USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 74
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"The citizens of Missouri are willing to acknowledge their proper and just allegiance to the government of the United States, but they have always held and hold to-day that under the obligations of that allegiance, fixed and defined by the Constitution of the United States, they are not required to give up their state rights and bow down in the dust like serfs and slaves to federal dictation, or the dictation of any one or more states of the Union. Missouri has rights as a state of the Union. Missouri has rights as a state of this Union which you dare not invade without disregarding your oaths and trampling in the dust the Constitution watered with the blood of your Revolutionary sires. You can not abolish our state courts, nor our legislature; nor can you deprive us of two senators or our proper number of representatives upon this floor. You can not make local
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laws for our local internal police government conflicting with the reserved rights of the state and the people. While you can not do any of these things, either directly or in- directly, neither can you by direction or indirection, as you propose by this bill, abolish slavery. That is as much their concern as is the election of their legislature. The people of that state are a brave, magnanimous, patriotic and just-minded people; and whenever in the exercise of their virtues they determine that it is for their interest and to the interest of the state and country generally that the institution of slavery should be abolished in a legal and constitutional mode, all citizens of the state will agree to their verdict and sanction their action. You do not propose to have it accomplished in this way, but are for stepping in and settling the matter at once."
In conclusion Judge Norton pictured the horrors as he foresaw them of a free negro population in Missouri :
"Under this bill you propose to turn adrift upon the people of the state 100,000 persons without a dollar, without homes or provision made for them to get homes, persons of all ages, sexes and conditions, the old and infirm, the halt, lame and blind, the young and defenseless, in one promiscuous mass. Is this humanity? Humanitarians on the other side of the House may answer. The original bill pledged the faith of this government to take the emancipated slaves out of the state; the substitute adopted by the Senate, and now here for action, strikes this provision out, thus converting Missouri into a free negro state. You can not inflict a greater injury on Missouri than thus to fill up her communi- ties with this kind of worthless population. A free negro population is the greatest curse to any country."
Charcoals and Claybanks.
The Union men of Missouri divided sharply in 1862 upon the question of freeing the slaves in this state. The Charcoals were for immediate emancipation ; the Claybanks favored what Frank P. Blair, in a letter to Rudolph Doehn called a "gradual, peaceful and just measure of emancipation." Missourians recog- nized the fact that freedom of the slaves of the disloyal was coming as an act of war. The issue for this state was the course to be pursued regarding the slaves of the Union men. In the spring of 1863 there were held two local conventions in St. Louis, one called the Republican Emancipation convention by the "Char- coals," and the other the Union Emancipation convention by the "Claybanks." The "Charcoals" nominated Chauncey I. Filley for mayor; the "Claybanks" nominated his cousin, O. D. Filley, for mayor. The Democrats nominated Joseph O'Neill. The Charcoals resolved in their convention "Emancipation in Missouri should be sought in the most speedy manner consistent with law and order." The resolutions endorsed the President's proclamation of January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves in the Confederate states. The Claybanks resolved "That we regard slavery as an evil and believe that our state ought to adopt some constitutional mode of getting rid of an institution which has been a clog upon the wheels of her prosperity and the fruitful source of trouble and disaster." The Charcoals were successful, electing Chauncey I. Filley over the Claybank and the Democratic candidates.
James Taussig returning in May, 1863, from Washington, quoted President Lincoln as saying: "The Union men of Missouri, who are in favor of gradual emancipation, represent my views better than those who favor immediate emanci- pation."
In 1863 a plan of gradual emancipation was offered to the people of Missouri
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
in the form of a constitutional amendment. But in 1865 a constitutional con- vention declared for immediate freedom of all slaves. Negro schools were started in St. Louis by voluntary contributions, the laws at that time forbidding use of public money for such a purpose.
Negro Education in Missouri.
