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MISSOURI DISCONTENTS. – Governor Jackson of Missouri, since his wretched failures in revolution, has been regarded generally with rather easy-going contempt. His late friends in Missouri, however, men who are as devoted to southern rights as himself, and who certainly do not regard secession with any excess of scruple, not only despise but hate him, with such hearty hatred as only estranged friends are capable of. To them he is peculiarly hateful as well as contemptible, because they comprehend that his rash folly has shipwrecked their plans. He has undertaken to carry out the State out of the Union, and has failed so disastrously that its secession is now forever impossible. Disappointment heightens the wrath with which Governor Jackson is therefore regarded. The St. Louis Republican, for instance, censures his “weakness, if not wickedness,” in calling out fifty thousand men when he had not the arms for a regiment, and thus precipitating a conflict in which failure was certain. All his subsequent acts, the Republican thinks, stamp his conduct as destitute of judgment and true courage and of a just regard for the welfare of the State. And the Republican certainly would mourn very little at any prospect of successful secession.
Simple failure, however, is not the full measure of Governor Jackson’s short-coming. He does not pretend that Missouri has yet formally left the Union, - he has only pledged himself to take her out of it, - nevertheless he has invited the Indians and the Arkansas men to invade the State. This is a drop too much in the cup of the scrupulous defenders of State sovereignty. There was no law authorizing the Governor to take such a step, no proper occasion for it, and it is also, even according to the secession view, an infamous wrong. If Governor Jackson had done nothing else, says the paper before alluded to, this invitation of Arkansas and the Indians “out to call down curses upon him forever!”
A correspondent of that journal, from southwestern Missouri, says that Missouri will now invade Arkansas to avenge this insult, and as for the “fugitive Governor, the staple of his country shall be furnished him when the sovereigns get hold of him.” The Arkansas troops shall be expelled at any cost, and then, says this writer: –
“Arkansas will be divided. The southern boundary of Missouri shall be the Arkansas river. Justice requires this, and the demands of justice shall be fulfilled. Henceforward, is our cry, no peace with Arkansas till the Arkansas river shall be the southern boundary of this State.”
