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THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI
BY JOHN McELROY
States are not great except as men may make them,
Men are not great, except they do and dare.
—Eugene F. Ware.
WASHINGTON, D. C:
THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE CO.
1909
DEDICATED
TO THE UNION MEN OF MISSOURI
CONTENTS
[ THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI. ]
[ INDEX ]
[ CHAPTER I. ]A SALIENT BASTION FOR THE SLAVERY EMPIRE
[ CHAPTER II. ]THE WAR CLOUDS GATHER
[ CHAPTER III. ]NATHANIEL LYON'S ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE
[ CHAPTER IV. ]THE CAPTURE OF CAMP JACKSON
[ CHAPTER V. ]THE SCOTT-HARNEY AGREEMENT
[ CHAPTER VI. ]THE LAST WORD BEFORE THE BLOW
[ CHAPTER VII. ]GEN. LYON BEGINS AN EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN
[ CHAPTER VIII. ]STORM GATHERS IN SOUTHWESTERN MISSOURI
[ CHAPTER IX. ]EVE OF THE BATTLE OF WILSON'S CREEK
[ CHAPTER X. ]BATTLE OF WILSON'S CREEK
[ CHAPTER XI. ]THE AFTERMATH OF WILSON'S CREEK
[ CHAPTER XII. ]A GALAXY OF NOTABLE MEN
[ CHAPTER XIII. ]FREMONT'S MARVELOUS INEFFECTIVENESS
[ CHAPTER XIV. ]THE SAD RETREAT FROM SPRINGFIELD
[ CHAPTER XI. ]GEN. H. W. HALLECK IN COMMAND
[ CHAPTER XVI. ]HUNTER, LANE, MISSOURI AND KANSAS
[ CHAPTER XVII. ]PRICE DRIVEN OUT OF THE STATE
[ CHAPTER XVIII. ]GEN. EARL VAN DORN TAKES COMMAND
[ CHAPTER XIX. ]THE VICTORY IS WON
[ INDEX ]
ILLUSTRATIONS
[ The Struggle for Missouri. ]
[ The Scott-harney Agreement ]
[ Battlefield of Wilson's Creek ]
[ Table of Confederate Casualties ]
THE STRUGGLE FOR MISSOURI.
CHAPTER I. A SALIENT BASTION FOR THE SLAVERY EMPIRE.
Whatever else may be said of Southern statesmen, of the elder school, they certainly had an imperial breadth of view. They took in the whole continent in a way that their Northern colleagues were slow in doing. It cannot be said just when they began to plan for a separate Government which would have Slavery as its cornerstone, would dominate the Continent and ultimately absorb Cuba, Mexico and Central America as far as the Isthmus of Panama.
Undoubtedly it was in the minds of a large number of them from the organization of the Government, which they regarded as merely a temporary expedient—an alliance with the Northern States until the South was strong enough to "assume among the Powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."
They achieved a great strategic victory when in 1818 they drew the boundaries of the State of Missouri.
The Ordinance of 1787 dedicated to Freedom all of the immense territory which became the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The wonderful growth of these in population, wealth and political influence alarmed the Slave Power—keenly sensitive, as bad causes always are, to anything which may possibly threaten,—and it proceeded to erect in the State of Missouri a strong barrier to the forward march of the Free Soil idea.
When the time for the separation came, the Northern fragment of the Republic would find itself almost cut in two by the northward projection of Virginia to within 100 miles of Lake Erie. It would be again nearly cut in two by the projection of the northeast corner of Missouri to within 200 miles of Lake Michigan.
In those days substantially all travel and commerce was along the lines of the rivers. For the country between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi the Ohio River was the great artery. Into it empty the Alleghany, Monongahela, Muskingum, the Kanawhas, Big Sandy, Scioto, the Miamis, Licking, Kentucky, Green, Wabash, Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, each draining great valleys, and bringing with its volume of waters a proportionate quota of travel and commerce. The Illinois River also entered the Mississippi from the east with the commerce of a great and fruitful region.
West of the Mississippi the mighty Missouri was the almost sole highway for thousands of miles.
The State was made unusually large—68,735 square miles, where the previous rule for States had been about 40,000 square miles—stretching it so as to cover the mouths of the Ohio and the Illinois, and to lie on both sides of the great Missouri for 200 miles. A glance at the map will show how complete this maneuver seemed to be. Iowa and Minnesota were then unbroken and unvisited stretches of prairie and forest, railroads were only dreamed of by mechanical visionaries, and no man in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky or Tennessee could send a load of produce to market without Missouri's permission; he could make no considerable journey without traversing her highways, while all of the imperial area west of the Mississippi was made, it seemed, forever distinctly tributary to her.
New Orleans was then the sole mart of the West, for the Erie Canal had not been dug to convert the Great, Lakes into a colossal commercial highway.
Out of a country possessing the unusual combination of surpassing agricultural fertility with the most extraordinary mineral wealth they carved a State larger in area than England and Wales and more than one-fourth the size of France or Germany.
All ordinary calculations as to the development of such a favored region would make of it a barrier which would effectively stay the propulsive waves of Free Soilism.
So far as man's schemes could go there would never be an acre of free soil west of Illinois.
The Anti-Slavery men were keenly alive to this strategic advantage of their opponents. Though the opposition to Slavery might be said to be yet in the gristle, the men hostile to the institution were found in all parties, and were beginning to divide from its more ardent supporters.
Under the ban of public opinion Slavery was either dead or legally dying in all the older States north of Mason and Dixon's line. In the kingly stretch of territory lying north of the Ohio and between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi there was no taint of the foot of a slave, and the settlers there wanted to "set the bounds of Freedom wider yet."
The Anti-Slavery men everywhere, and at that time there were very many in the Southern States, protested vigorously against the admission of Missouri into the Union as a Slave State, and the controversy soon became so violent as to convulse the Nation. In 1818, when the bill for the admission of Missouri was being considered by the House of Representatives, Gen. James Tallmadge, of New York, introduced the following amendment:
And provided, That the introduction of slavery, or involuntary servitude, be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party has been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be declared free at the age of 25 years.
This was adopted by practically all the votes from the Free States, with a few from the Border States, which constituted a majority in the House. But the Senate, in which the Slave States had a majority, rejected the amendment, and the struggle began which was only ended two years later by the adoption of the famous Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a Slave State, but prohibited for the future any "Slavery or involuntary servitude" outside the limits of that State north of 36 degrees 30 minutes.
As in all compromises, this was unsatisfactory to the earnest men on both sides of the dispute.
The Anti-Slavery men, who claimed that Freedom was National and Slavery local, were incensed that such an enormous area as that south of 36 degrees 30 minutes had been taken from Freedom by the implication that it was reserved for Slavery.
The Pro-Slavery men, on the other hand, who had shrewdly made Slavery extension appear one of the fundamental and cherished rights of the South, set up the clamorous protest, which never ceased till Appomattox, that the denial of the privilege of taking property in Slaves to any part of the National domain won by the arms or purchased by the money of the whole country, was a violation of the compact entered into at the formation of the Government, guaranteeing to the citizens of all the States the same rights and privileges.
They also complained that under this arrangement the Free-Soilers gained control of 1,238,025 square miles of the Nation's territory, while Slavery only had 609,023 square miles, or less than half so much. This complaint, which seemed so forceful to the Pro-Slaveryites, appeared as rank impudence to their opponents, since it placed Slavery on the same plane with Freedom.
The great State, however, did not flourish in accordance with the expectations based upon its climate, natural resources and central position. The tide of immigration paused before her borders, or swept around under colder skies to Iowa and Minnesota, or to the remote prairies of Kansas and Nebraska. Careless as the average home-seeker might seem as to moral and social questions so long as he found fertile land at cheap prices, yet he appeared reluctant to raise his humble cabin on soil that had the least taint of Slavery. In spite of her long frontage on the two greatest rivers of the continent, and which were its main highways; in spite of skies and soils and rippling streams unsurpassed on earth; in spite of having within her borders the great and growing city of St. Louis, the Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley, Missouri in 1860, after 40 years of Statehood, had only 1,182,012 people, against 1,711,951 in Illinois, 1,350,428 in Indiana, 674,913 in Iowa, 172,023 in Minnesota, 2,329,511 in Ohio, 749,113 in Michigan, 775,881 in Wisconsin, with nearly 150,000 in Kansas and Nebraska.
More than a million settlers who had crossed the Mississippi within a few years had shunned her contaminated borders for the free air of otherwise less attractive localities.
Nor had the Slaveholders gone into the country in the numbers that were expected. Less than 20,000 had settled there, which was a small showing against nearly 40,000 in Kentucky and 55,000 in Virginia. All these had conspicuously small holdings. Nearly one-third of them owned but one slave, and considerably more than one-half had less than five. Only one man had taken as many as 200 slaves into the State.
The Census of 1860 showed Missouri to rank eleventh among the Slave States, according to the following table of the number of slaves in each:
1. Virginia.........490,865 10. Texas..........182,566
2. Georgia.........462,198 11. Missouri.......114,931
3. Mississippi.....436,631 12. Arkansas.......111,114
4. Alabama.........435,080 13. Maryland....... 87,189
5. South Carolina..402,406 14. Florida.........61,745
6. Louisiana.......331,726 15. Delaware....... 1,798
7. North Carolina...331,059 16. New Jersey...... 18
8. Tennessee.......275,719 17. Nebraska....... 15
9. Kentucky........225,483 18. Kansas......... 2
There were 3,185 slaves in the District of Columbia and 29 in the Territory of Utah, with all the rest of the country absolutely free.
The immigrant Slaveowners promptly planted themselves where they could command the great highway of the Missouri River, taking up broad tracts of the fertile lands on both sides of the stream. The Census of 1860 showed that of the 114,965 slaves held in the State, 50,280 were in the 12 Counties along the Missouri:
Boone........... ....5,034 Jackson..............3,944
Calloway.............4,257 Lafayette............6,357
Chariton.............2,837 Pike.................4,056
Clay.................3,456 Platte...............3,313
Cooper...............3,800 St. Charles..........2,181
Howard...............5,889 Saline...............4,876
Two-thirds of all the slaves in the State were held within 20 miles of the Missouri River.
