Immigrants from the Southern U.S.

History - The period of southern migration to Wisconsin was short, lasting from the late 1820s to 1840. Settlers from the southern states of Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina were the first white Americans after fur traders and military men to arrive in Wisconsin. By 1840, southerners numbered around 5,400, 56 percent of which lived in the lead region. The lead region had a distinctly southern atmosphere for several years--some settlers even brought their slaves. When the lead industry began to decline in the mid-1840s, southern migration slowed.

When white settlers streamed into Wisconsin to mine lead in the 1820s and 1830s, those who came from southern states often brought slaves with them. Although some were freed in Wisconsin, others, like a woman in Grant County ironically named "America," were eventually sent back into slavery in the South.

In 1840 fewer than 200 African Americans lived in Wisconsin. By 1860 that number had swelled to nearly 1,200. During the Civil War, a large number of new black residents arrived from the South as northern troops swept through slave-holding states. During these decades, a large number of white settlers from New England, New York and Germany with radical political opinions, including opposition to slavery, entered Wisconsin. They formed abolitionist groups, helped southern slaves escape through Wisconsin to Canada on the Underground Railroad, and founded the Republican Party. In the best-known abolitionist incident, former slave Joshua Glover was sprung from jail by a sympathetic mob, and when the prosecuted ringleader carried his case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, justices declared the federal Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional.

When the Civil War broke out, African Americans, not being full citizens under Wisconsin law, were not permitted to serve as soldiers, though some joined regiments as non-combatant laborers. But on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made it possible for black soldiers to enlist in Union regiments, and over the next two years 272 Wisconsin men of color did so. Another 81 from other states who enlisted in place of white draftees were credited to the Wisconsin rolls, bringing the total number of Wisconsin black troops to 353. Groups of men enlisted not just from cities such as Milwaukee and Janesville but also from Grant and Vernon counties, where communities of former slaves had taken up land. Most of Wisconsin's black soldiers were concentrated in Company F of the 29th Infantry Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops, though many also served in other units. Company F of the 29th arrived in Petersburg, Virginia, on July 22, 1864, in the heat of battle; 11 of its 85 men died the first week. Thirty years after the war, 45 black Civil War veterans were still living in Wisconsin. (Source)

Lead Mining - http://www.leadregiontrust.org/index.htm