Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 93

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 93

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The Memoir is a revelation of the efforts to take Missouri into the Con- federacy. At the same time it shows the wide divergence in sentiment on the subject of secession that prevailed among the democratic officials and leaders in the state, especially at Jefferson City that winter of 1861. Many of those who subsequently went into the Confederate army were still clinging to the hope that the Union would be preserved. Reynolds had no patience with them. He worked incessantly to have Missouri declare for the South. When Mr. Russell came from Mississippi as a commissioner to urge secession, the lieutenant-governor gave a dinner to him having General Sterling Price, Governor Claiborne F. Jack- son and Speaker McAfec present to hear the commissioner's views. To the great disappointment of Mr. Reynolds and those who were with him in advocat- ing secession before Lincoln's inauguration, the convention called by act of the

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MISSOURI AND THE CONFEDERACY

legislature and presided over by General Sterling Price, voted in March, 1861, in favor of the Union. Price was bank commissioner, a state office at the time. Reynolds had counted on him as favorable to the secession movement. He is bit- ter in his comments on Price. He says in his Memoir : "The high officer, who alone had it in his power to exercise any control over the vast power of the banks of the state, had on the very battlefield conspicuously gone over to the enemy. The 'money power,' now perfectly secure, was exercised against the southern rights party."

Not until the Camp Jackson affair did Reynolds find his opportunity. Up to that time, his Memoir shows, the secession following was too small to be ef- fective in any radical step proposed.

"After the Civil war began, the Missouri legislature met in special session May I, 1861. On Friday, May 10th, the Camp Jackson affair took place. The tone of the press of Missouri and all accounts of the feeling throughout the state, on account of that high- handed move, placed it beyond all doubt, that for the moment fully four-fifths of the popu- lation were ready to take up arms against the United States. On the afternoon of Satur- day, May IIth, or Sunday, May 12th, I visited Governor Jackson at his office adjoining that of the secretary of state in the capitol, and, to my surprise and gratification, met General Price in conference with him. General Price had been in St. Louis on May 10th, and had just arrived from there in the train of that morning. An interchange of a few words between us indicated that he had determined to come back to the southern rights party. I at once advised Governor Jackson to give him supreme military command, especially as armed volunteers were pouring into Jefferson City, and a commander of experience and reputation was indispensable. Governor Jackson was evidently reluctant, and urged that the military bill giving him power to organize the militia and appoint general officers had not yet become a law. I answered that the 'rebellion act,' which I had drafted and which had been passed on May 10th immediately after receipt of news of the Camp Jackson affair, gave him discretionary powers; that under it he could commission General Price merely to command troops, and, on the passage of the military bill, give him definite rank under it; that I would agree to be 'military secretary' under General Price and aid him to the extent of my ability. After some further persuasion, I pointed out the advantage of having General Price publicly and irrevocably with us, the prestige of his position as president of the state convention, his reputation in the Mexican war. Governor Jackson authorized me to draw up a commission in accordance with my views and said that he would sign it. I accordingly at once drew up a commission under the 'rebellion act' ap- pointing General Price to command in chief all the forces to be called out to suppress the rebellion begun by Lyon and Blair at St. Louis."

After preparing the commission, Mr. Reynolds had considerable difficulty in getting it signed, Governor Jackson showing much hesitation about "so im- portant a step." With the commission in hand Reynolds sought General Price.

"I had arranged with General Price to meet me at the office of the secretary of state and I immediately proceeded thither. Ascending the steps of the capitol, I encountered General Robert Wilson, state senator from Andrew county, a member of the state con- vention, and a public man of deservedly great weight in Missouri. I told him about the commission and asked him to accompany me to present it to General Price. He promptly consented and remarked: 'I am glad Price is to take command. If these hot-headed boys who are now commanding are left to themselves, they will carry us all to the devil.' He alluded to Parsons, Peyton, Colton Green and others who were taking charge of the volunteers arriving. We entered the office of the secretary of state and found General

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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI

Price there. The great seal was attached to the commission and on behalf of Governor Jackson, I tendered it to General Price.

"As he had previously promised me to accept, I was somewhat taken aback by his re- maining silent and seeming to be in a deep study. I thereupon stated to him that as his personal and political friend, and as lieutenant-governor of Missouri, I urged his acceptance of the commission. Turning ,to General Robert Wilson, I requested him as a senator and member of the convention, and a leading public man to express his opinion. General Wil- son in a few words said that he considered it General Price's duty to the state to accept the commission. After a pause of a few moments, General Price said, in a tone as if he had come to a sudden decision : 'Well, gentlemen, I accept and rely on your support to the best of my ability.' General Wilson and I each responded : 'Yon, can count on our support.'"

A Call to Arms.

Lieutenant-Governor Reynolds' next step was to prepare an address, or proclamation, to the people of Missouri. This was to be signed by Governor Jackson, and, Mr. Reynolds says, was prepared at the governor's request. This address, according to the Memoir, raised no question of secession but called on the entire people of the state to form military organizations and arm themselves, and then await further orders of the state. government. General Price was with Governor Jackson when the lieutenant-governor read the draft of the address to them:

"I explained that its policy was to impress the universal indignation about the Camp Jackson outrage, and have every neighborhood commit itself to sustain by arms the state government ; that the universal ferment we could reasonably expect would probably confine Lyon, who could not count on over eight thousand men, to St. Louis, and counterbalance the unionist excitement in Central Illinois, as well as encourage the southern proclivities of Southern Illinois ; that if Lyon should venture to leave St. Louis to advance on Jefferson City, we could make the country swarm in insurrection around him, until, if he ventured too far, he would be lost; and that we could also make St. Louis rise in his rear; that if compelled to leave Jefferson City, we should retreat along the valley of the Osage, drawing him towards the southwest and setting the populous secession counties on the upper Mis- souri to rise in his rear; that on the extent of the response to the call in the proclamation, our future course should depend; that if as general as everything indicated it would be, we could hold nearly the entire state and perhaps even St. Louis, call together the con- vention and have the state secede. An additional reason was that if we should at once begin war, I did not believe Lyon had enough troops to do us harm, and that one certain result at least would be to produce a most powerful diversion to gain time for the defense of Virginia, and possibly determine Kentucky to abandon her 'neutrality.'"

Mr. Reynolds left the draft of the address, under the impression that it was approved by the governor and by General Price, and that it would be issued at once. But several days passed without the appearance of the proclamation. Mr. Reynolds conferred with General Price :

"I stated my apprehension that Governor Jackson was inclined to temporize · and gain time, and even adopt the neutrality system of his native state, Ken- tucky; that I considered delay fatal and leading to transactions and compromises which would end in giving the Federals possession of the state; that for that reason I intended to proceed at once to the Confederate States and, treating the governor as morally under duress, ask as lieutenant-governor from Mr. Davis the entry of Confederate troops into Missouri to protect the government."

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MISSOURI AND THE CONFEDERACY

The Appeal to Richmond.

Mr. Reynolds says his proposition met with the approval of General Price ' and that he left Jefferson City on this errand to Richmond, not telling Governor Jackson of the application to be made. He went by way of Arkansas. En route he saw in the press dispatches that General Harney and General Price had entered into an agreement "which was so astonishing that I doubted th accuracy of the telegram." When he reached Memphis, Mr. Reynolds learned of the removal of Harney, the reinstatement of Lyon, and the practical abroga- tion of the Harney-Price agreement. He wrote to President Davis asking that Confederate troops be sent to Missouri and later, receiving no answer, went to Richmond, where he joined Major E. C. Cabell, who had come from Missouri as Governor Jackson's commissioner to the Confederate states with a request that Confederate troops be sent :

"In June, 1861, I saw Governor Jackson's proclamation announcing the breaking out of hostilities between the United States authorities and those of the State of Missouri. Soon after Major E. C. Cabell telegraphed me from Richmond to come there at once. I arrived there and from Major Cabell's reports and my own conversation with Mr. Toombs, secretary of state; Mr. Benjamin, attorney-general, and Mr. Memminger, secretary of the treasury of the Confederate states, discovered a marked indisposition to grant the aid asked by the authorities of Missouri, although in addition to the application of General Price and my- self, one had been made for troops by the governor through Major Cabell, his commis- sioner to the Confederate states, with full power under the great seal of the state and by authority of the 'rebellion act.'

