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 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
The convention met in the Mansion House, one of St. Louis' best known hotels of that day, situated on the corner of Vine and Third streets, forty-one delegates being present. David Barton was made president of the convention and William G. Pettis secretary. On June 12, 1820, the convention opened. On July 10, the constitution was signed and the convention adjourned. The constitution went into effect without submission to the people. It lasted till superseded by the Drake constitution of 1865.
35
THIE STATE OF MISSOURI.
An election for state officers, a legislature, a representative in congress and other officials was held on August 28. Alexander MeNair was elected governor by 6,575 votes, as compared with 2,556 for Gen. William Clark, who had been the territorial gov- ernor from 1813 until the state's admission in 1821. William H. Ashley was chosen lieutenant governor, and John Scott was elected to congress without opposition.
Alexander McNair was born in Pennsylvania in 1774, removed to St. Louis in 1804, held several minor political posts during the territorial days, was a merchant in that town at the time of his election as the first governor of the state of Missouri, served as such until the end of his term in 1824, and died in St. Louis in 1826.
1949954
William H. Ashley, who was born in Virginia in 1778 and came to St. Louis in 1802, was head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, organized in 1822, was elected to congress, serving from 1831 to 1837, and died in 1838.
Jolin Scott served ten years as Missouri's representative in the lower branch of congress, four years during the territorial stage and six years in the state, retiring in 1827. He was born in Vir- ginia in 1782, graduated from Princeton college, removed to Ste. Genevieve in 1806, and died there in 1861.
Gen. William Clark, a younger brother of George Rogers Clark, was born in Virginia in 1770, was a minor officer in the army for a few years, resigning in 1796, after which he removed to St. Louis, which was his home from that time onward; was Lewis' partner in the exploration of 1804-06, and afterward suc- cessively an Indian agent, a brigadier general in command of upper Louisiana, governor of Missouri Territory for eight years ending in 1821, and superintendent of Indian Affairs until his death in St. Louis in 1838.
The general assembly, or legislature, consisting of fourteen senators and forty-three representatives, met in the Missouri Hotel in St. Louis, on the corner of Main and Morgan streets, on September 19, 1820, and chose James Caldwell, of Ste. Gene- vieve, speaker of the lower chamber, Lieut. Gov. Ashley presiding over the upper body. Governor McNair appointed and the senate confirmed Joshua Barton as secretary of state, Edward Bates as attorney general, Peter L. Didier as state treasurer ; and William Christie as auditor of public accounts.
The most prominent of all of these was Edward Bates, who was born in Virginia in 1793, removed to St. Louis in 1804, studied law with Rufus Easton, one of Missouri Territory's repre-
F
36
THE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
sentatives in congress, and was a member of the convention of 1820 which framed the state constitution. After a brief service as state attorney general he was in the legislature several times, was a member of congress in 1827-29, was attorney general under Lincoln in 1861-64, and died in St. Louis in 1869.
Among the work of the legislature at its first session was the organization of the counties of Boone, Callaway, Chariton, Cole, Gasconade, Lafayette, Perry, Ralls, Ray and Sabine; the choice of a site for the state capital, which the constitution stipulated should be on the Missouri within forty miles of the mouth of the Osage; and which was established at St. Charles until 1826, and then removed to its present location, which was named Jef- ferson City in honor of the author of the Louisiana purchase ; and the election of two United States senators. The last named turned out to be by far the most difficult and exciting of its tasks.
David Barton, a Kentuckian by birth, long a resident of Mis- souri, prominent and popular, who had presided over the con- vention which framed the state constitution, and who was about 35 years of age at the time, was chosen unanimously as one of the senators. Barton remained in the senate until 1831, before which time the state had turned against him on account of his entrance into Adams' and Clay's National Republican party, which was one of the ingredients of the Whig party, organized in 1834. He was subsequently defeated as a candidate for con- gress, but was afterward elected to the legislature. In the last years of his life his mind was clouded. He died near Boonville in 1837.
