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after quoting from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, he had said: "The States should have the right to judge, in the last resort, when their sovereignties are encroached upon, and to take measures for their protection."

The campaign was an exciting one. A newspaper was published at Monroe, bearing the title Wisconsin State Rights. The resolutions of Madison and Jefferson were constantly referred to in the press. Numerous communications appeared in the papers, signed "State Rights;" and the Milwaukee Sentinel, just before the election, told its readers to vote for "State rights and Byron Paine." State rights and Byron Paine won. Paine received 40,500 votes to Lynde's 38,355. After the election, Charles

Sumner wrote Judge Paine from Rome, Italy, as follows:1

ROME, 12TH May, '59.

MY DEAR SIR- Of late I have received very little political intelligence from home, and in the depression of a protracted disability I have hardly missed it. But to-day I have been gladdened and strengthened by the news that the people of Wisconsin have elected you a Judge of the Sup. Ct. on the issue distinctly presented, that it is the duty of the State to throw the protection of its process around all within its borders. Better news for Freedom never, in the long line of history, reached this ancient capital. Wherever I go I feel the new influence, and the venerable monuments about me flash for the moment with the brightness of youth.

God bless the people of Wisconsin who know their rights, and knowing dare maintain! God bless the champion they have chosen! God bless the cause! To the people, to the champion, and to the cause, an American citizen far away in a foreign land sends the best wishes of his heart.

In this event I hail the certain beginning of a new order of things in our country. Trial by Jury, Habeas Corpus and the other safeguards of the rights of all-struck down by the preposterous and tyrannical pretensions of slavery under the National constitution will again become realities! A happy day it will be for the peace and good name of the Republic when this is achieved. Meanwhile Wisconsin has nobly set the example which older States must follow. The end cannot be doubtful.

I congratulate you, my dear Sir, upon the distinguished position you have been called to occupy! but permit me to add that, honorable as it is to be a judge, the cause you represent gives to you a better glory.

Believe me, my dear Sir,

with much regard
Very faithfully yours,

The Hon'ble Byron Paine.

CHARLES SUMNER.

A copy of the letter is in the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

IX. Nullifying Legislative Acts.

"

During the fifties, several of the Northern States passed "personal liberty laws. Wisconsin passed such a law in 1857, its title being "An Act relating to the writ of habeas corpus to persons claimed as fugitive slaves, the right of trial by jury, and to prevent kidnaping in the State."1 The act made it the duty of the district attorneys in the counties to faithfully use all lawful means to "protect, defend, and procure to be discharged, every person arrested or claimed as a fugitive slave.' It was provided that any person who should to be a slave, should be fined $1,000. required, to prove a person a slave. tant clause of all was, that declaring that judgments recovered against any one for not obeying the terms of the fugitive slave. act, should not constitute a lien. The effect of this act would be practically to nullify the hated provisions of the fugitive slave law, in Wisconsin.

represent any free person Two witnesses were to be Perhaps the most impor

By a vote of 47 to 37 in the assembly, and 13 to 12 in the senate, the legislature of 1859 took another important step, in adopting joint resolutions relative to the decision of the United States supreme court reversing the decision of the supreme court of Wisconsin. They read as follows:

Whereas, The supreme court of the United States has assumed appellate jurisdiction in the matter of the petition of Sherman M. Booth for a writ of habeas corpus presented and prosecuted to final judgment in the supreme court of this State, and has, without process, or any of the forms recognized by law, assumed the power to reverse that judgment in a matter involving the personal liberty of a citizen, asserted by and adjudicated to him by the regular course of judicial proceedings upon the great writ of liberty secured to the people of each State by the constitution of the United States:

"And whereas, Such assumption of power and authority by the supreme court of the United States, to become the final arbiter of the liberty of a citizen, and to override and nullify

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the judgment of the State courts' declaration thereof, is in direct conflict with that provision of the United States constitution which secures to the people the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus:

"Therefore resolved, The senate concurring, that we regard the action of the supreme court of the United States, in assuming jurisdiction in the case before mentioned, as an arbitrary act of power, unauthorized by the Constitution, and virtually superseding the benefit of a writ of habeas corpus, and prostrating the rights and liberties of the people at the feet of unlimited power.

"Resolved, That this assumption of jurisdiction by the Federal judiciary, in the said case, and without process, is an act of undelegated power, and therefore without authority, void and of no force."

The next resolution quoted the Kentucky statement of the compact theory of the constitution, and the resolutions then continued:

Resolved, That the principle and construction contended for by the party which now rules in the councils of the nation, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their power; that the several States that formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a positive defiance, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done or attempted to be done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy."

It is perhaps significant that the greater portion of the last resolution is taken verbatim from the radical Kentucky resolutions of 1799, with the substitution of the words "a positive defiance" for the word "nullification."

These resolutions, and the personal liberty law of 1857, were Wisconsin's strongest formal protests against the fugitive slave

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Wisconsin's action was guided by her opposition to slavery.

When the national authority seemed united to the slave cause, she took high State sovereignty ground. On the eve of the War of Secession, through her courts, her legislatures, and her elections, she stood by the compact theory of government, and declared for nullification. When the slave cause was de fended by the doctrine of State sovereignty, and the nation aimed to coerce South Carolina from her secession under that theory, Wisconsin found her interest united with the national cause, and sent her forces to the field in eager and effective support of the Federal government. It was a reversal of theory, with consistency of purpose, hardly paralleled in history.

EARLY LEGISLATION CONCERNING WISCONSIN BANKS

BY WILLIAM WARD WIGHT.

[Paper presented at the Forty-third Annual Meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, December 12, 1895.]

In one of the volumes of the Wisconsin Historical Collections,1 are reproductions in facsimile of what are believed to be the earliest forms of paper currency in circulation within the present boundaries of Wisconsin. One of these morsels is dated in March, 1814, and, in repetitious French, asserts itself to be bon for one dollar; the other, dated May 1, 1815, with more ambition, claims to be good for four dollars. However, as these pieces of paper were payable in drafts on Quebec or Montreal, or were redeemable at the Army Bill office, in Quebec, by government bills of exchange on London, at thirty days' sight, a creditor would have been pardonably cautious in preferring gold.

We assume that the early permanent settlers, after the peace of 1815, got along fairly well without the aid of banking institutions. In 1834, however, the then metropolitan portion of the district, Green Bay, felt its approaching financial manhood, and desired a bank. Thereupon the legislature of Michigan passed an act incorporating the first bank in that portion of the Territory west of the Lake-the Bank of Wisconsin, at Green Bay. The concern opened in a rambling structure built by John Jacob Astor. The old stone vault is still to be seen on the corner of Adams and Milwaukee streets, in Green Bay,

2

'Vol. xi., pp. 274, 275.

3

Laws of Mich. Terr., 1835, p. 56, approved January 23, 1835.

Neville and Martin's Historic Green Bay, p. 260. Morgan L. Martin was the president of the Bank of Wisconsin; Henry Stringham, cashier; H. W. Wells, clerk; and James Duane Doty was one of the directors. The bank went down in the crash of 1837. See Strong's Hist. Wis. Terr., p. 285.

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