THE BOOMERANG CONVENTION[7]
Missouri could not escape the dreaded, impending conflict. She carried
the elements of it within her own bosom. Union and disunion forces
angrily faced each other throughout all her borders. They jostled each
other in the streets, marts and society of St. Louis. But amid these
strong cross-currents of opinion, she remained securely anchored to the
Union. She was, to be sure, somewhat battered and broken, but was
surprisingly kept from the disaster of disunionism, that overtook most
of her sister slave States. It is my object in this chapter to show that
this great State, probably contrary to the expectation of a majority of
her inhabitants, was early in 1861, through the very machinery devised
to take her out of the Union, kept from that destructive folly.
When a Southern State contemplated seceding from the Union, first of
all, through an act of its legislature, it provided for the creation of
a sovereign Convention. The delegates to this Convention were duly
elected by the people. At the appointed time they assembled, organized
for business, and took up the question of secession, which they had been
chosen to examine and decide. If they passed an ordinance of secession,
it was believed that by such action the relations of the State to the
Union were utterly and irrevocably severed, unless the convention
determined of its own motion, or was required by the legislative act
that called it into being, to submit the ordinance to the people to be
ratified or rejected by their suffrages. For example, in Texas and
Virginia the secession ordinances were ratified by popular vote.
In Missouri the secession Governor, re-enforced by a secession
legislature, early in 1861, began to devise measures to take the State
out of the Union. He followed in the wake of the Cotton States. The
legislature, in full sympathy with him, passed an act which provided for
the calling of a State Convention. In a “Whereas,” which precedes the
sections of this act, it announced in fair words its “opinion,” that
“The condition of public affairs demands that a Convention of the people
be called to take such action as the interest and welfare of the State
may require.” Then the act specifies the time and the conditions of the
election of the members of the contemplated Convention, and specifically
designates the subject that the Convention was expected to consider,
viz.: “The then existing relations between the government of the United
States, the people and governments of the different States, and the
government and people of the State of Missouri, and to adopt such
measures for vindicating the sovereignty of the State, and the
protection of its institutions as shall appear to them to be demanded.”
But this act contained one section of vital importance. It provided that
any act of the Convention, changing or dissolving the political
relations of Missouri “to the government of the United States,” should
not be deemed valid until ratified by a majority of the qualified voters
of the State. However, when this act became a law, neither the Governor
nor the legislature seemed to have the slightest doubt that the people
of the State would ratify by a decided majority an ordinance of
secession; happily, no occasion ever arose for testing that question.
Nor was the confidence entertained by the Governor and the legislature
unfounded. They had every reason to believe that the same voters who had
elected them, when appealed to, would elect a Convention that would
favor their project of secession, and that an ordinance of secession
submitted to them would be triumphantly ratified. But
“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft agley.”
Still, to the secessionists at that time all things betokened certain
success. Their skies looked bright. If there were a threatening cloud as
big as a man’s hand they did not see it.
But too great confidence often leads men to overlook weaknesses in their
most hopeful projects. Those who devised the legislative act providing
for a convention, neglected to put into it any provision for limiting
its continuance or life. It was made a sovereign body, and also the sole
judge as to the time when it should adjourn _sine die_. So, as we shall
see, the Governor and the legislature “builded better than they knew.”
To them the Convention proved to be a boomerang, but to the State a
priceless blessing.
This act was approved by the Governor on the 21st of January. The
election of the members of the Convention took place on the 18th of
February, and the Convention met, according to the provision of the act
by which it was created, at Jefferson City, the capital of the State, on
February 28th, 1861.
But if this Convention was to keep the State from secession as some
began to hope it might, it was unmistakably clear that it should not
continue its deliberations at the capital of the State. Jefferson City
was then a small, and to sojourners in it, a somewhat desolate place.
