisconsin, the development of her villages, and the life of a pioneer lawyer-farmer are set on the plan­ tation farm of Wisconsin's first governor. Villa Louis Prairie du Chien The Wisconsin fur trade, military occupancy in the pre-territorial days, and the luxurious life of the man who turned frontier develop­ ment into a great personal fortune, this is the story of Villa Louis. Society Museum • Madison Administrative center of all Society activities, the Society building houses one of the na­ tion's finest historical libraries and the famous Museum of Wisconsin History.

Right: Visitors approach Old Wade House along the elm-shaded brick walk.

Admission Free To All Society Members The State Historical Society of Wisconsin 816 State Street Madison, Wis. To promote a wider appreciation of the American heritage The Purpose with particular emphasis on the collection, advancement, of this and dissemination of knowledge of the history of Wisconsin Society shall he and of the Middle West.

The State Historical Society of 'Wisconsin 816 State Street Madison 6, Wisconsin Second class postage paid Return Requested Madison, 'Wisconsin