CHAPTER V

SENATOR BENTON AND SLAVERY

Returning to the field of politics, it may be observed that the state legislature took little official notice of the Garrisonian program till the congressional debates raging about the abolition petitions and the use of the mails to scatter antislavery literature had stirred the whole land. On February 1, 1837, a law was passed which subjected to fine and imprisonment “any person [who] shall publish, circulate, or utter by writing, speaking, or printing any facts, arguments, reasoning, or opinions, tending directly to excite any slave or slaves, or other person of color, to rebellion, sedition, . . . or murder, with intent to excite such slave or slaves.” The punishment for the first offence was to be a fine of one thousand dollars and imprisonment for not more than two years, for the second offence imprisonment for not more than twenty years, and for the third, imprisonment for life.¹ Although several individuals were punished for attempts to run slaves over the borders, there is a dearth of records dealing with prosecutions under the statute of 1837, but what the law failed to accomplish popular feeling effected, and several persons were forced to flee the State for airing their antislavery views.²

An idea of the feeling of insecurity caused by the abolition crusade can be gained from the fact that the above law passed the House of Representatives by a vote which was unanimous—61 to 0.³ George Thompson states that while he and his companions were prisoners at Palmyra in 1841,

their counsel informed them that it was a violation of the Missouri law to read even the Declaration of Independence or the Bible to a slave.⁴ On February 12, 1839, the Assembly passed resolutions protesting against the efforts of the North to interfere with “the domestic policy of the several states.” Each slave State would be forced to “look out for means adequate to its own protection, poise itself upon its reserved rights, and prepare for defending its domestic institutions from wanton invasion, whether from foreign or domestic enemies, peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must.”⁵ On February 2, 1841, the Assembly in joint session voted an address of thanks to President Van Buren for his “manly and candid course on the subject of abolitionism.” For some unknown reason the vote was close—47 to 43, ten members being absent.⁶ Two weeks after this vote of thanks the legislature passed a series of resolutions condemning Governor Seward of New York for having demanded a jury trial before consenting to the rendition of fugitive slaves. The Assembly declared that such a jury “frequently would be Abolitionists,” and characterized

Seward’s action as “frivolous and wholly unworthy of a statesman.”⁷

Some conception of the grip with which the State was held by slavery can be gained from the action of the constitutional convention which assembled at Jefferson City in November, 1845. A reporter at the convention wrote as follows on November 24: “Mr. Ward presented a petition from one solitary individual, on the subject of the abolition of slavery. He remarked that he arose to perform a delicate duty—present a petition on the subject of abolition, containing 27 reasons. Every person who knew him, was aware of his opposition to abolitionism in every shape. He wanted to get rid of the petition, and therefore he moved to lay it on the table.” Mr. Ewing then moved that it be not received. The vote was unanimously in favor of this motion—64 to 0.” Mr. Hunter called for ayes and noes that the world might know the sentiment of this body on the subject of abolitionism.”⁸ The subjects of abolition or of emancipation did not again appear before the convention. The actual provisions of the constitution of 1845 relating to the negro deserve some further consideration.

Although this constitution was defeated, its failure was due to causes other than the slavery sections, which were identical with those of the constitution of 1820. The changes were leveled at the free negro rather than at the slave. For example, to article iii, section 26, paragraph i, was added a clause compelling the removal of newly emancipated negroes from the State. The same clause was also

added to paragraph iv of the same section.⁹ This evident satisfaction of the convention with the old provisions implies that the public may have been similarly minded. The vote on the various paragraphs cannot be learned as they were not passed on singly.

Reviewing the discussion thus far as a whole, and bringing it to a point, it is evident that from the later territorial days Missouri was largely inhabited by a citizenship which came from slaveholding communities. Arriving in Missouri already acclimated to the economic and social atmosphere of a slave society, and themselves possessing considerable slave property, it can hardly be conceived that these people would immediately turn their backs on the traditions which they so dearly loved and renounce a system which not only involved a great amount of capital, but was the only source of labor then available.

This early period of Missouri slavery sentiment and its influence upon politics and religion conveniently closes with the opening of the Mexican War. It is marked by western good humor and fair play toward the negro, if not always toward the political opponent. One event after another set the populace in a furor. Emancipationists and even a few abolitionists there were in the State throughout these years, and the Colonization Society was fairly well supported.¹⁰ But agitation for emancipation was more common among individuals than in political parties, and that general emancipation could have taken place before 1861 does not seem probable to the present writer.

The annexation of Texas early engaged the attention of the State. On November 8, 1844, Governor Marmaduke in his last message to the legislature made a plea for annexation. He argued that many Missourians had settled in

Texas,¹¹ that its markets were valuable, and that if the United States did not act it might either become a prey to the English or to the savages. In this message there is no reference to slavery.¹² Two days later the new governor, Edwards, sent his message to the Assembly, but it took no notice whatever of the Texas question.¹³ The thoughts of the State, however, were on the new republic, for on November 26, 1844, Ellis introduced in the Senate joint resolutions relative to annexation.¹⁴ These strongly favored that action, approved Senator Atchison’s vote on the Texan treaty in the Federal Senate, opposed a division of Texas into free and slave States, and declared that the decision of the question of slavery should be left to the citizens of Texas.¹⁵ Resolutions appeared in the House on November 29, December 9, and December 12, also favoring annexation.¹⁶ After various amendments and substitutes had been proposed, Gamble, on December 12, offered ten resolutions which condemned the Texan treaty as “an intrigue for the Presidency,” provided that the boundary of Texas should not exceed in extent the largest State in the Union, and declared that Benton’s vote against the treaty “was in strict conformity with the sovereign will of Missouri.”¹⁷ After a protracted debate these resolutions were rejected on December 18 by a vote of 63 to 27, ten members not being present.¹⁸ These resolutions were so conglomerate that this vote cannot be taken as a gauge of sentiment against Benton.

