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 8
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CHAPTER IX
Texas Annexation and the Mexican War
S EVERAL months before the election of 18446 which killed the proposed state constitution, Missouri had something more exciting to deal with than the framing of a new organic law. The war with Mexico began in the first half of that year, and Missouri took an especially prominent part in that struggle. The war came as a consequence of the annex- ation of Texas in 1845, which Missouri had ardently favored.
For many reasons Missouri had a profound interest in the welfare of Texas and its addition to the. American Union. The creation of Texas as an Americanized community had its incep- tion with two Missourians: Moses Austin and his son Stephen F. Austin, both residents of St. Louis at the time their connection with Texas began. Many emigrants to Texas went from Mis- souri. Scores of Missourians were in the ranks of the armies of Houston and the other commanders at the time Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836. Missouri was a cham- pion of national expansion in any quarter in which it could be had, irrespective of the influence which it would exert on the balance between the free and the slave sections of the country. Benton and other representatives of Missouri in congress had often denounced the treaty of 1819 with Spain by which the country was led to surrender all its claims to Texas, which some understood to have been part of the Louisiana which Bonaparte sold to Jefferson in 1803. Through the trade with New Mexico over the Santa Fe trail and its extensions in different directions Missouri furnished a convenient highway by which Mexican territory could be invaded from the north, and at the same time it established the trade and social relations. which began the
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work of Americanizing New Mexico long before Kearney, Doni- phan and Price, in the war of 1846-48, made the military con- quest of New Mexico which Texas annexation precipitated.
President Tyler sent a treaty to the senate in April, 1844, for the acquisition of Texas, which that body rejected. The vic- tory gained by Polk, however, on an annexation platform, a few months later, was taken by the country as a mandate in favor of annexation, and a measure, supported by Benton, Atchison and the rest of the Missourians in congress, and signed by Tyler on March 1, 1845, just before his retirement from the presidency and Polk's accession, the terms of which were agreed to by Texas, brought annexation on December 29 of that year, nine months after Polk entered office, and Texas became the twenty- eighth state of the Union.
A settlement of the Oregon controversy came soon afterward. As insistence on the possession of the whole of Oregon up to the Alaska line would have brought war with England, and as war with Mexico on account of the Texas boundary dispute was immi- nent, Polk receded from the "Fifty-four-forty-or-fight" position, and proposed a compromise, under which the forty-ninth paral- lel, which was the boundary between the United States and Eng- land east of the Rocky mountains, should be extended westward to the Pacific. This was a repetition of a proposal previously made by Tyler, but which England rejected. England, however, after some hesitation, now acquiesced. Polk signed the Oregon treaty on June 14, 1846, the senate ratified it on the 18th, it was accepted by the British government later on, and the territory comprised in the present states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, and parts of the states of Montana and Wyoming, came under the flag.
Several weeks before Polk placed his signature to the Oregon annexation treaty, war with Mexico began. Shortly after Texas, on December 29, 1845, became United States territory, Polk ordered Gen. Zachary Taylor, commander of the southern divi- sion of the western department of the army, to enter the dis- puted region west of the Nueces and march to the Rio Grande, which was the boundary that Texas claimed and which the United States government was determined to defend. Taylor, with a force of about 4,000, promptly complied with this com- mand, and reached the Rio Grande opposite Matamoras, on March 28, 18.16. A reconnoitering party of Americans, under Captain Thornton, was surprised by a larger body of Mexican soldiers on the Texas side of the river on April 24, and some of
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Thornton's men were killed and the rest captured. Word of the fight was immediately sent by swift messengers, and the news soon reached Washington.
As Taylor refused, when ordered by the Mexican commander, to retire to the Nueces, General Arista, with six thousand men, crossed to the east side of the Rio Grande to move against him. Taylor attacked Arista on May 8 at Palo Alto and defeated him, and assailed him on May 9 and beat him still more severely, after which the Mexicans retreated to the west side of the river, and were shortly afterward followed by Taylor, who occupied Mata- moras.
Meanwhile Polk, learning of the attack on Thornton, sent a war message to congress. That body recognized a state of war as existing with Mexico, and passed an act on May 13, 1846, authorizing a call for fifty thousand volunteers, and made an appropriation of ten million dollars for the prosecution of hostili- ties.
