VIII.

History

A.

Early Inhabitants

In the prehistoric period, successive stages of human development took place in Missouri. Nomadic hunters, called Paleo-Indians by archaeologists, were present perhaps as early as 12,000 years ago. Divided into small bands, they ranged widely over the land, hunting many now-extinct animals. The next stage, called Archaic, lasted from about 10,000 to 3,000 years ago. In this period, woven baskets and highly specialized stone tools abounded. Following that was the Woodland culture, which saw the introduction of pottery and agriculture. Southeastern Missouri contains many artifacts and relics of the culture called Mississippians or Mound Builders, a village society that started about ad 800.

The peoples who inhabited the area during the era of exploration and settlement were seminomads who were attracted by the forests and prairies in the lower part of the Missouri River valley, which abounded with game. They lived about half the year in villages, growing crops. Most powerful and numerous were the Osage, who lived along the Osage River. North of the Missouri lived the Otoe, and a village of the Missouria people was located at the confluence of the Grand and Missouri rivers. The name of the village was applied to the people, the river, and finally the state. The Iowa and, later, the united Sac (Sauk) and Fox drove out the other groups by the early 19th century. Some Shawnee and Delaware were temporarily moved to Missouri by the Spanish, but all of the Native Americans had been forced out of the state by 1837.

B.

European Exploration and Settlement

European discovery, exploration, and settlement of the Mississippi and Missouri valleys were accomplished by French trappers, traders, and missionaries. In 1673 explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet boated down the Mississippi River and charted it past the mouth of the Missouri. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, claimed the entire Mississippi drainage area, including the Missouri Valley, for France in 1682, naming it Louisiane (in English, Louisiana). By 1700 the mission of Saint Francis Xavier was established on the site of modern St. Louis. In 1714 Étienne Véniard de Bourgmont explored the Missouri River, and nine years later he built Fort Orleans near the mouth of the Grand. Antoine de La Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, governor of Louisiana, explored the lead region of southeastern Missouri in 1715, and Captain Charles Claude du Tisne made an overland journey into Osage territory in 1719.

The lead deposits led the French to found Sainte Genevieve, the first permanent white settlement in Missouri, about 1750. In 1763 the Maxent and Laclède Company of New Orleans obtained a monopoly of the fur trade in the Missouri Valley. Pierre Laclède and his party, including 14-year-old René Auguste Chouteau, selected the site of St. Louis for their trading post. Early in 1764, under Chouteau’s guidance, settlers began clearing land for the village. A few months later, news arrived that France had ceded Louisiana to Spain. Don Pedro Piernas, the first Spanish governor, reached St. Louis in 1770 and made it the capital of the district of Upper Louisiana.

C.

The Revolutionary Period

During the American Revolution (1775-1783), the French and Spanish in St. Louis openly sympathized with the United States against Great Britain and aided U.S. Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark, who fought the British nearby in present-day Indiana. This led to an attack on the town in 1780 by a British and Native American force, but the invaders were beaten.

When the war ended in 1783 and the Illinois country on the other side of the Mississippi was ceded to the United States, many of the French settlers of Illinois moved into Upper Louisiana. Anxious to make the territory self-supporting, the Spanish government encouraged immigration from the United States, going so far as to offer settlers Spanish citizenship and free land. Between 1795 and 1804, hundreds of Kentuckians, Tennesseans, Virginians, and Carolinians took advantage of the offer. Among them was the famed pioneer Daniel Boone, who lived in the Femme Osage region of Saint Charles and served as a syndic, or frontier judge.

In 1787 the Congress of the United States passed the Northwest Ordinance, which provided for the organization of territory ceded from Great Britain, including the Illinois country, and prohibited slavery in these territories. However, west of the Mississippi, the Spanish government welcomed slavery, thus inducing Southerners who wanted to expand the institution of slavery to settle in Missouri.

D.

The 19th Century

D.1.

Territorial Period

By 1804 the population of Missouri exceeded 10,000. The French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte, who had forced Spain to return Louisiana to France in 1800, sold it to the United States in 1803 (see Louisiana Purchase). However, the Spanish remained in authority in St. Louis until 1804, when U.S. Army Captain Amos Stoddard took over the government. Congress organized Upper Louisiana as the Louisiana Territory in 1805. St. Louis remained the capital. General James Wilkinson, the first governor, was unpopular, and in 1807 he was replaced by the well-known explorer Captain Meriwether Lewis.

