As matters are at present Missouri will stand by her lot, and hold to the Union as long as it is worth an effort to preserve it. So long as there is hope of success she will seek for justice within the Union. She cannot be frightened from her propriety by the past unfriendly legislation of the North, nor be dragooned into secession by the extreme South. If those who should be our friends and allies undertake to render our property worthless by a system of prohibitory laws, or by reopening the slave trade in opposition to the moral sense of the civilized world, and at the same time reduce us to the position of an humble sentinel to watch over and protect their interests, receiving all the blows and none of the benefits, Missouri will hesitate long before sanctioning such an arrangement She will rather take the high position of armed neutrality. She is able to take care of herself, and will be neither forced nor flattered, driven nor coaxed, into a course of action that must end in her own destruction.
The inaugural address of the new Governor was, under a thin vail of professed love for the Union, a bitter Secession appeal. He said that the destiny of the Slaveholding States was one and the same; that what injured one necessarily hurt all; that separate action meant certain defeat by the insolent North, which was alone and wholly responsible for the present deplorable conditions. He applauded the "gallantry" of South Carolina, urged that she be not condemned for "precipitancy," and said significantly: "If South Carolina has acted hastily, let not her error lead to the more fatal one—an attempt at coercion."
With reference to the Republican Party and the future policy of Missouri, he said:
The prominent characteristic of this party * * * is that it is purely sectional in its locality and its principles. The only principle inscribed upon its banner is Hostility to Slavery;—its object not merely to confine Slavery within its present limits; not merely to exclude it from the Territories, and prevent the formation and admission of any Slaveholding States; not merely to abolish it in the District of Columbia, and interdict its passage from one State to another; but to strike down its existence everywhere; to sap its foundation in public sentiment; to annoy and harass, and gradually destroy its vitality, by every means, direct or indirect, physical and moral, which human ingenuity can devise. The triumph of such an organization is not the victory of a political party, but the domination of a Section. It proclaims in significant tones the destruction of that equality among the States which is the vital cement for our Federal Union. It places 15 of the 33 States in the position of humble recipients of the bounty, or sullen submissionists to the power of a Government which they had no voice in creating, and in whose councils they do not participate.
It cannot, then, be a matter of surprise to any—victors or vanquished—that these 16 States, with a pecuniary interest at stake reaching the enormous sum of $3,600,000,000 should be aroused and excited at the advent of such a party to power.
Would it not rather be an instance of unprecedented blindness and fatuity, if the people and Governments of these 16 Slaveholding States were, under such circumstances, to manifest quiet indifference, and to make no effort to avoid the destruction which awaited them?
The meeting of the Legislature naturally brought to the State Capital at Jefferson City all of the powerful coterie which was self-charged with the work of taking Missouri into the road whither South Carolina was leading the Cotton States. This coterie included the Judges of the Supreme Court and all the State officials, and the United States Senators and Representatives. Ever since the Anti-Benton faction had accomplished the great Senator's defeat, the shibboleth for admission into the higher circles of Missouri Democracy had been "Southern Rights." As the mass of the Middle Class Democrats favored Senator Douglas's plan of letting the settlers in each Territory decide for themselves whether they would have Slavery, it was highly politic for every candidate to claim that he was a Douglas Democrat. It must be known to the inner ring, however, that he was at heart fully in accord with the views of the extreme Pro-Slavery men, and ready at the word to join the Secessionists. So thorough was this preliminary organization, that while in Missouri tens of thousands of professed Union men went over to Secession when the stress came, there was no instance of an avowed Pro-Slavery man cleaving to the side of the Union.