The story of a border city during the Civil War

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CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

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Contents

OHAPTEB PAQE

I. St. Louis 1

II. Forebodings of Conflict . . . .11

Chapter I

I NEED not say that St. Louis is built on the western bank of the Mississippi River about twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri, since everybody knows that. But the present generation thinks of the city only as it is to-day, with its more than half a million of inhabitants, extensive parks, palatial residences, well-constructed churches, imposing business blocks, great railroad bridges spanning the river, unrivalled central depot and attractive trolley cars. But all this has flowed from its wonderful development since the close of the Civil War. We write of it as it was immediately before, and during, that mighty conflict.

In 1860 it had only one hundred and fifty-one thousand seven himdred and eighty inhabitants, about one thousand five hundred of whom were slaves. A large number of enterprising young men had flocked to the city from every part of the United States, so that the white males of the city exceeded the white females by more than ten thousand. Among the whites there were many thousands of intelligent, manly, thrifty Germans, a fact which needs to be borne in mind, if we would fully understand and duly appreciate the part which the city acted in the earlier stages of the Civil War.

Most of the city stood then, as now, on bluffs or extended terraces that rise gradually one above the other. Its situation is both healthful and beautiful. But before the war its area was comparatively small. It extended along the river only six and a half iniles and between three and four back from it. It contained only fifteen and a half square miles. The ground now occupied by the finest residences was then rough, open fields, lying beyond its western limits. The city was built of brick. The business blocks, warehouses, hotels, residences, schoolhouses, and churches were all of the same material. Most of the sidewalks were also made of red brick. Whichever way you looked your eyes rested on red brick, and wherever you walked you trod on red brick. I remember but one business block that had a stone front, and that was marble. The enterprising citizen who built it made quite a fortune out of it. Its very novelty made it attractive, and its rooms were readily rented to professional men. The city is still largely built of brick. The clay from which the brick is made is found in large quantities near the city, and its inhabitants naturally and wisely use this excellent building material that lies close at hand.

Most of the dwelling-houses were built out to the street, so that, with rare exceptions, there were no front yards. On warm summer evenings the families living in any given block sat on the front stone steps of their houses, that they might be refreshed by the cooler air of the evening. But most of the streets were macadamized with limestone, and in summer absorbed during the day so much heat, as they lay under the burning rays of the sun, that they continued to radiate it long after the sun went down. At such times a perch on the front stone steps afforded so little relief from the heat-laden atmosphere that the half-baked sufferers longed for the arctic regions. A distinguished man from the East, on a hot night in September, waking up at two o'clock in the morning from a troubled sleep, declared that he foimd himself, on account of the stifling heat, swelling up Uke a mouse in an exhausted receiver. But such days were exceptional and not pecuhar to St. Louis.

The larger part of the fuel then consumed in the city was soft coal. We bought it not by the ton, but by the bushel. In those days there were no smoke-consumers. Vast volumes of smoke poured forth from the black throats of great chimneys in manufacturing establishments, while the chimneys of every dwelling-house, and the smoke-stack of every steamer on the river, added their contribution to render the atmosphere dusky. In still days of the autunm or winter the smoke hung like a pall over the city.

But in spite of a few such drawbacks it was even then a very pleasant city. There were few who were very poor. None were permitted to go unclothed and unfed. Most of the people were thrifty; many of them were rapidly accumulating wealth. The markets of the city were well supplied with all the varied products of the fields and the forests. The homes of the people were comfortable, many of them attractive. Their tables were loaded with abundant and wholesome food. The churches were numerous and well attended. The public schools were of a high order. Private schools and colleges had been founded, and were already doing good work.

The inhabitants of the city were a conglomerate; but just on that account were broad and catholic in their thinking. Coming from every section of the

Republic, by attrition their provincialisms and prejudices were worn away till they came to take comprehensive and just views of the great questions that were at that time agitating the nation. Men from the South and North had learned each other's excellences, and with mutual respect and high esteem stood shoulder to shoulder in business, civic duty and charitable and religious service. I have never met anywhere men of broader gauge.

