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, 2001-2004 BRUCE H. BECKETT, Columbia, 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 LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN, Rolla Avis G. TUCKER, Warrensburg LEO J. ROZIER, Perryville
TRUSTEES, 1999-2002 CHARLES B. BROWN, Kennett W. GRANT MCMURRAY, Independence DONNA J. HUSTON, Marshall THOMAS L. MILLER, SR., Washington JAMES R. MAYO, Bloomfield PHEBE ANN WILLIAMS, Kirkwood
TRUSTEES, 2000-2003 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, 2001-2004 WALTER ALLEN, Brookfield DICK FRANKLIN, Independence W. H. (BERT) BATES, Kansas City VIRGINIA LAAS, Joplin CHARLES R. BROWN, St. Louis EMORY MELTON, Cassville VERA F. BURK, Kirksville 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. BRUCE H. BECKETT, Columbia, Chairman JAMES C. OLSON, Kansas City WALTER ALLEN, Brookfield ROBERT C. SMITH, Columbia H. RILEY BOCK, New Madrid Avis G. TUCKER, Warrensburg LAWRENCE O. CHRISTENSEN, Rolla VIRGINIA G. YOUNG, Columbia DICK FRANKLIN, Independence MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOLUME XCVI, NUMBER 3 APRIL 2002
JAMES W. GOODRICH LYNN WOLF GENTZLER Editor Associate Editor
RHIANNON SOUTH WORTH 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
COVER DESCRIPTION: Born in St. Louis in 1880, painter and muralist Frank B. Nuderscher was a versatile artist who received little formal training. He was best known for St. Louis cityscapes and landscape views of the Ozarks, particularly the Arcadia Valley. In 1904 he received first prize from the St. Louis Artists' Guild for a painting of Eads Bridge. After two decades of painting St. Louis commercial and residential scenes, he moved to Arcadia in the 1920s. There he painted and directed the Ozark School of Art. Nuderscher's Artery of Trade mural, which depicts Eads Bridge, is one of the lunettes in the Missouri State Capitol. The artist died in 1959. The Nuderscher oil painting on the cover, titled Sunny Afternoon (20" x 24"), is a recent gift to the Society from Adolf and Rebecca Schroeder. 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 are encouraged to 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 accept ance and publication. 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 responsibility 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 fournal of American Histoty.
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 FRIEND OF THE ENEMY": FEDERAL EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS DISLOYALTY IN ST. LOUIS DURING THE CIVIL WAR. By Louis S. Gerteis. 165
PENDERGAST VS. STARK: POLITICS, PATRONAGE, AND THE 1938 SUPREME COURT DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY. By Patrick McLear. 188
"BUTCHERIN' UP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE A LITTLE BIT": DIZZY DEAN, BASEBALL BROADCASTING, AND THE "SCHOOL MARMS' UPRISING" OF 1946. By Patrick Huber and David Anderson. 211
NEWS IN BRIEF 232
MISSOURI HISTORY IN NEWSPAPERS 234
MISSOURI HISTORY IN MAGAZINES 240
GRADUATE THESES RELATING TO MISSOURI HISTORY, 2001 246
BOOK REVIEWS 247
Phillips, Christopher. Missouri s Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of Southern Identity in the Border West. Reviewed by Louis S. Gerteis.
Triplet, William S. Edited with introductions by Robert H. Ferrell. A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne: A Memoir, 1917- 1918; A Colonel in the Armored Divisions: A Memoir, 1941-1945; In the Philippines and Okinawa: A Memoir, 1945-1948. Reviewed by Leslie Anders. Gooch, John O. Circuit Riders to Crusades: Essays in Missouri Methodist History. Reviewed by John Wigger.
BOOK NOTES 253
Brandt, Thompson A., ed. Harry S. Truman s Musical Letters.
Hauser, Heinrich. My Farm on the Mississippi: The Story of a German in Missouri, 1945-1948.
Brophy, Patrick, ed. With Plow and Pen: The Diary of John G. Dryden, 1856-1883.
St. Marys of the Angels Parish History, Wien, Mo., 1876- 2001.
Jackson, David W., ed. Direct Your Letters to San Jose: The California Gold Rush Letters and Diary of James and David Lee Campbell, 1849-1852.
Wright, John A., Sr. The Ville, St. Louis.
Pavlige, Betty. Soulards Second Century.
Tinling, Marion. Sacagawea s Son: The Life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.
Cobb, Vickie Layton. Taney County, Missouri.
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State Historical Society of Missouri The Provost Marshals Office in St. Louis "A Friend of the Enemy": Federal Efforts to Suppress Disloyalty in St. Louis During the Civil War
BY LOUIS S. GERTEIS*
During the Civil War, federal forces in St. Louis struggled continually, and often vainly, to suppress disloyalty. Dissident activity in the city direct ly challenged federal authority. Even the expression of disloyal opinion, because it hinted at covert conspiracy, raised the ire of federal authorities. President Abraham Lincoln understood from the outset of the secessionist cri sis that the restoration of the Union required the suppression of disloyalty in St. Louis. But as Lincoln and his military commanders in the city repeatedly discovered, efforts to check disloyalty unavoidably challenged the tradition of civilian government and civil liberties in the United States: the fight to pre serve the Union could easily destroy the republic. Nowhere did federal forces face this dilemma with greater complexity and urgency than in St. Louis.
*Louis S. Gerteis is a professor of history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He received the M.A. degree and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This article is adapted from chapter six of Civil War St. Louis, by Louis S. Gerteis, copy right 2001 by the University Press of Kansas. Used by permission of the publisher.
165 166 Missouri Historical Review
Edward Bates, a St. Louis lawyer chosen by Lincoln to be his attorney general, understood the urgency of the matter and soon discovered its com plexity as well. In June 1861, Bates secured the appointment of James O. Broadhead as assistant district attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri and instructed him to prosecute "offenders against the United States." This directive suggested prosecutions for treason. As Bates knew, however, the constitutional definition of treason placed a heavy burden of proof on feder al authorities. Article III, section three, of the Constitution defined 'Treason against the United States" as consisting "only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." The same sec tion also stipulated that "No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." The Constitution's language concerning an overt act made it difficult for federal authorities to use treason trials to suppress disloyal activ ity and opinion among civilians. On the other hand, declarations of martial law, which carried with them the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and trials before military commissions, provided broader avenues of intervention. On August 14, 1861, General John C. Fremont declared martial law "in the city and county of Saint Louis" and appointed Major Justus McKinstry (then acting quartermaster) as provost marshal. The general gave McKinstry sweeping powers: "All orders and regulations issued by him will be respect ed and obeyed accordingly."1 Two weeks later, Fremont extended martial law throughout most of the state and drew Lincoln's censure by authorizing sum mary executions and the emancipation of slaves. Although Fremont's more limited declaration of martial law on August 14 had been made without direct authorization from the War Department, Lincoln made no mention of it as he rescinded portions of the later order. In effect, Lincoln allowed Fremont's first declaration of martial law to stand. The imposition of martial law creat ed distinct new dangers for Conditional Unionists. With Confederate and Union armies in the field, any opposition to federal policies became potential violations of military law. Angry denunciations of Lincoln and "Black Republican" despotism—the familiar language of the Democratic Party just a few months earlier—now could be grounds for military arrest. Early acts of confiscation determined the location of military prisons in St. Louis. Thus, the Myrtle Street prison was a converted slave pen operated by slave dealer Bernard M. Lynch at the corner of Fifth and Myrtle Streets. Lynch had moved south into the Confederacy early in the conflict, and in September 1861, federal authorities confiscated his two-story brick building
1 J. C. Fremont, Proclamation, 14 August 1861, 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. 3: 442 (hereinafter cited as O. R.). See also James O. Broadhead, "St. Louis during the War," James O. Broadhead Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. ' 'A Friend of the Enemy " 167 and converted it for use as a prison. Among the initial group of twenty-seven inmates was Max McDowell, the son of Dr. Joseph McDowell, who had founded the McDowell Medical College on Gratiot Street. The college, too, was later confiscated for use as a prison. Active in politics, Dr. McDowell's proslavery and pro-Confederate sympathies were well known. On May 30, 1861, German Home Guards searched the college as a suspected hiding place for weapons but found none. Shortly after the search, Dr. McDowell, accom panied by his two sons, Max and Drake, left St. Louis for the Confederacy. Eventually, Dr. McDowell traveled on to Europe, but Max returned to St. Louis to recruit troops for the Confederacy. Arrested for this activity, Max McDowell became one of the first prisoners at the Myrtle Street prison, the "Hotel de Lynch," as the St. Louis Missouri Democrat dubbed it, obviously enjoying the fact that Confederate sympathizers were jailed in the former slave pen.2 In December 1861, the McDowell Medical College became the Gratiot Street prison. The old dissecting room became the mess hall, and sufficient bunks and cooking stoves were installed to accommodate from five hundred to seven hundred prisoners. Early in 1862, Anne Ewing Lane, the eldest daughter of St. Louis's first mayor, William Carr Lane, reported to her sister that the federal authorities "have several hundred prisoners down at McDowell's College." The makeshift character of the place permitted a num ber of early escapes, two of which struck Lane as particularly amusing. One prisoner borrowed the clothing and toolbox of a friendly carpenter working in the prison and simply walked past the guards. Another prisoner took his cue from the minstrel stage. He "went to the chimney and blackened his face & hands, put on a head-handkerchief, took the coal bucket to get some coal, but has not yet made his appearance."3 The Department of the Missouri would also utilize a recently construct ed prison across the river in Alton, Illinois. In January 1862, the War Department and Richard Yates, the governor of Illinois, authorized General Henry Halleck to use the new prison for military prisoners to be transferred from the overcrowded Gratiot Street and Myrtle Street facilities. The trans fers began early in February. Federal authorities used the St. Louis prisons as temporary holding facilities. The city's provost marshals determined who
2 William B. Hesseltine, "Military Prisons of St. Louis, 1861-1865," Missouri Historical Review 23 (April 1929): 381-382; William C. Winter, The Civil War in St. Louis (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1994), 84.
3 William G. B. Carson, "Secesh," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 23 (January 1967): 123. 168 Missouri Historical Review stayed in these prisons and for how long.4 Some of the prisoners awaited trial before a military commission at the arsenal; others, convicted and sentenced to a prison term, awaited transfer to Alton. Within a week after the Alton facility opened, authorities there reported the prison full.5 The St. Louis prisons differed from military prisons elsewhere in the country because they housed not only prisoners of war but also political pris oners, deserters from the Union army, and federal soldiers awaiting trial for crimes. Federal authorities brought persons arrested for disloyal activity before military commissions for examination. Afterward, they were either released on bond, banished, sentenced to a prison term in Alton, or con demned to death.6 Early in January 1862, Halleck appointed Colonel J. W. Tuttle of the Second Iowa Volunteers as superintendent of the Gratiot Street prison. With the appointment came detailed instructions that suggested what conditions might have been like prior to that time. The prisoners would be allowed to receive from friends any articles of clothing and personal hygiene "usually provided for soldiers." "Articles of luxury or ornament" would be excluded, and if friends offered inmates pipes and tobacco, these would be "regarded as common stock and be divided among the prisoners generally." The prisoners would be required to show "proper respect" when officers vis ited the prison for inspections. At the command "all attention," they were to stand "in the position of a soldier until the inspecting officer has passed."7 Prisoners who became ill were to be removed to the prison hospital, a building next to the prison. There, doctors who were Confederate prisoners of war served as volunteers under the direction of a federal medical officer. The federal government cared for extremely ill prisoners at several city hos pitals, including the New House of Refuge and the City Hospital on Fifth Street, and military hospitals on Fourth and Hickory Streets and at Jefferson
4 The succession of commanders in Missouri brought a succession of provost marshals. During Fremont's command (July-October 1861), Major Justus McKinstry served as provost marshal and quartermaster. George E. Leighton and Bernard G. Farrar served as provost mar shals during Henry Halleck's command (November 1861-March 1862), and Farrar continued as provost marshal under John Schofield (June-September 1862). Thomas T. Gantt and Franklin A. Dick served as provost marshals under Samuel Curtis (September 1862-May 1863). When Schofield resumed command in Missouri (May 1863-January 1864), he appointed James O. Broadhead as provost marshal. J. P. Sanderson served as provost marshal under William Rosecrans (January-December 1864). Sanderson's investigation of the clandestine Order of American Knights marked the end of military efforts to uncover disloyal persons in St. Louis. See Broadhead, "St. Louis during the War."
• Schuyler Hamilton to Colonel J. M. Tuttle, 7 February 1862; Chas. C. Smith to Lieutenant-Colonel Burbank, 12 February 1862; both in O. R., ser. 2, vol. 3: 245-246, 257-258.
6 Hesseltine, "Military Prisons," 383.
7 Hamilton to Tuttle, 9 January 1862, O. R., ser. 2, vol. 3: 185-186. "A Friend of the Enemy' 169
Barracks. The hospital operated by the Catholic Sisters of Charity also treat ed military prisoners.8 Martial law and the arbitrary power it gave to provost marshals produced problems from the outset. Lincoln's private secretary, John Hay, visited St. Louis late in August 1861, and he recorded in his diary that he "saw very much of Fremont and his wife." Hay found Fremont "quiet, earnest, indus trious, imperious." He found Jessie Fremont "very much like him, though talking more and louder."9 This imperiousness drew increasing criticism in St. Louis and within Lincoln's administration. McKinstry's appointment as provost marshal became part of the problem. He was not only unpopular, he was corrupt. McKinstry was arrested on December 13, 1861, and a court- martial later convicted him of selling war contracts and dismissed him from the service.10
Ibid.
9 Tyler Dennett, ed., Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1939; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1972), 26.
10 L. Thomas to Hon. Simon Cameron, 23 September IS 31, O. R., ser. 1, vol. 3: 544; Broadhead, "St. Louis during the War."
111 prisoners, as well as sick and wounded Union soldiers, were treated at the hospital at Jefferson Barracks.
State Historical Society of Missouri 170 Missouri Historical Review
When Henry Halleck assumed command of the Department of the Missouri in mid-November 1861, he brought with him a cautious and bureau cratic demeanor. More accomplished as a scholar than as a field command er, Halleck possessed a sophisticated understanding of the law (he had writ ten on the subject of international law). Unlike Fremont, he insisted upon establishing and following a clear line of command. On November 20, Halleck telegraphed Lincoln (via General-in-Chief George B. McClellan), informing him: "No written authority is found here to declare and enforce martial law in this department." "Please send me such written authority," added Halleck, "and telegraph me that it has been sent by mail." Lincoln left the matter to McClellan's discretion. "If General McClellan and General Halleck deem it necessary to declare and maintain martial law at Saint Louis," Lincoln wrote McClellan, "the same is hereby authorized."" McClellan waited several days before drafting a reply to Halleck. On November 25, Halleck complained to the War Department that his telegram of November 20 "still remains unanswered." Seeming to suspect that the restraints implicit in Lincoln's border state policy complicated the matter, Halleck assured Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas: "It is not intended to either declare or enforce martial law in any place where there are civil tri bunals which can be intrusted with the punishment of offenses and the regu lar administration of justice." In places where no such tribunals existed, how ever, "it devolves upon the military to arrest and punish murderers, robbers, and thieves." Halleck added that martial law already existed: "In this city, for example, it has existed for months, but by what legal authority I am unable to ascertain." "It certainly is not right," complained Halleck, "to leave a public officer in a position where his duty requires him to exercise an authority which his superior can, but is unwilling to, confer."12 As Halleck drafted his complaint, McClellan belatedly responded to the original telegram. The general hesitated to grant Halleck the broad authority he sought. McClellan demanded specific information "as to the necessity of enforcing martial law." Halleck should demonstrate condi tions "sufficiently pressing for such a step" and supply "the names and addresses of the officers to whom you think the power should be given." Again, Halleck tried to explain his situation. No organized enemy had formed a "large gathering in any one place so that we can strike them," noted Halleck. Instead, widespread lawlessness plagued his command and
" H. W. Halleck to General McClellan (For the President of the United States), 20 November 1861, O. R., ser. 1, vol. 8: 817; A. Lincoln, 21 November 1861, endorsement of H. W. Halleck to General McClellan, 20 November 1861, ibid., ser. 2, vol. 1: 230.
12 H. W. Halleck to Brig. Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, 25 November 1861, ibid., ser. 1, vol. 8: 817-818; Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 36-37. 'A Friend of the Enemy " 171 required not a military campaign but the imposition of martial law. A col lapse of civil authority and attacks on Unionists and their property made refugees of loyal citizens. "To punish these outrages and to arrest the traitors ... it is necessary to use the military power and enforce martial law." Martial law "has been for months exercised here by my predecessors," Halleck observed, although he demanded "written authority." "I mean to act strictly under authority," he explained. If the president and the general-in-chief refused to grant the authority to declare martial law, "the Government must not hold me responsible for the result."13 While Halleck awaited authorization to declare martial law, he issued sternly worded orders on December 4, vowing to enforce the "laws of war." Halleck appointed Bernard G. Farrar as provost marshal general for the department. Farrar, a St. Louis native just thirty years of age, was the son of a prominent physician of the same name. Educated at the University of Virginia in his father's native state, Farrar returned to St. Louis, where he and Franklin Dick, who later served as provost marshal general, engaged in a number of joint real estate enterprises. In April 1861, Farrar joined the fed eral army. He was a close friend of Congressman Frank Blair, Dick's broth er-in-law, and served as aide-de-camp to Nathaniel Lyon. He remained as provost marshal general under Halleck until October 1862.14 In his orders, Halleck warned the citizenry that "mild and indulgent" treatment of disloyal behavior had come to an end. Anybody "giving information to or communicating with the enemy will be arrested, tried, condemned and shot as spies," announced the commander. "It should be remembered," he observed in a revealing addendum, "that in this respect the laws of war make no distinction of sex; all are liable to the same penal ty." The wives and mothers of rebels could no longer communicate with their husbands and sons without risking arrest and severe punishment. Halleck ordered the arrest of women who displayed the Confederate flag and those who insulted Union troops, a common occurrence when Union soldiers escorted Confederate prisoners to the city's military prisons.15
13 L. Thomas to Maj. Gen. H. W. Halleck, 25 November 1861 ("In reply to your telegram of the 20th instant the general-in-chief desires you to give your views more fully. . . ."); H. W. Halleck to Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, 30 November 1861, both in O. R., ser. 2, vol. 1: 231-233.
14 Hdqrs. Department of the Missouri, General Orders, No. 13, 4 December 1861, ibid., ser. 2, vol. 1: 233-234; William Hyde and Howard L. Conard, Encyclopedia of the Histoiy of St. Louis (New York: Southern History Company, 1899), 1: 259. Farrar remained close to Frank Blair and served as a pallbearer at his funeral. See William E. Parrish, Frank Blair: Lincoln s Conservative (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 131, 288.
15 Hdqrs. Department of the Missouri, General Orders, No. 13, 4 December 1861, O. R., ser. 2, vol. 1: 234. 172 Missouri Historical Review
After serving in the Mexican War, Henry Halleck resigned from the army and became a prominent lawyer in California. He returned to the army in 1861 and proved a better administrator than commander.
State Historical Society of Missouri
Halleck soon received a directive signed by Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward that "authorized and empowered" him "to suspend the writ of habeas corpus within the limits of the military division under your command and to exercise martial law as you find it necessary in your discre tion to secure the public safety and the authority of the United States." On December 26, 1861, Halleck declared martial law in St. Louis and "in and about all railroads in this State." He later added telegraph lines to the martial law decree. The intent was clear: to define an area of military interest with in which martial law applied and to leave the rest of the state in the hands of the civil government established under the authority of the state convention. Wherever civil courts "aid the military authorities in enforcing order and pun ishing crimes," Halleck promised not to interfere with their jurisdiction. In General Orders No. 1, issued on January 1, 1862, he authorized civilian trials by military commissions. St. Louis and the surrounding military district felt the full force of military rule for the rest of the war.16
16 Abraham Lincoln and Wm. H. Seward to Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, 2 December 1861; Hdqrs. Department of the Missouri, General Orders, No. 34, 26 December 1861; both in O. R., ser. 2, vol. 1: 155, 233-236; Neely, Fate of Liberty, 37. 'A Friend of the Enemy' 173
General Halleck also drew on the "laws of war" to institute a policy of assessing disloyal persons. Halleck's board of assessors (appointed December 12, 1861, and consisting of two officers and several loyal citizens) drew up a list of known and suspected secessionists and recorded the value of their property. Those on the list who did not voluntarily donate money to the Western Sanitary Commission to assist in the support of civilian refugees in St. Louis would be required collectively to pay $10,000. To determine how to distribute the financial burden, Halleck defined three degrees of disloyal ty. He directed the board to levy the highest level of assessment against per sons who had joined the Confederate army. Those who gave direct aid to the Confederacy constituted a second class of disloyal persons. The third class consisted of those who in print or in speech supported the Confederacy. The board scrutinized St. Louis tax records to determine property values. Halleck's order provided for appeals, but he imposed a 10 percent fine on appellants who failed to establish their loyalty. If the assessments were not paid, Halleck's order provided for the seizure and sale of property.17
17 W. Wayne Smith, "An Experiment in Counterinsurgency: The Assessment of Confederate Sympathizers in Missouri," Journal of Southern History 35 (August 1969): 362- 364.
Union officials assessed Southern sympathizers to help support refugees pouring into St. Louis from southern and western Missouri. State Historical Society of Missouri / 74 Missouri Historical Review
The first list drafted by the board of assessment contained three hundred names. The board selected an initial group of sixty names from this list, levied fines ranging from $100 to $400, and gave them five days to pay. Some of those assessed disavowed the Confederacy and, after taking the oath of allegiance, were relieved of their assessment and removed from the list. A group of twenty-five protested the legality of the assessments and pressed unsuccessfully for their repeal. The assessments were not simple to administer. St. Louisans were unwilling to serve on the board if they were to be publicly identified. Also, Halleck found that the initial assessments had been levied on lesser offend ers. In orders issued on January 7, 1862, the commander reconstituted the board and instructed its members to revise downward the existing assess ments. By January 16, the new assessments were ready, and Halleck then ordered property seized and sold when those assessed refused to pay. Topping the new list in terms of the amount assessed and value of prop erty confiscated and sold was William McPheeters, a physician who later joined the Confederate army as a surgeon. McPheeters had been assessed $800, and federal authorities seized a buggy, a table inlaid with Egyptian marble, and a rosewood piano, among other pieces of property. J. Kennard and Sons, merchants, were also assessed $800 and had carpets valued in that amount confiscated. D. Robert Barclay, a lawyer, lost two library cases and the books they contained. Samuel Engler, a merchant, lost $700 worth of can dles (although they sold at auction for only about $400). In all, the assess ment board levied fines of $16,340 and collected $10,913.45. About two- thirds of the amount collected came from the auction of seized property ($6,563.45). The first round of assessments ended in early March 1862, and Halleck dissolved the board as he relinquished command of the Department of the Missouri.1 s The pro-Southern sympathies of St. Louis's old elite were pronounced, but increasingly, they had to be kept private. One scion of an old family, Lucien Duthiel Cabanne, grudgingly took the oath of allegiance in order to enter St. Louis from his residence near Belleville, Illinois, to attend his son's wedding in October 1861. Battles were being fought at every level of the city's commercial and cultural life. Albert Pearce, a staunch Unionist, had won election as president of the Chamber of Commerce early in January 1862, and he sought election as president of the Mercantile Library as well. Anne Lane noted with approval that Pearce lost his bid to control the Mercantile to John H. Beach. "The 'Union Ticket' as it was called had Albert Pierce [sic] over here for President, and all the members of it, were out-and-out Black Republicans." The opposition ticket to Pearce included
ls St. Louis Missouri Republican, 28 December 1861; O. R., ser. 1, vol. 8: 823-824, 490; Smith, "Experiment in Counterinsurgency," 365-366. "A Friend of the Enemy " 175 vice presidential candidate "Charlie Miller and one or two other 'Seceshers' were on the other ticket and they were elected."19 As federal authorities assigned assessments to prominent secessionists, the pressure on Lane's friends increased considerably. She correctly believed that her father would be closely watched, but due to his discretion and his age—and due to his increasingly frail health (he died early in January 1863)—the family would be spared an assessment. Lane noted that family friends, including Samuel Bullitt Churchill, a former St. Louis postmaster; Orleana Wright Schaumburg, widow of Judge Charles Schaumburg; Mrs. Stephen Watts Kearny, widow of Fremont's nemesis General Kearny (who had died in 1848); and Mrs. Joseph A. Sire, widow of a wealthy St. Louis fur trader, were assessed. It was a bitter period for Lane to endure. "The dutch & the darkeys are the only free people here now," she wrote to her sister in Germany early in May 1862. The Germans were particularly annoying to Lane. "If you in Germany have more music than we have here," she wrote her sister, "I am sorry for you." Through her open windows, she heard bands and singing from nearby beer gardens. The beer garden at Washington Hall (50 South Third Street), directly behind her house on Fourth Street, was "in full blast," as was Tony Niederwiser's restaurant at 17 South Fourth. General William Harney's former residence, nearby on Fourth, had also been turned into a beer garden. "I was in hopes," wrote Lane, "the war would have killed off so many of the dutch that beer gardens would have suffered but it seems not." To William Carr Lane it seemed that the liberties of Southern people were being systematically destroyed: "The Higher law doctrines" of the Republicans "have prostrated every safeguard." A sense of foreboding was not restricted to the old elite. The Southern-born wife of a St. Louis black smith bellows manufacturer wrote to her son in Saline County on July 1, 1862. "I dread to think of the coming winter," she wrote, "the Negro's [sic] are coming in by the hundred."20 In July 1862, General John Schofield, working with Governor Hamilton Gamble, reinstituted assessments in St. Louis (and in September, across the state) to pay for the uniforms and arms of the new Enrolled Missouri Militia. Schofield placed his provost marshal general, Thomas T. Gantt, in charge of the new assessments. By the end of the year, two staunch unionists, Unitarian minister William Greenleaf Eliot and the influential lawyer Samuel T. Glover, led the Unionist opposition to the revived assessments. Writing to Governor
19 Carson, "Secesh," 123. Charles C. Miller was the antebellum business partner of John Bowen, a Confederate army officer. See Winter, Civil War in St. Louis, 22.