Since the legislature was in session the Convention could not meet in
its halls, which, for such a body, were the only suitable places of
meeting in the city. Instead of that, the delegates were compelled to
occupy for their deliberations a small, repulsive court-house. No desks
were there provided for them. Moreover, the hotel accommodations were
meagre and unattractive, and, most of all, the libraries and
reading-rooms of the capital were about equivalent to nothing. The
tallow candles and oil lamps which at night gave just enough light in
the houses and on the muddy streets to make darkness visible, were far
more luminous than the intellectual lights of that then cheerless place;
and the light of the legislature then in session was darkness. There was
at that time hardly any considerable town in Missouri more
intellectually stagnant than its capital. Should the Convention carry on
its deliberations there, its members would have few if any facilities
for the investigation of vastly important questions that were certain to
arise, while all the currents of influence that would flow in upon them,
would urge them on to declare for secession. To all this the Union men
of St. Louis, together with a few scattered here and there throughout
the State, were keenly alive. Dr. Linton, a distinguished physician of
our city, and a member of the Convention, said, “When I got to Jefferson
City and heard nothing but the ‘Marseillaise’ and ‘Dixie’ in place of
‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ I felt uneasy enough, and when I heard
Governor Jackson speak I felt badly.... I recollect, with my colleague,
Mr. Broadhead, hearing ‘Dixie’ played on the streets, and that we
stepped up to the leader of the band and asked him to play ‘The
Star-Spangled Banner;’ he said, being a foreigner, ‘Me ’fraid to play
that.’ We assured him that there was no danger, and he played one stanza
of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ but immediately went off into ‘Dixie,’
and of course we went off in disgust.”
The Union men of St. Louis not only saw the danger arising from the
continuance of the Convention in Jefferson City, but they determined if
possible to avert it. Having in secret seriously considered the whole
matter, they cautiously and wisely laid their plan to bring the
Convention to their own city. Since many men in the State were deeply
prejudiced against St. Louis, regarding it as the stronghold of
Free-soilism, it was necessary carefully to conceal the movement that
was being made. If any delegate from St. Louis had openly moved that the
Convention should adjourn to our city, the motion would undoubtedly have
been promptly and decisively voted down. But the delegates from St.
Louis, instead of making an open move, quietly and unobserved found some
delegates from the country to whom they deemed it safe to make their
suggestions, and without any knowledge of it on the part of the
Convention these men were won to their ideas. When, therefore, the
Convention, on the second day of its session, was perfecting its
organization, Mr. Hall of Randolph County,—a strong pro-slavery district
near the centre of the State,—moved that when the Convention adjourned,
it should adjourn to meet “in the Mercantile Library Hall of St. Louis,
on Monday morning next, at 10 o’clock.” The motion met with strong
opposition, but after some discussion it became evident that there was
probably a majority in its favor. Still, the Convention, wishing to act
prudently in a matter of such vital importance, inquired if it were
certainly known that they could occupy the hall mentioned in the motion
of the gentleman from Randolph County? This brought to his feet Judge
Samuel M. Breckinridge, a delegate from St. Louis, who said that at the
request of some members from the country, he had already telegraphed to
St. Louis, and had received an answer that the Convention could occupy
without expense either of the two halls belonging to the Mercantile
Library Association. The undivulged fact was that the Union men of St.
Louis, days before, had arranged to offer to the Convention, without
cost, either of these halls, if by any means that body could be induced
to occupy it. At last, to remove any objection that might arise from
pecuniary considerations, the citizens of our city telegraphed that the
railroad fare of all the members of the Convention had also been
provided for; so, at the close of the second day’s session at Jefferson
City, on March 1st, the Convention, by a decided majority, adjourned to
meet on the following Monday, March 4th, at 10 A. M. in the Mercantile
Library Hall of St. Louis; and by that move the doubt that Missouri
would secede from the Union was greatly strengthened.