Among them were those distinguished as lawyers, statesmen, and preachers. To name some to the neglect of others would seem to be invidious. But among the lawyers, Samuel Glover and James O. Broadhead; among the preachers, Henry A. Nelson, Triunan M. Post, Wm. G. EUot and Father Smarius; among the statesmen, Frank P. Blair and Edward Bates, the latter afterwards Attorney-general in President Lincoln's Cabinet, are names which readily occur to those of that generation who stiU live.

When, in the autumn of 1858, I made St. Louis my adopted home, the name of Thomas H. Benton was on all lips. He had died in April of that year. The people of the city were justly very proud of him. He had represented Missouri for thirty years in the Senate of the United States, and was unquestionably the most distinguished man of the State and of the Northwest. A funeral procession fully five miles in length had followed his body to its burial-place in Belle Fontaine Cemetery. But this great man, like many others who have been pre-eminent, had marked peculiarities. In the Senate he was called " The Magisterial." In consonance with that descriptive phrase, when he addressed crowds at political meetings in St. Louis, he never said, " Fellow citizens," but always simply,

" Citizens." And the contents of his speeches from the stump were often quite as magisterial.

Mr. Benton, while United States Senator, at times took an active part in the election of congressmen from St. Louis. It was customary then for those opposed to each other to speak in turn to the people from the same platform. On one occasion Mr. Crura was the name of the candidate who, with Mr. Benton, was addressing the voters of the city. Near the close of one of Mr. Benton's speeches, he said, " Citizens, is my opponent a loaf, or even a crust? No," then suiting the action to the word, he apparently picked up and held a very small particle between his thumb and finger, while he added in a tone of great contempt, — " No, citizens, he is nothing but a tiny Crum."

During another canvass, he was stoutly opposing Mr. Bogie, who was a candidate for Congress. Late one evening when about to close his speech in reply to him, he said, " Citizens, you have been told that my opponent's name is Bogie. Citizens, it is a mistake; his name is Bogus. But, citizens, notwithstanding that, like Cato of Rome, I would now send my servants (slaves) to light him home, were it not that to-morrow you would be asking, ' Mr. Benton, what sort of company do your servants keep? ' "

la 18.56, his son-in-law, John C. Fremont, was offered the RepubUcan nomination for the Presidency, and asked him if he thought it was best for him to accept it? Benton, believing the Republican party to be sectional, was bitterly opposed to it; so he said to Fremont, "If you accept the nomination, I'll drop you like a hot potato, sir! like a hot potato, sir! "

These incidents, standing alone, would misrepresent Mr. Benton; but they throw a side-light on his character and help us better to understand the most eminent citizen of St. Louis, a statesman of large mold and of a well-merited national reputation.

The early history of St. Louis is so full of interest that we cannot refrain from briefly noting a few items that belong to it. Its beginning carries us back to 1764. It was then a mere trading-post of a company of merchants, whose leader was Pierre Lig'ueste Laclede. The post consisted of one house and foiu: stores. It was named St. Louis in honor of the patron saint of Louis XV of France. Though not possessing the dignity of an incorporated town, the following year it became the capital of Upper Louisiana. Through the wise foresight of Jefferson, despite his party principles, the vast and vaguely defined territory of Louisiana was purchased from France at a time when Napoleon sorely needed money. In transferring this inunense region there were two formal ceremonies, one at New Orleans, Dec. 20th, 1803; the other at St. Louis, on March 10th, 1804. On the latter day Major Stoddard, who was the agent of the French Government to receive Upper Louisiana from Spain, for France, was also the accredited agent of our government to take over the same territory for the United States. That one man should represent both nations in affairs of such tremendous importance was, to say the least, imique.^ This ceremony of transfer took place at the northeast comer of First, or Main, and Walnut Streets. The event should be commemorated by some suitable tablet or monument erected on the spot of transfer. We trust that the Missouri Historical Society will have the honor

• The originals of both these commissions are in the archives of the Missouri Historical Society. See also Scharf s History of St Louis, and Billon's Annals of St. Louis.

of doing this work so consonant with its aims and character.

