(serene music) - Missouri is a crossroads of America.

From the nation's westward expansion to the brink of secession, Missouri has been at the center.

Beginning with the region's indigenous cultures up until the brink of the Civil War, over the next hour, we will trace Missouri's indelible and undeniable mark on American history.

(serene music continues) (mellow music) - There are few places in the United States that better reflect the major developments in American history, that better reflect an early history that is complex, that involves movement and migration and change.

There are few places that better reflect the nation's social and demographic changes in the 19th century, and then fewer places that better reflect how the nation has changed in the last century.

- When we look at Missouri in American history, it's a fascinating place because we really are, sort of, caught in the middle, in every sense of that word.

We've been geographically in the middle, culturally in the middle.

Anything that has happened across the course of American history, you can tell a Missouri story about that, about the ways Missouri not only shaped the nation, but the way the nation was shaping how Missouri turned out to be as a state.

So while you have fascinating things happening all over the place with American history, Missouri is this totally unique place where all of these things are kind of congealing and a lot of the big moments are happening and taking shape.

- Missouri plays a major role in the first 100 years of American history.

It continues to play a large role after that, but in those first decades of the 19th century leading up to the Civil War, it is a major player in much of what happens.

(water flowing) - Before Missouri was Missouri, it was a densely populated region.

At the confluence of the two largest moving bodies of water on the continent, this region is one of the most biodiverse in North America and has been home to people who built societies based on the abundant flora and fauna found here, as well as the river system, which created opportunities for trade.

(gentle music) - The draw to that confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi was not originally seen as a location of trade.

It was seen as a location of abundance, and that source of the confluence was also the main draw for those ancestral Osage.

Because of the spirit, the richness, the power of the water, and the confluence, those two large bodies of water coming together is something that's very significant for our tribe.

(gentle music continues) The name of our ancestral Osage people is Niukonska, which means children of the middle waters.

So this is a place of middle waters, essentially, of where we came to be and to grow as a culture.

(gentle music continues) - This was one of the first densely populated areas in the spaces that became the United States.

The first Indigenous peoples who arrived here did so understanding that there were profound advantages to living here.

(gentle music continues) - Let's set the stage: This area is densely populated when the French and Spanish arrive in the 17th century.

This is a region that is a well-established hub of trade and commerce, offering a network of rivers and trails.

And the Europeans take advantage of that as they set up trading posts, establish relationships with the Osage, and build settlements.

(birds twittering) (insects chirping) - The Osage would've been certainly well aware of the French before they actually saw them face to face.

The tribes in that area, they're moving within territories, and our territory for that time period was still quite large, encompassing the state of Missouri, large portions of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas.

And so, you know, we are constantly coming into contact with other tribal groups along the borders of our territory.

So when the French were starting to come into our area of the country, that information would've been passed straight through to everybody who was in their line so that the tribes would've been aware of what was coming.

(solemn music) - One way to understand, for example, St. Louis, is it's not so much that the French arrived and built a town, but rather that the Osage determined there was an advantage to letting Frenchmen establish an outpost here.

- You have to see it more of the tribe taking a stance at what the situation that is brought to them at that point, you know, what does that hold for them?

And realizing that they had certain goods, they had certain things that were attractive to the tribal members.

They saw it as advantageous to work with these groups, and the French, it was a very beneficial relationship that was created and lasted for many years, making lucrative changes in the domestic life in terms of materials that were being traded.

- This region where we are now was at the intersection of territorial claims by the British, the French, and the Spanish, all of whom are vying for mastery of North America.

But in reality, most of North America was governed by Native Americans.

They were the governing authority, and all of these groups are struggling for control.

(solemn music continues) - The Treaty of Fontainebleau signed in 1762 transferred all the territory of colonial Louisiana west of the Mississippi River from France to Spain.

Just two years later, Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau would come up the river from New Orleans and, in 1764, found the French fur trading outpost of St. Louis, setting the stage for some of the most pivotal aspects of American history.

(birds twittering) - Pierre Laclede has this notion of establishing a trading outpost that will be between the center of French trade in the Great Lakes region and the great entrepot of French trade, which is New Orleans.

So by 1800, there were probably only around 2,000 people in St. Louis.

It was complex, it was multilingual, it had a really active commerce and trade, and what was traveling through here came from thousands of miles away and would travel halfway around the world.

So even though it's this small town, it's at the center of everything.

