It would be aside from my object to present in detail the events which belong to this invasion of our State. When we saw that the rebel general had evidently abandoned the purpose of attacking St. Louis, its loyal inhabitants felt the intensest satisfaction. We now saw with increasing delight that the distance between the invaders and our city was daily growing greater; that General Price, overestimating the number of Union troops at Jefferson City, just as he had at St. Louis, passed on to the west and north, leaving the State capital unharmed. Soon the scattered detachments of Federal troops began to concentrate in his rear, and he hastened his march. Near the western border of the State, Union troops from Kansas joined in the pursuit. Now in every battle the rebel forces met with defeat, and were soon driven from southwest Missouri into Arkansas, never more to return. This was the last invasion of our State.
But in this invasion the rebel general was in some ways largely successful. He killed and wounded very many of our troops. During this campaign, though it lasted only a few days, there were more than forty skirmishes and about fifteen battles, some of them of considerable dimensions. Many places, either utterly without defence, or inadequately defended, were temporarily occupied, and plundered. Houses of Union men were burned. Railroad tracks were torn up, and the rails twisted and destroyed. Bridges, depots and warehouses were reduced to ashes. Horses, mules and wagons in large numbers were carried away. Vast quantities of commissary stores were ruthlessly gathered for the Confederate army. Price, in his report of this campaign, claims that he destroyed full ten million dollars worth of property. Perhaps that is an exaggeration; but he marched by a circuitous route from one end of our State to the other, devastating a strip of territory about twenty miles wide.
He, to be sure, lost heavily. Ten pieces of his artillery, two stand of colors, large numbers of wagons, mules and small arms, and nearly two thousand prisoners were captured by the Federals. Many of his men were slain in battle. He had also been compelled in his flight to burn very many of the wagons that he had confiscated, and to destroy much of his ill-gotten plunder.
Moreover, he had utterly failed, politically. He anticipated the uprising of the “Order of American Knights,” fully twenty-five thousand in number, and that most of them would join his army; he also expected to take St. Louis and swing our State into the Southern Confederacy; march into Illinois, where, re-enforced by the one hundred fifty thousand Knights of that State, and greeted by the Knights from Indiana and Ohio, with Vallandigham at their head, he hoped to establish a Northwestern Confederacy and put a stop to the war, which was being waged for the maintenance of the Union. But divine Providence had decreed that this audacious scheme of rebels and copperheads should never be realized. The effort to make the airy fabric of that dream a reality had been attended with devastation, misery and blood, and had ended in inglorious defeat.
But one sad outcome of the devastating march of Price’s army was patent to every eye. Before it Union men with their families fled for their lives. Many of them hastily left their homes at night, lighted on their way by their flaming houses. Avoiding their pillaging foes, they made their way to St. Louis. They came in great numbers, and like the refugees that preceded them, were kindly received and abundantly cared for.[[112]]
CHAPTER XXIV
NEGRO SCHOOLS
Before the last invasion of our State by Price, a few of us became deeply interested in the education of the colored children of our city. No public school was open to them. Although the negroes of St. Louis owned taxable property, assessed year by year at a valuation of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and had long paid annually no inconsiderable school tax, it had been used for the education of white children alone. This rank injustice, one of the many shameful wrongs of chattel slavery, led the colored people to establish in different parts of the city a few private schools for the education of their own children. By the flocking of contrabands into St. Louis the demand for colored schools had steadily grown more imperative. But these schools, founded and conducted by colored teachers, were of a very low grade. They were worthy of hearty commendation, as earnest efforts on the part of those who, though brought up in ignorance, desired better things for their children than they themselves had known. This ignorance yearning for knowledge, this stretching out of black hands toward the light, was an appeal too eloquent to be resisted. A goodly company of us determined to do what we could to lay the foundation for the future education of our colored population. It was already pretty clear that they were to be enfranchised citizens, and would need greater intelligence to enable them to discharge creditably their obligations to the community and the State.
We saw at a glance what they needed was better schools and more of them. Larger and more cleanly rooms, more and better elementary books, and above all more thoroughly trained teachers were absolutely necessary in order to secure results even moderately satisfactory. To accomplish this, two things were demanded, money and self-sacrificing workers. The first could not be obtained from the public treasury. While the law compelled thrifty blacks to pay a school tax, it forbade the use of a cent of it in educating black children. We and they had to bow before the majesty of the law. The only resort left us was private charity. But this did not fail us. The negro property holders not only cheerfully paid the school tax for the education of white children, but also generously contributed from their limited incomes to sustain the private schools for colored children. And loyal whites, who, from the beginning of the war, had nobly responded to a multitude of appeals for charity, by their bountiful gifts helped on this new educational enterprise, while a company of men and women came forward with alacrity to do the necessary work involved in this philanthropic project. They met with and counselled the colored school board; solicited and collected money; secured the donation of the necessary furnishings for the schoolrooms and the books and simple apparatus required; encouraged pupils to attend the schools and inspirited teachers when in their new and difficult work their hearts began to fail them.
I was chosen to examine the colored applicants for positions as teachers. In the months of September and October, I spent six half days in the work of examination. It was a difficult task. These aspirants for the responsible office of teacher knew accurately very little. The superintendent of our city schools furnished me with the questions to be asked. But these questions were framed for white teachers of larger knowledge and greater discipline and were quite unfit for my purpose; however, being required to use them, I did my best in Saul’s armor.
During the war the price of gold in New York was quoted in every daily paper. It was one dollar and forty cents or one dollar and seventy-five cents or two dollars and twenty-five cents, that is, it took so much in paper currency to buy one dollar in gold. One of the questions designated for these examinations was: “What is the leading industry of New York?” referring of course to the State of New York. It was a rather difficult question for any one to answer. I gave it to a bright-looking colored girl, as a part of her examination. Her answer was, “Buying and selling gold.”