Some Civil War Letters of David K. Pitman and Hamilton Gamble
by Bob Brail
One of the better known pieces of writing to come out of the Civil War was composed by a Southerner, Mary Boykin Chestnut. Her lengthy work, part diary and part memoir, covers the entire war and is full of information about famous people and important battles, along with the day-to-day drudgeries and uncertainties of war. Of course, other folks were writing during the war years, although the writings they produced are, for the most part, not considered as significant by historians. One example is some letters exchanged between a Cottleville farmer and the governor of Missouri. However, they do provide some interesting insights into the Civil War in Missouri and, in particular, St. Charles County.
On August 5, 1861, a slave-owning farmer from St. Charles County, David K. Pitman, wrote the following letter to Hamilton R. Gamble, the provisional governor of Missouri. Gamble had replaced Governor Claiborne F. Jackson on June 30 when the Missouri legislature ended Jackson's tenure because of his Confederate sympathies, so Gamble had held office only for about a month when he received this letter from Pitman. These were the early days of the war; the first Battle of Bull Run had taken place only two weeks earlier in Virginia, and the Battle of Wilson Creek would occur in southwestern Missouri on August 10. (Spelling and some grammar corrections have been made in these letters).
Cottleville August 5, 1861
H. R. Gamble Esq.
Gov'nr of Mo.
Dear Sir,
I desire to make some enquiries of you in regard to these home guards etc. But before entering upon it, you would doubtless like to hear of your sister's health. She has been slowly declining all summer, for the last several weeks she has been closely confined to bed, and is now entirely helpless, and her mind has failed as much as her body, she is all the time wanting to go somewhere. But we have this comfort, she does not seem to suffer any bodily affliction – more than the decline of all her physical and mental powers. We do not think she can last much longer. If you can find time from your onerous duties, we would be glad to see you.
But to the subject of these “home guards”. I do not know by what law or authority they are organized. I suppose by neither but by might. Whither by law, authority, or might, my object is to know if they cannot be disbanded, and their arms taken from.
Today they have gone into encampment at Cottleville to remain as I understand ten days. Their number is said to be between 500 and 1000 under the command, I understand, of Conl. A. Krekel. They are armed with United States muskets and have been “sworn in” some time, to do what I don't know. But for the two last weeks they have kept a standing guard in Cottleville over their armory. Sometimes they have been insolent to unoffending persons, trying to stop men in passing the street. But this we have borne for the sake of peace. I now feel alarmed, fearing a collision between the encampment and the citizens. They seem to go at will about the village, drinking, and insulting at pleasure all that cross their path. We are now in a state of feeling which is as combustible as a magazine. Should any violence be committed by the “home guards” I will not pretend to say where it will end. The whole country is in a state of excitement, as you know, and the more excitable are only held in check by the more moderate portion of the community. I do hope if in your power they may be disbanded and their arms taken from them. I know they are not armed and organized by the state of Missouri and I know that no law of the U. S. for this arming a portion of the citizens, (and they aliens by birth and if the truth were known aliens in heart) while the true Americans are unarmed.
I suppose the whole thing is without law or authority, and therefore in violation of law and can be suppressed.
I know, Sir, you have head and heart full, and would not trouble if I did not believe something should be done to put an end to these “home guards.”
I hope and pray you may succeed in the object of your present position, but if you do, it will only be another evidence that God's ways are not as man's ways.
Oh! That we had faith as a grain of mustard seed.
I have been suffering for several days with neuralgia, and my whole nervous system is deranged so I can hardly write or put thoughts together.
Respectfully [illegible],
D. K. Pitman
David K. Pitman
David K. Pitman was born 1805 in Kentucky, the son of of John and Magdaline Pitman, who were St. Charles County farmers. By the time of the Civil War, David K. Pitman owned thirty-five slaves and several hundred acres to the west of Cottleville, on both sides of what is now Highway 364, including the Pitman Cemetery, which is today clearly visible from the highway. John Pitman and many of his descendants, including David K., are buried there.
Hamilton R. Gamble was born in Virginia in 1798. A lawyer, Gamble moved to Missouri and became involved in politics, serving as the secretary of state, as a legislator, and as a judge on the Missouri supreme court. It was in his capacity as Missouri supreme court justice that Gamble wrote the dissenting opinion in the 1851 case that upheld a lower court and returned Dred Scott to slavery. Ten years later, Gamble, though an owner of slaves, was committed to the Union, a semtiment which many other slave-owning Missourians shared in 1861. Though there were thousands of other Missourians who counted themselves as Southern sympathizers, under Gamble's leadership Missouri remained in the Union.
