Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 103

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074

USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 103

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IX-A Call for the Beauty Doctor.

1890-1900. With nothing for a beginning, Kansas City hopefully plunges into the task of attempting to beautify herself with parks and boulevards. Before 1900 she has nearly twelve miles of completed boulevards and 1,691 acres of parks. Population in 1900 for Kansas City, Mo., 164,745.

X-A Ninety-Day Wonder.

1900-1910. Kansas City leaps into the limelight of national fame in 1900 after a fire destroys a huge convention hall prepared for the Democratic national convention. Though experts say it "can't be done," Kansas City rebuilds the hall in ninety days, and the con- vention opens on the minute of schedule time. Then Kansas City keeps on plunging deeper and deeper into heavy expenses for parks and boulevards, inspired by the slogan :. "Make Kansas City a Good Place to Live In!"

XI-Her Place in the Sun.

1910-1920. A period of swift development of trade which boosts Kansas City into fifth place in the entire United States in volume of bank clearings. This business activity is accompanied by an even more startling development of residence districts. The Country Club "development" in particular, is a home community richly deserving a national repu- tation. No let-up, meanwhile, in the work of extending the park and boulevard system.

Even in so sketchy an outline as this, no one can fail to perceive that from first to last the unseen but powerful spirit of Kansas City has been ever active in stimulating the community to keep valiantly struggling after success. No one can contend that Kansas City was a winner because she "had all the luck." The luck was dead against her for fifty consecutive years, and turned and bit her at stated intervals thereafter. Kansas City won not because she had all the luck, but because she had all the pluck.

In the end the town even made itself "a good place to live in," though that ambition had caused her rivals the most hilarious laughter of all. The hills and valleys were turned from liabilities into assets.

Our prose epic is now drawing to a close, revealing a city celebrated the country over for her eighty miles of boulevards, her more than 3,000 acres of parks, her residence districts of nation-wide fame, her business section booming as never before in all history -for, in addition to the regular trade of a rich tributary territory, the city now feels an unusual stimulus from the Southwest's newly developed oil fields.

The Epic of Kansas City.

C. L. Edson, a native, returning to Kansas City in the summer of 1920, rhymed his "impressions." He explained that the "Great Race" of the last sacred city

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"is the strain that subdued wild America. More men of this stock live in Kan- sas City than in any other town." Mr. Edson's other footnote related to the "Town Builders." It attributed Kansas City's wonderful stride to the early discovery that the railroad was to supersede the river transportation. Mr. Edson put it in this way: "There were a dozen towns around the Kaw mouth all aiming to be the metropolis of the Southwest. Why did Kansas City outstrip them all? Because she had what the other towns lacked-a man of genius. This man predicted that river traffic would die and that the railroads would rule the plains. So the mudbank village of Kansas City gave $20,000 toward a railroad bridge. The river was bridged and the railroads came." This is the epic as it. appeared in the Kansas City Star :

The California Hummer with its ears pinned back, Races thro' the city on the Belt Line track To the union station. There the brakes buck down, And we tarry twenty minutes in a big beef town.

A tall town of Traders with its Big Biz hives, The last sacred city where the Great Race thrives, The tree-felling, bear-slapping, road building race, Hold this their capital-and market place.

THE FOUNDERS OF THE CITY.

The herders and the traders and the sod corn crew, They planted 'em a city when the world was new, They planted Kansas City, and the darn thing grew.

The bearcat killers and the Dan Boone clan, The boys that taught the panther his respect for man- They planted Kansas City where the bull trails ran.

BUILT ON BREAD AND BEEF.

Ships made Carthage, gold made Nome, Grain built Babylon, the wars built Rome, Hogs. made Chicago with their dying squeal, Up popped Pittsburgh at the birth of steel ; Come, Kansas City, make your story brief : "Here stands a city built o' bread and beef."

"WHERE THE WEST BEGINS."

Here the pioneer axman came out of the woods, And his trek through the forest was done, The curtain, on woodcraft, had fallen for good, And the Prologue of Grass had begun. Here the buffalo border undauntedly ran, And the Jin of the Desert stood mocking at man.

The steamboat was stopped by the shallows and sand, And the rivers were troubled no more, But the bull train set forth for the journey by land. And the Boone tribe went on as before, Tho' the Ozarks and ox carts and leaf littered lanes, Had blended and ended and balked at the plains.