20 Carson, "Secesh," 127-130; James W. Goodrich, ed., "The Civil War Letters of Bethiah Pyatt McKown, Part I," Missouri Historical Review 67 (January 1973): 247. 176 Missouri Historical Review
Born in Massachusetts, William Greenleaf Eliot came to St. Louis in the 1830s and served as pastor of the Church of the Messiah. With Wayman Crow, he founded Washington University, incorporated in 1853.
State Historical Society of Missouri Gamble, Eliot noted that the citizens of the state exhibited "all shades of opin ion" regarding secession and the war. Those who claimed neutrality were, in Eliot's view, little better than open traitors. But Eliot also discerned several "grades of lukewarmness" and those who exhibited a "hesitating zeal." All of these points of view fell short of "unqualified loyalty," but when military commissions tried to tailor assessments to degrees of disloyalty, "no two tri bunals could agree upon the details of such an assessment, either as to per sons or amounts to be assessed." The absence of consistency in the applica tion of assessments made them seem unfair, and Eliot regarded it as "danger ous to the public peace" to keep persons in the community who had been "exasperated by fines and held up to public contempt." He favored banish ment "'beyond the lines.'" Glover found the secret nature of the board pro ceedings offensive. On January 20, 1863, the War Department suspended all assessments in Missouri, and the practice would not be resumed until Sterling Price's marauding army in 1864 caused a fresh flood of civilian refugees to descend on St. Louis for protection and subsistence.21 The policy of assessments served the intended purpose of raising money from disloyal families to support refugees, but it did not silence dissent in St. Louis or prevent disloyal activity in the city. When General Samuel Curtis (the victor at the Battle of Pea Ridge) took command of the Department of the
21 W. G. Eliot to Gov. H. R. Gamble, 1 December 1862, O. R., ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1: 801- 802. On December 10, 1862, Lincoln asked Curtis to suspend Schofield's order regarding assessments and to inform him of his views on the matter. Curtis replied that only military necessity could justify assessments and that such a necessity did not then exist. See Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 5: 548. 'A Friend of the Enemy " 177
Missouri in September 1862, federal policy on the critical issue of slavery had begun to change. Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and the Final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The prospect—so dear to the hearts of Conditional Unionists in the first two years of the war—that the Union could be restored with the social values of the slaveholding South undisturbed grew increasingly remote as federal forces began to enlist black troops in the spring of 1863. Curtis and his provost marshal general, Franklin A. Dick, sensed that the government had embarked upon a more resolute course to suppress the rebellion, and they inaugurated a policy of banishment that proved to be far more disruptive than assessments for the families of Confederate soldiers. In April 1863, the War Department issued General Orders No. 100, offer ing commanders in the field, for the first time, detailed instructions in matters relating to martial law, enemy property, prisoners of war, partisans and spies, parole, and insurrection. These "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field" had been prepared by the legal scholar Francis Lieber, revised by a board of army officers, and approved by President Lincoln. On the issue of loyalty and disloyalty, the orders instruct ed a commander to protect loyal citizens as much as possible from the "hard ships of the war" and to "throw the burden of the war, as much as lies within his power, on the disloyal citizens." The commanders should attempt to dis tinguish between disloyal citizens who are "known to sympathize with the rebellion without positively aiding it" and those who, "without taking up arms, give positive aid and comfort to the rebellious enemy." Commanders could then determine how best to place the burden of the war on the disloyal citizens. The orders empowered commanding officers to "expel, transfer, imprison, or fine the revolted citizens who refuse to pledge themselves anew as citizens obedient to the law and loyal to the government."22 By spring 1863, under the direction of General Curtis and Provost Marshal Dick, federal policy toward disloyal citizens in St. Louis relied sub stantially on banishments. The practice, however, had begun earlier under the more conservative General Schofield. On September 3, 1862, Provost Marshal General Farrar announced the banishment of "Mrs. [John] Sappington, of Saint Louis County." She was the mother-in-law of Claiborne Fox Jackson, Missouri's secessionist governor who had fled the capital in 1861. Farrar charged that she had "given information to the traitors of the movement of the U.S. forces" and "harbored and aided men in arms against the United States Government." The provost marshal ordered her to "give parole and bond in $2,000 for her future loyal conduct and conversation" and
22 War Dept, Adjt. General's Office, General Orders, No. 100, 24 April 1863, O. R., ser. , vol. 3: 148-164. 178 Missouri Historical Review required that she leave Missouri within forty-eight hours. Farrar directed that Mrs. Sappington "reside in the State of Massachusetts" and report to his office by letter each month.23 On May 14, 1863, as Provost Marshal General Dick supervised the war's most extensive banishments in St. Louis, other members of the Sappington family—Mrs. David Sappington and Linton Sappington—were among thirteen men and five wives of Confederate offi cers banished to the Confederacy.24 Anne Lane lamented the banishments. "Several boat loads of southern sympathizers—mostly women & children"—had been sent away from the city, she wrote to her sister, "and more are to go." Lane also believed that the "Ladies" of the Union Aid Society spied on those whose loyalty they sus pected. The members of the society, she maintained, "are sworn to visit sus pected sympathizers and report any thing they may be induced to say." In this way, she believed, the normal habits of hospitality and social intercourse had been corrupted by the Yankees to persecute those who were not sufficiently zealous in support of the Union cause. Among the most dramatic events for Lane was the arrest of Sallie McPheeters, wife of Confederate surgeon William McPheeters, and her children, who were all lodged in the Gratiot Street prison for two days before being banished from the city. Sallie McPheeters's efforts to communicate with her husband had led to her arrest and banishment.25 The hardships protested by Lane were real, but so, too, were overt acts of Southern espionage. Margaret McLure (later the first president of the first chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy) used her home on Natural Bridge Road as a gathering place for Confederate agents—mail runners and spies—who penetrated Union lines. She was among those banished from the city in May 1863.26 Banishment also resulted from what women of Southern sympathies regarded as simple acts of charity. Fannie M. Coons, wife of Dr. A. J. Coons, provided aid to Confederate soldiers at the Myrtle Street and Gratiot Street prisons. She also organized a charity fair at the Mercantile Library that federal authorities regarded as a fund-raising event for the
23 Bernard G. Farrar, Special Orders, No. 61,3 September 1862, ibid., ser. 2, vol. 4: 486.
24 Through successive marriages, the Sappington family became closely tied to Claiborne Fox Jackson. Three of the daughters of Dr. John Sappington, a wealthy slaveholder of Saline County, became wives of the twice-widowed Jackson. Winter, Civil War in St. Louis, 86; Charles van Ravenswaay, "Arrow Rock, Missouri," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 15 (April 1959): 21 In; Christopher Phillips, "Claiborne Fox Jackson," in Dictionary of Missouri Biography, ed. Lawrence O. Christensen et al. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 423 (hereinafter cited as DMB).
25 Carson, "Secesh," 142.
26 Winter, Civil War in St. Louis, 85-86. "A Friend of the Enemy' 179
Following her banishment, Margaret McLure remained in the South until the end of the war, then returned to St. Louis. Noted for her philanthropy, McLure was instrumental in the found ing of the Confederate Home of Missouri in Higginsville for the care of indigent veterans.
State Historical Society of Missouri Confederacy. They closed the fair and arrested its promoters. All of the women arrested, except Coons, were quickly released on their parole. Coons accepted banishment to Carlyle, Illinois, rather than pledge her loyalty to the United States. She, however, frequently made clandestine trips to St. Louis and resided for a time with her close friend, Hannah Stagg, a staunch Unionist. Stagg later marveled that her friendship with Coons survived the war.27 For the wives of Confederate soldiers who remained in St. Louis under martial law, the rigors of life in the field with their husbands may well have seemed preferable to the scrutiny of provost marshals. But as Mary Bo wen, wife of Confederate General John Bowen, discovered, the fortunes of war could be very harsh. Bowen had been elected colonel of the second regiment of Missouri Volunteer Militia in March 1861. With his men, he answered General Daniel Frost's call to muster at Camp Jackson. Bowen accepted the parole offered by General Lyon after the capture of Camp Jackson, then immediately presented himself to the Confederate War Department in Richmond, where he received a commission as a colonel. At Memphis, Tennessee, Bowen organized the First Missouri Infantry Regiment, a unit that included a number of men from Camp Jackson. During the war, he steadily rose in rank. Bowen became a brigadier general in March 1862 and a major general in May 1863. Wounded at Shiloh, he recovered sufficiently to lead his brigade of Missourians in the defense of Vicksburg. Throughout the war, Mary Bowen remained close to her husband. She gave birth to her third child (a second son) at Camp Sterling Price in Mississippi in September 1862. She and her children remained with General Bowen during the painful siege of
27 Hannah Isabella Stagg, "Local Incidents of the Civil War," Missouri Historical Society Collections 4 (1912): 68. 180 Missouri Historical Review
Vicksburg. A few days after the surrender of the fortress city, as the Bowen family made their way east into central Mississippi, General Bowen died of dysentery. Mary Bowen buried her husband and proceeded to Atlanta, where she lived with her children until they were driven from the city by William Sherman's advancing federal army. Bowen returned to her Carondelet home at the end of the war, but evidently in pecuniary distress, she sold the proper ty in 1867.28 In the spring of 1863, Anne Lane had noted the names of more family friends in the published lists of those to be banished, including Eliza "Lily" Frost, wife of General Daniel Frost, and her mother, Mrs. Richard Graham (nee Catherine Cecelia Mullanphy). Lily Frost offered a prominent example of the difficulties faced by the families of Confederate soldiers under martial law in St. Louis. After his capture at Camp Jackson, Frost accepted parole and returned to his estate, Hazelwood, in Florissant, northwest of the city. After being assessed by General Halleck in 1861, Frost left his family at Hazelwood and made his way south to offer his services to the Confederacy. In St. Louis, Lily Frost was taken into custody and held for a time in a con fiscated private residence on Chestnut Street. Detained at the same location were the wives of Confederates Trusten Polk, a former governor and U.S. senator; William M. McPheeters; and Claiborne Fox Jackson's former aide, William M. Cooke, who won election to the Confederate Congress in the fall of 1861 and represented Missouri until his death in April 1863.29 Lily Frost used Confederate mail runner Absalom Grimes to send letters to her husband. A letter from Lily to Daniel Frost was found on Grimes when he was captured at Memphis. Provost Marshal General Dick charged Lily Frost and the other wives with "collecting and distributing rebel letters." More broadly, as Dick explained, "These women are wealthy and wield a great influence." The provost marshal had sufficient evidence to convict the women of disloyal behavior before a military commission, but he then faced the "embarrassment" of deciding "what to do with them." It seemed best to send the women through the lines to join their husbands and sons. Dick requested authority to banish these "disloyal, avowed and abusive enemies of the Govt." On April 23, 1863, the officer received the authority he sought from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Lily Frost joined a group sent aboard the Belle Memphis on May 13 to Memphis. From that federally controlled
28 Winter, Civil War in St. Louis, 23.
29 Robert E. Miller, "Daniel Marsh Frost, C.S.A.," Missouri Historical Review 85 (July 1991): 381-401; Winter, Civil War in St. Louis, 138-139. "A Friend of the Enemy " 181 city, she traveled by rail to Okalona, Mississippi. With Elizabeth Polk, Frost traveled west to Arkansas, where they rejoined their husbands.30 Frank Blair's cousin, Confederate cavalry commander J. O. Shelby, angrily insisted that Blair help his wife relocate when she was banished from her St. Louis home. "I am surprised," wrote Shelby, "that any set of men should resort to such means as to vent their feelings on some innocent women." Shelby sent his best wishes to Frank's wife, Appoline, and prom ised to visit her when he returned to St. Louis with a Confederate army. Blair settled Elizabeth Shelby in the Lexington, Kentucky, home of Benjamin Gratz, Shelby's stepfather.31 Banishments served the purpose of getting troublesome folks out of the city and ended their capacity to influence and lead others in opposition to the United States. In an early episode, the presence of two dead men provoked Provost Marshal General Dick to take preemptive action. One of the dead was Emmett MacDonald, the lone captive from Camp Jackson who had refused to give his parole. After the Camp Jackson affair, MacDonald fought with the Confederacy, commanding a Missouri artillery battery at the Battles of Lexington and Pea Ridge. Later in 1862 he raised a cavalry regiment in Arkansas and rose to the rank of colonel. MacDonald rode with John S. Marmaduke during a raid into southwest Missouri early in 1863 and was killed by federal artillery fire near Springfield on January 11. The other dead man troubling Dick was John M. Wimer, a former mayor of St. Louis. In many ways the Virginia-born Wimer made an unlikely Confederate. As mayor in the mid-1850s, Wimer had stood with Frank Blair and Gratz Brown as a Free-Soil Democrat. With Blair and Brown, Wimer fought against Claiborne Jackson's Southern Rights Democrats and their effort to unseat Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Wimer, however, vehemently opposed Blair's and Lyon's actions at Camp Jackson. Federal authorities arrested Wimer for disloyalty in the spring of 1862 and held him in the Gratiot Street prison. In August they transferred him to the Alton military prison, from which he escaped in December. Wimer made his way to southwest Missouri and died with MacDonald. In death, MacDonald and Wimer raised troublesome issues for General Curtis and Provost Marshal Dick. Fearing that public funerals for
30 Miller, "Frost," 381-401; F. A. Dick to Col. W. Hoffman [Commissary-General of Prisoners], 5 March 1863, O. R., ser. 2, vol. 5: 320. After the banishment, Frost moved his fam ily to Matamoros, Mexico, and soon resigned his commission in the Confederate army. He trav eled with his family to Cuba and then to Montreal. With his wife and children safely settled in Canada, Frost sought a new Confederate command. He did not receive one, however, in part due to charges of desertion leveled against him by opponents in Arkansas. After President Andrew Johnson pardoned Frost in October 1865, he returned with his family to St. Louis, where he remained active in Democratic politics. He died in 1900 on his Hazelwood estate. See also Christopher Phillips, "Daniel Marsh Frost," in DMB, 323-324.
31 Parrish, Frank Blair, 172. 182 Missouri Historical Review
John Wimer came to St. Louis in 1828. Politically active, he was elected as a constable and an alderman prior to his election as mavor.
State Historical Society of Missouri them would encourage violent expressions of antifederal sentiment, Dick directed that the men's bodies be taken from their families' homes and quiet ly buried in the Wesleyan Cemetery near the site of Camp Jackson.32 The burials of MacDonald and Wimer dramatized the problem that fed eral authorities faced as they struggled to suppress and punish disloyalty. The dilemma repeatedly required intervention by President Lincoln, who searched in vain to find a middle course for the border city. The case of two prominent brothers, the physician William M. McPheeters and the pastor Samuel B. McPheeters, illustrated the deep personal antagonisms that made the issue of loyalty and disloyalty in St. Louis a topic of repeated concern to the president. William McPheeters and his younger brother were natives of Raleigh, North Carolina, and graduates of the University of North Carolina. At the university, Samuel McPheeters and Frank Blair had known each other as classmates and roommates. For a time the career paths of the McPheeters brothers diverged. William studied medicine in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1841 he moved to St. Louis, where he became professor of clinical medicine at the St. Louis Medical College in 1843. His 1849 essay on the "History of Epidemic Cholera in St. Louis" remains a standard account of that devastating event. Nearly four years younger than his brother, Samuel followed in his father's footsteps as a Presbyterian minister. After studying at Princeton Theological Seminary in the mid-1840s, he followed his brother to St. Louis and became pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, which
12 Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the Histoiy of St. Louis, 1: 2512; Winter, Civil War in St. Louis, 119. 'A Friend of the Enemy" 183 soon merged with another congregation to become, in 1853, the Pine Street Presbyterian Church.33 Notwithstanding their friendship with Frank Blair and Edward Bates, the McPheeters brothers did not share the sentiments of the Unconditional Unionists. William openly sympathized with the Southern cause during the excitement of the spring and summer of 1861. Samuel, who had taken a year's leave of absence from the Pine Street church for health reasons, wor ried and watched the unfolding of events from New Mexico, where he had taken a commission as an army chaplain. The violence that followed Lyon's seizure of Camp Jackson outraged William, who denounced it as the "St. Louis Massacre" and repeatedly refused to take the oath of allegiance required by the state convention to practice as a physician. In January 1862, General Halleck's assessment board placed McPheeters on its list of disloyal persons. As one of the McPheeters children lay dying in the house, federal troops entered it to take much of the family's furniture. Provost Marshal Farrar announced in the city newspapers that on February 3, 1862, the gov ernment would offer for sale to the highest bidder "the chattels, property and effects of Wm. M. McPheeters''' The property consisted of six rosewood damask chairs, two rosewood damask sofas, one rosewood marble top table, a piano, and a buggy with harness. The property would be auctioned to raise
Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 3: 1404-1410.
State Historical Society of Missouri
Unwilling to take the oath of loyalty and twice assessed by Union officials, Dr. William McPheeters left St. Louis for the South in June 1863. His wife, Sallie, and children were banished from the city eighteen months later and joined him in Arkansas. 184 Missouri Historical Review the three hundred dollars assessed "upon said Wm. M. McPheeters, as a friend of the enemy, in aid of the suffering families, driven by the rebels from Southwest Missouri." When the sale occurred, the St. Louis Missouri Republican (a Democratic newspaper opposed to radical Unionism) reported "lively bidding" and took care to list the names of all buyers and to reveal the identity of one man who bid through a pseudonym. The paper reported, for example, that "Mr. English, carriage merchant" purchased McPheeters's par lor furniture, and a "Mr. Binder" bought the marble top table. On February 19, 1862, Farrar announced a second levy against Dr. McPheeters.34 In June 1862, McPheeters left St. Louis to join the Confederate army. He served with Sterling Price as a surgeon with the rank of major throughout most of the war.35 The departure of William McPheeters for the Confederacy marked the beginning of a painful and complex struggle between the Reverend Samuel McPheeters and staunchly Unionist members of his congregation. Before returning to St. Louis in the summer of 1861, McPheeters expressed to a friend his hope to keep himself free of the sectional contentiousness of the city. He took the oath of allegiance required by the state constitutional con vention for the performance of marriages. But the open disloyalty of the min ister's brother brought suspicion upon himself. In June, as Dr. McPheeters left St. Louis, angry members of Reverend McPheeters's congregation con fronted him on the issue of loyalty. Led by George P. Strong, these parish ioners demanded to know why their minister had presided over the baptism of a child given the "name of that arch rebel and traitor, Sterling Price." Strong and his supporters regarded this activity to be "a premeditated insult to the Government, and all its friends in the Pine Street Church." The protest ing members of the congregation demanded that McPheeters make his views on secession publicly known.36 Samuel McPheeters replied to Strong's letter on July 8, arguing that his political views were not the business of the congregation. He invoked Thomas Jefferson's famous comments on the separation of church and state
34 Cynthia DeHaven Pitcock and Bill J. Gurley, "'I Acted from Principle': William Marcellus McPheeters, Confederate Surgeon," Missouri Historical Review 89 (July 1995): 387- 388; Civil War Scrapbooks, vol. 1, Missouri Historical Society.
35 In January 1865, federal authorities banished McPheeters's wife, Sallie, to Arkansas, where she joined her husband for the final months of the war. Upon their return to St. Louis on July 16, 1865, federal officials required the doctor and his wife to sign the loyalty oath they had so long rejected. McPheeters resumed his medical career and prospered in St. Louis until his death in 1905. Pitcock and Gurley, "McPheeters," 402-405.
3(1 Quoted in Milan James Kedro, "The Civil War's Effect Upon an Urban Church: The St. Louis Presbytery Under Martial Law," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 27 (April 1971): 179. "A Friend of the Enemy' 185 and insisted that his role as pastor should be judged without regard to his views as a citizen. Letters continued to be exchanged between McPheeters and Strong during the fall of 1862 as General Curtis succeeded General Halleck as commander of the Department of the Missouri. Frustrated, Strong decided to make the matter public. In a letter to the St. Louis Missouri Democrat, Strong called on the pastor to state his views candidly and pub licly. "As a man, called to be a minister of the Gospel, and our spiritual teacher and guide," Strong wrote, the public must know if McPheeters "is a friend or an enemy to our Government." This "is a question which does deeply concern us and our families." "We have a right to know," concluded Strong, "and you have no right at a time like this to conceal it."37 Strong's public condemnation of McPheeters may have been intended to justify the actions soon to be taken by General Curtis against the minister. On December 19, 1862, Provost Marshal General Dick acted on orders from Curtis to banish McPheeters and his wife from the state. They were directed to relocate to a place of their choosing, "North of Indianapolis, and west of Pennsylvania," and remain there for the duration of the war.38 In his order, General Curtis made no specific charges against McPheeters. The com mander simply stated that McPheeters's "wife, ... his brother, and intimate associates" had "seduced" the pastor "from an open and manly support of the Government into active sympathy with the rebellion." Curtis also appointed a military commission to control the governance of the Pine Street church. On December 23, 1862, McPheeters left St. Louis for Washington, D.C., to
37 Ibid., 180.
38 Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States . . . During the Great Rebellion . . . , 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Philip & Solomons, 1865), 533.
State Historical Society of Missouri
Secular and religious powers combined to force the Reverend Samuel McPheeters to leave his pastorate at the Pine Street Presbyterian Church in 1864. Bedridden for a number of years, he died in 1870. 186 Missouri Historical Review protest his banishment. On the eve of his departure, he published his rebut tal to Strong and General Curtis: "As a pastor, and because I am a pastor, I have stood aloof from these things, even in my private relations."39 Attorney General Bates, a devout Presbyterian and a close friend of the McPheeters family, arranged an interview for himself and the minister with President Lincoln. The president responded to the appeal by directing General Curtis not to banish McPheeters and his wife. St. Louis banker James E. Yeatman and stove manufacturer Giles F. Filley (both members of William Greenleaf Eliot's Unitarian Church) promptly went to Washington to lobby the president to maintain the banishment order. Yeatman carried a let ter from Curtis expressing the general's hope that Lincoln would give him "more rather than less discretion, especially as to the disposal of persons dis loyal and dangerous to the public peace." Curtis explained that the relative ly peaceful condition of his department "is mainly owing to a steady applica tion of military power." The commander particularly recommended Yeatman to the president because he had been "raised in the South" and because "his inclinations are pro-slavery." Lincoln knew Yeatman as a moderate Unionist. Curtis added that neither Yeatman nor Filley were members of McPheeters's congregation, and for that reason, they could speak with the president about the McPheeters matter "without prejudice."40 After reviewing the case, Lincoln attempted to chart a course that would appease McPheeters's Unionist friends (represented in his cabinet by Bates) without alienating stalwart Unionists and General Curtis. Lincoln noted in his reply to Curtis that he could not find "anything specific" alleged against the minister. After his interview with McPheeters, the president agreed that "he does sympathize with the rebels." He questioned whether exile was war ranted for "secret sympathies," but he left the final decision to Curtis's dis cretion. On one point, however, Lincoln gave the general explicit instruc tions: the United States should not, under any circumstances, take on the role of operating churches. Lincoln had long since accepted military commissions as the proper instrument through which executive authority could be wielded under martial law, but the creation of a military commission to administer the operations of a church carried the principle further than the president was willing to go. "The U.S. government must not, as by this order, undertake to run the churches," Lincoln wrote. "When an individual, in a church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest, he must be checked; but let the churches, as such take care of themselves."41
39 Kedro, "Civil War's Effect," 181.
40 Major-General Saml. R. Curtis to Abraham Lincoln, 30 December 1862, O. R., ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1: 884.
