July 4, The Day When Wisconsin Broke Free (From Michigan)

On July 4, 1836, Wisconsin officially broke off from Michigan to become its own territory.

Michigan was only one of several territories that the future Wisconsin had belonged to. We’d been part of the original Northwest Territory, Indiana Territory, Illinois Territory, and finally Michigan before becoming a territory in our own right once enough people had settled here. The map on the right from 1838 shows the settled parts of the territory with an inset of the entire Wisconsin territory.

Land speculator, judge and all-around Wisconsin booster James Duane Doty led the effort to create the Wisconsin territory. Much to Doty’s chagrin, President Andrew Jackson appointed his rival General Henry Dodge governor.

Doty didn’t let this setback deter him in his quest to shape Wisconsin. Dodge’s new job came with responsibility for conducting a census, holding elections, and convening a territorial legislature in Belmont that would select a new capital. Doty purchased some land with a few partners on an isthmus where downtown Madison stands today. Doty then hired a surveyor to map out a hypothetical city that he named Madison after the former president who had just died. He aggressively lobbied the legislature to select his planned city as capital. Doty won.

Doty finally became Wisconsin’s territorial governor in 1841, where he tried and failed to lobby public support for statehood.

The territorial seal that’s pictured below the map on the right was likely created in 1838, and shows a farmer plowing behind a horse, a Native American, a river steamboat, a lighthouse, a lake schooner, and the first capitol building in Madison (though not a very accurate representation of that).