Camp Jackson massacre
Coordinates: 38 ° 38 ′ 11.6 " N , 90 ° 14 ′ 12.2" W.
The Camp Jackson massacre ( English Camp Jackson massacre or Camp Jackson affair ) was an incident in the early stages of the Civil War that occurred on May 10, 1861 in St. Louis , Missouri . A volunteer contingent of the Union Army under Nathaniel Lyon had captured a large group of secessionist militiamen outside the city in the eponymous Camp Jackson who wanted to illegally obtain weapons from the city's federal arsenal. As they marched into town with the prisoners, the troops were surrounded by a hostile crowd and began to fire into the crowd, killing at least 28 civilians and injuring dozens more. Day-long riots followed in St. Louis, which only ended when regular Union troops arrived and martial law was imposed.
Background and history
The state of Missouri, one of the slave states, was special in that the proportion of slave owners and their slaves in the population was relatively small. Originally settled by slave-holding southerners , numerous immigrants, including many Germans and Irish, had settled here in the years up to the civil war. The border state between northern and southern states had largely voted for neutralist candidates in the presidential election in 1860 ; its electoral votes had gone to the northern democrat Stephen A. Douglas . However, among the residents of the state there were also numerous supporters of partisanship for one side or the other in the emerging conflict.
In early 1861, both secessionist and unionist partisans were organizing themselves into paramilitary groups. The secessionists called themselves "Minutemen" after the militiamen of the War of Independence . Former Senator and brigadier general of militia Daniel M. Frost presented on February 13, a new regiment of five Minutemen - companies from the area of St. Louis on the 2nd regiment of the Missouri Volunteer Militia . That same month, the state government passed a law banning militia activities outside the state-regulated Missouri Volunteer Militia , forcing the unionists to organize in secret.
On February 28, MPs were elected to a constitutional convention in the state , which was supposed to discuss a constitutional amendment and the question of leaving the Union. In the vote on March 21, 98 MPs spoke out against secession, only one voted in favor. However, they wanted to remain neutral in the event of war and neither side wanted to provide men or weapons. The convention then adjourned.
On April 20, one week after the fall of Fort Sumter , a group of Confederate sympathizers seized the arsenal in the city of Liberty and captured several (obsolete) artillery pieces, over 2000 firearms, several edged weapons and a large amount of ammunition and powder. This sparked fears that Southern sympathizers might be targeting the much larger St. Louis Arsenal next , the largest federal arsenal of any slave state with nearly 40,000 long guns in stock. The arsenal was guarded by federal troops under the then Captain Nathaniel Lyon .
Missouri was under the jurisdiction of the Department of the West of the United States Army , which was commanded by Brigadier General William S. Harney . His headquarters were in the Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. Harney, a senior career officer, wanted to avoid open conflict with secessionist forces as much as possible. Due to his unclear position, he was replaced by Lyon as acting commander on April 23, by order of the War Ministry .
Action of the Union Army
Lyon, a passionate supporter of the Union, immediately began drafting and arming Unionist militiamen in St. Louis known as Home Guard and Missouri Volunteers , respectively. War Secretary Simon Cameron had previously ordered Harney to do this, but Harney had delayed it. Most of the recruits were initially Forty-Eighters (emigrants from the revolutions in Europe 1848/49 ) and Wide Awakes (the name of a republican youth organization that had parades and campaigned in the run-up to the presidential election of 1860). According to one estimate, 80% of the volunteers in the regiments first established were German-Americans who had only recently lived in the country. The majority rejected slavery and were a preferred target of hostility from those who had long been living in Missouri.
Lyon's next move, again under orders from the War Department, was to move much of the weapons in the St. Louis arsenal out of the reach of the secessionists. In the early morning of April 26, nearly 21,000 rifles were loaded onto the City of Alton steamship , which then carried the guns across the Mississippi River to Illinois . The remaining weapons were retained for arming the Missouri Volunteers .
