Still, to the secessionists at that time all things betokened certain success. Their skies looked bright. If there were a threatening cloud as big as a man’s hand they did not see it.
But too great confidence often leads men to overlook weaknesses in their most hopeful projects. Those who devised the legislative act providing for a convention, neglected to put into it any provision for limiting its continuance or life. It was made a sovereign body, and also the sole judge as to the time when it should adjourn sine die. So, as we shall see, the Governor and the legislature “builded better than they knew.” To them the Convention proved to be a boomerang, but to the State a priceless blessing.
This act was approved by the Governor on the 21st of January. The election of the members of the Convention took place on the 18th of February, and the Convention met, according to the provision of the act by which it was created, at Jefferson City, the capital of the State, on February 28th, 1861.
But if this Convention was to keep the State from secession as some began to hope it might, it was unmistakably clear that it should not continue its deliberations at the capital of the State. Jefferson City was then a small, and to sojourners in it, a somewhat desolate place. Since the legislature was in session the Convention could not meet in its halls, which, for such a body, were the only suitable places of meeting in the city. Instead of that, the delegates were compelled to occupy for their deliberations a small, repulsive court-house. No desks were there provided for them. Moreover, the hotel accommodations were meagre and unattractive, and, most of all, the libraries and reading-rooms of the capital were about equivalent to nothing. The tallow candles and oil lamps which at night gave just enough light in the houses and on the muddy streets to make darkness visible, were far more luminous than the intellectual lights of that then cheerless place; and the light of the legislature then in session was darkness. There was at that time hardly any considerable town in Missouri more intellectually stagnant than its capital. Should the Convention carry on its deliberations there, its members would have few if any facilities for the investigation of vastly important questions that were certain to arise, while all the currents of influence that would flow in upon them, would urge them on to declare for secession. To all this the Union men of St. Louis, together with a few scattered here and there throughout the State, were keenly alive. Dr. Linton, a distinguished physician of our city, and a member of the Convention, said, “When I got to Jefferson City and heard nothing but the ‘Marseillaise’ and ‘Dixie’ in place of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ I felt uneasy enough, and when I heard Governor Jackson speak I felt badly.... I recollect, with my colleague, Mr. Broadhead, hearing ‘Dixie’ played on the streets, and that we stepped up to the leader of the band and asked him to play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner;’ he said, being a foreigner, ‘Me ’fraid to play that.’ We assured him that there was no danger, and he played one stanza of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ but immediately went off into ‘Dixie,’ and of course we went off in disgust.”
The Union men of St. Louis not only saw the danger arising from the continuance of the Convention in Jefferson City, but they determined if possible to avert it. Having in secret seriously considered the whole matter, they cautiously and wisely laid their plan to bring the Convention to their own city. Since many men in the State were deeply prejudiced against St. Louis, regarding it as the stronghold of Free-soilism, it was necessary carefully to conceal the movement that was being made. If any delegate from St. Louis had openly moved that the Convention should adjourn to our city, the motion would undoubtedly have been promptly and decisively voted down. But the delegates from St. Louis, instead of making an open move, quietly and unobserved found some delegates from the country to whom they deemed it safe to make their suggestions, and without any knowledge of it on the part of the Convention these men were won to their ideas. When, therefore, the Convention, on the second day of its session, was perfecting its organization, Mr. Hall of Randolph County,—a strong pro-slavery district near the centre of the State,—moved that when the Convention adjourned, it should adjourn to meet “in the Mercantile Library Hall of St. Louis, on Monday morning next, at 10 o’clock.” The motion met with strong opposition, but after some discussion it became evident that there was probably a majority in its favor. Still, the Convention, wishing to act prudently in a matter of such vital importance, inquired if it were certainly known that they could occupy the hall mentioned in the motion of the gentleman from Randolph County? This brought to his feet Judge Samuel M. Breckinridge, a delegate from St. Louis, who said that at the request of some members from the country, he had already telegraphed to St. Louis, and had received an answer that the Convention could occupy without expense either of the two halls belonging to the Mercantile Library Association. The undivulged fact was that the Union men of St. Louis, days before, had arranged to offer to the Convention, without cost, either of these halls, if by any means that body could be induced to occupy it. At last, to remove any objection that might arise from pecuniary considerations, the citizens of our city telegraphed that the railroad fare of all the members of the Convention had also been provided for; so, at the close of the second day’s session at Jefferson City, on March 1st, the Convention, by a decided majority, adjourned to meet on the following Monday, March 4th, at 10 A. M. in the Mercantile Library Hall of St. Louis; and by that move the doubt that Missouri would secede from the Union was greatly strengthened.
