Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 by Various

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[Transcriber's note: All footnotes moved to end of document.]

THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

* * * * *

VOL. I.--APRIL, 1862.--No. IV.

* * * * *

THE WAR BETWEEN FREEDOM AND SLAVERY IN MISSOURI.

It is admitted that no man can write the history of his own times with
such fullness and impartiality as shall entitle his record to the
unquestioning credence and acceptance of posterity. Men are necessarily
actors in the scenes amid which they live. If not personally taking an
active part in the conduct of public affairs, they have friends who are,
and in whose success or failure their own welfare is in some way bound
up. The bias which interest always gives will necessarily attach to
their judgment of current events, and the leading actors by whom these
events are controlled. Cotemporaneous history, for this reason, will
always be found partisan history--not entitled to, and, if intelligently
and honestly written, not exacting, the implicit faith of those who
shall come after; but simply establishing that certain classes of
people, of whom the writer was one, acted under the conviction that they
owed certain duties to themselves and their country. It will be for the
future compiler of the world's history, who shall see the end of present
struggles, to determine the justice of the causes of controversy, and
the wisdom and honesty of the parties that acted adversely. To such
after judgment, with a full knowledge of present reproach as a partisan,
the writer of this article commends the brief sketch he will present of
the beginning and military treatment of the great Rebellion in the State
of Missouri. He will not attempt to make an episode of any part of this
history, because of the supposed vigor or brilliancy of the martial
deeds occurring in the time. Least of all would he take the 'Hundred
Days,' which another pen has chosen for special distinction, as
representing the period of heroism in that war-trampled State. Any
'hundred days' of the rebellion in Missouri have had their corresponding
_nights_; and no one can be bold enough yet to say that the day of
permanent triumph has dawned. Humiliation has alternated with success so
far; and the most stunning defeats of the war in the West marked the
beginning and the close of the hundred days named for honor. This fact
should teach modesty and caution. For while justice to men requires us
to admit that the greatest abilities do not always command success,
devotion to principle forbids that a noble cause should be obscured to
become the mere background of a scene in which an actor and popular idol
is the chief figure. It is with a consciousness of such partialities as
are common to men, but with an honest purpose, so far as the writer is
able, to subordinate men to principles, that this review of the origin
and chief incidents of the rebellion in Missouri is begun.

The close connection of the State of Missouri with the slavery agitation
that has now ripened into a rebellion against the government of the
United States, is a singular historical fact. The admission of the State
into the Union was the occasion of vitalizing the question of slavery
extension and fixing it as a permanent element in the politics of the
country. It has continued to be the theatre on which the most important
conflicts growing out of slavery extension have been decided. It will be
the first, in the hope and belief of millions, to throw off the fetters
of an obsolete institution, so long cramping its social and political
advancement, and to set an example to its sister slave-holding States of
the superior strength, beauty, and glory of Freedom.

