This colored sketch of St. Louis and the Mississippi River was drawn from the river bank with St. Louis in the background. The caption below the sketch reads, “San Louis and Mississippi,” with other printing in German.
By 1860, St. Louis was a rapidly growing, vibrant city. From 1832 to the 1850s the number of steamboats in St. Louis increased from 532 to more than three thousand. Business and population in St. Louis boomed. As St. Louis expanded and became more diverse, the city became increasingly alien to rural Missourians. Streets filled with merchants, various minorities (especially Germans), and developing industries resembled nothing of the traditional Southern cities, and instead bore a striking resemblance to the industrial cities of the North. The common man of rural Missouri still saw his economic wealth come from hard work on the land rather than through industrialized labor. This division between urban and rural Missouri furthered the political strife in the state.
Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 31049
