MISSOURI AND KANSAS

maximum of thirty-nine stripes.⁴⁰ The county patrols were established in 1837. The act gave the county court power to appoint township patrols to serve for one year. The stripes to be given by a justice were reduced to a maximum of twenty. This law was reenacted in 1845, and again in 1855.⁴¹ Cities had their own systems of slave regulation. As early as 1811 a patrol was established in St. Louis to arrest stray negroes and prevent fires in slave cabins after dark.⁴² Jefferson City in 1836 passed an ordinance which was very similar to the county patrol act.⁴³ The same year a supplementary ordinance was published which compelled all citizens, under a penalty, to aid the patrol if called upon.⁴⁴

The courts seem to have been rigid in interpreting the laws covering slave escapes. Steamboats as well as ferryboats and other small craft were held to be under the statute.⁴⁵ It was not necessary to prove that the captain of the boat knew that the negro he carried was a slave.⁴⁶ The owner of the steamboat was liable for the value of the negro if the latter was carried off by the carelessness of the captain in permitting the slave to ship.⁴⁷ Later still it was held that the

owner was responsible even when the captain did not know that the slave was on board, unless the captain used proper care to guard against such an occurrence—“that degree of care . . . that prudent men would take in conducting their own affairs.”⁴⁸ The shipowner was held responsible not only for the carelessness of his agent, the captain,⁴⁹ but also for that of the boat’s clerk if the latter took money for the slave’s passage, which fact was considered sufficient proof of trespass.⁵⁰

The strictness with which the courts applied the law is illustrated by a case from the Buchanan circuit court, as reported in a newspaper of 1855: “Dr. Fox’s slave—a negro girl—was decoyed on board the Aubrey [at St. Joseph] by the watchman of the boat in the night time without the knowledge or consent of the commander or any of his subordinates. . . . No moral delinquency is attributed to any officer of the Aubrey, except the watchman and he had been very promptly discharged. The girl was found on board between this city and Boonville, and as soon as discovered was immediately secured and afterwards placed in jail at that place, by Mr. Glime (chief clerk) who also from that place sent telegraphic dispatches to Dr. Fox, and the agents of the boat . . . by which means the slave was promptly restored to her owner. . . . This case . . . has been completely and amicably settled; the defendant having paid to the plaintiff the sum of $450, and the plaintiff having given a full release of all claims against the boat.”⁵¹ This shows that the risk of escape, undoubtedly increased by the proximity of St. Joseph to the then turbulent Kansas, had affected the courts to such an extent that heavy damages were paid in a case where it was acknowledged that “no moral delinquency” existed, and where the defendants had done everything to right the matter, including the immediate return of the slave.

Perhaps Missouri suffered, especially during the fifties, from loss of slave property as did no other border State. The Underground Railroad ran into the State from three sides, and its service appears to have been efficient. “The Underground Railroads,” declared Trusten Polk in the United States Senate in 1861, “start mostly from these [the border] states. Hundreds of dollars are lost annually. And no state loses more than my own. Kentucky it is estimated, loses annually as much as $200,000. The other border states no doubt in the same ratio. Missouri much more.”⁵² As early as 1847 the legislature memorialized Congress for a better treaty of rendition, “as the citizens of this State are annually subjected to heavy losses of property, by the escape of their slaves, who pass through the State of Illinois, and finally find a secure place of refuge in Canada.”⁵³ In 1846 a mass-meeting of St. Louis citizens was held in the court house “to devise ways and means to protect their slave property in this city and county.”⁵⁴ “When,” mourns a Boone County editor in 1853, “will the abominable system of man-stealing, practiced by a portion of our northern people, find their operations checkmated and discountenanced by that professedly Christian and law-abiding people?”⁵⁵

