MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW

THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI The State Historical Society of Missouri, heretofore organized under the laws of the State, shall be the trustee of this State-Laws of Missouri, 1899, R.S. of Mo., 1969, chapter 183, as revised 1978. OFFICERS, 1998-2001 LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN, Rolla, President JAMES C OLSON, Kansas City, First Vice President SHERIDAN A. LOGAN, St. Joseph, Second Vice President VIRGINIA G. YOUNG, Columbia, Third Vice President NOBLE E. CUNNINGHAM, JR., Columbia, Fourth Vice President R. KENNETH ELLIOTT, Liberty, Fifth Vice President ROBERT G. J. HOESTER, Kirkwood, Sixth Vice President ALBERT M. PRICE, Columbia, Treasurer JAMES W. GOODRICH, Columbia, Executive Director, Secretary, and Librarian

PERMANENT TRUSTEES FORMER PRESIDENTS OF THE SOCIETY H. RILEY BOCK, New Madrid ROBERT C. SMITH, Columbia LEO J. ROZIER, Perryville Avis G. TUCKER, Warrensburg

TRUSTEES, 1996-1999 BRUCE H. BECKETT, Columbia JAMES R. MAYO, Bloomfield CHARLES B. BROWN, Kennett W. GRANT MCMURRAY, Independence DONNA HUSTON, Marshall THOMAS L. MILLER SR., Washington

TRUSTEES, 1997-2000 JOHN K. HULSTON, Springfield ARVARH E. STRICKLAND, Columbia JAMES B. NUTTER, Kansas City BLANCHE M. TOUHILL, St. Louis BOB PRIDDY, Jefferson City HENRY J. WATERS III, Columbia DALE REESMAN, Boonville

TRUSTEES, 1998-2001 WALTER ALLEN, Brookfield VIRGINIA LAAS, Joplin CHARLES R. BROWN, St. Louis EMORY MELTON, Cassville VERA F. BURK, Kirksville DOYLE PATTERSON, Kansas City DICK FRANKLIN, Independence JAMES R. REINHARD, Hannibal

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Eight trustees elected by the board of trustees, together with the president of the Society, consti­ tute the executive committee. The executive director of the Society serves as an ex officio member. ROBERT C. SMITH, Columbia, Chairman LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN, Rolla WALTER ALLEN, Brookfield JAMES C. OLSON, Kansas City H. RILEY BOCK, New Madrid Avis G. TUCKER, Warrensburg VERA F. BURK, Kirksville VIRGINIA G. YOUNG, Columbia MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW

VOLUME XCIV, NUMBER 1 OCTOBER 1999

JAMES W. GOODRICH LYNN WOLF GENTZLER Editor Associate Editor

SUKANYA DUTTA-WHITE AMY L. NORD Information Specialist Information Specialist

The MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW (ISSN 0026-6582) is published quarterly by the State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298. Receipt of the MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW is a benefit of membership in the State Historical Society of Missouri. Phone (573) 882-7083; fax (573) 884-4950; e-mail ; web site . Periodicals postage is paid at Columbia, Missouri. POSTMASTERS: Send address changes to MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298. Copyright © 1999 by The State Historical Society of Missouri

COVER DESCRIPTION: Eating Up the Lights, by Missouri artist Gary R. Lucy, depicts the technique used by nineteenth-century steamboat crews to determine a safe channel in an inland waterway when traveling by night. To mark a safe passage, crewmen preceded the boat in a skiff, took depth read­ ings, and placed lighted candles on pieces of wood anchored by a stone attached to a string. As the steamboat advanced, it would glide over the floating markers, consuming their light under the bow- thus the term "eating up the lights." Lucy, a resident of Washington, Missouri, will speak about his work as an artist and the influ­ ence of historic interpretation in art at the Society's annual meeting on October 23. Selected works depicting scenes of life on the inland waterways of North America by the artist are on exhibit in the Society's art gallery through December. [Cover illustration courtesy of the artist] EDITORIAL POLICY The editors of the Missouri Historical Review welcome submission of articles and documents relating to the history of Missouri. Any aspect of Missouri history will be con­ sidered for publication in the Review. Genealogical studies, however, are not accepted because of limited appeal to general readers. Manuscripts pertaining to all fields of American history will be considered if the subject matter has significant relevance to the history of Missouri or the West.

Authors should submit two double-spaced copies of their manuscripts. The footnotes, prepared according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed., also should be double-spaced and placed at the end of the text. Authors may submit manuscripts on disk, preferably in Microsoft Word. Two hard copies still are required. Originality of subject, general interest of the article, sources used, interpretation, and style are criteria for acceptance and publica­ tion. Manuscripts, exclusive of footnotes, should not exceed 7,500 words. Articles that are accepted for publication become the property of the State Historical Society of Missouri and may not be published elsewhere without permission. The Society does not accept responsi­ bility for statements of fact or opinion made by the authors.

Articles published in the Missouri Historical Review are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts, America: History and Life, Recently Published Articles, Writings on American History, The Western Historical Quarterly, and The Journal of American History.

Manuscript submissions should be addressed to Dr. James W. Goodrich, Editor, Missouri Historical Review, State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298.

BOARD OF EDITORS

LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN ALAN R. HAVIG University of Missouri-Rolla Stephens College Columbia

WILLIAM E. FOLEY VIRGINIA J. LAAS Central Missouri State University Missouri Southern State College Warrensburg Joplin

SUSAN M. HARTMANN DAVID D. MARCH Ohio State University Kirksville Columbus

ARVARH E. STRICKLAND University of Missouri-Columbia CONTENTS

"A HIGH WALL AND A DEEP DITCH": THOMAS HART BENTON AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. By John D. Morton 1

MEMORY, MYTH, AND MUSTY RECORDS: CHARLES WOODSON'S MISSOURI CAVALRY IN THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, PART 1. By Thomas F. Curran 25

ISIDOR BUSH AND THE BUSHBERG VINEYARDS OF JEFFERSON COUNTY. By Siegmar Muehl 42

THE PRESIDENT AND THE EMPEROR: HOW SAMUEL SPAHR LAWS FOUND AN ELEPHANT AND LOST HIS JOB. By Maurice M. Manring 59

HISTORICAL NOTES AND COMMENTS

Society to Hold Annual Meeting on October 23 80

Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration Scheduled

for 2004-2006 81

News in Brief 82

Local Historical Societies 84

Gifts Relating to Missouri 93

Missouri History in Newspapers 95

Missouri History in Magazines 100

In Memoriam 106

BOOK REVIEWS 108 Mitchell, Franklin D. Harry S. Truman and the News Media: Contentious Relations, Belated Respect, Savage, Sean J. Truman and the Democratic Party; De Luna, Phyllis Komarek. Public versus Private Power during the Truman Administration: A Study of Fair Deal Liberalism. Reviewed by James N. Giglio.

Kemm, James O. Rupert Hughes: A Hollywood Legend. Reviewed by Alan R. Havig.

Carnahan, Jean. If Walls Could Talk: The Story of

Missouri's First Families. Reviewed by Lynn Wolf Gentzler.

BOOK NOTES 115

Rothwell, Dan A. A Guide to Chesterfield's Architectural Treasures.

Images of the Ozarks. Donley, Paul, comp. Tracks to the Past: A Pictorial History of Aurora, Missouri.

Scheel, Gary L. Rain, Mud & Swamps: The Story of the 31st Missouri Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

Jobe, Sybil Shipley. A History of Newton County, Missouri, As Portrayed in the Courthouse Mural.

Claycomb, William B. Pettis County, Missouri: A Pictorial History.

Derendinger, Elaine, Melba Fleck, and La Vaughn Miller, comps. and eds. Stories of Howard County, Missouri: "The Mother of Counties."

Giangreco, D. M., and Kathryn Moore. Dear Harry . . . Truman's Mailroom, 1945-1953.

Ponder, Jerry. General Sterling Price's 1864 Invasion of Missouri.

James, Larry A., comp. The Monark Towns and Surrounding Villages.

Ponder, Jerry. Major General John S. Marmaduke, C.S.A.

CONTRIBUTORS TO MISSOURI CULTURE: JOHN G. NEIHARDT Inside back cover Diet. Amer. Ports. Engr. John Rogers

"A High Wall and a Deep Ditch": Thomas Hart Benton and the Compromise of 1850

BY JOHN D. MORTON*

Privately conceding his doubts about the likelihood of a resolution of the nation's mounting sectional crisis, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton wrote in January 1850 to a friend in St. Louis: "For all the purposes of ben­ eficial legislation, we are already nearly in a state of disunion." Southern extremists, continued Benton, had begun "organizing a Southern Convention at Nashville, without waiting any further action of congress on the slave question."1 During the ensuing months, Benton's policy decisions con­

form D. Morton is currently a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. He received his B .A. and M.A. degrees from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the University of Virginia respectively.

1 Thomas H. Benton to John O'Fallon, 17 January 1850, John O'Fallon Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. 2 Missouri Historical Review tributed decisively to the eventual passage of the Compromise of 1850, which managed to stave off national disintegration for another decade. Emphasizing Benton's patriotism as the primary motive behind his legisla­ tive behavior that year, historians have overlooked the powerful influence of the Democratic senator's electoral goals.2 Senator Benton's actions in 1850 illustrate the relationship between party politics and policymaking in nineteenth-century America. During the 1820s and 1830s, the young republic's political leaders formed elaborate party organizations to mobilize an expanding electorate. Between the 1830s and the 1890s, these organizations constituted the central structure of politi­ cal power in the United States, serving as indispensable vehicles for gaining and maintaining office in an electoral universe characterized by universal suffrage for white adult males and extremely high rates of voter turnout.3 Focusing on national party development, political historians have yet to explore in sufficient detail the state party organizations.4 Benton's response to controversial legislative proposals in the spring and summer of 1850 high­ lights the impact of the federal form of government on the party system and the considerable influence that state party politics had on national policy­ making during the nineteenth century. The Thirty-first Congress, which convened in December 1849, confront­ ed several sectionally divisive issues.5 The bulk of these disputes involved national policy toward the southwestern territories acquired as a result of the Mexican War of 1846-1848. One major point of controversy concerned California's admission to the Union. Hoping to preserve the sectional bal­ ance of power in the Senate, many southern legislators opposed statehood for

2 Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: Scribner, 1947); William N. Chambers, Old Bullion Benton: Senator from the New West (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956); Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1964); Elbert B. Smith, The Presidencies ofZachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988). 3 Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966); William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967); Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991); Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 4 Michael F. Holt stresses the need for further research on party politics at the state level in The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: Wiley, 1978), 14. In a subsequent article, "Rethinking Nineteenth-Century American Political History," Congress and the Presidency 19 (autumn 1992): 103, Holt urges scholars to explore the ways in which "political developments in the states . . . influenced political behavior at the national level." 5 For thorough accounts of the Thirty-first Congress and the Compromise of 1850 see Nevins, Ordeal, 219-345; Chambers, Old Bullion Benton, 313-377; Hamilton, Prologue; and Smith, Presidencies, 1-23, 91-194. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch " 3

California because its recently drafted constitution prohibited slavery. Also at issue was Congress's stance toward slavery in the unorganized territories of New Mexico and Deseret (Utah). The question of whether Congress should accept slaveholding Texas's claims to the eastern half of New Mexico related to this dilemma. Two unrelated issues also sparked sectional flames: the southern demand for a stricter, more effective fugitive slave law and the northern call for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. The protracted debate in the Senate on these sectional disputes centered on the quid-pro-quo settlement plan devised by Mississippi Democrat Henry S. Foote. In April, the Senate agreed to Foote's motion to refer separate com­ promise resolutions proposed earlier by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay and Tennessee Senator John Bell to a select committee of thirteen. The senators instructed the committee to form a single compromise bill. Foote's professed concern with sectional harmony concealed the pro-southern strategy that underlay the combination form of compromise. By tying all of the measures together, a Texas/New Mexico boundary settlement favorable to Southerners desiring the extension of slavery would be the price Northerners would have to pay for the admission of a free California.6 The roll-call vote on Foote's motion reflected its heavy southern support. Southerners constituted twenty- three of the thirty senators who secured its adoption on April 18.7 On May 8 the chairman of the select committee, Henry Clay, presented its "omnibus" scheme, which combined into a single package several measures: 1) the admission of California as a state into the Union without mention of slavery; 2) the establishment in Utah and New Mexico of territorial governments expressly forbidden to legislate on slavery; and 3) a boundary settlement that granted the southeastern corner of New Mexico to Texas. The committee's plan also included separate bills for a stricter fugitive slave law and the abo­ lition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.8 The presentation of the omnibus bill in May ushered in nearly three months of heated debates. Senators from both the North and the South sought to amend the bill to suit their sectional interests. Ultimately, it became evi­ dent that the passage of such a combination of measures was impossible. Consequently, the Senate destroyed the omnibus bill on July 31 by stripping from it every measure except the one that provided for a territorial govern­ ment in Utah. Emerging as the compromise leader during the remainder of

6 Foote's strategy is discussed in Smith, Presidencies, 138. 7 Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 774. 8 Whereas the omnibus bill prohibited the future territorial governments of Utah and New Mexico from legislating on slavery, the compromise resolutions that Clay and Bell had sub­ mitted in January and February established territorial governments without congressional action on slavery. Missouri Historical Review

Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas s aggres­ sive leadership was central to the passage of the Compromise of 1850. The Chicago city council initially declared the compromise measures violations of the laws of God and the constitution and Douglas a traitor.

Library of Congress the session, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois managed to push through the Senate individual settlement measures.9 Collectively known as the Compromise of 1850, these bills restored to New Mexico a portion of its southeastern corner and compensated Texas with an extended northern boundary, admitted California with its constitutional provision prohibiting slavery as a state into the Union, granted New Mexico and Utah territorial governments with sovereignty over the legality of slavery within their bor­ ders, established a more stringent fugitive slave law, and abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia. After House approval, President Millard Fillmore signed each measure into law. Congress's ability to resolve, temporarily at least, the nation's burgeon­ ing sectional crisis stemmed in large measure from the legislative actions of Senator Benton. The Missouri Democrat relentlessly strove to mobilize Senate opposition to the quid-pro-quo, combination form of compromise leg­ islation and to build support for separate voting on individual measures. It was only in the form of separate, distinct bills that the Senate managed to establish a temporary sectional truce. None of the final settlement measures passed in August and September of 1850 received the support of a majority of senators from both sections, and only a small group of senators voted for all of the final measures.

9 Hamilton, Prologue, 114, 135, 141, emphasizes the centrality of Douglas's efforts to the Compromise of 1850. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch " 5

To account for Senator Benton's legislative behavior, historians have stressed his profound desire to preserve the Union. Scholars emphasize that Benton championed the spirit of compromise that the omnibus bill purported to embody but opposed the form of the legislation as an impracticable means of achieving compromise. Benton accurately feared that combining dis­ parate, controversial topics would delay and possibly jeopardize the passage of any one measure. Ultimately, historians contend, Benton's overriding love for the Union and desire for sectional harmony impelled him to oppose what he believed to be an unpassable settlement plan.10 Traditional historiography presents a plausible case for the importance of the senator's personal principles but overlooks the powerful influence that Benton's party and intraparty factional objectives in Missouri exerted on his policymaking during that fateful Thirty-first session of Congress. His leg­ islative behavior was closely tied to his campaign to win re-election to the Senate. Along with his commitment to the Union, Benton's attempt to sway the electorate that would choose the Missouri state legislators, who, in turn, would vote on his re-election decisively shaped his actions. Missouri politics at mid-century exhibited characteristics typical of parti­ san political competition in the antebellum South. From the birth of the mass party system in the 1830s through the 1850s, the recurring electoral strategy of parties in both the free and slave states was to emphasize differences over policy issues between themselves and their rivals.11 Party leaders' efforts to highlight policy differences exhibited a distinct ideological dimension. Officeseekers portrayed their programs as embodying, and their opponents' programs as subverting, the republican traditions of popular government, indi­ vidual liberty, and equality of rights.12 In the pre-Civil War South, republicanism merged with sectional and racial concerns. Southern politicians repeatedly transformed the slavery extension debate into an issue both of republican rights and racial safety— whether or not Southern whites would have equal rights within the nation and

10 Nevins, Ordeal, 222, 249-250; Chambers, Old Bullion Benton, 315, 332-333, 358-359, 364; Hamilton, Prologue, 92; Smith, Presidencies, 11, 136-137. For evidence that Benton's deep commitment to the Union guided his actions during the compromise proceedings of 1850, these historians cite the senator's behavior during the late 1840s. Scholars highlight Benton's condemnation of the Wilmot Proviso of 1846 and Calhoun's southern rights manifestos of 1847 and 1849 as Union-threatening agitation. 11 Holt, Political Crisis, 12-13, 36, 81. 12 Holt stresses the centrality of republicanism to antebellum party politics in Political Crisis, 5. Bernard Bailyn, in The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1967), and Gordon S. Wood, in The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), trace the intellectual origins of republican ideology and demonstrate its influence on the polit­ ical behavior of the American revolutionaries. 6 Missouri Historical Review whether or not they could diffuse an allegedly dangerous black population into the western territories.13 By 1849 a powerful faction of Missouri's Democratic Party was in open revolt against Benton, the longtime leader of the Missouri Democracy and a U.S. senator since 1820. During the previous half-decade, Benton had increasingly alienated an emerging proslavery, Calhounite wing of the party. This growing camp was outraged by Benton's opposition in 1844 to President John Tyler's plan for the immediate annexation of slaveholding Texas. This disaffection intensified after Benton publicly disapproved of John C. Calhoun's southern rights resolutions of 1847. Benton further exacerbated the rift when he proposed in August 1848 that the Senate adopt a House bill estab­ lishing in Oregon a territorial constitution that prohibited slavery.14 Angered by Benton's stance on the slavery extension issue, Missouri's proslavery Democrats had formed a distinct anti-Benton faction by 1849. Led by U.S. Senator David R. Atchison; U.S. Representative James S. Green; and Missouri State Assemblymen Carty Wells, Claiborne F. Jackson, and W. Claude Jones, this faction sought to prevent Benton's re-election to the Senate by the Missouri state legislature. From 1849 the anti-Benton faction strove to galvanize popular opposi­ tion to the senator by denouncing his stance on the slavery extension issue as a threat to republican liberties and racial security. The orchestrators of this campaign realized that they could not merely appeal to the economic inter­ ests of Missouri's slaveholders. Although numerous slaveowners had emi­ grated with their human property to the state since its birth in 1820, their pace of arrival had been outstripped by a flood of nonslaveholders, mainly from the southern states but also from the North and from Europe. By 1850 only about 16 percent of Missouri's white population owned slaves, and slaves constituted only 12.8 percent of the state's total population. To mobilize Missouri's large nonslaveholding majority against Benton, the clique attempted to appeal to cherished political values and deep racial fears.15

13 William W. Freehling, in The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 289-307, 423, elaborates on the dynamics of party pol­ itics in the antebellum South. 14 Clarence H. McClure, Opposition in Missouri to Thomas Hart Benton (Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1927), 72-165; Chambers, Old Bullion Benton, 312- 343; William E. Parrish, David Rice Atchison of Missouri: Border Politician (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1961), 81-93; Perry McCandless, A History of Missouri, Volume 11, 1820-1860 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972), 227-257. 15 For an outline of the history of slaveholding in Missouri see McCandless, History of Missouri, 31-66, and Donnie D. Bellamy, "Slavery, Emancipation, and Racism in Missouri, 1850-1865" (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1971), 29-70. To estimate the total slaveholding population of Missouri in 1850, the author multiplied the number of individual slaveholders that Bellamy listed by five, thereby taking into account family members. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch "

Missouri State Assemblyman Claiborne F. Jackson's resolutions provided the central arguments for the anti-Benton rhetoric.

State Historical Society of Missouri

Perhaps to a greater extent than Northerners, white citizens of slavehold­ ing states like Missouri had profound anxieties about maintaining republican citizenship. The presence of slavery reminded southern whites what their condition would be if they lost political liberty and social equality in a nation ruled by and for Northerners. Missourians also had pronounced racial con­ cerns. Fearing that emancipation would lead to amalgamation, miscegenation, or a bloody race war, a majority of the state's white population valued slavery as a bastion of racial order. These racial fears had prompted Missourians in the 1840s to pressure their state legislators to enact laws barring the entrance of free blacks into the state.16 With these popular anxieties in mind, the anti-Bentonites repeatedly emphasized the republican and racial implications of the national policy dispute over slavery extension. On January 15, 1849, Claiborne F. Jackson presented to the Missouri General Assembly resolutions that soon became the centerpiece of the anti-Benton campaign. Like John C. Calhoun's Southern Resolutions of 1847 and Southern Address of 1849, the Jackson Resolutions portrayed the issue of slavery extension into the western territories as a matter involving Southerners' equal rights. "The territories acquired by the blood and treasure of the whole nation," declared the resolutions, "ought to be governed for the common benefit of the people of all the states " The document, fur­ thermore, depicted congressional prohibition of slavery extension as an

16 Holt, Political Crisis, 55-56; Bellamy, "Slavery,' 66-70; McCandless, History of Missouri, 60. 8 Missouri Historical Review encroachment on state sovereignty. Referring to Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot's proposal in 1846 to bar slavery from any territory acquired from Mexico, the Jackson Resolutions asserted that "any organization of terri­ torial governments, excluding the citizens of any part of the Union from removing to such territories with their property, would be an exercise of power, by Congress, inconsistent with the spirit upon which our federal compact was based, insulting to the sovereignty and dignity of the states thus affected. . . ." Finally, the resolutions targeted Missourians' racial fears by equating the effort to prevent slavery expansion with abolitionism, describing free-soil legislation as the product of "the spirit of Anti-slavery fanaticism."17 From early 1849 through the state legislative elections of August 1850, anti-Benton Democratic politicians and editors relentlessly stressed the threat posed by northern congressmen's free-soil policy to Missourians' republican citizenship and racial order and repeatedly accused Benton of being a propo­ nent of this policy. In a letter to the citizens of Platte County on June 4,1849, Senator Atchison contended that Benton supported the Wilmot Proviso and thus sought to reduce white Missourians "to the social and political level of . . . slaves." Speaking at Liberty, Missouri, later that month, Atchison insist­ ed that the ultimate goal of free-soil policy was abolition and that "all who could not engage in war against Col. Benton, and in favor of Jackson's reso­ lutions, are rank abolitionists." Allegations of Benton's support for a policy that violated Southerners' popular sovereignty, equal rights, and racial safety filled the pages of the anti-Benton press. The Jefferson City Metropolitan, for example, warned its readers on April 16, 1850, that free-soil legislation would lead to "the horrors of a servile insurrection, such as St. Domingo wit­ nessed at the close of the last century," and on July 30 it announced: "According to Benton, the people have no rights—the States have no rights—Congress is King!"18 As soon as Benton returned to Missouri from Congress in May 1849, he began a summer-long campaign to undermine the tactics of his Democratic enemies. On January 29,1849, Benton had written to his close friend and the

17 The Senate passed the resolutions on January 26, and the House endorsed them on March 6. Governor Austin King officially approved them on March 10. They are quoted in McClure, Opposition, 158-159. 18 Atchison, quoted in Elbert B. Smith, Magnificent Missourian: The Life of Thomas Hart Benton (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1958), 251; Atchison, quoted in Barbara L. Green, "The Slavery Debate in Missouri, 1831 -1855" (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1980), 87-88; Jefferson City Metropolitan, 16 April, 30 July 1850. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch "

Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot's proviso symbolized the growing resolve of many Northerners to prohibit the expansion of slav­ ery in the 1840s.

Diet. Amer. Ports.

leader of the pro-Benton wing of the Missouri Democracy, Montgomery Blair: "I have been perfectly aware of the plot against myself & friends. ... I shall be out among them [the anti-Benton faction] as soon as Congress adjourns & drive them out to open war." To undercut his opponents' exploitation of the slavery extension issue, the senator emphasized in numerous public addresses that the vast majority of northern citizens and their national political representatives sought neither the application of the Wilmot Proviso nor the abolition of slavery. In a public letter to the citizens of Missouri on August 30, 1849, Benton summarized the principal themes of his summer- long speaking tour, underscoring the falsehood of the anti-Benton Democrats' charges and the ulterior motive behind them: "The state was to be carried by means of a lie and a scarecrow—an abolition lie and a Wilmot Proviso scarecrow. The people were to be told that Congress was going to abolish slavery in the states—that the proviso was the first step in the process—and Missouri to be the first victim—and that Benton was an abolitionist."19

19 Benton, quoted in Parrish, Atchison, 87; Benton, quoted in McClure, Opposition, 146. Benton's principal speeches occurred at Jefferson City on May 26, Boonville on June 9, St. Joseph on August 9, and Fayette on September 1. In Opposition, 166-193, McClure describes in detail Benton's speaking tour during the summer of 1849. 10 Missouri Historical Review

Benton went to Washington in November for the upcoming congressional session, confident about his political prospects. Indeed, the senator had reason for optimism, for there were important signs that his campaign had influenced public opinion in his favor. Five state senators who had voted for the Jackson Resolutions in January 1849 had subsequently repudiated them, and the three senators who had been absent from the vote had since publicly opposed the res­ olutions. In addition, numerous Democratic newspapers in Missouri had thrown their support behind Benton. Writing to Benton's longtime political ally and personal friend, Martin Van Buren, on November 11, 1849, Democratic editor Francis P. Blair, Sr., noted that Benton was "full of confi­ dence as to the triumph of his efforts in Missouri." Henry D. Gilpin, a former U.S. attorney general, conveyed a similar impression in a letter to Van Buren on January 27, 1850: "There is a fierce combination against Col. Benton . . . but it does not trouble him, in the least; I never saw him more buoyant, and he is perfectly confident of a complete triumph in Missouri."20 So deep grew the rift between the pro- and anti-Benton factions that each camp decided to run separate candidates on different platforms in the August 1850 state legislative elections. Benton had announced his desire for a sep­ arate pro-Benton ticket in the party as early as May 26, 1849, at a speech in Jefferson City. He declared, "Between them and me, henceforth and forev­ er, a high wall and a deep ditch! and no communication, no compromise, no caucus with them."21 The party's division over Benton became official at a meeting of Benton Democrats in St. Louis on March 8, 1850. The group adopted resolutions asserting that the upcoming city elections were a proper occasion "to apply the test of Benton or no Benton to the candidates who shall be presented; and we recommend it to the meetings to be held by the democracy, to nominate no man for office, who is not known to be in favor of the re-election of Col. Benton to the Senate...." In May and June, pro- and anti-Benton Democrats throughout the state convened separately to nominate candidates for the General Assembly. During the remainder of the summer, the candidates of the two factions vied both with each other and with the nominees of the Whig Party for election to the state legislature.22 Senator Benton exploited his position as a policymaker in the Thirty-first Congress to influence Missouri state politics, but more specifically, to help his allies within the Missouri Democratic Party win the August elections.

20 Francis P. Blair, Sr., to Martin Van Buren, 11 November 1849, Martin Van Buren Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Henry D. Gilpin to Martin Van Buren, 27 January 1850, ibid. 21 Benton, quoted in Chambers, Old Bullion Benton, 345. 22 Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer, 23 March, May-June 1850. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch " 11

Shaping much of Benton's legislative behavior in the compromise proceed­ ings of 1850 was his perceived need to disprove the claims that his enemies within the state party had made about him in 1849 and continued to make during the open campaigning in 1850. To secure the election of his allies, Senator Benton needed to expose the falsehood that he supported an alleged effort by northern congressmen to enact free-soil and abolitionist policies. A major portion of Benton's policy decisions in the Senate represented a continuation of the efforts he had made during the summer of 1849. Benton's votes against the reception of northern citizens' free-soil and abolitionist peti­ tions, his proposal to instruct the select committee against abolishing slavery, and his votes and speeches against measures that applied the Wilmot Proviso doctrine to the newly acquired southwestern territories can all be attributed to the senator's intraparty factional objectives at the state level in Missouri. State partisan goals were also a major driving force behind Benton's relent­ less opposition to combining separate compromise measures into a single, quid- pro-quo settlement package. To help his allies within the state party mobilize voters, the senator not only sought to deflect the attacks of the anti-Benton Democrats, he also strove to provide pro-Benton candidates with a policy issue that would differentiate them from both their factional and party rivals. Benton viewed Senator Foote's plan as a perfect subject of conflict between the competing factions. David Atchison, the representative of the anti-Benton Democrats in the Senate, supported the quid-pro-quo scheme. Like many other southern senators, he would have preferred a California bill

State Historical Society of Missouri

Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison, a leader of the anti-Benton faction, secured the passage of Henry Foote's motion for a single compromise bill. 12 Missouri Historical Review that divided the region into slave territory south of the Missouri Compromise line and free territory north of it. He recognized, however, the value of a plan that would combine all of the compromise measures. Such a package would hold California's admission hostage to proslavery concessions elsewhere in the Southwest and to the passage of a stricter fugitive slave law.23 By oppos­ ing the combination plan, Benton sought to fashion a legislative record around which pro-Benton candidates for the Missouri state legislature could rally the electorate against their intraparty competitors. Steering the Senate away from the combination form of compromise also enabled Benton to forge a position that pro-Benton Democratic officeseekers could utilize to mobilize voters against Whig rivals. Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, whose policies the Missouri Whigs had championed since the 1830s, emerged as the architect and a major proponent of the Senate's quid- pro-quo compromise tactic. From the outset of the Thirty-first Congress through the August 1850 elections, Missouri Whigs endorsed the Kentucky senator's efforts at reaching a sectional compromise.24 The pro-Benton Missouri Democrats' need to differentiate themselves from their Whig competitors in the state legislative campaign became espe­ cially evident after the St. Louis mayoral election of April 3. The race had involved three competitors because the warring factions of the Democratic Party had run separate candidates. The election results revealed an unprece- dentedly popular Whig Party. While the pro-Benton Democratic candidate for mayor attained a clear majority of votes over his anti-Benton Democratic rival (2,018 to 644), the Whig mayoral candidate won a solid victory (with a total of 3,329 votes) over both Democratic officeseekers. The outcome of the election led the pro-Benton Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer to predict that the real "contest [in August] will not be between the Democratic party and the disunionists . . . but between the Democracy and the Whigs."25 The speeches that Benton made in the Senate to justify his policy deci­ sions provide evidence of the powerful influence that party and intraparty politics in Missouri exerted on his national legislative behavior. Employing the republican rhetoric central to antebellum American partisan politics, Benton portrayed his opposition to the Senate's combination plan as a defense of popular sovereignty and equal rights. Moreover, Benton's partic­ ular formulation of this rhetoric harkened back to the political ideals that Missourians had embraced in their struggle for statehood in 1819-1820. Finally, the Missouri senator accompanied his votes and proposals pertaining to abolition and free-soil legislation with explicit proclamations that his

23 Jefferson City Metropolitan, 1 July 1850; Hamilton, Prologue, 116. 24 Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer, 10 August, 21 September 1850. 25 Ibid., 6, 20 April 1850. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch' 13

State Historical Society of Missouri The Senate in Session in the 1850s

actions demonstrated the falsehood of southern agitators' allegations. Senator Benton's aim of deflecting the criticisms of his enemies within the Missouri Democracy guided his reaction to the free-soil and abolitionist peti­ tions that northern citizens and state governments sent to the Senate during the spring of 1850. He used the Senate's votes on their reception to dissociate him­ self from abolitionist policy and the Wilmot Proviso doctrine. On five of the six occasions in which the Senate voted on the reception of these petitions between January and April, the Missouri senator either abstained or voted in opposition.26 Benton's need to disprove the accusations of the anti-Benton Democrats also underlay his attempt to dissuade northern senators from pressing for appli­ cation of the Wilmot Proviso doctrine. Speaking to the Senate on February 27, he focused attention on Mexican President Vicente Guerrera's decree of 1829 and the Mexican General Congress's enactment of April 1837, both of which had abolished slavery in the Republic of Mexico. The actions of the Mexican government, argued Benton, proved "that there is not the least ground for fear­ ing, or hoping that it [slavery] can ever exist in California or New Mexico." Mexican law had therefore already achieved the purpose of the Wilmot Proviso. He concluded by stressing that "the proviso of which we have heard so much is of no force whatever—unnecessary in any point of view—and of no more effect, if passed, than a piece of blank paper pasted on the statute

26 Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 165, 310, 342, 469, 779. 14 Missouri Historical Review book." His effort to dissuade northern senators from crafting explicit free-soil legislation was clearly linked to the goals of his speaking tour in Missouri during the previous summer. Northern proposals for the application of the Wilmot Proviso doctrine would have undercut Benton's attempt to clear northern congressmen of the charge of advocating Free-Soilism.27 Continuing his effort to obstruct the anti-Benton Democrats' use of the slavery issue in the upcoming campaign, Benton offered on April 8 an amendment to Foote's compromise committee proposal. Benton's amend­ ment instructed the proposed select committee against considering the "abo­ lition of slavery within the States," "abolition of the slave trade between the States," "abolition of slavery in the forts, arsenals, navy-yards, and dock­ yards of the United States," "abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia," or "any question in relation to the subject of domestic slavery in the United States, which shall not be specially referred to it by order of the Senate." Benton's instructions clearly resulted from his desire for a legisla­ tive record that the pro-Benton faction could invoke to disprove the accusa­ tion that he advocated abolition. "I shall call for the yeas and nays upon each amendment," Benton declared to the Senate, "in order that my vote stand recorded against giving to any committee of this body the right to take into consideration these questions."28 The Missouri senator also sought to provide his allies with evidence that contradicted the anti-Bentonites' claim that northern congressmen sought to enact abolitionist legislation. Three days earlier, Benton had noted in a Senate speech that "complaints of aggressions, encroachments, and oppres­ sions are made from some parts of the South" but had insisted that "so far as these undefined complaints apply to Congress, and the northern States, I know of no foundation for them." On April 8 he explained that he had draft­ ed the anti-abolition amendment "with a view of having the question pre­ sented, so that the vote might be taken of each of these points, and for the express purpose of letting the people of the United States see that they have been alarmed without reason and against reason; that there is not the least foundation in the world for supposing that the Senate is going to interfere with the subject about which they are so alarmed."29 The amendment fulfilled Benton's partisan political objectives. Although all five of the instructions met defeat on April 18, the roll-call voting enabled Benton to establish a record of opposition to abolitionist legislation. Equally important, the voting produced a record of northern congressional opposition to abolition. All of the 34 votes for the instructions, each of which was voted

27 Ibid., 430-432. 28 Ibid., 446. 29 Ibid., 447. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch" 15 on separately, were cast by Benton and senators from northern states. Ironically, senators from slaveholding states contributed the overwhelming majority of opposition votes, casting 102 of the 141 total ballots against the instructions. Southerners opposed Benton's ostensibly pro-southern measure because they saw it as a tactic to delay passage of Foote's quid-pro-quo com­ bination proposal, which they favored. Ultimately, the southern senators joined those northern senators with strong antislavery views to defeat the Missouri senator's amendment.30 Benton's need to expose the falsehoods made by his enemies within the Missouri Democratic Party also prompted him to vote against explicit free-soil amendments to the select committee's omnibus bill. Seeking to bely the notion that he advocated the Wilmot Proviso doctrine, Benton joined David Atchison, Jefferson Davis, and other southern senators on June 5 in voting against Ohio Senator Salmon P. Chase's amendment prohibiting the territorial governments of New Mexico and Utah from authorizing slavery. After the Senate rejected Chase's amendment by a vote of 30 to 25, New York Senator William H. Seward attempted to bar slavery from the newly acquired territories by offer­ ing the following amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, oth­ erwise than by conviction for crime, shall ever be allowed in either of said Territories of Utah and New Mexico." Again joining forces with Atchison and other slave state senators, Benton cast his vote against Seward's Wilmot Proviso-like amendment, which failed by a vote of 33 to 23.31 On June 6, Benton also helped the Senate defeat an amendment by Connecticut Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin declaring the Mexican gov­ ernment's prohibition of slavery to be in force in New Mexico, until "altered or repealed by Congress."32 The Missouri senator's vote against Baldwin's amendment represented a complete about-face from the stance he had taken in late February. Benton's February 27 speech, in which he had underscored the continu­ ing jurisdiction of Mexican laws banning slavery in the newly acquired ter­ ritories, had backfired. The anti-Benton press in Missouri had subsequently issued a torrent of attacks on his speech. While Benton's goal had actually been to dissuade northern senators from drafting explicit free-soil legislation, the senator's opponents in Missouri interpreted his speech as an attempt to secure congressional recognition of the continuing jurisdiction of Mexico's prohibition of slavery. Denouncing Benton's legal exposition as an under­ handed effort to achieve the essence of the Wilmot Proviso, the Jefferson City Metropolitan referred to the senator's views as "monstrous heresy" on

30 Ibid., 704-714. 31 Ibid., 1131-1136. 32 Ibid., 1141. 16 Missouri Historical Review

An advocate of equal rights, Connecticut Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin was appointed to the "peace congress" of 1861 to settle differences between the North and the South.

