For President’s Day, Presidential Visits To Wisconsin

Wisconsin hasn’t given the nation a president, but it has played host to many current and future presidents, from Calvin Coolidge’s summer White House in northern Wisconsin to Abraham Lincoln’s service in the Black Hawk War.

The 23-year-old Lincoln answered the call for troops to combat Black Hawk and his followers in 1832. He was elected captain soon after he joined the Illinois militia and was mustered out in July. He didn’t spend long in Wisconsin, less than two weeks, and never saw any fighting. He later said that his military service involved “a good many bloody struggles with mosquitoes.”

Among those presidents who also served in Wisconsin was Zachary Taylor, who was stationed at Fort Howard in Green Bay and twice served as commandant of Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien. Taylor saw significantly more action in the Black Hawk war than Lincoln. He pursued Black Hawk up the Rock River in Illinois and through Wisconsin to the mouth of the Bad Axe River, where the war ended.

Other presidents to have visited Wisconsin include Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland (he also came on fishing trips), Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

None have been given so prominent a place, however, as Abraham Lincoln, whose statue sits atop Bascom Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The statue is modeled on the original created by Adolph A. Weinman in Lincoln’s hometown in Kentucky and was commissioned by UW alumnus Richard Lloyd Jones. Many cities and universities hoped to receive the replica, but Jones won out. The statue was unveiled in 1909, 100 years after Lincoln’s birth. It’s become a campus landmark, as the above image shows, with students decorating Lincoln for homecoming.