To a practical application of the Jacksonian theory of spoils politics was due the migration of Lapham from the capital of Ohio to the new-born town of Milwaukee in the spring of 1836. In later years he humorously explained that he was “reformed” out of office and employment in Ohio; at the time, there is reason to believe, the blow was not considered in a humorous light. Early in his canal career Lapham had worked under Byron Kilbourn, who now had thrown in his fortunes with the rising young village of Milwaukee. As a leading promoter of the coming metropolis Kilbourn had extensive business projects in view, among them that of procuring the construction of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal, which would, it was fondly believed, go far toward realizing for the nascent city her dreams of metropolitan greatness. There was much demand for men possessed of engineering ability, and Kilbourn, who had conceived a friendship for Lapham which was to prove lifelong, now brought him to Wisconsin on a salary of $1,000 a year. Thus Wisconsin became his permanent home, for he left Milwaukee only to remove in old age to a farm near Oconomowoc. At the mouth of the Milwaukee River Lapham found, on his arrival on July 3, 1836, fifty houses where a few months before had been but two or three. In coming from the older settled portion of Ohio to Milwaukee he had entered a new world. Chicago was still in the height of its first mad speculative boom and conditions at Milwaukee differed only in detail from those which prevailed at Chicago. Indeed, on reaching Detroit on his westward journey, Lapham wrote to his brother: “I am now, and have been since I arrived at Sandusky, in what might very properly be called the world of speculators: everybody you meet is engaged in some speculation; everything you hear has some speculation at the bottom. The hotel where I am now writing has suspended on the walls of the barroom plats of new towns; I have added the ninth.” No wonder the impecunious young man, engulfed in such an atmosphere, proceeded, immediately upon his arrival at Milwaukee, to purchase three town lots for $5,000, payable “one-half in one one-half in two years.” How did he expect to provide the money to meet this obligation? He did not expect to provide it; he “bought them for the purpose of selling them again at a higher price.”