In 1861, a two-story frame Masonic Hall at the corner of Washington and Spring Streets in Neosho became the site of a special session of Missouri’s Twenty-first General Assembly, held from October 21 through October 28, at which an Ordinance of Secession was passed. After recognition by the Confederate government on November 28, 1861, Missouri became the twelfth Confederate state. At the same time, however, Missouri also had a provisional government loyal to the Union, created by a state convention meeting from July 23-31, 1861, that declared the executive offices and General Assembly seats vacant and installed Hamilton Gamble as provisional governor. That provisional government, intended to last only until elections could be held, remained in place until November 1864 because of wartime conditions. The Neosho session came after Governor Claiborne Jackson’s long but frustrated effort to lead Missouri into secession. Jackson had argued in his January 3, 1861 inaugural address that Missouri, as a slave state, should stand with the South, but he misjudged support for disunion when the state convention instead reaffirmed Missouri’s ties to the Union while opposing coercion of the seceded states. The General Assembly also initially refused to pass a military bill to organize a state guard, and Jackson’s effort to seize the St. Louis arsenal was thwarted by Unionists. After the bombardment of Ft. Sumter and Jackson’s refusal to answer Lincoln’s call for troops, St. Louis Unionists raised 10,000 Home Guards, and on May 10, 1861, they captured the First Brigade of the state militia at Camp Jackson. In mid-May the General Assembly then authorized formation of a state guard, but an uneasy truce ended on June 11 at the Planters House hotel in St. Louis, where Gen. Nathaniel Lyon declared that a state of war existed between the federal and state governments. Three days later Lyon drove Jackson from Jefferson City. Jackson then moved southwest, where his State Guard scattered a smaller federal force at Carthage on July 5, defeated the federal army at Wilson’s Creek on August 10 with Arkansas State Guardsmen and Confederates, and won at Lexington on September 18-20 before retreating before a large federal army. While at Lexington, Jackson called the General Assembly into special session at Neosho on October 21. During the first week, little business was conducted as members waited for enough senators and representatives to arrive, and no official roster or Senate roll calls were recorded. The General Assembly went into session on October 28, passed an ordinance of secession and an act ratifying the provisional constitution of the Confederate States of America, then adjourned on October 29 to meet in Cassville on October 31, where most of the session’s business was completed and where Jackson signed the acts on November 3. During the Civil War, Missouri thus had two governments: a Unionist government sitting in Jefferson City under the authority of the state convention and a fugitive government of regularly elected members, dispossessed of capital and state, moving from place to place.