On June 4, 1812, Missouri Territory, with some privileges of self-government, was carved out of Louisiana Territory. It had the same borders as the present state except for the northwestern triangle, which was added in 1837. The next few years saw frequent Native American attacks on outlying settlements, part of a British plan of harassment during the War of 1812 (1812-1815). When peace came, a flood of immigrants poured into the territory, raising the population to nearly 70,000 by 1820. Many settlers came from the South, bringing their slaves. However, in contrast to the plantation life of the South, subsistence farming, lead mining, and trapping were the principal pioneer occupations. Some tobacco and pork were produced and rafted down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

Life in territorial Missouri was characterized by land speculation, gambling, drinking, brawling, and little attention to religion or social amenities. Although many American settlers were essentially honest and industrious, they were often crude and illiterate. The most stable cultural influences came from the old French Catholic families of St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve.

Missouri’s geography made it a natural crossroads between the East and the unexplored West. In 1804 the Lewis and Clark Expedition had set out westward from St. Louis, and later, Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long set out from the same city. These early Western explorers brought back reports of fur-rich country, and before long, trader Manuel Lisa organized the Missouri Fur Company. Soon, St. Louis became the eastern base of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company of Jedediah Smith, William Sublette, James Bridger, and William Ashley, and of the American Fur Company of John Jacob Astor and the Chouteau family.

D.2.

The Missouri Compromise

By 1817 Missourians were lobbying for statehood. Petitions were circulated, and Congress began to consider the issue in 1818. Missouri’s request caused an extended debate over slavery. The institution had long been a sore point in Congress between politicians of the Northern states, who wanted to limit or abolish it, and those of the South, who wanted to preserve it. To maintain harmony, the issue had been avoided as much as possible. Now, however, the Northerners took a stand against extension of slavery into new territories. The Southerners were just as adamant because they wanted to preserve their power in the United States Senate. The seats were evenly divided between North and South, which meant that the South could block bills that threatened its system. However, if all new states were free states, the slave states would soon be a minority in the Senate. Missouri became the test case.

Congressman Henry Clay of Kentucky worked out a solution. Missouri would be allowed to enter the federal Union as a slave state, Maine (a territory that prohibited slavery) would be admitted as a free state, and slavery would be allowed elsewhere in the former Louisiana Territory below Missouri’s southern boundary, latitude 36°30’N. This was the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The admission of one free and one slave state preserved the free-versus-slave balance in Congress, and the demarcation line assured the South that more slave states could be admitted in the future.

Although much more of the new territory was located north of the line than south of it, Southerners felt that few states could be formed from the northern part because explorers Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long had described the area—the Great Plains—as a “great desert.”

D.3.

Early Statehood

On July 19, 1820, Missouri’s constitutional convention approved a document that allowed slavery and prohibited immigration of free blacks to the state. The ban on free blacks was another barrier to admission, because the Constitution of the United States guaranteed that a citizen’s rights in one state could not be withheld in another state. Clay, anxious to save his compromise, secured the promise of the Missouri legislature that it would never enforce that clause of the constitution.

Under the new Missouri constitution, Alexander McNair was elected governor; William H. Ashley, lieutenant governor; and John Scott, U. S. representative. The legislature later chose David Barton and Thomas Hart Benton as the state’s first U.S. senators. Missouri was admitted to the Union as the 24th state on August 10, 1821, by proclamation of President James Monroe, after the legislature passed a declaration that the provision barring free blacks would never be enforced. It was not long, however, before the legislature reneged on its agreement, passing laws restricting free blacks in 1825.

D.4.

Economic Development

A severe nationwide economic slump following the panic of 1819 created serious problems for the new state. The Bank of St. Louis failed, and confidence in banknotes, supported by Eastern capital, quickly fell. In response, the legislature established loan offices to issue state currency and placed a moratorium on debt repayment. Missourians distrusted banking and paper currency in general and supported national political leader Andrew Jackson, who was a Westerner, a staunch ally of Benton’s, and a champion of hard money (money backed by gold reserves). Jackson’s Democratic Party did well in Missouri elections. In the Senate, Benton urged expansion of the fur trade, protection of overland trails, a free land policy, and other measures that would concentrate political and economic power in the West.

The constitutional convention and the first legislature had met in St. Louis. In 1821 the legislature moved to St. Charles, and in 1826, when a statehouse was completed, it moved to Jefferson City. In its early years, Jefferson City was a village of mud streets, tents, and log houses, where coonskin-capped legislators carried on lively debates on internal improvements and on the relative merits of hard and soft money. In spite of the capital city’s natural importance, it was St. Louis that became the commercial center of the state.