41 Basler, Collected Works, 6: 33-34. "A Friend of the Enemy " 187
Working through the church's governing board, George Strong continued his effort to remove McPheeters from the pulpit, which he achieved after the church body had been purged of all disloyal elements by Provost Marshal Dick. Defeated, Samuel McPheeters moved to a church in Kentucky. After the war, the Pine Street congregation voted decisively (but not unanimously) to invite him to return. By that time ill health plagued the pastor, and he returned to St. Louis only for a brief visit. He died in Kentucky in 1870 at the age of fifty-one.42 As the case of Samuel McPheeters illustrated, the use of martial law and military commissions in the suppression of civilian disloyalty could easily breach all barriers separating the military authority of the United States from the civil society it presumably defended. Lincoln's intervention in the McPheeters case can be viewed as a prominent example of the president's efforts to define a barrier between civil society and military rule. Nevertheless, Lincoln never retreated from his initial decision to leave the administration of martial law in the hands of commanders in the field. Presidential interventions were rare; civil liberties in Civil War St. Louis rest ed primarily in the hands of the city's military commanders.
42 George M. Apperson, "Presbyterians and Radical Republicans: President Lincoln, Dr. McPheeters, and Civil War in Missouri," American Presbyterians 73 (winter 1995): 239-249; William E. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861-1865 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1963), 110-113; Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 3: 1404-1408.
Lewis E. Atherton Prize The State Historical Society of Missouri seeks nominations for the Lewis E. Atherton Prize, to be awarded to an outstanding master's thesis on Missouri history or biography. Criteria for selection include originality of subject matter or methodology, effective use of sources, clarity of style, and contribution to the understanding of Missouri history. Nominations must be made by the department that granted the degree, and no more than two nominations are accepted annually from each depart ment. Nominees must have completed the master's degree between July 1, 2000, and June 30, 2002. The award is given at the discretion of the Lewis E. Atherton Prize Committee. The recipient receives a $300 cash prize and a certificate, which will be presented at the Society's annual meeting in October 2002. Three copies of the thesis should be mailed to James W. Goodrich, Executive Director, State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry, Columbia, MO 65201-7298. The deadline for receipt is July 1, 2002. 41" " '" II ",|", '!,!•
Courtesy Kansas City Star
Pendergast vs. Stark: Politics, Patronage, and the 1938 Supreme Court Democratic Primary
BY PATRICK McLEAR*
Scholars at times exaggerate continuity and create patterns of conspira torial behavior. An example of overzealous and distorted historical analysis has been the portrayal of Governor Lloyd C. Stark's behavior in the 1938 Democratic Party primary campaign between James M. Douglas and James V. Billings for a Missouri Supreme Court seat. Contrary to current historiog raphy, Stark did not "goad" Kansas City political boss Thomas J. Pendergast into a political brawl for control of the state's Democratic Party during this
^Patrick McLear is a professor of history at Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph. He received the M.A. degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. The author wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance provided by the Missouri Western State College Foundation for research on this arti cle. Pendergast vs. Stark 189 primary battle.1 Instead, Pendergast, believing that Stark had no visible organization to sustain such a political rivalry, selected this political contest to embarrass the governor. Stark responded to this challenge by marshalling the considerable powers of his office, particularly patronage, in opposition to Pendergast's chosen nominee. The Pendergast-Stark conflict had begun after the Boss endorsed and supported Stark for governor in the 1936 general election. In December, a federal grand jury, directed by Judge Albert L. Reeves, began examining Kansas City's 460 precincts for vote fraud, and the first trial began on February 14, 1937.2 A series of federal grand juries generated 39 voting fraud indictments against 278 defendants; the subsequent trials resulted in 259 con victions.3 When the grand juries did not indict any members of the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners, Pendergast requested that Stark reap point Fred Bellemere and George V. Aylward, the two Democratic members.4 In July, however, the governor told the Boss that he intended to appoint an entirely new board. Stark agreed to retain Pendergast appointee R. Emmett O'Malley as state superintendent of insurance for one year and allow Pendergast to recommend three people for the post. The governor would select one, according to the editor of the Kansas City Daily Democrat, "if he were found to be acceptable."5 These two issues, voter fraud and patronage, became the important points of conflict between Pendergast and Stark. Ironically, neither of these subjects was new to either politician. During the 1936 election, Stark had pledged to change the election laws to prevent illegal voting. On September 23 he reminded a Columbia audience of a promise made during the primary elec tion: "An honest ballot is the foundation of democratic government and ... if nominated and elected ... I will see that every Missourian is given an honest ballot and a fair count and that election frauds are punished to the limit of the
1 Richard S. Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, Volume 5, 1919 to 1953 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 204; David D. March, The History of Missouri (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1967), 2: 1389. On May 4, 1938', a Jefferson City Post- Tribune writer observed: "Stark feels that Pendergast forced the fight on him by bringing out Circuit Judge James V. Billings of Kennett for the Democratic nomination that Douglas seeks."
2 Weekly Kansas City Star, 17 February 1937.
3 Maurice M. Milligan, Missouri Waltz: The Inside Story of the Pendergast Machine by the Man Who Smashed It (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948), 166.
4 Kansas City Missouri Democrat, 14 May 1937.
5 Kansas City Daily Democrat, 30 July 1937. 190 Missouri Historical Review law."6 Although many Missourians heard the Stark theme and dismissed his willingness to fulfill this commitment, others believed him and joined his campaign despite their opposition to Pendergast. St. Joseph resident Joseph Morton wrote Stark in October after hearing him speak in that city and pro posed a solution to what the writer called "registration exposures at Kansas City." Morton suggested that Stark call "a conference of all the candidates for State offices, the Governor and the State committee and begin immedi ately a thorough and relentless scrutiny of these registration lists employing whatever agencies may be necessary to get at the facts. Bring the election commissioners into sincere cooperation, or if this is not possible, remove them and appoint others and furnish the judges and clerks of election in November with purged registration lists and maintain your organization for service in the election to prevent frauds in voting and recording."7 Although Stark did not immediately act on Morton's recommendation, the letter may have influenced the candidate's thinking. Stark must have known that his predecessor, Governor Guy Park, received continual demands from Kansas City and outstate residents for the removal of the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners from August through October 1936. Rumors of election fraud caused Hugh O'Connor of Kansas City to write Park on August 17 and ask "for the removal of the elec tion commissioners and election judges & clerks in all the precinct[s] and a punishment of the guilty parties of fraudalent [sic] practice of the election held Aug 4, 1936." Park suggested that O'Connor take any evidence to the "proper authorities" or "furnish me with the evidence."8 Yet the governor became combative when he received a particularly nasty letter from Guy Peabody of Sedalia. On October 9, Park wrote: "I am sure the situation there [Kansas City] is not as it was in 1928 when Democratic voters were herded into basements by the police and drugged, so that they could not vote. Did you call the attention of the then Governor to the situation?"9 While Park refused to remove the election board commissioners without evidence of their participation in voter fraud, Stark drew a different conclusion. He denied
6 Clipping, 24 October 1936, folder 9033, Lloyd C. Stark Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia (hereinafter cited as WHMC- Columbia).
7 Morton to Stark, 1 October 1936, copy, folder 1066, Guy Park Papers, WHMC- Columbia. Cecil F. Holman wrote to Stark: "Neither myself nor any member of my immediate family voted for you in 1936, believeing [sic] that any man connected with the Pendergast machine would be governed by that machine." Holman to Stark, 13 July 1938, folder 4086, Stark Papers.
x O'Connor to Park, 17 August 1936; Park to O'Connor, 18 August 1936; both in folder 1064, Park Papers.
g Park to Peabody, 9 October 1936, folder 1063, ibid. Pendergast vs. Stark 191
Pendergast's request for their reappointment. Moreover, the governor select ed commissioners not politically aligned with the Boss. O'Malley, appointed as superintendent of insurance by Park in 1933, became involved in an insurance fund scandal that resulted in his indictment and conviction for income tax evasion. The case had begun in 1929 and involved 137 firms operating in Missouri and $9,020,279.01 in premium overcharges held by federal courts. A settlement made by O'Malley with rep resentatives of the insurance companies on May 18, 1935, paid the companies 50 percent of the monies; 20 percent would be returned to the public; and 30 percent would be placed in a trust fund directed by the companies' agents for the settlement of all claims and fees resulting from the litigation. Any monies remaining after the settlement would belong to the companies.10 Unfortunately for O'Malley, Stark disliked this solution and was determined to replace the superintendent upon becoming governor, but he had no knowl edge of any criminal conspiracy between O'Malley and Pendergast. Although Stark relented on O'Malley's removal, agreeing to retain him an extra year, the superintendent continued to meddle with the impounded insur ance premiums. This behavior ran counter to the new governor's instructions and provoked Stark to dismiss the superintendent in October 1937.11 The growing crisis between Pendergast and Stark reached a higher level of intensity after the machine victory in Kansas City's March 1938 election.
10 Rudolph H. Hartmann, The Kansas City Investigation: Pendergast's Downfall, 1938- 1939, ed. Robert H. Ferrell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 127-130. 11 William M. Reddig, Tom s Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1947), 295-297.
State Historical Society of Missouri
R. Emmett O 'Malley, a longtime person al friend and political associate of Tom Pendergast, became state superintendent of insurance in 1933. 192 Missouri Historical Review
Forced to participate in an honest registration and vote, Pendergast's Democratic organization lost only one city council seat and earned the elec tion by more than 43,000 votes. This success encouraged the Boss to chal lenge James M. Douglas's bid to be elected to the Missouri Supreme Court in the statewide August primary. Douglas, an attorney from St. Louis, had been appointed to a vacant position on the court by Stark in April 1937.12 Therefore, Douglas's defeat would send a message to all Missourians that Stark could expect to become politically isolated and Democrats would endanger themselves if they befriended him. The governor seemed political ly vulnerable because, with the exception of O'Malley, he had not begun to replace state employees appointed by Park, a perceived Pendergast ally Historians, particularly Lyle Dorsett in The Pendergast Machine, have portrayed the Park administration as dominated by the Boss.13 While Pendergast's personal influence with Park remains irrefutable, the perception is an exaggeration. As Dorsett clearly demonstrated, the governor conceded to any patronage request the Boss made personally or through his representa tive and nephew, James M. Pendergast. For example, on August 19, 1933, Jim Pendergast wrote to Park concerning employment for Leo Fox in the Department of Oil Inspection and Dr. T. S. Bourke on the State Board of Health, and both men received appointments.14 Moreover, after Park appointed O'Malley to direct the Insurance Department on July 1, 1933, he generously granted the superintendent the right to make his own appoint ments, a decision that later proved embarrassing to the governor.15 Fred E. Roach, clerk of the Buchanan County Circuit Court, wrote to Park on August 3, 1933, that a position in the Insurance Department promised to his brother had been given to someone else. "It seems," wrote Roach, "that I will have to rely wholly upon you now if my brother gets a job." The governor responded on August 8: "I am disappointed that O'Malley did not do this. I feel under special obligation to you and will endeavor to take care of your brother in some other department."16
12 Ibid., 303, 306. A Jefferson City journalist suggested: "Whether Missouri's governor or Kansas City's 'boss' will be the more potent force in Democratic politics in the next two or three years is among a number of political questions raised by the wide open break between the two last week." Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic, 7 April 1938.
13 Lyle W. Dorsett, The Pendergast Machine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), 96. 14 Jim Pendergast to Park, 19 August 1933, folder 1665, Park Papers; State of Missouri Official Manual, 1933-1934 (Jefferson City: Midland Printing, n.d.), 725, 832.
15 Park to Dwight Brown, 1 July 1933, folder 858; Park to L. D. Wood, 14 July 1933, fold er 859; Samuel Hargus to John J. Mee, 9 August 1933, folder 860; all in Park Papers. 16 Fred E. Roach to Park, 3 August 1933; Park to Roach, 8 August 1933; both in folder 860, ibid. Pendergast vs. Stark 193
Park, however, frequently ignored office seekers merely endorsed by Pendergast. On January 23, 1933, Sophia Fritts, an employee of the Kansas City Health Department, wrote Park's executive secretary, Samuel Hargus, to inquire about the receipt of her job application and endorsements from the machine: "You can see by my letter-head that I am a 'regular.' Have been active in Mr. Pendergast's organization for years." Since she failed to receive the desired response from Park, Fritts wrote Hargus again on September 9, 1933. "I'm not asking for a job. I did that & got beautifully sat upon by 'our' Gov," she continued. "He informed me (because I referred to you & my friend Mr. T. J. Pendergast) that it was he & not Mr. P. who gives jobs & we K. C. people believe it now."17 An examination of Park's patronage files and employment information in the state official manuals suggests that the governor made numerous appoint ments based on endorsements from Democratic leaders in St. Louis and out- state. These non-Pendergast appointments made by Park formed the core of Stark supporters who defied the Boss and helped elect Douglas to a term on the state supreme court. For example, Colonel James Linwood Peatross of Rolla received the support of Rubey M. Hulen, chairman of the Democratic State Committee and personal attorney of one of Pendergast's most vocal enemies, William Hirth, for the job of superintendent of the State Federal Soldiers' Home in St. James.18 Despite a complaint by State Representative B. H. Rucker that Peatross drew a veteran's pension of more than $200 per month, Park appointed the colonel.19 Peatross remained loyal to Park and became a Stark ally during the supreme court fight and in the primary cam paign for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1940.20 Even Stark, Park's rival for the deceased Francis Wilson's place on the Democratic gubernatorial ticket in 1932, successfully endorsed a job seeker. Andrew J. Murphy, a wholesale grocer in Stark's home county of Pike, became a member of the Tax Commission with a $4,500 annual salary.21 The limitations imposed by a four-month campaign for the 1938 primary against a well-organized opponent was a major obstacle for Stark. He began
17 Fritts to Hargus, 23 January 1933, folder 18; Fritts to Hargus, 9 September 1933, fold er 1665; both in ibid.
18 Kansas City Star, 1 April 1938; Missouri Official Manual, 1933-1934, 458; New York Times, 8 July 1956; Hulen to Park, 21 January 1933, folder 1573, Park Papers.
19 Rucker to Park, 8 March 1933, folder 559, Park Papers.
20 Missouri Official Manual, 1933-1934, 709; Peatross to Stark, 9 May 1938, folder 4031, Stark Papers; State of Missouri Official Manual, 1939-1940 (Jefferson City: Midland Printing, n.d.), 654.
21 Stark to Park, 17 March 1933, folder 2065, Park Papers; Missouri Official Manual, 1933-1934,Ml. 194 Missouri Historical Review by firing Pendergast appointees in order to employ loyal supporters. The governor received encouragement from many Missourians, including R. F. Patterson of Tarkio College, who wrote: "I hope you will oust every Pendergast-approved appointee in the state against whom you can possibly place your foot."22 No one doubted that Stark influenced the state prison board to dismiss State Penitentiary Warden J. M. Sanders "for the good of the service." In reality, Sanders lost his job because he refused to force peniten tiary employees to support Douglas.23 Stark's manipulation of employees reinforced an extremely negative report concerning Missouri's penal system. A month prior to Sanders's replacement, the Osborne Association of New York City had announced the results of a survey indicating that the penitentiary system was not just over crowded but "victimized by the spoils system of partisan politics" with "an unsavory reputation." The association sharply criticized the administration of Algoa Farms, the intermediate reformatory for young men, which "has suf fered from political domination in matters of policy and personnel." After reviewing the Training School for Boys, a Boonville facility, the inspectors concluded: "The entire correctional system must be freed from the control of
22 Patterson to Stark, 6 May 1938, folder 4030, Stark Papers.
23 Kansas City Star, 16 June 1938. William Hirth, editor and publisher of the Missouri Farmer, expressed his concern over the Sanders incident in a letter to the governor. He feared that the publicity "did harm both to yourself and to the cause of Judge Douglas." Hirth to Stark, 17 June 1938, folder 4229, Stark Papers.
State Historical Society of Missouri
J. M. Sanders, appointed as warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary during the Park administration, was a former sheriff of Newton County. Pendergast vs. Stark 195 partisan politics."24 Worse, according to the report, the Stark administration had previously announced that a new hiring system would be implemented based on applicants "passing physical and mental tests and that all future can didates for employment during his [Stark] administration would be physically and mentally examined." The report concluded: "The fact that the majority of employees interviewed regarded the proposed examinations as screens for patronage is recorded here because of its significance with reference to staff morale."25 Stark and James E. Matthews, director of the State Penal Commission, attempted to deny the veracity of the report by calling it "anti quated" and not applicable to the current system.26 The administration con tinued to manipulate state employees for political ends. Stark fired the supervisor of state liquor control, Thomas F. Fitzgerald, a Pendergast ally, on April 29, 1938, and replaced him with Edmund J. McMahon, a St. Louis street commissioner and member of Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann's political machine. This action caused newspaper speculation that all Pendergast appointees associated with the governor's patronage would soon be replaced. When questioned by reporters concerning Fitzgerald's dismissal, McMahon indicated that the governor had not com plained about the work of the former supervisor. Indeed, Stark would not state publicly that he was dissatisfied with Fitzgerald's performance.27 On May 9, when he "ousted" seventeen of forty liquor inspectors, it became clear that Stark had replaced Fitzgerald for patronage reasons. Two days later, McMahon hired twelve replacements.28 The editor of the Jefferson City Post- Tribune concluded in an editorial that Fitzgerald "was too rough with the boys and took seriously the governor's admonition that he wanted the liquor laws enforced strictly and without favor." The supervisor, stated the editor, "not only revoked and suspended many licenses in St. Louis, St. Joseph and other parts of the state but actually carried the drive to his home town, Kansas City." With McMahon in charge, the liquor inspectors "cracked down on Kansas City" while St. Louis dealers received better treatment. An observer noticed that liquor enforcement under McMahon had been "loosening up" in
24 Jefferson City Sunday News and Tribune, 15 May 1938.
25 William B. Cox and F. Lovell Bixby, eds., Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles (New York: Osborne Association, 1938), 1: 208.
26 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 16 May 1938.
27 Kansas City Star, 30 April 1938; Jefferson City Sunday News and Tribune, 1 May 1938; see "Fitzgerald is Still in Dark," 2 May 1938, Jefferson City Post-Tribune. On May 3, 1938, the editorial writer observed: "Boss Pendergast, of Kansas City, loses a liquor supervisor and Boss Dickmann of St. Louis, gains a liquor supervisor. One Boss's loss is another Boss's gain."
28 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 9, 11 May 1938. 196 Missouri Historical Review
St. Louis. Twenty-three dealers from McMahon's hometown received pro bation rather than revocation of their licenses.29 Clearly, patronage and poli tics became inseparable issues as Stark approached the August primary. The uproar and bitterness in the Democratic Party surrounding the per sonnel changes in the Department of Liquor Control had not subsided before Stark announced on May 18 his intention to examine the records of employ ees in the Grain and Warehouse Department. Although the governor denied any intention to "purge" workers linked to the Pendergast machine, a Jefferson City Post-Tribune writer reported on May 24 that a meeting would be held between the head of the bureau, C. E. Yancey of Liberty, new inspec tors, Stark, and "his patronage advisors, including Adj. Gen. Lewis M. Means; Chairman A. J. Murphy of the unemployment compensation com mission, and Robert E. Holliway, secretary to the governor."30 The next issue of the newspaper explained more completely the governor's intent when it reported "that the personnel changes would involve persons believed to be close to the T. J. Pendergast organization, although the governor said an
29 Ibid., 19, 23 May 1938.
30 Kansas City Star, 18 May 1938; Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 24 May 1938.
State Historical Society of Missouri Pendergast vs. Stark 197 attempt would be made to weed out the 'least efficient workers.'" By May 27, Stark had fired nine Kansas City grain inspectors. The newspaper writer mused that the "dismissals followed closely the removal of Pendergast men who were liquor inspectors." The editor of the Post-Tribune commented neg atively regarding Stark's patronage tactics, explaining that a Democrat office holder "must get right with the administration chiefs and vote as they tell him to vote." In addition, the editor found it ironic that Stark attacked Pendergast for doing precisely what the governor was doing.31 Although Stark did not continue the large-scale replacement of state employees linked to the Pendergast organization, his administration occa sionally claimed a new victim. For example, J. B. Monohan, a clerk for George Blowers, state purchasing agent, lost his job after telling his supervi sor that he supported Billings. Blowers's only public comment was that the clerk had been a "mediocre employe [sic]." Monohan probably expressed his problem as well as any recently departed employee when he denounced the governor: "It would seem that in order to work for the state under the present administration it is necessary for a man to do just what the governor would see fit to call on him to do."32 A similar protest had been made by W. L. Brandon, a physician and the vice president of the State Board of Health, whose departure created more controversy. Stark had written to Brandon on May 12: '"I will appreciate it very much if you will give me a confidential report on those who are for Judge Douglas in your section; and also the names of the leaders who are against him.'" Stark told Brandon to '"please let all of my friends and appointees know that I am vitally interested in keeping the Supreme Court free of hand picked political candidates.'" Brandon's reply was brief and pointed: "For me as a man, as a member of my profession, or as an officer of the State Board of Health, to do the things or be party to the doing of the things that you have asked in this letter to be done would not only cast an omnious [sic] shadow and deadly blight over my beloved profession, which is a work of love and service, but over also our State Board of Health." He offered the governor his resignation.33 Although Stark stated that Brandon "misunderstood" the meaning of his letter, the governor accepted the resig nation on the eve of a Douglas rally at the capital and emphasized his support of Douglas. A writer for the Jefferson City Post-Tribune noted that Brandon's resignation heightened the already tense atmosphere, and the city "crackled with reports the word was out for administration forces to get behind the
31 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 25, 27, 31 May 1938.
32 Jefferson City Sunday News and Tribune, 29 May 1938.
33 Brandon to Stark, 17 May 1938, folder 4035, Stark Papers; Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic, 19 May 1938. 198 Missouri Historical Review meeting." The editor wrote: "Rather than obey the administration's com mand to dig up two carloads of friends for the Douglas rally Dr. Brandon beat the governor to the punch by resigning before he could be kicked out."34 Pendergast's contender for the state supreme court seat, James V. Billings, judge of the twenty-second judicial circuit from Kennett, began his campaign on April 18 with a personal attack on the governor, accusing him of "shooting Democrats out of season" and "hitting below the belt." He jus tified his verbal assault on the fact that Stark had announced his support for Douglas before other Democrats could enter the race.35 Stark refused to respond to Billings, but he did state that he had no intention of taking "part in the Democratic primary this summer."36 By April 29 the governor had changed his mind. Appearing before a St. Louis women's club, Stark announced that "a sinister and ominous shadow is raising its head in an attempt to destroy the sanctity of our highest court," which would "destroy our freedom and our liberties." Clearly, Stark referred to the power and influ ence of the Pendergast machine, which he attacked again on May 2 in a speech in Hannibal and the next day before the Missouri State Medical Association at the capital.37 Through these early speeches, Stark attempted to solidify support for Douglas and himself. Before the governor delivered the St. Louis address, Mayor Dickmann and Robert E. Hannegan, chairman of the St. Louis Democratic City Committee, had endorsed Douglas. By May 4, William L. Igoe, a Democratic faction leader opposed to Dickmann's administration, joined with the mayor and city committee.38 This appearance of unity,
34 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 19 May 1938. Despite some criticism of Stark's behavior, many Missourians supported his actions. H. L. Kerr, a physician from Crane, wrote the gover nor "to say that I do not think that your administration is ruined nor even injured by the recent resignation of a member of the State Board of Health. I want to congratulate you and say that so long as your administration continues to be courageous, honest, and honorable you have a perfect right to expect at least some loyalty from your appointees." Kerr to Stark, 19 May 1938, folder 4037, Stark Papers.
35 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 18 April 1938; Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic, 16, 19 April 1938. Pendergast's selection of Billings on April 8 ended speculation about who would oppose Douglas. Earlier in the month, rumors had circulated that James M. Reeves, a circuit judge from Caruthersville, would be the candidate. Jefferson Citv Post-Tribune, 8 April 1938; Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic, 18 April 1938."
36 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 21 April 1938. On May 23, according to Stark's secretary, a supporter stopped at the governor's office to urge Stark to "get actively into the campaign— that that is the only way that Douglas can win; that the fight is not between Douglas and Billings, but between Stark and Pendergast." S. W. Powell to Stark, memo, 24 May 1938, fold er 4176, Stark Papers.
37 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 29 April, 3 May 1938.
3S Ibid., 29 April, 4 May 1938. Pendergast vs. Stark 199
James V. Billings had served as prosecuting attorney of Dunklin County before his elec tion to the circuit court in 1932.