Diet. Amer. Ports. Engr. Alexander H. Ritchie

April 30. Similarly, the Hannibal Missouri Courier wrote: "The Free Soilers are changing their tactics. The 'Wilmot Proviso,' (which is a plain, straight­ forward, unequivocal prohibition of slavery), is to be abandoned, and the same idea carried out in a different shape—that is, the new territories are to be declared free under the laws of Mexico. . . . This is Mr. Benton's idea . . . ought not this fact to open the eyes of every Democrat to Benton's Free Soilism?" With the hope of deflecting such criticisms, Benton reversed his position on June 6 regarding Mexico's abolition of slavery.33 Benton's intraparty factional strategy also prompted him to support leg­ islation that granted the newly acquired territories popular sovereignty over the institution of slavery. The Missouri senator's need to distance himself from free-soil policy compelled him to vote for an amendment to the omnibus bill that Louisiana Senator Pierre Soule offered on June 17. The amendment mandated that when New Mexico "shall be admitted as a State, it shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as [its] constitu­ tion may prescribe at the time of [its] admission." Joining forces with Atchison and other southern senators, Benton helped secure the passage of Soule's amendment.34

33 Jefferson City Metropolitan, 30 April 1850; Hannibal Missouri Courier, quoted in ibid.. 4 June 1850. 34 Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 1239. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch" 17

Throughout the Thirty-first Congress, Benton strove not only to disprove the anti-Benton Democrats' claims but also to establish a legislative record around which Benton Democratic candidates for the Missouri General Assembly could rally voters against their factional and party rivals. Hoping to create a winning issue for his allies, Benton emerged as the principal crit­ ic of the compromise tactic that the Senate considered during the spring and summer of 1850. The Senate first began considering a quid-pro-quo, "lump" settlement of sectional disputes on March 12, when Senator Foote proposed that the Senate establish a select committee with instructions to create a sin­ gle compromise package. On the following day, the Missouri senator, together with Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin, offered an amendment to Foote's proposal stating that "nothing in this resolution shall be construed to authorize the said committee to take into consideration anything which relates to the admission of the State of California into the Union."35 On April 5, Benton gave a brief speech defending the amendment. Describing Foote's proposal as a violation of Californians' equal right to the process of admission on a separate basis that other states had undergone, he proclaimed: "I, for one, will never consent to make the admission of that state weigh in the balance against the catching of runaway Negroes.... No one state has ever yet been subjected to such a condition." Benton also denounced Foote's motion as an infringement on Californians' right to self-government, for California had no representatives in Congress "to say aye or no to it."36 When the Senate resumed consideration of Foote's motion and the Benton-Baldwin amendment on April 8, the Missouri senator delivered a lengthy oration elaborating on the anti-republican characteristics of Foote's proposal. Benton again depicted the conjunction of California statehood with other sectionally controversial measures as a denial of Californians' equal rights. Foote's proposal, contended Benton, was an affront to Californians' "honor, dignity, and rights." Referring to Senator Clay's argu­ ment that a combination of bills offered the quickest means to California statehood, the Missouri senator insisted that "an honorable admission, no matter upon what time" was preferable "to a dishonorable one, no matter how speedy." Benton's response belies the notion, popular with many histo­ rians, that a Unionist desire for a practicable sectional compromise plan motivated Benton's opposition to the combination tactic. It suggests instead the importance of his partisan political interest in devising a republican issue salient to Missouri voters. Benton's speech portrayed the select committee proposal not only as a violation of Californians' equal rights but also as a dangerous deviation from

35 Ibid., 517. 36 Ibid., 646-652. Missouri Historical Review

Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, often referred to as "the Great Compromiser" for his role in several compromise pro­ ceedings, declared his allegiance to the Union stronger than his loyalty to the state.

State Historical Society of Missouri the republican tradition of popular government. Benton argued that the pro­ posal encroached on Californians' popular sovereignty. Lacking any con­ gressional representation, the citizens of California had no means of resisting the plan to make their admission to the Union contingent upon the passage of other compromise measures. Invoking the language of self-government that had become a hallmark of partisan political discourse in the United States during the Second Party System, Benton reminded his fellow senators that there "is more dignity in being tried at home than abroad—more consonance to our notions of fair trial to be tried in her own person than by proxy." According to Benton, the combination form of compromise undermined the popular sovereignty not only of Californians but also of the American people. The quid-pro-quo tactic, he emphasized, would enable a minority faction of southern extremists to pressure the majority of congressmen into voting for concessions to the South in order to secure the admission of California into the Union. The Missouri senator criticized the combination tactic as a "log-rolling" scheme by which a "minority in Congress" sought "to control or awe the majority." If the American people's political repre­ sentatives were to engage in the "open and independent voting" that formed "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch" 19 the basis of democracy, concluded Benton, Congress needed to consider each compromise measure separately.37 The Benton-Baldwin amendment became the first in a series of anti- combination legislation that the Missouri senator introduced during the spring and summer of 1850. Benton's numerous proposals enabled him to establish a roll-call voting record that his allies in the Missouri Democratic Party could use to mobilize voters against their factional and party rivals. On April 11, the Senate defeated the Benton-Baldwin amendment by a vote of twenty-eight to twenty-six, but the amendment provided Benton with an opportunity to vote against both Atchison and Clay. Polarized roll-call vot­ ing between the senators also occurred on April 17 over a Benton proposal to table Foote's motion, which failed by a vote of twenty-eight to twenty-four. Before the Senate adjourned that day, Benton offered an amendment com­ prising nine sections, all of which instructed the proposed select committee against connecting California's admission to the other compromise measures. On the following day, Benton voted against Atchison and Clay in favor of each of the instructions, but the Senate rejected all of Benton's motions, including the ones to table Foote's proposal.38 Shortly after defeating Benton's proposals, the Senate voted on Foote's motion to refer the Clay and Ball compromise measures to a select commit­ tee with instructions for it to form a single compromise bill. Atchison, Clay, and twenty-eight other senators secured the passage of Foote's motion against the opposition of Benton and twenty-one other senators. Unrelenting in his opposition, Benton proposed on April 19 that the newly created select committee "be instructed to report separately upon each different subject referred to it, and that the said committee tack no two bills of different natures together." On June 10 he offered a motion that the Senate indefi­ nitely postpone consideration of the omnibus bill that the select committee had presented on May 8. Although Benton's legislative actions initially failed to steer the Senate away from the quid-pro-quo form of compromise, they did succeed in providing him with numerous opportunities to differen­ tiate himself from Atchison and Clay.39 Benton continually invoked the language of republicanism to justify his legislative battle against the combination tactic. Reiterating the themes he had communicated on April 5 and 8, the Missouri senator on April 22 por­ trayed his resolution instructing the select committee against tacking togeth­ er unrelated measures as a defense of democratic government and equal

37 Ibid., 656-665. 38 Ibid., 704-714, 751-764, 769-775. 39 Ibid., 769-775, 780-782, 1173. 20 Missouri Historical Review rights. He again stressed that binding together dissimilar issues forced indi­ vidual congressmen to vote for policies that they otherwise would not approve. Like his previous speeches, Benton's address on April 22 denounced the combination form of compromise not only as a violation of the fundamental principles of popular government but also as a denial of Californians' equal citizenship. The separation of the California statehood bill from other sectionally controversial measures, he insisted, was "a ques­ tion of right, and of decorum—that right and decorum which give to every State a separate consideration."40 Benton's Senate speeches centered on republican themes that would appeal particularly to Missourians' political beliefs. In his pleas for separate voting on the California statehood legislation, Benton employed the same language that he and many other Missourians had invoked in their own strug­ gle for statehood thirty years earlier. In February 1819, Representative James Tallmadge, Jr., of New York had proposed an amendment to the Missouri statehood bill prohibiting "the further introduction of slavery" into the state and requiring that all slave children "born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years." Tallmadge's amendment won the approval of the House of Representatives but met defeat in the Senate. Shortly after the Fifteenth Congress adjourned in early March, Benton, then editor of the St. Louis Enquirer, began a year-long campaign to mobilize the citizens of Missouri in opposition to congressional restriction of slavery in Missouri.41 Utilizing the idiom of America's Revolutionary founders, the Enquirer declared to the citizens of Missouri: "The question now before you is not whether slavery shall be permitted or prohibited in the future state of Missouri; but whether you will meanly abandon your rights, and suffer any earthly power to dictate the terms of your constitution." Reminding Missourians that their status as territorial citizens had never deprived them of their future rights to popular sovereignty and political equality, the Enquirer proclaimed that the restrictionists in Congress will be "disappointed if they expect that the people here have degenerated, have forgotten the rights which they never will alienate because they inhabit a territory."42 By insisting, three decades later, that the Thirty-first Congress honor the equal rights of

40 Ibid., 794-797. Benton elaborated on the republican goals of his anti-combination leg­ islation again on June 10, 1850. 41 Annals of the Congress of the United States, 15th Cong., 2d sess., 1818-1819, 1: 1170; John D. Morton, '"This Magnificent New World': Thomas Hart Benton's Westward Vision Reconsidered," Missouri Historical Review 90 (April 1996): 293. See entire article for an analysis of Benton's efforts in 1819-1820 to mobilize Missourians against the congressional restriction of slavery. 42 St. Louis Enquirer, 1 April, 19 May 1819. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch' 21

m ,v L &*i»v* ^n jraS WLJJBJ will A'Wi 5-S \^Vp^BWS»7i^M^-^^^\

State Historical Society of Missouri A Political Rally

California's settlers, Senator Benton sought to evoke Missourians' memories of their own experience as territorial inhabitants demanding entrance into the Union on an equal footing with other states.43 In retrospect, Senator Benton's policymaking in 1850 consisted of two major strands of behavior. While repeatedly striving to guide the Senate toward consideration of separate settlement measures, he simultaneously forged a stance of opposition to abolitionist and explicit free-soil legislation. Both sets of actions were responses to state-level partisan political impera­ tives. Benton's Senate speeches provide strong evidence of the powerful influence that the senator's party and intraparty political objectives in Missouri exerted on his national policymaking. Even more conclusive evi­ dence occurred when pro-Benton Democrats utilized Benton's legislative record in the election campaign of 1850. Their election strategy centered on the senator's national policy decisions. The pro-Benton Democratic press in Missouri interpreted the senator's proposals, votes, and speeches against abolition and the application of the Wilmot Proviso doctrine as proof of the falsehood of anti-Benton accusa­ tions. The April 8, 1850, Springfield South-Western Flag, for example, con­ tended that Benton's votes to table abolitionist petitions clearly revealed that

43 Floyd C. Shoemaker, Missouri's Struggle for Statehood, 1804-1821 (Jefferson City, Mo.: Hugh Stephens Printing Company, 1916), 81-113; Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819-1821 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), 258-273. 22 Missouri Historical Review his enemies within the Missouri Democracy were "base slanderers and calumniators." Similarly, the Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer wrote on May 11: "During last summer the disunionists made charges against Col. Benton to wit: that he was a free-soiler, an abolitionist, a traitor ... all of which charges we now propose to contrast with extracts from his speech in the Senate on the 11th [of April]." On June 8, the South-Western Flag asserted that Benton's April 11 amendment instructing the proposed select committee against considering abolitionist legislation demonstrated "that Col. Benton was at that time the unyielding supporter of the rights of the South." Finally, both the Jefferson Inquirer and the South-Western Flag cited Benton's vote in favor of Senator Soule's popular sovereignty amendment as further evi­ dence of the inaccuracy of the anti-Benton Democrats' allegations. In sum, the pro-Benton wing of the Missouri Democracy highlighted the senator's legislative record to erase the line of difference that the anti-Benton wing was drawing between the two factions on the issue of slavery.44 Simultaneously, Benton's allies utilized the senator's record of opposition to the combination form of compromise to rally the Missouri electorate against anti-Benton Democratic and Whig candidates for the state legislature. To differentiate themselves from their factional and party rivals, the Benton Democrats emphasized their support for the senator's efforts to steer the Senate toward separate voting on individual compromise measures. Affirmations of Benton's legislative actions in the Senate formed a central feature of the platforms on which Benton Democratic officeseekers ran. The senator's allies in Benton County, for example, met on April 8 and adopted resolutions pledging their support for Benton, the Union, and "the immediate admission of the new State of California without restriction." The platform adopted by a mass meeting of pro-Benton Democrats in St. Louis on May 4 proved typical. In addition to affirming allegiance to the Union and opposi­ tion to secession, it asserted: "We approve of Col. Benton's efforts in the Senate of the United States, to disconnect the subject of the admission of California from the measures involving a discussion of the slavery question."45 Benton's allies also expressed their support for the senator's position on California statehood and the combination tactic in their newspapers. The May 20 South-Western Flag asked Missourians to "demand of every candidate for office, whether he is in favor of the immediate admission of California into the Union, disconnected from all other subjects whatever." The pro-Benton

44 Springfield South-Western Flag, 8 April, 8 June, 13 July 1850; Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer, 11 May, 6 July 1850. 45 Springfield South-Western Flag, 22 April 1850; Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer, 11 May 1850. "A High Wall and a Deep Ditch " 23 press reprinted all of Benton's major Senate speeches pertaining to the California statehood bill and the omnibus form of compromise.46 Invoking the senator's republican rhetoric, pro-Benton Democratic newspapers portrayed their candidates as defenders of popular sovereignty and equal rights. Denouncing the omnibus bill as a violation of Californians' equality, the South-Western Flag insisted on May 27 that Californians were "entitled to an immediate admission into the Union, entitled to it upon prin­ ciples of rights and justice." The Benton Democratic press blended its emphasis on republican precepts with appeals to Missourians' regional iden­ tity as Westerners. "The influence of every man in Missouri who have [sic] sons —and every lady who has a husband in that country [California]," pro­ claimed the South-Western Flag on June 8, "will be cast against those candi­ dates who are only willing to let California in as a compromise." Appealing to Missourians' memories of their own experience as western territorial citi­ zens struggling for political independence and equality, the Jefferson Inquirer declared on June 29 that the "people of Missouri wish the same rights extend­ ed to the people of California, which they would desire to have were they there—to think, act, and speak for themselves."47 The day of reckoning came on August 5, when the state's voters cast bal­ lots for representatives to the General Assembly. While the Benton Democrats soundly defeated their intraparty rivals, they failed to win the state legislative majority that would have ensured Benton's re-election in the senatorial election scheduled for January 1851. The new assembly would seat a total of sixty-four Whigs, fifty-five Benton Democrats, and thirty- seven anti-Benton Democrats. On January 9, 1851, three months after Congress had adjourned, Missouri's state legislature officially nominated candidates for U.S. senator. Benton faced competition from James S. Green, the nominee of the anti-Benton Democrats, and Henry S. Geyer, the Whig nominee. None of the candidates received the necessary majority until the fortieth ballot, on January 22, when Geyer managed to lure the votes of enough anti-Benton Democratic legislators to win the election.48 Benton's failure to retain his Senate seat, which he had occupied since the Monroe administration, did not alienate him from the world of party pol­ itics. Francis P. Blair, Sr., had written former President Van Buren on August 1, 1850, that Benton, cognizant of his imminent defeat, had already

46 Springfield South-Western Flag, 20 May 1850. Benton's lengthy speeches to the Senate on April 8, April 22, and June 10, 1850, appeared in the Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer on April 27, May 26, and June 29, 1850, respectively. 47 Springfield South-Western Flag, 27 May, 8 June 1850; Jefferson City Jefferson Inquirer, 29 June 1850. 48 Chambers, Old Bullion Benton, 369-375; McClure, Opposition, 214-216. 24 Missouri Historical Review

"telegraphed Frank [Blair, Jr.,] to announce him as a candidate for the House of Reps in the next Congress."49 The veteran senator's partisan political aims, which in 1850 centered on the state legislative race in Missouri, had shaped many of his policy decisions during the first session of the Thirty-first Congress. Hoping to provide his allies in the Missouri Democratic Party with a policy issue around which they could mobilize voters against their intraparty and party rivals, Benton formulated and continually advocated the compromise tactic that Congress would ultimately adopt. Similarly, Benton's repeated opposition to abolitionist and explicit free-soil policies was an attempt to fashion a legislative record that his allies in Missouri could invoke to deflect the damaging criticisms of their factional opponents. The Missouri senator's legislative behavior during that momentous session of Congress illuminates the powerful influence that state party politics exerted on national governance during the antebellum era. Benton's policymaking in 1850 highlights the profound impact that the federal system of decentralized government has had on American political development.

) Blair to Van Buren, 1 August 1850, Van Buren Papers.

Ask and Receive

Canton Press, February 18, 1898. As one little tot repeated the Lord's prayer recently, she was interrupted when she reached the sentence "give us this day our daily bread" by her brother who said, "hit him for pie, Daisy, hit him for pie."

It Adds Up

St. Joseph Journal of Commerce, September 12, 1903. Small vices make the big leaks in modern incomes.

Match Made In Heaven

Canton Press, February 11, 1898. I'm not denyin' that women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men. George Elliot. State Historical Society of Missouri

Charles Hugh Woodson of Chariton County commanded a Missouri Confederate unit that served in mountainous northern Virginia from 1863 until the end of the war. Memory, Myth, and Musty Records: Charles Woodson's Missouri Cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia Part 1

BY THOMAS F. CURRAN*

On May 23, 1864, the Congress of the Confederate States of America passed a joint resolution thanking the officers and soldiers from Missouri in Confederate service east of the Mississippi River. Among several Missouri units, the resolution cited "Woodson's detached company," commanded by Captain Charles Hugh Woodson of Chariton County.1 Woodson's company, also known as Company A, First Missouri Cavalry, was the only Missouri unit

Thomas F. Curran is an assistant professor of history at Saint Louis University and the managing editor of the Journal of Policy History. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Notre Dame. 1 U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880- 1901), ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 3: 1008. Hereinafter cited as O. R. All other units cited in the reso­ lution operated in the western theater.

25 26 Missouri Historical Review to serve in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War and operated in the Shenandoah Valley from July 1863 to the end of the conflict. Despite this distinction, little exists in writing about Woodson and his fellow Missourians.2 In the years and decades after the war, abundant accounts about veterans and their military exploits appeared in print. The county histories that flour­ ished in the late nineteenth century also chronicled the feats of local heroes and their regiments. As Brooks Simpson recently noted, however, "For any historian to claim to have culled the complete story of 'what really happened' from these narratives is to engage in self-delusion."3 A history of several counties in north-central Missouri that appeared a decade and a half before Woodson's death in 1909 only casts a cloud of mystery over the captain and his Missouri confederates. In fact, Woodson's company remained unmen- tioned while the captain was credited with accomplishments he never per­ formed. The fallacious information recorded in the volume in all likelihood originated from the captain himself. According to the publisher's preface in Portrait and Biographical Record of Clay, Ray, Carroll, Chariton and Linn Counties, Missouri, "Instead of going to musty records, and taking therefrom dry statistical matter that can be appreciated by but few, our corps of writers have gone to the people [featured in the book] . . . and from their lips have the story of their life struggles."4 Numerous other published sources, includ­ ing several obituaries, repeated the information presented in Portrait, shed­ ding little light on what Woodson and his Missouri cavalry contributed to the Confederate war effort and simultaneously raising questions about Woodson's aversion to recounting his true story.

2 Two works that give the company passing attention are William C. Davis, The Battle of New Market (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1975), and Francis Haselberger, "General Rosser's Raid On The New Creek Depot," West Virginia History 26 (January 1965): 86-109. Both studies discuss Woodson's Cavalry in the context of its contribution to the respective incidents. Helping to explain the dearth of literature is the fact that the O. R., ser. 1, vols. 33-50, misidentifies Woodson as Major Blake L. Woodson and the Missouri unit as the Forty-fifth Virginia Infantry Battalion, which Blake Woodson eventually commanded. The error is final­ ly corrected in volume 51 and in the cumulative index. Several historians have compounded the O. R.'s error by making the same misidentification in their works. See Virgil Carrington Jones, Gray Ghosts and Rebel Raiders (McLean, Va.: EPM Publications, 1984), 324-325; Mark Joseph Stegmaier, "The Kidnapping of Generals Crook and Kelley by the McNeill Rangers," West Virginia History 29 (October 1967): 39; Roger U. Delauter, Jr., McNeill's Rangers, 2d ed. (Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, 1986), 88. These works refer to Woodson and his company only in passing. In "The Guerrilla War, 1861-1865," Civil War Times Illustrated 13 (October 1974): 47, Albert Castel mentions "Buck Woodson, an independent bushwhacker chieftain," with no further explanation. 3 Brooks D. Simpson, "Battles and Leaders: Old and New in Civil War Military History," Reviews in American History 24 (September 1996): 421. 4 Preface, Portrait and Biographical Record of Clay, Ray, Carroll, Chariton and Linn Counties, Missouri (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1893). The Woodson biographical sketch appears on pp. 718-719. Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 27

While the information in Portrait concerning Woodson's prewar and postwar activities appears accurate, the "musty" Civil War records eschewed by the publishers of the volume paint a very different yet still compelling portrait of the man, his company, and their Civil War exploits. During the spring and summer of 1863, circumstances of the war brought the men who would join Woodson's Cavalry to Virginia. Drawn together by their Missouri roots and the shared experiences of capture, imprisonment, and exchange, the "Missouri exiles" struggled to find their niche in the Army of Northern Virginia.5 Before the war's end, Woodson's Cavalry would distinguish itself at the Battle of New Market, aid in keeping the lower Shenandoah Valley in Confederate hands as long as possible, and disrupt Union army activities in northeastern West Virginia through guerrilla activities during the waning months of the conflict. Why then did the captain of this unit fail to report his cavalry's deeds to the writers of the regional history? On December 20, 1841, Charles Woodson was born to John and Mary Webster Woodson in Howard County, Missouri, just north of the Missouri River in the central part of the state. After the deaths of Woodson's father in 1844 and his mother in 1849, Ruth Lockridge of the same county adopted the orphaned youth. Under Lockridge's care, Woodson received a common school education, and as he neared adulthood, he learned the carpentry trade before setting out on his own. On the eve of the Civil War, Woodson, near­ ly six feet tall with fair hair, blue eyes, and a "florid" complexion, resided in neighboring Chariton County. Woodson lived with the family of Robert and Mary McCampbell, a young couple with three small children who had migrated from Kentucky in 1858. Also in the household were two adult brothers of McCampbell, John and Andrew.6 Like many male residents of the divided state, Woodson cast his lot with the Confederacy once the war commenced. One source estimates that between 500 and 1,200 men from Chariton County provided service to the Confederacy while only about 130 served with the Union army. In a state with a total slave population of less than 10 percent in 1860, Chariton, a tobac­ co producing county, contained a population consisting of approximately 20

5 The term "Missouri exiles" appears in the diary of Lieutenant Edward Herndon Scott in William T. Price, Memorials of Edward Herndon Scott, M.D. (1873; reprint, Wytheville, Va.: Jim Presgraves, 1974), 13. 6 Portrait, 718; "A Pioneer, Dead," Salisbury Press-Spectator, 16 July 1909 (Woodson File, Hall of Valor Museum, New Market Battlefield Historical Park, New Market, Va., type­ script); U.S. Census, 8th Report, 1860, "Chariton County, Clark Township, Missouri," 300; T. Berry Smith and Pearl Sims Gehrig, History of Chariton and Howard Counties, Missouri (Topeka, Kans.: Historical Publishing Company, 1923), 594; Walter Williams, ed., A History of Northeast Missouri (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1913), 3: 1994. The description of Woodson comes from Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers . . . Missouri, "Woodson's Cavalry," Roll 80, National Archives. Hereinafter cited as Compiled Records. 28 Missouri Historical Review percent slaves. In the 1860 presidential election, however, northern Democrat Stephen Douglas won a close race in the county against antisecession Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, 692 votes to 608. The Southern Democrat and proslavery candidate, John C. Breckinridge, ran a distant third, receiving fewer than 300 votes, while Republican Abraham Lincoln took one lone vote. The institution of slavery does not adequately explain the high attraction to the Confederacy in the county. A more likely explanation involves the man chosen to lead the pro-Confederate state militia, or Missouri State Guard, at the war's outset—Sterling Price. A resident of Chariton County, Mexican War hero, and former governor, Price was one of the most popular men in the state.7 Woodson enlisted as a six-month volunteer in the First Missouri State Guard, Third Division, and fought at the Battles of Carthage and Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington. With his six-month commitment finished, Woodson received his discharge on December 16, 1861, and departed for home at a time when Price, soon to be commissioned a major general in the Confederate army, was desperately encouraging Missouri State Guard mem­ bers to join the regular Confederate service. Woodson may have left with the

7 Smith and Gehrig, History of Chariton and Howard Counties, 254. Information on Chariton County is drawn from Sceva Bright Laughlin, "Missouri Politics During the Civil War," Missouri Historical Review 23 (April 1929): 400-426; ibid. 24 (January 1930): 281. A brother of Woodson who had moved to the Colorado Territory prior to the war enlisted and served in a Union regiment from that territory. Portrait, 718.

Union View of the Battle of Carthage, July 5, 1861 State Historical Society of Missouri Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 29 intention of returning after he obtained additional clothing, money, and sup­ plies from home, as did many other Missouri volunteers.8 According to postwar recollections of Woodson's activities, fate would not allow the carpenter to return to Chariton County in 1861. On his way home, Federal troops captured Woodson in Randolph County and sent him to St. Louis. After transferring Woodson to the military prison in Alton, Illinois, in the spring of 1862, his captors transported him east to be paroled and exchanged. Once paroled, Woodson joined the Seventh Virginia Cavalry, serving under Turner Ashby and William "Grumble" Jones. During 1862, the Seventh Virginia Cavalry participated in Stonewall Jackson's May Shenandoah Valley campaign, Jackson's capture of Harper's Ferry during the Army of Northern Virginia's fall invasion of Maryland, and Lee's retreat after the Battle of Antietam, providing cover for troops as they withdrew across the Potomac.9 Scrutiny of other records and sources discredits this postwar account. First, during the winter and spring of 1862, informal paroles and exchanges of prisoners were not uncommon, but Union officials in the west did not send Confederate prisoners to Virginia for exchange at this time. Once the oppos­ ing armies arranged a more formal exchange program, they designated Vicksburg, Mississippi, as the exchange point in the west, with City Point, Virginia, playing that role in the east. Vicksburg remained the exchange point until it came under siege in May 1863.10 There is no evident reason why Woodson's captors would have shipped him to Virginia in 1862 as he claimed. Second, and more damning, is Woodson's service record, which fails to suggest any association with the Seventh Virginia Cavalry.11 Instead, the

8 Compiled Records, "Missouri State Guard," Roll 192; Smith and Gehrig, History of Chariton and Howard Counties, 254, 458; Portrait, 718; Phil Gottschalk, In Deadly Earnest: The History of the First Missouri Brigade, CSA (Columbia, Mo.: Missouri River Press, 1991), 37-38; "Capt. Charles H. Woodson," Confederate Veteran 18 (July 1910): 339. 9 "Capt. Charles H. Woodson," 339; Portrait, 718. For the activities of the Seventh Virginia Cavalry during this time see Richard L. Armstrong, 7th Virginia Cavalry (Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, 1992), esp. 33-44. According to the Portrait biographer, Woodson "man­ aged [at Alton] to secure a butcher knife and tunneled a distance of many feet under the walls, and by this means made his escape to Baltimore," a rather incredible feat, even if the evidence from Woodson's service record did not suggest otherwise (p. 718). 10 For the history of prisoner exchanges see William Best Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1930). 11 Woodson has a record with the Missouri State Guard and with his cavalry unit, but none appears with the Seventh Virginia Cavalry. During the final months of the war, John T. Peerce, a member of the Seventh Virginia Cavalry, rode with Woodson and his men. A native of Hampshire County, Virginia (now West Virginia), Peerce spent much of 1864 and 1865 on detached service, scouting and conducting guerrilla raids in the Shenandoah Valley. Woodson's familiarity with the movements of the Virginia unit may have come from his association with Peerce. See John T. Peerce, Amnesty Papers, West Virginia, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s-1917, Record Group 94, National Archives; George Crook to Andrew Johnson, 10 February 1866, The Papers of Andrew Johnson, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 10: 73-74. 30 Missouri Historical Review record states that Woodson reenlisted as a lieutenant in May 1862 in a unit that became part of the First Northeast Missouri Cavalry. Raised in the sum­ mer of 1862 by Colonel Joseph C. Porter, the First Northeast conducted guer­ rilla-style attacks on Federal troops in northern Missouri, including Chariton County. Over the course of the ensuing fall and winter, Porter's Cavalry fell victim to Union General John Schofield's vigilant antipartisan campaign in the state. Once captured, many of Porter's men faced summary execution as guerrillas; the rest were ordered imprisoned at hard labor for the duration of the war. Because of overcrowding at the Alton prison, the fortunate incar­ cerated soldiers would be paroled with over one thousand Confederate sol­ diers and sent to Virginia for exchange in June 1863.12 Woodson was captured in September 1862 in Randolph County, an area where Porter's men operated and where Woodson first claimed to have been caught in 1861. Woodson's captors sent him to the Alton prison, where he eventually joined the group of Confederates paroled and exchanged at City Point in June 1863. From City Point the parolees went to Camp Lee, near Richmond, where Confederate officials allotted Woodson fourteen months back pay for service with the First Northeast Missouri Cavalry.13 The record reveals nothing concerning what Woodson did in the five months prior to joining Porter's Cavalry, but he may have taken part in the rampant guerrilla activity that visited northern Missouri during the period. Porter recruited many of his men from these individuals and small groups of partisans.14 Woodson also collected back pay for his six months in the Missouri State Guard at Camp Lee, but he received more than the rate due to a private. According to a notation on the pay voucher, a captain in the adjutant gener­ al's office had "heard Brig. Gen'l. John B. Clark, late of the Missouri State Guard say that C. H. Woodson was a [lieutenant] ... in his command." John B. Clark, Sr., commanded the Third Division of the state guard before being chosen as a Missouri senator for the first Confederate Congress. Nothing in Woodson's early service record confirms or contradicts this elevation in rank during his six-month enlistment, and Clark may have mistaken Woodson for Lieutenant Colonel William Woodson, who served with Clark's division. Nonetheless, the information available to Confederate officials in Richmond

12 Compiled Records, Roll 80; Joseph A. Mudd, With Porter in North Missouri: A Chapter in the History of the War Between the States (Washington, D.C.: National Publishing Company, 1909); Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958), 76-91; O. R, ser. 2, vol. 6: 693-694. 13 Compiled Records, Roll 80; Joanne Chiles Eakin, comp., Missouri Prisoners of War: From Gratiot Street Prison & Myrtle Street Prison, St. Louis, Mo., And Alton Prison, Alton, Illinois (Independence, Mo.: privately printed, 1995), n.p. 14 A 1968 transcribed copy of Woodson's biography from Portrait found in Woodson's file at the Hall of Valor Museum, New Market Battlefield Historical Park, contains an annotation stating that guerrilla activity was high in Randolph County and that Woodson "may have been involved." Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 31

