USA > Missouri > A History of Northeast Missouri, Volume I > Part 76
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"Edward attained more prominence as a public man than others of the name and the full account of his life which follows is from the pen of another of Missouri's distinguished men, the Hon. Wm. F. Switzler: 'Edward Bates, Lincoln's attorney-general, one of Missouri's greatest citizens; his career as lawyer, farmer, statesman-Among the many memories of a long and active editorial, political and official life in Missouri, during which he personally knew nearly every one of its public men, living and dead, of two generations, and performed services with them in parliamentary bodies, none are more pleasant to the writer of this sketch than those connected with the late Edward Bates. An-
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terior to the Civil war they were old Whigs together, entertaining many of the same convictions of public questions and worshipping at the same shrine of public duty.
" 'Measured by any of the approved standards of civilized life, Mr. Bates was no common man. First of all, and better than all, he was a Christian gentleman, and, therefore, a loyal friend; sweet-tempered, com- plaisant, obliging, polished in manner, and one of the most entertaining conversationalists of his day. In short he belonged to that illustrious line of gentlemen, who, alas! are not as numerous as they ought to be, who dignified the bar, the legislative hall, and the executive chamber; who made the street brighter, home happier, and mankind better by their presence. With all, he was a natural orator, master of the most elegant diction and beautiful imagery, and gifted with all the graces of elocution. His voice was as musical as a lute, and words fell from his lips without effort. He did not write and memorize his speeches, but spoke as moved by the inspiration of the occasion, trusting to the occasion for arguments and illustrations and the most befitting words.
" 'Edward Bates was born at Belmont, Goochland county, Virginia, September 4, 1793, and died at his home in St. Louis, March 25, 1869, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. His father, Thomas F. Bates, was of old English stock and a Quaker; but, on the occurrence of the Revolu- tionary war, his love of country and hatred of tyranny caused him to break faith with that sect and he enlisted as a soldier, and continued as such until the patriot armies of the colonies conquered a peace. Mr. Bates was the seventh son of a family of twelve children, and his father died while he was very young. Books were scarce, and schools in that part of Virginia were almost unknown. Benjamin Bates, a kinsman, lived at Hanover Court House, Virginia, and was a good scholar. To some extent, the education of Edward, who early evidenced a fondness for study, was committed to him. He taught him the elementary branches, instructed him in mathematics, some philosophy and a little history. Finally he entered Charlotte Hall, a Maryland Academy, where he acquired a good knowledge of the higher branches of English and the classics. He desired to enter the -American navy, and, through the influence of a friend, was appointed a midshipman, but his mother objecting to his becoming a sailor, he declined it. He did, however, enter the militia service at Norfolk, and served from February to October, 1813. His brother, Frederick Bates, of St. Louis, who had been ap- pointed secretary of the territory of Missouri, wrote him of the bright prospects of the great country west of the Mississippi, and he resolved to ".go West and grow up with the country." Frederick Bates was the second governor of the state of Missouri, elected for four years in August, 1824, and died in office August 4, 1825. In the summer of 1814, Edward came to St. Louis, in the twentieth year of his age. He resolved to study law, and, with this view, entered the office of Rufus Easton, then an eminent lawyer, and from 1814 to 1816 a delegate to congress. He died in St. Charles July 5, 1834. In 1816 Mr. Bates was admitted to the bar and rapidly rose to distinction as an attorney and speaker; so rapidly indeed, that in 1818 Governor William Clark (of the celebrated Lewis and Clark expedition), then governor of Missouri territory, appointed him attorney-general of the territory. In May, 1820, the fifteen counties then organized in Missouri elected forty-one delegates to a convention to form a constitution for the prospective state. Of this number St. Louis elected ten, namely, David Barton, Edward Bates, Alexander Mc- Nair, William Rector, John C. Sullivan, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., Bernard Pratte and Thomas F. Riddick. The convention met in St. Louis, June 12, 1820, and elected David Barton president, and framed a constitution
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for the state, which remained its organic law for forty-five years, till it was supplanted by the "Drake Constitution" of 1865. Mr. Bates took an active interest in the proceedings of this body and rendered valuable service to the state.