Missouri continued to be the gateway to the Far West. The Santa Fe, Oregon, California, and other overland trails originated in Missouri; Franklin, Westport, Independence, and Saint Joseph became successive staging centers. The lucrative Santa Fe trade brought gold and silver to Missouri, while Oregon’s lush Willamette Valley and California’s gold lured many Americans to and through Missouri. The state’s role in the development of the Rocky Mountain area is reflected in the thousands of Western families who trace their beginnings to Missouri.

D.5.

Population Growth

St. Louis had long been the supply point for Western expeditions and a port for the increasing river traffic. From the early days its people were a blend of French and Spanish, and to these were rapidly added fur traders, pioneers, French-speaking slaves, and immigrants from abroad. Irish, English, and German immigrants came in great numbers after 1820. Among the early German immigrants were John Sutter, on whose California land the Gold Rush began; Adolphus Busch and Eberhard Anheuser, who helped make brewing a national industry; and Carl Schurz, a writer, journalist, and U.S. senator from Missouri after the Civil War. St. Louis and Kansas City attracted large communities of Italians, Greeks, Poles, and Jews.

Missouri’s growth from 1820 to the Civil War was spectacular. The population increased 18-fold in 40 years, reaching nearly 1.2 million in 1860. Hemp joined tobacco and pork as major cash products of the farms and plantations, and merchandising developed in answer to the demands of the fur and trading companies. By 1860 some important industrial foundations had been laid. Ironworks at Meramec Spring, Springfield, Ironton, and Pilot Knob expanded rapidly as native coal replaced wood and other fuels. Successful steamboat operations on the Missouri and the Mississippi delayed railroad construction until the 1850s. In the decade before the war, the state appropriated $25 million in bonds to promote railroad building. The Pacific Railroad broke ground in 1851, and in 1859 the Hannibal and St. Joseph became the first line to cross the state. In 1858 the Butterfield Overland Mail began operations between Tipton and San Francisco, California, and two years later the first Pony Express rider left St. Joseph for California.

D.6.

The Mormon War

In 1831 Joseph Smith, organizer of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, settled a band of his Mormon followers at Independence. Smith designated Independence as “Zion,” the place to which Jesus Christ would return. Converts flocked into western Missouri.

The Mormons were against slavery and favored immigration of free blacks. Their views soon brought them into conflict with proslavery factions, and they were forced north across the Missouri River into Clay County. Violence continued, and in 1836 the legislature set aside Caldwell County for the Mormons, where they settled and founded the town of Far West. However, some also moved into Davies and Carroll counties, where opposition from their neighbors led to the Mormon War. Governor Lilburn W. Boggs called out the state militia with the order that the Mormons had to be “exterminated or driven from the state.” By April 1839 most Mormons had left Missouri and gone first to Illinois, and later founded a new Zion in Salt Lake City, Utah.

However, to many of Smith’s original followers, Independence was still the Mormon Zion. In 1860 his son Joseph Smith III accepted leadership of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who were the largest group of dissident Mormons and still lived largely in the Midwest. He established the headquarters of this body at Independence.

D.7.

The Mexican War and the Slavery Question

Missourians interested in expansion of trade were vigorous supporters of the Mexican War (1846-1848). More than 9,000 Missourians volunteered to fight the Mexicans. The federal generals Stephen Watts Kearny and John C. Frémont (Senator Benton’s son-in-law) and the Missouri volunteer colonels Alexander W. Doniphan and Sterling Price were instrumental in bringing victory to the United States.

In the peace treaty of 1848 Mexico ceded to the United States the vast lands of California and New Mexico. Debate began in Congress about the status of slavery in these new territories. The Missouri legislature directed its Congressional delegation to vote for the protection of slavery in the new territories. Senator Benton displayed great political courage in ignoring these instructions and openly endorsing a ban on slavery. However, he lost his seat in 1850 in a bid for reelection.

In 1854 the Kansas and Nebraska territories were formed out of the northern part of the old Louisiana Territory. Both were wholly above the 1820 compromise line of latitude 36°30’N, in the Great Plains region that had been called a desert. It was clear by now, however, that the plains were fertile farmland and could be divided into several new states. The Southern states saw that they would be in a minority in the Senate if the 1820 line were retained. Because many slaveowners lived in Kansas, the South pressed to have it admitted as a slave state. After much bitter debate, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, repealing the Missouri Compromise and allowing the two territories to decide whether they would be free or slave states.