On Monday morning, when the Convention met for the first time in its new quarters, its members found themselves in a beautiful hall, such as some of them had never before seen. Each member was provided with a desk, and pages were at hand to do his bidding, all at the expense of the loyal men of the city. The free use of the Mercantile Library and Reading Room, with its papers and periodicals from every part of the Union, and also of the Law Library of the city, was also tendered them. Then, by a secret prearrangement, in companies of from six to twelve, the members of the Convention were daily invited by Union men to dine with them; and, so long as the Convention continued its sessions, in the most conservative and kindly way, at the tables and in the parlors of the best and most intelligent men and women of the city, the whole question of secession in all its phases was thoroughly discussed. By such a procedure, without arousing antagonism, deep-rooted prejudice began gradually to give way, and new light, unobserved, penetrated the minds of the members of this sovereign Convention, and, as one by one the days passed, the hope of the disloyal that Missouri would secede was constantly on the wane.
Let us now notice the composition of this sovereign body, in whose hands was providentially placed the political destiny, not only of Missouri, but perchance also of the entire Republic. It had ninety-nine members. Of these, fifty-two were lawyers, seven of whom were judges. These men by their training were capable of clearly and firmly grasping the fundamental principles of law and government. Happily more than half of the Convention was of this class. Twenty-six were farmers, who from habit of thought were decidedly conservative. Eleven were merchants, who intuitively discerned the conditions that must be maintained in order to secure and promote the commercial prosperity of their State. Three were physicians, one of whom, Dr. Linton, was an exceptionally clear-headed and brilliant man. There were also one lumber dealer, one bank commissioner, one civil engineer, one blacksmith, one tanner, one leather dealer and one circuit clerk. Each of these, by his pursuit, was fitted to appreciate what was necessary to secure the highest material interests of the State. The Convention as a whole was in ability quite above the average, and unmistakably superior both in intellectual and moral force to the legislature which had called it into being.
Considering the vastly important question which the Convention was called upon to decide, it is also a matter of great interest to note the ages of its members. One man, like an elderly maiden, was coy, and refused to give his age; of the remaining ninety-eight, six were between twenty-four and thirty; twenty-one were between thirty and forty; forty-one were between forty and fifty; twenty-four were between fifty and sixty; and six were between sixty and seventy. Most of these men, then, were in the maturity and vigor of manhood. Two-thirds of the Convention, lacking one, were between forty and sixty, old enough to have gotten rid of crudities of thinking, and the impulsiveness and rashness of young blood, and yet young enough to be free from the enfeebling touch of age.
And since they were to deal with the question of secession, the underlying cause of which was slavery, we should not fail to consider their nativity, and the influences that surrounded them in early life, when the deepest and most lasting impressions are made upon men. Thirty of the ninety-nine delegates to this Convention were born in Kentucky; twenty-three in Virginia; thirteen in Missouri; nine in Tennessee; three in North Carolina; three in New York; three in New Hampshire; two in Maryland; two in Pennsylvania; two in Illinois; one in Alabama; one in the District of Columbia; one in Ohio; one in New Jersey; one in Maine; one in Prussia; one in Bremen; one in Austria; and one in Ireland. Eighty-two were born in the South, including the one from the District of Columbia, while there were only thirteen born in the North and four in Europe. When we observe that more than four-fifths of the Convention had been born and brought up in slave States, we might rationally conclude from this surface view that Missouri would soon follow her seven erring sisters, like them secede from the Union, and link her destiny to the Southern Confederacy.
Beyond question the Convention was almost unanimously pro-slavery. Some of those born and educated in the North had become sweeping and positive in their advocacy of slavery. There were none in the Convention who did not denounce the Abolitionists, and very many of its members condemned with equal severity the Republican party. All of them, with possibly a very few exceptions, desired to protect and preserve the system of human bondage that had unhappily fastened itself upon the nation. But right here where there was so high a degree of unanimity, strange to say, the Convention divided. The vexed question with them was, “What will preserve slavery?” Some of them were in favor of going out of the Union to preserve it; others with at least equal emphasis and force urged that in order to preserve it Missouri must remain in the Union. These delegates pointed to the geographical position of their State; on three sides of her were free States. If she should secede, she would be confronted on the east, north and west by a foreign nation and by hostile territory, which would be an asylum for fugitive slaves. One speaker declared: “It will make a Canada of every Northern State, and the North will be a borne from which no slave traveller will return.” Such men vehemently urged that secession would be the inevitable destruction of slavery in Missouri. If the State should secede, it would not be long before she would present to the world the anomaly of a slave State without a slave. To be sure, the Cotton States withdrew from the Union in order to preserve slavery; but even if the citizens of Missouri believed that they had the constitutional right to secede, they could not follow the example of the Gulf States, for if they did, they would blot out forever the very institution that they were so earnestly striving to save. So many in Missouri, and not a few in this Convention, reasoned.