THE STORY OF A BORDER CITY DURING THE CIVIL WAR
CHAPTER I
ST. LOUIS
I need not say that St. Louis is built on the western bank of the Mississippi River about twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri, since everybody knows that. But the present generation thinks of the city only as it is to-day, with its more than half a million of inhabitants, extensive parks, palatial residences, well-constructed churches, imposing business blocks, great railroad bridges spanning the river, unrivalled central depot and attractive trolley cars. But all this has flowed from its wonderful development since the close of the Civil War. We write of it as it was immediately before, and during, that mighty conflict.
In 1860 it had only one hundred and fifty-one thousand seven hundred and eighty inhabitants, about one thousand five hundred of whom were slaves. A large number of enterprising young men had flocked to the city from every part of the United States, so that the white males of the city exceeded the white females by more than ten thousand. Among the whites there were many thousands of intelligent, manly, thrifty Germans, a fact which needs to be borne in mind, if we would fully understand and duly appreciate the part which the city acted in the earlier stages of the Civil War.
Most of the city stood then, as now, on bluffs or extended terraces that rise gradually one above the other. Its situation is both healthful and beautiful. But before the war its area was comparatively small. It extended along the river only six and a half miles and between three and four back from it. It contained only fifteen and a half square miles. The ground now occupied by the finest residences was then rough, open fields, lying beyond its western limits. The city was built of brick. The business blocks, warehouses, hotels, residences, schoolhouses, and churches were all of the same material. Most of the sidewalks were also made of red brick. Whichever way you looked your eyes rested on red brick, and wherever you walked you trod on red brick. I remember but one business block that had a stone front, and that was marble. The enterprising citizen who built it made quite a fortune out of it. Its very novelty made it attractive, and its rooms were readily rented to professional men. The city is still largely built of brick. The clay from which the brick is made is found in large quantities near the city, and its inhabitants naturally and wisely use this excellent building material that lies close at hand.
Most of the dwelling-houses were built out to the street, so that, with rare exceptions, there were no front yards. On warm summer evenings the families living in any given block sat on the front stone steps of their houses, that they might be refreshed by the cooler air of the evening. But most of the streets were macadamized with limestone, and in summer absorbed during the day so much heat, as they lay under the burning rays of the sun, that they continued to radiate it long after the sun went down. At such times a perch on the front stone steps afforded so little relief from the heat-laden atmosphere that the half-baked sufferers longed for the arctic regions. A distinguished man from the East, on a hot night in September, waking up at two o’clock in the morning from a troubled sleep, declared that he found himself, on account of the stifling heat, swelling up like a mouse in an exhausted receiver. But such days were exceptional and not peculiar to St. Louis.
The larger part of the fuel then consumed in the city was soft coal. We bought it not by the ton, but by the bushel. In those days there were no smoke-consumers. Vast volumes of smoke poured forth from the black throats of great chimneys in manufacturing establishments, while the chimneys of every dwelling-house, and the smoke-stack of every steamer on the river, added their contribution to render the atmosphere dusky. In still days of the autumn or winter the smoke hung like a pall over the city.
But in spite of a few such drawbacks it was even then a very pleasant city. There were few who were very poor. None were permitted to go unclothed and unfed. Most of the people were thrifty; many of them were rapidly accumulating wealth. The markets of the city were well supplied with all the varied products of the fields and the forests. The homes of the people were comfortable, many of them attractive. Their tables were loaded with abundant and wholesome food. The churches were numerous and well attended. The public schools were of a high order. Private schools and colleges had been founded, and were already doing good work.
The inhabitants of the city were a conglomerate; but just on that account were broad and catholic in their thinking. Coming from every section of the Republic, by attrition their provincialisms and prejudices were worn away till they came to take comprehensive and just views of the great questions that were at that time agitating the nation. Men from the South and North had learned each other’s excellences, and with mutual respect and high esteem stood shoulder to shoulder in business, civic duty and charitable and religious service. I have never met anywhere men of broader gauge.
Among them were those distinguished as lawyers, statesmen, and preachers. To name some to the neglect of others would seem to be invidious. But among the lawyers, Samuel Glover and James O. Broadhead; among the preachers, Henry A. Nelson, Truman M. Post, Wm. G. Eliot and Father Smarius; among the statesmen, Frank P. Blair and Edward Bates, the latter afterwards Attorney-general in President Lincoln’s Cabinet, are names which readily occur to those of that generation who still live.