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 6
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Missouri's feeling against the Mormons at this time was intensi- fied by the secession from the order of Harris, Cowdery and Whitmer, the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, who declared that their previous testimony regarding the authenticity of the plates and of Smith's translation and revelations was false; together with the apostacy of Orson Hyde, Thomas B. Marsh and other leading spirits in the church, some of whom deposed that
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MORMON TROUBLES IN MISSOURI.
Smith declared his prophesies and the doctrines of his sects were superior to the laws of the land; that he would tread down his enemies, and that if he were persecuted further he would cause a sea of Gentile blood to flow from the Rocky mountains to the Atlantic.
At the state election on August 6, 1838, the Mormons' Mis- souri troubles came to a head. In Gallatin, Daviess county, on that day, William Penniston, a Gentile candidate for the legis- lature, denounced the Mormons as horse thieves and robbers, and threatened that none of them would be allowed to vote in that county. Samuel Brown, a Mormon, said the charges were false, and that he would vote. He was struck by a Gentile, and a gen- eral melee began, which continued at intervals throughout the greater part of the day. Exaggerated reports of the trouble spread, both Mormons and Gentiles armed throughout the coun- ties, in which the Mormons resided, and a miniature civil war ensued, in which there were many collisions, in which cattle were . killed and much property was destroyed on both sides and a few lives were lost.
The outcome was that Governor Boggs called out the militia in the disturbed regions, under Gen. David R. Atchison, afterward a United States senator ; Gen. Alexander W. Doniphan, a Mexi- can war hero of the after day ; Gen. John B. Clark, and others. Several demonstrations were made by the militia, the efforts of Doniphan and Atchison being chiefly to preserve the peace between the Missourians and the Mormons. A fight, however, took place at Crooked river, in Ray county, between a small num- ber of Missouri militia and a Mormon force under Captain Patton, a Danite leader, who was called "Fear Not," in which the militia were defeated by the loss of one man killed, but in which three Mormons, including Patton, lost their lives. Long before this time Smith, Rigdon and the rest of the leaders had arrived from Kirtland, and Smith took direct command of the Mormons in Missouri.
In this crisis Governor Boggs issued his famous "exterminat- ing" order, for which he was criticised somewhat at the time by Atchison and a few other Missourians, and for which he was condemned more generally afterward. Under date of October 27, 1838, the governor addressed Gen. John B. Clark, saying :
"Since the order of this morning to you directing you to cause four hundred mounted men to be raised within your division, I have received information of the most appalling char-
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acter, which entirely changes the face of things, and places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this state. Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operations with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace. I have just issued orders to Maj. Gen. Willock, of Marion county, to raise five hundred men and to march them to the northern part of Daviess, and there unite with General Doniphan, of Clay, who has been ordered with five hundred men to proceed to the same point for the purpose of intercepting the retreat of the Mormons to the north. Brig. Gen. Parks, of Ray, has been ordered to have four hundred men of his brigade in readiness to join you at Richmond. The whole force will be placed under your command."
Three days later, on October 30, the most destructive fight of the whole campaign took place at Hanghn's Mills, on Shoal Creek, a few miles south of the present town of Breckinridge, in Cald- well county. About forty Mormons were gathered there on that day when one hundred mounted rangers from Daviess and Living- ston counties rode up, under command of Col. Thomas Jennings, who had fought under Jackson in the war of 1812-15, and whio was to figure in the Mexican war afterward, the rangers being part of an independent force organized in the disturbed region to fight against the Mormons. Most of the Mormons immediately fled into a log blacksmith shop in the town, but this proved to be a trap instead of a fortress. In the battle which ensued an assault was made upon the shop, and many of the rangers pushed their rifles through the cracks between the logs and killed or wounded their enemies on the inside, without the loss of a man by them- selves. No prisoners were taken. All were killed or so badly wounded that they were supposed to be dead, and both wounded and dead were thrown into a well near by. Reports as to the number of dead range between eighteen and thirty-three.
