USA > Louisiana > The province and the states, a history of the province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the territories and states of the United States formed therefrom, Vol. IV > Part 10
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Jackson died in 1845, a year after the defeat of his political protegee Van Buren in the convention which nominated Polk. At the time of his contest for re-election in the Missouri legis- lature in 1851, Benton was very nearly the last of the old Jack- sonian unionist and nationalist chieftains of the Democracy who were left in any position of power in any of the slave states. All these are the principal circumstances which give the rupture of the Democratic party in Missouri and Benton's overthrow an importance as a great date mark not only in the annals of that commonwealth but in the political history of the United States.
After a service of thirty years in the senate, the longest in the history of the country at that time, Benton retired in 1851. He kept up his fight, however, against slavery extension and in favor of the Missouri compromise under which his state was admitted into the Union, was elected to the house of represent- atives in 1852, was defeated for that chamber in 1854 and for the governorship in 1856, and died in 1858. Benton's appearance in the canvasses of the two last named years will be touched upon in more detail in a subsequent chapter.
Naturally the principle of the Jackson resolutions continued to figure in Missouri politics for several years, though chiefly in the contests for congress. In 1852 the Democrats nominated the Mexican war hero, Gen. Sterling Price, an enemy of Benton's, for governor, and against him the Whigs put up James Winston, a man of ability and personal popularity, who, however, was beaten by 13,461 by Price. The most exciting contest for the house of representatives at Washington which was waged in any part of Missouri in that year was in the St. Louis district, in which Benton was elected after a hard fight. Among Benton's colleagues in the house for that terin who were then well known to the country or who afterward became so, were John S. Phelps and Mordecai Oliver. Missouri's population of 383,702 in the census of 1840 had increased to 682,044 in 1850, and the state's five representatives in the popular branch of congress had expanded jo seven, beginning with the election of 1852.
The duction for president in 1852, in which Franklin Pierce was the Democratic candidate, and. Pierce's old commander in
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THE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
the Mexican war, Gen. Winfield Scott, an excellent soldier but a poor politician, was the Whig nominee, was easily won by Pierce, who carried twenty-seven states, as against four (Ver- mont, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Tennessee) which went to Scott. In Missouri far less interest was taken in the presiden- tial contest than had been aroused in that for governor, and the vote on each side was much smaller. Pierce's poll was nearly 8,000 less than was that for Sterling Price, and Scott's vote was 3,000 short of that for Winston, the Whig candidate for gover- nor. Pierce's lead over Scott in Missouri was 8,369, as com- pared with 7,406 for Cass over Taylor in 1848, and 10, 118 for Polk over Clay in 1844.
The legislature which passed the Jackson resolutions early in 1849 enacted two other measures of great importance. Under one of these the construction of the railroad which afterward became known as the Missouri Pacific was authorized, to extend from St. Louis to the state's western border. Under the other the state's public school system was extended and greatly improved.
The Missouri Pacific's charter provided for a capital of ten million dollars; its corporators included Thomas Allen, John O'Fallon, James H. Lucas, Lewis V. Bogy, Henry M. Shreve, Wayman Crow, James E. Yeatman, Henry Shaw, Pierre Chou- teau, Jr., Robert Campbell, Bernard Pratte, John B. Sarpy, Louis A. Benoist and other well known citizens of St. Louis and other parts of the state. Thomas Allen was chosen president and James H. Lucas vice president, and ground was formally broken for the construction of the road by Mayor Luther M. Kennett on July 4, 1850, on the south bank of Chouteau's pond, on Fifteenth street, in the presence of Gov. Austin A. King and a large assemblage. That road, which was opened to Frank- lin in 1853, to Jefferson City in 1856, to Sedalia in 1861, and to ' Kansas City in 1865, was the beginning of the permanent rail- way system of Missouri.