The loss of negroes by escape became unbearable as a result of the filling of Kansas by antislavery settlers, and the subject deserves attention at this point. The question of the real motive or motives behind the settlement of Kansas and the struggle which resulted has been a fruitful subject of debate. Many writers, especially those with antislavery leanings, have maintained that the whole affair from the conception of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise to the

admission of Kansas as a State was an organized effort of the slave States to expand their territory.⁵⁶ Slaveholding Missourians, however, have always asserted that from the standpoint of Missouri proslavery people it was purely a defensive movement to conserve existing slave property and an existing slave society. The present writer has come to the conclusion that as far as Missouri was concerned this latter argument is in the main correct, no matter what territorial ambitions to spread may have moved the South as a whole. While it cannot be denied that many Missourians had the desire to enlarge the slave power, yet one thing is certain, that outside of the Missouri counties near or immediately bordering on the Kansas line—Jackson, Pratte, Clay, Ray, Holt, Buchanan, and so on,—sentiment for action was sluggish, and only fiery stump oratory and a wild plea from the radical press, both Democratic and Whig, aroused the populace to activity. As will be seen in the sequel, very few permanent settlers ever went from Missouri to Kansas with their slaves, and this is the chief argument against the contention that Missourians were engaged in a general offensive movement toward Kansas in order to spread slave territory.

No matter how greatly many Missourians may have craved the rich prairies of Kansas as a field of exploitation for their black labor, it appears that their first thought was to defend what they already possessed. An observing man like W. F. Switzler dwells upon this point, but makes no mention of any idea of expansion.⁵⁷ “When Missourians have seen her citizens robbed of their property,” wrote J.

Locke Hardeman of Saline County in June, 1855, “and members insulted and imprisoned for merely appealing to the laws of the land that proposes to guarantee the rights of property. . . . What shall Missourians do? . . . If Kansas be settled by Abolitionists, can Missouri remain a slave State? If Missouri goes by the board what will become of Kentucky? Maryland? Virginia?”⁵⁸ Senator David R. Atchison as early as 1853 saw the real danger clearly. “Will you sit here at home,” he said in a speech at Weston, “and permit the nigger thieves, the cattle, the vermin of the North to come into Nebraska . . . run off with your negroes and depreciate the value of your slaves. . . . But we will repeal the Compromise. I would sooner see the whole of Nebraska in the bottom of hell than see it a Free State.”⁵⁹

Undoubtedly Atchison made this passionate plea to arouse feeling, but the very fact that emotion could be aroused by harping on this string makes it appear evident that the fear for property was stronger than the wish to expand slave territory. The first was a less abstract and less distant proposition. The antislavery forces of Missouri realized the whole situation. Kansas as a free State meant eventually a free Missouri. “So soon as Kansas will have constituted herself a free state,” confidently boasted the Anzeiger des Westens in 1858, “slavery must fall in Missouri.”⁶⁰

It is not the purpose of this study to follow all of the struggles that Missouri experienced in her antebellum days, but simply to attempt to explain the motives of those actions which are related to the slavery issue. Others have sketched the development of the general agitation for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and its immediate effect upon Kansas.⁶¹ Here will be considered only the movement within the State, which practically begins on January 2, 1849, when the state Senate passed a resolution declaring that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional and void, and holding “Squatter Sovereignty” to be an axiom. “Whether the slave, or the free States,” said this statement, “are willing to abide by said act, as a compromise, or not, is a matter of perfect indifference to the people of the territories. Their right to self-government is wholly independent of all such compromises.”⁶² This idea is in harmony with the Napton Resolutions, which were before the legislature at the same time. An anti-Benton wing of the Democratic party consistently hammered away on this theme. Even Atchison was taken unawares, and seems to have lost courage. In his Fayette speech late in 1853 he refused to vote for the organization of the Nebraska Territory till the Compromise

of 1820 should be repealed.⁶³ Benton’s plea for the organization of the Kansas country as a necessity for developing his “Central National Highway from the Mississippi to the Pacific” was most warmly advocated by his supporters, the Missouri Democrat and the Jefferson Inquirer.⁶⁴ On January 9, 1854, Frank Blair, Gratz Brown, and others declared at a meeting of St. Louis Democrats that they regarded “all who oppose it [the immediate organization of Nebraska Territory] upon whatever pretext, as hostile to the best interest of this State.”⁶⁵

