Cass County, Missouri - Chapter 3: Missouri State, 1917

EVENTS OF ITS ADMISSION INTO THE UNION - PLAN OF ADMITTING FREE AND SLAVE STATES - COMPROMISES - MISSOURI ADMITTED BY PROCLAMATIONSTRIFE OF SETTLERS - FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY - SELECTION OF UNITED STATES SENATORS - BARTON AND BENTON SELECTED SENATORS - CIVIL WAR - EARLY SETTLEMENTS - EXECUTIVES OF COUNTY AND STATE FROM 1770.

The events of Missouri's admission to the Union as a State has much to do with the formation of the character of early settlement of the county. When Delegate Scott, from Missouri, introduced in Congress in 1819 his resolution preparatory to the admission of our State into the Union, there was a story raised relative to slavery. Jefferson is quoted as saying, "The Missouri controversy sounds like a fire-bell at midnight." The statesmen from North and South had been in the habit of admitting States into the Union by pairs. One to be slave, the other free. In 1818 Illinois and Mississippi were admitted, one slave, the other free State.

In 1819 when Alabama and Missouri applied for statehood, both ask¬ ing to be admitted as slave states a great hue and cry was raised through¬ out the Union and the strife never ended indeed until at Appomattox. The tempest was stilled for a while by cutting Maine off from Massa¬ chusetts and admitting her as a free State and Alabama and Missouri as slave states. Thus peace was held for a time. After furious debates both in Congress and on the hustings the peacemakers procured what was known as the first Missouri Compromise. This compromise left no ad¬ vantage to the slave, or pro-slavery party, and only left the country, par¬ ticularly Missouri, in a state of agitation. In 1820 Delegate Scott called up his resolution for the admission of Missouri. Her constitution so presented called for slavery. The storm burst forth with renewed fury. This all resulted in what is known as the Clay or Second Compromise. This was as meaningless as the first Missouri compromise. It had the effect, however, of James Monroe, by proclamation bearing date of the 10th day of August, 1821, declaring Missouri one of the States of the Union. The significant fact, revealed in our histories, is that all these eventful contests admitting Missouri into the Union were all accom¬ plished without a vote of the people.

All this wrangle, turmoil and strife left Missouri for the years fol¬ lowing in a mind not at all peacefully inclined. Not this alone but fur¬ ther brought to our shores a citizenship from the North and the South, bringing with them the bitterness and combativeness of each. It was this restless class who generally claim his home on the frontier. Statehood settled, we would expect quiet, if not peace, to reign. Not so in Missouri. Her first General Assembly meeting, even before the admission of the State, was in an apparent deadlock over the selection of the first senators to the United States Senate. David Barton was selected with little oppo¬ sition. Then followed a complete tie-up over the selection of his "sen¬ atorial yoke fellow," as we term it today, his associate in the Senate. After much acrimonious strife, it was proposed Senator-elect Barton should name his mate. This he did by the choice of Col. Thomas Hart Benton. Mr. Benton hailed from Tennessee, having been born in North Carolina. He had settled in Missouri during her territorial days.

During the period of seeking statehood, we had a government, in a way. The position of our State was fairly portrayed in the message of the then Governor, McNair. He said, "Since the organization of this gov¬ ernment (referring to the State organization) we have exhibited to the American people a spectacle novel and peculiar - an American republic on the confines of the Federal Union, exercising all the powers of sovereign government, with no actual political connection with the United States, nothing to bind us to them but a reverence for the same principles and an habitual attachment to them and their government." It would seem we were then in the Union, but not of the Union.

The lucky strike seems to have thus early turned to Mr. Benton. Mis¬ souri, it was assumed, was entitled to two senators, one for a four-year term and one for a six-year term. This was determined between David Barton and Thomas H. Benton, by casting lots. In this Mr. Benton re¬ ceived the six-year term. The man who really made him a Senator had to take the short term. This long term gave Benton great power and enabled him to fix firmly his power over the fighting democracy of Mis¬ souri. With prestige and his great force of character Senator Benton was enabled to keep himself in the Senate of the United States for thirty years. From that day to early eighteen sixties, Benton ruled Missouri. Between our admission to the Union and the Civil War many brilliant men appeared on the political horizon. As we look back to it, we see with a degree of shame, many of these useful men throwing away their usefulness in falling victims to dueling. Thanks be to the masses of the people this vile practice was put to an end.

The horrors of our Civil War are too fresh in memory to profit in rehearsing its bloody and cruel happenings. That war raged in Missouri from 1856. The border counties, of which Cass was one, had their share in the doings of those awful days. These scenes of the whole state had a mighty influence on the character of the early settlers of this county and for that reason is here briefly referred to.

So from the early settlements about St. Louis, St. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau and the eastern border of the State, this turbulent spirit of the hardy pioneer pushed his way west, up the Missouri and Osage rivers. From the Osage they wended their way northward and from the shores of the Missouri River they gradually pushed their way over hill and plain southward. From these differing sources came the early settlers of the fertile plains of this county. The people were as different in tempera¬ ment, too, as they were from their source of springing. The French and his blood were ever pushing out in quest for lead, zinc and mines of other ores, about which the Indian had told fabulous stories. The Spanish and his descendants came to these plains from a purely adventurous spirit and an all absorbing desire to find new game to hunt and new places of discovery. On the open plains, forty miles south of the mouth of the Kaw as it entered the great Missouri, both found as good a land as the sun shines upon, now Cass County, Missouri.