The letter's opening paragraph explains the relationship these men shared. The sister of Gamble that Pitman refers to was his mother-in-law, Eliza Gamble Baker, which means Gamble was Pitman's uncle by marriage. Eliza Baker was indeed failing rapidly. She died just three weeks after this letter was written.
Of course, it was not for the purpose of passing on family news that Pitman had written the letter. He was extremely concerned with the actions of the St. Charles County Home Guard, encamped at Cottleville, under the leadership of Colonel Arnold Krekel, judge, abolitionist, publisher of the newspaper Das Demokrat, and provost marshal of St. Charles, Warren, and Lincoln Counties. The home guard units, like the one Krekel led, had been authorized by General Nathaniel Lyon, the commander of the Department of the West, less than two months before Pitman wrote his letter, Lyon's authority coming from the government of the United States. These home guard units were formed “to protect their homes and neighborhoods from the state's pro-Southern element.” Although in his letter Pitman questions whether the home guard had been authorized by any legitimate power to exist, “the formational authority [was] provided by the United States government. . . . [T]his national-level involvement in localized communit defense efforts was unique in the course of the Civil War.” In all, nearly 20,000 men served in the Missouri Home Guard. Authorities began to phase out the home guard units by December, 1861, so their existence was brief.
Pitman would have found it nearly impossible to disregard the presence of the St. Charles County Home Guard since their encampment was immediately adjacent to several lots he owned in Cottleville. In the years before the Civil War, Pitman had subdivided two parcels of his land next to the village of Cottleville. The second of these subdivisions was just south of the Boone's Lick Trail. Krekel called about 1,300 recruits to Cottleville to gather on July 15, just a few weeks before Pitman wrote his letter to Governor Gamble, and they set up camp at the edge of Cottleville, next to Pitman's property. This encampment was referred to as “Camp Bates.” More than 500 county residents appeared, and they elected Arnold Krekel to be their president.
The St. Charles County Home Guard reconvened at their Cottleville camp on August 5, the day David Pitman wrote his letter to Gamble, for a week of military drills. The men were instructed to bring their guns; the U. S. Army would supply ammunition. According to Krekel's Das Demokrat, nearly one thousand men were expected to attend. The newspaper stated that “Patriotic citizens” were encouraged to “supply small comforts” to the troops, and that such “friend[s]” would make themselves “unforgettable to the Home Guard.” The veiled threat against people like David Pitman was clear.
In December, 1861, Hamilton Gamble wrote the following letter to David K. Pitman. St. Louis Dec. 14, 1861. President Abraham Lincoln's Emanciption Proclamation was still just over a year in the future.
David K. Pitman Esq.
My dear Sir
I have received your favor of the 11th and have a moment of comparative leisure to answer it though I must be brief.
I look with deep anxiety to the action of Congress. If the abolitionists shall be able to carry through the two Houses their scheme for turning the present war into one against slavery as an institution the question will be one of the greatest magnitude to the country whether the President will have the firmness to breast the current. If he should yield to the malignant influence of those blackhearted and insane abolitionists, I have no longer a hope for the restoration of peace and order. In such a war I can take no part.
Unless God has determined to blot us out as a nation, I hope to see the madness stayed.
In respect to the matter of a lisence to pass through the Federal lines south with your negroes I need only say to you that I have done what I could to obtain the same permission for Dr. James Wilson since Dr. Ben left but have not succeeded.
You ask my advice as to the best course to pursue and I give it to you you with the knowledge I possess of your position and sentiments. Neither you nor I can foresee what is coming to pass. [The rest of the letter is missing.]
It is clear from this letter that Hamilton Gamble had no fondness for “insane” abolitionists, calling the abolition of slavery a “madness.” In fact, in August, 1861, when General John C. Fremont issued an emancipation proclamation for the slaves in Missouri, Gamble wrote a letter of protest to President Lincoln, who removed Fremont from command and reversed his proclamation. As the Civil War progressed, Gamble was attacked by pro-emancipation legislators for “coddling traitors” and being “secretly in league with secessionists.” When Gamble wrote the words, “Neither you nor I can foresee what is coming to pass, “ he probably had no idea that in only a few months, he would be supporting the “blackhearted and insane abolitionists.” However, by the fall of 1862, Gamble was trying to convince Missouri's slaveholders to support President Lincoln's idea of gradual, compensated emancipation. Gamble finally brought a bill for the gradual emancipation of Missour's slaves to the legislature in 1863. The measure, which provided for gradual emancipation in 1876, passed. Of course, the Thirteenth Amendment, which freed all slaves, rendered this measure meaningless.
In July, 1863, when David Pitman wrote again to Governor Gamble, the war was going badly for the Confederates. The Confederate loss at Gettysburg, and the surrender of Vicksburg to the Union army occurred less than two weeks earlier. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was six months in the past.
