But, while under the rule of the United States all religious intolerance disappeared, African slavery flourished, established and protected by law. And although in 1860 St. Louis had but few slaves, nevertheless pro-slavery sentiment largely prevailed. Those who cherished it were often intense and bitter, and at that time socially controlled the entire city. But on the other hand the leading business men of the city were quietly, conservatively, yet positively, opposed to slavery. Many of them had come from New England and the Middle States and believed slavery to be a great moral wrong; but those from the North and South alike saw that slavery was a drag upon the commercial interests of the city and all were hoping that in some way the incubus might be lifted off from it. For St. Louis, the commercial capital of Missouri, already had many great merchants and enterprising manufacturers, who were not only throwing out their lines of trade into every part of the State, but also into all the surrounding States and territories. It was linked by the Mississippi and Missouri, fed by numerous and important affluents, with a vast territory which was probably the richest on the earth’s surface. And very much of its trade was with southern cities. In 1860, more than four thousand steamers, with a capacity of one million one hundred and twenty thousand and thirty-nine tons, loaded and unloaded at its wharves. To obstruct the Father of Waters at the mouth of the Ohio, or to divide it by secession, was a matter of life and death to all the business interests of St. Louis. And no one without this conception clearly in mind can adequately understand what took place there in those days of awful storm and stress between 1860 and 1865.
CHAPTER II
FOREBODINGS OF CONFLICT
For many years the subject of slavery, in its varied aspects, had been constantly and hotly discussed in all political and religious journals, on the stump, in the pulpit, and in the Congress of the United States. The higher law doctrine, propounded by William H. Seward, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, the Kansas war, Lincoln’s celebrated debate with Douglas, and his pregnant declaration in 1858, that the nation could not continue to exist half slave and half free, that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” had greatly agitated the whole nation. In the hearts of pro-slavery men, vengeful fire was smouldering; it needed only an added breath to make it shoot up into a devouring flame. The apprehensiveness and extreme sensitiveness of pro-slavery Missouri manifested itself in the winter of 1859–60, through its legislature. That body of lawmakers passed a bill by an overwhelming majority, expelling from the State all free negroes. There were more than a thousand of that class in St. Louis, and a large majority of these were females, doing domestic service in the best families of the city. The excitement caused by this short-sighted action of the legislature was intense. The bill enacted was a declaration in the form of law, that the presence of free negroes was a menace to slavery. Many men in St. Louis were asking with flushed faces, “What shall be done to meet this emergency, to avert this calamity?”
I met on the street one of the coolest men that it has been my lot to know during a long life, and even he, whose spirit never seemed to be ruffled by any exasperating event, was hot with indignation. With great vehemence he denounced the barbarous legislation, and said that something must be done to thwart its purpose. But on inquiry I found that he was unable to suggest any line of action by which this vicious legislation could be neutralized.
Now let us note in contrast another man. There was a negro pastor in the city by the name of Richard Anderson. When a boy he was a slave, and had been brought from Virginia to Missouri. When he was twelve years old his master, Mr. Bates, had given him his freedom. He now began to do odd jobs about the city. He became a newspaper carrier, and thus aided in distributing among its subscribers The Missouri Republican. While doing his work he learned to read; the newspaper that he carried from door to door was his spelling-book and school reader. With his ability to read came broader intelligence. He industriously thumbed and mastered good books. The Bible was constantly read by him. He became a Christian. He was called to be a preacher and pastor. He was a large man of commanding presence, a descendant of an African chief. He was very black. While his nose was somewhat flattened, it was straight and sharply cut; his thick lips were firmly set. His eyes were large and lustrous, his forehead was high and broad. He preached well. His manner was quiet, suggesting reserved power; his thought was orderly and clear. He had great power over an audience. If his black hearers became noisy with their shouting of “amen” and “hallelujah,” by a gentle wave of the hand he reduced them to silence. He was a born leader, but he led by the inherent force of his character. One of his deacons said, “He led us all by a spider’s web.” He was universally respected, and was welcome to all houses where the members of his church were employed. He never betrayed any confidence reposed in him. Like his Master “he went about doing good.” Nothing diverted him from his purpose. Nothing seemed to disturb his equanimity. While he sometimes burned with indignation, he never lost control of himself. He was a man of rare balance of mind.
