Robert Marcellus Stewart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Marcellus Stewart (March 12, 1815 - September 21, 1871) (also known as Robert M. Stewart) was the Democratic Governor of Missouri from 1857 to 1861.

He championed the founding of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad in northern Missouri which resulted in the founding of the Pony Express and the rise of Kansas City, Missouri as a metropolitan region.

He also had to deal with the ramp up to the American Civil War including the Bloody Kansas border skirmishes between Kansas and Missouri.

In 1861 as he left office he urged that Missouri adopt an armed neutrality in the Civil War not sending men or arms to either side (although he personally leaned to preserving the Union). His message said:

As matters are at present Missouri will stand by her lot, and hold to the Union as long as it is worth an effort to preserve it...In the mean time Missouri will hold herself in readiness, at any moment, to defend her soil from pollution and her property from plunder by fanatics and marauders, come from what quarter they may...She is able to take care of herself, and will be neither forced nor flattered, driven nor coaxed, into a course of action that must end in her own destruction.

His successor Claiborne Jackson also favored the armed neutrality stance (although he favored joining the Confederacy). When Missouri was forced to take sides after Jackson was removed from office in 1861, Stewart attempted to join the Union army but was rejected for health reasons.

Bridges and trains of the Hannibal & St. Joseph were sabotaged numerous times during the war and passengers shot by snipers. On September 3, 1861, between 17 and 20 died and 100 injured when a bridge across the Platte River (Missouri) was sabotaged in the Platte Bridge Railroad Tragedy. The bushwhackers were to say they were attempt to assassinate Stewart.

Stewart was born in 1815 in Truxton, New York, and died in 1871 in St Louis, Missouri.

Stewart made his fortune as a land spectulator/settler in the Platte Purchase area of Missouri (including most notably Nodaway County, Missouri) before settling in St. Joseph, Missouri. Stewart accompanied such settlers as Isaac Hogan into the newly acquired territory and set up a law practice in St. Joseph.

Trusten Polk was simulatenously elected governor and U.S. Senator in the election of 1856. Stewart then ran for office to follow him after he decided to become a senator. Stewart became governor in March 1857.

He is interred in Mount Mora Cemetery in St. Joseph. He remained a bachelor and was considered quite eccentric including an instance of riding his horse into the governor's mansion.