Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 42

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 42

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A tradition of the trail which has survived the generations is the wonderful surgical operation Richard Gentry performed. A Missourian named Broaddus attempted the feat of drawing his rifle muzzle foremost over the end gate of a wagon. As was to be expected he received the load in his left arm, shattering the bone. The time was August. Inflammation set in. Broaddus gritted his teeth and said "no" to amputation until he was apparently dying. Then he con- sented. There was no surgeon. Gentry took a hand saw, a butcher knife and an iron bolt. He filed a finer set of teeth on the back of the saw, whetted the butcher knife to razor edge and put the bolt in the fire. With the knife the arm was circled down to the bone. A few strokes of the saw cut through that. Then the hot bolt was applied until the stump was seared and the blood flow stopped. In a few weeks Broaddus was well.

Among the many Missourians who engaged in the trail trade were John S. Jones, Thomas C. Cartwright and Thomas F. Houston.

Five Dollars a Letter.

The pony express came in as a fast mail feature of the overland trail. It was organized by the same Missourians who had made a success of the trail traffic. With the discovery of gold and the sudden migration of thousands to California there arose a need for quicker transit of mail. Five dollars was charged for each letter. The thinnest paper was used. The distance was nearly two thou- sand miles from St. Joseph to San Francisco. It was covered in eight days. There were eighty riders in the saddle constantly, forty on the way from St. Joseph to California and forty coming eastward at the same time. With those

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kept in reserve a force of four hundred riders was employed for the pony ex- press. The service continued about a year. It ended when the Pacific telegraph was completed and began sending messages. To connect with the pony express the Hannibal & St. Joe railroad, only recently completed, put on a fast mail. The hero of the first run of this train was Engineer Add Clark. He drew the mail from the Mississippi to the Missouri, 206 miles, in a little over four hours. Crowds assembled at the stations to see and cheer. At the St. Joseph terminus a pony stood near. The mail clerk jumped from the mail car, ran with the little bags of mail and threw them across the back of the pony. The rider plied his spur and dashed to the landing where the ferry boat was waiting. In less than a minute after the train stopped the pony express was on the way across the Missouri river.

Hampton Ball's Stage Driving Days.

One of the last of the Missouri stage drivers was Hampton Ball who died at Jonesburg in 1911. He was of the Virginia Balls, the family to which George Washington belonged. At eighty-one Hampton Ball was tall and erect, muscular and active. He accounted for his splendid health by his "temperance, inde- pendence and outdoor life." As early as 1847 Mr. Ball drove the stage on the Boone's Lick road. "Why, sir," he once said, "we never heard of such a thing as a stage coach robbery on our route. We did not always stick to the road. There were no fences. When one track became too muddy or too rough with ruts we drove out on the prairie or made a new road through the woods. Wild hogs were through this region in large numbers. No one fattened hogs. The hogs lived on the mast, which they found plentiful in the woods. I have seen from the stage coach many a time a farmer shooting a hog, from which he would make bacon. I was a clerk at $6 a month, or rather a boy working in a store for that amount, when I was offered 40 cents a day and board as a stage coach driver. I got my employer's permission to accept the new job and went to work at it.

"We married earlier in those days than now. Nowadays a man is not an old bachelor until he passes 50 and a woman is not an old maid until she gets to be 40, and, you know, she is never that old before she is married. When I was young, girls married at 14 and boys before they were 20. My wife had $12.50 in silver and I had $151 in silver, which was our total wealth when we got married. We built a log cabin and went to work. The high price of living did not bother us then. It did not require so much for us to live. I don't think we were any less happy, however."

Bledsoe's Ferry is an historic crossing of the Osage in Benton county. In pioneer days, there was a trail and later a road which crossed Missouri diag- onally from northeast to southwest. It began at Palmyra and ended in the Cherokee Nation. Bledsoe's Ferry was the halfway place. Near Bledsoe's was a large settlement of the Shawanoese or Shawnees.

A One-Passenger Railroad.

