Letter to the Editor

Another take on Gamble

Dear editor:

Missouri Supreme Court Justice Michael Wolff's column on Missouri's Civil War (Dec. 28), while admirable overall, contains several lamentable blunders of commission and omission.

1. "After Missouri's decision (by Convention) not to secede from the Union, Gov. Jackson and other Confederate sympathizers fled the state." Yes, but only because a U.S. army, composed in part of St. Louis German immigrants raised in a totally illegal manner, was approaching, led by that fanatical bigot Gen. (recently Capt.) Nathaniel Lyon, who, says his biographer, "hated everybody." The Union, by this action, was making war on a State "still legally a part of the Union" (Allan Nevins), which had as yet committed no overt hostile act.

2. "The Convention elected Hamilton Gamble as provisional governor." But half the original members of the Convention by then were in jail for "treason." The Convention which thus evicted the government the people had elected and in effect set itself up as the government can but be likened to the Rump Parliament which Cromwell finally sent packing in disgust, or the French Revolutionary Constituent Assembly leading to the Reign of Terror.

The Convention no more had a quorum than the Legislature that passed the Ordinance of Secession. The latter's defenders declare enough proxies were available to constitute a quorum. And the Legislature that created the Convention surely had the power to revoke its charge.

And secessions by Legislative Act were grudgingly acknowledged by the Union in other states. Reputable historians answer the question, Did Missouri secede? by "Not proven, either way."

3. "He (Gamble) served during the war." Among Gamble's laurels Justice Wolff fails to crown him with is the nitwit Militia Act of 1863 which sent hundreds of Missouri men fleeing to the bush (and the Bushwhackers) "as a means of safety," and thereby prolonged and deepened the longabiding bitterness of Missouri's Civil War.

4. "Slavery did not end in Missouri until after the Civil War, when the 13th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1866." Wrong. Missouri's Constitutional Convention of January 1865 (four months before the War ended), dominated by that alltime villain Charles Drake, ended slavery in Missouri by an Ordinance. Most of this Convention's other Ordinances were to be declared unconstitutional bills-of-attainder and ex post facto laws.

Deo Vindice, Mr. Justice ("God, free us!" in true Latin)

-- Patrick Brophy, Nevada