Senate Joint Resolution 22
Relating to: naming a Seawolf submarine the "Manitowoc".
The question was: Shall Senate Joint Resolution 22 be recommended for concurrence by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Harsdorf moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 91 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Harsdorf read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 91
Relating to: significant Wisconsin persons.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 91 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Potter moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 94 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Potter read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 94
Relating to: Wisconsin women's accomplishments and significant Wisconsin events.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 94 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Jeskewitz moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 92 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Jeskewitz read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 92
Relating to: Wisconsin firsts.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 92 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Reynolds moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 90 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Reynolds read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 90
Relating to: honoring Wisconsin Indian tribes.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 90 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Brandemuehl moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 89 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
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Representative Brandemuehl read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 89
Relating to: honoring Wisconsin veterans.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 89 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Albers asked unanimous consent that the Assembly adjourn in honor of 144 members of the 115th Fighter Wing Unit from Wisconsin, who returned home to their families after spending one month participating in "Operation Southern Watch" in Kuwait - patrolling the southern "No-Fly Zone" in Iraq. Granted.
Representative Robson moved that Senate Joint Resolution 30 be recommended for concurrence by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Robson read the resolution.
Senate Joint Resolution 30
Relating to: proclaiming Statehood Day Weekend.
The question was: Shall Senate Joint Resolution 30 be recommended for concurrence by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Ourada moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 93 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Ourada read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 93
Relating to: significant Wisconsin events.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 93 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Hutchison moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 88 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Hutchison read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 88
Relating to: celebrating Wisconsin's sesquicentennial.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 88 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Coggs moved that Assembly Joint Resolution 95 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole.
Representative Coggs read the resolution.
Assembly Joint Resolution 95
Relating to: celebrating the achievements of Wisconsin's African-Americans.
The question was: Shall Assembly Joint Resolution 95 be recommended for adoption by the Committee of the Whole?
Motion carried.
Representative Ladwig moved that the Committee of the Whole arise.
The question was: Shall the Committee of the Whole arise?
Motion carried.
3:30 P.M.
The Assembly reconvened.
Speaker Jensen in the chair.
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Representative Schneider addressed the members in honor of the Sesquicentennial of Wisconsin's statehood.
"We are here today because Belmont was Wisconsin's first Capital, and we're celebrating 150 years of statehood. This gives us the opportunity to step back from our usual concerns, look around and wonder how legislators operated in 1737, when this was the Territorial Capital, and see if we can find any insight for today from what has gone before. The purpose of celebrations like this is to shake us out of our complacency, to make us question how we do things, and to show us how much we have in common, and how much history we share simply by living our lives in Wisconsin.
First a few words about Belmont. Although Belmont was the first official Territorial Capitol for the Wisconsin Territory, for any whites living here between the time when this area was organized as part of the United States under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the territorial capitol was Marietta, Ohio when this was part of the Northwest Territory, Vincennes, when it was part of the Indiana Territory, Kaskaskia, when it was part of the Illinois Territory, and Detroit, when the Michigan Territory was formed. Carving out new Territories and making them into states was a boom industry in those years -- and one people like you and me might have been engaged in.
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When Michigan's Territorial Council could feel statehood approaching, they established a new Council for their western counties, (the ones that wouldn't be included in the state of Michigan), and this new Council met in Green Bay on January 1, 1836.
The purpose of this Green Bay meeting was to petition for Territorial status, and the question of where the Capital would be was already an important one -- because the federal government traditionally made a large grant, of land or money, for the establishment of the Capital. The Council meeting in Green Bay asked the United States Congress to name Cassville as Territorial Capitol: it was centrally located for the huge new Territory, which included Iowa, Minnesota and part of North and South Dakota, and was in the heavily populated lead-mining region. Congress ignored the recommendation, (an experience that is not unique to their time or any other), and left it up to the new Governor of the Wisconsin Territory, Henry Dodge, to pick a temporary site, and the Legislature to be elected to pick a permanent home.