St. Louis people were given early a small object lesson in railroad operation. A little railroad was brought to the city and put on exhibition. The Baptist

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church at Third and Market was rented. A circular track was built on staging. The rolling stock was a miniature locomotive and one car which held a single person. Steam was raised in the locomotive and the little train was sent around the track at a lively rate for such a short circuit. This was the summer of 1830. Probably not twenty people in the city had seen a railroad previously. An ad- mission fee was charged and a small amount was collected for a ride in the one-passenger car. The object was educational, for St. Louis was just at the beginning of agitation for railroads. At the same time admission was charged to cover expenses. A newspaper said :

The public will be much gratified by a visit to the miniature railroad exhibited at the old Baptist church. This combination of art and science, although in miniature, is complete in all its parts, and exhibits in one view all the apparatus necessary for railroad traveling. With a few ounces of coal, and a small measure of water, it winds its way round on a circular track of one hundred feet at the rate of seven miles an hour, carry- ing a person of the largest size in the car.

The First Iron Horse.

A little locomotive, the first real iron horse that St. Louisians saw, was brought up the river on the Chariton in 1838. The boat went on to Meredosia, a town with considerable expectations on the Illinois. There, in the summer of 1838. eight miles of railroad was built, in an easterly. direction toward "the Athens of Illinois," Jacksonville. The civil engineer, who ran the line and su- perintended the construction was George P. Plant, the son of a Massachusetts cotton manufacturer. Mr. Plant came to St. Louis a couple of years later and became the head of the great milling firm. The contractor who did most of the construction work was T. T. January, who also came to St. Louis soon after- wards with his brother Derrick A. January. The Januarys were Kentuckians, brothers-in-law of the Massachusetts man. The little railroad was given the high sounding name of the Northern Cross. Two men who became prominent in St. Louis a few years later participated in the opening of the railroad in November, 1838. They were Charles Collins, in honor of whom Collins street was named, and Miron Leslie.

In the winter of 1839, a governor of Pennsylvania, David R. Porter, sent to the legislature a message dwelling on the importance to that state, of "a continuous railroad to the city of St. Louis." He was ridiculed for such a wild suggestion. The next year a burlesque message, purporting to come from the governor, was printed and widely circulated in Pennsylvania. At that time. 1840. Texas was a country of refuge for some Americans as well as an at- tractive region to the good settlers. The bogus message contained this para- graph which was esteemed an excellent joke at the expense of Governor Porter :

"During the last session of the legislature, in a special message, I took occasion to recommend the construction of a continuous railroad to St. Louis in the State of Mis- souri. As there are few spectacles more sublime than the voluntary retraction of an erroneous opinion by a public officer, I have determined to present that spectacle to the world. I therefore withdraw my special recommendation and in its stead recommend a continuous railroad to the Republic of Texas. This is done because more of our party friends are traveling in the latter direction."

STAGING IN THE OZARKS

FIRST LOCOMOTIVE IN MISSOURI

On December 1, 1852, the first locomotive whistle was heard on the Pacific track just west of Fourteenth Street. The locomotive was of St. Louis manufacture by Palm & Robertson.

OVERLAND TRAIN Organized to leave Western Missouri for California following the dis- covery of gold

Vol. 1-25

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Early Railroad Projects.

St. Louis had 10,000 inhabitants when Mayor John F. Darby sent a railroad message to the board of aldermen. That was the first formal railroad project in Missouri or anywhere west of the Mississippi. The time was February, 1836. The road then proposed was to run from St. Louis to Fayette in Howard county. Acting on Mayor Darby's message, the board of aldermen called a meeting of the citizens. The meeting appointed a committee to draw up an address. In effect the address was a call to the counties interested to send delegates to a railroad convention to be held in St. Louis in April, 1836. Eleven counties were represented. The delegates were entertained at the expense of the city and were banqueted. Two projects were endorsed. One of them was a railroad south from St. Louis to Iron Mountain. The other was for a railroad to St. Charles and westward through the counties north of the Missouri river.

At the next session of the legislature, 1836-7, George K. McGunnegle, a rep- resentative from St. Louis, introduced a bill to charter the St. Louis and Iron Mountain and the bill passed. That was the beginning of railroad legislation in Missouri. The legislature declined to vote aid to the enterprise.