"Finally Mr. Davis gave an audience to Major Cabell and myself, Mr. Toombs and Mr. Walker, Confederate secretary of war, being the only other persons present. After hear- ing the reasons urged by Major Cabell and myself in favor of intervention of the Con- federacy in Missouri, and combating them by arguments drawn from the armory of straight-laced state sovereignty doctrines (as in the subsequent official answer to our appli- cations), he finally, with the air of a man conscious of the weakness of those arguments, and suddenly resolving to give his ruling reasons at whatever risk of offending, drew himself up in his chair, and compressing his lips, said to us: 'I find, gentlemen, by your governor's proclamation of June -, which I have in my hand, that in the conference between General Price and himself and General Lyon at St. Louis, he offered to use his state troops to drive out of Missouri any Confederate troops entering it. Now at the very moment when he made this offer you, Mr. Cabell, were here with a commission from him to me, and presenting his request for these Confederate troops to be sent into Mis- souri. So that, had I assented to the request, those troops, even though with your lieuten- ant-governor at the head of them, might have had to fight against, instead of with General Price's army. Now I think General Lyon acted very unwisely in not accepting Governor Jackson's proposals, and Mr. Lincoln may send him orders to accept them. Governor Jackson, in his proclamation, makes a merit of having proposed them. Now, if I agree to send Confederate troops into Missouri at your request, can you give me any guarantee that Mr. Lincoln may not propose and Governor Jackson assent to the agreement rejected by General Lyon and compel those troops to retire before their joint forces?'

"Of course no answer could be made to this, especially as the President's whole tone and manner showed a fixed resolution and great disgust at what he evidently considered double dealing and an insult to his dignity in setting a trap for Confederate troops to be used or opposed, according as the Missouri authorities might succeed or fail in making terms with the United States. Major Cabell and I remained silent, or at best contented our- selves with arguing feebly that whatever the previous vacillation, Governor Jackson and General Price had taken the final leap into the secession camp and could be trusted ac- cordingly. But President Davis' mind was evidently made up and the audience soon ended.

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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI

A day or two afterwards, Major Cabell and I received the official answer to our respective applications rejecting them on the mere technicality (and an erroneous one) that only a convention representing the sovereignty of the state could be treated with by the Con- federate states."

Sterling Price, the Leader.

About this time General Price issued a proclamation from Marshall, appeal- ing to those Missourians who sympathized with the South :

"Leave your property at home. What if it be taken-all taken? We have $200,000,000 worth of northern means in Missouri which cannot be removed. When we are once free the state will indemnify every citizen who may have lost a dollar by adhesion to the cause of his country. We shall have our property, or its value, with interest.

"But, in the name of God and the attributes of manhood, let me appeal to you by con- siderations infinitely higher than money! Are we a generation of driveling, sniveling, degraded slaves? Or are we men who dare assert and maintain the rights which cannot be surrendered, and defend those principles of everlasting rectitude, pure and high and sacred, like God, their author? Be yours the office to. choose between the glory of a free country and a just government, and the bondage of your children! I will never see the chains fastened upon my country. I will ask for six and one-half feet of Missouri soil in which to repose, but will not live to see my people enslaved.

"Do I hear your shouts? Is that your war-cry which echoes through the land? Are you coming? Fifty thousand men! Missouri shall move to victory with the tread of a giant ! Come on, my brave boys, 50,000 heroic, gallant, unconquerable southern men! We await your coming.

STERLING PRICE, "Major-General Commanding."