St. Charles Co. July 14, 1863
To Honorable H. R. Gamble
Dear Sir
John expects to go down to your city today, to make an effort to recover our negros. I am led by the advice of Hamilton (as coming from you) to make this effort, and I hope John and my neighbor Mr. J. T. Sanford will not be guilty of the impropriety of violating any law or order. But from what I in part witnessed yesterday in my neighborhood I have but little encouragement to make an effort to recover my negros. The circumstance to which I allude is substantially this. I was passing on a crossroad near my place which road leads to the Missouri River and met 12 or 13 young negro men. I asked them where they were going. The reply was “To the army, sir.” This was all that passed between us. I thought of going on and get a company of men and capture them. But met Capt. Campbell who informed me that they were within or under the protection of a militia company commanded by a Capt. Newsteter from O'Fallon. I am not sure this is the proper name but as near as I can come to a dutch name. Capt. Campbell met them three or four miles in advance of me and met them marching together. The white men on horseback and the negros afoot. I am satisfied the soldiers had sent them the negros to the crossroad (the nearest route to the river) and they, the soldiers, went round by Cottleville, as I afterwards learned the soldiers left Cottlevile in the direction to join the negros across the river. I have also learned the soldiers who are stationed at Peruque Bridge have commenced “pressing” or plundering again taking such things as corn, bacon, etc. and compelling the farmers to take it to them.
This I do not know myself. I have heard it so directly that I believe it.
Very respectfully yours
D. K. Pitman
The second half of the Civil War would be devastating for both these men, though for different reasons. Most of Pitman's male slaves he owned in 1860 were either too young or too old to have joined the Union army during the war. However, it is clear from his letter that some of his slaves had escaped, and he may have realized when he encountered the group of slaves on their way to enlist, that some of his former slaves may have done the same thing. By the war's end, David K. Pitman had experienced what had to have been a very painful financial setback. Although the value of his real estate grew from $29,150 in 1860 to $40,000 in 1870, his overall worth dropped from $55,850 in 1860 to $42,500 in 1870. The primary reason for this setback was, of course, in 1870 Pitman no longer owned thirty-five slaves. In that same ten year period, Pitman's personal estate, which would have included the value of his slaves, dropped from $26,700 to $2,500, about a ninety percent decrease. In current dollars, the purchase cost of Pitman's slaves in 1860 would have been approximately $800,000 to $900,000.
Pitman would continue to have encounters with Arnold Krekel and the Home Guard. Arnold Krekel would organize at least two more pro-Union gatherings in Cottleville during the war, the first in July, 1863. In September, 1864, Krekel would hold the county convention of the Radical Union Party in the same location. One historian writes, “This may have been the event that prompted David Pitman to sell the area across from Krekel's camp to the newly forming Catholic Church for $250 that same year.”
Hamilton Gamble would not live to see the end of the Civil War, serving as Missouri's governor for only a little more than two and one-half years. In December, 1863, Gamble, who was already in poor health, suffered an arm injury while riding on a train. He never recovered from the accident, and eventually died from pneumonia on January 31, 1864.
Although neither David K. Pitman nor Hamilton Gamble will ever be listed among the great writers of the Civil War experience, the three letters included in this article provide some interesting glimpses into St. Charles County and Missouri Civil War histories. These men lived at a time when so much of the world around them was changing, and these letters effectively reflect those uncertain times.
Sources: 1875 Plat Map Book of St. Charles County, Missouri; “Architecture and Historic Resources Survey Report” (dnr.mo.gov/shpo/survey/SCAS007-R.pdf); “Cottleville: Where History Never Grows Old” ( sites.google.com/a/cityofcottleville.com); “Federal Militia in Missouri” (civilwarstlouis.com); Federal Population and Slave Censuses; Findagrave.com; “Gov. Hamilton Rowan Gamble” (nga.org); “Gamble, Hamilton R.” by Christopher Phillips (civilwaronthewesternborder.org); A History of Augusta, MO. 1850s-1860s As Reported in the St. Charles Demokrat (Trans. and Ed. Anita Mallinckrodt); Letter from Hamilton Gamble to David Pitman, December 14, 1861 (mohistory.org); Letter from David Pitman to Hamilton Gamble, August 5, 1861 (mohistory.org); Letter from David Pitman to Hamilton Gamble, July 14, 1863 (mohistory.org); “Measuring Slavery in 2016 Dollars” (MeasuringWorth.com); “Missouri Frees Slaves in 1865” (stltoday.com/news/archives); Missouri Union Provost Marshal Papers, 1861-1866 (s1.sos.mo.gov); Record Book of the Provost Marshal for St. Charles, Lincoln,and Warren Counties (mohistory.org); “Missouri's Dred Scott Case, 1846-1857” (sos.mo.gov/archives/resources).