When forging trails and roads, humans and other animals typically take the path of least resistance. Early Missourians used the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and their tributaries to traverse the state, but in order to travel through what we now know as the Ozarks, the trails that became the Old Wire Road were almost the only option. The original route was created by Indigenous Americans, predominately the Osage, who followed trails created by large game, along what is now known as the Ozarks Plateau. The first non-Indigenous people, such as Spanish explorers, French traders and trappers, and European American settlers from Kentucky and Tennessee, used these same trails to enter the Ozarks region. The trails also allowed these newcomers to extract and exploit the area’s many natural resources.¹

The trails were not entirely stable and were not always easy for travelers. Flooding and other natural events often forced changes in the route and travelers on foot encountered rugged terrain. Often, people who traveled the route had to cross multiple waterways along their way. Those on horseback had an easier time as they could move faster and were able to cross streams and rivers much more easily, although a trip along the trail was still quite arduous. The emergence of wagon use in Missouri necessitated the construction of better and more stable roads and the needs of the large vehicles often required taking a slightly different course than the original trails. The state government finally consolidated multiple trails into an official road in 1836, part of which is now the Old Wire Road.

The Old Wire Road also played a part in the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from their ancestral lands in 1838. The Cherokee people were originally located in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and eastern Tennessee, but the United States government forced them to leave their homes and move to “Indian Territory” (present day Oklahoma). The Cherokee people were forced westward along a route now known as the “Trail of Tears.” The Cherokee entered Missouri near Cape Girardeau and traveled overland through Farmington and Potosi, eventually meeting up with The Old Wire Road in Rolla. Headed by federal guides called “conductors,” the Cherokee traveled roughly ten to fifteen miles each day on foot, in often brutal winter conditions. At least one fourth of the Cherokee Nation died as a result of this forced migration.²

In 1857, John Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company was awarded a federal contract to provide transportation of the mail from St. Louis, Missouri to San Francisco, California. The route that Butterfield developed and operated covered over 2,700 miles and used stagecoaches to move both mail and passengers starting in 1858 and ending in 1861, at the start of the Civil War.³ The Missouri portion of the route began in St. Louis, traveled west to Tipton, Missouri, by railroad, by road south to Springfield and Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then west to California. When the first telegraph line in Missouri was built in 1859, it utilized the same route. The road soon became known locally as the Old Wire Road because of the telegraph wires that were strung parallel to it.⁴

In 1859, construction began on the Central Division of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. In order to take advantage of the natural resources of iron, lead, and oak, the railroad followed the corridor of the Wire Road from St. Louis to Springfield. By 1860, the railroad had reached Rolla, Missouri, and when the Civil War began in 1861, Rolla became a major supply depot for the Union Army; as people and supplies moved between St. Louis and Rolla via the railroad. The Union army installed a new telegraph line, paralleling the railroad tracks from St. Louis to Fort Smith. Travel from Rolla to Springfield continued by foot and wagon for another 12 years due to disruption in construction of the rail line as a result of the war.

During the war, the Old Wire Road was crucial to Union communication, troops, and supply routes between Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis and Fort Smith in Arkansas. Several pivotal battles were fought along the Wire Road, including Wilson’s Creek near Springfield in 1861, the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Battle of Prairie Grove in Northwest Arkansas in 1862, and the Battle of Springfield in 1863. In the aftermath of each battle, the sick and wounded were transported up the Wire Road to the General Hospitals in Springfield and St. Louis.⁵

Over time, the Old Wire Road has been called by many names – The Great Osage Trail, The St. Louis/ Springfield/ Fayetteville Road, Highway 14, and Route 66. The road’s most iconic moniker is the Old Wire Road, due to the telegraph lines that followed along it. In the nineteenth century, the telegraph was as innovative as the internet is today. It allowed for quicker communication for news, business, personal messages, and train arrival times. The route is still often referred to locally as the Old Wire Road, even though today I-44 is the U.S. Department of Transportation’s official name for it on the map.⁶ Although the interstate does not take the exact route of the Old Wire Road, the highway continues to follow the railroad line from St. Louis to Springfield, connecting towns along the way and playing an important role in Missouri’s history.