''When the state was admitted into the Union in 1821, Mr. Bates was appointed attorney-general by Governor McNair, but held the office only a short time, and was succeeded by Rufus Easton. He resumed the practice of his profession and prosecuted it with distinguished ability and success. In 1822 he agreed to serve the people of the county in the lower branch of the legislature and was elected. In 1824 he was ap- pointed by President Monroe United States attorney for the district of Missouri and discharged the duties of that position with acknowledged fidelity and ability till 1827, when he resigned and was elected a repre- sentative to congress, serving from 1827 to 1829. His opponent was Hon. John Scott, of Ste. Genevieve, who had served the previous term. Both were Whigs. On May 29, 1823, Mr. Bates was united in marriage to Miss Julia D. Coalter, a daughter of David Coalter, who moved to Missouri in 1818 from South Carolina, where Miss Coalter was born. Gen. John D. Coalter, deceased, was an able lawyer and well known Whig politician of St. Charles, was a brother of Mrs. Bates. Mrs. Hamilton R. Gamble, of St. Louis, and Mrs. William C. Preston, of South Carolina, were her sisters. Mrs. Bates died in St. Louis about twenty years ago. Very few of her children, one of whom was Barton Bates, once a judge of the supreme court, survive her. John C. Bates is now a distinguished officer in the United States army. In 1828 Mr. Bates was a candidate for re-election, but was defeated by Spencer Pet- tis (in honor of whom Pettis county was afterwards named) by a large majority. Political parties were not organized in Missouri until 1828, at which time, under the influence of Andrew Jackson, who was elected president, the Democrats and Whigs of Missouri met each other at the polls for the first time as forces drilled for such an encounter. Bates was an old-time Henry Clay Whig; Pettis, a Jackson Democrat.
" 'In 1834 Mr. Bates was elected as a Whig to the Missouri house of representatives, and was regarded as the ablest and most eloquent mem- ber of that body. It was at this session that he practiced a laughable but harmless joke on a Democratic member from a southwest county, whose name, like Mr. Bates', commenced with the letter "B." The mem- ber was a very clever but uneducated man, who really didn't know half the time how to vote. Some of his friends advised him that as Bates' name on a roll-call was called first to watch how he voted and vote the other way, "agin Bates," and he would vote all right. This came to Bates' ears, and, not being averse to a little harmless mischief, he resolved at the next call of the roll on a political question to vote against his opinion and for the Democratic side and afterwards ask leave to change his vote. And he carried out the joke, and the old fellow from the southwest voted "agin Bates," and against his party, for his "idee was so he voted agin Bates it was sartin to be Dimicratical."
" 'His health becoming impaired and his law practice neglected by active participation in political and official life, he concluded to move to St. Charles county, where he owned a farm on the Dardenne Prairie, and regularly vibrate between his farm and law office. He did so, but the experiment ran its course in a few years, and in 1842 he removed back to St. Louis. The writer of this once asked him at his home in St. Louis what success he had as a farmer, to which he replied that "it took all the money Lawyer Bates could make to support Farmer Bates." In 1847 the great internal improvement congress met in Chicago, and Mr. Bates was one of the delegates from Missouri. At that time he was
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comparatively unknown outside of the state, but at that convention in a single speech he leaped at one bound into national prominence and fame. He was chosen president of the convention and delivered the opening address, in which he electrified the members by the great ability and elo- quence he displayed in combating the doctrine that the constitutional power of congress to make appropriations for internal improvements was limited to the tide waters of the ocean. No single speech delivered during the last generation produced a more beneficial or lasting effect upon our national internal improvement policy. In the West especially it was electrical; and it was not long thereafter until the great states in the Mississippi Valley were admitted to be entitled to a share of federal patronage in the construction of their interstate railroads and improve- ment of their rivers and harbors. Upon the accession of Mr. Fillmore to the presidency in 1850, Mr. Bates was nominated by him and immedi- ately confirmed by the senate as secretary of war, which he declined. In 1853 Mr. Bates was elected by the people of St. Louis judge of the St. Louis land court, the important duties of which he discharged with marked ability and to universal public approval. In 1854 he co-operated with the Free Labor, or Emancipation, party in St. Louis in opposing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the admission of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton, or pro-slavery, constitution. At the Republi- can national convention at Chicago in 