The pro-slavery doctrines of John C. Calhoun, after having pervaded the
democracy of all the other slave-holding States, and obtained complete
possession of the national executive, legislative and judicial
departments, finally, in 1844, appeared also in the State of Missouri.
But it was in so minute and subtle a form as not to seem a sensible
heresy. Thomas H. Benton, the illustrious senator of the Jackson era,
was then, as he had been for twenty-four years, the political autocrat
of Missouri. He had long been convinced of the latent treason of the
Calhoun school of politicians. He was able to combat the schemes of the
Southern oligarchy composing and controlling the Cabinet of President
Polk; unsuccessfully, it is true, yet with but slight diminution of his
popularity at home. Nevertheless, the seeds of disunion had been borne
to his State; they had taken root; and, like all evil in life, they
proved self-perpetuating and ineradicable. In 1849 the Mexican war,
begun in the interest of the disunionists, had been closed. A vast
accession of territory had accrued to the Union. It was the plan and
purpose of the disunion party to appropriate and occupy this territory;
to organize it in their interests; and, finally, to admit it into the
Union as States, to add to their political power, and prepare for that
struggle between the principle of freedom and the principle of slavery
in the government, which Mr. Calhoun had taught was inevitable. But the
hostility of Benton in the Senate was dreaded by the Southern leaders
thus early conspiring against the integrity of the Union. The Missouri
senator seemed, of all cotemporaneous statesmen, to be the only one that
fully comprehended the incipient treason. His earnest opposition assumed
at times the phases of _monomania_. He sought to crush it in the egg. He
lifted his warning voice on all occasions. He inveighed bitterly against
the 'Nullifiers,' as he invariably characterized the Calhoun
politicians, declaring that their purpose was to destroy the Union. It
became necessary, therefore, before attempting to dispose of the
territories acquired from Mexico, to silence Benton, or remove him from
the Senate. Accordingly, when the legislature of Missouri met in 1849, a
series of resolutions was introduced, declaring that all territory
derived by the United States, in the treaty with Mexico, should be open
to settlement by the citizens of all the States in common; that the
question of allowing or prohibiting slavery in any territory could only
be decided by the people resident in the territory, and then only when
they came to organize themselves into a State government; and, lastly,
that if the general government should attempt to establish a rule other
than this for the settlement of the territories, the State of Missouri
would stand pledged to her sister Southern States to co-operate in
whatever measures of resistance or redress _they_ might deem necessary.
The resolutions distinctly abdicated all right of judgment on the part
of Missouri, and committed the State to a blind support of Southern
'Nullification' in a possible contingency. They were in flagrant
opposition to the life-long principles and daily vehement utterances of
Benton--as they were intended to be. Nevertheless, they were adopted;
and the senators of Missouri were instructed to conform their public
action to them. These resolutions were introduced by one Claiborne F.
Jackson, a member of the House of Representatives from the County of
Howard, one of the most democratic and largest slave-holding counties in
the State. The resolutions took the name of their mover, and are known
in the political history of Missouri as the 'Jackson resolutions.' And
Claiborne F. Jackson, who thus took the initiative in foisting treason
upon the statute-books of Missouri, is, to-day, by curious coincidence,
the official head of that State nominally in open revolt. But Jackson,
it was early ascertained, was not entitled to the doubtful honor of the
paternity of these resolutions. They had been matured in a private
chamber of the Capitol at Jefferson City, by two or three conspirators,
who received, it was asserted by Benton, and finally came to be
believed, the first draft of the resolutions from Washington, where the
disunion cabal, armed with federal power, had its headquarters.

Thus the bolt was launched at the Missouri senator, who, from his
prestige of Jacksonism, his robust patriotism, his indomitable will, and
his great abilities, was regarded as the most formidable if not the only
enemy standing in the way of meditated treason. It was not doubted that
the blow would be fatal. Benton was in one sense the father of the
doctrine of legislative instructions. In his persistent and famous
efforts to 'expunge' the resolutions of censure on Gen. Jackson that had
been placed in the Senate journal, Benton had found it necessary to
revolutionize the sentiments or change the composition of the Senate.
Whigs were representing democratic States, and Democrats refused to vote
for a resolution expunging any part of the record of the Senate's
proceedings. To meet and overcome this resistance, Benton introduced the
dogma that a senator was bound to obey the instructions of the
legislature of his State. He succeeded, by his great influence in his
party, and by the aid of the democratic administration, in having the
dogma adopted, and it became an accepted rule in the democratic party.
Resolutions were now invoked and obtained from State legislatures
instructing their senators to vote for the 'Expunging Resolutions,' or
resign. Some obeyed; some resigned. Benton carried his point; but it was
at the sacrifice of the spirit of that part of the Constitution which
gave to United States senators a term of six years, for the purpose of
protecting the Senate from frequent fluctuations of popular feeling, and
securing steadiness in legislation. Benton was the apostle of this
unwise and destructive innovation upon the constitutional tenure of
senators. He was doomed to be a conspicuous victim of his own error.
When the 'Jackson resolutions' were passed by the legislature of
Missouri, instructing Benton to endorse measures that led to
nullification and disunion, he saw the dilemma in which he was placed,
and did the best he could to extricate himself. He presented the
resolutions from his seat in the Senate; denounced their treasonable
character, and declared his purpose to appeal from the legislature to
the people of Missouri.