A cross between a female horse and a male donkey, mules were brought to Missouri from Mexico in the 1820s via the Santa Fe Trail. In 1821, William Becknell led a party from Franklin,  located on the Missouri River in Howard County, to Santa Fe. His journey was the first legal trade between the United States and Mexico. The Missouri traders observed that the Spanish mules were small, hearty animals capable of working long hours in blistering heat. Becknell returned to Franklin with mules, which he believed were better than horses for the rigorous work demanded by life on the trail.¹

Animal handlers, such as the teamsters on the Santa Fe Trail, had to overcome the infamous reputation mules have for being stubborn. Those who did, found mules to have an “independent attitude” and capable of performing all kinds of labor. They could pull and carry more weight than horses and go for longer periods with little food or water. Mules were easier to train than horses and were remarkably surefooted. As smart animals, they were careful and less prone to injury than horses. Well-trained mules also were unlikely to become frightened in large crowds. The versatile and strong mule rapidly became a draft animal of choice for powering farm equipment and hauling freight.²

The opening of the Oregon Trail and California Trail greatly increased the demand for mules, as livestock breeders and traders recognized their potential utility as draft animals for transportation and agricultural purposes. While rugged, Spanish mule stock were sometimes too small to pull increasingly heavier wagons that could be filled with up to 5,000 pounds of cargo. Missouri traders discovered a robust market selling these smaller animals to work on southern farms and plantations, where they were valued for their intelligence, sure-footedness, and ability to work in warm temperatures. Mules were a favored draft animal on southern farms until well into the twentieth century.³ Mules, most of which were bred and raised in the Upper South, also played a major role transporting military supplies and hauling large guns.⁴

In most cases, mules are infertile since they are a hybrid cross between two equine breeds; therefore, mules were typically bred by specialized male breeders rather than raised by individual farmers.⁵ Breeders in Tennessee and Kentucky earned a reputation for producing larger mules capable of heavier workloads. As a result, the prices of the smaller Spanish stock fell when these larger animals became available. Missouri breeders adjusted their practices to meet the market demand and began concentrating on breeding big jacks and large mares, laying the foundation for the renowned Missouri Mule.⁶

For decades, one company dominated Missouri’s mule industry: Guyton & Harrington in Lathrop, Missouri. The company was founded by two cousins, J.D. Guyton and W.R. Harrington, who came to Missouri in the 1880s from Mississippi and Alabama. Under their leadership, it became the largest mule dealership in the world. Their main facility in Lathrop had three large barns, each capable of housing 1,000 mules. The company also operated two large facilities in Kansas City and East St. Louis. Five hundred buyers kept mules moving through the elaborate economic system, which matched sellers with buyers.⁷ A lucrative contract with the British army was largely responsible for Guyton & Harrington’s remarkable success. From 1901 to 1902, the company supplied the British with mules for the Boer War in South Africa. In anticipation of future wars, the company kept fertile land for future use and were thus able to meet the demands imposed by the Great War.⁸

Missouri continued to dominate the trade in mules into the early decades of the twentieth century. Located in the southwest corner of the state, Springfield became one of Missouri’s most prominent livestock centers. On June 28, 1914, ironically the day Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated, the Springfield Republican reported on the city’s thriving mule industry. Six mule dealers were located on Convention Avenue. Many of their animals were raised on local farms, but the companies also purchased livestock from southeast Kansas, Oklahoma, and northern Arkansas. They had customers from as far away as Delaware and San Francisco. The peak of the livestock trade in Springfield was in 1916; over 14,000 horses and mules were shipped from the “Queen City.” Their estimated value was $2.5 million.⁹ Yet, Guyton & Harrington continued to dominate Missouri’s mule industry. By 1918, they had expanded to 18 buildings on 4,700 acres of land, with 150 men caring for 50,000 mules. By the end of the war, they had supplied the British army with 180,000 mules. This represented about one half of all those shipped from America during the war.