State Historical Society of Missouri City Point, on the James River, served as an exchange point for prisoners. in mid-1863 suggested that Woodson had experience as an officer, experi­ ence that would indicate his suitability to command his own unit.15 While at Camp Lee, Woodson met fellow Missourian and former school­ teacher Edward Herndon Scott of the Sixth Missouri Infantry. This twenty- one-year-old Platte County resident had sided with the Confederates at about the same time that Woodson's first enlistment ended. Captured on May 1, 1863, at Port Gibson, Mississippi, during Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg cam­ paign, Scott spent a brief time in the Alton prison before being shipped east to City Point. With other exchanged prisoners, Scott and Woodson were assigned to help defend the Confederate capital while the bulk of General Lee's army invaded Pennsylvania. Under these circumstances, Woodson, with the help of Scott, devised a plan to organize a unit composed of former prisoners from their state. Near the end of June, the two Missourians secured an appointment with Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon to pre­ sent their idea. Allotted only five minutes to state their purpose, Woodson and Scott convinced the secretary of the merits of their request. They then set about enlisting men for their new company, Company A, First Missouri Cavalry, with Woodson as captain and Scott as first lieutenant.16

15 Compiled Records, Roll 192; Smith and Gehrig, History of Chariton and Howard Counties, 196; O. R., ser. 1, vol. 53: 424, 439. 16 Price, Memorials, 5-11; Compiled Records, "Sixth Infantry," Roll 136. 32 Missouri Historical Review

At its inception, the Missouri company numbered approximately seventy men, with others joining over the course of time. Of the eighty-six men known to have served under Woodson, the previous service records of fifty-three have been identified.17 The fifty-three came from fourteen separate Missouri units, with two members of the company coming from non-Missouri units. Slightly more than one-half had served with the cavalry, with the largest contingent, nineteen, having ridden with Porter's First Northeast Missouri. The records further show that more than half of Woodson's men had been captured in Missouri, with 45 percent, mostly cavalry, taken north of the Missouri River. Another 36 percent, all from infantry units, became prison­ ers during the Vicksburg campaign. The rest of those with complete records came into Federal custody elsewhere. One exception, George Hall, deserted from the Second Missouri Cavalry in February 1864 and somehow made his way from Mississippi to Virginia. According to a notation in his record, Hall "was a good soldier but [was] induced to desert by others of improper designs."18 Who the "others" were and whether they too joined Woodson could not be ascertained. Certainly, some men recruited in the waning months of the war never generated a service record with the company. Their names are forever lost. In the weeks following his meeting with Seddon, Woodson proceeded with enrolling men from the exchanged Missourians in Richmond. During this time, he reunited with one of his prewar housemates, Andrew McCampbell. A merchant before the war, McCampbell served in the state guard at the conflict's outset before joining the Sixth Missouri Infantry at Memphis in April 1862. McCampbell surrendered with the rest of the Confederates at Vicksburg, and although it was known that he went on to serve in Virginia, his superiors with the Sixth Missouri considered him a deserter.19 This was true of a number of men who joined Woodson's compa­ ny. Like Woodson, McCampbell also apparently revised his war experience in later years. According to a Chariton County history published in 1923, McCampbell served throughout the entire war in Virginia under Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Furthermore, the account credits McCampbell with catching Jackson as the general fell from his horse after being fatally wounded by his own men during the Battle of Chancellorsville. This would have been impossible, for when that battle occurred in the first days of May 1863, McCampbell was among the Confederates retreating toward Vicksburg as Grant's men approached.20

17 This information is drawn from Compiled Records and Eakin, Missouri Prisoners of War. 18 Compiled Records, "Second Cavalry," Roll 18. 19 Ibid., "Sixth Infantry," Roll 136. 20 Smith and Gehrig, History of Chariton and Howard Counties, 594. Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 33

A sense of camaraderie quickly developed among the men, but they immediately faced a serious obstacle to providing the mounted service for which the unit was raised. Confederate policy required cavalry troops to pro­ vide their own horses, and the Missourians had none. According to a nota­ tion made in the unit's compiled service record written when the unit was created, "the majority of men lost their horses in Mo. while in service." If any of the men had at one time provided mounts, they certainly would have relinquished them at the time of their capture. For the rest of 1863 and well into 1864, Woodson's Cavalry would be cavalry in name only, with most of its men dismounted until horses could be obtained.21 Had the men possessed horses, the company might have been designat­ ed a partisan ranger unit such as the one raised by fellow Missourian John Hanson McNeill in Hardy and Hampshire Counties, Virginia. Like Woodson, McNeill and his son Jesse entered the Confederate service in Missouri at the war's outset and were soon after captured. The McNeills escaped from imprisonment in St. Louis and made their way east to Hardy County, where they had lived before setting off for Missouri in 1848. There "Hanse" McNeill raised a cavalry company that would be assigned to John D. Imboden's partisan rangers. During the winter of 1863, McNeill received permission to raise and command his own partisan unit. McNeill's Rangers would soon make a name for themselves for their daring exploits in north­ western Virginia as a truly independent command. This type of service seems to be what Woodson had intended for his company. Once organized, however, Woodson's company would not enjoy that independence.22 On August 30,1863, Woodson's horseless cavalry received its first assign­ ment. The company proceeded northwest of Richmond to Orange County to perform defensive duty. That would last only a brief time. Although desig­ nated as an independent company, the lack of horses minimalized the compa­ ny's effectiveness. Therefore, on September 22, Captain Woodson and his Missourians were assigned to the Sixty-second Virginia Infantry, a regiment that had originated in April 1862 as John Imboden's First Regiment Virginia Partisan Rangers under the Partisan Ranger Act passed by the Confederate Congress one week earlier. In January 1863, Imboden received promotion from colonel to brigadier general while his group of partisans, which had

21 Compiled Records, Roll 80; Price, Memorials, 17. 22 For the best studies of McNeill's Rangers see W. D. Vandiver, "Two Forgotton [sic] Heroes—John Hanson McNeill and his Son Jesse," Missouri Historical Review 21 (April 1927): 404-419; Simeon Miller Bright, "The McNeill Rangers: A Study in Confederate Guerrilla Warfare," West Virginia History 12 (July 1951): 338-394; and Delauter, McNeill's Rangers. Perhaps the McNeills' tale of escape from Federal custody inspired the one attributed to Woodson by his biographer. 34 Missouri Historical Review

In July 1863, Brigadier General John Imboden's forces had protected the Confederate army during its retreat from Gettysburg. In October, Imboden was oper­ ating in the Shenandoah Valley.

State Historical Society of Missouri grown substantially, converted to a regular army unit with a designation as part of Imboden's new command, the Northwest Virginia Brigade.23 Woodson's company united with the Sixty-second Virginia, now led by Colonel George H. Smith, in Augusta County. The assignment to the Northwest Brigade actually came at Woodson's request, perhaps because the captain felt that General Imboden understood the value and uses of partisan service. Woodson, however, did not expect to be attached to a regiment within the brigade. Little did he know that circumstances leading to this decision would later provide his company with the opportunity to make their mark on the battlefield. On October 9, 1863, the Sixty-second Virginia advanced into the Shenandoah Valley, where Woodson's Cavalry saw its first action in service with the Army of Northern Virginia. Moving along the Valley Turnpike on October 18, the Sixty-second with the Northwest Brigade arrived at Charles Town, which was garrisoned by Federal troops, and surrounded the town with artillery. The encircled Federals refused to surrender, but after three volleys of cannon fire and a brief skirmish at close quarters, 434 Federals were taken prisoner before approaching reinforce­ ments prompted Imboden to withdraw to Augusta County.24

23 Price, Memorials, 11-12; Charles Woodson to R. E. Lee, 31 October 1863, Compiled Records, Roll 80; Harold R. Woodward, Jr., Defender of the Valley: Brigadier General John Daniel Imboden, CS.A. (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1996), 49-69; Roger U. Delauter, Jr., 62nd Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, 1988), 1-8. 24 Compiled Records, Roll 80; Woodward, Defender of the Valley, 91-94; Delauter, 62nd Virginia Infantry, 21-23. Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 35

Serving under Imboden in the valley satisfied Woodson and his men, but in October the captain learned of an attempt to transfer the company to Mississippi, where Missouri troops were being consolidated. Such a move probably would have meant separating the men of the company, with some returning to their former units and others joining new units. Disturbed by the possibility, Woodson wrote to Robert E. Lee, asking the general to intervene on his behalf with the secretary of war. Lee honored the request, and Woodson's Cavalry remained in Virginia.25 After a short stay in camp, the Northwest Brigade began to move again. From the first week in November through the third week in December, Imboden's men harried two consecutive Federal raiding parties in the valley, both under the command of Union General William W. Averell. In each instance, Averell endeavored to threaten the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, which cut across southern Virginia. The raids had mixed results. At the same time, the Confederates in the valley failed to stop Averell's forces from with­ drawing to their encampment at Beverly in the northern Shenandoah Valley. The Missouri company's contribution to the venture, except for their partic­ ipation in dislodging a small force of Federal cavalry from Harrisonburg in early December during Averell's withdrawal, remains unknown. At Harrisonburg the horseless Confederates chased the mounted men from the town to "the cheers of ladies and the waving of handkerchiefs."26 The Sixty-second Virginia enjoyed little rest after returning to Augusta County. In mid-December, Jubal Early was appointed temporary comman­ der of Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley and charged with coor­ dinating an assault into northwestern Virginia conducted by Fitzhugh Lee. The Northwest Brigade, including the Sixty-second Virginia, was soon directed to help shield the raid, but Woodson's company did not take part in the affair. Instead, on January 1, 1864, the "Missouri exiles" were assigned to provost marshal duty in Harrisonburg, where they would remain through April. As evidenced by their willingness to reenlist after their exchanges, Woodson's men wanted to fight; for now that honor eluded them.27 While in Harrisonburg, Woodson's men reaffirmed their determination to fight by voluntarily reenlisting for forty years, or until the end of the war. At the same time, they remained on their best behavior and made a conscious

25 Charles Woodson to R. E. Lee with Lee's endorsement, 31 October 1863, Compiled Records, Roll 80. From October 1863 to the end of the war, Lieutenant Colonel Robert S. Bevier of Missouri coordinated the return of exchanged Missouri prisoners from City Point to the consolidated Missouri Brigade. He initiated the attempted transfer. See O. R., ser. 1, vol. 49, pt. 2: 1117-1118; Gottschalk, In Deadly Earnest, 323-333. 26 Woodward, Defender of the Valley, 95-97; Delauter, 62nd Virginia Infantry, 23-24; Price, Memorials, 12-13. 27 Woodward, Defender of the Valley, 97-100; Delauter, 62nd Virginia Infantry, 24-25; Price, Memorials ,13. 36 Missouri Historical Review effort to "earn the confidence and esteem of the people."28 This suggests mis­ givings among the Virginians about the Missourians. The townspeople grad­ ually warmed up to the men, as confirmed by the two pairs of socks each member received from the civilians that spring. The local Rockingham (Va.) Register also praised the Missourians as "not only good soldiers, but intelli­ gent, sober, highminded gentlemen" after the men reenlisted. The editor pro­ claimed, "There is not ... in the Confederate service, better soldiers than these Missouri boys."29 Still, there seem to have been lingering doubts among some townspeople concerning the company's courage. On the same day that the Rockingham (Va.) Register commended Woodson's company, for example, Lieutenant Scott confided in his diary that a Colonel Edwin Tiffin Harrison Warren, whose home the Missourians camped near, had commented that "the company is more like a female school rather than a company of soldiers, for [Warren] has never missed a chicken or a rail since we arrived." In an age when soldiering repre­ sented the pinnacle of masculinity, Warren must have known the backhanded nature of his compliment.30 A lawyer and landowner prior to the war, Warren

28 Price, Memorials, 13-14. 29 "Captain Charles Hugh Woodson," Rockingham (Va.) Register, 1 April 1864 (Woodson File, New Market, typescript). 30 Price, Memorials, 14. See Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New York: Viking Press, 1988), 17-18. Mitchell explores this theme more fully for Northern soldiers in "Soldiering, Manhood, and Coming of Age: A Northern Volunteer," in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, ed. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 43-54. Confederate soldiers in a variety of dress pose for a photographer. State Historical Society of Missouri Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 37 had enlisted in the Tenth Virginia Infantry as its lieutenant colonel at the out­ break of hostilities and became its colonel in May 1862. The 1864 winter lull in fighting afforded Warren the chance to visit his home and meet with the encamped Missourians. Woodson's men would soon have the opportunity to prove themselves on the field of battle to doubters like Warren. In early May, Woodson's company reunited with the Sixty-second Virginia and prepared to confront an anticipated major Union offensive into the valley from the north, an assault that would culminate at the town of New Market.31 Confederate leaders based many of their assumptions about an impending offensive in Virginia on the elevation of Ulysses S. Grant to general-in-chief of the entire Union army and his relocation to the eastern theater. To coordi­ nate efforts to protect the Shenandoah Valley, command of all Confederate troops was placed in the hands of Kentucky General John C. Breckinridge, the former U.S. senator, vice president under James Buchanan, and 1860 presi­ dential candidate of the southern wing of the Democratic Party. Breckinridge first concentrated and organized all available troops, thus the order to Woodson's company to rejoin Smith's Sixty-second Virginia. As expected, Grant launched his "Grand Assault" against Lee's army in early May. One of the assault's first victims in the Battle of the Wilderness was the man who had insulted Woodson's Missourians, Colonel Edwin T. H. Warren.32 While Grant concentrated the bulk of his forces on Lee's defensive line pro­ tecting Richmond, he sent two columns into the valley, one from the north and the other from the south. A key objective in this move was to keep Confederate troops in the valley from uniting with the rest of Lee's army against Grant's main thrust. Leading the drive from the north was the newly appointed com­ mander of the Valley District, Franz Sigel, a politically connected general of German origins with a less than stellar record as a field commander. Sigel's troops, numbering nearly 9,000 at the campaign's outset, moved up the Shenandoah at a snail's pace, slowed by a combination of well-executed Confederate cavalry raids and Sigel's own sluggishness.33 Afforded this valuable time, Breckinridge chose to remain with the Confederate forces confronting Sigel, thereby concentrating as many troops as possible against a much larger approaching enemy. On the eve of the main clash with Sigel at New Market, Breckinridge had approximately 5,300 men at his disposal, including 264 young

31 Price, Memorials, 14-15; John W. Wayland, A History of Rockingham County, Virginia (Dayton, Va.: Ruebush-Elkins Company, 1912), 135-139; U.S. Census, 8th Report, "Rockingham County, Harrisonburg, Virginia," 364; Delauter, 62nd Virginia Cavalry, 29. 32 Wayland, History of Rockingham County, 139. Much of the account of the events lead­ ing up to and including the Battle of New Market is drawn from Davis, Battle of New Market. 33 Richard R. Duncan, "The Raid on Piedmont and the Crippling of Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley," West Virginia History 55 (1996): 25-40. 38 Missouri Historical Review

Prior to the Civil War, John C. Breckinridge had served in Congress and as vice president in the Buchanan administration.

State Historical Society of Missouri men and boys from the nearby Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. The Missouri contingent engaged at New Market numbered 62,34 Woodson's men looked forward to confronting the troops who "fout mit Sigel," mocking the general's heavy German accent. Many of the Missourians had faced Sigel at the Battles of Wilson's Creek in 1861 and Pea Ridge in 1862.35 When the main bodies of the opposing armies converged at New Market on May 15, Breckinridge decided to take the offensive. Woodson's company found itself near the center of the Confederate left flank, sandwiched by the Sixty-second Virginia on the right and the Fifty- first Virginia on the left. Directly ahead of them as they advanced was Captain Alfred von Kleiser's Thirtieth New York Battery of artillery. Sigel ordered Kleiser and the commanders of two other nearby batteries to double- load their guns with grapeshot and canister. A lethal hail of hot metal soon

34 In Battle of New Market, Davis puts the number of Woodson's company at sixty-two (p. 196). The Rockingham (Va.) Register for May 20, 1864, counts seventy. Quoted in "The Opposing Forces at New Market, Va., May 15, 1864," Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (New York: Century Company, 1887-1888), 4: 491-492. Aunit strength report from Lieutenant J. A. V. Pugh of Woodson's company written on the day after the battle counted sixty-five men, but it is unknown if all were engaged in the fight. Quoted in John W. Wayland, A History of Shenandoah County, Virginia (Strasburg, Va.: Shenandoah Publishing House, 1927), 319. 35 "Where Woodson's Missourians Fell," New Market (Va.) Shenandoah Valley, 25 May 1905 (Woodson File, New Market, typescript). See Stephen D. Engle, Yankee Dutchman: The Life of Franz Sigel (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993), pp. 49-119, for Sigel's wartime activities in and around Missouri, and pp. 167-193 for the period leading up to and including the Battle of New Market. Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 39 engulfed the approaching Confederates on the left. Confederate casualties rapidly swelled, and Woodson's men took more than their share, including the captain and Lieutenant Scott, both wounded by shell fragments. Despite the heavy barrage of canister and grape, Smith's Sixty-second Virginia and the Missourians advanced ahead of the rest of the Confederate line before falling back into place. With Smith's men back in line and the Confederate advance at a standstill, the Missourians put their superb marks­ manship skills to use. After pummelling the approaching Confederates with deadly results, Kleiser's battery now came under the accurate aim of Woodson's men, who wounded several gunners and killed a number of horses. More important, the Missouri marksmen drove Kleiser's men to cover, temporarily silencing the New York guns and bringing relief to Smith's regiment. After a failed Union cavalry charge on Breckinridge's right flank, the Confederates on the left launched their own charge, reinforced by the cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, who until now had remained in reserve. The cadets proved their mettle as Sigel's line crumbled. Thanks in part to the marksmanship of Woodson's company, Kleiser had too few horses to carry away one of his guns, which the cadets captured as the New Yorkers fled. Sigel's troops began a full retreat with Breckinridge's men in hot pursuit. Saving Sigel from complete annihilation was the inability of the Confederate cavalry to reach a bridge on the Federals' escape route and destroy it. Sigel's men crossed the bridge spanning the Shenandoah River, ending the Confederate pursuit.36 Breckinridge's important victory thwarted Grant's plans for the valley, but it came at a cost. Of the 4,087 Confederates engaged at New Market, at least 530 became casualties, roughly 13 percent of the force. Casualties were higher in the units on Breckinridge's left flank. For instance, the Sixty-sec­ ond Virginia suffered over 20 percent casualties, 92 of its 448 men. But no unit experienced a higher casualty rate than Woodson's Missourians. Of the members engaged in the battle, between 40 and 60 were killed or wounded, a staggering casualty rate of between 64 and 90 percent.37 One wounded Missourian provided a moment of comic relief during the battle after a minie ball shattered his foot. Private James Smith commandeered a Union prison­ er and forced him to carry Smith to town on his back. The anxious people of New Market could only laugh when "the little 'Reb' on a big 'Yank's' back . . . came gallantly riding into town."38

36 Davis, Battle of New Market, 125-158. 37 Ibid., 200, cites forty casualties. Quoting Lieutenant Pugh's report, John W. Wayland cites sixty out of sixty-five men. Wayland, History of Shenandoah County, 319. Several other sources place the number between these two figures. 38 James F. Smith, "Inquiry," Confederate Veteran 6 (June 1898): 277. 40 Missouri Historical Review

State Historical Society of Missouri

11 The Little 'Reb'on a Big 'Yank's'Back"

Woodson's casualties included 5 dead. Among them was young Tommy Cave of Boone County, Missouri, shot through the neck while loading his weapon. At the tender age of fourteen, Cave had enlisted in early December 1862 against the wishes, but with the reluctant acceptance, of his Southern- sympathizing father. Cave was captured two months later and imprisoned at Alton, where a review board examined his case because of his youth. Despite finding Cave a "Rebel to [his] Govt, and to his parents," or because of it, rather than releasing the boy, the board recommended his exchange. This was effected in the spring of 1863 with most of the other Missourians who joined with Woodson.39 After the battle, the citizens of Harrisonburg had the remains of Cave and the other fallen Missourians removed to that town and buried—a further testament to the cordial relationship that had devel­ oped between Woodson's men and their hosts from the previous winter.40 On the day after the Battle of New Market, Lieutenant J. A. V Pugh of Woodson's company reported that only five of the men who had survived the battle were fit for duty. The Missourians' will to fight was not a casualty of the battle. Eight of the wounded tried to report for duty on May 16 but were

39 Compiled Records, Roll 80. 40 Price, Memorials, 15; Mary Harrison Clagett, "Memoirs of Mrs. Margaret Harrison Cave," in Reminiscences of the Women of Missouri During the Sixties (St. Louis: United Daughters of the Confederacy, Missouri Division, 1929), 127-132. Memory, Myth, and Musty Records 41 sent back to the makeshift hospitals in New Market. As the wounded recov­ ered over the next weeks, they rejoined the company, remaining true to their commitment to fight to the end.41 If any Virginians had questioned the fighting abilities of Woodson's company before New Market, none could question it after. The editor of the Rockingham (Va.) Register, who went to New Market and witnessed the bat­ tle firsthand, lauded the men commanded by "the modest, gallant Charley Woodson." The company, continued the report, "never flinched in the midst of the terrible rain of fire and blood through which they passed in the assault upon the strong position of the enemy. They were the bloody victors of that hard-fought field." After the war, former Confederate general and native Virginian John Echols, who had commanded a brigade on Breckinridge's right flank at New Market, praised in no uncertain terms Woodson's men for their bravery during the clash. The Battle of New Market, while nearly destroying the company, afford­ ed the "homeless strangers from Missouri" the opportunity to prove them­ selves to others on the field of battle.42 In all likelihood, such a chance would not have materialized at New Market had they been mounted as intended. While the cavalry under Breckinridge played an important tactical role in harassing the Union advance up the valley and threatening Sigel's rear dur­ ing the clash, the Confederate heroes of the day emerged from among the infantry. Those heroes included Woodson's Missourians.

[to be continued]

41 Wayland, History of Shenandoah County, 319; "Woodson's Missourians in the Battle of New Market" (Woodson File, New Market, typescript), 2. 42 Rockingham (Va.) Register, 20 May 1864, quoted in Wayland, History of Shenandoah County, 316; "The Opposing Forces at New Market," 491-492.

Eastern Weather Report

Canton Press, February 18, 1898. The news that the snow is three feet deep in Rhode Island is not very startling. It has no room in that state to spread out and so it has to pile up.

Some Say

Unionville Putnam County Leader, January 7, 1898. There is no pleasure in [having] nothing to do; the fun is in [having] lots to do—and not doing it. State Historical Society of Missouri

Isidor Bush and the Bushberg Vineyards of Jefferson County

BY SIEGMAR MUEHL*

Isidor Bush (1822-1888), a Jewish immigrant in St. Louis, seems an unlikely founder of a viticultural enterprise that became renowned through­ out the United States and Europe for its catalogs and contributions to grape culture. Born in Prague's ghetto, Bush was taught at home by tutors engaged by his wealthy parents. In 1837, when Isidor was fifteen, his parents moved to Vienna, where his father invested in a publishing business that under the name of Von Schmidt and Bush became the largest Hebrew publishing house

*Siegmar Muehl is professor emeritus in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. He has a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. degree in educational psychology from the University of Iowa.

42 Isidor Bush 43 in the world. Here young Bush learned the printer's and publisher's trade.1 In 1842 he began editing and publishing a Jewish Yearbook (Das Jahrbuch fuer Israeliten) with many distinguished Jewish scholars as contributors. A liberal in the pre-1848 revolutionary years, Bush also published radical papers, including the Voice for Religious Liberty (Organ fuer Glaubensfreiheit), which supported the cause of Jewish emancipation from Austria's anti-Semitic laws. The failure of the republican cause in the 1848 revolution, followed by harsh retributions against Vienna's liberals, prompt­ ed the twenty-six-year-old Bush to seek refuge in America. Arriving in New York in 1849 with his wife, Theresa (nee Taussig), and four-year-old son, Raphael, Bush opened a stationery store and began pub­ lishing Israels Herald, a German-Jewish weekly devoted especially to the reform movement and the B'nai B'rith order. This paper, the first Jewish weekly in the United States, ceased publication after only a few months due to lack of funds. Later the same year, Bush moved his family to St. Louis, where his wife's relatives had settled earlier, and joined the grocery business with his brother-in-law, Charles Taussig. Eventually, Bush became a prominent citizen of St. Louis and the state, active in business, civic, political, and religious endeavors. He served as president of the People's Savings Bank, as head of the German Immigration-Aid Society, as secretary of the state board of immigration, and as a city councilman. Bush was also a vigorous pro-Union and antislavery advocate—a delegate to both the 1861 and 1865 state conventions—and a dedicated promoter of Jewish causes and philanthropies. He was among the charter members of the St. Louis-area B'nai B'rith lodges, one of the founders of the B'nai El Temple, and a chronicler of the history of Jews in St. Louis.2 These activities, however, provide few clues about what led Bush to pursue his post-Civil War involvement in viticulture. Perhaps Bush's grocery or bank president contacts alerted him to busi­ ness opportunities in grape culture. In the 1850s, widespread enthusiasm and activity in St. Louis and the state focused on the economic potential for this

1 The following sources document Bush's European background and his varied involve­ ments in the St. Louis community: "Isidor Bush," in U.S. Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-made Men: Missouri (New York: U.S. Biographical Publishing Company, 1878), 36-39; B. F. Peixotto, "Isidor Bush," The Menorah 9 (October 1890): 190- 202; William Hyde and Howard L. Conard, eds., Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis (New York: Southern History Company, 1899), 1: 286-287; Samuel Bowman, "Isidor Bush," The Modern View 3 (1902): 16-18. Peixotto and Bowman were Bush contemporaries. See also James A. Wax, "Isidor Bush, American Patriot and Abolitionist," Historica Judaica 5 (October 1943): 183-203. 2 "Historical Sketches," Jewish Tribune, 7, 21 December 1883. 44 Missouri Historical Review new type of agriculture. Bush's German-immigrant acquaintances in Missouri, viticulturalists George Husmann and Friedrich Muench, may have influenced him. Both men lived a few miles up the Missouri River from St. Louis. Husmann owned a horticultural business near Hermann while Muench was a widely known grape culturist and winegrower near Marthasville. Closer to home, Bush probably also knew Alexander Kay ser, a prominent St. Louis lawyer who promoted winegrowing statewide through a series of annual fairs —some in St. Louis—where growers from all over the state and sometimes from Illinois exhibited and competed for prizes.3 The failure of the Bush-Taussig grocery business shortly before the Civil War, which proved to be a painful experience for Bush, may have been the catalyst that moved him into his new vocation. Benjamin Peixotto, a Jewish friend and contemporary, reported: "Bush always believed in the pursuit of agriculture by the Jews, and [desired] to spare his only son Ralph from the accidents and vicissitudes of commercial life."4 These two goals apparently coalesced in Bush's thinking. Since discussion of grape culture was so prevalent at the time, Bush not surprisingly chose this field as a promising one for both his and his son's future. To learn the trade, Bush apprenticed his son, Raphael, to George Husmann at Hermann and subsequently to "Old (John) Mottier," a well- known Swiss viticulturist in the Cincinnati area. Mottier was known for advising people about establishing vineyard operations in their home areas.5 In 1862, when Bush became general passenger and freight agent for the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad, he gained opportunities to familiarize himself with the territory along the railroad's right-of-way, land potentially suitable for growing grapes. In February and March 1865, he bought several parcels (241 acres) of Jefferson County land that lay twenty-five miles south of St. Louis along the railroad right-of-way and bordered the Mississippi

3 Siegmar Muehl, "Winegrowing in the Hermann Area: Early Years' Chronicle," Missouri Historical Review 87 (April 1993): 233-252; J. Thomas Scharf, ed., History of Saint Louis City and County (Philadelphia: Louis Everts & Company, 1883), 2: 1495. 4 Peixotto, "Isidor Bush," 198. Benjamin Franklin Peixotto was a Jewish activist in Cleveland. Through his leadership in the B'nai B'rith, the lodge established the forerunner of the Cleveland Jewish Orphanage. This orphanage was one of Bush's favorite philanthropies, "his pet institution . . . which he helped to found and of which he became a life long Trustee in 1868." See Bowman, "Isidor Bush," 17. 5 U.S. Biographical Dictionary, 38; Linda Walker Stevens, "Old Nick, Cincinnati Winemaker," Time Line 13 (March/April 1996): 24-35. Isidor Bush 45

River.6 Of the transaction, Bush wrote: "My friend Mr. Husmann had exam­ ined the land for me, and on his judgement my son and I safely relied, as to its superior adaptability for grape and fruit culture." Bush went on to note that the area "possessed a station of the Iron Mountain railroad and an excellent steamboat landing." The latter facilities were used by area farmers to ship grain and other produce to market. Bush later wrote a description of a desirable vineyard location that close­ ly resembled his own riverside property: "Hillsides, gentle slopes, along large rivers, on bluffs overhanging the banks of large streams . . . there is the location for the culture of the grape." This account also noted the importance of shelter afforded by nearby woods to protect the vineyards from northwest winter winds. The wooded bluff tops bordering Bush's land on the west pro­ vided just such a shelter.7 As early as 1866, four acres of the property had been planted with vines and an orchard with a thousand pear trees. In addition, one acre had been set aside to test new grape varieties before quantity planting. In the next few years, the vineyard expanded, and by 1868 it contained nine acres with some

6 Jefferson County Deed Index, 1865-1866,5: 193,194, 368-369,404-405, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City. According to the property deeds, the cost of land varied from $20 to $85 per acre for the two parcels along the river. In 1866, Bush bought 320 acres of land far­ ther inland from the river. See also "Report of Isidor Bush & Son—Bushberg Vineyard and Orchard," in Annual Report of the State Board of Agriculture (Jefferson City, Mo.: Missouri State Board of Agriculture, 1868): 513-514. 7 Isidor Bush & Son, Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of American Grape Vines (St. Louis: Studley & Company, 1869), 29.

Bordering the Mississippi River, Bushberg Vineyards had both a steam­ boat landing and a terrain conducive to the cultivation of grapes. 46 Missouri Historical Review twenty different grape varieties. That year, the vineyard location acquired a post office designated "Bushberg." The post office was undoubtedly estab­ lished to handle the firm's growing mail-order business.8 The vineyard's first catalog, dated 1869-1870, and Bush's correspon­ dence provide glimpses into the firm's early years. The first catalog, Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of Grape Vines, Small Fruit and Seed Potatoes, listed Isidor Bush and Son as proprietors. The paperbound, sixty- page publication sold for twenty-five cents. All the vineyard products were available by mail order. The grape varieties listed for sale included eighty kinds of cultivated, one-year-old native vines. The catalog was also issued in a German-language edition since many grape growers, who were also potential customers, were recent German immigrants. The catalog acknowledged several outside sources and experts "from whom we have copied": among them, Missourians Friedrich Muench, who had supplied the German translation; George Husmann, "our friend and teacher"; and Henry B. Kelley, Bushberg's foreman and propagator. Kelley, like Raphael, had been trained by Husmann. The catalog's introduction noted: "Our success in grape growing, and in the propagation business of grape vines has been highly satisfactory ... far beyond our expections, the demand for our plants exceeding our stock. . . . With our increased facilities we are now enabled to offer both a larger and better stock, and at reduced prices." A "Testimonials" page in the catalog showed that the business served customers mainly in Missouri and Illinois. One customer in Springfield, Missouri, a recipient of four thousand rooted vines in November 1868, wrote: "They were so well packed that they arrived in the very best condition. . . . the whole lot are healthy well-rooted vines."9 Bush also promoted the vineyards by entering their grape products in the horticultural exhibits at the annual St. Louis fair. In fall 1870, Bushberg vineyards was one of the main exhibitors "to whom nearly all the first pre­ miums in this department were justly awarded." The prizes recognized the

8 Annual Report, 514. See also Gail Unzelman, "The 'Bushberg Catalogues,'" in The Wayward Tendrils Newsletter 5 (April 1995): 1-4, and Missouri State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1876-1877 (St. Louis: R. L. Polk and Company, 1876), 112. For an early map list­ ing see Campbells New Atlas of Missouri (St. Louis: R. A. Campbell, 1873), 29. 9 The German-language edition was advertised in the 1869 Bush catalog ("Advertisements") and in the "Advertising Sheet" in the Grape Culturist 2 (1870). A few years earlier Muench had published Amerikanische Weinbau Schule, translated by Elizabeth Cutter as School for American Grape Culture (St. Louis: Conrad Witter, 1865), and Husmann, The Cultivation of the Native Grape and Manufacture of American Wines (New York: Geo. E. and Frank W. Woodward, 1866). Acknowledgments appeared on the catalog's facing page. Kelley's training by Husmann is referred to in a February 11, 1871, Isidor Bush letter to Meissner. This and subsequent Bush and Meissner letter references are from the Meissner Family Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. The contents are only partially paginat­ ed. See also 1869-1870 Bushberg catalog sections "To Our Customers" and "Testimonials." Isidor Bush 47

best six bunches of Norton's Virginia and Catawba grapes and the best and largest number of bunches on one vine.10 In an April 1869 letter to Gustave Meissner, a German-immigrant nurs­ eryman on Staten Island and one of Bushberg's customers, Bush commented on his vineyards' prospects some three years after their beginning: "I must tell you that the company itself is still an experiment, a rather grandiose one, but still with no guarantee of success (this in confidence)."11 In mid-January 1871, Bush again wrote Meissner, who then operated a nursery at Waterloo, Iowa. He invited the twenty-eight-year-old Meissner to become his foreman in place of Kelley, who wished to leave, and provided details about the vineyards' oper­ ation. Bush described a glass house and cold frames for vine propagation. The house could supply "with careful management 25,000 vines from sturdy rootlings." Bush noted Raphael's role at the Bushberg site: "He likes to stand by the side of foreman Kelley and works in propagation and in the vineyards." Raphael also directed the foreman, Bush explained, "since he [Raphael] under­ stands vineyard work well." As for his own St. Louis-based role in the busi­ ness, Bush wrote: "Isidor Bush, the father, provides the means. However, he does none of the work and has much other business to attend to." Bush supplemented the foreman's salary of $65 a month with a one-third share of the net profit from the propagating business. At the time, the com­ bination gave the foreman an annual income of some $1,200. In addition, the

10 Grape Culturist 2 (November, December 1870): 303, 322-323. 11 Isidor Bush to Meissner, 6 April 1869, Meissner Family Papers. For Meissner's back­ ground see Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 3: 1439.

