"My name is Sarah Frances Shaw Graves... I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old with my Mama who was a slave..."
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- Federal Slave Narrative Project, 1936
Slavery in the West
Slavery in northwestern Missouri operated on a much smaller scale than in the American South or even in other parts of Missouri, but it was present in the region from the earliest days of white settlement. Many farmers moving to Missouri were poor and could not afford slaves or had no interest in owning other people, but other white settlers moved to the area and brought enslaved people with them. Missouri’s landscape could not support the massive production of crops like southern plantations, so slaves generally worked on smaller farms and may have worked alongside slave holders in their fields. Despite these differences in scale, enslaved people were subjected to the same grueling work, conditions, and harsh punishments as slaves in other parts of the country.
The Platte Purchase
In 1836, a bill for the Platte Purchase was approved. This purchase added new land to the northwestern corner of Missouri. The counties that made up the Platte Purchase were Atchison, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway, Andrew, and Platte. Slavery in this region was technically illegal at the time since the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery anywhere in Louisiana Purchase land that was north of the southern Missouri border. Despite the Missouri Compromise, all six of these newly admitted counties permitted the enslavement of African Americans. The largest numbers and highest percentage of enslaved people were in the southern part of the region in Platte, Buchanan, and Andrew counties, but the northern three counties also had populations of enslaved people. The map on the left was created using slave schedules from the US census and property records for Nodaway County. It shows the locations within the county where slave owners owned land and where enslaved people lived and worked.
Above: Map of the Platte Purchase.
Left: General Property Locations of Select Nodaway County Slave Owners, 1845-1860. Map created by Aaron Schmidt.
Slavery across the country did not look universal, and there were some differences between the South and the West and Midwest. In the West, slave owners often worked with alongside their slaves on subsistence-level farms. This relationship between owner and slave was more intimate than in the South. Also, slavery happened on a much smaller scale, which is another reason for these different relationships. Unlike the South, the land in the West-Midwest was not suitable for mass crop production, so the need for slaves was not as high. Because farmers lived in the newly established West, they were not able to trade and sell their products with the North as readily as southern plantations. As a result, they were not able to turn a profit that allowed for an expanded farm and higher numbers of slaves. This explains another reason slavery happened on a smaller scale in Missouri, especially northwestern Missouri. Many of the white farmers struggled to support themselves and could not engage in the slave market. Further, while some white residents came from southern states and supported the system of slavery, others came from free states and found slavery abhorrent. Despite any of the regional differences, enslaved people in Missouri were still slaves. They were owned by other people, forced to work long hours, and suffered from physical and sexual violence.
South v. West
After the Civil War
On January 1st, 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was signed, which freed all slaves who were in the Confederate states. However, Missouri was never left the Union, though many of its white residents supported the Confederacy. The Emancipation did not extend to slave states that remained in the US, yet freedom appeared so close for many enslaved people in northwestern Missouri. During the war, people escaped slavery by crossing the borders to Kansas or Iowa, sometimes using the path of the Underground Railroad. Some young Black men from Missouri even were able to join the Union Army. The slaves in Missouri were not freed until the Missouri Constitutional Convention where state legislators ended slavery in the state on January 11, 1865, just a few months before the war ended.
Knobel, E., Artist, and Theodore Schrader. Emancipation Ordinance of Missouri. An ordinance abolishing slavery in Missouri / Missouri, ca. 1865. St. Louis, Mo.: Published by "The Westliche Post," Photograph.