The Fight for Missouri. From the election of Lincoln to the death of Lyon. With maps

Preface

. I HAVE written this book because it was my duty to write it ; because, too, I fancy that I know more about the events that are narrated in it, than does any one who will ever take the trouble to write about them ; and because I am the only living witness to many facts the remembrance of which ought to be preserved. That the reader may know whereon I ground these assertions, and that he may, before reading my testimony, be able to decide whether it be worth his attention, I will tell him frankly how I happen to know about these things. In the elections of 1860 — for Governor of Missouri, and for President of the United States — I took an active, though inconspicuous part, chiefly in the political management of the St. Louis Bulletin, which was owned and edited by one of my friends, Mr. Longuemare.

In its columns and elsewhere I advocated earnestly the election of Breckinridge to the Presidency, and of Claiborne F. Jackson to the Governorship. But when the latter, in obedience to the manifest will of a majority of the Democratic Preface. IV Party of Missouri whose candidate he was, an nounced his determination to support Mr. Douglas for the Presidency, we Breckinridge Democrats refused to support him any longer, and nominated a candidate of our own, Hancock Jackson. We did this because we believed that the slave-holding States could not remain in the Union, with either safety or honor unless the North should consent to give them Constitutional guarantees that their rights as coequal States of the Union should be both respected and protected by the Federal Gov ernment, and because we thought that this question should be plainly submitted to the North in the then pending Presidential election, and a positive answer demanded.

As Mr. Douglas' candidacy, with his policy of equivocation, prevented this question from being put fairly to the North, we op posed him and every body who supported him. Claiborne F. Jackson was, nevertheless, elected Governor, in August, and Missouri, alone of all the States, cast her electoral vote in November for Douglas. On assuming the office of Governor just after the formal secession of South Carolina, Governor Jackson declared in his Inaugural Address that, in his opinion, it was both the interest and the duty of Missouri to make common cause with the other slave-holding States in the impending conflict. This declara- Preface. V tion brought the Bulletin, which had meanwhile fallen under my absolute control, to his zealous sup port. The great interest which I felt in the matter caused me to spend most of the time at Jefferson City, where measures looking to the secession of Missouri, and to arming her militia, and getting the State ready otherwise for the emergency, were pending before the General Assembly ; and finally, toward the middle of February, I disposed of the Bulletin, and took up my abode at Jefferson City, and remained there as the guest of the Governor till we were all driven thence by Blair and Lyon, in June.

During this time I assisted Governor Jack son in conducting his correspondence and in other confidential matters, and upon the enactment of the military law in May was commissioned as one of his aides-de-camp. General Price had asked me to accept the position of adjutant-general of the State forces, to the command of which he had just been appointed, but I introduced to him, and got him to appoint instead, Captain Henry Little who had just resigned his commission in the United States Army and was a thousand times better fitted than myself to discharge the duties of the place. I therefore remained with the Governor ; followed him when he left Jefferson City ; was with him at Booneville, and Carthage ; and went with him to Cowskin Prairie, in the south-western corner of the Preface. VI State.

When, however, on arriving there, he relin quished the command of all the State forces to General Price, and was about to go East, I got his permission to remain with the army, and was the next day assigned to duty by General Price as his chief of ordnance. A few days later Colonel Little left for Richmond in order to secure his commission in the regular army of the Confederate States, and I was then assigned to duty as Acting Adjutant- General of the State Guard. This position I held during all of the eventful campaign, in which were won the Battles of Wilson's Creek, Fort Scott, and Lexington. During this time — from the election of Lincoln in November 1860, to the death of Lyon at Wilson's Creek on the 10th of August 1861 — occurred all the events that I have narrated in this volume ; but I remained with General Price till the last year of the war, as adjutant-general and sometimes as chief of staff, of the commands that he held, except that for brief periods I was entrusted with special duties.

I left him in the summer of 1864, in order to attend a meeting of the Confederate Congress, of which I was a member, and did not return to the army. When the war ended General Price took to Mexico the records of the several commands which he had held, and also other important papers relat ing to the war. On returning to this country he Preface. VII brought these records and papers with him and gave them to me, with the understanding that I would one day write the story of his campaigns. I turned over most of them to the War Department several years ago, and many of them have been, and the rest will be, published in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. In preparing the political part of this volume, I have relied chiefly upon the Journals of the General Assembly of Missouri, and of the State Convention, and on the official reports of their debates, and upon contemporaneous publications, particularly the Missouri Republican ; and upon the original documents published in Peckham's Life of Lyon — a book whose glaring faults are more than compen sated by the important facts the remembrance whereof it has preserved.