Pressing Grapes State Historical Society of Missouri 48 Missouri Historical Review foreman received "a separate, well-built house of 2 rooms, free firewood, etc." According to Bush, while the vineyard earned "over $7,000 yearly from grape vines. . . . without doubt, with persistence the business is yet capable of further expansion. In this enterprise we need a man to work and feel as if the place were his own."12 Meissner eventually accepted Bush's offer, becoming the Bushberg propagation foreman in spring 1871. By 1875 he had proven such an asset to the firm that he became the third partner.13 Bush's "other business" included several viticulture-related activities. He was a board member and treasurer of his friend Husmann's Bluffton Wine Company, an experience that proved advantageous in managing his own vineyard operation. Bush also contributed regularly to the Grape Culturist, a new journal published in St. Louis and edited by Husmann.14 In addition to the vineyards, Bush had a wholesale wine business in St. Louis that distrib­ uted native wines produced by vintners from neighboring states and those as far away as New York and California. The firm probably also sold wines made at the Bushberg site.15 The reputation of the Bushberg vineyards began to spread in the 1870s. Recognition came in part from the firm's catalogs of 1875, and later, of 1883 and 1895. These catalogs, which no longer listed small fruit and seed pota­ toes, had two major sections. The "Grape Manual" contained a history of grape culture, with up-to-date information about various aspects of grape growing, including grape diseases and destructive insects. A second section, the "Descriptive Catalogue," described and listed native grape varieties, their

12 Bush to Meissner, 16 January 1871, Meissner Family Papers. 13 The 1875 Bushberg catalog listed Meissner as the third "proprietor." One source gave the beginning date of Meissner's partnership as 1872. Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 3: 1439. 14 "Bluffton Wine Company," Grape Culturist 1 (January 1869): 1, 45-47. See also Peixotto, "Isidor Bush," 199. 15 U.S. Biographical Dictionary, 38. Meissner's letters provided evidence of wine pro­ duction at the vineyard. A November 22, 1886, letter to Isidor Bush in the Meissner Family Papers, 37, referred to coopers working at the vineyards and to a wine cellar. A January 5, 1893, letter to Raphael Bush, ibid., 265-266, referred to the vineyards' "wine operations." Interestingly, the balance sheet extracts, ibid., 47, do not include wine sale entries. Separate accounts may have been kept for the St. Louis wine business. Another source noted: "A very large quantity of domestic wine of superior quality is annually manufactured in the county [Jefferson]. The greatest amount at any single point being made at Bushberg. . . ." History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gasconade Counties, Missouri (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1888), 383. Isidor Bush 49 histories, and characteristics. Handsome engravings illustrated fruited bunches of many of the grapes. An index provided graphically coded indi­ cators of berry size and color for each variety and noted leading varieties for general cultivation. With each new catalog edition, the contents expanded, becoming almost encyclopedic for a publication of its kind. George Englemann, the noted St. Louis botanist, wrote illustrated articles on the classification of native grapes, a field he had pioneered.16 Experts, including Englemann, provided articles on recent findings and treatments for deleterious diseases and insects. In the latter area, the catalog particularly acknowledged the work of Charles V. Riley, the Missouri state entomologist.17 Whereas the modest paperbound 1869-1870 catalog had listed eighty grape varieties, all for sale at the Bushberg vineyards, the 1895 edition, avail­ able in hard cover for one dollar, carried descriptions of all American grapes grown east of the Rocky Mountains, "varieties which have ever received

16 For more about Englemann see William G. Bek, "George Englemann, Man of Science, Part I," Missouri Historical Review 23 (January 1929): 167-206, and Michael Long, "George Englemann and the Lure of Frontier Science," ibid. 59 (April 1995): 251-268. 17 Floyd G. Summers, "Charles V. Riley, Benefactor of Agriculture," ibid. 19 (July 1925): 611-621; "Missouriana," ibid. 32 (April 1938): 378-405.

State Historical Society of Missouri

The u Grape Manual" sec­ tions of the Bushberg cata­ logs, widely acclaimed for their encyclopedic content, provided extensive informa­ tion on methods and aspects of vine grafting. 50 Missouri Historical Review attention of Viticulturalists, of which we could obtain accurate information." A separate publication listed the vineyard stock available for sale. The vine descriptions drew on the expertise of a distinguished list of grape culturists from across the nation. Interestingly, a list of individual propagators of new varieties of seedlings and hybrids using native stock that appeared in the 1895 catalog did not include names associated with the Bushberg vineyards. In the 1883 and 1895 catalogs, a short essay titled "The Temperance Question" was appended to the "Manual" section on winemaking. During the nineteenth century, church temperance groups had begun crusading to ban pro­ duction of all alcoholic drinks, and in the 1840s, Maine passed the nation's first "prohibition" law. In response to this growing temperance agitation, the Bushberg catalog extolled the virtues of wine as a beverage: "Wine itself is an apostle of temperance. . . . Let wine and beer drinking be prohibited, and the use of opium, the secret tippling of strong drinks, the increase of vice and intemperance, would be the consequence." Perhaps to remind religious zealots backing prohibition to read their Bible more carefully, the essay concluded by quoting from Psalms 104:15: "Wine . . . makes glad the heart of man."18 "Testimonial" pages now documented the far-flung geographical repre­ sentation of the vineyards' clientele and the catalog's expanded recognition. While the 1869 catalog had published letters from only Missouri and Illinois customers, the 1875 edition featured letter extracts from East Coast cus­ tomers and those in border states and farther south. A French grower in the Rhone Valley wrote on receipt of his order: "The vines are in best condition and growing vigorously." In the 1895 catalog, the "Testimonial" pages quoted prominent horticul­ turists commenting on the 1883 edition. Extracts from four sources suffice to give the flavor of these comments. William Saunders, superintendent of the Experimental Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture, wrote: "It is at once the BEST CATALOGUE and the BEST MANUAL on American grapes that has yet been published." Professor W. J. Beal, secretary of the American Pomological Society, noted: "It is a grand work—far ahead of anything of the kind I know of in this country." Likewise, Samuel Miller, agricultural editor of ColmansRural World, a St. Louis paper,observed: "For forty years I have been getting every work on the grape I could hear of, and consider this of Bush & Son & Meissner the most valuable work of the kind yet published in the English language." George W. Campbell of Delaware, Ohio, a well-known propagator of American grape varieties, characterized the 1883 Bushberg catalog's account of vine grafting as "probably one of the best and most practical articles on this subject yet published." Campbell continued: "I would like also to

! Catalogue, 1895, 81; ibid., 1883, 66. Isidor Bush 51 express my approval of the entire work, for it seems to have been written carefully and conscientiously, and certainly contains a larger amount of valu­ able information in reference to American grape-vines than any catalogue I have ever seen." He concluded with a slight reservation about the vine descriptions, which he attributed to "the senior member of the firm [who] is doubtless influenced by his locality and also by his evident love for this 'noblest fruit.' In some instances he is perhaps, To their faults a little blind/ and to their virtues very kind.'" Testifying to the catalog's European reputation, Professor Jules-Emile Planchon, director of La Vigne Americaine, a French journal on viticulture published in Montpellier, wrote: "I have engaged M. Brazille to make a trans­ lation. ... It is a work that renders a great service to Europe and it will come into the hands of a very large number of winegrowers. ..." A letter from August von Babo, director of the Austrian School of Viticulture at Klosterneuberg, reflected more praise: "The work of our St. Louis friends, enriched by the knowledge of Englemann and Riley, has for us an originali­ ty, a value of prime importance for viticulture. Honor and thanks to the grape growers at Bushberg.. .." In addition to the French translation, the 1895 cat­ alog had also been translated into Italian.19 Who, among the three Bushberg proprietors and partners—father, son, and Meissner—took major responsibility for the writing, editing, and pro­ duction of the catalogs in St. Louis? Although the text referred to the "edi­ tors," it is likely that Isidor Bush, located in St. Louis, made the greatest con­ tribution. Raphael Bush and Gustave Meissner, living and working at the vineyard, probably had more than enough to occupy themselves with propa­ gation work, order shipping, and supervising vineyard workers, not to men­ tion overseeing the maintenance of various physical properties at Bushberg.20 Also, the writing style in the catalogs is similar to that of the articles Bush published in the Grape Culturist. Certainly, Bush's editorial and publication know-how acquired in Vienna and New York gave him the experience and skills that would have contributed to the catalogs' acclaim.

19 Ibid., 1875 and 1895, "Testimonials," n.p. A note on the 1895 catalog page titled "Opinions of some Prominent Horticulturists and from the Press" reported: "We regret very much the loss of a number of valuable testimonials destroyed by the great fire on last Christmas eve, which laid our St. Louis office in ashes." 20 A Meissner letter to Isidor and Raphael Bush, November 17, 1886, Meissner Family Papers, 17, listed twenty-five "boarded" employees that year. As head of the German Immigration-Aid Society, Isidor Bush occasionally provided jobs to needy immigrants at his Bushberg vineyard. In 1867 an eighteen-year-old, penniless Jewish immigrant from Vienna came to Bush's St. Louis office seeking aid. Bush offered the young man a vineyard job. On better acquaintance, Bush discovered the youth had journalistic aspirations and found him a job on the St. Louis German-American newspaper, the Westliche Post. The young immigrant was Joseph Pulitzer. Bowman, "Isidor Bush," 16. 52 Missouri Historical Review

The reputation of Bushberg vineyards also derived from their important role in helping to restore European vineyards during the destructive Phylloxera infestation as chronicled in the "Grape Manual" sections of the 1875, 1883, and 1895 catalogs.21 The first American settlements along the Atlantic coast and, later, those farther west, had made efforts to grow the European grape Vitis vinifera, a different species from its wild North American relative. All of these attempts had ended in failure. Viticulturalists concluded that the cause lay in the soil and climate conditions. The people at Bushberg, however, expressed some doubts about this long-held convic­ tion. In 1867, Bushberg imported from Austria several varieties of European vines "with a view to discover by careful observation, the real cause of the failure." As with previous attempts, the vines languished in a few years for no obvious reason. About the same time, French botanists discovered that the cause of an European infestation of grape vines was the root louse Phylloxera. The insect bore a close resemblance to the American gall louse, which seemed to infect only the leaves of native American vines. In 1870, when Riley, Missouri's entomologist, forwarded this informa­ tion to his Bushberg colleagues, he was invited to the vineyards "to unearth both diseased and healthy vines, native and foreign, of every kind, in order

21 In addition to the Bushberg catalog accounts see Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. "Phylloxera."

State Historical Society o f Missouri

r^u^JdJ^mJW^.

3fc^lSc\. * :->! 'A r^*V^ MM \^^^^^^^3^wt^^^ ir3fiP^ The underside of a grape leaf Jr&^orfS ^m^wtrjl^^ Slllil s^&y* covered with Phylloxera galls. ^53flp^»S^5#£iri The 1895 Bushberg catalog CHMjEP^Si jgSj ^^I^K^^O^ $W&J identified the insect as one of \|g3f^\jijl'

22 Catalogue, 1883,7-8,24. 23 J. Leenhardt-Pomier, "M. Meissner," La Vigne Americaine et la Viticulture en Europe 4: (April 1898): 125-127. Trans. Lois B. Muehl and Siegmar Muehl. 54 Missouri Historical Review demand.24 One newspaper account reported that "from 1879 to 1883 Bushberg shipped from 5,000,000 to 8,000,000 [vines] a year . . . building up a fine trade with Servia [sic], Austria, Brazil, Australia and other countries as well as France." The same account noted that a "half million riparia cuttings" had been purchased by a California grower.25 But after 1883, Bushberg's income from foreign sales of "plants" dropped abruptly—from $2,242 in 1883 to $863 in 1884—as indicated by extant Bushberg balance sheet extracts from 1883 to 1886. By 1885-1886 foreign sales had ceased entirely.26 Even before the publication of Bushberg's 1895 catalog, Meissner-Bush correspondence raised the question of "winding up the old firm," or perhaps continuing the business with only Raphael Bush and Meissner as partners. In his seventies, Isidor Bush was in poor health and apparently wished to retire. A January 1, 1893, Meissner letter, addressed to both Bushes, revealed dif­ fering views of this possibility. Meissner perceived the Bushes as "greatly discouraged at the entire future of the business—too much so I think." By contrast, he proposed "not just keeping going next year but many years to come." Four days later, in response to a follow-up letter from Raphael, Meissner wrote: "This proposition of yours, as to how we may continue together in the grape nursery business . . . comes without one friendly line of encouragement. However, I will accept the fact of your making the proposi­ tion as implied evidence that you are friendly to a continuation."27 Grounds for Raphael's coolness were likely both personal and econom­ ic. In 1886, Meissner and the Bushes had an acrimonious exchange in which Meissner charged Raphael with bookkeeping irregularities. The Bushes, on their part, believed Meissner spent too much time tending his own private vineyard business, which he had developed on a six-hundred-acre Illinois island directly across the river from Bushberg.28 The Bushes may have had grounds for their charge. A Meissner biogra­ phy reported that in 1881 he "revisited France, and the same year also visit­ ed Spain and Italy, in the interest of his business. . . ,"29 Some of Meissner's earlier visits to France, Texas, and the Indian Territory may also have

24 For other Missouri growers involved in these shipments see Siegmar Muehl, "The Wild Missouri Grape and Nineteenth-Century Viticulture," Missouri Historical Review 91 (July 1997): 373-383. 25 Undated newspaper clipping, Meissner Family Papers, n.p. 26 Extracts from balance sheets, ibid., 47. 27 Meissner to Isidor and Raphael Bush, 1, 5 January 1893, ibid., 259-263, 265-266. 28 Meissner to Isidor and Raphael Bush, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23 November 1886, ibid., 13- 42. Only Meissner's view of this situation is present; no relevant Bush letters survive. For Meissner's island property see Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 3: 1439; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Upper Mississippi River Navigation Charts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1982), 110. 29 Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 3: 1439. Isidor Bush 55

•*•-*"J^r* * **

Initially one of Bushberg's customers, Gustave Meissner became the third pro­ prietor of the firm by 1875.

Merkle Collection, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis

involved his own vineyard. This business must have been profitable, since in 1875, Meissner built on Bushberg property an imposing frame house on a bluff overlooking the river.30 The dispute almost broke up the partnership, but eventually, cooler heads prevailed. The matter was smoothed over, at least on the surface. Economic reality may have been a more serious reason for Raphael's reluctance to continue the business. Although income from Bushberg's domestic plant sales had increased substantially from 1883 to 1886 ($3,640 to $8,913), this increase likely included the shipments of grafting stock to California, mentioned earlier.31 Once this demand was met, such sales would have diminished. Unfortunately, accounts recording the firm's sales in the late 1880s and early 1890s no longer exist. The larger economic climate for Missouri's grape culture during this period did not promise well for the long term. Wine and grape prices had begun to decline due to increased competition from similar California products readily shipped by rail to the Midwest. This decline would have affected Bushberg sales since there would be less demand for vine stock to establish or replant vineyards.

30 Walter L. Eschbach and Malcom C. Drummond, Historic Sites of Jefferson County, Missouri (Hillsboro, Mo.: H. Bartholomew and Associates, 1968), 30. 31 Extracts from balance sheets, Meissner Family Papers, 47. 56 Missouri Historical Review

Vine diseases—rots and mildews —also became more virulent during the 1880s. Although chemical sprays existed to control these blights, spraying was expensive and labor intensive. As a result, many growers simply dropped out of the business.32 Whatever the reason, evidence indicates that the Bushberg business did not continue for long after 1895. In April 1895, Isidor Bush offered to sell some of his land to Meissner, who requested to purchase ten acres that included "ground on which my house stands . . . most of the buildings of Bushberg proper, your old residence, packing house, and old stables." Meissner also asked for assured right-of-way to the rail depot and river land­ ing to provide access to his island vineyard operation. A month later, Bush sold Meissner six of the ten requested acres.33 In his will, written in 1897, Isidor Bush bequeathed to his son the land along the river that he purchased in 1865, minus the portion sold to Meissner. The will made no mention of the vineyard business as such but did specifi-

32 Peter J. Poletti, Jr., "An Interdisciplinary Study of the Missouri Grape and Wine Industry, 1650 to 1989" (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University, 1989), 100-122. 33 Meissner to Isidor Bush, 25 April 1895, Meissner Family Papers, n.p. Meissner's letter to Bush, November 22,1886, ibid., 38, referred to "Your old residence " This was another bluff- top property south of the Meissner house that Meissner also characterized as the "stone house" or "Foster place." Current residents of the Meissner property, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Gleason, report­ ed in a September 20, 1998, letter to the author that the "stone house" was originally built by Major Emory Foster shortly after the Civil War and later acquired by Bush.

Isidor Bush Residence at Bushberg Merkle Collection, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis Isidor Bush 57 cally cite the wine-business property in St. Louis and shares of stock as part of Raphael's legacy.34 Gustave Meissner and Isidor Bush both died in 1898: Meissner in January; Bush in August. At the time of his father's death, Raphael still lived at Bushberg.35 In 1902, Meissner's son, Gustave, Jr., had his own nursery business at Bushberg, with headquarters in his father's old house. His two partners at the time did not include Raphael Bush.36 Whatever vineyard business existed in the area after the turn-of-the-cen- tury was insufficient to maintain the Bushberg post office. With its closing in 1904, the "town" of Bushberg officially disappeared. Raphael Bush was its last postmaster.37 Although the post office had put Bushberg on the map, the population was never large enough for its inclusion in census listings. One source gave the population as sixty in the 1880s.38 Regardless, Bushberg had once boast­ ed an elegant guest accommodation, the "Bushberg Hotel," built to house visitors arriving by train or steamboat in the vineyards' heyday. Although Isidor Bush died over one hundred years ago, several landmarks attest to the location of the former vineyard property. The Meissner house stills stands on the river bluff just east of Pevely, as does Bush's old residence. The present owner calls the Meissner house and property "Evergreen Hill" and the Bush residence "Greystone." Both were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.39 Except for derelict stone foundations below the bluff, none of the vineyard buildings once located in that area survive. Current maps continue to use "Bushberg" designations in the area. One Jefferson County map shows a "Bushberg Road" that runs a north-south loop through the old Bushberg property east of Highways 61/67. A Corps of Engineers map shows a "Bushberg Light and Daymark" on the river. On the Illinois shore, the same map depicts "Meissner Island," now stranded on the river's east bank as the result of river channel changes.

34 Isidor Bush will, October 1897,1-2, Probate Division, Missouri Circuit Court, St. Louis. The will confirmed Meissner's land purchase. 35 Isidor Bush obituary, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 6 August 1898. 36 G. E. Meissner, Jr., to Eagle Generation Company, St. Louis, 2 October 1902, Meissner Family Papers, n.p. The other partners were R. M. Baker and E. W. Bohde. 37 Ruth Welty, "Place Names of St. Louis and Jefferson County" (master's thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1939); Robert G. Schultz, Missouri Post Offices, 1804-1981 (St. Louis: American Philatelic Society, 1982). 38 Missouri State Gazetteer, 1885-1886, 192. 39 "Greystone and the Gustave Meissner House," National Register of Historic Places (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1974), n.p. 58 Missouri Historical Review

Today, Missouri wine-grape growers, like their Bushberg predecessors, continue to experiment with European Vinifera vines and hybrids (using native vines).40 These efforts are pursued by both the State Fruit Experiment Station at Mountain Grove and several private growers. Although Phylloxera is no longer a problem, today's challenge is to find the best vines to prosper under Missouri's sometimes sudden and extreme temperature changes. The long-term goal is to increase harvest from these select vines and improve the taste of Missouri's wines in order to compete successfully in a wider market. As a testament to the lasting legacy of Isidor Bush, Gustave Meissner, and other pioneer growers in the state, the honored tradi­ tion of viticulture is alive and well in Missouri.

40 Linda Walker Stevens, "Amazing Grapes," Missouri Wine Country Journal 1 (fall/winter 1990): 28-35.

The Late Riser

Charleston Courier, May 6, 1864. "Mr. Smithers, how can you sleep so? The sun has been up these two hours." "Well, what if he has? He goes to bed at dark (hie), while I'm (hie) smoking and drinking till after (hie) midnight."

A Lonely Time

Jefferson City Jefftown Journal, September 25, 1959. Why the two little ink drops were crying: Their mother and father were in the pen, and they didn't know how long the sentence was going to be.

Gave Away the Wrappers

Columbia Missouri Herald, December 9, 1898. "Did you divide your bonbons with your little brother, Mollie?" "Yes, ma, I ate the candy and gave him the mottoes. You know he is awfully fond of reading." State Historical Society of Missouri

The President and the Emperor: How Samuel Spahr Laws Found an Elephant and Lost His Job

BY MAURICE M. MANRING*

When a college president decides to quit, usually a large contingent of critics is eager to hold the door for him. The University of Missouri's suc­ cession of presidents has been no exception to this rule. The University's first president, Hiram Lathrop (1841-1849), was also its first president to be badgered into leaving. When Lathrop's successor, James Shannon (1850- 1856), resigned, one member of the board of curators told him that if the gov­ erning board "had fully known your history, there would have been no more probability of your election to the Presidency than of procuring ostrich feath­ ers from the back of a goat."1

*Maurice M. Manring is the manager of media relations for the University of Missouri System. He received the B.A. degree in journalism and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from the University of Missouri-Columbia. 1 Warren Woodson to James Shannon, 1853, James S. Rollins Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia; hereinafter cited as WHMC- Columbia. For information about Shannon's career see Frank F. Stephens, A History of the University of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1962), 75-122, and Jonas Viles, The University of Missouri: A Centennial History (Columbia, Mo.: E. W. Stephens Company, 1939), 52-78.

59 60 Missouri Historical Review

University of Missouri presidents have retired, resigned, or been fired for a variety of reasons. Benjamin Minor (1860-1862) had the ill fortune of tak­ ing over the school just before it closed during the Civil War, and he was not invited back when it reopened. The curators dismissed Stratton Brooks (1923-1929) for his role in the firing of a sociology professor, Max F. Meyer, who circulated in class a rather tame (even for 1929) survey on sexual behav­ ior. More recently, C. Brice Ratchford (1971-1976) and George Russell (1991-1996) retired in the wake of divisive conflicts over University gover­ nance. University presidents must keep many constituents happy—students, alumni, faculty, legislators, taxpayers, curators —and angering even one of those groups can hasten the chief executive's departure from office. Samuel Spahr Laws, who served the third-longest term as president in the history of the University, from 1876 to 1889, proved to be an exception to this maxim. Laws alienated and angered almost everyone, even his admirers, from practically the moment he arrived in Columbia. Students considered him aloof and uncaring, and they maintained their dislike when they became alumni. Faculty members were taken aback by his autocratic hiring and fir­ ing of instructors. He was a poor lobbyist. Instead of following the dictates of the board of curators, he often dictated to its members. Despite his dis­ agreeable personality and his management failures, Laws served as president for thirteen years. By the time he left, he had plenty of help finding the door. But he might have stayed on even longer had he had not sought state fund­ ing for the purchase of a dead elephant. Laws had good reason to believe in his own judgment over that of all others: people told him he was brilliant—even some of his enemies conced­ ed the point—and there was little in his early career to make him think dif­ ferently. Born in 1824 in Virginia, Laws "absorbed the constitutional views of the South" regarding states' rights and slavery. He worked in a tool fac­ tory as a young man and matriculated to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was the valedictorian of the Class of 1848. Laws then earned a divinity degree from Princeton University's seminary in 1851.2 He moved to St. Louis that year, intending to settle into a Presbyterian pas­ torate. In 1854, Westminster College, a newly established Presbyterian college in Fulton, needed a math teacher, and Laws accepted the position. He became the institution's first president a year later and married Ann Marie Broadwell, the daughter of William A. Broadwell, who became a prominent Confederate official in the trans-Mississippi area and fled to Mexico after the Civil War.

2 Walter Havighurst, The Miami Years, 1809-1969 (New York: Putnam, 1969). This volume is out of print and hard to find but offers a good overview of Laws's life. Miami University of Ohio has put an updated text on the Internet at . See especially Chapter 20, "The Avenues of Learning." The President and the Emperor 61

i mm Ann Marie Broadwell Laws •A*

BBlPP5#2j|

' ' ' Mr

State Historical Society of Missouri After six peaceful years as president and math professor, however, Laws's loy­ alty to the South cost him his job in 1861. Like many in Missouri, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the federal government and was committed to Gratiot Prison in St. Louis. He spent three months in a damp cell, reading Aristotle, and was offered freedom on the condition that he leave the country. Laws spent the next year in Paris and moved to New York in 1863, where rel­ atives helped him find a job in Wall Street's Gold Exchange.3 Once again, Laws impressed his peers and was elected vice president of the exchange a few months later. In his spare time, he studied law at Columbia University and was admitted to the New York Bar Association in 1869. Still intellectually restless, he studied medicine at Bellevue Hospital and earned an M.D. in 1875. Bothered by disorganization at the Gold Exchange, Laws worked on a telegraphic machine that would print out a steady stream of updated stocks. In 1866 he patented the first stock ticker, a device that changed financial markets and provided its inventor—now the chief of the Gold Indicator Company—a comfortable income. Laws was still operating the Gold Indicator Company when, in July 1869, he allowed a young mechanic, newly arrived in New York, to sleep in his shop. The young man studied the ticker machine and was in the room when it broke down. He replaced a spring and made other adjustments, and the ticker began spitting out figures again. Impressed, Laws called for the twenty-two-year-old Thomas Alva Edison.

3 Papers of Moses Broadwell, Payne-Broadwell Family Papers, WHMC-Columbia; Viles, University, 174-175; Stephens, History, 263. For information about Laws's imprisonment and release see the Liberty Weekly Tribune, 4 July 1862 and 23 January 1863. 62 Missouri Historical Review

Edison recalled, "Doctor Laws came in to ask my name and what I was doing. I told him, and he asked me to come to his office the following day. His office was filled with stacks of books, all relating to metaphysics and kindred matters. He asked me a great many questions about the instruments and his system, and I showed him how he could simplify things generally." The next day, Laws offered to place Edison in charge of his entire plant at a monthly salary of three hundred dollars. Edison accepted and in 1871 patented his improvements to the ticker's printer. By blind chance, Laws gave the man who would become America's greatest inventor his first job in New York.4 Consider the credentials Laws held when the board of curators of the University of Missouri, looking for a president in 1875, contacted him. He held degrees in divinity, law, and medicine and had taught mathematics. He was an independently wealthy businessman and a leader in the nation's largest financial community. He was a successful inventor who had traveled in Europe, and he had previous experience as a college president in Missouri. Even the major blot on his resume—his imprisonment for refusal to take the loyalty oath—was not a disqualification in a state where many shared his sympathies, and where the outgoing University president, Daniel Read, was still distrusted by some a decade after the war for being too "pro-Union."5 On paper, Laws looked perfect. On the basis of correspondence between board president James S. Rollins and Laws —and apparently with no refer­ ences—the curators voted unanimously on December 15, 1875, to hire him

4 Quoted from Havighurst, Miami Years, 249. For further information about Laws's relation­ ship with Edison see Ronald W. Clark, Edison: The Man Who Made the Future (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1977), 27-28; Neil Baldwin, Edison: Inventing the Century (New York: Hyperion, 1995), 49; and Robert Conot, A Streak of Luck (New York: Seaview Books, 1979), 30, 33. 5 Stephens, History, 262; Viles, University, 168-169.

State Historical Society of Missouri

Thomas A. Edison patented the Edison Universal Stock Printer with improve­ ments upon Laws's original design. The President and the Emperor 63 for a four-year term (1876-1880) and also to name him professor of mental and moral philosophy. Twelve days later, the first signs of trouble arose, but the curators ignored them.6 Laws responded to the news of his hiring in a letter dated December 27, 1875. Although the curators apparently thought the negotiations had con­ cluded, Laws wrote, "I have decided to accept and hereby do accept the appointment, but I reserve to myself the right to reign at my own discretion. The reason for this reservation is simply this: So far as I know, a term appointment made and accepted simpliciter would, if terminated otherwise than by natural limitation or mutual consent of the parties, ground an action for damages for breach of contract. If I find myself out of place or unpleas­ antly situated, I wish to quit without being hampered." The curators solved this problem by allowing the record to stand and, on June 2, 1880, reelecting him with no specific length of appointment. Laws spelled out two other demands in his acceptance letter. The curators agreed to them, though these demands foreshadowed the problems that would eventually lead to the president's downfall. First, he said, "As to the faculty, that so long as the present organization of the body continues, the acts of the Curators affecting it will not be taken without knowledge and approval of the president." Simply put, the curators were not to dismiss faculty members with­ out Laws's permission; implicitly, they were to leave hiring and firing solely to the president. Second, students would not have the right to appeal presidential decisions to the board. He explained, "The appeal of students from their Faculty tends to bring the whole concern into contempt and to brew unbound­ ed disorder." Laws told the board that he would attend its meeting in May 1876 and signed the letter, "Very truly your obedient servant."7 Aside from his own difficulties, Laws's years as president have been regarded as a relatively unimportant time sandwiched between eras of rapid expansion. Jonas Viles, in his centennial history of the University, called Laws's administration "perhaps the least important period in the history of the University." Frank F. Stephens, writing in 1962, saw things differently, stating that "too much attention has been given to the man himself rather than to the development of the University during those years."8 Enrollment increased throughout Laws's tenure, peaking at 580 students in his final year, and the School of Engineering was established in 1877. Some of the more lasting accomplishments of the Laws administration, how-

6 Secretary, Board of Curators Minutes, 1839-1920, 15 December 1875, University of Missouri-Columbia Archives; hereinafter cited as UA. 7 Samuel S. Laws to R. L. Todd, Secretary, University of Missouri Board of Curators, 27 December 1875, Board of Curators Minutes, UA; Board of Curators Minutes, 2 June 1880. 8 Viles, University, 173; Stephens, History, 317. 64 Missouri Historical Review

ever, were attributable to his acquisitive nature. He purchased, with two thousand dollars of his own money, a new telescope and building for the University observatory in 1880. His connections with Thomas Edison pro­ vided the engineering school with a valuable electric dynamo in 1882, and he acquired Thomas Jefferson's original headstone for the campus a year later (it was delivered in 1885). Laws also bought a huge bronze statue of George Washington and placed it in front of the President's House.9 His most notable addition to the campus, however, was the building of two new wings to old Academic Hall. The original University building had been constructed with funds from Boone County supporters, and no admin­ istration had been able to persuade the state legislature to appropriate funds for further construction. Laws's sole lobbying victory in Jefferson City was the 1885 appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars to build and furnish the expansion, which doubled the size of the building. The east side housed the chapel and library, the west side, the law, languages, and physics depart­ ments. In addition, the first floor of the west wing served as the home of one of Laws's primary interests: a natural history museum. He began to collect specimens, including rocks and stuffed animals.

9 Stephens, History, 287, 293, 295; James Olson and Vera Olson, The University of Missouri: An Illustrated History (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988), 25-26; Annual Catalogue of the University of the State of Missouri at Columbia, Missouri, 1888-1889 (Jefferson City, Mo.: Tribune Printing Company, 1889), 7. After Laws left the University of Missouri, he loaned the statue to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. Today, Miami University of Ohio owns the statue.

The Laws Observatory

State Historical Society of Missouri The President and the Emperor 65

State Historical Society of Missouri Laws's additions to Academic Hall, along with the rest of the building, were lost in an 1892 fire. Only the six columns were left standing.