As everywhere, the Slaveowners exerted an influence immeasurably disproportionate to their numbers, intelligence and wealth.
A very large proportion of the immigration had not been of a character to give much promise as to the future.
The new State had been the Adullam's Cave for the South, where "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt and every one that was discontented gathered themselves." Next to Slavery, the South had been cursed by the importation of paupers and criminals who had been transported from England for England's good, in the early history of the Colonies, to work the new lands. The negro proving the better worker in servitude than this class, they had been driven off the plantations to squat on unoccupied lands, where they bred like the beasts of the field, getting a precarious living from hunting the forest, and the bolder eking out this by depredations upon their thriftier neighbors. Their forebears had been paupers and criminals when sent from England, and the descendants continued to be paupers and criminals in the new country, forming a clearly marked social class, so distinct as to warrant the surmise that they belonged to a different race. As the eastern part of the South and the administration of the laws improved, this element was to some extent forced out, and spread in a noisome trail over Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri. While other immigrants went into the unbroken forest with a few rude tools and in the course of several years built up comfortable homes, their's never rose above abject squalor. The crudest of cabins sufficed them for shelter, beds of beech leaves were all the couches they required; they had more guns in their huts than agricultural or mechanical implements; they scarcely pretended to raise anything more than a scanty patch of corn; and when they could not put on their tables the flesh of the almost wild razor-back hog which roamed the woods, they made meat of woodchucks, raccoons, opossums or any other "varmint" their guns could bring down. They did not scorn hawks or owls if hunger demanded and no better meat could be found.
It was this "White Trash" which added so much to the horrors of the war, especially in Missouri, and so little to its real prosecution. Wolf-like in ferocity, when the advantages were on their side, they were wolf-like in cowardice when the terms were at all equal. They were the Croats, Cossacks, Tolpatches, Pandours of the Confederacy—of little value in battle, but terrible as guerrillas and bushwhackers. From this "White Trash" came the gangs of murderers and robbers, like those led by the Youngers, Jameses, Quantrils and scores of other names of criminal memory.
As has been the case in all times and countries, these dregs of society became the willing tools of the Slaveholding aristocrats. With dog-like fidelity they followed and served the class which despised and overrode them. Somehow, by inherited habits likely, they seemed to avoid the more fertile parts of the State. They thus became "Bald Knobbers" and "Ozarkers" in Missouri, as they had been "Clay Eaters" in South Carolina, or "Sang Diggers" in Virginia.
With these immigrants from the South came also large numbers of a far better element even than the arrogant Slaveowners or the abject "White Trash."
The Middle Class in the South was made up of much the same stock as the bulk of the Northerners—that is of Scotch, Scotch-Irish and North English—Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists and Dissenters generally—who had been forced out of Great Britain by the intolerant Episcopalians when the latter gained complete power after the suppression of the Rebellion of 1745. With these were also the descendants of the sturdy German Protestants who had been driven from Europe during the religious wars when the Catholics gained the ascendency in their particular country. These were the backbone of the South, and had largely settled along the foothills of the Alleghanies and in the fruitful valleys between the mountains, while the "White Trash" lived either on the barren parts of the lowlands or the bare and untillable highlands.
It is a grave mistake to confound these two classes of Non-Slaveholding whites in the South. They were as absolutely unlike as two distinct races, and an illustration of the habits of the two in migrating will suffice to show this. It was the custom in the Middle Classes when a boy attained majority that he chose for his wife a girl of the same class who was just ripening into vigorous womanhood. Both boy and girl had been brought up to labor with their own hands and to work constantly toward a definite purpose. They had been given a little rudimentary education, could read their Bibles and almanacs, "cipher" a little, write their names and a letter which could be read. When quite a lad the boy's father had given him a colt, which he took care of until it became a horse. To this, his first property, was added a suit of stout homespun cloth, which, with a rifle, an ax and some few other necessary tools, constituted his sole equipment for married life. The girl had been given a calf, which she had raised to a heifer; she had also a feather bed and some blankets of her own making and a little stock of the most obvious housekeeping utensils. With this simple outfit the young couple were married, and either went in debt for a little spot of land near home or pushed out into the new country. There they built a rude log cabin to shelter them from the storm, and by the time their children had reached the age they were when they married they had built up an unpretentious but very comfortable home, with their land well cleared and fenced, and stocked with cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry sufficient to maintain them in comfort. From this class came always the best and strongest men in the South. Comparatively few of them became Slaveowners, and then but rarely owned more than one or two negroes. A very large proportion found homes in the great free States north of the Ohio River.
On the other hand, none of this accession to comparative wealth seemed possible to the "White Trash." The boys and girls mated, squatted on any ground they could find unoccupied, raised there the merest shelter, which never by any chance improved, no matter how long they lived there, and proceeded to breed with amazing prolificacy others like themselves, destined for the same lives of ignorance and squalor. The hut of the "Clay Eater" in South Carolina, the "Sand Hiller" in Georgia, the "Sang Digger" in Virginia was the same as that his grandfather had lived in. It was the same that his sons and grandsons to the third and fourth generations built on the bleak knobs of the Ozarks or the malarious banks of the Mississippi. The Census of 1850 showed that about 70,000 of the population of Missouri had come from Kentucky, 45,000 from Tennessee, 41,000 from Virginia, 17,000 from North Carolina and 15,000 from the other Southern States. Nearly 40,000 had gone from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but a very large proportion of this number was the same element which had streamed across the southern parts of those States on its way to Missouri. Only 13,000 had entered from the great States of New York and Pennsylvania, and but 1,100 from New England. Nearly 15,000 Irishmen, mostly employed along the rivers, had settled in the State.
While the Slaveowners and their "White Trash" myrmidons were Pro-Slavery Democrats, the Middle Class were inclined to be Whigs, or if Democrats, belonging to that wing of the party less subservient to Slavery which in later years was led by Stephen A. Douglas.
Upon these three distinct strata in society, which little mingled but were all native Americans, was projected an element of startling differences in birth, thought, speech and manners. The so-called Revolution of 1848 in Germany was a movement by the educated, enthusiastic, idealistic youth of the Fatherland to sweep away the horde of petty despots, and unite their pigmy Principalities and Duchies into a glorious and wide-ruling Germany. They were a generation too soon, however, and when the movement was crushed under the heavy hand of military power, hundreds of thousands of these energetic young men thought it safest and best to make new homes in the young Republic beyond the seas. The United States therefore received a migration of the highest character and of inestimable benefit to the country.
Somewhere near 150,000 of these went to Missouri. They had none of the antipathy of Northern Americans to a Slave State. They were like their Gothic forebears, to whom it was sufficient to know that the land was good. Other matters could be settled by their strong right arms. The climate and fertility of Missouri pleased them; they saw the State's possibilities and flocked thither. Possibly one-half settled in the pleasant valleys and on the sunny prairies, following the trail of good land in the Southwest clear down to the Arkansas line. The other half settled mostly in St. Louis, and through them the city experienced another of its wonderful transformations. Beginning as a trading post of the French with the Indians, it had only as residents merchant adventurers from sunny France, officers and soldiers of the royal army and the half-breed voyageurs and trappers who served the fur companies. Next the Americans had swarmed in, and made the trading post a great market for the exchange of the grain and meat of the North, for the cotton and sugar of the South. Its merchants and people took their tone and complexion from the plantations of the Mississippi Valley.
Now came these Germans, intent upon reproducing there the characteristics of the old world cities beyond the Rhine. They brought with them lager beer, to which the Americans took very readily, and a decided taste for music, painting and literature, to which the Americans were not so much inclined. German signs, with their quaint Gothic lettering and grotesque names, blossomed out on the buildings, military bands in German uniforms paraded the streets, especially on Sundays. German theaters also open on Sunday represented by astonishingly good companies the popular plays of the Fatherland, and newsboys cried the German newspapers on the streets. Those who went into the country were excellent farmers, shrewd in buying and selling, and industrious workers. They dreamed of covering the low hills of the western part of the State with the vineyards that were so profitable on the Rhine and of rivaling the products of Johannesburg and the Moselle on the banks of the Gasconade and the Maramec.
The newcomers were skilled men in their departments of civilized activities—far above the average of the Americans. They were good physicians, fine musicians, finished painters, excellent actors and skillful mechanics, and each began the intelligent exercise of his vocation, to the great advantage of the community, which was, however, shocked at many of the ways of the newcomers, particularly their devoting Sunday to all manner of merrymaking. Still more shocking was their attitude toward the Slavery question. Even those Americans who were opposed to Slavery had a respect approaching awe of the "Sacred Institution." It had always been in the country; it was protected by a network of laws, and so feared that it could only be discussed with the greatest formality and circumspection. The radical Germans had absolutely none of this feeling. In their scheme of humanity all Slavery was so horrible that there could be no reason for its longer continuance, and it ought to be put to an end in the most summary manner. The epithet "Abolitionists," from which most Americans shrank as from an insult, had no terrors for them. It frankly described their mental attitude, and they gloried in it as they did in being Free Thinkers. They had not rebelled against timeworn traditions and superstitions in Germany to become slaves to something worse in this.
Vigorous growths as they were, they readily took root in the new soil, became naturalized as fast as they could, and entered into the life of the country which they had elected for their homes. They joined the Republican Party from admiration of its Free Soil principles, and in the election of 1860 cast 17,028 votes for Abraham Lincoln.
