MISSOURI. 



MITCHEL, ORMSBY M. 595 



to a vindictive retaliatory order from Presi- 

 dent Davis. (See PRISONERS, EXCHANGE OF.) 



Early in October the political parties began 

 to prepare for the November election, and the 

 issue of emancipation or anti-emancipation was 

 at once distinctly set before the people of the 

 State. The emancipationists, however, were 

 divided in sentiment on several important 

 points, the radical portion, under the lead of 

 B. Gratz Brown, of the " Missouri Democrat," 

 being in favor of immediate emancipation, 

 while the more conservative members of the 

 party, represented by Col. Frank P. Blair, 

 urged a gradual removal of slavery from the 

 State. Many of the latter were slaveholders 

 and residents of large slaveholding districts, 

 and, although pledged unconditionally to the 

 maintenance of the Union, were necessarily 

 averse to the too sudden dissolution of the re- 

 lations of master and servant. Throughout the 

 State generally the two divisions of the party 

 united in the support of the same candidates; 

 but in St. Louis a somewhat bitter contest was 

 waged between them, which, had not the dem- 

 ocrats been in a very small minority, might 

 have led to the defeat of the emancipation 

 ticket in that city. 



On Tuesday, Xov. 4, the -election took place, 

 and resulted in the choice of the following 

 members of Congress : 1st district, F. P. Blair ; 

 2d do., H. T. Blow ; 3d do., John W. Xoell ; 

 4th do., S. H. Boyd; 5th do., J. W. McClurg; 

 6th do., Austin A. King ; 7th do., Benjamin 

 Loan; 8th do., W. A. Hall; 9th do., James S. 

 Rollins. Of these Blair, Blow, Noell, Boyd, 

 McClurg, and Loan were avowed emancipa- 

 tionists, King and Hall democrats, and Rollins 

 a Union man. In St. Louis, the contest be- 

 tween Blair and Knox, the radical emancipa- 

 tion candidate, was very close, the official re- 

 turn showing a vote of 4,743 for Blair to 4,590 

 for Knox, and 2,536 for Bogy, democrat. The 

 emancipationists were equally successful in se- 

 curing a majority in both branches of the Leg- 

 islature, that in the lower house being large. 



On December 29, the new Legislature met 

 at Jefferson City, and the House of Represent- 

 atives was immediately organized by the elec- 

 tion of the emancipation candidate for Speaker, 

 by a vote of 67 to 42. On the succeeding day 

 Governor Gamble submitted his annual mes- 



After congratulating the Legislature and the 

 State upon the fact that a Union General As- 

 sembly had at length been convened, he re- 

 viewed the condition of the State since the out- 

 break of secession, and showed that the num- 

 ber of volunteers from Missouri, after allowing 

 for the casualties of war, and mustering out ir- 

 regularly enlisted troops, was 27,500, which, 

 with 10,500 State militia, gave a total force of 

 38,000 men in service for the war. The en- 

 rolled militia, numbering 52, 000, would give the 

 State the grand total of 90,000, the latter force 

 furnishing a large body of men, armed and 

 equipped for any emergency. 



The indebtedness of the State, according to 

 report of the auditor, was stated at $27,370,090, 

 composed of the following items : 



Miscellaneous debt 1602,800 



Pacific Railroad bonds (main) 7,000,000 



Pacific Railroad. Southwest branch 4,500,000 



Hannibal and 8t Joseph 8,000,000 



North Missouri 8,850,000 



Iron Mountain 8,600,000 



Cairo and Fulton 650,000 



Platte county 700,000 



Revenue bonds 481,000 



State defence warrants 725.000 



Arrears of interest due 1,812,090 



$27,370,090 



In view of the constantly increasing arrear- 

 ages of interest upon this sum, owing to the 

 impossibility of collecting the State taxes dur- 

 ing the continuance of the civil war, he ear- 

 nestly recommended the adoption of measures 

 to restore the State credit and reduce the State 

 debt. 



On the subject of emancipation he observed 

 that he had long been convinced that the ma- 

 terial interests of Missouri would be advanced 

 by substituting free for slave labor, and rec- 

 ommended a plan by which the children of 

 slaves born after the passage of the act shall be 

 free, but remain under the control of their 

 owners until they have arrived at a certain age, 

 the owners to be compensated for the diminish- 

 ed value of slave mothers after being thus ren- 

 dered incapable of bearing slave children. He, 

 however, denied that the Legislature could con- 

 stitutionally adopt a scheme by which the 

 owners of slaves could be divided into classes, 

 and the slaves of one class be emancipated 

 without compensation while compensation was 

 provided for the other class. 



MITCHEL, ORMSBY MACKITIGHT, an Ameri- 

 can astronomer, and major-general of volun- 

 teers in the United States service, born in Union 

 co., Ky., Aug. 28, 1810, died of yellow fever, 

 at Beaufort, S. C., Oct. 30, 1862. He received 

 his early education at Lebanon, Warren co., 

 Ohio, and, at 12 years of age, began life for 

 himself as clerk in a store in Miami, Ohio. In 

 1825 he received an appointment to a cadet- 

 ship in West Point. In 1829 he graduated 

 fifteenth in a class of 46, among which were 

 Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, now 

 generals in the Confederate service. He was at 

 once appointed assistant professor of mathe- 

 matics, which position he occupied for two 

 years. He subsequently studied law, was ad- 

 mitted to the bar, and practised in Cincinnati 

 until 1834, when he was elected professor of 

 mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy in the 

 Cincinnati College. In 1845 he proposed the 

 establishment of an observatory at Cincinnati, 

 raising nearly the whole of the requisite amount 

 by his own exertions, and was made director 

 of the institution. To obtain the necessary ap- 

 paratus he took a flying trip to Europe, visited 

 London, Paris, and Munich, completed his con- 

 tracts and returned to his college duties in the 

 short space of 14 weeks. In 1859 he was 

 chosen director of the Dudley Observatory at 



