(WISCONSIN) Acts Passed at the First Session of the Legislat

Sale 2310 - Lot 297

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(WISCONSIN.) Acts Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Wisconsin. 88 pages. 4to, modern buckram; badly cropped with loss of the bottom line on many pages, 3-page typescript list of the missing lines bound in; signed twice on title page and once on last page by James Duane Doty. Belmont, WI, [1836]

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first edition. The first meeting of Wisconsin's territorial legislature, which met on a windswept prairie for six weeks and established the outlines of a government. During this early period, the territory included all of present-day Minnesota and Iowa, as well as part of the Dakotas. This official printing of the session was one of the first books published in Wisconsin. It begins with the original act of Congress establishing the territory. The 42 acts which follow include the foundation of a court system (#2), the establishment of the permanent capital at Madison (#11) and an abortive university at Belmont (#36), the creation of several new counties, and the authorization of numerous roads, banks, and bridges.
A participant later recalled the legislature's first session: "Gov. Dodge called the legislature together at Belmont, the last of October, 1836. Belmont was then unknown—it was not on the map, and the inquiry was upon every tongue, 'Where is Belmont?' . . . They passed the session on an open prairie where a collection of poor buildings had been hastily erected for their accommodation; and this was Belmont"--Proceedings of the Wisconsin Editorial Association, 1869, page 56.
The original owner, James Duane Doty (1799-1865), was an important early Wisconsin politician and founder of its capital city, Madison; he later represented the territory in Congress and served as its second governor. Only one known at auction since the 1967 Streeter sale, III:1926. McMurtrie, Wisconsin 9.