Meanwhile, on November 1, Gen. S. D. Lucas, with a large military force in advance of General Clark, who had the main body of the troops, reached Far West, the Mormons' capital. Smith, seeing the hopelessness of further struggle, accepted the terms offered by Encas. The Mormons gave up their arms, sur- rendered their leaders for trial, including Smith, and promised to leave the state. Brigham Young, who had joined the Mor- mons in 1832, who had advanced swiftly in the church, and who
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MORMON TROUBLES IN MISSOURI.
was one of its leading dignitaries at the time, left Missouri in 1838 just before the general collapse came, going to Quincy, Ill., where many Mormons had already gathered.
Smith and most of the other prisoners were taken to Richmond, Ray county, from which Smith and a few of his companions were transferred to Liberty, Clay county. Indictments for treason, murder, robbery, arson and a few other offences were brought against most of them. A few of the prisoners in both Richmond and Liberty escaped, others were acquitted, and Smith and those left with him were being taken from Liberty to Boone county on a change of venue when, on April 15, 1839, they got away from their guards (it was charged that the guards were bribed to let them escape) and fled across the river to Quincy. Several attempts were made in the next few years by the Missouri author- ities to have Smith extradited, but all failed.
During all this time the rank and file of the Mormons were dis- posing of their property as best they could, usually at a ruinous loss, and leaving the state, some going to lowa Territory and oth- ers to different parts of Illinois. On April 20, 1839, five days after Smith's escape, the last of the Mormons left Far West and abandoned the state. The number of Mormons in Missouri at the end of 1838, at the time the decree of banishment was passed against them, was placed by their own anthorities at about fifteen thousand. On the site of the Far West of the Mormons' days is built the present town of Kerr.
In his report to Governor Boggs soon after the surrender of Smith and the rest of the leaders at Far West, General Clark placed the losses in the campaign at forty Mormons killed and several wounded, and fifteen citizens badly wounded and one killed. In a memorial sent by the Mormons to congress while they were in Nauvoo asking for pecuniary redress, the losses from their expulsion from Jackson county were placed at one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars,, and two million dollars were the damages they sustained in the whole state. Con- gress took no action.
As the Mormons had about the same feeling for Boggs that the Jews who escaped the massacre at Jerusalem had for Titus, the attempt on his life in 1842, in which he was shot while sitting near the window of his residence at Independence, was naturally laid to them. This was two years after Boggs retired from the governorship, and while the Mormons were domiciled at Nauvoo. It was learned afterward that (. 1'. Rockwell, a Mormon, went from Nauvoo to Independence, worked in the latter place until
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TIIE PROVINCE AND THIE STATES.
he got what he supposed was a favorable opportunity to carry out his design, when he made his way in the night to Boggs' house, fired at him through the window, inflicting a serious wound, from which, however, he recovered. Rockwell was arrested, but the evidence against him was deemed to be defective at certain points, and he was acquitted.
After being driven from Missouri the Mormons established themselves in Nauvoo, Ill., in 1840, prospered for a few years, and then tribulation came as in Ohio and Missouri. Joseph the prophet and his brother Hyrum Smith, imprisoned on a charge of levying war against the state of Illinois, were assassinated while in a jail in Carthage in 1844 by a mob composed of disguised members of a militia regiment. In 1846 the Mormons under Brigham Young, who succeeded the prophet Joseph, fled from Nauvoo, crossed the plains, established themselves on the borders of Great Salt Lake, built up Utah, expanded along the great Cordilleran mountain system through states and territories down into Mexico and up into Canada, and have evolved one of the most marvelous social organization which the world has seen.
Nevertheless, through all their mutations of fortune, the Mor- mons still believe that they will one day return to Jackson county, set up the kingdom of the Lord on the spot near Independence from which they were driven when Dunklin was governor of Missouri and Jackson was president of the United States, bring in the millenium, and spread their sway over all the peoples of the earth.
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MISSOURI'S PERMANENT BOUNDARIES.
CHAPTER VII
Fixing the Permanent Boundaries
T 'HIE enabling act of congress of 1820 under which Missouri entered the Union in 1821 fixed the state's boundaries on most of its west end and on all of its east and south sides as they are to-day. On the northwest corner, however, and along the north line the state's limits have been altered since those days. In the first case, which was an expansion of the state's area, the change came through the so-called "Platte purchase," which was made in 1837. In the second instance, in which the state gave up some territory which it claimed, the alteration was a result of the dispute between Missouri and Iowa, which was settled finally by and act of congress which was in line with a decision of the supreme court previously rendered. In each of these instances the question of the Indian occupation of the state was involved.