For military details I am indebted above all to the Official Records, which the Government is pub lishing. The zeal, the fairness, the intelligence, the care, and the ability with which they have been collected, compiled, arranged, and edited by Lieuten ant-Colonel Robert N. Scott, U. S. A., entitle that gentleman to the gratitude of every one who took an honorable part in the war, and of all who shall ever desire to learn its true history. Valuable as these Records are to the student, they need nevertheless the elucidation of those, who, by reason of their Preface. personal knowledge of the men, and in other ways, are competent to sift the statements of those wit nesses — most of them now silent forever — whose testimony they perpetuate. As it was my fortune to know personally most of the men who took a prominent part in the struggle for Missouri, and something about the character and credibility of every one of them, I feel sure that my little book will for that reason be a useful guide to those who may wish to comprehend that struggle aright.

I have been greatly assisted in my search after the truth by many of the survivors of the war, who have furnished me important documents and valuable reminiscences, all which I have freely used. I would, perhaps, win favor for this volume if I were to mention their names, but higher considerations induce me to be silent. I must, however, express my great obligations to Mr. R. I. Holcombe, author of An Account of the Battle of Wilson's Creek, for much valuable information. I have doubtless made many trifling mistakes and may have made some that are important, but no man ever labored more earnestly to ascertain the truth and to tell it plainly and impartially, than I have done, in preparing to write, and in writing, this account of the fight that was made for Mis souri in 1861. New York, fanuary, 1886. I. POLITICAL

Chapter I. The Governor

Election of Lincoln — Meeting of Congress — Buchanan's Message — He Denies the Right of Congress to Prevent Secession by Force, and Urges Concessions to the South — The North Objects — The Crittenden Proposition — Tacit Agreement between the President and South Carolina as to Reinforcing Sumter — South Carolina Secedes — Major Anderson retires to Fort Sumter — South Carolina sends Commissioners to Washington — Failure of Negotiations — Meeting of the General Assembly of Missouri — Message of Governor Stewart — Claiborne F. Jackson — His Inaugural. The enactment in 1850 of a Fugitive Slave Law, some of whose provisions were not only inconsistent with the civilization of the age, but required citizens of Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio to do what no self-respecting Virginian could have been forced to do ; together with the repeal, in 1854, of the Missouri Compromise, brought about, in 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, and the transfer of the Federal Govern ment to a party which was pledged to prevent the extension of slavery beyond the limits of the States in which it was then established by law, and whose ablest and most influential leaders were known to be in favor of using all lawful means to abolish it even within those States.

Thoroughly frightened by this fact, for they firmly believed that their well-being, and indeed their safety, were involved in the continued ex istence of slavery, all of the Cotton States, except Texas (whose action was hindered by her governor, Gen. Houston), took instant steps to secede from the Union, and to establish a slave-holding Con federacy ; and when Congress met on the 3d of December, it had become certain that one, at least, of these States would secede before the end of the year. President Buchanan, in calling the attention of Congress to this fact, in his annual message, im plored it to consider carefully what the Government must do ; to consider whether it had the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain within the Union ; and whether, if it had the power, it would be expedient to exercise it.

For his own part he did not believe that the Constitution dele gated any such power to Congress, or to any other department of the Government ; but, on the con trary, that to make war against a State was at vari ance with the whole spirit and intent of the Consti tution. "Congress," said he, "possesses many means of preserving the Union by conciliation, but the sword was not placed in its hand to preserve it by force." The best way to preserve it was, in his opinion, to satisfy the just demands of the South by adopting a Constitutional amendment which should not only protect slavery in the States where it was already established, but in all of the Terri tories, so long as they remained Territories ; and which should also compel the Northern States to restore fugitive slaves to their owners.

He promised that while Congress was considering this all important matter he would, to the extent of his ability, defend the public property, and take care that the Federal laws should be enforced, in all the States. The President's recommendations were referred in both Senate and House to special committees, but it soon became manifest that the North would not give heed to them. Mr. Crittenden, therefore, submitted what became known as the Crittenden Proposition. It differed from the President's chiefly in this, that, while requiring Congress to en force the rendition of fugitive slaves, and to protect slavery in the States where it then existed, it de clared that slavery should never exist north of the Missouri Compromise line, but should be protected in all the territory south of that line (36°3o' north latitude).

