University of Missouri, St. Louis IRL @ UMSL Theses Graduate Works 5-12-2009 A Conservative in Lincoln's Cabinet: Edward Bates of Missouri Mark Alan Neels University of Missouri-St. Louis, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis Recommended Citation Neels, Mark Alan, "A Conservative in Lincoln's Cabinet: Edward Bates of Missouri" (2009). Theses. 162. http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/162 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Works at IRL @ UMSL. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of IRL @ UMSL. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A CONSERVATIVE IN LINCOLN’S CABINET EDWARD BATES OF MISSOURI Mark Alan Neels M.A., History, University of Missouri – St. Louis, 2009 B.A., History, Missouri State University – Springfield, 2006 A Thesis submitted to the Graduate School at the University of Missouri – St. Louis in Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History May 2009 Advisory Committee Louis S. Gerteis, Ph.D. Chairperson Peter Acsay, Ph.D. J. Frederick Fausz, Ph.D. Gerda W. Ray, Ph.D. Copyright, Mark A. Neels, 2009 Neels 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….4 CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................. 14 I SPEAK FOR NO MAN BUT MYSELF:" EDWARD BATES AND THE TRANSITIONAL POLITICS OF THE ANTEBELLUM YEARS CHAPTER TWO............................................................................................................. 43 EDWARD BATES AND THE EARLY POLICIES OF THE LINCOLN ADMINISTRATION CHAPTER THREE ........................................................................................................ 70 THE "PESTILENT QUESTION:" EDWARD BATES, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, AND THE POLICY OF EMANCIPATION CHAPTER FOUR: .......................................................................................................... 94 "I WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE THE BEST DEFENSE I CAN:" EDWARD BATES AND THE BATTLE OVER THE MISSOURI CONSTITUTION OF 1865 EPILOGUE .................................................................................................................... 119 "A GENERATION THAT HAD PASSED AWAY" NOTES…………………………………………………………………………………124 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………..137 Neels 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The fulfillment of this thesis marks a year’s undertaking that could not have been possible without the helpful guidance of my thesis director, Professor Louis S. Gerteis. For his guidance, and for taking the time to converse with me on Bates, Lincoln and the politics of the first half of the nineteenth century, I am greatly indebted. As well, I wish to thank the members of my thesis committee who have read through this document. They are Professors Peter Acsay, J. Frederick Fausz and Gerda W. Ray. Also, I wish to acknowledge and thank Professor Winston Hsieh, Graduate Advisor for the Department of History at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. Finally, I would be doing a great disservice if I did not acknowledge the love and encouragement of my wife, Mary Kate Neels. To her, as was Edward Bates to his own wife Julia, I am committed most of all. Neels 4 INTRODUCTION In this study, I have investigated the conservative values of Edward Bates, prominent Missourian and attorney general in the first administration of President Abraham Lincoln. To properly appreciate the topic of this study, some biographic information is necessary. Edward Bates was born in Belmont, Virginia near the James River in Goochland County, in 1793. As the youngest of twelve children of Thomas Bates, a revolutionary war veteran who had given up his private business to fight for independence and had been repaid with destitution, Bates was born into what biographer Marvin Cain described as “straitened circumstances.” His elder brothers left home when he was a young boy, and from the age of five, he was under the tutelage of his mother and older sisters. By the age of eight he could spell and compose verse, and after Thomas’s death in 1805 Bates’s mother, most likely hoping to provide her son with a more formal education, sent him to live with an older brother in Northumberland, Virginia. Two years later Bates again relocated, this time to the home of a cousin in Hanover, Maryland, where he received further instruction in history, philosophy and natural science. He enrolled at Charlotte Hall Academy in St. Mary’s County, but was quickly dissatisfied by the long regimen of individual study required for formal education. He continued at the academy, nonetheless, but when hostilities broke out in the War of 1812, Bates quickly signed up with the Virginia militia. Mustered out in early 1813 after brief service, and faced with the lack of prospects offered by his late father’s legacy of debt, Bates decided Neels 5 to join his brother, Frederick, in the Louisiana Territory. In 1814 he ventured west to Missouri. 