The choice of the second senator led to a long and exciting contest. There were many candidates-John B. C. Lucas, who had been land commissioner and chief justice under the territo . rial government ; John R. Jones, Henry Elliott and Thomas H. Benton. Lucas was the most prominent and popular of these. Benton, who was born in North Carolina in 1782, removed to Nashville in early manhood, where he was admitted to the bar ; was an officer under Jackson in the fighting against the Indians during the war of 1812-15; and removed to St. Louis shortly afterward, where he won reputation for his legal knowledge and eloquence. But Benton, in a duel on Bloody Island, in the Mississippi off St. Louis, in 1817, had killed Charles Lucas, United States attorney, son of Judge Lucas, and had thus aroused the hostility of the judge and of a large number of persons in St. Louis.
37
THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
Benton, however, had some influential friends, including Col. Anguste Chouteau, Laclede's principal subordinate in found- ing St. Louis in 1764, and the first and one of the best known of the great family of St. Louis Chouteaus; Bernard Pratte, George Sarpy, Sylvester Labadie and others, all of whom were among the leading citizens of the place, and on their side Bar- ton, the other senator, was enlisted. By their aid, and by car- rying a sick member-Daniel Ralls, of Pike county, who died a few days later-into the meeting room to answer to his name, Benton won the election. In the drawing for seats, Benton got the long term and Barton the short term. Benton served in the senate until 1851, thirty years ; became one of the great national figures ; was defeated for re-election to the senate in 1851 by the pro-slavery section of his party; was elected to the house of representatives in 1852 as an opponent of the extension of slavery into the territories ; was defeated on the same sort of ticket as candidate for governor in 1856, and died in 1858.
The contest in congress, however, over the anti-free negro provision of Missouri's constitution, which is given in detail in the preceding chapter, delayed her admission until August 10, 1821. Barton and Benton did not take their seats until Decem- ber of that year, more than twelve months after their election.
Missouri entered the Union with her present boundaries except in two particulars. By the "Platte purchase" of 1836 the triangle in the northwestern end of the state, comprising the present counties of Atchison, Andrew, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway and Platte, was annexed. A dispute with lowa as to Missouri's northern bondary, due to the vagueness of the phraseology of the act of congress of 1820, threatened to lead to war between the two communities, and the militia on each side of the line was called out, but the matter was referred to the supreme court, which decided in Iowa's favor, and an act of congress in 1848 laid out . the state's present northern line on the basis of this decision.
A year after Missouri entered statehood her principal indus- trial and commercial center, St. Louis, was incorporated by the legislature, and on the first Monday of April, 1823, William Carr Lane was chosen the city's first mayor. Archibald Gamble, James Kennerly, Thomas McKnight, James Lacknan, Philip Rocheblave, James Lopez, William H. Savage, Robert Nash and Henry Von Phul were elected aldermen. St. Louis' population at that time was 4,800.
Especial attention is called to the persons mentioned in this
! 1
38
THE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
and the preceding chapters in connection with offices in the ter- ritory the state and the city of St. Louis, as well as those named in connection with the banking and other interests. They are cited particularly to show those who figured conspicuously in the founding of Missouri, and in starting it on its great career. Many not yet named, however-the Gratiots, the Cabannes, the O'Fallons, the Carrs, the Sublettes, the Biddles, the Mullanphys, the Kennetts and the Geyers, Manuel Lisa, Wilson P. Hunt, John F. Darby, David Musick, Francis Cottard, Bernard Berthold. Andrew Henry, James Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Joshua Pilcher, Jedediah S. Smith, and Robert Campbell-were active in the development of Missouri in its carly days. Some of those last mentioned were prominently connected with the fur trade, which was the largest single interest in St. Louis and Missouri during the territorial days and in the state's carly years, which represented a business of over two hundred thousand dollars a year even in the first two decades of the nineteenth century ..
An earlier resident of the state than any named thus far except the first of the Chouteaus, and one or two others, and a more distinguished personage than any other Missourian except Ben- ton, is still to be mentioned. This is. Daniel Boone, who moved from Kentucky in 1795 into Missouri, then Spanish territory, became a loyal subject of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII., settled in the Femme Osage region, about forty-five miles west of St. Louis, in the St. Charles district, was a military and civil officer under the Spanish regime, and gladly renewed his alle- giance to the United States on the transfer of Louisiana to this country in 1803-04. The old pioneer died in 1820 at the resi- dence of his son, Major Nathan Boone, on the Femme Osage creek, in St. Charles county, but his body was disinterred and taken to Frankfort, Ky., in 1845. Boone's Lick, a local- ity in the central part of the eastern section of the state in the early days, Boonville and other Missouri names commemorate the old frontiersman and some of his descendants are among the prominent Missourians of today.
