Wisconsin, A White Refuge

Wisconsin is one of the last American places with 95% White population. It also hold the record for alcohol consumption. Paradoxically, the antislavery movement and the Republican Party were born there. Throughout the 1850s Wisconsin was a leader in the abolition of slavery. Slaves passed through the Underground Railroad on their way to Canada. In 1854 Wisconsin abolitionists held meetings in a schoolhouse in Ripon, where they recommended forming a new political party called Republican. (Today the Little White Schoolhouse, which is claimed to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, is a museum and national landmark.) That same year the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional.