USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 9
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"The governor of Missouri called the general assembly in special session on June 4, 1821, which passed 'a solemn public act declaring the assent of this state to the funda- mental condition contained in a resolution passed by the Congress of the United States providing for the admission of the State of Missouri into the Union on a certain condi- tion,' which was approved June 26, 1821, and transmitted to the President.
"On August 10, 1821, President Monroe issued his proclamation announcing the fact, and Missouri was on that day a state in the Union.
"The credentials of Barton and Benton were dated October 9, 1820, certified their election on October 2, and were for the first time presented to the Senate-Barton's on December 3, 1821, and Benton's on December 6, 1821-were read, and the oath administered to each on said days, respectively, when each took his seat.
"While they were elected October 2, 1820, before the state was admitted to the Union, on August 10, 1821, and their credentials never presented to the Senate till December 3 and 6, 1821, and no oath previously administered to them, and no record made in the journals of the Senate of their names or presence, the records of the secretary of the Senate, dated March 3, 1821, and signed by John Gaillard, president pro tempore, show that they were certified to have attended, Barton from November 14, 1820, and Benton from November 18, 1820, each, to March 3, 1821, and they were paid their regular per diem salary and mileage, just as other senators were."
Territorial Government Suspended.
Dating back the salaries of the senators to 1820, was only one of several ways in which the government at Washington recognized Missouri as having the status of statehood in 1820. William Clark had been governor of the Terri- tory of Missouri by appointment. His salary was stopped promptly upon the formation of the state government in 1820 and the territorial government was suspended with such informality that John Scott, who had been territorial dele- gate and who was elected representative, addressed this inquiry to John Quincy Adams, secretary of state.
"Governor William Clark of Missouri desires to know what eye of the general government he now occupies. The law authorizing the people of Missouri, within certain lines specified in the then Missouri territory, to form a constitution and state govern- ment, made no disposition as to the remainder of the territory. He advises me that he is still possessed of the public acts and documents, and that an immense tract of country
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remains unprovided for, in which there are several large tracts of land to which the Indian title has been extinguished. He drew for his pay as governor, but his drafts were only paid up to the 20th of September, the time when the state government went into operation. It is now necessary for him to know whether the government still considers him in office, within the State of Missouri, or whether in office as to that portion of the country out of the lines of the state. And also that he have some discretion as to the disposition he is to make of the public acts, records, and documents which would properly belong to the state. An early reply will oblige him and your obedient, respect- ful servant."
The Absurd Solemn Public Act.
Notwithstanding the organization of the state government and the election of senators, admission to the Union was hung up by Congress until the passage of the "Clay Formula" in 1821. This required Missouri, as a further condition to admission to pass "a solemn act," that the "restrictive clause" excluding free negroes and mulattoes from settling in the state should not be construed to affect any citizen of any other state, in the rights guaranteed under the Con- stitution of the United States. Missourians thought this was ridiculous.
Frederick W. Lehmann said the legislature "passed what it called a solemn public act by which it declared in effect that the fundamental condition was con- tained in the constitution of the state; that it was a piece of impertinence on the part of Congress to require this express assent; that it made no difference whether the assent was given or withheld and so the state solemnly gave it. The state observed the condition in the spirit in which the assent was given. Free persons of color, citizens of other states were not forbidden entry into Missouri. But such conditions were imposed upon their living here, that few, if any, cared to come."
The preamble of the "solemn act" in its entirety was a wonderful document charged with satire. Mark Twain could not have done better.
"Forasmuch as the good people of this state have, by the most solemn and public act in their power, virtually assented to the said fundamental condition, when their repre- sentatives in full and free convention assembled, they adopted the constitution of this state, and consented to be incorporated into the federal Union, and governed by the Consti- tution of the United States, which among other things provides that the said Constitu- tion and laws of the United States, made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything to the con- trary, or the law of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. And although this general assembly do most solemnly declare that the United States have no power to change the operation of the constitution of this state, except in the mode prescribed in the constitu- tion itself, nevertheless, as the Congress of the United States has desired this general assembly to declare the assent of this state to said fundamental condition, and forasmuch as no such declaration will neither restrain nor enlarge, limit nor extend, the operation of the operation of the Constitution of the United States or of this state; but the said constitution will in all respects remain the same as if the said resolution had never been passed, and the desired declaration was never made; and because such declaration will not divest any power or change the duties of any of the constitutional authorities of this state or of the United States, nor impair the rights of the people of this state, or impose any additional obligation upon them, but may promote an earlier enjoyment of their vested federal rights, and this state being, moreover, determined to give to her sister states and to the world the most unequivocal proof of her desire to promote the peace and harmony of the Union, therefore,-
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"Be it enacted and declared that the general assembly of the State of Missouri, and it is hereby solemnly and publicly enacted and declared, that this state has assented and does assent that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution of this state shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citizen, of either of the United States, shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizens are entitled under the Constitution of the United States."
