State Historical Society of Missouri
Calculated Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson
and the Strategy for Secession in Missouri
BY CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS*
On the cold evening of January 3, 1861, as the tocsin of dissolution hung
over the nation, an anxious crowd assembled with the joint session of the legislature in the House chamber of the Missouri statehouse in Jefferson City to
listen to the outgoing governor's farewell address. More specifically, they
came to hear the new chief executive speak to the latest and most portentous
of the nation's political crises. The lawmakers came especially to size up
^Christopher Phillips is an assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.
He received the Ph.D. in history from the University of Georgia, Athens. A version of this article appears in Missouri's Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of Southern
Identity in the Border West, by Christopher Phillips, published by the University of Missouri
Press in June 2000.
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