Editing Madison, Wisconsin (section)

===Founding===
[[File:Madison WI Barber 1865p439cropped.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|View of downtown and Capitol from Washington Street, 1865]]

Madison's modern origins begin in 1829, when former federal judge [[James Duane Doty]] purchased over a thousand acres (4&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup>) of swamp and forest land on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona, with the intention of building a city in the Four Lakes region. He purchased 1,261 acres for $1,500. When the [[Wisconsin Territory]] was created in 1836 the territorial legislature convened in [[Belmont, Wisconsin]]. One of the legislature's tasks was to select a permanent location for the territory's capital. Doty lobbied aggressively for Madison as the new capital, offering [[American bison|buffalo]] robes to the freezing legislators and choice lots in Madison at discount prices to undecided voters.<ref>Mollenhoff, David V. (2003) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=NwrIKM0rBd4C&q=buffalo+robes&pg=PA26 Madison, a History of the Formative Years] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170116173314/https://books.google.com/books?id=NwrIKM0rBd4C&q=buffalo+robes&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q=buffalo+robes&f=false |date=January 16, 2017 }}'' Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. {{ISBN|0-299-19980-0}}. Page 26.</ref> He had James Slaughter [[plat]] two cities in the area, Madison and "The City of Four Lakes", near present-day [[Middleton, Wisconsin|Middleton]].

Doty named his city Madison for [[James Madison]], the fourth President of the U.S. who had died on June 28, 1836, and he named the streets for the other [[Signing of the United States Constitution|38 signers]] of the [[U.S. Constitution]].<ref>Historic Madison, Inc., [http://www.historicmadison.org/Madison%27s%20Past/madisonspast.html Madison's Past – Early History] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120623093154/http://www.historicmadison.org/Madison%27s%20Past/madisonspast.html |date=June 23, 2012 }}</ref> Although the city existed only on paper, the territorial legislature voted on November 28, 1836, in favor of Madison as its capital, largely because of its location halfway between the new and growing cities around [[Milwaukee]] in the east and the long-established strategic post of [[Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin|Prairie du Chien]] in the west, and between the highly populated [[lead]] mining regions in the southwest and Wisconsin's oldest city, [[Green Bay, Wisconsin|Green Bay]], in the northeast.<ref>[https://www.wicourts.gov/courts/supreme/hearingroom.htm Supreme Court, History: The Supreme Court Hearing Room] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180112101826/https://www.wicourts.gov/courts/supreme/hearingroom.htm |date=January 12, 2018 }} Wisconsin Court System.</ref><ref name="briefhistory">{{Cite web |date=July 24, 2012 |title=Madison, Wisconsin - A Brief History |url=https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS2401 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190110014319/https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS2401 |archive-date=January 10, 2019 |access-date=January 9, 2019 |website=Wisconsinhistory.org |publisher=Wisconsin Historical Society}}</ref>