"The government of the United States, with its fleets and armies, and the consolidated North, with its population of nineteen millions are arrayed in the attitude against the seven seceded cotton states of the South, with an aggregate populations of less than five millions, with an army wholly improvised for the occasion, and without even the nucleus of a navy or the shipyards necessary for the creation of one. If Napoleon was right in his declaration that Providence is always on the side of the heaviest artillery, the fearful odds combined against the seceded states would seem to leave them no possible chance of escaping from submission, subjugation, or destruction.
The New York Herald: April 18, 1861
The New York Herald: April 18, 1861
Wisconsin and the Move Towards War
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Wisconsin: The Northern Exception Before the war, the North and South were two different worlds. Wisconsin was much more North than South, but isolated, Wisconsin did not act as passionately as the rest of the Northern states. (Click on the image to enlarge)  |
The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act However, the Fugitive Slave Act changed things for Wisconsin. With war looming over the horizon, Henry Clay proposed a compromise. In a series of five bills, he gave the North and South what they wanted and kept the Union together for ten more years. "I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance. I owe allegiance to two sovereignty, and only two: one is the sovereignty of this Union, and the other is the sovereignty of the state of Kentucky. My allegiance is to this Union and to my state....I here declare that I owe no allegiance to [the Confederacy]; nor will I, for one, come under any such allegiance if I can avoid it." Henry Clay to the Senate. One of these bills involved fugitive slaves. It stated that runaway slaves must be returned to their masters. This angered many Wisconsinites and caused the assisted breakout of Joshua Glover (a fugitive slave) from a Milwaukee jail. |
Prof. Joseph Ranney, on the subject of the Fugitive Slave Act.
The Beginning of the Civil War
Source: The Library of Congress
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Prof. James Marten on the beginning of the Civil War
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For most of the first two years, the Union was losing the war. The North was demoralized after high expectations at the start. However, in 1862 there were a number of key victories that spurred the need for a draft to push the offensive.
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