This case study looks at Wisconsin's path from territory to state by viewing the United States as both a “postcolonial republic” and a “settler empire.” (pp. 1–2) In other words, Bethel Saler examines the intersections between the United States desire for white self-government and its determination to govern others such as American Indians and French creoles in the west.

Wisconsin was the last of the five states created out of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. Although Indian title to large parts of the territory had not been secured and foreign threats loomed, the Northwest Ordinance provided a framework for territorial government and a course by which territories would eventually enter the Union as states, equal in power and status to their predecessors. As Saler notes, this was a far more complicated process than might appear. State formation was not just political but also cultural. The people of the territory, both white and non-white, had to be culturally fitted for incorporation into the polity.

In the late eighteenth century, the federal government not only designed policies for selling land to settlers and governing the Northwest Territory, but had to secure control of the land through military action against the Indians. One of the constraints on implementing these measures, however, was concern about passing control of the territory too quickly to men who might not make worthy citizens of a self-governing republic. Even white settlers might be too uncultured, uneducated, in short, too “savage” to be trusted with political power. Although self-rule was the hallmark of the independent United States, the federal government practiced paternalism over its territories.

Wisconsin became a separate territory in 1836, during the Indian Removal period. In a chapter on “the treaty polity” (pp. 83–120), Saler discusses the settlement of New York Christian Indians, the Stockbridges and Brothertowns, in Wisconsin on Menominee land. The resulting contest made the federal government the arbiter between the tribes. Treaties not only regulated who got lands but altered the nature of the economy, shifting it from the fur trade to one based on federal annuities. In addition to establishing control over the native population, the federal government acquired a long-established French settlement. The French also had to conform to the new regime of land titles and federal regulation of trade with the Indians.

The first major American settlement in Wisconsin came in a lead mining rush in the 1820s. Although the influx of white and black miners, along with some women, was not the stable farm families Congress hoped would settle the west, the government secured title to the lands from the Indians to accommodate the newcomers.

Religion, of course, was a part of the civilizing mission and the federal government encouraged the work of missionaries. Both Catholics and Protestants taught natives to read, value private property, practice monogamy, and wear western clothes. According to Saler, most Indians incorporated aspects of Christian practice and belief into native customs although some converted entirely and others rejected Christian ways completely. Christianity, nonetheless, created a fissure within native communities. Meanwhile, the settlers themselves needed the benefit of religion, particularly in the mining district. Territorial courts forced men, cohabiting with Indian women, to conform to American norms by getting legally married. Women were judged by their standards of housekeeping and childcare. One's whiteness could be evaluated based on one's conformity to such cultural norms.

By the mid-1840s, settlers in Wisconsin hoped for statehood. The first constitutional convention, however, produced a document that was too specific about too many controversial issues. The proposed constitution contained recognition of married women's property rights, a homestead exemption, and a prohibition on banking. Voters rejected the constitution and a second constitutional convention was quickly called. This time the delegates avoided the contentious issues by leaving them to the legislature and future popular referenda.

At the same time as Wisconsin was achieving statehood, some of the same men who were delegates to the first constitutional convention set about organizing a state historical society. Although they believed the historical record showed Euro-American settler civilization displacing Indian societies, the documents they preserved often told a different story of the long coexistence of native and settler groups, their cultural interaction, and a legacy that continued into the American-dominated period. Frederick Jackson Turner and his frontier thesis serves as Saler's final example of this historicizing. Although Indians had not disappeared from Turner's Wisconsin, the historian nonetheless crafted an interpretation that made white geographical advancement and native retreat the dominant American story.

Much of what Saler covers will be familiar to historians of the Old Northwest or of Wisconsin. What Saler has done is broaden the tale of settlement and political development by incorporating economic and cultural elements. The result is a sophisticated analysis of the complex development of the Old Northwest.