On Monday morning, when the Convention met for the first time in its new
quarters, its members found themselves in a beautiful hall, such as some
of them had never before seen. Each member was provided with a desk, and
pages were at hand to do his bidding, all at the expense of the loyal
men of the city. The free use of the Mercantile Library and Reading
Room, with its papers and periodicals from every part of the Union, and
also of the Law Library of the city, was also tendered them. Then, by a
secret prearrangement, in companies of from six to twelve, the members
of the Convention were daily invited by Union men to dine with them;
and, so long as the Convention continued its sessions, in the most
conservative and kindly way, at the tables and in the parlors of the
best and most intelligent men and women of the city, the whole question
of secession in all its phases was thoroughly discussed. By such a
procedure, without arousing antagonism, deep-rooted prejudice began
gradually to give way, and new light, unobserved, penetrated the minds
of the members of this sovereign Convention, and, as one by one the days
passed, the hope of the disloyal that Missouri would secede was
constantly on the wane.
Let us now notice the composition of this sovereign body, in whose hands
was providentially placed the political destiny, not only of Missouri,
but perchance also of the entire Republic. It had ninety-nine members.
Of these, fifty-two were lawyers, seven of whom were judges. These men
by their training were capable of clearly and firmly grasping the
fundamental principles of law and government. Happily more than half of
the Convention was of this class. Twenty-six were farmers, who from
habit of thought were decidedly conservative. Eleven were merchants, who
intuitively discerned the conditions that must be maintained in order to
secure and promote the commercial prosperity of their State. Three were
physicians, one of whom, Dr. Linton, was an exceptionally clear-headed
and brilliant man. There were also one lumber dealer, one bank
commissioner, one civil engineer, one blacksmith, one tanner, one
leather dealer and one circuit clerk. Each of these, by his pursuit, was
fitted to appreciate what was necessary to secure the highest material
interests of the State. The Convention as a whole was in ability quite
above the average, and unmistakably superior both in intellectual and
moral force to the legislature which had called it into being.
Considering the vastly important question which the Convention was
called upon to decide, it is also a matter of great interest to note the
ages of its members. One man, like an elderly maiden, was coy, and
refused to give his age; of the remaining ninety-eight, six were between
twenty-four and thirty; twenty-one were between thirty and forty;
forty-one were between forty and fifty; twenty-four were between fifty
and sixty; and six were between sixty and seventy. Most of these men,
then, were in the maturity and vigor of manhood. Two-thirds of the
Convention, lacking one, were between forty and sixty, old enough to
have gotten rid of crudities of thinking, and the impulsiveness and
rashness of young blood, and yet young enough to be free from the
enfeebling touch of age.
And since they were to deal with the question of secession, the
underlying cause of which was slavery, we should not fail to consider
their nativity, and the influences that surrounded them in early life,
when the deepest and most lasting impressions are made upon men. Thirty
of the ninety-nine delegates to this Convention were born in Kentucky;
twenty-three in Virginia; thirteen in Missouri; nine in Tennessee; three
in North Carolina; three in New York; three in New Hampshire; two in
Maryland; two in Pennsylvania; two in Illinois; one in Alabama; one in
the District of Columbia; one in Ohio; one in New Jersey; one in Maine;
one in Prussia; one in Bremen; one in Austria; and one in Ireland.
Eighty-two were born in the South, including the one from the District
of Columbia, while there were only thirteen born in the North and four
in Europe. When we observe that more than four-fifths of the Convention
had been born and brought up in slave States, we might rationally
conclude from this surface view that Missouri would soon follow her
seven erring sisters, like them secede from the Union, and link her
destiny to the Southern Confederacy.
Beyond question the Convention was almost unanimously pro-slavery. Some
of those born and educated in the North had become sweeping and positive
in their advocacy of slavery. There were none in the Convention who did
not denounce the Abolitionists, and very many of its members condemned
with equal severity the Republican party. All of them, with possibly a
very few exceptions, desired to protect and preserve the system of human
bondage that had unhappily fastened itself upon the nation. But right
here where there was so high a degree of unanimity, strange to say, the
Convention divided. The vexed question with them was, “What will
preserve slavery?” Some of them were in favor of going out of the Union
to preserve it; others with at least equal emphasis and force urged that
in order to preserve it Missouri must remain in the Union. These
delegates pointed to the geographical position of their State; on three
sides of her were free States. If she should secede, she would be
confronted on the east, north and west by a foreign nation and by
hostile territory, which would be an asylum for fugitive slaves. One
speaker declared: “It will make a Canada of every Northern State, and
the North will be a borne from which no slave traveller will return.”
