The first shots of the Civil War were fired at Camp Jackson in St. Louis. Lincoln had called for troops, but so had our Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson. Federal troops formed would fight for the Union Army. Little did those first state troops that had heeded Jackson’s call realize that they would become Confederates. Jackson would issue a call for the state to secede, but that plan would be thwarted because of the huge German influx to Missouri.
German immigrants began arriving in the state in the 1830s, and by the time the 1850s had begun, the demographics of the state had greatly changed. Those first German immigrants, and the second wave at the end of the 1840s, would take issue with the business of slavery. Beyond the issues of human rights were the facts that the enslavement of humans gave the property owners of huge plantations “free labor” that the immigrants could not compete with. Also, since slaves were not just property, those enslaved had great value and increased the wealth of slaveowners. Those taxpayers with money have a large influence on the government.
By the time the Civil War began, the U.S. had in many ways already begun in Missouri. Germans would hold rallies maligning their neighbors and shame them for their practices. They would also befriend the slaves who came to their doors, begging for food, ragged and beaten. They would aid in their escape, often hiding them and protecting them. With the fugitive slave laws enacted in 1850, they were putting themselves and their own families at great risk with these actions. They started their own newspapers in their native language, sharing stories like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in German for those who spent their time carving a life out of the land and hadn’t the time for learning a new language. They took part in the government, and when the Governor called for secession, they made sure it didn’t happen. Then they joined the Union Army, leaving their families behind, and often giving their own lives, so that not only would their new fatherland remain whole, but that the promise of freedom for all would finally ring true.
Missouri was a border state, and when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the state was still on the brink, with a precarious balance over the issue of slavery. The state had begun with thousands of settlers from the southern states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, who were still fighting for the right to own other human beings and call them property. What might have happened if the Germans who held Missouri for the Union lost their hold?
History Happens 
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