Missouri Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson, a slaveholding planter from near Arrow Rock in west-central Missouri, who took office on Jan. 3, 1861. He wanted to state to join the Confederate States of America, and hoped the convention would help things along. Federal troops chased him from Jefferson City on June 14, 1861, after war began, and he took part in a rump assembly of pro-Southern legislators in Neosho, Mo., that voted to seceed on Oct. 30-31. They soon fled the state. He died near Little Rock, Ark., in 1862. (Missouri History Museum)
ST. LOUIS • Two large American flags flanked the image of an eagle, its fiery eyes fixed on the assembly floor below. From its bill flowed a banner with the words, “Union Forever.”
But sentiment was anything but unanimous among the men gathered for the special State Convention at the St. Louis Mercantile Library on March 4, 1861. Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson and fellow secessionists in the Legislature hoped the convention would push Missouri into the budding Confederate States of America.
The 99 delegates had been chosen in a hastily called statewide election. After one day in Jefferson City, they moved to the spacious private library, at 510 Locust Street, because of the better taverns and hotels nearby. Unionists hoped some of the city’s anti-secession feelings, symbolized by the eagle, might sway the delegates.
Jackson, a slaveholding planter from central Missouri, made his view plain by urging Missouri to “stand by the South.” Opposing him was U.S. Rep. Francis Blair Jr., President Abraham Lincoln’s point man in St. Louis. Blair’s newspaper, the Missouri Democrat, warned delegates: “The slave interest claims to dominate the state. Shall it do so?”
Across Missouri, only the city went for Lincoln in the November election. But Jackson’s scheming was complicated by widespread sympathy for saving the Union, even among slaveholders. Most of the convention delegates owned slaves, but only a few favored secession.
Delegates chose Sterling Price, a former governor and future Confederate general, as their chairman. They picked Hamilton Gamble, a St. Louis lawyer and future Union provisional governor, to lead its key Committee on Federal Relations. The choices portrayed Border State ambivalence.
The majority sought a hopeless middle ground. With Missouri flanked on three sides by free states, many considered secession suicidal. John Henderson of Pike County warned of mass flight by slaves that “will prove to be our destruction.” But John Redd of Marion County, arguing that the Union “cannot be pinned together by bayonets,” urged secession if bullets were to fly.
On March 9, Gamble’s committee declared “no adequate cause” for secession – but also opposed using federal troops to “coerce” seceding states. Ten days of debate were followed by overwhelming votes in favor of the creaky compromise. A much narrower 54-39 vote added an amendment urging Lincoln to abandon Fort Sumter at Charleston, S.C.
Jackson was thwarted, but events quickly overwhelmed the convention’s yearning for compromise. Sumter was bombarded on April 12. Jackson mustered the state militia to keep an eye on St. Louis, but Union Capt. Nathaniel Lyon captured its camp on May 10. Later that day, 28 civilians and seven soldiers died in gunfire on Olive Street between Lyon’s troops and Southern sympathizers.
Read more stories from Tim O’Neil’s Look Back series.