A negro regiment, composed in the main of former Missouri slaves, started the fund which bought the site of Lincoln Institute at Jefferson City. The first contribution was $20, given by Maj. Samuel A. Love, for many years a leader among the negro Baptists of Missouri. The time was pay day for the colored troops; also it was Sunday. J. Milton Turner, afterwards Minister to Liberia by appointment from General Grant, addressed the soldiers. He told them that education was the great need of their people now that freedom had been obtained. He explained that colored teachers must be trained. To accomplish that there must be a normal school. The fund thus started grew with contribu- tions from another negro regiment. It was sufficient to buy the site. The legis- lature was asked for help. An understanding was reached by which the state was pledged to recognize and support the institute when the contributions from individuals reach $15,000. Capt. R. B. Foster who had been in the movement from the beginning went East with Turner. Anti-slavery people contributed freely. The guarantee fund was raised. The state administration redeemed its promise and Missouri inaugurated one of the earliest training schools for colored teachers. Turner established, as he believed, the first negro school in Missouri outside of St. Louis. He said one of his supporters was Jesse James, who on several occasions contributed from $10 to $25. "But for Jesse James," said Turner, "I could not have kept up the school."
Samuel Cupples and Dr. Woodward.
The introduction of colored teachers for colored schools was one of the inno- vations which St. Louis tried with admirable results. It came about after Samuel Cupples and Dr. Calvin M. Woodward had become active in the public school board. For a number of years the teachers of-the colored schools were white. When a young white woman was assigned to teach a colored school there followed an indignant protest from her friends. White teachers failed to arouse the interest among their pupils necessary for best results. Mr. Cupples was a trustee of the Lincoln Institute at Jefferson City. He made inquiries as to the capabilities of the students who were being educated at the institute and proposed the trial of colored teachers in the St. Louis colored schools. Dr. Harris, Dr. Woodward and others favored the experiment. At that time the enrollment of children in the colored schools was about two thousand. Mr. Cupples, Dr. Harris and Dr. Woodward visited the colored schools, invited the parents to a conference, had refreshments and explained the purpose to better the educational facilities for the children. They urged that they must have the cooperation of the parents to obtain the improvement desired. Children must attend regularly, must not be kept out on Mondays to go after the laundry and at other times to run errands, but must be present five days in the week. In a year the enrollment of the colored schools of St. Louis had doubled. The improved conditions under colored teachers
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SLAVERY AND AFTER
has been so marked and gratifying that it brought the public school board to the conclusion to build a colored high school to cost $350,000, the best equipped high school for colored pupils in the United States.
A few years ago Sir William Mather, accompanied by Lady Mather, visited St. Louis to observe the progress made in manual training. From the white schools they went to the colored and saw the boys and girls receiving the same practical instruction in the use of their hands as well as their minds.
"I am surprised," exclaimed the lady. "Wasn't this a slave state? I am sur- prised that you are doing so much for the negroes."
"Madame," said Mr. Cupples, "the only people who understand the negroes and who know how to make good citizens of them are those who lived in the former slave states."
Then Lady Mather insisted upon having some pictures of the colored school children of St. Louis at their studies and especially engaged in the manual training and domestic science work.
"When we go up to Khartoum," she said to Sir William, "I want to show what these people are doing for the little Africans in St. Louis."
The Missouri Negro.
When the bill to reimburse the depositors of the Freedman's Savings bank was before Congress, Senator Vest opposed it. He' said that the bill was in the interest, not of the original depositors, but for the benefit of claim agents. And then he paid this touching tribute to the negro as he had known him in Missouri : "I have nothing to say to any man who thinks that I would grind the African race out of one cent. If any man in this world has reason to be their friend, I am that man-raised with them, nursed by one of them, an humble owner of them as inherited property. I never bought or sold one for gain in my life. They are a docile, gentle, inoffensive race, and the Southern man who would wrong them deserves to be blotted from the roll of manhood. When our wives and children were in their hands during the war they acted so as to make every man in the South their friend who had one particle of manhood about him."
According to Commissioner Fitzpatrick, of the state bureau of labor statistics, there were in 1913 nearly 3,800 Missouri farms owned by negroes and these farms were worth $27.768,000, taking the average value of a farm in the state as a basis. Investigation by the bureau showed that these farms, as a rule, were well kept and well stocked and productive, growing wheat, corn, oats, grasses, watermelons, strawberries, peaches, apples and all other food necessities. Negroes raised poultry for the market, sold eggs, milk and butter, had bee hives and plenty of honey, produced sugar cane, which, in fall, they boiled out for sorghum molasses. Their daily menu was made of the best things they produced. Nearly every negro farmer in Missouri, the commissioner stated, had a bank account.