Whatever may have been the sincerity of the sparring between Benton and Atchison, it is evident that many Missourians emphatically demanded the opening of Kansas. Was this an economic desire for the spread of hemp culture by Missouri slavemasters, or was it to forestall the possible free-state emigration? Both of these elements entered into the situation. Ray gives a number of contemporary quotations to prove that the desire of Missourians for the rich Kansas hemp lands was the cause of the whole movement.⁶⁶ Besides the statements noted by Ray several others could be mentioned,

but they are so few that it seems evident that the hemp issue was a minor one.⁶⁷ The Parkville Industrial Luminary and the St. Joseph Commercial Cycle preached hemp lands and Kansas with a vim, but otherwise there was little advocacy of such a program. These prints apparently were more deeply engaged in rousing the Missourians to settle the Territory than in giving them disinterested advice.

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened Kansas to slavery under the “Squatter Sovereignty” policy, was enthusiastically supported by the anti-Benton Democrats and many of the Whigs of the State. All of the Missourians in Congress save

Benton voted for the measure.⁶⁸ The Whigs of Boone County declared in March, 1854, that they approved “of the establishment of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, with power in the people who may settle in those Territories to regulate the subject of slavery within their own limits according to their own pleasure.”⁶⁹ “Resolved that the Whigs of Marion County are in favor of the immediate organization of the Nebraska Territory,” said another statement, “and that we indorse and are in favor of the bill now pending.”⁷⁰ Similar resolutions were passed by the fourth Congregational Whig convention meeting at Plattsburg, July 8, 1854.⁷¹ Fifty of the sixty Whigs in the legislature met on Christmas day, 1854, and unanimously decreed that they would support only such candidates as acquiesced in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.⁷² The party as a whole seems to have been a unit on this question.

The anti-Benton Democrats were especially hostile toward the Compromise of 1820. “There is no power given Congress to say that slavery shall exist on one side of a line of latitude and shall not on the other,” read Governor Sterling Price’s message of December 25, 1854, “and hence in my opinion, that clause of the Missouri act was a nullity.”⁷³ The press of the period was burdened with Democratic resolutions favoring the repeal. In St. Louis a meeting of second ward Democrats declared on June 3, 1854, that they “congratulate the country on the cheering fact that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill is now the law of the land.”⁷⁴ Democratic expressions similar to the above are numerous. On the other hand, the Benton Democrats—Frank Blair, B. Gratz Brown, and others—were implacable enemies of the repeal.

Benton was most vociferous in condemning the attack on the Missouri Compromise, which he always considered a sacred compact. However, in 1855, the year following the repeal, his supporters claimed that he deserted this position and betrayed them as a bid for Missouri favor.⁷⁵ Whether this is true or not, it but proves the popularity of the repeal in the State.

When Kansas was once open to settlement, its future status as a slave or a free State depending on whether pro-slavery or antislavery votes were in the majority when the constitution was adopted, events took place with great rapidity. In the late summer of 1853 colonists had arrived from Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri, although lands were not yet “subject to lawful settlement.”⁷⁶ Some proslavery people at first looked upon efforts to make Kansas a free State as harmless. “Doubtless many more will be sent out to Kansas by these Societies of the North with a view of making Kansas a free State. . . . But we do not at present believe they will be able to accomplish it,” the St. Joseph Gazette said.⁷⁷ The correspondent of the Republican wrote his sheet from Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, on December 17, 1854, that “notwithstanding the Aid Societies have poured in hordes of her paupers for the purpose of Abolitionizing Kansas, they either become initiated in our institutions, or leave as soon as they arrive. Now, if the South does her duty, and especially Missouri, the Northern hope of Abolitionizing Kansas, will be a phantom hope.”⁷⁸

