is a defaulter,"27 said the Madison Argus, with a bitterness increased by its inability to meet the competition of the Democrat.

The early procedure of the convention contained no peculiarities. It appointed standing committees to consider various aspects of the constitution and slipped into regular habits as easily as if constitution-making were a daily practice for its members. Within a few days the committees began to report tentative articles, and real debate was entered upon.

It had been anticipated that the great issues before the convention would be judiciary and finance,28 and the report presented from the committee on banking by Edward G. Ryan, of Racine, precipitated the great debate. Ryan had already determined upon the outlines of his banking section when he was appointed chairman of the committee on October 8, three days after the assembling of the convention.29 The next morning he reported his draft to the convention, without assembling his committee or, apparently, even consulting his associates.30 The recent failure of the Oakland County Bank, of Michigan, "one of the last of the 'wild cat' brood,'' had provided a text for the Democrats who demanded the extinction of all banks. "Let our neighbors of the Sentinel ask the farmers 'Shall we have banks in Wisconsin?' 'No!' will be their united hearty response,''32 declared the Milwaukee Courier, adding that throughout the lead region merchants, mechanics, and laborers joined in the repudiation. "Draco, who wrote his code in blood was a mild and humane legislator compared with Mr. E. G. Ryan,'' declared the Sentinel when it read his proposed article, which prohibited the incorporation of banks, the

"Madison Argus, October 5, 1847.

"Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, September 22, 1846.

2 Journal of the Convention, 1846, p. 24.

30 Ibid., 38; statement of M. S. Gibson, of Fond du Lac.

31 Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, October 17, 1846.

:32 Milwaukee Courier, October 14, 1846.

"Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, October 15, 1846.

issuance of notes as money, and the receiving or passing of bank paper, under heavy and specific penalties.34

With the introduction of the banking section the definitive struggle of the convention was begun. Its opponents offered as alternative a system of free banking under general laws, while John H. Tweedy, of Milwaukee, a young Whig with a growing influence, pressed upon the convention the free system that New York was on the point of adopting in the constitution just framed.35 "How many settlers are there now in our territory," inquired the leading Whig paper, "who have been compelled to borrow the money with which they bought their lands, at 15, 20, 25, aye 50 per cent interest?-Do they think that money would command such exorbitant rates if we had good banking institutions here?''36 But the older residents of the territory had too keen a recollection of the depreciation and bankruptcy that followed the panic of 1837 to yield to such appeals. Texas, in 1845, had prohibited banks and the president of its convention had praised Jackson most because he had the honor of giving the blow which will eventually destroy them [banks] on this continent."'37 The antagonism had spread up the Mississippi Valley. The unratified Missouri constitution of 1845 had flatly forbidden the creation of any bank of issue.38 Iowa, in 1844, had required that no bank charter be issued until approved by popular vote; and in 1846 had gone further, and had forbidden the creation of any bank.39 And Illinois, in 1847, was in the act of restricting the creation of banks to those whose charters had been accepted by popular vote.40

"Journal of the Convention, 1846, p. 27.

"Ibid., 60; Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, October 9, 22, 1846; C. J. Lincoln, Constitutional History of New York (1906), 2, 196.

"Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, October 17, 1846.

"Thomas J. Rusk, in Texas Convention Debates, 1845, 461; F. L. Paxson, "The Constitution of Texas, 1845," in Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 1915.

"Missouri Convention Journal, 1845, ap. 52.

"Shambaugh, History of the Constitutions of Iowa, 226, 303.

"Journal of the Convention

altering, amending, or revising the

Constitution of the State of Illinois (Springfield, 1847), 565. In 1862 an

The sectional interests of Wisconsin territory thrust a plane of cleavage through the Democratic party which in the other western states was nearly unanimous in its hostility to banks. Many of the newcomers were from the eastern states and were in sympathy with the Hunker faction of the dominant party. Some of these tended to act with the Wisconsin Whigs. A Milwaukee correspondent of Moses M. Strong admitted that "on banks and banking there is some difference of opinion among Democrats" but his wish, as late as December, 1846, still fathered the thought that "the voice of the Democracy says no banks.”41

Moses M. Strong, Ryan, and the antibanking extremists controlled the final phrasing of the article. The pains and penalties were ultimately omitted, but small bills were left under the ban, those of ten dollars being prohibited after 1847 and those under twenty dollars after 1849. The factions developed by the banking debate continued throughout the session.