A railroad convention was held in St. Louis as early as 1836, and many lines of road were projected, on paper, in the next dozen years. One road, about five miles in length, was built from Richmond to a point on the Missouri opposite Lexington between 1849 and 1851. It was operated by horse power and its rails were made of wood. Benton shares with Asa Whitney of New York the honor of being the pioneer in the movement for a trav continental railway. This was part of Benton's plan of colonization of the Pacific coast by which he proposed to win
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BREAK IN THE MISSOURI DEMOCRACY.
the Oregon country in the controversy as to title which the United States had with England. Several meetings in further- ance of the transcontinental road were held in St. Louis in the 40's of the nineteenth century. Missouri's actual railway scheme, however, dates from the beginning of work on Allen's and Lucas's road in St. Louis in 1850.
The year 1849 is memorable in St. Louis's annals on account of the occurrence of the most destructive fire in the city's history and the most serions visitation of the cholera which it has seen. The latter is treated in a previous chapter in connection with the earlier appearance of this malady. The fire started on the steam- boat White Cloud, lying at the wharf near the foot of Vine street, on the night of May 19, and quickly communicated to twenty- three other vessels, to a large amount of material lying along the levee, and to buildings on the streets adjoining. The fire had a front of a mile in length, several lives were lost, and property to the amount of over three million dollars was destroyed, two- thirds of which was covered by insurance. That conflagration and the cholera which started immediately afterward make 1849 a year of unpleasant associations for St. Louis and vicinity.
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CHAPTER XII
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise
D URING the four years, beginning with January, 1853, of the term of Gov. Sterling Price, Missouri made great prog- ress in a material way, as the census figures of 1860 were to show, in population, business activity, general develop- ment and wealth. Construction on several new railroads was started, and work on other roads, which were begun or projected during the service of Governor King, was pushed. Steamboat- ing on the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Illinois and the Ohio rapidly expanded, and added to the sum of the interests of St. Louis and the other Missouri towns on or close to the rivers. While Missouri increased in population from 383,000 in 1840 to 682,000 in 1850, and was destined to make a still longer leap between 1850 and 1860, St. Louis's gain was in a far higher ratio than that of the state as a whole. Her population very nearly quintupled from 1840 to 1850, expanding from 16,000 in the former year to 77,000 in the latter, and it was to swell to 160,000 in 1860.
In Missouri's legislature the years of Price's incumbency saw many exciting contests, both in the work of organizing the house and in that of legislating in both branches. The slavery quesr tion, in the shape in which the Jackson resolutions presented it to the people of Missouri, split the dominant Democratic party, precipitated feuds between its two clements, made each of them less hostile to the Whigs than it was to the rival Democratic faction, and gave some triumph to the Whigs, who had just succeed d. through the rupture in the ranks of their enemies, in clecting a United States senator, Geyer, to succeed Benton. But even with the aid which this Democratic vendetta gave them,
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the Whigs were unable to elect a senator to succeed Atchison (but they elected several representatives in congress) or to choose a governor to follow Price. In the contests in the legislature the Anti-Benton Democrats had the influence of Governor Price on their side.
The names of the leading contestants comprise many of the most prominent Missourians of the day. In the alignment in the legislature the most active of the Anti-Benton Democrats were Robert M. Stewart and Claiborne F. Jackson, each of whom was afterward governor; Lewis V. Bogy, afterward a senator; John W. Reid, J. II. Britton, William C. Price, George C. Medley and others. The Bentonites had for their spokesman Francis P. Blair, Jr., Benjamin Gratz Brown, John D. Stevenson, Bart Able, Judge Arnold Krekel and others, most of whom afterward reached higher station. Among the most active and influential of the Whigs in these contests were Thomas Allen, James S. Rollins, James O. Broadhead, Col. Alexander W. Doniphan, . Henry T. Blow, Samuel H. Woodson, and Charles H. Hardin, who was chosen governor twenty years later, but who, long before that time, had become a Democrat.