(water flowing) - The French, like, why did they come up the river and decide to position themselves here?

- So the first French who came here actually weren't coming up the river, they were coming down the river, because the French were establishing their base of operations in the Great Lakes region, and they followed the river down.

And when they established New Orleans, it was partly to give them a point at the bottom of the Mississippi River.

When French merchants first sought to create an outpost here in St. Louis, a lot of that was to establish a presence in the midpoint of the Mississippi, but also because they thought there would be really great trading opportunities with the Osage and with the other villages in this area.

- And it's at the confluence.

- It's at the confluence of three major rivers, of course: the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio.

You know, everyone talks about St. Louis as the place where east meets west, and that's very much the case here.

Again, people weren't just looking west.

People were looking east to establish various forms of contact.

- [Cat] Because rivers, back in the day, before steamboats, before railroads, they really were the highway.

That was the fastest way to transport goods.

- Oh, absolutely, rivers were absolutely the way you transported goods.

And it wasn't just the speed, it was the volume.

You could transport so much more.

You could fill a canoe, a flat boat, whatever, and you could put so much more on that than you could put, obviously, on someone's back, but also on a horse's back or in a carriage.

And in the 18th and 19th centuries, everybody knew that that was the way you transported things.

(birds twittering) (geese honking) - [Cat] So the outpost of St. Louis is established.

What is it like here?

- Well, let's think, first of all, about the landscape that we're on.

It would've been really different.

There wasn't a dense population here, but even aside from that, there weren't as many trees.

This was mostly an area of prairie grasses.

It was an area of relatively clear views.

Planting trees is something that happened at large-scale in the 19th and 20th centuries.

St. Louis, at the start of the American Revolution, was on the space that's now the Arch grounds, and it was a very small space.

There were one or 2,000 people living there.

There was a fort, there were some houses, there were trading posts, but really not much more.

So it would've looked so completely different from the large metropolis with long streets and tall trees that we have today.

- [Cat] So why did people want it?

If it's just this tiny little outpost, why does it matter?

- You see, we're talking about tiny outposts like that's a bad thing.

From the perspective of the people who established the town, that's what they were thinking in terms of, it was very efficient.

The French had really struggled to convince their own countrymen to move to North America.

Their approach wasn't one based on large numbers of settlers moving to land that they were trying to claim to control, but rather to leverage relationships they'd established with Native Americans.

And the most efficient way to do that was with trading outposts.

The French, of course, were starting to build some larger settlements in what eventually becomes Montreal and throughout areas that are now Nova Scotia.

But in the 1760s, this was an efficient way to do things, and it worked for the French.

(gentle music) - Not long after St. Louis was founded as a fur trading outpost, the American Revolution rocked the continent and truly the entire globe.

Now, while we think of the revolution as being fought in New England, it actually reached as far west as where The Gateway Arch stands today.

(militant music) - The American Revolution was, first and foremost, an internal conflict within the British Empire as a series of British colonies in mainland North America declared their independence, and that's the story we know, and rightly so, that's the story of the American Revolution.

But it quickly became a global conflict of empires.

That's the principle reason why France and Spain formed alliances with the United States, was they saw it as a way to gain advantage over Britain in the competition among them.

- Spain, in 1779, decided it was going to enter the Revolutionary War, and all of a sudden, the tiny town of St. Louis is one of the places everybody is fighting to have.

- It's not like what we picture George Washington and the continental army against the redcoats.

There are a small number of British army officers, a certain number of British volunteers and militia men, and then several different Native American forces.

And they're all aligned for an attack on St. Louis for different reasons.

- To paint a picture of what St. Louis looked like in 1780, it is absolutely not the metropolis you see today.

All of St. Louis was 3 blocks wide, 19 blocks long.

The whole entire town fit on the grounds of what is now The Gateway Arch, had no more than a couple thousand people in the town and in the surrounding areas nearby.

But this was an unbelievably crucial point.

Sitting at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, whoever controlled St. Louis was about to control the entire center portion of North America.

When word comes that Great Britain is on their way to attack St. Louis, Fernando De Leyba, who is in charge of St. Louis, has no more than a few dozen men at his disposal.

He leaps into action.

He puts a shovel into the hand of every St. Louisan who can dig, and every St. Louisan who has money, he starts bugging them to give some.

He manages to build a single stone defensive tower that is named Fort San Carlos.

That is the only defense St. Louis has when the attack finally comes in May of 1780, is this one 30-foot tall stone tower.

