ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln would announce the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation declared that, if the Confederate states did not cease fighting and return to the Union by January 1, 1863, all enslaved people within those states would be freed. It was a crucial step in the Civil War, signaling a shift towards the abolition of slavery as a central goal of the Union effort. Effective on January 1st, 1863, President Lincoln declared

“that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

Missouri was a slave state that had never officially declared secession from the Union. Those enslaved in Missouri would hear of the news, and know that it did not apply to them because they were a “border State”. In 1863, Archer Alexander (1806-1880) an enslaved man who had been born in Virginia, and brought to Missouri in 1829, would heroically step forward and risk his life to inform the Union troops of a plot to destroy a nearby railroad bridge. Afterwards he would be forced to flee at the Howell’s Ferry Landing on the Underground Railroad, and nearly die because of it. In September of 1863, he would be given his freedom, for his important services to the Military. He had been helped by an abolitionist named Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot who lived in St. Louis Missouri.

It would not be until January 11, 1865, that the State of Missouri would amend its Constitution and declare all persons held as slaves within its borders were free. The Civil War would end that spring. Then, on April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was murdered, by a Confederate assassin because of his actions to emancipate the enslaved. When the news of Lincoln’s death reached those who had been given their freedom because of this man’s actions, they were devastated, and a formerly enslaved woman named Charlotte Scott proclaimed that the “colored people had lost the best friend they ever had.” Sadly, it would not be until that following June 19th, that the U.S. Military would arrive in Texas and those that had been freed there were even told of what Lincoln had done! Today we celebrate that day as JUNETEENTH.

It would be eleven years later, that on that same date of his assassination before a Memorial would be raised in our Nation’s Capitol to President Lincoln. The Freedom Memorial, often referred to today as the Emancipation Memorial, was the first Memorial to Lincoln to be erected by all of the formerly enslaved in Washington, D.C. . That Memorial still stands today, a National Landmark in a National Park. There with him is a Missouri man named Archer Alexander, who rises to greet his future of freedom. He has worked a life of toil, and has broken his own chains through his own actions, but because of Lincoln and his sincere belief that

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free”

that all future generations will now and forever be free to celebrate Juneteenth!

Archer Alexander is on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. For more information about Archer Alexander see https://archeralexander.blog/

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