But on New Year’s Day of 1861 we were startled by an event altogether unique. It filled many pro-slavery men with bitter resentment, but put new life and hope into anti-slavery men of all shades of opinion, and even some who were supposed to uphold slavery were amused and in their secret souls rejoiced over the strange happening. It came to pass in this wise. When estates in St. Louis and St. Louis County were in process of settlement, there were often slaves belonging to them that must be disposed of at their market value. But when there was no immediate demand for such property these poor creatures were put for safe keeping into the county jail, until they could be sold. Of course they were not regarded as criminals, but simply as valuable assets that, having brains, and wills, and consciences, might run away, to the financial detriment of voracious heirs. So, until the conditions were favorable for a sale, these self-willed chattels were securely lodged behind the stone walls and barred doors and windows of the malodorous jail.
In connection with this reprehensible procedure, a culpable custom had sprung up,—a custom exceedingly offensive to most of the inhabitants of St. Louis. It had become the duty of the sheriff, or his deputy, when the kind-hearted heirs gave the order, to sell at auction, on New Year’s Day, these imprisoned slaves from the granite steps of the Court-house. So, on the first of January, 1861, a slave auctioneer appeared with seven colored chattels of various hues, the thinking fag-ends of estates, just led out by him from the jail, where, some of them, for more than a year, without having been charged with any crime or misdemeanor, had been forced to be the companions of thieves, adulterers, and murderers. The auctioneer placed these cowering slaves on the pedestal of one of the massive pillars of the Court-house. Crowning the cupola of this building, dedicated to the righteous interpretation and execution of the law, was a statue of Justice, with eyes blindfolded, holding in her hand a pair of scales, the symbol of impartial equity. From the top of the great granite pillar, beside which these shrinking human chattels stood, waved for the hour a star-spangled banner, the symbol of freedom for all the oppressed. This auction of slaves had been extensively advertised, and about two thousand young men had secretly banded themselves together to stop the sale and, if possible, put an end to this annual disgrace. The auctioneer on his arrival at the Court-house found this crowd of freemen in a dense mass waiting for him. The sight of bondmen about to be offered for sale, and that too under the floating folds of their national flag, crimsoned their cheeks with shame and made their hearts hot within them. Yet they scarcely uttered a word as they stood watching the auctioneer and the timid, shrinking slaves at his side. At last he was ready and cried out, “What will you bid for this able-bodied boy?[[5]] There’s not a blemish on him.” Then the indignant, determined crowd in response cried out, at the top of their lungs, “Three dollars, three dollars,” and without a break kept up the cry for twenty minutes or more. The auctioneer yelled to make himself heard above that deafening din of voices, but it was all in vain. At last, however, the cry of the crowd died away. Was it simply a good-natured joke only carried a little too far? The auctioneer seemed to be in doubt how to take that vociferating throng. “Now,” he said in a bantering tone, “gentlemen, don’t make fools of yourselves; how much will you bid for this boy?” Then, for many minutes, they shouted, “Four dollars, four dollars,” and the frantic cries of the auctioneer were swallowed up in that babel of yells; his efforts were as futile as if he had attempted to whistle a tornado into silence. To the joy of that crowd of young men the auctioneer was at last in a rage. It had dawned upon him that this was no joke; that the crowd before him were not shouting for fun on this annual holiday, but were in dead earnest. When their cries once more died away, he soundly berated them for their conduct. But they answered his scolding and storming with jeers and catcalls. At last he again asked, “How much will you bid for this first-class nigger?” This was answered by a simultaneous shout of “Five dollars, five dollars,” and the roar of voices did not stop for a quarter of an hour. And so the battle went on. The bid did not get above eight dollars, and at the end of two hours of exasperating and futile effort, the defeated auctioneer led his ebony charges back to the jail. Through the force of public opinion freedom had triumphed. No public auction of slaves was ever again attempted in St. Louis. But in the cries and counter cries of the auctioneer and that throng of freemen could be felt the pulsations of the coming conflict. We had before us in concrete form Lincoln’s doctrine, that the nation cannot exist half slave and half free.
CHAPTER III
RUMBLINGS OF THE CONFLICT
Far away to the south we now began to hear, like the low growling of distant thunder, a rumbling of the approaching conflict. Early in 1861, secession ordinances in quick succession were passed by the Gulf States. By February 1st all of them, following the lead of South Carolina, through the action of their respective State conventions, had severed their relations with the Union. They also forcibly seized United States forts, arsenals, arms, custom-houses, lighthouses and subtreasuries. In Texas the United States troops had been treacherously surrendered. The Federal government offered no resistance to those who thus trampled on its authority, inaugurated revolution, and resorted to acts of war.
These hostile movements, coming before the inauguration of the President-elect, made all classes in St. Louis anxiously thoughtful. To be sure a few extreme pro-slavery men, who were pronounced secessionists, heartily approved of what the Cotton States had done, and were secretly rejoicing over it. From prudential motives they refrained from open and noisy support of the acts of the seceding States; but most of our fellow-citizens, who had formerly lived in States further south, regarded these early acts of secession as at least ill-timed and precipitate, as born of thoughtless, groundless hatred and blind passion. They were not at all prepared to join this open and violent revolt against the Federal government, and to engage in the unlawful seizure of its property. And in this conservative, pro-slavery class lay the hope of the unconditional Union men of St. Louis and Missouri. If its undivided influence, through any motives, however diverse, could be directed firmly against the secession of our State, we might remain in the Union.