1860, his name was favorably mentioned by conservative Republicans for the presidency, and on the first ballot he received forty-eight out of the 465 votes cast. But Mr. Lincoln being regarded as the strongest compromise candidate between the friends of Mr. Seward and the conservative element, his name was withdrawn, and Mr. Lincoln was nominated. After his election and in- auguration he tendered Mr. Seward the place of secretary of state, and to Mr. Bates his choice of the remaining positions in his cabinet. He accepted the office of attorney-general, the duties of which he, of course, discharged with distinguished ability. Near the close of the year 1864, his health failed under the great strain of official duties and responsi- bilities, and believing the interests of the country demanded the services of a younger and more robust official, he resigned and returned to his home in St. Louis. His official life ended here. Although rid of the cares and labors of public station, his health continued to wane, and near the close of 1868 it assumed a dangerous form, and he died as above stated. An immense concourse attended his funeral, Reverend Doctor Niccolls pronounced an appropriate and eloquent funeral dis- course, and the remains of the illustrious citizen were laid to rest in Belle- fontaine Cemetery. At a meeting of the St. Louis bar held a few days thereafter, Hon. John F. Darby presided and a feeling address recalled many of the civic and Christian virtues and most important services of the deceased. Speeches were also delivered by other members of the bar-Shepley, Hunton, Broadhead, and others, after which Mr. Broadhead offered resolutions, one of which was as follows :
" 'He has filled high places of trust, both in the state and nation, and following the example of Sir Mathew Hale, he discharged those trusts uprightly, deliberately and resolutely; so that no man could say that he did not confer more honor on the office than the office did upon him; and he retired all the poorer for his public services, except in that esteem which follows the faithful discharge of duty.
" 'He was a firm believer in the Christian religion, and a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church at the time of his death.' "
"Reference to the memorable speech of Edward Bates at the Chicago River and Harbor Convention on July 7, 1847, is made by Horace Greeley, reporter for the New York Tribune, as follows: 'Previous to
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putting the question, however, the president of the convention, Hon. Edward Bates, of Missouri, returned thanks for the honor done him in a speech which took the convention completely by surprise-so able, so forcible, and replete with the soul of eloquence. I will not attempt to give an account of this wonderful speech, of which I regret to know that no full notes were taken. No account that can now be given will do it justice. In the course of it, Mr. B. remarked that when he emi- grated in 1814 to the French village of huts called St. Louis, which has now 50,000 inhabitants, he was obliged to hire a guard against hostile savages to accompany him across the unbroken wilderness which is now the state of Illinois, with a civilized population of 600,000 freemen. His speech was greeted at its close by the whole convention rising and cheering long and fervently.'
"A like reference was made by Thurlow Weed, reporter for the Albany Evening Journal: 'Wednesday morning .- Convention met pursuant to adjournment. Provisions were made for the publication of the proceedings and their distribution among the people. Hon. Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, then offered the usual resolution of thanks to the chairmen. Thereupon, the chairman, Mr. Bates, of St. Louis, arose and in one of his most appropriate speeches, returned his thanks to the convention. The speech, if ever published as delivered, will be pronounced one of the richest specimens of American eloquence. He was interrupted continually by cheer upon cheer; and at its close, the air rung with shout after shout, from the thousands in attendance. The convention adjourned at half-past eleven today, with more harmony, if possible, than it commenced. Never have we witnessed such a harmo- nious meeting, from beginning to end. Its proceedings have been wor- thy any people and any cause. And the interest of the people was con- tinued throughout all the sittings. Up to the last hour the crowd was a dense one, and every delegate stayed to the end. This convention must rank as one of the most respectable and we hope it will prove one of the most useful ever assembled on the continent. This is a strong expression, we know, but we ask those who may be inclined to doubt it to hear before they judge.'
"The family life of Edward Bates and his wife, Julia Davenport Coalter, was ideal. Both lived to an advanced age and they were the parents of seventeen children. The oldest child of their first-born hesi- tates to speak in his own words of the virtues of his ancestry, and prefers to enter here the tribute of a family friend, the Hon. John F. Darby, to the widow of Edward Bates, upon the occasion of her funeral services :-
MRS. JULIA BATES, WIDOW OF THE LATE EDWARD BATES, EsQ.