Such men vehemently urged that secession would be the inevitable
destruction of slavery in Missouri. If the State should secede, it would
not be long before she would present to the world the anomaly of a slave
State without a slave. To be sure, the Cotton States withdrew from the
Union in order to preserve slavery; but even if the citizens of Missouri
believed that they had the constitutional right to secede, they could
not follow the example of the Gulf States, for if they did, they would
blot out forever the very institution that they were so earnestly
striving to save. So many in Missouri, and not a few in this Convention,
reasoned.
While, however, the Convention was divided on the question of the
secession of the State, and, during its earlier sessions, how evenly
divided none could tell, nearly all, if not all, of its members were
professed Unionists. The people had elected them as Unionists. It was
loudly proclaimed that Unionism had triumphed at the polls by from forty
to sixty thousand majority. Nearly every man that spoke during the
deliberations of the Convention with great vigor asserted that he was in
favor of maintaining the Union. The Hon. Hamilton R. Gamble, chairman of
the Committee on Federal Relations, in explaining to the Convention the
report of that committee, said: “As far as my acquaintance with the
gentlemen of this Convention extends, I know of no gentlemen who avow,
or insinuate, or in any manner admit, that they entertain any unfriendly
feeling to the Union. You may speak to any member of the Convention you
please in reference to his position about the Union, and he will
proclaim that he is in favor of the Union. How, then, in the
introduction of this question before this body, shall I undertake to
speak in favor of the Union, when there is a unanimity, an entire
unanimity, among all the members upon the very view which I would
endeavor to take and enforce?”
Any one unacquainted with the hair-splitting political doctrines of that
day might have been deceived by this emphatic and universal profession
of Unionism by the members of this sovereign Convention. Calhoun also
frequently made the strongest declarations of his warm attachment to the
Union. But neither he nor they had in mind the actual government formed
by the people of the States under the Constitution, in contradistinction
to the confederation that preceded it, but simply a compact of sovereign
States, which having been voluntarily entered into could by any State be
lawfully terminated at will. Many in this Convention were conscious or
unconscious disciples of Calhoun, and in their speeches advocated his
political heresies. Their effusive professions of devotion to the Union
deceived no one who was at all conversant with our political history.
The Hon. Mr. Gamble, whose words I have quoted in reference to their
“entire unanimity” for the Union, understood them perfectly, and he
expatiated on their professions of devotion to the Union in order to
induce them, if possible, to act in accordance with them, and to vote to
keep Missouri in that Union for which they expressed such fervent love.
On the surface there was unity; beneath the surface, contrariety. Some
of the Convention meant by the Union a centralized, sovereign government
under the Constitution, while others meant a loose compact of sovereign
States.
And if both parties when they spoke of the Union had meant the same
thing, which manifestly they did not, the phrase, “Union man,” would
still have been ambiguous. In the debates of the delegates it came out
clearly that there were two kinds of Union men in the Convention,
conditional and unconditional. Mr. Sheeley of Independence said: “I
admire this Union, and while perhaps I will stick in it as long as any
man in the Convention, who is not an unconditional Union man,” thus
openly announcing himself a conditional Union man. Mr. Vanbuskirk of
Holt County, in an able speech, declared that on the part of some of the
Convention, “the whole matter is brought to this point, that it is Union
upon condition; that is, Union with the ‘buts’ and ‘ifs,’ or ‘under
existing circumstances.’” Of course that kind of Unionism was a mockery.