Almost immediately the Missouri-Kansas border became a battleground, as proslavery and antislavery groups crossed into Kansas to vote in its decisive 1855 election. What was called the Border War ensued, with much destruction and killing in both Kansas and Missouri. Southern sympathizers, led by David Rice Atchison and others, raided antislavery towns on both sides of the border, while opponents of slavery such as John Brown and James Lane ravaged proslavery areas.

The anger of the North over slavery was further aroused by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States about the status of a Missouri slave, Dred Scott. Scott’s owner had taken him from Missouri to Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota, where slavery was banned at the time under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. In 1846, back in Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that residence in a free territory released him from slavery. The Supreme Court of Missouri, however, ruled in 1852 that upon his being brought back to territory where slavery was legal, he became a slave again. Scott’s lawyers had the case shifted to federal court, then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, not only that Scott was not free, but that the U.S. Constitution gave Congress no authority to prohibit slavery anywhere in the territories. Northern condemnation of the decision was furious.

D.8.

Civil War

The hostility of Northerners to the Dred Scott Case, which included threats to abolish slavery in the states where it existed, helped convince Southerners of their growing insecurity within the Union. Many came to believe that secession from the Union was the only way to protect what they called “Southern rights,” including the right to own slaves. The presidential election of 1860 brought the issue to a crisis. That year, Abraham Lincoln was elected president as the candidate of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery. The Southern state of South Carolina had threatened to secede if the Republicans won, and in December 1860 it did so. Other Southern states followed. On February 8, 1861, they set up a confederacy called the Confederate States of America.

In February 1861 the legislature called a state convention to consider Missouri’s relation to the Union. None of the delegates favored immediate secession, but Governor Claiborne F. Jackson was pro-Southern and refused to respond to Lincoln’s call for troops in April 1861, when the American Civil War began. Instead he ordered the state militia to assemble at Camp Jackson in St. Louis. Union Army General Nathaniel Lyon soon marched against the camp and forced its surrender. Agitators attacked the Union troops, who then fired into the crowd, killing several people.

In a last effort to maintain peace, on June 11, Lyon met Jackson in St. Louis, but the conference ended when Lyon would not approve Missouri’s neutrality and Jackson refused to permit Union troop movements in the state. Jackson called for 50,000 volunteers and placed Sterling Price in command of the militia; Lyon then occupied the capital. Jackson and remnants of the legislature fled to Neosho. On June 17, Price’s militia attacked Lyon’s troops at Boonville, but Lyon was victorious. However, at a bloody battle at Wilson’s Creek on August 10, Lyon was killed and his troops routed. Price led his Confederate soldiers to another victory at Lexington the next month.

In October the Neosho government approved Missouri’s secession. However, the state convention set up a provisional government in July 1861, with Hamilton R. Gamble as governor. Largely through Gamble’s diplomacy, Missouri stayed in the Union. Thus it later avoided many of the agonizing problems of Reconstruction, as the restoration of the Union was called. As the war proceeded and the government’s position was consolidated, Confederate strength declined.

A Union Army victory in March 1862 at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, ended the Confederate threat to seize Missouri, but fighting continued in the state in the form of raids and guerrilla action. Confederate guerrilla bands such as that of Captain William Quantrill were particularly difficult to control. Such notorious Missourians as Jesse James, Frank James, and Cole Younger rode with Quantrill. Notable battles included Price’s defeat at Pilot Knob on September 27, 1864, when he lost 1,500 men in less than half an hour, and the Battle of Westport on October 21, 1864, which ended the movement of Confederate troops in Missouri. During the war approximately 110,000 Missourians served with Union forces and nearly 40,000 with the Confederate forces, and more than 1,000 battles and skirmishes took place in Missouri.

D.9.

Reconstruction and Postwar Development

The major issues facing Missourians at the close of the Civil War related to Reconstruction and the rebuilding of the war-torn state. The provisional government of 1861 continued to function, but as early as 1863 it split into factions. A wing of the Republicans, called Radicals, who favored harsh measures gained control of the state government in 1864 and called a constitutional convention. The resulting constitution of 1865 abolished slavery, freeing the 115,000 remaining slaves, promoted public education, and prohibited further commitment of state funds to promotional ventures such as railroads. It also required a test oath to bar former Confederate sympathizers from holding public office, voting, teaching, practicing law, and preaching. The unpopularity of this extremism led to the swift downfall of Radical rule. In 1866 the U.S. Supreme Court declared portions of the test oath unconstitutional, and in the 1869 and 1870 elections a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats made Carl Schurz U.S. Senator and Benjamin Gratz Brown governor. In 1872 the Radicals were ousted, and the Democrats gained in strength as the moderate Republicans declined. In 1875 the state approved its third constitution, the second in ten years. It eliminated all hints of reprisals against former Confederates, stipulated that at least 25 percent of the general revenue be used for public education, created commissions to regulate the railroads, placed tax restrictions on local communities, and lengthened the governor’s term to four years.

