Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Post #10
by Tonya McQuade
In my previous post, I began discussing my visit to the Missouri Civil War Museum in April. The museum, located at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, opens with several exhibit displays talking about events prior to the Civil War that contributed to the state's political divisions. Since that's also how I begin the book I'm working on, A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree, I thought I'd share excerpts from that opening chapter before sharing some of the museum's other displays in my next post.
One "event" I had not known about was Missouri's unique role in the Election of 1860. I knew that, with Abraham Lincoln's election, various southern states had started to secede. I did not know Missouri was the only state in which Stephen A. Douglas, the Northern Democratic candidate, came out on top as their choice for president. Lincoln was their last choice. Candidates from four different political parties competed in this election, with disputes regarding states' rights and slavery all coming to a head - the election had the second largest voter turnout in American history.
At the start of the Civil War, Missouri clearly was a state divided - with many events and decisions tied to Missouri significantly contributing to the later outbreak of the war, including the Missouri Compromise (1820); the Compromise of 1850, which strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law and had a big impact on border states like Missouri; the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which led to the “Bleeding Kansas” borders wars between Kansas and Missouri; and the Dred Scott decision (1857), which started in the Missouri Courthouse and resulted in one of the Supreme Court’s worst decisions: that African Americans were not U.S. citizens and therefore had no citizenship rights.
Now for some excerpts from A State Divided:
Chapter 1: Early Beginnings - Greene County, Tennessee and Andrew County, MO
The Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott case, the “Bleeding Kansas” border wars - Missouri was a state torn apart by political disagreements and violence even before the firing on Sumter that early morning of April 12, 1861. Some of the first blood shed during the Civil War was spilled on Missouri soil during the Camp Jackson Massacre, and the first Union general to be killed - Nathaniel Lyon - was killed there at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Soon, the state even found itself with two competing governments and governors, one recognized by the United States government and one by the Confederacy.
Like so many in Missouri, the Hale and Petree families of northwestern Andrew County found themselves caught in this political maelstrom. Originally from Tennessee and Indiana, each had relatives who fought and died on both sides of the war. James C. Hale volunteered early on to join the Union army, seeing action in Missouri, Kentucky, and Arkansas before spending much of his enlisted time at Benton Barracks General Hospital in St. Louis. Benjamin Petree was drafted toward the end of the war and found himself participating in Gen. Sherman’s March to the Sea - across South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia - witnessing huge amounts of devastation and destruction, before marching in the celebratory Grand Review of the Union Army in Washington. D.C.
James C. Hale’s and Benjamin Petree’s letters cast light on this pivotal border state that saw 42% of the battles in the U.S. during the first year of the war; suffered more than 1000 battles on its soil, many of those involving guerrilla warfare; and experienced one of the last surrenders - that of Confederate Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, who commanded the Trans-Mississippi Department west of the Mississippi River - 47 days after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox….
While many in Missouri initially hoped the state could stay neutral in the war, the battle over slavery was one they knew all too well. The 1850’s brought a lot of strife to Missouri, especially along the western border where James Calaway Hale and his family established their farm just south of Savannah in Nodaway Township, Andrew County, in an area known as the Platte Purchase. Not originally part of Missouri, this land was acquired in 1836 after the United States government purchased it for $7500 from various Indian tribes, who agreed to move west of the Missouri River to areas that are now part of Kansas and Nebraska.
The acquisition added 3,149 square miles to the northwest corner of Missouri but sparked controversy for two reasons. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had prohibited the extension of slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel at the 36°30′ north except within the boundaries of the then-defined state of Missouri. Further, it went against the terms of the controversial Indian Removal Act, which had “permanently” moved tribes west of the Missouri border as it stood in 1830. Now, some of those same tribes were being forced to move again.
The Platte Purchase, however, drew many farmers - especially slave-holding farmers from Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky eager to plant hemp and tobacco in the more southern portion - to its lush soil. By extending Missouri’s border to the Missouri River on the east, it also opened up shipping options for these same farmers. By the time James and his family settled in the more northern region of the Platte Purchase, St. Joseph had become one of the largest cities in Missouri and was the jumping off point for many of the American settlers moving west. It also became the point of departure for the Pony Express for the eighteen months it operated from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861.