Aside from that, the town is sitting entirely defenseless.

It seems like such a small thing against the scope of the Revolutionary War and the scope of American history, but had St. Louis fallen to Great Britain, they would've been able to set up a military encampment at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

All that fur trading wealth that was going to France and Spain and ultimately to the United States, their allies, all of that would've transferred over to Great Britain.

You can see this situation where, had Great Britain managed to get St. Louis, they could actually build a new, sort of, base in the center of the country, and the United States might not look the way it does today.

(militant music continues) (city bustling) - So St. Louis does not fall to the British, the Americans win the Revolutionary War, and the region's extensive fur trade, now with the land under the control of Napoleon, continues on as it had before.

That is, until the Louisiana purchase takes place.

- So throughout the 18th century, what were then the three most powerful empires in Europe, Britain, France, and Spain, had all been jockeying for control of the Americas.

- When Thomas Jefferson is sitting in Washington DC or at Monticello, looking across the river into what becomes the state of Missouri, he's a very worried man.

The Louisiana Territory switched hands from Spain back to France in the year 1800, putting Napoleon Bonaparte right across the river in that territory.

Jefferson realizes that if Napoleon wanted to, he could cut off American access to the river at New Orleans, and there would be almost nothing that America could do about it.

He's extremely worried that this is going to happen, so he puts together a plan.

He would send James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris to make an offer for the city of New Orleans for $10 million.

- So they say what we'll do is we need to acquire New Orleans, which controls the Mississippi.

It's technically east of the Mississippi, and we want to get the Gulf Coast and the Florida Peninsula.

That will establish our security.

And those are the instructions they send to their negotiators.

And James Madison writes very detailed instructions.

He says, "Your objective is to acquire New Orleans," what were called the Floridas, the Gulf Coast and the Florida Peninsula.

Monroe gets to France, and up to this point, the French have been unwilling to budge.

- Napoleon, at this time, is facing a lot of problems in the Caribbean and France's colonies there.

He's desperately in need of money.

And so he makes a counter-offer that surprises everyone: the entire 828,000-square mile Louisiana territory for $15 million.

They jump on the offer without the actual proper authorization to make that purchase.

And all of a sudden, the United States has doubled its size in a landscape that it knows almost nothing about.

- [Peter] So they sign a treaty, they conclude the negotiations in April 1803, and news of it reaches Washington DC on July 4th, 1803.

And Thomas Jefferson throws a big celebration, not because the United States has doubled its territorial claims, but because it has resolved the Mississippi Crisis without going to war, without causing disunion.

- The Louisiana purchase had a profound impact on the United States.

The geographic size of the United States doubles, and that happens, actually, twice in about a 30-year period.

You have the American Revolution, and then you have Louisiana Purchase, and so you have all of this land that becomes available.

And now you have all these individuals that, for decades, have lived under the French and the Spanish systems.

Well, what does that mean?

Well, are your land rights going to stay in place?

How is that going to be translated?

- The Louisiana Purchase creates the single greatest domestic governance challenge of the first half of the 19th century.

And in the end, it's the Louisiana Purchase, as much as anything, that will precipitate the Civil War.

- Beginning in the 1800s, we enter into one of the critical time periods that produce a change for our tribe that is tremendously impactful.

In the early 1800s, this period has been preceded by decades of immigrants coming into our territory, our homeland, First the French, then the Spanish.

We see the British on the borders.

We see tribes from the eastern seaboard that are being moved westward, and they're coming into our territory.

And this is extremely unsettling for the Osage.

And we are trying to defend our territory the best we can.

We essentially are battling everybody around us, all around our borders.

We're fighting to keep our home.

And everybody wants it, and everybody wants to move into it.

- The vast region of the Louisiana Territory is essentially unknown to the Americans who have just acquired it.

Indigenous people have been here for millennia, and the European trading post may have been long established, but to the Americans, it's unexplored.

The two-year expedition of Lewis and Clark changed that.

(haste music) - The same time that the Louisiana Territory is being transferred to the United States at St. Louis, right across the river on the Illinois side, two explorers are preparing for the journey of a lifetime.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were sent by Thomas Jefferson to try to find a path through the new purchase of the United States.

They eventually make it all the way to the Pacific Ocean and return living to tell the tale.

- The expedition would've been a disaster without Native Americans.

Native Americans give them roadmaps.

They give them food.

They provide everything you would need for a cross-country trip.