The town of St. Louis was laid out between the river and the first range of bluffs on the west, and a series of circular towers was erected around it for defence. The houses were mainly built of rough stone and whitewashed, and each house had a separate lot for fruit and flowers. These houses were without cellars. The first house provided with such a convenience was built by Laclede on what is now called Main Street, between Market and Walnut. Lidian women and children helped dig it, carrying out the dirt on their heads, in wooden platters and baskets. In this house civil government was inaugurated in 1765 by Captain Louis Saint Ange, Acting French Governor of Upper Louisiana; in it, also, the Marquis de Lafayette was entertained in 1825.

The streets of the old town*were all quite narrow; it was thought that such streets could be more easily defended. And there they are, cramped and narrow to this day. But in time the land above and west of the village was laid out in town lots, and the chief promoters of this enterprise, Judge Lucas and Colonel Chouteau, built their dwelling-houses far back from the river and the old town, the former at the comer of Seventh and Chestnut Streets, the latter at the comer of Sixth and Olive Streets. In 1809, the year in which St. Louis was incorporated as a town, Fort BeUe Fontaine became the headquarters of the Department of Upper Louisiana. It was several miles north of the village, on a high bluff, overlooking the Mississippi. The land for this fort was secured by treaty from the Sac and Fox Indians. On it was a great spring of pure water capable of supplying a thousand men; hence the name of the fort, Belle Fontaine.

St. Louis was early called the Gateway of the West. In 1817 the first steamboat tied up to her levee.^ This was the beginning of an imperial trade. Streams of commerce now began to flow into her markets froni the great continental rivers, from the upper Mississippi, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Ohio, the lower Mississippi with its far-reaching affluents; and, through the Gulf of Mexico, even from the cities of the Atlantic seaboard. For many years her chief trade had been in the pelts and furs of wild animals; but now this lucrative traflac was greatly augmented. For forty years the annual value of it alone was between two and three hundred thousand dollars, while commerce in all agricultural products and in manufactured goods was constantly swelling in volume. Still it is worthy of note that deerskins were an article of barter, and furs were currency in St. Louis, from the days of Laclede until Missouri became a State in 1821; and a year later, even before St. Louis had five thousand inhabitants, it was chartered as a city.

When under Spanish control, it was strictly Roman Catholic. In 1862 1 met at a wedding in St. Louis a lady almost a hundred years old. She was still in excellent health. Her intellect was clear and vigorous. As she took my arm to go to the wedding supper, she archly remarked, " Your wife will not be jealous when she learns how old I am." Yet, when we were seated at the table, after some moments of absolute silence on her part, into which I did not venture to intrude, she said, " I do believe that God has forgotten me." I looked at her with mingled astonishment and curiosity and said, " Why so? " She replied, " All the friends of my early life are gone and I am left alone." She now

'The Louisiaua Purchase ; Hitchcock, p. 248.

became reminiscent and added, " I lived here when St. Louis belonged to Spain. And just as for many years no free negro has been permitted to enter this city without a pass, so for years, in my early life, no Protestant could enter it without a written permit from the Spanish authorities."