Such were the strangely differing elements which were fermenting together in the formation of the great Commonwealth during those turbulent days from 1850 to 1860, and which were to be fused into unexpected combinations in the fierce heat of civil war. The same fermentation—minus the modifying influences of the radical Germans—was going on in all the States of the South except South Carolina, where the Middle Class hardly existed. Everywhere the Middle Class was strongly attached to the Union, and averse to Secession. Everywhere the Slaveowners, a small minority, but of extraordinary ability and influence, were actively preaching dissatisfaction with the Union, bitterly complaining of wrongs suffered at the hands of the North, and untiring in their machinations to win over or crush the leaders of those favorable to the Union. Everywhere they had the "White Trash" solidly behind them to vote as they wished, and to harry and persecute the Union men. As machinery for malevolence the "White Trash" myrmidons could not be surpassed. Criminal instincts inherited from their villain forefathers made them ready and capable of anything from maiming a Union man's stock and burning his stacks to shooting him down from ambush. They had personal feeling to animate them in this, for their depredations upon the hogs and crops of their thriftier neighbors had brought them into lifelong collisions with the Middle Class, while they had but little opportunity for resentment against the owners of the large plantations. In every State in the South the story was the same, of the Middle Class Union men being harassed at the command of the Slaveowners by the "White Trash" hounds. They had been sent into Kansas to drive out the Free State immigrants there and secure the territory for Slavery, but though backed up by the power of the Administration, they had been signally defeated by the numerically inferior but bolder and hardier immigrants from the North.
Force rules this world; it always has; it always will. Not merely physical force, but that incomparably higher type—intellectual force—Power of Will. It seemed that in nearly all the States of the South the Slaveowners by sheer audacity and force of will succeeded in dominating the great majority which favored the Union, and by one device or another committing them hopelessly to the rebellion. This was notably the case in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, where the majority repeatedly expressed itself in favor of the Union, but was dragooned into Secession.
In Missouri, however, the Secessionists encountered leaders with will and courage superior to their own. Many of these were Slaveowners themselves, and nearly all of them were of Southern birth. Head and shoulders above these, standing up among them like Saul among the Sons of Israel, was Frank P. Blair, then in the full powers of perfect manhood. He was 42 years old, tall and sinewy in body, blue-eyed and sandy-haired. He came of the best Virginia and Kentucky stock, and had long been a resident and slaveowner in Missouri. As a boy he had served in the ranks in the Mexican War, had an adventurous career on the Pacific Coast, had gone back to Missouri to achieve prominence at the bar, and as early as 1848 had come to the front as the unflinching advocate of Emancipation and the conversion of Missouri into a Free State. Against his perfect panoply of courage and resource all the lances of the Slaveowners were hurled in vain. Their violence recoiled before him, their orators were no match for him upon the stump, and their leaders not his equal in party management. In 1852 he was elected to the Missouri Legislature as a Free Soiler, was re-elected in 1854, and in 1856 to Congress. His value to the Union was immeasurable, for he was a leader around whom the Union men could rally with the utmost confidence that he would never weaken, never resort to devious ways, and never blunder. As a Southerner of the best ancestry, he was not open to the charge of being a "Yankee Abolitionist," which had so much effect upon the Southern people of his State.
A very dangerous element was composed of a number of leaders who belonged to the Pro-Slavery wing, but desiring to be elected to offices, masked their designs under the cover of the Douglas Democracy. The most important of these was Claiborne F. Jackson, a politician of moderate abilities and only tolerable courage, but of great partisan activity. He professed to be a Douglas Democrat, and as such was elected Governor at the State election. Born in Kentucky 54 years before, he had resided in Missouri since 1822. A Captain in the Black Hawk War, his service had been as uneventful and brief as that of Abraham Lincoln, who was two years his junior, and he was one of the Pro-Slavery clique who had hounded the great Thomas H. Benton out of politics on account of his mild Free Soilism. In person he was tall, erect, with something of dignity in his bearing. He essayed to be an orator, had much reputation as such, but his speeches developed little depth of thought or anything beyond the customary phrases which were the stock in trade of all the orators of his class south of Mason and Dixon's line.
The fermentation period culminated in the Presidential campaign of 1860, the hottest political battle this country had ever known.
The intensity of the interest felt in Missouri was shown by the bigness of the vote, which aggregated 165,618. As the population was but 1,182,012, of which 114,965 were slaves, it will be seen that substantially every white man went to the polls.
The newly-formed Republican Party, mostly confined to the radical Germans of St. Louis, cast 17,028 votes for Abraham Lincoln.
The Slaveowners and their henchmen—"Southern Rights Democrats"—cast 31,317 votes for John C. Breckinridge.
The "Regular Democrats" polled 58,801 votes for Stephen A. Douglas and "Squatter Sovereignty."
The remains of the "Old Line Whigs," and a host of other men who did not want to be Democrats and would not be Republicans, cast 58,372 votes for John Bell, the "Constitutional Union" candidate.
Thus it will be seen that out of every 165 men who went to the polls 17 were quite positive that the extension of Slavery must cease; 31 were equally positive that Slavery should be extended or the Union dissolved; 59 favored "Squatter Sovereignty," or local option in the Territories in regard to Slavery; 58 thought that "all this fuss about the nigger was absurd, criminal, and dangerous. It ought to be stopped at once by suppressing, if necessary, by hanging, the extremists on both sides, and letting things go on just as they have been."
Thus so great a proportion as 117 out of the total of 165—nearly five-sevenths of the whole—professed strong hostility to the views of the "extremists, both North and South."
The time was at hand, however, when they must make their election as to which of these opposite poles of thought and action they would drift. They could no longer hold aloof, suggesting mild political placeboes, lamenting alike the wickedness of the Northern Abolitionists and the madness of the Southern Nullifiers, and expressing a patriotic desire to hang selected crowds of each on the same trees.
South Carolina had promptly responded to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States by passing an Ordinance of Secession, and seizing all the United States forts, arsenals and other places, except Fort Sumter, within her limits.
The rest of the Cotton States were hastening to follow her example.
To the 117 "Middle-of-the-Road" voters out of every total of 165 it was therefore necessary to choose whether they would approve of the withdrawal of States and seizures of forts, and become Secessionists, or whether they would disapprove of this and ally themselves with the much-contemned Black Republicans.
It was the old, old vital question, asked so many times of neutrals with the sword at their throats:
"Under which King, Bezonian? Speak, or die."
CHAPTER II. THE WAR CLOUDS GATHER
The storm-clouds gathered with cyclonic swiftness. South Carolina seceded Dec. 20, 1860, and sent a Commission to Washington to negotiate for the delivery of all the forts, arsenals, magazines, lighthouses, and other National property within her boundaries, organizing in the meanwhile to seize them. Her Senators and Representatives formally withdrew from Congress; the Judges and other Federal officials solemnly resigned their places; and Maj. Robert Anderson, recognizing the impossibility of defending the decrepit Fort Moultrie against assault, transferred his garrison to Fort Sumter.
President Buchanan announced the fatal doctrine that while no State had the right to secede, the Constitution gave no power to coerce a State which had withdrawn, or was attempting to withdraw from the Union.
Mississippi seceded Jan. 9, 1861; Florida, Jan. 10; Alabama, Jan. 11; Georgia, Jan. 19; Louisiana, Jan. 26; and Texas, Feb. 1;—all the Cotton States precipitately following South Carolina's example.
Each made haste—before or after Secession—to seize all the United States forts and property within her borders.
In the midst of this political cataclysm the Legislature of Missouri met on the last day of 1860.
The Senate consisted of 25 Democrats, seven Unionists, and one Republican; the House of 85 Democrats, 35 Unionists, and 12 Republicans.
The retiring Governor—Robert M. Stewart—sent in his final message Jan. 3, and the same day his successor—Claiborne F. Jackson—was inaugurated, and delivered his address. Gov. Stewart was a typical Northern Democrat, born in New York, but long a resident of Missouri. He was a strong Douglas man, and believed that the Southern people had the Constitutional right to take their slaves into the Territories and hold them there, and that this right ought to be assured them. He had never pretended to be in love with Slavery, but he believed that the Constitution and laws granted full protection to the Institution. He denied the right of Secession, particularly as to Missouri, which had been bought with the money of the whole country. In his final message he did not hesitate to clearly set this forth, and to denounce South Carolina as having acted with consummate folly. He recognized the Union as the source of innumerable blessings, and would preserve it to the last. He said:
As matters are at present Missouri will stand by her lot, and hold to the Union as long as it is worth an effort to preserve it. So long as there is hope of success she will seek for justice within the Union. She cannot be frightened from her propriety by the past unfriendly legislation of the North, nor be dragooned into secession by the extreme South. If those who should be our friends and allies undertake to render our property worthless by a system of prohibitory laws, or by reopening the slave trade in opposition to the moral sense of the civilized world, and at the same time reduce us to the position of an humble sentinel to watch over and protect their interests, receiving all the blows and none of the benefits, Missouri will hesitate long before sanctioning such an arrangement She will rather take the high position of armed neutrality. She is able to take care of herself, and will be neither forced nor flattered, driven nor coaxed, into a course of action that must end in her own destruction.
The inaugural address of the new Governor was, under a thin vail of professed love for the Union, a bitter Secession appeal. He said that the destiny of the Slaveholding States was one and the same; that what injured one necessarily hurt all; that separate action meant certain defeat by the insolent North, which was alone and wholly responsible for the present deplorable conditions. He applauded the "gallantry" of South Carolina, urged that she be not condemned for "precipitancy," and said significantly: "If South Carolina has acted hastily, let not her error lead to the more fatal one—an attempt at coercion."
With reference to the Republican Party and the future policy of Missouri, he said:
The prominent characteristic of this party * * * is that it is purely sectional in its locality and its principles. The only principle inscribed upon its banner is Hostility to Slavery;—its object not merely to confine Slavery within its present limits; not merely to exclude it from the Territories, and prevent the formation and admission of any Slaveholding States; not merely to abolish it in the District of Columbia, and interdict its passage from one State to another; but to strike down its existence everywhere; to sap its foundation in public sentiment; to annoy and harass, and gradually destroy its vitality, by every means, direct or indirect, physical and moral, which human ingenuity can devise. The triumph of such an organization is not the victory of a political party, but the domination of a Section. It proclaims in significant tones the destruction of that equality among the States which is the vital cement for our Federal Union. It places 15 of the 33 States in the position of humble recipients of the bounty, or sullen submissionists to the power of a Government which they had no voice in creating, and in whose councils they do not participate.
