CHAPTER IV

The Slavery Issue in Politics and in the Churches

The motives behind the fight for statehood in Missouri during the years 1819-21 have been discussed by several writers.¹ The opinion of the majority of authorities on this subject is that the sentiment of Missouri in 1819 shifted from the old Jeffersonian dislike of slavery, or at least from a cold support of the system, to an avowed proslavery position. This change of attitude is said to have been caused by the attack of the northern representatives in Congress on Missouri’s efforts to secure statehood, this northern opposition being based on avowed hostility to slavery extension. This is the orthodox view, and it is held by those who declare that the South at heart had no great solicitude for slavery till northern interference pricked her pride. At first glance this appears plausible, but a closer inspection of the materials relating to the period shows this opinion to be both superficial and unreasonable.

The people of Missouri were in favor of slavery from the earliest days of its existence as a Territory. Even before Missouri became a Territory her citizens had what appears to have been more than a mere nominal attachment to “the peculiar institution.” On January 4, 1805, the settlers about

St. Louis protested warmly at being joined to the Indiana Territory under the title of “The District of Louisiana.” Their pride was touched and their grievances were many, but of all their complaints the fear for their slave property seems to have been one of the most weighty. Their memorial to Congress reads as follows: “Slaves cannot exist in the Indiana Territory, and slavery prevails in Louisiana, and here your petitioners must beg leave to observe to your honorable Houses, that they conceive their property of every description has been warranted to them by the treaty between the United States and the French Republic. . . . Is not the silence of Congress with respect to slavery in the District of Louisiana, and the placing of this district under the government of a territory where slavery is proscribed, calculated to alarm the people with respect to that kind of property, and to create the presumption of a disposition in Congress, to abolish at some future day slavery altogether in the District of Louisiana?” Again they claimed that the treaty warranted “the free possession of our slaves, and the right of importing slaves into the District of Louisiana, under such restrictions as to Congress in their Wisdom will appear necessary.”²

This last statement at least was no mere attempt to conserve existing property, but was an open desire to import blacks. The full force of the slavery issue, however, did not develop till the struggle for statehood opened. Petitions to this end are said to have been signed by citizens of Missouri Territory as early as 1817.³ Apparently no mention of slavery was made in them. On January 8, 1818, the

speaker of the House of Representatives “presented a petition from sundry inhabitants of the Territory of Missouri praying that the said Territory may be admitted into the Union; on an equal footing with the original States.”⁴ John Scott, the territorial delegate, presented several similarly described papers on February 2 and March 16, 1818.⁵ There is in the Library of Congress a printed petition signed by sixty-eight Missourians. It is not dated and makes no mention of slavery, though it deals extensively with territorial needs and abuses.⁶

That the Missouri of 1820 really had considerable slave property to fight for is evident. Between 1810 and 1820 the slave population of the Territory had grown from 3011 to 10,222.⁷ That this gain was not simply the natural increase of the negroes of the old French settlers is learned from many sources. An item in the Missouri Gazette of October 26, 1816, says that “a stranger to witness the scene would imagine that Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas had made an agreement to introduce us as soon as possible to the bosom of the American family. Every ferry on the river is daily occupied in passing families, carriages, wagons, [and] negroes.” The same paper on June 9, 1819, gives the following report from St. Charles: “Never has such an influx of people . . . been so considerable, . . . flowing through our town with their maid servants and men servants . . . the throng of hogs and cattle, the whiteheaded children, and curlyheaded Africans.” Another item in the same issue states that “170 emigrants were at the Portage des Sioux at one time last week.” The papers for nearly every week from the above date are filled with similar statements. That the newcomers were of the kind to make

Missouri a slave State there is no trouble in discovering. The St. Louis Enquirer of November 19, 1819, informs us that a citizen of St. Charles counted for nine or ten weeks an average of one hundred and twenty settlers’ vehicles per week, with an average of eighteen persons per vehicle. “They came,” it continues, “almost exclusively from the States south of the Potomac and the Ohio bringing slaves and large herds of cattle.” The Gazette of January 26, 1820, states that “our population is daily becoming more heterogenious [sic] . . . scarcely a Yankee has moved into the country this year. At the same time Virginians, Carolinians, Tennesseeans, and Kentuckians are moving in great force.” The St. Louis Enquirer of November 10, 1819, claims that in October of that year two hundred and seventy-one four-wheeled and fifty-five two-wheeled vehicles passed “Mrs. Griffith’s in the point of the Missouri,” bound for Boone’s Lick, and speculates that from ten to fifteen thousand people would settle in Missouri during the autumn. Timothy Flint, a New England clergyman, counted a hundred persons passing through St. Charles in one day. “I have seen . . . nine wagons, harnessed with from four to six horses. We may allow one hundred cattle . . . and from three or four to twenty slaves to each wagon. The slaves seem fond of their masters.”⁸

This change in the character of the population is reflected in the personnel of the constitutional convention of 1820. According to one partisan paper there was not “a single confessed restrictionist elected.”⁹ At Mine à Burton the

“Manumission Men” were beaten by 1147 to 61 votes,¹⁰ at St. Louis by about 3 to 1,¹¹ and in Cape Girardeau County by 4 to 3.¹² It therefore appears that this influx of newcomers had brought into the Territory many who had financial or hereditary reasons for favoring slavery. A letter of Judge J. B. C. Lucas of St. Louis, written October 27, 1820, confirms the fact that slavery was the basis, at least to a considerable extent, of the local struggle against restriction. “I was a candidate,” wrote Judge Lucas, “for the state convention. I did not succeed because being requested to declare my sentiments on the subject of slavery, I expressed an opinion that it would be proper to limit the importation of slaves to five years or a short period from the date of the Constitution . . . the ardent friends of slavery, in all its extent and attributes, charged me, or suspected me to be hostile to the principles altogether, and contended that I dare not go the whole length of my opinion, knowing it to be unpopular. In fact I was called an emancipator and this is the worst name that can be given in the state of Missouri.”¹³ Judge Lucas also stated that as he was known to oppose the Spanish land claims these claimants, in order to procure his defeat—in which object they succeeded—spread the report that he opposed slavery.¹⁴ If such an issue was raised to defeat a candidate, St. Louis at least must have been strongly proslavery in sentiment in 1820, but it was not the “Lawyer Junto” of that city alone which had this feeling, as will be seen later. It seems hardly possible that the hardheaded frontiersmen with their ten thousand slaves would thunder at Congress for two years on an abstract question of constitutional equality.¹⁵

The immigration of southern settlers during the late territorial period changed the social complexion of Missouri. To this fact can be traced the real cause of the anxiety of the people to be admitted as a slave State. This lay at the heart of the outcry against the attempt of Congress to force conditions on the new commonwealth. The merits of the slavery question were soon obscured, and the excitement veered over into the constitutional field.¹⁶ Slavery was theoretically condemned, and at the same time the right to import negroes was asserted. At least a denial of the right of Congress to prevent the introduction of slaves became the cry of the proslavery party. “No Congressional Restriction!” was the shibboleth of the day. “I regret as much as any person,” declaimed John Scott, the territorial delegate in 1819, “the existence of Slavery in the United States. I think it wrong in itself, nor on principle would I be understood as advocating it; but I trust I shall always be an advocate of the people’s rights to decide on this question . . . for themselves. . . . I consider it not only unfriendly

to the slaves themselves to confine them to the South, but wholly incompetent on Congress to interfere.”¹⁷

In this same strain Henry Carroll, on presenting a resolution from Howard County against congressional interference, said: “There are none within my view, none it might be said in Boone’s Lick country . . . who would not lend efficient co-operation to achieve all the good within their compass, and wipe from the fair cheek the foul stain which soils it . . . [but] a rejection of slavery cannot fail to shut out of our country those disposed to migrate hither from the southern states, under a repugnance to separate from the labor useful to them.”¹⁸ On September 11, 1819, the Baptist Association in session at Mount Pleasant Meeting House in Howard County adopted a petition to Congress in which these words are found: “Although with Washington and Jefferson . . . we regret the existence of slavery at all . . . and look forward to a time when a happy emancipation can be effected, consistent with the principles of . . . justice . . . the constitution does not admit slaves to be freemen; it does admit them to be property . . . we have all the means necessary for a state government, and believe that the question of slavery is one which belongs exclusively to the people to decide on.”¹⁹

The efforts of Congress to dictate the slave policy of Missouri raised a veritable tidal wave of antagonism in the Territory. On April 28, 1819, citizens of Montgomery County vigorously criticized Congress.²⁰ Resolutions followed to the same effect in Franklin County on July 5,²¹ in Washington County on the 29th,²² and in New Madrid County soon after.²³ In some cases the theory of limiting importations of negroes into the new State was advocated, but any tampering with the slaves already in the Territory

was condemned. Such a declaration was made at a meeting at Herculaneum in Jefferson County in April, 1819²⁴ and the grand jury of the county followed the example in July.²⁵ On April 11, 1819, nearly a hundred citizens of St. Louis met and condemned any further importations of slaves into the State, but decried any interference with the local system as it existed.²⁶

Official bodies joined in the protest against Federal tyranny. The grand jurors of St. Louis on April 5, 1819, declared that “they believe that all the slave-holding states are virtually menaced and threatened with eventual destruction [if slavery is prohibited in Missouri].”²⁷ The grand jurors of Montgomery County in July said, “They view the restriction attempted to be imposed on the people of Missouri Territory in the formation of a State Constitution as unlawful, unconstitutional, and oppressive.”²⁸ The Washington County grand jury put themselves similarly on record during the same month.²⁹ The editorials, the correspondence, and the general material of the press during these months bear witness to the interest which Missouri took in the slavery question.

If the mere naked words and phrases of the multitude of indignant resolutions and declarations of the period be accepted as the expression of honest opinion, we should be forced to the conclusion that the majority of the inhabitants of the Territory in 1820 thought less of slave labor than of constitutional rights. Nevertheless, the present writer and at least one other student of the period are forced by both internal and external evidence to the belief that the declarations

of the press and of the various individuals and political bodies should not be taken on faith as being the real sentiments of the day.³⁰ No great liberties need be taken in interpreting the phraseology of the documents of these years to arrive at this view. The real solicitude of the “anti-restriction” men for slavery creeps out here and there with bald frankness.

On April 5, 1819, the “Grand Jury of the Northern Circuit of the Territory of Missouri,” meeting at St. Louis, declared that congressional restriction of slavery was “an unconstitutional and unwarrantable usurpation of power over our unalienable rights and privileges as a free people. . . . Although we deprecate anything like an idea of disunion which next to our personal liberty and security of property is our dearest right . . . we feel it our duty to take a manly and dignified stand for our rights and privileges.”³¹ It appears that these jurors, at least, struck at the root of the whole matter when they advanced “personal liberty and security of property” as alone being dearer than the Union. Another illustration of this point appears in the account of the celebration at St. Louis on March 30, 1820, to commemorate the enabling act which Congress had just passed, admitting Missouri with slavery. Among other features of this celebration was one “representing a slave in great spirits, rejoicing at the permission granted by Congress to bring slaves into so fine a country as Missouri.”³² This

affair does not look like the celebration of a victory over a point of constitutional law.

The real strength of an immediate emancipation party during these years is not difficult to measure. Joseph Charless of the Missouri Gazette, who led the forces of those who opposed the introduction of slaves, stated editorially that he had spoken personally with all the convention candidates on his slate—Lucas, Bobb, Pettibone, and so forth. He said: “I am apprised of the sentiments of all those candidates who were favorable to the restriction of slavery. . . . They are decidedly opposed to any interference with the slaves now in the territory.”³³ Judge Lucas, in a long statement in the Gazette of April 12, 1820, denied that he was an immediate emancipationist, but said that he did favor the limitation of the period allowed for the importation of negroes lest the State be filled with thieving slaves and with overgrown slaveholding “nabobs” who would corrupt the democratic institutions of Missouri. He also argued that slaves would cause white labor to shun the State, and so argued for restriction.

Of all the convention candidates whose cards appear in the four papers examined which cover the campaign period not one advocated any interference whatever with the slave property of the Territory.³⁴ Many were for the restriction of future importations, but none favored any meddling with the slaves already on the soil. Most of them condemned slavery in the abstract, but at the same time came out boldly for temporary importations. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., who is a fair example of these, declared that should he be elected

to the convention, “any attempt to prevent the introduction of slaves . . . will meet my warmest opposition.”³⁵ Not only in St. Louis was there strong proslavery feeling. James Evans, running for election in Cape Girardeau County, advertised as follows: “I frankly declare that I am in favor of the future introduction of slaves into the new State.”³⁶ Thomas Mosly of the same county was for no “constitutional restriction on the subject whatever.”³⁷ Several others advocated the same policy. A lone restrictionist came out in Cape Girardeau County. George H. Scripps declared that increased slave importations would keep free labor from the State, and would result in race amalgamation.³⁸

In Lincoln County John Lindsay stated that “as to slavery, I shall be in favor of it.”³⁹ Abner Vansant of Jefferson County did not deny that slavery affected morals and had other bad features, but considered that “perhaps it would be politic to permit the future introduction of them [slaves] for a short time.”⁴⁰ Indeed several candidates, as, for example, Robert Simpson, were not strongly proslavery in feeling, but thought it expedient to “allow a reasonable time for those owning slaves and who may become interested in our soil, to emigrate to the state.”⁴¹ Rufus Pettibone also favored no restriction for a number of years “for the sake of encouraging emigration.”⁴² This economic motive was doubtless an important factor in arousing opinion against restriction. The broad prairies were there to be developed, and slave labor was to be the means of accomplishing the task.

From the constitutional convention itself one may gain a clear-cut view of the sentiment of the period. The procedure of this assembly, together with the origin and development of the slavery clauses, has been minutely examined and analyzed by others, and the subject need not enter into the present discussion.⁴³ The slavery sections of the constitution will be set forth in the various chapters of this study according to their subject matter. In general it may be said that the document laid no restriction upon bona-fide importations of slaves, and only by the consent of the master could they be emancipated.⁴⁴ Benton’s claim to the authorship of the clause preventing emancipation without the owner’s consent and without reembursing him was not made by him until years after the convention had assembled. He repeatedly maintained that he secured the insertion of this provision, but his claim is backed by his own word alone.⁴⁵ The constitution apparently satisfied the pro-slavery element.⁴⁶ The question seemed legally settled,

although the free-negro clause was to keep Missouri and the whole country roused for another year.

