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George Caleb Bingham: The Missouri Artist
Most people today know George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) as an artist. During his lifetime, Bingham saw himself “as a public officer” or “as a writer,” with “artist” a close third. All views of him are equally true: Bingham was incredibly skilled with a pencil and brush, a fact attested to by the numerous works of…
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A Desolated Country: The Union Jail Collapse, Lawrence Massacre, and General Order No. 11
On May 29, 1863, Missouri guerrilla Jim Vaughn, escorted by Federal soldiers, walked toward the gallows at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Several weeks earlier, Union soldiers had apprehended Vaughn in Wyandotte, Kansas, while trying to get a haircut. James Blunt, the military commander of Kansas, had a no-quarter policy for Missouri pro-southern guerrillas, or “Bushwhackers” as…
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German Americans in World War I
The loyalties of Missouri’s German American residents became suspect after the United States entered the Great War on the side of the British and French in April 1917. Most people of German descent actively worked to convince their neighbors of their allegiance to their adopted nation rather than their nation of birth. Federal laws increasingly…
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Missouri and the Western Steamboat
No object better reflected early Missouri’s history than the iconic western paddlewheel steamboat. Missouri boasts of access to two of the nation’s major interior rivers — the Missouri and the Mississippi, and, therefore, the steamboat figures prominently in the early history of the state. Oftentimes, Americans romanticize the steamboat age as a time of slow…
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Social and Working Conditions of Enslaved Families and Communities
During slavery and for years after, white Missourians often boasted that their state’s border location rendered slavery milder than down river in the Cotton Kingdom of the Deep South. They often pointed to Missouri’s more temperate climate, a less arduous work regime, and the “domestic” relations of slavery in a state with few large plantations as…
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Homer G. Phillips: Transforming Missouri Medicine
In the first half of the twentieth century, segregation and discriminatory practices kept Missouri’s Black residents from accessing equitable medical education and healthcare. After years of lobbying for adequate hospitals, in 1937, St. Louis welcomed a state-of-the-art medical center to serve the Black community. The construction of Homer G. Phillips Hospital represented a transformational moment…