Claiborne Fox Jackson (April 4, 1806 – December 6, 1862) was an American politician of the Democratic Party in Missouri. He was elected as the 15th Governor of Missouri, serving from January 3, 1861, until July 31, 1861, when he was forced out by the Unionist majority in the Missouri General Assembly after planning to force the secession of the state.
Before the war, Jackson worked with his father-in-law, John Sappington, to manufacture and sell patent medicines, in the form of quinine pills, to treat and prevent malaria.
He became quite wealthy and politically influential, deeply involved in the Democratic party in Saline County and central Missouri. He served twelve years in the Missouri House of Representatives, twice as Speaker. In 1848 he was elected to the State Senate. During the 1860 election, Jackson professed to be a Unionist. However, in 1861, after the Missouri Convention rejected secession, Jackson secretly planned a secessionist coup in league with the Confederate government.
In 1860 Jackson successfully ran for governor as a moderate on the issue of secession. During his inaugural speech of January 3, 1861, however, he declared that Missouri would resist any Union coercion by force of arms. He then called for a convention to pass a secession ordinance, but that body, dominated by Unionists, defeated the measure. After the fall of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April 1861, Jackson denounced President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers and began plotting to seize the U.S. Arsenal in St. Louis. To that end he dispatched secret emissaries to Confederate president Jefferson Davis and received four large cannon.
But Jackson's scheme was defeated by the prompt actions of Cap. Nathaniel Lyon, who attacked and scattered Jackson's “State Guard” at Camp Jackson on May 10, 1861. Jackson fled the state capital, Jefferson City, as Lyon's forces approached and established a rump legislature at Neosho; this body formally voted to secede the following October. However, continuing Union successes under Gen. Samuel R. Curtis sent the secessionist governor and his followers fleeing again, this time into Arkansas, where they erected a temporary capital at Camden.
Jackson died of pneumonia, resulting from complications from stomach cancer on December 7, 1862, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He was replaced by Lieutenant Governor Thomas C. Reynolds.
The exile government continued, setting up shop in Shreveport, Louisiana and then Marshall, Texas. The government took part in and sent representatives to the Confederate government. The exile government was formally disbanded at the conclusion of the Civil War.
Early life
Claiborne Fox Jackson, son of Dempsey Carroll and Mary Orea "Molly" (née Pickett) Jackson, was born in 1806 in Fleming County, Kentucky. He had several older brothers. His father, Dempsey Carroll Jackson, was a wealthy tobacco planter and slaveholder. He was likely tutored at home and taught to be a planter.
Claiborne Fox's second cousin was John Jackson and his third cousin was Jarvis Jackson Jr, father and brother of Hancock Lee Jackson (respectively). Hancock Lee Jackson, the 13th governor of Missouri, was also Claiborne Fox Jackson's 3rd cousin. The two shared a great-grandfather, Joseph Jackson Sr. John and Jarvis Jr. later sold the land that would become Laurel County, Kentucky.
Migration to Missouri – career and marriages
In 1826 Jackson moved with several of his older brothers to Missouri, settling in the Howard County town of Franklin. The Jackson brothers established a successful general mercantile store. As a young widower, Claiborne Jackson organized, and was elected captain of, a unit of Howard County volunteers for the conflict.
After returning from the war, Jackson decided to make a change, moving to nearby Saline County, where his father-in-law lived. He worked for him for a time in the family businesses. This was also part of the region along the Missouri River known as "Little Dixie."
In 1833 Jackson married Louisa Catherine Sappington, a younger sister of his late wife. He worked with his father-in-law and brother-in-law Erasmus Sappington in the manufacture and sale of "Dr. Sappington's Anti-Fever Pills", a patent medicine preventative and treatment for malaria. The pills were filled with quinine, which Sappington manufactured from ground cinchona bark imported from Peru. He developed wide distribution of the pills, which became best sellers. Malaria was prevalent throughout the Missouri and Mississippi valleys, as were yellow fever, scarlet fever, and influenza. Saline County was relatively near the head of the Santa Fe Trail in neighboring Howard County. Traders and emigrants traveling through the area were also eager to buy pills to treat malaria.
Subsequently, both men and their entwined, extended families became quite wealthy and influential in the region. They had two daughters together, Louisa Jane (1841–1918) and Annie E. Jackson (1844–1926).
Political career
Through his family connections with Dr. Sappington, Jackson, along with his brother-in-law Meredith M. Marmaduke, became deeply involved with Missouri Democratic Party politics. Jackson was first elected in 1836 to the Missouri House of Representatives, where he represented Saline County.
He moved to the Howard County seat of Fayette, Missouri—then a center of political power in the state—in 1838 and worked for the local branch of the state bank. This would pay great political dividends later in his career. Asserting that Congress had no constitutional right to legislate on slavery in the states, the resolutions rejected the Missouri Compromise and any effort by outside forces to determine slavery in a territory, but said to preserve harmony it would accept extension of the Compromise to all new territories. It stated that Missouri had much in common with other slaveholding states and needed to resist Northern encroachment. It mandated that the state's U.S. Senators and Congressmen support these resolutions. As Commissioner, Jackson traveled to various locations around the state inspecting banking facilities. He used these occasions to build a power base for his next attempt at elected office, as a candidate for Governor of Missouri. Jackson assumed the governor's office on January 3, 1861. During his inaugural address, he declared that Missouri shared a common bond and interest with other states that allowed slavery and could not separate herself from them if the Union should be dissolved. He called for a state convention to decide the issue. as he had become weakened from stomach cancer.
He was initially denied a burial in Missouri because of having led a secession movement. Jackson was buried in Little Rock's Mount Holly Cemetery. Following the end of the Civil War, he was exhumed, and reinterred in the family Sappington Cemetery of his in-laws in Saline County, Missouri. All three of his wives are buried there as well.