1 A young man of twenty-one when he arrived in St. Louis, Bates rose to prominence through his association with Frederick, who had become a prominent citizen through his assignment by President Thomas Jefferson to the posts of Secretary of the Louisiana Territory and Recorder of Deeds for the town. Through this assignment, Frederick had established a relationship with the wealthy French landowners, and had managed to acquire land both west of St. Louis, on the Dardenne Prairie, and west of St. Charles, near Bonhomme. Likewise, Bates’s relationship with Frederick enhanced his own professional development in ways far more promising than anything he might have encountered in Virginia. Impressed by Frederick’s lawyer-friend, Rufus Easton, Bates petitioned Easton to study law in his office, and was elated when Easton agreed. Two years later, in 1816, Bates finished his training and was admitted to the bar. Now established on his own merits, Bates began prosecuting land disputes, and eventually caught the attention of Territorial Governor William Clark’s administration. Named a circuit attorney for St. Charles, St. Louis and Washington County, by 1818 Bates had opened his first private practice with attorney Joshua Barton. Fortunately for Bates, Governor Clark appointed him attorney for the Northern District of Missouri, a position that brought him into further contact with many of the most influential politicians of the Territory – including future senators David Barton and Thomas Hart Benton, and future Missouri governor Alexander McNair. Close association with such influential citizens opened the prospects of a promising political career, and Bates first emerged as a statesman during the crusade for Neels 6 Missouri statehood. When John Scott, Missouri’s lone territorial delegate, proposed Missouri’s admission to the Union, New York’s Representative James Talmadge added the prerequisite that Missouri should agree to the manumission of all slaves who had reached their twenty-first birthday. A similar amendment on the limitations of slavery within the state appeared in Illinois Senator Jesse B. Thomas’s amendment of 1820, which banned slavery in all of the Louisiana Territory north of the 36 th parallel. As a private citizen, Bates opposed both the Talmadge and Thomas proposals on the grounds of a strict interpretation of the qualifications for statehood. He believed that the only provision that must be met was the requirement, in Article IV, section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, that the state establish a republican government. The Talmadge and Thomas proposals, he believed, made extra-constitutional provisions for Missouri statehood. Nonetheless, Congress adopted Thomas’s proposal, with the exception that Missouri should be allowed to organize under a pro-slavery constitution, and President James Monroe thereby authorized Missouri to form a state government. The stance that Bates took won him a seat as a pro-slavery anti-restrictionist to the Missouri State Convention. During this time, however, Bates moved away from his Jeffersonian roots and closely associated himself with the wealthy banking class of Missourians. During this period, he first exhibited what would later be considered “Whiggish” tendencies. In the fulfillment of his duties on the Judiciary Committee, Bates proved an influential member of the convention. He advocated a strong judicial branch, proposing the election of judges to life terms and bestowing upon them full authority to interpret the laws. When the convention adjourned on 19 July 1820, Bates’s work had so enhanced his reputation that Missouri governor, Alexander McNair, named Neels 7 him as the state’s first attorney general. Also, McNair appointed Bates’s law partner Joshua Barton Missouri’s first secretary of state. Both men served in their positions for just over a year, before a controversy surrounding economic relief legislation, which Bates believed the state lacked the authority to implement, forced Bates to resign his post. This was the first in a series of temporary retirements that would define his later political career. 2 Between 1822-1829 Bates served in both the state and national legislatures. He served in the Missouri House from 1822-1823, retiring at the end of that term to attend to his new bride, Julia Davenport Coulter, and their first son. The death of his law partner, Barton, that same year, in a duel with Thomas Rector, interrupted Bates’s law practice. Rector’s brother, William, had been the Surveyor General of Missouri, Illinois and Arkansas. Barton had