Dodge picked Belmont, where John Atchison had already begun offering lots of land for sale -- he made the offers in New York, Washington, Dubuque and Mineral Point. Atchison was also bringing in several public buildings he constructed back East, (probably in Pittsburgh), such as this building, and hoped the Governor's action would determine the new Legislature's choice of a permanent Territorial Capitol -- one which would get the $20,000 in federal money.
What was it like? Brown County legislator Henry Baird wrote home "that he was `agreeably surprised, when emerging from the wood, to see 6 or 8 very pretty framed buildings'" -- not the log cabins that must have made up most homes in the Territory. But legislators were crowded, and they complained about lacking heat and water. Today, they complain about office space, travel allotments, committee assignments and state vehicles.
James Doty, who eventually convinced the Legislature to name Madison the new Capital, was only one of a number of promoters trying to change the location. Cassville and Burlington, Iowa, offered their own inducements to get the Capital changed, but Doty was better: 16 legislators, (there were only 39, 13 in a Council and 26 in a House), ended up owning land in Madison, along with the clerks of both the Council and the House, and the Governor's son.
Did Doty buy the vote? It turns out that the decision on this question turned on Iowa politics as much as Wisconsin issues: The bill to make Madison the Capital included a provision to make Burlington the temporary Capital, and that split the legislators from what would become Iowa two years later. The support of Des Moines legislators for Madison was probably critical, since the Des Moines legislators outvoted Dubuque legislators in the Council by one vote -- the margin of Madison's victory. In the House there seems to have been an alliance between Des Moines, Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin legislators in favor of Madison, with Dubuque strongly opposed, and other Wisconsin legislators split, but mostly in favor of somewhere, (anywhere), north or east of Madison.
Burlington, the Wisconsin Territory's second Capital, is in southern Iowa. "Major Jerry" Smith had `offered to build a temporary capital out of his own pocket'. The Legislature was happy with this two-story building when it met there in November, 1837, but it burnt down the next month. In the summer of 1838, Iowa was separated out as a separate Territory, with its own Capital, and our Legislature and government moved to Madison.
A Capitol building was being built in Madison, but was far from completed. The legislators used small improvised rooms on the first floor, over a basement being used to protect some of the builder's hogs from the winter cold. Ebenezer Child, a legislator from Green Bay, claimed that he would poke at the hogs underneath through gaps in the floor to rile them up to drown out boring speakers. Now, of course, none of us would think of making any noise when someone else is speaking.
These stories, and the whole history of Wisconsin, as a Territory and, for 150 years, as a state, is important to me, not just because the stories are so much fun. We need to take inspiration from the courage of the men and women who made this state, and to seek enlightenment in the way they faced their problems. It would be easy to dismiss the problems they faced, 150 or 160 years ago. We all like to look back on "the good old days" and see in our own time more dangers, more threats, and more critical issues: In our Sesquicentennial year the United States is still trying to forge a new world order to replace the Cold War Alliances, state governments face demands for changes, (usually involving additional expenditure), in welfare, education, the environment along with ferocious pressure to cut back state spending and taxation, and Americans in general face moral questions caused by technological changes unimaginable even a few years ago: Is cloning moral, and who is responsible for making the decision? How far must we go to protect our privacy, if protecting it limits the use of data bases that could save our lives in medical emergencies, or catch dead-beat parents, or prevent cheating on taxes? What limits should we, as a society, put on genetic manipulation of plants, animals, or even human beings? When currencies crash in East Asia and threaten the world's economic health, when environmentalists demand a cut-back in carbon emissions to limit damage to our climate, what can, or should, such small entities as a single state like Wisconsin do to make the economy humane and ecologically sound? It's easy to think that the first generations in Wisconsin had it easier, or at least faced fewer complex questions.