After the Compromise of 1820 Missouri sat down to enjoy the fruits of her effort, her legally secure black labor. The first decade of her statehood was one of development. With her great and pugnacious senator, Thomas Hart Benton, she was becoming influential in the land. In these years there occurred an episode which was so spontaneous and romantic and so long kept secret that but for the high authority who vouches for it one might well consider the whole story comparable to Jefferson’s shimmering salt mountain and other airy legends of Mississippi Valley lore. This is the emancipation conspiracy of 1828 which was years after revealed by the Whig leader, Mr. John Wilson of Fayette. He, with Senators Benton, Barton, and other prominent statesmen of both parties, “representing every district of the State,” met in secret to plan a movement for gradual emancipation. Candidates were to be canvassed, and both parties were to get memorials signed to be presented to the legislature. At this juncture appeared the widespread newspaper canard representing that Arthur Tappan of New York “had entertained at his private table some negro men and that, in fact, these negroes rode out in his private carriage with his Daughters.” This report raised a storm of indignation in the State, and the scheme of the emancipationists was abandoned. Mr. Wilson claims that “but for that story of the conduct of the great original fanatic on this subject we should have carried, under the leadership of Barton and Benton, our project and begun the future emancipation of the colored race that would long since have been followed by Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia . . . our purpose after we got such a law safely placed on the Statute Book, was to have followed it up by a provision requiring the masters of those who should be born to be

free to teach them to read and write. This shows you how little a thing turns the destiny of nations.”⁴⁷

Assuming that the meeting took place, its first peculiarity is the really naive confidence of the participants that but for the Tappan story “we should have carried, under the leadership of Barton and Benton, our project.” The furor which convulsed Missouri during the Compromise debate would seem to have been sufficient to appal any one who might be minded to tamper anew with the slavery question. It hardly seems possible that Benton, who systematically smothered the slavery issue, should have pushed such a program, but the apparently permanent calm which followed the Compromise and the material prosperity of the State during these years may have warranted a venture at wiping out an institution which Benton considered a potential cause of bitter agitation and political unrest.

Again, one can scarcely believe that sentiment in Missouri had materially changed between 1821 and 1828 when it is considered that she more than doubled her slave population between 1820 and 1830.⁴⁸ It might be answered that Benton was clever enough to feel the public pulse, and that if he entered into any such project there must have been appearances to justify his hopes of success. But Benton was not an infallible reader of the signs of the times. It is known how he mistook popular sentiment when he made his disastrous “Appeal” to the voters of his party twenty years later. Another fact which appears to make the success of any such emancipation scheme doubtful in 1828 is that in

January of the next year the Missouri General Assembly passed a resolution declaring it to be unconstitutional for Congress to vote money for the American Colonization Society.⁴⁹

There was some antislavery sentiment in the State prior to the Garrisonian movement. As early as 1819 one Humphrey Smith was indicted by the Howard County grand jury for inciting slaves to revolt.⁵⁰ In 1820 certain ministers of the Methodist body were accused of preaching sedition to slaves. This was denied by one A. McAlister of St. Charles County, who declared that he had talked to them and had heard most of them preach. The “Methodist Church,” he continued, “would no sooner countenance such conduct than they would any other gross immorality.”⁵¹

There must have been some effective antislavery feeling in the General Assembly in these early years. On December 30, 1832, Lane submitted the following resolution to the House: “Resolved. . . . That the following amendment to the Constitution of this State be proposed. . . . That so much of the twenty sixth section of the third article of the Constitution, as declares that the General Assembly shall have no power to prevent BONA FIDE emigrants to this State . . . from bringing [their slaves] from any of the United States . . . shall be and is hereby repealed.”⁵² This amendment got as far as a second reading, but does not reappear in the journal. It must have had some supporters to have gone even as far as that. During the year 1835 there was a demand for a state convention to meet and settle various needs, among others to bring about emancipation.

An insight into the views of this precise period can be gained from a prominent citizen who had much at stake and great opportunities for observation. James Aull of Lexington

was a trader of considerable prominence throughout western Missouri. He had mercantile establishments at Lexington, Independence, Liberty, and Richmond, In answer to an antislavery Quaker firm, Siter, Price, and Company of Philadelphia, who refused to have business relations with any firm dealing in negroes, Aull wrote on June 15, 1835: “We are the owners of Slaves, . . . [but] it would gratify me exceedingly to have all our negroes removed from among us, it would be of immense advantage to the State, but to free them and suffer them to remain with us I for one would never consent to. I once lived in a town where about 1/10 of the whole population was free Negroes and a worse population I have never seen.” Aull then discusses the emancipation movement of the time as follows: “At our August elections it will be proposed to our people the propriety of calling a convention, if the convention meet one of the most important subjects to be brought before it will be the gradual abolition of slavery. I have no doubt that we will have a convention and I have as little doubt that such steps will be taken as will free all our slaves in a limited number of years. Many of our Slave holders are the warm advocates of this doctrine but I have not conversed with a man who would consent to let them remain amongst us after they are free.”⁵³

From this letter it appears that from an early date one of the fundamental problems of emancipation was prominent,—the free negro. The slaveholder had before him not only the fear of losing, in case of legal emancipation, the only labor then available, but also the spectre of a great body of free blacks as his neighbors, who he felt would be both an economic and a social burden.

