of a free man, and also prepared him for citizenship. A man who would risk his life in battle for the country would be a strong candidate for its civil and political privileges.1 Thus the Emancipation Proclamation raised other questions than that merely of setting slaves free. Latent in the edict was the whole question of United States citizenship, and, chiefly, in its provision for receiving freedmen of suitable condition into the armed service of the United States.2

The liberal and humane policy of the people of West Virginia toward the negro resembled the policy, which, for two years, had been slowly and with difficulty developing in Missouri. On the twenty-eighth of February, 1861, at the city of Jefferson, the State met in convention to discuss the great questions of the hour, and to adopt a policy. The delegates, with few exceptions, were men of Southern birth, and the majority of them were lawyers.3 Missouri was disposed to act the part of national peacemaker. Many delegates favored a new federal convention; the minority, in event of the refusal of

1 The act of Virginia, of 1723, provided that no negro should be set free except for meritorious service, to be judged by the country and council. In 1863 the negro troops were performing a meritorious service of which the Nation was soon to judge, and the only adequate reward would necessarily be some recognition of his civil and political rights.

2 For an account of the preliminary and final Emancipation Proclamations and a facsimile of the original manuscript, see Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, History, VI, 6, 8, 19. The text of each is given in Statutes at Large, XII, 1267-1269.

8 The nativity of the members was as follows: Kentucky, 30; Virginia, 23; Missouri, 14; Tennessee, 10; New York, New Hampshire, North Carolina, 3 each; Pennsylvania, Germany, Illinois, 2 each; and one each from Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Alabama, Maine, Austria, Ireland. There were thirty-two lawyers, twenty-five farmers, eleven merchants. Journal Proceedings of the Missouri State Convention held at Jefferson City and in St. Louis, March, 1861, pp. 5, 7.

40

ATTITUDE OF MISSOURI.

the Northern States to agree to some adjustment of the slavery question, would have Missouri take a decided stand in favor of the South; but State pride, strongly intrenched, would make Missouri the arbitrator in the great dispute. The State was an integral part of the great West, which was faithfully attached to the Union. Inviting her sister States to ignore the dogmas of New England, on the one hand, and of the Gulf States, on the other, she would at once inaugurate a Western policy of loyalty.2 Missouri agreed with the prevailing sentiment of the day that the Constitution of the United States was a compact between the States, and the general government was a confederacy,3 but the State would do nothing to countenance the right of secession. Let the Crittenden resolution be adopted and the darkness that overshadowed the land would be dispelled. Any attempt of the general government to coerce the seceding States would involve the whole nation in civil war, and hopelessly dissolve the Union. The border States held the balance of power; let them unite upon a plan of adjustment between the factions. The causes of the sudden disruption of the Nation lay in the alienated feelings extending North and South, rather than in actual injury either had suffered.5

4

The position of Missouri relative to adjoining States that continued in the Union would necessarily expose her to total destruction if she became a part of the new Confederacy, whenever any rupture might take place between the different Republics. From a military point of view, to cease connection with the Northern Confederacy

1 A Resolution to this effect was defeated seventy to twentythree. Journal, p. 47.

2 Journal, p. 31.

3 Journal, 32.

4 Journal, 35, 37.

5 Journal, 55.

meant the annihilation of the State. Its larger interests would not tolerate a system of free trade; immigration to the State would cease, for no slaveholder would come to a frontier State, nor a Northern man to a foreign. country avowedly hostile to his own. The slave interests of the State would be destroyed, because it would have no more power or right to capture a slave found in a free State than it had in Canada. The owners of slaves might either remove with them to the South or sell them; in either case, in a few years Missouri would exhibit the spectacle of breaking up its most important relations to the old Union in order to enter into a slaveholding Confederacy, and yet be without slaves itself. How glorious would be the mission of Missouri, therefore, to aid in arresting the progress of revolution, and restoring peace and prosperity to the country.1

But there was strong secession element in the State, which found utterance in many propositions, chief of which was that if the Federal Government began war with the seceding States, Missouri would join them.2 A stronger element, however, denounced secession as a heresy, and declared that it would never countenance or aid a State in making war on the general government, nor on the other hand, furnish men and money

Its Govern

1 Report of Committee on Federal Relations, Journal, 55, 58. 2 Journal, 80. The secessionists were led by the Governor, Claiborn F. Jackson, and were strongest in the rural districts, but had an aggressive minority strength in St. Louis. Jackson and his adherents in the Legislature, and out of it, left nothing unturned to take the State over to the Confederacy. ment passed many acts to aid the State in this course. The contest began early in Missouri; and for nearly three years the State was one of the most tangled local, military and civil problems with which the President had to deal. For an extended account of these military affairs, see Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, IV, 206, 227, 397-413; VI, 369, 399.

8 Journal, 85.

42

SOUTHERN RIVALS OF NEW YORK.

to sustain the Government in attempting to coerce a seceding State.1 Let it not be forgotten, said a member, that forty millions of slave property in Missouri must be protected. Men might talk at will about principles and theories of government, and about slavery in the Territories, but a man who had labored a lifetime to build up a fortune, and had half of it in slave property, would not rest satisfied a moment without sufficient guarantees that he could lie down at night and sleep in quiet and safety, knowing that no robber dared take his property from him.2 Secession was founded upon ambition and selfish

Did not the merchants of Charleston believe that in case South Carolina could be supported by the Confederacy, the city, in the course of ten years, would become a rival to New York? Had not the merchants of Savannah, Mobile and New Orleans the same delusion, and was it not entertained by some of the merchants of the West, and, among them, those who believed that in case the Southern Confederacy was formed, Missouri must go with it and St. Louis thereby become the chief city on the continent ?3 As in Virginia, and other slaveholding States, public opinion in Missouri was, at this time, firm that the national government could not coerce a State, and the fears of the slaveholder for his property, and the theories of State sovereignty and secession were appealed to as an argument for independent action.

In Missouri alone the slaves were valued at nearly one hundred million dollars. So vast an investment, it was thought by many, anchored the State to the Confederacy. But what reason had Missouri to secede? It had no grievances against the general government; therefore,

1 Journal, 61. 2 Journal, 71.

3 Journal, 86.

4 Journal, 105.

5 Journal, 108.

let it be neutral. Its area was sufficient for an empire, and adjoining States might unite with it in forming a Republic of the West. Certainly, if the old Union was to be dissolved, the State must look out for its own interests. Missouri, it must be remembered, was a sovereign.

Moreover, was there not another interpretation of the situation? Who did not know that, for years, there had been growing up in the Southern mind a system of tyranny in public opinion, which had put down every man who presumed to question the will of the dominant party on the subject of slavery? This tyranny was now in the possession of the greater part of the South. It had formed. a slaveholding Confederacy, whose purpose was dominion. If Missouri, with its small slave population, was made a member, was it not clear that the white population would be driven off and that more would not come to the State for the purpose of manufacturing, or even for farming, when they knew that the State would be subject "to the cotton lords of South Carolina and Louisiana ?” 1

Perhaps no word, in the lexicon of American constitutional government, has been more zealously discussed than the word "compact." There were those in Missouri at this time who thought it an inadequate expression for the government of the United States; a federation, or compact existed before this government, but the Union was more than a compact. The Constitution of the United States was made, by its people, as one community.2 But this notion was

1 Journal, 122.

2 The long discussion that followed, on the nature of the National Constitution, was a free quotation from the debates in the Convention of 1787; both the advocates of State sovereignty and of National sovereignty thought that discussion of the Constitution in the Convention proved the truth of their theories. See the Journal, pp. 153, 160.

CALIFORNI