CHARITABLE AND PENAL INSTITUTIONS. The State maintains insane hospitals, located re spectively at Farmington. Saint Joseph. Fulton, and Nevada. There is also a colony for feeble minded at _Marshall. A State Federal soldiers' Inoue is Ideated at Saint James, and a State Con federate home at Iligginsville. The State school for deaf and dumb is at. Fulton, and the school for the blind at Saint Louis. A boys' reform school is located at Boonville, a girls' reform school at Chillicothe, and the State prison, for both men and women, at .JetTerson City. A large number of prisoners are employed under the con tract system, but their work is eontined within the prison walls. In some of the counties male prisoners within the county jails are worked on the public roads or at quarrying stone.
Ilisroay. :Missouri was part of the vast area of Louisiana claimed by the French on the ground of the discoveries of La Salle, who de seended the Mississippi to its mouth in 1681-82. A few years before La Salle, in 1673, .Nlarquette and .foliet had sailed down the river as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. The territory in cluded within the present State was traversed be fore 172011y parties of Freneh explorer.: in search of mines of lead and silver, and in 1723 a certain Lieutenant Renaud received the grant of a large tract of land in that region. The foundation of Sainte Genevieve is sometimes placed in the year 173'5. The second settlement within the State was Saint Louis. established as a trading post in 17(4, a year after the (.1...1011 of Loui siana to Spain by the Peace of Paris. Many Frying] residents removed from the east of the• Mississippi to Saint Louis. which became. under the Fresh and the Spanish, a prosperous little capital. The colonization of the region Was greatly :leveler:Hod hy the ordinance of 1787. which, in excluding slavery from the Northwest Territory, diverted the stream of southern immi gration to Missouri. The Spaniards also en couraged immigration by the otter of liberal bounties to settlers. In 1800 Louisiana was retroceded to France, which. however, retained it only three years. After the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States, in 1803, the entire territory was divided into two by the line of the 33d parallel of latitude, the northern part being known as the District and Territory of Louisiana till 1812. and subsequently as the Territory of Missouri. At that time the popu lation was over 20,000, and the chief occupations of the inhabitants were agriculture, fur-trading, and mining. The mass of the people were sturdy
and unrefined: the rough baekw•oodsman and the fighting :Mississippi hoatman were picturesque types of the society of the period. After 1815 the volume of immigration increased markedly. In 1820 there were 06,000 inhabitants within the present limits of the State. of whom about 10,000 were slaves. The Indian titles to the land were extinguished rapidly. Between 1800 and 182-1 the Usages and Sacs and Foxes ceded almost :ill their lands, though it was not till 1837 that the area of the State was rounded out by the so ealled Platte Purchase.
In 1817 the Territorial Legislature applied to Congress for permission to prepare a State Con stitution. (For the struggle in Congress cerning .Missouri. see 'UNITED STATES :111(I :11 IS sol•la COMPROMISE.) In June. 1820, a eon vention framed a Constitution which sanetioned slavery and forbade any free negro or mulat to to take up his residence in the State: but :Missouri was admitted (August 10, 1821) only after the Legislature had taken a pledge that the anti-freedmen clause should never he en forced. The period after was one of rapid, if not entirely sound. development. An era of wild speculation in lands set in, accompanied by the usual inflation of the eurrency (the Bank of Saint Louis had been established in 181)1). and the inception of an elaborate system of internal improvements. \Vithin twenty years after 183:i the State pledged its credit for $28,000.000 to various railroad companies. and found itself sad dled with a debt of over twenty millions. The system of public education was quite inellieient before the Civil War, Saint Louis Uni versity had been incorporated in 1832. and the State University at Columbia eight years later. llespeet for the law was often sadly wanting in the western part of the State. as was shown in the history of the A101111011A. They had settled at Indepelplenve in Jackson County, and had made the beginning of a prosperous community. when they were driven out. by mob violence. for which it is probable they were less responsible than their enemies. They established themselves snow in Caldwell County: but there, too, they came into conflict with the authorities and the inhabitants, who foreed them to depart once more in a destitute condition. leaving valuable farms and other property behind them. See Moam ON S.