On the same day that Gamble’s resolutions failed the original Senate resolutions relative to annexation passed by a margin of 55 to 25, nineteen members being absent.¹⁹

In this Texas agitation the legislature was following rather than leading the State. On June 8, 1844, the Democracy of St. Louis city and county passed resolutions demanding the “reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period.” “We pledge ourselves,” they boasted, “not to be behind the foremost in the contest . . . until the stars and stripes shall wave in triumph over the Union with Texas included.”²⁰ It will soon be seen that their jingoism was not mere froth. Not only Democrats but Whigs as well were most enthusiastic in the cause of Texas from this time till the close of the Mexican War.

The demand of Missouri, and in fact of the whole Southwest, for Texas was probably due in greater degree to native love of expansion for its own sake than to any desire for new slave territory. The poverty of the exhausted soil and the need of fresh acres might have influenced portions of the old South, but Missouri was in 1844 still in the exploitative stage, and the economic pressure could not have been severe. This western democracy was indignant at outside, and especially at northern, dictation. Annexation made a good campaign issue, even for home use. There is indication that it was employed for this purpose in the resolutions of a meeting in favor of the annexation of Texas held in Greene County in April, 1845. The declaration runs: “Resolved, That we look upon the re-annexation of Texas to the United States as a measure calculated to reunite the democratic party of this State.”²¹

The later course of the Texan question and the war in which it culminated appealed with particular force to the

Missourians. Switzler mentions the enthusiasm with which the State raised troops for this conflict.²² Irrespective of party affiliation, the flower of Missouri enlisted. Such prominent Whigs as A. W. Doniphan were among the leaders of the State in this war. Missouri furnished 6733 of the 71,309 volunteers who enlisted during the Mexican War. Only two States, Louisiana and Texas, furnished more, and they were much closer to the seat of war than was Missouri.²³ In 1840 the white population of Missouri was but one forty-fifth of that of the whole country, nevertheless that State furnished one eleventh of the nation’s volunteers in the Mexican War.²⁴

The Wilmot Proviso was most distasteful to the Democratic party of Missouri. Benton disliked the act because it stirred up the slavery issue. The proslavery wing of the party was indignant because the bill sought to restrict the system in the Territories. The General Assembly on February 15, 1847, passed instructions to the Missouri senators in Washington to vote according to the spirit of the Missouri Compromise, which of course was considered as at variance with the Wilmot Proviso.²⁵ Popular sentiment, however, seems to have viewed the proviso with less fear than did the legislature. On January 8, 1848, a meeting of St. Louis

Democrats was held in the court house rotunda. Trusten Polk and Frank Blair were among those present. Judge Mullanphy offered the following special resolution: “Resolved, That the declaration of the Congress of the United States ‘that war existed by act of Mexico” is true.’” Regarding the proviso this meeting made a declaration which was evidently so worded as to save Benton, whose attitude upon the question had caused much criticism in the State. The fifth of the thirteen resolutions read as follows: “Resolved, That as we are now approaching a period when the struggle for the control of the Government is again to be contested by the Federalists, we think it time to give over disputes in Congress; upon such abstractions as the Wilmot Proviso . . . we think this [absurd Proviso] has lived long enough, and time sufficient has elapsed to enable every man to perceive the folly of it.”²⁶

A bitter struggle, however, developed over the proviso. Some in the State even favored disunion, if a prominent contemporary, Colonel W. F. Switzler, interpreted the period correctly.²⁷ This intense feeling is reflected in a

letter written by F. P. Blair, Sr., in January, 1849: “Frank [F. P. Blair, Jr.] writes me from St. Louis that his legislature will instruct him against the Wilmot Proviso—in which case Frank insists he ought to resign or . . . make an appeal to the people of Missouri.”²⁸ This declaration was made about the same day that the so-called “Jackson” Resolutions against Benton were introduced into the Missouri Senate (January I), and brought to pass the “Appeal” of that senator from his legislative instructions to the people of the State.

The protracted debate and intense excitement growing out of the pertinacity of the Wilmot Proviso brought Benton’s political record squarely before the people on the eve of his sixth attempt to represent Missouri in the United States Senate. Since the events leading up to and concerning Benton’s defeat have been treated by several authorities,²⁹ it will be the province of this study to take up the various political struggles only in so far as they are affected by the slavery issue. Some writers maintain that slavery in itself was the cause of Benton’s fall, while others would have it that those of the rising generation who had political ambitions, jealous of his dictatorship, and grieved by their exclusion from public affairs, had most to do with overturning

his power. The arguments of this chapter will go to show that both of these elements enter into the fight. The slavery question seems to have been the real vital force behind the struggle, although the personal equation of Benton’s imperiousness cannot be overlooked.

It was said that of all his colleagues in the Senate Dr. Linn alone was treated with consideration by Benton. The man who dared to look Andrew Jackson in the eyes and who would as soon meet his opponents with pistols as with eloquence was not the man to brook criticism from local politicians. His arrogance is said to have been supreme. “In 1828,” declared Lewis V. Bogy, “Col. Benton sent a series of instructions addressed to Spencer Pettus, then Secretary of State, in his own hand writing, and told the Legislature that they were not to cross a T or dot an I, but they must be passed as sent.”³⁰ Benton’s friend, the editor of the Jefferson Enquirer, lamented that his enemies had seized “upon his traits of character, and upon what they call his vanity, egotism, and self conceit,” and admitted that he was not “infallible” on these points.³¹ The Whigs had had little use for Benton for a generation. One Whig editor warned his party not to aid the Benton wing of the Democrats. “Benton,” he wrote, “has ruled this state, for thirty years with a despotism rarely equalled, in any country.”³²

From 1820 to 1844 Benton’s control was hardly questioned. His hold on his party, despite the fact that he took little interest in Missouri politics, was undoubtedly due to the pride which his constituents felt in a statesman whose national prominence shed such lustre on a new and western State. The old settlers worshipped a Missourian who was

the equal of Clay and Webster in debate and who feared not to castigate Calhoun for his nullification program, but with the debate on the Texan Treaty of 1844 and the Wilmot Proviso a radical proslavery wing of the Democratic party developed which realized that its first task was to unseat Benton. The situation is very hard to analyze because of the bitterness on both sides. Benton’s enemies covered whatever personal animus and rivalry they might have borne him with the cloak of the slavery issue. To extricate the slavery needle from the haystack of political furor which buried Missouri from 1849 to 1852 is most difficult. That Benton’s whole slavery vote and policy were contrary to those of a large portion of his own party in Missouri is certain. To what extent this fact was used by his enemies both within the State and without deserves some attention.

Benton’s position on the various great political struggles revolving about the slavery issue was quite consistent. He opposed the Texan Treaty of 1844 which all knew meant war with Mexico. “Atlantic politicians,” he said on June 10, 1844, “hot in pursuit of Texas, may have no sympathy for this Mexican trade, but I have! and it is my policy to reconcile the two objects—acquisition of Texas and the preservation of the Mexican trade—and, therefore, to eschew unjust war with Mexico as not only wicked but foolish. . . . I am for treating her with respect, and obtaining her consent fairly and honorably . . . to the annexation of Texas.”³³ Benton opposed the war with Mexico up to its declaration.³⁴ “Col. Benton called . . . and I gave him a copy of the message declaring war on Mexico,’” wrote President Polk in his diary for May 11, 1846. “I found he did not approve it in all its parts. He was willing to vote

men and money for defence of our territory, but was not prepared to make aggressive war on Mexico. . . . I inferred too, from his conversation that he did not think the territory of the United States extended west of the Nueces River.”³⁵ After war had been declared, however, Benton became quite enthusiastic. He advised Polk that a general-in-chief should be appointed, “a man of talents and resources as well as a military man,” and modestly intimated to the President that “if such an officer was created by Congress, he would be willing to accept the command himself.” Polk continues: “He [Benton] alluded to what was apparent to every one, that the Whigs were endeavoring to turn this war to party account. . . . I [Benton] have returned. . .to Washington to render you any aid in my power.”³⁶ Benton received an appointment but without the plenary powers which he desired. Congress was unwilling to create the office of lieutenant-general, to which Polk intended to appoint Benton. Polk did, however, appoint him major-general and his appointment was confirmed by the Senate, but Benton refused to accept unless he was placed in supreme command and also given full diplomatic powers. Polk concluded that he had no right to put him over the four major-generals already in the field.

Benton played the patriot and supported the war when it actually took place, but he was never reconciled to either the justice or the expediency of the enterprise, and repeatedly accused Calhoun of causing it.³⁷ From the day he opposed the Texan Treaty his enemies gave him no peace. “There is cogent logic,” ran an editorial of June, 1844, “as well as a severe rebuke in the . . . letter of the ‘Hero of New Orleans’ [Jackson’s letter of February, 1843, favoring annexation, which was published in 1844] that must have been gall and wormwood to Benton. Jackson has fixed the

stigma on Benton’s recreant brow—let it rest there forever.”³⁸ Other papers and individuals as well were disgusted with Benton’s stand on the whole Texan question.³⁹

The Compromise of 1850 was generally popular with the Missouri Democracy. Benton, however, opposed most of its provisions. He decried compromise on principle. “Clay is destroying the Union with his humbug compromises,” he wrote Clayton in December, 1850.⁴⁰ Among the provisions of the Compromise of 1850 which he disliked was that which dealt with slavery in the District of Columbia. He maintained that Congress had the power to abolish slavery in the District, “but,” he said, “I am one of those who believe that it ought not to be touched while slavery exists in the States from which the District was ceded.”⁴¹

Benton was also against “mixing up the question of admitting California with all the questions which slavery agitation has produced in the United States. . . . I asked for California a separate consideration.”⁴² He argued that slavery was already abolished in the territories acquired from Mexico. He then read the Mexican Decree of Emancipation of 1829 and the article of the Mexican constitution of 1843 which forbade slavery in all the Mexican territories. “The practical application which I make of this exposition of law is,” he continued, “that the proviso

[Wilmot’s] of which we have heard so much is of no force whatever—unnecessary from any point of view—and of no more effect, if passed, than a blank piece of paper pasted on the statute book.” He declared that positive law alone could introduce slavery into California and New Mexico.⁴³ Distasteful as this whole argument, with its conclusion, must have been to many of his constituents, Benton continued to preach it, and even elaborated it in his Jefferson City speech of May 26, 1849.⁴⁴

As to a fugitive slave law, Benton urged an “efficient and satisfactory” act, but “it must be as a separate and independent measure.” He believed that the seduction of slaves was “the only point . . . at which any of the non-slave-holding States, as States, have given just cause of complaint to the slave-holding States.”⁴⁵

When the movement for the acquisition of the 54:40 line and the demand for “all of Oregon” appeared, Benton was likewise in opposition while the Missourians clamored for the Columbia River country.⁴⁶ In his speech at Jefferson City, mentioned above, Benton said that his position on the slavery question had been consistent. “In my vote on the Oregon bill,” he declared, “in which I opposed the introduction of slavery there—and, again in my letter to the people of Oregon . . . I declared myself to be no propagandist of slavery.” He did not stop here, but openly decried the system: “My personal sentiments, then, are against the institution of slavery, and against its introduction

into places in which it does not now exist. If there was no slavery in Missouri today, I should oppose its coming in . . . as there is none in New Mexico and California I am against sending it to those territories.”⁴⁷

Regarding the question of slavery in, and the power of Congress over, the Territories, Benton gave out what must have been unpalatable doctrine to his Jefferson City hearers. “It is absurd,” he said, “to deny to Congress the power to legislate as it pleases upon the subject of slavery in the territories. . . . Congress has power to prohibit, or to admit slavery, and no one else.... Congress has the constitutional power to abolish slavery in [the] territories.”⁴⁸

Benton was no sentimental antislavery enthusiast. He had considerable slave property himself. “I was born to the inheritance of slaves,” he said, “and have never been without them. I bought some but only at their own entreaty. . . . I have sold some, but only for misconduct. I had two taken from me by the Abolitionists, and never inquired after them; and liberated a third who would not go with them. . . . I have slaves in Kentucky. . . . I have slaves in Washington City—perhaps the only member of Congress who has any there.”⁴⁹

Benton’s whole attitude toward slavery was open to the world, and must have been anything but satisfactory to an influential portion of his party. There is, therefore, a reasonable basis for supposing that the opposition to him might well have been based, not immediately perhaps, but certainly ultimately, on the slavery issue. Of course this was by no means the only motive that caused his defeat. The personal and political bitterness was deep-seated, but Benton himself always thought that it was the disunion faction headed by Calhoun which brought about his downfall.

