Alonzo William Slayback (July 4, 1838 – October 13, 1882) was an American Confederate military officer and a founder of the Veiled Prophet Parade and Ball in St. Louis, Missouri. He was shot and killed in self-defense by the managing editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Personal Slayback was born July 4, 1838, in Plum Grove, Marion County, Missouri, the son of Alexander Lambdin Slayback, an attorney, and Anna Maria Minter."Col. Slayback's Career," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 14, 1882, page 1 The father died of cholera at age thirty, leaving his widow, three sons, and a daughter. A college classmate of Alonzo Slayback recalled in 1882 that Alexander Slayback had died when Alonzo and his brother, Charles E. Slayback, "were little children, leaving no property at all."No headline, Public Ledger, Memphis, Tennessee, Page 2, November 1, 1882
Nicknamed "Lon", he was tutored by his mother, and at age 10 he passed an examination which enabled him to enter the Masonic College in Lexington, Missouri. He graduated in 1856, with highest honorsAncestry.com. U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 [database on-line] in a "full collegiate course."Uncredited, A Memorial Volume: Being Selections in Poetry and Prose From the Written Thoughts of Col. Alonzo W. Slayback, Including a Brief Biographical Sketch, St. Louis: J.H. Chambers & Co. (1883)
After college he went to St. Joseph, Missouri, where he read law under Bela M. Hughes and taught school. He was admitted to the bar in 1857, his first partner being Joseph P. Grubb.
On April 14, 1859, Slayback was married to Alice A. Waddell, daughter of William B. Waddell of Lexington, Missouri.Missouri marriage records
During his military service with the Confederate Army in the American Civil War, he was gravely ill with typhoid fever but was nursed back to health by his wife.
At his death on October 13, 1882, he was survived by his wife and six children, Susanna, 21; Minnette, 14; Katie, 12; Mabel, 9; Grace, 7, and Alonzo W. Jr., 3. Also surviving were three siblings, Charles E. and Preston Slayback and Mrs. Minnie Bond. Susanna, known as Susie, was married on March 5, 1884, to Wellington Adams."The Bridal Day: Adams-Slayback," St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, March 6, 1884, image 12
Professional
Military
It was said that Slayback "was a participant in the Border Ruffian troubles in 1855–56, living at St. Joseph, Missouri, at that time.""Editorial Observations," The Howard Courant, Page One, November 2, 1882
Slayback served in the Confederate States of America. He was practicing law in Lexington, Missouri, when, following the lead of Claiborne Fox Jackson, he raised a regiment of cavalry, of which he was elected colonel, and he joined General Sterling Price's command of the Missouri State Guard in June 1861."Gallery: Marmaduke's Raid & Shelby's Raid: Alonzo Slayback," Trans-Mississippi Theater, Virtual Museum"
The next month, he was visiting his wife in Lexington when he was captured by Union Army troops. He was imprisoned for three weeks, some of the time in Masonic College, where he had gone to school and which had been converted into a prison. He escaped when he hit his guard with a bucket while they were gathering water at a spring.
After the Battle of Lexington in September 1861, he was elected colonel of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, 5th Division of the Missouri Guard, known as Slayback's Lancers.
In March 1864 General Edmund Kirby Smith appointed him bearer of special dispatches to the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia. After, he recruited a regiment of cavalry (called the "Slayback Lancers") was elected colonel, and was attached to a brigade commanded by General Joseph O. Shelby.
He commanded a regiment in the Battle of Pea Ridge, and he was promoted for meritorious conduct at Farmington, Missouri, and at the Siege of Corinth.
At war's end, he joined an expedition to Mexico to avoid surrender after defeat, led by Confederate General Joseph O. Shelby, and spent a year with him. Before they crossed into Mexico, the men ceremoniously lowered the Confederate battle flag into the waters of the Rio Grande. That act impelled Slayback to write a lengthy poem, The Burial of Shelby's Flag.Andrew Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico, University of Oklahoma Press (1965), page 19
Civilian
Slayback was a schoolteacher while studying law. He was admitted to the bar in September 1857 in St. Joseph, Missouri, and practiced there until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860.
Upon his flight to Mexico, he became ill in Mérida, but Mexican General Tomás O'Horán Escudero, prefect of the city under Maximilian, invited him to his home to convalesce. He learned Spanish and also kept a journal, or a diary of his times, "in the form of letters to his absent wife."
Slayback recounted that he met his mother in Havana, Cuba, in February 1866 and she induced him to return to the United States. They reached New York on February 18, and he went on to Washington, D.C., where he received a pardon from the government.
He returned to St. Louis and built up an eminent law practice. He was twice elected president of the Law Library Association, and he was proud of closing the library on Sundays because "working lawyers work enough on the six working days and ought to rest on Sunday." He was a member of the University Club, the Merchants' Exchange, the Merchants' Benevolent Society, and of the Legion of Honor, No. 6.