Only about six months before, the rabid secessionist, Yancey of Alabama,
had proclaimed himself to be a pre-eminent Union man, but declared that
if Abraham Lincoln should be elected to the Presidency, he would favor
immediate secession. That was being a Calhoun Unionist, a Unionist
according to a construction of the Constitution that was utterly at
variance with John Marshall’s interpretation of it. In 1861, in
Missouri, whenever a man said, “I am a Union man in the Constitution,”
we knew for a certainty that his Unionism was conditional, and that he
should probably be classed with the secessionists.
Let us notice the conditions on which the loyalty of these “but” and
“if” Unionists was based. First, they felt themselves to be under no
obligation to sustain the Union unless the Federal government should
guarantee to them their rights. They meant by this, their rights in
slave property. The people of the Northern States must not obstruct by
legislation, or in any other way, the faithful execution of the Fugitive
Slave Law; in fact must aid the Southern slaveholder in recapturing his
fleeing property.
In the second place, they demanded a compromise by which slavery south
of 36° 30′ should be protected in the territories. In demanding no more
than this, many of them thought that they were making very generous
concessions to the North, since they believed that, under the
Constitution, the Southern slaveholder had the undoubted right to go
into any territory of the United States with his human chattels, and
there be protected in both person and slave property.
In the third place, they announced that they would not sustain the
Union, if the general government should attempt to coerce the seceded
States. They declared that they would neither aid their seven erring
sisters in making an attack on the Federal government, nor the Federal
government in coercing the States that had left the Union. This view was
urged by Mr. Howell on the floor of the Convention in a resolution, a
part of which was, “We earnestly remonstrate and protest against any and
all coercive measures, or attempts at coercion of said States into
submission to the general government, whether clothed with the name or
pretext of executing the laws of the Union, or otherwise. And we declare
that in such contingency Missouri will not view the same with
indifference.” This resolution intimated, and it came out clearly in the
ensuing debate, that if the United States should attempt to compel by
force the collection of the national customs in the South, such an act
on the part of the general government would be regarded as coercion.
This is sufficient to reveal the true character of the conditional
Unionists. They affirmed emphatically, “we are in favor of keeping
Missouri in the Union, if the Northern States will guarantee the
execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, protect slavery in the territories
south of 36° 30′, and the general government will not even in the
execution of the Federal laws south of Mason and Dixon’s line use any
force whatever; but if these conditions are not fulfilled, we are in
favor of going out of the Union, and uniting our fortunes with the
Southern Confederacy;” and when the Convention adjourned to St. Louis,
the Unionism of a decided majority of its members was unquestionably of
that conditional type.
Since we have so fully set forth the composition and views of the
Convention, it will be unnecessary to reproduce in detail its
organization and proceedings. The Hon. Sterling Price, afterwards a
Confederate general, was chosen president, and presided over the
deliberations of the Convention with ability and impartiality. The
delegates to the Convention took an oath to sustain the Constitution of
the United States and that of the State of Missouri. A strong Committee
on Federal Relations was appointed, of which Hon. Hamilton R. Gamble, an
unconditional Union man of whom we have already spoken, was chairman.
During the first sittings of the Convention, numerous resolutions in
reference to the attitude that Missouri ought to maintain toward the
Union were introduced and referred to the Committee on Federal
Relations; and while that committee was deliberating, the members of the
Convention occupied the time in making speeches on the general subject
of secession. As each one seemed anxious to declare himself, there was
much speaking. Both extreme and conservative views were freely aired,
and each day evidently added new strength to the position that it would
be unwise for Missouri to sever her relations with the Union.
There was one unique incident that profoundly stirred the whole
Convention. The Convention of the State of Georgia, that passed an
ordinance of secession, sent the Hon. Luther J. Glenn as a commissioner
to present it to the Convention of Missouri and to urge its delegates to
enact a similar ordinance and to join the Southern Confederacy. He
appeared at Jefferson City, during the proceedings of the second day of
the Convention, and his communication from Georgia to the Convention was
read by the Chair.[8] This communication was promptly laid on the table,
but the incident greatly disturbed all genuine Union men, especially
since the commissioner with his secession message had been received with
open arms by the Governor, and in the evening both houses of the
disloyal legislature in joint session had listened to an address from
him with the most manifest marks of sympathy.[9]
At the first day’s session in St. Louis this communication of the
Georgia commissioner was called up, and a motion was made that he be
invited to address the Convention. Thereupon there was hot debate. Hon.
