THE HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. IN THREE PARTS, Historical, Documentary, and Descriptive. COMPILED BY DIRECTION OF THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE. BY WILLIAM R. SMITH, PRESIDENT OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN. PART II-DOCUMENTARY. VOL. III. LIBR MADISON, WIS.: BERIAH BROWN, PRINTER. 1854. INTRODUCTORY. THE Documentary History of Wisconsin, as its title implies, necessarily promises to embrace all such matters as tend in any degree to elucidate the true history of the country in its civil and political aspect; also to embody and preserve all local statistics, to which a reference may in future be had, when the mere preservation of such materials will be appreciated very far beyond their present apparent value or significance. The character of such a compilation is also necessarily desultory, diffuse, and unconnected; except in such degree as that each separate material may at some time, and for some purpose, be considered, if not essential, at least explanatory of, or ancillary to, the true records of a general history. In gathering together such materials of a Documentary history, a fastidious observer in directing his views solely to the present time, might have reason to complain of the apparent unimportance of the facts exhibited or related; but history itself is no more than a compilation of facts; every matter relative to the age, the locality, the personages, and the events, of which the future historian may 3 |