Although rapid technological innovations in the early twentieth century revolutionized warfare, armies still relied heavily on mules for transporting equipment during World War I. Just as they had during the Civil War, commanders on the Western Front depended on animal power to move men and equipment. Trucks were widely available, but they became less reliable the closer they got to the battlefield. They were prone to breakdowns and were difficult to navigate on muddy roads in forward areas. Mules, however, could easily maneuver throughout the war-torn landscape. Strong and agile, they carried heavy loads for long distances and their surefootedness in treacherous terrain, was legendary. Animals, like soldiers, endured harsh privations during wartime, but mules recovered from intense exertions quickly and could subsist on vegetation when grain and hay were not available. Troops in the trenches received most of their supplies, including all-important hot meals, by mules. Even tanks, one of the most recognizable symbols of modern warfare, depended on mules to transport their ammunition and gasoline.¹⁰ Appreciation for the contributions of Missouri mules to the war effort did not go unnoticed by the British army. As one correspondent wrote, “The much maligned, supposedly stubborn, balky, and generally pestiferous mule, has won a place in the heart of the British Army from which he can never be dislodged.”¹¹

The mule industry slowly declined after the First World War as farmers began turn to tractor power. Tractors could be used to plow – one of the hardest farming tasks that relied on animal power. Yet, change did not come immediately because early tractors were unreliable and very few implement attachments were available for these early machines. At this point, the new technology simply increased costs for the farmer as they had to maintain both machines and work animals. In 1925, it was estimated that 14 percent of Missouri farmland was tilled by tractors.¹² By the early 1930s, more implements were available, and tractors had become a real threat to animal power. Work stock, however, remained common as there was little money for machinery and the gasoline to power it in the early days of the Great Depression. Intense drought and disease from 1934 to 1936 devastated livestock and led most farmers to finally make the switch to tractor power.¹³

The efficiency of tractors ensured that farmers would never return to animal power, and the once vibrant Missouri mule market dried up. The change was illustrated by President Harry Truman who recalled that growing up on a Missouri farm he “had to learn to judge mules, and you had to know a good one when you saw him, or he would get the best of you.” During his 1948 presidential campaign, Truman stopped at a plowing contest in Iowa. The president asked the farmers if he could do some plowing with a four-mule team. The farmers told him, “No, that’s obsolete. You’re living in a past age. We have no mules on the place. You’ll have to go to Missouri to get one.” Accepting the change, Truman said, “All right, I’m not one to turn the clock back.”¹⁴

Even still, Truman recognized that mules have been an important part of Missouri’s work, industry, and military life since the earliest days of statehood. Though no longer a substantial part of Missouri’s economy, President Truman still featured them in his inaugural parade on January 20, 1949. Brought from his hometown of Lamar, four mules pulled a wagon along the route in a fitting tribute to their role in Missouri’s history and culture.¹⁵

Since 1854, the Kansas-Missouri border had been in a state of conflict. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers flocked to Kansas to decide the fate of the peculiar institution in the state. The start of the American Civil War in 1861 poured fuel on the fire. Although Missouri remained in the Union, a sizeable portion of the population sympathized with the Confederacy. This was especially true on the border. The Union Army’s occupation of the state, along with frequent raids from Kansas “Jayhawkers” and the paramilitary “Red Legs” radicalized some Missourians to join pro-southern Bushwhackers. The people of the Missouri-Kansas region lived in constant fear. Federal troops and guerrilla bands compelled citizens to take sides, sometimes by force. During this time, ordinary men became infamous. Notable Jayhawkers included Senator James Lane, a brilliant orator who helped organize the first Black Union infantry regiment, Charles Jennison, a member of the Kansas state senate, and William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who joined up with the Jayhawkers after the Union army rejected him for being too young. Notable Bushwhackers included Frank & Jesse James, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, and William Quantrill. 

Quantrill’s early life is somewhat mysterious. He was born in Ohio in 1837 but spent most of his adult life in Kansas. In 1858, he was a schoolteacher in Osawatomie, Kansas, but soon moved to Lawrence and assumed the alias Charley Hart. Surprisingly, he joined up with a band of Jayhawkers. Douglas County authorities indicted him for horse stealing, burglary, and kidnapping of enslaved people. He achieved notoriety in 1860 when he organized a band of five Jayhawkers to raid a Jackson County farm. He tipped the pro-slavery property owner off about the raid, however, and three of the Jayhawkers died as a result. Although his motivations were not entirely clear, it appears that Quantrill was more interested in plunder than the Jayhawkers’ moral cause.³