It cannot, then, be a matter of surprise to any—victors or vanquished—that these 16 States, with a pecuniary interest at stake reaching the enormous sum of $3,600,000,000 should be aroused and excited at the advent of such a party to power.
Would it not rather be an instance of unprecedented blindness and fatuity, if the people and Governments of these 16 Slaveholding States were, under such circumstances, to manifest quiet indifference, and to make no effort to avoid the destruction which awaited them?
The meeting of the Legislature naturally brought to the State Capital at Jefferson City all of the powerful coterie which was self-charged with the work of taking Missouri into the road whither South Carolina was leading the Cotton States. This coterie included the Judges of the Supreme Court and all the State officials, and the United States Senators and Representatives. Ever since the Anti-Benton faction had accomplished the great Senator's defeat, the shibboleth for admission into the higher circles of Missouri Democracy had been "Southern Rights." As the mass of the Middle Class Democrats favored Senator Douglas's plan of letting the settlers in each Territory decide for themselves whether they would have Slavery, it was highly politic for every candidate to claim that he was a Douglas Democrat. It must be known to the inner ring, however, that he was at heart fully in accord with the views of the extreme Pro-Slavery men, and ready at the word to join the Secessionists. So thorough was this preliminary organization, that while in Missouri tens of thousands of professed Union men went over to Secession when the stress came, there was no instance of an avowed Pro-Slavery man cleaving to the side of the Union.
Next to Gov. Jackson,—surpassing him in intellectual acuteness and fertile energy,—was Lieut.-Gov. Thos. C. Reynolds, then in his 40th year, a short, full-bodied man, with jet-black hair and eyes shaded by gold-rimmed glasses. He boasted of being born of Virginia parents in South Carolina, but some of the Germans claimed to know that his right name was Reinhold, and that he was a Jew born in Prague, the Capital of Bohemia, and brought to this country when a child. He was a man of more than ordinary ability, and had accomplishments quite unusual in that day.
He spoke French, German and Spanish fluently, wrote profusely and with considerable force, and prided himself on being a diplomat. He had seen some service as Secretary of Legation and Charge d' Affaires at Madrid. He had been elected as a Douglas Democrat, but was an outspoken Secessionist, and as he was ex-officio President of the Senate, he had much power in forming committees and shaping legislation. He clung to the wrecked rebel ship of state to the last, went with Gov. Jackson and the rest when they were driven out of the State, assumed the Governorship when Jackson—worn out by the terrible strains and vicissitudes—died at Little Rock, Ark., in December, 1862—and was last heard from near the end of the war, with the shattered and melancholy remnants of the Missouri State Government and troops, on the banks of the Rio Grande, writing furious diatribes against Gen. Sterling Price, the admired leader of the Missouri Confederates.
Another man of great influence in the State was United States Senator James S. Green, a Virginian by birth, but who had been a resident of Missouri for about a quarter of a century. He was a lawyer of fine talents, and in the Senate ranked as a debater with Douglas, Seward, Chase, Toombs, Wigfall, Fessenden, Wade, and others of that class. In Missouri he was one of the leaders of the Ultra-Slavery "Softs" against Thos. H. Benton; had been Minister to New Granada, and Representative in Congress, and in the Senate belonged to the Jefferson Davis-Toombs-Wigfall cabal, which was planning the disruption of the Union. His term expiring March 3, 1861, he was now in Jefferson City for the rather irreconcilable purposes of securing his re-election to the United States Senate and of fulfilling his pledge to his Secessionist colleagues to carry Missouri out of the Union.
His colleague—Senator Trusten Polk—a strong, kindly, graceful man—was there to assist him in both purposes. Born in Delaware, he had been a resident of Missouri since 1835, elected Governor of the State in 1856, resigned to accept Benton's seat in the Senate, from which he was to be expelled in 1862 for disloyalty, and to follow the failing fortunes of the Missouri Confederates to the banks of the Rio Grande.
The problem of absorbing intensity for the Secession leaders—Messrs. Jackson, Reynolds, Green, Polk and others—was to win over, entrap or constrain a sufficient number of the 117 "Doubtful" voters out of every 165, to give them a working majority in the State. There was fiery zeal enough and to spare on the Secession side; what was needed was skillful management to convince the Union-loving peace-loving majority that the Northern "Abolitionists," flushed with victory, meant unheard-of wrongs and insults to the South; that Missouri must put herself in shape to protect her borders, call a halt on the insolent North, and in connection with the other Border States be the arbiter between the contending sections, and in the last resort ally herself with the other Slave States for mutual protection.
A man to be reckoned with in those days was the Commander of the Department of the West, which included all that immense territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, except Texas, New Mexico, and Utah. This man was the embodiment of the Regular Army as it was developed after the War of 1812. At this time that Army was a very small one—two regiments of dragoons, two of cavalry, one of mounted riflemen, four of artillery, and 10 of infantry, making, with engineers, ordnance and staff, a total of only 12,698 officers and men—but its personnel and discipline were unsurpassed in the world. Among its 1,040 commissioned officers there was no finer soldier than William Selby Harney. A better Colonel no army ever had. A Colonel, mind you—not a General; there is a wide difference between the two, as we found out during the war. There are very many Americans—every little community has at least one—who, given a regiment, where every man is within reach of his eye and voice, will discipline it, provide for it, rule it, and fight it in the very best fashion. Give him some piece of work to do, of which he can see the beginning and the end, and he will make the regiment do every pound of which it is capable. But put in command of a brigade, anything beyond voice and eye, set to a task outreaching his visual horizon, he becomes obviously unequal to the higher range of duty.
A form of commanding hight (sp.), physique equal to any test of activity or endurance, a natural leader of men through superiority of courage and ability, William Selby Harney had for 43 years made an unsurpassed record as a commander of soldiers. He had served in the everglades of Florida, on the boundless plains west of the Mississippi, and in Mexico, during the brilliantly spectacular war which ended with our "reveling in the Halls of the Montezumas." He it was, who, eager for his country's honor and advancement, had, while the diplomats were disputing with Great Britain, pounced down upon and seized the debatable island of San Juan in Vancouver waters. For this he was recalled, but the island remained American territory. He was soon assigned to the Department of the West, with headquarters at St. Louis.
He had been for 12 years the Colonel of the crack 2d U. S. Dragoons, and for three years one of the three Brigadier-Generals in the Regular Army, his only seniors being Maj.-Gen. and Brevet Lieut.-Gen. Winfield Scott, the General-in-Chief; Brig.-Gen. John E. Wool, commanding the Department of the East; and Brig.-Gen. David E. Twiggs, commanding the Department of Texas.
Gen. Harney's assignment, while a recognition of his eminent fitness for ruling the territory over which he had campaigned for more than a quarter of a century, was highly gratifying to him inasmuch as he was married to a wealthy St. Louis woman, and in that city he had an abundance of the luxurious social enjoyment so dear to the heart of the old warrior. A Southerner by birth and education, a large Slave-owner, with all his interests in the South, and at all times seemingly in full sympathy with the Southern spirit that dominated the Army, the Secessionists sanguinely expected that he would prove as pliant to their proposals as had Gen. Twiggs, the Commander of the Department of Texas. We shall see how soldierly instincts and training measurably disappointed them.
To return to the Missouri Legislature: Lieut.-Gov. Reynolds could, as a lieutenant always can, be more outspoken and radical than his chief, who labored under responsibility. On the day the Legislature met he published an important letter which thoroughly indicates the feeling of the Secessionists at that period. He urged the General Assembly to promptly express the determination of Missouri to resist every attempt by the Federal Government to coerce any State to remain in the Union, or to use force in any way to collect revenues or execute the laws in any seceding State. He denounced President Buchanan's distinction between "coercing a State" and "compelling the citizens of the State to obey the laws of the United States" as a "transparent sophistry." "To levy tribute, molest commerce, or hold fortresses, are as much acts of war as to bombard a city." He also urged immediate and thorough organization of the militia and other preparations for "putting the State in complete condition for defense." If the present controversy could not be adjusted before March 4, the State of Missouri "should not permit Mr. Lincoln to exercise any act of Government" within her borders.
This was certainly distinctly defiant, and shrewdly calculated to gather about the new administration all the wavering men who could be attracted by inflammatory appeals to their prejudices against the North, to their State pride, and to their hopes of making Missouri the arbiter in the dispute. Lieut.—Gov. Reynolds followed up his pronunciamento by carefully organizing the Senate committees with radical Secessionists at the head, and the immediate introduction of bills ably contrived to put the control of the State in the hands of those who favored Secession. These committees promptly reported several bills.
One provided for calling a State Convention, an effective device by which the other Southern States had been dragged into Secession. Another provided for the organization of the Militia of the State, which would be done by officers reliable for Secession, and the third was intended to extinguish resistance by taking away much of the police power of the Republican Mayor of St. Louis, who had at his back the radical Germans, organized into semi-military Wide-Awake Clubs. All these bills seemed to be heartily approved all over the State, and the Southern Rights leaders were exultant at their success. Apparently the 117 "Doubtfuls" were flocking over to them.
It seemed for a few momentous days in the opening of 1861 that Missouri would be inevitably swept into the tide of Secession, and even in St. Louis, the stronghold of Republicanism, a monster mass meeting, called and controlled by such afterwards—strong loyalists as Hamilton R. Gamble, later the Union Governor of the State, Nathaniel Paschall, James E. Yeatman, and Robert Campbell, unanimously passed resolutions declaring slave property to be held as a Constitutional right which the Government should secure, and if it did not, Missouri "would join with her sister States and share their duties and dangers," and that the Government should not attempt to coerce the seceding States. This word "coerce" had an extraordinarily ugly sound to all ears, and was a potent enchantment in taking many of the professedly Union men into the ranks of the rebellion. Even Horace Greeley recoiled from "a Union held together by bayonets."
