10

CONFRONTATION, EMANCIPATION AND THE IRONCLAD OATH

Although the Emancipation Proclamation issued on January 1, 1863, did not apply to Missouri because it was a loyal state, slaves in Missouri did not know or care about such distinctions. One of the points of contention between Governor Gamble and Samuel Curtis, who assumed duties as the new department commander in September 1862, was the enforcement of the provision of the Second Confiscation Act that freed slaves of persons known to be Rebels. Curtis’s provost marshal, Franklin Dick, authorized the issuance of certificates of freedom to former slaves based only on their assertion that their master supported the rebellion. Once word of this policy became known, slaves began to leave for Union army camps in large numbers.

While the growing Radical faction approved of General Curtis, conservatives campaigned to have him replaced. Complaints over Curtis and Dick’s assessments led to the suspension of the practice in January 1863. Conservatives circulated rumors, vehemently denied by Curtis, that he was involved in corrupt cotton trading. The relationship between Gamble and Curtis grew worse. Lincoln decided to replace Curtis, but the man he named, William Sumner, unexpectedly died before he could assume command. Finally, Lincoln brought back John Schofield as departmental commander in May 1863. He wrote to Schofield that he did not remove Curtis because he had done anything wrong. Rather, Lincoln said that the Union men in Missouri had fallen into a “pestilential factional quarrel” with Curtis at the head of one faction and Governor Gamble the other. “[A]s I could not remove Governor Gamble, I had to remove General Curtis.” Lincoln went on to urge Schofield to follow a moderate course. “If both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will, probably, be about right.”

Samuel Curtis pursued antislavery policies in Missouri that conflicted with Governor Gamble’s and led to his removal by Lincoln. Library of Congress.

Somehow Lincoln’s letter got into Radical hands in Missouri, and it was published. Both conservatives and Radicals were incensed. Gamble wrote a blistering reply to the president, calling the reference to him a “most wanton and unmerited insult.” Lincoln refused to read Gamble’s letter “to preserve my own temper, by avoiding irritants, so far as practicable.” He denied acting from any malice toward the governor.

Schofield suspected that Curtis had turned the letter over to the newspapers. (Curtis denied it.) Schofield summoned the editor, William McKee, to explain his actions, but he declined to appear. Schofield arrested McKee and demanded to know who provided the letter. McKee refused to divulge his source. At that point, Lincoln intervened and called Schofield’s hunt off. “Please spare me the trouble this is likely to bring,” he wrote. Schofield complied, but that did not settle the uproar.

Charles Drake, a newly minted Radical (he had been a Know-Nothing in the 1850s and a proslavery Democrat as late as 1860) led the emerging Radical Republicans, whose major platform plank was immediate and uncompensated emancipation of the slaves. Throughout 1863, Charles Drake repeatedly criticized Lincoln as too soft and as a dupe of conservatives like Gamble. The governor, he said, “was in fact in sympathy with the disloyal people of Missouri, however little you like it.”

The disaster at Lawrence brought Missouri Radicals into another confrontation with the president, this time in person. Accompanied by Kansas senator James Lane, Drake led a delegation of seventy Missourians into the East Room of the White House, where they were introduced one by one to the president. John Hay, one of Lincoln’s personal secretaries, took notes of the meeting. Hay, an Illinois native and a graduate of Brown University, had little use for the “frowsy” and “ungodly Pike”—a term of derision for Missourians. They were, Hay recorded, “[a]n ill combed, black broadcloth, dusty, longhaired and generally vulgar assemblage of earnest men who came to get their right as they viewed it.”

Drake read a statement complaining of the ineptitude of General Schofield and seeking to have him replaced by the comfortably radical General Benjamin F. Butler. They also that the EMM was ineffective and largely disloyal and sought to have it replaced by regular Federal troops. Drake protested that Gamble had no authority to require men to join the EMM and that some Radicals who intended to file a lawsuit to that effect were prevented from doing so when General Schofield announced that the president’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus would apply in such cases.

