St. Louis After the War of 1812
- Became staging base for the Western Department of the U.S. Army
- Before arriving in St. Louis, the politician (eventual U.S. Senator) Thomas Hart Benton feuds with General Andrew Jackson
- In War of 1812 he is under Jackson’s command
- Leaves Nashville because of ongoing feud
- Thomas Hart Benton arrives in St. Louis in 1815
- Becomes real estate attorney for Chouteau
- Kills principal business rival (Charles Lucas) in a duel
- Between 1810 and 1840 the city grew from 1,500 to 35,000
- Developed small industry: brickyards, tanneries and smelters
- William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) traded for Indian territory
- Pierre Chouteau acquired and sold off Indian territories as real estate
Benton’s Contributions to Land Settlement: Take from the Natives and give to the whites
- Sponsored a bill eliminating federal trading posts and allowing American Fur Company to control
- They forgave Osage and Sioux debts by taking land as federal territory, which was sold to the Chouteau real estate business
- Senators Benton and Barton granted 160-acre sections at $1.25 an acre to white settlers, allowing them to farm until they could afford to purchase the land at federal auction.
Ultimately settlers just moved in on the Indians’ land, driving them out.
Benton and Jackson become allies in plans for driving of Indians off their lands.
1828 – Andrew Jackson elected President on platform of “Indian removal today, Indian removal tomorrow, Indian removal forever”
Benton developed the means for settling the West
- 1842, 1843-1845, 1853-54 Three expeditions seeking out routes for the railroad, led by John C. Fremont
- Made speeches for the extension of the railroad and the connection with Asian markets
- No place for Indians in Benton’s imagined global order
Sauk nation negotiated with William Henry Harrison the release of a Sauk farmer charged with murder of white settlers. Without authority they ceded
“most of what today is western Illinois, southwestern Wisconsin, and a small strip of eastern Missouri, including the city of Saukenuk (known today as Rock Island , IL) , the ancestral home of the Sauk.”
1825- 1832 The Black Hawk Wars, described in the autobiography Life of BlackHawk.
1838 – Black Hawk dies
1832 – US Dragoons headquartered at Jefferson Barracks – attacked most Indian tribes before the Civil War – led by William Harney. Tried for beating an enslaved woman- participated in the Second Seminole War – committed several sadistic executions. Called “the avenging angel: volatile implacable and unrepentant.”