The bill "to call a Convention to consider the relations of the State of Missouri to the United States, and to adopt measures for vindicating the sovereignty of the State, and the protection of her institutions," was promptly reported back to both Houses on the 9th of January, and as promptly passed by them, with only two adverse votes in the Senate and 18 in the House. Of the latter 11 were from St. Louis.
The Secessionists proceeded to a joyful celebration of this new triumph. They hastened at once to another step to ally Missouri with the South. A Commissioner arrived from the State of Mississippi to ask the co-operation of Missouri in measures of common defense and safety. The Governor received him with the distinction accredited an Embassador from a foreign power, and recommended the Legislature to do likewise. The serviceable Lieut.-Gov. Reynolds carried out this idea by putting through a joint resolution to receive the Commissioner in the House Chamber, with both bodies, the Governor and other chief officers of the State, and the Judges of the Supreme Court in attendance, and with every other honor. He dictated that upon the announcement of the entrance of the Commissioner, the whole body should respectfully rise. The radical Union men from St. Louis resisted this vehemently, and did not hesitate to apply the ugly word "traitor" to the Commissioner, and those who were aiding and abetting him.
The Commissioner made a long address, in which he said that the Union had been dissolved, could never be reconstructed; that war was inevitable, and the people of Mississippi earnestly invited those of Missouri to unite with their kindred for common defense and safety. A few days later the Legislature adopted a resolution against coercion, and another introduced by George Graham Vest, of the Committee on Federal Relations, afterwards Senator in the Confederate House from Missouri, and for 24 years representing Missouri in the Senate of the United States. This resolution declared that so "abhorrent was the doctrine of coercion, that any attempt at such would result in the people of Missouri rallying on the side of their Southern brethren to resist to the last extremity." There was only one vote against this in the Senate, and but 14 in the House.
The eager young Secessionists were impatient to emulate their brethren farther south, and strike a definite blow—seize something that would wreck the sovereignty of the United States. Forts there were none. In the historic old Jefferson Barracks, below St. Louis, there were only a small squad of raw recruits, and a few officers, mostly of Southern proclivities, whom it would be cruel to turn out of house and home while they were waiting "for their States to go out."
There were but two Arsenals in the State; a small affair at Liberty, in the northwest, near the Missouri River, which contained several hundred muskets, a dozen cannon, and a considerable quantity of powder. The other was the great Arsenal at St. Louis, one of the most important in the country. It covered 56 acres of ground, fronting on the Mississippi River, was inclosed by a high stone wall on all sides but that of the river, and had within it four massive stone buildings standing in a rectangle. In these were stored 60,000 stands of arms, mostly Enfield and Springfield rifles, 1,500,000 cartridges, 90,000 pounds of powder, a number of field pieces and siege guns, and a great quantity of munitions of various kinds. There were also machinery and appliances of great value. The Arsenal was situated on rather low ground, and was commanded from hills near by. At the beginning of 1861 the only persons in it were some staff officers, with their servants and orderlies, and the unarmed workmen. The officer in command was Maj. Wm. Haywood Bell, a North Carolinian, graduate of West Point, and Ordnance Officer, but who had spent nearly the whole of his 40 years' service in Bureau work, attending meanwhile so providently to his own affairs that he was quite a wealthy man, with most of his investments in St. Louis.
Gov. Claiborne F. Jackson had as his military adviser and executant Maj.-Gen. Daniel M. Frost, a New Yorker by birth and a graduate of West Point. He had served awhile in the Mexican War, where he received a brevet as First Lieutenant for gallantry at Cerro Gordo, and then became Quartermaster of his regiment. He had been sent to Europe as a student of the military art there, but resigned in 1853, to take charge of a planing mill and carpentry work in St. Louis. He subsequently became a farmer, was elected to the Missouri Senate, entered the Missouri Militia, rose to be Brigadier-General, and was sanguinely expected to become for Missouri what Lee and Jos. E. Johnston were for Virginia, Beauregard for South Carolina, and Braxton Bragg for Louisiana. He was really a good deal of a soldier, with foresight and initiative force, and had the Governor had the courage to follow his bold counsels, the course of events might have been different.
As early as Jan. 8 he visited the Arsenal, and had an interview with its commandant, which he reported to the Governor as entirely satisfactory. Maj. Bell was wholly in sympathy with the South, and regarded the Arsenal as being virtually Missouri's property when she should choose to demand it. His honor as a soldier would compel him to resist any attack from an irresponsible mob, but a summons from the sovereign State of Missouri would meet with the respectful obedience to which it was entitled. It was therefore decided that this was the best shape in which to leave matters. Maj. Bell would hold the Arsenal in trust against both the radical St. Louis Germans and over-zealous Secessionists, who wanted to seize it and arm their particular followers. When Gen. Frost had organized the Missouri Militia to his satisfaction, he would march into the Arsenal, and under the plea of protecting it from mobs, use its contents to thoroughly arm and equip his Militia, which would thus be put in very much better shape than the troops of any other State.
Meanwhile, Gen. Frost recommended that as little as possible be said about the Arsenal, in order to avoid attracting attention to it.
All the same, the Arsenal was intently watched by both sides, and for the next four months it was the great stake for which they played, since its possession would go far toward giving possession of the State. There were but 150,000 stands of arms in the rest of the South, while here were 60,000.
Even before South Carolina seceded the ardent young Secessionists of St. Louis had begun the organization of "Minute Men" to "protect the State." Naturally, their first step in protecting the State would be to seize the Arsenal, to prevent its arms being used to "coerce the people." Their headquarters were in the Berthold House, a fine residence at the corner of Fifth and Pine streets, over which floated the Secession flag.
Into these companies went numbers of young men from the best families of the South, who had come to St. Louis to take advantage of business opportunities, and young Irishmen, of whom there were many thousands in the city, and who; having in their blood an antipathy to "the Dutch" dating from William of Orange's days, were skillfully wrought upon by the assertion that the "infidel, Sabbath-breaking, beer-drinking Dutch who had invaded St. Louis" were of the same breed as those who harried Ireland and inflicted innumerable persecutions in 1689. Very effective in this was one Brock Champion, a big-hearted, big-bodied young Irishman, of much influence among his countrymen, who played little part, however, in the war which ensued. More conspicuous later was Basil Wilson Duke, a bright Kentucky lawyer, 25 years old, who was Captain of one of the companies, and afterwards became the second in command and an inspiration to John H. Morgan, the great raider. The Captain of another company was Colton Greene, a South Carolinian, a year or two younger than Duke, a merchant, a man of delicate physique and cultivated mind, but of great courage and constancy of purpose.
Everywhere in the State began a systematic persecution of the Unconditional Union men and the bullying of the Conditional Union men. Secession flags in numbers floated from buildings in St. Louis, Rolla, Lexington, Jefferson City, Kansas City, and elsewhere. Union meetings were disturbed and broken up in all the larger towns, the Star Spangled Banner torn down and trampled upon, and the borders of Kansas and Iowa were thronged with Union refugees telling how they had been robbed, maltreated, and threatened with death, their stock killed, their houses and crops burned by the "White Trash" which the Slave Power had turned loose upon them.
When Maj. Bell had talked of "irresponsible mobs," he may have thought of premature young fire-eaters like Duke, Greene, and Champion, eager for the distinction of capturing the Arsenal, covetous of distributing its arms to their followers. Most likely, however, he had in mind forays from Illinois, or by the radical Germans of St. Louis, who were ill disposed toward seeing their enemies equipped from its stores.
Gen. Frost had the Germans in mind as early as Jan. 8, probably immediately following his interview with Maj. Bell, for he sent out a secret circular to his trusted subordinates instructing them that "upon the bells of the churches sounding a continuous peal, interrupted by a pause of five minutes, they should assemble with their men in their armories, and there await further orders." One of these circulars fell into the hands of a good Union man, who immediately took it to Frank P. Blair. It was found that it was the Catholic church bells that were relied upon to do the ringing, implying that the enthusiastic, reckless Irishmen were to take the initiative.
The Archbishop of St. Louis was immediately seen, to prohibit the bells of the churches being used as a tocsin to light the flames of civil war. Mr. Blair sent the circular with other information to Gen. Scott, with an urgent request that an officer of sounder loyalty supersede Maj. Bell, and that some troops be sent to Jefferson Barracks against an emergency. Mr. Montgomery Blair, brother of F. P. Blair, Jr., and soon to be Postmaster-General, Gov. Yates, of Illinois, and President-elect Lincoln supported this request. A fortnight later Maj. Bell was relieved, and assigned to duty in the East.
A gallant one-armed Irish First Lieutenant of the 2d U. S., one Thomas W. Sweeny, of whom we shall hear more later, was ordered to Jefferson Barracks, where it was supposed his influence with his countrymen might offset that of Mr. Champion. A small squad of Regulars was sent him from Newport Barracks.
Maj. Bell foreseeing that the Army was to be no longer a place for a quiet gentleman with business tastes, resigned his commission, to remain with his well-placed investments in St. Louis.
All this disturbed the Secessionists. They saw that the Government had an eye on the important Arsenal, and did not intend to give it up as tamely as it had other places in the South. The arrival of the Regulars was made the basis of inflammatory appeals that the Government was trying to "overawe and coerce the people." Two days later this "intimidation" became flagrant. Isaac H. Sturgeon, Assistant United States Treasurer at St. Louis, a Kentuckian and Secessionist, had for reasons of his own reported to President Buchanan that he was concerned about the safety of $400,000 in gold in his vaults. The President handed the letter to Gen. Scott, who sent an order to Jefferson Barracks which resulted in a Lieutenant with 40 men being sent to the Post Office Building to protect the removal of the gold. The city was thrown into the greatest excitement as the troops marched through the streets, the papers issued extras, and it required all the efforts of the officials and the leaders on both sides to preserve the peace.