To the southern radicals, with their doctrine of nullification and their hatred for his stalwart defence of the Union,

Benton laid the charge of seeking his ruin by undermining him at home. From the day when he and Jackson “were made friends together” the rift between the Jacksonian Unionists and the Calhoun “Nullifiers” was never closed. In the open Senate on March 2, 1847, Benton formally charged Calhoun with conspiring to consummate his defeat.⁵⁰ His speeches of the following years are burdened with the most abusive denunciations of Calhoun and the latter’s famous Resolutions of 1847, the prototype of the so-called “Missouri” or “Jackson” Resolutions to which attention will be called later.⁵¹ Benton so hated and abominated Calhoun that he severely criticized President Shannon of the State University for placing Calhoun’s newly published works in the University library.⁵² Calhoun, on his part, denied any complicity in the imaginary conspiracies to unseat Benton. “He [Benton] seems to think,” wrote the former, “I stand in his way, and that I am ever engaged in some scheme to put him down. I, on the contrary, have never for a moment thought of raising him to the level of a competitor, or rival; nor considered it of any importance to me whether he should be put down or not.”⁵³

There is some evidence, however, that Calhoun and other extreme southern leaders were at least corresponding with Benton’s enemies at home who had his defeat as their chief political goal. Judge W. C. Price of Springfield, who claims to have been Benton’s arch-opponent in Missouri, states that he opened the fight against Benton in 1844. The judge, according to his own story, was in constant communication with Calhoun, Davis, Benjamin, and other extremists of the South. He declared that it was in 1844, at a time when Benton refused to aid in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise

in order to save Missouri from a free-soil neighbor to the west, that he declared war on the latter and worked incessantly to undermine him.⁵⁴ These reminiscences need not be taken too seriously. Benton’s stand on the Texan Treaty had already given him bitter enemies,⁵⁵ and even earlier than this there was an active faction against him in his own party in the State. So perhaps Judge Price overestimated his own importance in claiming to be the “original” anti-Benton man.

There was in fact a distinct anti-Benton movement within the Democratic ranks of Missouri before the Texan Treaty came up. On July 5, 1843, one V. Ellis, a St. Louis Whig, wrote to George R. Smith relative to the appointment of certain Indian agencies, that “Benton’s days are numbered. V. Buren has no chance for the nomination . . . it shall not be my fault if things do not work right. Select Democrats in all cases, & such as are opposed to Benton.”⁵⁶ In March, 1844, Charles D. Drake sent out printed instructions for the Whigs in the approaching presidential election. The Whigs were to launch an aggressive campaign, and, by dividing the Democrats, win. “Is there, or can there be created, such a division,” said a portion of this suggestive query, “as would enable the Whigs by their votes to elect an anti-Benton man, . . . or if no anti-Benton man can be found, one who will go with us on these measures?”⁵⁷

Nevertheless, the stand of Benton on the Texas question can be considered as the real cause of the organized opposition. “Ever since 1844, when Mr. Benton commenced opposing the Democratic party and its great measure . . . the annexation of Texas,” said a published letter of 1857, “his followers have never doubted his position.”⁵⁸ On

October 1, 1844, Benton was severely criticized at Hannibal by one Davis, who answered him from the platform, and declared that “he was dissatisfied, and others were dissatisfied . . . with the Colonel’s [Benton’s] position on the subject of Texas.”⁵⁹

There is very substantial ground for presuming that Benton’s enemies took advantage of his position on the slavery question in general and used it as a lever. Senator Atchison implied as much in a speech at Platte City on September 26, 1849. He said: “I have been and am now making war on him [Benton], Free Soilism, Abolitionism, and all similar isms . . . and if he is not driven from the United States Senate, it will be no fault of mine?”⁶⁰ The observations of Montgomery Blair, a shrewd man of affairs, leave the impression that the slavery issue was by no means the sole root of Benton’s trouble. “I have no doubt,” he wrote Martin Van Buren from St. Louis early in 1849, just after the passage of the “Jackson” Resolutions, “but that we can sustain Col. Benton . . . his enemies are in the ascendant now in this State & it requires something potent to physic them with. Fortunately for him, I think, they have taken the Slavery chute, imagining that the safe channel, while the course of his old associates and his own

vote on the Oregon bill would they think effectually destroy him.”⁶¹

As above quoted, Montgomery Blair is casually stating to a personal friend that Benton’s enemies had chosen the “Slavery chute” as the most convenient exit by which to discharge him, evidently believing that Benton’s slavery policy was not the real cause of the attack upon him. Even one of Benton’s opponents, W. C. Price, acknowledged that it was not only because of their honest displeasure with his stand against slavery, but as much because of their jealousy of his dominance, that the enemies of Benton sought his downfall.⁶² Benton himself thought that the slavery issue was a mere subterfuge to place him in a bad position. Calhounism and secession appeared to him as the sole inspiration of his enemies. “The slavery question,” he wrote Clayton in 1855, “is a cover for the real motives which, with the politicians, [is] ambition—with the masses, [is] a belief that the Union works to the disadvantage of the South.”⁶³