It was in Washington, however, and not in Jefferson City, that the contest took place which had the closest interest for Mis- souri, and Missourians figured prominently in it. Willard P. Hall, of St. Joseph, a Benton Democrat, and consequently an opponent of slavery extension, introduced in the popular branch of congress on December 2, 1852, just after the election of Price as governor and Franklin Pierce as president, but before either of them had entered office, a bill for the organization of the Territory of Platte, which would include several of the present states, among them Kansas and Nebraska. As reported to the house from the Committee on Territories by William A. Richardson, of Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas's personal represent- ative in that chamber, with the name of the proposed territory changed to Nebraska, the bill passed that branch on February 10, 1853. Reported to the senate by Douglas, without amendment, it was, by Southern votes, laid on the table in that body on March 3, the last day of the term of congress and of Fillmore as presi- dent.
Neither Hall's bill nor Richardson's modification of it made any reference to slavery. As the proposed Territory was all north of the Missouri compromise line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, it was dedicated to freedom by the Missouri slavery IV-8
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prohibition of 1820. The organization of a territory there meant an in-rush of settlers from the North and from Europe which would quickly result in the creation of one or more free states, thus increasing the preponderance of the North that had been gained through the admission of California as a free state in 1850. Neither Douglas nor anybody else yet seriously pre- tended that the compromise of 1850, which had organized the Territories of New Mexico and Utah out of parts of the Mexi- can cession of 1848, without any reference to the slavery ques- tion, superseded the Missouri adjustment of 1820, which applied to the territory gained from France in 1803. This is why the Hall-Richardson measure encountered the hostility of the South which defeated it in the senate.
Senator Atchison, one of the most pronounced of the pro- slavery men, declared in congress while the Hall-Richardson bill was pending, that the Missouri compromise had been a blun- der, but he confessed that he did not see any chance of its repeal, and therefore he was willing to accept that Nebraska bill, with slavery shut out of the territory. "I have always been of opinion," he said, "that the first great error committed in the political history of this country was the ordinance of 1787, rendering the Northwest Territory free territory. The next great error was the Missouri compromise. But they are both irremediable. There is no remedy for them. We must sub- mit to them. I am prepared to do it. It is evident that the Missouri compromise cannot be repealed. So far as that ques- tion is concerned, we might as well agree to the admission of this territory now as next year, or five or ten years hence."
These words by Missouri's senior senator were spoken early in 1853. Less than twelve months afterward, however, Douglas and many others were to assert that the principle of the Mis- somri restriction of 1820 had been removed by the legislation of 1850. And about the same time that prohibition itself was to be abolished by the Kansas-Nebraska territorial act. More- over, only a few years later the supreme court (in 1857) was to decide that the Missouri slavery prohibition had been uncon- stitutional all the time.
It was the last day of the last congress of the Taylor-Fillmore administration which, on March 3, 1853, saw the Hall-Richard- son Nebraska territorial bill laid on the table in the senate through Southern hostility. Early in the first session of the first con- gress under Pierce-on December 14, 1853-Augustus O. Dodge, an Iowa Democrat, introduced in the senate a bill for the organ-
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ization of that territory which had a different fate. The Nebraska in this measure, as in that of Hall, comprised virtually all the region stretching from the western line of the states of Missouri and Iowa and the Territory of Minnesota westward to the crest of the Rocky mountains.
With some important changes, this bill was reported to the senate from the Committee on Territories by Douglas, its chairman, on January 4, 1854. In Dodge's bill, as in Hall's, there was no reference to slavery, but as all the Nebraska region was north of the Missouri compromise line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, from which slavery had been shut out since 1820, the presumption was that the territory was to remain free soil. As reported by Douglas, however, the bill contained this clause: "When admitted as a state, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe at the time of their admission."
