In the front window of a picture store on Fourth Street the artists of the city were accustomed to display their paintings. The Southern friends of Mr. Noble, as in his studio they gazed upon his embodied protest against slave auctions, anxiously asked: “Are you going to exhibit that painting in the window on Fourth Street?” He replied that he had thought of doing so. They said, “If you do, you shall have no social standing with us. Our relations with you will end forever.”

Almost all of the artist’s intimate friends were Southerners. To be cut by them in that way seemed to him a very bitter trial. For the moment he hesitated. Up to that time I had not known him; but I was known in St. Louis as an uncompromising Union man; so, in his hesitation as to what he should do, he called at my house, told me his whole fascinating history, and asked my advice as to whether, in view of the threats of his old friends, he should put his painting of the slave auction in the show-window. I counselled him not to be turned aside by threats from doing any right thing, and insisted that in his case his conscience was involved; that he was bound in some way to bear witness to his conviction concerning slavery, and that he should do it by his brush as well as by his lips. I told him, come what would, he ought to display his painting; that while it would cost him much so to do, there certainly would be compensations for his sacrifice; that, in my judgment, where he would lose one friend he would gain three; and that those whom he would gain would be better than those whom he would lose. At the close of our conversation he determined to act in accordance with his own judgment and conscience, even if he lost all his old friends and gained none.

The next day his “Slave Mart”[[37]] was in the show-window. Before it all day long stood a crowd, ever going, ever coming. Thousands viewed with admiration the work of the artist. There was a soul, a life in the picture, that appealed to every onlooker. Some subtle power in it laid hold of the imagination and touched the heart. The artist became more widely known. He entered on a new career. Friends such as he never had before sprung up on every hand. He afterwards painted John Brown going out, with pinioned arms, to execution, and stooping to kiss a negro baby. This historical painting was afterwards engraved, and the engraving was extensively sold.

We have written enough to show how much it cost one in St. Louis, during the war, to decide firmly with which party in the national conflict he would cast his lot. Such decisions in a multitude of cases were divisive; they often set in bitter antagonism husbands and wives, parents and children; in not a few instances destroyed old friendships and blotted out for a time the ordinary amenities of life, and even split asunder Christian churches, the very body of Christ; and the cleavage was so deep and radical that it remains to this day; some churches still being designated either “North” or “South.”

The whole thing was amazing when it was enacted, the recollection of it now is weirdly strange. But we should never forget that those who uncomplainingly sacrificed for their country the tenderest relations of life were as heroically patriotic as those brave men who fell pierced with Minie balls on the “high places” of bloody battlefields.

CHAPTER X
BITTERNESS

I should be glad to omit all reference to the bitterness of feeling that pervaded the minds of many in St. Louis during the period of the war, if, without mentioning it, I could faithfully present what was there enacted. But it was an important factor in the life of that city so long as the gigantic and heroic struggle to preserve the Union lasted. Happily such intense bitterness as then confronted us has forever passed away. As a mere reminiscence it is like a wasp in amber, interesting perchance, but harmless.

We shall best enable the generation born since the war vividly to apprehend the extreme virulence of not a few in St. Louis at that time, by calling attention to some concrete examples of it.

Soon after the taking of Camp Jackson, when a multitude of national banners, large and small, began to be displayed, a mother with her little son, who was not more than five years old, boarded an Olive Street horse-car. Some one had given to the little boy a tiny flag. Up to that moment she had not observed it. When she caught sight of it, before all in the car she cried, in anger, “Where did you get that dirty rag?” Then snatching it from the hand of her child, she threw it upon the floor as though it were a viper, and stamping it beneath her feet, said in a rage, “Let me never see you touch that vile thing again.” Such an exhibition of wrath against the Stars and Stripes seems to us now astounding, but it was all too common then.

This extreme bitterness, early in 1861, began to manifest itself against the Germans of the city, who, as we have already noted, with hardly an exception were openly and stoutly opposed to secession. Those who favored the Southern Confederacy seldom if ever called them Germans, but usually denominated them, “the Dutch.” The intense contempt which, by the tone of their voices, they injected into that simple phrase, “the Dutch,” was marvellous. And this scorn for our German fellow-citizens was especially manifested by the gentler sex. The secession women, belonging to the best society of the city, often poured out their vituperation on the loyal Germans. At parties and receptions, more than once I heard them hotly denounce the Germans as Amsterdam Dutch without the Amster. This was shocking then, it is almost unbelievable now.