The means used to force Benton to declare himself was the passage of the so-called “Jackson” Resolutions of 1849.⁶⁴ Frank Blair and his St. Louis Bentonites openly charged the anti-Benton faction with this intent. “His [Benton’s] friends will see at once,” was the statement by Blair, “that those most busy in Missouri, in denouncing the proviso, are none others than Benton’s old enemies, and although many of them are northern men, and must therefore be disinclined to the extension of slavery . . . it is

enough . . . that Benton voted for the proviso for Oregon, and denounced the attempt . . . to carry slavery to the Pacific shore.”⁶⁵

The “Jackson” or “Jackson-Napton” Resolutions have been discussed by almost every writer on Missouri history, hence elaborate consideration of the text of them would be out of place in a study merely of the slavery issue. Their origin, however, deserves attention. By chance Claiborne F. Jackson has often been given credit for these resolutions, but judge William B. Napton of Saline County, an old enemy of Benton, deserves the honor of originating them. The copy of a letter dated August 8, 1849, from Sterling Price to Benton conclusively proves that Napton was the author, although at the time he seems to have denied it. In this letter Sterling Price asserted that Napton drew them up during the winter of 1848-49 and told him (Price) that he expected that either Carty Wells or Claiborne F. Jackson would introduce them in the legislature.⁶⁶

On January 1, 1849, the resolutions were introduced in the Senate by none other than Carty Wells of Marion

County.⁶⁷ They were referred to the committee on Federal relations, and on January 15 were reported by its chairman, Claiborne F. Jackson.⁶⁸ This caused Jackson’s name to be associated with them. Parallel resolutions were introduced in the House of Representatives on January 5.⁶⁹ Amendments, substitutes, and counter-resolutions were offered by the Whigs, who opposed the measure in both houses. On March 6 Jones proposed that Benton be commended for his “long and brilliant career in the Senate,” whereupon Wilkerson offered an amendment approving of Senator Atchison’s political record “generally, and particularly his course in reference to the subject of slavery.”⁷⁰ On January 26 the resolutions⁷¹ as a whole passed the Senate by a

vote of 23 to 6, four members not being present.⁷² They passed the House on March 6 by a vote of 53 to 27, thirteen members being absent and sick.⁷³ Of these twenty-seven voting nay, Switzler, who was a Whig member, says that all but four were Whigs, and that seventeen members, all Whigs but two, voted “from first to last” against the resolutions.⁷⁴

Benton refused to stand by the instructions which the resolves embodied, and made his celebrated “Appeal” to the voters of the State.⁷⁵ On May 26 he delivered his

famous “Calhounic” at Jefferson City. He accused the South Carolinian of undermining him in Missouri, castigated his local enemies, and gave an exposition of his own views regarding slavery.⁷⁶ When Benton made his “Appeal,” not only he but as astute a politician as Montgomery Blair thought that he would be successful. “I have no doubt,” wrote Blair, “but that we can sustain Col. Benton in the doctrines here ascribed to him. . . . I think now that they [Benton’s enemies] have no longer the fostering care of Mr. Polk at Washington if Col. Benton will carry out his determination to visit the whole state [he will be able to] annihilate them with the questions which only need to be explained to be as strong with the people as the Bank question was. It must be confessed however that the work remains to be done, but I am strong in the faith that it will be accomplished.”⁷⁷ Two months later Blair was still sanguine, though he could not overlook the obstacles with which the old warrior’s way was beset. He wrote Van Buren: “I still think he will succeed although he has great difficulties to contend against,” the greatest of these difficulties being his absence from and loss of touch with local politics; in fact he had not “been in the State or made a political speech out of it for two years.”⁷⁸ Just after his Jefferson City speech Benton was full of cheer, and wrote to F. P.

Blair, Sr., “that he was never better received by his constituents.”⁷⁹ In December even the hopeful Blairs were anxiously fearing a coalition of Whigs and anti-Bentonites,⁸⁰ but as late as November, 1850, Benton wrote from Missouri that he was “victorious there.” The two younger Blairs, however, were fearing that the “best that can happen will be no election.”⁸¹ Although Benton was defeated and a Whig took the seat he had so honored for thirty years, he was far from politically dead, as he himself viewed the situation. The fierce torrent which swirled about his “Appeal” was to convulse Missouri and split his party beyond repair.

It is not the aim of this paper to follow Benton’s campaign during 1849-50, but it is of importance to learn something of the influence of his “Appeal” in moulding later politics. In his Jefferson City speech he admitted that he had “no idea that the mass of the members who voted for the resolutions in the last General Assembly, had any idea that they were Calhoun’s, or considered the dissolution of the Union which they announced, as a thing in actual contemplation. But they are not the less injurious on that account. They are the act of the General Assembly, and stand for the act of the State, and bind it to the car of Mr. Calhoun.”⁸² Nevertheless, in his speech at Fayette on September 1, 1849, he took a different view. “The whole conception, concoction, and passage of the resolutions,” he said, “was done upon conspiracy, perfected by fraud. It was a plot to get

me out of the Senate and out of the way of the disunion plotters.”⁸³

During this campaign Benton was at once so extravagantly lauded and so scorchingly condemned that it is very hard to discern the real motives of the contestants. “We have already noticed the difficulty,” said an editorial in the Missouri Republican of September 10, 1849, “which attends our purpose to give a faithful history of the quarrels between Benton and his enemies in this State.” A fair idea of the furor which swept over the State can be gained from the following account of a meeting held in St. Louis, February 12, 1849. “The meeting was organized amid much confusion,” and a committee was appointed to draft resolutions. The committee reported a series of resolutions declaring for the power of Congress over the Territories, denouncing the late Washington convention of southern men as a “Hartford Convention,” and praising Benton for seeing the imminent danger which was threatening the Union. Amid confusion Mr. Hoyt offered the late (” Jackson”) resolutions of the legislature. These were laid on the table by “a large majority.” After this the Benton resolutions were carried.⁸⁴ Throughout the State, resolves were drafted favoring Benton and condemning him. Letters attacking him and letters taking his part and prints of speeches pro and con crowd the press of the years 1849-53. The editorial comments are at times so vitriolic as to appear amusing to those living in an age when personalities are not so important in polities.⁸⁵

The swirl of excitement engulfed even the Whigs themselves. “And the Whigs,” wrote a contemporary, “were to some extent divided into Benton and Anti-Benton Whigs, designations which attached to the one segment or the other according to the intensity of its pro-slavery or anti-slavery sentiments.”⁸⁶ One gets a good deal of light on the position of the Whigs in this contest from the reply of James S. Rollins to Goode, a St. Louis Whig.