In December of 1861, Quantrill formed a band of Missouri guerrillas and started raiding into Kansas. The size of the gang fluctuated depending on the circumstances, ranging anywhere from 30 men to 300. Notable members included Cole Younger and ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson. Throughout 1862, Quantrill’s gang attacked Kansas towns such as Aubry, Olathe, and Shawneetown, where they burned the village and killed seven civilians and fifteen soldiers. Leaders in the Confederate Army mostly saw the Bushwhackers as useful, as they routinely conducted raids on Union troops in Missouri. But others considered the Bushwhackers problematic. One Confederate general described Quantrill’s gang as only a “shade better than highwaymen.”⁴

The Union army was not well equipped to deal with the situation. Guerrilla fighters were usually mounted and armed with fast-firing revolvers. They also knew the area well and could hide in the countryside and receive support from local families. With the situation out of control, Union command had to shake things up. General Halleck, chief of all northern armies, explained that “peace cannot be restored and preserved near the border of Kansas and Missouri unless the country on both sides of the line be under the same command.”⁵ To address this issue, the Union army created the Department of the Missouri, which included both Kansas and Missouri. It split the area into several districts, including the District of the Border, which comprised all of Kansas and Missouri north of the 38^th parallel and south of the Missouri River. On June 16, 1863, the same day the Bushwhackers ambushed the Ninth Kansas near Westport, Union commanders put 34-year-old Thomas Ewing Jr. in charge of the district.

Before the Civil War, Ewing was a leader in the Kansas Free State Party, a railroad promoter in Leavenworth, and the Kansas Supreme Court’s Chief Justice. In 1862, he resigned his judgeship and took command of the Eleventh Kansas regiment.  After serving in the Prairie Grove campaign, Union command put him in charge of the District of the Border. The Kansas City Journal, a local newspaper, praised Ewing’s selection and described him as a “man of sense and brains.”⁶

When Ewing arrived at his new headquarters in Kansas City, he found the situation deplorable, referring to the area as “a hornet’s nest of a district.”⁷ A new report came in almost every day of guerrillas attacking Union soldiers. Half the local population had left the area due to the violence. Ewing’s strategy was two-fold. First, he needed to protect the border. Ewing established eight military posts along the state line south of Kansas City. Patrols passed from post to post every hour. If patrolmen spotted Bushwhackers, they could pursue the enemy, call for reinforcements from other posts, and alert Kansas towns nearby.⁸ Second, Ewing had to remove support for the Bushwhackers. Ewing estimated that two-thirds of the families in Western Missouri supported the guerrillas and were “actively and heartily engaged in feeding, clothing, and sustaining them.”⁹ Women, in particular, were critical to the bushwhacker supply line. In July of 1863, Union officers arrested Mollie Grandstaff and several other women. They were using cloth stolen by the guerrillas to make shirts for the armed men in the bush.¹⁰ On August 3, Ewing wrote to the head of the Department of the Missouri, General Schofield, and recommended that the army should transport those aiding Bushwhackers out of the state to Arkansas. Ewing wagered that with the families gone, guerrillas would have no support and would follow them out of the state.

In the meantime, Ewing was rounding up those suspected of aiding the Bushwhackers. Army officials commandeered a three-story brick building in the McGee’s Addition neighborhood of Kansas City. The building belonged to state treasurer and painter George Caleb Bingham, who used the third floor as his art studio. The Union army converted the second and third floor into jail cells, while the first floor and basement served as offices and storage space for the guards.¹¹ The prison held seventeen women and girls captive as they awaited military trial. But on August 13, a merchant on the first floor noticed floors sagging, cracks in the walls and ceilings, and plaster crumbling. An inspector came to assess the situation and noted structural problems. Still, no one moved the prisoners out of the building. Around two o’clock, the building collapsed. As a massive cloud of dust rose from the rubble, a small crowd gathered as Union soldiers and citizens searched for survivors. It is not clear how the building collapsed. Some say Bingham’s third-floor addition affected the structural integrity of the building. Others say Union soldiers removed a partition wall between the prison and an adjoining hotel for easier access to a brothel. The most likely reason is that Union soldiers removed brick columns in the basement or possibly a load-bearing wall for more space.¹² Four women died, including Charity Kerr, a cousin of Cole Younger, and Josephine Anderson, a sister of ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson. Rumors spread that the Union army intentionally destroyed the building. The day after the jail collapse, General Schofield approved Ewing’s plan of moving guerrilla families out of state, which became General Order No. 10.