[For the Republican.]
Yesterday, the widow of Edward Bates, deceased, Mrs. Julia Bates, was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, an account of which has already been given in your widely circulated journal. One who has so long and so prominently been connected with the past history of St. Louis, as has been the widow of Edward Bates, is entitled to a passing notice, and I propose to give you a short and very brief sketch in rela- tion to her. The writer hereof has known Mrs. Bates in the city of St. Louis for more than fifty years. As a friend of her husband and as a devoted personal friend of the family, he has been a visitor of that amiable, accomplished and refined domicile for more than half a century, and has shared in the hospitality and partaken of the kindness of the household at the board of that devoted and pleasant establishment full many a time and oft. Edward Bates was married to Julia Coalter in the year 1823, the same year that his partner, Joshua Barton, was killed in a duel by Rector. I have known Mrs. Bates ever since. Mrs. Bates bore her husband seventeen children, surviving her husband more than eleven years. She was, when young, a most beauti- ful woman. Modest, gentle and retiring, she was calculated to impart happiness around the domestic circle. When she went with her distinguished and talented hus- band to Washington City, she did it as a matter of duty, and not of pleasure, where
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she lived four years, while her husband was attorney general of the United States, without ostentation or display of fashion. Mrs. Bates was one of the noblest and best of women. The father of Mrs. Bates, David Coalter, came to the territory of Mis- souri in the year 1817 from South Carolina while Mrs. Bates was a child. He was a man of distinction and wealth, and purchased a large tract of land in the Dardenne Prairie, St. Louis county, in the Missouri territory, for which he paid at that time $20,000, money enough in that day to have purchased more property than the Lucas . and Lindell estates, which have since been counted by millions, were worth. "Reasoning at every step he takes, Man yet mistakes his way."
Mr. Coalter was a man of distinction, from what I can learn of his family; he lived for awhile in the neighborhood of Florissant township in the vicinity of that eccentric individual, Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, who was at one time judge of the St. Louis circuit court, and who utilized a hollow sycamore tree in the country by cut- ting off the top of it, and making a law office of it, in which his books were stored around the shelves on the inside. Mr. David Coalter had five daughters and two sons. They were a most distinguished family. The daughters married, all of them, most distinguished and talented men of position, place and station. One of the daughters married Governor Means, who afterward became governor of South Carolina; another daughter married Chancellor Harper, who was the first and only chancellor the state of Missouri ever had; and after the constitution of the state of Missouri was amended, giving the circuit courts chancery jurisdiction, the office of chancellor was abolished, and the chancellor removed back to South Carolina, remaining the chancel- lor of that state as long as he lived. Another daughter married William C. Preston, who came all the way to St. Louis county to marry his wife, and married her here in Missouri. His maternal grandmother was a sister of Patrick Henry, for many years he was in the United States Senate from South Carolina. He it was who delivered the eloquent and fine oration at the founding of the monument of the bat- tle of King's Mountain. Another daughter, Caroline, married Hamilton Rowan Gam- ble, of Missouri, who went to South Carolina to marry her in the fall of the year 1827. And Julia, just buried, married Edward Bates in Missouri in the year 1823. She was the youngest child. I might give further and many other interesting sketches of the Coalter family, but this will suffice. JOHN F. DARBY.
ST. LOUIS, Oct. 18, 1880.
"Of the seventeen children of Edward Bates, only two survive; Matilda, the tenth child, was born January 21, 1840. She married Maj. Edward Best Eno, and bore him five children, one of whom, Henry, died in childhood. Another, Edward Bates, died in the prime of manhood. unmarried. She is now a widow and lives in Silver City, New Mexico, with her daughter, Matilda, and near the home of another daughter, Julia Bates, the wife of Wayne Wilson, and the mother of three children. Her eldest daughter, Christine, the wife of George Compton, and the mother of three sons, lives at Kirkwood, in St. Louis county. John Coalter, the twelfth child and sixth son of Edward Bates, was born in St. Charles County, August 26, 1842. He entered the army in 1860 at the age of eighteen, and after a long and continuous and distinguished service, was retired at the completion of his sixty-fourth year with the rank of Lieutenant General. He is unmarried and resides in Washing- ton City.