About the middle of May, Governor Edwards of Missouri called for volunteers for the Army of the West, which was the name of the column that, assembling at Fort Leavenworth, in the present Kansas, was to march to Santa Fe and strike New Mexico, Mex- ico and California.
Here, as on many other occasions before and afterward, the mili- tary spirit of the people of Missouri asserted itself: Under the law of 1825 a complete militia system, to include all able-bodied men in the state between eighteen and forty-five years of age, except minis- ters, teachers, civil officers and one or two other classes, was estab- lished. Primarily the law was enacted to afford protection against the Indians, who were something of a menace to the state in 1825 and for years afterward, but the system which it created grew to be one of the most valued and popular institutions of the state. Companies, battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions were organized, all officers up to and including colonels being elected by the privates, and brigade and division commanders were chosen by the officers. Regular muster days were set apart in which the militia was organized into companies and drilled, and other days into which the formation into battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions was attended to. On many occasions previous to the service of Edwards, Missouri's Mexican war governor, Missouri's militia did good work. Parts of it figured in the Black Hawk and other Indian troubles, in the various Mormon disturbances from 1833 to 1838, and in the boundary dispute with lowa, while a
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regiment under Col. Richard Gentry won glory in the Seminole war in Florida.
There was a prompt response to Governor Edwards' call of May, 1846, for volunteers to serve in the war against Mexico. In a book named "Doniphan's Expedition," written by John T. Hughes, a member of Doniphan's command, the story of the part which Missouri bore in the war is told, and the record is very creditable to the state. Mounted companies from the counties of Jackson, Lafayette, Clay, Saline, Franklin, Cole, Howard and Callaway had arrived at Fort Leavenworth by June 18, the First Missouri Cavalry was organized, and Alexander W. Doniphan was elected as colonel, C. F. Ruff as lieutenant colonel, and Will- iam Gilpin as major. Two of these-Doniphan and Gilpin- figured with prominence before and afterward.
Colonel Doniphan, who had enlisted as a private in one of the companies of his regiment, was born in Kentucky, settled in Mis- souri at an early age, became a lawyer, served in the legislature. as a Whig, figured in the troubles of 1838 against the Mormons in Missouri as a brigadier general of militia, was thirty-eight years of age when the Mexican war began, made a brilliant record in that conflict, was conspicuous in the state's politics subsequently and died in Richmond, Mo., in 1887. Gilpin, a graduate of West Point, participated in the Seminole war in Florida as an officer of the regular army, resigned just afterward, edited the Missouri Argus in St. Louis for a short time, went to Oregon for a year or two, and was back in Missouri in time to enlist in the first regiment, being only twenty-five years of age at the time of his election as major. He made a fine record in the Mexican war, was appointed governor of the Territory of Colorado by Lincoln in 1861, and died in 1804.
Before the Army of the West was formed at Fort Leavenworth in the early summer of 1846 the St. Louis Legion, six hundred and fifty strong, commanded by Col. A. R. Easton, left by way of the Mississippi for Mexico to join General Taylor's Army of Occu- pation, but was mustered out after a service of a few months.
With the First Missouri there also assembled at Fort Leaven- worth two batteries of light artillery from St. Louis, two hundred and fifty strong, under Captains R. A. Weightman and A. W. Fischer, the battalion being commanded by Maj. M. 1 .. Clark. The Laclede Rangers were there also from St. Louis, about too in num- ber, under Capt. T. B. Undson, and a battallion of infantry, 145 men, from Platte and Cole counties, under Captains W. Z. Angney and Murphy, the former being the ranking officer. The Laclede
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Rangers were attached to the First Dragoons of the regular army, whose colonel was Stephen W. Kearney, and who numbered about 300 men, under the immediate command of Maj. E. V. Sinner, who participated in the Kansas territorial troubles a few years later, and who was a distinguished officer on the Union side in the Civil war. Another officer in the dragoons was Capt. Philip St. George Cooke, who was afterward a well known general in the Union army in 1861-65. The aggregate strength of the Army of the West was one thousand six hundred and fifty-eight men, with sixteen pieces of artillery, twelve being six pounders and four being twelve pound howitzers. All were from Missouri except the regulars. All were mounted except the battalion from Cole and Platte counties. Kearney, who was advanced to the rank of brigadier general, was fifty-two years of age at the time. He had served in the war of 1812, had been in the army con- tinuously afterward, was made commander of the Army of the West, did good service in the war then about to begin, and died in St. Louis in 1848, a few months after the war's close.