Charles Drake, a Radical Republican, was primarily responsible for the state constitution that abolished slavery in Missouri in January 1865. Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

Lincoln listened patiently. When Drake was finished, though, the president went on the attack. He pointed out that the criticisms of General Schofield were “vague denunciations” whose basis was his sympathy with their political enemies. He defended Schofield’s administration of the department and praised him for sending much-needed reinforcements to Grant at Vicksburg. As for their complaints about the suspension of habeas corpus, he noted that their position was “that which is right when employed against [your] opponents is wrong when employed against yourselves.” The interview lasted for an hour, with the president trading barbs with Drake, Lane and rude “members from the interior” of Missouri. Lincoln promised a thoughtful response.

Drake waited ten days in Washington for the president’s answer. Lincoln wrote it five days after the meeting but did not send it until Drake was back in St. Louis. Perhaps he wanted to avoid another personal confrontation. The response was thoughtful, but hardly what Drake’s delegation wanted. Lincoln repeated his defense of General Schofield, refused to disband the EMM (noting that his suspension of habeas corpus did apply to prevent Radical attempts to attack its legality in court) and rued the political discord among Missouri Unionists over the issue of slavery. He summed up the situation in typical pithy prose:

We are in civil war. In such cases there always is a main question; but in this case that question is a perplexing compound—Union and Slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the Union, saying nothing of those who are against it. Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not without slavery—those for it without, but not with—those for it with or without, but prefer it with—and those for it with or without, but prefer it without. Among these again, is a subdivision of those who are for gradual but not for immediate, and those who are for immediate, but not for gradual extinction of slavery. It is easy to conceive that all these shades of opinion, and even more, may be sincerely entertained by honest and truthful men. Yet, all being for the Union, by reason of these differences, each will prefer a different way of sustaining the Union.

Lincoln’s refusal to accede to the Radicals’ demands was a setback for them. It was followed shortly by an unsuccessful campaign to replace the Missouri Supreme Court judges, appointed by Gamble in 1862, who were retained in office by a thin margin in the November elections. Charges of fraud were bandied about, apparently with some reason. One regiment returned 1,084 votes for the Radical candidates and only 5 for the incumbents. It is likely that the Radicals did enjoy overwhelming support in that unit—the difficulty was that it had only 726 eligible voters.

On a more satisfactory note, General Schofield finally fulfilled the promise of the Second Confiscation Act and Emancipation Proclamation that slaves could join the Union army. This was, of course, a touchy subject in Missouri. The first regiment organized in Missouri was designated the Third Arkansas Volunteer Infantry (Colored) to avoid rousing the sensibilities of loyal slaveholders. However, all but the staunchest proslavery advocate realized that the recruitment of black soldiers was inevitable.

Schofield’s order provided that slaves who were accepted for the army would be given a certificate declaring that they were forever free. To placate their owners—at least those who were loyal—the government would allow them to claim $300 per man who volunteered. Schofield did not, however, permit recruiting officers to travel to the field for men. Rather, they were directed to set up offices in the towns. That meant that slaves who wished to join had to run away from their masters (or seek their consent). Contrary to orders, slave patrols were revived in some counties for the express purpose of preventing bondsmen from enlisting. Some officers took steps to actively discourage enlistments. In Mexico, for example, William Poillon (later an officer in the Sixty-eighth United States Colored Infantry) wrote to his friend Dr. James Martien (Jefferson Jones’s nemesis) that a local lieutenant brought back a man from St. Louis who had been rejected by the army. The man’s horror stories about African American soldiers who were suffering from “Cold, Starvation and death” were being used to discourage volunteers. (The stories were true.)

Despite the obstacles, the lure of freedom was too much to stop the male slaves from taking the opportunity to lose their bonds forever.

Spottswood Rice tried to run away in 1863, but he was caught by slave patrols. He agreed with his owner, Benjamin Lewis, not to run away again. Rice, however, had no intention of staying on Lewis’s plantation. In February 1864, he enlisted in the United States Army, persuading ten of Lewis’s slaves from Howard County to join him. Like many new recruits, he suffered from disease and saw no action (Rice developed chronic rheumatism, which plagued him for the rest of his life). He served honorably as a hospital attendant in St. Louis until he was discharged in 1865.

