The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Struggle for Missouri, by John McElroy

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Title: The Struggle for Missouri

Author: John McElroy

Release Date: March 25, 2010 [EBook #31770]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI ***

Produced by David Widger

THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI

BY JOHN McELROY

States are not great except as men may make them,
Men are not great, except they do and dare.
--Eugene F. Ware.

WASHINGTON, D. C:

THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE CO.

1909

DEDICATED

TO THE UNION MEN OF MISSOURI

THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI.

[Illustration: 003-The Struggle for Missouri.]

3

CHAPTER I. A SALIENT BASTION FOR THE SLAVERY EMPIRE.

WHATEVER else may be said of Southern statesmen, of the elder school,
they certainly had an imperial breadth of view. They took in the whole
continent in a way that their Northern colleagues were slow in doing.
It cannot be said just when they began to plan for a separate Government
which would have Slavery as its cornerstone, would dominate the
Continent and ultimately absorb Cuba, Mexico and Central America as far
as the Isthmus of Panama.

Undoubtedly it was in the minds of a large number of them from the
organization of the Government, which they regarded as merely a
temporary expedient--an alliance with the Northern States until the
South was strong enough to "assume among the Powers of the Earth the
separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's
God entitle them."

4

They achieved a great strategic victory when in 1818 they drew the
boundaries of the State of Missouri.

The Ordinance of 1787 dedicated to Freedom all of the immense territory
which became the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and
Wisconsin. The wonderful growth of these in population, wealth and
political influence alarmed the Slave Power--keenly sensitive, as bad
causes always are, to anything which may possibly threaten,--and it
proceeded to erect in the State of Missouri a strong barrier to the
forward march of the Free Soil idea.

When the time for the separation came, the Northern fragmen