State Historical Society of Missouri however, was very deceiving, and Stark knew this to be the case. On May 4 the governor wrote Igoe: "While the Kansas City people are endeavoring to place the opposition to Judge Douglas on me, of course you realize, in view of the fact that St. Louis had already endorsed Judge Douglas, the real attack is not on Judge Douglas or me but on St. Louis itself." Stark then wrote to Hannegan: "I realize the real fight is an attempt on the part of the Kansas City people to prevent the Democratic organization in St. Louis from having its fair share in State affairs."39 Such rhetoric apparently had little impact on these seasoned St. Louis politicians. They refused to be drawn into a Kansas City versus St. Louis clash for Stark's benefit. Instead, Hannegan announced on May 13 that St. Louis Democrats supported Douglas because of his "record." He further declared that no one should draw the conclusion that their support for Douglas occurred because he was the governor's candidate. "In announcing our [the St. Louis Democratic City Committee's] support of Judge Douglas," the chairman stated, "we did so because of Judge Douglas (and no one else) and before anyone else announced his support for Judge Douglas. Not because any individual or group of individuals had decided to support him and regardless of any disputes or quarrels between individuals in other parts
39 Stark to Igoe, 4 May 1938, folder 4104; Stark to Hannegan, 4 May 1938, folder 4029; both in Stark Papers. 200 Missouri Historical Review
of the state."40 Stark could not have been enthusiastic with this declaration of independence, and the appearance of unity against the Kansas City organiza tion was more image than reality, as Stark would later learn in the 1940 sen atorial primary. The St. Louis Democrats outmaneuvered Stark early in the campaign. Arch A. Johnson, chairman of the Douglas Democratic Lawyers' Committee of Greene County, suggested holding a large Douglas rally at the capital on May 20. Stark ordered all department heads to marshal their employees for a crowd and encouraged as many Missourians as possible to demonstrate their support of Douglas. St. Louis Democrats joined in the planning, and two trains with more than one thousand people arrived at the desired time. Naturally, the crowd cheered for Douglas. But when Dickmann came to the podium to address the celebrants, it should have become obvious to everyone, including Stark, why St. Louis Democrats had enthusiastically accepted the governor's invitation to Jefferson City. According to the editor of the Jefferson City Post-Tribune: "The St. Louis boys stampeded the meeting. The cheers for Douglas were positively feeble when compared with the cracking crescendo of noise that thundered acclaim for the burgomaster [sic] of St. Louis. The Dickman [sic] boom for governor in 1940 was definitely launched. The 193 8 judgeship faded out of the picture. Again Judge Douglas is made the vehicle for another's ambitions." Worse, Dickmann "shouted" to the crowd: "We're for Jim Douglas. We're not mad at anybody." One journalist, surprised by this less than subtle political confession, concluded: "The mayor made it clear his organization would go down the line for Judge Douglas but he wanted no part of the Stark-Pendergast war."41 Stark devoted much energy toward the Douglas-Billings race. In addi tion to handing out executive patronage, the governor denounced "bossism" with positive results. These activities, along with a developing political organization, allowed Douglas supporters to negate the Pendergast-Billings lead by the latter part of June and early July. One Kansas City attorney, writ ing to Stark with an assessment of the campaign as of July 9, concluded: "Douglas is gaining all over the state. Billings has reached the peak and his popularity is receeding [sic].99 One Douglas adherent, A. P. Farris of
40 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 13 May 1938; Poplar Bluff Dailv American Republic, 13 May 1938.
41 Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic, 17 May, 8 July 1938; Jefferson City Post- Tribune, 20, 25 May 1938. Many contemporaries and historians have seemingly been shocked by Stark's defeat in the 1940 senatorial primary, when St. Louis Democrats deserted the gover nor in favor of Harry S. Truman. They failed to realize that St. Louis Democrats and the gov ernor had never been united; they only joined together on some issues of mutual benefit. For the latest view of this turnabout in the 1940 senate race see David McCullough, Truman (New York: Touchstone, 1992), 250-251. Pendergast vs. Stark 201
State Historical Society of Missouri This Jacob Burck cartoon attacking bossism appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on July 6, 1938. Maplewood, predicted on July 17 that Douglas would beat Billings with a 100,000-vote majority.42 Despite the receipt of positive intelligence from a variety of informants throughout Missouri, Stark seemed to become more agitated and demanding of his supporters. Always concerned with disloyalty in the ranks, he direct ed his office staff to contrive a system for determining supporters, opponents, and traitors. They filed a white card with an individual's name if that person assisted with the Douglas campaign. An opponent who was not a member of the administration earned a blue card for the file, and a disloyal member of the administration was assigned to the blacklist.43 Throughout the primary, Stark charged that the Pendergast-Billings fac tion extorted money from the employees of Missouri's Works Progress Administration (WPA). The editor of the Jefferson City Post-Tribune
42 William C. Reynolds to Stark, 9 July 1938, folder 4152; Farris to Robert E. Holliway, 17 July 1938, folder 4084; both in Stark Papers. 43 See Fred A. Morris to Stark, 20 May 1938, folder 4038; office memo, 19 July 1938, folder 4084; office memo, 22 June 1938, folder 4059; all in ibid. 202 Missouri Historical Review
believed that Stark's verbal attacks on the WPA were unwarranted when sim ilar abuses could be found in other areas of state and local government. The governor's appointees to the Kansas City election board, however, had responded by opening an investigation into allegations that the WPA had operated illegally in Kansas City during the March 1938 city elections. Jack Swift, an assistant election commissioner, complained on April 21 that he had information from a confidential source—who turned out to be a supervisory clerk named Bernice Conn—that local WPA employees had been forced to contribute 20 percent of one month's salary to the Pendergast organization. Investigators found that thirty-six workers had contributed between 6.2 and 28.5 percent of one month's pay; however, twenty-two workers, including one district director of operations, had contributed nothing to the Pendergast representative. No one had been fired, and the contributors admitted that their donations had been voluntary. Therefore, no evidence existed for fur ther investigations or prosecutions.44 Verbal allegations of misconduct against the WPA and Harry Hopkins, the national director, occurred frequently during Democratic primaries in 1938, although such attacks were normally associated with U.S. Senate races.45 Stark, campaigning against bossism and corruption from the earliest days of the Douglas-Billings race, focused on Missouri's WPA, directed by Matthew Murray of Kansas City, a Pendergast ally. Pettis County resident and attorney Henry C. Salveter wrote to the governor on May 10 and declared the situation there to be "literally a stench in the nostrils of good citizens." He believed it would be difficult to convince voters there to support Douglas, since twelve hundred people were in WPA programs. Such correspondence led Stark to jot a note on May 27 at the bottom of a summary of Salveter's letter: "W.P.A. all against Douglas[.] Key to situation the President."46
44 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 31 May 1938; folder 2-MO-241, box 478, stack 530, Work Projects Administration Records, Record Group 69, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
45 Hopkins had invited this criticism when he endorsed Representative Otha Wearin for a U.S. Senate seat held by Guy M. Gillette in Iowa. Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic, 25, 26 May 1938. This issue in Kentucky received more national attention. See Polly Ann Davis, Alben W. Barkley: Senate Majority Leader and Vice President (New York: Garland, 1979), 58- 71.
46 Salveter to Stark, 10 May 1938, folder 4031; memo, 27 May 1938, folder 4043; both in Stark Papers. Stark wrote to Jacob L. Milligan on July 8, inquiring "how 'G-men' can be used in the Primary Election?" This produced a response from his brother, Maurice M. Milligan, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. In a letter dated July 15, Maurice Milligan indicated that an earlier conversation between the governor and J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had led to a misunderstanding. Milligan explained that the FBI had no jurisdiction in primary elections. He continued: "The director thought when you talked to him that you had reference to general election violations in 1936." This correspondence clearly indicates Stark's obsession with attacking "Pendergastism." Stark to Jacob Milligan, 8 July 1938, folder 4067; Maurice Milligan to Stark, 15 July 1938, folder 4081; both in ibid. Pendergast vs. Stark 203
Stark telegrammed President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 29, accusing Murray of using the WPA to support Billings, and he demanded that Hopkins order Murray to end this activity. When Hopkins did not contact Stark by July 13, the governor wired Roosevelt again. By the time Roosevelt's secre tary, M. H. Mclntyre, contacted Hopkins on July 22, the director had already met with Murray in Washington. Before leaving Missouri, Murray had demanded that Stark substantiate his allegations: "The governor should stop shooting from behind a tree and come out in the open with his statements." Typically, the governor ignored this demand for evidence, and on July 31, Hopkins wrote to Stark: "The evidence secured from this investigation shows that administrative or supervisory employees of the WPA in Missouri have not engaged in any coercive activities nor have they threatened or intimidat ed any WPA employees." Hopkins concluded: "There is no evidence that any WPA employee has been threatened with his job for political reasons."47 The Douglas campaign, directed by Stark and his supporters throughout the state, could not make the same claim. In addition to firing state employ ees whenever "necessary," Stark's forces "lugged" state workers to finance the election. John J. Griffin, vice president of the Mutual Bank and Trust Company of St. Louis, wrote Stark on June 30 that he had just spoken with Lottie C. Walsh, deputy commissioner of the Department of Labor and Industrial Inspection. She "advised me she had received no word as to what
47 Mclntyre to Hopkins, notation at bottom of memorandum, 7 July 1938; Stark to Roosevelt, telegram, 13 July 1938; Mclntyre to Hopkins, telegram, 22 July 1938; all in Official File 300, Missouri, box 23, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; Kansas City Star, 19, 31 July 1938. Although Hopkins had ordered an inves tigation on July 21, he had "every reason to have confidence in Murray." His confidence stemmed from the fact that the evidence, letters from Missourians supplied by Stark, "came from Missouri members of the Stark faction." Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic, 22 July 1938.
Townsend Godsey Photograph, State Historical Society of Missouri
Lloyd C. Stark 204 Missouri Historical Review action her department was to take in the Douglas campaign. So I assumed the authority to instruct her to collect five per cent of her monthly payroll from the people in her department and to use my name for authority for so doing."48 Despite such "voluntary" contributions and donations from private citi zens, the Douglas campaign remained short of money. Guy C. Motley, sec retary-treasurer of the Outstate Douglas-for-Judge Club, wrote Sallye Powell, the governor's secretary, on June 28 that he knew "many of the Governor's friends have already contributed . . . , and I do not want to prod any one." But, he continued, the campaign needed money, "so please tell the folks right down the line, executive clerks, stenographers, etc., to aid the Douglas-for- Judge campaign in every way possible." Despite these pleas for assistance, Stark publicly denied and rejected a "lug." In a July 6 letter to T. H. VanSant, an officer in the Callaway Bank at Fulton, Stark wrote: "There absolutely was no assessment made against anybody anywhere, and the heads of the Departments were notified in writing that there should not be."49 To the con trary, Stark had made preparations to mobilize the financial and human resources of the executive branch. On July 1 he received from R. W. Meyer, the chief clerk for the state purchasing office, a letter summarizing a planning meeting with the governor.
The opposition will say, the Governor is putting the lug on his appointees. We are accused of it anyhow. It was even in the Jefferson City paper Thursday, June 30th. There is no law against it. It has always been done, why not do it now. This word should reach the employees Thurs., July 14. The Department Heads meeting should be Thursday, July 14th or what ever time is convenient to you. That gives us 18 days to get the job done. It will take the opposition one week to find it out and they cannot do any thing about it in the remaining eleven days as the work will be done.
In support of this initiative, on July 16, Stark wired twenty-seven dedicated supporters around the state, excepting Kansas City and St. Louis, to meet at the Governor's Mansion on July 19 for a confidential meeting. Apparently, the participants convinced the governor that another "lug" would be inappro priate, and the focus shifted to conducting an enthusiastic newspaper cam paign titled "Eleventh Hour Publicity."50
48 Griffin to Stark, 30 June 1938, folder 4181, Stark Papers; State of Missouri Official Manual, 1937-1938 (Jefferson City: Midland Printing, n.d.), 809.
49 Motley to Powell, 28 June 1938, folder 4060; Stark to VanSant, 6 July 1938, folder 4066; both in Stark Papers.
50 Official Manual, 1937-1938, 827; Meyer to Stark, 1 July 1938, folder 4065; telegram, 16 July 1938, folder 4087; J. W. McCammon to Stark, 20 July 1938; Stark to Leslie H. Forman, memo, 20 July 1938, folder 4104; all in Stark Papers. Pendergast vs. Stark 205
Stark also worried about voter apathy. On July 22, Franklin J. Creagan, an inspector in liquor control, wrote to Edmund McMahon: "It's surprizing [sic] the number of people we talk to that know nothing about this contest but who are glad to support a man that Governor Stark wants to see nominated." Therefore, Stark's staff began to solicit ten names from each employee and supporter, so that the governor could send each one a personal letter. The governor's staff estimated that 375,000 letters were needed to accomplish this.51 Stark encouraged his entire administration to work for Douglas through out the campaign. The activities of Earl H. Shackelford, a referee for the Workmen's Compensation Commission, were representative of these efforts. On July 31 he wrote to Stark: "During the last three weeks I have traveled 4231 miles and have visited over 100 counties so I am sure you will agree that when Douglas' victory is flashed, I am entitled to celebrate just a little."52 Other Stark loyalists reported to the governor on the behavior of state employees and their relatives. Frank D. Connett, chairman of the Buchanan County Democratic Committee, wired Arch C. Martin, a guard at the prison in Jefferson City: "Find your son and brother-in-law leading the fight against Douglas in Rushville. I expect you to stop this at once."53 In addition, Stark's office requested that each employee's car display Douglas stickers. The gov ernor sought to have "all State employees have their close friends and rela tives assist Douglas Chairm[e]n in hauling voters in from [the] Country." Moreover, Stark directed his secretary to contact Missouri Attorney General Roy McKittrick on July 25 to see if the governor had the authority to declare election day a legal holiday.54 The result would be that state employees could work to get out the vote. Stark's determination to awaken the electorate with personalized letters led him to more politically improper behavior. He requested the heads of state boards to enlist their members, a portion of whom were Republicans, in
51 Creagan to McMahon, 22 July 1938, folder 4113; Madeleine Whitsett to Fannie Swindler, 13 July 1938, and E. R. Holland to Douglas Headquarters, 18 July 1938, folder 4088; Virgil Kelly to Leslie H. Forman, 11 July 1938, folder 4071; all in ibid.
52 Official Manual, 1937-1938, 832; Shackelford to Stark, 31 July 1938, folder4189, Stark Papers.
53 Official Manual, 1937-1938, 739; Connett to Martin, copy of telegram, 26 July 1938, folder 4153, Stark Papers. Connett, an apple grower like Stark, appears to be atypical of coun ty chairmen. Many declared their loyalty to Billings and the Boss or remained neutral. Therefore, Douglas supporters organized their own county clubs to promote their candidate. William H. Becker to Stark, 3 August 1938, folder 4226; Arthur V. Lashly to Frank Hollingsworth, 3 August 1938, folder 4231; both in ibid.
54 L. H. Forman to Bill Marsh, 25 July 1938, and Forman to McKittrick, 25 July 1938; both in folder 4137, Stark Papers. 206 Missouri Historical Review
James M. Douglas, a native of St. Louis, served as a Missouri Supreme Court judge from 1937 to 1949.
State Historical Society of Missouri the Douglas campaign. Dr. Winfrey W. English, a Republican member of the Missouri Dental Board, had received a letter from Dr. Reuben Rhoades, board secretary, requesting that English write to twenty-five to fifty friends, encour aging them to vote for Douglas. Although sympathetic to Douglas, English refused. He told Rhoades: "As a republican I cannot advise republicans to vote for him in the primaries, as they have no vote in a democratic primary. I do not believe my democratic friends would appreciate letters from me telling them how to vote in their primary, in fact, I think they would resent it."55 Not all Republican members of state boards responded negatively. Fred Crosby, secretary-treasurer of the Missouri State Poultry Association, agreed to a similar request from Dr. H. E. Curry, state veterinarian. Crosby wrote to Curry on July 28: "I am a Republician [sic] in politics, but I am going to sup port and vote for Judge James M. Douglas for like yourself I realize the importance of having able and well qualified men on our Supreme bench." He sent ten names to Douglas headquarters in Jefferson City.56 Stark's attempt to enlist Republicans demonstrated not only his relentless efforts in building support for Douglas but also the willingness of Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary. As early as April, Republicans had begun writing the governor and pledging support for Douglas, one concluding: "Both old parties should be sent to the laundry."57
55 English to Rhoades, 20 July 1938, folder 4134, ibid.
5(1 Crosby to Curry, 28 July 1938, folder 4141, ibid.
57 W. E. Sullivan to Stark, 29 April 1938, and C. L. Diesterweg to Stark, 30 April 1938; both in folder 4026, ibid. Pendergast vs. Stark 207
Throughout the campaign, Republicans wrote the governor, announcing their intention to vote for Douglas in the primary. On June 28, H. H. Milligan of St. Louis reported to the governor that some members of the St. Louis Medical Association "who are life-long Republicans are voting the Democratic ticket in the Primary in order that they may cast their votes for Judge Douglas." This lack of cohesion continued to plague both parties, as W. Fairleigh Enright, president of the Empire Trust Company of St. Joseph, indicated on July 1. He wrote Stark that a Pendergast Democrat believed that the "coming primary test. . . was not a fair one because so many Republicans would vote in the primaries."58 This Republican political trend had become apparent as early as May. Barak T. Mattingly, chairman of the Republican State Committee, fearing Republican support for Douglas and incumbent U.S. Senator Bennett C. Clark, publicly announced his opposition to these candidates. Nonetheless, Republicans' reluctance to oppose either Democrat delayed former governor Henry S. Caulfield's decision to run against Clark until May 27.59 As the August voting date drew closer, Stark sought political information from a variety of sources, including Republicans. Ruben R. Schade, a Republican and the managing editor of the Jackson Cape County Post, was president of the nonpartisan Southeast Missouri Press Association. Jack Stapleton from Stanberry, director of publicity for the Douglas headquarters, attempted to recruit Schade on June 6 as a source of information about south east Missouri newspapers supporting Douglas. In a letter to Stark on June 18, Schade indicated that he had written Stapleton and "informed him that I did not care to give this information in writing to him, in order that it would be kept out of the Douglas-for-Judge Club files, but further stated I would write you confidentially and give you information." Schade explained that he had traveled throughout the twenty counties of southeast Missouri between April 1 and May 20, contacting editors in each town. These journalists had discussed a variety of subjects, including their views on the Billings-Douglas race. Schade further enticed Stark's interest: "I can put you in position to find the people who are working behind your back." After considering Schade's offer, the governor wrote him on July 2, requesting "the names of the leaders who are friendly and also those otherwise." On July 8, Schade responded to Stark with a three-page letter identifying Stark's friends and enemies.60
58 Milligan to Stark, 28 June 1938, folder 4060; Enright to Stark, 1 July 1938, folder 4065; both in ibid.
59 Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 18, 27 May 1938.
60 Schade to Stark, 18 June 1938; Schade to Stapleton, 18 June 1938; Stark to Schade, 2 July 1938; Schade to Stark, 8 July 1938; all in folder 4123, Stark Papers. 208 Missouri Historical Review
Stark and his allies did not have to befriend Republicans to attract their support. George W. Kriegesman, editor and publisher of the Webster Groves Webster News-Times, wrote the governor on July 15 that one thousand of the ten thousand Republicans in Webster Groves, a predominately Republican community, were "strictly anti-Pendergast." He also boasted that he could provide another one thousand Republican votes for Douglas by the primary election, since the voters knew "that they are not compelled to vote the Democratic ticket at the General Election." He editorialized about the same themes on July 22 and warned Republicans not to be shocked by the number of voters participating in the Democratic primary, "as we will not be surprised if at least one-third of the vote will be cast by Republicans simply to defeat the political boss." On the Friday before the primary, his newspaper carried a banner headline: "VOTE FOR JUDGE DOUGLAS—AUG. 2nd Save Missouri from Boss Rule—Keep the Ballot Sacred." He announced on August 5, after the primary, "At Least forty percent of the Democratic Vote Was Cast By Republican Voters."61 Despite Stark's concerns about the election, Douglas won easily. The Kansas City Star reported on August 3 that Douglas received an 116,898-vote majority with only 187 precincts not reported. The governor immediately sent a telegram to Roosevelt: "We have crushed the Pendergast machine by a landslide majority." The final totals expanded Douglas's majority to 119, 498, and Pendergast grimly concluded: "I think if the vote of yesterday is properly analyzed it will show that the Republican Metropolitan press of Missouri and the Republican voters were the controlling factor in the nomi nation of Judge Douglas."62 Republicans had aided the Douglas candidacy, but Pendergast's comment was clearly an exaggeration. The bossism theme that had permeated the contest had rallied a variety of voters from both par ties to the Stark-Douglas banner. An obvious result of the 1938 Douglas-Billings primary fight was the fracture of the Democratic Party. During the campaign, C. L. Buford of Fredericktown, responding to a personal invitation from the governor to sup port Douglas, declined to play a public role in the primary since he had "the highest regard for both, Judge Douglas and Judge Billings." Buford did express concern about the impact of the race on Missouri's Democratic Party. "In my opinion," wrote Buford, "this is a very foolish mistake to have hap pened to our party and it is sure to kick back in 1940. Unless this fighting of power between the two present facions [sic] subsides shortly both sides will lose with the election of Republicans in this state." Buford obviously foresaw
61 Kriegesman to Stark, 15 July 1938, folder 4181, Stark Papers; Webster Groves Webster News-Times, 22, 29 July, 5 August 1938.
62 Kansas City Star, 3 August 1938; Stark to Roosevelt, telegram, 3 August 1938, Official File 300, Missouri, box 23, Roosevelt Papers; Official Manual, 1939-1940, 348. Pendergast vs. Stark 209
State Historical Society of Missouri On August 3, 1938, St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial cartoonist Daniel Fitzpatrick portrayed a defeated Thomas Pendergast and proclaimed, "The People Win A Battle." that the other elected officials of the state government would desert the gov ernor and openly work against Douglas. Secretary of State Dwight Brown, State Auditor Forrest Smith, State Treasurer R. W. Winn, and Attorney General Roy McKittrick each supported Billings in some fashion.63 The Douglas-Billings controversy created a definite rift between the gov ernor and these men. Brown, the most significant opponent, actively used the patronage of his office against Douglas. Brown's was second only to the gov ernor's in the number of jobs available. Unionville attorney Clare Magee, a vocal spokesman for Billings and Brown's political drummer, had begun to
63 Buford to Stark, 22 June 1938, folder 4059, Stark Papers; Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 28 April, 10 May 1938. Anticipating a lack of support from his fellow bureaucrats, Stark attempted to enlist Hannegan's aid to coerce some of them: "I think you ought to bear down hard, and with all the power you can muster, on Bob Winn, State Treasurer. Also, have some body bear down on Lloyd King, who is running for Superintendent of Schools." Stark to Hannegan, 7 May 1938, folder 4030, Stark Papers. 210 Missouri Historical Review solicit support for the secretary of state for the next governor's race.64 Moreover, Stark attempted to keep the "boss" issue alive by continuing his attack on the Pendergast machine. He additionally sought to reduce appro priations for state agencies not under his direction (perhaps as punishment for non-support in the Douglas race). Stark also was rumored to be promoting Nick T. Cave of Columbia, a political ally and chairman of the Social Security Commission, as a candidate for governor.65 Indeed, bossism, the central issue in state politics as a result of Pendergast's support of Billings, caused Brown to forgo the 1940 governor's race, fearing that it would be attached to his can didacy. Instead, he sought reelection as secretary of state, winning easily with 963,017 votes, more than any other office seeker on the ballot, including President Roosevelt. The Democratic candidate for governor, Lawrence McDaniel, stigmatized by the bossism issue as an associate of Bernard Dickmann, lost to his Republican opponent, Forrest Donnell.66 The loss of the governorship and associated patronage to the Republicans made the GOP more competitive in Missouri politics. Pendergast's attack on Stark over Douglas's election to the Missouri Supreme Court had an extremely negative impact on Missouri's Democratic Party. In self-defense, Stark enlisted support from various Democratic fac tions across the state. For example, St. Louis Democrats Hannegan, Dickmann, and Igoe favored Douglas's election while denouncing the idea of being pro-Stark or anti-Pendergast. Stark cleverly attracted Democrats and some Republicans to embrace a crusade against Pendergastism. Unfortunately for Stark, the successful Douglas campaign was nothing more than a temporary endorsement of Stark's leadership, a fact that became evi dent in his 1940 Democratic senatorial primary loss to Harry S. Truman.
64 W. Fairleigh Enright to Stark, 25 July 1938, folder 4160, Stark Papers; Magee to Brown, 18 August 1938, folder 407, Dwight H. Brown Papers, WHMC-Columbia. Guy Motley, secre tary-treasurer of the Outstate Douglas-for-Judge Club, referred to Dwight Brown as "our enemy." Motley to Stark, 7 July 1938, folder 4185; Clare Magee, "Why I Am Supporting James V. 'Josh' Billings," folder 4127; both in Stark Papers.
65 Jefferson City Sunday News and Tribune, 29 January 1939; Jefferson City Post-Tribune, 2 February 1939. Charles Richards, president of the Jefferson Club of St. Charles County, wrote to Stark on August 4, 1938: "It looks to me like Brown, Smith, Winn, et al are way out on a limb so to speak; we'll get around to them all right in 1940 and I hope to see a lot of new faces around the state house in 1941." Folder 4224, Stark Papers.
