[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 5 (Monday, January 12, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S147-S148]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  MISSOURI'S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

  Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I ask the Senate to join me today in 
honoring the 150th anniversary of the State of Missouri's Emancipation 
Proclamation which ended slavery in the State of Missouri. This 
proclamation of freedom was imperative for democracy and progress in 
our State. It is undoubtedly a landmark in Missouri's history.
  In 1720, the arrival of 500 slaves to the areas presently known as 
St. Louis

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County and Jefferson County, marked the beginning of slavery in 
Missouri. Those slaves, who were brought to work in the lead mines in 
those counties, experienced great discrimination over the course of 
1\1/2\ centuries. When the Territorial Slave Codes were created in 
1804, slaves were banned from using firearms, participating in 
assemblies, holding church services and selling alcohol. Under the 
codes, slaves were also punished severely for participating in 
resistance efforts and the mutilation of slaves for the sexual assault 
of white women was made legal. White men who sexually assaulted slave 
women, however, were charged for trespassing upon a slave owner's 
property.
  Retained by the State Constitution in 1820, the Territorial Slave 
Codes were only a premonition of more to come. In 1821, Missouri 
entered the Union as a slave State with the passing of the Missouri 
Compromise and in 1825, the Missouri Legislature passed a law which 
declared slaves to be incompetent as witnesses in legal cases involving 
whites. That gloomy trend continued as the education of slaves was 
banned in an 1847 ordinance. One of the most foreboding events, 
however, occurred in 1857 with the infamous Supreme Court case Dred 
Scott v. Sandford when the judicial system in the state of Missouri and 
the wider judicial system in the United States decided that persons of 
African descent were not U.S. citizens.
  At the time of the Civil War, over 100,000 slaves were living in the 
State of Missouri and when President Abraham Lincoln signed the 
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Missouri's slaves were not freed as 
Missouri was not officially in rebellion against the United States. 
Missouri's slaves received their freedom on January 11, 1865, when the 
Emancipation Ordinance was signed at a State convention in St. Louis. 
That ordinance was made effective immediately and the strict codes of 
the past were eliminated.
  I ask that the Senate join me in reflecting upon this difficult time 
in Missouri's history and honoring the historical significance of the 
Emancipation Ordinance which ended slavery in the State of Missouri, 
150 years ago.

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