Part 1 (1/2)
The Struggle for Missouri.
by John McElroy.
CHAPTER I. A SALIENT BASTION FOR THE SLAVERY EMPIRE.
Whatever else may be said of Southern statesmen, of the elder school, they certainly had an imperial breadth of view. They took in the whole continent in a way that their Northern colleagues were slow in doing. It cannot be said just when they began to plan for a separate Government which would have Slavery as its cornerstone, would dominate the Continent and ultimately absorb Cuba, Mexico and Central America as far as the Isthmus of Panama.
Undoubtedly it was in the minds of a large number of them from the organization of the Government, which they regarded as merely a temporary expedient-an alliance with the Northern States until the South was strong enough to ”a.s.sume among the Powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's G.o.d ent.i.tle them.”
{4} They achieved a great strategic victory when in 1818 they drew the boundaries of the State of Missouri.
The Ordinance of 1787 dedicated to Freedom all of the immense territory which became the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The wonderful growth of these in population, wealth and political influence alarmed the Slave Power-keenly sensitive, as bad causes always are, to anything which may possibly threaten,-and it proceeded to erect in the State of Missouri a strong barrier to the forward march of the Free Soil idea.
When the time for the separation came, the Northern fragment of the Republic would find itself almost cut in two by the northward projection of Virginia to within 100 miles of Lake Erie. It would be again nearly cut in two by the projection of the northeast corner of Missouri to within 200 miles of Lake Michigan.
In those days substantially all travel and commerce was along the lines of the rivers. For the country between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi the Ohio River was the great artery. Into it empty the Alleghany, Monongahela, Muskingum, the Kanawhas, Big Sandy, Scioto, the Miamis, Licking, Kentucky, Green, Wabash, c.u.mberland and Tennessee Rivers, each draining great valleys, and bringing with its volume of waters a proportionate quota of travel and commerce. The Illinois River also entered the Mississippi from the east with the commerce of a great and fruitful region.
{5} West of the Mississippi the mighty Missouri was the almost sole highway for thousands of miles.
The State was made unusually large-68,735 square miles, where the previous rule for States had been about 40,000 square miles-stretching it so as to cover the mouths of the Ohio and the Illinois, and to lie on both sides of the great Missouri for 200 miles. A glance at the map will show how complete this maneuver seemed to be. Iowa and Minnesota were then unbroken and unvisited stretches of prairie and forest, railroads were only dreamed of by mechanical visionaries, and no man in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky or Tennessee could send a load of produce to market without Missouri's permission; he could make no considerable journey without traversing her highways, while all of the imperial area west of the Mississippi was made, it seemed, forever distinctly tributary to her.
New Orleans was then the sole mart of the West, for the Erie Ca.n.a.l had not been dug to convert the Great, Lakes into a colossal commercial highway.
Out of a country possessing the unusual combination of surpa.s.sing agricultural fertility with the most extraordinary mineral wealth they carved a State larger in area than England and Wales and more than one-fourth the size of France or Germany.
All ordinary calculations as to the development of such a favored region would make of it a barrier which would effectively stay the propulsive waves of Free Soilism.
{6} So far as man's schemes could go there would never be an acre of free soil west of Illinois.
The Anti-Slavery men were keenly alive to this strategic advantage of their opponents. Though the opposition to Slavery might be said to be yet in the gristle, the men hostile to the inst.i.tution were found in all parties, and were beginning to divide from its more ardent supporters.
Under the ban of public opinion Slavery was either dead or legally dying in all the older States north of Mason and Dixon's line. In the kingly stretch of territory lying north of the Ohio and between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi there was no taint of the foot of a slave, and the settlers there wanted to ”set the bounds of Freedom wider yet.”
The Anti-Slavery men everywhere, and at that time there were very many in the Southern States, protested vigorously against the admission of Missouri into the Union as a Slave State, and the controversy soon became so violent as to convulse the Nation. In 1818, when the bill for the admission of Missouri was being considered by the House of Representatives, Gen. James Tallmadge, of New York, introduced the following amendment: And provided, That the introduction of slavery, or involuntary servitude, be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party has been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be declared free at the age of 25 years.