Meanwhile Sterling Price resigned from congress just after the declaration of war against Mexico, was appointed by President Polk colonel of another regiment of Missouri cavalry, which assembled at Fort Leavenworth, to re-enforce the Army of the West, and was elected colonel by his men. They were recruited from the counties of Boone, Benton, Carroll, Chariton, Linn, Liv- ingston, Monroe, Randolph, Ste. Genevieve, and St. Louis. D. D. Mitchell was chosen lieutenant colonel and Captain Edmondson was made major. To Colonel Price's force was attached an extra battalion of mounted men under Lieutenant Colonel Willock, con- sisting of four companies, recruited from the counties of Marion, Polk, Platte and Ray. Price's entire command numbered about one thousand two hundred men.
In August 1846, Governor Edwards made another call for one thousand volunteers, this time for infantry, to re-enforce Price. The regiment was raised quickly, and Maj. John Dougherty of Clay county was chosen colonel, but before marching orders were received Polk countermanded the call under which they were raised, and they were mustered ont of the service.
Kearney's Army of the West, on June 26, 1846, started for New Mexico over the Santa Fe trail which the Missouri traders had opened many years earlier, and which furnished a well marked highway to the New Mexican capital. It reached Santa Fe, nine hundred miles from Fort Leavenworth, on August 18. The Mexican governor, Armijo, fled at the approach of the
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American troops. On the 19th Kearney issued a proclamation absolving the people of New Mexico from their allegiance to Mexico and annexing the territory to the United States.
Under Kearney's instructions Colonel Doniphan and Willard P. Hall, both lawyers, framed a provisional constitution for the gov- ernment of New Mexico. Then Kearney appointed a full set of civil officers for the territory, among whom were Charles Bent, governor, and Francis P. Blair, Jr., United States district attorney. Most of the other officials were New Mexicans who had been partly Americanized by the social and business relations established with New Mexico by the Missouri traders, and who promptly swore allegiance to the United States on the arrival of the troops on August 18. Willard P. Hall, who was mentioned in the pre- ceding chapter as having been elected to congress from Missouri in 1846, was a private in Doniphan's command, and was chosen to congress while in the military service. Bent was a well known Missourian and a prominent Santa Fe trader, who built the post on the Arkansas called Bent's Fort. Blair, also a private in the war, and then twenty-five years of age, was just beginning that career which made him the most illustrions of Missourians next to Benton himself.
On September 25, General Kearney, with part of his force, started for California to aid in completing the conquest of that region which was well under way at that time by Fremont, Ben- ton's son-in-law, leaving Doniphan at Santa Fe until Price's arrival. Price, who traversed the same course from Fort Leaven- worth which had been followed by Kearney and Doniphan a few weeks carlier, reached Santa Fe on October 1, 1846. Soon afterward Doniphan, leaving Price in command in New Mexico, began his march to Chihuahua, where he was to re-enforce Gen- cral Wool. Doniphan dealt with the Navajoes on the way, reduc- ing them to a semblance of subjection, and then left Valverde on December 12, pushing due southward into the heart of the enemy's country. On Christmas day Doniphan met and defeated one thousand one hundred Mexicans at Brecita, in which fight thirty Mexicans were killed and one American was killed and seven wounded, and two days later he entered El Paso del Norte, in the department of Chihuahua. On February 8, 1847, after being re-enforced by Major Clark with 117 men and six pieces of artillery, Doniphan resumed his march for Chihuahua, 250 miles distant, through a sterile and mountainons country, and on Feb- rnary 28, when seventeen miles from his objective point, he sud- denly found his course blocked at the pass of the Sacramento by
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General Herredia and 4,000 Mexicans, who were intrenched in a position of great natural strength. Doniphan's effective force numbered only 950 men at that time, yet he attacked the Mexicans with great vigor and drove them out of their fastness with a loss, it was estimated, of 800 killed or wounded, while his own casual- ties were one killed, Maj. Samuel C. Owens, and eleven wounded, several of these mortally This was one of the most marvelous victories of a war which had many marvels. The next day, March 1, Doniphan entered Chihuahua, a city of 25,000 people which capitulated at his approach.