As the South claimed that it had the right to demand protection for its slave property in all of the common territory of the Union, it felt that it would be yielding a great deal for the sake of peace, and the preservation of the Union, if it consented to accept Mr. Crittenden's proposition. But every Southern State, with the exception of South Caro lina, manifested its willingness to accept it. Most Northern Democrats quickly showed their willing ness to sustain it, and the President, abandoning his own proposition, urged the country to adopt Mr. Crittenden's. Many Republicans, too, averse to strife and bloodshed, consented to it, while others, like Hor ace Greeley, were ready to let the Cotton States go in peace, if they thought that they could do better out of the Union than in it. But the great majority of Republicans were not willing either to concede to the South the right to establish slavery in the Territories, or to let any State secede.

They would not abandon, in the hour of victory, the principles for which they had manfully contended through forty years of defeat and disaster ; nor would they let those, whom they had just vanquished, destroy the Union in the very hour that it was about to be dedicated, as they believed, to a wider freedom and a higher humanity. They were content to await the fast-coming 4th of March. Meanwhile the Cotton States were all hastening towards secession. This brought the President to the consideration of the most important question that had ever been submitted to any President : Whether he should attempt to reinforce the Fed eral forts in those States which were preparing to secede. While denying his own right, and the right of Con gress, to make war upon a State, he had expressly said in his message that it was his duty and his determination to protect the public property, and to enforce the laws, in all the States.

On the other hand, he knew that, if he attempted to reinforce the forts at Charleston, the attempt would be regarded by the South Carolinians as a threat of subjugation, and would be resented by them as an act of war. Happily the Representatives of South Carolina in Congress came to his assistance by giving him the strongest assurances that South Carolina would neither attack nor molest the forts, until her State Convention had met and decided to withdraw the State from the Union ; nor until she had sent com missioners to treat with the Federal Government as to the forts and other matters ; provided the Government of the United States would not, mean while, send any reinforcements to the forts, or change the military status in Charleston harbor. The President, while accepting these assurances "as a happy omen that peace might still be pre served, and time be thus gained for reflection," replied that, whilst he could not promise not to rein force the forts, it was his then determination not to reinforce them until they should be actually at tacked, or until he had certain evidence that they were about to be attacked.

Upon this tacit understanding both the President and the State continued to act in good faith until after the State had seceded. General Scott, who had been detained in New York by sickness, came to Washington on the 12th of December, and, being ignorant of the assurances which had been given to the President by the South Carolina representatives, urged him, at an interview on the 15th, to send a reinforcement of 300 men to Major Anderson, at Charleston. The President, knowing that Major Anderson was in no danger of attack, and that an attempt to reinforce him would needlessly " impair the hope of compromise, provoke collision, and disappoint the country," refused to send the reinforcements. General Cass, who had insisted upon the President's compliance with General Scott's advice, thereupon resigned the Secretaryship of State (December 15th).

The resignation was rather gladly accepted, and Judge Black became Secretary of State, while Edwin M. Stanton succeeded Black as Attorney-General. Howell Cobb had already resigned the Secretary ship of the Treasury (December 8th) and returned to Georgia. On the 20th of December the South Carolina Convention adopted an ordinance of secession, and sent commissioners to Washington to treat with the United States Government as to the forts within her limits, and as to other matters. These commissioners reached Washington on the 26th of December; but the very next morning — be fore they had had time to present their credentials to the Secretary of State — they were themselves startled, and the whole country electrified, by the news that, during the preceding night, Major Ander son had secretly dismantled Fort Moultrie, spiked its guns, burnt the gun-carriages, and removed his command to Fort Sumter, which occupied a more tenable, and a more commanding, position in the harbor.

The Secretary of War, Governor Floyd, of Vir ginia, protested against Major Anderson's conduct in a paper which he read, on the 27th of December, to the President, in presence of the Cabinet. In this paper he insisted that Major Anderson had, by removing his command to Fort Sumter, changed the military status at Charleston, and had thereby violated a solemn pledge of the Government ; that there was now but one way to vindicate the honor of the Administration and to prevent civil war; and that was to withdraw the garrison from the harbor of Charleston altogether. He accordingly asked the President to authorize him to make that order at once. The President refused to do this, and on the 29th of December the Secretary of War tendered his resignation, saying that he could no longer hold the office " under his convictions of patriotism, nor with honor ; subjected as he was to the violation of solemn pledges and plighted faith."