Missouri was soon called upon by the radical press and by “Atchison, Stringfellow & Co.” to do her “duty.” Jackson, Platte, Clinton, and other western counties by resolution and by organization condemned the settlement of Kansas by northern immigrants, and advocated proslavery action.⁷⁹ On July 29, 1854, a large meeting was addressed at Weston by Atchison. B. F. and J. H. Stringfellow, and George Galloway were present. Here the “Platte County Self Defensive Association” was formed. By resolution it was determined that the settlers sent out by the Emigrant Aid Society were to be turned back. The Defensive Association was to hold public meetings, urge the settlement of Kansas by proslavery men, and guard the territorial elections against frauds. The Kansas League, a subsidiary institution composed chiefly of the same persons, was formed to carry out the decrees of the association. It worked in secret, was bound by an oath, held meetings in the night, suppressed antislavery newspapers, and silenced Northern Methodist ministers.⁸⁰ The anti-Atchison forces answered by calling the Law and Order meeting at Weston on September 1. Their declaration was signed by one hundred and thirty-three citizens. They declared their loyalty to the General Government and their opposition to “violence and menace.”⁸¹

The slave interests of the State were now thoroughly aroused. On December 28, 1854, Mothersead of Gentry

County submitted five resolutions to the House of Representatives which declared that “the law organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska maintains the equality of the States, and the justice of the Constitution, and therefore demands our decided approval,” and “That the State of Missouri as a slave State, and from local position, is deeply interested in the character of the Government that is instituted in Kansas Territory, and that it is the duty of the State and her citizens, to use all means, consistent with the Constitution . . . to prevent, if possible, that beautiful country becoming an asylum for abolitionists and free-soilers, to harass and destroy our peace and safety.”⁸² Appeals were now made by the proslavery party for emigrants. “You can without exertion send 500 of your young men who will vote in favor of your institution,” pleaded Atchison at Platte City on November 6, 1854 “Should each county in the state of Missouri only do its duty the question will be decided quietly and peaceably at the ballot box.”⁸³ The press now loudly called for volunteer voters for Kansas. “Will Kansas be a free or a slave State?” queried the Liberty Tribune in the autumn of 1854, and continued: “Citizens of Missouri you must ACT . . . you must go to Kansas; nothing else will do . . . you must go to Kansas NOW, for an election is soon to take place for a Delegate to Congress and the Territorial Legislature, and it is all important that the Abolitionists should be defeated in the first election, for by the Territorial law their Legislature can exclude slavery . . . you must nip the thing in the bud.⁸⁴ “The hour for action in Kansas is at hand,” was the clarion cry of a St. Joseph Whig editor in March, 1855, “and we call every free voter to the polls! to the polls!! to the polls!!! . . . Let the minion of . . . his Aid Society stand back until he has redeemed the birthright he ignominiously sold, by a service of hard labor in tilling

the soil of Kansas.”⁸⁵ The Richmond Weekly Mirror was comforted by the fact that “Missouri and the entire South are awake to a sense of their danger,” and it bade God-speed to the departing voters. It advised the emigrants, however, to settle in Kansas and thereby become legal voters.⁸⁶ In Ray County six local meetings were held in February, 1855, and a call was made for voters to go to Kansas for the March election.⁸⁷ The practice at local county meetings was to elect delegates who would go to Kansas to vote. Yet for some the movement was too slow. The young bloods were dissatisfied with the efforts of their elders. On March 17 a body of the State University students assembled under the lead of Adjunct-Professor B. S. Head. They criticized the apathy of the Kansas meeting held the same day in Columbia, and passed the following declaration: “Be it resolved That we the youth of the South having within our bosoms a spark left of that patriotic spirit that fired the minds . . . of our Revolutionary sires . . . do hereby express our condemnation of the course . . . pursued by those whose age and mature judgment should have prompted them to set a nobler example to the rising generation.” They passed a resolution to send a delegate voter to Kansas.⁸⁸