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THE MAKING OF A CITY

Here ended an era. Old guidings were gone, And a tree tribe was out on the grass, And facing the sunset * * * they looked on the dawn Of a dream that would yet come to pass, And their trading post, built as a plainsmen's retreat, Is this capital town in a kingdom of wheat.

Little Kansas City, when its bones were green as gristle, Swapped its catfish seaport for a locomotive whistle. "Oh, isn't it a beaut; just hear that whistle toot. "It cost our river birthright and some borrowed gold to boot."

Oh, think of Bennie Franklin, he bought a whistle, too; "Don't pay too much for whistles," is the moral that he drew. Did Kansas City weep when the harvest was to reap? Oh, no; she laughed in triumph; she had bought her whistle cheap.

Where is Westport Landing, and its bull and harness trade? Where is Leesport Landing and the local fuss it made? The port of Independence and the port of Wyandotte? They are rusted, they are busted, they are buried and forgot. And the locomotive whistle goes a roaring o'er the spot.

The River was the sponsor for those towns upon the shore, The River was their wet nurse but it suckles them no more; Their landings all have languished where the weeds and willows wave, Their dream of catfish commerce is a legend in the grave, And the river towns are dust upon the Kansas City pave. The Iron Mare is mother of the epoch here begun- And the city, Kansas City, is the railroads' son.

THE UNION STATION.

Stroll thru this station where the tribe trails meet, The clans from the cotton, the hordes from the wheat, Watch the West in action-from a grandstand seat.

Six sheep shearers out of far Cheyenne, Ten tie hackers from the Ozark hills, An oil king and cotton king from Texarkan', And a po' white piker with the ague chills. A "silly ass" tourist that has never earned a dollar, A tall, tanned Texan in a wide brimmed hat, A rich Swede farmer in a ten-cent collar,

A Wind-River booster with his pockets flat. Oil-rich Indians as sour as sin, Dining room darkies with a golden grin; Beef men, bread men, corn, wool and cotton men, Squaw men, Mexicans, half breeds and rotten men, Seethe through the city, the great gate city, Crowding Kansas City as the great trade town.

Corn-fed farmer girls as pretty as an apple, Unconscious of their beauty as it gleams and glows, And a small town vamp-each cheek a scarlet dapple, She's larking to the city in her tell-tale clothes.

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Snuff-dipping razorbacks with black slouch lids, And Rackensack mothers with a hundred kids. All this is movie stuff in a mammoth scene, A masque of America moving to and fro, Types out of Hollywood, types from the screen, But this is not a movie, it's the Big World Show.

Bud's top balloon goes a sailing to the ceiling ; Now it settles downward while the slow tear wells, Bud bravely follows with his baby eyes appealing, Till an injun gets his bauble-and he yells hell's bells!

A farm hand from Berryville is told to take his ticket To gate number seven to await the Clinton Plug He scans every gate, but he lacks the wit to pick it; He "can't read readin'" any more'n a doodle bug. A Springfield drummer sees the numb-skull's plight. And points to the gate that will put the fellow right ; There stands Bryan with his palm leaf fan;

He's lapping up a soda with a livestock man.

This is Kansas City, where the tribe trails meet, The rail head, the gateway, the West's main street, The old tribal stamping ground to stamp your feet.

HISTORY OF KANSAS CITY.

Price was a rebel, a raider lacking pity,

Along came the war and he raided Kansas City.

Peace brought a jubilee; Jesse James was there, James and his robber band robbed the county fair.

Stockyards and packing houses! How the city grew ; They had the Priests of Pallas and the Karnival Krew.

The flood drowned the bottoms like an old wet hen; Down burned Convention Hall-they built it up again.

The Star boomed for boulevard and parkways green, And Kansas City houses are the finest ever seen.

RECOLLECTIONS OF KANSAS CITY. -

In. 1890 the old settler said: "I shot a deer-put a bullet thro' his brain- And gutted him and et him where now it's Sixth and Main; I never have forgot how he tasted, sizzlin hot." (Today a cafeteria is standing on the spot.)

"I whacked bulls-me and twenty wagon hands, Teaming up the holler where the Junction stands. In an old stone building, where they later had The Star, I shot a blanket Injun in a quarrel at a bar."

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THE MAKING OF A CITY

In 1920 the settler's son said: "Well do I remember the cable car days, The Aggie Meyers murder and the silver craze ; The Nebraska Clothing Company was raking in the scads, And kept the people laughing with their funny little ads.