An unidentified African American soldier at Benton Barracks. Approximately 40 percent of male slaves of military age in Missouri joined the army. Library of Congress.

Nancy Jones reported that three of her slaves, Speed, Ike and Willie, signed up, and that all but two of a neighbor’s slaves did likewise. In all, more than three hundred men were recruited at Boonville alone by the end of 1863. Paula Stratton’s man—also named Ike—left in December. Willard Mendenhall noted in his diary that black soldiers were being recruited in Lexington—“an outrage,” in his opinion.

William Messley, another Howard County recruit, was listed as an engineer in civilian life. The twenty-two year-old Messley was quickly picked to be the first sergeant of his company of the Sixty-second United States Colored Infantry. He became seriously ill in 1864 and for undisclosed reasons was reduced in rank to sergeant. But on May 13, 1865, in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmetto Ranch, Texas (on the Rio Grande), Messley earned a promotion back to first sergeant for “gallantry in action.”

But the soldiers’ pride in their newfound freedom and military service to their country was often tempered by troubles at home. The statute that freed a black recruit also freed “his mother and his wife and children.” But the families usually did not accompany them to the army, and they were left at the mercy of their former owner. Some of the masters and mistresses treated them badly. It must have been wrenching for Private Andrew Hogshead (also known as Andrew Valentine) to receive a letter from his wife, Ann, that read, “You do not know how bad I am treated. They are treating me worse and worse every day. Our child cries for you. Send me some money as soon as you can for me and my child are almost naked. My cloth is yet in the loom and there is no telling when it will be out. Do not send any of your letters to Hogsett [his former owner] especially those having money in them as Hogsett will keep the money.”

William Messley, from Howard County, Missouri, was promoted to first sergeant for gallantry at the Battle of Palmetto Ranch, Texas. Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

The commanders of these men sought help for them. One reported that wives of Simon Williamson and Richard Beasley, soldiers from Franklin County in the Sixty-fifth United States Colored Infantry, “have again been whipped by their Masters unmercifully” and prevented them from going to the post office to pick up mail. If they did get mail, the master was “sure to whip them for it if he knows it.” Lieutenant William Argo, Seventh Cavalry MSM, reported from Sedalia that the families of black soldiers were being driven from their masters’ homes. He was directed to send them to the contraband camp at Benton Barracks established by General Schofield.

Hogshead, Williamson and Beasley all later died of disease in Louisiana.

Some soldiers did not passively endure maltreatment of their families. Spottswood Rice wrote to his daughter Mary in September 1864, assuring her that he had not forgotten her and that he would come to take her from her mistress, Kitty Digges of Glasgow. “I expect to have you. If Diggs dont give you up this Government will and I feel confident that I will get you Your Miss Kaitty said that I tried to steal you But I’^ll let her know that god never intended for man to steal his own flesh and blood.” To Digges, he wrote:

I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal to plunder my child away from you now I want you to understand that mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own and you may hold on to hear as long as you can but I want you to remembor this one thing that the longor you keep my Child from me the longor you will have to burn in hell…I want you to understand kittey diggs that where ever you and I meets we are enmays to each orthere I offered once to pay you forty dollers for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you you never in you life befor I came down hear did you give Children any thing not eny thing whatever not even a dollers worth of expencs now you call my children your pro[per]ty not so with me my Children is my own and I expect to get them and when I get ready to come after mary I will have bout a powrer and autherity to bring hear away and to exacute vengencens on them that holds my Child you will then know how to talke to me I will assure that and you will know how to talk rite too I want you now to just hold on to hear if you want to iff your conchosence tells thats the road go that road and what it will brig you to kittey diggs I have no fears about geting mary out of your hands this whole Government gives chear to me and you cannot help your self[.]

