This photo of the State Bank, built during the 1890s and still standing at the intersection of Shaw and Maple, was the earliest Russell photo I could come up with this morning. The resolutions cited below date from perhaps 20 years earlier.
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Back in the day when I was a pup and enrolled at Russell Community School --- before the mists of time had rolled over the 1950s and 1960s --- a point of pride in that small city was the fact it had three churches (Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian), but no bar. Intoxicants had not been available in a retail setting there since, I believe, the great fire of 1929.
That's all changed now. Russell Community School and the Presbyterian church are long gone. But there are at least two bars.
The trail to this particular form of perdition seems to have been blazed during late spring, 1879 --- 12 years after Russell had been founded along the route of the new Burlington & Missouri River Railroad --- when a saloon opened downtown. Sadly, we do not know who opened the bar or how long it lasted.
But we do know that a mass meeting of concerned citizens was called on Tuesday, May 20, and their collective outrage was expressed in the form of resolutions that were forwarded for publication to both The Chariton Patriot and The Chariton Leader (Russell did not yet have a newspaper of its own). Here's how they read --- from the local news page of The Leader of May 24:
RESOLUTIONS
Adopted by the citizens of Russell at a mass meeting May 20, 1879:
Whereas. The belief that poverty, crime, depredation and death are the fruitful results that flow from the sale of intoxicating liquors, and that the establishment of a saloon in our city would be one of the greatest calamities that could befall us as a people, thereby opening the gates of vice and crime to pour in their dark and turbid waters upon us. Filling up and overflowing all our channels of purity and peace, and overthrowing the very foundations of our social fabric, be it therefore resolved:
First: That entertaining such solemn convictions as these, we view with dismay the grog shop that has recently been set up in our midst.
Second: That we will use all lawful means that we can command for the suppression of the same.
Third: That there are but two sides to this question, that there is no middle ground to occupy, and all who are not with us are against us, and in our warfare against this monstrous iniquity, that all those who oppose us will be compelled to recognize them as where they properly belong, aiders and abetters of our common enemy.
Fourth: That we have no compromises, concessions nor truces to make with the whisky traffic. But on the contrary will loudly and fearlessly maintain our ground and fight it out on this line regardless of the time it may take to do it.
Fifth: That we pledge ourselves collectively, and each to the other, that we will stand by and defend each other and all our co-laborers, and that any insult or indignity that may be given to any one of our number will be taken and accepted as applying to us all.
Sixth: That we cordially invite all who entertain the feelings and views as expressed in these resolutions to assist us in overthrowing the mighty evil that is sought to be fastened upon us.
Seventh: That not only our moral support but also our heartfelt thanks are due to our friends who have taken the lead in our behalf in our warfare against this perfidious usurper and destroyer of our best interests and happiness.
Eighth. That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the Chariton Leader and Patriot, with a request that they publish the same.
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I checked The Patriot, but didn't find the resolutions published there --- although I may not have looked carefully enough. Dan Baker --- editor of The Leader at the time --- gave them a prominent spot on his local news page, however.
Dan was unlikely to have been too sympathetic to the Russell ralliers' call to action. He was a Unitarian among hardshell Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians --- and enjoyed a nip himself now and then.
So he couldn't resist offering the following advice to the good people of Russell elsewhere on that page:
"Elsewhere we publish a long and elaborate set of resolutions, high flown in style, denouncing a little grog shop that had the awful temerity to open its doors in Russell. To read the massive resolutions one would naturally infer that the social and moral fabric of the nation was tottering on the verge of destruction over the little saloon that rears its head and hideous mien in the midst of Russell's moral people. We would kindly suggest to those alarmists that if they don't want its "flood gates of ruin" they had better stay away from it. If they don't want it to flourish, don't patronize it. If they don't want intoxicating drinks to ruin them, don't use them, and lastly if they haven't enough common sense to behave themselves in the neighborhood of a saloon, nor enough manhood to keep sober because one is located in their midst, that they get some sober minded guardian to take care of them."
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