By State Sen. Lena Taylor
You might be surprised to learn that the word “slavery” is actually a fixture in the Wisconsin constitution.
In ARTICLE I., the DECLARATION OF RIGHTS, in the section after a provision on equality and ‘inherent rights,’ is the second issue that the state constitution addresses: SLAVERY.
At first glance, it’s summed up in just two words: ‘Slavery prohibited.’ However further reading is required to understand the full context of those two words.
Article 1, Section 2, states: “There shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in this state, otherwise than for the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.
Right there—in black on white parchment—rests a provision that allows an exemption to the slavery prohibition rule.
The “Exception Clause,” also known as the “Punishment Clause,” made it possible for slavery to be used as a method of punishment, allowing the government to legally subject incarcerated people, across the United States, into forced labor.
Ratified in 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in America, “except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” and numerous states adopted the same language.
Former slaveholding states used the exception as a loophole to reclaim people who had been previously enslaved and whom had sought safe harbor in free states, like Wisconsin.
Pro-slavery sympathizers, living on the borders of free and slave states, used the language as an opportunity to keep a form of de facto slavery, by creating and enforcing laws that disproportionately penalized Black Americans.
Enslavers could ensure that they continued to get free labor off the backs of, often wrongfully, convicted people.
While the Wisconsin Department of Corrections does not use slave labor, they are legally permitted to do so under current law.
This has to change, but modifications to the state constitution does not come easy.
To remove the slavery provision, amendments to the constitution must be adopted by two successive legislatures and then ratified by the electorate in a statewide election.
As a part of a larger Conditions of Confinement Package of bills, along with fellow coauthors, I re-introduced a resolution to amend our constitution.
The amendment would strike the last 15 words of Article I, Section 2, and finally put an end to the ugly legacy of slavery, Wisconsin would join states like Tennessee, Alabama, Oregon and Vermont, who have all decided to make changes to their constitutions, in the past year.
The Wisconsin constitution has been amended 148 times, since the state was founded in 1848. It was last amended in April 2023. After 176 years, I hope we can all agree that it’s time to remove any reference to slavery.
Change starts with the passing of LRB 5017/1, re: slavery or involuntary servitude in punishment of a crime (first consideration).
Slavery in the Badger State!
It may come as a surprise to learn that during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries slavery existed in the region that would become the state of Wisconsin.
Over this period, thousands of enslaved African Americans or enslaved American Indians lived and worked in this region. Although their lives and histories have been obscured, enslaved men and women helped build some of the most important industries in the state.
French fur traders were the first to introduce chattel slavery to the region. They brought hundreds of enslaved African Americans and Kaskaskias, Meskwaki, Pawnee, and others into the region from the 1670s to 1763. When the British took control after the French and Indian War (1754-63), over 400 enslaved African Americans entered what would become the state of Wisconsin against their will. These men and women were brought to this region as laborers supporting the British fur trade. After the Revolutionary War, the newly formed United States drafted the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 to govern the territories on the frontier of the new country, including the lands that would become Wisconsin.
The Northwest Ordinance forbade the owning of slaves, but lax enforcement permitted slavery to continue in the region.
Chattel slavery increased during the Lead Rush in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, supporting an economic boom in southwest Wisconsin and neighboring parts of Iowa and Illinois.
Because the Northwest Ordinance stipulated that statehood was dependent on population, the population spike associated with the lead rush helped transform Wisconsin into a territory and then a state by 1848.
Prominent figures in Wisconsin history were connected to this history of slavery and lead mining. Henry Dodge (Dodgeville), John Rountree (Platteville) and George W. Jones (Sinsinawa) all came to the region in the 1820s to mine and process lead. Each brought enslaved individuals with them from Missouri or Kentucky.
Henry Dodge, for example, arrived in the Wisconsin Territory in 1827 from Missouri and brought five enslaved individuals with him. Toby, Tom, Lear, Jim, and Joe were held in bondage in the Wisconsin Territory, working as smelters at Dodge’s furnace.
Dodge had promised to free the five men if they would work a short time at his smelting furnace. Instead, Dodge held them in captivity for twelve years despite the prohibition of slaveholding in the region. he five individuals were finally freed on April 11, 1838. The lead industry was already in decline when slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865.
Of the approximately 100 African Americans who worked with lead in nineteenth-century Wisconsin, most gained their freedom by 1842. Toby, Tom, Lear, Jim and Joe remained to work in the lead industry for years beyond 1838 as free Wisconsinites soon to be joined by freemen like James D. Williams. By 1860, the African American population in Wisconsin had grown to 1,200, all of whom were free.
—This article is courtesy of ‘Wisconsin 101,’ a collaborate public history project created through a partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Madison history department, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and Wisconsin Public Radio’s ‘Wisconsin Life’ program.
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