The rest of the constitution was subordinate in its interest to the banking provision. A framework similar to that of other states was readily agreed upon. Much comfort was found in the decisions, often quoted, of the Iowa, Missouri, and New York conventions. Only here and there did novelties creep in. Judiciary and suffrage represented problems on which all the new constitutions had to take stand; homestead exemption and married women's property rights reflected the radicalism that was in the saddle.

The election or appointment of judges was the question at the crux of the judiciary problem. The eastern members of the convention came from states in which long-time appointive judges administered the law. The western members had

other Illinois convention framed a constitution, known by Republicans as "the Egyptian swindle," because of its popularity in the southern end of the state, and inserted in it, by Democratic votes, a complete prohibition of banks and bank notes. O. M. Dickerson, The Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1862 (University of Illinois Studies, 1, no. 9-Urbana, 1905), 404. "J. W. Helfenstein, Milwaukee, to Moses M. Strong, December 2, 1846, in Moses M. Strong MSS. in Wisconsin Historical Society.

had a wider experience with the new Democratic theory of short term and election. But uniformity of opinion was absent. Ryan, later to be a great chief justice of Wisconsin, was bitterly opposed to the elective principle, although he did much to shape the other details of the article.42 The radical Milwaukee Courier, though itself preferring election, was willing to print certain letters of one "Ormond," advocating appointment—and such tolerance of opinions was not usual in the Wisconsin papers of the day.

43

There was a general agreement with "Ormond" that the constitution "must be Democratic in order to satisfy the people of Wisconsin." As to what was Democratic, there was a tendency to look to New York, where men were studying the Mississippi precedent of 1832. Mississippi had framed its second constitution in this year, adopting the elective principle for judges. J. A. Quitman, a New Yorker who had associated himself with Mississippi and who later became its governor, wrote in 1845 to the editor of the Democratic Review44 that although opposed to this method of choice at first he had come to believe it entirely good. John Bigelow 45 was using this letter, with other Democratic materials, in a series of papers on constitution-making that he wrote for the Democratic Review about this time, and that now remain the best general statements of Democratic theory. And Bigelow was a Barnburner, or Progressive. It was another victory for the liberal faction in Wisconsin when the convention determined that the courts should be filled by election rather than by "the Old Hunker method of appointment."'46 Ryan, though he opposed election now, lived to approve his defeat.

The eagerness of all factions to conciliate and get the votes of immigrants made the definition of the suffrage

42 Strong, History of the Territory of Wisconsin, 516; John B. Winslow, Story of a Great Court (Chicago, 1912), 5.

Milwaukee Courier, August 14, September 30, 1846.

"Democratic Review, 418 (June, 1846).

John Bigelow, Retrospections of an Active Life (New York, 1909), 1, 670. Wisconsin Democrat, October 31, 1846.

franchise a matter of political importance. The convention itself, under the territorial law which called it, had been chosen by white males, twenty-one years of age, citizens of the United States or aliens who had filed their declaration of intention to become citizens, who had resided six months in the territory and ten days in the county.47 Every month population was jumping upward, and by its distribution into unexpected regions was affecting the political balance. Between the censuses of June, 1846, and December, 1847, the growth was from 155,000 to 210,000,48 the increase including nearly enough voters, under the liberal election law, to give control to whichever faction they should support. Many of the newcomers, whose votes all factions wanted to secure, were foreign born, complicating the problem of residence with that of nativism.

In the political breakup of the thirties, Native Americanism came to the front as it has often done in such periods of party dissolution. In general the Whig party, which was in the East the party of conservatism and property, was in sympathy with nativism and the protest against the foreigner; but in Wisconsin there was small difference between the Whigs and Democrats, since both parties exerted themselves to welcome the unnaturalized.

The convention worked at length over the question of extending the suffrage to negroes, but, without serious division, it fixed the qualifications for whites. It extended to one year the residence term for all, and required, in addition, of aliens who had filed their intention papers, an oath to support the Constitution of the United States.49 To many of the foreigners this oath was an affront. They had been allowed to vote for members of the convention itself on residence,

Laws of the Territory of Wisconsin, 1846, 9. The second Wisconsin convention was chosen by electors having the same qualification, but eliminated the offensive oath from the constitution which it made. Laws of the Territory of Wisconsin, special session, 1847, 4.

4 Madison Argus, January 11, 1848; April 18, 1848.

"Journal of the Convention to Form a Constitution for the State of Wisconsin, with a Sketch of the Debates (Madison, 1848), 604.