Mr. Goode: “Though there was nothing in the resolutions [“Jackson”] in which he did not heartily concur, yet he deemed their introduction at the time was inexpedient.”

Mr. Rollins: “Every Whig in the General Assembly except the gentleman from Scott, (Mr. Darnes) voted against those resolutions when they were introduced. Their action was endorsed by every Whig newspaper in the State. Every Whig of prominence and distinction in Missouri sustained the action of their Representatives in this hall. Including our distinguished candidate for the Senate (Col. Doniphan).”

Mr. Dames said that the Whigs had approved his vote (above) and that “at public meetings of Whigs held shortly after the resolutions were passed in support of the Jackson resolutions and of his action in that hall.”

Mr. Rollins: “But on that particular occasion I was with Col. Benton. The Whig party of Missouri was with Col. Benton upon that question, and against the anti-Benton wing of the Democratic party. I condemned the Jackson resolutions because they sprung a baleful agitation upon the State, and also because they embodied nullification and tended to disunion . . . the Whigs were united almost to a man on this question.⁸⁷

The effects of Benton’s “Appeal” were most important. The Democratic party was so riven by hatred and bitterness that the cleavage between slavery and antislavery became more and more distinct. Benton’s failure of reelection in 1851 but aroused him and his friends to carry the war to the last extremity. To “put down Benton” was easier than to eradicate the force and pertinacity of his followers. Henceforward the anti-Bentonites became the active proslavery organization, although by no means a secession party.

For years the Democratic party was in a precarious condition. The Napton Resolutions were the rocks on which the party was shattered. Yet despite dangers at the hands of the jubilant Whigs, one wing of the Democrats, led by Frank Blair, risked party success to repeal them. The Claiborne F. Jackson faction held solid for no retraction. The legislative session of 1852-53 was disrupted by the “irrepressible” resolutions and by the three-cornered fight for the speakership between Bentonites, anti-Bentonites, and Whigs. The power of Congress over slavery in the Territories also embittered the partisans, “the animus of the discussion foreshadowing to many the terrible catastrophe in which our national troubles culminated in 1861.⁸⁸

The Democratic party longed for peace but found it not. On December 22, 1851, the Democracy of Oregon County passed resolutions declaring that, whereas the divisions in the party had given the Whigs a senator and three congressmen, “unless these unhappy divisions are amicably adjusted . . . the Whigs will have both the executive and the legislature of the State.”⁸⁹ A Platte County gathering of January 8, 1852, begged for a healing of the schism.⁹⁰ For weeks the press was full of accounts of similar pleas. But as much as they loved peace and harmony they loved principle more. The Democrats of Ray,⁹¹ Osage, Cooper, Boone, Lafayette, Randolph, Monroe,⁹² and other counties determined “to lay aside personal animosities and petty bickerings,” but at the same time declared plainly that the instruction of senators and even of representatives was “a vital principle of republicanism.”

The Democratic state convention met at Jefferson City on April 5, and the party seemed again united.⁹³ Candidates were nominated, and a solid front was arrayed to meet the Whigs. Colonel Lewis V. Bogy was nominated to represent St. Louis in Congress. Even the St. Louis Democracy on April 24, under the leadership of Frank Blair, B. Gratz Brown, and Trusten Polk, swore to support the ticket.⁹⁴ But the pipe of peace was rudely knocked from the lips of the sanguine politicians. Benton announced his independent candidacy for Congress. The whole conflict now reopened.

The Bentonites struck at the Napton Resolutions.⁹⁵ On February 1, 1853, Frank Blair in a long speech moved the repeal of the resolutions, declaring they “did not express the sentiments of the people of this State.”⁹⁶ A week later Claiborne F. Jackson reviewed Benton’s whole career as an antislavery statesman.⁹⁷ On the 15th the rescinding resolution was tabled by a vote of 72 to 49.⁹⁸ The resolutions therefore remained, and along with them the ill-feeling.

The Whigs loved not the Napton Resolutions, but they loved still less Democratic peace and harmony. “We always opposed making these questions [Napton Resolutions] a test of orthodoxy in the whig ranks,” declared the Hannibal Journal. “Besides, if the whigs were to repeal these resolutions, the only bone of contention would be taken from the democratic ranks, and the cohesive power of public plunder would bring their disjointed ranks together, and then the Whigs might bid adieu to all hope of ever getting power in this State.”⁹⁹ Other Whig papers agreed with the journal, while some favored the repeal of the resolutions.¹⁰⁰

With his election to Congress in 1852 Benton opened his agitation for the “Central National Highway to the Pacific.” But even this popular issue could not save him. In 1854 he was defeated for reelection to Congress, and two years later failed in his efforts to become governor. Benton was a

fighter and never knew when he was beaten. His Jackson Unionism was out of date. His revenge, however, was sweet, for David R. Atchison, his inveterate enemy, was as politically dead as himself,—so dead that, as Frank Blair said, “We have ceased to look at the spot where he went down.”¹⁰¹ Against Benton’s protests the Missouri Compromise was repealed, but his enemies merely digged their own pit, for Kansas was soon filled with abolitionists. So passes Thomas Hart Benton from the field of Missouri politics, of which for thirty years he had been the master. With him passed the Democrats who believed in the Union at any price. Following Benton came the most passionate period of Missouri history.¹⁰²