D.10.

Growth and Industrialization

Missouri, which had the largest population among slave states in 1860, continued its rapid growth after the Civil War. It ranked fifth among the states in population from 1870 to 1900. This growth was principally in the newer inland counties and in the lead mining and zinc mining areas in southwestern Missouri. The mining boom of the 1870s led to the development of Joplin and other smaller towns.

However, progress was not uniform. Nationwide economic slumps in 1873 and 1893 erased the gains made by farmers during economic booms. Also, in some areas, particularly on the western border, the Civil War had caused devastation of farms. The farmers were chronically in debt, and their debtor status was virtually guaranteed by deflation of the dollar, rising costs, and, in some counties, exploitation by the railroads. Foreign immigrants continued to come to the St. Louis and lower Missouri River areas after the war, flooding the labor market and causing wages to fall. Because of the financial difficulties of the farmers and laborers, the Greenback Party and People’s Party enjoyed great popularity in Missouri. The Greenbackers endorsed soft money (paper money whose value was not tied to the price of gold) and the People’s Party endorsed free coinage of silver, both measures that were expected to inflate the dollar and thereby help the farmers and laborers pay off their debts.

But also during this period, industries and the state’s general development were stimulated by the growth of railroads. By 1870 there were 3,200 km (2,000 mi) of track, an increase of almost 250 percent in ten years. Crops could now be transported to distant markets, and livestock could be profitably carried to the new stockyards in St. Louis and Kansas City.

E.

The 20th Century

E.1.

Reform

After 1905, statewide reform of the government was led by governors Joseph W. Folk and Herbert S. Hadley. Their combined eight-year record included prosecution of Standard Oil Company and other monopolies, passage of direct primary election laws to restrict political machines (organized political groups under the control of strong leaders or factions), and regulation of lobbying, public utilities, child labor, and food and drug production. William T. Harris, later the U.S. commissioner of education, paved the way for education reforms and innovations during his tenure as superintendent of the St. Louis schools, and Frederick D. Gardner was a pioneer in penal reforms. The desire for reform led Missouri in 1904 to vote for Theodore Roosevelt, the first time after Reconstruction that the state voted for a Republican presidential candidate.

The entry of the United States into World War I (1914-1918) checked the reform movement. More than 140,000 Missourians joined the armed forces of the United States.

E.2.

Economic Ups and Downs

At the war’s end most of Missouri was prosperous, although an economic slump in agriculture in 1921 soon ended the prosperity of the farmers. Nevertheless, Missourians launched an extensive road building effort during the 1920s that did what an early slogan demanded, “Get Missouri Out of the Mud.” While farmers suffered, most areas of the economy grew during the 1920s, but beginning with the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression spread across the Missouri economy. To offer some relief, state and federal construction programs were begun.

E.3.

Reform Resumed

Although emphasizing relief, the state resumed its long-interrupted struggle against political corruption. Despite the direct primary laws, the state still had political machines. An outstanding example in the 1930s was the one run by the boss of the Kansas City Democratic Party, Thomas J. Pendergast. Pendergast’s influence declined after he broke with Governor Lloyd Stark in 1938, but it was not ended until 1939, when Pendergast was sentenced to prison for income tax evasion. One of the most notable products of the Pendergast machine was Harry S. Truman, a Jackson County judge, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934 and elected vice president in 1944. With the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, Truman became the first Missourian to serve as president of the United States.

E.4.

Missouri After 1940

More than 450,000 Missourians served with U.S. armed forces during World War II (1939-1945). The war also made demands on Missouri’s minerals, and the production of aircraft brought the state out of the economic despair of the 1930s. Missouri’s McDonnell Aircraft Corporation (subsequently known as McDonnell Douglas and now part of The Boeing Company), one of the state’s chief employers, established itself during the war as a defense contractor.

Missourians approved a fourth state constitution in 1945. This constitution gave labor the right to bargain collectively and largely removed education from political control. The executive department was streamlined, and the tax system was modernized. However, the constitution also segregated the educational system: black and white children were to be educated in separate public schools. This clause remained in effect until the historic 1954 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing segregation.