He presided over a church of a thousand members. Fully half of them were free. The bill for the expulsion of free negroes from the State fell with greater severity upon him than upon any other man in St. Louis. I met him expecting that he would be greatly agitated and cast down; but was surprised to find him absolutely unruffled. I ventured to ask him if he had heard of the recent legislation pertaining to free negroes. He quietly replied that he had, and then added with emphasis, “That bill will never become a law.” With mingled curiosity and surprise I asked, “How do you know that?” Lifting his hand and pointing upward toward heaven, and turning his eyes thitherward he replied, “I know because I have asked up there.” Calm and assured as he was, I feared that he was the victim of a fatal illusion from which he might be soon rudely awakened. But nothing that I said in opposition to his conclusion moved him in the slightest degree from his conviction.
Time soon showed that this black man with his great, calm soul, and unswerving faith was right. Hon. R. M. Stewart was then governor of the state. He was a staunch Bourbon Democrat. He believed slavery to be right. He drank whiskey freely and said: “Cotton is not king, but corn and corn-whiskey are king.” He knew that. He spoke from abundant and sad experience.
But he had been brought up in eastern New York. The doctrine that all men, irrespective of color, have an inalienable right to liberty had been breathed in with the air of his native hills, and had become part and parcel of his life-blood. As he looked at that infamous bill, passed almost unanimously, the teaching received in boyhood asserted itself. It was stronger than his pro-slavery Bourbonism, stronger than party ties; his soul was in revolt against this shameless iniquity. If, however, he should veto the bill, these legislators would quickly pass it over his head. So he took the only course by which it could be effectually defeated. The legislature was about to adjourn. It was his constitutional privilege to retain the bill instead of returning it with his signature or his veto. If he did not return it within twenty days, it failed to become a law. He pocketed it, and the free negroes were left in peace. And who can say that the praying, believing, black pastor did not know?
But although this execrable legislation failed, it left its indelible mark on the public mind. Men were made by it sensitive and suspicious. They doubted, as never before, the possibility of maintaining a government which extended its ægis over forces so utterly antagonistic as freedom and slavery. In this portentous state of the public mind the presidential campaign of 1860 began. Throughout the Union the political conflict was fierce, but in Missouri, and in its great commercial city, St. Louis, it was unusually hot and acrimonious. African slavery was the distracting problem. None attempted to disguise it. Men on every hand spoke plainly and boldly. Most of the people of the slave states, and the citizens of Missouri among the rest, believed with all their hearts that if the Republican party should be successful at the polls, henceforth slavery would probably be excluded from the territories, and, at no distant day, would become extinct even in the states. They seemed to see on the wall the handwriting that foretold its doom. Their more fiery orators declared that if slavery were hemmed into the states, “like a scorpion girt by fire, it would sting itself to death.” This was a most unfortunate simile with which to characterize an institution that they stoutly contended was not only beneficent, but also divine.
They regarded the Republican candidate for the Presidency as the embodiment of all their apprehended woes, and so they poured out upon him without stint their bitterest execrations. In this they were encouraged by the outrageous cartoons of Harper’s Weekly. In one of its issues he was depicted in ludicrous, not to say horrible, uncouthness of figure, as drunk in a bar-room. The moral turpitude of such a representation was simply unspeakable when we remember that Mr. Lincoln in his boyhood promised his mother that he would never drink intoxicating liquor and had sacredly kept his word. In another issue of the Weekly he was portrayed as frightened by ghosts, his shocky hair standing on end. So, sustained by a widely read Northern journal in their grotesque and monstrous representations of Mr. Lincoln, many of them, not all, emptied upon him a flood of billingsgate. Some in common conversation, others in their political harangues on the stump, called him an idiot, a buffoon, a baboon, the Illinois ape, a gorilla.