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 4
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One of the most important of the legislature's acts during its first session, in 1826, in the state's new seat of government, was the re-election of Benton to the senate, in which body, through successive extensions of tenure, he remained until 1851.
The year 1828. in which a president, state officers, and a rep- resentative in congress were to be chosen, saw the most exciting canvass which Missouri had known along to that time. Though the popular designations in national politics were still "Adams men" and "Jackson men," a definite division into parties was beginning to take shape. The strong central government section of Jefferson's Republican party -- the section which would have been Federalist if there had been a Federalist party at that time -- had rallied around Pres. John Quincy Adams and his sec- retary of state, Henry Clay, in 1825-28, and began calling them- selves National Republicans, while the larger clement of Jeffer- soit's patty, taking Jackson's side in the contest, began calling themselves Democrats carly in Jackson's presidency, which was a name which had been used interchangeably with Republicans for many years before that time. The National Republicans became the nucleus of that coalition of Anti-Masons, Anti-Jackson Demo- crats and the rest of the elements of the opposition who, in 1834, adopted the Whig name.
Jackson's adherents, in January, 1828, put up Dr. John Bull of Howard county, Col. Benjamin O'Fallon of St. Louis, and
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Ralph Dougherty of Cape Girardeau, for Missouri's three presi- dential electors, while the supporters of President Adams in March of that year nominated Benjamin H. Reeves of Howard, Joseph G. Brown of St. Louis and John Hall of Cape Girardeau as electors. In the election in the latter part of that year, Jack- son carried Missouri by a large majority, his electors receiving 8,272 votes, as compared with 3,400 for the Adams men. The Democrats carried Missouri for the presidency in every election to this day except in 1864, when the state went to Lincoln, and in 1868, when it gave its support to Grant. In the country at large in 1828 Jackson's electoral vote was 178, against 83 for Adams.
In the election for governor in 1828, Adams' party's candidate left the field before the close of the canvass, and Governor Mil- ler, the Jackson nominee, was chosen by a virtually unanimous vote. In the same year Spencer Pettis, Democrat, defeated Edward Bates, National Republican, for congress. Bates stepped down on March 4, 1829, and though he served in the legislature and held other posts afterward, he did not re-enter national office again until he went into Lincoln's cabinet in 1861.
The Democratic wave, which took on powerful impetus at this time, swept David Barton, National Republican, out of the sen- ate, in an election held in the legislature in November, 1829, and put Alexander Buckner, Democrat, in his place. When Bar- ton left the senate in March, 1831, his career ended. Ile was a candidate for the house of representatives against Pettis in 1830, and was beaten, and the man who a few years earlier was the most potent of Missourians dropped into obscurity, and died near Boonville six years after he left the senate.
In a duel shortly after the election of 1830 between Pettis and Maj. Thomas Biddle, paymaster in the army, and brother of Nicholas Biddle, head of the United States Bank, which Jackson fought, and also brother of Commodore Biddle of the navy, both were mortally wounded. This necessitated a special elec- tion, in which Gen. William H. Ashley (then a National Repub- lican, and a Whig when the Whig party was founded in 1834), the fur trader, and a man of vast personal popularity, was chosen to succeed Pettis, and, by re-elections, served from 1831 to 1837.
Jackson was always stronger than his party in Missouri, as he was in several other Western states. Ile carried Missouri by a large majority in 1832. In that election the state had four
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STARTING MISSOURI'S POLITICAL MACHINERY.
electoral votes, one being gained under the apportionment based on the census of 1830. The national enumeration of that year showed that Missouri had 140,455 inhabitants, as compared with 66,557 in 1820. The state had much more than doubled in the decade, and had advanced from the twenty-third place among the states to the twenty-first. The negro population had increased even faster than the whites, expanding from 10,569 in 1820, to 25,660 in 1830, all but 569 of whom were slaves.
In the election of 1832 Daniel Dunklin, Democrat, of Washing- ton county, was elected governor to succeed Miller. Dunklin was born in South Carolina in 1790, emigrated to Kentucky in 1807, moved to Missouri in ISIo, settling in Potosi, held one or two local offices in his county, and was a member of the con- vention of 1820 which framed Missouri's constitution, and was chosen lieutenant governor in 1828, in the year in which Miller was chosen governor the second time. Governor Dunklin resigned a month before the expiration of his term in 1836, to take the post of surveyor general of Illinois, Missouri and Arkan- sas, offered him by President Jackson, held that office for sev- eral years, and died in 1844.
