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17th century
In
1673, Father
Jacques Marquette and
Louis Joliet sailed down the
Mississippi River in canoes
along the area that would later become
Missouri. The two established that the Mississippi River
ran all the way to the sea. In 1682,
Robert Cavalier
claimed the Louisiana
Territory for France.
From this
time up until the building of the first
railways in the Mississippi
Basin in the 19th century,
the Mississippi system waterways were the only means of
communication and
transportation in the region.
During the early years of French occupation, trade with the
Indians
was the only major industry. It was carried on using
birch canoes and
pirogues.
18th century
By
1720, immigrants
were settling in considerable numbers, both by way of the
Great Lakes and the mouth of the
Mississippi. To meet the demands of rapidly expanding
commerce, barges
and keelboats were introduced. In
the same year, the Frenchman
Phillippe
François Renault brought the first
black slaves to
Missouri to work in lead
mining.they also both were looking for
gold in the mines of the Mississippi.
Fort Orleans was built in
1724 along the north bank of the
Missouri River by
Etienne de Bourgmont in
what is now Carroll
County, Missouri.
In
1750,
Ste. Genevieve was
founded on the Mississippi.
King Louis XV issued an edict
concerning the use of black slaves in the territory.
Spain gained control of the region in
1762 under the
Treaty of Fontainebleau,
but it did not assume control until 1770.
Under the Spanish regime, the code concerning black slaves
was continued.
St. Louis was founded in
1764 by the Frenchman
Pierre Laclède Liguest. Five
years later, he founded
St. Charles as a
trading outpost.
19th century
Louisiana Territory
Spain, in
1800, negotiated the territory's cession
back to France. The French ruler,
Napoleon, reasoned that the territory could not be
protected from the expanding United
States. He then sold it to the U.S. under
President Thomas Jefferson
for $15 million in 1803 as part of the
Louisiana Purchase.
The
Lewis and Clark
Expedition set out in 1804 to map
the region and in 1805, the
Louisiana Territory was
organized, with the
government seat in St. Louis.
The
Mississippi-Ohio river systems were navigated by
steamboat starting in
1811 with the
New Orleans
steamboat travelling from
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
to New Orleans. On
December 16 of that year, the
first of a series known as the
New Madrid earthquakes
occurred, the largest in the history of the United States.
Tremors were reported as far away as
Philadelphia.
Missouri Territory
After
Louisiana became a state in
1812, the remaining Louisiana Territory
was renamed the Missouri
Territory. That year, the first general assembly of the
Missouri Territory was created, with the five original
counties being Cape Girardeau,
New Madrid,
Saint Charles,
Saint Louis, and
Ste. Genevieve.
In
1817, the steamboat
Zebulon M.
Pike reached Saint Louis. That year, the commerce
from New Orleans to the Falls of the
Ohio at Louisville
was carried in barges and keel-boats having a capacity of 60
to 80 tons each, with 3 to 4 months required to make a
single trip. In 1820 steamboats were
making the same trip in 15 to 20 days, by
1838 in 6 days or less; and in 1834
there were 230 steamboats, having an aggregate tonnage of
39,000 tons, engaged in trade on the Mississippi. Large
numbers of flat boats, especially from the Ohio and its
tributaries, continued to carry produce
downstream; an extensive canal system in the state of
Ohio, completed in 1842,
connected the Mississippi with the
Great Lakes; these were connected with the
Hudson River and the
Atlantic Ocean by the
Erie Canal, which had been open
since 1825.
In
1818, the first college west of the
Mississippi River was founded,
Saint Louis University,
a Catholic Jesuit Seminary that expanded into secular
instruction as well.
Missouri Compromise
Also in
1818, Missouri requested admittance to
the Union as a
slave
state. This became a national controversy due to the
delicate balance between free and slave states. In
1820, the
Missouri Compromise cleared the way for Missouri's entry
to the union as a slave state, along with
Maine, a free state, to preserve the balance.
Additionally, the Missouri Compromise stated that the
remaining portion of the Louisiana Territory above the
36°30′ line was to be free from slavery. This same year, the
first Missouri constitution was adopted. The following year,
1821, Missouri was admitted as the 24th
state, with the state capital temporarily located in Saint
Charles until a permanent location could be selected.
Jefferson City was chosen in
1826 as the site for the capital.