Although no convention met, despite the prediction of Mr. Aull, there seems to have been a somewhat widespread idea that gradual emancipation could be effected by this

means.⁵⁴ The Missouri Argus states that several articles favoring gradual emancipation had appeared in various papers, although no sheet had definitely declared for it. Some papers opposed the meeting of any convention lest the slavery subject should be discussed. The Missouri Argus stated editorially that “the slave-holders cannot be frightened, as they know that they have the power in their own hands. They never will consent to turn their slaves loose among us. Some system of disposing of the blacks would have to be devised. . . . Such a question should be discussed at a time when the public-mind is entirely serene and peaceful.”⁵⁵ Again, the Argus stated in the same issue that a discussion of slavery would tend to check southern immigration to the State and would cause restlessness and insubordination on the part of the slaves. “We are conversant with men in every section of the State, and fully believe that the proposition to abolish slavery at this time would be voted down by a majority of four or five to one. So exceedingly unpopular and illy received is it, that no candidate dare avow himself its advocate.” Whether the Argus was wholly correct or not may be questioned, but the fact that the convention was never held makes it probable that the editor had well analyzed the situation.

At this period there seems to have been little race feeling. The Daily Evening Herald of St. Louis of June 9, 1835, in commenting on the burning of two Alabama negroes for murdering two white children, said: “We have no such punishment known to our laws, and it argues an evil state of public mind that can permit this punishment of feudal tyranny to be inflicted upon men, in defiance of the law, because they are black.” Another statement which illustrates the broad feeling of the time and the strength of the emancipation party of the State is found in the following

editorial: “Is it not wonderful that the citizens of free States will not allow the doctrines of Abolition and negro equality to be lectured upon but at the risk of pelting with eggs, when here in Missouri we calmly allow a political party to subserve party ends, to attempt to break up the very foundations, the whole slave interests in Missouri?”⁵⁶ Such sympathy for the negro seems to have been the calm and judicial feeling in the State on the eve of a period in which anti-negro sentiment was as bitter and as violent in its demonstrations as any the State ever witnessed.

On April 28, 1836, the mulatto, Francis McIntosh, was burned by a St. Louis mob for stabbing an officer.⁵⁷ A young New England editor, the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, of the Observer, already disliked for his anti-Catholic, antimob, and antislavery sentiments, severely criticized the mob and the judge who upheld their action.” By the fall of 1835 the agitation created by Lovejoy was at least strong enough to cause apprehension on the part of his friends. On October 5 of this year a letter was sent to the Observer by several prominent citizens, among whom was Hamilton R. Gamble, later the Union governor and the champion of gradual emancipation. These men suggested that “the

present temper of the times require a change in the manner of conducting that print [The Observer] in relation to the subject of domestic slavery. The public mind is greatly excited, and owing to the unjustifiable interference of our Northern brethren in our social relations, the community are, perhaps, not in a situation to endure sound doctrine on this subject . . . we hope that the concurring opinion of so many persons having the interest of your paper and of religion both at heart, may induce you to distrust your own judgment, and so far change the character of the OBSERVER as to pass over in silence everything connected with the subject of slavery.”⁵⁹

Lovejoy, however, would not be silenced. His criticism of Judge Lawless and the McIntosh mob brought a storm of indignation, and he prepared to move up the Mississippi to Alton, Illinois, after a mob had pillaged his office. It is said that Lovejoy’s criticism of the Catholics, and of Judge Lawless as such, added to his attacks on mob rule and slavery, caused this affair,⁶⁰ and the slavery issue is therefore not to be considered as the only cause of the feeling which compelled his flight. To follow Lovejoy’s career to his violent death would be of no immediate pertinence in this

connection.⁶¹ His retirement to Alton has been considered to mark the close of an epoch in Missouri history. This period is said to have been characterized by a somewhat general demand for gradual emancipation. That there was such a movement is evident, but it seems improbable that those who favored the issue were numerous enough to have been successful at any time.

Lovejoy’s expulsion from St. Louis was looked upon as justifiable by most of his local contemporaries. “As I remember,” wrote the Reverend W. G. Eliot, “very few persons, even among the best citizens, expressed either regret or condemnation!”⁶² The Bulletin of St. Louis expressed the sentiment of a considerable number when it stated editorially that “we have read, with feelings of profound contempt and disgust a paragraph in the Alton Observer . . . in which . . . Elijah P. Lovejoy, the fanatic editor . . . spits his venom at the Judge [Lawless]. . . . We in common with every honest man consider this ‘Reverend’ libeler to have disgraced . . . the town which has the misfortune to have him for an inhabitant. . . . The epithet of ‘infamous’ which this fanatic bestows upon Judge Lawless, is properly applied to himself alone. Such vile language sufficiently explains his expulsion from this city.⁶³

The reformer’s efforts apparently did little to better the lot of the Missouri slave. Unfortunately he made his plea just when the Garrisonian movement was agitating both the country and Congress. Lovejoy’s program was naturally considered a part of the general abolition movement, so that the people were prejudiced against him when he began his preaching.

