A state government's elected and legal officials defy the federal government on the thorniest controversial issue of the day, battling for supremacy in the courts.

A contemporary reader might assume that's Texas or Iowa's current tussle with federal authorities over immigration.

But in the culminating chapter of legal scholar Alison L. LaCroix's new book, the state is Wisconsin, the time is the turbulent period right before the Civil War began, and the precipitating incident is a famous moment in Milwaukee history: the capture of escaped slave Joshua Glover, followed by anti-slavery demonstrators breaking him out of a Milwaukee jail in 1854.

Read more at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel