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 17
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RETURN TO POWER OF MISSOURI DEMOCRACY. 181
only cities ahead of it were New York, Philadelphia, and Brook- lyn. Chicago, however, which was just below St. Louis in 1870, got ahead of St. Louis in the next few years, and has been increas- ing its lead since then.
Practically all of this increase had come since the middle of 1865. Immigration from the Eastern states and from Europe flowed into Missouri in a large volume in the three or four years immediately preceding 1870. The farmns which had been aban- doned during the war were reoccupied, and vast tracts of wild lands were put under cultivation. Villages that had been wholly or partly destroyed during that conflict were rebuilt, and some of the larger towns had expanded into cities. All the elements of the state's population were giving their attention to the pro- motion of her interests and prosperity.
In time and conditions of service Governor Brown was more fortunate than were his forerunners during the preceding decade and a half. The issues were less disturbing to the peace of the state than they had been since the beginning of the Kansas territorial troubles in the term of Gov. Sterling Price. The gov- ernor was a man of ability, experience and character. A Ken- tuckian by birth, he was one of Missouri's earliest Free Soilers and Republicans, edited the Missouri Democrat for a few years, served for a short time in the army, and was sent to the senate in the middle of the war, and was there until 1867, three years before his election as governor, at which date he was forty-five years of age.
The railway issue came up in a very embarrassing way dur- ing Governor Brown's administration. Previous to the war the state guaranteed the payment of bonds issued to the railways to the amount of twenty-three million seven hundred one thou- sand dollars, the companies agreeing to pay the interest on their bonds as it accrued. All except the Hannibal and St. Joseph defaulted in the payment, and the roads were sold by the state soon after the war, together with 1,824,000 acres of land which had been granted to some of them by congress, the debt at that time due to the state by them being thirty-one million seven hun- dred thirty-five thousand eight hundred forty dollars. The sales realized only six million one hundred thirty-one thousand four hundred ninety-six dollars, leaving a net loss to the state of twenty-five million six hundred four thousand three hundred forty-four dollars.
But a far greater railroad burden was impending. Within a few years after the war's close fifteen million dollars had been
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subscribed by the counties of the state to aid in building railroads, and county courts, at the bidding of two-thirds of the voters, were permitted to issue bonds binding the counties to the pay- ment of these sums. As a large portion of the persons who would have to pay the taxes were disfranchised under the opera- tion of the constitution of 1865, and as the spirit of speculation, especially in railroad building, was particularly wild at that time in many Western states, there was a reckless prodigality in voting bonds in Missouri which inflicted serious burdens on the people subsequently. In most cases only a very small part of the proposed roads were built. In some cases none were built. As the United States supreme court held that these bonds, or such of them as had been sold to presumably innocent purchasers before maturity, should be paid, heavy debts were saddled upon many of the counties.
An outbreak took place as a consequence at Gun City, in Cass county, on April 24, 1872, in which a large body of masked men stopped a railroad train and killed three men who were aboard of it-J. C. Stephenson, one of the county judges; James C. Cline, county attorney, and Thomas E. Detro, one of Cline's sureties-who had been parties to the issue of bonds in that county. Governor Brown called out the militia, order was restored in the county, but all attempts to identify and bring the guilty persons to justice failed. Litigation on account of the bonds lasted for years. In most cases compromises were event- ually reached and payments were made, but some of these debts are still outstanding.
Meanwhile some stirring politics was developing in Missouri, especially that which gave Messrs. Schurz and Brown's Liberal Republican movement a national status. The resignation of the Radical Republican Charles D. Drake from the senate gave the Democratic legislature in 1871 a chance to elect his successor, and it chose General Blair, who was then one of the legislature's members. This was Blair's last office. He served to the end of the term, in 1873, was a candidate for renomination, but was defeated by Lewis V. Bogy, who had been a pro-slavery Demo- crat during slavery days, and died in 1875, just fourteen years within about one month after the demise at Wilson's Creek of his illustrious co-worker in the national canse, Nathaniel Lyon. Blair's memorial, standing with Benton's as Missouri's two con- tributions to the great figures of the commonwealths in Statuary hall, in the national capitol, shows the regard in which the great Unionist chieftain is hell by his compatriots in his state.
RETURN TO POWER OF MISSOURI DEMOCRACY. 183
The Liberal Republican schism of 1870 was considered by some Republicans at the time to be only a temporary division in their party. The logic of their position, however, forced Gov- ernor Brown and his associates into an alliance with the Demo- cratic party, which in the case of some of them became perma- nent, although Senator Schurz for a time a few years later was back in the Republican party. There was a difference of sen- timent between the two sections of the party which was certain to create a gulf between them, and to widen it after it was made. The Brown and Schurz element were hostile to the harsher pro- visions of the reconstruction scheme as it had been developed by the legislation of 1867-70. As the Republicans supplemented them by new legislation in the same direction in 1871, the Kuklux act, the seceders were compelled to seek new affiliations.
At a gathering of Liberal Republicans in Jefferson City on Jannary 24, 1872, a call was issued to all persons in the United States who favored the ideas there set forth to send delegates to a convention to be held at Cincinnati on May 1, to nominate candidates for president and vice president. This broadened Mis- sonri's Liberal Republican movement into a great force in national politics.
The convention at Cincinnati, of which Senator Schurz was made permanent chairman, opposed the reopening of the ques- tions settled by the three war amendments, demanded universal amnesty, impartial suffrage, local self-government, the main- tenance of the writ of habeas corpus, and civil service reform, and straddled the tariff because of the necessity of bringing as many Republicans as possible into the alliance with the Demo- crats which was seen to be essential if the movement was to have any chance of success. The majority of the Missonri dele- gates wanted Governor Brown for president, but Horace Greeley was selected for that post, and Brown was put in the second place on the ticket. The Democrats, in national convention in Balti- more in July, accepted the Liberal Republican ticket and plat- form, but in the election the Republican candidates, Grant and Wilson, swept the country.
In Missouri the coalition was heavily in the preponderance. Greeley and Brown, with a vote of 151,434, had a lead of 32,238 over the Grant ticket. For state officers there was a fusion between the Liberal Republicans and the Democrats, the latter getting the candidates for governor, treasurer, anditor, attorney general and judges of the supreme court, while the Liberal Repub- licans got the lieutenant governor, secretary of state and regis-
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ter of lands, Silas Woodson, of Buchanan county, being the nominee for governor, and Charles P. Johnson, of St. Louis, for lieutenant governor. Ex-Sen. John B. Henderson was nominated for governor by the Republicans. The entire fusion ticket was elected, Woodson's lead over Henderson being 35,442. Of the thirteen congressmen to which Missouri was entitled under the apportionment based on the census of 1870 (she had nine congressmen under the 1860 census allotment), the Democrats elected nine and the Republicans four. The Democrats and their allies gained a majority in each branch of the legislature. Two constitutional amendments were ratified at the same elec- tion, one increasing the number of supreme court justices from three to five, and the other stipulating that no part of the school fund should be invested in the stocks or bonds of any other state, or in those of any county, city, town or corporation.
The number of votes cast for governor in 1872, 279,000, was 112,000 in excess of the poll of 1870. Some of this immense gain was, of course, due to the increase in the population in the interval, but by far the larger part of it represented the number of disfranchised persons who were restored to full citizenship by the removal in 1870 of the proscriptive provisions of the constitu- tion of 1865.
Liberal Republicanism, as such, did not figure in any subsequent canvass in Missouri. A few of its adherents drifted back to the Republicans before the election for governor in 1874, but most of them, except in the case of the Germans, had merged them- selves permanently in the Democracy by that time. The year 1872 is notable in Missouri's annals from the fact that it placed the Democratic party again in the ascendant in the state, and it has remained so till the present time except that the Repub- licans in 1894 elected the minor state officers and most of the congressmen. Governor Brown, who never held another polit- ical post after he stepped down in Jefferson City at the beginning of 1873, resumed the practice of the law in St. Louis, remained a Democrat to the end of his days, and died in 1885.
Silas Woodson was born in Kentucky, practiced law there and served in its legislature several years, and was a comparatively recent arrival in Missouri, settling in the state, at St. Joseph, in 1854, the year of the repeal of the Missouri compromise. Elected a circuit judge in 1860, he served through the war period. was chairman of the Democratic state convention of 1872, and in the deadlock between several aspirants, was nominated for governor. As he was the first Democrat elected to the gov-
RETURN TO POWER OF MISSOURI DEMOCRACY. 185
vrnorship since Claiborne F. Jackson in 1860, and as his entrance into office signalized the return of the Democratic party to a sway in the state which was destined to last for a third of a cen- tury at least, he, on that account, has a distinguished place in Missouri's annals.
But Governor Woodson had troubles such as beset none of his predecessors since Hancock Jackson, the lieutenant governor who went to the executive office early in 1857 on the resignation of Trusten Polk when the latter entered the senate. The losses during the war, supplemented by the wild speculation of the years immediately afterward, particularly the excessive railroad building, precipitated a financial crash in 1873. This was more extensive than the panic of 1857, lasted a longer time, and did more damage. "Runs" on banks took place, mills closed or reduced their working time, wages were cut, and tens of thou- sands of persons in Missouri were thrown out of employment.
One of the immediate effects of the panic of 1873 was the rapid extension of the Patrons of Husbandry (whose members. were popularly called Grangers, from the granges, or lodges, of which it was composed), founded in 1867 to enable farmers to purchase their supplies at first hand, to advance their education and to promote their general interests. This order, which had three-fourths of its strength in agricultural communities, quickly quadrupled in numbers as a consequence of the crash of 1873, and had 1,500,000 members in 1875, when at the height of its power. It was strong in Missouri, and though it never gained the potency there that it won in Illinois, Wisconsin and other states in which it incited extreme legislation cutting down rail- road rates, it impelled Governor Woodson to urge a large reduc- tion in the expenditures for the support of state and county offices, and it influenced the legislature to carry out his recom- mendations in that direction. Though much of the Granger legislation was subsequently repealed, an ultimate effect of it was to induce congress to enact the interstate commerce law of 1887.
An important act of the legislature in 1873 was the establish- ment of the Southeast Missouri Normal school at Cape Girar- dean. This was one of the evidences of the extension of edu- cation which began in Missouri soon after the close of the war. Pritchett college was organized in Glasgow in 1868. By act of the legislature the State Agricultural college was located at Columbia i 1870, and the School of Mines and Metallurgy was placed at Rolla in the same year. In 1873 Drury college and
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in 1875 Park college were opened, the former in Springfield and the latter in Parkville.
By far the most important piece of legislation of Governor Woodson's time was the act of 1874 to authorize a vote of the people to decide whether or not a convention should be held to revise and amend the Drake constitution, the vote to take place on November 3, 1874, the same day as that on which state offi- cers were to be chosen.
In the campaign of 1874 the Democrats had Charles Hardin, of Audrain county, as their candidate for governor, and Nor- man J. Colman, of St. Louis, for lieutenant governor. The Repub- licans did not participate in the canvass under their own name, but joined the Grangers and other elements of the opposition to the Democracy. The coalition called itself the People's party, or the Reform party, but the Republicans composed its chief ingredient, and for governor it put up William Gentry, a promi- nent farmer of Pettis county.
The Democrats swept the state, electing their entire state ticket by large majorities, their lead on governor being 37,462. In the vote on the question of holding a convention the majority for the convention was only 283. The aggregate vote on that issue was only 222,315, which was 39,000 below that on gov- ernor, which itself was 18,000 less than the vote cast on gover- nor two years earlier, when Woodson was chosen. The assured supremacy of the Democrats caused a diminution of interest on their side as well as on that of their opponents, Hardin's vote in 1874 being more than 7,000 below Woodson's, although the population of the state was rapidly increasing. The Democrats elected every one of the state's thirteen members of congress, one of whom was Richard P. Bland, first elected in 1872, and obtained a large majority in each branch of the legislature. A surprising decline in Republican strength was shown in that can- vass, as well as in the special election for members of the con- vention which took place a little less than three months later, in which they chose only one-tenth of the delegates.
Charles H. Hardin was a Kentuckian by birth, but was taken to Missouri at an early age by his parents, served in the legis- lature several years before the war as a Whig, became a Democrat in the war period, was a Unionist at that time, was in the legisla- ture again after the war, and was fifty-four years of age at the time of his election as governor in 1874.
The legislature's first important task in Governor Hardin's term when it met in 1875 was to choose a successor in the sen-
RETURN TO POWER OF MISSOURI DEMOCRACY. 187
ate to Carl Schurz, who had returned to the Republican party soon after the defeat of the Liberal Republican-Democratic coali- tion of 1872, and who was to receive the post of secretary of the interior in 1877 in President Hayes's cabinet. Gen. Francis M. Cockrell was chosen. General Cockrell was born in Missouri in 1834; was the first native born Missourian elected to the sen- ate except Lewis M. Bogy, who was chosen in 1873, and who was to be General Cockrell's colleague for two years; won a brilliant record on the Southern side in the war of secession, in which he rose to the rank of major general, participating in the battles of Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge and many other impor- tant fights ; never held a political office along to the time he was chosen to the senate; will, at the end of his present term, in 1905, have served as long in that body as did Benton, and has been an exceedingly industrious, public spirited, efficient and popular legislator.
But the constitutional convention attracted much greater inter- est than did any other Missouri event of 1875. Its delegates were chosen at a special election on January 26 of that year ; sixty of them were Democrats, six were Republicans, and two were classified as Liberal Republicans; among them were ex-Sen. Waldo P. Johnson, of St. Clair county, William F. Switzler, of Columbia (who had served also in the convention that framed the constitution of 1865), Thomas Shackleford of Howard county, Jamies O). Broadhead, Joseph Pulitzer (the proprietor of the New York World since 1883), II. C. Brockmeyer (lieutenant governor in 1877 81), and George H. Shields, all of St. Louis. The convention met at Jefferson City on May 5; chose Waldo P. Johnson for president ; did its work with great care; framed an entirely new constitution ; finished its labors on August 2; and the constitution was submitted to the people at a special election on October 30, 91,205 votes being cast in favor of ratification, and only 14,517 against it. On November 30, 1875, it went into operation.
The constitution of 1875 doubled the length of the term of governor and of almost all the rest of the state officers, making it four years, as it was under the constitution of 1820, which that of 1865 superseded, and it provided that the governor and state treasurer could not be chosen as their own successors. It enu- merated a large number of subjects on which the legislature could not enact special laws; prohibited the contracting of debts by the legislature for more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars in any one year unless the act should be approved by a
-
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two-thirds vote of the qualified voters of the state at an elec- tion held for that purpose; forbade the creation of corporations save under a general law ; and stipulated that the only restric- tions which should be placed on the voting privilege of male citi- zens of the United States and of males of foreign birth over twenty-one years of age who declared their intention of becom- ing citizens should be a residence of a year in the state and of sixty days in the county, city or town.
Under authority granted by the constitution of 1875 the city of St. Louis ( which had annexed the city of Carondelet in 1871 under an act of the legislature of 1867) separated itself from St. Louis county, enlarged its territorial limits, erected itself into an independent municipality, and adopted a special charter which theoretically went into operation on October 22, 1876, but which did not actually take effect until March 5, 1877, when the St. Louis court of appeals officially ascertained the result of the vote on the charter and proclaimed the birth of the new city.
In the latter part of the term of Governor Hardin a conspiracy to defraud the federal government of a large part of the reve- nue due on whiskey was unearthed at St. Louis. The plot extended to Milwaukee, Chicago and other places, but St. Louis was its radiating center. Simultaneously, on May 10, 1875, government officers in St. Louis and the other towns seized six- teen distilleries and as many rectifying houses, aggregating about three million five hundred thousand dollars, others were taken possession of in different parts of the country afterward, and 238 persons were indicted. President Grant indorsed the papers in one of the cases with the injunction, "Let no guilty man escape." Many of the trials took place in Jefferson City, begin- ning in the fall of 1875, and a great number of convictions were secured, the most important of which were those of Jolm A. Joyce, internal revenue special agent; John McDonald, super- visor of internal revenue, and W. O. Avery, chief clerk in the treasury department. The prosecutions were vigorously pushed by Benjamin H. Bristow, secretary of the treasury. D. P. Dyer was district attorney, and ex-Sen. John B. Henderson was one of the counsel for the government. Although Bristow was unable to proceed with his work as far as he desired, the whiskey ring was killed.
