END OF CIVIL WAR ERA IN MISSOURI IS FINALLY IN SIGHT

ST. CHARLES, Mo. -- It is often said that you can't understand Missouri politics unless you know the history of the Civil War in our state. In Missouri, the Civil War did not start in 1861 but seven years earlier with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Border wars erupted between Missourians and Kansans over the issue of slavery in Kansas. When the war came, it was truly a civil war between Americans and between Missourians who were fighting on both sides and against each other.

At that time, three-fourths of Missourians traced their roots to Kentucky and Tennessee where slavery was legal. Not all approved of slavery. Those from eastern Tennessee who were small farmers and did not have slaves moved into Southwest Missouri. Just as eastern Tennessee remained loyal to the Union, the people of Southwest Missouri were predominantly pro-Union during the Civil War. A second major pro-Union group were the German immigrants who had settled in and around St. Louis. When the Civil War came, they helped keep St. Louis solidly in the Union camp. In the postwar period, Southwest Missouri and St. Louis became strongholds of the Republican Party.

The Missouri senatorial district map in 1990 would show that not much had changed in 130 years. The Republican seats in the Missouri Senate were almost entirely in Southwest Missouri and the suburbs surrounding St. Louis. The New Deal, with its government assistance for agriculture, had solidified the Democratic predominance in outstate Missouri. More importantly, it was the first time African-Americans left the party of Lincoln and began voting Democratic, a trend that has continued. Nationally, while Republicans were losing the urban and minority vote, they were picking up in the rural South and West. Until the 1980s, that national trend was not taking pace in rural Missouri, due largely to animosities going back to the Civil War. During the 1980s, many of these areas began voting Republican in presidential or gubernatorial elections but continued to vote Democratic in state Senate races. As a result, Republicans have not had a majority in the Missouri Senate since 1946.

Change in last decade

Things began to change after 1990. For the last decade, Republicans in the Missouri Senate have been fighting hard to end the Civil War-era in Missouri. The first victories were the result of redistricting. Democratic areas in the northern part of the state were losing population, and the Republican Southwest Missouri was gaining. Growth was also taking place in traditionally Republican St. Charles County. As a result, new districts were created in St. Charles County and Southwest Missouri that were won by Republicans. At the same time, a redrawn 27th District that had eliminated New Madrid County and picked up Republican Perry County was won by a Republican, Peter Kinder -- the first crack in the Democratic rural hegemony.

In 1994, Sam Graves from Atchison County, named after pro-slavery Sen. David R. Atchison, replaced a Democrat in the 12th District in Northwest Missouri. The people were beginning to realize that conservative Democrats simply keep the liberal Democratic Party in charge.

In 1998, state Sen. Sarah Steelman beat a Democrat incumbent to make the 16th District Republican. In the process, she won Callaway County, which had attempted to secede from the state during the Civil War to become the Kingdom of Callaway. It was a pro-slavery stronghold in what was known as Little Dixie, and it remained a Democratic stronghold through most of the last century.

In the recent election, Republicans were challenging in the 31st District (five counties south of Kansas City and the 25th District (the Bootheel). The 31st District includes the counties known as the Burnt District in which, pursuant to Order No. 11, Union forces in 1863 moved in and forcibly removed all of the inhabitants and burned their houses and barns. This was seen as the only way to keep them from feuding with their pro-Union neighbors across the state line in Kansas. The first time Harry Truman's mother visited the White House, the president told her she would be sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom. She is said to have replied, "I'd rather sleep on the floor." As a small girl, Truman's mother had seen her entire family forcibly removed from their farm and their house burned by Lincoln's army of occupation. The Burnt District and the Bootheel are rural areas, and the people there are just as conservative as rural people throughout the state. But, given their history, they have found it difficult to vote Republican.

Nevertheless, last November Republican Bill Foster beat the Democratic incumbent in the Bootheel, an area geographically, economically and demographically very much a part of the Old South. For the first time, that area will be represented by a Republican in the Missouri Senate. In the Burnt District, a Republican candidate actually won the rural counties, but the incumbent was able to win a close race by carrying the Kansas City suburbs in Cass County.

Three vacancies

State Sens. Sam Graves and Lacy Clay have been elected to Congress. State Sen. Joe Maxwell will become our lieutenant governor. So those three senatorial districts are vacant. The Republicans have a temporary 16-15 majority in the Senate.

To have a permanent majority, they will have to retain control of the 12th district and also win the 18th District, which is in Northeast Missouri. Anyone who had read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" or "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" can imagine where this area's sympathies were during the Civil War. It was also the site of guerrilla warfare which subsided only when Union forces executed 10 men at the Palmyra Massacre. Nevertheless, this is an area that President-elect George W. Bush, U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft (running for re-election) and U.S. Rep. Jim Talent (running for governor) all won in November. But the area has continued to vote Democratic in Missouri Senate elections. If the 12th District can be retained and the 18th District won in the special election on Jan. 24, Senate Republicans will have a permanent majority for the next two years.

Then we could finally say that the Civil War era has ended in Missouri.

Steven Ehlmann is the retiring Republican floor leader of the Missouri Senate. In January he will take office as an associate circuit judge.