The "fundamental condition" applied to "the fourth clause of the twenty- sixth section of the third article." As a matter of fact the clause to which Congress objected is the first clause of the third division of the section according to the printed copy of the constitution. The explanation of this apparent mis- take is that a manuscript copy was sent to Congress and that the printer who subsequently published the constitution for use in Missouri made a different subdivision of the text.
Ad Interim Statehood.
Governor McNair was not a man to be disturbed by the anomalous condi- tion of the state that was not yet a state in the Union. He was at college in Philadelphia when his father died. On his return home an issue arose between a younger brother and himself as to the head of the family and the control of the estate. The Spartan mother decided to leave it to a test of physical superior- ity. The younger won. Alexander McNair went into the army, served a short time and came west to grow up with the country.
When, after the three and one-half years of waiting, Missouri became a state in the Union, Governor McNair congratulated Missourians on the capacity for self-government they had shown in the interim. "Since the organization of this government," the governor said in his message to the legislature, "we have exhibited to the American people a spectacle novel and peculiar-an American republic on the confines of the federal Union, exercising all the powers of sovereign government, with no actual political connection with the United States, and nothing to bind us to them but a reverence for the same principles and an habitual attachment to them and their government."
Government Recognition of Statehood.
In a variety of official acts, the national government recognized Missouri as a state from September, 1820, but in a condition of transit into the Union. Before the action of Congress on the constitution of Missouri, a bill was intro- duced "to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States in the State of Missouri." Missouri was referred to as a "state" even in the resolu- tion making admission dependent on the passage of "a solemn public act which shall declare the assent of the said state to the said fundamental condition." No fewer than four times in the resolution which paved the way for admission, was Missouri referred to as "said state."
While the resolution calling for the "solemn public act" was pending in the House, Mr. Adams of Massachusetts opposed it "on the ground of the defect of power of Congress of the United States to authorize or require the legislature of a state, once admitted to the Union, to do the act proposed by this resolution to be demanded of the legislature of Missouri." The resolu-
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tion was passed by a vote of 87 to 81. It went through the Senate by a vote of 28 to 14.
John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, transmitted the resolution to "His Excellency, Alexander McNair, Governor of Missouri," and referred to it as "the resolution of Congress for admitting the State of Missouri into the Union." The department of state had cut off the territorial government of Mis- souri in September, 1820.
When President Monroe issued his proclamation of the 10th of August, 1821, he concluded with these words: "The admission of the said State of Mis- souri into this Union is declared to be complete."
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CATTLE CENTER
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MISSOURI, THE CENTER STATE
CHAPTER III
MISSOURI GEOGRAPHY
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The Center State-A Stormy Petrel on the Sea of National Politics-Original Boundaries- Material Gains South and West-The Long Controversy on the North-Haney War in Rhyme-Resetting the Iowa Mileposts-Billy Mclaughlin's Field-Amazing Bee Tree Stories-The Platte Purchase-Thrifty Trading with the Indians-Neal Gilliam's Map-Peter Burnett's Ride-That Arkansas Jog-The First St. Louis County-Early Reservation of School Lands-Making of Counties-How Lillard Lost Fame-Military Heroes Remembered-The State of Pike-Some First Families of Missouri-Kingdom of Callaway-A Mother of Counties-When Liberty was a Metropolis-Moving Days for County Seats-Arrow Rock Traditions-Steelville's Famous People-Osage Semi- nary on Paper-When Chariton Rivaled St. Louis-First Days of County Government- Salt River Tigers-Audrain Was "Little Sis"-A Turkey Dinner and a Town Christen- ing-William Muldrow, Optimist Extraordinary-Marion City, Dickens' Eden-Where Mark Twain Discovered Mulberry Sellers-The First Railroad-Missouri's "Phila- delphia" and "New York"-Eastern Investments Submerged-A Wholesale Educational Plan-Lost Towns-Boom in Now Forgotten Sites-Fascinating Arguments of the Promoters-Town, River and Prairie Nomenclature-City, Ne Plus Ultra-Spring- field's Beginning-Kickapoo, the Beautiful-Neosho, Clear Cold Water-Climate Charmed-Great American Desert Discovered-Missouri, Then and Now.
I came from the center of the earth .- Bishop Thomas Bowman, of Missouri.
From the first, Missouri has been the stormy petrel of American politics, the richest, the most imperial commonwealth in the Union. Her geographical position always placed her in the thick of the fight. She was a slave peninsula jutting out into a free-soil sea. The first serious trouble on the slavery question came with her admission into the Union, and the second over the admission of California,-a Missouri colony. Most people date hostilities from Sumter, April, 1861. As a matter of fact, Missouri and Kansas had been carrying on a Civil war on their own hook for five or six years before the first gun was fired in Charleston harbor.