"I 'member long before the ten-cent store, Or the first nickelodeon opened up its door. Me and Brother Joe had a tandem bike, and Bo, We used to scorch the paving where your jitney busses go.

Envoy. The California Hummer with its ears pinned back, Rumbled from the station on its westward track, And the tourist in the diner had a beefsteak brown, As a high life reminder of a corn-fed town.

CHAPTER XXIX

A GRAND OLD MAN OF MISSOURI

John Finis Philips-Eighty-five Years of the Century of Statehood-Vivid Recollections of the Legal Giants-The Big Four after the Civil War-At the Gettysburg of the West- The Frank James Case-Abiel Leonard's Early Fee-Legislative Pardon for a Duel- Leonard's Last and Vest's First Notable Case-Washington Adams' Misquotation- Gardenhire's Peroration Spoiled-John B. Clark's Fountain of Tears-Barton, the Fore- most Citizen-Edward Bates' Appeal for Sacred Personal Rights-"Old Sarcasm" Hay- den-Four Supreme Court Judges at the Bar-Two Views of the Bench-Judge Ryland's Classic Lore-Vest's Missouri Version of Latin-Judge Napton's Search for Law-A Good Turn and Lifelong Friendship-Farmer Hicks and Lawyer Hicks-The Railsplitter-Lynch Law Rebuked-A Practical Joke that Dissolved a Partnership- Primitive Practice Along the Osage-Judge Emmerson's Free-for-All Court-John S. Phelps on Nunc Pro Tunc-Waldo P. Johnson's Thick-Headed Client-Duke Draffen's Mastery of Law-The Defense of Justice Cross-What Became of a Fee-Missouri's Best Story Teller-Speeches that Live Only in Tradition-Passing of the Old Breed- Modern Conditions-Ethics of the Shyster-A Tribute to the Pioneers of the Profession.

As God is my witness, I have tried so hard to do right .- John F. Philips.

The grand old man of Missouri, in the closing years of the state's century, was John Finis Philips. When he was born, in Boone county, on the last day of 1834, the state was thirteen years old. Boy and man he knew the pioneers, and he lived to have active part in the affairs of Missouri to the end of his eighty-five years. Only a few days before he went with Judge Walter Sanborn to the home of Samuel W. Fordyce near Hot Springs, where the end came in the spring of 1919, Judge Philips addressed a public meeting in Kansas City, giving his views as to the form a memorial to those who fought in the World war might take worthily. At the celebration of Missouri's first state centennial, the one-hundredth anniversary of the presentation of the memorial to Congress for statehood, Judge Philips talked charmingly of the pioneer period of state- hood. He was in full possession of mental vigor down to the last.

What amazing variety of service he had rendered! As Judge Philips he was most popularly know. To his credit there was a supreme court commis- sionership, judgeship on the Kansas City court of appeals bench and twenty- two years as judge of the United States district court of the western district of Missouri. He had handed down 437 opinions, characterized by their fullness of information, their completeness of treatment of the issues involved.

True to the faith of his fathers and to the name of the Presbyterian preacher, Rev. John Finis, famous in the early religious life of Missouri, Judge Philips was active in the church, going as a delegate to the Pan-Presbyterian con-

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vention in Edinburgh, in 1877. That gave him opportunity for European travel and observation which rounded out his vision.

Missouri's Big Four.

. Four young Missourians, who had begun the practice of law in Central Missouri, and who were destined to become, by common consent, known two decades later as Missouri's "Big Four," came together in the winter of 1860-61, to talk about their futures. Cockrell had made up his mind to go with the states rights movement. With that same simple steadfastness of purpose which won for him thirty years in the United States Senate and the utmost confidence in his integrity. more telling in life than brilliance of mind, there was no hesita- tion or variableness in his decision." Vest had been an elector for Douglas, the winning ticket in Missouri in 1860, and had made strong Union speeches. But he had a sentiment of devotion to his southern land which carried him with the secessionists when the issue came. The arguments of Philips and Crittenden, who had decided to remain with the Union, could not change this inclination. Speaking of the sequel to this conference, Judge Philips said :

"Vest chose to emigrate to Arkansas with the seceding state officials, and down there Shelby's brigade elected him to the Confederate Congress. I don't blame them,-Vest had a persuasive tongue. I suppose he talked to them as he talked to a jury, and Vest's juries usually did what he told them to do. Few men could resist either his eloquence or his logic. He told me once he never had studied an English grammar, but no public speaker had a better command of the language or understood more perfectly the effective marshaling of sentences or the magic use of words. But that was not all. He had a voice that was a worthy vehicle of his finest periods and a dignity and presence that stilled and inspired all men.