Laws's relations with his faculty were shaky from the beginning. E. L. Ripley, dean of the struggling normal school, resigned when Laws eliminated its preparatory department and model school, and the president referred to teacher training as "pseudo-education" on several occasions—the first time in a speech at the Kirksville Normal School in 1877. (This contributed to a long- running argument between the president and the state superintendent of education, as well.) In addition, Laws followed a peculiar practice in hiring professors. He believed that a state school should be nonsectarian but Christian, and he aimed to ensure a balance of Protestant denominations among the faculty. In one case, Laws hired an editorial writer from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat as a professor of English. Although the man had no college training, he was a Methodist, and Laws needed a Methodist on the faculty in 1877. Lieutenant Enoch Crowder, the institution's respected professor of military science, later complained that, in 1888, Laws passed over a qualified assistant professor in physics to promote another to the chair. "Dr. Laws, himself, told me that he allowed himself to be influenced very materially by the fact that Professor [Marcellus] Thompson was a member of the Christian Church. That is the principle of the management of the University."10 Many students found Laws intolerable as well, mostly because of the endless rules he established. Stephens, in his centennial history, noted:

10 Stephens, History, 271-272; Viles, University, 181, 183-184. Crowder's quote appears in Testimony Taken Before the University Investigating Committee, 35th General Assembly of the State of Missouri (Jefferson City, Mo.: Tribune Printing Company, 1889), 494-495. Crowder later became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines and the first American ambassador to Cuba. Crowder Hall, the University's ROTC building, bears his name. 66 Missouri Historical Review

"Laws could be characterized as the Moses, the law-giver, of this period of University history. Rules were formulated and expanded until they covered almost every phase of student life and conduct. . . . There was even a rule about the standard to determine disputed pronunciations of words."11 In 1880 the president outlawed fraternities, sororities, and other secret societies on the basis that they sapped membership from literary societies. Fraternities went underground rather than disband. Laws required female students to wear uniforms: "'a black suit of alpaca or cashmere, consisting of a skirt, short enough to walk in, a polonaise and hat, with white collar at the neck and cardinal necktie, a long cloth sack cloak, to be worn in winter, and a waterproof cloak for rainy weather.'" Students were forbidden to loiter, smoke on campus, skip Sunday services, shoot pool, and curse. In November 1888, students gathered in the chapel to protest the addition of criminal statutes regarding libel to the rule book and demanded that the next catalog omit them. The next catalog did omit them, because by then Laws was on his way out.12 Laws also censored the University Missourian, a monthly publication of his admired literary societies, requiring all published material to be vetted by the faculty. He railed against the vulgar but sometimes funny "bogus pro­ grams" (parodies of the University catalog) that students distributed from time to time. Students responded by painting the George Washington statue red, white, and blue in 1884. Laws had the statue cleaned and continued his war against disorderly students, who still could be seen drinking, parading, loitering, and otherwise disobeying the clearly defined rules.13 Reasons for the deterioration of relations between Laws and alumni groups—particularly in Kansas City—are harder to document. Mostly, the enmity seemed to originate with recent alumni who did not fondly remember their president. Some of the antagonism was due to the efforts of James Black, a faculty member who had been dismissed when Laws apportioned faculty seats along sectarian lines. After his firing, Black took a job teaching sec­ ondary school in Kansas City. Laws's greatest transgression against alumni, however, was probably his unilateral decision to change the name of the school—then commonly known as "Missouri State University"—to "Missouri Agricultural College and University" in the 1885-1886 catalog. His motiva­ tion for doing so remains puzzling, but he apparently believed that because three-fifths of the institution's endowment was in agricultural funds, he could

11 Stephens, History, 290. 12 Ibid., 291, 298-299; Annual Catalogue of the University of the State of Missouri at Columbia, Missouri, 1887-88 (Jefferson City, Mo.: Tribune Printing Company, 1888), 140-141. 13 Stephens, History, 296-297; Viles, University, 189, 196, 215-216. Some students, how­ ever, supported Laws and circulated a petition demanding that his salary be increased. Jefferson City Daily Tribune, 17 February 1881. The President and the Emperor 67 defuse criticism that the University was spending endowment income from agriculture school funds on departments not providing professional training in agriculture. Following this logic, he also named all the arts and sciences departments "Academic Schools of the College of Agriculture." The board of curators executive committee, a panel of three curators from Boone County who could act on behalf of the board, approved his bookkeeping methods in a September 1886 meeting but declared that the official name of the institution was the "University of the State of Missouri." That December, students parad­ ed, carrying signs that read "Agricultural Medical Students" and "Agricultural Arts Students." They also held pitchforks and hoes and pushed wheelbarrows. In a January 1887 meeting, the full board of curators officially repudiated Laws's name change and restored "Missouri State University."14 Laws might have invited more trouble with some alumni and legislators with an address in St. Joseph before the Missouri Press Association in May 1882. He was invited to speak on "Education and the Press" but recycled, for some inexplicable reason, an older guest lecture he had given in law school classes on states' rights. Laws conceded that the Civil War had set­ tled the question of secession but argued that the question of the right of states to withdraw from the Union was a legitimate and honorable debate before the conflict. Therefore, he concluded, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were no more traitors than was George Washington. This remark undoubtedly pleased conservative Democrats in the legislature, but in a state as divided by the Civil War as Missouri, it also probably bought Laws at least as many enemies as friends.15 Without a doubt, Laws's biggest headache was the moribund College of Agriculture, which had struggled to find students and establish a curriculum since its founding in 1870. He seemed to solve a large problem by securing the dismissal of George Swallow, the college's founding dean, after a bitter confrontation in 1882. Swallow, a nationally renowned geologist, was criti­ cized for having failed to develop the land allotted for an experimental farm, leaving members of the General Assembly reluctant to appropriate funds for

14 Viles, University, 190-192; Stephens, History, 305-308; Board of Curators Minutes, 12 January 1887. Black wrote to the board in 1888 complaining about the "petty tyrannical mea­ sures of this would-be despot" Laws and submitted copies of a survey he had taken among alumni. Thirty-three responses to the survey are extant in the University Archives; they indi­ cate that twenty-four respondents wanted Laws out, four wanted him to stay, and five did not directly answer the question. James Black to Board of Curators, undated, Board of Curators Official Correspondence, 1888, UA. The surveys were transmitted to the board by another alumnus of the University, J. S. Snoddy. J. S. Snoddy to the Board of Curators, 9 January 1888, ibid. Laws explained his reasoning for the name change in Testimony, 458-460. See also the Annual Catalogue of the Missouri Agricultural College and University at Columbia, Missouri, 1885-86 (Jefferson City, Mo.: Tribune Printing Company, 1886). 15 Viles, University, 185-186; Stephens, History, 275. 68 Missouri Historical Review the college. Laws told the board of curators that they should ask for either Swallow's resignation or the president's. The board asked Swallow to resign and fired him when he refused.16 Swallow's successor, J. W. Sanborn, was saddled with all of his predeces­ sor's problems and added more of his own. Sanborn was ahead of his time in developing the experimental farm to demonstrate the value of crop rotation and the use of manure, but the pace of his progress did not impress legislators. He also made the questionable decision to hold three jobs in addition to his posi­ tion as dean: secretary of the state board of agriculture, experiment station sta­ tistician, and secretary of the Kansas City Fat Stock Show. Sanborn erred even further in his reaction to a clerical error in the 1887 appropriation of money to the agricultural college. The school was supposed to receive six thousand dol­ lars for a new barn; instead, when the bill reached Governor David R. Francis, it appropriated eight thousand dollars, and the governor, oblivious, signed it. The state superintendent of agriculture called attention to the error, but Sanborn wanted the full amount and threatened legal action to get it. Francis had to arrange a special meeting of the board of curators in January 1888 to patch up the embarrassing discrepancy, and Sanborn was persuaded to drop his com­ plaint. But Sanborn—and thus Laws, who continued to defend his dean—had made a powerful enemy in the governor.17 Finally, Laws and Sanborn blundered even as they attempted to placate their critics. One of those was J. W. Kneisley, an unredeemed Confederate and carpenter who represented Boone County in the Missouri House of

5 Viles, University, 178-180; Stephens, History, 272-275. 7 Viles, University, 193-194.

Though hotly contested in each race, J. W. Kneisley was elected by Boone Countians to the Missouri House of Representatives six times.

State Historical Society of Missouri The President and the Emperor 69

Representatives throughout most of the 1880s and who had opposed the cre­ ation of a College of Agriculture. In 1887 the representative, who had con­ tinued as a strong critic of Sanborn and the agriculture school's management, applied for a position as the University's carpenter. Laws and the curators agreed and granted him an annual salary of nine hundred dollars. Kneisley was assigned to work mostly on the experimental farm during his single year on the job, where he developed an even deeper hatred for Sanborn, whom he called a "damn Yankee." Kneisley never passed up an opportunity to insult either the president or the dean and even delivered speeches criticizing them in the Academic Hall chapel. Laws and Sanborn, who had entered into a questionable relationship with the state representative in hopes of quieting his criticism, instead gave him a platform to criticize them further.18 All of these problems were brewing in December 1888 as the board of visitors arrived on the campus to gather information for its annual report. At this time, the University operated under the board of curators but was inspected annually by a panel whose sole purpose was to report to the state on its schools and lunatic asylum. Its report was often perfunctory. But in 1888 the visitors were appointed by Governor Francis, who had already been burned by his encounter with Sanborn. On top of all of this, Laws had purchased a dead elephant. In September 1885, the Forepaugh Circus, while on tour in Liberty, Missouri, lost one of its major attractions when the Emperor, an Indian elephant, dropped dead.19 (That same month, Jumbo, the elephant made famous by P. T. Barnum, also died in a train accident in Canada. This coincidence led people to confuse the Emperor and Jumbo for decades.) Laws wanted the Emperor for his natural history museum. The purchase must have made perfect sense to him: the ultimate specimen, so tantalizing- ly close. He telegraphed the elephant's owners, bought it, and arranged for it to be shipped to Rochester, New York, to be preserved by taxidermist Henry Augustus Ward. He sent Ward a personal promissory note for one thousand dollars as a down payment. Laws apparently intended to pay all of the expenses related to the Emperor out of his own pocket—as he had done for the University many times before—but his personal fortune was dwin­ dling, not only because of his generosity, but also because of setbacks in the Kansas City real estate market, specifically his purchase and renovation of the Centropolis Hotel.20

18 Stephens, History, 312-313, 321. 19 Columbia Missouri Statesman, 2 October 1885. 20 H. A. Ward to Samuel Laws, 10, 22 May, 28 June, 15, 22 July 1889, Records of MU Presidents Prior to 1963, Dates: 1841-1963, Samuel Spahr Laws (1876-1889), UA. For infor­ mation about the Centropolis Hotel see the Columbia Missouri Statesman, 11, 18 June 1886. 70 Missouri Historical Review

In 1886, Ward delivered not one but two elephants to the University. The first was the Emperor's "articulated" (posed) skeleton. The second was the elephant's stuffed carcass. Ward had taken an amusing liberty in preparing the body—he had placed a stuffed tiger on the Emperor's trunk. He explained that during the Emperor's life "he had killed five men; so we are mounting him in the heroic attitude of tossing a Bengal tiger."21 The unreal­ istic pose not only made the elephant's dubious educational value even more questionable but would further expose Laws to ridicule around the state. Nonetheless, Laws had the two Emperors placed in his natural history muse­ um on the first floor of Academic Hall's west wing in mid-1886. The University received one of its most generous state appropriations to date in 1887, including the first-ever line-item appropriation for the College of Agriculture. The institution, however, did not obtain everything it request­ ed. Specifically, the curators were denied funding for any museum speci­ mens, including the elephant that Laws had hoped the state would buy and that he apparently began to consider selling. An assistant to the taxidermist Ward wrote to Laws on March 22, 1887, and noted, "I regret the failure of

21 Ward to Laws, 10 March 1886, Records of MU Presidents.

In this view of the natural history museum, the Emperor's skeleton is located direct­ ly behind his carcass, which lacks the stuffed tiger. University of Missouri-Columbia Archives The President and the Emperor 71 your bill with the legislature which makes the sale of Emperor necessary. Prof. Ward will of course do what he can to find you a purchaser."22 Laws must have changed his mind, however, because on August 8,1887, he wrote to W. Pope Yeaman, president of the board, suggesting that the cura­ tors pay the bill. On August 15, the board's executive committee approved a motion to repay the president for the expense of transporting and mounting the elephant. The curators gave Laws $1,100.67—the amount of the note to Ward, plus interest—for three specimens: the carcass, the skeleton, and the tiger on the elephant's trunk. The board's biennial report claimed, "As the specimens have a monetary value of from $2,500 to $3,000, and are of great value to the University students of zoology, and forasmuch as to remove the aforesaid specimens from the museum would require the derangement of the walls of the west wing of the University," the purchase was justified.23 Laws still owed Ward a balance of $585 for his work. And the cura­ tors—unwittingly, as later events would suggest—had approved the purchase of items that the General Assembly specifically did not want them to buy with state money. Not surprisingly, the board of visitors that came to the campus in December 1888 was "very antagonistic" toward the Laws administration. Its report said that faculty members were unhappy, that students dropped out reg­ ularly and were denied the right to petition the board, and that the University had paid eleven hundred dollars for a dead elephant after the legislature had specifically refused funds for that purpose. The visitors recommended that the College of Agriculture be removed from the Columbia campus, objected to Sanborn's multiple jobs, and called on the General Assembly to condemn the Laws administration. In January 1889, the General Assembly named a joint committee of eight to investigate the state of the University.24 The joint committee opened its hearings on January 31, 1889, in the east wing of Academic Hall. Senator J. W. Sebree chaired the committee, but Champ Clark, then a representative from Pike County, led most of the ques­ tioning of fifty-five witnesses during nine days of testimony. All witnesses testified in closed session, and Laws and Sanborn did not have the right to cross-examine. In addition, the committee asked the entire faculty, by secret

22 Frank Ward to Samuel Laws, 22 March 1887, ibid. Laws's financial troubles are evi­ denced by Henry Ward's refusal to allow Laws to renew his note and stall payment. Ward to Laws, 4 August 1887, ibid. 23 Samuel Laws to W. Pope Yeaman, 8 August 1887, Official Correspondence, 1887; Board of Curators Minutes, 15 August 1887; Biennial Report of the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri to the 35th General Assembly for the Two Years Ending December 31, 1888 (Jefferson City, Mo.: Tribune Printing Company, 1889), 13-14. 24 "Report of the Board of Visitors," in Appendix to Senate and House Journals of the 35th General Assembly of the State of Missouri, 1889 (Jefferson City, Mo.: Tribune Printing Company, n.d.), 17-25. 72 Missouri Historical Review

ballot, "Tn your opinion, will the future success of the University be best pro­ moted by the continuance of Dr. S. S. Laws in the office of President?'" Three faculty members abstained, thirteen voted yes, and ten voted no. A Kansas City Times reporter, wandering the halls on the day before the hearings began, lavished most of his attention on the Emperor: "The university museum at its present consists chiefly of room and elephant, but it is hoped that the legisla­ ture will eventually donate funds to supply the lonesome animal with pleasant company and attractive surroundings." The unnamed correspondent also expressed fear that the committee might be engaging in a "cover-up" of the Laws administration's failures and noted that the Columbia residents he inter­ viewed scoffed at the notion that the agriculture school might be moved. 'That's about the size of the best thought in Columbia," he wrote. "Peace and harmony, progress and reputation—and a big appropriation biennially."25 One of the highlights of the hearing must have been the testimony of Curator Yeaman, who tried to explain how the executive committee had come to authorize the elephant purchase. He first argued that the 1887 appro­ priation request to the legislature had somehow authorized the purchase. Then, pinned down by the fact that the curators had authorized the purchase after the legislature had refused to fund it, he agreed that the action was "ill advised and injudicious. And had I then, at the time of the purchase, been informed of the act of the legislature, as I was afterwards, I would not have encouraged the transaction." How could the president of the board of curators not know in August 1887 what the legislature had decided in March? Yeaman explained that he joined the board after the act of the legislature but before the August meet­ ing. In August he had just returned to Columbia from a long trip:

I hurried back to attend a meeting of the executive committee, and was taken down with nervous prostration. I was in bed several days after the meet­ ing. While I was in bed sick the president of the University came to see me, and my wife told him I was too sick to see any one, that talking made me worse; but he insisted on seeing me, and said that it was about a matter that would not agitate me at all. So he came in and sat down by my bed and began talking about the elephant. I said that it seemed to me that I had heard that the legislature had refused to make an appropriation for that purpose. . . . But he said that that appropriation was brought up after the other appropriation bills had been acted on, and that was the only reason the bill was not passed. And after some talk of this kind, I at last negotiated with him for the purchase of the elephant if the board was willing.

25 Viles, University, 198-199. Faculty members' statements can be found throughout Testimony. Kansas City Times, 31 January 1889. The President and the Emperor 73

First a Kentucky lawyer, Yeaman became a Baptist minister in 1860 and pursued that career for over forty years. By the time of his death in 1904, Yeaman was considered one of the ablest leaders of Missouri Baptists.

State Historical Society of Missouri

Yeaman said that the Columbia-based executive committee decided it would be all right to pay for the elephant out of funds appropriated for "mis­ cellaneous expenses." His description of Laws's visit during his attack of "nervous prostration" and his admission that he did not know who had hired Kneisley to be the University's carpenter could not have helped the presi­ dent's case. As for the Emperor, Yeaman said, "It is a very nice elephant."26 J. W. Kneisley recounted his laundry list of complaints against Sanborn for the committee. He claimed that Sanborn did not understand agriculture, saying, "His manner of farming is no farming at all." (Possibly, Kneisley did not understand the principles of crop rotation.) He accused Sanborn of some­ how creating the clerical error regarding the appropriation for a new barn, speculated that Sanborn received fifty cords of wood per year at University expense, and claimed that the dean bought manure at five cents per wagon load but sold it to the University at fifty cents per load. He said that both fac­ ulty and students were generally dissatisfied with Laws. Of the College of Agriculture, he added, "Practical men throughout the state, both local and abroad, think it is a humbug." Possibly out of deference to a fellow legisla­ tor, the committee did not ask Kneisley how he came to be employed as the University's carpenter, or whether a sitting member of the General Assembly should be on the school payroll.27

26 Testimony, 304-306. 27 Ibid., 206, 208-209. 74 Missouri Historical Review

Sanborn appeared three times before the committee; his testimony accounts for 80 of the 539 pages of questions and answers in the transcripts. The committee grilled him endlessly on dozens of minor points, such as whether he owned his own horse and buggy, the condition of the University's orchard, his various salaries, his relationship with the president of the board of curators, and the price of milk and butter. Sanborn denied any responsibility for the mix-up over the barn appropriation, but said the eight-thousand-dollar appropriation was meant for the entire farm, not just the six-thousand-dollar barn. He said that Kneisley had "always operated against the welfare of the college," even before Sanborn became dean, and that the accusations the legislator/carpenter had spread were simply part of his long campaign against the establishment of an agricultural school. Sanborn also added that Kneisley was "generally regarded as a poor work­ man. . . . The people in town do not think him a good carpenter."28 Luther M. Defoe, a twenty-year-old fifth-year junior majoring in engi­ neering, recounted student complaints regarding Laws. His testimony was rather thin on details, but he said he believed "the large majority of the stu­ dents" were dissatisfied with Laws. He cited the refusal of the right to peti­ tion and the suppression of the student newspaper. Defoe said of Laws: "His nature is not in common with young people. He is tyrannical in his ruling and is overbearing. He attempts to rule by coercion, and not by retaining the respect of the students." When asked whether he had ever confronted the president, Defoe said he had never spoken with Laws and added, "I have always dreaded to come in contact with him."29 A written statement by Enoch Crowder, a military science professor, was in many ways the most damning testimony. On a theoretical basis, the man­ agement of the University made sense, he said, but "in the practical realization of the theory, however, there is failure everywhere." Crowder said Laws selected weak candidates to head departments and then compounded that error by giving them wide latitude. He recounted the selection of professors based on religious affiliation. He said that many of the best faculty members had left the institution. Crowder then took aim at some of Laws's pet projects, saying, "I believe that a competent Professor of Astronomy is worth far more to the University in the way of securing patronage than the best Observatory the state could build here. I believe that well known educators in any of the Chairs of this University would do more towards securing patronage than all of the club houses, and laboratories, and other appliances which the state might furnish. . . . I do not believe that Dr. Laws is competent to supervise the work of the

28 Ibid., 102-103, 105, 106. 29 Ibid., 249-250, 251. Defoe, Laws's chief critic among the students, became a much- loved professor of mathematics and was known as "Daddy" Defoe. A newly constructed men's dormitory was named after him in 1940. The President and the Emperor 75 departments of this University, and therefore he is incompetent to shape the work of an institution of learning like this."30 On the stand, Laws seemed to corroborate all other evidence regarding his arrogance, vanity, and inflexibility. He pointed out, correctly, that seven­ teen of his thirty-two University employees were alumni, rebutting a charge that he was biased against graduates of the institution. He established that he had nothing to do with another minor complaint regarding the location of a rooming house on campus. Laws explained that he had not brandished a pis­ tol at rowdy students during an illicit May 1 parade; although he was carry­ ing his pistol, he said, it was loaded with the wrong size of ammunition.31 (Whether or not this explanation helped him with the committee is unclear.) But his testimony regarding the elephant is confusing and obfuscatory. He said that "Yeaman is mistaken about my taking the initiative" in getting the board to purchase the Emperor but added, "I really did desire to have the property remain here for it is a valuable specimen and a great addition to the new museum." He also claimed, "The youth attending this University will learn more there in a short time studying the specimens in the museum than they would learn out of a text book for a year."32 The committee asked Laws only a few questions about the agricultural school. He bent the truth about the firing of Swallow: "I asked the board to release me and retain him. I did not work against Prof. Swallow, nor do any­ thing to interfere with his prospects in the University." Laws, of course, had told the board in 1875 that he would not be held to any definite term of office and would leave when he saw fit, so he did not need the board to "release" him. He defended the dean of agriculture and testified, "In Sanborn's case we have an actual farmer who has grown up from the farm." But on the sub­ ject of the experiment station and the controversy over the barn appropria­ tion, Laws begged off: "In my official capacity I had nothing to do with it."33 Laws was still stung over the student and alumni reaction to his efforts to change the University's name. He admitted to the committee that the name change was "of my own volition," with no permission from anyone else, and he resented the "burlesque parade" that students held to protest the new name. "I suppose it was honestly understood by some of the parties concerned that I had been guilty of a piece of arrogance and affrontry [sic], but I feel sure that if they knew the circumstances in the case they could not possibly have thought that. ... I insist it was right."34

30 Ibid., 494, 495. 31 Ibid., 478-479. 32 Ibid., 492-493. 33 Ibid., 466-468. 34 Ibid., 459. 76 Missouri Historical Review

He also insisted that the opposition of alumni to his administration had been badly overstated and that most students supported him as well. Laws suggested that a few people, actively plotting against him, were responsible for such misperceptions. "There are some little fellows," he said, "that have a scheme which they seem to be trying to realize, but take them out and I know of nothing but cordiality of the part of the students." He denied cen­ soring the student newspaper: "The Missourian was a financial failure and never was suppressed by the faculty nor by myself." He defended the denial of student appeal to the board by pointing out that it was a board of curators policy—although the enforcement of that rule was one of his demands before taking office—and reminding the panel that "the truth is, the right of a stu­ dent is not like the right of a citizen."35 After a grilling about a dozen decisions to hire and fire staff, Laws's testi­ mony was over. He told the legislators that the University of Missouri was "one of the best organized universities in America" and added, "My financial experiences have always terminated rather successfully and my administrative ability with both faculty and students is almost phenomenal." The explanation for all his troubles was clear. "The truth is, gentlemen," he said, "I have been made a scape-goat, for a good many years, for many egregious errors commit­ ted in connection with this institution for which I am in no way responsible."36 The majority of the committee disagreed with Laws. The five members who supported the majority report, including Champ Clark, recognized Laws's intelligence and devotion but called on the president to resign. They were less generous with Sanborn, who they said should be fired if he refused to quit. The majority, however, also found that no money had been spent dis­ honestly and recommended that the agricultural school stay in Columbia. On the subject of the Emperor, the majority concluded, "However good the bargain in this elephant trade, it was made in direct contravention of the expressed will of the last General Assembly. If the people of Missouri don't want elephants they have a right to say so, and the Executive Committee and Dr. Laws combined have no right to force elephants on them at any price." The minority of three, including Chairman Sebree, argued that "the purchase was within the lawful authority of the Executive Committee" and urged Laws and Sanborn to stay on.37 Both men intended to do just that.

35 Ibid., 471, 475, 482. 36 Ibid., 453-454, 456. 37 "Majority Report," in Appendix, 4, 9, 11-12; "Minority Report," in Appendix, 23. The majority report confused the issue with Sanborn even further by claiming that the General Assembly accidentally appropriated fourteen thousand dollars for Sanborn's barn instead of eight thousand, a figure it apparently reached by adding, for some reason, the actual amount appropriated (eight thousand dollars) with the amount that was supposed to have been appro­ priated (six thousand dollars). "Majority Report," 10. The President and the Emperor 11

The governor and many members of the legislature, however, wanted them out. Correspondence among Francis, Secretary of State Alexander Lesueur, and Treasurer James Siebert shows the governor's hand in shaping appropriations legislation that denied the University any funding unless Laws and Sanborn were no longer in its employ. That legislation was moving through both hous­ es when Laws finally sent the governor a letter of resignation on April 25,1889. Laws's name was then withdrawn from the final appropriations bill, while Sanborn's remained. The state settled its final piece of business with the out­ going University president by appropriating a payment of $623.83 to Laws— the balance of the money owed him for the elephant, plus interest.38 Laws stayed at work until his terminal date of July 1,1889, but declined to preside over commencement ceremonies. A. F. Fleet, a professor of Greek, was named "acting senior professor," and the University would not have a permanent president until Richard Jesse arrived in 1891. Laws con­ tinued to try to eliminate what he thought were falsehoods about his time in Missouri. In a January 15, 1892, letter to the Kansas City Star, he defended his purchase of the Emperor but conceded that "this elephant business had something to do with creating the disgust that caused me to resign." He prob­ ably understated the case. While his own stubbornness and arrogance won him enemies, and the College of Agriculture provided a perpetual source of criticism, the purchase of the Emperor was made in direct disobedience of the legislature. It made Laws an object of ridicule as well.39 The former president lived in Kansas City for a while after leaving Columbia, Missouri, but in 1893, Laws became a professor at the Presbyterian Theological Institute in Columbia, South Carolina. In March 1901 he returned to mid-Missouri to ask the General Assembly for a $5,500 appropriation to repay him for improvements he had made to the President's House during his tenure. The state agreed to pay him $3,000. While he was in Jefferson City, a group of alumni compiled a brief book in tribute to him, which said: "We deeply appreciate and gladly testify that the University achieved great progress under your administration." Laws lived ninety- seven years and died in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1921.40

38 Samuel Laws to Governor David Francis, 25 April 1889, Records of MU Presidents. The biographical files on Samuel Laws in the University Archives contain an undated telegram from Secretary of State Alexander Lesueur to Francis offering his opinion that the appropria­ tion, as written, would be "in force as soon as Sanborn resigns." Lesueur said that Treasurer James Siebert was in agreement. On the final payment to Laws see Stephens, History, 316. 39 Kansas City Star, 15 January 1892. 40 Jefferson City Daily Tribune, 2 September 1893; Stephens, History, 321; Jefferson City State Tribune, 6 March 1901; Tribute of the Alumni of the University of Missouri to Doctor Samuel SpahrLaws (Columbia, Mo.: Stephens Printing Company, 1901). In his will, Laws left twenty shares of Western Union stock to endow the observatory at Columbia. Columbia University Missourian, 28 January 1922. 78 Missouri Historical Review

The entire board of curators followed Laws in resignation in May 1889. Governor Francis appointed a new nine-member panel that June. In addition, the rules regarding the appointments of curators were changed to guarantee that only one member could be from the Columbia area, eliminating Boone County's control over the executive committee. One of the new board's first acts was to fire Sanborn, who had refused to leave, continued to circulate petitions and testimonials on his behalf, and challenged the legislature's right to dismiss him via an appropriations act. After his departure, the experi­ mental farm began to flourish; the University awarded Sanborn an honorary degree in 1926. Today, Sanborn Field is one of the oldest and most success­ ful experimental farms in the country.41 The Emperor lasted longer at Mizzou than any of the other figures in the whole affair. Both the carcass and the skeleton remained on the first floor of Academic Hall until the building burned in January 1892. Students knocked out a large window to rescue both of Laws's elephants; the story of "Jumbo's" rescue became part of campus lore. In 1914 the zoology department destroyed the decaying carcass. The bones went into storage by 1949 and were presumed

41 Official Registry of Members. University of Missouri System Board of Curators, Office of the Secretary to the Board, University Hall, Columbia, Mo.; Stephens, History. 317; Board of Curators Minutes, 8 June 1889.

F. B. Mumford, Sanborn, and M. F. Miller pose at Sanborn Field in 1926.

University of Missouri, College of Agriculture, Photographs, WHMC-Columbia The President and the Emperor 79 lost.42 In 1977, Clara Williamsen, a University archivist, set out on a search for the bones and apparently found some of them three years later in the attic of Lefevre Hall. Anthropology professor Michael O'Brien compiled an invento­ ry of the University's collections in the late 1980s and reported, however, that the bones Williamsen had found probably were not the Emperor's. As of 1998, O'Brien said, the location of the Emperor's skeleton remained unknown; once again, the University has misplaced its elephant.43 Not much other evidence remains of Samuel Spahr Laws's stormy career in Missouri. Two buildings on the Columbia campus bear his name. The first is the current observatory, a fitting tribute to the president who paid for improvements to the school's first observatory out of his own pocket in 1880. The second is Laws Hall, one of a trio of spectacularly ugly dormitories con­ structed during the post-World War II boom in enrollment. Laws should be remembered as one of the more perplexing figures in the University's history. He was brilliant enough to invent the stock ticker but too foolish to admit his mistakes. He gave generously to the University but was aloof and inflexible in dealings with its students. Faced with a variety of constituents to please, he acted in a manner seemingly designed to anger them all. Most memorably, he not only bought a dead elephant with state money but insisted that the purchase was a bargain. Laws's administration might not have been the most important in the University of Missouri's his­ tory, but he was the most colorful character ever to lead the campus, even more so because of the events surrounding his exit.

42 Stephens, History, 328-329; Viles, University, 233-234; Olson and Olson, 29-30; S. B. Fisher, "S. B. Fisher, '90, New York, Tells of Burning of Old Academic Hall," Missouri Alumnus 15 (February 1927): 213; "Emperor, An Elephant," memorandum by C. L. Rollins, 27 February 1936, UA; Savitar, 1894-1895, 27, 96; "Dodson Reviews Jumbo's Rescue," Missouri Alumnus 20 (December 1931): 119. 43 Williamsen's discovery is documented in the Columbia Daily Tribune, 3 August 1980. O'Brien performed his inventory around the time of the University's sesquicentennial in 1989. He said in a phone interview with the author on July 22, 1998, that the anthropology depart­ ment had acquired elephant bones from other sources since the Emperor went into storage.