After Mayor Darby's message and the convention, ten years went by with only agitation to mark development of railroad sentiment in St. Louis. On the 20th of December, 1847, wires reached the Mississippi. St. Louis was put upon the telegraph map. This stimulated the railroad movement. A com- mittee of citizens was appointed to ask the legislature for authority to vote on a subscription of $500,000 by St. Louis toward the building of the Ohio and Mississippi railroad. The route had been surveyed from Cincinnati through Vincennes to the Mississippi. After some delay the legislature provided for the submission. The proposition passed. That was the first of many contribu- tions by St. Louis toward railroad construction.

By mass meeting in the rotunda of the court house popular sentiment in St. Louis was committed to the project. Mayor John M. Krum presided. An address to citizens favoring a loan of $500,000 was adopted. It was prepared by Thomas Allen, Frederick Kretschmar, John McNeil, Willis L. Williams, Samuel M. Bay, Isaac H. Sturgeon, Samuel Hawken, Trusten Polk, Daniel D. Page, Lewis V. Bogy and A. L. Mills. The mass meeting led to the appoint- ment of a vigilance committee, as the body was called, of ten men from each ward "to attend the polls on Monday and secure favorable consideration of the subject." The $500,000 loan to the Ohio and Mississippi went through by a heavy majority carrying five of the six wards.

"This vote may be hailed as a new era in the history of St. Louis," said the current newspaper account. "It is the first instance in which she has put forth her efforts to the accomplishment of a great enterprise and she has come up to the full amount desired with a promptness and a heartiness which evince that she understands her interest in the proposed work."

The First Railroad Eastward.

The citizens as well as the municipality promoted the building of the first railroad eastward. St. Louis was strongly represented by Mayor Luther M. Kennett, John O'Fallon, James H. Lucas, Andrew Christy, Daniel D. Page and

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others among the incorporators who obtained from the Illinois Legislature in the winter of IS51 the incorporation of the St. Louis and Vincennes railroad. This was the western half of the Ohio and Mississippi. The directors held meetings in St. Louis. They chose John O'Fallon the first president. They added to the St. Louisans on the board Charles P. Chouteau and Robert Camp- bell. While the city of St. Louis aided with $500,000, St. Louis bankers carried the financial load.

The Ohio and Mississippi railroad enterprise received no encouragement from Illinois in the beginning. Cincinnati and Vincennes were anxious for the extension of the road to St. Louis. They sent Abner T. Ellis and Professor O. M. Mitchell, the noted astronomer, to St. Louis to obtain encouragement. Illinois was worse than indifferent. The state had a well defined policy not to encourage railroads which would build up cities outside of the state. To ob- tain permission to build a railroad across Illinois from Vincennes to St. Louis it was necessary to overcome this opposition. Not long afterwards Illinois became · liberal with charters to build railroads anywhere. Isaac H. Sturgeon was strong in public life when the Ohio and Mississippi movement started. He suggested the subscription of $500,000 by the city of St. Louis, and later as state senator put through the legislation which permitted the county of St. Louis, which included the city, to subscribe $200,000.

On the 7th of February, 1852, St. Louis inaugurated the building of the first railroad eastward. Headed by the mayor, Luther M. Kennett, and escorted by the directors of the company, the participants in the ceremony and a large number of interested citizens crossed by ferry boat to the east side. The celebration was distinctively a St. Louis affair.' Charles D. Drake, the St. Louis lawyer, afterwards United States senator, called the assemblage to order and announced the programme. President O'Fallon spoke and so did Abner T. Ellis, representing Vincennes. Mayor Kennett, always happy in his references, re- minded the audience that St. Louis had previously crossed over to the Illinois side to build first sand and then stone dykes. Now the city proposed to add iron bands to its relations with Illinois. The officers of the Pacific railroad were present. Thomas Allen told how much it would mean to the first railroad west from St. Louis to have this first railroad east. Charles D. Drake loaded a wheelbarrow with sand and gravel. Mayor Kennett trundled to the place which the contractor pointed out. The work was begun.

Resourceful "Dan" Garrison.

When Daniel R. Garrison had completed all but seven miles of the Ohio and Mississippi he ran out of rails. A shipment from England had been made but it might be months enroute. The Terre Haute railroad was in course of construction. On the levee at St. Louis lay a consignment of rails for the Terre Haute. There wasn't money enough in the bank of Page & Bacon, the institution which was financing the Ohio and Mississippi, to buy a ton of these rails from the competing road. The consignment was being conveyed across the river. In some manner, never fully explained, a sufficient quantity of these rails to lay the seven miles was loaded on Ohio and Mississippi cars. This had been done before the owners discovered the mistake. The sheriff of St.