Before the
steamboat was successfully employed on the Mississippi the
population of the valley did not reach 2,000,000; but the
population increased from approximately 2,500,000 in 1820 to
more than 6,000,000 in 1840, and to 14,000,000 or more in
1860. The well-equipped passenger boats of the period
immediately preceding the Civil War were also a notable
feature on the Ohio and the Lower Mississippi.
During this
time, both free blacks and slaves lived in Missouri. In
1824, the Missouri
State Supreme Court ruled that free blacks could not be
re-enslaved, known as "once free, always free." In
1846, the
Dred Scott v. Sandford
case began. Dred and Harriet Scott,
who were slaves, sued for freedom in state courts. This was
on the premise that he had previously lived in a free state.
This case continued until 1857,
culminating in a landmark
United States Supreme
Court decision rejecting Scott's arguments and
sustaining slavery.
Platte Purchase
At the time
of its admission, the western border of Missouri was a
straight line from Iowa to Arkansas based on the confluence
of the Kaw River with the
Missouri River in the Kansas
City West Bottoms. Land in what
is now northwest Missouri was deeded to the
Iowa (tribe) and the combined
Sac (tribe) and
Fox (tribe). Following
encroachments on the land by white settlers -- most notably
Joseph Robidoux --
William Clark
persuaded the tribes to agree give up their land in exchange
for $7,500 in the 1836 Platte
Purchase. The land was ratified by Congress in 1837 and
an area a little smaller than the combined area of
Rhode Island and
Delaware was added to Missouri. It
consists of Andrew,
Atchison,
Buchanan,
Holt and
Nodaway counties.
Gateway to the West
The
University of
Missouri was created in 1839. Six
years later, St. Louis was connected by telegraph to the
east coast. The same year, the first bank
west of the Mississippi was established.
The
California Gold Rush
began in 1848 and Saint Louis,
Independence,
Westport and
Saint Joseph became
departure points for those heading to California, earning
Missouri the nickname "Gateway to the West".
Kansas City was
incorporated a year later on the banks of the Missouri
River.
In
1860, the Pony
Express began its short-lived run from Saint Joseph to
Sacramento, California.
Mormons and the 'Mormon War'
Joseph Smith, Jr., the
leader of the LDS church (otherwise known
as Mormons) claimed to have received
revelation that western Missouri, specifically the area
around Independence,
and other areas of western Missouri, were to become
Zion and a place of
gathering. By the early 1830's Mormons came into the area,
at first to Independence and its neraby environs. One Mormon
community was set up in
Daviess county and was named
Adam-ondi-Ahman, which Joseph Smith said was the place
where Adam lived after being expelled from the Garden of
Eden.
Many of the
early settlers in western Missouri, who came from the
southern states and brought along with them the institution
of slavery, resented the newcomers. The Mormons would vote
in blocs and congregate in concentrated areas, and would
typically trade only amongst themselves, and they would not
hold slaves; all this tended to make the 'old settlers'
jealous and suspicious. Open claims by the Mormons that the
area was given to them by God only worsened the situation.
By the mid 1830's Mormons had effectively been driven from
the Independence area, but they relocated to counties north
and a little east. Disputes with old settlers began anew,
and by 1838 open hostility was peaking again. Missouri
governor Lilburn Boggs issued
the ominous sounding
Extermination Order, which encouraged Missourians to
expel Mormons by all means possible. Skirmishes and small
battles occurred and a number of people were killed, mostly
Mormons. Joseph Smith was jailed, along with other LDS
leaders and held in several jails for more than five months,
with no hope of a trial or court hearing. Smith was allowed
to escape and he and his church moved to Illinois to form
the city of Nauvoo in 1839. Missouri still holds many
important sites still considered significant by the LDS and
Community of Christ churches. In 1976 Missouri officially
revoked the extermination order.
Civil War
Immediately
before the Civil War
began, Missourians voted overwhelmingly against seceding
from the Union. However, in the
1860 presidential election, the
Republican
(and therefore anti-slavery)
Abraham Lincoln received only a small percentage of
Missouri votes, mostly from St. Louis.
Northern Democrat
Stephen A. Douglas won the
state's 12
electoral votes — the only state he captured in his
campaign. Sympathies ran for both sides, the
Confederacy and
the Union, and it was in Saint Louis where the first blood
was spilled in the "Camp
Jackson Affair."
In
1861, General
John C. Fremont issued a proclamation that freed slaves
who had been owned by those that had taken up arms against
the Union. Lincoln immediately reversed this unauthorized
action. Secessionists tried to form their own state
government, joining the Confederacy and establishing a
capital in exile first in Neosho,
Missouri and later in Texas (at
Marshall, Texas). By the end of the war, Missouri had
supplied 110,000 troops for the
Union Army and 40,000
troops for the Confederate Army.