This clause startled the North. It had profound interest for Missouri also, but for an opposite reason. At that particular time the North was especially sensitive on the slavery ques- tion. It feared that Texas might seize the option allowed in the joint resolution of 1845 by which it was annexed to the United States, divide itself into four additional states, and increase the pro-slavery vote in the senate by eight. Schemes, too, were on foot at that time to gain Cuba by purchase or con- quest, and thus, as the North supposed, to add two or more to the number of the slave states. Filibustering expeditions had been organized from 1849 to 1854 by adventurers in the United States, natives and Latin-Americans, to take Cuba. . The later demonstrations, from 1854 to 1860, were directed chiefly against Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and other points in or near Cen- tral America, all of which were believed in the Northern states to be in the slavery interest.
Missouri felt a deep interest in the bill in the shape which it had when Douglas reported it. With the free state of Illi- nois on its eastern border and that of Iowa on its northern line, Missouri would, if slavery were shut out from the new territory, be beset by adverse influences on three sides. The temptation and the opportunity for slaves to attempt to escape from their masters would be largely increased. In nearly the entire North the enforcement of the fugitive slave law of 1850 encountered many obstructions. The underground railway had branches in all the free communities. This aspect of the question made a
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direct appeal to all of Missouri's slaveholders, who, of course, were only a small portion of the state's population.
Other Missourians who neither owned slaves nor employed them felt an interest in the bill with the Douglas modification. Even before the Jackson resolutions of 1849 were presented in Jefferson City, a considerable number of the state's Democrats and many of her Whigs began to believe that it might be well, as a matter of policy, to let the territories have the same privileges as regards the admission or exclusion of slavery that the states enjoyed. This position was taken by many persons who belonged to the Benton wing of the Democracy, who were personally opposed to the extension of the institution. It was held by some who were against slavery everywhere, and who would thus be glad to see it completely swept away. Most of these became Republicans afterward. Benton himself, of course, not only hield that it was the right of congress to shut slavery out of the territories, but also held that it was congress's duty to do this.
But to the free states in general this Nebraska bill with its slavery option had a portentous meaning. Though it did not rescind the Missouri slavery exclusion of 1820 in express terms, the effect of the measure would be a removal of that prohibition. Moreover, the express terms were quickly supplied. Archibald Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, Henry Clay's successor in the sen- ate, gave notice on January 16, 1854, twelve days after Doug- las reported the bill, that he would move, as an amendment to it, the abolition of the Missouri barrier. Douglas then got the bill referred back to the Committee on Territories, and when he reported it on January 23, a second time, it contained a stipu- lation repealing the Missouri restriction.
This section of the bill recited that "the constitution and all the laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the same force and effect within the said territory of Kansas as elsewhere within the United States, except the 8th section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and mean- ing of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, not to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof per- fectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in
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their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States." The bill also provided for a division of the proposed Nebraska territory, the part south of latitude 40 degrees, that state's present northern boundary, to be known as Kansas.
According to some of his close friends, Douglas's object in dividing the territory was to give one state to the North and the other to the South on the balance-preservation principle of carlier times, when slave states and free states were yoked together in admission. This seems to have been the understanding of Senator Atchison, Benjamin F. Stringfellow, his brother J. H. Stringfel- low, and most of the rest of the pro-slavery chieftains of Mis- souri. They assumed at the outset that Kansas ought to be sur- rendered to slavery, while Nebraska, for which the South was to make no contest, was to be allowed to remain free. This will help to partly account for the promptness and carnestness with which raiders from Missouri surged across the border into Kan- sas after the territorial act was signed.
As the bill put into the hands of the residents of the territories the power to admit or exclude slavery, it gave slavery, in the Kansas-Nebraska case, an equal chance with freedom in a region from which it had been shut out by the Missouri restriction of 1820. The North was alarmed and angered. Protestations in the shape of resolutions from most of the legislatures of the free states, and of memorials from representative citizens of all of them, against the bill were sent to congress. Speeches were made by most of the anti-slavery leaders in congress against it. The most impressive of these was by a representative of a slave state- Thomas 11. Benton, of Missouri, then serving his single term in the popular branch of congress, after his long career in the senate.