The same year that the anti-abolition feeling drove Lovejoy from St. Louis an episode growing out of the slavery situation convulsed Marion County. Dr. David Nelson, president of Marion College, who was a Southerner and a former slaveholder, read at a religious meeting a paper presented to him by Colonel John Muldrow “proposing to subscribe $10,000 himself and asked others to subscribe, to indemnify masters for their slaves when government should think proper to abolish slavery in that way.” This led to a personal encounter between Muldrow and a certain extreme pro-slavery citizen named John Bosley, in which Bosley was severely injured. The people were highly incensed, and the college president was forced to flee the State.⁶⁴ Muldrow was tried at St. Charles and was acquitted, Edward Bates acting as his counsel.⁶⁵ It is interesting to note that his proposition was in harmony with the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution of 1820 which provides that slaves were not to be emancipated “without the consent of their masters, or without paying them.” The incident indicates that this clause had become unpopular, at least in Marion County.

Two other men, Williams and Garrett, were ordered from Marion County the same year for receiving literature from the American Colonization Society. The feeling became so warm that upon Dr. Nelson’s return to attend his sick son a public meeting was called at Palmyra, May 21, 1836, and it was resolved “That we approve the recent conduct of a portion of our citizens towards Messrs. Garrett and Williams

(two avowed advocates and missionaries of abolition) who came among us to instruct our slaves to rebellion by the use of incendiary pamphlets . . . eminently calculated to weaken the obligations of their obedience.”⁶⁶ The faculty of Marion College were suspected because of Dr. Nelson’s course. Conscious of the public temper, they exhibited a resolution passed by them the day before this meeting, in which it was resolved “That the faculty of Marion College utterly disapprove, as unchristian and illegal the circulation of all books, pamphlets, and papers, calculated to render the slave population of the State discontented.” They had taken even such definite action as to forbid the students to talk sedition to slaves, circulate any antislavery literature, hold any antislavery meetings or discuss slavery matters before the public, or instruct slaves without the consent of their masters.⁶⁷

The feeling exhibited in the events just recounted persisted in Marion County for years. In July, 1841, the Illinois abolitionists, George Thompson, James Burr, and Alanson Work, were betrayed near Palmyra by slaves whom they attempted to entice into Canada.⁶⁸ After a stormy imprisonment and trial they were sentenced to the penitentiary for twelve years, but were pardoned before their terms expired.⁶⁹ This event caused the formation of a vigilance

committee in each township of the county to examine strangers who could not well explain their business, and suspected persons were expelled from the county and were also threatened with a penalty of fifty lashes should they return.⁷⁰ Some doubtful sympathy seems to have been felt for Thompson and his companions by certain Missourians. The Daily Evening Gazette lamented that Missouri had no “Lunatic Asylum,” as “the poor, deluded creatures” were victims of “monomania—a case not where the morals are stained, but where the mind is disordered.”⁷¹ At the same time anti-abolition feeling in Marion County continued. On March 8, 1843, citizens set fire to the institute of the Quincy abolitionist, Dr. Eels. They were not prosecuted.⁷²

While these events were occurring in eastern Missouri, the western portion of the State was in an uproar over the “Mormon War.” The extent of the slavery element in the Mormon troubles is debated, but the citizens of western Missouri were convinced that their slave property was endangered by the sectaries, whether the Mormons deserved the imputation or not. On July 20, 1833, a large meeting of “Gentiles” was held at Independence. It is said that nearly five hundred were present. A manifesto was published by this meeting, a portion of which is as follows: “More than a year since, it was ascertained that they [the Mormons] had been tampering with our slaves, and endeavoring to rouse dissension and raise seditions among them. . . . In a late number of the STAR published at Independence by the leaders of the sect, there is an article inviting free negroes and mulattoes from other states to become Mormons, and remove and settle among us. This exhibits them in still more odious colors . . . [this] would corrupt our blacks, and instigate them to bloodshed.”⁷³

Other meetings were called to take action against the Mormons. In the summer of 1838 citizens of Carroll County condemned “Mormons, abolitionists, and other disorderly persons.”⁷⁴ This implies that the slavery issue in some cases entered into the “Mormon War.” On the other hand, citizens of Ray County, meeting about the same time, passed seven resolutions against Mormon shortcomings, but did not mention slavery among these.⁷⁵ The Mormons asserted that nothing but the bitter prejudice of the Missouri “Gentiles” and their greed for the well-improved Mormon farms was the motive underlying the trouble. Etzenhouser, writing with a strong pro-Mormon bias, quotes General Doniphan as denying that the slavery question “had anything to do with it [the Mormon War].”⁷⁶

The position of the Mormons on the slavery issue is said to have shifted at different periods.⁷⁷ Be that as it may, the

consideration here is of the effect of the negro question on the Missourians of the day. Whether real or alleged, activity relative to slavery on the part of the Mormons was used by the western Missouri people during the thirties as a campaign slogan, and the issue must therefore have been vital and important. That the Missourians thought the Saints were negro thieves seems certain. When Burr, Work, and Thompson attempted to entice slaves from Marion County in 1841, the people thought at once that they were Mormons.⁷⁸ As late as 1855 a St. Joseph editor; in quoting Brigham Young’s denial that the Mormons had ever stolen slaves, remarked: “We think that the latter day saints are not so bad after all.”⁷⁹ Evidently Young’s statement was a surprise.