If Sir Walter Scott had lived in that day, he could have found material for fifty novels descriptive of border warfare in the forays and exploits of the Missourians and Kansans before the first soldier was legally mustered into the service of either army .- Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The boundaries of Missouri, as defined by Congress in the act of March 6, 1820, underwent several notable changes. On the west, the original line was changed to the material advantage of the state. On the north the boundary between Missouri and what became Iowa led to controversy which broke out at long intervals and was not settled finally until the Supreme Court of the United States, several governors and a commission had had their flings at it. The end was in 1895. What did Congress mean by "the rapids of the River Des Moines ?" Where was "the Indian boundary line?" These were the issues. The original boundary not changed by man was "the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River," where nature took its shifting course for one hundred years. The boundaries, as defined by Congress, were :
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"Beginning in the middle of the Mississippi river, on the parallel of thirty-six degrees of north latitude; thence west along that parallel of latitude to the St. Francis river ; thence up and following the course of that river, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to the parallel of latitude of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes; thence west along the same to a point where said parallel is intersected by a meridian line passing through the middle of the mouth of the Kansas river where the same empties into the Missouri river; thence from the point aforesaid, north along the said meridian line to the intersection of the parallel of latitude which passed through the rapids of the river Des Moines, making the same line to correspond with the Indian boundary line; thence east, from the point of intersection last aforesaid, along the said parallel of latitude, to the middle of . the channel of the main fork of the said river Des Moines; to the mouth of the same where it enters into the Mississippi river; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi river; thence down and following the course of said river, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to the place of beginning."
The questions about the northern boundary were not answered until there had been clashes of authority between local officials on the line. Some arrests were made. Threats were exchanged. The militia was ordered to be in readi- ness. The government ruled on what Congress meant. "The boundary war" passed without serious trouble. Missouri gave up a narrow strip that had been claimed. At the time, the loss of the land was not felt so much as that of the bee trees which were numerous in the disputed territory.
The Iowa Line.
Overt acts which brought on the "Iowa war" were the invasion of the dis- puted strip by a Missouri farmer who cut down three bee trees, and by the sheriff of Clark county who went on the strip and tried to collect taxes. The farmer was not caught but the Iowan who owned the land got a judgment against the Missourian for $1.50. The sheriff was arrested and charged with "usurpation of authority." He was taken to Burlington, the capital of Iowa territory and soon turned loose. Indignation meetings were held in Lewis, Clark and Marion counties and Missourians in long resolutions demanded that Missouri laws be enforced against the Iowans. Under orders from Governor Boggs, Major General Willock called out 200 men. About 600 Missourians . went into camp on Fox river near Waterloo. The snow was deep and the Mis- sourians had no blankets except those they had taken from a store at LaGrange. The Iowa militia to the number of 300 came down and camped on their side near Farmington. Governor Lucas came with them and had as one of his cap- tains James W. Grimes, afterwards United States senator from Iowa. It was proposed that the sheriff of Clark County, accompanied by militia, make another attempt to collect taxes, and it was expected this would bring on the crisis of force. But before this step was taken, sober second thought got in its work. and Marion county started a movement to have a commission appointed by Missouri and Iowa to effect a peaceable settlement. Iowa fell in with this and the determination of the boundary was effected. A grand oratorical effort by Thomas L. Anderson of Palmyra had much to do with bringing this about. Anderson pictured the horrors of war between neighbors; described the suffer- ings of the militia shivering along Fox river, with the mercury below zero; pointed out that if there was actual fighting, the general government would interfere, and that the bloodshed would accomplish nothing. He concluded :
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"Send them home to their families. Send them to those who at this inclement season need them, and who are watching anxiously for them, and praying for their safe and speedy return. And in the name of the God of Mercy and Jus- tice, gentlemen, let this monumental piece of absurdity, this phenomenal but cruel blundering have an end."
When peace was declared the militia who had saved themselves from freez- ing by keeping up big fires, around which they huddled, there being no tents, celebrated. They held the governors of Missouri and Iowa responsible for the warlike preparations, and to show their resentment they cut a quarter of venison in two parts, labeled one of them Boggs and the other Lucas, hung them in a tree, fired volleys into them, took them down and buried them with pretended solemnity. On the way home, some of these soldiers marched with their coats wrongside out, in celebration of the participation in the "honey war." This "war" cost Missouri about $20,000.
The Honey War in Rhyme.
