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“All property, real and personal, of the wife ... shall be her separate property.”

These seemingly innocent words sparked passionate debate when Wisconsin was becoming a state in the middle of the 19th century.

In the fall of 1846, 124 elected delegates met in Madison to write the state’s first constitution. They argued for 10 weeks before producing a draft, which included a provision that allowed married women to possess their own property.

In most places back then, a wife’s wages, inheritance and other assets legally belonged to her husband. Few people questioned it. But some utopians had settled on the Wisconsin frontier. They believed that slavery should be abolished, workers should be fairly compensated, and women should be able to keep their earnings.

Opposing them were critics who argued that women’s property rights contradicted the Bible and would undermine the institution of marriage. All that winter and spring the two sides argued in the Wisconsin press.

Other controversial provisions in the draft constitution would have allowed immigrants who had applied for citizenship to vote, outlawed privately owned banks, and put the question of black suffrage up to a referendum.