Rest stops, supplies, lodging, you name it.

But whenever Lewis and Clark arrive at a village, they say, "We bring important news.

This land is now owned by the United States."

So they are laying claim to that land every step of the way.

- [Andrew] When Lewis and Clark re-arrive in St. Louis in 1806 after two years of being gone, when most people had probably long since given them up for dead, they come back with all of these tales of all of the animals they had found out west, all of the different landscapes they had crossed.

And it sparks this huge movement toward St. Louis and Missouri of all of these people streaming in from the east, hoping to strike it rich in this new territory that seemed, at least to them, to be theirs for the taking.

(mischievous music) (water flowing) (birds twittering) - The Lewis and Clark Expedition would never have succeeded without the assistance of Native Americans.

And back in St. Louis, William Clark, in particular, would play an outsized role in the shaping of the American government's treatment of native peoples as settlers moved into the new territory.

- The United States did not seek to acquire the land in the Louisiana Purchase.

That did not mean that Anglo-Americans were not expansionistic.

The vast majority of American citizens engaged in agriculture.

And to them, what it meant to be American, what it meant to be free, what it meant to be independent was that you owned land of your own.

And as the population grew, that became increasingly difficult.

And so Anglo-Americans did what they'd always done: They coveted the land owned by Native Americans.

And in the era of the Louisiana Purchase, one of the first things the federal government sets out to do is to form alliances with some Native Americans, but also to get other Native Americans to cede their land.

- The tribe, if you look at the history, would not have been aware of the enormous land base of the Louisiana Purchase.

They would not have been aware of that, of how big that land transfer was.

What they were aware of was Fort Osage on the Missouri River and William Clark coming to them and sitting down and explaining that they wanted to make a treaty with the tribe.

And that treaty is really the the turning point in our history.

And this occurs in 1808.

And with that signing of our Osage members, we essentially turn over the majority of the state of Missouri and the northern half of Arkansas to the United States government.

(solemn music) - When Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis, Clark ends up staying here in St. Louis, where he becomes a Native American agent for the US government.

It becomes his job to do a lot of the awful work that we now know happened of removing the Native American people.

Clark would later say that he regretted some of this work, but it is a very real part of a person we oftentimes think of as an American hero.

- William Clark is mentioned in some of the early documents about his regret of negotiating that treaty with our tribe.

And this is really the last point where our tribe has our traditions, our culture intact.

(solemn music continues) From this point forward, (solemn music continues) we're never the same again.

(solemn music continues) And that's hard for us, today, to think about that, what that meant.

(solemn music continues) - More than any other American official, William Clark, who, on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, negotiates from a position of respect and trust, will become an Indian agent who single-handedly helps to execute the large-scale dispossession of Native Americans living in land that is now especially Missouri, but also Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa.

(solemn music continues) - With that 1808 treaty, we thought we could come back and hunt in our areas where we've always hunted, we could go to our resource areas, our sacred sites, our burials of, you know, our families.

We thought we could go back and visit those locations and hunt in the Ozarks, for instance.

And that was not the case.

With that 1808 treaty, we lost that ability.

And the 1825 treaty solidified, you know, the whole state for us that we could not come back.

And so Missouri State law states that Native Americans are not allowed in the borders of Missouri.

(solemn music continues) (insects chirping) (leaves rustling) - As America continues its expansion, Missouri remains a pivotal player with an influx of European immigrants coming to the region.

As each group arrives, they bring with them their culture and points of view.

Now, the system of slavery is well established in Missouri, having existed here since the first Europeans arrived, but not all of these newcomers approve, setting the stage for the coming conflict.

(birds twittering) - The first wave of migrants were mostly from the upper South states, so from places like Kentucky, foremost, and Virginia, the Carolinas, to a lesser extent.

And they came westward looking for land, looking for opportunity, and brought a lot of enslaved people with them.

But then the population started to shift because Germans started to move.

And then a lot of folks started to move here from Northern states or from free states.

That really started to change the demographics of the state, but also it started to change the labor system because many of those folks were not as engaged in slavery as the Southern folks were.

And then, ultimately, it changed the politics of the state, and that was the primary reason, or one of the main reasons why Missouri ended up becoming a border state during the Civil War.

- The influx of German immigrants into Missouri in the early 19th century, early to mid-19th century, I think, did have a profound impact on the culture of the state.

And just Missouri's geography, you have the confluence of people from the north, people from the east, people from the south coming together and arriving basically in the west at the time.

