On March 21, 1856 when William A. Barstow resigned from office as Wisconsin's governor, he shared national news with Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who was engaged in a battle with fellow Senator Lyman Trumbull over the legitimacy of the recent elections in Kansas which took place in the wake of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. The passage of this law was one of the major precipitating events leading to the Civil War.
Image courtesy of Cleveland Public Library, Plain Dealer collectionDownload Original File