But the saddest result of the ruthless guerrilla campaign was the shutting up for many months of the common schools in nearly every county of the State. Such a calamity was measureless. And while our city schools were undisturbed, we keenly sympathized with our fellow-citizens in the State, and learned anew that, in what was of highest worth, we were kin. CHAPTER XX CHARCOALS AND CLAYBANKS In our hot fight for Missouri and the Union we unhappily split up into factions. We not only contended against secession but against each other. And the warring factions were significantly named Charcoals and Claybanks. The Charcoals taken as a whole were uncompromising radicals, while the Claybanks were the conservatives. Many of the Claybanks had been born and educated in the North, while some of the blackest of the Charcoals had been reared in the midst of slavery. They were recent converts to Unionism and gloried in their new-found faith. What gave birth to these party names no one can certainly tell. Apparently, like Topsy, they “just growed.” The clay of Missouri is of a decidedly neutral tint. Perhaps an extremist, indignant at a conservative for his colorless views, called him a claybank; and since the name was descriptive, fitting, and easily understood by Missourians, it stuck. The conservative, stung by the epithet, may have warmly retorted, “You are a charcoal.” And that name, equally descriptive and fitting, also stuck. At all events each faction named the other, and each adopted the name hostilely given and gloried in it. And for many months these names bandied by the opposing factions played an important part in the heated controversies of our State. Both Charcoals and Claybanks were loyal to the Federal government. Upon the main issue, the preservation of the Union, they agreed; but they were at swords’ points upon the statement of the problem in hand and the method of its solution. The Claybanks contended that the foremost question was the maintenance of the Union. They were ready to preserve it either with or without slavery. So their cry was: “Let us first save the Union, and afterwards adjust the matter of slavery.”