On the adjournment of Congress, Benton returned to Missouri and
commenced a canvass in vindication of his own cause, and in opposition
to the democratic majority of the legislature that passed the Jackson
resolutions, which has had few if any parallels in the history of the
government for heat and bitterness. The senator did not return to argue
and convert, but to fulminate and destroy. He appointed times and places
for public speaking in the most populous counties of the State, and
where the opposition to him had grown boldest. He allowed no 'division
of time' to opponents wishing to controvert the positions assumed in his
speeches. On the contrary, he treated every interruption, whether for
inquiry or retort, on the part of any one opposed to him, as an insult,
and proceeded to pour upon the head of the offender a torrent of
denunciation and abuse, unmeasured and appalling. The extraordinary
course adopted by Benton in urging his 'appeal,' excited astonishment
and indignation among the democratic partisans that had, in many cases,
thoughtlessly become arrayed against him.[A] They might have yielded to
expostulation; they were stung to resentment by unsparing vilification.
The rumor of Benton's manner preceded him through the State, after the
first signal manifestations of his ruthless spirit; and he was warned
not to appear at some of the appointments he had made, else his life
would pay the forfeit of his personal assaults. These threats only made
the Missouri lion more fierce and untamable. He filled all his
appointments, bearing everywhere the same front, often surrounded by
enraged enemies armed and thirsting for his blood, but ever denunciatory
and defiant, and returned to St. Louis, still boiling with inexhaustible
choler, to await the judgment of the State upon his appeal. He failed.
The pro-slavery sentiment of the people had been too thoroughly evoked
in the controversy, and too many valuable party leaders had been
needlessly driven from his support by unsparing invective. An artful and
apparently honest appeal to the right of legislative instructions,--an
enlargement of popular rights which Benton himself had conferred upon
them,--and--the unfailing weapon of Southern demagogues against their
opponents--the charge that Benton had joined the 'Abolitionists,' and
was seeking to betray 'the rights of the South,' worked the overthrow of
the hitherto invincible senator. The Whigs of Missouri, though agreeing
mainly with Benton in the principles involved in this contest, had
received nothing at his hands, throughout his long career, but defeat
and total exclusion from all offices and honors, State and National.
This class of politicians were too glad of the prospective division of
his party and the downfall of his power, to be willing to re-assert
their principles through a support of Benton. The loyal Union sentiments
of the State in this way failed to be united, and a majority was elected
to the legislature opposed to Benton. He was defeated of a re-election
to the Senate by Henry S. Geyer, a pro-slavery Whig, and supporter of
the Jackson resolutions, after having filled a seat in that august body
for a longer time consecutively than any other senator ever did. Thus
was removed from the halls of Congress the most sagacious and formidable
enemy that the disunion propagandists ever encountered. Their career in
Congress and in the control of the federal government was thenceforth
unchecked. The cords of loyalty in Missouri were snapped in Benton's
fall, and that State swung off into the strongly-sweeping current of
secessionism. The city of St. Louis remained firm a while, and returned
Benton twice to the House; but his energies were exhausted now in
defensive war; and the truculent and triumphant slave power dominating,
the State at last succeeded, through the coercion of commercial
interests, in defeating him even in the citadel of loyalty. He tried
once more to breast the tide that had borne down his fortunes. He became
a candidate for governor in 1856; but, though he disclaimed anti-slavery
sentiments, and supported James Buchanan for President against Fremont,
his son-in-law, he was defeated by Trusten Polk, who soon passed from
the gubernatorial chair to Benton's seat in the United States Senate,
from which he was, in course of time, to be expelled. Benton retired to
private life, only to labor more assiduously in compiling historical
evidences against the fast ripening treason of the times.

The Missouri senator was no longer in the way of the Southern oligarchs.
A shaft feathered by his own hands--the doctrine of instructions--had
slain him.