But, while under the rule of the United States all religious intolerance disappeared, African slavery flourished, established and protected by law. And although in 1860 St. Louis had but few slaves, nevertheless pro-slavery sentiment largely prevailed. Those who cherished it were often intense and bitter, and at that time socially controlled the entire city. But on the other hand the leading business men of the city were quietly, conservatively, yet positively, opposed to slavery. Many of them had come from New England and the Middle States and believed slavery to be a great moral wrong; but those from the North and South alike saw that slavery was a drag upon the commercial interests of the city and all were hoping that in some way the incubus might be lifted off from it. For St. Louis, the commercial capital of Missouri, already had many great merchants and enterprising manufacturers, who were not only throwing out their lines of trade into every part of the State, but also into all the surrounding States and territories. It was linked by the Mississippi and Missouri, fed by numerous and important affluents, with a vast territory which was probably the richest on the earth's surface. And very much of its trade was with southern cities. In 1860, more than four thousand steamers, with a capacity of one million one himdred and twenty thousand and thirty-nine tons, loaded and unloaded at its wharves. To obstruct the Father of Waters at the mouth of the

Ohio, or to divide it by secession, was a matter of life and death to all the business interests of St. Louis. And no one without this conception clearly in mind can adequately understand what took place there in those days of awful storm and stress between 1860 and 1865.

Chapter II

Fob many years the subject of slavery, in its varied aspects, had been constantly and hotly discussed in all political and religious journals, on the stump, in the pulpit, and in the Congress of the United States. The higher law doctrine, propounded by William H. Seward, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, the Kansas war, Lincoln's celebrated debate with Douglas, and his pregnant declaration in 1858, that the nation could not continue to exist half slave and half free, that " a house divided against itself cannot stand," had greatly agitated the whole nation. In the hearts of pro-slavery men, vengeful fire was smouldering; it needed only an added breath to make it shoot up into a devouring flame. The apprehensiveness and extreme sensitiveness of pro-slavery Missouri manifested itself in the winter of 1859-60, through its legislature. That body of law-makers passed a bill by an overwhelming majority, expeUing from the State all free negroes. There were more than a thousand of that class in St. Louis, and a large majority of these were females, doing domestic service in the best families of the city. The excitement caused by this short-sighted action of the legislature was intense. The bill enacted was a declaration in the form of law, that the presence of free negroes was a menace to slavery. Many men in St. Louis were asking with flushed faces, " What shall be done to meet this emergency, to avert this calamity? "

I met on the street one of the coolest men that it has been my lot to know dm-ing a long Ufe, and even he, whose spirit never seemed to be ruffled by any exasperating event, was hot with indignation. With great vehemence he denounced the barbarous legislation, and said that something must be done to thwart its purpose. But on inquiry I found that he was unable to suggest any line of action by which this vicious legislation could be neutralized.

Now let us note in contrast another man. There was a negro pastor in the city by the name of Richard Anderson. When a boy he was a slave, and had been brought from Virginia to Missouri. When he was twelve years old his master, Mr. Bates, had given him his freedom. He now began to do odd jobs about the city. He became a newspaper carrier, and thus aided in distributing among its subscribers The Missouri Republican. While doing his work he learned to read; the newspaper that he carried from door to door was his spelling-book and school reader. With his ability to read came broader intelligence. He industriously thumbed and mastered good books. The Bible was constantly read by him. He became a Christian. He was called to be a preacher and pastor. He was a large man of commanding presence, a descendant of an African chief. He was very black. While his nose was somewhat flattened, it was straight and sharply cut; his thick lips were firmly set. His eyes were liarge and lustrous, his forehead was high and broad. He preached well. His manner was quiet, suggesting reserved power; his thought was orderly and clear. He had great power over an audience. If his black hearers became noisy with their shouting of " amen " and "hallelujah," by a gentle wave of the hand he reduced them to silence. He was a bom leader, but he led by the inherent force of his character. One of his deacons said, "He led us all by a spider's web." He was universally respected, and was welcome to all houses where the members of his church were employed. He never betrayed any confidence reposed in him. Like his Master "he went about doing good." Nothing diverted him from his purpose. Nothing seemed to disturb his equanimity. While he sometimes burned with indignation, he never lost control of himself. He was a man of rare balance of mind.

