The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963 Page: 193

THE SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
VOL. LXVI OCTOBER, 1962 No. a
A issouri's Cofederate Capital
inI 4 arshall, rexas
WILLIAM R. GEISE
N THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY, GOVERNMENTS IN EXILE HAVE
become a familiar phenomenon. Few persons realize, how-
ever, that late in 1863 Marshall, Texas, became the seat of
such a government, when Governor Thomas C. Reynolds of Mis-
souri established his state capital there. From July, 1861, until the
end of the Civil War, there were two governments of Missouri.
One, sitting in the regular state capitol at Jefferson City, was cre-
ated under the stress of wartime necessity by a state convention,
exercising vague and extraordinary powers. The other, composed
of a number of the last regularly elected members of the old state
government, became a fugitive government, dispossessed of both
capital and state, moving from place to place, before finally coming
to rest in Marshall. Eventually this shadow government had little
claim to legality in Missouri beyond its possession of the official
state seal and its recognition by the Confederate States, but for
some thirty thousand Missourians who "went South" it was, for
four years, the state executive. Earlier events must be examined in
order to see how Marshall, Texas, became the last capital city of
"rebel" Missouri.
On the eve of the Civil War the moderate attitude of Mis-
sourians toward the sectional issue was shown by their vote in the
national election of 186o. The state was carried by Stephen A.
Douglas with 58,801 votes; John Bell was a close second with
58,372, while the two uncompromising opponents, John C. Breck-
inridge and Abraham Lincoln, received only 31,317 and 17,028
1M. L. G. and C. Guillaume Thummel and Perry S. Rader, The Civil Government
of the United States and the State of Missouri and the History of Missouri from the
Earliest Times to the Present (Columbia, 1897), 280.