In another quarter at this period a movement less violent but of enormous consequences to the slave interests of the State was developing. This was the Platte Purchase, which added six very rich counties to the slave power. Benton and Linn pushed the measure in the Senate, the former always taking great pride in its accomplishment, both because of the magnitude of the undertaking and because of [footnote continues on p. 125] with you, put them not away; but if they choose to leave you, or are not satisfied to remain with you, it is for you to sell them, or to let them go free, as your own conscience may direct you. The Church on this point assumes the responsibility to direct. The laws of the land recognize slavery; we do not wish to oppose the laws of the country” (The Frontier Guardian [date not given], quoted in the Eleventh Annual Report [1851] of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, pp. 94-5).

its importance to Missouri.⁸⁰ In his message of November 22, 1836, Governor Boggs stated that the General Assembly had memorialized Congress on the subject, and that Congress had agreed to grant the request when the Territory should be secured from the Indians.⁸¹

That the State was anxious to obtain the rich river bottoms of this region cannot be doubted. It does not seem likely that this was a preconcerted grab for more slave territory as von Hoist asserts,⁸² and as Horace Greeley apparently believed. The latter says that the bill passed “so quietly as hardly to attract attention.”⁸³ Either the North

wished to win the favor of Benton and his constituents, or, as Carr says of the act, “It did not and could not add to the voting strength of the South in the Senate.”⁸⁴ Whether or not this accession contravened the Missouri Compromise has no direct bearing on the discussion of the local slavery system, and consequently will not be considered here.

During the late thirties and early forties the slavery question began to affect the religious bodies of the country. In Missouri the change did not fail to manifest itself,⁸⁵ but the scope of this study will limit the discussion to a few of the denominations in which the struggle occurred. The Methodist Church labored heavily in this storm. As early as 1820 little patience was manifested toward those who instigated negroes to discontent or preached to them anything that might cause sedition.⁸⁶ In 1835 the Missouri Annual Conference, while praising the Colonization Society, at the same time condemned the “Abolition Society” and its agents, declaring the latter to be “mischievous in character,

and not calculated to better the situation of the people of color of the United States.”⁸⁷

The Missouri feud stirred up a general and bitter discussion elsewhere, and, indeed, was the immediate cause of the slavery issue being injected into debates of the church. The question was transmitted to wider circles by the appeal of the Reverend Silas Comfort in 1840 from the Missouri to the General Conference of that year. The Missouri Conference had adjudged him guilty of maladministration in admitting the testimony of colored members against a white member in a church trial. On May 17, after a protracted debate, the General Conference reversed the decision of the Missouri Conference. Much bitterness was aroused, and when the next General Conference met at New York in 1844, the sectional break was imminent. Despite the protests of the southern members, Bishop Andrew was suspended for indirectly holding slaves through his wife.⁸⁸ In the following spring the Southern Methodist Church was formed at Louisville.

The Missouri Conference of 1844, held after the session of the General Conference, remained firm in its position on slavery. “We are compelled to pronounce the proceeding

of the late General conference against Bishop Andrew extra-judicial and oppressive,” said one of the resolutions of the committee of nine who reported on October 4, 1844.⁸⁹ But the conference does not seem to have been very bitter against the Northern Methodists at this time. It even condemned some of the southern agitators for their “violent proceedings.” The resolutions of the conference contain the following worthy clause: “We do most cordially invite to our pulpits and firesides all our bishops and brethren who, in the event of a division, shall belong to the northern Methodist Church.”⁹⁰ The members of the conference deeply regretted “the prospect of separation,” and declared that they most sincerely “pray that some effectual means, not inconsistent with the interests and honor of all concerned, may be suggested and devised by which so great a calamity may be averted.” Nevertheless, they approved the call of the Southern Methodist Convention to be held at Louisville the following May, and requested the individual churches to state their position regarding a separation from the Northern Methodists.⁹¹

