Context
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Wisconsin territory was included in the vast stretch of land claimed by the United States at the end of the Revolutionary War. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 outlined a method to survey and denote the new lands so they could be sold to white settlers, despite the fact that indigenous people had occupied the land for centuries or millennia. After a dispossessive treaty signed with the Menominee in Washington, D.C.; a brutal eradication campaign against the Sauk, Meskwaki (Fox), and Kickapoo after the Black Hawk War; a series of dispossessive treaties signed with the Ho-Chunk, Sauk, and Fox; and the violent displacement of the Potawatomi, Wisconsin’s territorial status was formalized in 1836.
Present day Wisconsin is home to 12 federally recognized indigenous nations: Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Brothertown Nation, Forest County Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk Nation, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, Oneida Nation, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Sokaogon Chippewa Community, St. Croix Chippewa of Wisconsin, and Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican. Wisconsin is the ancestral land for these tribes, and others that were dispossessed by white colonization.
In Wisconsin's early years, most of the wealth generated through trade, manufacturing, and land sales was directed toward settlers' construction projects and land investment, leaving few resources to develop social and intellectual institutions. Despite the more practical and functional economic objectives of Wisconsin's early settlers, many quickly expressed an underlying concern for cultural and social improvement of settled communities.
Petitions surrounding the foundation of discussion groups, libraries, agricultural societies, and most importantly, schools rapidly gained popularity. Many of the New Englanders among Wisconsin's settlers were shocked at the condition of Wisconsin's schools and ardently supported the creation of a public education system. Towns petitioned for the building of school houses and the land to build them on using community funds. Communitites passed taxes to construct schoolhouses, petitions for land grants for universities, and founded academic institutions for the education of the blind and the institution which became the School for the Deaf. By 1848, the Wisconsin legislature had incorporated four private colleges: Carroll College, Beloit College, Lawrence Institute (now Lawrence University), and Sinsinawa Mound College.
Religion was a large part of social life in early settlements. Petitions on moral questions such as temperance, abolition, abortion, and divorce regularly cited the protection of Christian ideals. Many citizens petitioned against laws that could allow the state to interfere with parochial schools and violate the separation of church and state, while others petitioned to remove tax exemptions from religious organizations. The German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity community of the city of Sheboygan petitioned to remain tax exempt.
Citizens constructed hospitals, shelters for indigent residents, and mental health institutions preceding the Mendota Mental Health Center, Winnebago Mental Health Center. Communities also aggressively petitioned for laws regulating medical care and treatment of prisoners. Wisconsin eliminated the death penalty in 1853 following legislative action by Christopher Latham Sholes of Kenosha and Marvin H. Bovee, as well as citizen petitions on the topic. The legislature also responded to requests for name changes, legal adoptions, and inheritance rights.