Abolition and the Law in Civil War–Era Wisconsin
In 1849, more than a decade before the start of the Civil War, a Wisconsin election asked voters whether suffrage rights should be extended to people of color. The United States was beginning to show signs of discord as the debate over whether to admit new territories as slave or free states plagued the nation. Despite this tension, the question of black male suffrage was presented to voters on the gubernatorial ballot in Wisconsin’s 1849 election. The votes came back with a 5,265 to 4,075 majority in support of the measure. Unfortunately, the motion was denied on a technicality. The question of black suffrage was one of several items on the ballot that day, and the majority of citizens only voted on certain issues. The State Board of Canvassers determined that since far fewer than half of the voters had chosen to vote on suffrage, it must be assumed that those who did not vote for or against it were opposed. The decision reversed the majority vote, and African Americans were denied voting rights.
Sixteen years later, a tall, mixed-race man walked into the polling place in Milwaukee’s Seventh Ward and requested that his name be added to the voting registry. As expected, the request was denied. The man was Ezekiel Gillespie, a former slave who had lived in Wisconsin since 1852. While the nation was still reeling from the Civil War, Gillespie took his case to trial, and ultimately the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that African Americans not only had the right to vote, but that they should have been allowed to do so since the election of 1849. The decision to overturn the 1849 ruling and grant voting rights to black men came four years before the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869 and a full century before the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. Though groundbreaking, the decision in the Gillespie case is consistent with Wisconsin’s history as an abolitionist state that fought against slavery through legal (and sometimes extralegal) means during the Civil War era.
Two white Wisconsinites emerged during the mid-1800s as champions for the abolitionist cause: Sherman M. Booth and Byron Paine. The two gained national attention for their attack on the Fugitive Slave Act after their involvement in the escape of former slave Joshua Glover in 1854 four years after the act passed. While history tends to remember Booth and Paine only for their role in the Glover case, both were instrumental in fighting for African American suffrage in Wisconsin. Booth accompanied Gillespie when he attempted to vote, and Paine served as his lawyer during the trial. As a result of their efforts, Wisconsin became the first state in the Midwest to pass black suffrage.
Sherman Booth gained attention for his abolitionist sentiments immediately upon moving to Wisconsin in 1848, just months after the state’s founding. He moved to Wisconsin following years of political activism on the East Coast, where he had been involved with the abolition movement while a student at Yale University. After his graduation in 1841, Booth worked with Ichabod Codding, editing Codding’s abolitionist. Booth and Codding moved from Meridan, Connecticut, to Milwaukee to continue their activist work, and Booth took control of the , which he renamed the .
