Statues, Monuments, and Memorials

Scott Small

Dred and Harriet Scott Old Courthouse east facing Dred Scott Way  11 North 4th Street
Dred Scott’s owner had taken him to live in Illinois and Wisconsin for several years. That served as the basis for Dred’s suit for freedom. Territories and many “free” states deemed all people coming into their boundaries to be forever free. In 1857, The Dred Scott case declared them wrong. The decision nullified the Missouri Compromise which disallowed slavery in northern territories. The Supreme Court believed they’d put an end to the slavery question once and for all by making slavery legal everywhere. They accomplished just the opposite result. Southerners found stronger cause to demand enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Seeing slaves captured in northern streets inflamed abolitionists and brought Civil War much closer.
Grant
General Ulysses S. Grant Market and Tucker Streets N 38° 37.641′ W 090° 11.918′
For a statue weighing tons, this one got around. In 1891, it stood in the middle of Tucker Street between Olive and Locust and even had a pillared arch with the word “Peace” soaring over it. It was moved to the grounds of the new city hall in 1898--to the backside. Public outcry over the shabby treatment saw it moved again to its present spot on St. Louis’s main street.
Schurz

Carl Schurz quotation Market and 14th Streets Front (East end) of the Peabody Opera House
“Democratic government will be the more successful the more the public opinion ruling it is enlightened and inspired by full and thorough discussion...The greatest danger threatening democratic institutions comes from those influences which tend to stifle or demoralize discussion.”-Carl Schurz
Statesman and 48er Carl Schurz brought Lincoln news that he’d been nominated for President by the Republican party in 1860. As Lincoln’s envoy, he performed the essential service of persuading Spain to stay out of our war. In reward, Lincoln sent him to St. Louis as Brigadier General of Volunteers under John Charles Fremont. He served throughout the war and was at the battle of Chancellorsville and on Sherman’s march to the sea. After the war, he adopted St. Louis as his home. As newspaper editor, he gave Joseph Pulitzer his start in the news business. In 1869 Missouri chose him to represent the state in the United States Senate, the first German-born American elected to that body. He served as Secretary of the Interior and held great influence in American politics for three decades. He uttered his most famous saying in the U.S. Senate on February 29, 1872
“My Country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

Lee69 Robert E. Lee Leonore K. Sullivan Boulevard N 38° 37.394′ W 90° 11.064′

Under orders from St. Louisan Army Chief of Engineers General Charles Gratiot, Lieutenant Robert E. Lee led the Army Corps of Engineers in ridding the river of famous dueling spot Bloody Island. He built rock dikes and revetments to tame the channel which made navigation easier and kept the St. Louis waterfront intact. After the war Robert E. Lee, defeated General-in-Chief of Confederate forces, urged the people of the South to reunite with the north to forge a lasting peace.

Commemorating the Civil War in and around St. Louis
Find location by color group: Blue-Downtown, White-Forest Park, Red-South City, Butternut-North County

Lyon
General Nathaniel Lyon in Lyon Park Broadway and Arsenal N 38° 35.680 W 090° 12.637
The statue of a soldier beside General Nathaniel Lyon mounted on his horse commemorates Lyon’s defense of the arsenal. At the same corner is an explanatory plaque. In the middle of the Park is an obelisk, said to be on the very ground where Lyon laid his plans to take Camp Jackson.
Hecker

Hecker Monument in Benton Park Wyoming at Illinois N38º 35.788′ W 90º 13.296′
48er Friedrich Hecker not only gave passionate voice to every person’s quest for freedom, he commanded a regiment with notable gallantry. He grabbed the colors himself and was shot down by Stonewall Jackson’s men at Chancellorsville. He survived and kept on fighting.

The dates on the monument 1848 and 1861 mark the beginning of Hecker’s two great quests for liberty.
As compelling as Hecker is Benton Park itself--as a graveyard emptied of its inhabitants and turned into a park just after war’s end.
Daenzer

Schurz - Preetorius - Daenzer Monument in Reservoir Park Grand at Russell
All three immigrants were “Forty-Eighters,” men who fled Germany because of its failed revolution. All three were ardent abolitionists. Daenzer and Preetorius owned powerful German language newspapers--the Anzeiger des Westens and the Westliche Post. Lincoln made Carl Schurz a brigadier general and envoy to Spain--the beginning of a successful career in politics. The Memorial to the German Spirit of Enlightenment, The Naked Truth, created quite a scandal when it was unveiled in 1914. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union wanted to melt it down and turn it into bullets in WWI.

*for deeper exploration Mercantile Library in the Thomas Jefferson Library on the campus of the University of Missouri at St. Louis.
For best parking, use the parking garage off West Drive, third level. N 38º 42.571′ W 90º 18.718′

The Mercantile displays a plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln from life by Leonard W. Volk, 1862. The Mercantile also has a bust of James Yeatman, head of the Western Sanitary Commission. Yeatman was a true visionary who started a subscription library in 1845, the first library west of the Mississippi. The Mercantile library is still a St. Louis cultural and historical treasure.

 LincolnHead200

Francis Preston Blair Kingshighway and Lindell N38º 38.652′ W 90º 16.008′
Frank Blair belonged to a powerful political family. His father edited the vastly influential Washington Globe. His brother Montgomery served as Postmaster General in Lincoln’s Cabinet. Frank recruited great numbers of Union “Wide Awakes,” soldiers who were vital to General Lyon’s success in holding St. Louis for the Union in those crucial early days of the war. Frank Blair, a full general who’d never been in the army before, surprised General Grant by being a good soldier. Even General Sherman, who abhorred political generals, promoted Blair to Corps Commander for his outstanding bravery and leadership. Frank Blair ranks among the best of Lincoln’s “Political Generals."

 Blair
General Franz Sigel Grand Drive and Union Boulevard N38º 38.621′ W 90º 16.570′
Sigel fled from a failed revolution in Germany to make his home in St. Louis as Director of St. Louis Schools. Respected and adored by Germans, he was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers after the Camp Jackson Affair. This splendid equestrian statue may be more than he deserves. At Carthage, Missouri, he gave the rebs their first victory in battle on July 5, 1861--16 days before the Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas).		 Siegel

Edward Bates, Attorney General under Lincoln Lagoon and Fine Arts N 38º 38.517′ W 90º 17.774′ Edward Bates served as Missouri’s first attorney-general in 1821 and was brother to Missouri’s second governor, Frederick Bates. As a highly visible Republican candidate for President in 1860, he was a clear choice for Lincoln’s cabinet. His controversial opinion of July 5, 1861 made him hated by the rebs. As Attorney-General of the United States, he wrote that the President has the power to suspend Habeas Corpus--to arrest and hold indefinitely anyone believed to aid insurgents during domestic rebellion.
 Bates
Daughters of the Confederacy Memorial Cricket and Confederate Drive N 38º 38.668′ W 90º 16.805′Feelings ran hot in St. Louis until long after the war. Not until World War I was a Confederate statue allowed in the park--and then only if it depicted no soldiers or firearms. Even so, it has suffered damage by vandals. The south face pictures the Spirit of the Confederacy as an angel watching over a family sending a man off to volunteer. Moved to The Civil War Museum at Jefferson Barracks in 2018. Dar