{7} This was adopted by practically all the votes from the Free States, with a few from the Border States, which const.i.tuted a majority in the House. But the Senate, in which the Slave States had a majority, rejected the amendment, and the struggle began which was only ended two years later by the adoption of the famous Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a Slave State, but prohibited for the future any ”Slavery or involuntary servitude” outside the limits of that State north of 36 degrees 30 minutes.
As in all compromises, this was unsatisfactory to the earnest men on both sides of the dispute.
The Anti-Slavery men, who claimed that Freedom was National and Slavery local, were incensed that such an enormous area as that south of 36 degrees 30 minutes had been taken from Freedom by the implication that it was reserved for Slavery.
The Pro-Slavery men, on the other hand, who had shrewdly made Slavery extension appear one of the fundamental and cherished rights of the South, set up the clamorous protest, which never ceased till Appomattox, that the denial of the privilege of taking property in Slaves to any part of the National domain won by the arms or purchased by the money of the whole country, was a violation of the compact entered into at the formation of the Government, guaranteeing to the citizens of all the States the same rights and privileges.
They also complained that under this arrangement the Free-Soilers gained control of 1,238,025 square miles of the Nation's territory, while Slavery only had 609,023 square miles, or less than half so much. This complaint, which seemed so forceful to the Pro-Slaveryites, appeared as rank impudence to their opponents, since it placed Slavery on the same plane with Freedom.
{8} The great State, however, did not flourish in accordance with the expectations based upon its climate, natural resources and central position. The tide of immigration paused before her borders, or swept around under colder skies to Iowa and Minnesota, or to the remote prairies of Kansas and Nebraska. Careless as the average home-seeker might seem as to moral and social questions so long as he found fertile land at cheap prices, yet he appeared reluctant to raise his humble cabin on soil that had the least taint of Slavery. In spite of her long frontage on the two greatest rivers of the continent, and which were its main highways; in spite of skies and soils and rippling streams unsurpa.s.sed on earth; in spite of having within her borders the great and growing city of St. Louis, the Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley, Missouri in 1860, after 40 years of Statehood, had only 1,182,012 people, against 1,711,951 in Illinois, 1,350,428 in Indiana, 674,913 in Iowa, 172,023 in Minnesota, 2,329,511 in Ohio, 749,113 in Michigan, 775,881 in Wisconsin, with nearly 150,000 in Kansas and Nebraska.
More than a million settlers who had crossed the Mississippi within a few years had shunned her contaminated borders for the free air of otherwise less attractive localities.
Nor had the Slaveholders gone into the country in the numbers that were expected. Less than 20,000 had settled there, which was a small showing against nearly 40,000 in Kentucky and 55,000 in Virginia. All these had conspicuously small holdings. Nearly one-third of them owned but one slave, and considerably more than one-half had less than five. Only one man had taken as many as 200 slaves into the State.
{9} The Census of 1860 showed Missouri to rank eleventh among the Slave States, according to the following table of the number of slaves in each: 1. Virginia.........490,865 10. Texas..........182,566
2. Georgia.........462,198 11. Missouri.......114,931
3. Mississippi.....436,631 12. Arkansas.......111,114
4. Alabama.........435,080 13. Maryland....... 87,189
5. South Carolina..402,406 14. Florida.........61,745
6. Louisiana.......331,726 15. Delaware....... 1,798
7. North Carolina...331,059 16. New Jersey...... 18
8. Tennessee.......275,719 17. Nebraska....... 15
9. Kentucky........225,483 18. Kansas......... 2 There were 3,185 slaves in the District of Columbia and 29 in the Territory of Utah, with all the rest of the country absolutely free.
The immigrant Slaveowners promptly planted themselves where they could command the great highway of the Missouri River, taking up broad tracts of the fertile lands on both sides of the stream. The Census of 1860 showed that of the 114,965 slaves held in the State, 50,280 were in the 12 Counties along the Missouri: Boone........... ....5,034 Jackson..............3,944
Calloway.............4,257 Lafayette............6,357
Chariton.............2,837 Pike.................4,056
Clay.................3,456 Platte...............3,313