Inviting Santa

Columbia Missouri Herald, December 16, 1898. Rocheport, Mo. Dec. 2, 1898. Dear Santa.—You wont half to climb down the chimney this time because I am fraid You will fall in the far and get burnt I am going to put on the door in big letters just walk right in it dont make a bit of difference if it is the first time and leave ... for me all You have gott I will close good night Your little girl. Rowena Wilhite. RS. bring me a great big doll that will go to Sleep. 80

HISTORICAL NOTES AND COMMENTS Society to Hold Annual Meeting on October 23

Award-winning Missouri artist Gary R. Lucy will serve as the luncheon speaker at the Society's annual meeting on Saturday, October 23, in the Donald W. Reynolds Alumni and Visitor Center on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus. Noted for his early work as a wildlife artist, Lucy placed second in the Federal Duck Stamp Competition in 1973, the same year he received the Best of Show Award at the National Wildlife Art Show. Other prizes include a third-place award in the National Wild Turkey Federation Stamp Competition in 1977 and winning the 1982 Missouri Duck Stamp Competition. In 1986, Lucy moved away from the wildlife theme and began to focus on historic interpretation. His realistic scenes of life on the inland waterways of North America have been exhibited at museums around the state, including the Old Courthouse in St. Louis and Arrow Rock State Historic Site. Lucy's com­ ments will focus on his work as an artist and on the influence of historic inter­ pretation in art. Selected works by Lucy, a resident of Washington, Missouri, are on exhibit in the Society's art gallery, which will be open to members and guests following the luncheon. The Society will sponsor two workshops in conjunction with the annual meeting. Christine Montgomery, photographic specialist with the Society, will present a slide lecture on "Creating and Maintaining Your Family Photo Archive." Montgomery will provide participants with a brief history of nine­ teenth- and early twentieth-century photo processes and describe their use­ fulness in dating family photographs. A portion of the workshop will be devoted to discussing what to include in a family photo archive and how to properly care for photographs. Max and Anne Miller, former co-presidents of the Genealogical Society of Central Missouri, will present "Genealogy: Going Beyond the Beginning." The Millers will offer methods to advance beginning family his­ tory skills to an intermediate level. Attendees can expect to explore court­ house research (probate records, deeds, marriage records, and court records), cemetery visits, important Internet sites, and Missouri resource facilities and to learn other helpful suggestions for pursuing genealogical investigation. Further information about the annual meeting can be obtained by call­ ing the Society at (573) 882-7083 or viewing the Society's web site, . Historical Notes and Comments 81

Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration Scheduled for 2004-2006

Almost two hundred years ago, in 1804-1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led an expedition to explore the Missouri River and Columbia River areas of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. The bicentennial of this watershed event in our nation's history will be commemorated on the national level, by the states through which the expedition passed, and by regional and local organizations within those states. In July 1998, Governor Mel Carnahan established the Missouri Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission. He charged the commission to rekin­ dle the spirit of discovery, achievement, and wonder fostered by the original exploration. In fulfilling its mission, the commission will recommend effec­ tive means to observe the bicentennial, promote public awareness of the his­ torical significance of the Missouri Territory and the expedition and cultural tourism in relation to the expedition, and serve as a liaison to other agencies and groups to coordinate and plan activities related to the bicentennial. The members of the commission have begun planning commemorative events. Some of these will be held in conjunction with programs sponsored by the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council, the National Park Service, and other federal agencies; others will be state-based. From June to September, the commission held ten public meetings in communities around the state to foster communication and receive input on events and a proposed interpretive signs program. One of the goals of the commission is to establish a master calendar to note all Lewis and Clark Bicentennial-related events in the state. The Missouri Division of Tourism and the commission will then promote these events, thereby increasing their visibility and encouraging attendance. The commission is particularly interested in promoting events that will occur two hundred years after the times Lewis and Clark were in the state: November 20-December 12, 1803 (the journey up the Mississippi River); May 14-July 17, 1804 (the journey up the Missouri River from its confluence with the Mississippi to the Iowa border); and September 9-23, 1806 (the return jour­ ney from the Iowa border to St. Louis). Interested individuals and organizations planning events can contact the commission through Tamilynn Holder, Cultural Tourism Coordinator, Missouri Division of Tourism, at (314) 340-7343. Further information about the bicentennial can be found on the Missouri Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission web site at and the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council web site at . 82 NEWS IN BRIEF

The Forty-second Annual Missouri Daughters of the American Revolution, the Conference on History will be held from Baldwin Academy students from Kirksville. March 30 through April 1, 2000, at the and the Columbia Art League children's art Adams Mark Hotel in St. Louis. The pro­ class. In July students from the Special gram committee invites submissions for Libraries Management class of the University papers and sessions on the conference theme, of Missouri-Columbia's School of Information "Missouri and the Wider World," but also Science and Learning Technologies and the encourages papers focusing on Midwestern Columbia College Missouri History class and American history as well as international toured Society facilities. topics. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 1999. Send a one-page abstract Sponsored by the State Historical Society and a brief curriculum vita to Professor Louis of Missouri and the Western Historical Gerteis, Department of History, University of Manuscript Collection-Columbia. National Missouri-St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge History Day in Missouri was held in Road, St. Louis, MO 63121. Columbia on April 10. It was attended by The Conference will meet jointly with the 438 students from 71 schools. Forty-seven of Organization of American Historians and the these young Missourians—first- and second- National Council on Public History. The place winners at the state contest—went on to keynote address will be given by Professor Ira represent their state at the twentieth annual Berlin of the University of Maryland, who will National History Day competition held at speak about slavery, emancipation, and memory. College Park, Maryland, on June 13-17. At the national level, Allison M. Gibson The David B. Lichtenstein Foundation of of Hannibal Middle School placed eighth in St. Louis presented the State Historical the junior division individual exhibit catego­ Society with a $10,000 donation to the ry, while Jason Knutzen and Nick Vaughan of National History Day in Missouri program in Carl Junction Intermediate School placed June. National History Day in Missouri's stu­ third in the junior group exhibits. Carrie dent competition encourages sixth- through Clark of Carl Junction Junior High placed twelfth-grade students to conduct extensive eleventh and Nathan William Skelley of research and explore historical subjects related Joplin Junior High placed second in the to an annual theme and present the research in junior division individual performances. papers, performances, exhibits, or media pre­ Jared Ritter, Whitney McFerron, and Jeremy sentations. Students can advance from local Nail of Advance R-IV Schools placed sixth in contests to regional, state, and national com­ the junior division group documentaries. petitions. The Lichtenstein Foundation dona­ The theme for History Day 2000 is "Turning tion has been added to the James C. and Vera Points in History: People, Ideas, Events." For Olson Travel Fund established by the more information contact the Western Historical Society's executive committee in 1998. Manuscript Collection at 23 Ellis Library, Stipends from this fund are given annually to University of Missouri-Columbia, MO 65201 - the first- and second-place winners in each 5149; phone: (573) 882-0189; e-mail: division at State History Day to assist with . The National meeting expenses in traveling to the National History Day in Missouri web site is History Day competition held in Maryland. . In May and June, several tour groups visit­ ed the Society's libraries and art gallery. These The Boone County Historical Society included the Rock Bridge State Park volun­ hosted "Heartland Chautauqua: Inside the teers, the Howard County Chapter of the Civil War" in Columbia on June 14-19. The Historical Notes and Comments 83 chautauqua programs included reenactments of History Day in Missouri and assistant of Civil War experiences through characters director of the Western Historical Manuscript such as Union General William T. Sherman, Collection-Columbia, spoke at the reception. escaped slave and human rights activist Sojourner Truth, African-American Union The William P. Clements Center for Army Sergeant A. A. Burleigh, Union spy Southwest Studies in the Department of History Elizabeth Van Lew, and Civil War nurse and at Southern Methodist University in Dallas author Louisa May Alcott. The State invites applications for three year-long residen­ Historical Society cosponsored the event. tial research fellowships for the academic year 2000-2001: the Clements Research Fellowship In June, Newspaper Library staff member in Southwest Studies, the Carl B. and Florence Susan McCormack and Reference Library E. King Research Fellowship in Southwestern staff members Marie Concannon and Laurel history, and the Summerfield-Roberts Research Boeckman attended sessions on genealogical Fellowship in Texas history. The center also and government resources on the Internet invites applications for the Clements-DeGolyer offered by the Missouri Library Network Library Grant, awarded to facilitate scholarly Corporation (MLNC). research on any aspect of the Southwestern experience, and the newly created William P. John L. Buse, Bridgeton, and Gregory C. Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book Poelker, St. Louis, received a Certificate of on Southwestern America. For more informa­ Commendation for their book, In His Own tion contact David J. Weber, director, or Jane Hand: A Historical Scrapbook of St. Charles Elder, associate director, at the Clements Center County, Missouri, from the American for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist Association for State and Local History Fifty- University, Dallas, TX 75275-0176; phone: fourth Annual Awards Program in July. The (214) 768-3684; fax: (214) 768-4129; e-mail: awards program recognizes individuals and . organizations that meet standards of excel­ lence in the collection, preservation, and inter­ On July 30-31, Susan McCormack and pretation of state, provincial, and local history Wayne Sanders, Newspaper Library staff mem­ throughout North America. In His Own Hand bers, represented the Society at the Missouri presents late nineteenth- and early twentieth- State Genealogical Association Conference century photographs by Rudolph Goebel with held at the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Jefferson City. annotations by John J. Buse, an avocational They displayed Society publications and other historian and a grandfather of John L. Buse. materials of interest to genealogists.

On July 16-17, Marie Concannon, Ste. Genevieve staged its thirty-third annu­ Reference library staff member, represented al "Jour de Fete" celebrations on August 14- the Society at the American Family Records 15. Many of Ste. Genevieve's historic houses, Association Conference held in the John as well as the Ste. Geneveieve Museum, were Knox Village Pavilion in Lee's Summit. opened to the public. Festivities included an arts and crafts exhibit, the fifteenth annual 5K Secretary of State Rebecca McDowell race, a birds of prey exhibit, car and train Cook held a reception at the James C. shows, and displays of antiques. Kirkpatrick State Information Center in Jefferson City on July 23 to honor the stu­ On August 6, Society photograph special­ dents who represented Missouri at the ist Christine Montgomery met with the Shelby National History Day in Maryland. Dr. County Historical Society in Shelbina and pre­ James Goodrich, executive director of the sented an informal talk on how to date old Society, and Laura Bullion, state coordinator photographs and preserve family pictures. 84

LOCAL HISTORICAL SOCIETIES

Affton Historical Society Belton Historical Society Four hundred people attended the twenty- On July 25 members attended a meeting at second annual Fourth of July brunch at the the Old City Hall building and heard Tim historic Oakland House in Affton on July 5. Shickles's program, "Union Station: Science Society members gathered at Oakland House City." The Society sponsored the All Class on July 25 for a meeting and a presentation 1922 reunion at Belton High School on August by Georgianna Gerber on the book The St. 2. The Society's museum is open Monday, Louis Portrait. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 1:00-4:00.

Andrew County Museum Benton County Historical Society and Historical Society The annual membership banquet was held Thirty museum members and visitors on May 20 at the First Baptist Church in toured the Negro Leagues Baseball, American Warsaw, where Leah Schwartz, a Missouri Jazz, and Steamboat Arabia Museums in Humanities Council speaker, portrayed Kansas City on June 26. On July 8, the St. Calamity Jane. On June 14, the Society host­ Joseph Museum Association held its monthly ed the Cole Camp Area Historical Society at meeting at the museum. Pony Express the Benton County museum in Warsaw. The Museum director McAndrew Burns gave a talk group met at the home of members Lewis and on the importance of board member orientation Gerry Smith for the annual picnic on July 8. and development for museums. The Andrew The newly elected president of the Society is County Fair's annual melodrama, this year John Owen. titled The Deadly Dr. Devearoux, was held at the museum on July 11 and 15. Bonniebrook Historical Society The Society held the Bonniebrook Audrain County Historical Society Banquet on April 7 in the Rose Garden at From June 5 to 13, the Society sponsored Bonniebrook Park in Branson. Special a quilt show at their museum in Mexico. guests included Jim Skahill, owner of the Members met for a luncheon at the museum Kewpie copyright. Mary Holmes added to on June 7. July 18 marked the dedication of the gathering with her vocal rendition of the historic church on the museum grounds. "Rose of Washington Square."

Barry County Genealogical Boone County Historical Society and Historical Society In May and June, the Society sponsored a The group meets on the third Tuesday of spring lecture series about Boone County area each month at the Cassville Community history. The Society hosted the 1999 Heartland Center. At the May 18 meeting, members Chautauqua at Nifong Park in Columbia on worked on the obituary collection. Lisa June 14-19. The June 19 membership meeting Deffenbaugh spoke about photograph and took place in the auditorium of the Walters- document preservation at the June 15 gather­ Boone County Historical Society Museum in ing, and Society members met for a regular Columbia and included a program about Civil business meeting on July 20. War music by Bob Kountz. Bill Helvey's pho­ tography exhibit. Rural Faces and Places, Barton County Historical Society Tracy Montminy *s Imagery to Illustration, the Society president Bob Douglas presented Society's Elements of Architecture, and Boone "The First Legal Hanging in Barton County" County native Byron Smith's painting and at the July 11 quarterly meeting at the United print exhibit were available for viewing at the Methodist Law Chapel in Lamar. museum through July 30, August 8, September Historical Notes and Comments 85

7, and October 1, respectively. David Sapp meeting, where they viewed early films of delivered a slide presentation on Boone County Pleasant Hill and Harrisonville. The Society cemeteries at the August 15 membership meet­ is offering a year 2000 calendar, One Room ing at the museum. Schools in Cass County, for $5.00. For more information call (816) 887-2393. Boone-Duden Historical Society Ralph Gregory spoke about Gottfried Duden Cedar County Historical Society and local history at the monthly meeting on June Truman Brown spoke at the May 24 meet­ 28 at St. Paul's United Church of Christ in ing at the Cedar County Museum in Stockton. Marthasville. The Kamphoefner House, New On June 28, Kathy Dains discussed the roles of Melle, is open on Sunday, 1:30-4:30. women in the development of Missouri at the meeting at the El Dorado Springs City Library. Bridgeton Historical Society The July 26 gathering, held at Yesterdays Cafe Shirl Lector of the St. Louis County Parks in Stockton, featured a meal and the reelection and Recreation Department gave a presenta­ of the following officers: Eldon Steward, pres­ tion on Sacajawea, guide for Lewis and ident; Luella Phipps, vice president; Leila Ellis, Clark, at a Society meeting. secretary; and Doris Cotten, treasurer.

Brush and Palette Club, Inc. Centralia Historical Society The Club awarded its annual scholarships A Barbie Doll exhibit was held in July to Mary Bickmeyer and Jessica Ham, gradu­ and August at the Centralia Museum in honor ates of the Gasconade County R-l High of the Society's twenty-fifth anniversary and School in Hermann. Barbie's fortieth anniversary. Two hundred- eighteen dolls and other Barbie memorabilia Carondelet Historical Society were on display. Officers for 1999 are Ron Bolte, presi­ dent; Leeta Chesney, vice president; Mary Chariton County Historical Society Ann Stolter, treasurer; and Mary Ann Simon, Bob Nelson presented "A Night at the Old secretary. The June 27 meeting at the Flicks: Back to the Silent Movies" at the July Carondelet Historic Center included a pro­ 18 quarterly meeting at the museum in gram by Fenton Runge titled "The History of Salisbury. He augmented his talk with slides Carondelet, Past, Present, and Future." dating from 1915 to 1925.

Carroll County Historical Society Christian County Museum The Society held open houses at the muse­ and Historical Society um in Carrollton on May 9 and June 19 in cel­ Members gathered at the Christian ebration of Mother's Day and Father's Day. County Public Library in Ozark for the sum­ Several elementary school classes toured the mer meeting on June 20. Jeff Patrick, a his­ museum on May 20. The May dinner meeting torian with the National Park Service, gave a at the Mandeville Methodist Church featured talk titled "Civil War in the Ozarks." Harold Dooley's talk on the history of the church and the Mandeville area. The Society Civil War Round Table of Kansas City hosted a quilt show June 3-6. At the July din­ The group held meetings at the Leawood ner meeting at the Hale Hurricane Baptist Country Club, Leawood, Kansas, on May 25, Church, Victor O'Dell spoke about the history June 22, and July 27. At the May meeting, of the church and cemetery. members heard Michael Hughes present "Indians in the Civil War." Donald Bates gave Cass County Historical Society a talk titled "Civil War Weaponry" at the June Members met at Pearson Hall in gathering, and Ethan S. Rafuse discussed Harrisonville on June 27 for their quarterly "McClellan's Peninsular Campaign" in July. 86 Missouri Historical Review

Civil War Round Table of St. Louis his musical group provided gospel music at The May 19 meeting at the Two Hearts the July 15 meeting at the school. Banquet Center featured Wiley Sword's pro­ gram, "The Southern Invincibility: The Civil DeKalb County Historical Society War's Mental Confrontation." The Society hosted the Crossroads Bike Group 47 in June, supplying the cyclists with Clay County Archives a breakfast during their coast-to-coast tour. and Historical Library Society members are compiling a list of The Society held its first annual volunteer DeKalb Countians with military service recognition celebration on June 25 at the records. Beulah Winger directed a tour of the Liberty Community Center. historical museum for first- and second- graders from the Maysville Summer Cole County Historical Society Academy on June 22. To commemorate the purchase of another row house, the Society hosted a tour of the Douglas County Historical house and a summer garden party in the & Genealogical Society gown room of the museum in Jefferson City Members of the Society continue to com­ on May 21. The Society participated in the pile scrapbooks for the research area. The city's downtown Fourth of July celebration public may submit family group sheets, fam­ by holding an open house at the museum. ily stories, vital statistics records, information about local events, school records, etc. for Concordia Historical Institute inclusion in these scrapbooks. For more The Institute honored its volunteers at a information contact the Society at (417) 683- luncheon on April 30 at Concordia 5799 or (417) 683-2536. Seminary's Wartburg Hall in St. Louis. Ferguson Historical Society Cooper County Historical Society The Society's 1999 picnic was held June On May 29, the Society dedicated a Civil 19 in the garden of Ruth and Gunnar Brown War marker for the Battle of Wilkin's Bridge in Ferguson. in Billingsville. John P. Kennedy, a member of the Mid-Missouri Civil War Round Table, Friedenberg Lutheran Historical Society was the guest speaker. Members participated Restoration of the Society's 1850s log in a show-and-tell program at the June 14 cabin has been completed, and tours are meeting at Bunceton Federated Church. available by appointment. For more informa­ Jeanne Lacy presented "Sears Houses" on tion contact the Society at 814 North Smith July 12 at the Mount Pleasant Baptist Street, Perryville, MO 63775. Church. On August 8, the Society held a lawn party at Crestmead, home of Bob and Friends of Arrow Rock Ann Betteridge. Officers elected at the May 2 annual meet­ ing at the Arrow Rock Old Tavern included Dallas County Historical Society Barbara Quinn, president; Bill Lovin, vice Members gathered at the Crescent School president; and Mary Burge, secretary. in the Buffalo Head Prairie Historic Park in Buffalo for the May 19 meeting. Dixie Friends of Historic Boonville Goodwin presented "Making Lasting The Friends sponsored the 1999 Brown Memories," providing a display of scrap- Bag Lunch concert series, the Boon's Lick books as accompaniment to her talk. The Community Art Show, and student and profes­ June 17 meeting at the school featured Jason sional art exhibits in June. The Missouri River Dickey's program on the uses of conservation Festival of the Arts was held August 5-8. The lands in Dallas County. Allen Hawley and Missouri Brass Quintet, the Freddy Cole Trio, Historical Notes and Comments 87 the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and Kevin and Golden Eagle River Museum Cindy Spencer performed at the festival. Other On May 23, Museum members, led by festival events included art exhibits, a picnic, Ken Buel, traveled the Great River Road and a forty-mile bicycle ride. along the upper Mississippi River. Dan Martin presented "Old Man River's Sketchy Friends of Jefferson Barracks Past" at the June 27 meeting, and Bob and Members participated in the Memorial Day Carol Mullen shared a slide show of their trip ceremony at Jefferson Barracks National to Greece and Crete at the July 25 gathering. Cemetery in St. Louis on May 31. The Friends gathered at the Visitors Center at Jefferson Grain Valley Historical Society Barracks Park in St. Louis for a general meeting Members met at the Society's building at 506 on June 24, where Bob Blanchard portrayed Main Street on May 27. Danny Lane gave a pro­ General Douglas MacArthur. Members also gram on his postcard collection. The Society aided in a clean-up day at the Sappington sponsored an ice cream social on July 23. Cemetery in Crestwood and assisted with the Victorian Fourth of July celebration at the Old Grand River Historical Society Courthouse in downtown St. Louis, Civil War and Museum and World War II summer day camps at the park, Joyce Stark and Jack Neal led a sing- the Blues on the Mississippi concert series, and along after the Society's July 13 picnic at the Suson Park Traditional Music concert series. Simpson Park in Chillicothe. Eva Danner then led a tour of the Livingston County Friends of Keytesville Courthouse. The Grand River Historical The Friends met on July 11 at the General Museum in Chillicothe is open Tuesday and Sterling Price Museum. They discussed the Sunday, 1:00-4:00, through October. profits from the May fashion show luncheon, the reroofing of the historic Presbyterian Greene County Historical Society Church, and the possible acquisition of the Members conducted a bus tour of historic William and Bettie Hill letters. Springfield for the students of the Drury College Institute for Mature Learning on Gasconade County Historical Society May 12. The Missouri State Guard was the Don and Mary Jo Lenauer hosted the topic of William Piston's talk at the Society's Society's July 11 quarterly membership meeting May 27 meeting. Jack Elliott presented "A at their home. Members learned the history of History of Broadcasting in Springfield" at the the property and toured the home and gardens. June 24 gathering. Both meetings were held The bank building in Hermann will become the at Mrs. O'Mealey's Cafeteria in Springfield. Society's Historic Library and Archives. The Society's newest publication is Nine Months in the Infantry Service: The Civil War German-Austrian-Swiss Historical- Journal of R. P. Matthews. Heritage Society of the Ozarks The Society's final spring meeting occurred Grundy County Historical Society at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in The Society meets the second Monday of Springfield on May 24. The program consisted each month at the Grundy County Museum in of videos about life and culture in the Germanic Trenton. The museum, which includes a Rock nations of Europe and a discussion about the Island railroad caboose and a country school, is transference of that culture to the Ozarks. open weekends, 1:00-4:00, through October.

Glendale Historical Society Henry County Historical Society The Society held a quarterly membership On June 17 at the Adair Annex in Clinton, meeting on June 10 at City Hall that featured members heard the "Old Piano Roll Blues" at entertainment by the Bobby Grimm banjo group. a reception celebrating the acquisition of a Missouri Historical Review

player piano from the Mary Margaret Nebel gram at the May 17 meeting was an overview of estate. Members also witnessed the unveil­ the geological formation of the Iron Mountain ing of the newest Louis Freund painting area. At the June 21 gathering, members learned donated to the Society. about the everyday life of early Iron Mountain settlers. Dent's Settlement, a predecessor of Historic Kansas City Foundation Bismarck, was the topic of discussion at the July The Foundation sponsored many events 19 meeting. during Preservation Week 1999: the annual meeting on May 11 at the Marietta Chair Jasper County Historical Society Building, walking tours of the city's historic Society members gathered for a meeting at areas May 12-16, and a workshop on pre­ the Jasper County Annex Building in Carthage serving outdoor sculpture on May 14. on July 11, where Bob Capps showed a video he had prepared on the Southwest Missouri Historic Madison County Electric Railway titled Once Upon a Trolley. Members gathered at the Historic Copies of the video are available for $19.00 Madison County Jail in Fredericktown for the plus postage from Bob Capps, 18234 Heron May 18, June 15, and July 20 meetings. At Road, Carthage, MO 64836. the May meeting, Teri Combs Moss demon­ strated scrapbook preparation and photo­ Johnson County Historical Society graph preservation; in June, Bernice Saling Kingsville elementary schoolchildren held shared a newspaper article by Jan Boland classes in the Society's restored one-room Nations; and in July, Celeste Vanderbruggen schoolhouse on May 13. On June 12, the presented the program. The Society spon­ Society participated in a ceremony at Sunset sored a historical bus tour of Fredericktown Hill Cemetery in Warrensburg to honor John A. and Marquand on July 3. Falconer, the only Medal of Honor recipient buried in Johnson County. A reception in the Historical Society of Polk County old courthouse in Warrensburg followed the On May 27 members met at the North Ward ceremony. The old courthouse grounds were Museum in Bolivar and heard Dennis Hood's the site of a Civil War reenactment by students presentation titled "Artifacts of the Civil War." from Wentworth Military Academy, Lexington, on June 15. Clayta Downing, Mary Rainey, Huntsville Historical Society Jane Reynolds, and Wallace Brown represented Frances Peevler presented "Love Our the Society at the Leeton Fair on June 25 and Flag" at the June 15 meeting, and at the July the Johnson County Fair on July 22. 20 gathering, Charmian Poe presented "Collection of 3000 Handkerchiefs." Both Kansas City Westerners meetings were held at the museum. The June 8 meeting featured Missouri Humanities Council storyteller Leah Schwartz Independence 76 Fire Company portraying Calamity Jane. Florent W. Wagner Historical Society gave a slide presentation on the history of On June 5 and 6, the Society sponsored the Overland Park, Kansas, at the July 13 dinner Heritage Salute parade and display in celebra­ meeting. Both gatherings were held at the tion of the 150th anniversary of the city of Wyndham Gardens Hotel in Kansas City. Independence. The group held a pump-in for members and their fire trucks on August 14 at Kimmswick Historical Society the Tractor Supply Company in Independence. John Costello and Boy Scout Troop 450 from Arnold demonstrated a flag ceremony at Iron Mountain Historical Society the June 1 meeting at Kimmswick Hall. On Monthly meetings are held on the third August 2 members carpooled to Hoppies Monday at the Trap Rock Building. The pro­ Marina on the Mississippi River. Charles and Historical Notes and Comments 89

Fern Hopkins shared their experiences as Elmwood Farm Cemetery conducted by Mrs. owners of one of the few marinas south of St. Bob Wright in Eolia on June 17. On July 24 Louis. Society members assisted with the members completed the cleaning and prepara­ town's Civil War Days on August 14-15. tion of a cellblock in the Old Jail museum in Troy to be used for additional display space. Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society Postal History of Missouri on Stamps and Meramec Station Historical Society Covers was the title of the display at the The Society received a pot-bellied stove museum in Fulton throughout May. Ann manufactured by the Wilson Stove Company Neel and Pam Smith presented "Entangled located in Valley Grove from 1903 to 1915. The Lives: Facing Our Slaveholding Past" at the stove is on display at the Valley Park City Hall. June 13 meeting at Dulaney Auditorium at William Woods University in Fulton. Mid-Missouri Civil War Round Table New officers for 1999-2000 are George Kirkwood Historical Society Lyons, president, and Harold Miederhoff, The Society held a quarterly meeting and secretary. Roger Baker presented "The Med­ strawberry festival on June 8 on the lawn of al of Honor" at the June 15 meeting at 212 Mudd's Grove and hosted a tour of ten High Street in Jefferson City. Kirkwood gardens on June 20. Miller County Historical Society Laclede County Historical Society The Society's annual ice cream social drew a Society meetings are held monthly on the crowd on June 19 at the museum in Tuscumbia. fourth Monday, except in December, at The July 11 quarterly meeting, also held at the Harwood Manor in Lebanon. Kenneth Howe museum, featured a potluck dinner and Bob spoke about the history of funerals at the May Butler's program, "What is a Fiddle Anyway?" 24 meeting, and Rev. Nellie Rector talked about her life as a pastor at the June 28 gath­ Mine Au Breton Historical Society ering. On July 26 members were entertained Regular monthly meetings are scheduled for by the Kountry Kousins Kitchen Band. the second Tuesday except December at the Washington County Library in Potosi. The Lawrence County Historical Society Moses Austin Heritage Festival, sponsored by On May 16 members met at the restored the Society, occurred June 19-20. Jim Clark pre­ Adamson cabin in Mount Vernon. Doug sented "An Afternoon with Mark Twain" at the Seneker, chairman of the cabin restoration pro­ festival. Members attended monthly meetings ject, gave a talk about the building. The July 18 on July 13 and August 10. meeting at the Jones Memorial Chapel in Mount Vernon featured a talk about tombstones and Moniteau County Historical Society graveyards given by Kathy Fairchild, Virginia Society projects include photographing Schmidt, and Fred Mieswinkel. and cataloging the homes and buildings of the county, completing the Hall of History Lee's Summit Historical Society Museum, and preparing the second edition of The Society gathered at the Lee Haven the History of Moniteau County. Monthly Community Building on June 4 for a potluck meetings are held on the second Monday at dinner and program in which Richard and the Cultural Heritage Center in California. Linda Cawby discussed what they had found The July 11 meeting featured a carry-in dinner in the attic of their historic home. at the Maclay House in Tipton, and members gathered again on August 8 for a business Lincoln County Historical meeting at the center. Hours of operation for and Archeological Society the genealogy library are Thursday-Saturday, Society members participated in a tour of 1:00-5:00, through October. 90 Missouri Historical Review

Monroe County Historical Society Perry County Lutheran Historical Society Members gathered at the Mr. and Mrs. The Society has conducted several tours to Clifford Gander home near Monroe City for historic sites in the Altenburg area and will be the May 16 meeting. Clifford Gander dis­ constructing an outdoor altar in Trinity Park. played his collection of Native American arti­ facts and fossils. On June 28, Homer and Pettis County Historical Society Mary McCollum hosted the Society meeting At the June 7 meeting in the Yeater at their home in Strother, where Mary gave a Building of State Fair Community College in program on the history of Strother and the Sedalia, Society president Rhonda Chalfant William S. Forsythe family. The Society par­ spoke about the organization of public ticipated in the Old Threshers Festival on schools in Sedalia and Pettis County and dis­ July 9-11 in Paris with a booth exhibiting played photographs and scrapbooks of the photographs and stories about the new mural McVey School. The grave of Brigadier in Paris. General James Totten at Crown Hill Cemetery received a new headstone. John G. Neihardt Corral of the Westerners Ray Brassieur presented "Maine Acadian Pike County Historical Society Houses: Material Expressions of Identity" at Members met at the Lay Field Station the May 13 meeting at Jack's Restaurant in near Louisiana for the July 13 dinner meet­ Columbia. On June 10 members attended a ing, where Ben Clark, great-grandson of buffalo barbecue at the Jim and Eloise Champ Clark, spoke about Champ's child­ Denninghoff residence in Columbia. hood, his first political efforts, and his career as Speaker of the U.S. House of Nodaway County Historical Society Representatives from 1911 to 1920. The At the annual meeting held on June 28, group also learned about Arline McNutt's Robert Bohken instructed members in book, The Rural Schools in Pike County. "Speaking Northwest Missourian." The Society's historic Caleb Burns House is being Pleasant Hill Historical Society repainted in an 1850s color scheme. June King and Mary Margaret Ingels pre­ sented "Early Memories of Pleasant Hill and Normandy Area Historical Association the Surrounding Area" at the July 18 meeting The Association sponsored a booth at the at the museum. Normandy Open House at City Hall on August 7. Members dispersed information William Clarke Quantrill Society about Normandy and the city's history as Joanne Chiles Eakin, Marsha Noland well as the histories of other area towns. Bergman, and Donald R. Hale displayed Quantrill family items in the Society's O'Fallon Historical Society Friends and Descendants exhibit during the On June 7 members gathered for a picnic Independence Heritage Salute sesquicenten- dinner meeting at the log cabin. nial celebration on June 5.

Old Trails Historical Society Randolph County Historical Society The Society hosted a picnic dinner on July Ann Neel and Pam Smith presented 18 at the Bacon Log Cabin in Manchester. "Entangled Lives: Facing Our Slaveholding Past" at a program sponsored by the Society at Osage County Historical Society the Moberly Area Community College on June Following a dinner at the Civic League 18. The group's open house and membership Hall in Meta, members heard Dale Kirby's drive was held at the Historical Center in presentation, "Barrel Making, a Missouri Moberly on July 29, and the white elephant Industry," at the May 24 gathering. sale was held at the Center on August 7. Historical Notes and Comments 91

Raymore Historical Society annual Memorial Day celebration in Memorial The Society gathered on May 11 at the Park in Sappington. The day's activities Cullen Funeral Home, where David Cain of the included a presentation of patriotic music by Free Trappers presented the program. At the the Spirit of St. Louis Marching Band and talks June 8 meeting, the son of Mrs. Sam Ray spoke by Jim Doerr and William Rebholz. about his mother's postcard collection. Installation of lighting for the Honor Roll and flag pole in Memorial Park was completed and Raytown Historical Society put into service on Flag Day, June 14. The July Members sold sesquicentennial clothing 28 membership meeting at Lindbergh High and books at the Raytown Barbecue. The School in St. Louis featured Mardean Midwest Cloggers and David Jefferies pro­ Steinmetz's talk on historic preservation. vided entertainment for Society members at their quarterly meeting and picnic held at Schuyler County Historical Society Kupfer Chalet in Kansas City on July 28. A The Society hosted an ice cream social on doll exhibit by Nadine Madaris and selected the museum grounds in Lancaster on July 25. art pieces by Bob Byerly were on display in The Corder Family and Juanita Smyser's the museum throughout the summer months. group provided live music. Repair work on the W. P. Hall house has been completed. St. Clair County Historical Society Members met at the Osceola Senior Center Scott County Historical on May 18, where Ellen Gray Massey present­ and Genealogical Society ed "Voices of Country Women." At the June Virginia Heise spoke about Civil War 15 meeting held at the Iconium Fire skirmishes along Crowley's Ridge and the Department Building, a panel of Iconium resi­ Battle of Chalk Bluff at the June 15 meeting dents gave a history of the area. The July 20 at the Scott County Courthouse in Benton. A meeting at the Osceola Senior Center featured guest speaker from the Northern Cherokee a show-and-tell program of newspaper clip­ Nations talked about the history of the pings, school records, books, and other items. Cherokee people in southeast Missouri at the The Society is offering for sale its new book, July 20 gathering, also held at the courthouse. St. Clair County Cemeteries. Priced at $35.00 plus shipping and handling, the volume can be Shelby County Historical Society purchased from the St. Clair County Historical The Society hosted an open house at the Society, P.O. Box 376, Osceola, MO 64776. museum in Shelbina on June 6. Items from early twentieth-century Shelbina businesses, St. Francois County Historical Society several wedding dresses, Civil War artifacts, Monthly meetings are held on the fourth and newspaper clippings, photographs, and Wednesday, January-October, and the third maps of Shelbina were on display. The group Wednesday in November at the Ozark also participated in the Civil War reenactment Federal Bank in Farmington. Mark Dryer at Bethel on June 12-13 with a display of entertained with old-time fiddling at the newspaper articles, letters, documents, and March 24 meeting, and the April 28 meeting surgical instruments dating from 1861 to 1865. featured a show-and-tell. Sons and Daughters of the Blue and Gray St. Joseph Historical Society Civil War Round Table The Society hosted a garden party at The group met on May 16 at the Maryville Robidoux Row on June 13 in appreciation of Public Library, where Bill Mauzey presented members and volunteers. "Ghosts of Gettysburg." Officers elected at the meeting were Sally Tennihill, president; Sappington-Concord Historical Society George Hinshaw, vice president; and Yelrah On May 31 members attended the Society's Regnissik, secretary/treasurer. At the June 27 92 Missouri Historical Review and July 18 gatherings at St. Francis Hospital his experiences broadcasting from the top of in Maryville, George Hinshaw and Sally the Chase Hotel in St. Louis and covering Tennihill performed scenes from plays popular Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech. during the Civil War. Washington Historical Society Stone County Historical/ New officers for the Society include Genealogical Society George Bocklage, president; Les Mades, vice Society meetings took place on June 6 and president; Norma Linder and Ruth Frick, sec­ August 1 at the Christian Church in Galena and retaries; and Don Hahne, treasurer. Monthly on July 11 at Spring Creek Mill in Hurley. At the meetings are held on the second Wednesday at July gathering, Ann Christensen shared a map the museum; the museum is open Saturday- and article about Native Americans at the time of Sunday, 1:00-4:00, and the library has addi­ Christopher Columbus's arrival in America. Jim tional hours from 9:00 to 3:00 on Tuesday. The Barrett showed two maps of Stone and Taney group held a covered dish dinner on June 8. Counties at the August meeting. Webster County Historical Society Texas County Missouri Genealogical In June the town of Marshfield, birthplace and Historical Society of astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, and the At the May 21 meeting, Loura Ford spoke Society hosted the Hubble family reunion. The about early Virginia settlers and her trips to Society celebrated the receipt of its two-vol­ Williamsburg, Virginia. Norman Brown ume Webster County History Book in July. gave a talk about the area north of Houston and the Blankenship Mineral Spring at the Westphalian Heritage Society June 25 meeting. On July 23, Tom Lawing This spring, students from Thomas-Morus- discussed the John Ray family and their Gymnasium in Oelde, Germany, visited involvement in the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Westphalia and the Society's museum. The All meetings convened at St. Mark's Catholic Society also hosted a pizza party for the students. Church in Houston. White River Valley Historical Society Vernon County Historical Society Fred Pfister presented "Walt Whitman Ellen Gray Massey, author of A Candle (1819-1892): Memories of President Within Her Soul: Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey Lincoln" at the June 13 meeting at the and Her Ozarks, spoke about rural Missouri College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout. women of the early twentieth century at the Society's July 11 meeting at the Winston Historical Society Bushwhacker Museum in Nevada. The Society organized the city's Jesse James Days festival held at City Park on July Warren County Historical Society 16-18. Ralph Rowlett, professor of anthropol­ Members gathered for a meeting and pro­ ogy at the University of Missouri-Columbia, gram on May 27 at the Warren County presented "Viking Warrior." The group meets Museum and Historical Library in on the first and third Thursdays of each month Warrenton. Lee Cavanaugh gave a talk about at the Winston Depot Museum. 93