And then you add the Black experience, you add the Native American experience, and then you throw in the German immigrant experience.

And so I think that that speaks to, really, the conflicted nature of Missouri and, kind of, how people felt about systems of enslavement.

Especially, you know, when you're a nation that kind of hangs its hat on the Declaration of Independence and what is stated in the Declaration of Independence, this manifesto about freedom and opportunity.

And then you have a government that is built around the notion of the franchise or being able to vote and representation.

And that doesn't exist for a portion of the population.

And so I think that when Germans move to the region, they challenged this notion.

(birds twittering) (insects chirping) - So in the early 19th century, Missouri is incredibly diverse.

It's a hub of commerce and culture.

And with the Missouri River heading west from the St. Louis region, there are thousands of people arriving each day, gearing up for arduous journeys on the trails out west.

(contented music) - [Diane] The rivers converge here, the Missouri, the Mississippi, Ohio River converge along the borders of Missouri.

And then the trails west all started here.

First, the Santa Fe Trail from central Missouri down to Santa Fe, what's now New Mexico, the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, out of western Missouri, Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph.

- When people are heading westward, whether it be on the Santa Fe Trail or the Oregon Trail, all of these different trails heading west out of Missouri, leaving from places like Independence and St. Joseph, all of those families were stocking up on goods in St. Louis.

If you go through the St. Louis city directories, you can see all of these different advertisements for cast iron pots and pans, lead shot for your shotguns, rifles, and saddles and wagons.

So everything they were taking with them, it was right here in St. Louis.

- The steamboats were very important to the development of the state.

They're coming through St. Louis, but ultimately, they're trying to go as far up the river as they can to unload people and freight so that people can then take part in these wagon trains and go to the west.

(contented music continues) (water lapping) - So we're standing here on the historic levee - Yes.

- In St. Louis, Missouri.

And these are some of the original stones.

- That's right, so when you think back about St. Louis' riverboat era, you just try to imagine what this would've been like where we are standing right now with 100 steamboats lining this levee.

Imagine these stones, feel them under your feet, how rough and uneven they are.

Just imagine all of these dock hands and levee workers unloading carts from all across the interior of the United States.

You know, apples, slate from the Great Lakes, you know, all the grain from across the Midwest, all of that coming to this one spot on St. Louis's levee.

This was one of the most densely populated and active places in the entire United States in the middle part of the 19th century.

- [Cat] So the steamboats, they would be belching this, like, black smoke 'cause they were coal-fired?

- Absolutely.

Yeah, so these steamboats were enormous.

They were like floating palaces.

The largest one was, the Grand Republic was about 300 feet long.

Just imagine, that's half the height of The Gateway Arch, just how long these incredible boats were.

And they were fed constantly by coal and wood.

Sometimes they would dip the wood in tar before they would throw it into the steamboat's boilers - Wow.

- To give it an extra burn to get it going as fast as they could.

This was all about economy.

These boats were loaded down with everything you could think of, just moving it all across the United States.

- And so what was the steamboat era?

- So the steamboats really start to take off in St. Louis after the 1820s.

The first steamboat, the Zebulon Pike, arrives at St. Louis in 1817.

St. Louisans can't believe what they're seeing when it gets here.

You know, there this boat that can move up river almost as easily as down.

This is a floating miracle for them.

After that point, steamboats start coming one after another.

By the 1820s, the fur trade is feeding the growth of steamboats.

By the 1850s, that's really the height of the steamboat moment in St. Louis, where you have hundreds of boats lining the levee.

But then, of course, the decade after that, the Civil War hits.

That really turns the corner.

Beyond that, the railroad will start its rise.

The steamboats will dwindle farther and farther.

But in that moment before the Civil War, this was one of the busiest spots in the country.

(birds twittering) - So behind us, The Gateway Arch National Park is this expansive greenway, but back before the park was built, it was full of industrial buildings.

- Absolutely, when you come to St. Louis today, you see this incredible icon standing on the riverfront.

But this is nothing like what the riverfront looked like when these levee stones were laid here.

St. Louis pushed all the way up to the edge of the river.

What is now Leonor K Sullivan Boulevard was formerly Main Street on St. Louis.

There was a wall-to-wall row of buildings right here, five, six stories tall.

These were all of the fur trading warehouses and iron factories.

And you know, the St. Louis Stock Exchange was right here.