66 Brown to Earl Johnson, 28 February 1940, folder 214, Brown Papers; State of Missouri Official Manual, 1941-1942 (Jefferson City: Mid-State Printing, n.d.), 236. Courtesy of The Sporting News "Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit": Dizzy Dean, Baseball Broadcasting, and the "School Marms' Uprising" of 1946
BY PATRICK HUBER and DAVID ANDERSON*
In the 1944 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals defeated their cross- town rivals, the St. Louis Browns, four games to two. Missing in action from the wartime contest, however, was Dizzy Dean, the former Cardinal All-Star pitcher who had served as a play-by-play radio announcer for both clubs on two small local stations during the regular season. Although the logical selec tion for the assignment, Dean had been passed over for World Series broad casting duties in part because his tortured grammar had offended major league baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Commissioner Landis, the game's de facto "czar" since 1920, considered Dean's "oral atrocities"—especially his frequent use of the colloquialism
*Patrick Huber is an assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri-Rolla. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. David Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Missouri Conference on History in Osage Beach, Missouri, on March 9, 2001.
211 212 Missouri Historical Review
"ain't"—an embarrassment to baseball and "unfit for a national broadcaster." Unabashed, Dean responded to Landis's criticism with characteristic Ozark common sense. "How can that commissar say I ain't eligible to broadcast?" Dean marveled. "I ain't never met anybody that didn't know what ain't means.'" Ultimately, it was the Gillette Safety Razor Company, the sponsor for the preceding five national broadcasts of the World Series, that made the decision not to sign Dean as one of the radio announcers for the Fall Classic. Instead, Gillette hired its three regular boxing broadcasters to cover the games. According to Dean biographer Robert Gregory, the replacement announcers were "all competent, all urban, all fact-filled, all grammatically sound, all perfectly acceptable to the commissioner." Dean did, however, enjoy a small measure of vindication over his critics. Three weeks after the World Series ended, the nation's leading sports weekly, The Sporting News, selected him as major league baseball's best play-by-play announcer for the 1944 season. Dean's emergence as "a terrific radio favorite in the St. Louis area," the mag azine noted, was "an accomplishment that was all the more remarkable because his broadcasts were carried over two stations of limited power— WEW, St. Louis, for daylight games, and WTMV, East St. Louis, 111., for night games."2 Dizzy Dean is, of course, best remembered as one of the St. Louis Cardinals' greatest pitchers, the National League's last thirty-game winner, a four-time All-Star, and a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame (elected in 1953). But following his retirement as a player, he went on to enjoy a distinguished career as a baseball broadcaster between 1941 and 1965, first on St. Louis radio, and later on CBS Television's popular Game of the Week? Dean was among the first generation of baseball players to enter radio sportscasting, and like the enterprising showman Bill Veeck—the one time owner of the St. Louis Browns who developed outrageous promotional schemes to improve stadium attendance—he recognized the entertainment
1 "Dean a Natural for World's Series Mike, But He Drives Landis Dizzy," The Sporting News, 24 August 1944, 9; Robert Gregory, Diz: The Story of Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression (New York: Viking Books, 1992), 368-369; Vince Staten, OV Diz: A Biography of Dizzy Dean (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 218.
2 Gregory, Diz, 369; "Dizzy Dean No. 1 Announcer," New York Times, 1 November 1944; J. G. Taylor Spink, "Dean Tops Play-By-Play Aircasters; Commentator Prize to Wismer Again," The Sporting News, 2 November 1944.
3 For biographies and biographical essays about Dean see Curt Smith, America s Dizzy Dean (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1978); Gregory, Diz; Staten, OP Diz; John E. DiMeglio, "Dizzy Dean," in Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, ed. Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 1253-1254; Frank J. Olmsted, "Dizzy Dean," in American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6: 288-289. l(Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 213
Although the Gillette Safety Razor Company chose not to use Dizzy Dean as a broadcaster for the 1944 World Series, the Falstaff Brewing Corporation renewed his contract the following year and sent him on a tour of army bases and hospitals as a "goodwill ambassador. "
State Historical Society of Missouri value of baseball. Perhaps as a result, Dean never took the game he was call ing too seriously. One of baseball's first genuine humorists, he peppered his broadcasts with folksy anecdotes, lively chatter, and—decades before Yogi Berra or Bob Uecker—verbal slapstick. According to Bill MacPhail, direc tor of CBS Sports between 1955 and 1974: "Diz never announced. He just sort of talked the game. That's the way he was on television, [and] on radio before. You felt you were around a potbellied stove and he was speaking to you. He was funny [and] warm. He didn't let you listen or watch. He made you."4 Along with his down-home approach, Dean was notorious for his man gled grammar and malapropisms. On one occasion, when the Chicago Cubs mounted a ninth inning rally in a close game against the Cardinals, Dean fret ted that the outcome could be "disastrous" for the Redbirds, or conversely, if the Redbirds managed to hold their thin lead, he said, "It could be GOOD- astrous." And once, on Game of the Week, Dean reportedly referred to a courageous play as one of "testicle fortitude." Many baseball fans tuned in to Dean's entertaining broadcasts as much to hear him as they did to hear the game he was supposed to be announcing. As Bud Blattner, Dean's announc ing partner on Game of the Week between 1955 and 1959, noted: "Diz didn't provide the program. He was the program."5
4 Jeffrey E. Smith, "Jay Hanna 'Dizzy' Dean," in Dictionary of Missouri Biography, ed. Lawrence O. Christensen et al. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 234-235; Smith, America s Dizzy Dean, 118. 5 "Case of Pure English vs. Dizzy Dean," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 12 July 1946; Paul Dickson, Baseball's Greatest Quotations (New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991), 104; Curt Smith, The Storytellers: From Mel Allen to Bob Costas: Sixty Years of Baseball Tales From the Broadcast Booth (New York: Macmillan, 1995), 59. 214 Missouri Historical Review
Dean's unconventional approach to "commertatin'," as he called it, par ticularly his use of Ozark vernacular speech and idioms, rankled some edu cated listeners, especially English teachers. They decried his flawed gram mar as symptomatic of declining standards of education among America's schoolchildren. In 1948, Dean's appearance at the dedication ceremonies opening a Denver minor league baseball stadium incited the Denver English Language Study Group to protest his visit. The demonstrators carried plac ards that proclaimed: "Keep Dizzy Dean Off The Air! He's A Menace To The English Language." Dean, in turn, dismissed such attacks as nonsense. "When I tell people that the score is nothin'—nothin' and nobody's winning," he responded to his critics, "why, folks know exactly what the score is. I just talk common sense." Nonetheless, Dean's on-air speech ignited several high ly publicized controversies, including one particularly famous incident, the so-called "School Marms' Uprising" of 1946, in which a Missouri teachers association allegedly lodged a formal complaint condemning the detrimental influence of his poor English on schoolchildren. The controversy escalated into a national debate about both Dean's abilities as a baseball announcer and his misuse of standard American English on the radio airwaves.6 To understand Dean's remarkable career, one must first recognize that the only thing that rescued him from an impoverished life of sharecropping and migrant labor was a strong right arm. He was born into a white sharecrop ping family, the third of five children, on January 16, 1910, in Lucas, Arkansas. Albert Monroe and Alma (Nelson) Dean named their son Jay Hanna for the Gilded Age railroad baron Jay Gould and the Ohio GOP politi co Mark Hanna—decidedly odd choices for his humble sharecropper par ents.7 Dean's mother died of tuberculosis when he was eight, and between the ages of ten and sixteen, young Jay worked alongside his two brothers and
6 Clipping of photograph from The Sporting News, circa 1948, in Dizzy Dean file, The Sporting News Archives, St. Louis; Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 120.
7 Staten, OP Diz, 8; Gregory, Diz, 23-24. Dean's father, Albert, was originally from Rolla, Missouri. Dizzy Dean's paternal great-grandfather, Moses Dean, migrated from Tennessee and in 1840 resettled six miles southeast of Rolla, in Phelps County, in an area appropriately called "Dean's Neighborhood." His son, Matt, served as the sheriff of Phelps County for two terms. Albert Dean "was born in Rolla in 1873 and lived there until the age of fifteen," when the fam ily moved to Lexington, Oklahoma. Although historical evidence definitively confirms that Dizzy Dean was born on January 16, 1910, in Lucas, Arkansas, confusion exists about his actual birth date and place of birth largely because Dean was prone to recasting the facts of his life as it suited him. He often claimed he was born in 1911, but his stories varied, depending on his whim. In fact, after a game in 1934, Dean told three different journalists within the span of a half hour that he had been born on three different dates and in three different places. Later, when confronted with these discrepancies, he explained: "I was helpin' the writers out. Them ain't lies; them's scoops." Dickson, Baseball's Greatest Quotations, 105. See Staten, OP Diz, 8-10, 12-13; Gregory, Diz, 22-24. Dizzy's birth name was Jay Hanna, although he often went by Jerome Herman as an adult. "Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 215 father as a sharecropper and migrant cotton picker across Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Even as a young boy, Dean displayed promising tal ent as a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher. While in Spaulding, Oklahoma, the tall, lanky teenager pitched for the junior high school team, although he was not a student. Dean always claimed his formal education ended in the second grade, and he liked to add: "I wasn't so good in the first grade either."8 In 1926, sixteen-year-old Dean lied about his age and enlisted in the army. He was assigned to the Third Wagon Company, Second Infantry Division, stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. Private Dean pitched in pickup games for the company team until Sergeant James K. Brought, a World War I veteran and talented left-hander, recruited him to pitch for the Twelfth Field Artillery regimental team. In fact, Sergeant Brought gave Dean his famous nickname. Early one morning, he caught Dean, who was supposed to be on KP duty, practicing his pitching by hurling peeled potatoes at a garbage can lid. "You dizzy son of a bitch," Sergeant Brought roared, and the nickname "Dizzy," which suited the eccentric Arkansas country boy, remained with him for the rest of his life.9 In 1929, Dean received an early discharge from the army when the San Antonio Public Service Company reportedly paid $150 to buy out his remain ing eight-month military stretch and gave him a job so he could pitch for the company's semipro team. A few weeks later, a scout for a St. Louis Cardinals farm club signed Dean to a minor league contract.10 In 1932, after a brief but stellar minor league career, the twenty-one-year-old Dean joined the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals pitching staff. In his rookie season, he led the National League in strikeouts (191), shutouts (4), and innings pitched (286) while compiling an 18-15 record and a 3.30 earned run average (ERA) for the sixth-place Cardinals. Between 1933 and 1936, Dean reigned as the domi nant pitcher in the league, averaging 25 wins, 195 strikeouts, and a 2.99 ERA.
8 Staten, 01'Diz, 19, 24-25; Gregory, Diz, 25, 27-28; Curt Smith, Voices of the Game: The First Full-Scale Overview of Baseball Broadcasting, 1921 to the Present (South Bend, Ind.: Diamond Communications, 1987), 100.
9 Staten, 01' Diz, 27-31; Gregory, Diz, 29-32.
10 Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 26, 39; Staten, OP Diz, 36-37, 41-42, 55-58, 61-62; Gregory, Diz, 36, 55, 59-61. In 1930, Dean split his first season in the minors between the St. Joseph Saints (Class A) of the Western League and the Houston Buffaloes (Class AAA) of the Texas League, posting a combined 25-10 record and striking out 229 batters. The St. Louis Cardinals called him up late in the season, and on the last day of the 1930 regular season, he pitched a three-hit, complete game to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-1. Dean began the 1931 sea son with the Cardinals, but two and a half weeks into the season, Gabby Street, the club's man ager, sent Dean to Houston, reportedly because of his excessive spending sprees, off-field antics, and penchant for routinely skipping practice. In Houston, Dean carried the Buffaloes to the Texas League pennant, leading the league in wins (26), shutouts (11), and strikeouts (303) and tying for the lead in ERA (1.57). That season, Dean was also named the Texas League's Most Valuable Player. 216 Missouri Historical Review
During that stretch, he also led the league in complete games every season, in strikeouts three times (1933-1935), and in wins twice (1934-1935), and he was selected three times as a National League All-Star (1934-1936). In July 1933, Dean set a modern major league record, striking out seventeen Chicago Cubs in a single game. "I should have done better," the pitcher told sports- writers, in mock disgust, after the game. "My fastball wasn't breaking just right.'"1 Dean enjoyed his greatest season as a pitcher in 1934, the same year the St. Louis Cardinals added his younger brother, Paul (whom sportswriters promptly nicknamed "Daffy"), to its pitching staff. During spring training, Dizzy boldly predicted that "Me 'n' Paul,"—as he liked to refer to the broth ers Dean—would together win forty-five games for the Cardinals that season, despite the fact that Paul had never pitched a single inning in the major leagues. As it turned out, they won a combined forty-nine games, more than half of the Cardinals' ninety-five wins that season, although the Deans each missed at least two starts after being suspended for skipping an exhibition game. Together, the Dean brothers led the Cardinals—known as the Gashouse Gang for their slashing, hard-nosed style of play—in one of the most exciting pennant races in baseball history. The St. Louis Cardinals surged from behind in the final two games of the season to overtake the New York Giants and win the National League pennant, mainly due to the Dean brothers' pitching. The Cardinals won nineteen of their last twenty-three games, with Dizzy pitching in seven of the last ten games, winning four and saving one in the final weeks of the regular season.12 Dizzy Dean won thirty games that year, the last National League pitcher to do so. Only one other major league pitcher (Denny McLain of the 1968 Detroit Tigers) has won thirty games since. Dean also led the league in strike outs (195), shutouts (7), and complete games (24), finished second in ERA (2.66), and won the National League's Most Valuable Player award. The
11 Staten, OP Diz, 93; Mike Shatzkin, ed., The Ballplayers: Baseball's Ultimate Biographical Reference (New York: Arbor House, 1990), 262; The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Definitive Record of Major League Baseball, 9th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 1804; John Thorn and Pete Palmer, eds., Total Baseball, 3d ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993), 1462; Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 45.
12 Gregory, Diz, 126; Staten, OP Diz, 103, 126, 132-136; Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 49, 64. The 1934 Gashouse Gang also featured such stars as shortstop Leo "the Lip" Durocher, left fielder Joe "Ducky" Medwick, second baseman Frankie Frisch, first baseman Ripper Collins, and third baseman Pepper Martin, "the Wild Horse of the Osage." For further information on the Gashouse Gang see Roy Stockton, The Gashouse Gang and a Couple of Other Guys (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1945); G. H. Fleming, The Dizziest Season: The Gashouse Gang Chases the Pennant (New York: William Morrow, 1984); Doug Feldmann, Dizzy and the Gashouse Gang: The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals and Depression-Era Baseball (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000). "Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit' 217
Dean liked to refer to a fastball as "fog- gin ' one past the batter. "
Courtesy of The Sporting News
Cardinals went on to defeat the Detroit Tigers in the 1934 World Series, with the Dean brothers accounting for all four Redbird victories in the hotly con tested seven-game series.13 By 1934, Dean had emerged as one of the most colorful celebrities of depression-era baseball and, like Babe Ruth before him, one of the game's leading gate attractions. On the diamond, he intentionally threw at opposing players and enjoyed taunting hitters, shouting to them from the mound, "Son, what kind of pitch would you like to miss?" An incorrigible braggart, he referred to himself as "The Great Dean" and considered himself the greatest pitcher in baseball. He liked to say, "It ain't bragging if you can do it," and often boasted, "There'll never be another like me."14 Perhaps most of all, Dean reveled in passing himself off as a dumb Ozarks hillbilly, uneducated, unsophisticated, and unschooled in the conven tions of modern urban life. While pinch-running during the fourth game of the 1934 World Series, Dean was conked in the right temple by the shortstop's throw while attempting to break up a double play. Knocked unconscious, he had to be carried from the field. "The doctors X-rayed my head," Dean later told reporters, "and found nothing." On another occasion, during an extreme ly hot, muggy day at Sportsman's Park, Dean and fellow prankster and team mate, third baseman Pepper Martin, started a fire outside the Cardinals
13 Shatzkin, Ballplayers, 262; Baseball Encyclopedia, 1804-1805; Thorn and Palmer, Total Baseball, 1462.
14 Curly Ogden, "Clowns of the Diamond," Esquire, January 1935, 119; Smith, America s Dizzy Dean, 92; Staten, OP Diz, 4-5; Dickson, Baseball's Greatest Quotations, 107, 108. 218 Missouri Historical Review dugout, wrapped themselves in Indian blankets, and sat around the fire smok ing peace pipes while photographers snapped away. "Diz was a newspaper man's dream," said Ray Gillespie, a longtime sportswriter for the St. Louis Star-Times. "Every day he'd give us some new story, a novel experience to write about. It was incredible."15 In 1937 a freak injury derailed what promised to be a record-shattering career for Dean. While pitching in the third inning of the 1937 All-Star Game, Dean suffered a broken toe when he was drilled on the left foot by a line drive off the bat of Cleveland Indians centerfielder Earl Averill. Ten days later Dean attempted to return to the pitching rotation before his injury had fully healed. Altering his normal pitching motion to compensate for his still- tender toe, he strained his right arm and, as a result, developed bursitis in the shoulder of his pitching arm.16 Dean was never again the same dominating pitcher. Before the start of the 1938 season, Branch Rickey, the Cardinals general manager, traded his injured pitching ace to the Chicago Cubs for three players and $185,000. Hampered by his persistently sore shoulder, Dean appeared in only forty- three games with the Cubs over the next four seasons. In May 1941 he retired from baseball, at the age of thirty. He coached first base for the Cubs for one month and then traded the coach's box for the broadcast booth.17 In June 1941, Dean signed a three-year contract for $25,000 with the Falstaff Brewing Corporation to become KWK's radio announcer for the home games of both the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns. "This job ain't gonna change me none," Dean promised his fans. "I'm just gonna speak plain of ordinary pinto bean English." Dean called his first game on July 10, 1941, a nighttime contest between the Browns and the New York Yankees. One month later, a survey revealed that Dean had captured an amazing 82 percent of Cardinals' radio listeners in the St. Louis area, despite the fact that he was competing against simultaneous broadcasts of the team's games over the much more powerful KMOX. He also began receiving an average of sixteen hundred fan letters per month. Pundits attributed Dean's popularity to his unparalleled use of the English language. "Thanks to radio," wrote a sports columnist for the New York World-Telegram, "you can still lis ten to Diz, and that always was the next best thing to seeing him pitch. Unless somebody spoils him, he is going to be as great a sensation on the airwaves
15 Dickson, Baseball's Greatest Quotations, 107; Staten, OP Diz, 145, 175; Smith, Americas Dizzy Dean, 56, 65, 75-76.
16 Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 104-105; Staten, OP Diz, 186-187; Gregory, Diz, 334- 335,337.
17 Shatzkin, Ballplayers, 263; Baseball Encyclopedia, 1804; Thorn and Palmer, Total Baseball, 1462; Staten, OP Diz, 190, 294; Gregory, Diz, 342, 362-364. llButcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 219
as he was on the pitching mound. You've never heard anything like it and neither have local philologists, who swear that since Dizzy took over he's coined 28 new words."18 Arguably, no other sport lends itself to slang as well as baseball, and over the next few seasons, Dean developed a highly distinctive lexicon to describe the national pastime. Among his trademark broadcasting expressions was swang, the past tense of swing, as in "Stephens swang and missed." Throw was conjugated as throwed, as in "Marion throwed the runner out at first." And slide, of course, became slud, as in "Slaughter slud safe into second." Dean was also prone to make such signature blunders as "The runners have returned to their respectable bases" and "Musial stood confidentially at the plate." At the end of each broadcast, Dean signed off by urging listeners, "Don't fail to miss tomorrow's game."19 In 1943, in an attempt to cash in on Dean's mangled English, his sponsor, the Falstaff Brewing Corporation, pub lished a booklet for distribution to beer consumers and fans titled The Dizzy Dean Dictionary And What's What in Baseball. It was intended, as Dean's ghostwriter noted in the introduction, to "clear up a lot of misunderstandings that people has about my baseball lingo." "All of the statements and expres sions included in this booklet are Dizzy's," claimed the publisher. "Any sim ilarity to good grammar," it added, "is purely coincidental." Indeed, Dean popularized so many new trademark words and descriptive phrases over the years on his baseball broadcasts that a new word, Deanism, was coined to describe them.20 On radio, Dean broke many of the standard rules of baseball announcing in an age when polished, vocally trained, college-educated professionals such as Red Barber, Mel Allen, and Bob Prince increasingly dominated the air waves. Unlike his more literate colleagues, Dean talked with a thick Ozarks accent and related what was happening on the diamond in a dialect spoken by much of his Missouri radio audience. He regularly butchered the pronuncia tion of players' names—he called Stan Musial "Moo-zell"; Phil Rizzuto, "Rizzooti"; and later on television's Game of the Week, he referred to Chico Carrasquel simply as "that hitter with the three K's in his name." Dean also never prepared for broadcasts, never kept a scorecard, and seldom provided
18 Staten, OP Diz, 207-208; Smith, Voices of the Game, 101; Gregory, Diz, 363-366.
19 "Swing, Swanged, Swunged," Time, 24 April 1950, 59; Dickson, Baseball's Greatest Quotations, 104; Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 119-120; Gregory, Diz, 365-366.
20 Dizzy Dean, The Dizzy Dean Dictionary And What's What in Baseball (St. Louis: Falstaff Brewing Corporation, 1943); Paul Dickson, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (New York: Facts On File, 1989), 124-125. The Dizzy Dean Dictionary proved so popular with St. Louis baseball fans that Falstaff published a second issue in 1949. See The Dizzy Dean Baseball Dictionary (St. Louis: Falstaff Brewing Corporation, 1949) and Jerome H. "Dizzy" Dean, Dizzy Baseball: A Gay and Amusing Glossary of Baseball Terms Used by Radio Broadcasters, with Explanations to Aid the Uninitiated (New York: Greenberg Press, 1952). 220 Missouri Historical Review
listeners with batting averages or other statistics during a decade when sports- casters increasingly relied on such information. An unabashed partisan, he enthusiastically rooted for the St. Louis teams and often cheered the home town players from the broadcast booth. "Come on, Enos," Dean would yell into the microphone to outfielder Enos Slaughter, one of his favorite Cardinals, "knock the ball down this guy's throat." Nor did missing a pitch or two upset him. Rather, Dean simply ad-libbed, providing a cursory account of the game while entertaining his listeners with what essentially amounted to a vaudeville act.21 On the air, Dean enlivened dull innings by recounting stories about boy hood incidents involving "Me 'n' Paul," a recent bird hunt, or his glory days with the Gashouse Gang, all the while ignoring the game below. Sometimes in the midst of a game, he shared his favorite recipe for fried chicken, boast ed of his skill at pinochle, or warbled a rousing rendition of his signature song, "The Wabash Cannonball." As Vince Staten, one of Dean's biogra phers, remarked: "Diz's descriptive phrases and grammatical inventions were fun, but the most appealing thing about a Dizzy Dean broadcast was Diz's approach. For him the game was just that, a game. And if the game got boring, he was as bored with it as the average listener. So he did what he had to do to keep himself interested. And in the process, he became an entertainer. . . . Dizzy Dean was the first announcer to become bigger than the game he was covering."22 Despite his enormous popularity, Dean's flawed grammar irritated some radio listeners, especially English teachers who saw the baseball announcer as a symbol of the deplorable state of public education in America and attrib uted the alarming rise of juvenile delinquency to the improper influence of the mass media. In fact, throughout his broadcasting career, Dean collided on a number of occasions with self-appointed guardians of the American lan guage. In 1942, during his first full season as a baseball announcer, the St. Louis Board of Education circulated a petition urging the Falstaff Brewing Corporation to pull Dean from the air. In particular, the board claimed that Dean's frequent use of the expressions "ain't" and "them Cardinals" set a bad example for the city's impressionable schoolchildren. Undisturbed, Dean
21 Smith, Voices of the Game, 102-103; "Baseball: Play-By-Play," Newsweek, 14 July 1947, 77-78; Frank X. Tolbert, "Dizzy Dean—He's Not So Dumb!" Saturday Evening Post, 14 July 1951, 104; Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 120; Patrick Huber, "A Glimpse of 01' Diz: Dizzy Dean on St. Louis Radio, 1947," Gateway Heritage 22 (fall 2001): 61.