Gov. Claiborne Jackson took advantage of the occasion to send a message to the Legislature, in which he said that this was an "act insulting to the dignity and patriotism of the people."
The gold having been removed, Gen. Harney ordered the troops back to the Arsenal, and quiet was restored.
Maj. Peter B. Hagner, of the District of Columbia, who graduated from West Point in 1832, and had distinguished himself in the Mexican War, succeeded Maj. Bell in the command of the Arsenal. His sympathies were strongly with the South, but not so strongly as to overmaster his desire to retain his commission and its emoluments. He was willing to go any length in serving the Secessionists that did not involve his dismissal from the Army. He had two brothers in the service, and all three held on to their commissions until forced from their hands by the grim grasp of death.
Meanwhile, Lieut.-Gov. Reynolds was pushing the Legislative work to carry Missouri out of the Union. The acts which proved so successful in the other Southern States in binding the people hand and foot and dragging them over to the rebellion were closely imitated. One of these was the celebrated "Military Bill" introduced in the Senate, Jan. 5, 1861. This put every man of military age in the State into the Militia, and at the disposal of the Governor, who was given $150,000 outright to enable him to carry out his plans. It made everybody owe paramount allegiance to the State, and prescribed severe penalties, including even death, to be inflicted by drum-head court martial for "treason" to the State—for even the utterance of disrespectful words against the Governor or Legislature. This went a little too far for many of the members, and by obstinate fighting the passage of the bill was postponed from time to time and at last defeated.
Another bill was generally understood as one to stamp out Republicanism in St. Louis, but officially designated as "An Act to amend an act for the suppression of riot in St. Louis City and County." This took out of the hands of the Republican Sheriff and Mayor most of their peace-preserving powers, which were given to a Board to be appointed by the Governor, thereby to tie their hands when the time came for taking the Arsenal. One of the Governor's Police Commissioners was Basil Duke, the leader of the "Minute-Men."
Though they had none of the noisy aggressiveness of the Secessionists, the leaders of the Unionists, during those bitterly intense Winter days, were no less able, courageous, and earnest. Blair had a masterful courage and determination not equalled by any man opposed to him. He was one of those men of mighty purpose who set their faces toward an object with the calm resolution to die rather than fail. Against the hardened steel of his relentless will the softer iron of such thrasonic Secessionists as Gov. Jackson, Lieut.-Gov. Reynolds, United States Senators James S. Green and Trusten Polk, Gen. Frost and lesser leaders, clashed without producing a dent.
Blair had skill and tact equal to his courage. He foresaw every movement of his antagonists and met it with a prompt countermove. To their inflammatory rhetoric he opposed clear common sense, loyalty and wise judgment as to the future. When occasion demanded, he did not hesitate to publicly express the hope "that every traitor among them would be made to test the strength of Missouri hemp." He was swift to subordinate himself and "the Cause," when anything could be gained. There were many prominent men who wanted to save the Union, but would deny to Frank Blair the credit of it. He unhesitatingly gave them the highest places, and took the subordinate one for himself. There were tens of thousands of Whigs and Democrats who loved the Union, but shuddered at the thought of becoming Black Republicans. He abolished the Republican Party, that they might form a Union Party, the sole principle of which should be support of the Government.
Next to Blair was the famous "Committee of Safety," which did such high work for the Union during those fermenting days. These and their birthplaces were:
O. D. Filley, New England.
John How, Pennsylvania.
Samuel T. Glover, Kentucky.
James O. Broadhead, Virginia.
J. J. Witzig, Germany.
These self-denying, self-sacrificing patriots worked together with Blair in perfect harmony and with the utmost skill. They were more than a match for their Secession opponents in organization and management, and lost very few points in the great game that was played throughout the Winter, with the possession of the City, the State, and the Arsenal for the main prizes.
The Committee of Safety had its Home Guards to offset the Minute Men. Where there were hundreds of these latter drilling more or less openly, with much fifing and drumming and flaunting of Secession flags, there were thousands of Home Guards meeting and training with greatest secresy in old foundries, breweries, and halls, with pickets out to prevent surprise, sawdust on the floors to drown the sound of their feet, and blankets at the windows to arrest the light and the words of command. The drill hall was only approached at night, and singly or by twos or threes, to avoid attracting attention. Most of these Home Guards were Germans, and a large proportion had had military training in Europe. The great problem with them, as with the Minute Men, was to get arms, and both sides watched the Arsenal with its 60,000 rifles and 1,500,000 cartridges with sharp covetousness.
The Governor of Illinois loaned the Home Guards a few arms, but it was expected that these would be repaid with interest from the stores of the Arsenal.
The appointment of Maj. Hagner to the command of the Arsenal was satisfactory to the Secessionists, but there was naturally a good deal of interest as to the bias of Capt. Thomas W. Sweeny. One day a man presented himself at the west gate of the Arsenal and asked to see Capt. Sweeny. Sweeny went to the gate and recognized an old acquaintance, St. George Croghan, the son of that Lieut. Croghan who had so brilliantly defended Fort Stephenson, at Lower Sandusky, in the War of 1812, and who afterwards was for many years Inspector-General of the United States Army. Croghan's grandfather had been a gallant officer in the Revolution. It was a cold day, and Croghan wore a citizen's overcoat. On their way to the quarters, the guards properly saluted Sweeny as they passed. Said Croghan, "Sweeny, don't you think those sentinels ought to salute me—my rank is higher than yours?" at the same time throwing open his overcoat and revealing the uniform of a rebel field officer.
"Not to such as that, by heavens!" responded Sweeny; and added: "If that is your business, you can have nothing to do with me. You had better not let my men see you with that thing on."
Croghan assured him his business in calling was one of sincere friendship; but he would remark while on the subject, that Sweeny had better find it convenient to get out of there, and very soon, too.
"Why?" asked Sweeny.
Replied Croghan: "Because we intend to take it."
Sweeny in great excitement exclaimed: "Never! As sure as my name is Sweeny, the property in this place shall never fall into your hands. I'll blow it to hell first, and you know I am the man to do it."
Nine months later this Croghan was to fall mortally wounded at the head of a cavalry regiment while attacking the Union troops near Fayetteville, W. Va., while Sweeny was to do gallant service in the Union army, rising to the rank of Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and command of a Division, and being retired in 1870 with the rank of Brigadier-General.
CHAPTER III. NATHANIEL LYON'S ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE
The Secessionists were in the meanwhile hardly making the headway in the Legislature that they had anticipated, in spite of the stimulating events in the extreme Southern States.
A curious situation developed in the Legislature leading to the arrest for a while of Lieut.-Gov. Reynolds's plans for organizing the State for rebellion. The term of Senator James S. Green expired on the 3d of March, and he was desirous of being his own successor. The first consideration was whether Missouri was likely to stay in the Union and have a Senator. At the moment this seemed probable enough to warrant going on and electing a Senator, and the Pro-Slavery men made strenuous efforts to re-elect Mr. Green, but it was significant that he was deemed too ultra a Secessionist, and Waldo P. Johnson was elected in his stead. Among the many things in the war which turned out surprisingly different from what men had confidently expected was that Mr. Green took the selfish politician's view of the "ingratitude" of those who refused to re-elect him, sullenly retired to private life, and did not raise his hand nor his voice for the South during the war, while Mr. Johnson, who was elected because he was a better Union man, soon resigned his seat in the United States Senate, entered the Confederate army, became Lieutenant-Colonel of the 4th Mo. (Confederate), and fought till the close of the war.
Jan. 18, after a prolonged debate, both Houses passed a bill to call a Convention "to consider the relations of Missouri to the United States." This was the successful device which had been used in carrying other States out of the Union, and despite the conservatism of the language of the act it was hoped that it would be successful in this instance. In the Senate there were only 26 votes against it, and in the House but 18, of whom 11 were from St. Louis. The Southern Rights men regarded this as a great triumph, however, and made much jubilation throughout the State. The election for members to the Convention was fixed for Feb. 18, and the Convention was to meet on the last day of the month. This act was followed by the adoption of a joint resolution which expressed profound regret that the States of New York and Ohio had tendered men and money to the President for "the avowed purpose of coercing certain sovereign States of the South into obedience to the Federal Government," and declaring that the people of Missouri would rally to the side of their Southern brethren to "resist the invaders and to the last extremity." Only 14 votes were cast against this resolution.
The main interest now centered upon the election of delegates to the Convention. New political lines ran among the people, dividing them into Secessionists, "Conditional Union" men and "Unconditional Union" men.
Blair's leadership was able to efface the Republican Party for the time being, and carry all of the members over to the Unconditional Unionists. The result of the election was a blow to the Secessionists, not one of whose candidates was elected.
In St. Louis the Unconditional Union candidates were elected by over 5,000 majority.
The bitterly-disappointed Secessionists denounced the majority as "Submissionists," and threatened all manner of things.
The election occurred on the same day that Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President of the Southern Confederacy.
When the State Convention met at Jefferson City, it was found that of its 99 members 53 were natives of either Virginia of Kentucky, and all but 17 had been born in Slave States. Only 13 were natives of the North, three were Germans, and one an Irishman. A struggle at once ensued for the organization of the Convention, which resulted in a victory for the Union men, ex-Gov. Sterling Price being elected President by 75 votes, to 15 cast for Nathaniel W. Watkins, a half-brother of Henry Clay, and a strenuous advocate of Southern Rights. As soon as the Convention completed its organization it adjourned to St. Louis, to avoid the badgering of the pronounced Secessionists, who constituted the State Government, and the clamorous bullying of the crowd assembled in the State Capital to influence its action.