The Whigs were the conservative force in Missouri politics, but the Kansas convulsion loosened many of them from their ancient moorings. On the slavery issue that party, like Benton, largely favored moderation. They prided themselves on their sound financial tenets. Agitation they naturally shunned. “Resolved, That we are equally opposed to the abolitionists of the North, and the Nullifiers of the South, as enemies of the Union, and will hold no political communion with either,” said the Daviess County Whig convention declaration of 1852.¹⁰³ Fifty of the sixty Whig members of the legislature met on Christmas day, 1854, and, after condemning those who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and those who sought to defeat the purpose of the Fugitive Slave Law, declared unanimously that they would support no candidates tarred with the free soil or the abolition stick.¹⁰⁴

James S. Rollins was the intellectual leader of the Whigs for years. His statement of the orthodox Whig position on slavery is as follows: “I will reiterate what I consider to be the correct doctrine upon the subject of slavery,” he said to a joint session of the legislature in 1855; “Congress . . .

has the power to legislate in the territories. . . . But if Congress has the power, as I believe it has, to legislate upon the slavery in the territories, justice, honor and expediency forbid its exercise.... Upon the question of slavery, I think, I may safely say, that the great Whig party of Missouri, is sound and conservative, ready to resist illegal Northern aggression and abolitionism on the one hand, and to suppress Southern fanaticism and nullification on the other. Above all things the people want repose upon this question. The safety of their property, the integrity of the Union, and the permanency of the Government itself, cries aloud against further agitation! Let it cease!” Mr. Rollins then read a resolution which had been previously drawn up for a Boone County meeting, and “which,” he said, “I believe embodies on this question the Whig sentiments of this State.” This document is as follows: “Resolved, That although the people of this State have always been willing to abide by the Missouri Compromise, yet believing the best and only method of settling the slavery question is to submit it to the judgment of the people; we approve of the establishment of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska with the power of the people who settle in those territories to regulate the subject of slavery within their limits according to their own pleasure.”¹⁰⁵

The Whigs as a party never admitted that slavery was anything but a personal matter. They would not allow their party to become an instrument for or against it. “There is a Whig ticket for the City of St. Louis,” caustically remarked an antislavery German editor, “upon which appear the proud names of slave-raising millionaires, and millionaire slave-raisers, and at the head of them is Luther M. Kennett.”¹⁰⁶

The American party of Missouri, composed largely of old-time Whip, was also far from favorable to the antislavery program. At a Boone County meeting held on February 4, 1856, resolutions were adopted condemning congressional interference with slavery in the Territories, advocating the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, and pleading for a cessation of slavery agitation.¹⁰⁷

A great force in Missouri politics, especially during the fifties, was the German element of St. Louis. Detesting slavery and slaveholders on the one hand, and hating still more what they thought slavery stood for—disunion—they became active antislavery agitators. The old southern portion of the State was both shocked and outraged by these uncouth iconoclasts, many of whom had little respect for a slaveholding aristocracy, Calhoun politics, or the Puritan Sabbath.¹⁰⁸ Boernstein of the Anzeiger des Westens was exceptionally obnoxious to the proslavery people. “The tremendous majority of the citizens of our State are tired of the improper influence of the Slavocratic interest. They are not willing any longer to be tyrannized by a few thousand slaveholders,” declared the Anzeiger in 1854.¹⁰⁹ The

Germans do not seem to have advocated an unqualified abolition program. “We are for the abolition of slavery in Missouri, but only constitutionally and in a manner to pay due respect to the just claims of the citizens of the State,” explained the Anzeiger.¹¹⁰ “On the subject of slavery, being an institution recognized by the laws of the country,” stated the Volksblatt in 1856, “although we would favor a plan for gradual emancipation, we are against any forcible and unconstitutional interference for its abolition. And, therefore we are decidedly opposed to the Abolition party.”¹¹¹

The Germans even held slaves in some cases. In 1860 nineteen Germans of St. Louis paid taxes on forty out of the thirteen hundred and eighty-three slaves taxed in the city. Of these German slavemasters O. C. Schauenburg led with six negroes, C. W. Gauss was second with five, and George Heise and J. R. Lienberger were taxed on three each.¹¹² When the South seceded, the Germans, with hardly an exception, supported the Union. Of the 10,730 Federal

volunteers raised in St. Louis in 1861 four fifths, according to the state adjutant general’s report of that year, were Germans.¹¹³ One German writer boasts that his countrymen who did not support the Union could be counted on his fingers.¹¹⁴

Throughout the slavery period the subject of emancipation was unceasingly preached by an ever active minority, while, on the other hand, a mighty effort was made to keep the agitation out of politics. “Our own representative, the Hon. Willard P. Hall, is a slave holder both in theory & practice,” wrote Adam Klippel of St. Joseph to Salmon P. Chase in 1849, “and although his constituents, by a large majority, are non-slaveholding, yet he never dares to speak a word in favor of freedom.”¹¹⁵ “We do not apprehend much trouble from the slavery question,” said a St. Louis editor the same year, “for . . . the great majority of our citizens look upon the subject as we do: that it is more dangerous for the politicians than for the people at large.”¹¹⁶ On the other hand, the St. Louis newspaper, the Organ, in this same year claimed that there was a widespread desire for emancipation in the State and that “not a single paper in Missouri, out of St. Louis, condemns or disapproves the agitation of the question.”¹¹⁷ From the evidence touched upon in foregoing pages it is clear that this editor did not know the rural press of the State. The conservative old paper, the Republican, ever counseled caution and deprecated agitation.

