Wisconsin Territory - Territorial Area

Territorial Area

The area that would later be part of the second—and by far the longest lasting—incarnation of the Wisconsin Territory was originally part of the Northwest Territory. It was later included with the Indiana Territory when this was formed in 1800. In 1809, it became part of the Illinois Territory; then, when Illinois was about to become a state in 1818, this area was joined to the Michigan Territory. Then, the Wisconsin Territory was split off from Michigan Territory in 1836 as the state of Michigan prepared for statehood.

However, the original Wisconsin Territory, as established by statute on April 20, 1836, did not just include land from the original Northwest Territory. By the Act of April 20, 1836, 4 Stat. at Large 10, ...this part of the territory ceded by France, where Fort Snelling is, together with so much of the territory of the United States east of the Mississippi, was brought under a Territorial Government under the name of the Territory of Wisconsin. By the eighteenth section of this incorporation act, it was enacted: "That the inhabitants of this Territory shall be entitled to and enjoy all and singular the rights, privileges, and advantages, granted and secured to the people of the Territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio, by the articles of compact contained in the ordinance for the government of said Territory, passed on the 13th day of July, 1787, and shall be subject to all the restrictions and prohibitions in said articles of compact imposed upon the people of the said Territory."' In 1833, Congress had annexed huge tracts of land west of the Mississippi to the then Michigan Territory. When the Wisconsin Territory was split off from the Michigan Territory, it inherited this western land. Thus, the 1836 Wisconsin Territory included all of the present-day states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, and that part of the Dakotas that lay east of the Missouri River. The portion of the Territory east of the Mississippi River had originally been part of the Northwest Territory, which had itself been included in the cession by Britain in the 1783. Most of the remaining land of the original Wisconsin Territory was originally part of the Louisiana Purchase, though a small fraction was part of a parcel ceded by Great Britain in 1818. This land west of the Mississippi had been split off from the Missouri Territory in 1821 and attached to the Michigan Territory in 1834. In 1838, the Iowa Territory was formed, reducing the Wisconsin Territory to the boundaries for the next ten years; upon granting statehood to Wisconsin, its boundaries were once again reduced, to their present location.