The Digges family was frightened and angry. Kitty Digges’s brother, Frank Digges, was a prominent man in Glasgow. He was a lawyer and served as the town’s postmaster for a time. Although a slaveholder, Digges was a strong Unionist. He was the provost marshal for the area for a couple of years. Therefore, he and his family expected that their voices would be heard by the Missouri high command. After receiving Rice’s letter, Frank wrote to William Rosecrans, the department commander, with his complaints. He asked Rosecrans “to send the scoundrel” that wrote the letters away. Digges explained that Rice’s daughter Mary was hired out by his sister to another person. Kitty asked him to let Mary go to St. Louis, but he refused. He had let the rest of Rice’s family go and would send Mary whenever he was satisfied that her mother could support her. Whether Rosecrans intervened is not known, but Mary did join her family in St. Louis.

Although the Digges family escaped any attacks by Union soldiers, Spottswood Rice’s former master Benjamin Lewis met with tragedy a month later. A brigade of Price’s soldiers led by Jo Shelby captured Glasgow on October 15. The Confederates moved on the next day, and townsfolk must have been relieved to see them go. But guerrilla “Bloody Bill” Anderson led his men into town on October 21. According to a lurid account in the New York Times, Anderson burst into Mrs. Lewis’s bedroom demanding that she reveal where her husband was hiding. She at first said she did not know but relented when Anderson threatened to burn the house down. The guerrillas seized Lewis and “proceeded for several hours with a series of acts which the demons inhabiting the lowest hell could not surpass in cruelty.” Lewis was punched, pistol-whipped and beaten. The guerrillas shoved the barrel of their revolvers in his mouth and threatened to blow his head off. Lewis offered them $1,000 in silver, but they demanded $5,000 in gold. A nighttime visit to the bank of Thompson & Dunnica produced the $5,000 in gold and greenbacks—Thompson being Lewis’s cousin. While Anderson was torturing Lewis, some of his men were raping a young female slave. Early the next morning, the men returned and raped two more slave women. Lewis’s health was broken. He survived the war but died shortly thereafter from the effects of his night of terror.

Missouri Radicals, led by Charles Drake, initially opposed Lincoln’s reelection but later united behind him when their favorite, John C. Frémont, withdrew from the race. In the November 1864 election, the Radicals won control of the statehouse and both houses of the General Assembly, and they dominated the delegates to a state convention selected to draw up a new constitution. The convention’s first order of business was the emancipation of slaves. There was no more debate about gradual versus immediate emancipation or whether the slaveholders should be compensated. Slavery had broken down in the state by the end of 1864, with little remaining but to give it a formal burial. On January 11, 1865, the convention approved emancipation of all slaves in Missouri effective July 4, 1865. When the news reached the Radical legislature, its members broke into a rousing rendition of “John Brown’s Body.” Dr. John Bates Johnson, a member of the Western Sanitary Commission, wrote of the celebrations in St. Louis:

Glasgow, Missouri, in 1864. Glasgow was an important port for the processing and shipping of tobacco. Library of Congress.

[W]e have had nothing but salutes, bonfires, illuminations and huzzas. The negroes are about the happiest mortals I have seen. They all seem calm, not disposed to any outbreak as evidence of their joy, but their faces seem lit up with new hope that they are free.

Emancipation Ordinance abolishing slavery in Missouri, January 11, 1865. Library of Congress.

Another major provision Drake sought to have in the new state constitution was the “ironclad” oath requiring anyone who sought to vote or to serve as a public official, juror, lawyer, corporate officer, trustee, teacher or minister to attest that he had not committed any of eighty-six actions in support of the rebellion. These innovations did not last long. The latter provision was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1867 as a bill of attainder—punishment without a judicial trial. Frank Blair challenged the voting provision by refusing to take the oath—no one thought that a former Union major general and United States congressman supported the rebellion. In a surprise, the Supreme Court upheld the suffrage provision in a tie vote. But when former Confederates won the right to hold public office, these kinds of restrictions were repealed, and conservative Democrats once again controlled the state.