In spite of all caution, the activity of the great anti-slavery leaders, Frank Blair, B. Gratz Brown, Boernstein, and George R. Smith, continually brought the disagreeable spectre before the people. Evidently Gratz Brown’s electorate in St. Louis favored his views. “I sent you a few days since a copy of my remarks upon the Emancipation resolutions,” he wrote George R. Smith in 1857. “It was a startling speech to the House in some respects, and took the opposition members by surprise. In St. Louis I hear it raised quite a furor. . . . It was framed principally as you will see from reading it to suit my own meridian, but I am sanguine enough to hope that it will not be without good effect even in other counties of Missouri.”¹¹⁸

The extent of emancipation sentiment during the last years of the slavery regime in Missouri cannot be measured either in its volume or in its intensity. The opinion is often advanced that the State was ready for emancipation at any time between 1804 and 1860, but that the attitude of the antislavery faction caused justifiable resentment on the part of the slaveholders. “Let it be understood,” said a pro-slavery contemporary many years later, “that Missourians did not so much oppose the emancipation of their slaves as they did the means used to accomplish it. For thousands of slave holders believed that the abolition of slavery would be a blessing both to the slave and to the master, if it could be done in a lawful and peaceable way. . . . For ten years before the war it was a foregone conclusion with intelligent classes that slavery would be abolished in Missouri, and a system of free labor adopted that would be more successful in developing the resources of the State.”¹¹⁹ It is doubtful if this writer would have made the above statement in slavery days. Such musings were common after slavery was dead and the success of free labor realized in Missouri. The mass of slave-owners were well satisfied with their property, and bitterly resented any hint that emancipation

was either advisable or possible, especially if the negroes were to remain in the State after being liberated.

The proslavery leaders at the time denied that slavery was a burden either economically or socially. The Address of the Lexington Pro-Slavery Convention to the People of the United States, drawn up by Sterling Price, Judge W. B. Napton, and others, mentioned the fact that the idea was prevalent “that Missouri contained but a small slave population, and that the permanence of this institution here was threatened by the existence of at least a respectable minority of her citizens . . . we think it proper to state, that the idea above alluded to is unfounded; and that no respectable party can be found in this State, outside of St. Louis, prepared to embark in any such schemes. In that city . . . it will not seem surprising that its wild and heterogeneous population should furnish a foothold for the wildest and most visionary projects.”¹²⁰

One of the great slavery advocates of the State in the late fifties was Senator Green. In the United States Senate on May 18, 1858, he said: “It has been my privilege to live there [in Missouri] nearly twenty years, to mix freely with the people of all classes. . . . I know it [sentiment in Missouri] to be exactly the reverse of what he [Senator King] represents it. . . . The public common sentiment of the people of the State is for peace, for law, . . . and to abide by our institutions as they are, . . . I undertake to say that the sentiment to which the Senator alludes in the State of Missouri is exceptionally small.”¹²¹ “Emancipation! a new word in our political discussions; a new theme in this State for the contemplation of the people,” exclaimed W. F. Switzler in a joint session of the legislature in 1857.¹²² The following year Switzler repeated his statement, and claimed that not fifteen thousand voters could be found in the State who favored emancipation.¹²³

Although the active emancipation party in Missouri in the late fifties was comparatively small, it was menacing. The General Assembly felt called upon to denounce the movement. On February 10, 1857, Carr introduced the following resolution in the Senate: “Be it therefore Resolved, That the emancipation of all the slaves held as property in this State, would not only be unpracticable, but any movement having such an end in view, would be inexpedient, impolitic, unwise, and unjust, and should, in the opinion of the General Assembly be discountenanced by the people of the State.” This declaration passed the Senate by a vote of 25 to 4, seven members being absent or not voting.¹²⁴ It passed the House by a majority of 107 to 12, thirteen members being absent or not voting.¹²⁵

A general spirit of intolerance toward agitators was manifested during the last decade of the slavery regime in Missouri. The State University was in a condition of unrest for years. President James Shannon, who had served as a minister of the Christian Church and as president of a denominational college in Kentucky, was accused of preaching sectarianism and proslavery politics in the classroom. On December 22, 1852, a committee was appointed by the Senate, and on January 25, 1853, one was named by the House, to examine the university.¹²⁶ A report was made on February 24, signed by five of the faculty and many students, declaring that the charges were false.¹²⁷

Early in 1856 a student of Bethany College named Barns lectured on “Liberty.” A reporter stated that Barns was offensive to the proslavery people, and fled after receiving threatening letters. The reporter, however, declared that

Barns was not badly used, but craved martyrdom.¹²⁸ One Ross, a temperance lecturer, in 1855 created “quite a row” in Howard, Boone, and Cooper Counties by his antislavery utterances, but there was no proof that he was an abolitionist. His relatives were told to watch him lest he get into trouble.¹²⁹ In April, 1855, at Chillicothe, a Christian minister, the Reverend David White, was ordered to leave the county as his sermons were “strongly tinctured with Abolition sentiments.” A vigilance committee was appointed to carry out the decrees of the protesting citizens.¹³⁰

Even some of the most ardent emancipationists of the Civil War period, the “Charcoalers” of 1863, were far from being abolitionists at this time. General George R. Smith, who with Charles D. Drake led the unconditional emancipationists later, resented bitterly being styled an abolitionist in 1856. “I have never either published or charged you privately with being an abolitionist,” indignantly wrote Silas H. Woodson to Smith on July 1, 1856; “I am mortified and astonished that you should become so evidently disaffected toward me on the strength of rumor.”¹³¹

One fact which should always be kept in mind is that secession and slavery bore no close relation to one another in Missouri. Out of a total poll of 166,518 in 1860, Breckinridge received but 31,317 votes, while Lincoln received but 17,028.¹³² A year later, however, the Camp Jackson affair considerably changed sentiment in favor of the South. It is very unsafe to gauge sentiment by count of votes, especially at a presidential election, yet to realize the conservative nature of the Missourians when it came to a clear division one has but to glance at the combined vote of the radicals, Breckinridge and Lincoln, in comparison with the 117,173 votes received by Douglas and Bell, or to turn back to 1857

when Stewart defeated Rollins by only 334 votes for governor in a State which was considered strongly Democratic.¹³³ The slaveholding Missourian of the fifties valued his property, and he longed for peace. If national issues—the tariff, the currency, internal improvements—were temporarily submerged, the slaveholder turned to a candidate who would secure the integrity of existing conditions. Slavery may have been the ultimate but it certainly was not the immediate cause of the Civil War as far as Missouri was concerned.