22 "Baseball: Play-By-Play," 78; Staten, OP Diz, 209-210. For more information on base ball broadcasting in the 1930s and 1940s see Smith, Voices of the Game, 25-40, 45-121; Red Barber, The Broadcasters (New York: Dial Press, 1970), 87-121; Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination From Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern (New York: Times Books, 1999), 199-204, 209-218; John Dunning, On the Air: The Encvclopedia of Old-Time Radio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 627-632. "Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 221
Charles Trefts Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri Dizzy and Paul Dean (pictured here in 1934) were excel lent pitchers and close brothers. Paul, however, was quiet and reserved, unlike his boisterous older brother. told the teachers, "You learn 'em English, and I'll learn 'em baseball." Falstaff, whose beer sales had skyrocketed since hiring Dean, brushed off the complaints and doubled his salary when his contract expired in 1944 (to a five-year, $100,000 deal). "Contrary to the belief of some," wrote J. G. Taylor Spink, editor of The Sporting News, in 1944, "Dizzy is no clown over the air. True, he uses an informal, colorful style, establishing his own rules of grammar. But this only adds to the interest in his broadcasts, which give listeners an accurate picture of what is transpiring on the diamond, based on Dean's own intimate knowledge of the game."23 Two years later, Dean faced another, more significant, controversy con cerning his colorful on-air speech. In July 1946, the English Teachers Association of Missouri allegedly filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which exercised broad powers over commercial radio broadcasting. The teachers claimed that Dean's broadcasts were "replete with errors of grammar and syntax" and were "having a bad influence on their pupils." St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporter Leonard Lyons
23 Lee Allen, Dizzy Dean: His Story in Baseball (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967), 145; Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 121; Staten, OP Diz, 208; Gregory, Diz, 368-369; J. G. Taylor Spink, "Dizzy Reaches Pinnacle in New Field," The Sporting News, 2 November 1944. For more information about the perceived detrimental effect of the mass media on American youth after World War II see James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 3-5, 24-41, 80- 90, 176-177. 222 Missouri Historical Review first broke the story in his July 11, 1946, column, and over the next five weeks, the local controversy, termed the "School Marms' Uprising" by an imaginative writer, escalated into a national debate about Dean's appropriate ness as a radio broadcaster and the consequences of his abuse of standard American English on the radio airwaves.24 Almost immediately, the English Teachers Association's complaint "stirred up a hornet's nest" in the St. Louis area. On July 12, the day after news of the grievance surfaced, the Globe-Democrat defended Dean's broad casts and chastised the teachers' association in an editorial titled "Case of Pure English vs. Dizzy Dean." "To listen to the broadcast of a game with Dizzy at the microphone," the editorial writer observed, "is a pleasant inter lude." He continued:
It is a melange of grammatical errors, vaudeville, observations on his "hongriness" and his yearning for a helping of fried chicken, plus a routine calling of strikes and balls and a scientific analysis of the game as it is being played or should be played. It is fun and information rolled into one. . . . But the question remains, how damaging is Dizzy's murder of the King's English to the youths of St. Louis and its environs? We do not share the apprehension of the teachers. Exposure to shattered syntax as perpetrated by Dizzy may encourage a certain degree of laxity among his young hear ers—and adults as well—but their interest is in the game, not in the linguis tic precision of the broadcast. This Dizzy gives them accurately and with color. The imperfections of his speech may be remembered and copied, but we doubt it. If Dizzy admits over the radio that he "doesn't know nothing" about a certain "sityashun," the lugubrious teachers may expect to hear such con versation in their classrooms. But the question is whether the youngsters heard it first at the radio, or at home, at the corner drug store, at the Boy Scout meeting. We have the feeling that Dizzy's mispronunciations are by no means isolated violations of grammar's rules, and correction is part of the teachers' business. . . . All this is respectfully referred to the FCC if it considers the case of Pure English vs. Dizzy Dean. We frankly hope Dizzy wins the verdict. We can imagine nothing more painful than Mr. Dean attempting to speak according to the book. . . . Such talent should not be circumscribed by stodgy school teachers or dull government agents, whatever may be its influence on the youths of America.25
24 Leonard Lyons, "Leonard Lyons' Column," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 11 July 1946; "Teachers Blast Dizzy Dean's Bad Grammar But His Radio Fans Voice Strong Approval," New York Times, 21 July 1946. See also Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 123; Staten, OP Diz, 220-223; Gregory, Diz, 370-371.
25 "Them Teachers Ain't Going to Run Diz Off the Air," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 20 July 1946; "Pure English." (iButcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 223
The controversy attracted additional attention when Dean mentioned it during one of his radio broadcasts, and soon both the Associated Press and the United Press were covering the developing story on their national wire services. According to an Associated Press account, St. Louis fans flooded the offices of both the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and Dean's radio station, WIL, with dozens of letters and telegrams, "almost without exception taking Dizzy's side and condemning the teachers." One night, Dean received "more than 150 telegrams" during a broadcast. Sentiments expressed in the mount ing piles of mail ranged from "assertions that Dizzy is a better influence on children than English teachers to advice that snobs mind their own business." "We would rather listen to you than the teachers any day," wrote one fan, "so don't change your style." "You and your listeners at least know what you are talking about, which is more than can be said of some teachers," proclaimed another.26 On July 16, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat published several letters it had received defending Dean's announcing skills in "The Mail Bag" section. A St. Louis doctor wrote: "If the kids can acquire 10 per cent of Diz's disarm ing frankness and honesty, it'll do them more good than his vernacular can possibly do harm!" One woman criticized the self-righteous teachers for their "intolerance," "anti-democratic attitude," and "lack of [a] sense of humor." "The Constitution offers everyone the right of free speech," she noted, "And what could be freer than Dizzy's speech?" "Perhaps Dizzy's English isn't the best on earth, but it helps me," explained a "High School Pupil." "When a student hears the mistakes Dizzy makes he knows how it sounds and then, most likely he himself will never make them. . . . Instead of hurting my English, Dizzy has helped it, and I shall continue to listen to him and profit by his mistakes!"27 For a week and a half, the usually outspoken Dean remained uncharac teristically silent about the intensifying debate. Then, on July 20, he respond ed to the English teachers in an official statement in which he apologetically explained the reason for his poor grammar. "I see where some teachers asso ciation of America is sayin' I'm butcherin' up the English language a little bit," Dean said. "Well, all I gotta say is that when me and my brother and pa was pickin' cotton in Arkansas we didn't have no chance to go to school much. I'm very happy that kids are gettin' that chance today." Six days later, he wrote a longer, less apologetic reply for the United Press, acknowledging that much of his radio announcing was a consciously crafted routine designed to amuse his Missouri audience. "Naturally, I play around with my stuff on
26 "Teachers Blast Dizzy"; "Them Teachers."
27 "The Mail Bag," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 16 July 1946. 224 Missouri Historical Review the radio," he admitted. "But I ain't dumb. I know most of the folks listen ing are from my part of the country—mostly from the Ozarks. They like it. A guy's got to do that sort of thing in this business. You got to say something every minute in front of the mike—something, even nonsense. ... I may not know that man Webster's front name, but, brother, I can learn you which is a ball and which is a strike—or vice vica [sic]."1* Two and a half months later, Dean published one final rejoinder, which he claimed to have written himself, in the October 1946 issue of The American Weekly, a nationally syndicated newspaper magazine. "The smart folks got all sweat up the other night when I said that Marty Marion slud into second base," Dean began.
The folks listening in knowed what I meant. What's the difference whether I said he slud or slided? Marty got where he was going didn't he? A guy don't have time to look things up in the dixionary when all hells breaking loose out there on the diamond. . . . When I say on the radio that the boys run back to their respectable bases the folks know what I mean. It may be wrong talk, but the fans catch on. I don't mean to be crossing up the kids. Fact is, if you'd read my fan mail you'd know I got them in my corner. Most of my mail comes from kids. Most of em can write and talk bettern I can. So if little Johnny slips with an ain't you can blame it onto old Diz. But if he grows up not known the difference between a two-bagger and a stole base, it ain't because I didn't try to learn him the right way [sic].29
Not only did the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and local baseball fans pas sionately defend their beloved broadcaster, but national magazines and news papers also rallied to Dean's defense, including H. L. Mencken's Baltimore Sun, The Pleasures of Publishing (Columbia University Press's newsletter), and The Sporting News.30 Even Norman Cousins, editor of the highbrow Saturday Review of Literature, wrote a spirited two-page editorial defending the maligned baseball broadcaster. Dean, Cousins remarked, possessed "the strongest, best lubricated, and most frequently used voice apparatus the national pastime has ever known. . . ." "Abuse of English," Cousins contin ued, "is the standard occupational disease of the national pastime—a disease
28 "Them Teachers"; Dizzy Dean, "Dizzy Derides Grammar Critics; Won't Change 'Slud' to 'Slidded,'" New York Times, 26 July 1946.
29 Dizzy Dean, "Dizzy Learns Them," American Weekly, San Francisco Examiner, 6 October 1946, clipping in "Baseball, Dizzy Dean," in Peter Tamony Collection, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia.
30 Baltimore Sun, 16 August 1946, and Pleasures of Publishing, 12 August 1946, both cited in H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiiy into the Development of English in the United States: Supplement II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 347-348 n. 6; J. G. Taylor Spink, "Listeners in Dizzy Dean's Corner," The Sporting News, 31 July 1946. "Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 225 which, if cured, would do irreparable damage to the patient. Not a small part of the vigor of the American language comes from our sports; and we are sure we can count on Henry Mencken to join with us in a holy crusade to put Dizzy back on the air should the Missouri teachers succeed in their efforts at grammatical decontamination of the baseball broadcasts. Anyway, our pri vate hunch is that the teachers won't get to first base."31 Cousins, as it turned out, was absolutely correct. The teachers associa tion's complaint went nowhere, but not because it was ill founded, as even the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, one of Dean's staunchest advocates, readily admitted. Rather, the complaint had apparently never been filed in the first place. Shortly after the controversy erupted, Ha Maude Kite, the secretary of the English Teachers Association of Missouri, told the St. Louis Globe- Democrat that the association had lodged no official complaint with the FCC. "If there was a complaint made," she stated, "it must have come from an indi vidual teacher." A thorough search of the FCC's published records for the period July-August 1946 revealed no such grievance lodged by the English Teachers Association of Missouri, any group of teachers, or any individual teacher. It appears the "School Marms' Uprising" was nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to generate even higher ratings for Dean's already popular broadcasts on WIL or to sell more copies of the Globe-Democrat. According to H. L. Mencken, the iconoclastic editor of the Baltimore Sun, "a press-agent disguised as an indignant schoolma'am" perpetrated the hoax and "got space in the newspapers by protesting against the Arkansas dialect forms used in sports broadcasts by Dizzy Dean."32 The author of the apparent hoax (perhaps Lyons himself?) will probably never be known for certain. Nor will the exact motives behind it. But the controversy clearly exposed the conflicting views of English teachers and ordinary citizens concerning the proper usage of the American language with in postwar society. The incident also reflected a long-standing struggle between urbane reformers and educators, on the one hand, and corporate sponsors and network executives, on the other, over the appropriate use of radio broadcasting. The former group envisioned radio as a medium to edu cate listeners and to refine manners and speech; the latter group saw radio as a commercial vehicle to entertain listeners and, more importantly, to sell them advertised merchandise. With regard to the "School Marms' Uprising," the English Teachers Association of Missouri seemingly believed that replacing Dean with a more grammatical announcer would eliminate a harmful
31 Norman Cousins, "We're on Dizzy's Side," Saturday Review of Literature, 3 August 1946, 16-17.
32 "Them Teachers"; Federal Communications Commission, Federal Communications Commission Reports: Decisions, Reports, and Orders of the Federal Communications Commission of the United States, 1945-1947, vol. 11 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1948); Mencken, American Language, 347-348, n. 6. 226 Missouri Historical Review influence on their students' speech. The Falstaff Brewing Corporation, how ever, appeared unconcerned about such matters. The longtime radio sponsor seemed to care only that Dean's on-air endorsements of its beer kept cash reg isters ringing. And, of course, baseball fans and even some magazine and newspaper editors wanted Dean to continue to amuse listeners and enliven the national pastime with incomparable radio announcing.33 The widespread attention Dean received as a result of the "School Marms' Uprising" ultimately helped launch his career as a national broad caster. The immediate fallout from the controversy, however, may have dam aged his announcing career in St. Louis, at least with the Cardinals' manage ment. In January 1947, less than three months after the controversy subsided, Sam Breadon, the owner of the Cardinals, announced that a new "two-state, six-station baseball radio network" had been created that would broadcast, for the first time, all of the team's home and road games during the upcoming season. But Breadon decided against hiring Dean as one of the announcers on the new network, despite radio surveys showing that the former Cardinal pitcher had drawn the largest baseball listening audience in 1946. Perhaps
33 For the cultural struggle over radio see, for example, Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 18- 20; Mencken, American Language, 33-36.
Sportsman s Park was home to both the Cardinals and the Browns for nearly thirty years.
Charles Trefts Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri ilButcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 227 due to the recent "School Marms' Uprising," Breadon chose two of Dean's competitors on St. Louis radio—former Cardinals manager Gabby Street and the rising young Harry Caray, recently crowned as baseball's best play-by play announcer for the 1946 season by The Sporting News. Breadon justified his selection by explaining his desire for the Cardinals to employ what he called "conventional" and "dignified" announcers. In turn, Bill DeWitt, gen eral manager of the Browns, assured fans that "the Browns are happy to offer Dizzy the opportunity to continue his contracts with his large local follow ing." Consequently, Dean and his longtime announcing partner, Johnny O'Hara, were left to cover only the games of the perennially cellar-dwelling St. Louis Browns.34 Dean suffered through five more dismal seasons as a play-by-play announcer for the pitiful Browns, during which they never finished higher than sixth place in the American League standings. But his career was far from over. In 1953, the Falstaff Brewing Corporation, seeking to expand its national market, hired Dean (at $100,000 a year) to serve as the play-by-play announcer for a new, nationally televised Saturday afternoon program on ABC called Game of the Week. Previously, baseball broadcasts originated only on local radio and television stations, with the exception of the All-Star Game and the World Series, which received national coverage. Thus, Dean made broadcasting history as baseball's first national television announcer when Game of the Week debuted in June 1953.35 With his colorful personality and entertaining coverage, Dean made Game of the Week an immediate hit with television viewers. The show cap tured unprecedented ratings despite being blacked out in all major league baseball cities because team owners feared that telecasts of the games would sharply diminish ballpark attendance. During its first season on the air, tele vision surveys revealed that on Saturday afternoons "75 percent of all [TV] sets in use outside of big league cities" were tuned to Dizzy Dean and Game of the Week. In 1955, Falstaff moved Game of the Week to CBS. The show
34 Staten, OP Diz, 224-225; Gregory, Diz, 372; "Dean to Stay at Mike—For Browns Only," The Sporting News, 5 February 1947.
35 In 1950, Dean left St. Louis to accept a two-year, $60,000 contract in a larger market as a television announcer for the New York Yankees on station WABD, the flagship station of the Dumont network. "I'm just as calm and confidential in front of these cameras as anyplace else," Dean remarked shortly after beginning his new job. "Only difference between television and radio is they ain't so much to talk about in television." In 1952, Dean returned to Missouri to again cover the St. Louis Browns for two more seasons on the Falstaff Brewing Corporation's twenty-station radio network. Tolbert, "Dizzy Dean," 25, 104; Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 142; Gregory, Diz, 373-374, 385-388; Staten, OP Diz, 252-276; Smith, Voices of the Game, 131, 143-149. 228 Missouri Historical Review continued to attract such high ratings that the network added a Sunday after noon game to Game of the Week's weekly lineup two years later. "Dean's popularity, and thus his broadcasting, were enormously powerful in the small towns," remarked Bill MacPhail, longtime director of CBS Sports. "In the hinterlands it was incredible. Watching Dizzy Dean was a religion. An absolute religion." In 1966, after twenty-five years as a baseball announcer, the aging Dean retired from CBS's Game of the Week when rival network NBC acquired the exclusive television broadcast rights to Major League Baseball.36 As a pioneering baseball broadcaster and sports humorist, Dizzy Dean left a tremendous legacy. He heralded a new kind of sports announcer in World War II-era America by creating a distinctive, appealing persona for himself that eventually overshadowed the games he covered. Early in his broadcasting career, he learned to parlay his rural Ozarks poverty and hard- scrabble upbringing into massive commercial appeal on the nation's airwaves as the voice of the common man—folksy, humorous, and utterly irresistible. Dean consciously traded on his image as an uneducated Ozarks sharecropper, but many contemporary sportswriters and broadcasters recognized that Dean was not actually as dizzy as he appeared. Prescott Sullivan of the San Francisco Examiner observed in 1956: "Although [Dean] is consistently ungrammatical, the homely hill-billy phrases which delight 01' Diz's radio and television audience occur but rarely in his everyday speech. Presumably, he saves them for his working hours when they are worth money." "The charm of Dizzy Dean," claimed Milton Gross of the New York Post in 1963, "is that he tries to make you believe he's still picking boll weevils out of his ears when he's picking up $100,000 a year broadcasting the Game of the Week." Beginning in the late 1960s, other radio and television broadcasters followed Dean's lead to create their own distinctive ethnic, regional, or "jock" personas in the broadcast booth. In this sense, Dean stands as the forefather of a host of sports broadcasters, including Don Meredith, Keith Jackson, Harry Caray, Dick Vitale, Frank Broyles, and John Madden.37 On the air, Dean excelled as a baseball broadcaster precisely because he was savvy enough to create a public persona that widely appealed to radio lis teners and later to television viewers. Bud Blattner, his announcing partner
36 On Game of the Week, Falstaff paired Dean first with former Cardinal infielder Buddy Blattner (1955-1959) and then with former Dodger shortstop Pee Wee Reese (1960-1965). Smith, America's Dizzy Dean, 142; Smith, Voices of the Game, 143-149. On July 17, 1974, Dean died of a heart attack in Reno, Nevada, at the age of sixty-four. See "Dizzy Dean, Hall of Fame Pitcher, Dies," New York Times, 18 July 1974; "Dizzy Dean, Gashouse Gang Ace, Dead at 63," The Sporting News, 3 August 1974.
37 Prescott Sullivan, "No More Dizzy Deans in Baseball, Says the Man Who Should Know," San Francisco Examiner, 2 March 1956, clipping in "Baseball," Tamony Collection; Dickson, Baseballs Greatest Quotations, 104; Smith, Voices of the Game, 149. (iButcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 229 on Game of the Week, noted, "Diz was, in the expression of many athletes, 'dumb like a fox.' He made sure, with rare exceptions, that he didn 't prepare, because people didn't want him to be a polished, prepared broadcaster. They expected him, they wanted him, to demolish the game." Blattner continued:
Diz lacked a formal education but he wasn't dumb. If ya' answer to "Dizzy," you're not supposed to be a Phi Beta Kappa, so he rarely got out of character. One day, on Mutual's Game of the Day, he actually did a half- inning of polished play-by-play. Then, between innings he told me, "That's enough a-that poop. Now 01' Diz is gonna make some money," and pro ceeded to butcher the next half inning absolutely beyond repair. He winked 'cause, boy, he knew people loved it—guys returning to their 'respectable' positions—everything he later made famous on CBS. And, all the while, I was giving the score, trying to inject sanity, just mar veling at 01' Diz.38
Mel Allen, who worked with Dean in New York in 1950 and 1951, agreed. Dean, Allen noted, "had an excitement about him, and he was a great name, especially in St. Louis." But, Allen explained, he "was a personality more than an announcer."
Oh, he could get serious with you once in a while when you were talk ing, but once he took off solo, doing what passed for play-by-play, it was show biz time. Missing a pitch or two—it never fazed him. And he was smart, intelligent. . . . Diz always knew what he was doing. The things he came up with—a guy "sludding" into third—they were professional. I'll never forget: Once he said "slid" correctly, by mistake, and he corrected himself. He wanted to goof up—it was a part of the vaudeville.39
Although Dean's deliberate use of unconventional grammar exasperated English teachers and urbane sophisticates in three decades ("surely a record," remarks Vince Staten), it endeared him to hundreds of thousands of fans who appreciated his down-home disposition and his authoritative inside knowl edge of the game. After all, Dean was a rarity among his generation of retired baseball players who became radio broadcasters—he had actually been a bona fide star on the diamond. His "aw-shucks" country persona, combined with his flair for self-promotion and penchant for self-effacing, good-natured humor, allowed him to emerge from various controversies more popular than ever. Although the "School Marms' Uprising" has largely faded from public memory, the incident marked an important event in Dean's broadcasting career. In fact, The Pride of St. Louis, the 1952 biopic of Dean's career,
38 Smith, Voices of the Game, 132; Smith, Stoiy tellers, 59.
39 Smith, Voices of the Game, 102. 230 Missouri Historical Review
Dizzy Announcing the Game of the Week
Courtesy of The Sporting News concludes with a heartwarming but highly fictionalized account of the "School Marms' Uprising" that could only have been scripted by a Hollywood screenwriter. In the film, unlike in reality, a remorseful Dean decides to retire from broadcasting rather than harm impressionable school children with his flawed speech. In doing so, however, he so deeply moves the callous English teachers that, at the film's end, they abruptly withdraw their complaint and beg him to return to the airwaves.40 Although seldom acknowledged by baseball and broadcast historians, Dean played a pivotal role in transforming modern sportscasting into the field we know today. Not only was he television's first national baseball broad caster and one of the earliest sportscaster celebrities, but he also helped to introduce the regional accent into commercial radio broadcasting. At least since the early 1930s, the major radio networks of CBS and NBC had required their announcers to speak proper, uninflected American English, with no traces of regional accent or colloquialisms. The Selection and Training of Radio Announcers, an NBC pamphlet from the 1930s, for exam ple, stated that the network expected its announcers to possess "a good voice, clear enunciation, and pronunciation free of dialect or local peculiarities; abil ity to read well; sufficient knowledge of foreign languages for the correct pro nunciation of names, places, titles, etc.; . . . [and] a college education." To
40 Twentieth Century-Fox's The Pride of St. Louis, which premiered Easter week of 1952 at the Missouri Theater in downtown St. Louis, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Story. Herman J. Mankiewicz, who wrote the script, had written the screenplay for the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic, The Pride of the Yankees, and had cowritten, with Orson Welles, the screenplay for the 1941 classic, Citizen Kane. Staten, OP Diz, 245-246. "Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit" 231 promote the standardization of radio speech, the major networks established schools for their announcers, published manuals of proper pronunciation for them, and hired speech specialists to scrutinize their broadcasts for slipshod pronunciation and colloquial expressions. In this culturally homogeneous medium populated by announcers who spoke with proper pronunciation and diction, Dean made his Ozarks drawl and dialect, ordinarily a serious liabili ty, into his most marketable asset. In doing so, he contributed to making the nation's airwaves more democratic and culturally diverse. In this respect, Dean turned out to be ahead of his time. Soon, distinctive regional speech became not the exception but the norm for sportscasters. By 1957, W. Cabell Greet, the longtime pronunciation consultant to CBS, could report that "for baseball and other sports announcers a southern accent has become almost de rigueur. . . . [Mel Allen], a native of Alabama, has reverted to and even inten sified his original southern pronunciation (deliberately)."41 Dizzy Dean made his mark on baseball history as one of the greatest St. Louis Cardinals pitchers and he added to his achievements in the sport with twenty-five years as a broadcaster. Dean reigned as one of the most well- liked and imaginative baseball announcers in America for nearly three decades and popularized a distinct style of folksy humor, a conversational approach, and an unaffected, down-to-earth sensibility that remain hallmarks of much of radio and television sportscasting into our own day. More than a quarter century after his death, baseball broadcasters, politicians, and pundits still quote him. In the end, Dean's often-quoted boast that "there'll never be another like me" (which served as his epitaph) was well founded. There will never be another broadcaster like Dizzy Dean on the airwaves—only imita tors, all of whom remain in his debt for the revolutionary contributions he made to twentieth-century sportscasting.
41 Waldo Abbot, Handbook of Broadcasting: How to Broadcast Effectively, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1941), 31; Mencken, American Language, 33-36; Douglas, Listening In, 102-106; Saul Carson, "Play Ball!" New Republic, 28 April 1947, 39; Michael Montgomery, "The Southern Accent—Alive and Well," Southern Cultures (inaugural issue, 1993): 61.