Sample Orr, referring to Mr. Glenn, said: “He is here to-day and called
an ambassador by some, by others a commissioner. If he is an ambassador,
he has missed the right city. He should have gone to Washington. If he
is here as a commissioner from a sister State, then the oath we have
taken forbids that we should have an alliance with any other State in
the Confederacy.” He meant by Confederacy, the United States. Mr. Smith,
a delegate from St. Louis, said: “We did not come here to receive
ambassadors from foreign States.” But finally the Convention deemed it
best on the whole to listen to the gentleman from Georgia, who then
proceeded to tell the very old story of the atrocious conduct of the
Northern abolitionists, and of the equally reprehensible acts of the
Chicago Convention, that nominated Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency;
of the deplorable condition of his State, on account of the protective
tariff, that built up the North and pulled down the South, and that, on
account of these things, which a long-suffering people could no longer
endure, his State had peaceably seceded, and he was commissioned by
Georgia to urge Missouri to follow her example.[10]
Georgia’s Ordinance of Secession and the address of her commissioner
were referred to a special committee, of which the Hon. John B.
Henderson, the author of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of
the United States,[11] was chairman. On the eighteenth day of the
sittings of the Convention, Mr. Henderson, slaveholder though he was,
presented a comprehensive report recommending the rejection of the
prayer from Georgia to secede, presented by Mr. Glenn, and urging the
weightiest and most conclusive reasons against the disruption of the
Union. This report was stronger meat than the Convention was then able
to digest, so after a short, sharp debate it was laid on the table[12]
and was never afterwards taken up. It did not need to be. It had done
its work. The author of it had seized his opportunity to deal a
staggering blow against the secession of Missouri, and the effect of it
could not be neutralized. So what at first was a menace was transmuted
into a blessing.
The Georgia commissioner made a vow that he would never buy a new hat
until Missouri seceded from the Union. In 1900 he was still living. The
silk hat that covered his obfuscated brain when he represented seceded
Georgia before the Convention in St. Louis had been fixed over three
times. He was still proud of it and of the cause that he represented in
1861. Whether he now lives, we do not know. He has died, or will die, in
the faith. He was made of stern stuff. If he has, or when he shall have,
departed to the land where silk hats are not needed, and from which no
one ever secedes, every one who admires pure grit will heartily breathe
the prayer, _Requiescat in pace_.
We return now from this peculiar and important transaction, unexpectedly
thrust upon the attention of the Convention from without, to notice
that, by the time it had fairly begun its work in St. Louis, the
secession legislature which had created it, repented of what it had
unwittingly wisely done, and began to agitate the question whether it
had the power to repeal the ordinance that called the Convention into
being, and thus permanently dissolve it. They saw of course that the
Convention was not of their way of thinking. They refused to vote the
necessary means for the publication of its proceedings. Mr. Foster of
the Convention said in debate, “Although the legislature of Missouri
called this body into existence, yet, sir, its complexion so very
materially differs from the complexion of the legislative body, that, if
they had the power, in my judgment, they would crush us out of existence
to-day.” To the Union men of St. Louis and the State this growing
antagonism of the two law-making bodies was a cheering symptom. The
legislature, however, soon learned from its legal advisers that it could
not efface the wisdom into which it had blindly blundered; that the
chicken which it had so fondly hatched and fostered into maturity could
not be put back into the shell again; that, in short, there was no
political power in Missouri superior to the sovereign Convention which
it had evoked into being, and which was now calmly and wisely
deliberating in the great commercial city of the State.
