Let it Demonstrate

John Fox Potter (1817-1899) was educated in the east and carved his idyllic homestead, “Lake Side Farm,” from the Wisconsin wilderness. A community leader he was at the founding of the Republican party, and the first Republican, an abolitionist – Black Republican, to serve Wisconsin in the 1st Congressional District, a longtime Democratic stronghold. On the eve of the Civil War he battled the Southern “fire-eaters” on the floor of Congress with his oratory and his fists. Potter “scalped” a fellow congressman; leveled a future Supreme Court jurist; and when challenged, under the code duello, for insisting that fellow abolitionist’s views be heard – his choice of weapons was the infamous, and barbarous, “bowie knife.” He was a man of action, and a man of introspection. He hosted progressive thinkers at his rural lakeside retreat; including Thomas Wentworth Higginson a radical clergyman who authored the vows attacking the concept of coverture for feminist Lucy Stone’s wedding, and carried on a “correspondence” with Emily Dickinson for decades. After a brief, but tumultuous, service as a Consul to the Canadas, he retired to his “Lake Side Farm” and hosted a group of social and political thinkers and activists from Milwaukee – The Phantom Club.