Additional political tensions in Missouri began with the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California as a free state but allowed other territories acquired from the Mexican War to be subject to “popular sovereignty,” determined by voters in those territories. The compromise also included a strengthened Fugitive Slave Law, which led to tensions in both slave and free states. Since Missouri was a slave state bordered by four free states (Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois), tensions there ran especially high.
Only about a tenth of Missouri’s residents owned slaves - and those who did typically had only a much small number of slaves. In 1860, the free population of Missouri was 1,058,352; the slave population, 114, 965. Slaves made up less than 10% of the population in most parts of the state, whereas in states like Mississippi and South Carolina, they made up half the population. Still, at the start of the Civil War, most Missouri residents favored preserving slavery.
The Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854 brought further troubles to Missouri. The act not only established the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska, but it too altered the previous conditions set forth in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited the expansion of slavery north of Missouri’s southern border in land acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. The new act divided the territories of Kansas and Nebraska at the 40th parallel and allowed for the issue of slavery to be decided by “popular sovereignty,” or popular vote.
This decision shocked and angered abolitionists. Frederick Douglass in a speech on October 30, 1854, stated: “Fellow citizens, the proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise was a stunning one. It fell upon the nation like a bolt from a cloudless sky. The thing was too startling for belief … and you knew that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a breach of honor.”
There was little debate over the issue of slavery in Nebraska, where most settlers came from the midwest which had no slavery. Such was not the case, however, in Kansas where there were many pro-slavery Missourians living just across the border. Soon, the Kansas/Nebraska Act set off efforts among both pro- and anti-slavery proponents to alter the vote in Kansas, with voters racing to the territory to cast their votes - in many cases fraudulently - to determine whether Kansas would be slave or free. The violence that ensued earned this area and time period the name “Bleeding Kansas.”
Eventually, Kansas was admitted as a free state - the 34th state of the Union - on January 29, 1861. However, the conflicts that occurred there contributed significantly to the later eruption of the Civil War. Some of the most brutal acts of violence during the war occurred along the Kansas-Missouri border, in many cases perpetrated by the anti-slavery Jayhawkers and pro-slavery Bushwhackers, acting in retaliation for actions and events that occurred during the “Bleeding Kansas” years.
This was the environment in which James and his family found themselves living in early 1861, as more and more states began to secede and the country moved toward war. Border ruffians were roaming the countryside, leaving everyone feeling on edge. James’s own brother Meshack was killed in June 1861 by Confederate sympathizers. Fortunately, his wife and son were able to escape injury.
Meshack’s death came right as everything else in the state seemed to start falling apart. First, their governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, had called for a vote on secession, leaving many Missourians feeling anxious as the constitutional convention in St. Louis approached. Many experienced relief when the majority of state legislators voted not to secede, saying that at present they saw “no adequate cause to impel Missouri to dissolve her connection with the Federal Union.”
Unfortunately, that was not the end of it. A few weeks later, shots were fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and President Lincoln asked Governor Jackson to send four Missouri infantry regiments to join federal troops. He refused….
That refusal, among other things, eventually led to Missouri having two governments - one led by Claiborne Fox Jackson that was recognized by the Confederacy; the other, led by the newly appointed Governor Hamilton Gamble and recognized by the Union. Some Missouri troops stayed loyal to Jackson and were renamed the Missouri State Guard; others remained loyal to the Union, joining various Missouri Regiments to battle the Missouri State Guard. Many Missourians, not wanting to be sent east to fight in battles in other states, left the Missouri Stage Guard after some months of service and joined up with the many bushwhacker groups roaming the countryside. It’s not difficult to see how families and towns were torn apart.
If you like what you read, please click "Follow" up at the top! Stay tuned for my next post about the Missouri Civil War Museum exhibits - coming soon.
Love your blog! So informative!
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