GIFTS RELATING TO MISSOURI

Paul Barker, Springfield, donor: Ava Farm Record, 4 February 1897, photocopy. (N)* Francis M. Barnes, Kirkwood, donor: The Black Stocking, University of Missouri-Columbia student publication, December 1944-February 1945. (R) Robert Baumann, St. Louis, donor: Reports by various St. Louis agencies and organizations on juvenile crime, business and economic development, and housing. (R) Daniel Boone Regional Library, Columbia, donor: Columbia City Directory, 1978-1979. (R) Carnegie Public Library, Shelbina, donor: Supplement to Shelby County, Missouri, Cemeteries, 1998. (R) Cedar County Historical Society, Stockton, donor, via Bob Phillips: Stockton Stalwart, 6 January, 6 October 1882, photocopies. (N) William B. Claycomb, Hughesville, donor: Pettis County, Missouri: A Pictorial History, by the donor. (R) Marie Concannon, Columbia, donor: Prisoners on Purpose, edited by Samuel H. Day, Jr. (R) Geraldine F. Coon, Colorado Springs, Colorado, donor: Pitts Family History, 1643-1988: The Descendants of John Pitts, 1753-1834, Volumes I and II, by Josephine Pitts Gambill. (R) Ellis Libraries, University of Missouri-Columbia, donor: Missouri Society of the Sons of the American Revolution Yearbook, 1899. (R) Paddy Feeny, West Sussex, U.K., donor: Non-intervention in Missouri, 1940: A Suggested Context for the Study of Isolationism, by the donor. (R) Richard Frazier and Daryl Limpus, Archie, donors: Archie: A History of a Railroad Town, compiled by the Archie 2000 History Book Committee. (R) Laverne W. Fulton, Columbia, donor: Historical Sketch ofHydesburg Church from 1830-1903. (R) Skip Gatermann, St. Louis, donor: Cleveland High School Staff-Alumni Association, The Clevelandite, Summer 1998; March of Dimes Bikers for Babies, Biker Bits, March 1999. (R) James W. Goodrich, Columbia, donor: Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self, by Bruce Michelson. (R) John F. Harris, Great Falls, Montana, donor: James F. Berry and the Sam Bass Gang, by the donor. (R) Larry and Linda James, Neosho, donors: Photographs of Pioneer, Newtonia, and Stark City. (E) Ron Johnson, Stillwater, Minnesota, donor: Panther Valley Pathways: A Historical and Genealogical Sketch of Early Settlers of Panther Valley, Webster County, Missouri, by the donor. (R)

*These letters indicate the location of the materials at the Society. (N) refers to Newspaper Library; (M), Manuscripts; (R), Reference Library; (E), Editorial Office; and (A), Art Collection. 94 Missouri Historical Review

Nancy Hale Lee, Martinsburg, donor: Index to the Municipal Records of Wellsville, Missouri: With Transcriptions of Various Records and Lists; Merchant Assessment Book for the City of Wellsville, Missouri, 1895 through 1980; Municipal Court Dockets: City of Wellsville, Missouri: 1 September 1910-23 August 1923; Officials and Employees of Wellsville, Missouri: Selected Years 1872 through 1994, all compiled by the donor. (R) Lewis County Historical Society, Canton, donor, via Jean Purvines: The Rise and Fall of Williamstown, by Carmen Leslie Barber. (R) Margaret Lyle, St. Joseph, donor: Issues of the Meadville Messenger, 1910s-1940s, loaned for microfilming. (N) Helen Mathena, Springtown, Texas, and Jackie Pratt, San Antonio, Texas, donors: St. Louis Hesparian, 5 January-20 April 1867, loaned for microfilming. (N) Clifford and Lucille Maupin, Montgomery City, donors: Various issues of the Middletown Chips, 1936-1939, and the Wellsville Optic-News, 1945 and 1948, loaned for microfilming. (N) Fred H. Meinershagen, Columbia, donor: The Prosperous and Diligent Blacksmith from Wersen Revisited, by the donor. (R) Robert H. Phillips, Dunnegan, donor: Directory: Lindley Prairie Cemetery, Cedar County, Bear Creek, Missouri. (R) Neil S. Smith, Columbia, donor: Enhanced Index to Linn County, Missouri, Nineteenth Century Courthouse Deed Records Book A, 1837-1845, compiled by the donor. (R) Becky L. Snider, Columbia, donor: Papers of Max and Minnie McNulty. (M) Mark Stauter, Rolla, donor: Jackson Missouri Cash-Book, 3 August 1962; Jackson Cape County Post, 8 December 1941, 10 May 1956; Jackson Pioneer, 6 June 1965; DeSoto Weekly Republican, 19 May 1905; St. Louis Weekly Missouri Republican, 28 January 1859. (N) James A. Tharp, Lee's Summit, donor: Plat maps of Grundy, Linn, Livingston, and Sullivan Counties. (R) Kenneth E. Weant, Arlington, Texas, donor: Audrain County, Missouri: 5419 Deaths Reported in and Chronological Index to Selected Articles from the Mexico Intelligencer, 3 September 1885 to 31 December 1903 (Volume 1); Civil War Records in the St. Louis Republic (1140 Camp Chase Ohio Deaths) (The Landis Battery; A Missouri Artillery Unit) and (Missourians Who Attended the 1895 Reunion of Southern Soldiers at Houston) (Volume 2); Audrain County, Missouri: 4027 Deaths Reported in and Chronological Index to Selected Articles from the Missouri Intelligencer, 7 January 1904 to 28 December 1916 (Volume 2); Callaway County, Missouri: The Veterans (War of 1812 to World War II) (Volume 5A); Audrain County, Missouri: 4176 Deaths Reported in and Chronological Index to Selected Articles from the Mexico Intelligencer plus 2010 Draft Registration and Servicemen Names, 4 January 1917 to 26 December 1929. (R) Westminster College, Fulton, donor, via Gail Pautz: Wentworth Military Academy Alumni Directory, 1986. (R) Nelda Wilkinson, Cape Girardeau, donor: / Remember the Ozarks, by Charles Williams. (R) Evlyn Wolf, Amity, donor: Green Hills Area Wide Telephone Directory, 1983. (R) Robert G. and Margie McDaniel Woods, Palmyra, donors: Journals of Stella Elizabeth Edwards Woods and personal files of Robert G. Woods; Marion County Human Services Directory, 1999. (M) & (R) 95

MISSOURI HISTORY IN NEWSPAPERS

Appleton City Journal June 3, 1999: "Iconium really did have a [Commercial] hotel."

Bethany Republican-Clipper May 26, 1999: "William Robinson's role in building Bethany has been all but forgotten," by Phil Stewart.

Butler News-Xpress June 11, 1999: "Museum Memories: When Butler was a college town," Butler Academy. July 2: "The way it was" featured Poplar Heights Farm, by Brian Phillips.

Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian June 7, 1999: "History of the Neely's Landing Post Office," by Steven R. Bender.

*Carl Junction Courier May 28, July 16, 1999: "History, Legend, and Lore" featured Lonny Chapman of Joplin and Carl Junction and automobiles. Both articles by John Durbin.

Carthage Press June 15, 1999: "Vanished Carthage building had a long history," Hall's Boarding Stable, by Sue Vandergriff.

Columbia Daily Tribune July 11, 1999: "Little town's [Sarcoxie] peonies attract tourists," by John Rogers.

Columbia Missourian May 15, 1999: "Remembering a time when orphans waited for adoption," orphan trains, by Michelle Brummitt.

Cuba Free Press May 27, 1999: "Brief History of University [of Missouri and Lincoln] Outreach and Extension," by Pat Snodgrass.

Dexter Daily Statesman May 27, 1999: "Mill bridge offers span across time," Burfordville Bridge at Bollinger Mill State Historic Site, by Annabeth Miller. July 25: "Renovation planned for Dexter's [train] depot."

El Dorado Springs Star May 13, 1999: "Roscoe residents preserve history."

Fulton Sun Gazette May 9, 1999: "Notes from KOCHS" featured the Crowson Livery Stable and the Baptist Church in Fulton. June 17: "Cumberland Presbyterian Church [of Warrensburg]."

^Indicates newspapers not received by the State Historical Society. 96 Missouri Historical Review

Hannibal Courier-Post May 22,29,1999: Two-part series on Central Park titled "Central Park once a hilly, wood­ ed block" and "Central Park has served as a gathering spot for generations." Both articles by J. Hurley Hagood and Roberta Hagood.

Hermann Advertiser-Courier July 7, 1999: "A glimpse into the past" featured Market Street.

Jackson Cash-Book Journal May 12, 1999: "Bruening-Kerstner Dry Goods Company turned the century," by Beverly K. Hahs.

Jefferson City Post-Tribune May 8,1999: "Looking back at a century of life on the land," evolution of farming around Republic.

Jefferson City Sunday News Tribune May 16, 1999: "Elizabeth Rozier honored for historic preservation efforts"; "Five historic properties earn Landmark Awards," the Ephriam B. Ewing House, Whaley's East End Drugs, the Price Mansion, the Cliff Street Mansion, and Houchin House, all in Jefferson City; "Two Cole County landmarks considered for placement on national historic register," Lewis Bolton House near Wardsville and Lincoln University's Hilltop Campus Historic District Boundary Increase building. May 23: "Ferry once 'bridged' Osage River between Cole, Osage counties," by Gary Kremer.

Joplin Globe May 13, 1999: "How Joplin was built: Interest in local architecture grows into a new book," From Lincoln Logs to Lego Blocks: How Joplin Was Built, by Nammi Bhagvandoss. June 23: "The Way We Were" featured the ground-breaking ceremony for Immanuel Lutheran School. July 3: "City [Neosho], airport [Neosho Municipal] to honor pioneer pilot [Hugh Robinson]," by Debbie Robinson.

*Kahoka Hometown Journal June 3, 1999: "Guns in Jesse James Farm & Museum [in Kearney] Not Authentic."

Kansas City Star June 4, 1999: "A not-so-homogenous history [of Independence]." July 19: "Lincoln rejection [by Mary Owens Vineyard] wins place in history." Both arti­ cles by Brian Burnes.

Kennett Daily Dunklin Democrat June 7, 1999: "A great [St. Louis] cathedral for the Catholic city of the West [St. Louis]," by Sarah Wheeler.

Lancaster Excelsior June 30, 1999: Fourth of July celebrations of 1916, by Marilyn Foreman.

Liberty Tribune-News May 5, 1999: "From the beginning ... A lifetime of achievement," Hal Townsend. Historical Notes and Comments 97

May 19: "Former Bell School pupils have fond memories," by Marcia L. Horn.

Memphis Democrat June 24, 1999: "Barker U[nited] M[ethodist] Church Celebrates 125th Anniversary."

*Monroe City Lake Gazette June 22, 1999: "Trail of Death Markers Dedicated at See's Creek and North Fork."

Neosho Daily News May 17, 1999: "[M. E.] Benton School 100 years old," by Jim Burrows.

New Haven Leader July 7, 1999: "Two Sections of Town Listed on National Historic Register."

Odessa Odessan June 3, 1999: "[First Baptist Church] Bell tower history researched," by Jeanette Easton.

Owensville Gasconade County Republican May 26, 1999: "When the Civil War touched Gasconade County," by Jim Featherston.

Park Hills Daily Journal May 29, 30, June 1, 1999: Three-part series on George Washington Brooks titled, respec­ tively: "The Last Slave's Story," "A local slave's role in war between the states," and "Missouri's last living slave spent time in [Farmington] area." All articles by Sarah Heimburger.

Perryville Perry County Republic Monitor May 27, 1999: "Migets—1936," Marguerite and Leo Miget.

Piedmont Wayne County Journal-Banner June 3, July 1,1999: "Historical Wayne County" featured the Clearwater Dam project and the Ellis Webb Sawmill.

Rich Hill Mining Review May 27, June 25, July 29, 1999: The "Rich Hill from 1900 to 2000" series featured, respec­ tively: "1940s—European Conflict becomes WWII," "1955—Rich Hill celebrates 75th birthday," and "1960s—A time of decisions for Rich Hill." All articles compiled by Randy Bell.

Richland Mirror June 3, 1999: "Cornerstone Baptist Church celebrates 10 years."

Rolla Daily News May 23,1999: "Ozark Life," a photo feature of the "Step Back in Time" Civil War reenactment. June 28: "Pedestrian [Main Street] bridge dedicated by groups that saved it."

St. Joseph News-Press June 3, 1999: "Only 1 room, but full of learning," Fountain Bleu School of Avenue City, by Alonzo Weston.

*St. Louis County Star Journal East May 19, 1999: "Frank's [Nursery and Crafts store] an American success story." 98 Missouri Historical Review

*St. Louis Oakville/Mehlville Journal May 26, 1999: "Tour shows off St. Louis' Victorian [houses] splendor," by Glen Sparks.

*St. Louis O'Fallon Journal June 2, 1999: "St. Paul Church marks 150th with celebration," by Raymond Castile.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch May 3, 1999: "[Ferris] Wheel of Fortune" and "Ferris invented his big wheel for Chicago's 1893 exposition." Both articles by John M. McGuire. May 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, June 6, 13, 20, 27, July 4, 11, 18, 25, 1999: The weekly "20th Century [and St. Louis]" series featured the following topics, respectively: World War II, Harry Truman, the atomic bomb, the birth of television, the Cold War, bridging the Mississippi, the baby boom, Route 66, the Korean War, rock and roll, civil rights. May 17: "The day St. Louis went up in flames," the 1849 fire, by John M. McGuire. May 20: "Lucky Lindy: A Vision Fulfilled," Charles Lindbergh, by Jan Jacobi. June 21: "Statues of 19th-century lawmakers [Thomas Hart Benton and Francis Preston Blair] face eviction from U.S. Capitol," by Stephanie Hanes. June 27: "Soldan [International Studies High School] stand out for architects looking at school renovation," by Holly K. Hacker. July 6: "Security is a thriving business. Just ask the folks at the 150-year-old John Baumann safe and hardware company." July 11: "Town [Portage des Sioux] will celebrate its place in history as it turns 200," by Joan Little. July 17: "The Father of International Tennis [Dwight Davis]," by Nick Wishart. July 18: "Teacher [Chip Clatto] takes his students to explore what may have been a hide­ out for slaves [on Lemp Avenue]," by Rick Pierce.

St. Louis Review June 18, 1999: "Sts. Peter and Paul Parish: 150 years as 'community of faith.'"

*St. Louis South County Journal June 16, 1999: "Historic [Icarian] home another sign of city's rebirth," by Clayton Berry.

*St. Louis South Side Journal July 11, 1999: "City gets jail, saves [Court Square] building," by Glen Sparks.

*St. Louis Southwest County Journal June 27, 1999: "Archive center [old Gratiot School] includes 160 years of school history," by Glen Sparks.

St. Louis Watchman Legals July 15, 1999: "Historic Black Cemetery goes up for sale," Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery in Springfield.

St. Louis Webster-Kirkwood Times June 20, 1999: "Locomotive [Frisco steam engine] rises to former glory," by Heather Cole. June 25: "St. Paul's Lutheran Church Celebrates 150 Years," by Priscilla Visintine.

Salem News May 11,1999: "Turning the key on history," Bunker Union Church, by Dwayne McClellan. Historical Notes and Comments 99

Sedalia Central Missouri News June 23, 1999: Special section "A Trip Back" featured the history of Pettis County.

Sedalia Democrat May 26, 1999: "State Fair" and "Maple Leaf Club." Both articles by Rhonda Chalfant. June 14: "Sedalia High School recalled in book," by Ron Jennings; "Off to war: Sedalia soldiers volunteer to go to Cuba," Spanish-American War, by Rhonda Chalfant.

Springfield Mirror June 11, 1999: "Sacred Heart Parish [of Verona] to celebrate 125th anniversary," by Christine Ballew-Gonzales.

Springfield News-Leader June 21, 1999: "Peanut butter's father [George Washington Carver] called Missouri home," by John Rogers.

Thayer South Missourian News June 10, 1999: "The last hanging in Oregon county, June 1899," by Jan Sisk.

Troy Lincoln County Journal June 29,1999: "Moscow Mills had two depots," the Short Line and the Burlington depots, recollections by Charles R. Williams.

Tuscumbia Miller County Autogram-Sentinel April 29, 1999: "Window to the Past" featured Iberia Cemetery, by Peggy Smith Hake.

Vienna Maries County Gazette June 30, 1999: "Vienna Residents Recall Father Coffey's Cabin on the Gasconade [River]," by Joe Welschmeyer.

Webb City Sentinel June 18, July 9,1999: "Ancestors, Legends, and Time" series featured "Fond Memories of teachers," Webb City High School teachers Mayme Stinnett, Helen Herrod, and Olive Gilmer, and "Taking a walk in Webb City's downtown memory lane." Both articles by Jeanne Newby.

The Way It Works

Columbia Summer Complaint, August 10, 1929. Prof, in History: Mr. Harold Clinton Davis will now tell us how the art of osculation or kissing has been handed down through the ages. Davis: It was handed down from mouth to mouth. 100

MISSOURI HISTORY IN MAGAZINES

All Aboard, Frisco Railroad Museum Number 1, 1999: "Time Tables: Frisco Line, Part 1: Pre-1902"; "Company Service Roster: Wreckers, Work Trains, Hoists, Part One"; "Down at the Depot," construction of Frisco depots.

Ancestors Unlimited May, 1999: "History of Roaring River Baptist Church: Eagle Rock, Barry County, Missouri," compiled by Edith Carter Ball, reprinted.

Area Footprints, Genealogical Society of Butler County May, 1999: "Elk General Baptist Church" in Broseley; "116th Anniversary for Union Hill Church: History of the Union Hill Church and Commertown," by Gladys Leach, reprinted; sev­ eral short articles about the town of Grandin and its businesses; "Scott's Cafe and Swank's Station [in Poplar Bluff]: A Landmark of the Past," by Amy (Swank) Berry; "[Butler County] Courthouse is on Historic Register," by Rebecca M. Ward, reprinted.

Augusta Neighborhood News July-August, 1999: "When Schliirsburg was 'San Marino.'"

The Blue and Grey Chronicle June, 1999: "The [Civil] War Comes to Jackson County," by Wayne Schnetzer; "What Really Happened on the Steamboat EmmaT Captain Nicholas Wall's encounter with Joseph O. Shelby, continued, reprinted; "Daring Attempt to Capture the 'James Boys,'" reprinted; "The Honey War," by Joanne C. Eakin.

Boone's Lick Heritage, Boonslick Historical Society June, 1999: "Civil War Entrenchment Near Otterville," by James M. Denny; "Battle of Wilkin's Bridge" in Cooper County, by Robert L. Dyer.

Bushwhacker Musings, Vernon County Historical Society July, 1999: "Early Experiences of J. M. Linn, Trader," by Levi L. Aldrich, reprinted; "Fifty Years of Progress for Nevada," by Reni Geiger and Franklin Norman, reprinted; "More on Badger Township," by M. J. Williams.

Christian County Historian May, 1999: "The Wrightsman-Smith Hotel (A Lost Landmark)" in Ozark, by Shirley Stewart.

CMFA News, Confederate Memorial Friends Association Spring, 1999: "The James Gang's Last Survivor," Jim Cummins, by Donald H. Hale.

Columbia Senior Times June, 1999: "Columbia's Ann Hawkins Gentry: Pioneer Woman." August, 1999: "The Historical Hall Theatre Carries On." This and the above article by Michelle Long Windmoeller.

DeKalb County Heritage July, 1999: "Entertainment in Stewartsville in the 1880s." Historical Notes and Comments 101

Florissant Valley Quarterly July, 1999: "The Seminary Cemetery" on the grounds of the Museum of the Western Jesuit Missions, by Edwin Benton.

Friends of the James Farm Journal Summer, 1999: "James Farm bomb report, thought lost, now found," by Jack Ventimiglia, reprinted; "Official Report [on James Farm bombing] of Adjutant General [George Caleb] Bingham," reprinted.

Gateway Heritage, Missouri Historical Society Spring, 1999: "Deja Vu All Over Again? St. Louis Master Plans and the Dream of the Democratic Community," by Mark Abbott; "The Zouaves Take St. Louis," by William C. Winter; "Establishing a Metropolitan Police Force: The Civil War and the First St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners," by Allen E. Wagner; "Alexander Skinker: Citizen Soldier," by Earl K. Dille; "When the Doughboys Came Marching Home" from World War I, by Duane R. Sneddeker; "People and Place in Twentieth-Century St. Louis," by John Wolford.

Heritage, Assemblies of God Spring, 1999: "The Wiley Family and the Beginnings of Pentecost in Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas," by Glenn Gohr.

Jefferson Barracks Gazette, Friends of Jefferson Barracks July-September, 1999: "Franklin D. Callender: A Forgotten Man of Jefferson Barracks, Part Two," by Esley Hamilton; "The Barrell Movement: A Sketch of Camp Life on the Rio Grande," the St. Louis Legion encampment, by John S. Robb.

Journal, Douglas County Historical and Genealogical Society May, 1999: Several articles devoted to Brown's Cave near Ava; "Thomas S. and Mary Burdan Brown," by Cinita Davis Brown; "Keeping Law and Order in Cass Township in the 1890s," by Marian Conradi; "The Flood in Douglas County," in 1876, reprinted articles; "The Execution of Edward W. Perry," continued, reprinted; "[Interview With] Eva Surguine" about Spring Creek community.

Kansas City Genealogist Spring, 1999: "Twenty-Year-Old Murder Mystery Is Recalled in 1864," the murder of Antonio Jose Chavez, by Joanne Chiles Eakin.

Kansas History Summer, 1999: "A 'Fiend in Human Shape'? William Clarke Quantrill and His Biographers," by Barry A. Crouch.

Kirkwood Historical Review Summer, 1999: "Kirkwood in the Twenties," featuring newspaper articles selected by Betty Beck.

Lawrence County Historical Society Bulletin July, 1999: "From the Civil War Diary of Robert T. McMahan"; "The Kimmins Cemetery," also known as Misemer Cemetery, in Ozark Township.

The Lutheran Witness July, 1999: "In the Ozarks, 1899," life in the ministry in Thayer for Rev. William and Emma Richter, by Susan O. Bachman. 102 Missouri Historical Review

Missouri Archaeological Society Quarterly April-June, 1999: "Robert Taylor Bray: 1925-1999," by W. Raymond Wood.

Missouri Folklore Society Journal Volume 20,1998: "Old-Time Fiddling in Missouri: A Workshop" and "A Tribute to William A. (Bill) Driver," both by R. P. Christeson; "Reminiscences of R. P. Christeson" and "Chroniclers of an Era: Loman Cansler and Max Hunter, Collectors of Traditional Music, Song, and Lore," both by Donald M. Lance; "P.S., Make Sure You Bring Your Fiddle: The Ancestry, Life, and Legacy of Herk Sanders," by Timothy Bond; "Terrible Songs—Missouri Tragedies in Music," by Judy Domeny.

Missouri Historical Society Magazine Summer, 1999: "Volunteer Fire-Fighting in St. Louis"; "St. Louis Aviation Pioneers: Tom Benoist."

Missouri Municipal Review July, 1999: "Ash Grove—A Small Town With a Big History," by Iver Johnson.

Missouri Resources Summer, 1999: "Missouri's Historic Border Battles," McKissick's Island and the Honey War, by Dwight Weaver.

Nevada Historical Society Quarterly Spring, 1998: "The Making of Mark Twain," by Brian Scott Hagen.

Newsletter, Cedar County Historical Society July, 1999: "Historical Notes: The Building of the Stockton Community Building"; "The Mill at Caplinger," by Mildred Martin Goss.

Newsletter, Chariton County Historical Society July, 1999: "Brunswick's First Town Hall," by Blake Sasse.

Newsletter, Commerce Historical and Genealogical Society July-August, 1999: "Growing Up in Commerce," by JoAnn Dodson Gibbar and Wanda Dodson.

Newsletter, Gasconade County Historical Society Summer, 1999: "A 'Company Community' at Bay," the Phillips Pipeline Company Pump Station, by Randolph E. Puchta; "The Gasconade Bridge Disaster," by Sandy Bothe.

Newsletter, Historic Madison County May, 1999: "Fire Bugs Again," the burning of the Madison Hotel in Fredericktown, reprinted. June, 1999: "Paul Deguire Shot By Walter Day," reprinted.

Newsletter, Howard County Genealogical Society April-May, 1999: "The Story of a Man Named Samuel [Crowley]." June, 1999: "Memoirs of Doctor Peck" about Franklin, Missouri, reprinted.

Newsletter, Iron County Historical Society July, 1999: Short stories on the George W. Scoggin family. Historical Notes and Comments 103

Newsletter, Laclede County Historical Society July, 1999: "Historical Memories," the Brush Creek Cemetery near Morgan and the Pisgah Cemetery.

Newsletter, Lincoln County Historical and Archaeological Society July, 1999: "Elmwood Farm Cemetery"; "Rice Fields of Lincoln County"; "Cap-Au- Gris," an extinct town near Troy.

Newsletter, Osage County Historical Society May, 1999: "George Washington Moss [of Byron]: His Life and Times," information sup­ plied by Mary Beth Stout. June, 1999: "A Letter From Grandmother," Maria Scriven Mantle, reprinted. July, 1999: "Cooper Hill and the Langenberg Store."

Newsletter, St. Francois County Historical Society May, 1999: "History of the Esther School" in Esther, reprinted; "A Tale of Two Train Tunnels," the Jefferson County and St. Francois County tunnels, by Gene Murdock.

Newsletter, Scott County Historical & Genealogical Society May, 1999: "James A. C. McPheeters." June, 1999: "Montrose Pallen Wade." July, 1999: "Probate Judge [Charles A.] Leedy."

Newsletter, South Central Missouri Genealogical Society April-May-June, 1999: "Mt. Zion [Church]," reprinted.

Newsletter, Warren County Historical Society May, 1999: "Brief History Regarding the Formation of Warren County," reprinted.

The Northeast Reporter, Northeast Missouri Genealogical Society June, 1999: "Village of Warren," submitted by Arleta Utterback; "Correspondent Offers Brief History of New Market," submitted by Mildred Allen. August, 1999: "Ilasco, Missouri: From boom town to ghost town," by Edward Husar.

Novinger Renewal News July, 1999: "History of Novinger," by Walter J. Novinger, continued; "The Novinger I Remember," by Martha Perry.

Old Mill News Summer, 1999: "Revolution of a Nineteenth Century Mill," Milbank Mills in Chillicothe, by Carolyn Cook Leffler.

Old Mill Run, Ozark County Genealogical and Historical Society July, 1999: "The Grist Mills of Ozark County."

Old Settlers Gazette July 31, 1999: This issue featured the following topics: the histories of Waynesville, Fort Leonard Wood, and Miller County, the 1948 Fort Leonard Wood cattle drive, the Gasconade River, Pulaski County's poor farm, Squire John Ferguson of Iberia, Gospel Ridge School in St. 104 Missouri Historical Review

Robert, Potencenia Sariana Zeigenbein of Waynesville, and Harold Bell Wright.

Ozark Happenings Newsletter, Texas County Missouri Genealogical and Historical Society April-May-June, 1999: "Tie-Rafters—Stalwart Men of the Ozarks"; "Some Ozarks Burial Customs."

Ozar'kin, Ozarks Genealogical Society Summer, 1999: "The Civil War Journal of William Henry Harrison Rogers," submitted by Mary Alice Mallard; "Westminster Tabernacle/Westminster Presbyterian Church: Springfield, Missouri, 1885-1999," by George T. Harper.

Ozarks Mountaineer June-July, 1999: "When Ma Barker's Gang Terrorized the Ozarks," by Larry Wood; "Our Unique Neighbor," Gaulding Cemetery in Ozark County, by Mona Gaulding Decker; "Granby, Missouri—The Oldest Mining Town in the Southwest," by Verla A. Mooth.

Platte County Missouri Historical & Genealogical Society Bulletin April-May-June-July, 1999: Short article about the 1887 Jersey Lawn mansion near Platte City; "Banishment from Missouri in 1864," by Mrs. B. A. C. Emerson; "The Missouri Valley Hotel" in Parkville.

Resume, Historical Society of Polk County May, 1999: "Villages of the Limberlost," the obscure settlements of Polk County: Orleans, Huckaby, Burns, Rock Prairie, Tin Town, Wishart, Sentinel, Adonis, Rondo, Huron, Violet, and Schofield, by Robert G. Beason and Jessie Beason. July, 1999: "The Day They Kidnapped the Sheriff [Jack Killingsworth]," by Robert G. Beason.

Ripley County Heritage Summer, 1999: "They Followed the Timber," the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company; "The Wall," in Doniphan, by Olive Rogers; "P. J. Burford—A Man of Enterprise."

Rural Missouri June, 1999: "Grandeur Restored: Downtown Sedalia's historic Hotel Bothwell returns to its former glory," by Bob McEowen. July, 1999: "Missouri vs. Missouri," the Vicksburg campaign in the Civil War, by Steve Rudloff.

St. Charles County Heritage July, 1999: "St. Charles in the 1920s," by Mark Poindexter; "Lake Creek: The Cradle of German Emigration to Missouri," by Dorris Keeven; "Celebrating Our Founder, Edna McElhiney Olson," by Carrol Geerling; "St. Charles County—100 Years Ago," by Anita Mallinckrodt.

St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly Summer, 1999: "Helen Jane Van Amburg's One Hundred Years—Plus," submitted by Ann Doerr.

St. Louis Lawyer, Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis May 5, 1999: '"We Must Drive These Animals From Us': In that promising year of 1894, St. Louis lawyers would meet to organize the bar association," by Marshall D. Hier; "Postcard From 1874: By 1874, the Civil War had been over for nine years, since Robert E. Lee signed the articles of surrender at Appomattox," St. Louis in 1874, by Peter J. Dunne. Historical Notes and Comments 105

The Secessionist, Missouri Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans June, 1999: "Colonel Emmitt MacDonald, C.S.A.," by Gene Dressel, reprinted.

Seeking W Searching Ancestors June, 1999: "Miller Co. White Man [William Williams] Sold at Auction in 1859." August, 1999: "Window to the Past," the James Gang train robbery at Ottersville; "Window to the Past," Herman S. Tellman. This and the above articles by Peggy Smith Hake.

The Semaphore, Winston Historical Society July, 1999: "A Great Robbery on the Rock Island Railroad," reprinted; "The Winston United Methodist Church: 125 Years of Service to the Community."

S.E.MO. Record, Dunklin County Genealogical Society July, 1999: "Senath, Missouri," reprinted.

Show Me Route 66 Spring, 1999: '"Just Call Me Wrink,'" Wrinks Food Market in Lebanon, by Skip Curtis; "The Munger Moss [Hotel]" near Lebanon, by Ramona Lehman; "Twins Reminisce," Henry Glen Kelly, Jr., and Mary Gladys Kelly Stephens, by De Kelly; "Memories," the Adam Stenzinger family, by Janis Stenzinger-Caldwell.

Springfield! Magazine June, 1999: "Queen City History: (Part XXVI) Springfield's Amazing Boy Scout Band is Born!" by Robert C. Glazier. July, 1999: "A Tale of Two Volunteers," Amanda and Lester Cox, and "Queen City History: Part XXVII: Hometown Electronics Whiz [Granville Pearson Ward] Puts First Radio Station on Air Here," both by Robert C. Glazier; "Zesta: A Nickel or a Dime? Recollections of a 1950s Carhop," by Jane Hale. August, 1999: "[Camp] Arrowhead Celebrates 75 Years of Camp Tradition: The Oldest Scout Camp West of the Mississippi [near Marshfield] Still Going Strong," by David J. Eslick. Guide to Springfield, 1999: Several articles by Robert C. Glazier relate the history of Springfield from 1820 to the present; "When the Railroad Came to Town," by Mabel Carver Taylor.

Tree Shakers, Meramec Valley Genealogical and Historical Society July-August, 1999: "Lake Tekakwitha," in Jefferson County, submitted by Virginia Dailey.

Waterways Journal June 28,1999: "The Great Bridge Opened 125 Years Ago," Eads Bridge in St. Louis. July 19, 1999: "A Steamboat [the Mayflower] Ran on Missouri's Chariton River." Both articles by James V. Swift.

Western Historical Quarterly Summer, 1999: "Joined Forces: Robert Campbell and John Dougherty as Military Entrepreneurs," by Marilyn Irvin Holt.

