them. The other was a very natural
desire to be solid with the administration at Washington, which, as
elsewhere shown, was not then actively Anti-Slavery. It did not want
the question of slavery agitated, especially in the border slave
States.

The Blairs were a clan as well as a family. The quarrel of one was the
quarrel of all, and the Missouri Radicals had no more effective
antagonist than the old Washington editor and politician, Francis P.
Blair, Sr., the family's head, who was so intimate with the President
that it was understood he could at any time enter the White House by
the kitchen door.

The writer was once a member of a delegation of Missouri "Charcoals"
that went to Washington to see the President. An hour was set for the
interview, and we were promptly at the door of the President's
chamber, where we were kept waiting for a considerable time. At last
the door opened, but before we could enter, out stepped a little old
man who tripped away very lightly for one of his years. That little
old man was Francis P. Blair, Sr., and we knew that we had been
forestalled. The President received us politely and patiently listened
to what we had to say, but our mission was fruitless.

The Radicals of Missouri sent deputation after deputation to the White
House, and got nothing they wanted. The Conservatives never sent a
deputation, and got all they wanted. They had advocates at the
President's elbows all the time.

With both State and Federal administrations against them, the Missouri
Charcoals may be regarded as foolhardy in persisting in the fight they
made for the deliverance of their State from slavery. They did
persist, however, and with such success in propagating their views
that Governor Gamble and the other Conservative leaders decided that
heroic measures to hold them in check were necessary. He undertook to
cut the ground from under their feet. The old convention that had
killed emancipation "at the first pop," or as much of it as was in
existence, was called together by the Governor, who appealed to it to
take such action as would quiet agitation on the slavery question.
Accordingly, it proceeded to enact what was called an emancipation
ordinance. The trouble with it was that it emancipated nobody. It
provided for the liberation of part of the slaves at a distant future
day, allowing the rest to remain as they were. The Radicals simply
laughed at the measure. They pronounced it a snare and a fraud, an