Rivers. During his administration, the State Board of Public Works was organized. Dewey was an abolitionist and the first of many Wisconsin governors to advocate against the spread of slavery into new states and territories. The home Dewey built near Cassville is now a state park. Between 1848 and 1862, Wisconsin had three Democratic governors, all of whom were in office prior to 1856, four Republican governors, all of whom were in office after 1856, and one Whig governor, Leonard J. Farwell, who served from 1852 to 1854. Under Farwell's governorship, Wisconsin became the second state to abolish capital punishment. In the presidential elections of 1848 and 1852, the Democratic Party won Wisconsin. In the elections of 1856, 1860, and 1864, the Republican Party won the state. New parties Between the 1840s and 1860s, settlers from New England, New York and Germany arrived in Wisconsin. Some of them brought radical political ideas to the state. In the 1850s, stop-overs on the underground railroad were set up in the state and abolitionist groups were formed. Some abolitionist and free-soil activists left the Whig and Democratic parties, running and in some cases being elected as candidates of the Liberty Party and Free Soil Party. The most successful such group was the Republican Party. On March 20, 1854, the first county meeting of the Republican Party of the United States, consisting of about thirty people, was held in the Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. Ripon claims to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, as does Jackson, Michigan, where the first statewide convention was held. The new party absorbed most of the former Free Soil and Liberty Party members. Abolitionism A notable instance of abolitionism in Wisconsin was the rescue of Joshua Glover, an escaped slave from St. Louis who sought refuge in Racine, Wisconsin in 1852. He was caught in 1854 by federal marshals and put in a jail at Cathedral Square in Milwaukee, where he waited to be returned to his owner. A mob of 5,000 people led by Milwaukee abolitionist Sherman Booth, himself a "Yankee" transplant from rural New York, sprung Glover from jail and helped him escape to Canada via the underground railroad. Immigration In the 1850s, two-thirds of immigrants to Wisconsin came from the eastern United States, the other one-third being foreign-born. The majority of the foreign born were German immigrants. Many Irish and Norwegian immigrants also