Secessionist actions
Missouri's governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson , was elected to office in 1860 on the ticket of pro-unionist North Democrat Douglas, but was personally in favor of secession. After the clear decision of the Constitutional Convention in March Jackson conspired with like-minded people and it was decided to occupy St. Louis with a coup d'état and thus present the people of the state with a fait accompli. The most difficult obstacle was the heavily secured St. Louis Arsenal.
In mid-April 1861, Jackson wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis asking for artillery pieces to break through the thick walls of the arsenal. The letter was delivered personally by Militia Officers Colton Greene and Basil Wilson Duke . Around May 1, Jackson called a section of the Missouri Volunteer Militia for "exercises" in the St. Louis area, and gave command of the troops to Brigadier General Frost. The militia gathered at Camp Jackson outside the city limits (now part of the St. Louis University campus ).
Davis had meanwhile agreed to Jackson's request. On May 9, the steamship JC Swan delivered two 12-pounder field guns, two 32-pounder siege guns and 500 rifles with ammunition, packed in boxes that had been marked as a shipment of marble for camouflage . The ammunition came from the Confederate raid on the federal arena in Baton Rouge , Louisiana . Militia officers received the cargo in the port area of St. Louis and arranged for it to be transported to Camp Jackson, about 10 kilometers away.
Course of the massacre
Lyon immediately suspected that the force at Camp Jackson might be planning an attack on the Arsenal. This was confirmed by personal research when he entered the camp in disguise. On May 10, he marched with 6,000 men (Missouri Volunteers and federal troops) to the camp and demanded the surrender. 669 militiamen were captured and disarmed.
The prisoners were taken back to the arsenal under guard, where they were to be released on word of honor. Secessionists in the city saw this as a humiliation and rallied along the route. Angry shouts rang out and stones and rubbish were thrown at Lyon's soldiers. Units that consisted mostly of German-Americans were a preferred destination.
It is unclear what ultimately caused the soldiers to fire into the crowd. According to the most frequently cited explanation, a drunk man stumbled into the street, pulled a gun and fired at the soldiers. Captain Constantin Blandowski is said to have been fatally wounded by the 3rd Missouri Volunteer Infantry . (Blandowski was an ethnic Pole from the Prussian province of Upper Silesia , who had fought in the Légion étrangère and on the side of the rebels in the Hungarian War of Independence . After emigrating to the USA, he was active in the Turner movement in St. Louis, regardless of his Polish one Ethnicity, he was recognized by the German population as one of their own and transfigured into a martyr of the German-Americans on the side of the Union.) The soldiers then opened fire, first over the heads of the crowd and then into the crowd. At least 28 civilians were killed, including women and children. There were more than 75 wounded.
The massacre caused rioting for several days in St. Louis. On May 11th, volunteer militiamen were shot at from windows and returned fire. Colonel Heinrich Börnstein , who commanded the 2nd Missouri Volunteer Infantry and was the publisher of the Gazette of the West in his civil life , described in his memoir that on the morning of May 11th he had given up several of his men to visit their families and went on :
"Most of them did not return [...] until it grew dark, with clothing torn, faces beaten bloody, and all the signs of having suffered mistreatment [...] Two of them never returned and they were never heard of again."
Rumors spread in the city that the "Germans" were planning to murder the established Americans. Many of the city's wealthy citizens fled to the surrounding areas or to the neighboring state of Illinois across the river. Martial law was proclaimed, but the situation was only brought back under control with the arrival of regular federal troops.
consequences
Governor Jackson had proposed a military bill prior to the events that would have put the state in readiness for war. It provided for the establishment of state military forces and extensive executive powers for the governor. The bill encountered resistance at first, but was passed on May 11 by the Missouri General Assembly . The act created the Missouri State Guard , which was placed under the command of the later Major General of the Confederate Sterling Price . The unionists described the law as a "de facto secession act" ("secession act in all but name"). Critics also pointed out that the introduction of reservist status for all men of age and the governor's total control over the state guard made Jackson the de facto dictator of the state.
