I need not say that St. Louis is built on the western bank of the Mississippi River about twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri, since everybody knows that. But the present generation thinks of the city only as it is to-day, with its more than half a million of inhabitants, extensive parks, palatial residences, well-constructed churches, imposing business blocks, great railroad bridges spanning the river, unrivalled central depot and attractive trolley cars. But all this has flowed from its wonderful development since the close of the Civil War. We write of it as it was immediately before, and during, that mighty conflict.

In 1860 it had only one hundred and fifty-one thousand seven hundred and eighty inhabitants, about one thousand five hundred of whom were slaves. A large number of enterprising young men had flocked to the city from every part of the United States, so that the white males of the city exceeded the white females by more than ten thousand. Among the whites there were many thousands of intelligent, manly, thrifty Germans, a fact which needs to be borne in mind, if we would fully understand and duly appreciate the part which the city acted in the earlier stages of the Civil War.

Most of the city stood then, as now, on bluffs or extended terraces that rise gradually one above the other. Its situation is both healthful and beautiful. But before the war its area was comparatively small. It extended along the river only six and a half miles and between three and four back from it. It contained only fifteen and a half square miles. The ground now occupied by the finest residences was then rough, open fields, lying beyond its western limits. The city was built of brick. The business blocks, warehouses, hotels, residences, schoolhouses, and churches were all of the same material. Most of the sidewalks were also made of red brick. Whichever way you looked your eyes rested on red brick, and wherever you walked you trod on red brick. I remember but one business block that had a stone front, and that was marble. The enterprising citizen who built it made quite a fortune out of it. Its very novelty made it attractive, and its rooms were readily rented to professional men. The city is still largely built of brick. The clay from which the brick is made is found in large quantities near the city, and its inhabitants naturally and wisely use this excellent building material that lies close at hand.

Most of the dwelling-houses were built out to the street, so that, with rare exceptions, there were no front yards. On warm summer evenings the families living in any given block sat on the front stone steps of their houses, that they might be refreshed by the cooler air of the evening. But most of the streets were macadamized with limestone, and in summer absorbed during the day so much heat, as they lay under the burning rays of the sun, that they continued to radiate it long after the sun went down. At such times a perch on the front stone steps afforded so little relief from the heat-laden atmosphere that the half-baked sufferers longed for the arctic regions. A distinguished man from the East, on a hot night in September, waking up at two o’clock in the morning from a troubled sleep, declared that he found himself, on account of the stifling heat, swelling up like a mouse in an exhausted receiver. But such days were exceptional and not peculiar to St. Louis.

The larger part of the fuel then consumed in the city was soft coal. We bought it not by the ton, but by the bushel. In those days there were no smoke-consumers. Vast volumes of smoke poured forth from the black throats of great chimneys in manufacturing establishments, while the chimneys of every dwelling-house, and the smoke-stack of every steamer on the river, added their contribution to render the atmosphere dusky. In still days of the autumn or winter the smoke hung like a pall over the city.

But in spite of a few such drawbacks it was even then a very pleasant city. There were few who were very poor. None were permitted to go unclothed and unfed. Most of the people were thrifty; many of them were rapidly accumulating wealth. The markets of the city were well supplied with all the varied products of the fields and the forests. The homes of the people were comfortable, many of them attractive. Their tables were loaded with abundant and wholesome food. The churches were numerous and well attended. The public schools were of a high order. Private schools and colleges had been founded, and were already doing good work.

The inhabitants of the city were a conglomerate; but just on that account were broad and catholic in their thinking. Coming from every section of the Republic, by attrition their provincialisms and prejudices were worn away till they came to take comprehensive and just views of the great questions that were at that time agitating the nation. Men from the South and North had learned each other’s excellences, and with mutual respect and high esteem stood shoulder to shoulder in business, civic duty and charitable and religious service. I have never met anywhere men of broader gauge.