All parties were finally convinced that though the legislature had
created the Convention, it could not destroy it. So the work of this
sovereign body moved on undisturbed. On the eighth day of its sittings
the Committee on Federal Relations reported through its chairman. In
their report the Committee, with but partial success, detailed the
political events which led to the secession of the Cotton States, and
had raised the question of secession in the remaining slave States. But
they presented with cumulative force many cogent reasons why Missouri
should not follow her erring sisters in seceding from the Union, and
finally crystallized their recommendations on the whole subject of
secession in seven resolutions, the first and chief of which was, “That
at present there is no adequate cause to impel Missouri to dissolve her
connection with the Federal Union.” This resolution seems to us now tame
and timid. But a more sweeping and positive resolution could not have
been carried through the Convention. Its very weakness was its strength.
Its apparent obeisance to the doctrine of secession made it acceptable
to many conditional Union men. When the loyal men of St. Louis heard it,
they were lifted up with hope.
However the Committee was not unanimous. On the next day some
conditional Union men on the Committee presented a minority report. Then
numerous amendments were offered, and for eight days longer the debate
went on, more earnest and vigorous than ever, but each day it was
evident that the more positive secession sentiment was slowly vanishing,
so that when on the sixteenth day of the Convention, the vote was taken
on the resolution quoted above, while nine members of the Convention
were absent, all present but one voted for it. George Y. Bast, a farmer
from Rhineland, Montgomery County, has the unenviable distinction of
being the minority of one that voted for the secession of Missouri. The
other resolutions of the Committee, with varying majorities, were also
adopted.
On the 22d of March the Convention adjourned to meet on the third Monday
in December following; but it also appointed a committee of seven, one
from each congressional district, to whom the power was delegated to
call the Convention together before the third Monday in December, if, in
their judgment, the public exigencies demanded it.
The reasons urged by the Convention against the secession of Missouri as
we gather them from its reported proceedings, briefly stated, were
these:
First: the geographical position of Missouri. She was so far north that
her climate was better adapted to the white man than to the black.
Moreover, she was shut in on three sides by free States, into which, if
she seceded from the Union, her slaves would flee and from which they
could not be brought back.
Second: she had other, and far greater interests than her slaves. They
numbered only one hundred and twelve thousand, while she had within her
borders more than one million, one hundred thousand white men. During
the then preceding decade her slaves had increased twenty-five per cent;
while her white population had increased one hundred per cent. The
taxable value of her slaves was only forty-five million dollars, while
that of her other property was three hundred and fifteen million
dollars. Most of her slaves were engaged in raising tobacco and hemp,
while her white population, which, through immigration, was rapidly
increasing, was developing her mining, manufacturing, and commercial
interests. The members of her sovereign Convention, from whose brains
the cobwebs had at last been swept, and whose vision had become clear,
saw that the immigration of free white men to Missouri would nearly, if
not wholly, cease, if the State by secession should be placed under the
political domination of the Confederacy, whose corner-stone had been
declared by its brilliant Vice-President to be African slavery.
Third: timid men were everywhere crying out for compromise. And most of
the members of the Convention still hugged the delusion that the
political antagonisms, which were then shaking the nation to its
foundations, and had already severed seven States from the Union, might
be overcome by compromise. To inaugurate measures by which such
compromise might be effected some advocated a convention of the border
slave States; others of the border slave and border free States; and
still others of all the States, and, so long as they cherished hope of
such a peaceful adjustment of difficulties, they thought it inexpedient
for Missouri to secede.
Fourth: most of the Convention believed that the seven States which had
already seceded had been carried out of the Union by ambitious
politicians; that the people had not been permitted fairly and fully to
discuss the question of secession, and freely to cast their ballots for
or against it. During the deliberations of the Convention extreme
Southern politicians, like Yancey of Alabama, were roundly and bitterly
denounced. Moreover, the State pride of the Missourians had been deeply
stung by the seceded States. Those States, they affirmed, had rudely
snapped the tie which bound them to the Union, without any consultation
with the border slave States, and then after they were out of the Union
and had gone so far as to set up a Southern Confederacy, they
complacently turned around and invited the States whose counsels they
had ignored to join them. Missouri felt that she should have been
consulted before secession was enacted, and some strong pro-slavery
members of the Convention declared in unmistakable terms that they were
utterly opposed to following the cotton lords of the South Atlantic and
Gulf States. Thus the precipitancy of the hot-headed Southern
politicians became no inconsiderable element of the force which kept
Missouri in the Union.