John McElroy, in "The Struggle for Missouri," said of Sterling Price: "He was a man of the finest physique and presence, six feet two inches high, with small hands and feet and unusually large body and limbs ; a superb horse- man; with a broad, bland, kindly face framed in snow-white hair and beard. His name would indicate Welsh origin, but his face, figure and mental habits seemed rather Teutonic. He had a voice of much sweetness and strength, and a paternal way of addressing his men, who speedily gave him the sobriquet of 'Pap Price.' He appeared on the field in a straw hat and linen duster in sum- mer. and with a blanket thrown over his shoulders and a tall hat in winter. These became standards which the Missourians followed into the thick of the fight, as the French did the white plume of Henry of Navarre.

"General Price was a remarkable instance of the indefinable quality of leadership. This is something that does not seem to depend upon intellectual superiority, upon greater cour- age or devotion, or even upon clearer insight. A man leads his fellows-many of whom are his superiors in most namable qualities-simply because of something unnamable in him that makes him assume the leadership, and they accept it. There was hardly a prominent man in Missouri that was not Price's superior in some quality usually regarded as essential .. For example, he was a pleasing and popular speaker, but Missouri abounded in men much more attractive to public assemblages. He was a fair politician, but rarely got more than the second prize. He had distinguished himself in the Mexican war, but Claiborne Jackson made more capital out of his few weeks of inconsequential service in the Black Hawk war than Price did out of the conquest of New Mexico and the capture of Chihuahua.

"He served one term in Congress, but failed to secure a renomination. He had been elected governor of Missouri while his Mexican laurels were yet green, but when he tried to enter the Senate he was easily defeated by that able politician and orator, James S. Green.

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"Though he belonged to the dominant anti-Benton faction of the Missouri democracy and the Stephen A. Douglas wing, he never was admitted to the select inner council, or secured any of its higher rewards, except one term as governor.

"At the outbreak of the war he was holding the comparatively unimportant place of bank commissioner. For all that he was to become and remain throughout the struggle- the central figure of secession in the trans-Mississippi country.

"Officers of high rank and brilliant reputation like Ben McCulloch, Earl Van Dorn, Richard Taylor and E. Kirby Smith were to be put over him, yet his fame and influence outshone them all. Unquestionably; able soldiers, such as Marmaduke, Shelby, Bowen, Jeff Thompson, Parsons, M. L. Clark and Little, were to serve him with unfaltering loyalty as. subordinates.

"Yet from first to last his was a name to conjure with. No other than his in the South had the spell in it for Missourians and the people west of the Mississippi. They flocked to. his standard wherever it was raised, and after three years of failures they followed him with as much eager hope in his last disastrous campaign as in the first, and when he died in St. Louis, two years after the war, his death was regarded as a calamity to the state, and he had the largest funeral of any man in the history of Missouri."

Missouri Admitted into the Confederacy.

The first appeal for a Confederate army to be sent having failed, E. C. Cabell and Thomas L. Snead were made commissioners by Governor Jackson to go to Richmond and negotiate for the admission of Missouri into the Confederacy. They were acting for the "executive power of the state." On the 3Ist of October they signed an agreement with R. M. T. Hunter, the Confederate secre- tary of state, by which Missouri was to be admitted into the Confederacy. A call was sent out to members of the legislature which had been abolished by the convention in July. On the 2d of November those who responded to the call met at Neosho. They ratified the agreement with Secretary Hunter. Thus Missouri secured her recognition as one of the Confederate states. The Neosho body elected John B. Clark and R. S. T. Peyton, senators, and Thomas A. Harris, Casper W. Ball, A. H. Conrad, George G. Vest, Dr. Hyer, Thomas Freeman and William M. Cooke, representatives of Missouri in the Confed- erate Congress. .

In his Memoir, Reynolds tells of the next negotiations at Richmond :

"About the beginning of December, 1861, the newly elected Missouri delegation to the Confederate Provisional Congress arrived in Richmond, bringing a letter from Governor (Claib.) Jackson to President Davis, suggesting the union of the troops in Arkansas and Missouri under one commander, expressing a preference for General Price for the position. The governor also wrote me a letter asking me to see the President and urge the appoint- ment of General Price to the command. 1

"Before I saw the delegates, or received Governor Jackson's letter, they had had an interview with Mr. Davis, in which according to their own accounts to me, they had with importunity amounting almost to overbearingness demanded, as a mark of proper respect to the popular wish, the assignment of General Price to command all of the troops in Ar- kansas and Missouri. The President finally ended the conference by drawing himself up. haughtily and saying, 'Gentlemen, I am not to be dictated to.' They promptly declared they had no wish to dictate, but they soon left.