Soon after the war ended, Slayback was elected regent of a group of paroled Confederate soldiers to begin "an asylum for the orphans of Missouri rebel deceased.""Miscellaneous," Jefferson City People's Tribune, October 10, 1866, page 4
Editor Sol. Miller of The Kansas Chief newspaper described Slayback "as much a rebel as ever" who said in an August 1868 speech that only by electing a Democratic presidential ticket headed by Horatio Seymour could "God's chosen people, the noblest men who ever lived, the gallant sons of the South," gain what they had fought for.""The Old Regime," The (White Cloud) Kansas Chief, August 6, 1868, image 2
A lifelong Democrat and the law partner of James O. Brodhead and Herman A. Haeussler, he ran for Congressman-at-large in 1872, in the Second District in 1876"State News," The Wakanda Record, Carrollton, Missouri, October 13, 1876, page 1 and in the Ninth District against Erastus Wells."Cockerell's Crime; A St. Louis Editor Kills Colonel A.W. Slayback of Political Notoriety," The Inter Ocean, Chicago, October 14, 1882, Page 4"Candidates-The State Canvass," Fulton Telegraph, May 31, 1872, page 3"Slayback vs. Wells," St. Louis Dispatch, September 26, 1876, image 4 He ran also for United States Senator, but withdrew his name during the legislative session considering the appointment."The Senatorial Fight," The Lexington Weekly Caucasian, January 18, 1873
Governor Charles Henry Hardin appointed Slayback as Missouri's representative to a May 1875 centennial celebration of the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in Charlotte, North Carolina."State News," Missouri Patriot, April 29, 1875, page 2 In the same year, Slayback attended a meeting to help form "a society to provide lectures for the working classes.""The Sunday Lecture Society," The St. Louis Republican, July 19, 1875, page 5
Publications In August 1873, the Inland Monthly published Slayback's "The Next National Necessity", setting forth "that gentleman's views of the temper and action of the people of the North and South in their relations with each other.""New Books," Missouri Republican, August 24, 1873, page 2>
Slayback published a book of poems dealing with "war and love.""Missouri Poets", George G. Vest, The Review, Windsor, Missouri, February 22, 1894, Page 7 After his death, his wife published a memorial volume of his writings, with an uncredited biography as the introduction.
Postwar speech
According to the Daily Missouri Republican, he later "admitted the inherent weakness of the secession idea and the perception of it by the confederate soldiers at an early stage of their struggle." In a speech given at the decoration of both Union and Confederate soldiers' graves on May 30, 1873, Slayback said that the Southern soldiers had
cast their eyes upon the government at Richmond, and its constitution recognizing the right of any state in certain contingencies to set up a separate nationality for itself, with its little president and its little senate, its little supreme court and its little navy, with its Palmetto, its Pelican, or its Lone Star for a flag, and the soldier began to ask himself, "For what am I fighting?"A Secession Reminiscence," Daily Missouri Republican, June 14, 1873, page 4
The Rolla (Missouri) Weekly Herald noted that the speech "seems to meet with almost universal approval, as expressive of a returning spirit of fraternity, by which alone is the genuine work of reconstruction to be accomplished.""Col. Slayback's Speech on Decoration Day," June 12, 1873, page 2 The Cash-Book of Jackson, Missouri, however, said it spoke for "thousands of ex-Rebs, who utterly deny that Slayback represented the prevailing sentiment of the South at the time of the surrender" and that the speech was "silly twaddle."Untitled, July 9, 1973, image 1
Veiled Prophet celebration
Historian Thomas M. Spencer has credited Slayback with "all of the work" that the latter "had put into creating" the organization responsible for the St. Louis Veiled Prophet celebrations, beginning in 1878.
Slayback wrote the description or story line for St. Louis's first Veiled Prophet parade. He noted in his diary:
Today I gave to the printer the descriptive manuscript whereby I have woven a classical story and brought into order and coherency the "Floats" for the Parade, or illuminated nocturnal pageant of the secret society known as the "Veiled Prophets." I think it is the nearest thing to a "stroke of genius" that I ever produced."Quoted in Thomas M. Spencer, The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration: Power on Parade (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press), 2000
In 1882, a movement by St. Louis Irish Americans forced the parade organizers to withdraw a float that was to have featured, in the words of historian Spencer, "a Donnybrook Fair with several jig-dancing and seemingly drunken Irishmen, [which] was certainly in accordance with the usual stereotype of the Irish at the time." Slayback then challenged the protestors:
Let them raise a finger against any part of the pageant, if they dare. I feel sure that there will be on hand a sufficiently large number of people who have St. Louis's interest at heart to prevent any sort of attack. Yes, sir. Just let them try it."The Irish Float," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 3, 1882, Page 4
Death
Editorial page article
Slayback was a law partner of James O. Broadhead, and "bitter controversy had arisen" between Broadhead and John M. Glover "over a race for Congress.""Died in Cairo, Egypt; Sudden Passing of Col. John A. Cockerill, Formerly of St. Louis," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11, 1896, Page 5
On Friday, October 13, 1882, the editorial page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch printed the following (quoted only in part):
Mr. Alonzo W. Slayback, an individual whose chief claim to distinction rests upon the fact that he is the law partner of Col. James O. Broadhead, rose in a meeting of Democratic ward politicians in this city last night and without personal provocation proceeded to apply a string of vile and virulent epithets to the Post-Dispatch and its conductors, making charges which he knew to be false.