Very few in St. Louis had at all anticipated such early, radical, revolutionary action on the part of the Gulf States, and perhaps least of all was it foreseen by those who were unconditionally loyal. They had fondly hoped that threatened secession would expend itself simply in violent talk; that a second and sober thought would come to control the acts of the pro-slavery States; that the ill wind would blow over without doing any serious damage. They knew, to be sure, that a messenger from Alabama had, in December, visited our Governor and Governor-elect, urging them to join in a concerted secession movement of the slave States; that in that same month South Carolina had passed an ordinance of secession; but they could not believe that this madness would continue, that the slave States would generally be infected by it. To their minds abrupt and violent secession was so palpably foolish that it seemed to them impossible that it could be approved by any large number of men in the South. But when in January one State after another seceded, and these seceded States on the 4th of February assembled by their delegates at Montgomery, Alabama, formed a confederacy, adopted a provisional government, and elected a president and vice-president, they unmistakably heard in the distance the angry growl of the coming bloody conflict.[[6]]
The loyal men of St. Louis turned their eyes to Washington, hoping that they might discern something there which would quiet their baleful apprehensions. But instead of sunshine and hope, they saw there the same black war-cloud. The representatives and senators of the seceding States were shamelessly plotting the overthrow of the very government in whose legislative councils they still continued to sit. In the Cabinet of the President were some who were aiding and abetting secession. The Secretary of War, John Buchanan Floyd of Virginia, had sent large detachments of the standing army to distant and not easily accessible parts of the country, and had removed large quantities of arms and ammunition from Northern to Southern arsenals, that, at the beginning of the conflict, which he evidently believed to be close at hand, the South might be better prepared for battle than the North. In the midst of all this treachery the chief executive sat nerveless. In his last annual message, he declared that the general government had no power to coerce a State. He said: “After much serious reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress, nor to any other department of the Federal government.” He again declared: “The power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution.” Moreover, he asserted: “Congress possesses many means of preserving it (the Union) by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in its hand to preserve it by force.” This message for a moment quite disheartened the loyal men of our city. The executive of a great nation, by his own public confession, stood powerless before those domestic foes that were tearing down the government bequeathed us by our fathers. In his message he assured them that with impunity they could complete their work of dismembering the Republic. So for a time the secessionists seemed to have the upper hand all around; at Montgomery they ruled over the seceded States; at Washington they subsidized to their own interests the Federal government; its President openly proclaiming that, do what they might, he had no constitutional power to lay upon them punitively even the weight of a finger.
We had no Andrew Jackson in the presidential chair. In 1832, when South Carolina arrayed herself against the general government and proceeded to nullify its legislative acts, he said with an emphasis which showed that he was conscious of having the whole constitutional power of the nation behind him to make his words effective, “The Union, it must, and shall be, preserved;” and nullification in weakness and shame hid itself. If we had had such a President in December, 1860, when South Carolina seceded, we might have been saved from the awful conflict that, unchecked in its beginning, daily gathered to itself power until it was almost beyond control.
Loyal men throughout the nation utterly repudiated the President’s interpretation of the Constitution. The unconditional Unionists of St Louis shared the thoughts that were pervading and agitating the minds of all true patriots. But they had anxieties which were peculiar to all, in the border slave States, who were uncompromisingly loyal to the Federal government. These States, largely on strictly economic grounds, hesitated to join in the secession movement; still a large majority of their inhabitants were in profound sympathy with the underlying cause of secession, the preservation and perpetuation of slavery. So the absorbing thought of the uncompromisingly loyal men of St. Louis was, whether, in the sweep of events, they would be drawn with their State, against their will, into the vortex of secession. What could they do to avert such a dire calamity? They still hoped, even when hope was seemingly baseless, that as muttering storms which blacken the horizon often pass on and away forever, so in some way, hidden from their view, this rising, growling storm of rebellion and revolution would be finally dissipated, leaving the southern sky once more clear and serene. Nevertheless, while they were thoughtful and anxious, they were undaunted. There never was a band of braver men. The precipitate acts of the Gulf States, the disintegration of the national Congress, the unrebuked intrigues in the Cabinet of the subservient President saddened, but did not terrify them. By these untoward and ominous events their courage was re-enforced, their vision cleared, their purpose made definite and robust. They resolved anew to resist with all their heart, and with all their mind, and with all their strength the secession of Missouri from the Union. Any that had been timid became suddenly courageous; any that had been weak became strong in spirit. These unconditional loyal men, surrounded by a morass of difficulties, beset on every side by insidious, plotting political foes, often utterly at a loss in whom to confide, with everything seemingly against them, at last, fully aroused and braced for the conflict, became the hope, and, as it proved, the political salvation of St. Louis and Missouri. They became the leaders who, by wise counsels and sane action, gathered around them the conservative pro-slavery men of the city and the commonwealth, and these two classes standing together saved the State from the disaster of secession.
The fourth of March drew near. Mr. Lincoln, in tender, pathetic speech, bade adieu to his neighbors at Springfield and hastened on to Washington. As he journeyed towards the national capital the loyal of St. Louis followed him with almost breathless interest. They pored over his short speeches to the crowds that gathered to greet him at railway stations. They were thrilled with his brave and patriotic utterances at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In the malicious plot laid at Baltimore, they heard once more the rumbling of the approaching conflict; and when, in his great inaugural address, he said, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one ‘to preserve, protect, and defend’ it;” we knew that, if neither the Federal government nor the secessionists yielded, the civil war of which the President spoke would inevitably burst upon us.