All of the economy of the city was happening within just a couple hundred feet of the river's edge where all of these goods were coming through.

(water lapping) - It really is so cool to kind of be standing, is this, like, pink granite, I think?

- Yeah, so this is Missouri granite.

What is now Elephant Rock State Park in southeast Missouri was formerly the town of Graniteville, where Phillip Schneider had a granite quarry.

In the 1880s and 1890s, they were sending 60,000 of these granite street pavers to St. Louis every single week, an enormous undertaking to pave the city streets.

But these are a local product.

They're more than 300,000 of them still on the levee today.

And these are the same ones that were here when St. Louis's levee was one of the biggest industrial centers in the United States.

- [Cat] Amazing.

(water lapping) (boat honking) - In today's globalized world, you can get stuff shipped to you from anywhere on the planet.

You have no idea where your goods are coming from.

By the end of the Civil War, St. Louis is one of the five largest cities in the entire country.

When you're building a city that big, you still generally have the things right around you to pull from.

So you know, this granite comes from Missouri.

All of the iron that was making the cast iron stoves, the pots and pans, the cast iron storefronts of these factories, that was all coming from southeast Missouri iron mines.

You had lead, you had bricks that were starting to be made from the clay right beneath St. Louis's feet.

All of these raw materials were in this really incredibly rich area that surrounds St. Louis.

You know, we had the rivers bringing in all of these goods from up and down the Midwest, but you also had all of these incredible things right here, the crops and the livestock from all across the Midwest, the geographic raw materials right beneath our feet.

St. Louis sat on this gold mine of resources, and you had all of this stuff just coming together in this one place to very quickly build a metropolis.

- So many of the trails that people who ended up populating the west, you know, went on actually emanated from Missouri.

Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, California Trail, it all came from Missouri.

- A lot of them started on Missouri's western edge, sort of, officially, because that was really the edge of white, European, American understanding.

Beyond that, there weren't a whole lot of settlements.

You know, what is now Kansas City, Independence, Missouri, was about as far as you got.

And beyond that, there were fur trapping outposts.

But it was mostly the Native American people who were living here still occupying the vast majority of those territories.

So St. Louis was really the last spot where people could stock up on goods.

- [Cat] So people would stock up, so they'd be in St. Louis for a short amount of time.

They would come down to this levee, and they would get onto a steamboat.

They would go a little bit north to the Missouri River and then head out west.

- And beyond that, it was up to them to make it happen.

And a lot of the names that you still see around St. Louis today are the people who built their wealth, you know, stocking up these migrants who were headed west.

Henry Shaw came to St. Louis in 1819 when he was just 19 years old, and he opened a general store where he was just selling migrants all the things that they would need.

He retired when he was 40 years old because he had made so much money selling things to folks moving out west.

An incredible, you know, amount, just thinking about how much money and economy was happening in that moment.

- Do you have any concept of how many thousands of people actually, kind of, like, came to St. Louis and through Missouri out to the west?

- It's a good question because so many of them were moving, sort of, by their own volition.

There was no documentation the way there is today where everybody knows where you're at.

You can use your phone to call somebody up at any time.

These people were sort of out on their own.

So it was thousands and thousands of people.

You know, we have records from the 1840s of every new steamboat coming into St. Louis dropping off 1,000 people at a time.

You know, incredible amounts of movement and human life and activity going on right here.

- And that was also very diverse.

I mean, you had people who were trying to go out for the gold rush.

You had folks who were going out to become fur traders, but then you also had families, right?

I mean, people had different reasons for going west or going southwest.

- Yeah, you have all of these different groups of people coming here because it represents opportunity.

And it's a place where you can kind of get lost in the crowd and hopefully find a way to make a name for yourself.

(water lapping) (city bustling) - Amid the bustle of growth and expansion in the 19th century, there is a hum of friction under the surface.

America is grappling with the question of slavery.

And again, Missouri is at the center of the debate and a harbinger for the conflict that is to come.

(insects chirping) - As soon as the Louisiana Purchase happens and the United States takes over this vast new territory.

The big question on everyone's mind is the topic that will come to define the United States for the next four decades moving forward, all the way up to the Civil War: slavery.

In all of this brand new territory, would slavery be allowed?

Would it not be allowed?

How will this upset the power balance that has been carefully crafted between the Northern and Southern states that have been made by this time?

So as soon as this happens, as soon as the first conversations about Missouri becoming a state pop up, that is the single topic that overtakes all else.