The urbanization and industrialization characteristic of Missouri during the 20th century were accelerated after World War II. Rural counties declined in population, and the metropolitan areas of St. Louis and Kansas City spread for miles into the adjacent countryside. Organized labor became a powerful force in state affairs, peaking in influence during the 1950s and 1960s, but began to decline in the 1970s. A part of the decline was caused by the transformation of the Missouri economy. Manufacturing was replaced by the service sector as the chief employer of labor. Much of the subsistence farming in the Ozarks was replaced by business enterprises associated with recreation, as state and federal programs of conservation and waterpower created huge lakes in the southern half of the state. In the more productive agricultural areas, farm units increased in size and the number of farms and farmers greatly declined.

As Missouri entered the 1980s, social issues remained to be dealt with, including the persistence of racial segregation in the public schools of St. Louis and Kansas City. The high interest rates and recession of the early 1980s caused some hardship, especially among farmers and miners. Missourians were also made aware of serious environmental problems when residents of the town of Times Beach had to abandon their homes because of the dioxin contamination discovered in 1982. Both the state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched massive cleanup efforts. The state spent more than $40 million on dioxin cleanup, and the EPA built and operated a special dioxin incinerator at Verona. The EPA closed and dismantled its incinerator in 1988.

E.5.

Missouri at the End of the Century

Many of the trends of the 1980s persisted into the 1990s. Efforts to end segregation in Kansas City and St. Louis continued to tax the state’s school funds and led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Missouri v. Jenkins, requiring reconsideration of achievement requirements and across-the-board pay raises for Kansas City schools. Changes in racial attitudes on the part of both black and white Missourians made the future of desegregation efforts even more questionable as some black activists called for black-controlled schools as preferable to integrated ones, and many whites expressed dismay at the cost of desegregation attempts in the two cities. Indeed, the results of these efforts satisfied few.

Politically, Democrat Mel Carnahan broke Republican control of the governor’s office in 1992. Republicans Christopher Bond and John Ashcroft had held the governor’s position during the 1980s (both were subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate). Quickly, Carnahan succeeded in getting the Democratically controlled legislature to create a new formula that increased and equalized state support for public elementary and secondary schools. New standards of expectations for student achievement also became a part of the 1993 law.

Many of the difficulties that faced Missourians in the 1990s were the same as in the rest of the nation. The changes in educational policy reflected the ongoing concern about economic trends that increasingly placed greater emphasis on adequate levels of education and training for employment. Competition in a world economy meant that Missouri companies had to produce more efficiently. Important manufacturing firms such as McDonnell-Douglas (now part of The Boeing Company) employed fewer people and became more profitable. Those who remained employed often made more money than before, and those who had to find work in service occupations often received lower wages.

At the same time, public institutions of higher education raised their fees, making it more difficult for many Missourians to continue their schooling. Many middle-class people in both rural and urban Missouri struggled to maintain their standards of living. The number of two-parent families with both parents working increased, leaving children with less parental supervision and with greater dependence on day care centers. Teenage gangs, drive-by shootings, drug use, out-of-wedlock births, and other signs of social breakdown received frequent media attention, not only in St. Louis and Kansas City, but also in Springfield and other medium-sized and rural places.

During the 2000 general election, Carnahan, who had been reelected governor in 1996, ran against Ashcroft for his Senate seat. A few weeks before the election, Carnahan was killed in a plane crash as he traveled to a campaign event. At the time of his death, it was too late to remove his name from the ballot, and thus he remained the Democratic candidate. In November Carnahan won the election posthumously. The new Missouri governor, Democrat Bob Holden, appointed Carnahan’s wife, Jean Carnahan, to fill his seat for a special two-year term. Although Ashcroft lost the election, he was appointed U.S. attorney general by President George W. Bush. At the end of her special two-year term, Carnahan sought election to complete her late husband’s term, but she was defeated by Republican James Talent.

The Republicans recaptured the governor’s mansion in the 2004 elections with the selection of Matt Blunt as governor. The same year Ashcroft resigned as U.S. attorney general. Blunt chose not to seek reelection in 2008, and the Democrats regained the state house with the election of Jay Nixon. The victory extended the Democrats’ edge in governorships, with 29 to the Republicans’ 21.

The history section of this article was contributed by Lawrence O. Christensen. The remainder of the article was contributed by Walter A. Schroeder.