Missourians of the early days dropped into rhyme on every occasion of ' interest. The Palmyra Whig of October 26, 1839, thus characterized the trouble with Iowa over the boundary. A strip of about twelve miles width was in dispute. Some of the settlers on the strip owned slaves which they could do if they were Missourians but not, according to the Missouri compromise, if they were Iowans. But popularly the Iowa war was supposed to hinge on the ques- tion of which state could claim possession of the bee trees on the strip. So the Whig satirized the Honey war in verse, to the tune of Yankee Doodle :
Ye freeman of the happy land Which flows with milk and honey, Arise! To arms ! Your ponies mount ! Regard not blood nor money. Old Governor Lucas, tiger-like, Is prowling round our borders, But Governor Boggs is wide awake- Just listen to his orders.
Three bee trees stand about the line Between our State and Lucas. Be ready all these trees to fall And bring things to a focus. We'll show old Lucas how to brag And seize our precious honey. He also claims, I understand, Of us three bits in money.
Now, if the governors want to fight, Just let them meet in person. And when noble Boggs old Lucas flogs, 'Twill teach the scamp a lesson. Then let the victor cut the trees, And have three bits in money, And wear a crown frem town to town, Anointed with pure honey.
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The Sequel to the Honey War.
Forty years after the "Honey war," when the boundary between Missouri and Iowa was supposed to have been settled for all time by the stone posts set ten miles apart in 1851, there arose a curious controversy where Mercer county bordered on the line. Some of the stones had disappeared. Mercer, at the time of the marking, was not much settled. Traditions as to where the true line ran differed. William Howard Moore of Mercer county had a dispute with neighbors. Decatur was across the line in Iowa. Charges were made against Moore. An indictment was returned by the Decatur grand jury. Iowa officers watching their opportunity arrested Moore after a struggle, on what they claimed was the Iowa side and took him to Leon. Bail was given, Moore insisted that he was on the Missouri side at the time and that it was a case of kidnapping. Formal complaint was made and the papers were put in the hands of a Missouri deputy sheriff. The sheriff of the Iowa county was found on the Missouri side and arrested. An Iowa man appeared on the scene with two drawn revol- vers compelling the release of the sheriff, who ran across the line into Iowa. There was much talk and excitement but no bloodshed. Then the governors of Missouri and Iowa came together in St. Louis to take up the controversy. This was in 1895. Stone was governor of Missouri. Moore made his statement, testifying that his arrest had been made on a road the south side of which was in Missouri. He also showed that, if the line was where the Iowa officers claimed, it would cut off several acres of land which had been patented to him as being in Missouri. The matter went to the Supreme Court of the United States. A commission was appointed by the court to find where the boundary really was. The commissioners took testimony, reached conclusions and put up stone monuments. On the south side of the Lineville square the old public well which had been supposed to be exactly on the boundary was left in Missouri by the decision, while the bridge on the east of the depot which had been put in by Iowa was given to Mercer county, Missouri. As a whole the determination by the commissioners seems to have been quite satisfactory to the Missourians for the press account of the results said :
"The famous elm and oak at the lake were held by the commissioners not to be witness trees on the Hendershott line, and they located a line forty-nine feet north of that for the 52nd mile post, while the 53rd went eighteen or twenty feet into Billy McLaughlin's field, proving positively that we on the Missouri side were right. The 53rd was set on Saturday and before evening the Missouri girls had it beautifully decorated with flowers. There is considerable talk of having a bonfire on the hill just north of Hiram Moore's house to celebrate the setting of the last monument which gives our people justice at last. We rejoice at the result of the survey, of course, not because it gives us any Iowa land, but because it gives us our own. That Wayne county should have been so liberal as to build a good bridge in Mercer county, may surprise you as it does us. Well, I suppose we ought to thank them for the bridge which is set ten feet or more south of the line."
The strip of land involved in the last controversy was about two miles long and from fifteen to two hundred feet wide. It cost Missouri and Iowa a good deal more than it was worth. Even after the new posts were in, there were some disputes about fences.
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The Days of Honey Harvests.
The stories which those early settlers along the Iowa line told of their har- vests of honey help to an understanding of the "Honey war." George Coombs and his sons told of finding 170 bee trees the first year of their settlement in Clark county. All but five of these trees were found in one hunt which con- tinued several days. In preparation for this hunt, Coombs went to Warsaw on the Illinois side and bought some barrels. With the help of his boys he filled seven of these barrels with wild honey in comb and seven with strained honey. These barrels he hauled to Warsaw and sold the contents for twenty-five cents a gallon. The last night of the hunt, the Coombs party camped on Fox river. A dry tree was cut down for wood to keep the fire going all night. The wolves surrounded the camp and were so daring that embers from the fire were thrown to keep them back. In the morning the hunters found that the tree they had cut down in the dusk the night before was partly hollow and the cavity was filled with honey.
Judge John Langford told of cutting on Little Fox river a bee tree which yielded twenty-five gallons of honey. George K. Biggs located a dozen bee trees in one day within a short distance of his home. From one of them he took fifty gallons of honey.
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