Mid Terms in Missouri

Stump Speaking by George Caleb Bingham

Tonight I'll be covering our president as part of his whirlwind campaign tour before the 2018 midterm elections. My coverage will be in Cape Girardeau, MO. This is the last of three stops of the septuagenarian Commander in Chief, and one of dozens made in the weeks before the polls close.



Cape Girardeau is large town, that is passed it's prime by some hundred years now. The cape, of the towns name, was a bluff of rocks that outcropped along the river banks. That prominent feature was completely annihilated by railroad construction.

The earliest recorded European settlers were french trappers who set up a temporary trading fort here. Later French and Indians who would stunningly side against the Americans in the Revolutionary War established a more permanent settlement here, after being granted rights from the Spanish who had acquired the territory after the Seven Years War ended. At the time of Louis & Clark's visit here at the beginning of their expedition the town was run by Louis Lorimier, a horse racing British sympathizing Frenchman, who had married a Shawnee woman and who had seen his settlement attacked and burned by Clark's brother, George Rogers Clark, some thirty years before while attempting to exterminate indian encampments there. During the visit William Clark stayed upriver with the  crew while Lewis travelled to meet Lorimier alone

Cape Girardeau's real heyday would come mid-century 1800's as a way stop for travel between St Louis and Memphis. Mills and shipbuilders no doubt did good business in the town, but there was not even a bridge to span the river in town until 1928. Some called the town the City of Roses for the many rose gardens cultivated publicly and privately around the town particularly along Spanish Avenue. Today a few rose gardens are still maintained around town.  My guess is farmers and millers in the area used Cape Girardeau as the closest port to get their goods to the larger cities up and down the river. At one time the city boasted an impressive opera house, accounting for the time period that is sort of like saying your town has a movie theater in it.

As the interstate highway system rapidly outstripped the river barges in speed and efficiency for moving goods, and as the frontier expanded from the Mississippi River westward the town here began declining and has not looked back. In it's waning days of prominence, post-Civil War, the forward thinking town leaders succeeded in establishing a state funded university in Cape Girardeau. Southeast Missouri State University is now the fourth largest employer in the area, behind several healthcare providers and Proctor & Gamble plant which makes Pampers diapers and Bounty Paper towels at their local plant. A former president of Southeast Missouri State University, William Duncan Vandiver, is famous for saying, "I'm from Missouri, you have to show me." This is of course where the state's Show Me motto comes.

The town is pretty enough. The old city slopes down the hill toward the river. It was a good enough spot to establish a town, as the flood plain on this side is naturally abutted by the hills. Lately floods have gotten more frequent though and the old levee wall has been dangerously close to being topped in 2016, and generally floods have been far more frequent in the past thirty years than ever before.

When Trump comes to speak tonight he will be stumping for Josh Hawley, the Missouri Attorney General. The Stanford graduate and former Londoner, led his state to sue the Federal Government to stop Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), he has also been vocal in his support for separating children of immigrants coming to America from their parents at the time of their crossing. He is very much a Trump ally and supporter.

The painting above was done by a Missouri politician, George Caleb Bingham, and depicts how stumps of his era worked. The painter is actually in his scene, the man seated on the platform directly behind the speaker, he is dutifully scribing notes to counter-point during his upcoming turn at the podium. It's a by-gone era being shown where both candidates would take the same stage at the same time to address the voting public. Bingham believed very mightily in democracy, and the republic. He believed it could be hard work to keep up with the candidates and their views, but it was hard work that the American people were up to doing, and must do in order to maintain their freedoms.

 Certainly the people in the audience will feel the gravity of the election they are going to participate in, and understand the importance of their vote. I am not sure that they will appreciate that where they live is a place founded by people many different cultures who held many different beliefs and because of those differences, not in spite of or ignorant of, those differences they made a place to live where they and their future generations could prosper. The ideals of those bygone men included some despicable views on race and gender, and those concepts should be thrown to the side by right thinking people. At the same time, those men knew the importance of staying progressive in their stewardship of the local economy and environment. I am less sure that the audience tonight will be as thoughtful when recollecting those olden-times.