He presided over a church of a thousand members. Fully half of them were free. The bill for the expulsion of free negroes from the State fell with greater severity upon him than upon any other man in St. Louis. I met him expecting that he would be greatly agitated and cast down; but was surprised to find him absolutely unruffled. I ventured to ask him if he had heard of the recent legislation pertaining to free negroes. He quietly replied that he had, and then added with emphasis, "That bill will never become a law." With mingled curiosity and surprise I asked, " How do you know that? " Lifting his hand and pointing upward toward heaven, and turning his eyes thitherward he replied, " I know because I have asked up there." Calm and assured as he was, I feared that he was the victim of a fatal illusion from which he might be soon rudely awakened. But nothing that I said in opposition to his conclusion moved him in the slightest degree from his conviction.

Time soon showed that this black man with his great, calm soul, and unswerving faith was right. Hon.

R. M. Stewart was then governor of the state. He was a staunch Bourbon Democrat. He believed slavery to be right. He drank whiskey freely and said : " Cotton is not king, but corn and corn-whiskey are king." He knew that. He spoke from abundant and sad experience.

But he had been brought up in eastern New York. The doctrine that all men, irrespective of color, have an inalienable right to liberty had been breathed in with the air of his native hills, and had become part and parcel of his life-blood. As he looked at that infamous bill, passed almost imanimously, the teaching received in boyhood asserted itself. It was stronger than his pro-slavery Bourbonism, stronger than party ties; his soul was in revolt against this shameless iniquity. If, however, he should veto the bUl, these legislators would quickly pass it over his head. So he took the only course by which it could be effectually defeated. The legislature was about to adjourn. It was his constitutional privilege to retain the bUl instead of returning it with his signature or his veto. If he did not return it within twenty days, it failed to become a law. He pocketed it, and the free negroes were left in peace. And who can say that the praying, believing, black pastor did not know?

But although this execrable legislation failed, it left its indelible mark on the public mind. Men were made by it sensitive and suspicious. They doubted, as never before, the possibility of maintaining a govern" ment which extended its segis over forces so utterly antagonistic as freedom and slavery. In this portentous state of the public mind the presidential campaign qf 1860 began. Throughout the Union the political conflict was fierce, but in Missouri, and in its great commercial city, St. Louis, it was unusually hot and acrimonious. African slavery was the distracting problem. None attempted to disguise it. Men on every hand spoke plainly and boldly. Most of the people of the slave states, and the citizens of Missouri among the rest, believed with all their hearts that if the RepubUcan party should be successful at the polls, henceforth slavery would probably be excluded from the territories, and, at no distant day, would become extinct even in the states. They seemed to see on the wall the handwriting that foretold its doom. Their more fiery orators declared that if slavery were hemmed into the states, " like a scorpion girt by fire, it would sting itself to death." This was a most unfortunate simile with which to characterize an institution that they stoutly contended was not only beneficent, but also divine.

They regarded the Republican candidate for the Presidency as the embodiment of all their apprehended woes, and so they poured out upon him without stint their bitterest execrations. In this they were encouraged by the outrageous cartoons of Harper's Weekly. In one of its issues he was depicted in ludicrous, not to say horrible, uncouthness of figure, as drunk in a barroom. The moral turpitude of such a representation was simply unspeakable when we remember that Mr. Lincoln in his boyhood promised his mother that he would never drink intoxicating liquor and had sacredly kept his word. In another issue of the Weekly he was portrayed as frightened by ghosts, his shocky hair standing on end. So, sustained by a widely read Northern journal in their grotesque and monstrous representations of Mr. Lincoln, many of them, not all, emptied upon him a flood of billingsgate. Some in common conversation, others in their political harangues on the stump, called him an idiot, a buffoon, a baboon, the Illinois ape, a gorilla.