Dr. John Bull, of Howard county, a former Jackson man, but now acting with the National Republicans, was elected to congress in 1832 as a colleague of Ashley, the apportionment under the census of 1830 giving Missouri an additional mem- ber of the house of representatives. He served only one term, however, and was succeeded by Albert G. Harrison, Democrat.
In the summer of 1832 St. Louis had its first visitation of Asiatic cholera. It crossed the Atlantic from Europe, ravaged New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities on the coast, invaded the South and West, and lasted five weeks in St. Louis. During part of this time the deaths averaged thirty a day, the aggregate mortality out of the city's 8,000 inhabitants being about 500. Other places in Missouri, notably St. Charles, Ste. Genevieve and Cape Girardeau, were assailed by the mal- ady in 1832 and 1833. It returned to St. Louis in the summer of 1836, but did less damage than in 1832, and made another visit in 18.19, in which season the total deaths from the scourge in St. Louis were over 4,000 out of a population of about 70,000.
Among the deaths from the cholera of 1832-33 was Sen. Alexander Buckner, who had held office only two years. Buck- ner was born in Indiana, removed to Missouri in 1818, was a member of the convention of 1820 which framed the state con -
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stitution, served in the legislature, and was one of the best known of the state's citizens at the time lie was elected to succeed Bar- ton in the senate. Buckner was succeeded in the senate by Dr. Lewis F. Linn, also a Democrat, who was born in Ken- tucky in 1796, who served as a surgeon in the latter part of the war of 1812-15 against England, removed to Missouri soon afterward, settling at Ste. Genevieve, and served in the legisla- ture for several years. During ten years, until his death in 1843, while he was a colleague of Benton, he was one of the most active and efficient representatives Missouri ever had in the United States senate.
The first dozen years of the life of Missouri as a state, which saw the community make great gains in population, wealth and the extent and variety of its industries, also saw the creation of its oldest representative of the higher learning, the St. Louis Uni- versity, which dates from 1829. The University of the State of Missouri, the largest of its educational institutions, was estab- lished at Columbia in 1840, and Washington University was founded in St. Lonis in 1853. Of the other prominent Mis- souri universities or colleges of today, William Jewell, of Liberty, was founded in 1849; Westminster, of Fulton, 1853; Central, of Fayette, 1855; La Grange, of the town of that name, 1858; Central Wesleyan, of Warrenton, 1864; Pritchett, of Glasgow, 1868; Drury, of Springfield, 1873; Park, of Parkville, 1875; Pike, of Bowling Green, 1881; and Missouri Valley, of Mar- shall, 1889. In ratio of colleges to inhabitants Missouri has always stood below Ohio, Illinois and one or two other states in the Mississippi valley, but she ranks fairly well with the rest of the Western states.
By the end of those dozen years Missouri's steamboating inter- ests began to assume proportions of some importance. The Gen- eral Pike, Capt. Jacob Reid, which tied up at the foot of Mar- ket street on August 2, 1817, and the much larger vessel, the Constitution, Capt. R. T. Guyard, which arrived just two months later, the first and second steamboats, respectively, which ascended the Mississippi beyond the mouth of the Ohio, blazed a path which many vessels of their class followed in the next few years.
The Missouri Republican, of St. Louis ( successor to the Mis- sonri Gasette and predecessor of the St. Louis Republic of today), on April 19, 1822, said at that time five steamboats were engaged in the trade between St. Louis and Fever river, in the lead mining region- - the Indiana, Shamrock, Hamilton, Mus-
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STARTING MISSOURI'S POLITICAL MACHINERY.
kingum and Mechanic. The number and tonnage of the steam .. boats from St. Louis kept on growing from that time till the civil war closed the lower Mississippi and made navigation on the Missouri dangerous. The Virginia, the first steamboat to reach the Mississippi's upper waters, arrived at Fort Snelling, in the present Minnesota, in May, 1823. That was twenty-six years before the organization of Minnesota as a territory and thirty-five years before its admission as a state.