"Vest went to Richmond and I went to Jefferson City as a member of the provisional convention. Our ways lay apart for four years. There was no longer any doubt of Mis- souri's stand after the convention met. The legislature had invested it with extraordinary powers, confident that it would do Jackson's bidding, and it used those powers to defeat his plans and cement the state to the Union. The convention declared the state offices vacant and declared Hamilton R. Gamble governor. I was commissioned to raise a regiment and took the field at the head of the 7th Missouri cavalry, but retained my seat in the con- vention and attended its sitting whenever I could leave the saddle long enough to reach the capital."

In that convention, John F. Philips was the youngest but one of the mem- bers. He was twenty-six years old. But in and out of the convention he . gained state-wide fame for his aggressive speeches for the Union. He fought as well as he talked. The battle of Westport, in what are now the suburbs of Kansas City, was called "the Gettysburg of the West." There the cause of Price and the states rights Missourians reached high tide and began its reces- sion. Philips led the charge up what became known as "Bloody Hill." Crit- tenden fell wounded on the slope. Philips led in the drive of the Confederates southward down the Wornall road and was made a brigadier-general for his gallantry.

Philips chose early between politics and law. He had his choice. He had been on the Bell-Everett, Constitutional Union, electoral ticket in 1860; he had bad two terms in Congress ; he was a member of a committee which investigated

JUDGE JOHN F. PHILIPS A grand old man of Missouri

JUDGE THOMAS T. GANTT

JUDGE SAMUEL TREAT

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A GRAND OLD MAN OF MISSOURI

the Tilden-Hayes 'election in 1876 and made a report which has recognition in national political history. But after these successful experiences, he moved to Kansas City and entered upon his greater and more satisfying career as a lawyer and jurist.

The Frank James Case.

After the Civil war, Philips and Vest at Sedalia and Cockrell and Crittenden at Warrensburg became the powers in law and politics. The action of the two Union officers, Philips and Crittenden, in forming early partnerships with the two Confederates, Cockrell and Vest, had no little influence in determining the future political success of the two senators.

There came later another chapter in the curiously interwoven careers of the four men. Crittenden was elected governor of Missouri over the most popular man the republicans could nominate, David P. Dyer. He determined to put an end to the series of events which had prompted the epithet of "the robber state" as applied to Missouri by some eastern papers. He offered large rewards for the capture of Frank and Jesse James. Two young Missourians, scarcely out of their teens, Bob and Charlie Ford, undertook to earn the rewards. In 1881, Jesse James was shot and killed at his home in St. Joseph by one of the Fords. Frank James appeared at the governor's office in Jefferson City, accompanied by Major John N. Edwards who had known of his career during the war, and sur- rendered, laying his pistols on the governor's table. Frank James was indicted on the charge of complicity in the killing of Conductor Westfall of the Rock Island in connection with the holdup of a train. On the twenty-first of August, 1883, the most notable criminal trial in that generation of Missourians began at Gallatin. William H. Wallace, for the state headed the prosecution.

John F. Philips and Charles P. Johnson were in the array for the defense. James was acquitted. Thereafter he led a law abiding life. At the funeral, held at the farm house in Clay county, there was no prayer, no hymn, no preacher, but Judge Philips, then past fourscore, journeyed out from Kansas City and spoke a few words as he had promised the man he had defended nearly thirty-five years before.

Judge Philips' Reminiscences.

Of all Missourians, John F. Philips knew longest and most intimately the bench and bar of the Center State, during the century closing. Boy and man, lawyer and jurist, his recollections went back to the pioneers. Close relation- ship with his profession continued down to 1919. Repeatedly Judge Philips was called upon to tell of those he had known. And he responded with delightful detail and charming diction. Before the Missouri Bar Association, at the cen- tennial celebration of Missouri's formal appeal to Congress for statehood, and on other occasions, Judge Philips gave the reminiscences which follow :

"In 1855, when I commenced reading law, I began to take notice of the leading lawyers of the bar of Missouri. Like the first large objects in nature the eye beholds, such as rivers, lakes, forests, and towering hills, the notable personages first observed are apt to impress the mind with exaggerated conceptions of their magnitude. Yet, there are those

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who fix the attention in early life, who ever after stand out distinctly, as monumental as the mountains, as grand as the sea, because they are great.

