Missouri's Delegation In the Confederate Congress

Associate Professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy, Denver, Major Kirkpatrick is a native of Missouri. He studied at the Northwest Missouri State Teachers College and the University of Missouri, where he received his doctorate. His article is based on a paper delivered at the 1958 meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association . Missouri's Delegation In the Confederate Congress MAJOR ARTHUR R. KIRKPATRICK after Missouri's government-tn-extle was admitted to the Confederacy in November, 1861, a total of thirteen men represented that state in the Confederate Congress at Richmond. Two of diese served in both Senate and House of Representatives as well as in the unicameral provisional Congress. A fourteenth was chosen by the state's Confederate General Assembly to sit in the House of Representatives, but never appeared in Richmond, while a fifteenth, appointed senator by Governor Thomas C. Reynolds, did not accept until after his seat had been taken by another. These men were all well known and respected in Missouri politics in I860 and represented fairly equally the Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell groups in the state. Although Governor Claiborne F. Jackson and bis state government had been driven from Jefferson City by Federal troops in June, 1861, and had been declared deposed by the state convention the following month,1 he called the General Assembly to meet in special session in Neosho on October 21.2 One week later this special session passed an ordinance of secession3 and ratified the provisional Confederate Constitution .4 1 Journal of the Missouri State Convention. Held at Jefferson City, July 1861 ( St. Louis: George Knapp & Co., 1861 ), pp. 7-12. 2 Journal of the Senate, Extra Session of the Rebel Legislature, Called Together by a Prochmation of C. F. Jackson, Begun and Held at the Town of Neosho, Newton County, Missouri, on the Twenty-First Day of October, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-One (Jefferson City: Emory S. Foster, 1865-1866), pp. 3-4. 8 Journal, Rebel Senate, op. cit., pp. 8-9. 4 Ibid., pp. 42-43. 188 A few days later the Assembly enacted what Governor Jackson called "the most extraordinary bill in the history of legislation."5 He had requested that the legislature select three commissioners to represent Missouri in the provisional Congress of the Confederate States, that they elect two senators for the permanent Congress, and that they authorize him to call an election for members of the House of Representatives .6 The Assembly enacted a bill providing for the holding of an election for representatives as soon as the military situation in the state would allow it, but it also named two senators and seven representatives who would serve until after the election. These nine congressmen were also to sit as commissioners in the provisional Congress during the remainder of its life.7 Jackson pointed out that the election of senators was the function of the legislature alone and should not therefore require the governor's signature and that neither the General Assembly nor the governor had any constitutional power to elect representatives. Such action, he said, would have no effect "except to place the state in a false and ludicrous position before the world." He signed the bül only because it authorized an election, but he declared that had there been time for its reconsidertion he would have vetoed it.8 As senators thelegislature elected John B. Clark, a prominent Howard County Democrat and brigadier general in the Missouri State Guard,9 and state Senator Robert L. Y. Peyton, Democrat of Cass County and a colonel in the Guard, whose sister was married to a nephew of Jefferson Davis.10 The seven representatives chosen were as follows:11 William M. Cooke, an anti-Benton lawyer and judge from St. Louis, whom Governor Jackson had sent in the spring of 1861 to request arms from the state of Virginia, represented the First Congressional District. The Second District was represented by Thomas A. Harris, Jr., a member of the state House of Representatives from Mark Twain's home, Hannibal. In fact, Private Samuel Clemens served under Harris for a few weeks in the summer of 1861 while the latter still commanded the...