But yet another obstacle remained. The Missouri Compromise lifted a
barrier to the expansion of the Calhoun idea of free government, having
African slavery for its corner-stone. This obstacle was to be removed.
Missouri furnished the prompter and agent of that wrong in David E.
Atchison, for many years Benton's colleague in the Senate. Atchison was
a man of only moderate talents, of dogged purpose, willful, wholly
unscrupulous in the employment of the influences of his position, and
devoid of all the attributes and qualifications of statesmanship. He was
a fit representative of the pro-slavery fanaticism of his State; had
lived near the Kansas line; had looked upon and coveted the fair lands
of that free territory, and resolved that they should be the home and
appanage of slavery. It is now a part of admitted history, that this
dull but determined Missouri senator approached Judge Douglas, then
chairman of the Committee on Territories, and, by some incomprehensible
influence, induced that distinguished senator to commit the flagrant and
terrible blunder of reporting the Kansas-Nebraska bill, with a clause
repealing the Missouri Compromise, and thus throwing open Kansas to the
occupation of slavery. That error was grievously atoned for in the
subsequent hard fate of Judge Douglas, who was cast off and destroyed by
the cruel men he had served. Among the humiliations that preceded the
close of this political tragedy, none could have been more pungent to
Judge Douglas than the fact that Atchison, in a drunken harangue from
the tail of a cart in Western Missouri, surrounded by a mob of 'border
ruffians' rallying for fresh wrongs upon the free settlers of Kansas,
recited, in coarse glee and brutal triumph, the incidents of his
interview with the senator of Illinois, when, with mixed cajolery and
threats, he partly tempted, partly drove him to his ruin. The
Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed. What part Atchison took, what part
Missouri took, under the direction of the pro-slavery leaders that
filled every department of the State government, the 'border-ruffian'
forays, the pillage of the government arsenal at Liberty, the embargo of
the Missouri river, and the robbing and mobbing of peaceful emigrants
from the free States, the violence at the polls, and the fraudulent
voting that corrupted all the franchises of that afflicted territory, do
sufficiently attest. It is not needed to rehearse any of this painful
and well-known history.

The Territory of Kansas was saved to its prescriptive freedom. The
slavery propagandists sullenly withdrew and gave up the contest. The
last days of the dynasty that had meditated the conquest of the
continent to slave-holding government were evidently at hand. The result
of the struggle in Kansas had reversed the relation of the contesting
powers. The oligarchs, who had always before been aggressive, and
intended to subordinate the Union to slavery, or destroy it, found
themselves suddenly thrown on the defensive; and, with the quick
intelligence of a property interest, and the keen jealousy of class and
caste which their slave-holding had implanted, they saw that they were
engaged in an unequal struggle, that their sceptre was broken, and that,
if they continued to rule, it would have to be over the homogeneous half
of a dismembered Union. From this moment a severance of the Slave
States from the Free was resolved on, and every agency that could
operate on governments, State and National, was set to work. It was not
by accident that Virginia had procured the nomination of the facile
Buchanan for President in the Baltimore Convention of 1856; it was not
by accident that Floyd was made Secretary of War, or that, many months
before any outbreak of rebellion, this arch traitor had well-nigh
stripped the Northern arsenals of arms, and placed them where they would
be 'handy' for insurgents to seize. It was not by accident that John C.
Breckenridge headed the factionists that willfully divided and defeated
the National Democracy, that perchance could have elected Judge Douglas
President; nor was it by accident that Beriah Magoffin, a vain, weak
man, the creature, adjunct, and echo of Breckenridge, filled the office
of governor of Kentucky, nominated thereto by Breckenridge's personal
intercession. And lastly, to return to the special theatre of this
sketch, it was not by accident that Claiborne F. Jackson, the original
mover for Benton's destruction, was at this remarkable juncture found
occupying the governor's chair, with Thomas C. Reynolds for his
lieutenant governor, a native of South Carolina, an acknowledged
missionary of the nullification faith to a State that required to be
corrupted, and that he had, during his residence, zealously endeavored
to corrupt.

We have now reached the turning point in the history of Missouri. The
State is about to be plunged into the whirlpool of civil war.
Undisguised disunionists are in complete possession of the State
government, and the population is supposed to be ripe for revolt. Only
one spot in it, and that the city of St. Louis, is regarded as having
the slightest sympathy with the political sentiments of the Free States
of the Union. The State is surely counted for the 'South' in the
division that impends, for where is the heart in St. Louis bold enough,
or the hand strong enough, to resist the swelling tide of pro-slavery
fanaticism that was about to engulf the State? Years ago, when it was
but a ripple on the surface, it had overborne Benton, with all his fame
of thirty years' growth. What leader of slighter mold and lesser fame
could now resist the coming shock? In tracing the origin and growth of
rebellion in Missouri, it is interesting to gather up all the threads
that link the present with the past. It will preserve the unity of the
plot, and give effect to the last acts of the drama.