Said a recent historian, in speaking of the great Missourian at that crisis in his life: "No man in either house of Congress brought so much intelligence and experience to bear upon his vote as did Benton. He had come into political life on the Missouri compromise. His state had kept him in the Senate for thirty years ; and when the legislature would no longer elect him, he had appealed to the people of his district and they had sent him to the House. He was not only a statesman of experience, but he was writing a history of the events in which he had been an actor and on which he had looked as a spectator. Certainly his protest should have been regarded. He spoke as a statesman whose memory and judgment were enlightened by the investiga- tion of an historian." ( Rhodes' History of the United States, vol. I. p. 188. )
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Benton declared that the movement for the annulment of the Missouri compromise had been initiated "without a memorial, without a petition, without a request from a human being." He denounced Douglas for re-opening the slavery question, and said that the Missouri compact had been forced on the North by the South, that it was "not a mere statute to last for a day," but "was intended for perpetuity, and so declared itself." He said he had stood upon the Missouri compromise for thirty years, and intended to stand upon it until he died.
This spectacle of Benton, then seventy-two years of age, the oldest man in point of service then in national office, a representa- tive of a slave state, standing up for freedom when many members from free states were making concessions to slavery, was one of the great historic pictures of the age.
Nevertheless, Benton and all the rest of the opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska bill were beaten at every point in the voting. That congress (1853-55) consisted of 38 Democrats, 22 Whigs and 2 Free Soilers in the senate, and 159 Democrats, 71 Whigs and 4 Free Soilers in the house. David R. Atchison was president pro tempore of the senate and Linn Boyd of Kentucky was speaker of the house. The bill passed the senate on March 3, 1854, by a vote of 37 to 14, all the southern Democrats except Sam Houston of Texas, and all the southern Whigs except John Bell of Tennessee, declaring for it. Fourteen northern Demo- crats also supported the bill. The two Free Soilers, of course, voted against it. The rest of its opponents were northern Whigs and northern Democrats. Senator Atchison of Missouri was one of the bill's most ardent champions.
In the house, of which Benton was a member, the bill passed on May 23, by a vote of 113 to 100, 69 of the affirmative votes (57 Democratic and 12 Whig) being furnished by the South, and 44 (all Democratic) by the North. Ninety-one (44 Whig, 44 Democratic and 3 Free Soil) of the 100 votes against the bill were from the North, and 9) (7 Whig and 2 Democratic) from the South. The two Democrats from the slave states who set them- selves against the overwhelmingly predominant sentiment of their section were John S. Millson of Virginia and Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. Every other representative of Missouri- James J. Lindley, John G. Miller and Mordecai Oliver, Whigs, as well as Alfred W. Lamb and John S. Phelps, Democrats, voted for the bill. Samuel Caruthers, of Fredericktown, Whig, was not recorded in the voting. Willard P. Ilall had left congress on
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March 4, 1853. President Pierce signed the bill on May 30, 1854.
The Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 was a fateful piece of legis- lation. By putting the slavery question at the front and driving out all other issues it destroyed the partisan affiliation between the South and the West which had existed from the early days of the government ; it started an armed struggle in Kansas between the free and the slave states for the possession of that locality; it killed the Whig party by driving its southern end, through the half-way houses of the American ( Know Nothing) party in 1856 and the Constitutional Union party of 1860, over to the Democ- racy ; it united the Free Soilers, the old Liberty party men, or
political abolitionists, the majority of the northern Whigs, the majority of the northern Know Nothings and a large clement of the northern Democrats, in a new organization, formed specifi- cally to fight slavery extension, which quickly adopted the Repub- lican name ; it split the Democracy, first in the Lecompton consti- tution fight in Kansas in 1858 and then in the Charleston national convention of 1860, thus giving the Republican party the victory which sent the South into secession,and this precipitated the civil war, which overthrew slavery, put a solid North and a solid South in politics, and kept them there until a very recent day.
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