St. Louis' first city directory, published in 1821, shows that the place was well provided with the resources and accompani- ments of a high order of civilization on the eve of its advance- ment in municipal dignity. According to that authority, St. Louis in 1821, "besides the elegant Roman Catholic cathedral, contains ten common schools; a brick Baptist church . built in 1818; an Episcopal church of wood; the Methodist con- gregation hold their meetings in the old Court House, and the
39
THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
Presbyterians in the Circuit Court room." It cites these as among the business interests of the town: "Forty-six mercan- tile honses which carry on an extensive trade with the most dis- tant parts of the republic in merchandise, produce, furs and peltry ; three weekly newspapers, viz., St. Louis Inquirer, Missouri Gasette (progenitor of the present St. Louis Republic ), and St. Louis Register; and as many printing offi- ces; one book store; two binderies; three large inns, together with a number of smaller taverns and boarding houses; six liv- ery stables ; fifty-seven grocers and bottlers ; twenty-seven attor- nies; thirteen physicians; three druggists," with a brewery, a nail factory, a tannery, three soap and candle factories, two brick- yards, and other sorts of business establishments. The directory also said that the town, in its northern part, contained 154 brick and stone dwelling houses and 196 of wood, and in the southern part there were 78 of brick and stone and 223 of wood, or 651 in all.
The year 1822, which saw the granting of a charter as a city to St. Louis, witnessed the establishment there of the Western Department of Astor's American Fur Company and the organi- zation, in the same town, of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, under the direction of William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry. The old Missouri Fur Company, established by Manuel Lisa, Andrew Henry, Pierre Chouteau, Sr., Auguste Choutean, Jr., Gen. William Clark, Sylvester Labadie, Pierre Menard, William Morrison and Andrew Henry, in 1800, with a capital of forty thousand dollars, had passed through several reorganizations before 1822, but it was still actively at work under the direction of Joshua Pilcher, Mannal Lisa having died in 1820.
But Ashley's Rocky Mountain Fur Company had a larger cap- ital than Lisa's concern, did more business, and had under its ยท direction a greater number of men then or subsequently con- spicuous in the fur trade and other activities-James Bridger, William L. Sublette, his brother Milton G. Sublette, Robert Campbell, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Jedediah S. Smith, David E. Jackson, Samuel Tulloch, James P. Beckworth, Etienne Pro- vost and many others-than were ever connected with any other organization in this field.
Astor's American Fur Company, which was chartered in New York in 1808, and which went into operation in 1810, had a longer life than either the Missouri or the Rocky Mountain companies, had a greater amount of capital than either, and, with its successors, it monopolized most of the fur trade of the West
40
THE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
from 1830 onward for a score of years, although Astor him- self retired from it in 1834, after half a century of labor as a fur trader. The establishment of the Western Department of Astor's company in St. Louis in 1822 put that town far ahead of all rivals in that field, and it was the radiating center of the fur trading influence in the United States until 1864, when the Northwest Fur Company, headed by J. B. Hubbell, of St. Paul, absorbed most of this trade for this country, and shifted the headquarters to that place.
If the residents of the St. Louis of 1822 could have taken a glance forward a few decades, they would have been surprised and gladdened at the favors which fortune was to lavish on their city. They would have seen that, notwithstanding the cholera of 1832, the panic of 1837 throughout the country, the Mississippi flood of 1844, the cholera visitation of 1848, the great fire of 1849 and the war of secession, part of which took place in that city, St. Lonis' population grew from 6,000 in 1830.to 185,000 in 1860, 311,000 in 1870, and 575,238 in 1900, when it was the fourth in rank of the country's cities. This great expan- sion has been due chiefly to the city's location close to the coun- try's geographical center, and to the sagacity, energy and general intelligence of its citizens.
The state of which St. Louis was the principal business and social center was destined to double in population during sev- eral successive decades, increasing from 66,000 in 1820 to 3,106,665 in 1900, advancing from the twenty-second place among twenty-two states in 1821 to the fifth place among forty-five states in recent years.