But in St. Louis there were from fifty to sixty thousand Germans, and they were almost solidly Republican. During this vituperative presidential canvass they invited Carl Schurz to address them and their fellow citizens, on the burning question of the hour. He was not as widely known then as he afterwards became; still he had already acquired considerable reputation as a political speaker. Moreover, he came to us from a free state, and a host of men in the city were anxious to hear what this German from Wisconsin had to say to them concerning our great national problem. In the evening of the first of August, 1860, he appeared in Verandah HaU. Fully three thousand enthusiastic souls were there to greet him and hear him. He spoke, as was his custom, from manuscript. His subject was, " The Doom of Slavery." With rare lucidity and forcefulness he justly stated the position of slavery and showed that, from its very nature, it could not permit men on its own soil freely to discuss it; nor could it safely permit the slaves to be educated except for servants, lest thereby there might be engendered within them aspirations for freedom incompatible with involuntary servitude; nor could slavery favor the development of domestic industries, since that would build up the free states more rapidly than their own, and so disturb the political equilibrium of the Republic; and for the same reason slavery coxild not consent to be kept out of the territories of the Northwest.

In contrast with this, he stated with equal clearness and cogency the position of free labor. It requires the highest advantages, educational and industrial;.

for all; instead of class privileges it demands privileges that are universal. He showed the utter incompatibility of slavery and free labor.

With unusual incisiveness he now analyzed the platforms of the parties that were then appealing to the people for their suffrages, pouring out his racy satire especially on squatter sovereignty or non-intervention, of which Senator Douglas of Illinois was the champion.

In the latter part of his masterful speech, by the clearest and most trenchant argument, he revealed the egregious folly of attempting to dissolve the Union, and then powerfully appealed to the reason and good sense of the slaveholders, some of whom sat before him, and urged them to abandon their position.

Two short paragraphs will reveal in some measure the spirit with which the orator spoke. He said : " I hear the silly objection that your sense of honor forbids you to desert your cause. Sense of honor! Imagine a futiffe generation standing around the tombstone of the bravest of you, and reading the inscription, 'Here lies a gallant man, who fought and died for the cause — of hiunan slavery.' What will the verdict be? His very progeny will disown him, and exclaim, ' He must have been either a knave or a fool.' There is not one of you who, if he could rise from the dead a century hence, would not gladly exchange his epitaph for that of the meanest of those who were hung at Charlestown."

" I turn to you, Republicans of Missouri. Your countrymen owe you a debt of admiration and gratitude to which my poor voice can give but a feeble expression. You have undertaken the noble task of showing the people of the North that the slaveholding States themselves contain the elements of regeneration, and of demonstrating to the South how that regeneration can be effected. You have inspired the wavering masses with confidence in the practicability of our ideas. To the North you have given encouragement; to the South you have set an example. Let me entreat you not to underrate your noble vocation. Struggle on, brave men! The anxious wishes of millions are hovering around you. Struggle on imtil the banner of emancipation is planted upon the Capitol of your State, and one of the proudest chapters of our history will read: Missouri led the van, and the nation followed." (Immense and long-continued cheering.)

It was a great speech, profoundly philosophical, keen in analysis, virile in argument, brilliant in style, and absolutely and refreshingly fearless. It strengthened feeble knees, stiffened gelatinous backbones, and gave courage to the faint-hearted. Again and again the great throng that listened broke out into rapturous applause. Thinking men were profoundly stirred. The free-soilers who for many months had been battling against fearful odds for the freedom of all, from that hour walked with firmer tread. One could feel in it all the first breath of the coming battle between freedom and slavery.

At last the canvass was over; November came; the ballots were cast and coimted, and, in spite of all the abuse heaped upon him, Mr. Lincoln was triumphantly elected. In the slave State of Missouri, he received more than seventeen thousand votes, almost wholly in St. Louis, Gasconade and Cole counties.^ To me it has always been a genuine joy that it fell to my lot to cast one of those ballots. They were ballots of freedom and progress.