On the Missouri the development of steam navigation was necessarily much slower, on account of its comparative lack of important towns, than it was on the Mississippi. The Indepen- dence, the first steamboat which entered the Missouri, left St. Louis on May 15, 1819, arrived at Franklin, on the Missouri, on May 28, and, after a few days delay, went on to old Chari- ton, and was back in St. Louis on June 5, from which she took freight to Louisville. The Western Engineer, with the Jeffer- son, Expedition and Johnson, entered the Missouri a few days after the Independence had left it, and the first named boat went up as far as old Council Bluffs, in Nebraska, a few miles beyond the present Omaha. This flotilla carried Maj. Stephen H. Long's exploring expedition. Until after 1830, however, the steamboat was a rare sight beyond the mouth of the Kaw, where the present Kansas City is built, and the earlier boats after that year were almost all engaged in the fur trade.
In 1831, Astor's American Fur Company, which had its west- ern headquarters at St. Louis, sent its steamboat, the Yellowstone. with Pierre Chouteau, one of its officials, aboard, up to Fort Pierre (named for him), near the present city of Pierre, in South Dakota. This was the first steamboat to ascend the Missouri higher than old Council Bluffs. In 1832 the Yellowstone went from St. Louis up to Fort Union, the company's post at the mouth of the Yellowstone, on the present North Dakota's west- ern border. On this trip the boat had among its passengers George Catlin, the painter and traveler, then making his first visit to the Indian country, in which he resided many years. The next step in the navigation of the upper Missouri was made in 1859, when the first steamboat reached Fort Benton, in the pres- ent Montana, at the head of navigation on that river.
The steamboat did not immediately drive out the flatboat (used for going with the current only), the keelboat and the barge, but these gradually diminished in number relatively to their for- midable rivals, and virtually disappeared by the time, at the 1V-4
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opening of the civil war, steam navigation on the Mississippi and its chief tributaries had reached its highwater mark. From the advent of the steamboat, with the great reduction in cost of trans- portation and the increased speed, safety and comfort which it brought, dated the beginning of the real expansion of St. Louis and the rest of the important towns on the waterways of the West.
5I
MISSOURI AS A BUILDER OF THE WEST.
CHAPTER V
Missouri as a Builder of the West
W IIEN, on March 3, 1825, President Monroe placed his . signature on a bill prepared by Sen. Thomas 11. Ben- ton appropriating ten thousand dollars for the survey of a road from Missouri's western frontier into New Mexico, and twenty thousand dollars to be given to the Indians on the line for permission to use the road, the country learned that Missouri was reaching out for commercial conquests beyond the nation's borders. That was during the carly days of Frederick Bates' term as governor. The road indicated was that which afterward became popularly known as the Santa Fe trail. It was the highway over which commerce between St. Louis and New Mexico's capital and adjoining Mexican settlements was carried on, the trail's eastern terminus being at 'a point on the Missouri river-first at Franklin, then at Independence, and afterward at Westport Landing, the site of the present Kansas City.
Petitions had been sent to congress during the governorship of Bates' predecessor, McNair, from leading citizens of St. Louis and other points in the state, re-enforced by appeals from the Missouri legislature, for the survey of a road into New Mexico, for treaties with Indians on the route, and for the establishment of a military post at the point where the trail crossed the Arkan- sas river. Benton, always intelligently alert for the welfare of his state, and enthusiastically devoted to the cause of west- ern expansion, quickly pushed the project to enactment. By the treaty of 1819 with Spain, the Arkansas river formed part of the boundary between the United States and Spain's dominion in the Southwest : Mexico and its colonies. That domain gained
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its independence from Spain in 1822. Thus New Mexico and all the rest of the territory south and southwest of the Arkansas river formed part of the Mexican republic at the time that Ben- ton's Santa Fe trail bill was enacted.
The opening of that highway had social and political conse- quences for the United States which neither its projectors nor anybody else in the United States or Mexico dreamed of at the time that Monroe put his signature to the Benton bill.
