Another sunny day, with a high of about seventy-seven, for Whitewater.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets today, at 5 p.m. The agenda is available online.
On this day in 1846,
Wisconsin’s first state Constitutional Convention met in Madison. The Convention sat until December 16,1846. The Convention was attended by 103 Democrats and 18 Whigs. The proposed constitution failed when voters refused to accept several controversial issues: an anti-banking article, a homestead exemption (which gave $1000 exemption to any debtor), providing women with property rights, and black suffrage.
The following convention, the Second Constitutional Convention of Wisconsin in 1847-48, produced and passed a constitution that Wisconsin still very much follows today. [Source: The Convention of 1846 edited Milo M. Quaife]
We should have adopted the constitution proposed at the first convention.