The first visible seam or cleft in the National Democratic party
occurred during the administration of President Polk, in the years
1844-48. Calhoun appeared as Polk's Secretary of State. Thomas Ritchie
was transferred from Richmond, Va., to Washington, to edit the
government organ, in place of Francis P. Blair, Sr. The Jackson _regime_
of unconditional and uncompromising devotion to the 'Federal Union' was
displaced, and the dubious doctrine of 'States' Rights' was formally
inaugurated as the chart by which in future the national government was
to be administered. But the Jackson element was not reconciled to this
radical change in the structure and purpose of the National Democratic
organization; and, although party lines were so tensely drawn that to go
against 'the Administration' was political treason, and secured
irrevocable banishment from power, the close of Polk's administration
found many old Democrats of the Jackson era ready for the sacrifice. The
firm resolve of these men was manifested when, after the nomination of
Gen. Cass, in 1848, in the usual form, at Baltimore, by the Democratic
National Convention, they assembled at Buffalo and presented a counter
ticket, headed by the name of Martin Van Buren, who had been thrust
aside four years previously by the Southern oligarchs to make way for
James K. Polk. The entire artillery of the Democratic party opened on
the Buffalo schismatics. They were stigmatized by such opprobrious
nicknames and epithets as 'Barnburners, 'Free Soilers,'
'Abolitionists,' and instantly and forever ex-communicated from the
Democratic party. In Missouri alone, of all the Slave States, was any
stand made in behalf of the Buffalo ticket. Benton's sympathies had been
with Van Buren, his old friend of the Jackson times; and Francis P.
Blair, Sr., of the _Globe_, had two sons, Montgomery Blair and Francis
P. Blair, Jr., resident in St. Louis. These two, with about a hundred
other young men of equal enthusiasm, organized themselves together,
accepted the 'Buffalo platform' as their future rule of faith, issued an
address to the people of Missouri, openly espousing and advocating free
soil-principles; and, by subscription among themselves, published a
campaign paper, styled the _Barnburner_, during the canvass. The result
at the polls was signal only for its insignificance; and the authors of
the movement hardly had credit for a respectable escapade. But the event
has proved that neither ridicule nor raillery, nor, in later years,
persecutions and the intolerable pressure of federal power, could turn
back the revolution thus feebly begun. In that campaign issue of the
_Barnburner_ were sown the seeds of what became, in later nomenclature,
the Free Democracy, and, later still, the 'Republican' party of
Missouri. The German population of St. Louis sympathized from the start
with the free principles enunciated. Frank Blair, Jr., became from that
year their political leader; right honestly did he earn the position;
and right well, even his political foes have always admitted, did he
maintain it.

Frank Blair was a disciple of Benton; yet, as is often the case, the
pupil soon learned to go far ahead of his teacher. In 1852, there was a
union of the Free Democrats and National Democrats of Missouri, in
support of Franklin Pierce. But the entire abandonment of Pierce's
administration to the rule of the Southern oligarchs sundered the
incongruous elements in Missouri forever. In 1856 Benton was found
supporting James Buchanan for President; but Blair declined to follow
his ancient leader in that direction. He organized the free-soil element
in St. Louis to oppose the Buchanan electoral ticket. An electoral
ticket in the State at large, for John C. Fremont, was neither possible
nor advisable. In some districts no man would dare be a candidate on
that side; in others, the full free-soil vote, from the utter
hopelessness of success, would not be polled; and thus the cause would
be made to appear weaker than it deserved. To meet the emergency, and
yet bear witness to principle, the free-soil vote was cast for the
Fillmore electoral ticket, 'under protest,' as it was called, the name
of 'John C. Fremont' being printed in large letters at the head of every
free-soil ballot cast. By this means the Buchanan electors were beaten
fifteen hundred votes in St. Louis City and County, where, by a union as
Benton proposed, they would have had three thousand majority. But the
'free-soilers' failed to defeat Buchanan in the State.

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