Missouri's influence had been active in inciting western expan- sion long before the United States government took a hand in the opening of the highway to Santa Fe. It was against the wishes of Wilson P. Hunt, a prominent St. Louis business man then and afterward, and also against the wishes of the rest of the Missourians attached to Astor's colony at the mouth of the Columbia, that the sale of Astor's post at Astoria to his old rival, Canada's Northwest Fur Company, took place in 1813. Had Hunt, who was the chief officer in the Pacific Fur Company, next to Astor himself, been present at the time, the transfer to the Canadian company never would have been made, and the capt- ure of the post by the British war ship shortly afterward would have been prevented. Thus the British fur traders would have been shut out of contact with the Pacific at that point, the dis- pute with England about the possession of the Oregon coun- try would have ended in our favor earlier, and the territory on the Pacific which we would have gained would have been much larger than was that which came to ns under the Anglo-American treaty of 1846 (the present states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho and parts of the states of Montana and Wyoming).
Moses Austin, for many years a resident of Missouri, and a large stockholder in the Bank of St. Louis for two years, con- ceived in 1818 the plan, subsequently carried out by his son, Stephen F. Austin, also a resident of St. Louis, whereby an Amer- ican colony was established in Texas, then Spanish territory, and the series of events was started which culminated in Texas' independence in 1836, her annexation to the United States in 1845, and the war of 1846-48 with Mexico on account of the Texas boundary dispute, by which the United States won the present California, Nevada, Utah, parts of Colorado and Wyo- ming, and the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico.
Thrust outward from the Mississippi toward the sunset as a promontory of civilization into a sea of savagery, with vast plains on three of its sides, dotted here and there with forests, and backed by a more formidable mountain chain than any which
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MISSOURI AS A BUILDER OF THE WEST.
white men had yet encountered in the United States, extend- ing from the Rockies onward to the neighborhood of the Pacific, much of this vast expanse being peopled with as fierce and pow- erful tribes of Indians as were found anywhere on the conti- nent at any time, Missouri was the gateway to the wilder and wider West. Its situation gave it a larger variety of people than those who had been on the frontier's firing line on its march from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi. Plying their trade on the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri, with their base of operations at St. Louis, were gay and grimacing coureurs des bois from Canada's lakes, with swaggering and riotous flatboat, barge, keelboat and pirogue men of American and other nation- alities.
Men of the old frontier met and mingled there with a new species of borderers. Boone, of the advanced guard of pioneers and commonwealth builders who wrested Kentucky and Ten- nessee from the red men, was residing at Charette, on the Mis- souri, near St. Charles, when the trade from St. Louis to Santa Fe was first projected. Around that time Robert Mclellan, Wilson P. Hunt and other Missourians were pushing their way across the continent to assist in establishing Astor's colony on the Pacific-the Mclellan who had fought under Wayne at Fallen Timbers back in 1794, while the British were still con- temptuously holding a line of United States posts from Michili- mackinac and Detroit along the great lakes to Oswegatchie, on the St. Lawrence. Mannel Lisa, George Drouillard, Andrew Henry and their companions of the newer order were up the Yellowstone and off at the Three Forks of the Missouri, in the service of the Missouri Fur Company, trapping beaver, trading with Omahas, Arickarees and Mandans, running the gauntlet of the thieving Crows, and alternately treating with and fighting the Sioux and Blackfeet. William H. Ashley, Jedediah S. Smith, William L. Sublette, Robert Campbell, Etienne Provost and James Bridger (who died in Kansas City as recently as 1881), all of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, from their base in St. Louis, were getting ready to open the paths to the Pacific for the gold seekers and the settlers who came after them and occupied the land. The Bents and the St. Vrains, of St. Louis, famous in the Santa Fe trade and in the annals of the West and the Southwest, were about to begin their work, and the boy Kit Carson, throwing aside his saddlers' tools and fleeing from Franklin, on the Missouri, was soon to join one of Charles Bent's Santa Fe caravans, and to begin the carcer, extending through
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THE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
the Mexican war and the war of secession, which romancers of the past two generations have embalmed in wild western legend.
The men of the latter class, beginning with Lisa, Henry and their associates-thie plainsmen and the mountaineers who, with canoes or on horseback, traversed vast distances and met and combated many varieties of Indians and many extremes of cli- mate and topography-necessarily developed traits which were absent from the make-up of the frontiersmen of Boone's and Kenton's days, who were impeded by the dense forests of the older states between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, and who could make little use of horses. The newer order were lighter hearted, and more alert, enterprising, audacious and resourceful.
