Politics is so nasty these days!

My friend Kevin co-wrote this story for the Capital Times - it's about a freed slave who started a fundraiser in 1856 to buy her son's freedom, as well.

Great story. Read the whole thing, but I especially enjoyed this part:

The pro-slavery Milwaukee Daily American mocked the fundraising effort, saying Johnson offended the abolitionists by speaking highly of her master and sniffed at the abolitionists for not raising enough money. "We fear that had the mother of the slave child depended solely upon such aid as she received from the babbling abolitionists of Milwaukee, she would have gone home saddened and dispirited," the American wrote.

(Sherman) Booth fired back, saying the editor of the American "has shown himself to be unworthy of the respect, and almost beneath the contempt of all honorable men" and said the American had made up quotes it attributed to Johnson.

"A northern editor, who volunteers to be the tool of the slave drivers of the South, and act the part of a northern traitor, from no interest except servility or baseness, deserves to be kicked and spit upon by slaveholders and slave drivers, and will be, as soon as he has finished their dirty work," Booth wrote.

Ouch. And if you know your Wisconsin history, then you know that Booth was the good guy.