Will Missouri be a slave state or a free state?

Now, slavery had been allowed in Missouri going all the way back through the French colonial period.

It had been absorbed into Missouri's culture when it became part of the Louisiana Purchase.

But as soon as Missouri's tries to make its first attempt to become a state, massive protests break out here in St. Louis of people demanding slavery be outlawed in Missouri.

(dissonant music) - What the Missouri Compromise does is it places the institution of enslavement front and center in terms of the US government.

There has to be a decision made on it.

Now, many people just really did not want to talk about slavery.

I mean, the issue had been on the minds of some individuals going back to the revolutionary period.

But instead of actually dealing with it, they're gonna push it off.

- The territorial legislature goes to Congress.

They say, "We wanna be considered for statehood," and it unleashes a really loud fight in Congress 'cause there's a member of Congress who said, "Okay, but we need a provision that mandates that their state constitution will provide for the rapid elimination of African American enslavement."

Pro-slavery advocates say, "Not a chance.

We're not gonna permit that.

This is wrong."

Other people make a constitutional claim.

They say, "No, no, no.

They write their own constitution.

They decide what's best for them, let them decide."

Well, the Missouri Crisis, as it became known, unleashed a national argument over the expansion of slavery.

It's in this context that Thomas Jefferson refers to as a fire bell in the night.

He says, this is going to just destroy the union because he's afraid this is what will happen.

- Because you are either going to have more states, just kind of looking at the map, that are going to have representatives and senators from enslaved states or free states.

And so it makes enslavement political.

It makes it very political.

It's not just about economics anymore.

And so the decision is made to permit Maine, which was also vying to become a state, a free state, which happens in 1820, Maine, and then 1821, Missouri comes in to become a slave state.

- The resolution of Missouri entering the union kicks the can down the road and, at the same time, opens a Pandora's box.

Because what it has said is that when territories want to enter the union, the question of whether they will enter as free or slave is a live wire.

(gentle music) - The Missouri Compromise or Crisis, as it's also known, is signed into law, and that quells the conflict for a while.

But soon a lawsuit first filed here at the old courthouse in St. Louis will reach the Supreme Court and change everything.

(solemn music) - The Dred Scott decision is the last nail in the coffin for the Missouri Compromise.

Dred and Harriet Scott were two enslaved Virginians, and their owners transported them to the west.

They eventually were in Missouri, but they lived for a while in the Old Northwest Territory.

There is a law in place that's actually the result of a suit in Missouri, but it becomes national policy: once free, always free, that if somebody lives in a free state, even if you are enslaved, you are free once you live there, and you cannot be re enslaved when you go somewhere else.

- Some of the earliest freedom suits in the state or in the territory were around 1809.

So there were some really early suits where individuals were leaning into this notion of once free, always free, because they had passed through that Northwest Territory.

- Their initial case was filed right here in St. Louis at the old courthouse, still stands in the middle of downtown St. Louis.

They won their initial court case, but as the case bounced back and forth through the appeals process, it eventually went all the way to the US Supreme Court and became a national focus.

Even though it was one of hundreds of other freedom suits that had been filed here in St. Louis, this one hit at just the right moment when this national issue about slavery and what was to come of the Missouri Compromise was heating up to new levels.

- The Scott case, in and of itself, was one of many.

The reason it is so important is because it goes to the US Supreme Court, and then the decision that was handed down by Chief Justice Taney was one that said, you know, the fact that they even filed a suit, it should have never happened because they're not citizens.

And it's wasn't because they weren't citizens because they were enslaved.

Taney argues that they weren't citizens because the political founders of the United States, did not consider any person of African descent to be a citizen, nor their descendants.

And they didn't have any rights, which white Americans were bound to respect.

And so this case has this national impact.

It nationalizes slavery.

It strips back the Missouri Compromise because the Missouri Compromise said that only states below this certain line of demarcation, the 36 30 parallel, could become slave states.

Well, the chief justice says that, well, no, no government can tell someone where you can and cannot take your property, and enslaved people are property.

And so it pulls back this idea of once free, always free.

No, you are someone's property.

It doesn't matter if you go into a free territory or free state or not.

You know, Black people are basically citizen non grata, persona non grata.

You're not a citizen.

You're here, but you have no rights.

This court case strips away citizenship for all Black people in the United States.

I don't think that people today really understand the magnitude of that decision and the impact that it had.

