Missouri Historical Review Volume 101, No. 4 July 2007 The State Historical Society of Missouri Missouri Historical Review Staff Editorial Advisory Board Gary R. Kremer Lawrence O. Christensen Editor William E. Foley Alan R. Havig Lynn Wolf Gentzler Patrick Huber Associate Editor T_. x T Virginia J. Laas Blaire Leible Garwitz Bonnie Stepenoff Information Specialist Arvarh E- Strickland 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 considered for publication in the Review. Manuscripts pertaining to all fields of American history will be considered if the subject matter has significant relevance to the history of Missouri, the Middle West, or the West. Genealogical studies, however, are not accepted because of limited appeal to general readers. Authors should submit two double-spaced copies of their manuscripts. Footnotes, prepared according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., also should be double-spaced and placed at the end of the text. Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts, preferably in Microsoft Word, on a disk or CD. Two hard copies still are required. Originality of subject, general interest of the article, sources used, interpretation, and style are criteria for acceptance and publication. Manuscript length, exclusive of footnotes, should be between 4,000 and 7,500 words. The editorial staff will not evaluate manuscripts that have been published elsewhere or have been submitted to another publication for consideration. Articles that are accepted for publication become the property of The State Historical Society of Missouri and may not be published elsewhere without permission.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 America: History and Life, Writings on American History, The Western Historical Quarterly, and The Journal of American History. Manuscripts submitted to the Missouri Historical Review should be addressed to Dr. Gary R. Kremer, Editor, Missouri Historical Review, The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298. Cover Description: The cover illustration is a detail from an 1869 map of Pleasant Hill drawn by Albert Ruger. This birds-eye view of the town shows the railroad that is the subject of James R. Shortridge s article, 'Edward Miller s Town: The Reconceptualization of Pleasant Hill by the Pacific Railroad of Missouri, " which begins on page 205. [Birds Eye View of the City of Pleasant Hill, Cass Co., Missouri, 1869, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division] 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. Periodicals postage is paid at Columbia, Missouri. Postmaster: Send address changes to Missouri Historical Review, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298. Copyright © The State Historical Society of Missouri, 2007 Missouri Historical Review Vol. 101, No. 4 July 2007 Contents Editor's Note 195 America's Crossroads: 196 A Century of Kansas City Essays from the Missouri Historical Review By Diane Mutti Burke and John Herron Edward Miller's Town: 205 The Reconceptualization of Pleasant Hill by the Pacific Railroad of Missouri By James R. Shortridge The St. Louis and Suburban 226 Streetcar Strike of 1900 By James F Baker From the Stacks: 246 Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Kansas City The William Volker and Company By David Boutros Book Reviews 251 The Union on Trial: The Political Journals of Judge William Barclay Napton, 1829-1883. Edited by Christopher Phillips and Jason L. Pendleton. Reviewed by Robert W. Frizzell Americas First Olympics: The St. Louis Games of 1904. By George R. Matthews. Reviewed by Steven L. Piott Fort Pillow, A Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory. By John Cimprich. Reviewed by Louis S. Gerteis Book Notes 255 Captain Tough: Chief of Scouts. By Charles F. Harris. Key Command: Ulysses S. Grant s District of Cairo. By T. K. Kionka. Five Stars: Missouri s Most Famous Generals. By James F. Muench. A Second Home: Missouri s Early Schools. By Sue Thomas. By His Own Hand?: The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis. Edited by John D. W. Guice. Seneca, Missouri: Little Town on the Border, Volume VLL By Virginia Brady Hoare and Mary Alice Tourtillott. Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home. Edited by Walter D. Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Helbich. News in Brief 256 Index to Volume 101 257 Editor's Note GARY R. KREMER This issue of the Missouri Historical Review features an essay titled "America's Crossroads: A Century of Kansas City Essays from the Missouri Historical Review," written by professors John Herron and Diane Mutti Burke, both faculty members in the Department of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Professor Herron arrived in Kansas City in 2003, after completing a doctorate at the University of New Mexico and doing post­ doctoral work at the University of San Diego. Hfs areas of specialty include environmental history, the American West, and modern America. Diane Mutti Burke joined the University of Missouri-Kansas City his­ tory department in 2004, after completing doctoral work under a distinguished scholar of the South, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, at Emory University in Atlanta the same year. Her specialties include the American South and African American and women's history. The essay crafted for this issue of the Review by professors Herron and Mutti Burke will also serve as the introduction to the second volume in the State Historical Society's Century of Missouri History Scholarship Series, a book titled Kansas City, America s Crossroads: Essays from the Missouri Historical Review, 1906-2006, to be published in October 2007. The first vol­ ume in this series, a collection of essays on the Civil War in Missouri edited by Dr. William E. Parrish, was published in 2006. The Century of Missouri History Scholarship Series, projected to reach twelve volumes over the next five years, celebrates the first century of publi­ cation of the Missouri Historical Review. Since the first issue of the Review appeared in October 1906, more than seventy articles on the history of the Kansas City region have graced its pages. Professors Herron and Mutti Burke surveyed each of these articles and selected fourteen to be reproduced in the commemorative anthology. Their introduction to the collection, published here for the first time, seeks to explain the trends they discerned in the articles and their rationale for choosing the essays. Next year, the Society plans to publish two additions to the series: a vol­ ume on the history of recreation and entertainment in Missouri, to be edited by Dr. Alan Havig, professor of history at Stephens College in Columbia, and a collection of essays on the history of St. Louis, to be edited by Dr. Louis Gerteis, chair of the Department of History at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. 195 America's Crossroads: A Century of Kansas City Essays from the Missouri Historical Review DIANE MUTTI BURKE and JOHN HERRON* In May 1968, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey arrived in St. Louis to dedicate what would become Missouri's most famous landmark, the Gateway Arch. Designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, the soaring steel arch rises more than six hundred feet above its foundation on the bank of the Mississippi River. The outline of the arch, immortalized on postage stamps and com­ memorative state quarters, is ubiquitous within Missouri. The landmark was built to cel­ ebrate the contribution of St. Louis to the development of the American frontier. In link­ ing the arch to the opening of the West, its architects incorpo­ rated America's tallest monu­ ment into a powerful national mythology. From Thomas Jefferson for­ ward, generations of American citizens had long dreamed of an expansive empire of liberty and democracy anchored in lands of This engraving of the the far west. A product of the Missouri riverfront in Atlantic world, Jefferson himself would never venture more than a few dozen Kansas City is believed to miles west of his Virginia home. But of the West he remained a man obsessed. have been derived from In his travels he scoured libraries and personal estates, eventually amassing T.M. Easterly's 1848 one of the largest private collections about the peoples and geography of the daguerreotype of Kansas American West.1 It was his faith in the western promise that prompted his City, the earliest known sponsorship of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the rest of the Corps picture of the city. of Discovery, an ambitious reconnaissance of America's newest acquisition, [SHSMO 025879] the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark were agents of national greatness as much as they were explorers. They mapped and catalogued the bounty of *Diane Mutti Burke and John Herron are assistant professors of history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Mutti Burke received a PhD degree from Emory University, and Herron received a PhD degree from the University of New Mexico. 196 America's Crossroads • 197 the region, but they also laid claim to a territory that Jefferson, and many like him, believed would fulfill the destiny of the young United States. And within this weighty mythology, St. Louis stood at the heart of it all—the jumping- off point for settlers, swindlers, and dreamers who looked to the West as the future of the republic. But greeting Humphrey on this spring day was not a multitude of flag- waving Jeffersonians, but a heavy rain, so much rain that event organizers cancelled a planned regatta and gathered crowds remained smaller than ex­ pected.2 The rain did not dampen Humphrey's enthusiasm, however, as in the middle of his presidential campaign, he tied himself and the nation to the promise and potential embodied by the arch.