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Clair county, with a posse, came after the Terre Haute rails. Mr. Garrison received the officer courteously and invited him and his party on board of the train to take a short ride while they talked about the claim to the rails. A railroad ride was a novelty. It appealed to the sheriff and the posse. But when the train approached the eastern boundary of St. Clair county, it did not stop. Imperative business prevented Mr. Garrison from returning with the train. The legal papers were of no effect beyond the county line. Before the sheriff got within his jurisdiction again the rails were down and the last spike had been driven. Very properly, when the Ohio and the Mississippi opened, the business men of St. Louis presented to Mr. Garrison a fine set of silverware.

When Benton Reversed Himself.

For ten years after St. Louis began the agitation for railroads Benton and his following opposed government aid to them. Coming back from Washington in 1839, the senator said in a speech: "Ever since the day when General Jack- son vetoed the Lexington and Maysville road bill, internal improvement by the general government was no longer to be considered as among the teachings and doctrines of the democratic party. It is the old, antiquated, obsolete and ex- ploded doctrine of Henry Clay's 'American system.' Look at Illinois, where whig rule obtained for awhile, overwhelmed in debt, unable to pay the interest on her bonds. Look at Missouri, a state free of debt-a state governed by democracy."

In 1849 Benton reversed himself. He made the speech more frequently quoted than any other in what he liked to call the "six Roman lustrums" of his senatorial career. The occasion was the national convention held in St. Louis to promote the building of a transcontinental railroad from the Mississippi to San Francisco. Benton participated. Enthusiasm reached its highest pitch when with all of his oratorical magnetism, he pointed toward the west and exclaimed : "There is the East. There is India!" The words of prophecy gave Harriet Hosmer the inspiration for the statue of Benton which stands in Lafayette park. Advocacy at last of that which he had most strenuously opposed won for Ben- ton his greatest renown.

The invitation to Benton to participate in the railroad convention of 1849 was carried by John F. Darby, one of the leaders in the movement. He said to the senator, as he afterwards narrated: "Colonel Benton, we expect you to aid us in this matter. St. Louis from her central position is entitled to have the road start from here. We shall have opposition and much to contend with. Douglas is striving hard for the Presidency, and he will try to have the Pacific road start from Chicago instead of St. Louis, run through Iowa, and give us the go-by. Should Douglas succeed in his presidential aspirations, it will give him additional power and influence."

The reply of Senator Benton, as Mr. Darby reported it, was: "I shall be there, sir; I shall attend the convention, and advocate the building of the road from St. Louis to San Francisco. Douglas never can be President, sir. No, sir, Douglas never can be President. His legs are too short, sir. His coat, like a cow's tail, hangs too near the ground, sir."

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Miss Hosmer's conception represents Benton holding a map and looking down to it. One who was present described Benton as assuming his most im- pressive pose, throwing back his head and stretching out his right arm to indicate the course, as he said in deep tones :

"Let us beseech the national legislature to build the great road upon the great national, line, which unites Europe and Asia-the line which will find on our continent the bay of San Francisco at one end. St. Louis in the middle, the national metropolis and great com- mercial emporium at the other end-the line which will be adorned with its crowning honor, the colossal statue of the great Columbus, whose design it accomplishes, hewn from the granite mass of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, overlooking the road-the pedestal and the statue a part of the mountain, pointing with outstretched arm to the western horizon and saying to the flying passenger, there is the East-there is India !"

Secret History of the Convention.

Back of the railroad convention of 1849 was a chapter of very interesting secret history. It is told in the manuscript collection of the papers of Samuel Treat. preserved in the archives of the Missouri Historical Society. Samuel Treat was a newspaper man, afterwards judge of the United States district court at St. Louis for many years. He left this memorandum, revealing how Benton and Calhoun were reached by the managers of the railroad movement of '49 :

"Colonel Benton's course with regard to the projected road was very equivocal. He had spoken of the buffalo tracks as indicative of the true route and ridiculed the course through the pass on the 42nd degree as urged by Whitney. So matters stood when the famous Memphis convention was held, at which Calhoun presided. At that convention Calhoun overcame his constitutional difficulties about the limitations of the Federal Con- stitution by denominating the Mississippi river as an inland sea. ~ As Mr. Calhoun in- sisted that the Federal government had no right to enter a state for any of its enterprises, I wrote to him with regard to the proposed convention at St. Louis favoring a Pacific rail- road and the enclosed is his answer.