But there is reason for grave doubt if even all these considerations
combined would have led to this result, if the Convention had continued
its deliberations at Jefferson City. It was well known that the object
of the Governor and the legislature in creating the Convention was to
secure the secession of the State. Had it continued its sittings at the
State capital, the influences by which it would have been surrounded
would probably have incited its members to enact an ordinance of
secession. But the adjournment to St. Louis at once awakened a
reasonable hope of a better outcome. The delegates were now surrounded
by an entirely different atmosphere. They met in that city the highest
intelligence and the staunchest loyalty in the State. They were mightily
impressed with the fact that scores of men there who had formerly been
slaveholders in the South were unflinchingly loyal to the old flag.
Gradually they came to see that secession antagonized all the
commercial, educational, and moral interests of the State; that it was,
in short, a suicidal policy. As they deliberated day by day, even those
who had been the warmest advocates of such a policy began to waver.
Every day their vision grew clearer and truer. Even the president of the
Convention, who so soon afterwards became a commander of Confederate
troops, for the nonce, seemed to be a genuine Union man, and when the
vote was taken on the question of secession, as we have already noted,
only one man could be found in the entire Convention, who had the
hardihood to vote against the resolution, that it was not just then
expedient for Missouri to secede from the Union.
The victory was won. It was a momentous victory. Who won it? A little
band of intrepid Union men, men of whom, with perhaps two exceptions,
the nation at large knew little or nothing. They had come together in
St. Louis from every part of the Republic and from foreign countries.
That city was their adopted home. They had largely laid aside the
prejudices that they brought with them from their former places of
abode. Their contact with each other had made them larger, grander men.
Upon them unexpectedly a day of darkness had fallen. Dangers thickened
around them, but the very perils which beset them united their hearts in
unswerving, burning loyalty to the Union. At last the only hope of
keeping their State in the Union was the sovereign Convention called
into being for the very purpose of taking it out of the Union. So,
before God, they firmly resolved to use as well as they could the
unpropitious instrument made ready to their hand. They could not
directly control the deliberations and votes of the Convention.
Forbidding as the prospect seemed to be, there was hope, however, if
this sovereign body could be induced to carry on its deliberations in
their adopted city. They must invite the Convention to do this. Not
openly; such publicity would utterly defeat their purpose. They must
work in secret. Fortunately some of their own number were members of the
Convention. They were good men and wise and true. They did their
delicate work with skill. The Convention, apparently self-moved, came to
St. Louis. It deliberated there. Missouri stayed in the Union.
What was the significance of this outcome to the nation at large? It had
a mighty influence in keeping Kentucky, West Virginia, Delaware and
Maryland in the Union. It cheered and strengthened our wise,
conservative, patriotic President, whose manifold perplexities and vast
responsibilities pressed upon him like the superincumbent weight of a
mountain. It put into the Union army more than one hundred and nine
thousand men, of whom more than eight thousand were colored,[13] besides
the Home Guards in every considerable town of the State. It is probable,
however, that part of this number, even if the State had seceded, would
have found its place in the Union ranks; but the doctrine of State
rights was so dominant that probably at least seventy-five thousand of
that number would have followed the State and helped fight the battles
of the Southern Confederacy. It is quite possible that this great
military force added to the Federal army really decided the conflict in
favor of the Union; and that when some future historian impartially
surveys the whole field, he may be constrained to affirm that a band of
patriotic men, most of them unknown to fame, in a border city, on the
western bank of the Mississippi River, confronted with apparently
insurmountable obstacles, by prudent, decisive action, not only saved
their State from the madness of secession, but the whole Union from
irretrievable disruption.
[Illustration:
THE ARSENAL, ST. LOUIS, IN 1866.
[_Page 63_
]