In 1913 the sweepstakes premium for "the highest yield of corn on one acre," awarded at the University of Missouri, went to a negro farmer. It was given to N. C. Bruce, connected with the Bartlett Farm and School for negroes at Dalton in Chariton county. Bruce raised 108 bushels on a single acre. The average for a field of sixty acres at the Dalton institution, where negroes are taught agriculture and other useful branches, was between sixty-five and seventy-five
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bushels an acre. One of the chief promoters of the Dalton school was the late Professor Calvin M. Woodward, father of manual training.
Bruce's record, officially, was 108 bushels of corn on a single acre. The negro students of the Dalton school raised an average of sixty-five bushels on a field of sixty acres. In 1915, Bruce won the first prize on corn for the entire United States at the San Francisco Exposition.
"Some of us," Bruce recently wrote to the writer, "the state's farthest down humanity, want to be saved to better service. We want our people to become desirable assets instead of a liability on white citizens. We know that the farms, farming and domestic service training, offer us our best opportunity. We have shown our white neighbors and are trying to show white law-makers and authori- ties of the state that we, country life Missouri black people, are worth saving equally as our brothers in Alabama and other southern states. We follow the lines of the late Booker T. Washington and get even quicker and better results with the poorest equipment."
"A minimum programme negro advancement" was recently put forward, by the "National Association for the Betterment of the Colored People." This pro- gramme, summarized, demands that lynching shall be stopped; that negroes shall have fair trial in courts ; that employment shall not be denied on account of color in any work for which negroes are qualified; that there shall be no peonage and that criminal penalties shall not be imposed for the breaking of labor contracts ; that common school education shall be open to all children ; that agricultural and industrial training shall be available to all children; that teachers from their own race shall be provided for negro schools ; that there shall be no segregation to con- fine negroes in cities to a slum district; that where segregation is enforced, there shall be like service for the same cost; that voting laws shall be the same for colored as for white people; that "grandfather restrictions" on suffrage shall be repealed.
It is noteworthy that Missouri, either through statutes existing and enforced, or through public sentiment, concedes nearly all of these demands. Perhaps no other state in the Union comes nearer the recognition of this "minimum programme." In the matter of education, the negro child in the Missouri cities enjoys advantages equal to the white. But in the matter of agricultural education, the excellent Dalton school is left to private subscription.
Missouri Slavery an Economic Mistake.
Missouri was not much of a slave State even in 1860, when the crisis was impending. That year the population was 1, 182,012, while the number of slaves was only 114.931, or only one in ten. Ten southern states had more slaves than Missouri. Five of these states,-Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina,-had, each, more than 400,000. Arkansas, which ranked twelfth in the number of slaves, had 11I, II4, nearly as many as Missouri.
What is more significant in its bearing on the interest of Missouri in the slavery question and also in the struggle of 1861 for control of the state is the showing that two-thirds of the slaves in Missouri were within a few miles of the Missouri river. Twelve counties contained 50,280 slaves, nearly one-half of the 114,935.
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Boone
5,034
Jackson
3,941
Callaway
4,257
Lafayette
6,357
,
Chariton
2,837
Pike
4,056
Clay
3,456
Platte
3,313
Cooper
2,800
St. Charles
2,181
Howard
5,889
Saline
4,876
While the census of 1860 gave Missouri 1, 182,912 population, it also showed that there were only 24,320 owners of slaves in Missouri. And while the most of the slaves were in the Missouri valley, with 909 slave owners in one county, Lafayette, it was an interesting fact that only one county was without a single slave. That was Douglas county, in the Ozarks.
Slavery was dying out in Missouri. If the Civil war had been postponed ten years, slavery would have ceased to be an issue in Missouri. These were the very interesting economic conclusions reached as the result of an exhaustive study made under the auspices of Johns Hopkins University by William Clark Breckenridge. The study showed that at the beginning of 1861 slavery was in- dustrially profitable in only four Missouri counties. Those were Missouri coun- ties where hemp growing was a leading industry. For all other branches of agri- culture in Missouri slave labor was not profitable. Custom and tradition prompted the Missouri slaveholders to hold to their peculiar institution against financial interest.
