Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 60, number 2, winter, 1976-1977

              The Politics of Reconstruction in Wisconsin, 1865-1873
By Richard N. Current
T the end of the Civil War the Republican or "Union" party •dominated Wisconsin politics. Republicans held tlie governorship and all the other state administrative posts, the three positions on the state supreme court, a large majority of the places in each house of the legislature, five of six congressional seats, and both United States senatorships. For eight years more the party continued to keep itself in power, though with a fluctuating share of the total vote. Then, in 1873, the Republicans faltered, los¬ ing the control of the state government that they had held since 1857.
The Republicans' almost unbroken record of success during the reconstruction years was by no means automatic. It depended on the care with which the leaders maximized the party's strengths and minimized its weaknesses. Its greatest strengths were its appeals to pa¬ triotism (or sectionalism), idealism, and ma¬ terialism. The leaders could identify the party with noble causes, with the war aims of union and freedom; and so long as their fellow parti¬ sans controlled Congress and the Presidency
Editor's note: By the courtesy of Richard N, Current, and of William F. Thompson, general editor of the six-volume series, we are pleased to present the con¬ cluding chapter of The History of Wisconsin, Volume II: The Civil War Era, 1848-1873, which the State Historical Society of Wiscon.sin has just published. Chapter 16 of Professor Current's 675-page book is reprinted here with a few minor editorial changes.
they could also promise the more solid bene¬ fits of the federal patronage and the federal pork barrel. To some extent, the party's weak¬ nesses derived from its very strengths. Anti- slavery idealism, insofar as it carried over to the postwar movement for Negro rights, ran against the much stronger force of racism. The reform spirit, which animated the antislavery drive, also gave rise to demands for sumptuary laws against drinking and Sabbath-breaking, laws that would turn away foreign-born voters, who looked upon such legislation as a product of continuing nativism. Moreover, the reform¬ ing impulse directed itself against monopolies, against corporations in general and railroads in particular, and as a result of the Republi¬ cans' effectiveness in promoting federal aid to private enterprise, especially through the financing of "internal improvements," the party exposed itself to charges of favoritism toward big business.
The leaders had to deal carefully, then, with the shifting crosscurrents of sectionalism, idealism, materialism, racism, nativism, and antimonopolism. Only by so doing could the politicians hold the party together and keep it on top. Holding it together required some effort, since the party was and had been from the beginning a congeries of rather disparate elements. It had originated in 1854 as a coali¬ tion consisting mainly of Whigs but contain¬ ing also Free Soilers and other dissident Demo¬ crats.   As it grew it incorporated all except a