Wool was not in Chihuahua, but had just taken part in the battle of Buena Vista, February 22, 1847, the last and most bril- liant of all Taylor's conflicts. Doniphan opened communication with Wool, and was ordered to march to Saltillo, seven hundred miles to the southeast, which distance was covered between April 28 and May 21, where Wool was found, who complimented the Missourians highly on their brilliant work. As the war in that part of Mexico was over, General Taylor, commander of the Army of Occupation, after passing a high encomium on their con- duct during the campaign, ordered Doniphan and his men to Brazos Island, at the mouth of the Rio Grande, which they reached on June 9. From thence they sailed for New Orleans, where they were mustered out of the service, and, sailing up the Mis- sissippi, most of them arrived at St. Louis on July 1. An enthusi- astic reception was given to them on July 2 by the people of that city, at which there was a parade of all the city's military com- panies and its fire department, and an address of welcome and congratulation was delivered by Benton and a reply by Doniphan.
Doniphan's heroic men had marched about three thousand miles through a hostile country, had braved hardships, hunger, thirst and all the extremes of heat and cold, had fought Indians, Mexi- cans and guerrillas of both races, had been uniformly successful in all their battles, and had completed a campaign as daring and successful as any in the annals of the wars of the period.
While Doniphan, in the latter part of 1846 and the early half of 1847, was marching and fighting on the southern verge of New Mexico's line and far into old Mexico, Price, with the other little army of Missourians, with his headquarters at New Mexico's capital, was having exciting times in that quarter and near the territory's northern border. A revolt had been planned by some of the New Mexican leaders, to take place on Christmas day, 1846, the same day as Doniphan's fight at Brecita, two hundred miles to the southward, but Price, learning of the plot, arrested
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some of the chief spirits in it, and the rising did not take place. The revolt was only delayed, however, not averted. On Jan- uary 19, 1847, Governor Bent and his escort of a few soldiers were murdered by insurgents at San Fernando, near Taos, in the northeastern part of the territory.
Price, as soon as he learned of the outrage, marched with three hundred and fifty ment against the rebels. Close to the village of Canada he met them on the march toward Santa Fe, and defeated them, although they largely outnumbered his force. This was on January 24. Early in February, after being re-en- forced by a company of cavalry and a 6-pounder cannon, his force then numbering four hundred and eighty men, he pursued the rebels to their stronghold at Taos, part of the way being through two feet of snow, which had to be shoveled away in order to get the artillery and the baggage wagons through. At Taos the Mexicans retreated to the Pueblo, where they were besieged two days, and then their position was carried by storm. About one hundred and fifty of the Mexicans were killed, many were taken prisoners, and the rest retreated and dispersed. The American loss was seven killed and forty-five wounded.
A few sporadic risings took place in the territory in the next two or three months, but none of them were as formidable as the one which was crushed at Taos, and Price and liis men were ordered home, reaching Missouri on September 25, 1847, having lost over four hundred men in battle and by disease. Other volunteers from Missouri had reached New Mexico from Fort Leavenworth by this time, and General Price returned to that point, having in his new command about three thousand men.
In the meantime Scott, with his base at Vera Cruz, after a wonderful series of successes between March, 1847, and Septem- ber, entered the City of Mexico on the 14th of the latter month, and the war was virtually ended. All the nation's new territory was pacified before the treaty of peace at Guadalupe Hidalgo, on February 2, 1848, placed the present New Mexico, Arizona, Cali- fornia, Nevada, Utah and portions of Colorado and Wyoming under the stars and stripes.
