A Milwaukee newspaper disputes the results of the 1849 referendum on black suffrage
 Negro Suffrage in Wisconsin
Despite voter approval in a special referendum on black suffrage held in 1849, the right to vote was consistently denied to African Americans during the mid-19th century. This newspaper article, written soon after Ezekiel Gillespie attempted to vote in 1865, lays out the anti-suffrage argument. It dismisses the results of the 1849 referendum by contending that the number of votes cast for suffrage in that year were not a majority of all votes cast on all subjects. The Click "Zoom & Pan" to view it more closely, or scroll down to see its electronic text version. pro-suffrage case, argued by Byron Paine before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1866, is given elsewhere in Turning Points.
|