At the time the Missourians made no denial of voting in Kansas and leaving that territory immediately afterward. They claimed that they were simply counteracting the deceitful and illegal action of the Emigrant Aid Society. In May the St. Joseph Commercial Cycle resented Governor Reeder’s statement that the Missourians had carried the Kansas election

by “fraud, violence, and corruption.” “We hurl back upon the head of this debased wretch, the vile slander which none but he . . . would proclaim to the world.” That any fraud or violence was committed was flatly denied. “The people of Missouri were present at many of the precincts . . . to see that quiet and order might prevail.”⁸⁹ The Liberty Tribune declared that Missourians voted in Kansas, “but only those who considered Kansas their home, and who were staying temporarily in Missouri, in order to shelter their families.”⁹⁰ Colonel D. C. Allen of Liberty stated that the Missourians went to Kansas feeling that they were justified, as the South considered that the North had broken a tacit agreement in engulfing Kansas after being given Nebraska. “There can be no doubt of there being secret organizations to secure votes in Kansas,” he said. A Lexington editor in May, 1855, declared that the able-bodied males of that place had all gone to Kansas with a sense of deep sacrifice to the cause of the South.⁹¹

Endeavors were also made to colonize Kansas with slave-holders as the only permanent means of securing victory. The St. Joseph Commercial Cycle on October 12, 1855, agitated “a tax of one or two per cent, on all . . . real and personal property for the purpose of colonizing one thousand proslavery men in Kansas.”⁹² Silas Woodson and others issued a call for a meeting to consider an organization for

this purpose,⁹³ and on December 31, 1855, the “Proslavery Aid Society” of Buchanan County was formed. Shares were to be sold as stock at twenty-five dollars each. Biennial meetings were to be held at the St. Joseph city hall. A vote was to be given for each share of stock, and a paid agent was to remain in Kansas. “All of the means of this society shall be faithfully applied to the purchasing of lands, and in furthering the interests of the proslavery party in Kansas Territory.”⁹⁴ For very good reasons this society was a failure, and later efforts to colonize Kansas fared no better. When on March 17, 1855, it was proposed to send settlers from Boone County to Kansas it was found that “no one was heard of who desired to go to Kansas to live.”⁹⁵ In some cases, however, success was partially realized. “Many citizens from Platte go over to Kansas,” is read in an entry in the Annals of Platte County for September, 1854, “and locate claims and then return. Some were in earnest, and became actual settlers.”⁹⁶ An attempt to raise money in Ray County at a meeting held on March 5, 1855, brought little result.⁹⁷ Benton contemptuously belittled the whole pro-slavery program to settle Kansas or vote there. “But a very small part of Missouri, and that in Atchison’s neighborhood [Platte County] had anything to do with it,” he wrote to J. M. Clayton in. July, 1855.⁹⁸

While the advance proslavery party were planning the invasion of Kansas with ballot and musket,⁹⁹ a tidal wave of

political hysteria swept over western Missouri. “The abolition excitement has been running so high at Weston,” wrote a correspondent from Westport on August 1, 1854, “that the authorities have ordered all free gentlemen of color to leave the town.”¹⁰⁰ “Proslavery harangues provoked the people to frenzy and outrage. Those living east and north of Platte City became almost insane,” reads an entry in the Annals of Platte County for April, 1855.¹⁰¹ On April 14 a meeting was held at Parkville to threaten Northern Methodists. G. S. Park and W. J. Patterson of the Luminary were threatened with a plunge into the Missouri if they reappeared in the village, “and if they go to Kansas to reside, we pledge our honor as men, to follow and hang them, whenever we can take them.” The press was then dumped into the river.¹⁰² “Atchison, Stringfellow & Co. have worked up quite a portion of Platte County to a fever-heat excitement,” says the account of a conservative slaveholder, “and they appear ready for almost any rash act; but that feeling does not extend above that county. Buchanan, Andrew, Holt, etc., are quite calm and conservative in feeling and action. Some effort was made in Buchanan to raise steam, but it proved an entire failure.”¹⁰³ On May 17, 1855, William Phillips, a Leavenworth abolitionist, was brought to Weston

