St. Louis (History day)

I began this morning with a visit to the Missouri History museum . This museum was built as the first national monument to Thomas Jefferson to honor the Louisiana purchase . A greater than life size statue in his likeness was created to memorialize Jefferson and the 1904 World's Fair that celebrated the land deal. The Jefferson Memorial Building, built in 1913 with profits from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, is the home of the museum. I appreciate that the present day museum has used the story and the statue as an educational opportunity. The exhibit boards discuss Jefferson's role in the perpetration of slavery and his role in the forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands. These aspects of Jefferson’s life are a key part of understanding his legacy.

In 1803, Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from France in a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase. This doubled the size of the United States and was a pivotal moment in the growth of the U.S. In addition, it brought land West of the Mississippi River under U.S. Control. The Mississippi has historically been a critical economic asset to development and expansion. The Louisiana Purchase also set up a future in which Native Americans would methodically be stripped of their ancestral lands. In the years to come, the U.S. would make many treaties with the Native American nations who called the Louisiana Territory home. However, as was sadly typical, these treaties were often one sided, negotiated in bad faith, or ignored by settlers who continued to wrest ever more territory from Native Americans.

To retrace some of the history, in 1681, France claimed the Mississippi Valley and named it Louisiana. The 1700s saw French explorers and traders arriving to trade with the Native peoples for furs, mine for lead and iron, and harvest lumber. By 1819, more than forty lead mines operated in the area. Manufacturers processed the ore into shot for guns or used it to make simple trade goods. By the mid-1800s, a growing number of lead-related industries such as smelters, paint manufacturers, and type foundries had helped to make St. Louis the westernmost industrial city in North America. However the lead industry, in particular, created both human and environmental hazards that persist to the present day.

For over a century, Spaniards, Britons, and Frenchmen fought over St. Louis and surrounding area. The village, established in 1764, with its location on a bluff near the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, offered vital access to the natural resources of the Mississippi river basin. Although the French settled in the area from the 1760s to the early 1800s, Spain actually governed the site for most of the colonial period. In 1762, France ceded its lands on the west side of the Mississippi River to Spain. In 1763, after their victory in the French and Indian war, England claimed control of lands on the east side of the Mississippi River.

In 1780, British military officials, struggling to suppress the American Revolution, sought to secure the remote western flank of their territory, along the Mississippi River. They organized a party of northern Indian warriors and sent them to attack St. Louis. Upon receiving the news of imminent attacks, the village's French and Spanish citizens quickly built a stone tower flanked with two long trenches, and called it Fort San Carlos . Although 21 of St. Louis’ 700 inhabitants were killed, they managed to repel the attack.

In 1800 Spain returned the Louisiana territory to France in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, just in time for the U.S. to purchase it from France in 1803. In a two day ceremony in 1804, Spain transferred Upper Louisiana to France on the first day so that France could transfer the territory to the U.S. on the second day. As mentioned previously, this set the stage for subsequent land grabs from Native peoples. In 1806 the Sac and Fox nation (Sauk and Meskwaki peoples) surrendered fifty million acres, from Missouri north to Wisconsin, to U.S. officials at St. Louis.

Enslaved African-Americans were brought to the the region that would become Missouri in the 1700s to work on tobacco and hemp plantations. When Missouri became a state in 1821, only 376 of its 10,000 blacks were free. The terms of the Missouri Compromise dictated that slavery would continue to exist here indefinitely. I previously discussed the Dred Scott case in a biog post about Fort Snelling in Minnesota, then the Wisconsin territory. His owner, an army surgeon, had taken him from Missouri, a slave-holding state, to Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom and claimed that because he had been been taken into "free" U.S. territory, he had automatically been freed and was legally no longer a slave. Scott sued first in Missouri state court, which ruled that he was still a slave under its law. He then sued in U.S. federal court, which ruled against him by deciding that it had to apply Missouri law to the case. Finally, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision against Scott. In an opinion written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, the Court ruled that people of African descent "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States". This decision was one of the events that precipitated the Civil War.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Missouri was a divided state. While it officially supported the union, a group of secessionists attempted to wrest control and mobilized at Camp Jackson. St. Louis's federal volunteer militia surrounded Camp Jackson and, outnumbered, the secessionists surrendered peacefully. Unfortunately, the conflict set off a civilian riot in which 28 died in the streets. Ultimately Missouri remained a union state, but elements of dissent continued throughout the war.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, St. Louis's African-American community numbered more than three thousand. Nearly half were slaves, while others were successful businesspeople, landowners, or free laborers. Only after the war, in 1865, did the Missouri Constitutional Convention formally abolish slavery in the state.

Much more information was covered at this well-organized and comprehensive museum.

After a brief stop back at my room, I walked over to the National Blues Museum . Blues, itself deriving from African spirituals, has influenced virtually all popular music that followed. It is perhaps the African-American sibling to Country music, which has historically been dominated by people of European-American descent. Blues and Country provide parallel soundtracks to the downtrodden, the oppressed, or simply the lovesick.

One of my favorite quotes was from Muddy Waters: The Blues had a baby and they called it Rock and Roll. The influence of Blues can be found in many genres, starting with Rhythm and Blues, continuing through Pop, Ragtime, Rock and Roll and the Folk revival to Rap. It is music by and for the people.

Tomorrow I’ll continue to explore St. Louis.