After Governor Clark's great council at Portage des Sioux, near the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi, in 1815, at the end of the war with England, Missouri was not serionsly disturbed by the Indians until Black Hawk's rising in 1832. Black Hawk, one of the chiefs of the Sacs and Foxes, who was born in Kaskaskia in 1767, four years after Pontiac's revolt, who became a noted warrior at an early age, and who, with Tecumseh, fought for the British in 1812, was sixty-five years of age at the time his own rebellion took place in 1832.
In 1804 most of the chiefs of the Sacs and Foxes signed a treaty at St. Louis with William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, which comprised the present states of Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Indiana, and to which upper Louisiana was for a short time attached for administrative pur- poses by which, for the sum of one thousand dollars a year, they
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agreed to transfer to the United States government certain lands on each side of the Mississippi, principally on the east side, and in the present states of Illinois and Wisconsin. Black Hawk did not sign this compact, declared that the signers were drunk, and repudiated it. Thus he was in the mood to join the British when Tecumseh's war belts were being sent among the Indians just before and after Tippecanoe, fought a few battles on their side, fraternized with them for a time afterward, and held aloof from the subsequent treaties of his and other tribes confirming or extending the scope of the agreement of 1804, although he is said to have signed one of them. When most of the Sacs and Foxes, under the lead of Keokuk, moved to the west side of the Mississippi in 1823 Black Hawk and his band stuck to their old lands. As they refused to move even after the treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1830 by which all the Indian lands cast of the river were finally ceded to the United States, a force of regulars and Illinois militia moved against them in 1831, but they returned in 1832, attacked the white settlments, and the war began.
The fighting administration at Washington-Jackson, presi- dent, and Lewis Cass, a veteran of 1812, secretary of war-took prompt action. From Jefferson Barracks, a military post estab- lished shortly before that time just south of St. Louis, Gen. Henry Atkinson, with a force of regulars, was sent up the Mississippi. The Illinois state troops were put in the field. General Scott was sent from the East with a large force, but was hampered by the cholera, which attacked his troops. The hostiles were driven into the present state of Wisconsin, were defeated by General Dodge at the Wisconsin river on July 21, 1832, and, on August 2, they were struck heavily by Atkinson at the point where the Bad Axe river flows into the Mississippi. Black Hawk and the last of his men who were under arms surrendered on August 27. He was taken to Jefferson Barracks and thence through the east, was imprisoned a short time in Fortress Monroe, and died at his camp on the Des Moines in 1838.
Among the men afterward famous who participated in the Black Hawk war were Abraham Lincoln, who was one of the Illinois volunteers ; Robert Anderson, who commanded the federal troops at Fort Sumter at the outbreak of the war of secesson, and Jefferson Davis, the head of the confederacy. Both Ander- son and Davis, then recent gradnates of West Point, were sta- tioned at Jefferson Barracks.
While Atkinson and his men from Missouri were fighting Black Hawk on the east side of the Mississippi the Missouri state
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MISSOURI'S PERMANENT BOUNDARIES.
troops were busy in their own territory, guarding against possible invasion from bands of hostiles from Illinois, Wisconsin or Iowa. . General Clark, United States superintendent of Indian affairs, from his lookout in St. Louis, was more interested in the out- break than any other person in the country, and his counsel was sought at the capital of Missouri, at the capital of Illinois, and at the capital of the nation. On General Clark's advice Governor Miller, himself a soldier of the War of 1812, ordered Maj. Gen. Richard Gentry, of Columbia, Mo., in May, 1832, to raise one thousand mounted volunteers, to march at a moment's notice. Gentry gave orders to Brig. Gens. Benjamin Miens, Jonathan Riggs, and Jesse T. Wood to furnish their quotas, and they did it promptly. Companies were raised in Boone, Callaway, Clay, St. Charles, Montgomery, Lincoln, Pike, Marion, Monroe and Ralls connties. Two companies under Maj. Thomas W. Conyer, accompanied by General Gentry, who had Jaines S. Rollins as one of his aides, pushed at once for the mouth of the Des Moines, . intending to range the country between that point and the main Chariton. Other troops under Col. Austin A. King, afterward governor of the state, marched up as far as Fort Pike, in the present Clark county. As there were no demonstrations of any consequence by the Indians the troops were recalled in Septem- ber, were mustered out of the service soon after the capture of the old chief on the east side of the river, and the Black Hawk war was ended.