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LAST OF THE BENTON DUELS
Thomas C. Reynolds and B. Grats Brown-Two Challenges and Two Acceptances-The First Ofending Editorial-Benton's Championship of Settlers-The District Attorney Protests-Brown Declares Authorship-Reynolds Satisfied-Friends in the Controversy -A Year Later-The Combination Against Benton-"Is It Perjury or Is It Not?"- Reynolds Asks "the Proper Atonement"-Rifles at Eighty Yards-A Question of Short- sightedness-The Meeting Off-Benton the Issue Again-Reynolds' German Speech- "Germans and Irish on an Equality with Negroes"-"An Unmitigated Lie"-The Editor Posted-4 Peremptory Challenge-Acceptance in Two Lines-Friends, Advisers and Surgeons-Selma Hall-A Graphic Story of the Meeting-Duello Etiquette-Kennett's Arrangements-Interchanges of the Seconds-Bearing of the Principals-The Pistols- "Fire !"-Reynolds' Quickness-Brown Wounded-The Return to St. Louis-No Prose- cution-In Later Years-Political and Personal Friends-Brown's Career Not Satisfy- ing-Reynolds' Fate.
They belong, too, to the small class of hermaphrodite politicians who, here in Missouri, style themselves antis, and who, in their blind opposition to Benton, are even willing to go to the length of subverting by the revival of obsolete laws, all he has done for thirty years past to guard the rights of the settler and to secure him his domicile free from intrusion .- B. Gratz Brown's Offending Editorial.
Thomas C. Reynolds was of South Carolina nativity. B. Gratz Brown was a Kentuckian, grandson of the first United States senator from the state. Rey- nolds graduated from the University of Virginia, went to Germany and com- pleted his education at Heidelberg. Brown graduated at Transylvania and went to Yale for his finishing course. He came to St. Louis in 1845, entered the law office of his relative, Francis . P. Blair, Jr., but devoted most of his time to the writing of editorials for the newspapers. Reynolds settled in St. Louis a year later, after service as secretary of legation at Madrid, began the practice of law, but gave more attention to local politics. In 1853 the political zeal of Reynolds was recognized by his appointment as United States district attorney. In 1854 Brown's facility with the pen justified the appearance of his name at the top of the editorial page of the Missouri Democrat.
These young men came to St. Louis at about the same time. Both quickly attained prominence in the community. Both were democrats-but democrats of factions between which the hostility was intense. Brown was a free-soil demo- crat. Reynolds was a proslavery democrat. Reynolds, within five years after his coming, won a position of influence in local political councils so marked that he was made the candidate of his faction for Congress in 1856, not with any expectation of election, but to swell the anti-Benton vote. Brown in the same time had written himself into such distinction that it was said his editorials in
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the Democrat were "cursed by proslavery men, commended by free-soilers, and read by all."
In 1854 an editorial by Brown provoked a demand for explanation from Reynolds. Three times in three years the editor and the district attorney engaged in controversies over articles in the Democrat. Twice the challenge passed and was accepted. In 1856 the duel was fought. It was the last, in which blood was shed, between St. Louisans. It closed a record begun forty years before- a long roll of tragedies. With the meeting between these young men of superior education, of refinement, of gentlemanly instincts, the code passed.
In an editorial printed the 21st of April, 1854, the Missouri Democrat ar- raigned the United States marshal and the district attorney for persecution of settlers in Southwest Missouri by prosecuting them for cutting timber on gov- ernment land and then charging them with "high treason" because they resisted.
The Offensive Editorial.
"The whole difficulty in these prosecutions," said the Democrat, "arises from the appointment of persons to office upon the recommendation of a few nullifiers at Washington and in opposition to the wishes of four-fifths of the people of the state. The present appointees owe their places to the misrepresentation of Atchi- son and Phelps, who have been laboring all along in cahoot to defeat the interests of Missouri, and, of course, nothing better could be expected of such proteges. They belong, too, to the small class of hermaphrodite politicians who, here in Missouri, style themselves antis, and who, in their blind opposition to Benton, are even willing to go to the length of subverting, by the revival of obsolete laws, all he has done for thirty years past to guard the rights of the settler and to secure him his domicile free from intrusion."