It literally says that Black people are not citizens in this country, nor their descendants, and they were never intended to be citizens of this country.

(solemn music continues) So on one hand, you have this court case saying that government cannot tell someone where they can and cannot take their property.

But what that also does is that says that the people of a region, of a territory do not have the right to self-governance.

So if a municipality or state says, "We want to prohibit this institution in our states," you can't do that.

It takes the autonomy away from the people living in that state or in that territory.

And so on one hand, it's taking political power away from the citizens.

So if the citizens in Kansas wanted to say, "We don't want enslavement here," they don't have that ability to make that decision because of that court case.

And so it's going to lead to infighting on the border between Missouri and Kansas because Missourians are like, "Well, we can take our enslaved people into Kansas," and Kansans are like, "No, you cannot.

You know, we don't want that here," and so it leads to conflict on the border.

The most intense fighting, I think, that you will find in Missouri is going to be the Bleeding Kansas.

That's arguably where the Civil War starts.

And it starts about five years, six years before Fort Sumter.

And it is, you know, being fought between Missourians and Kansans over the issue of slavery.

(solemn music continues) - The Dred Scott decision, which is rooted in Missouri, this is a case that comes from Missouri.

It disrupts a very tenuous balance in the argument over the expansion of slavery in ways that will set in motion what eventually becomes the decision by white Southerners to leave the union.

(dramatic music) - And that brings us to the edge of the Civil War.

When the Civil War begins, Missouri is a divided state.

It never seceded from the union, but it's deeply conflicted, with some groups pro-slavery and others against.

Again, Missouri is at the center of a pivotal point in American history.

This state that is at the nation's geographic center and a flashpoint for so much of what shaped the United States into the nation that it is today (patriotic music) - Without Missouri, American history would look very different in the sense that, you know, America presents itself as, if you will, a melting pot, although I would equate it more to a salad bar.

We're all on the table, but we're kind of in our different containers, if you will.

And I think, in Missouri, what you have is more of a bowl that has all of those different things thrown in, and at times, it becomes very volatile.

I think that that's why the state, you know, on the cusp of the Civil War, you have, you know, the formation of two different governments and why Missouri actually has a star on the Confederate flag, was because it was so conflicted.

And you know, because of Missouri, you have the issue of enslavement that becomes a national topic, and it does not go away.

(militant music) - Missouri didn't lead the Union, but it was deeply conflicted.

- Oh, yeah, there was a civil war, but there was an uncivil war in Missouri during this time.

And there were large numbers of white Missourians who were ready for secession.

And there were, of course, military units forming on both sides.

There were battles on both sides.

And that's one of the really interesting things.

Missouri really captures the larger national story.

Everyone always says the Civil War is, it's brother against brother, it's neighbor against neighbor.

Well, in Missouri, that actually happened.

There was a shooting war in Missouri between Missourians about which road they would follow.

(patriotic music) - You have frontier politics as a result of Missouri.

Missouri becomes a launching point for further westward expansion with Westport Landing in Kansas City.

Missouri is extremely important, geographically and culturally.

Even though it doesn't nicely fit in with the south and southern culture, although the southern part of the state absolutely does, the center part of the state is a little bit different, the eastern part of the state and going up towards St. Louis, you have more French culture.

Then Kansas City is kind of its own frontier thing.

So culturally, Missouri is actually, I think, an embodiment of the entire country.

You have urban, you have rural, you have small towns, you have individuals that were, you know, if we're talking 19th century, that were in pro-slavery, some that were anti-slavery.

You have German immigrants.

So Missouri is kind of the embodiment of everything, if you will, that is the United States.

And I think with exception that, oftentimes, we can find ways to really compromise, not to make a pun of the Missouri Compromise, but we can compromise over our political ideas, Missouri does kind of highlight that.

It's so unique in terms of its geography, its people, its culture, and what it has meant.

(birds twittering) (city bustling) (contented music) - Missouri is inextricably connected to US history.

How the United States is gonna develop, or more importantly, how the places that became the United States were going to develop is something we can really see by looking at our own state.

And then the country that would emerge is impossible without the distinctive history of Missouri.

We understand our country in a certain way, and it's unimaginable to see the United States as it is now without Missouri.

I don't just mean it would be like something's missing in the middle.

I mean that the country would not have become what it was without Missouri.

(inspiring music) - [Narrator] To learn more, visit h-tv.org.

(dramatic music) (gentle music) (bright music)