Luther Swift Dixon (1825-1891) moved to Wisconsin in 1850, settling in Portage where he practiced law and served as the district attorney of Columbia County. A Republican, he was appointed chief justice of the Wisconsin supreme court by Governor Randall in April of 1859. Soon after being appointed, he reversed the earlier decision of the Wisconsin supreme court that held the Fugitive Slave Law to be unconstitutional. “With this decision, Dixon defied the Republican States’-rights forces, which had refused to obey the dictates of the federal government on the slavery issue. In the regular supreme court election of 1860 the Republicans refused to nominate Dixon for the chief justiceship, but he was successfully elected as an independent, and was subsequently re-elected three times, serving until his resignation in 1874.”
There is much in The Prescott Journal in the spring of 1863 about Dixon’s campaign for chief justice.
For more information on Dixon, see the Dictionary of Wisconsin History entry for Luther Swift Dixon.
The Civil War and Northwest Wisconsin 