His resignation was instantly accepted, and Post master-General Holt was transferred to the War Department. The South Carolina commissioners had presented their credentials to the President on the 28th. He said at once that he " could only recognize them as private gentlemen, and not as commissioners from a sovereign State," but would communicate to Con gress — " the only competent tribunal " to which they could appeal — any proposition which they might have to offer. To this the commissioners replied that they could not offer any proposition, nor even enter upon the negotiations with which they had been entrusted, until Major Anderson's conduct had been satisfac torily explained, nor until the United States troops had been removed not only from Fort Sumter, but away from the harbor of Charleston.

These demands were formally repeated in a written com munication which they sent to the President the next day. While considering the reply which he should make to this communication the President learned that the authorities of South Carolina had, on the day after Major Anderson's removal to Sumter, seized Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, the Custom- House, and the Post-Office, and had raised the Palmetto flag over them all ; that every officer of the Customs — collector, naval officer, surveyor, and appraiser — together with the postmaster, had re signed their appointments; and that, on Sunday, the 30th of December, the State had seized the Arsenal of the United States, containing $500,000 worth of munitions of war, and had expelled the United States Government from all its property except Fort Sumter.

Distressed and angered by these facts, the Presi dent replied to the South Carolina commissioners that he would not withdraw the Federal troops from Fort Sumter; but would, on the contrary, defend that fort by all the means in his power, against all attacks from whatever quarter they might proceed. This reply was delivered to the commis sioners on the 31st of December. On that day the Senate Committee of Thirteen reported that they could not agree upon any settlement of the questions at issue between the North and the South. In the midst of the great excitement that was caused by these momentous events, the General Assembly of Missouri met at Jefferson City on the last day of December, 1860. At the presidential election Lincoln had received in the entire State barely seventeen thousand of the one hundred and sixty-five thousand votes which were cast, and most of these were given to him by the German inhabitants of the State.

Fifty-eight thousand eight hundred and one had been given to Douglas ; fifty-eight thousand three hundred and seventy-two to Bell, and thirty-one thousand three hundred and seventeen to Breckinridge. The General Assembly reflected the sentiment of the people as expressed in the presidential election. In the Senate there was only one Republican ; in the House there were twelve Republicans, thirty seven Bell men, artd eighty-three Democrats. The outgoing Governor, Robert M. Stewart, transmitted his message to the two Houses on the 3d of January. Stewart was a typical Northern Democrat. He believed that the Southern people had the constitu tional right to take their slaves into all the Territo ries and to hold them there, under the protection of the territorial and Federal laws, and that this right ought to be assured to them.

Not that he loved slavery, for he did not ; but because he loved the Union and revered the Constitution. Himself a native of New York, though long time a resident of Missouri, he felt none of that humilia tion which most Southern men felt in view of the fact that the long political struggle between the North and the South had at last ended in the defeat of the South, and in the triumph of the abolitionized North ; none of that blended anger and apprehension, which they felt, in contemplation of the fact that the South was thenceforth to be ruled by a party hostile to their institutions and unfriendly to their people. The right of secession he not only denied, but he denied it utterly ; and believed too that South Caro lina was acting with consummate folly in attempt ing to destroy a Union, which was the source of all her prosperity, and her surest bulwark and defence.

As to Missouri, she certainly had no right to secede. For she belonged to the United States by right of purchase — had been bought by the Federal Government, and paid for out of its treasury. What ever other States might do, it was her plain duty, and her interest, too, to remain within the Union. His message set forth clearly and strongly his own feelings and opinions at the beginning of the New Year, and it expressed in great measure the sentiments of a majority of the people of Missouri, at that time. " Missouri occupies a position in regard to these troubles that should make her voice potent in the councils of the nation. With scarcely a disunionist per se to be found in her borders, she is still deter mined to demand, and to maintain, her rights at every hazard. She loves the Union while it is the pro tector of equal rights, but will despise it as the in strument of wrong.

She came into the Union upon a compromise, and is willing to abide by a fair com promise still; not such ephemeral contracts as are enacted by Congress to-day, and repealed to-morrow; but a compromise, assuring all the just rights of the States, and agreed to in solemn Convention of all the parties interested. " Missouri has a right to speak on this subject, because she has suffered. Bounded on three sides by free territory, her border counties have been the frequent scenes of kidnapping and violence, and this State has probably lost as much, in the last two years, in the abduction of slaves, as all the rest of the Southern States. At this moment several of the western counties are desolated, and almost depopu lated, from fear of a bandit horde, who have been committing depredations — arson, theft, and foul murder — upon the adjacent border.