In politics Missouri has been Democratic, with an occasional short intermission, from the beginning. When it entered the Union in 1821, during Monroe's "era of good feeling," there was technically only one party in the country, Washington's, Ham- ilton's and Jay's Federalist party having passed off the stage a few years previously. This was Jefferson's Republican party, which, broadened and nationalized, largely through the influence of the West, gradually assumed the Democratic name, which definitely adopted that designation during Jackson's days in the presidency, and which has retained it ever since. In 1824, when there were four presidential candidates, all calling themselves Republicans, Missouri gave its electoral vote to Clay, who became one of the leaders of the National Republican party founded shortly afterward, and who became the master spirit of the Whig party, which was formed in 1834 from a coalition of the National
4I
THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
Republicans, the Anti-Masons and elements which Jackson's strenuous rule sent out of the Democracy.
After 1824 Missouri's electoral vote was always given to the Democratic party except in 1864, when it went to Lincoln, and 1868, when Grant received it. Many Whigs were sent to the popular branch of congress from Missouri. In the feud of 1851 between the Benton and the anti-Benton factions of the Demo- cratic party, the Whigs elected Henry S. Geyer to the senate, and he was the only avowed Whig who was ever chosen from Missouri to that chamber, although others chosen as Demo- crats became Whigs afterward. The Whigs had many votes in the legislature at one time and another, and were becoming an element of considerable consequence in the state just before the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854 killed the Whig party all over the country and created the Republican party of today as the opponent of the Democracy.
The Republicans and War Democrats controlled Missouri dur- ing most of the civil war period. In both branches of congress the Missouri Republicans were strong during the war and early reconstruction days. Thomas C. Fletcher, elected governor in 1864, and Joseph W. McClurg, chosen in 1868, were Republi- cans. All the rest of Missouri's elected governors were Demo- crats except Benjamin Gratz Brown, Liberal Republican, who was supported by the Democrats, elected in 1870, defeating McClurg. With the election of Silas Woodson, chosen in 1872, the Democrats regained control of the state, and they have held it ever since, except that in the Republican national tidal wave year of 1894 the Republicans carried the state for minor state officers, elected one branch of the legislature, and chose ten of the state's fifteen members of the popular branch of congress.
42
THE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
CHAPTER IV
Starting the State's Political Machinery
A UGUST, 1821, which ended Missouri's three years' struggle for admission, saw the state's political machinery soon run- ning smoothly. Before the state's representatives had a chance to take their seats in congress in December of that year, the country had forgotten the excitement of the contest, and all its disturbing influences had passed away.
The year 1824, which brought the presidential contest for a successor to Monroe, also brought to Missouri the necessity for the election of a new governor, McNair's term ending in that year. The choice was between Frederick Bates of St. Louis (a native of Virginia and brother of Edward Bates, Lincoln's Attor- ney General of the after time), one of the most prominent Mis- sourians of the day, who had held several offices in the territory, state and city, and William H. Ashley, whose exploits by this time as head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company had given him a reputation all over the country. Bates was elected, but he died on August 1, 1825, before he had been in office a year. John Scott was re-elected to congress. In the latter part of 1824 the legislature re-elected David Barton to the senate for the term beginning March 4, 1825.
In the presidential contest of 1824 four persons-Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William 11. Crawford and Henry Clay-all calling themselves Republicans, or Democrats, received electoral votes, Jackson getting 99, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. Missouri's three electoral votes were cast for Clay In the absence of a majority for any of the candidates, the con test went to the house of representatives in February, 1825 which had to choose from the three highest, thus excluding Clay
43
STARTING MISSOURI'S POLITICAL MACHINERY.
from the list. Clay threw his support in the house to Adams and elected him.
Missouri's representative in the house, Scott, voted for Adams and thus aroused the wrath of Benton, who contended that as Jackson had more of the popular and electoral vote than any of the other aspirants, he was entitled to the office. "For nine years we have been closely connected in our political course," wrote Benton to Scott the day before the voting in the house took place, but after Benton had learned Scott's choice. "At length the connection is dissolved, and dissolved under circumstances which denounce our eternal separation." "Tomorrow," he added, "is the day for your self-immolation. If you have an enemy, he may go and feed his eyes upon the scene; your former friend will shun the afflicting spectacle." Senator Barton favored Scott's course, and thus brought his own political overthrow at the end of the terin in 1831, for which he had just been elected.