The news of the Union jail collapse gave William Quantrill the perfect reason to raid Lawrence, an abolitionist stronghold located forty miles west of Kansas’s state line. Lawrence had a population of about 3,000. During the Bleeding Kansas conflict, pro-slavery men raided the town three times in 1855 and 1856.¹³ When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Lawrence townsfolk feared another attack. They set up home guard companies and posted details along the roads that led into town. Lawrence was confident that within fifteen minutes, they could organize 500 fighting men and repel any attack. On July 31, 1863, a rumor swirled that Quantrill was on his way to raid Lawrence. Mayor George Collamore took the threat seriously and organized the local guard. But ultimately, it was a false alarm. Many citizens laughed at him for his “great scare.”¹⁴ Lawrence citizens felt secure, safe, and unafraid of Quantrill. On August 6, 1863, the Kansas State Journal wrote that Quantrill’s “chance of escaping punishment after trying on Lawrence just once are indeed slim – perhaps more so than in another town of the state.”¹⁵

Quantrill had been planning to raid Lawrence since May, but his supporters had doubts about the idea. They knew that Lawrence was well defended and that Federal reinforcements could arrive quickly. But the Union jail collapse sparked the fire and set the plan into motion. Quantrill had about 300 men in his unit. By August 20, he had recruited 100 Southern loyalists and 50 other Bushwhackers, bringing his force up to 450 men. That night, disguised in Federal uniforms, they crossed the state line just south of Aubrey. The local Union post spotted Quantrill and his men, but they made no effort to pursue them. Instead, they alerted the other posts and sent word to Ewing back in Kansas City. No one warned the towns in Kansas. It is possible the outpost mistook Quantrill’s gang for Union cavalry.

 Quantrill’s force moved through Kansas, killing noted Jayhawkers and burning property along the way. By the early morning of August 21, the Bushwhackers stopped at a summit southeast of Lawrence that overlooked the town. Once again, some of Quantrill’s men had doubts about the raid. Quantrill refused to turn back and replied, “You can do as you please. I am going to Lawrence.”¹⁶

At 5 in the morning, while most residents were still asleep, Quantrill and his men stampeded into Lawrence. They quickly came upon an encampment of Black and white Union recruits of the Fourteenth Kansas Regiment. The guerrillas trampled through the camp, killing seventeen men. They next rode down Massachusetts street, firing revolvers into houses and setting buildings ablaze. As men came out of their dwellings, the Bushwhackers shot them dead. Small detachments blocked the roads east and west of town, preventing any escape and standing guard if Federal reinforcements arrived. Bushwhackers looted buildings, drank whiskey, and seized the local armory. Residents hid in barns, attics, gardens, and cornfields. Some men even disguised themselves as women to escape. On his hitlist, Quantrill was looking for Kansas Governor Thomas Carney and Senator Jim Lane. However, Carney was in Leavenworth and avoided the raid. Jim Lane was quickly notified of what was happening and ran out of his house in only his nightshirt. He evaded capture by hiding in his neighbor’s cornfield. Mayor Collamore hid in the well behind his house but ultimately suffocated from the smoke as his house burned. The lack of resistance shocked Quantrill’s men, and some refused to take part in the raid on unarmed civilians. But the majority were eager to exact revenge on the “Free State Fortress.” The attack lasted four hours.

When Quantrill received word of Federal cavalry approaching from the east, the guerrillas regathered and headed south with their loot. They had burned hundreds of homes, and even more bodies lay dead in the street. The Smoky Hill and Republican Union newspaper described the scene. One witness remarked, “Well known citizens were lying in front of the spot where their stores or residences had been completely roasted. The bodies were crisped and nearly black…In handling the dead bodies pieces of roasted flesh would remain in our hands. Soon our strength failed us in this horrible and sickening work.”¹⁷ The Bushwhackers killed more than 180 men and boys and destroyed 2,000,000 dollars” worth of property while only losing one man.

 On August 25^th, the guerrillas reached Cass County and split off into squads of about forty to fifty. A union detachment from Lexington, Missouri met one unit near Pleasant Hill, killing seven and recovering “a considerable amount of goods taken at Lawrence.”¹⁸ Another Union force intercepted a gang of Bushwhackers near Lafayette County, killing thirty. In total, the Bushwhackers lost between 60 and 70 men while retreating from Lawrence.  