The Annual Conference assembled at Columbia on October 1, 1845, under the presidency of Bishop Soule. The Southern Church had already been formed, and a great deal of interest and heat was manifest in the debates on the action to be taken by Missouri. By a vote of 86 to 14 the conference decided to separate, and a new organization was thereupon effected.⁹² Some ministers refused to accede,

and an active antislavery minority continued to flourish in the State.⁹³ It was ambitious, and was so tenacious of purpose that it was accused of courting martyrdom. These so-called “Northern Methodists” came out openly against slavery, and their propaganda caused intense bitterness until, in the fifties, hostility to the ministers of this organization became implacable. In Fabius township, Marion County, a public meeting on February 18, 1854, protested against these persons, and demanded that they refrain from preaching in the county.⁹⁴ On October 11, 1855, resolutions were passed by citizens of Jackson County requesting the Northern Methodists not to hold their conferences in the county,⁹⁵ and public meetings in Andrew, Cass, and other counties uttered condemnations.⁹⁶

The Northern Methodists, however, would not be silenced or driven from the field. At times they denied that they preached abolition doctrines. At their quarterly conference at Hannibal in 1854 they declared that the opposition to them was “a base persecution. . . . That, while we regard

the system of slavery as a great moral, social, and political evil, we do most heartily protest against any attempt, directly or indirectly, at producing insubordination among slaves; we do heartily condemn . . . the underground railroad operation, and all other systems of negro stealing.”⁹⁷ At a Warrensburg meeting in May, 1855, they protested that “the constitution and the laws guaranteeing to us the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience we regard as sacred, and the course pursued at meetings held in our own and sister counties in proscribing ministers of the Gospel of certain denominations, is tyrannical, arbitrary, illegal and unjust.”⁹⁸

The struggle soon degenerated into a hatred which long outlasted slavery days. Northern Methodist ministers were expelled. Benjamin Holland was killed at Rochester in Andrew County in 1856,⁹⁹ and Morris and Allen were driven from Platte County.¹⁰⁰ “The whole course of this Northern Methodist Church since the separation, has been faithless and dishonorable,” declared an editorial of 1855. “They are sending preachers into this State against an express agreement and plighted faith. . . . They send them . . . not for the purpose of propagating the Christian faith

. . . but to overthrow slavery.”¹⁰¹ When the press was declaring itself in this manner we cannot wonder that the populace detested the name.

In 1857 the Northern Methodists petitioned the legislature for a charter to found a university. A bill was introduced in the House on November 4 to grant such a charter.¹⁰² After being amended, it was tabled on November 12 by a vote of 95 to 16.¹⁰³ This action of the General Assembly called forth at the Annual Conference at Hannibal the following year this protest: “While we are aware that our anti-slavery sentiments were well known, we knew our peaceable and law-abiding character was equally well known. . . . Could we with reason have anticipated that a hundred ministers, and ten thousand members of our church, and a population of fifty thousand . . . would be denied a charter because their views of the peculiar institution did not correspond with those of a majority of the Legislature?”¹⁰⁴

The slavery question gave rise to many peculiar situations. Men found their positions perplexed by conflicting elements of religion, politics, and social status. The stand of the Reverend Nathan Scarritt well illustrates this point. His biographer says: “The division of his Church [the Methodist] left him connected with the Southern branch, where he has ever since remained, because, although opposed to slavery, he agreed with the Church South in her views of the relations of the Church to slavery as a civil institution.”¹⁰⁵ Such confusion of interests makes it very unsafe to attribute absolute party alignment to the slavery issue.

Dr. Scarritt, for instance, was a Whig, a Southern Methodist, in theory but not in practice opposed to slavery, and a strong Union supporter in 1860.¹⁰⁶

The Presbyterian Church also divided on the slavery issue, but much later than the Methodist. “The whole New School Church,” wrote an influential clergyman who was a witness of the events of the period, “was known to be opposed to slavery, and continued discussion was had at every meeting of the General Assembly until 1857, when such decisive action was taken as led to a separation from the General Assembly of all the synods in slaveholding states. In the Old School there was but little discussion on the subject, and the generally understood public sentiment of Missouri was that nothing was to be said against the institution, and consequently, so far as Missouri was concerned there was a constant tendency on the part of those of the New School, who wished for quiet, to leave that body and enter the Old.” The New School was embarrassed by its connection with the American Home Missionary Society, for this organization would not commission a slaveholder or aid a church which contained slaveholding members. “Out of this struggle the New School Synod came out a very small band.”¹⁰⁷

The Congregational Church was known in the State as an abolitionist body, and was regarded with little favor in Missouri as a whole, although it was fairly strong in St. Louis.¹⁰⁸ In 1847 the Reverend Truman M. Post was called.

to the Third Presbyterian Church of St. Louis. This organization became the First Congregational Church, and was very antislavery in feeling. Dr. Post, because of his slavery views, looked upon the call with some misgivings, whereupon two of the leading members, Dr. Reuben Knox and Mr. Moses Forbes, wrote him advising his acceptance. Dr. Knox even alleged that the few slaveholding members were “mostly as anti-slavery as you or I, and long to see the curse removed.”¹⁰⁹ Even before foreign immigration came to St. Louis in such large numbers there was apparently a strong antislavery body in the city which had migrated thither from the Northern and the border States.¹¹⁰