Nothing in this editorial showed personal animus toward Reynolds. The Mis- souri Democrat was making much of settlers' rights. That had long been a Benton doctrine. The evolution from it was the "squatter sovereignty" of Douglas, but Benton did not follow to that development. Some of these settlers had shown resistance when the marshal tried to serve warrants on them for cutting timber on government land. They had been charged with high treason under an old statute. They were being prosecuted in United States courts by the district attorney, far from their homes. The cases gave the Democrat excel- lent opportunity and use was made of it in the interest-of Benton, who was in Congress that term and a candidate for re-election.
Reynolds wrote a card in answer to the editorial, a rather mysterious card, in which he said, "My respect for the two lawyers who edit the Democrat for- bids my believing the article was penned by either of them." And then he pro- tested against the "comment on my official action."
The Democrat came back in the same issue which gave place to the card : "To satisfy his curiosity, we can inform him that the article was written by one of the editors of the Democrat." Then followed something very personal : "We remember that during Mr. Polk's administration, the very important fact of an offer to purchase Cuba by the American minister was made known to the public through the New York Herald, although the correspondence was not only not published, but was intended to be a state secret. As the district attorney
GOODS
TS
CRAMER, GROSS & CO.
!
MILLINERY.
NIELS
SEU E STORE
Courtesy Missouri Historical Society
BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS, FROM RUTGER STREET NORTH, 1872 Old French Market, now small park, in the center. Sacred Heart Convent on the right, where many members of the French families were educated in early days.
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LAST OF THE BENTON DUELS
was secretary of legation at that time, perhaps he can inform the public how the fact came to be known. Painful rumors were abroad through the country in regard to the manner in which the Herald obtained its information, but our memory does not retain all of the particulars, and we therefore await enlighten- ment from the district attorney."
A Satisfactory Explanation.
When he came down to the Democrat office that morning, Brown received a note from Reynolds, asking if this second editorial was "designed to be offen- sive," closing with, "my friend Mr. Goode will receive your reply." This course was in accord with the technicalities of the dueling code. Brown replied: "I am the author of the articles to which you allude." He added that the card of Reynolds "contained an assumption which I conceived reflected upon me per- sonally." Reynolds' answer was that he "had no intention in any part of that communication to reflect on either of the editors of the Democrat personally." Thereupon Brown wrote that this gave "an opportunity, of which I take pleasure in availing myself, to withdraw any language that is personally offensive to you in the editorial." The note of Brown was delivered to Reynolds "by my friend, Colonel Robert M. Renick." Reynolds answered: "Your note of to-day is received, and it gives me pleasure to accept the same as satisfactory."
Reynolds' interest in the controversy subsided suddenly when Brown avowed himself the author of the articles. Possibly Reynolds thought he was on the trail of big game. He knew, as did everybody in Missouri politics, that Benton was a frequent contributor to the editorial page of the Democrat. To the young district attorney, with his South Carolina theory of personal responsibility, an issue like this with the great Benton would be very attractive. In his card, evi- dently written as a feeler, Reynolds indicated his theory that the first editorial had not been written by either of the ostensible editors of the Democrats. He said his future course would depend upon his "opinion of the source" from which the editorial criticism emanated. Did he at first suspect that Benton might be the author of the editorial? If so, the readiness with which he expressed inten- tion to avoid personalities and with which he accepted satisfaction is· accounted for.
Robert M. Renick, the friend of Brown in this first affair, was a banker. George W. Goode, who acted for Reynolds, was a Virginian, and had passed through his own experience with the code of his native state. He had been a law partner of James A. Seddon, afterwards secretary of war in the Cabinet of Jefferson Davis. A close friend of Goode had sustained an injury which de- manded satisfaction on the field of honor. He was prevented by religious obliga- tions, possibly church relations, from sending a challenge, but Goode had acted for him. As a result of sending the challenge in Virginia, Goode moved to St. Louis. There he was counsel in a famous land case, won a fee of $50,000, bought an estate in St. Louis county and lived the life of a country gentleman.
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