White River Valley Historical Quarterly Spring, 1999: "The Summer of 1863," the Civil War diary of Lyman Bennett, edited by James J. Johnston; "For Fun and Profit: Hillbillies in Ozarks Popular Culture," by Lynn Morrow. 106

IN MEMORIAM

FRANCIS M. "BUD" BARNES, III Legislature. He was respected not only for his Francis M. "Bud" Barnes, III, of legal and parliamentary knowledge but his fair­ Kirkwood, a lawyer, former state legislator, ness in the way he used that knowledge." and past president of the State Historical An enthusiastic and accomplished avoca- Society, died on August 15,1999. Born in St. tional historian, Barnes shared his vast Louis on July 19, 1918, Barnes was a gradu­ knowledge of Missouri and Civil War history ate of the University of Missouri-Columbia with colleagues and friends. In the legisla­ and the Washington University School of ture, he also promoted appropriations for his­ Law. He served as a commissioned officer in torical projects such as the preservation of the U.S. Army Field Artillery and Combat Civil War battle flags and a new building for Engineers during World War II. In 1948 he the Missouri State Archives. Barnes served married Mary Shore Johnson. as a member of the State Historical Society's Barnes served as assistant city counselor board of trustees from 1978 until his death. for the city of St. Louis and as an attorney for He was elected president of the Society for a Southwestern Bell Telephone Company and three-year term in 1983 and joined the exec­ the Gaylord Container Corporation. In 1959 utive committee at that time. In 1986, by he joined Crown Zellerbach Corporation of virtue of his presidency, he became a perma­ San Francisco, where he served as assistant nent trustee of the Society and remained an secretary, then vice president. He retired active member of the executive committee from Crown Zellerbach as senior vice presi­ until his death. The Society presented him dent in 1973 and returned to Kirkwood. with its Distinguished Service Award and In 1976, Barnes was elected to the Missouri Medallion in 1987. House of Representatives. He served sixteen Barnes also helped found the Friends of years as representative from the district that the Missouri State Archives; served on the included Kirkwood. As a member of the boards of the Friends, the St. Louis House Appropriations Committee, Barnes was Mercantile Library Association, the noted for his strong support of higher educa­ Transport Museum Associates, and the tion. During his tenure in the legislature, he Friends of the University of Missouri- twice received the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Columbia Libraries and State Historical Meritorious Service Award and was selected Society of Missouri Library; and was a past by St. Louis Magazine and the Missouri Times president of the Kirkwood Historical Society as one of the "Top Ten" Legislators, 1978- and former editor of the Kirkwood Historical 1983. Members of both political parties Review. The University of Missouri- esteemed Barnes's political acumen. In 1992, Columbia recognized Barnes's contributions after Barnes announced that he would not seek to the school by presenting him with the reelection, Representative Chris Kelly of Distinguished Alumni Award in 1989. He Boone County remarked that the Kirkwood was also active in numerous civic organiza­ legislator had taught him one of the most tions and on the boards of the Clifford important lessons any lawmaker can learn: Willard Gaylord Foundation and the David "The process we are engaged in is more impor­ B. Lichtenstein Foundation. tant than any one bill. It is vital to protect the Barnes is survived by his wife; two institution of the House." Following Barnes's daughters, Betsy Wilson and Barbara death, Governor Mel Carnahan commented, Catanzaro; one son, Francis M. Barnes, IV; "Bud Barnes had an exemplary career in the and four grandchildren. Historical Notes and Comments 107

JEAN TYREE HAMILTON "Petch" Peden in St. Louis on September 18, Former State Historical Society board 1965. member Jean Tyree Hamilton, 89, died on Born on March 22, 1913, in Long Island, May 31, 1999, in Marshall. She was the New York, to Horatio Harwood and daughter of the late Clem and Maude Duncan Catherine Hanna Peden, William Peden spent Tyree. On February 24, 1940, she married his early years in the East and moved to Henry William Hamilton, who preceded her Columbia in 1946. He received his B.A., in death on June 16, 1984. M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University Born June 6, 1909, in Shelbyville, of Virginia, Charlottesville. Along with a Hamilton moved to Marshall from Lexington doctoral dissertation, he published two books in 1940. A graduate of Lexington High on Thomas Jefferson. Passionate about liter­ School, she attended Christian (now ature from an early age, Peden started many Columbia) College and the University of of the writing programs at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She served as deputy Missouri-Columbia and organized creative assessor and county treasurer in Lafayette writing as a major. He also founded the County and was a member of Chapter GM of University of Missouri Press in 1958 and co- the PEO Sisterhood and the Marshall Chapter founded the Missouri Review, which awards of the Daughters of the American Revolution. the Peden Prize for short fiction. Hamilton was active in archaeological Peden is survived by his wife, Margaret S. and historical preservation efforts and, both Peden of Columbia; two daughters, Sally with her husband and alone, published prolif- Peden of Fairfield, Iowa, and Eliza Mitchell ically in archaeology and history. She played of Webster Groves; one stepson, Kyle a key role in the restoration of Arrow Rock No wine of Boulder, Colorado; one step­ and was one of the founders and trustees of daughter, Kerry Dunning of Palatka, Florida; Friends of Arrow Rock. A trustee of the State five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Historical Society of Missouri from 1978 to 1992, Hamilton also served on its executive committee from 1986 through 1990. AMOS, NORMAN, Kansas City: Survivors include a son, James T. Hamilton December 16, 1920-March 16, 1999 of Maplewood, and one granddaughter. ANGELO, L. V. MIKE, Boonville: March 14, 1915-December 7, 1998 FULKERSON, FRANK, Jefferson City: WILLIAM H. PEDEN April 27, 1916-May 8,1999 William H. Peden, professor emeritus of MURPHY, JAMES P., Columbia: English at the University of Missouri- February 28, 1915-February 3, 1999 Columbia, died on July 23,1999, in Jefferson SHACKELFORD, DANNY, St. Louis: City at the age of 86. He married Margaret July 27, 1948-January 25, 1999 108

BOOK REVIEWS

Harry S. Truman and the News Media: Contentious Relations, Belated Respect By Franklin D. Mitchell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998). xv + 277 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. $34.95. Truman and the Democratic Party. By Sean J. Savage (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997). viii + 259 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $34.95, cloth; $18.00, paper. Public versus Private Power during the Truman Administration: A Study of Fair Deal Liberalism. By Phyllis Komarek de Luna (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1997). xii + 253pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95.

Despite the passage of nearly a half-century and the publication of three recent major biographies and many other works on Harry S. Truman, schol­ ars continue to produce monographs on his presidency in greater numbers than on most other twentieth-century presidents. This review covers three of several that have appeared in the past two years. Franklin Mitchell's Harry S. Truman and the News Media contends that the media treated President Truman harshly. There were several reasons for this. Truman's association with the Pendergast machine of Jackson County cost him the support of the major Missouri metropolitan newspapers and eventually some of the national press. Even future press secretary Charles Ross, a journalist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote scathing editorials in the 1930s against high school classmate Harry, whom he labeled "the senator from Pendergast" (p. 13). Second, Truman's desire to extend Roosevelt's initiatives caused the large Republican newspaper chains, run by the Hearst, Luce, and McCormick fami­ lies, to hammer him repeatedly. Third, the latter Truman administration, plagued by corruption in the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, and elsewhere, made it an easy target for the fourth estate. Finally, Truman's aggressive and vitriolic response against the "one-party press" inflamed the media all the more (p. x). Fortunately, his most negative comments against the "gutter columnists" never saw the light of day (p. 120). Despite the antagonism that often existed between Truman and the media, Mitchell points out that Truman socialized with several reporters during his presidency. Moreover, he held frequent press conferences —"the greatest show in town," he called it—in which he agreed to a no-holds-barred approach. He also overcame the opposition of the printed press in 1948 by taking his campaign to the people. Many of his speeches came to them via radio and tele­ vision and newsreels in the theaters. By the time of his death, the press acknowledged Truman's greatness by eulogizing him as a man of the people. Mitchell's study goes beyond Truman's interaction with the press. It also focuses on the state of the Washington press corps, which denied women and African American journalists entry into the inner sanctum, including the Book Reviews 109

National Press Club and the Gridiron Club. Truman's sensitivity toward black reporters seemed profound. He had a good relationship with them while he continued to address journalists at press conferences as "gentlemen" despite the presence of women reporters. The author also covers the slow transition from print to electronic jour­ nalism as television began to play a role in presidential elections. No bold innovator, Truman showed little interest in utilizing these new opportunities; his news conferences barred television and newsreel coverage. Mitchell includes the press coverage of Truman's personal family. Nothing angered him more than to have his wife, Bess, daughter, Margaret, or other family members dragged into the gossip columns. In the end, Truman's immediate and extended family came out fairly well largely because they "lived decent, conventional lives" (p. 208). His official family, in contrast, received considerable attention because of charges of wrongdoing. Written for the general reader as well as the scholar, Mitchell's well- crafted study incorporates all of the pertinent secondary literature along with the relevant collections at the Truman Library and other manuscript reposi­ tories. This reviewer's only criticism of this fine book relates to Mitchell's failure to use the oral histories from the Columbia Oral History Project and his neglect of the editorial cartoonists whose work Truman closely followed. Sean Savage, a political scientist, examines Truman's relationship with the Democratic Party and his role as party leader, the first study that concen­ trates fully on these related matters. There is no mistaking the thesis, which is restated throughout the book: Truman was both a party regular and a lib­ eral reformer. The two conflicted and thus contributed to intraparty strife, which Truman futilely tried to heal by working with the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic leadership in Congress. Few presidents cooperated as closely with the national committee in seeking to establish and implement a party program. Yet, given the developing conservatism of the time and the opposition of Southern Democrats in Congress, the key propos­ als of the Fair Deal agenda—civil rights, national health insurance, and fed­ eral aid to education—stood little chance of passing. Savage reminds read­ ers that Fair Deal successes involved only the "extension, consolidation, and revision of the New Deal policy foundation" (p. 163). Yet Savage treats Truman's presidential legacy favorably. His enduring accomplishments, according to Savage, involved his defending and protecting Roosevelt's great achievements of the 1930s. He also courageously and com­ batively sought to extend the party's liberal identity by vetoing unsuccessfully the Taft-Hartley Act and initiating the desegregation of the military. Beyond that, he fought for the most controversial policy objectives of the Fair Deal, which led to bitter division among Democrats in Congress. Yet the unwavering and farsighted Truman persevered in the end. Many of his proposals achieved legislative successes during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. While some scholars have found Truman's greatest weaknesses linked to 110 Missouri Historical Review his inept pursuit of the Fair Deal, Savage, somewhat similarly to Mitchell, faults Truman instead for his acceptance of the status quo. This included his embracing of political machines, excessive loyalty to controversial appointees, acceptance of straight-ticket voting, refusal to reach out to liber­ al Republicans, indifference to rhetorical style, as well as his rejection both of presidential primaries as eyewash and the use of public relations, adver­ tising firms, and television in political campaigns. But unlike other critics, Savage, when dealing with domestic communism, says nothing about Truman's adoption of loyalty boards that violated civil liberties. Unlike most historical works on the Truman era, Savage organizes his work topically; consequently, there is some repetition. This is a fine book, however; it is well researched with extensive use of primary sources from the Truman Library and other repositories. Too, Savage has a solid command of the secondary literature; his interpretations of the major political and policy matters are reliable, making this an excellent synthesis. His chapters on Truman and the machine bosses and the Democratic National Committee are particularly good. His coverage of the role of the committee's Research Division in the 1948 campaign represents a useful corrective of historical over­ sight. Though overfootnoted and a bit wordy, Truman and the Democratic Party can be easily and profitably read by scholars and general readers alike. The study of public power during the Truman years has commanded much less attention than the aforementioned works. Phyllis de Luna's monograph, the most comprehensive work on the subject, represents an updating of her 1974 dissertation. Its strength lies in the considerable amount of primary sources she brings to bear on the subject, most of which come from the Truman Library, the National Archives, and published government documents. Yet it suffers from unnecessary detail, to wit, the many proposals presented by private and public groups that often were not adopted or the innumerable commission or agency reports that made no impact. The individuals most involved—Truman, Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman, and Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug—never emerge as human figures. They merely repre­ sent various positions on the power question. The study lacks a sense of drama or human interest story—nothing, for example, on the social side of the exten­ sion of electricity by the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) into impoverished backward areas. Because it reads more like a report, even Truman scholars will have difficulty completing this book unless they are deeply interested in the power issue. De Luna organizes her work topically, beginning with the legacy of Progressives like Theodore Roosevelt who believed that government—primar­ ily federal—best promoted the public interest when it came to developing the nation's rivers for flood control, irrigation, or electric power. The crowning achievement of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was, of course, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which became a model of regional and multipurpose resource development. Yet Roosevelt's subsequent efforts to extend the TVA Book Reviews 111 concept to seven other regions, including the Columbia River valley, died a slow death as a consequence of several obstacles, especially an imposing antiwelfare-state coalition that continued into the postwar era. In dealing with the Truman period, de Luna includes chapters on the clash­ es over the valley authority question; federal extension of steam plants and transmission lines; the emergence of the Southwestern Power and Southeastern Power Administrations; and the remaining choice power sites—Kings River in the Central Valley of California, Roanoke Rapids on the Roanoke River in Virginia and North Carolina, Hells Canyon on the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho, and Niagara Falls on the Niagara River in New York. De Luna argues that the Truman administration secured only minor suc­ cesses in extending public power. She cites the establishment of the Southwestern Power Administration and the advancement of the REA, which brought electricity to 85 percent of the nation's farms. Federal generating capac­ ity nearly doubled during the Truman presidency; overall, however, federal capacity increased from only about 10 percent to around 12 percent, while pri­ vate capacity was only reduced from approximately 81 percent to 78.5 percent. De Luna contends that public power defeats were numerous and significant, and they included the administration's failure to establish a valley authority com­ parable to the TVA and a broad national power policy. The administration also failed to make headway with "choice" power sites such as Hells Canyon. The reasons for the administration's failures were formidable and com­ plex. Some of the roadblocks came out of the Roosevelt era, including the antiwelfare-state coalition in Congress and the bureaucratic opposition that came from the Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies. Truman also had to contend with the growing conservatism that followed the postwar era and the opposition of organized labor. Too, private companies proved effec­ tive in discrediting federal power initiatives, equating them with socialism. Consequently, after failing to secure legislation for the proposed Columbia River Authority, Truman retreated. His liberal rhetoric kept pub­ lic power issues alive especially during election periods in order to cater to certain interest groups, but otherwise he did little except to form ad hoc com­ missions and intra-agency committees that engaged in time-consuming stud­ ies as a way to divert public attention. De Luna concedes that while Truman never had a "real working majority for electric power liberalism in Congress," he still could have "worked diligently and consistently for public power liberalism" (p. 169).

Southwest Missouri State University James N. Giglio 112 Missouri Historical Review

Rupert Hughes: A Hollywood Legend. By James O. Kemm (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Pomegranate Press, 1997). ix + 372pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $24.95.

What does Rupert Hughes have in common with the likes of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Langston Hughes (no relation), Kate Chopin, Jack Conroy, and T. S. Eliot? All were Missouri natives who established notable writing careers after leaving the state. Born in Lancaster in 1872, Rupert Hughes was a popular writer who achieved commercial and critical success in various genres: the magazine short story and serial; the novel; the vaude­ ville playlet and the full-length Broadway play; the motion picture scenario and screenplay during both the silent and sound eras; and the non-fiction book, including biography and music history works. This prolific writer also directed a number of Hollywood films, especially during the 1910s and 1920s; composed music; conducted national speaking tours; appeared on two of his own network radio shows; assumed command of National Guard units during both world wars; survived the deaths of two of his three wives; and attempted to discipline his self-centered nephew, Howard Hughes, Jr. Only in the last effort did Rupert fail, as did many others. Why should historians, particularly students of Missouri's cultural histo­ ry, take an interest in Hughes? Answers to that question grow from Hughes's contacts with his native state and from his experience as a historian. Although Rupert left Missouri for Iowa when he was seven years old, he grew up in a family sadly representative of many others of the state. His father, Felix Turner Hughes, had served in the Missouri militia during the Civil War, while the father of his mother, Jean Amelia Summerlin, had owned slaves, and her brothers had served on both sides during the conflict. Rupert Hughes, though he never imagined that his own fiction rivaled that of Missouri's most famous writer, Mark Twain, greatly admired Twain and fol­ lowed his lead in writing several stories that dealt with small towns along the Mississippi River. While still a boy, Hughes met Twain during one of the author's visits to Keokuk, Iowa. In 1886-1887, Hughes attended St. Charles College near St. Louis, a Methodist boarding school that offered a classical edu­ cation and military training. Then in his mid-teens, he already was writing poet­ ry and plays. He regarded himself as both a Missourian and an Iowan. Hughes considered his three-volume biography of George Washington, published between 1926 and 1930, to be his most permanent writing achieve­ ment, a verdict with which James Kemm and others agree. Although Hughes never finished the projected five-volume work, he was the first Washington biographer to challenge the myths surrounding the man without becoming a debunker, a role relished by a number of biographers during the 1920s. Hughes's Washington was a human being, not a demigod, who, for example, distilled and drank liquor. To fervent "drys" during the years of national pro­ hibition, such a claim was nearly sacrilegious, but the biographer vigorously Book Reviews 113 defended the research that supported his portrait of Washington's life in the heated debates stimulated by his books. Kemm's biography of Hughes is quite informative, and his research in manuscript collections and secondary works is sound and comprehensive. He has read nearly everything that Hughes wrote, as well as much of the con­ temporary criticism of his fiction and other publications. The limitation of this biography is its almost complete failure to critically analyze its subject and his work. George Washington found in Hughes a biographer willing to humanize a legend. Hughes has found in Kemm a biographer who, whatev­ er his intentions, has created the legend of a popular writer without short­ comings or limitations. As the grandson of a first cousin of Hughes and as one who has spent his career in public relations, Kemm has celebrated a pro­ ductive and neglected author but has not adequately revealed the ultimate significance of Hughes's life and work.

Stephens College Alan R. Havig

If Walls Could Talk: The Story of Missouri's First Families. By Jean Carnahan (Jefferson City, Mo.: Missouri Mansion Preservation, 1998). xviii + 430 pp. Illustrations. Selected Bibliography. Notes. Index. $50.00.

Recalling her duties as hostess while serving as Missouri's first lady from 1909 to 1913, Agnes Lee Hadley once remarked, "My little stories [about former governors] filled awkward pauses and never failed to interest my guests" (p. 150). Jean Carnahan has now assumed the role of storyteller about Missouri's governors and their families, and like Mrs. Hadley's guests, readers will not fail to be interested. In this handsomely designed book, Carnahan summarizes the lives of the thirty families who have lived in the 1871 Governor's Mansion. A separate section briefly recapitulates the lives of the twenty governors and their families who served the state prior to the construction of the current official residence. Carnahan's purpose in writing the book was to "tell the story of those who lived in the 1871 Mansion and grappled with the problems of their day" (p. xiv). She concludes that "each [governor] provided able, if not always dynamic, leadership," and "there is a tendency for a first lady to do what is expected of her." As an incumbent, she notes that the first lady's "role is made all the more difficult because there is no script" (p. xiii). Although emphasizing the period of gubernatorial service, the author does not ignore the years preceding and following the term of office—usual­ ly discussing educational attainments, vocational and political achievements, and domestic life. In examining the administrations of the governors, Carnahan relates accomplishments and problems, placing them in the context of significant political, social, and economic issues of the day. 114 Missouri Historical Review

With or without a script, the first ladies of Missouri have assumed responsibility for transforming the Governor's Mansion into a home for their families while planning and hostessing myriad social events. Much of the time, they accomplished this in a building only sporadically refurbished and routinely neglected. Not until the latter part of this century have profession­ al preservation efforts been aimed at restoring the house to its original state (with suitable nods to modern-day conveniences). If Walls Could Talk is lavishly illustrated with period and contemporary images. Sidebars inform readers about such topics as "What do you call the Governor's Wife?" and "The Governorship: A Political Graveyard?" Carnahan has added to the literature available on Missouri's first fami­ lies and the building they call home during their gubernatorial terms. Two previous books, one by Eleanora G. Park and Kate S. Morrow, the other by Jerena East Giffen, focused on the first ladies; Carnahan's work additionally provides information about the governors and a sense of the time in which they served. Occasional typographical errors and a few misstatements of facts are only minor distractions. Carnahan's style is engaging, and If Walls Could Talk will interest gen­ eral readers. As a resident of the Mansion and an active first lady, she fur­ nishes insight into the evolving role assumed by her and her predecessors and manifests an appreciation of the rich history of the Governor's Mansion. Through this volume, she shares that history with a wide audience.

State Historical Society of Missouri Lynn Wolf Gentzler

Warming by Degrees

Unionville Putnam County Leader, January 7, 1898. The shivering cabman stood in front of the street thermometer and apostrophised the mer­ cury. "The more I see of you the better I like you," he murmured.—Chicago Tribune

Found Out

Unionville Putnam County Leader, January 7, 1898. A cloud had appeared in the sky of their connubial bliss, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. These dimensions, though small, were exact. She had just discovered some red, white and blue chips in his coat pocket.—Judge.

The Worst Yet

St. Louis Melting Pot, November 1914. "There's nothing so hard to ride as a young bronco," said the Westerner. "Oh, I don't know," replied the man from back East. "Did you ever try the water wagon?" 115

BOOK NOTES A Guide to Chesterfield's Architectural Treasures. By Dan A. Roth well (Chesterfield, Mo.: Chesterfield Historical Commission, 1998). vii + 144 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Charts. Bibliography. Index. $20.00, paper, plus $3.00 shipping and handling.

Troubled by "the alarming rate at which [Chesterfield's] architectural past [was] being eroded," Dan Rothwell, a member of the Chesterfield Historical Commission, decided to document the architectural history of the town in a book. Abundantly illustrated by current photographs, charts, and maps, the guide focuses on the historic and unique structures in Chesterfield and is as much an exploration of their history as an attempt to encourage future preservation efforts. The seven sections include Chesterfield area towns, the Faust Historical Village, the Leicester B. Faust estate, century-old houses, other significant structures, and buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. To order contact Dan A. Rothwell, 15720 Callender Court, Chesterfield, MO 63017-7306.

Images of the Ozarks. Photographs selected by Kristie Lee (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998). 122 pp. Illustrations. $24.95.

This handsome volume is a recent addition to the "Images of Missouri" series. Through a collection of more than 120 full-color photographs, Images showcases the natural beauty of the entire Ozark region—Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The introduction provides background informa­ tion on the region and its unique terrain and describes measures undertaken since the early 1930s to protect the environment.

Tracks to the Past: A Pictorial History of Aurora, Missouri. Compiled by Paul Donley (Marceline, Mo.: D-Books Publishing, 1998). 96 pp. Illustrations. $29.95, plus $5.00 shipping and handling.

With the primary purpose of "[preserving] old photographs that might otherwise have been lost," Tracks to the Past was born as a special project of the Aurora Advertiser to represent and record for posterity Aurora's rich her­ itage. In the tradition of a photo feature, this book documents the history of the town through black-and-white photographs, dating from the 1890s to the present, and often-substantial captions. Tracks also offers a separate section on the history of the Aurora Advertiser and a Lawrence County pioneer doc­ tor, Simon W. Bennage. The book can be ordered from the Aurora Advertiser, P.O. Box 509, Aurora, MO 65605. 116 Missouri Historical Review

Rain, Mud & Swamps: The Story of the 31st Missouri Volunteer Infantry Regiment. By Gary L. Scheel (Pacific, Mo.: Gary L. Scheel, 1998). 703 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Appendixes. $23.00.

The Thirty-first Missouri Volunteer Infantry Regiment was "one of the most durable Missouri regiments to serve the Union cause," traveling almost seven thousand miles, fighting in seven Confederate states, marching through eleven states in rebellion, and engaging in twenty-nine battles, skir­ mishes, and sieges, all in three years. It fought with General William Sherman in places such as Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge. Yet the regi­ ment has received little attention in Civil War literature. Rain, Mud & Swamps attempts to fill that void by providing an account of this regiment from its inception in 1862 to its disbandment in 1865 through a narrative that includes previously unpublished letters. Appendixes provide names of sol­ diers, diary extracts, and biographical sketches. The book can be ordered from Gary L. Scheel, P.O. Box 312, Pacific, MO 63069.

A History of Newton County, Missouri, As Portrayed in the Courthouse Mural. By Sybil Shipley Jobe (Neosho, Mo.: Newton County Historical Society, 1998). xii + 354 pp. Illustrations. $40.00, plus $5.00 shipping and handling.

Eighty-eight feet long and chronicling almost 150 years, from 1830 to 1979, the Newton County Courthouse mural in Neosho depicts the history of the county through five panels. Jobe explains the panels; provides background information on the people, places, and events depicted in them; and narrates relat­ ed stories. The five main sections of the book are arranged by chronology and then subdivided by topics. Color reproductions of the mural panels and black- and-white photos of other subjects provide the visual context for this tale of Newton County. Although the book does not aim to be an extensive history, it covers a wide array of subjects, ranging from the Civil War, George Washington Carver, and Thomas Hart Benton to movie theaters, golf courses, the Maryland filling station, and county communities. This volume is available from the Newton County Historical Society, P.O. Box 675, Neosho, MO 64850.

Pettis County, Missouri: A Pictorial History. By William B. Claycomb (Virginia Beach, Va.: Donning Company Publishers, 1998). 176 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. $30.00, plus $6.00 shipping and handling.

Originating in the village that grew around the gristmill established by Thomas Wasson at Pin Hook, Pettis County was organized in 1833 when the General Assembly added portions of Cooper and Saline to create a new coun­ ty. Named after Congressman Spencer Pettis, Pettis County is distinct as the place where four of Missouri's geographical areas converge. Through text Book Notes 117 and black-and-white photographs, Pettis County tells the story of its "ordi­ nary people within the framework of an extraordinary history." To order con­ tact the Mercantile Bank of Central Missouri, 3615 West Broadway, P.O. Box 1147, Sedalia, MO 65301-1147.

Stories of Howard County, Missouri: uThe Mother of Counties." Compiled and edited by Elaine Derendinger, Melba Fleck, and La Vaughn Miller (New Franklin, Mo.: South Howard County Historical Society, 1998). v + 159 pp. Illustrations. $10.00, paper, plus $3.00 shipping and handling.

Howard County was once the largest of Missouri counties, extending into the southern part of what is now Iowa. Today, it is centered in Missouri and distinct from other counties in the state by its tilted boundaries. Through narratives that include articles and excerpts from newspapers and other pub­ lications, Stories attempts to record and promote interest in local history. Maps, black-and-white photos, and sketches illustrate articles on a wide array of subjects ranging from "Bold Bank Robbers" and "A Brief History of Apples" to "The Great Flood of 1993," "The MKT Railroad," and the "Missouri Waltz." Stories also includes family histories and articles on gen­ eral topics such as education, cemeteries, the Civil War, post offices, and rail­ roads. Orders may be placed with the South Howard County Historical Society, P.O. Box 201, New Franklin, MO 65274.

Dear Harry . . . Truman's Mailroom, 1945-1953. By D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1999). xvi + 512 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $34.95.

President Harry S. Truman distrusted opinion polls. Instead—he believed—the thousands of letters, postcards, and telegrams he received from "everyday Americans" comprised a more accurate barometer of public sentiment and sensibilities. In Dear Harry, authors Giangreco and Moore have collected a wide cross-section of those letters and juxtaposed them with informative background essays. Representing the voice of the people, these letters provide an account of the greatest challenges facing the U.S. during the Truman administration, including civil rights, the Marshall Plan, the atomic bomb, the McCarthy hearings, and the Korean War. While the major­ ity of the letters are from private citizens, some are from senators and world figures such as Winston Churchill.

General Sterling Price's 1864 Invasion of Missouri. By Jerry Ponder (Mason, Tex.: Ponder Books, 1999). 207 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $17.75, paper, plus $2.00 shipping and handling.

In 1864, General Sterling Price undertook his last—and most disas- 118 Missouri Historical Review trous—military enterprise. As commander of the District of Arkansas Infantry Division, he set forth "to capture St. Louis and Jefferson City" with an army of troops from Arkansas and Missouri. This book tells the story of Price's subsequent march into Missouri and the ensuing series of misfortunes and defeats. Along with detailed descriptions of each battle, it provides a comprehensive report of the entire march, based on both Union and Confederate accounts. Orders can be placed with Ponder Books, P.O. Box 792, Mason, TX 76856.

The Monark Towns and Surrounding Villages. Compiled by Larry A. James (Neosho, Mo.: Newton County Historical Society, 1999). 187 pp. Illustrations. $25.00, paper, plus $4.00 shipping and handling.

Truman Elmore, a Seneca resident in the real estate business, bought farmland at four locations along the railroad route between Neosho and Wayne, in Newton and Barry Counties, to subdivide into town lots. In early 1907, he formed a corporation—MonArk Townsite Company—to sell the lots. This book traces the development of that region through the histories of the company, individual towns, their landmarks, organizations, and promi­ nent citizens. Supplemented by photographs and maps, the text includes per­ sonal reminiscences by settlers and articles and extracts from newspapers. This book is available from the Newton County Historical Society, P.O. Box 675, Neosho, MO 64850.

Major General John S. Marmaduke, C.S.A. By Jerry Ponder (Mason, Tex.: Ponder Books, 1999). 253 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $17.95, paper, plus $2.00 shipping and handling.

Major General John Sappington Marmaduke was reputedly the most active Confederate commander in the Trans-Mississippi Department during the Civil War and played a role in every major operation in Arkansas and Missouri. A native of Arrow Rock, Missouri, and educated at Yale, Harvard, and West Point, Marmaduke resigned from the U.S. Army in 1861 to join the Southern cause. After the war, as governor, he was the first ex-Confederate to hold a major state office in Missouri. This book gives the Confederate leg­ end "his proper place in American history" by documenting his contributions to the Confederacy and providing an account of his career. Orders may be placed with Ponder Books, P.O. Box 792, Mason, TX 76856. 119

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI SELECTED PUBLICATIONS A Centennial History of the State Historical Society of Missouri, 1898-1998. By Alan R. Havig, 1998. $29.95, plus $5.00 mailing and handling.

Directory of Local, Historical, Museum, and Genealogical Agencies in Missouri, 1998-1999. Compiled by Ann L. Rogers and Lisa Auanger, 1998. $7.00, postpaid.

Grand Army of the Republic-Missouri Division-Index to Death Rolls, 1882-1940. Compiled by Marie Concannon and Josiah Parkinson, 1995. $10.00, postpaid.

Guide to Selected Holdings of Microfilm at the State Historical Society of Missouri. Compiled by Linda Brown-Kubisch, 1997. $14.00, postpaid.

Historic Missouri: A Pictorial Narrative. 2nded. 1988. $9.95, plus $2.00 mailing and handling.

Historic Preservation Research: A Selected Bibliography of Resources Available at the State Historical Society of Missouri. Compiled by Deborah Allison, Dianne Buffon, and Linda Brown-Kubisch, 1999. $5.00, postpaid.

Index to Missouri Military Pensioners, 1883. Compiled by Marie Concannon, 1997. $7.00, postpaid.

Index to Residents State Federal Soldiers' Home of Missouri, St. James, Missouri, 1889-1946. Compiled by Marie Concannon, 1998. $15.00, postpaid.

Marking Missouri History. Edited by James W. Goodrich and Lynn Wolf Gentzler, 1998. $17.50, plus $5.00 mailing and handling.

Missouri Newspapers on Microfilm at the State Historical Society of Missouri. $14.00, postpaid.

My Road to Emeritus. By Elmer Ellis, 1989. $19.95, postpaid.

Report of the Committee of the House of Representatives of the 22nd General Assembly of the State of Missouri Appointed to Investigate the Conduct and Management of the Militia. Indexed by Linda Brown-Kubisch and Dianne Buffon, 1998. $17.00, postpaid.

Thomas Hart Benton: Artist, Writer, and Intellectual. Edited by R. Douglas Hurt and Mary K. Dains, 1989. $22.95, postpaid.

Union Burials—Missouri Units. 2nded. Compiled by Edward Parker, 1999. $13.00, postpaid.

These publications can be obtained by sending a check or money order to the State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298. Credit card orders can be placed by calling (573) 882-7083. 120

Join the State Historical Society to help preserve Missouri's heritage.

Founded in 1898, the State Historical Society is the preeminent research facility for the study of the Show Me State's heritage. It is the only statewide historical society in Missouri. The Society has assembled the second-largest specialized research library in the state and the largest collection of state news­ papers in the nation. The Society invites interested individuals to support its mission of col­ lecting, preserving, and making accessible the state's history by becoming a member. Members receive a one-year subscription to the Society's quarterly publication, the Missouri Historical Review. The State Historical Society is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization. Gifts of cash and property to the Society are deductible for federal income, estate, and gift tax purposes.

Individual membership $10.00 Contributing membership $25.00 Supporting membership $50.00 Annual sustaining membership $100.00 to $499.00 Annual patron membership $500.00 or more Life membership $250.00

To join the Society or to inquire about gifts or bequests contact:

James W. Goodrich State Historical Society of Missouri 1020 Lowry Street Columbia, Missouri 65201-7298 Phone (573) 882-7083 CONTRIBUTORS TO MISSOURI CULTURE John G. Neihardt

Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri—any of these states might claim poet John Neihardt as a native son, but Neihardt might have called himself a son of a region and a time. He spent much of his adult life describing in verse the nineteenth-century advancement of European Americans into the Missouri River region and the defeat of the Native Americans who struggled against encroachment on their traditional land and culture. In his epic A Cycle of the West, Neihardt wrote "of the richly human saga-stuff of a country that [he] knew and loved, and of a time in the very fringe of which [he] was a boy." Born near Sharpsburg, Illinois, on January 8, 1881, Neihardt spent his boyhood in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. He first saw the Missouri River at the age of six. In flood stage at the time, the river fascinated him for the rest of his life. Early on, Neihardt determined to be an inven­ tor, but shortly before his twelfth birthday, he felt called to be a poet. His first book of poetry, The Divine Enchantment, was published in 1900 but met with little success. Later dissatisfied with the work, Neihardt burned all available copies in a backyard bonfire. As a youth and young man, Neihardt pursued a number of occupations—schoolteacher, farm worker, clerk for an Indian trader with the Omaha, and newspaper editor. He later served as a lit­ erary editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers, professional lecturer, and poet in residence and instructor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Neihardt's reputation was assured with the publication of A Bundle of Myrrh in 1907. The volume of lyric poetry was an immediate success. It also captured the attention of Mona Martinsen, a young sculptor. A correspondence ensued, and the two were married in 1908. In 1912, Neihardt began work on the five heroic songs that composed A Cycle of the West. Written and published at intervals over the next twenty-nine years, the songs were gathered togeth­ er into a single work in 1949. In chronological order, the songs "are tales of struggle, triumph and defeat" in the area west of the Missouri River from 1822 (the year William Ashley and Andrew Henry led a party of trappers up the river) to 1890 (the date of the Battle of Wounded Knee). In the course of his writing, Neihardt met many "old-timers," both white and Indian, who had either played a role in events during these years or knew people who had been involved. The most significant John G. Neihardt Papers, Western Historical Mss. Collection-Columbia encounter occurred in the early 1930s when he asked to interview Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux holy man. The elderly Black Elk not only granted Neihardt an interview but also chose the poet as an instrument for imparting his vision and the Plains Indian belief system to the white world. Black Elk Speaks, published in 1932, became "one of the most widely read books about American Indians." Neihardt published more than twenty-five volumes of poetry and prose and received numerous awards. In 1921 he was named the poet laureate of Nebraska. He retired from teaching in 1965 and died in Columbia, Missouri, on November 3,1973. Neihardt's papers are included in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Columbia, where they are available to researchers interested in his work and the Plains Indians. In April 1999 the poet was posthumous­ ly inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame in Springfield, Missouri.