Panic swept through Kansas as news of the raid reached nearby towns and villages. Topeka was on full alert. Many residents spent the nights out in the cornfields for safety.¹⁹ The local papers harshly criticized Ewing and blamed him for the Lawrence raid. The Leavenworth Bulletin, in particular, was harsh on Ewing. They wrote, “The ‘man of brains’ has proved himself incompetent for the position he occupies, and the suffering people of our neighboring city, whose relatives and friends now sleep their last sleep – victims of the unholy rebellion – demand his removal.”²⁰  

Ewing decided to take quick, definitive action. On August 25, 1863, just four days after the Lawrence massacre, he issued General Order No. 11. It stipulated that any civilians living in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and the northern part of Vernon counties had fifteen days to leave the designated area, with the only exception being anyone who lived within one mile of a military outpost. If residents could establish their loyalty to the Union, they could move to a military outpost or into the State of Kansas. Anyone deemed disloyal could not move to Kansas. It also allowed the army to confiscate grain and hay on people’s property within the range of military outposts. Any grain and hay found outside the area would be destroyed.²¹

General Order No. 11 was much harsher than General Order No. 10 as it included all residents, not just guerrilla families. Ewing had his reasons, though. He believed the order was vital to prevent raids from Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers into Kansas and Missouri. Ewing also wanted to calm the people of Kansas. The Leavenworth Bulletin wrote that “Fire and sword shall go forth upon the Missouri border until not a single town or hamlet shall remain.”²² This rhetoric concerned Ewing, and he hoped Order No. 11 would prevent any retaliation from Kansans. Ewing also faced pressure from Kansas leaders, including Jim Lane, to implement some decisive action against the Bushwhackers.  

Many considered Order No. 11 as “inhuman” and “barbarous.” On August 28, 1863, The Morning Herald newspaper argued that the order was only necessary because of Ewing’s ineptitude. They wrote, “[Ewing’s] general Order No. 11 is an exceedingly harsh one, and might not have been required had he been a little more radical in his treatment of rebels and their friends.”²³ Thousands of people, mostly women, children, and the elderly, loaded up their wagons and left the border district. Colonel Bazel Lazear, a Union commander at Lexington, witnessed the mass exodus of civilians. He wrote to his wife, “It is heartsickening to see what I have seen…A desolated country and men & women and children, some of them all most naked. Some on foot and some in old wagons.”²⁴ Some Union soldiers and Jayhawkers looted the abandoned houses and set fire to them, which spread to the grasslands and started prairie fires. The district quickly earned the moniker of “The Burnt District.” Eventually, Ewing bowed to pressure and issued General Order No. 20, which allowed limited resettlement. But the damage was already done. Order No. 11 depopulated many areas. In Cass County alone, 55  to 60 percent of the families displaced never returned. Those that did return found their homes “stripped of nearly everything of value.”²⁵ General Ewing’s actions horrified painter George Caleb Bingham. He immortalized the events with his painting entitled Martial Law, also known as Order No. 11. It depicts Kansas Red Legs looting and burning a Missouri farmhouse as General Ewing apathetically looks on. Despite the cruel nature of Order No. 11, it did work as intended from a military perspective. Missouri guerrillas abandoned the Border District and moved into central Missouri, never raiding into Kansas again. But the displacement of families scattered the memories of the Civil War along the border and forever changed the landscape.

After the United States entered the Great War in April 1917, persons of German and Austrian origin experienced pressure to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States owing to national, state, and local war mobilization efforts. German American men enlisted in the military, registered for the Selective Service Act, served when drafted, or if too old, participated in the Home Guard, a volunteer organization that replaced the National Guard after it had been federalized into active service. Families bought Liberty Bonds, purchased War Savings Stamps, conserved food, and joined the Red Cross. Most did so to express their heartfelt patriotism; others deliberately appeared loyal to distract attention from their ethnicity. Those who openly expressed pro-German sentiments experienced the direct impact of the law or vigilante justice.²

Federal laws directly affected German Americans. Congress defined immigrants from Germany and Austria who had not yet become naturalized citizens as “alien enemies” and required that they register with federal authorities. In Missouri, 5,890 men and 2,684 women registered, including several American-born women who had married German-born men and, according to the 1907 Naturalization Law, had acquired their husbands’ nationality.³