Among them were those distinguished as lawyers, statesmen, and preachers. To name some to the neglect of others would seem to be invidious. But among the lawyers, Samuel Glover and James O. Broadhead; among the preachers, Henry A. Nelson, Truman M. Post, Wm. G. Eliot and Father Smarius; among the statesmen, Frank P. Blair and Edward Bates, the latter afterwards Attorney-general in President Lincoln’s Cabinet, are names which readily occur to those of that generation who still live.

When, in the autumn of 1858, I made St. Louis my adopted home, the name of Thomas H. Benton was on all lips. He had died in April of that year. The people of the city were justly very proud of him. He had represented Missouri for thirty years in the Senate of the United States, and was unquestionably the most distinguished man of the State and of the Northwest. A funeral procession fully five miles in length had followed his body to its burial-place in Belle Fontaine Cemetery. But this great man, like many others who have been pre-eminent, had marked peculiarities. In the Senate he was called “The Magisterial.” In consonance with that descriptive phrase, when he addressed crowds at political meetings in St. Louis, he never said, “Fellow-citizens,” but always simply, “Citizens.” And the contents of his speeches from the stump were often quite as magisterial.

Mr. Benton, while United States Senator, at times took an active part in the election of congressmen from St. Louis. It was customary then for those opposed to each other to speak in turn to the people from the same platform. On one occasion Mr. Crum was the name of the candidate who, with Mr. Benton, was addressing the voters of the city. Near the close of one of Mr. Benton’s speeches, he said, “Citizens, is my opponent a loaf, or even a crust? No,” then suiting the action to the word, he apparently picked up and held a very small particle between his thumb and finger, while he added in a tone of great contempt,—“No, citizens, he is nothing but a tiny Crum.”

During another canvass, he was stoutly opposing Mr. Bogie, who was a candidate for Congress. Late one evening when about to close his speech in reply to him, he said, “Citizens, you have been told that my opponent’s name is Bogie. Citizens, it is a mistake; his name is Bogus. But, citizens, notwithstanding that, like Cato of Rome, I would now send my servants (slaves) to light him home, were it not that to-morrow you would be asking, ‘Mr. Benton, what sort of company do your servants keep?’”

In 1856, his son-in-law, John C. Fremont, was offered the Republican nomination for the Presidency, and asked him if he thought it was best for him to accept it? Benton, believing the Republican party to be sectional, was bitterly opposed to it; so he said to Fremont, “If you accept the nomination, I’ll drop you like a hot potato, sir! like a hot potato, sir!”

These incidents, standing alone, would misrepresent Mr. Benton; but they throw a side-light on his character and help us better to understand the most eminent citizen of St. Louis, a statesman of large mold and of a well-merited national reputation.

The early history of St. Louis is so full of interest that we cannot refrain from briefly noting a few items that belong to it. Its beginning carries us back to 1764. It was then a mere trading-post of a company of merchants, whose leader was Pierre Ligueste Laclede. The post consisted of one house and four stores. It was named St. Louis in honor of the patron saint of Louis XV of France. Though not possessing the dignity of an incorporated town, the following year it became the capital of Upper Louisiana. Through the wise foresight of Jefferson, despite his party principles, the vast and vaguely defined territory of Louisiana was purchased from France at a time when Napoleon sorely needed money. In transferring this immense region there were two formal ceremonies, one at New Orleans, Dec. 20th, 1803; the other at St. Louis, on March 10th, 1804. On the latter day Major Stoddard, who was the agent of the French Government to receive Upper Louisiana from Spain, for France, was also the accredited agent of our government to take over the same territory for the United States. That one man should represent both nations in affairs of such tremendous importance was, to say the least, unique.^[1] This ceremony of transfer took place at the northeast corner of First, or Main, and Walnut Streets. The event should be commemorated by some suitable tablet or monument erected on the spot of transfer. We trust that the Missouri Historical Society will have the honor of doing this work so consonant with its aims and character.

