Missouri
Missouri (pronounced /mɨˈzʊəri/ or /mɨˈzʊərə/ ) is a state in the Midwest region of the United States bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Missouri is the 18th most populous state with a 2009 estimated population of 5,987,580. It comprises 114 counties and one independent city. Missouri's capital is Jefferson City. The three largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield. Missouri was originally acquired from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase and became defined as the Missouri Territory. Part of the Missouri Territory was admitted into the union as the 24th state in August 10, 1821.
Missouri mirrors the demographic, economic and political makeup of the nation with a mix of urban and rural culture. It has long been considered a political bellwether state. With the exceptions of 1956 and 2008, Missouri's results in U.S. presidential elections have accurately predicted the next President of the United States in every election since 1904. It has both Midwestern and Southern cultural influences, reflecting its history as a border state. It is also a transition between the eastern and western United States, as St. Louis is often called the "western-most eastern city" and Kansas City the "eastern-most western city." Missouri's geography is highly varied. The northern part of the state lies in dissected till plains while the southern part lies in the Ozark Mountains a (dissected plateau), with the Missouri River dividing the two. The confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers is located near St. Louis.
Indigenous peoples inhabited Missouri for thousands of years before European exploration and settlement. Archaeological excavations along the rivers have shown continuous habitation for more than 7,000 years. Beginning before 1000 CE was the rise of the complex Mississippian culture, whose people created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences, but they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City, because of the numerous surviving mounds, since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast as well as the upper river.
The first European settlers were mostly French Canadians, who migrated about 1750 from east of the river to the area of present-day Ste. Genevieve. It was the first European settlement in Missouri. They came from colonial villages on the east side of the Mississippi of the Illinois Country, where soils were becoming exhausted and there was insufficient river bottom land for the growing population. St. Louis was also founded by French-Canadian settlers. St. Louis became the center of a regional fur trade, which dominated its economy for decades. Ste. Genevieve was a thriving agricultural center, producing enough surplus wheat, corn and tobacco to ship tons of grain downriver to Lower Louisiana for trade. Grain production in the Illinois Country was critical to the survival of Lower Louisiana.
Part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname "Gateway to the West" because it served as a major departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West in the 19th century. The St. Louis area was the starting point and the return destination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which explored the western territories to the Pacific Ocean. The territory was admitted as a slave state in 1821 as part of the Missouri Compromise. River traffic and trade along the Mississippi were integral to the state's economy. To try to control regular flooding of farmland and low-lying villages, by 1860 the state had completed construction of 140 miles (230 km) of levees on the Mississippi.
The state was site of the epicenter of the 1812 New Madrid earthquake, possibly the most powerful earthquake in the United States since the founding of the country. Casualties were light due to the sparse population.
Originally the state's western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, the point where the Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary. In 1835 the Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about 66,500 square miles (172,000 km 2 ) to Virginia's 65,000 square miles (which then included West Virginia.)
As many of the early American settlers in western Missouri migrated from the Upper South, they brought enslaved African Americans for labor, and a desire to continue their culture and the institution of slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled plantation agriculture and became known as "Little Dixie." In the early 1830s, Mormon migrants from northern states and Canada began settling near Independence and areas just north of there. Conflicts over slavery and religion arose between the 'old settlers' (mainly from the South) and the Mormons (mainly from the North and Canada). The 'Mormon War' erupted. By 1839 settlers expelled the Mormons from Missouri.
Conflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. In 1838–1839 a border dispute with Iowa over the so-called Honey Lands resulted in both states' calling up militias along the border. After many incidents with Kansans crossing the western border for attacks (including setting a fire in the historic Westport area of Kansas City), a border war erupted between Missouri and Kansas.
From the 1830s to the 1860s, Missouri's population almost doubled with every decade. Most of the newcomers were Americans, but many Irish and German immigrants arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. Having fled famine, oppression and revolutionary upheaval, they were not sympathetic to slavery.
Most Missouri farmers practiced subsistence farming. The majority of those who held slaves had fewer than 5 each. Planters, defined by historians as those holding 20 or more slaves, were concentrated in the counties known as "Little Dixie", in the central part of the state along the Missouri River. The tensions over slavery had chiefly to do with the future of the state and nation. In 1860 enslaved African Americans made up less than 10% of the state's population of 1,182,012.
After the secession of Southern states began in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession. The convention voted decisively to remain within the Union. Pro-Southern Governor Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in St. Louis for training. Alarmed at this action, Union General Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon then directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German immigrants, to march the prisoners through the streets, and they opened fire on the largely hostile crowds of civilians who gathered around them. Soldiers killed unarmed prisoners as well as men, women and children of St. Louis in the incident that became known as the "St. Louis Massacre."
These events heightened Confederate support within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. In the face of General Lyon's rapid advance in the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital of Jefferson City on June 14, 1861. In the town of Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session. They enacted a secession ordinance. However, since the pro-Union state convention had been given the sole power to do such a thing, and the state was more pro-Union than pro-Confederate, this ordinance is generally given little credence. Nevertheless, the ordinance was recognized by the Confederacy on October 30, 1861.
With the elected governor absent from his capital and the legislators largely dispersed, Union forces installed an unelected pro-Union provisional government with Hamilton Gamble as provisional governor. President Lincoln's Administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal government. This decision provided both pro-Union militia forces for service within the state and volunteer regiments for the Union Army.
Fighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from Arkansas and Texas under General Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington, Missouri and suffering losses elsewhere, the Confederate forces had little choice but to retreat to Arkansas and later Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army.
Though regular Confed