Sept. 30, 1820: News didn't travel very fast in the early republic. The MO Intelligencer in Franklin reported on the meeting of the state legislature that convened in St. Louis on 9/20. #MOCrisis200 #MOBicentennial

The purpose of this session was to elect officers and form committees, and perhaps most importantly, to find a big enough room to fit the General Assembly!

The recent elections for governor and lieutenant governor were also on the agenda, and the returns were examined by the assembly. In a landslide, Alexander McNair defeated territorial governor William Clark by over 4,000 votes.

McNair gave a speech to the assembly later that day. In moving from the "dependent condition" of a territory to a "sovereign and independent state", McNair spoke of the importance of forming a constitution "that does honor to the character and intelligence of our infant state."

While the state constitution probably did honor the "character and intelligence" in that it was a proslavery constitution of which most Missourians supported, the constitution contained a clause excluding "free negroes and mulattoes" from the new state.

The issue was that this clause violated the "privileges and immunities" of the federal Constitution, which required states to respect the rights of citizens from other states. As black residents were citizens and could vote in many northern states, this was a major problem.

Representatives from northern states were outraged by this move, and the actions of the state constitutional convention threatened to undue everything Congress had been working on for over a year in trying to get the statehood bill passed.

Missouri, of course, would become a state the following year, but the Missouri state constitution in would become a major issue in Congress and would force a "second" Missouri Compromise. These will be covered later, so stay tuned!

The other election the assembly examined was for lieut. governor which was won by William Henry Ashley in a much tighter race. Ashley would serve in that office until 1824 when he would lose the election for governor to Frederick Bates.

While serving as lieut. governor, Ashley took out an ad in the MO Gazette seeking "ONE HUNDRED MEN" for an expedition ascending the Missouri River to its source with his partner Maj. Andrew Henry. The pair would eventually form the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

The ordeal of "Ashley's Hundred," as they came to be known, is legendary and helped set the stage for expansion into the American West in the 19th century. Part of that expedition was dramatized in the film "The Revenant," with Domhnall Gleeson playing the role of Maj. Henry.