'Civil War in St. Charles County' Shows War's Multilayered Effects

Like the rest of the country during the Civil War, St. Charles County was a diverse, uncertain hodgepodge of emotion, ambition, violence, and economic and political motivations.

Channel 9 KETC will televise The Civil War in St. Charles County at 3 p.m. Sunday. After the broadcast, the program will be available online through the county's SCCMO-TV Cable 993 or online video on demand.

Local politicians, educators, students and residents, including Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Judge Stephen Limbaugh, and Mark Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University narrated and provided voices for historical figures.

The one-hour program was produced and edited by St. Charles County’s Video Production Department.

St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, who wrote the documentary, said St. Charles County residents didn’t form into two sides in the Civil War. It was more like three sides, said Ehlmann, author of Crossroads: A History of St. Charles County.

“There were the Southerners, who supported slavery, and two factions of Unionists, those who wanted to keep the country together but not end slavery, and then there were Unionists who wanted emancipation,” said Ehlmann, who taught high school history before entering politics.

St. Charles vs. St. Charles

Jack Gamble, chief editor of the production, said, “There were Southerners, Unionists and a group of people right in the middle, and all three were pulling against each other and at odds with each other. There weren’t clear dividing lines. This was neighbor against neighbor.”

While researching visuals for the production, Gamble came across photos of many buildings still in use in St. Charles County, including a former school building on Third Street.

“We have a photo of soldiers marching in front of the building across the street from the ,” he said.

“There’s one home north of I-70 that’s still used as a residence today. There’s still a bullet lodged in the doorway,” Gamble said.

Part one of the documentary chronicles events from 1850, beginning with the the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act and leading up to the early part of the Civil War in 1861. The acts enabled new territories to decide if they would allow slavery in their borders, but it led to violence, political fighting and maneuvering.

“People think we have a lot of partisan fighting,” Ehlmann said. “But back then, they had murders, guerilla warfare, people being arrested for things they didn’t do with no habeas corpus.”

Idealists and Opportunists

Some Unionists simply wanted to preserve the status quo, not put an end to slavery. Even abolitionists weren’t of one mind on slavery, Ehlmann said.

“Many of the German immigrants were liberals who were involved in the revolutions in Germany in 1838 and 1840,” he said.

One leading abolitionist in St. Charles County was Arnold Krekel, who published a German language newspaper, Der St. Charles Demokrat, was a colonel in the militia, a state representative who later was appointed a judge by President Abraham Lincoln and signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

However, some abolitionists had more economic motivations, Ehlmann said.

“Many of them who believed in ideals of freedom, but there were some who sat back and thought, ‘That guy is not going to be able to farm 1,000 acres without slaves.’ Large landowners were gentlemen, not farmers,” he said.

“That’s exactly what happened after the Civil War. These people had been community leaders and owned large plantations, they divided up their property and sold it for small family farms,” Ehlmann said.

“It was an economic revolution as much as anything else.”

Daniel Griffith was a presiding commissioner in St. Charles County, but refused to take an oath of loyalty and was removed from office.

“He stuck around and griped about Yankee soldiers,” Ehlmann said. “In the Civil War, he was under house arrest.

After the war, Griffith couldn’t farm his ground, which he sold off after the war and moved to Texas.

Ehlmann plans a second part to this historical piece, documenting events during the Civil War in St. Charles County, including the .