where he was tarred and feathered, had half of his head shaved, was ridden on a rail, and was finally sold at auction by a negro. It was claimed, however, that the citizens of Weston did not participate in this affair.¹⁰⁴

By the summer of 1855 the furor had become pretty general in western and central Missouri. The anti-Bentonites and radical Whigs advocated strenuous action, while Bentonites, with some exceptions, and conservative Whip preached law and order.¹⁰⁵ A letter of May 24 from James S. Rollins to George R. Smith well describes the conditions in Boone and neighboring counties. “I endorse your position throughout, and commend you, for having the courage to take it, unless the conservative men of the Country stand firm, and resist the spirit of reckless unprincipled fanaticism, which a few dangerous demagogues are exciting, there is positively no predicting what is to become of our institutions. . . . The demagogues are doing all in their power to get up excitement in this locality, thus far they have not succeeded—they renew their efforts on the 2nd of June when a public meeting is called in this place. The principal instigators here, are . . . old McBride and . . . Shannon the Irishman, at the head of the college. . . . Let me tell you that no man is doing more to corrupt the public mind of Missouri, on these exciting questions than the aforesaid Shannon . . . the excitement is confined chiefly to Platte, Clay & Jackson. . . . We should not hesitate to make the issue which Atchison and his Mobocrats have tendered and if the law abiding conservative portion of Missouri, those indeed, the real slave owners, most deeply interested in this question, are overpowered, it will only be that much worse for the country . . . let us act.”¹⁰⁶

The meeting of June 2, referred to in the above letter, well portrays the spirit of the extremist element. Radical Democrats and Whigs for the time buried the hatchet. Three of each party were appointed to draft resolutions which were reported to the Assembly by W. F. Switzler, who had gone temporarily into the jingo camp. Slavery was declared to be a legal institution, abolitionism was excoriated, “Squatter Sovereignty” and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were endorsed, and the agitation of the slavery issue in or out of Congress was condemned. The Union was declared to be the “palladium of our liberties,” and Governor Reeder of Kansas was censured and with him the antislavery element in Kansas. Dr. Lee, one of the above committee of six, then offered a series of resolutions which declared that “odious measure,” the Missouri Compromise, to be unconstitutional, and stated that “while we deprecate the necessity, we cannot too highly appreciate the patriotism of those Missourians who so freely gave their time and money for the purpose, in the recent election in Kansas of neutralizing said abolition efforts.”¹⁰⁷

Meanwhile there was a demand for a state proslavery convention. The St. Louis Intelligencer on June 6 advocated such an assemblage, and prayed that every delegate be a slave owner, as “we never yet knew a mob composed of slaveholders.”¹⁰⁸ On June 21 a “Committee of Four” sent out a call from Lexington “To the Members of the General Assembly of the State, and all true friends of the South and the Union.”¹⁰⁹

As a result the convention met at Lexington, July 12 to 14, 1855.¹¹⁰ The “Irishman” James Shannon, president of

the State University, delivered on July 13 a fanatical tirade on abolitionism in general and on the antislavery forces of Missouri and Kansas in particular. His effort so pleased the leaders of the movement—Judge W. B. Napton, Sterling Price, and others—that it was ordered to be printed with the proceedings.”¹¹¹