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CHAPTER X
The Slavery Issue in Missouri
T HE new territory which this state took a leading part in win- ning for the United States in 18446-48 began to make serious trouble for the latter, and particularly for Missouri, even before that conquest was completed. To a bill introduced in the house of representatives on August 8, 1846, for an appro- priation of two million dollars to enable Polk to buy territory from Mexico, David Wilmot proposed an amendment shutting slavery out of all that region. This figured in the politics of the day as the Wilmot proviso. The date of its introduction was three months after the beginning of the Mexican war. Wilmot was a Pennsylvania Democrat, and his amendment had been agreed on by many of the Democratic members of other northern states.
Though the Wilmot proviso was not enacted until 1862, in the second year of the Civil war, it passed the house of representatives in 1846, in which body the North was predominant on account of population, but it failed in the senate, in which there was a balance between the free and the slave states, and in which, at that par- ticular time, the slave states were slightly in the lead in the division.
In the vote in congress the Wilmot prohibition, in a general way, split the country sectionally rather than by parties, reintro- duced the geographical line in politics, like that seen in the division on the question of Missouri's admission in 1819-21, and which reappeared momentarily in the Democratic national convention of 1844, when the South turned against Ex-President Van Buren, whom Benton favored, and defeated him for the presidential nomination because he was against Texas annexation. One of the Wilmot restriction's immediate consequences was that Cass of
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Michigan, in 1847, invented the popular sovereignty doctrine (that the people of the territories should have the privilege of deciding whether they would admit or exclude slavery, regardless of congress's wishes in the matter), which Douglas patented and applied in the Kansas-Nebraska territorial act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri compromise.
The principle of the Wilmot proviso (that slavery should be shut out of all the territories) formed the basis of the creed of the Free Soil party, which was organized in 1848, and was the prin- cipal article of faith of the Republican party, which was founded in 1854.
Naturally Missouri had a peculiar interest in the contest caused by the Wilmot proviso. Slavery had existed in Missouri from the earliest settlement, back in the days of the French and the Spanish occupation. The determination of Missouri .to retain slavery in 1821 was partly due to resentment at the attempt of the North to shut slavery out, and to thus prescribe conditions . for Missouri's entrance into the Union which, as it reasoned, would destroy, for Missouri, that equality for the states which was necessary to their dignity and independence. This contest made Missourians, even those who were in the abstract opposed to slavery, particularly sensitive on that issue, as one of their domestic concerns. It was one of the reasons why Rev. E. P. Lovejoy's anti-slavery paper of 1833-36, in St. Louis, the Observer, aroused the wrath of an element of the populace, which drove him to Alton in the latter year, where he was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in 1837.
Nevertheless, there was a chance at one time that emancipation in Missouri might have been accomplished by peaceable means. At a meeting of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis in 1877 Albert Todd presented a letter written by John Wilson to Thomas Shackleford, both well known Missourians, of an earlier day, in which Wilson said that in 1828 he was one of a company of twenty persons, representing both parties and all sections of the state, among whom were Senators Benton and Barton, who came together to consider how they could get rid of slavery in Missouri. They umanimonsly determined, wrote Wilson, to urge emancipation upon all candidates at the approaching election, and resolutions were drawn up and printed in secret and distributed "amongst us, with an agreement that on the same day these . resolutions, in the shape of memorials, were to be placed before the people all over the state, and both parties were to urge the
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people to sign them. Our combination, too, then had the power to carry out our project. Unfortunately, before the day arrived it was published in the newspapers generally that Arthur Tappan of New York had entertained at his private table some negro men, and that, in fact, these negroes had rode out in his private car- riage with his daughters. Perhaps it was not true, but it was believed in Missouri, and raised such a furore that we dared not nor did not let our memorials see the light. And, as well as I can call to mind, of the individuals who composed this secret meeting I am the only one left to tell the tale; but for that story of the conduct of the great original fanatic on this subject we should have carried, under the leadership of Barton and Benton, our project, and began in future the emancipation of the colored race that would long since have been followed by Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, etc. Our purpose further, after we got such a law safely placed on the statute book, was to have followed it up by a provision requiring the masters of those who should be born to be free to teach them to read and write." (Cited by Col. William F. Switzler in the "Commonwealth of Missouri," p. 222.)
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