Ol’ master wanted to see us free when he saw how things was goin’, but his oldest son had took charge of things and he said ‘no.’ It was right funny. Ol’ master had refused to sell me for twelve hundred dollars, so young master loaded me and four others of the best slaves in a wagon and linked our hands together and started South with us to sell us. We got within twelve miles of the Texas line when we met some soldiers and they said to turn the niggers loose. Freedom had come. That made young master mad as a hornet, but he let us go right there and then.”

- Mark Discus, enslaved in Dade County, MO

“The masters aimed to keep their slaves in ignorance and the ignorant slaves were all in favor of the Rebel army, only the more intelligent were in favor of the Union army. When the war started, my master sent me to work for the Confederate army. I worked most of the time for three years off and on, hauling cannons, driving mules, hauling ammunition and provisions. When the Union Army came close enough I ran away from home and joined the Union Army. There I drove six-mule teams and worked at wagon work…until the war ended.”

- Bill Simms, enslaved in Osceola, Missour

Missouri was admitted to the Union in 1820 as a slave-holding state. However, during the Civil War, Missouri became what is known as a border state, a state that sent troops to both the Union and Confederate forces, that had its star on both flags and truly represented the archetype of brother fighting against brother, neighbor against neighbor. Missouri had a complex political history, largely dealing with issues of slavery and slave rights, including most famously the Bleeding Kansas border skirmishes and the Dred Scott decision.

The nature of a border state was a strange one, though geography and economy led to fairly low slave holdings throughout Missouri. Despite that fact, from the time of admittance to the Union to the years just before the Civil War, the number of slaves listed in census records increased more than ten-fold, from 10,222 in 1820 to 114,931 in 1860. Emigrants from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia came to Missouri with agrarian dreams that could only be fulfilled through the use of slave labor.

The Ozarks was not home to many of the archetypal expansive slave plantations, and most slave owners in the Ozarks had less than ten slaves. Ten slaves or a thousand, slavery was a continued attempt to dehumanize African Americans and chain their freedom.

Court records and slave narratives provide primary source perspectives on the perceptions and treatment of African American slaves in the Ozarks. Cases like 1843's Mary et al. vs. Buffard, William T, paint a painful picture. In that case, a woman and her children who had been freed in their master's will were sold by his adminstrators to a dealer, Buffard, who later sold them to an Ozarks slave owner. Mary petitioned the courts for her freedom and also petitioned for damages against Buffard. Buffard simply motioned for dismissal, on the basis that Mary had no legal right to recompense, regardless of her treatment.

The chains in the OAAHM-Online's collection are primary source documents of a different kind. These physical reminders of the true nature of chattle slavery are some of the museum's most precious objects.