Great enthusiasm marked the progress of the convention. Twenty-five counties were represented on the opening day. Later two delegates arrived from St. Louis, bringing the number up to 226 from 26 counties.¹¹² Of these delegates one writer found that 150 were from counties which had gone Whig in the previous election, 18 were from anti-Benton counties, 15 from Benton counties, and the other 41 were from counties which were Whig and anti-Benton.¹¹³ This analysis, however, is most misleading. Naturally it was the radical proslavery element alone in any county which met to elect the delegates, and the majority party in the county did not necessarily have any control in the selection. That many Whigs joined the Kansas invasions and helped to fan the flame at home is certain.¹¹⁴ On the other hand, the law and order forces were led by the great Whigs—Rollins, Smith, Doniphan, and others. In 1855 Whig and Democrat differed fundamentally on the tariff, the currency, and kindred subjects, but differences on the slavery

question were largely a matter of personal opinion, not a party issue.

Judge W. B. Napton seems to have been the leading spirit in the convention. He introduced a series of resolutions covering the whole subject of slavery in the abstract and in its concrete application to Kansas. A committee of five was appointed to draw up an address to the people of the United States “setting forth the history of this Kansas excitement.”¹¹⁵ In this paper the danger to western Missouri slave property, and indeed to the slavery system throughout the country, was enlarged upon. Emigrant aid societies were condemned, the presence of a widespread desire for emancipation in Missouri was denied, and the entire political situation as it related to slavery was elaborately discussed.¹¹⁶

The resolutions of the Lexington convention did not carry with them the pacification of the whirlwind in Missouri. As northern settlers continued to pour into Kansas, political convulsions in Missouri increased. Nearly a year after the convention R. C. Ewing wrote George R. Smith from Lexington: “I find . . . the Slavery question . . . all absorbing. . . . Your reported opinion in relation to Kansas is doing you a deal of damage in Saline, Lafayette, & Jackson. . . . You had as well try to oppose an avalanche as the influence of this Kansas excitement.”¹¹⁷ Armed invasions of Kansas by Atchison and his henchmen ensued, but in this connection we are interested only in the effect of the settlement of Kansas on the escape of the Missouri slave.

After the struggle had resulted in a victory for the anti-slavery forces, the golden age of slave absconding opened.

Escapes apparently increased each year till the Civil War caused a general exodus of slave property from the State. The enterprising abolition fraternity of Kansas—Brown, Lane, Doy, and the rest—seemingly made it their religious duty to reduce the sins of the Missouri slaveholder by relieving him of all the slave property possible. The problem became so grave that in 1857 the General Assembly by joint resolution instructed the Missouri representatives in Congress to demand of the Federal government the securing of their property as guaranteed by the Constitution, and in particular protested against the action of certain citizens of Chicago who had aided fugitives to escape and had hindered and mistreated Missouri citizens in search of their slaves.¹¹⁸ In this same year two members of the legislature independently introduced amendments to the patrolling laws, which, although not adopted, received such strong support that they were printed in the appendix of the House Journal. These bills provided that special patrols should be created in the counties on the Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas borders, to be supported by a special tax levied on the slave property of the State. These patrols were to watch free negroes and examine all ferries and other river craft. Any boat not licensed was to be cut loose, and if it was not chained and locked the owner was to be fined one thousand dollars.¹¹⁹ This shows the nature and the constancy of the danger to which the slaveholder’s property was subjected.

The Underground Railroad was now running very smoothly. Neighboring States reveled in Missouri’s misery. Galesburg, Illinois, and Grinnell, Iowa, were considered

havens for the fugitive.¹²⁰ Philo Carpenter of Chicago is said to have helped two hundred Missouri slaves to Canada.¹²¹ The route of the western Missouri division of the Underground was by Kansas, circling Leavenworth, Atchison, Lecompton, and other proslavery settlements, and thence by way of Tabor, Iowa, to Canada. John E. Stewart and Dr. John Doy are said to have shipped a hundred slaves, averaging in value $1000, for the recovery of each of which a reward of $200 was offered. John Brown was rumored to have carried off sixty-eight.¹²²

