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The Territory of Wisconsin was an organized and incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 3, 1836, [1] until May 29, 1848, when an eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is the 20th-largest state by population and 23rd-largest state by area. It is divided into 72 counties and as of the 2020 census had a population of nearly 5.9 million. [14] Its most populous city is Milwaukee, while its capital and second-most populous city is Madison.
Apr 20, 2017 · The newly created Wisconsin territory included all of what is now Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and part of the Dakotas up to the Missouri River.
- Pre-Columbian History
- Exploration and Colonization
- The Territorial Period
- Statehood
- Civil War and Gilded Age
- 20th Century
- 21st Century
- See Also
- Bibliography
The first known inhabitants of what is now Wisconsin were Paleo-Indians, who first arrived in the region in about 10,000 BC at the end of the Ice Age. The retreating glaciers left behind a tundra in Wisconsin inhabited by large animals, such as mammoths, mastodons, bison, giant beaver, and muskox. The Boaz mastodon and the Clovis artifacts discover...
French period
The first European known to have landed in Wisconsin was Jean Nicolet. In 1634, Samuel de Champlain, governor of New France, sent Nicolet to contact the Ho-Chunk people, make peace between them and the Huron and expand the fur trade, and possibly to also find a water route to Asia. Accompanied by seven Huron guides, Nicolet left New France and canoed through Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and then became the first European known to have entered Lake Michigan. Nicolet proceeded into Green Bay,...
The Second Fox War
In the 1720s, the anti-French Fox tribe, led by war chief Kiala, raided French settlements on the Mississippi River and disrupted French trade on Lake Michigan. From 1728 to 1733, the Fox fought against the French-supported Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Huron and Ottawa tribes. In 1733, Kiala was captured and sold into slavery in the West Indiesalong with other captured Fox. Before the war, the Fox tribe numbered 1500, but by 1733, only 500 Fox were left. As a result, the Fox joined the Sauk people. Th...
The British period
The British gradually took over Wisconsin during the French and Indian War, taking control of Green Bay in 1761, gaining control of all of Wisconsin in 1763, and annexing the area to the Province of Quebec in 1774. Like the French, the British were interested in little but the fur trade. One notable event in the fur trading industry in Wisconsin occurred in 1791, when two free African Americans set up a fur trading post among the Menominee at present day Marinette. The first permanent settler...
The United States acquired Wisconsin in the Treaty of Paris (1783). Massachusetts claimed the territory east of the Mississippi River between the present-day Wisconsin-Illinois border and present-day La Crosse, Wisconsin. Virginia claimed the territory north of La Crosse to Lake Superior and all of present-day Minnesota east of the Mississippi Rive...
By the mid-1840s, the population of Wisconsin Territory had exceeded 150,000, more than twice the number of people required for Wisconsin to become a state. In 1846, the territorial legislature voted to apply for statehood. That fall, 124 delegates debated the state constitution. The document produced by this convention was considered extremely pro...
Civil War
Wisconsin enrolled 91,379 soldiers in the Union Army during the American Civil War. 272 of enlisted Wisconsin troops were African American, with the rest being white. Of these, 3,794 were killed in action or mortally wounded, 8,022 died of disease, and 400 were killed in accidents. The total mortality was 12,216 men, about 13.4 percent of total enlistments. Many soldiers trained at Camp Randall currently the site of the University of Wisconsin's athletic stadium. The draft implemented by Pres...
Progressivism and party politics
Wisconsin was a regional and national model for innovation and organization in the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. The direct primary law of 1904 made it possible to mobilize voters against the previously dominant political machines. The first factors involved the La Follette family going back and forth between trying control of the Republican Party and third-party activity. Secondly the Wisconsin idea, of intellectuals and planners based at the University of Wisconsin shaping gove...
World War I
During World War I, due to the neutrality of Wisconsin and many Wisconsin Republicans, progressives, and German immigrantswhich made up 30 to 40 percent of the state population, Wisconsin would gain the nickname "Traitor State" which was used by many "hyper patriots". As the war raged on in Europe, Robert M. La Follette, leader of the anti-war movement in Wisconsin, led a group of progressive senators in blocking a bill by president Woodrow Wilson which would have armed merchant ships with gu...
Roaring Twenties and the New Deal
The progressive Wisconsin Idea promoted the use of the University of Wisconsin faculty as intellectual resources for state government, and as guides for local government. It promoted expansion of the university through the UW-Extension system to reach all the state's farming communities. University economics professors John R. Commons and Harold Groves enabled Wisconsin to create the first unemployment compensation program in the United States in 1932. Other Wisconsin Idea scholars at the uni...
Republican trifecta
In 2011, Wisconsin became the focus of some controversy when newly elected governor Scott Walker proposed and then successfully passed and enacted 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, which made large changes in the areas of collective bargaining, compensation, retirement, health insurance, and sick leave of public sector employees, among other changes. A series of major protests by union supporters took place that year in protest to the changes, and Walker survived a recall election held the next year, be...
Divided government
Following the election of Tony Evers as governor in 2018, Wisconsin has seen a string of liberal victories at every level of government which have slowly chipped away at the conservative dominance within the state. This eventually led to the Wisconsin supreme court overturning the Walker-era legislative gerrymander in Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Surveys
1. Buenker, John (1988). "Wisconsin: As Maverick, Model, and Microcosm". In Madison, James H. (ed.). Heartland: Comparative Histories of the Midwestern States. Indiana University Press. pp. 59–85. ISBN 9780253205766. 2. Buenker, John D. The History of Wisconsin, Volume 4: The Progressive Era, 1893–1914. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1998. highly detailed history 3. Campbell, Henry C. Wisconsin in Three Centuries, 1684-1905 (4 vols.: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1906), highly detailed popular...
Specialized scholarly studies
1. Anderson, Theodore A. A Century of Banking in Wisconsin(1954) 2. Apps, Jerry. Meet Me on the Midway: A History of Wisconsin Fairs(Wisconsin Historical Society, 2022). 3. Apps, Jerry. When the White Pine was King: A History of Lumberjacks, Log Drives, and Sawdust Cities in Wisconsin(Wisconsin Historical Society, 2020). 4. Boatman, John F. Wisconsin American Indian history and culture: a survey of selected aspects (1998) online 5. Braun, John A. Together in Christ: A History of the Wisconsin...
Primary sources
1. Wisconsin Electronic Readerfull text of many primary source books 2. The Badger State: A documentary history of Wisconsin(1979) 3. La Follette's Autobiography, a personal narrative of political experiences, 1913
The Wisconsin Territory stretched north to the British-Canadian border and was originally bounded to the west by the Missouri River, although in 1838 an act of Congress made the Mississippi River the official western boundary.
Jun 29, 2020 · The vast Wisconsin Territory originally included all the current states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, and that part of the Dakotas east of the Missouri River. The Wisconsin Territory officially existed from July 3, 1836 until the current—and smaller—State of Wisconsin was established on May 29, 1848.
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A Brief History of Wisconsin before Statehood. Wisconsin became a territory in 1836. Before then, it was successively part of the Northwest Territory (1788-1800) and the territories of Indiana (1800-1809), Illinois (1809-1818), and Michigan (1818-1836).