The Trading-with-the-Enemy Act required that publishers of foreign language newspapers, such as the Missouri Volksfreund in Jefferson City and the Westliche Post in St. Louis, report to local postmasters translations of articles related to the war and the national government. Publishers who refused lost second-class mailing privileges. Consequently, several German-language newspapers, including the Osage County Volksblatt in Westphalia, had to close.⁴ This act also established the position of the Alien Property Custodian who had the authority to confiscate the property of any German citizen living in the U.S. or American residing in Germany. The custodian took ownership of companies in St. Louis, St. Joseph, and Kansas City. The Busch family from St. Louis had personal experience with this law because two American-born daughters of Adolphus Busch had married German men and lived in Germany. Their mother Eliza Busch, who was visiting in 1914, decided to stay, and offered property she owned in Germany for use by convalescing German soldiers. The custodian took possession of her inherited estate in St. Louis and California because her actions aided the enemy. Mrs. Busch regained most of her property when she returned to the U.S. in December 1918.⁵   

Federal legislation also impacted the freedom of speech. The Espionage Act of 1917 outlawed any action that could interfere with the military, and the Sedition Act of 1918 aimed to control dissent. Both led to the arrest of anyone, especially German Americans, who expressed pro-German or anti-American thoughts. Severity of punishment, however, varied. August Weist, deputy collector for St. Louis, had to pay a $200 fine for allegedly stating, “Our boys have no damned business being over there….The government has no damned business conscripting our boys over here.” By contrast, August Scheuring, a German-born resident in St. Louis, received a two-year prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth because while riding in a streetcar and sitting across from uniformed soldiers he allegedly said that “the Kaiser will win the war.”⁶

State and county authorities had an even greater impact on the lives of German Americans because they classified disloyalty based on local relationships and decided how to punish perceived disloyal behavior. The Missouri Assembly had ended its biennial session in April 1917, and Governor Frederick D. Gardner did not perceive the need for a special session. Instead, he followed National Council of Defense guidelines and appointed the Missouri Council of Defense as the agency in charge of mobilizing the state. Gardner intended to instill patriotism by calling upon Missourians to be, “ready to cooperate, ready to sacrifice, ready to suffer,” and that, “this is no time for slackers…it is our duty to drive them out and brand them as traitors.” In April 1918, he declared that all pro-Germans were German spies and that he was willing to establish martial law if he discovered them. The governor and state council also charged county and township councils with the responsibility of meeting mobilization quotas and controlling dissent.⁷

Local enforcement of the war effort varied and depended on the degree of how patriotic a community should appear. After Fritz Monat, a German-born socialist, had made pro-German remarks in Jefferson City and his association with militant labor unions threatened to destabilize local labor relations, a “committee of citizens” administered on him a public flogging and forced him to kiss the American flag. When Paul Paulsmeyer expressed derogatory opinions about Red Cross nurses, the draft board in Osage County rescinded his exemption from military service. “Intensely and aggressively patriotic” German Americans in Gasconade County, who were fearful that the county gain the “slacker” label, coerced fellow German speakers to more enthusiastically support the war effort and keep any critical opinions to themselves. Their efforts also resulted in the renaming of the town of Potsdam to the more patriotic sounding, Pershing.⁸

Removing references to anything obviously German, including the enemy’s language, turned into the primary function of local authorities. The Cass and Linn County Councils of Defense, for example, banned the use of German on the telephone. Several councils passed resolutions stating that speaking in German in public was unpatriotic. In St. Louis, city officials and English-language newspaper editors suggested that German-language newspapers should close and that German sounding street names should be changed to American names. These local efforts convinced the State Council to pass a resolution in August that encouraged all Missourians to speak only English.⁹             

During World War I, national legislation, state organizations, and local authorities created suspicion of everything German, including those who still used the German language. The German American experience on the home front during the conflict was not uniform. Many temporarily adjusted to the demand to appear patriotic to divert attention from their ethnicity. In some cases, names of businesses, towns, or streets were changed. A few reported fellow German Americans to the authorities. In Missouri, physical violence against German Americans was rare and limited to those who publicly flaunted their support for Germany.