"The first lawyer I ever saw was Abiel Leonard, of Fayette, Missouri. My father had been sued, in an action of ejection, in the circuit court of the United States, at St. Louis, for the recovery of possession of the homestead located by him, in Boone county in 1817. on which I was born. The claim advanced against him was predicated of what was known as a New Madrid earthquake certificate. He employed Mr. Leonard to defend the action. En route to St. Louis he remained over the night at my father's home. He was a small man physically, so ugly as to attract attention, with a lion's voice that challenged contradiction. He filled my youthful mind with awe. As I listened to him he seemed a very oracle of wisdom.

Abiel Leonard's Fee.

"In midwinter he and my father rode horseback, over 150 miles to St. Louis to attend that trial. They were gone over two weeks, during which the family awaited with anx- ious hearts tidings of them. Leonard won, and stopped again over night on his return, I suspect to collect his fee. When the neighbors, who in those days ever took the liveliest interest in the affairs of each other, learned of Leonard's charge for his services, they pronounced it exorbitant. It was the princely sum of $150.00! Verily, Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis.

"From that time to the close of his career he never failed to measure up to the highest standards of lawyer, jurist and citizen. With rapt interest I listened at the family fireside to the recital of the incident of one Berry cowhiding him, publicly in the court house yard. The hotheaded westerner assumed that as Leonard was a New England Yankee he was cold-blooded, and would not fight. How badly he reckoned! To wipe the ignominy from his honor thus meanly put upon him, Leonard challenged him to mortal combat, according to the then recognized Code Duello. They fought on Bloody Island in the Mississippi river. From the rifle held by steady nerves and directed by keen eyes, Berry fell. No man afterward questioned the right of the New Englander to be treated and respected as a gentleman.

Pardoned for a Duel.

"The legislature of the state, in recognition of the approval of public opinion of this action of Mr. Leonard, passed the following act :

"'AN ACT FOR THE RELIEF OF ABIEL LEONARD.

"'Preamble: Whereas, it satisfactorily appears to this General Assembly, that Abiel Leonard, at the October term of the Circuit Court of Howard, First Judicial district, before the judge of said court, in the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-four, was con- victed of challenging a person to fight a duel, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided, and the said Abiel Leonard was then and there, by the judgment of the court aforesaid, declared to be "incapable of holding or being elected to any post of profit, trust, or emolument, civil or military, under the government of this state, or of voting at an elec- tion within the same.

" 'Therefore, Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, that the said Abiel Leonard be and he is hereby restored to all the rights, privileges and liberties of a citizen of this state, in as full and perfect manner as he possessed and enjoyed them before the conviction and judgment aforesaid. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after the passage thereof, and shall be. taken and considered a public act.'"

"'(Approved December 24th, 1824, Chapter 13, Private Acts of Missouri 1824.) '"

"In 1835 the original roll of this private act was destroyed, together with all other laws then preserved in the archives in the office of the secretary of state, by the fire which consumed the state capitol building. A volume of the private acts of 1824, printed by public authority and containing this act, was found among the law books in the library of Judge Leonard after his death, preserved hy him, doubtless, as a valued treasure. On his death this volume passed into the hands of his son-in-law, General Odon Guitar, of Columbia, Missouri, and is now in the possession of Mr. R. A. Brown, an attorney at law of St. Joseph, Missouri, who married a daughter of General Guitar. Mr. Thomas K. Skinker, the well-known lawyer of St. Louis, who has a commendable passion for collecting and preserving such ancient and rare hooks, obtained a reprinting of this volume of private

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A GRAND OLD MAN OF MISSOURI

acts and tendered a copy to the secretary of state with the request that it be certified by him as a true copy. This the secretary declined to do unless the original volume, then in the hands of General Guitar, were filed in the office of the secretary of state. General Guitar did not accede to this request doubtless for sentimental reasons.

"Judge Leonard was a highly educated man, a rare classical scholar, with an eminently practical mind. He was not an orator, as the world estimates; but he was so logical, so learned, and intellectually honest that men listened to and believed in him. His term on the supreme bench of the state, from which he voluntarily retired, though short, demon- strated his premiership as a jurist, especially in that branch of the law which calls for the highest qualities of head and heart,-equity jurisprudence.

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Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 103

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939 Publication date: 1921 Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company Number of Pages: 1074

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074