Description
Bondage in the Land of the Free: Slavery in Wisconsin Before the Civil War
By Patrick Jung
Many people associate Wisconsin with the Union and the destruction of slavery during the Civil War. Thus, many people are surprised to learn Wisconsin and other states of the Midwest permitted slavery in the decades before the conflict. The first persons to practice slavery were Wisconsin’s Native inhabitants who resided in the state before White settlement. The French were the first Europeans to enter the region, and they intermarried heavily with the Native people and created a biracial and bicultural society known as the Metis. Like the Native people, the Metis also practiced slavery. The advent of large-scale White settlement after the War of 1812 resulted in many of the first Anglo-American settlers coming from the southern states, and they often brought African-American slaves with them. Slavery would not be completely abolished in Wisconsin until the 1840s when the state constitution officially ended the institution.