" Missouri has a right, too, to be heard by reason of her present position and power, as well as from the great calamities which a hasty dissolution of the Union would bring upon her. She has already a larger voting population than any of the slave States, with prospective power and wealth far beyond any of her sister States. . . . "Indeed, Missouri and the other border Slave States should be the first instead of the last, to speak on a subject of this kind. They have suf fered the evil and the wrong, and they should be the first to demand redress. . . " As matters are at present Missouri will stand by her lot, and hold to the Union as long as it is worth an effort to preserve it. So long as there is hope of success she will seek for justice within the Union. She cannot be frightened from her pro priety by the past unfriendly legislation of the North, nor be dragooned into secession by the extreme South.

If those, who should be our friends and allies, undertake to render our property worthless by a system of prohibitory laws, or by re opening the slave trade in opposition to the moral sense of the civilized world, and at the same time reduce us to the position of an humble sentinel to watch over and protect their interests, receiving all of the blows and none of the benefits, Missouri will hesitate long before sanctioning such an arrange ment. She will rather take the high position of armed neutrality. She is able to take care of her self, and will be neither forced nor flattered, driven nor coaxed, into a course of action that must end in her own destruction. " If South Carolina and other Cotton States persist in secession she will desire to see them go in peace, with the hope that a short experience at separate government, and an honorable readjustment of the Federal compact, will induce them to return to their former position.

In the mean time Missouri will hold herself in readiness, at any moment, to defend her soil from pollution and her property from plunder by fanatics and marauders, come from what quarter they may. The people of Missouri will choose this deliberate, conservative course, both on account of the blessings they have derived from the Union, and the untold and un imagined evils that will come with its dissolution. " . . . Whilst I would recommend the adoption of all proper measures and influences to secure the just acknowledgment and protection of our rights, and in the final failure of this, a resort to the last painful remedy of separation ; yet, regard ing, as I do, the American Confederacy as the source of a thousand blessings, pecuniary, social, and moral, and its destruction as fraught with in calculable loss, suffering, and crime, I would here, in my last public official act as Governor of Missouri, record my solemn protest against unwise and hasty action, and my unalterable devotion to the Union so long as it can be made the protector of equal rights."

In the evening Claiborne F. Jackson took the oath of office as Governor, in the presence of both Houses. Born in Kentucky, of Virginia parents, he had come to Missouri in his boyhood and found em ployment in a country store in Howard County. By the time that he was thirty he had acquired a sufficient fortune to retire from business and to de vote himself to politics, for which he had a natural aptitude and great fondness. Saline County sent him to the Legislature in 1836. He was one of the delegates from Howard County to the State Convention of 1845, and one °f its representatives in the Legislature in 1846. He was a member of the State Senate in 1848-9, and, as Chairman of the Committee on Federal Affairs, reported the Resolutions which bear his name. These resolutions took high Southern ground on the matter of slavery in the territory then just acquired from Mexico, and instructed Colonel Benton and his colleague in the United States Senate to conform their action to the doctrines therein laid down.

Benton refused to obey, and appealed from the Legislature to the people of Missouri. In the angry contest which ensued Jackson bore a conspicuous part, and was ever after recognized as one of the ablest leaders of the anti- Benton, or Southern Rights' Democrats. His election as Governor had devolved upon him the gravest responsibilities. He now assumed the office with becoming modesty, but with an unshak able determination to defend the honor and the in terests of Missouri against all assailants whatever. He was fifty-five years of age ; tall, erect, and dignified; a vigorous thinker, and a fluent and forcible speaker, always interesting, and often elo quent ; a well-informed man, thoroughly conversant with the politics of Missouri and of the Union ; with positive opinions on all public questions, and the courage to express and uphold them ; courteous in his bearing towards all men, for he was kind hearted, and by nature a democrat ; and a truthful, honest, and honorable gentleman.

He loved the Union, but not with the love with which he loved Missouri, which had been his home for forty years, nor as he loved the South, where he was born, and where his kindred lived. In his inaugural address to the General Assembly, he said, after rapidly commenting upon the growth of the antislavery party : " The prominent characteristic of this party . . . is that it is purely sectional in its locality and its principles. The only principle inscribed upon its banner is Hostility to Slavery; ... its object, not merely to confine slavery within its present limits ; not merely to exclude it from the Terri tories, and prevent the formation and admission of any slave-holding States ; not merely to abolish it in the District of Columbia, and interdict its passage from one State to another ; but to strike down its existence everywhere ; to sap its foundation in pub lic sentiment ; to annoy and harass, and gradually destroy its vitality, by every means, direct or indi rect, physical and moral, which human ingenuity can devise.