Claiborne Fox Jackson
Claiborne Fox Jackson was an American politician of the Democratic Party in Missouri. He was elected as the 15th Governor of Missouri, serving from January 3, 1861, until July 31, 1861, when he was forced out by the Unionist majority in the Missouri General Assembly after planning to force the secession of the state.
Before the war, Jackson worked with his father-in-law, John Sappington, to manufacture and sell patent medicines, in the form of quinine pills, to treat and prevent malaria.
He became quite wealthy and politically influential, deeply involved in the Democratic party in Saline County and central Missouri. He served twelve years in the Missouri House of Representatives, twice as Speaker. In 1848 he was elected to the State Senate. During the 1860 election, Jackson professed to be a Unionist. However, in 1861, after the Missouri Convention rejected secession, Jackson secretly planned a secessionist coup in league with the Confederate government.
In 1860 Jackson successfully ran for governor as a moderate on the issue of secession. During his inaugural speech of January 3, 1861, however, he declared that Missouri would resist any Union coercion by force of arms. He then called for a convention to pass a secession ordinance, but that body, dominated by Unionists, defeated the measure. After the fall of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April 1861, Jackson denounced President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers and began plotting to seize the U.S. Arsenal in St. Louis. To that end he dispatched secret emissaries to Confederate president Jefferson Davis and received four large cannon.
But Jackson's scheme was defeated by the prompt actions of Cap. Nathaniel Lyon, who attacked and scattered Jackson's “State Guard” at Camp Jackson on May 10, 1861. Jackson fled the state capital, Jefferson City, as Lyon's forces approached and established a rump legislature at Neosho; this body formally voted to secede the following October. However, continuing Union successes under Gen. Samuel R. Curtis sent the secessionist governor and his followers fleeing again, this time into Arkansas, where they erected a temporary capital at Camden.
Jackson died of pneumonia, resulting from complications from stomach cancer on December 7, 1862, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He was replaced by Lieutenant Governor Thomas C. Reynolds.
The exile government continued, setting up shop in Shreveport, Louisiana and then Marshall, Texas. The government took part in and sent representatives to the Confederate government. The exile government was formally disbanded at the conclusion of the Civil War.
Early life
Claiborne Fox Jackson, son of Dempsey Carroll and Mary Orea "Molly" Jackson, was born in 1806 in Fleming County, Kentucky. He had several older brothers. His father, Dempsey Carroll Jackson, was a wealthy tobacco planter and slaveholder. He was likely tutored at home and taught to be a planter.Claiborne Fox's second cousin was John Jackson and his third cousin was Jarvis Jackson Jr, father and brother of Hancock Lee Jackson. Hancock Lee Jackson, the 13th governor of Missouri, was also Claiborne Fox Jackson's 3rd cousin. The two shared a great-grandfather, Joseph Jackson Sr. John and Jarvis Jr. later sold the land that would become Laurel County, Kentucky.
Migration to Missouri – career and marriages
In 1826 Jackson moved with several of his older brothers to Missouri, settling in the Howard County town of Franklin. The Jackson brothers established a successful general mercantile store.In early 1831, Jackson married Jane Breathitt Sappington, daughter of Dr. John Sappington, a prominent frontier physician, and his wife, Jane, in Arrow Rock, Missouri. From Maryland and Nashville, Tennessee, Sappington had met his wife in Kentucky. She was a sister of future Kentucky Governor John Breathitt and two other politically connected brothers. After living in Franklin, Tennessee, they migrated to Missouri in 1817, settling in Arrow Rock a couple of years later. In addition to developing businesses, Sappington eventually acquired thousands of acres of land and became a major slaveholder.
But Jane Jackson died a few months after the wedding. That year her father established the Sappington Cemetery on his plantation for family burials, perhaps because of his daughter Jane's death.
Claiborne Jackson continued to work with his brothers after his wife's death, until 1832 and the outbreak of hostilities in the Black Hawk War. As a young widower, Claiborne Jackson organized, and was elected captain of, a unit of Howard County volunteers for the conflict.
After returning from the war, Jackson decided to make a change, moving to nearby Saline County, where his father-in-law lived. He worked for him for a time in the family businesses. This was also part of the region along the Missouri River known as "Little Dixie."