In the summer of 1836 a force of militia was again called out on account of an alleged Indian invasion of the present Mercer and Grundy counties, one company of which was commanded by David R. Atchison, who about this time began to figure as a militia commander in the Mormon troubles, and who occasionally acted as a counsel for the Mormons. It was quickly learned, however, that the culprits this time were not the Indians, but a band of desperate characters, many of whom belonged to the Hetherly family ( which was related to the Kentucky bandits Big and Little Harp), living in that locality, who stole from whites and Indians alike, as opportunity offered, and who often added murder to robbery. They were arrested, some of them turned state's evidence, one of them was sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, and the gang was broken up. This affair figured in the annals of the time as the "Hetherly war."
A year later, 1837, in that tempestnous era for Missouri extending from the closing year of Governor Miller's service through that of Governor Dunklin and to near the end of that of
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Governor Boggs, President Van Buren, knowing the martial fame of the Missourians, asked Senator Benton if a force of mounted volunteers could be raised in his state to assist in fighting the Seminoles. Benton answered that the Missourians were ready for any duty assigned them by the government, whereupon Secre- tary of War Poinsett asked Governor Boggs for troops, the governor issued a call for them, and a regiment of mounted men was raised, of which Richard Gentry, mentioned in a preceding paragraph, was elected colonel. The work of Gentry and his men forms a very interesting episode in Missouri history.
By a treaty between the United States government and a majority of the Seminoles, signed in 1832 and ratified by the :. 1. ate in 1834, these Indians agreed to give up their Florida .an'ds and move west of the Mississippi. Some of their chiefs, how- ever, including Osceola, Micanony, Jumper, Alligator and oth- ers, refused to sign the treaty or to be bound by it. On Decem- ber 28, 1835, Gen. Wiley Thompson, the Indian agent in Florida, with Lieutenant Smith, of the army, were killed near Fort King by a party of ludians under Osceola, and other whites in the vicinity were also murdered. On the same day Major Dade, with one hundred and ten soldiers, on their way to Fort King, were ambushed by Indians commanded by Alligator, Micanopy and Jumper, and all except three privates were killed.
This was the beginning of the Seminole war, which lasted seven years, and which was one of the most destructive of all the Indian struggles in American history. Though the soldiers were usually victorious their losses largely exceeded those of the Indians, who were generally able to hide themselves in the swamps, jungles and morasses of their locality, and who had their families and their food supply secure in their hidden fast- nesses. Many generals who before or afterward were famous- Clinch, Gaines, Call, Jesup, Taylor, Armistead and Worth-were in command in Florida successively in the war. The Indians' losses in killed and captured, however, could not be repaired, and at last, reduced to a remnant, all that were left alive surrendered in 1842, and were shipped to the west side of the Mississippi and joined their brethren who had crossed the river earlier. The descendants of those Seminoles constitute one of the five civilized tribes now residing in the Indian Territory.
Thus only two of the seven years of the Seminole war had expired when the Missouri volunteers entered it. The counties of Chariton, Ray, Boone, Howard, Callaway, Marion and Jack- son contributed to Gentry's regiment, and two companies of Dela-
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MISSOURI'S PERMANENT BOUNDARIES.
