The Veiled Prophet arrives every December, mists of secrecy swirling about his pointy brocade boots ... but his mysterious majesty stands in stark contrast to the blood-and-guts adventures of the VP creator, Confederate Col. Alonzo William Slayback.
A descendant of a French countess and one of Louis XIV’s royal guardsmen, Slayback was born on July 4, 1838, in Plum Grove, Mo. He rushed off to the Civil War and made his name as the dashing Confederate cavalry officer who commanded the Slayback Lancers and, under fire, rushed to save a friend wounded on the battlefield.
Slayback adored the trumpets heralding the charge, the sabers flashing, the romance of it all. He couldn’t let go of the Lost Cause. After Appomattox, he taught English to the Emperor Maximilian and was awarded the title of the Duke of Oaxaco.
He moved back to the States in 1866 and set up a law practice in St. Louis, where his brother Charles had become a rich grain merchant. Both loyal Confederates, they saw St. Louis as economically wounded by Union occupation during the war. Charles, who had lived in New Orleans and been a member of Krewe during Mardi Gras, foresaw the financial advantage of bringing such a festival to St. Louis. Alonzo foresaw the publicity.
Early in 1878, the Slaybacks gathered the city’s robber barons and power brokers to form the Order of the Veiled Prophet. “I think it the nearest thing to a stroke of genius that I ever produced,” the colonel wrote in his diary. Inspired by a poem by Thomas Moore, he dreamed up the name and mythology of the court of Khorassan. He decreed that the Veiled Prophet would select his “belle of the ball” from a bevy of debutantes. The debs’ photos should run in the newspapers, he said, to stimulate excitement about the ball.
He also produced, with a flourish, the first VP queen: his daughter, Susie Slayback.
At first, the VP Ball competed with the Court of Love and Beauty in the annual fall Mechanical and Agricultural Fair held in Fairgrounds Park, the big civic event of the time, run by the trade union heads who crowned their daughters as queens. But the big names and big money behind the VP Ball soon trumped the trade unions in the battle of the belles.
Alonzo Slayback’s talent for showbiz was unrivaled. He loved theatrical flashes before a jury just as he had loved them on the battlegrounds. His weapon was his stiletto tongue, used to ridicule opposing counsel in court and in speeches. Once he had all the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court shaking with laughter as he mocked his opponent’s client. He tried some 40 cases over 16 years and lost only one.
The same year Slayback created the VP, Joseph Pulitzer founded the Post-Dispatch. He chose a nationally renowned crusading journalist, John Cockerill, as his first editor, and the two men inveighed against the corrupt St. Louis oligarchy. One of Cockerill’s first targets? Slayback’s law partner, James O. Broadhead, who was running for Congress despite blatant conflicts of interest. but Broadhead’s peers did not deem it so; they elected him the first president of the American Bar Association.
The Post endorsed Broadhead’s opponent for Congress, John M. Glover, an attorney whom Slayback had ridiculed publicly. The paper even printed Glover’s accusation that Slayback was a coward. In a public speech, Slayback retorted that the newspaper was “a blackmailing sheet” and that it was impossible to work there and “be a gentleman.”
What had been dashing in a young cavalry officer proved foolhardy in a 44-year-old lawyer with a wife and six dependent children. Again Slayback rushed to battle, but this time with more theatricality than horse sense.
On Friday, October 13, 1882, he and another lawyer charged up the steps of the Post and burst into a closed-door meeting between Cockerill and two top Post employees. Slayback rushed at Cockerill.
The question remains: Was Slayback armed, as some Post witnesses testified, or did he merely keep his right hand under his jacket, giving the impression of reaching for a gun, as another witness reported? Slayback’s friend swore he bore no weapon. There is no doubt about the fact that Cockerill was armed. In self-defense, he reached for the revolver he kept in his desk and fired, shooting Slayback through the heart. As news of the killing spread, a mob of nearly 2,000 surrounded the building, yelling for Cockerill to be hanged. (One of his staunchest defenders was his competitor, the legendary Globe-Democrat editor Joseph McCullagh.)
An inquest failed to indict Cockerill, who had gladly gone to trial with hopes of vindication.
Within months, the Post had lost 2,300 subscribers, in part because Charles Slayback, now president of the Merchants Exchange, wielded tremendous power. Cockerill felt compelled to resign. Pulitzer bought the New York World and installed him there as editor. Feeling unwelcome in St. Louis, Pulitzer, too, moved to New York.
Weeks after the shooting, Broadhead—whose cause Slayback had championed to the point of death—won election to Congress. Years later, Broadhead’s opponent, Glover, was also elected to Congress.
The Veiled Prophet Ball went on.
And its first belle? After her husband lost his fortune and died, Susie Slayback went to work in the society pages of the Post.