Losing Faith in Scientists
St. Joseph Daily Herald, October 16, 1886 [Chicago Tribune]: A scientist says—your scientist is always saying something—that each adult person car ries enough phosphorous in his body to make forty thousand matches. They who know how hard it is to make a match of two people will begin to lose their faith in scientists. 232
NEWS IN BRIEF
Effective January 1, the Society changed exhibit are sketches Lyon made of the French the notification procedure for annual member countryside while serving in the U.S. Army ships. Approximately two months before a during the First World War and drawings and membership expires, a notice will be sent out. paintings made during his travels as a free Those who do not renew after that notice will lance commercial artist. The exhibit will run receive a final notice at the date of expiration. through June. In the past, the Society has sent three notices On display in the East-West Corridor and continued to send the Missouri Historical Gallery is The Cuban Missile Crisis: October Review and the Newsletter past the expiration 1962. This exhibit presents the work of edi date of membership. This change will reduce torial cartoonists from around the world in both postage and printing costs, thus enabling reaction to the escalating tensions between the the Society to use these funds for the purchase United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. of materials for the research collections. The Society's corridor galleries are free and open to the public from 8:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., The National Archives and Records Monday through Friday, and 9:00 A.M. to 4:30 Administration-Central Plains Region will P.M., Saturday, except holidays. host the forty-fourth annual Missouri Conference on History at the Marriott In December 2001, the Shelter Insurance Country Club Plaza in Kansas City from April Company of Columbia, through Ed Bartolacci 18 to 20. Presidential scholar Richard Norton and Rick McVeigh, donated equipment to the Smith and baseball legend Buck O'Neil will Society's Newspaper Library. The gift serve as the keynote speakers. Paper sessions, included a microfilm scanner and printer, a tours, and "History Expo 2002," featuring microfilm reader-printer, two microfiche area historical agencies, are included on the readers, and cabinets. program. For additional information contact the MCH Conference Coordinator: Reed The Vernon County Historical Society has Whitaker, Regional Administrator, National reissued Betty Sterett's Scenes From the Past Archives and Records Administration-Central (of Nevada, Missouri). First published in Plains Region, 2312 East Bannister Road, 1985, the book had gone out of print. The Kansas City, MO 64131; e-mail: second edition contains twenty-two essays not
December, and January, including the Laclede mittee is planning the 2004 Three Flags County Genealogical Society, staff members Ceremony, a reenactment of the transfer of the from Columbia's Convention and Visitors Upper Louisiana Territory from Spain to Bureau, and students from the Eldon High France to the United States. The ceremony is School Art Club and the University of scheduled to take place on the grounds of the Missouri-Columbia Civil War history class. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis on March 12-14, 2004. A collection of Society trustee John K. Hulston's bimonthly newspaper articles from On January 17, Mary Patricia Holmes, the Greenfield Vedette and the Ash Grove Society reference specialist, attended a Commonwealth have recently been compiled University of Missouri Police Department into a book, Moments In Time. These stories presentation dealing with bomb threats and about the people of southwest Missouri span suspicious mail. She and Christine the twentieth century and add to the rich writ Montgomery, photo specialist, attended a ten history about the Ozarks. This book is January 18 teleconference on the efficient use available in the reference library of the State of Internet search engines sponsored by the Historical Society. University of Missouri Libraries Staff Development Committee. Blanche M. Touhill, chancellor of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a trustee Society staff members Lynn Wolf of the Society, and Elizabeth Gentry Sayad of Gentzler, Dean Hargett, Christine St. Louis, a Society life member, have been Montgomery, and Amy Waters attended the named co-chairs of the National Louisiana Missouri Digitization Conference 2002 held Purchase Bicentennial Committee. This com in Columbia on February 12-13.
Try to Count
Hannibal Journal and Western Union, December 25, 1851. If fourteen pounds make one stone, how many stones will make one stone wall? If the earth takes twenty-four hours to go round [sic] the sun, how many hours will it take for a son to get round [sic] an angry father? Reduce pounds to shillings, by billiards, brandy-and-water and cigars. If seventy-two words are required in common law to make a sheet, how is it that one word will sometimes make a wet blanket, when a favor is being asked?
Quite the Character
St. Joseph Daily Herald, October 8, 1886. Mayor Harrison of Chicago, is quoted as saying: "I don't want to be known by my repu tation, for that is d—d bad. But my character is above reproach." It is understood in the north west that the mayor's reputation wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't thrown that big punch bowl at the head of Bayard at the famous meeting of the Iroquois club. . . . But we are all glad to know that his character retains its virgin purity. 234
MISSOURI HISTORY IN NEWSPAPERS
Albany Ledger January 9, 2002: "Pierce's Pennings," article about original marker at the northwest cor ner of Missouri, by Lester E. Pierce.
Aurora Advertiser January 18, 2002: "MFA officials say they are here as 'farmers serving farmers,'" history of the state MFA, by Kim McCully.
Belle Banner January 16, 2002: "History Matters," mineral springs development at Vichy and Rolla, by John F. Bradbury, Jr.
Blue Springs Examiner December 14, 2001: "Legacy List to be unveiled," list of the most influential people in Jackson County history, by Frank Haight, Jr. December 26: "Two [First] Ladies from Missouri," Julia Grant and Bess Truman, by Ted Stillwell.
Bolivar Herald-Free Press November 16, 2001: "Mt. View Missionary Baptist Church celebrates 150 years," near Polk. December 21: "Sulphur, iron springs put Graydon Springs on the map at turn of century," by Justin Ballard.
Branson Taney County Times January 9, 2002: "The Backward Trail," the settlers of Hollister, by Viola Hartman.
Branson West Stone County Gazette December 6, 2001: "History of Lampe includes brush with infamous Bonnie [Parker] and Clyde [Barrow]."
Butler News-Xpress November 9, 2001: "Butler's Doughboy [statue] has survived 74 years," by C. A. Moore. January 4, 2002: "It was a grand era . . . ," history of the Palace Hotel, by Howard Simpson.
Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian November 11, 2001: "Sikeston's 141-year history as rich as its swamp-turned-farmland," by Sam Blackwell.
Carthage Press November 7, December 5, 26, 2001: "The New City," articles about the Queen City band, the Jasper County Courthouse "war," and the construction of the first Carthage City Hall, by Marvin Van Gilder. Missouri History in Newspapers 235
Cassville Barry County Advertiser December 26, 2001: "Samuel Phariss: Barry County's first Postmaster and County Clerk," by Noralee Phariss Faulkner.
Centralia North County News Leader August 7, 2001: "History of Sturgeon," by Ryan Smith. January 15, 2002: "Eye on Columbia: Buy the Book," history of Missouri Book Services Textbook Exchange.
Chillicothe Constitution- Tribune January 17, 2002: "Historic [Otter Creek] bridge lands in Polo," by Catherine Stortz Ripley.
Columbia Missourian November 15, 2001: "William Least Heat Moon," by Ben Paynter.
Cuba Free Press August 9, 2001: "Huzzah Creek Notes," Native Americans in the Ozarks, by Jerry Wilson. November 22: "William Recklein and the history of the Cuba Recklein Library," by Cecil J. Markley. January 10, 2002: "New book [Growing Up in St. Francois County] by regional author [Jim Bequette] tells of Bonne Terre's history," by Chris Case.
El Dorado Springs Sun January 10, 2002: "Walker clan still in Osiris," by Allene Reynolds.
Gallatin North Missourian October 24, 2001: "Judge [Adam] Black: An officer of the peace during the Mormon War here," in Daviess County, by David Stark. November 28: "Jameson history (circa 1940) narrated by early county resident, Robert Brown."
Glasgow Missourian November 15, 2001: "Salem Lutheran Church observes 140 years," in Salisbury, by Reverend Laurence Carlson. January 10, 2002: "Early photo [of the] Glasgow Missourian [building]," history of the Glasgow Missourian.
Greenfield Vedette August 2, 2001: "South Greenfield To Celebrate 120 Years."
Hannibal Courier-Post November 22, 2001: "[Al's Tavern in] Illasco," by David Pole. December 15: "Treasured documents trace Milo Jackson's life—first as a slave, then a Civil War soldier," by Bev Darr.
Harrisonville Cass County Democrat-Missourian August 3, 2001: "The Orphan Train came to Cass County"; "A look back in history at Cass County's cemeteries." 236 Missouri Historical Review
Independence Examiner August 1, 2001: "A park's presidential influence," Benjamin Harrison in Jackson County, by Ted Stillwell. August 4: "Civil War pivotal in history of Lone Jack," by Kelly Evenson. August 6: "New Lewis and Clark map conflicts with local histories." October 20: "Hiram Young, an Independence success story," by Frank Haight, Jr. November 3: "Adventurer [Christian Ott] made Independence home," by Frank Haight, Jr. November 18: "Twyman Road carries an old family name," by Darla McFarland. November 25: "Bingham-Waggoner Estate symbol of city's history," by James Dornbrook. November 28: "[Walt] Disney found his inspiration here," by Ted Stillwell. December 1: "[Willard E.] Winner helped Independence grow," by Frank Haight, Jr. December 8: "Salisbury farm [in Jackson County] was once the place to be," by Amanda Curtright. January 12, 2002: "Mary Slover donated land for [Truman] presidential library," by Frank Haight, Jr.
Jefferson City Post-Tribune November 6, 2001: "[State] Archives begins African American [history] initiative," by Gary R. Kremer. December 22: "Historian [Chris Tabor] campaigns to preserve Civil War battlefield in Butler County," the Battle of Island Mound.
Joplin Globe December 16, 2001: "Historical graffiti," carvings in Missouri caves, by Andy Ostmeyer. January 16, 2002: "Signs of revival," Carthage artist Lowell Davis, by Max McCoy. January 18: "Bookmarking History," history of the Joplin Public Library, by Rebecca Porte.
Kansas City Star December 2, 2001: "[Walt] Disney in KC," by Robert W Butler and Brian Burnes. December 5: "[Walt] Disney's Missouri shaped a vision," by Brian Burnes and Robert W. Butler. December 9: "Remembering [murdered jazz performer] Steve Harvey," by Aaron Barnhart. December 22: "History of Liberal details small town's unusual test of faith," by Steve Everly. December 28: "19th-century letters tell of fur trading and the future KC," Francois and Berenice Chouteau's correspondence, by Brian Burnes.
Lamar Democrat January 2, 5, 2002: "Civil War Series," Stockton in the Civil War, by M. Leon Faubion.
Lathrop Rural Reporter November 15, 2001: "Local Church to celebrate 125 years," Prairie Ridge Christian Union Church in Polo. January 10, 2002: "Father Time can't catch area business," Leibrandt's Jewelry Store in Cameron, by Mike Dickerson. Missouri History in Newspapers 23 7
Marthasville Record November 22, 2001: "Charrette Village Had Role In Lewis and Clark Expedition," by Ralph Gregory.
Mexico Ledger October 31, 2001: "Lemp Mansion, rumored to be haunted, draws attention to St. Louis history."
Monett Times November 19, 2001: "Time capsule opens window on [Frederick Pachlhofer] farm home, immigrant family that built it," in Verona, by Kristin Nama.
Mound City News January 10, 2002: "Merchants in [Grover] building more than a century," by Linda Boultinghouse.
Mountain View Standard News December 19, 2001: "Professor [James E. Price] says Scotch-Irish settled the Ozarks," by Barbara Crouch.
Neosho Daily News November 18, 2001: "End of an Era: After 78 years Evans' Pharmacy closing," by John Ford.
Nevada Daily Mail & Herald August 10, 2001: "Happy Birthday, Missouri," by Marc Powers. January 8, 2002: "Dry Cleaning business [Star Cleaners] still going strong after 100 years of service in Nevada," by Elaine Grant. January 17: "City looks to restore, preserve historic black school [Lincoln School]," by Jeffrey Jackson.
Park Hills Daily Journal August 7, 2001: "The Lead Belt Journal," Moses Austin, founder of Herculaneum. November 19: "The builders of the bridge [over Terre Blue Creek] tell their story," by Donna Hickman. January 5, 2002: "Buildings have many stories to tell," architecture of southeast Missouri's small towns, by Teresa Ressel.
Piedmont Wayne County Journal-Banner August 2, 2001: "Journal Begun in 1876 at Greenville, Banner Rose From Ashes of Great Fire." November 22: "A Step Towards the Gallows," 1902 hanging of Sam Brown, by Jay Mondy.
Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic October 21, 2001: "Chalk Bluff visible reminder of Civil War," by Callie Chitwood. 238 Missouri Historical Review
Potosi Independent Journal November 29, 2001: "Bellevue Presbyterian Church: 'An Old Church With A New Spirit,'" in Caledonia, 194th anniversary.
Rolla Daily News January 6, 2002: "Last [Route] 66 business building [in Rolla] razed," by R. D. Hohenfeldt.
St. Joseph News-Press November 1, 15, 2001, January 17, 2002: "Tales of the Midland Empire," articles about St. Joseph's city auditorium, Lathrop's "mule-capital" nickname, and Blue Town in St. Joseph, by Alonzo Weston. December 3: "Looking for the [Mormon] Past" in Far West and "Site Yields Mormon Artifacts," both articles by Julie Belschner.
St. Joseph Telegraph January 10, 2002: "Centennial: At Hyde Park Presbyterian Church," by Madge Randall.
St. Louis American December 5, 2001: "Kirkwood [Quinette] cemetery sharing its historic stories after years of silence," preserving the African American cemetery, by Alvin A. Reid.
St. Louis North County Journal November 7, 2001: "Streetcars dominated transit options," by Charles Bolinger.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch November 4, 2001: "Did Jack the Ripper have ties to St. Louis?" by Joe Holleman. November 28: "Historian [Robert Barr Smith] blasts a hole in myth of notorious Missouri outlaws [the James-Younger gang] as good boys driven to crime," by T. W. H. Miller. December 9: "Violence against blacks changed Missouri landscape," early-twentieth-cen tury lynchings in Springfield area, by Norm Parish. December 13: "St. Louis musicians pay tribute to beloved blues man [James] Crutchfield," by Jeremy Kohler. December 16: "[Old Post Office] Building has inspired detractors, champions throughout its history," by Robert W. Duffy. January 6, 2002: "Birthplace in Lamar shows how humble [Harry] Truman's beginnings were," by Pamela Selbert. January 17: "Family-owned tobacco store [Westerheide Tobacco and Cigar Company] that opened in 1860 closes its doors," by Tracey Bruce. January 27: "Looking for Laura [Ingalls Wilder]," by Valerie Schremp.
St. Louis Riverfront Times December 19, 2001: "Bowling Alone," Arcade Lanes owner Jim Lampson, by Bruce Rushton.
Salisbury Press-Spectator November 15, 2001: "Salem Lutheran observes 140th anniversary." Missouri History in Newspapers 239
Seneca News-Dispatch January 17, 2002: "Seneca's Flora Stansberry makes the calls at Little League World Series," the first female home plate umpire in a Little League championship, by Lori Chapman.
Shelbyville Shelby County Herald January 2, 2002: "History of Shelby County's first years as told by Nicholas Watkins," reprinted.
Sparta News Journal October 9, 2001: "Closing a piece of [Christian] county history," the Chadwick Harris MFA, by Caleb Harris.
Springfield News-Leader November 18, 2001: "Cabool, Kabul: Town apparently named for [Afghanistan] capital," by Mike O'Brien. November 25: '"An Angel in Disguise,'" Sister Lorraine Biebel, by Diane Majeske; "City's medical history, black history meet in [Dr. Lymon D. Brown] house," by Sarah Overstreet. December 5: "Pressure, limited opportunities and violence drove many blacks from Ozarks," by Jefferson Strait. January 6, 2002: "60 years of sharing the rhythm," the Bedell family, by Michael A. Brothers. January 10: "Unusual life of a 'solid Missourian,'" White House photographer Ken White, by Michael A. Brothers. January 19: "Lights of memory still bright downtown," Marx Clothing Store, by Hank Billings. January 25: "Love of Ozarks will bring Ruth Henning home for burial," by Sarah Overstreet.
Tipton Times November 1, 2001: "Bixlers [Gas Company] observing 70 years," by Becky Holloway.
Unionville Republican October 31, 2001: "Town of Livonia history," by Patricia Pickering. November 7: "History of the Livonia American Legion," by Duane Crawford.
Warrensburg Gazette November 15, 2001: "Cumberland Presbyterian Church."
West Plains Daily Quill January 9, 2002: "West Plains Veterinary Clinic celebrating 50th anniversary."
More Than One Income
Maysville Western Register, November 24, 1870. Cider is said to be so plenty in New Hampshire that they pay a man fifty cents a barrel to drink it, and the Boston Post says good, able-bodied laborers are making from one to two dol lars a day at the business. 240
MISSOURI HISTORY IN MAGAZINES Ameren Journal January, 2002: "Wilderness to Wonderland: Union Electric Lights Up the World's Fair, St. Louis."
The Blue and Grey Chronicle December, 2001: "The Criminal, Outlaw, and Tory Leader General John McNeil," by Wayne Schnetzer.
Boone's Lick Heritage, Boonslick Historical Society December, 2001: "The Beehive Oven In Missouri," by Brett Rogers.
Bushwhacker Musings, Vernon County Historical Society January 1, 2002: "John Reynolds Gunned Down On Front Porch Of His Home," by Derald Linn.
The Christian County Historian November, 2001: "My Life Story," by Evalina Boyd Laughlin.
Civil War Times Illustrated March, 2002: "Roadblock on the Mississippi," Island No. 10, by Peter Cozzens.
Clay County MOsaic, Clay County Archives & Historical Library October, November, December, 2001: "Early Towns In Clay County," by Beverly Whitaker, Janine Critcher, and Kevin Fisher.
Collage Of Cape County, Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society December, 2001: "Reminiscences Of Judge W C. Ranney."
Colonial Williamsburg Winter, 2001-2002: "The Freshest Advices: Conservators Discover Unknown Williamsburg Artist [Bernard Wiley]," by Bob Doares.
Columbia Senior Times December, 2001: "Grant Elementary's Wonderful People and Wonderful Buildings," by Eliot and Muriel Battle. January, 2002: "Memories Of The Tough But Happy Christmas Of 1939," by Dorothy Kullman Tighe; "On A Wing And A Prayer: The History of Columbia Municipal Airport," by Eliot and Muriel Battle.
Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly Fall, 2001: "John H. C. Fritz, Dean and Professor: Part One," by Ruth Fritz Meyer.
Fence Painter, Mark Twain Boyhood Home Associates Fall, 2001: "Tom Sawyer Celebrates 125th Anniversary." Missouri History in Magazines 241
Ferguson Notes December, 2001: "From City To Suburb: A Glimpse of a Beautiful Spot in the Shadow of St. Louis," reprinted.
Florissant Valley Quarterly January, 2002: "Combs School," in St. Ferdinand; "Sacred Heart Parish 1866-2001," reprinted.
Gateway Heritage, Missouri Historical Society Fall, 2001: "Carrying On An Ozark Legacy: An Oral History of the Carnahans in Missouri Public Life," by Sandy Primm; "Building the Kraus House: Ruth and Russell Kraus and the Challenge of Frank Lloyd Wright," by Esley Hamilton; "The Rise And Fall Of Gaslight Square," in midtown St. Louis, by Danny Kathriner; "A Glimpse Of 01' Diz: Dizzy Dean On St. Louis Radio, 1947," by Patrick Huber; "The U.S.-Mexican War: Letters From Joseph H. LaMotte," compiled by Chuck Hill.
GSCM Reporter, Genealogical Society of Central Missouri January/February, 2002: "[Richard] Perry Thrall," by North Todd Gentry.
Guide to Springfield Summer and Fall, 2001: "An Almost Condensed History of the Queen City of the Ozarks: Springfield, Missouri," by Robert C. Glazier.
HeartBeat, Farm Credit Services of Eastern Missouri Fall, 2001: "The Stories Behind the Faces," Pearl Milling Company and Aunt Jemima, St. Joseph, by Juddi Morris, reprinted.
The Jefferson Barracks Gazette, Friends of Jefferson Barracks January, February, March, 2002: "Fire and Water: The Old 'Reservoir' Tower At Jefferson Barracks," by Esley Hamilton.
Journal of Douglas County, Missouri Winter, 2001: "Job High Schools—An Important Chapter in Douglas County's Educational History," by Kenneth Brown and Paul Barker; "Early Douglas County Newspapers," by Kenneth Brown.
Journal of the Early Republic Fall, 2001: "The Market Revolution in the Borderlands: George Champlin Sibley in Missouri and New Mexico, 1808-1826," by Andrew C. Isenberg.
Journal of the West Winter, 2002: "The Early Years of the Delaware Indian Experience in Kansas Territory, 1830-1845," by Richard S. Grimes.
KCPT January, 2002: "Mark Twain." 242 Missouri Historical Review
Kentucky Ancestors, Kentucky Historical Society Spring, 2001: "Kentuckians Who Went Thataway," Kentuckians in Carroll County, Missouri, before 1876.
Kirkwood Historical Review Fall, 2001: "An Insider's View of Woodlawn Country Club," by Earl Maschmeier. Winter, 2001: "The Early Days of The Kirkwood Historical Society," by R. T. Bamber.
The Lawrence County Historical Society Bulletin January, 2002: "History of Big Spring," as Clarkson Spring was known, by Lillian Paxton.
The Maries Countian Winter, 2001: "Stories of Old Timers of Yesteryears," Pay Down, a town remembered, by John W Terrill.
Mark Twain Journal Spring, 2000: "Mark Twain's 1902 Trip to Missouri: A Reexamination, a Chronology, and an Annotated Bibliography," by Paul Sorrentino.
Missouri Life February, 2002: "Missouri Mayhem," Bonnie [Parker] and Clyde [Barrow], by Charles E. Reineke.
Missouri Municipal Review December, 2001: "The Blackwater Renaissance," revival of a town, by Bonnie Rapp.
Missouri State Genealogical Association Journal Vol. XXI, No. 4, 2001: "Missouri's Poor Farms—Introduction and Overview," by Sue Hopkins Cooley.
MSM-UMR Alumnus Winter, 2001: "75 years of Progress and Tradition," MSM Alumnus Newsletter's anniver sary, by Alicia Kellogg.
Nebraska History Fall, 2001: "Soldiers' [Edward H. Ingraham and William W. Ingraham] Letters from Fort Childs, 1848-1849," edited by Richard E. Jensen.
Newsletter, Jasper County Historical Society November, 2001: "A Brief Biography of John C. Cox," by Steve Cottrell.
Newsletter, Osage County Historical Society December, 2001: "Osage County Goes To War." January, 2002: "Osage County Goes To War: They Also Served: Women in the Armed Forces."
Newsletter, St. Charles County Historical Society December, 2001: "St. Charles Christmas in 1802," reprinted. Missouri History in Magazines 243
Newsletter, St. Francois County Historical Society November, 2001: "Farmington Mercantile Company," by Terry Hall; "Do You Remember The Corral Drive-in?" by David Jennings.
Newsletter, Sappington-Concord Historical Society Winter, 2002: "The Sappington-Picraux House."
Newsletter, South Central Missouri Genealogical Society October, November, December, 2001: "[Howell County] Sheriff C. Roy Kelly."
Newton County Saga Winter, 2001: "Newton County Century Farms" and "Newton County Civil War Stories," both articles by Sybil Jobe.
North & South December, 2001: "Sultana: A Case For Sabotage," steamboat disaster on the Mississippi River, by D. H. Rule.
Old Mill Run, Ozark County Genealogical and Historical Society December, 2001: "Stutsman-Medsker," a family's history.
Ozark Happenings Newsletter, Texas County Missouri Genealogical and Historical Society October/November/ December, 2001: "Some Facts of the History of Cabool"; "Christmas in the Piney Country [Mincy Valley, Taney County]," by Douglas Mahnkey, reprinted.
Ozarks Mountaineer December, 2001: "Jim Stubbs: Polio's First Poster Child," by Fred Pfister; "The Tale of Turnback Creek," by Larry Wood; "A Schoolcraft Holiday Feast," the first recorded holiday dinner in the Ozarks, by James F. Barrett.
Pathways, Missouri Department of Transportation Fall, 2001: "Missouri's Great River Road," along the Mississippi, by Pam Droog.
Ridgerunner, West Plains High School Fall, 2001: "Thomasville High School A Piece of Southern Missouri History," by Lindy Russell; "Shellin', Grindin', and Shakin': The Story of an Ozarks Mill," the Elliotts' mill, in Rover, by Brianne Hobbs.
Ripley County Heritage Winter, 2001: "The First Bridge Over Current River," at Doniphan, by Ray Burson.
River Hills Traveler November, 2001: "Leo Drey, Pioneer Forest, impacted outdoorsmen," by Bob Todd. December, 2001: "Traveling Into History: Back when medicine came from the woods," by Jim Featherston. January, February, 2002: "Traveling Into History: No wonder drugs during the Civil War," by Jim Featherston. 244 Missouri Historical Review
The Royal Arch Mason Winter, 2001-2002: "The Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Masonic Story," by James M. Williams and Stephen R. Greenberg.
Rural Missouri December, 2001: "Caring for Brazeau," in Perry County, by Bob McEowen. January, 2002: "Train to Tragedy," a collision of trains on the way to the St. Louis World's Fair, and "Remember past and present," Verble Mauldin, both articles by Jeff Joiner. February, 2002: "The Story of an American Family," the Hornback family, by Jeff Joiner.
St. Charles County Heritage January, 2002: "Some Civil War Politics in St. Charles County," by Bob Schultz.
The St. Louis Bar Journal Winter, 2002: "Senator David Barton, Lawyer and Statesman," by Marshall D. Hier.
St. Louis Commerce December, 2001: "Waverly Place—Old is New Again in Historic Lafayette Square," by Zach Boyers.
St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly Fall, 2001: "Quarantine Island," by Michael McDermott.
St. Louis Journalism Review December, 2001 /January, 2002: "Weathering a Century," St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Weatherbird turns one hundred, by Don Corrigan.
Show Me Route 66 Fall, 2001: "The U.S. Numbered Highway System" and "The Birthplace of Route 66," both articles by James R. Powell; "U.S. 66 in Missouri-1931," reprinted; "U.S. Highway 66 in St. Louis," by James R. Powell.
Springfield! Magazine November, 2001: "When TV Was Young: Schools' Series on TV Interprets Curriculum" and "Queen City History (Part XLV): Lily-Tulip Cup Corporation Picks One Springfield Over Another to Lead 1950s Industrialization Here," both articles by Robert C. Glazier. December, 2001: "When TV Was Young: TV Classroom Airs its 188th Telecast" and "Queen City History (Part XLVI): The Second Battle of Wilson's Creek," both articles by Robert C. Glazier. January, 2002: "When TV Was Young: School TV Series Ruled the Airwaves When Video Choices Were Limited to Two" and "Queen City History (Part XLVII): Willard J. Graff Succeeds Harry P. Study As Springfield Superintendent of Schools," both articles by Robert C. Glazier.