ware and Osage Indians were in it, commanded by white officers. John W. Price was lieutenant colonel and Harrison W. Hughes was major, both of Howard county. Colonel Gentry's men were mustered into the service at Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, by Gen. Henry Atkinson, the commander of the department, early in October, 1837, they went down the Mississippi by boats to New Orleans, from which point they sailed to Florida, landing at Tampa Bay on November 15. Ordered forward on December 1 by Col. Zachary Taylor, the commander in Florida at that time, they advanced on Okeechobee Lake, one hundred miles from Tampa, and there, on December 25, the Seminoles were encoun- tered in large force, and in a position of great natural strength
In the battle Colonel Taylor placed the Missouri volunteers i the center and at the front, with the regulars on each flank, all the troops, by the nature of the ground, being compelled to fight on foot. After a fierce battle of several hours' duration the Indians were gradually driven across a swamp and at last retreated precipitately. The killed and wounded in the battle of Okeechobee was one hundred and thirty-eight, most of whom were among the Missouri volunteers. Among them was the heroie Gentry, who, mortally wounded in the battle, died that night.
As the campaign for the season ended with that fight, the Missouri troops were sent home early in 1838, and were mustered out of the service. The bodies of Colonel Gentry and of three regular army officers -- Captain Van Swearingen and Lieutenants Brooke and Center-were interred at Jefferson Barracks, the government erecting a monument over them.
Colonel Taylor's official report to Secretary of War Poinsett of the battle of Okeechobee said that the Missouri volunteers fled from the field early in the fight, and that his aides had been unable to rally them. Indignant at this charge the Missouri legislature appointed a special investigating committee, headed by David R. Atchison, which summoned many of the officers of Gentry's regi- ment before it, all of whom swore that Taylor's accusation of cowardise was grossly untruthful and unjust. The legislature, by a unanimous vote of both branches, passed a series of resolu- tions denouncing Taylor's charges, and asking President Van Buren to order an official investigation of the conduct of the Mis- souri volunteers, but Van Buren took no action on it. Gentry county, organized in 1841, was named in honor of the intrepid Missouri commander.
Just before Colonel Gentry's Missouri volunteers marched to
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fight the Indians of Florida, a treaty was made with some of the red men of Missouri, which added to the area of the state the locality in its present northwest corner then called the "Platte country." The law under which Missouri entered statehood fixed the state's westerly boundary on a north and south line "passing through the middle of the mouth of the Kansas river where the same enters into the Missouri river." That direct north and south line ran from the state's southerly boundary to its northern border. An agitation began in 1835 (Col. William F. Switzler, in his "History of Missouri," p. 230, says Gen. Andrew S. Hughes started it in a speech which he delivered at a militia muster near Liberty, in Clay county, in that year) to annex to the state the triangle northwest.of the present Kansas City, the "Platte country," and extend th Amandary of the state in that corner out to the Missouri river. " the idea met with immediate favor throughout the state, and a memorial asking the annexation was sent to congress in 1836.
As Benton ("Thirty Years' View," vol. 1, p. 626) points out, the difficulties in the way of this project were threefold. "1. To make still larger a state which was already one of the largest in the Union. 2. To remove 'Indians from a possession which had just been assigned to them in perpetuity. 3. To alter the Mis- souri compromise line in relation to slave territory, and thereby convert free soil into slave soil." The third of these obstacles was rendered especially formidable at that moment by the excite- ment throughout the country caused by the night in the house of representatives on the abolition petitions, by the agitation by Garrison and other emancipationists; the organization of aboli- tion societies throughout the country, and the transmission of anti-slavery literature through the mails into the South against the wishes of a large majority of that section's people. In the house of representatives the free states had a heavy preponder- ance. They had half of the senate, while a treaty which would have to be got with the Indians before the lands in the coveted district could be annexed would need a two-thirds vote for its ratification.
Nevertheless, success came quickly. Benton introduced a bill reciting that when the Indian title to that territory should be extinguished the jurisdiction over said tract should be "ceded to the state of Missouri." Benton's vigor, Senator Limm's adroit- ness and personal popularity and the enthusiastic aid of Mis- souri's representatives in the other branch of congress, Ashley and Harrison, together with the North's complaisance, did the
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MISSOURI'S PERMANENT BOUNDARIES.
work. No serious opposition was offered in either branch and Jackson placed his signature on the bill on June 7, 1836. Mis- souri's legislature assented to that act on December 16, the Sacs and Foxes agreeing to the terms for the relinquishment of their lands on September 17, and on March 28, 1837, President Van Buren proclaimed that that territory had become part of the state of Missouri.
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