To many Missouri slaveholders the seriousness of the problem must have been overwhelming. “It [slave abduction] threatens to subvert the institution in this State,” said an editorial of 1855, “and unless effectually checked will certainly do so. There is no doubt that ten slaves are now stolen from Missouri to every one that was spirited off before the Douglas bill.”¹²³ As a result of this unrest many

owners seem to have moved their negroes to safer regions. General Haskell of Kansas states that while going down the Missouri in December, 1858, there was a continuous stream of slaves driven on board his boat. By the time he reached Jefferson City there were three hundred and fifty bondmen aboard.¹²⁴ This account is confirmed by a similar report in a St. Joseph paper of 1860. “Within ten days no less than one hundred slaves were sold in this district, and shipped South. Owners are panic struck, and are glad to sell at any price.” An “excellent house-keeper” sold for $900 for whom $1200 had been offered the year before.¹²⁵

Not all slaveholders considered western Missouri as unsafe for slave property, as did the above. An army officer in 1857 wrote from St. Louis to George R. Smith of Pettis County that he had ten negroes at Fort Leavenworth whom he feared the abolitionists might run off. “I wish to purchase a tract of land for cultivation,” he wrote, “to put my negroes on. . . . I am offered fine tracts near Jefferson City and Boonville. I am advised by some of my friends to make a location in Mississippi. . . . I will visit your county if your answer to my questions seem to warrant it.”¹²⁶ A man as well informed as an army officer would not debate between Missouri and Mississippi when several thousand dollars’ worth of slaves were concerned if he thought the State was as unsafe a place for slave property as many believed it. At the same time, newspaper accounts of escapes are numerous during the years from 1850 to 1860¹²⁷ As in the other

border States, the advertisement, with a cut of the flying negro with his earthly goods in a bandana swinging from a stick over his shoulder, is seen in almost every issue of nearly every paper.

The opening of the Civil War at once released thousands of negroes. As it continued many of the slaves of western Missouri ran for Kansas. “$200,000 of colored wealth walked off in the night to the bleeding shores of our neighboring state and ‘turned up’ there as citizens,” said a contemporary¹²⁸. An entry in the Annals of Platte County for February 1, 1865, states that the Missouri was frozen over and that many slaves had crossed to Kansas and enlisted in the Federal army, and another item for April 1 declares that slaves were daily escaping, being enticed away by Union soldiers.¹²⁹ The Federal census of 1860 gave Missouri 114,931 slaves.¹³⁰ Of these but 73,811 were in the State in 1863.¹³¹ Many had enlisted in the Federal army, and many had fled to free territory. So many Missouri slaves took active part in the War that even the emancipationists were alarmed. In the “Charcoal” Convention of September, 1863, the radical emancipation party expressed their indignation. McCoy of Caldwell County offered among other resolutions the following: “Whereas, The slaves heretofore held in bondage in Missouri are rapidly escaping into surrounding States, and entering the army there, being credited to those states and as circumstances necessitate the draft for filling up the decimated regiments of our own State. . . .

We respectfully demand of General Schofield, permission to recruit colored men belonging to disloyal men of this State to be accredited on the quota of Missouri troops.”¹³²

From what has been said it is clear that the escape of the slave was a problem in Missouri throughout the whole slavery period. It may have been that in many instances the press and political agitators sought to arouse popular fear by holding up the spectre of a vast negro migration, representing millions of capital and the only obtainable labor, moving across the sluggish Missouri in the skiffs of the Massachusetts abolitionists, with “Beecher’s Bible” in hand and with Underground ticket in pocket, or by predicting a general exodus over the level boundaries of Jackson and Cass Counties, guided by dark, bearded satellites of John Brown or Jim Lane. Events proved that the slavery system, especially in western Missouri, was in danger, and in the fifties the hard-headed Missourian needed no lurid tales to arouse his fears and stir his resentment.