"Barton, the first child of Edward Bates, was born in St. Louis, Feb. 29, 1824. He died at Cheneaux, in St. Charles county, at the end of the year 1892. He was a lawyer and was credited by his friends with great natural talent for the practice of that profession, having a judicial mind and an inherent sense of justice which ruled every action of his life. The writer was told by Edward Bates that Barton was the best law draughtsman that he ever knew, and his opinions as judge are cited as models of clear and explicit language. He followed the practice of law for only a few years and about 1885 established the family home on Dar- denne Prairie, which he named Cheneaux, where he resided till his death. "This home place was so dear to the father and mother and the children that no idea of exchanging it for one in the city was success- fully maintained, although professional and business requirements caused the father to make frequent visits to Jefferson City and St. Louis. For
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many years his duties as judge of the Supreme Court of the State, and, later, as a railroad president, occupied much of his time and talents. He was a close friend and admirer of that great man and engineer, James B. Eads, and was interested with him in the construction of the St. Louis bridge, the Mississippi Jetties, and in other business enterprises. Bar- ton Bates and Caroline Matilda Hatcher of Oakland, St. Charles County, were married March 29, 1849, and after a few years residence in St. Louis, settled at Cheneaux on Dardenne Prairie. The Cheneaux family consisted of father, mother and ten children. Considering the latter in order of birth :-
"Onward, a Civil Engineer, lives in Chicago with his wife, Virginia Castleman, daughter of the late Judge Samuel Miller Breckenridge, of St. Louis. They have no children.
"Hester is the wife of Mr. Justin R. Graves of Evanston, Illinois. They have no children, but Mr. Graves was a widower, and had children by his first wife.
"Cora, wife of the Rev. Edwin Brown McCluer, D. D., lives at Bon Air, Virginia. She is the mother of five children: Dr. Bates McCluer, Mrs. Edwin Pinkerton (who has a daughter), Nellie, who is a teacher, and Edward and Margaret who are at school.
"Tarlton, who died in his early manhood.
"Frances Barton is unmarried and lives with her mother in Chicago.
"Margaret married Seth Singleton and is the mother of five children : Barton, who is married and has a son; Caroline and Katherine, who are school teachers, Julian, who was drowned while swimming with some playmates, and Hatcher, a young man just entering business.
"Hatcher, the one boy who remained at the homestead, well known throughout the county and loved by all, died July 24, 1900, the result of an accident.
"Eads lives in Colorado and is unmarried.
"Katherine was a physician. She had a university education, then graduated in the Medical College of New York, and completed her train- ing with a year's hospital practice. She practiced medicine for a while in Chicago, but was compelled, by failing health, to relinquish this work. For several years she was an invalid, and during this period was engaged in literary work. She died at Bon Air, Virginia, August 6, 1906. During the years of her study and practice she formed an ex- tended acquaintance, and she seemed to possess the rare quality of getting and holding the love of all who knew her. In a beautiful tribute written by one of her college friends is to be found this sentence :- "Her genius for friendship, and surely it was nothing short of this, was due to her wondrous gift of sympathy. Some one said after she was gone,-'It wasn't that she listened to you, was interested in you as you talked; she became you.'
"Barton, the tenth and youngest child of Barton and Caroline Matilda Bates, died in infancy.
"Barton, son of Edward, known as also his father was, as 'Judge Bates' was prominent in the history of the state. Born at the corner of Sixth and Market streets in the village of St. Louis, he was identified with the life of the state, and choosing St. Charles county for his home, he reared his large family here,-he belonged to this county In a sense he was not a public man, for he loved retirement and never sought pub- licity, but the citizens of the county knew and respected him and appre- ciated his character and qualities. The doors of the Cheneaux homestead were kept open, the old people loved their neighbors and the young people gathered their friends about them without question and without limit. It was always a holiday at Cheneaux, and yet the sense and prac- Vol. 1-37
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