On assembling at St. Louis the Convention immediately addressed itself to the duty for which it had assembled. Judge Hamilton R. Gamble, a Virginian, leader of the Unconditional Union men, and afterwards Governor of the State, as Chairman of the Committee on Federal Relations, made a long report, in which it was denied that the grievances complained of were sufficient to involve Missouri in rebellion; that in a military sense Missouri's union with the Southern Confederacy meant annihilation; that the true position of the State was to try to bring back her seceding sisters, and to this effect a Convention of all the States was recommended, to adopt the Crittenden Proposition. An attempt to amend this report by the declaration that if the Northern States refused to assent to the Crittenden Compromise Missouri would then side with her sister States of the South received only 23 votes, but among them was that of Sterling Price, who had begun to drift southward.
The Convention adopted Gamble's report, and a few days afterward adjourned subject to call of the committee.
The Secessionists were greatly discouraged by the result, and the Legislature also adjourned. Then came another fluctuation in public opinion. The great majority wanted peace. The attitude of the Governor and his faction, who seemed to look toward peace by putting Missouri in a state of defense to prevent the new Republican President from making war, appealed to many, and in the Spring elections the Unconditional Union men were defeated by a small majority, and St. Louis passed from their official control to that of the Conditional Union Men.
While these events were occupying public attention there occurred another, little noted at the time, but which was soon to be of controlling importance. Feb. 6 there marched up from the steamboat landing to the Arsenal a company of 80 Regular soldiers of the 2d U. S., from Fort Riley, Kan., at the head of which was a Captain, under the average hight, and a well knit but rather slender frame. He had a long, narrow face, with full, high forehead, keen, deep-set blue eyes, and hair and whiskers almost red. His face was thoughtful but determined, his manner quick and nervous. He bore himself towards his men as an exact and rigid disciplinarian, mingled with thoughtful kindness for all who did their duty and tried their best This was Capt. Nathaniel Lyon, born in Connecticut, descended from old Puritan stock, with the blood of Cromwell's Ironsides flowing in his veins. He was then 42 years old, and before another birthday was to fill the country with his fame, and fall in battle-face to the front. He had graduated from West Point in 1841, the 11th in his class. That his intellectual abilities were of high order is shown by his standing in that class, of which Zealous B. Tower, an eminent engineer, and brevet Major-General, U. S. A., was the head, and Horatio G. Wright, who commanded the Sixth Corps during the last and greatest year of its history, was the second.
Gen. John F. Reynolds, the superb commander of the First Corps and of the Right Wing of the Army of the Potomac, with which he brought on the battle of Gettysburg, where he was killed, graduated 26th in the class, and Gen. Don Carlos Buell, who organized and commanded the Army of the Ohio, graduated 32d. Gen. Robert Garnett, the first Confederate General officer to fall in the struggle,—killed July 13, 1861, at Carrick's Ford,—was the 27th in the class. Julius P. Garesche, who graduated 16th in the class, became Chief of Staff to Gen. Rosecrans, and was killed at Stone River.
Besides being thoroughly versed in all that related to his profession of arms, Capt. Lyon was well informed in history and general literature; was a devoted student of the Bible and Shakspere, and wrote well and forcibly. What was very rare among the officers of the old Army, he was a radical Abolitionist, and believer in the National Sovereignty. He was so outspoken in these views as to render his position quite unpleasant, where nearly every one was so antagonistic. A weaker-willed man would have been forced either out of the Army or into tacit acquiescence with the prevailing sentiment.
Upon graduation he had been assigned to the 2d U. S., and sent to get his first lessons in actual war fighting the Florida Indians. There his superiors found occasion to remark that his zeal sometimes outran his discretion—not an infrequent fault of earnest young men. He had distinguished himself and received a brevet in the Mexican War for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, and had then been sent to California. With a slender force he was charged with the duty of keeping a long frontier in order against turbulent Indians. He accomplished this by making the Indians more afraid of him than the whites could possibly be of them. No quick retreat, no impregnable fastness, could shelter them from his inexorable pursuit. On one occasion he carried boats on wagons over a mountain range to cross a river and strike an Indian lair where the marauders were resting in the fullest sense of security. His company had next been transferred to Kansas in the midst of the political troubles there, where, while doing his official duty with strict impartiality, his sympathies were actively with the Free State settlers.
For 42 years he had been growing and fitting himself for a great Opportunity.
For once Opportunity and the Man equal to it met.
Immediately after settling his company in the Arsenal, Capt. Lyon went to the city to meet Frank P. Blair. The two strong men recognized each the other's strength, and at once came into harmonious cooperation.
The fate of the Arsenal, of the City of St. Louis, and of the State of Missouri, was settled.
Before Capt. Lyon arrived, the Committee of Safety had had an alarm about the Arsenal, and rallied a strong force of their Home Guards in waiting to go to the assistance of Capt. Sweeny and his 40 men, should the Minute Men attack him. But the Secessionist leaders had such confidence in Maj. Hagner that they dissuaded the impatient Basil Duke, Colton Greene, Brock Champion and other eager young Captains from making the attack.
Capt. Lyon was soon reinforced. Lieut. Warren L. Lothrop, of the 4th U. S. Art., a Maine man, who had risen from the ranks, came in with 40 men. He was afterwards to succeed Frank P. Blair, jr., as Colonel of the 1st Mo. Light Art. Next came Capt. Rufus Saxton, also of the 4th Art., a Massachusetts man, later to rise to brevet Major-General of Volunteers, and to play an important part in caring for the freedmen of the South Carolina coast.
Still later came Capt. James Totten, of the 2d U. S. Art., with his company. He had been born in Pennsylvania, but was appointed to West Point from Virginia, and was in command of the Arsenal at Little Rock until he evacuated his post, Feb. 8, before a large force of rebels, and retired with his command to the Indian Territory, by virtue of the agreement with the Governor of the State. While Lothrop and Saxton appear to have been taken at once into the councils of Capt. Lyon, Capt. Totten does not, probably because the uncompromising Lyon did not like his methods in Arkansas. He was, however, true to his loyalty, and rose eventually to the rank of Brigadier-General.
There were now in the Arsenal nine officers and 484 men. Hagner and Lyon at once came into collision. Though Hagner belonged to the Ordnance, and not therefore regarded as eligible to command troops, he secured an order assigning himself to command according to his brevet rank of Major, which made him superior to Lyon. Hagner had been five years longer in the service than Lyon, but his commission as Captain was 20 days junior to Lyon's. Lyon energetically protested against Hagner's assignment in a letter to Blair, who was then in Washington, D. C, looking out for matters at that end of the line, in which he said:
It is obvious that the fine stone wall inclosing our grounds affords us an excellent defense against attack, if we will take advantage of it; and for this purpose platforms should be erected for our men to stand on and fire over; and that artillery should be ready at the gates, to be run out and sweep down a hostile force; and sand-bags should be prepared and at hand to throw up a parapet to protect the parties at these pieces of artillery; inside pieces should be placed to rake the whole length, and sweep down each side a party that should get over the walls, traverses being erected to protect parties at these pieces. A pretty strong field work, with three heavy pieces, should be erected on the side toward the river, to oppose either a floating battery or one that might be established on the island; and, finally, besides our houses, every building should be mined, with a train arranged so as to blow them up successively, as occupied by the enemy. Maj. Hagner refuses, as I mentioned to you, to do any of these things, and has given his orders not to fly to the walls to repel an approach, but to let the enemy have all the advantages of the wall to lodge himself behind it, and get possession of all outside buildings overlooking us, and to get inside and under shelter of our outbuildings, which we are not to occupy before we make resistance. This is either imbecility or d——d villainy, and in contemplating the risks we run and the sacrifices we must make in case of an attack in contrast to the vigorous and effective defense we are capable of, and which, in view of the cause of our country and humanity, the disgrace and degradation to which the Government has been subject by pusillanimity and treachery, we are now called upon to make, I get myself into a most unhappy state of solicitude and irritability. With even less force and proper disposition, I am confident we can resist any force which can be brought against us; by which I mean such force as would not be overcome by our sympathizing friends outside. These needful dispositions, with proper industry, can be made in 24 hours. There cannot be, as you know, a more important occasion nor a better opportunity to strike an effective blow at this arrogant and domineering infatuation of Secessionism than here; and must this all be lost, by either false notions of duty or covert disloyalty? As I have said, Maj. Hagner has no right to the command, and, under the 62d Article of War, can only have it by a special assignment of the President, which I do not believe has been made; but that the announcement of Gen. Scott that the command belongs to Maj. Hagner is his own decision, and done in his usual sordid spirit of partisanship and favoritism to pets, and personal associates, and toadies; nor can he, even in the present straits of the country, rise above this, in earnest devotion to justice and the wants of his country.
Lyon went to Gen. Harney to urge his right to command, from seniority of commission; but Harney sustained Hagner, who was in some things much more Harney's style than Lyon. Lyon thereupon appealed to President Buchanan, which meant to Gen. Scott, who, of course, sustained Hagner. Lyon was, therefore, forced to submit until Lincoln was inaugurated.
There was no vanity or self-seeking in this urgency of Lyon's. In the Army he was distinguished for his readiness to subordinate himself to carry out any plans which commended themselves to him. He had repeatedly offered to subordinate himself to Hagner if the latter would take what Lyon thought only the most necessary steps at that crisis for the defense of the position and stores of priceless importance.
What Lyon dreaded above all things was something akin to that which had freshly occurred at Little Rock, where Capt. Totten had withdrawn from the Little Rock Arsenal with his company in the face of a large mob of Secessionists, upon a receipt by the Governor for the arms and stores, and the promise that he would account for them to the United States Government. Lyon was determined to bury himself and his men in the ruins of the Arsenal before it should pass into the hands of the Secessionists.
Basil Duke, Colton Greene, and the other chafing young Captains had matured a plot with the connivance of Gen. Frost, of the Militia, probably somewhat at his instigation, which would brush aside the network of intrigue which Claiborne Jackson and others were spinning, bring matters to a focus, and in one blow crush Union sentiment, overawe the timid, fasten the wavering, seize the Arsenal and launch Missouri upon the tide of Secession with the Cotton States.