Scott's vote for Adams ended his political career, despite his ability, high character, and the value of the service which he had rendered to Missouri as a Territory and State. In the election of 1826 Scott was beaten for congress by Edward Bates, who was also an Adams man in the partisan divergencies of the time, as distinguished from a Jackson man, Jackson having already been placed in the field by his friends for the election of 1828, to succeed Adams. Scott retired to his home in Ste. Genevieve at the end of his service in 1827, gained a wide repu- tation as a lawyer during the next third of a century, and died at the beginning of the civil war.
Lafayette's visit to St. Louis was the chief event in that city's and Missouri's social annals for 1825. In obedience to a reso- lition adopted unanimously by congress in 1824, President Monroe invited this gallant friend and ally of the Americans during the war of independence to pay a visit to the United States, and he arrived in an American vessel at New York on August 15 of that year. He was received with distinguished consideration by congress, visited each of the twenty-four states and most of the important cities in the next twelve months ; was received everywhere with manifestations of delight; was voted by congress two hundred thousand dollars in money, as a return for his great expenditure in the American cause in the Revolu- tion, and a grant of a township of 24,000 acres of the public lands; celebrated his sixty-eighth birthday anniversary in the White House on September 6, 1825, as the guest of President Adams, and sailed on the following day on the new American
44
THIE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
frigate Brandywine down the Potomac and off to France, arriv- ing at Havre on October 5.
From New Orleans, at which he arrived in April, 1825. Lafayette went up the Mississippi by steamboat, stopping at Carondelet, which was a separate town from St. Louis until 1871, on April 28, and reached St. Louis on the 24th. More than half of that city's 5,000 people, still largely of Lafayette's nation- ality, greeted him as he landed from the boat, accompanied by his son. George Washington Lafayette. A carriage awaited him, into which he entered, attended by Mayor William Carr Lane. Col. Auguste Chouteau, the father of St. louis: and Stephen Hempstead, an officer of the Revolution, and father of Edward Hempstead. one of Missouri Territory's delegates in congress. Escorted by a company of cavalry and infantry, the distinguished visitor rode to the residence of Pierre Chouteau, Sr., at the cor- ner of Locust and Main streets, the finest dwelling house in the city, where he had a brilliant reception. The most notable fen- ture of the festivities during his stay in St: Louis was the ban- quet and ball at the Mansion House, the city's largest hotel, which was attended by the leading residents of the city and by many of those of the rest of the state.
The death of Gov. Frederick Bates on August 1, 1825, made Abraham J. Williams, the president of the senate, ex-officio gov- ernor. He called a special election. to be held shortly after- ward, at which Gen. John Miller, received 2.380 votes, William C. Carr 1.470, and Judge David Todd 1.113. General Miller being elected. served as governor through the remainder of the term, which ended in 1828, and then was re-elected for the ensuing four years, thus serving longer, seven years, than any other gov- ernor in Missouri's history.
General Miller was born in Virginia in 1781, received only a undimentary education, removed to Steubenville. O., in early manhood, edited a newspaper there, was made a general in the state militia, was a colonel in the army during the war with Eng. land in 1812-15, rendered gallant service, much of the time under the command of Gen. William Henry Harrison, was on duty in the army in Missouri Territory subsequently, left the army in 1817, and held the post of register of lands for a few years just previous to his election as governor in 1825. Four years after leaving the governorship, or in 18;5. he was elected to congress as a Democrat, served until 1843, and died near Flor- risant in 18.16.
Before Governor Miller was in office a year, or on November
45
STARTING MISSOURI'S POLITICAL MACHINERY.
20, 1826, the legislature met for the first time in Missouri's per- manent capital, Jefferson City. Previous to this time the sent of government had successively been in St. Louis and St. Charles; but, in the pushing of settlers into the interior of the state, even the latter place quickly ceased to be sufficiently central, and the site of the present Jefferson City was selected. The town was surveyed and laid out in lots in 1822, and the state house, which was on the spot now occupied by the governor's residence, was begun in 1823 and finished in 1820, at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars. The state house was burned down in 1837; the new one, on its present site, was started in 1838, was com- pleted in 18.41, enlarged in 188;, has cost about six hundred thou- sand dollars in the aggregate, and has few superiors in archi- tectural beauty among the state capitals of the country. Jeffer- son City, which consisted largely of log houses when the legis- lature first met there in 1826, today has all the modern ideas in the way of buildings and methods of transportation, and had 10,000 inhabitants at the time the census of 1900 was taken.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.