The city of St. Louis began as an early French trading community established by the Chouteau brothers. <span> <span>
The Chouteaus - Early Traders</span></span>The Chouteaus were early French traders and trappers who operated west of St. Louis, Missouri in the latter part of the 1700s and early 1800s. Their prominent name among explorers began with Auguste Chouteau. One of the founders of the city of St. Louis, Auguste was born at New Orleans on August 14, 1750. In the early part of the year 1764, although not yet 14 years of age, he was sent up the Missouri River from Fort Chartres by his stepfather, Pierre Liguest, with a company of 30 men to select a site for a trading post, and it is said that the boy's suggestions led to the selection of the spot where St. Louis now stands. After Liguest's death, Auguste succeeded to the business, and later formed a partnership with John Jacob Astor which was the inception of the American Fur Company. In 1794 he built Fort Carondelet in the Osage country, in what is now Vernon County, Missouri.<span><span><span /><span>He was commissioned colonel of the militia in 1808; and in 1815 was appointed one of the commissioners to make treaties with the Indians who had fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812, the other two commissioners being Ninian Edwards and William Clark .</span> </span></span>
Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, immigration into the United States rocketed to never-before-seen heights. Many of these new immigrants were coming from eastern and southern Europe and for many English-speaking, native-born Americans of northern European descent the growing diversity of new languages, customs, and religions triggered anxiety and racial animosity.
In reaction, some embraced nativism, prizing white Americans with older family trees over more recent immigrants and rejecting outside influences in favor of their own local customs. Nativists also stoked a sense of fear over the perceived foreign threat, pointing to the anarchist assassinations of the Spanish prime minister in 1897, the Italian king in 1900, and even President William McKinley in 1901 as proof. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in November 1917, the sense of an inevitable foreign or communist threat grew among those already predisposed to distrust immigrants.
The sense of fear and anxiety over the rising tide of immigration came to a head with the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who were accused of participating in a robbery and murder in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920. There was no direct evidence linking them to the crime, but—in addition to being immigrants—both men were anarchists who favored the destruction of the American market-based, capitalistic society through violence. At their trial, the district attorney emphasized Sacco and Vanzetti’s radical views, and the jury found them guilty on July 14, 1921.
Despite subsequent motions and appeals based on ballistics testing, recanted testimony, and an ex-convict’s confession, both men were executed on August 23, 1927.