Of course a majority of Missouri's 100,00 residents of 1825, the year in which Monroe signed Benton's Santa Fe highway survey bill, did not differ materially in character and proclivi- ties from the dwellers at that time in Kentucky, Illinois and the other Western states. Most of them were engaged in agricult- ure, with a sprinkling in lead and iron mining, in a few varieties of manufactures, and in general commerce with the rest of the United States. The elements, however, which are here singled out for especial mention were, in a considerable degree, peculiar to Missouri, and formed an important and rapidly increasing ingredient of the state's inhabitants. Obviously in such a soci- ety there must have been many men ready for any sort of haz- ardous enterprise, and eager to take desperate chances for the sake of money, fame or adventure. Manifestly, too, there must have been in such a community in that era many men who cared little for the Indians' rights to the soil, and who, having con- tempt for the Spaniards and their successors the Mexicans, and coveting the rich territory-rich, reputedly, in gold and silver- from the Arkansas to Rio Grande, were ready, on slight provo- cation, to act on the theory that the world's lands belong to those capable of getting the most out of them.
Moreover, these elements injected a dash of adventurousness into the make-up of the more conservative ingredient of the state's population. A regiment of Missouri mounted volunteers, com- manded by Col. Richard Gentry, fought under Zachary Taylor in 1837, and aided materially in bringing the Seminole war to an end. Missourians died with Bowie and Crockett at the Alamo, and, with Sam Houston, helped to win Texas indepen- dence at San Jacinto. Nearly a dozen years later their brothers we're with Taylor from Palo Alto to Buena Vista, and marched and fought with Scott from Vera Cruz to Santa Anna's capi-
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MISSOURI AS A BUILDER OF THE WEST.
tal, while the dash of Doniphan's Missourians through New and Old Mexico in the same war, was one of the century's most brilliant military achievements. The warriors of Lyon, Price and other Missouri commanders on each side were among the sturdiest of the fighters of 1861-65.
It is necessary to point out those conditions and characteris- tics in Missouri's society at the time the trade with Mexico's outlying territory began to be opened-which conditions con- tinued for several decades afterward-in order that the domi- nant part which Missouri played in the winning and building of the greater West, stretching from Texas and New Mexico onward to California and Oregon, may be grasped.
The story of the evolution of the trade between Missouri and New Mexico and of the political effects which it brought can now be readily understood. At Santa Fe and other points on or near the Rio Grande's upper waters the Spaniards had estab- lished permanent colonies long before the earliest settlers erected their log cabins in the Mississippi valley. As the distance between Santa Fe, the most important of these colonies, and the nearest seaport of any consequence in Mexican territory, Vera Cruz, was twice as far in miles and three times as far in time as from Santa Fe to St. Louis, it was obvious that Missouri conld supply those colonies' wants in the way of merchandise cheaper than could be done by Mexico. There were chances, therefore, for great profits in the trade with New Mexico, the amount, of course, of the profits depending largely on the duties and other restrictions which the home authorities-Spaniards previous to the revolution of 1822 and Mexicans afterward- would impose on the commerce. The fact that St. Louis had water communication with all parts of the outside world, and that goods could be transported along the Missouri to points 250 or 300 miles west of St. Louis before beginning overland transportation, would necessarily decrease the cost of the traffic and increase the profits.
Spaniards and Frenchmen had occasionally traversed the course between Santa Fe and the Missouri river before Jeffer- son bought Louisiana, but the road was known only vaguely until long after that annexation. In 1801 William Morrison, of Kaskaskia, Ill., who afterward figured prominently in many Missouri enterprises, sent a French creole, Baptiste Lalande, with a small stock of merchandise, up the Platte, with instruc- tions to push his way to Santa Fe and open trade with that region. Lalande reached there in safety, disposed of Morri-
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son's goods, kept the money, and remained in the New Mexican capital. Pike, when captured by the Mexicans in 1807, while try- ing to reach the sources of the Red river, met Lalande in his new home. Pike also met another American there, James Purcell (Pike called him Pursley), a trapper from St. Louis, who reached Santa Fe in his new capacity as a trader in 1805, and resided there for many years. The return of Pike from New Mexico in 1807, and his report, published a few years later, revived interest, particularly in Missouri, in the trade with Spain's colony.
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