The constitution of 1875, the third in the history of the state, which, with its amendments, is in operation to this day, swept away the last vestige of the legislation incited by the war, and brought in a new era for Missouri.
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MISSOURI FROM PHELPS TO FRANCIS.
CHAPTER XIX
From Phelps's Days to those of Francis
C ARLYLE'S aphorism, "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books," would, for the decade and a half after the adoption of the constitution of 1875, be as appli- cable to Missouri as it could be to any great and growing com- munity in the United States. The series of distracting issues which had convulsed the state from the introduction of the Jack- son resolutions in 1849 in the legislature onward to the close of the reconstruction days had all been settled, and for Missouri the charter of 1875 completed the readjustment. Missouri was busy expanding her industries and accommodating the great influx of settlers who were flowing in from the Eastern and middle Western states and from Europe. The acute effects of the panic of 1873 had, in a large degree, disappeared. Her crops of 1875 were heavy, despite the ravages of the Colorado beetle, which had invaded the state in that year, and something like prosperity was restored to the community.
Missouri took a larger interest in the national canvass of 1876 than it had done in any preceding one since 1860. Tilden, the Democratic candidate for president, who was nominated in St. Louis, was very popular throughout the state, and he car- ried it by a plurality of 58,000 over Hayes, the Republican nomi- nee. John S. Phelps, the Democrat, beat G. A. Finkelburg, of St. Louis, the Republican candidate for governor, by 52,000. The Democrats carried the legislature, but the Republicans won four of the state's thirteen representatives in congress. II. C. Brockmeyer, of St. Louis, was elected lieutenant governor. The term now for governor and most of the other state officers was four years.
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Governor Phelps was the veteran ex-congressman and ex-Union soldier. Ile was fifty-two years of age when he entered the gov- ernorship, he gave the state a very creditable administration, and he died in St. Louis in 1886, five years after he retired from office.
On the death of Sen. Lewis V. Bogy in 1877 while in office, Governor Phelps appointed David H. Armstrong, a prominent St. Louis politician, in his place, to serve till the legislature met. That body in 1879 elected Gen. James Shields, the Mexican and civil war hero, to fill out the unexpired part of Bogy's term, which was only a few weeks. Thus General Shields had the unique distinction of successively representing three states in the senate, for he had been one of Illinois' members in that cham- ber in 1849-55, and one of Minnesota's in 1858-59.
The legislature in 1879 elected George G. Vest for the new term in the senate. Mr. Vest, a Kentuckian by birth, was in the Missouri legislature in the opening days of 1861, was a pro- nounced Southern rights man, served in cach branch of the confederate congress, returned to Missouri in 1867, resumed the practice of the law, held no office until he was elected to the senate in 1879, and, by successive re-elections, he remained in that chamber until 1903, in which body he won national fame as an orator and as a statesman of ability, courage and public spirit.
During the term of Governor Phelps the legislature was active in dealing with questions relating to the revenues and taxation, but some of its work was declared unconstitutional by the courts. Among the most important of the legislation of the term were acts passed in 1879 to stock the streams of the state with choice fishes, under the direction of three commissioners; to create a bureau of labor statistics; and to establish a bureau of immi- gration. These laws, incited by the industrial expansion and the growing prosperity of the state were in line with that of 1875, during the term of Governor Hardin, creating a state railroad commission.
On April 11, 1877, the Southern hotel, in St. Louis was burned, and eleven lives were lost. This recalled the burning of the Lindell hotel, in the same city, on March 31, 1867, which was the finest building of its class in the United States at the time it was put up, in 1863. No lives were lost, but the build- ing itself was totally destroyed. The most memorable hotel fire in Missouri after that of the Southern hotel was that of the Planters' house, on April 3, 1886, in which four lives were lost.
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