The Twainian December, 2001: "Ken Burns Discovers Twain's Missouri," by Carolyn Kane.
Waterways Journal December 10, 2001: "River History Writing Has Its Pitfalls." Missouri History in Magazines 245
December 17, 2001: "A Cotton Boat [Golden Eagle] Became A Tourist Boat In 1918." January 7, 2002: "G. W. Hill Letters Tell Of Eagle Packet Company." January 28, 2002: "[Mark] Twain Remembered in Ken Burns Documentary." This and the above articles by James V. Swift.
The Westporter December, 2001: "Letter from William H. R. Lykins."
Whistle Talk, St. Louis Railway Enthusiasts January, 2002: "Getting around St. Louis: notes on car and bus line navigation," by Andrew D. Young.
White River Valley Historical Quarterly Fall, 2001: "A Building on the Move: The History of the Maine Clubhouse," in Taney County, by Gwen Simmons; "Tracing the Springfield-Harrison Road," by Curtis Copeland; "The McClary Rock House," in Kirbyville, by Viola Hartman.
The Richard S. Brownlee Fund In 1985 the executive committee of the State Historical Society of Missouri established the Richard S. Brownlee Fund to honor the longtime executive director upon his retirement. Income from the corpus of the fund is used annually to provide cash awards for individuals and organi zations proposing to publish, or make other tangible contributions to, the history of Missouri and its citizens. Individuals, local historical societies, museums, and governmental and nongovernmental agencies are eligible to apply for funding. Residency within the state is not a requirement. Applicants for Brownlee Fund monies should direct their proposals to James W. Goodrich, executive director of the Society. A cover letter out lining the goals and presenting a synopsis of the project should be accom panied by an itemized budget detailing the manner in which the request ed funds will be used. The deadline for the 2002 applications is July 1. 246
GRADUATE THESES RELATING TO MISSOURI HISTORY, 2001
CENTRAL MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY, WARRENSBURG MASTER'S THESES
Clifford, Amber R., "Forbidden Pleasures: Gender and Class in Kansas City Commercial Amusements, 1880-1920." Rinck, Jared, 'This Davis: The Man Who Saved Kansas City."
ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS
Gregory, Patricia Lehan, "Women's Experience of Reading in St. Louis Book Clubs." Harper, Christine F., "The Water Wizard: John F. Wixford and the Purification of the St. Louis Water Supply in 1904." Knight, Carole L., "Survival of the Forest: The Evolution of Forest Park as a Reflection of the Social and Cultural Dynamics of St. Louis."
TRUMAN STATE UNIVERSITY, KIRKSVILLE MASTER'S THESIS
Schippers, Julie Kathleen, "The Evolution of African American Conscious ness in 1917: The Black Press's Response to the East St. Louis Riot."
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA MASTER'S THESES
Campbell, Scott, "Regional Geography and Vernacular Literature: Vance Randolph's Ozarks." Mallea, Amahia K., "Progressive Kansas City and the Missouri River."
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
Romitti, Martin Anthony, "Political Storms: Punctuated Equilibrium and the Missouri River Policy Arena, 1990-2000." 247
BOOK REVIEWS Missouri's Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of Southern Identity in the Border West By Christopher Phillips (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000). xv + 342 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $29.95.
Claiborne Fox Jackson is remembered primarily for the last twenty-four months of his short life. From the beginning of the secessionist crisis in December 1860 until his death (at the age of fifty-six) in December 1862, Jackson worked to guide Missouri into the Confederacy. Jackson moved from his native Kentucky to Missouri in 1826 and quick ly attached himself to the wealthy and politically powerful John S. Sappington of the Boonslick region in the center of the state. Jackson main tained the Sappington connection zealously. When his first wife (Mary Sappington) died, he promptly married her sister Louisa. When Louisa died, Jackson took Eliza Sappington as his third wife. Eliza had been previously married to a man revealed to be a bigamist. Jackson's final marriage, clearly one of convenience, eased Eliza's sense of shame and thereby served the Sappington family's interests. The marriage also preserved Jackson's cher ished tie to the family. Jackson rose to prominence as Sappington's son-in-law within the Central Clique of proslavery Missouri Democrats. Christopher Phillips finds little to praise in this opportunistic political career. The so-called Jackson Resolutions precipitated a break with Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton over the issue of the westward expansion of slavery. But Benton's defeat in 1850 did not bring the political success that Jackson apparently expected for himself. When Jackson ran for governor in 1860, he tried to hide his Southern Rights past by endorsing the moderate Democrat, Stephan A. Douglas. This deception brought Jackson the victory he sought. But it was only when the tactic of "armed neutrality" failed and Jackson fled Jefferson City that he openly and directly tied himself to the Confederate cause. On November 28, 1861, the Confederate Congress admitted Missouri as the Confederacy's twelfth state. "God be praised," exclaimed Jackson. "This is the happiest moment of my life" (p. 269). Phillips sometimes claims too much for his subject. The attempt to link Jackson to the development of a Southern identity in the border West often falters as Jackson himself pursued self-interest over principle. Nevertheless, Phillips successfully recreates Jackson's relentless drive to become a large slaveholder and planter. When John Sappington died in 1856, Jackson used his portion of the estate to buy more slaves as well as the Sappington farm. In doing so, he revealed his own peculiar Southern identity. The republican 248 Missouri Historical Review simplicity of Sappington's Pilot Hickory Farm became Jackson's vainglori ous Fox Castle. Perhaps most important, Phillips's extensive research leaves no doubt that Jackson used his position as governor not to maintain the state's neutral ity, as he claimed, but to maneuver Missouri out of the Union. In this regard, Phillips credits Jackson with masterminding the Camp Jackson "affair" to force the Unconditional Unionists in St. Louis to commit an act of aggression that would galvanize Missourians into active opposition to the federal gov ernment. Phillips argues that Jackson's plan succeeded. In individual cases, the federal action against the state militia clearly had the effect Jackson desired. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see in the Confederate state govern ment that Jackson created much more than a dream of legitimacy.
University of Missouri-St. Louis Louis S. Gerteis
A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne: A Memoir, 1917-1918. By William S. Triplet. Edited with an introduction by Robert H. Ferrell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000). xv + 326 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographical Essay. Index. $29.95. A Colonel in the Armored Divisions: A Memoir, 1941-1945. By William S. Triplet. Edited with an introduction by Robert H. Ferrell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001). xiii + 301 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographical Essay. Index. $29.95. In the Philippines and Okinawa: A Memoir, 1945-1948. By William S. Triplet. Edited with an introduction by Robert H. Ferrell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001). xiii + 299 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographical Essay. Index. $29.95.
Sedalia's superintendent of schools greeted the Wilson administration's declaration of war on "Kaiser Bill" by promising high school boys "free diplomas" if they promptly enlisted for the impending crusade. William Samuel Triplet, nearing the end of his junior year at Sedalia High, enthusias tically joined the 140th Infantry, 35th Division (Missouri-Kansas National Guard). Two years later would find him a Purple Heart veteran of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) expecting to begin a peacetime mili tary career. That career would produce three books—all of which, edited by Robert H. Ferrell of the University of Indiana, are subjects of this review. While Triplet's division trained at Camp Doniphan (Fort Sill, Oklahoma), he became a platoon sergeant. As such he sailed with his unit to France in March 1918. In that war's final summer and fall, his company (D) endured lengthy frontline trench duty and several days of intensive combat, first in aiding reduction of the Saint-Mihiel salient in September and then sus taining the attack in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in the ensuing weeks. Book Reviews 249
Triplet's "active duty" ended suddenly at Exermont on September 28, when he suffered a flesh wound in his right arm that landed him in a base hos pital. His stay there was relatively brief, for AEF officials soon ordered men with "slight" wounds back to full duty. Triplet rejoined decimated Company D at Verdun and found himself acting first sergeant, company clerk, and sup port platoon leader. The armistice wildly celebrated that November produced but muffled festivities for Triplet. The papers ordering him to officer training school faced immediate revocation. Recent dreams of a career as a regular army noncom with a reserve commission in his pocket suddenly evaporated. Then, upon his discharge the following spring, Triplet was dismayed to learn that the 1917 diploma promise had been so modified by the school board that jun iors like Triplet were left out in the cold. Readers may experience occasional irritation with this volume. Frames of reference are sometimes obscured in double-talk, as in the case of one comrade's squabble with the medics over a case of "rosebud" incurred during his "recreational activities" (p. 61). (This reviewer, although a medical ser geant from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day, is at a loss for a diagnosis.) Another comrade's rape charge, growing out of a bedroom melee, is easily interpreted by devotees of "G.I. humor" of a later era. Further, the average reader will often puzzle over the vague timing affecting events central to the narrative. The index is sketchy, occasionally faulty, and lacks many entries that could facilitate understanding. The editor says Triplet was born in 1900 (p. ix), but West Point's records specify September 21, 1899, for the event. Despite these critiques (or cavils), Ferrell has preserved a valuable pri mary source in twentieth-century military science. The Western Front rou tine—poison gas, snipers, artillery barrages, chills, and dampness—become real for us. We sense the bitterness of doughboys ordered into relentless and sometimes fruitless advances "over the top" when one captain declares that generals should be "jail[ed] ... for murder" (p. 252). Triplet was a splendid writer with a penchant for realism. When a doughboy naturally "cusses," the right words appear in this text without apology. Triplett wrote A Colonel in the Armored Divisions: A Memoir, 1941-1945 to "complete" the story of his military experiences. This account opens long after the close of the first book, with Captain Triplet reporting for duty at Fort Benning's Infantry Board in 1940. Twenty years of peacetime service are skipped, but Ferrell struggles to fill the gap with meaningful notations. Through them we learn of Triplet's graduation from West Point in 1924 and his progress through those "company grade" years following. Many a read er will happily discover in Triplet the creator of the legendary "Sergeant Terry Bull," whose articles in the Infantry Journal before World War II foreshad owed tomorrow's tactics as well as the specific potential of the tank destroy er. How Triplet acquired a high school diploma to show the military academy 250 Missouri Historical Review and what member of the Sixty-seventh Congress nominated him to West Point neither the editor nor the author explains. (He went back to school and graduated from Sedalia High in 1920; Congressman Samuel Collier Major appointed him to the academy that year.) Triplet produces a lively and detailed account of an infantry officer's rise in training armored and amphibious assault units early in World War II. Sent to Europe as a colonel in late 1944, he was soon at the front in the 7th Armored Division. He led Combat Command A through a winter's fighting from the lower Rhine to the Baltic port of Liibeck. This work provides readers with a veritable manual for combat command in history's greatest war. Those studying it for other reasons may find them selves bothered by the lack of time frames. Also, the texture of this narrative is somewhat tainted by incomplete or contradictory statements. Confusion over the author's date of birth persists in this account, with exact dates of birth (or death) never mentioned. (He died in Leesburg, Virginia, on January 21, 1994.) Triplet frequently applauds the performance of the future Major General John F. R. Seitz, but the reader never learns Seitz's given name. Such instances testify to the often crucial importance of editing. The text abounds with Triplet's judgments of various colleagues, opin ions often telling us more about the author than about some of his contempo raries. For readers baffled by his malicious swats at the theater commander, Dwight Eisenhower, Triplet mercifully "lets it all hang out." On duty at the Pentagon in 1951, Triplet consulted his 201 file and learned that his division commander had recommended him for brigadier general in 1945 only to have Eisenhower blow it away: "We don't need any more generals." Affronted by this revelation, Triplet huffs: "Okay, Ike, I don't like you either" (p. 213). In the Philippines and Okinawa: A Memoir, 1945-1948 relates Triplet's experiences in the closing years of his career. When the European phase of World War II ended, the colonel began applying for duty in the Pacific the ater. Officials in Europe "thoroughly ignored" his requests until after V-J Day, but the autumn that followed found him on Luzon Island in command of the 342nd Infantry Regiment. Triplet provides us a valuable and entertaining study of the wartime army's struggle to adjust to a new era. There were "unmilitary habits" to sti fle—with court-martials or administrative "busting" for those slow to return to peacetime fuss and feathers. There were countless Japanese stragglers left in the Philippines to be rounded up and repatriated and Filipino guerrillas needing to resume prewar life styles. Triplet found himself commanding more than just a regiment, operating replacement depots, and organizing the 44th Infantry (Philippine Scouts). In early 1947, Triplet took his new 44th Infantry to Okinawa, where he soon found himself deputy commander and chief of staff of the Ryukyus Command. The author paints an interesting portrait of the construction of Book Reviews 251 quarters for officers and troops as well as clubhouses for their entertainment. There were flagrant misdeeds to handle, including the discovery of a highly profitable "motorized cat-house," an ambulance prepared and operated by a motor pool sergeant with an army nurse serving as "hostess." Triplet saw to it that the nurse was bounced back to the States shorn of her commission and the ex-sergeant relegated to the "broom and mop" brigade. Many readers may be nettled by the deficient and often erroneous index in this volume, along with the constant mention of individuals with their given names lacking. In particular, this reviewer is left wondering about the identity of a certain "Mr. Anders," a civilian contractor fined for speeding on Okinawan highways and then "deported" after sassing his military prosecu tors. The historical and military professions owe a twenty-one-gun salute to editor Ferrell and his press for the perception and determination that have revealed and preserved for us these priceless narratives.
Central Missouri State University Leslie Anders
Circuit Riders to Crusades: Essays in Missouri Methodist History. By John O. Gooch (Franklin, Tenn.: Providence House Publishers, 2000). xi + 212 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95.
This is an engaging and informative history of Missouri Methodism writ ten from an insider's perspective for an audience of the church faithful. The first two-thirds of the book is a topical study of Missouri Methodism before World War II, and the last third provides an overview of more recent events. Gooch is comfortable using a topical approach for the book's early chapters since there are other works, particularly Frank Tucker's The Methodist Church in Missouri, 1798-1939 (1966), that cover this period from other angles. Early chapters discuss such topics as circuit riders, African American Methodism, Indian missions, German Methodism, and the North-South divi sion of the church in 1844. Throughout, Gooch consistently ties events in Missouri to the larger history of Methodism and the nation. He draws on a wide array of denominational sources for his analysis of Missouri Methodism, while his discussion of larger developments relies mostly on sec ondary sources. The book is filled with interesting details and insights, but Gooch is clearly writing for a Methodist audience. In the chapter on the church's sec tional split in 1844, he devotes several pages to discussing whether the schism amounted to a separation or a secession on the part of southern Methodists. This subject is only of interest to Methodists with a stake in the institutional structure of the church. Another example appears in chapter 8, which dis cusses the 1938 conference held in Kansas City to reunite American 252 Missouri Historical Review
Methodism. Here Gooch provides full lists of delegates and committee mem bers, including the convention electrician. Because of its insider perspective, the book lacks an explicit central thesis. The author assumes that his readers are Methodists who already agree on the basic point—that God raised up the Methodists to take the gospel to those in need. The last one-third of the book reads more like a standard institutional his tory, with chapters about Missourians who became bishops and the church's evangelistic and reform efforts during the 1970s. It concludes with a short chapter titled "Personal Reflections." Here Gooch raises the question that "still haunts me as I write these final words: What happened? How was it that such a strong church declined so quickly? In the late twentieth century, even as we began all kinds of new ministries, ... we lost members. And we lost them not by the handful, but by the hundreds. Year after year. What hap pened?" (p. 188) This is a compelling question, one that this reviewer wish es the author had made a focus of the book. Gooch offers a few tentative sug gestions but then shies away from the implications of the answers. If the expansion of early Methodism is important, then so is its post-1960 decline, both to Methodists and others interested in the nature of American popular religion. In fact, a number of recent books address this phenomenon, partic ularly as it developed in the nineteenth century. These include Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (1993); Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy (1992); Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997); Beth Barton Schweiger, The Gospel Working Up: Progress and the Pulpit in Nineteenth- Century Virginia (2000); and William Sutton, Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (1998).
University of Missouri-Columbia John Wigger
Trading Compliments
St. Joseph Daily Herald, October 8, 1886. [New York Star]: The story is told by a Boston newspaper of a country parson who, with the tact that dis tinguishes some parsons, said to the local tailor: "When I want a good coat I go to Boston. That's the place. By the way, do you ever go to church?" "Oh, yes." "Where?" "Well, when I want to hear a good sermon I go to Boston. That's the place." 253
BOOK NOTES
Harry S. Truman's Musical Letters. Edited by Thompson A. Brandt (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000). v + 127 pp. Illustrations. Index. $69.95.
Arranged in chronological order, the letters in this volume reveal how Harry Truman's interest and taste in music expanded and matured throughout his lifetime. The majority of the letters were written to Truman's wife, Bess, and his daughter, Margaret, although correspondence with famous musicians, popular entertainers, and politicians is also included. One chapter is dedicat ed to Washington Post critic Paul Dume's negative 1950 review of Margaret Truman's singing performance and the president's scathing reply. This book can be ordered from Edwin Mellen Press, P.O. Box 450, Lewiston, NY 14092-0450, by calling (716) 754-2788, or online at
My Farm on the Mississippi: The Story of a German in Missouri, 1945- 1948. By Heinrich Hauser. Translated with an introduction by Curt A. Poulton (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001). x + 168 pp. Illustrations. $24.95, paper.
Fleeing war-torn Germany in 1939, Heinrich Hauser traveled to New York and Chicago before settling in Altenburg, Missouri, in 1945. Hauser, an established author in Germany, found peace in this small town that was still heavily influenced by previous generations of German immigrants. As a new immigrant, Hauser faced some of the same trials as those who came nearly a century before him. His impressions of local residents, his pride in restoring an abandoned farmhouse, and his struggle to profit from the land are superbly recorded in this narrative. The book is available in bookstores.
With Plow and Pen: The Diary of John G. Dryden, 1856-1883. Edited with an introduction by Patrick Brophy (Nevada, Mo.: Vernon County Historical Society, 2001). iv + 184 pp. Maps. Notes. Index. $30.00, plus $4.00 postage, paper.
Edited from the original four volumes of John Dry den's diary, this book's selected entries give readers a glimpse of pioneer life in Vernon County. Dryden was a well-educated man who had traveled extensively before set tling in Missouri as a farmer. His education likely led to the many roles he played in the community, including acting as a justice of the peace, a school teacher, and an amateur lawyer. A learned and involved member of his soci ety, Dryden's simple and sometimes wry observations about his community 254 Missouri Historical Review result in an interesting read. The book is available from the Vernon County Historical Society, 231 North Main Street, Nevada, MO 64772.
St. Mary's of the Angels Parish History, Wien, Mo., 1876-2001. (Wein, Mo.: History Book Committee, 2001). 294 pp. Illustrations. $30.00.
This book chronicles 125 years of the history of Wien and its first church, St. Mary's of the Angels. The beginning of the book notes the leaders of the church and lists additions made to the parish as both the town and St. Mary's grew. The latter portion of the book depicts the community's history through photographs. Included are images of first communions, weddings, and anniversaries; past and present parish members; memorials; and candid pho tos of the church's 1976 centennial celebration. This book can be ordered from St. Mary's of the Angels Parish, Route 1 Box 65, New Cambria, MO 63558-9616.
Direct Your Letters to San Jose: The California Gold Rush Letters and Diary of James and David Lee Campbell, 1849-1852. Edited by David W. Jackson (Kansas City, Mo.: The Orderly Pack Rat, 2000). xvi + 350 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $19.95, plus $3.00 postage, paper.
James and David Lee Campbell from Clayton, Illinois, were among the many Americans who set out to strike gold in California. Throughout their journey, the brothers kept a log and wrote letters home, which have been pre served and compiled by the descendants of these two '49ers. The Campbells' daily log records the simple day-to-day duties along the trail and working in California. In contrast to the minimal diary entries, the brothers' letters reveal their dreams, fears, longings, and the tribulations of everyday life in a strange new state. This book can be ordered from The Orderly Pack Rat, 7420 East Gregory Circle, Kansas City, MO 64133-6280 or online at
The Ville, St. Louis. By John A. Wright, Sr. (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001). 128 pp. Illustrations. Maps. $19.99, plus $5.00 shipping and han dling, paper.
In the late nineteenth century, the Ellerdsville neighborhood, or "the Ville," was one of the few areas in St. Louis where African Americans could rent or own homes. The Ville became a thriving African American commu nity and produced many of the area's nationally and locally famous citizens. This book tells the Ville's story through photographs and short descriptions of the schools, hospital, churches, banks, and residents of this industrious Book Notes 255 historical community. The book can be ordered from Arcadia Publishing at 1-888-313-2665 or at
Soulard's Second Century. By Betty Pavlige (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001). 128 pp. Illustrations. $19.99, plus $5.00 shipping and handling, paper.
Lifetime resident and community activist Betty Pavlige has written short passages about the events and inhabitants of Soulard in this volume. Acknowledging the area's rich history and the trials it faces today, these sto ries connect readers with one of St. Louis's oldest neighborhoods. From Charles Lindbergh flying overhead to a line of homeless waiting for food, Pavlige depicts more than fifty years of elusive moments and small details of everyday life in Soulard. The author's original art and collection of photo graphs complement her narrative. This book can be ordered from Arcadia Publishing at 1-888-313-2665 or at
Sacagawea's Son: The Life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. By Marion Tinling (Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press Publishing, 2001). viii + 125 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $10.00, paper.
Written for young history readers, this book chronicles the fascinating life of Sacagewea's son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau or "Pomp." His early childhood was divided between the Hidatsa tribe and a St. Louis boarding school. After school, Pomp traveled to Europe as the guest of the Duke of Wurttemberg. Several years later, Charbonneau returned to the United States and served in the West as a guide and trapper. He led the Mormon Battalion to California during the Mexican War and became a prospector during the gold rush. This account of Charbonneau's life simultaneously tells the story of an adventurer and the early American West. This volume can be ordered by calling 1-800-234-5308 or online at
Taney County, Missouri. By Vickie Layton Cobb (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001). 128 pp. Illustrations. Maps. $19.99, plus $5.00 shipping and handling, paper.
In addition to providing nearly two hundred photographs of residents and county scenes, the author recounts stories about Taney County citizens passed down for generations. Among the many photographs are those of the coun ty's original settlers, early schools, farms, battlegrounds, war heroes, and river scenes. This book can be ordered from Arcadia Publishing at 1-8 313-2665 or at
The Steamboat Idlewild, by Fred Geary Trace the Rivers of Missouri History The State Historical Society of Missouri collects, preserves, makes accessible, and publishes material relating to the history of Missouri and the Middle West. Its extensive collections of books, newspapers, journals, maps, manuscripts, and photo graphs are open to the public. An art gallery features rotating exhibits with selected paintings by George Caleb Bingham and Thomas Hart Benton on permanent display. Memberships further the mission of the State Historical Society. They provide funds to purchase books, preserve newspapers, and publish materials. Each member receives annually four issues of the Missouri Historical Review and a quarterly newsletter. The State Historical Society is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization. Gifts of cash or property to the Society are deductible for federal income, estate, and gift tax purposes. For further information about gifts or bequests contact James W. Goodrich, Executive Director.
Individual annual membership $10 Contributing annual membership $25 Supporting annual membership $50 Sustaining annual membership $100-$499 Patron annual membership $500 or more Life membership $250
Memberships may be sent to
State Historical Society of Missouri 1020 Lowry Street Columbia, MO 65201-7298 With Pen or Crayon
During the early morning of June 17, 1972, police surprised five men in the Democratic National Committee headquarters located on the sixth floor of the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Equipped with burglary tools and electronic listening devices, the intruders were apparently attempting to install "bugs" in the headquarters and planning to photograph doc uments housed in file cabinets. By June 19, police and reporters had discovered that burglar James E. McCord, a former CIA employee, was working as a security consultant for the Republican National Committee and the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. The directors of both organizations denied knowledge of the break-in. A day later, the Washington Post had linked the name of E. Howard Hunt, found in some of the burglars' address books, to Charles Colson, the White House special counsel. In what proved to be a prophetic utterance, Lawrence O'Brien, the head of the Democratic National Committee, declared, "As far as I am personally concerned, there is a clear line of direction to the Committee for the Re-election of the President and a developing clear line to the White House." Tom Engelhardt's editorial cartoon, "Agent 0072 Muffs One," which appeared in the June 20, 1972, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, com mented on the event. . . Over the next two years, amidst aggressive newspaper coverage, court cases, special inves tigations and congressional hearings, President Richard Nixon and many of his closest advisers were implicated in the break-in and the subsequent cover-up. Several staff members were con victed of conspiracy to obstruct justice. The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings against the president in May 1974. By the time Nixon resigned on August 9 1974, following the forced release of tape transcripts proving he ordered the cover-up shortly after the burglary attempt, Watergate had entered the lexicon as a term for scandal.