History of Missouri
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This article is about the history of the U.S. state of Missouri.
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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 Francois Renault brought the first black slaves to Missouri to work in lead mining.
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 terriory.
Spain gained control of the region in 1762 under the Treaty of Fontainebleu, 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 Laclede Blanchette. Five years later, he founded St. Charles as a trading outpost.
19th century
| Population Growth during the 1800s | |
|---|---|
| 1810 | 20,845 |
| 1820 | 66,586 |
| 1830 | 140,455 |
| 1840 | 383,702 |
| 1850 | 682,044 |
| 1860 | 1,182,012 |
| 1870 | 1,721,295 |
| 1880 | 2,168,380 |
| 1890 | 2,679,184 |
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 $11 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.
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, 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, 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.
The University of Missouri, the first state university west of he Mississippi River, was created in 1841. 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 1849 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.
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 Massacre." Because of the mixed sympathies, Missouri was the only state in the Union that did not officially secede, but where the Army declared a state of war.
Secessionists formed their own unrecognized government seceded from the Union, joining the Confederacy and establishing a capital 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. In 1861, General John. C. Fremont issued a proclamation that freed slaves owned by those that had taken up arms against the Union.
Because of the state's strategic location linking Northern and Southern states, many important Civil War battles occurred in Missouri. The state was the location of the largest number of engagements of any state.
Under Federal control, the Mississippi was closed to commerce, and when the war was over the prosperity of the South was temporarily gone 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 new lines of railways, the number of which rapidly increased. 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 became the first slave state to abolish 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.
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
| Population Growth during the 1900s | |
|---|---|
| 1900 | 3,106,665 |
| 1910 | 3,293,335 |
| 1920 | 3,404,055 |
| 1930 | 3,629,367 |
| 1940 | 3,784,664 |
| 1950 | 3,954,653 |
| 1960 | 4,319,813 |
| 1970 | 4,677,623 |
| 1980 | 4,916,766 |
| 1990 | 5,117,073 |
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 granting women the right to vote.
The first presidentfrom 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.
External links
- Missouri State Archives - Timeline (http://www.sos.state.mo.us/archives/history/timeline/timeline1.asp)
- Missouri State Archives - African American History Timeline (http://www.sos.state.mo.us/archives/history/timeline/timeline1.asp)
- Historical Population Data for Missouri (http://www.sos.state.mo.us/library/reference/census/counties1900-1990.pdf)