William S. Harney was reinstated as Commander of the Western District and met with Price on May 21. The resulting from the meeting Price-Harney Truce ( ceasefire ) left St. Louis under the control of federal troops and the rest of the state under the control of Prices State Defense Force. Many Missouri unionists viewed this arrangement as a surrender to Jackson and the secessionists and turned to President Abraham Lincoln with a request for Harney's recall. Unionists living outside the city have reported attacks by the State Guard, although the agreement implicitly excluded such, and many of them fled to the safety of the city.
Francis Preston Blair Jr. , a noted St. Louis Republican politician and now a Colonel of the Volunteers, was authorized by Lincoln to remove Harney and replace him with a suitable man at his discretion. On May 30, Blair deposed Harney and replaced him with Lyon, who was promoted to Brigadier General and appointed in command of all Union forces in Missouri.
On June 11, a meeting took place between Lyon on the one hand and Jackson, Price and their advisors on the other hand in the Hotel Planter's House in St. Louis. They argued for four hours, mostly over Jackson's powers under military law, before Lyon cut off the meeting by saying:
“Rather than concede to the State of Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my government in any matter however important, I would see you, and you, and you, and you, and every man, woman, and child in the State, dead and buried! This means was. In an hour one of my officers will call on you and conduct you out of my lines. "
Jackson returned to the capital, Jefferson City . The following day, Lyon had federal troops transported to Jefferson City in steamships and Jackson evaded to Boonville , where the State Guard troops gathered. Jefferson City was taken without resistance and the governor who had fled was persecuted with about 1,400 volunteers and regulars. Against the advice of his officers, Jackson ordered the State Guard to stand for battle at Boonville. In the resulting Battle of Boonville on June 17, the State Guard defeated Lyons troops and was routed. Jackson escaped with the rest of his troops, which were also joined by some secessionist members of the State Assembly, in the southwest of the state, near the border with Arkansas . Most of Missouri was provisionally controlled by the Union.
The Constitutional Convention convened again on July 22nd and decided (in the absence of 20 of its 99 members) to declare the governorship vacant. In the election that followed, the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court , Conservative Unionist Hamilton Rowan Gamble , was elected incumbent governor to head a provisional government. This was immediately recognized by the Lincoln administration.
Nativism , distrust of the federal government, fears about the future of slavery, and the discourse about state rights had all played a part in bringing about the Camp Jackson affair. The polarization of the residents of Missouri in supporters of the Union on the one hand and the Confederate on the other was accelerated. The previously mostly neutralist population was now effectively forced to take sides with one of the sides. Those who tried to compromise as conditional unionists now joined the Confederate camp in large numbers.
See also
Web links
- Missouri Civil War Museum page on the Camp Jackson Massacre on the Internet Archive
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dr. Lorenzo J. Greene, Antonio F. Holland, Gary Kremer: The Role of the Negro in Missouri History, 1719-1970: Slavery in Missouri. In: Official Manual - State of Missouri, 1973–1974. Lincoln University, accessed March 22, 2017 .
- ^ Scott Williams: The role of German immigrants in civil war Missouri. In: mcwm.org. Missouri Civil War Museum, archived from the original on March 3, 2012 ; Retrieved January 10, 2011 .
- ↑ Louis S. Gerties: Civil War St. Louis , University of Kansas Press, 2001, p. 93.
- ^ William E. Parrish: Frank Blair: Lincoln's Conservative , University of Missouri Press, 1998, p. 100.
- ↑ James W. Covington: The Camp Jackson Affair, 1861 , Master's Thesis, St. Louis University, 1943.
- ^ William L. Burton: Melting pot soldiers: the Union's ethnic regiments . In: North's Civil War . 2nd Edition. tape 4 . Fordham University Press, New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-8232-1827-1 .
- ↑ Sandie Grassino, Art Schuermann: Jefferson Barracks , 2011, p. 33
- ^ Heinrich Börnstein: Memoirs of a nobody: the Missouri years of an Austrian radical, 1849-1866 . Ed .: Steven Rowan. Missouri Historical Society Press, St. Louis 1997, ISBN 978-1-883982-20-1 , pp. 303 .
- ^ Albert Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West , p. 24