The town of St. Louis was laid out between the river and the first range of bluffs on the west, and a series of circular towers was erected around it for defence. The houses were mainly built of rough stone and whitewashed, and each house had a separate lot for fruit and flowers. These houses were without cellars. The first house provided with such a convenience was built by Laclede on what is now called Main Street, between Market and Walnut. Indian women and children helped dig it, carrying out the dirt on their heads, in wooden platters and baskets. In this house civil government was inaugurated in 1765 by Captain Louis Saint Ange, Acting French Governor of Upper Louisiana; in it, also, the Marquis de Lafayette was entertained in 1825.

The streets of the old town were all quite narrow; it was thought that such streets could be more easily defended. And there they are, cramped and narrow to this day. But in time the land above and west of the village was laid out in town lots, and the chief promoters of this enterprise, Judge Lucas and Colonel Chouteau, built their dwelling-houses far back from the river and the old town, the former at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets, the latter at the corner of Sixth and Olive Streets. In 1809, the year in which St. Louis was incorporated as a town, Fort Belle Fontaine became the headquarters of the Department of Upper Louisiana. It was several miles north of the village, on a high bluff, overlooking the Mississippi. The land for this fort was secured by treaty from the Sac and Fox Indians. On it was a great spring of pure water capable of supplying a thousand men; hence the name of the fort, Belle Fontaine.

St. Louis was early called the Gateway of the West. In 1817 the first steamboat tied up to her levee.^[2] This was the beginning of an imperial trade. Streams of commerce now began to flow into her markets from the great continental rivers, from the upper Mississippi, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Ohio, the lower Mississippi with its far-reaching affluents; and, through the Gulf of Mexico, even from the cities of the Atlantic seaboard. For many years her chief trade had been in the pelts and furs of wild animals; but now this lucrative traffic was greatly augmented. For forty years the annual value of it alone was between two and three hundred thousand dollars, while commerce in all agricultural products and in manufactured goods was constantly swelling in volume. Still it is worthy of note that deerskins were an article of barter, and furs were currency in St. Louis, from the days of Laclede until Missouri became a State in 1821; and a year later, even before St. Louis had five thousand inhabitants, it was chartered as a city.

When under Spanish control, it was strictly Roman Catholic. In 1862 I met at a wedding in St. Louis a lady almost a hundred years old. She was still in excellent health. Her intellect was clear and vigorous. As she took my arm to go to the wedding supper, she archly remarked, “Your wife will not be jealous when she learns how old I am.” Yet, when we were seated at the table, after some moments of absolute silence on her part, into which I did not venture to intrude, she said, “I do believe that God has forgotten me.” I looked at her with mingled astonishment and curiosity and said, “Why so?” She replied, “All the friends of my early life are gone and I am left alone.” She now became reminiscent and added, “I lived here when St. Louis belonged to Spain. And just as for many years no free negro has been permitted to enter this city without a pass, so for years, in my early life, no Protestant could enter it without a written permit from the Spanish authorities.”

But, while under the rule of the United States all religious intolerance disappeared, African slavery flourished, established and protected by law. And although in 1860 St. Louis had but few slaves, nevertheless pro-slavery sentiment largely prevailed. Those who cherished it were often intense and bitter, and at that time socially controlled the entire city. But on the other hand the leading business men of the city were quietly, conservatively, yet positively, opposed to slavery. Many of them had come from New England and the Middle States and believed slavery to be a great moral wrong; but those from the North and South alike saw that slavery was a drag upon the commercial interests of the city and all were hoping that in some way the incubus might be lifted off from it. For St. Louis, the commercial capital of Missouri, already had many great merchants and enterprising manufacturers, who were not only throwing out their lines of trade into every part of the State, but also into all the surrounding States and territories. It was linked by the Mississippi and Missouri, fed by numerous and important affluents, with a vast territory which was probably the richest on the earth’s surface. And very much of its trade was with southern cities. In 1860, more than four thousand steamers, with a capacity of one million one hundred and twenty thousand and thirty-nine tons, loaded and unloaded at its wharves. To obstruct the Father of Waters at the mouth of the Ohio, or to divide it by secession, was a matter of life and death to all the business interests of St. Louis. And no one without this conception clearly in mind can adequately understand what took place there in those days of awful storm and stress between 1860 and 1865.