"During the siege of Richmond by McClellan, General Price had come on there with his staff, Major Snead and others, and had not made a favorable impression. The object of his visit was to get himself assigned to command an expedition to Missouri, and on this being postponed rather than denied, his chief of staff, Major Snead, publicly in front of the Spottiswood Hotel, made a great fuss over it, tore from his uniform the insignia of

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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI

his Confederate rank, and declared that General Price would go to Missouri .anyhow. and fight again-under the 'bear flag' (of Missouri). The accuracy of the statement was subsequently admitted to me by Major Snead, who regretted his excitement. But the notoriety of the occurrence and Major Snead remaining in his confidential position near General Price, as well as the frequent intimations, by way of threats, by his friends, that General Price would resign unless his demands should be complied with occasioned thie general to be regarded as tacitly approving that turbulent escapade of his chief of staff.

The Movement to Make Price President.

"During the dark period of the siege of Richmond a scheme was formed, though I do not know that it ever ripened into a regular plot, to displace Mr. Davis by a popular inove- ment or pronunciamento and proclaim General Price President or generalissimo. I had heard some whisperings of it when in Richmond the previous winter; but according to the accounts I received in January, 1863, from Major Cabell and Mr. Vest, Congressman from Missouri, the movement had assumed formidable dimensions, and but for our success at the battle of Seven Pines would probably have broken ont. They described Senator Clark of Missouri as one of the most forward in it, Major Cabell relating to me a conversation he had with that senator to combat, though without success, his intention to join so wild a project. Mr. Davis, in a conversation, also in January, 1863, spoke of Mr. William M. Cooke, Congressman from Missouri, as one of the most active in it, 'going around in the streets and talking for it while the enemy was in front of Richmond.' General. Price, leav- ing his command in the West and coming to Richmond at the time when this project was on foot, excited remark. Col. William Preston Johnston, an aid of President Davis, also mentioned to me some turbulent remarks of General Price in a speech to a crowd from a balcony of the Spottiswood Hotel, but I forget the precise tenor of them, except, like General Price's speeches usually, that they indicated a disposition to plan and act for him- self, not very subordinate towards his official superiors, nor very respectful towards the President. It was also stated and generally believed that he had had a high quarrel with Mr. Davis at the latter's house after dining together.

"Another matter also had great effect on Gen. Sterling Price's position. In the pre- ceding year (1862) began the so-called 'Copperhead' movement in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Its precise object and extent was a mystery to the Confederate government and people. It appeared sometimes as a 'reconstruction' movement to restore the old Union," and at other times as one looking to a 'North West Confederacy' to include Missouri, and to remain independent and allied with, or to be united to the Southern Confederacy. On one point, however, all reports agreed, viz., that General Price had some connection with it and was to be its military leader. The tone, if not direct statements, of General Price's organ, the Jackson (Miss.) Argus and Crisis, edited by his confidential friend, Mr. J. W. Tucker (sometimes called Deacon Tucker) of St. Louis, and some articles in it on that subject by a Methodist clergyman, Dr. B. T. Kavanagh, also confidentially connected with General Price, tended to confirm these reports. But nothing was known from General Price himself by the Confederate government.

"Soon after my reaching Richmond in January, 1863, General Price telegraphed to me a request to await his arrival there. I answered that I would do so. He soon came on, accompanied by Major Snead, and I had a very cordial meeting with both. I explained to General Price in the course of our various conversations, my desire that the Confederate states should as soon as practicable send an army into Missouri, and that he should com- mand it, but that there were many obstacles in the way, including, as far as delicacy per- . mitted my mentioning them to him, the matters heretofore mentioned as having impaired his influence.

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Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 93

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