In 1833 Jackson married Louisa Catherine Sappington, a younger sister of his late wife. He worked with his father-in-law and brother-in-law Erasmus Sappington in the manufacture and sale of "Dr. Sappington's Anti-Fever Pills", a patent medicine preventative and treatment for malaria. The pills were filled with quinine, which Sappington manufactured from ground cinchona bark imported from Peru. He developed wide distribution of the pills, which became best sellers. Malaria was prevalent throughout the Missouri and Mississippi valleys, as were yellow fever, scarlet fever, and influenza. Saline County was relatively near the head of the Santa Fe Trail in neighboring Howard County. Traders and emigrants traveling through the area were also eager to buy pills to treat malaria.
Subsequently, both men and their entwined, extended families became quite wealthy and influential in the region. In May 1838, Jackson's second wife, Louisa, died, likely from complications of childbirth. Their infant son, Andrew Jackson, died the next month. That same year Jackson married again, to the widowed Elizabeth Whitsett Pearson, also a daughter of his parents-in-law. They had two daughters together, Louisa Jane and Annie E. Jackson.
Political career
Through his family connections with Dr. Sappington, Jackson, along with his brother-in-law Meredith M. Marmaduke, became deeply involved with Missouri Democratic Party politics. Jackson was first elected in 1836 to the Missouri House of Representatives, where he represented Saline County.He moved to the Howard County seat of Fayette, Missouri—then a center of political power in the state—in 1838 and worked for the local branch of the state bank. This would pay great political dividends later in his career. Claiborne Jackson served a total of twelve years in the Missouri House, including terms as Speaker in 1844 and 1846.
In 1840 Jackson nearly became involved in a duel over politics; duels had been prohibited. Writing anonymously to a Fayette, Missouri newspaper, Jackson made accusations that John B. Clark, the Whig candidate for Missouri Governor that year, was guilty of election fraud. The men exchanged more harsh words, and Clark challenged Jackson to a duel. The matter was settled without gunplay. Later, after Clark had switched party allegiance to the Democrats, he and Jackson became political allies.
Jackson was elected to the state senate in 1848. As leader of the pro-slavery Democrats, he headed efforts to defeat US Senator Thomas H. Benton, a powerful politician who was pro-Union. This was an event with both personal and political implications for Jackson, as his father-in-law and Benton had a longtime friendship. Until that time, like his father-in-law and brother-in-law Marmaduke, Jackson had been an ardent backer of Benton.
Marmaduke chose to side with Benton, as his views on slavery and related issues had changed since the 1840s. This likely cost him the chance to be elected governor in his own right The estrangement with Jackson and his other in-laws led to disruption in the extended family.
Amidst increasing tensions related to slavery in the state and nation, Missouri State Senator and Judge Carty Wells of Marion County introduced what were first known as the Calhoun resolutions, developed by US Senator John C. Calhoun for all slaveholding states. These were referred to the committee on foreign relations, which Jackson chaired. He is credited with introducing them to the whole state senate on January 15, 1849. They were afterward known as the "Jackson Resolutions." Asserting that Congress had no constitutional right to legislate on slavery in the states, the resolutions rejected the Missouri Compromise and any effort by outside forces to determine slavery in a territory, but said to preserve harmony it would accept extension of the Compromise to all new territories. It stated that Missouri had much in common with other slaveholding states and needed to resist Northern encroachment. It mandated that the state's U.S. Senators and Congressmen support these resolutions. US Senator Thomas Hart Benton had rejected Calhoun's resolutions in the Senate and strongly opposed the effort to introduce them at the state. But Jackson and the anti-Benton faction had their way. The joint convention of the legislature to vote for US Senator voted for Whig Henry S. Geyer, and Benton lost his office. Benton supporters retaliated by derailing Jackson's attempts to secure the Democratic nomination for U.S. Congress in 1853 and again in 1855.
In 1857, Jackson was appointed by the governor as Banking Commissioner of Missouri. In that position he established a system of six State Banks, with branch locations. This proved an advantage to business and the general public alike by stabilizing temporary currency shortages that had happened from time to time, especially in the more rural areas of the state. As Commissioner, Jackson traveled to various locations around the state inspecting banking facilities. He used these occasions to build a power base for his next attempt at elected office, as a candidate for Governor of Missouri.