In fact, the issues of the 1830's, when, for a year, Belmont was the Territorial Capitol, or of the 1840's, when we achieved the Statehood we celebrate this year, were just as tough. Was war against Mexico justified? Ulysses S. Grant, who fought in it, thought not. Slavery and racial prejudice? The question of allowing blacks to vote was one of the controversies of the time, and Territorial Status followed closely on the heels of the Black Hawk War -- which helped prepare for white settlement by clearing Native Americans out. The economy? --The original Wisconsin State Constitution forbade the formation or operation of banks without a positive referendum on the question. The paper money issued by private banks tended to decline in value and sometimes become worthless -- which gave banking a bad name. The environment? At a time when pigs could root under the floor or outside the building in which the Assembly met, I think the stench of that issue probably took on a personal importance greater than we now realize; it just wasn't addressed as a "cause", but as a matter of individual responsibilities, particular problems, specific answers. "Move the pigs" is an idea that makes sense, but it's a long way from environmentalism.
To find a meaning in our Sesquicentennial, we have to go beyond "moving the pigs" to see how some of the people acted, how ideas, institutions and events shaped us, and gain inspiration from them.
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The corner of the Capitol Square outside the Governor's office has a statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg, a Wisconsin soldier who fell at the battle of Chickamauga in the Civil War. Wisconsin has given huge numbers of its civilians as soldiers in each of America's Wars since then, but not just as citizen-soldiers; Wisconsin's own General Douglas MacArthur led America's forces, including the Wisconsin-based 32nd Division, in the Southwest Pacific during World War II. We know how to follow, and, on occasion, we're also able to lead.
Aldo Leopold and John Muir were among the founders of the Environmental Movement, but in our day Gaylord Nelson started Earth Day, and the modern form of the Movement, while we wrestle today with how best to implement and support recycling. In the early days it was enough to observe clearly and report passionately to reach people; now it's a matter of organizing, establishing distinctions, making changes in the ways we act.
Wisconsin native and UW Professor Frederick Jackson Turner formulated the Frontier Thesis: that America was formed by the contact of settlers with the wilderness, an idea which takes on new meaning every time we push for a new mission to Mars, or for more research on an earthly frontier like the deep ocean bed or an intellectual frontier like the Human Genome Project. Other Professors at the University of Wisconsin worked with Progressive politicians to produce a host of reforms: John R. Commons and Worker's Compensation, Edwin Witte, the "Father of Social Security," and UW PhD., Charles McCarthy, who fathered the nation's first vocational-technical school system as well as beginning the legislative reference library. Wisconsin was the first state to pass unemployment compensation. Wisconsin became synonymous with progressive politics, an accomplishment both parties can claim as a proud part of their past.
The Kohler family gave the state a strong industry, two Governors, and a goad to the labor movement that led to several horrible strikes; the 1934 strike saw police killing 2 and wounding 47. Herb Kohl has carried on the tradition of moving from economic commitment to personal political commitment. I only hope labor negotiations with players on the Bucks are more peaceful.
Even in fields where no advance is possible, such as the courage shown by those awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Wisconsin continues to make herself known, from the two MacArthurs, father and son, to Richard Bong, the World War II Marine ace from Poplar, and Mitchell Red Cloud, of Friendship, who died stopping a Chinese Communist attack in Korea, and allowed the rest of his unit to escape.
There are parallel lives, past and present, in less high-minded fields, too. Think of Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, each a reminder to his own time of the horror that man can do --that each of us might face, if social conscience loses its force.
Wisconsin has its own memories of an FBI shootout with John Dillinger near Manitowish Waters, of Al Capone's hideout near Couderay, of Frank Balistrieri, Milwaukee's alleged Mob boss, and, if I remember correctly, the "Pizza" connection, organized crime's local connection here in Wisconsin that gained fame when busted a few years ago.
Wisconsinites have a history of resisting laws they don't like, from the mob that freed fugitive slave Joshua Glover from a Milwaukee jail in 1854 to actions we might like to forget, like the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall. Each action helped determine which way the nation turned immediately after.
Frances Willard lived her early life in Wisconsin, then went on to become President of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in the 19th Century. Kathryn Clarenbach, a life-long citizen of this state, was a co-founder of the National Organization of Women, as well as giving us a friend and fellow legislator.