"It became important to secure the aid both of Mr. Calhoun and Colonel Benton, hence a private interview with some of my friends in the city council, and with Colonel D. H. Armstrong and Isaac H. Sturgeon and others. We induced the passage of a city resolution urging Colonel Benton not only to favor but to make a speech in aid of the enterprize. The history of that convention is well worth recording. Colonel Benton yielded to our solicitations and made his renowned speech, one of the grandest of his efforts which is burlesqued in his statue in Lafayette park.

"In the height of his enthusiasm, after referring to the efforts of Modern History to reach India and Columbus' discovery, he exclaimed, pointing west, that there should be carved out of the tallest peak of Cordilleras a statue of Columbus with outstretched hand pointing westward, indicating 'There is the East. There is India.' The statue (in Lafay- ette park) represents him as studying a map to find out where India was, representing nothing of the boldness and grandeur of his exclamation.

"The constant hostility and rivalry between Colonel Benton and Mr. Calhoun made it important that both, if possible, should be brought to aid the plan for a railroad to the Pacific ocean. Few seem to remember the political difficulties then in the way. Benton was brought to the support of the enterprize through playing on his hostility to Calhoun, despite his former opposition to the project. I addressed a letter to Mr. Calhoun to overcome his scruples. The enclosed is the result."

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J. C. Calhoun to Samuel Treat.

"My dear sir :

"Agreeably to your request, I enclose my answer to the committee to you. I have left it open for your perusal. After you have read it, wet the seal with your tongue and press it down with your thumb. I have made my answer short and comprehensive. I thought under circumstances it would be better. If St. Louis should in full deliberation thought to be preferable as the eastern terminus I would heartily give it my support, but I think the course you suggest the best, at least for the present, to fix the terminus for the present at Independence or some other place on the western limits of the state. It will do much to conciliate all the different interests.

"I am glad to learn that Benton has fixed his doom. It is a wonder he has been able so long to impose on the country. His fall will be one step to a better state of things.

"It is vastly important that you should have, at this time, a true and able paper.

"Yours truly, "J. C. CALHOUN.

"SAM'L TREAT."

Benton, the Prophet.

"Benton was not a southern Democrat," said George G. Vest, "he was a national Democrat. He appreciated more thoroughly than any man of his era the possibilities of that vast country west of the Mississippi, destined to be- come the seat of empire on this continent. I heard him at a little town on the Missouri river, standing with his right arm extended, declare, with the air and tones of an ancient prophet, 'There is the East; there is the road to India.' And upon his bronze statue in Lafayette park in St. Louis today, upon the pedestal, are engraved these prophetic words. He declared, and men-laughed at him when he said it, that this continent would be bound together by bands of iron which would carry our produce to the Pacific slope to feed the innumerable mil- lions in Asia and the Orient."

In February, 1849, Senator Benton presented to the Senate his bill "to pro- vide for the location and construction of a central national road from the Pa- cific ocean to the Mississippi river, with a branch of said road to the Columbia river." That was the year of the discovery of gold in California and of the great rush of gold seekers across the continent. In setting forth his views on the bill, Senator Benton used these prophetic words :

"When we acquired Louisiana, Mr. Jefferson revived this idea of establishing an inland communication between the two sides of the continent, and for that purpose the well- known expedition of Lewis and Clark was sent out by him. About thirty years ago I began to turn my attention to this subject. I followed the idea of Mr. Jefferson, Lasalle and others, and attempted to revive attention to their plans. I then expressed the confident belief that this route would be established, immediately with the aid of the American government, and eventually, even without that aid, by the progress of events and the force of circumstances. I go for a national highway from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and go against all schemes of individuals or of companies, and especially those who come here and ask of the Congress of the United States to give themselves and their assigns the means of making a road and taxing the people for the use of it.

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Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 42

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