Because of
the state's strategic location linking Northern and Southern
states, many important Civil War battles occurred in
Missouri. Missouri was the location of the third largest
number of engagements of any state, after Virginia and
Tennessee. The pro-Southern state force known as the
Missouri State Guard
commanded by Sterling Price
initiated a long retreat from
Boonville to the Southwestern portion of the state in
1861. In Carthage,
the Guard defeated a heavy detachment of Federal regulars
commanded by Col. Franz Sigel.
Shortly afterward, the 12,000 man force of the combined
elements of the Missouri State Guard, Arkansas State Guard,
and Confederate regulars soundly defeated the Federal army
of Nathaniel Lyon at
Wilson's Creek or
"Oak Hills".
Following
the success at Wilson's Creek, southern forces pushed
northward and captured the 3500-strong garrison at the first
Battle of Lexington. At
this time, Federal forces contrived to campaign to retake
Missouri, causing the Southern forces to retreat from the
state and head for Arkansas and later Mississippi.
In
Arkansas, the Missourians fought at the battle of Pea Ridge,
meeting defeat. In Mississippi, elements of the Missouri
State Guard participated in the struggles at
Corinth and
Iuka, suffering heavy losses.
In 1864,
Sterling Price plotted to liberate Missouri, launching his
1864 raid on the state. Striking
in the southeastern portion of the state, Price moved north,
and attempted to capture
Fort Davidson but failed. Next, Price sought to attack
St. Louis but found it too heavily fortified and thus broke
west in a parallel course with the Missouri River. The
Federals attempted to retard Price's advance through both
minor and substantial skirmishing such as at
Glasgow and
Lexington. Price made
his way to the extreme western portion of the state, taking
part in a series of bitter battles at the
Little Blue,
Independence, and
Byram's Ford. His
Missouri campaign culminated in the
battle of Westport in
which over 30,000 troops fought leading to the defeat of the
Southern army. The Missourians retreated through
Kansas and
Oklahoma into Arkansas where they stayed permanently for
the remainder of the war.
Besides
organized military conflict, Missouri also spawned a
breeding ground for guerrilla
warfare. In such a bitterly divided state, neighbors
frequently took up arms against neighbors. Such roving bands
as Quantrill's Raiders
and the men of Bloody Bill
Anderson terrorized the countryside, striking both
military installations and civilian settlements. Because of
the widespread guerrilla conflict, and the support by
citizens of border counties, Federal leaders were compelled
to issue General Order
No. 11 in 1863, forcing all citizens of Jackson, Cass,
and Bates counties off of their land.
Under
Federal control, the
Mississippi was closed to commerce, and when the war was
over the prosperity of the South was temporarily ruined and
hundreds of steamboats had been destroyed. Moreover, much of
the commerce of the West had been turned from New Orleans,
via the Mississippi, to the
Atlantic seaboard, via the Great Lakes and by the
rapidly multiplying new lines of railways. There was, of
course, some revival of the Mississippi commerce immediately
after the war, but this was checked by a sandbar at the
mouth of the south-west pass. Relief was obtained through
the Ead's jetties at the mouth of the south pass in
1879, but the facilities for the
transfer of freight were far inferior to those employed by
the railways, and the steamboat companies did not prosper.
In
1865, Missouri abolished slavery, doing
so before the adoption of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
by an ordinance of immediate emancipation. Missouri adopted
a new constitution, one that denied voting rights and had
prohibitions against certain occupations for former
Confederacy supporters.
Later 19th century
The
Missouri's Women's Suffrage
Club was organized in 1867, to win the
right to vote for women, and was the first such club in the
nation.
Missouri
adopted its 3rd constitution on
October 30, 1875.
In 1882, the bank robber
Jesse James was killed in
Saint Joseph.
20th century
On
March 1, 1912,
US Army Captain
Albert Berry made the first
parachute jump from a moving
airplane over Missouri.
In
1919, Missouri became the 11th state to
ratify the
19th amendment, which granted women
the right to vote.
The first
president from Missouri, Harry S.
Truman, assumed the presidency in 1945
after the death of Franklin
D. Roosevelt. Truman was re-elected in
1948.
Construction began on the Saint Louis
Gateway Arch in
1965.
In
1980, court-ordered
desegregation began in
Missouri.
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