The police powers of the city of St. Louis had been taken away from the Mayor, Frost had his Militia in readiness, the Irish were properly worked up to a state of exasperation against the "infidel, Sabbath-breaking Dutch," and hosts of Americans were in the same net when on the day of Lincoln's inauguration the Secession flag was boldly hoisted from the roof of the Berthold Mansion, in the most prominent part of the city. At once excitement burned to fever heat. Incensed by the wanton insult, the Germans and other Unconditional Union men raged that the flag should be torn down, and crowds gathered around the Berthold Mansion for that purpose. The house had, however, been converted into an arsenal, with all the arms and ammunition that could at that time be gathered, and filled with determined men under the leadership of Duke, Greene and others, eager to precipitate a riot, under the cover of which the Irish and Americans could be hurled against the Germans, and the Arsenal seized.
Blair and the Committee of Safety saw the danger of this. Their followers were not so ready for battle as the enemy was, and in conjunction with the more conservative leaders of the other side they succeeded in restraining their indignant friends from opening up a day of blood which would have been forever memorable in the history of St. Louis. Blair at once hastened back to Washington, and a few days after the Inauguration secured from the new Secretary of War an order assigning Capt. Lyon to the command of the Arsenal. This had to come through Gen. Harney's hands, and in transmitting it he informed Capt. Lyon:
You shall not exercise any control over the operations of the Ordnance Department. The arrangements heretofore made for the accommodation of the troops at the Arsenal and for the defense of the place will not be disturbed without the sanction of the Commanding General.
This was to save Hagner's pride, as well as propitiate Gen. Harney's Secession friends in St. Louis, who were becoming very uneasy at the way the "Yankee Abolitionist" was taking hold.
The dilemma into which Gen. Harney was becoming daily more involved was far more perplexing than any he had encountered in his fighting days. A question that could be settled sword in hand never had troubled him much. Alas! this could not be—not then. On the one side were the lifelong associations and habits of thought of the plain old soldier. All of his friends were Southerners and Slaveholders, as he himself was. Nearly all of the public men he knew, the officials of the State of Louisiana, which he called his home; of Missouri, which was almost equally his home, had either gone over irrevocably to Secession, or were preparing to do so. In his real home, the Army, it was almost as bad. The next Brigadier-General above him, Daniel E. Twiggs, had just surrendered all the men and property under his command to the State of Texas. The men who controlled the War Department,—Secretary Floyd, Adjutant-General Samuel Cooper, Quartermaster-General Joe E. Johnston, Assistant Adjutants-General John Withers and George Deas, had gone into the Confederate army. Robert E. Lee, Gen. Scott's prime favorite, was preparing to do so.
On the other hand were the deep, ineradicable instincts of soldierly loyalty to the Flag under which he had fought for 40 years. The man who had hanged 60 men at one time in Mexico for deserting the Flag was likely to have a severe struggle before he could bring himself to do the same. He was deeply incensed at the "Black Republicans" for irritating the Southerners so that they felt compelled to secede, but did not believe that the latter should have seceded. At least, until Missouri seceded he was going to maintain, as best he could, the National authority in his Department.
A flashlight is thrown on his mental attitude by his reply to Lieut, (afterwards General) Schofield, when informed by him of the above-mentioned preparations for seizing the Arsenal under the cover of a riot. "A ———— outrage," he exclaimed in his usual explosive way. "Why, the State has not yet passed the Ordinance of Secession. Missouri has not gone out of the United States."
The limitations placed by Gen. Harney upon Lyon's assignment to command were aggravating. Hagner commanded the buildings, the arms, ammunition, and other stores, and the strong walls surrounding the grounds. Lyon commanded merely the men. He could not draw a musket, a cannon, or a cartridge for either, not even a hammer, a spade nor an ax, without a requisition duly approved by Harney. Nor could he change a single arrangement of the grounds without Harney's approval.
Lyon was almost nightly meeting with the Committee of Safety, and visiting the drill-rooms of the Home Guards, where he advised, encouraged and drilled the men. The Secessionists were extremely fearful that in some way he would manage to get the arms and ammunition, and besought Harney and Hagner to omit no precaution to prevent this.
When away from his Secessionist environment, Harney's soldierly instincts asserted themselves. Lyon's vigorous, uncompromising course was far more to his mind than the dull, shifty Hagner's.
One was zealous in the performance of his duty, and the other a red-tape bureaucrat, whose first thought always seemed to be to clog and hamper the men in the field. Harney had suffered too much from these "office fellows" to be especially enamored of them. Therefore he had moods, when he gave Lyon a free hand, which the latter made the most of until the General's mood changed.
During one of these Lyon had undermined the walls of the buildings, placed batteries, built banquettes for the men to fire over the walls, cut portholes, reinforced the weaker places with sandbags, and established a vigilant sentry system to prevent surprise.
The Secessionists were equally full of plans, though not of performances. Minute Men were organizing throughout the State to rush in at the given day by every train and overwhelm St. Louis, taking the Arsenal by sheer force of numbers. Many of the Captains of the large steamboats which carried on the trade between St. Louis and New Orleans were zealous Secessionists, and mooted plans for assailing the Arsenal on the river side with cannon mounted on boats, backed up by large crowds of men. But Gov. Jackson and his coterie still relied mainly upon inciting some form of riot in the city, which would allow Gen. Frost to get possession of the Arsenal with his Militia and "protect it from violence." Once in Gen. Frost's hands—then!
The Secessionists scored a point and carried dismay to the Unionists by securing an order from Gen. Scott for Capt. Lyon to attend a Court of Inquiry at Fort Leavenworth. While he was gone they might carry out their plans with comparative ease and safety. Blair, however, succeeded in getting Gen. Scott to revoke the order.
To find out precisely what the position of affairs inside the Arsenal was, and to spy out its defenses, a number of prominent citizens, among whom was James S. Rains, afterwards Brigadier-General in the Confederate army, calling themselves Grand Jurors for the United States District Court, presented themselves at the Arsenal and attempted an entrance. The Sergeant of the Guard held them awhile till he could communicate with Capt. Lyon, and they went away in anger.
There were other officers in the Arsenal whom Lyon could trust as little as he could Maj. Hagner, but Capts. Saxton and Sweeny and Lieut. Lothrop stood firmly by him in every movement, going so far as to mutually agree that they would shoot Maj. Hagner before he should be allowed to turn over the arms to the Secessionists.
The bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter and the President's call for troops threw the country into a tumult of excitement, and changed the political relations everywhere. All over the South the Secessionists were jubilant, and those in Missouri particularly exultant. Very many of the waverers at once flocked over to the Secessionists, while others sided with the Union. To what extent this change took place was as yet unknown, nor which side had a majority. Public sympathy as voiced by the leading papers seemed to be that the Union had "been riven asunder by the mad policy of Mr. Lincoln, and that it was necessary for Missouri to take a stand with the other Border States to prevent his attempting to subjugate them."
Gen. Frost submitted a memorial to Governor Jackson, in which were the following recommendations:
1. Convene the General Assembly at once.
2. Send an agent to the South to procure mortars and siege guns.
3. Prevent the garrisoning of the United States Arsenal at Liberty.
4. Warn the people of Missouri "that the President has acted illegally in calling out troops, thus arrogating to himself the war-making power, and that they are therefore by no means, bound to give him aid or comfort in his attempt to subjugate by force of arms a people who are still free; but, on the contrary, should prepare themselves to maintain all their rights as citizens of Misouri."
5. Order me (Frost) to form a military camp of instruction at or near the city of St. Louis; to muster military companies into the service of the State; and to erect batteries and do all things necessary and proper to be done in order to maintain the peace, dignity, and sovereignty of the State.
6. Order Gen. Bowen to report with his command to me (Frost) for duty.
He proposed to form a camp of instruction for the Militia on the river bluffs near the Arsenal, from which it could be commanded by guns and mortars to be obtained from the South when Frost with his brigade and that of Gen. John S. Bowen, who was afterwards to be a Major-General in the Confederate army and command a division at Vicksburg, with what volunteers they could obtain, would force Lyon to surrender the Arsenal and its stores.
While considering these recommendations the Governor received a request from the Secretary of War for four regiments of infantry, Missouri's quota of the 75,000 men the President had called for. To this Governor Jackson replied the next day:
Your dispatch of the 13th instant, making a call upon Missouri for four regiments of men for immediate service, has been received. There can be, I apprehend, no doubt but these men are intended to form a part of the President's army to make war upon the people of the seceded States. Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary in his objects, inhuman and diabolical, and cannot be complied with. Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on such an unholy crusade.
The same day he sent Capts. Greene and Duke to Montgomery with a letter to the President of the Confederacy, requesting him to furnish the siege guns and mortars which Gen. Frost wanted, and another messenger to Virginia with a similar request. He also called the Legislature to meet at Jefferson City May 2, to take "measures to perfect the organization and equipment of the Militia and raise the money to place the State in a proper attitude for defense." He did not dare order Gen. Frost to establish his military camp of instruction in St. Louis, but he took the more prudent and strictly legal course of ordering the commanding officers of the several Militia Districts of the State to assemble their respective commands at some convenient place, and go into encampment for six days for drilling and discipline. This order authorized Gen. Frost to establish his camp wherever he pleased within the City or County of St. Louis.
Gen. Bowen, who was in command of a force in the southwest to guard the State against the marauders from Kansas, was ordered to report with certain of his troops to Gen. Frost. The Arsenal at Liberty was at once seized by the Secessionists in that neighborhood, who secured several hundred muskets, four brass guns, and a large amount of powder. These proceedings of the Governor disturbed Gen. Harney greatly, and he wrote at once to Gen. Scott asking him for instructions.
Capt. Lyon did not ask or wait for instructions. He wrote at once to Gov. Dick Yates, of Illinois, to obtain authority to hold in readiness for service in St. Louis the six regiments which Illinois was called upon to furnish. Gov. Yates acted promptly, and received authority to send two or three regiments "to support the garrison of the St. Louis Arsenal." Lyon received orders to equip these troops, and to issue 10,000 additional stands of arms to the agent of the Governor of Illinois.
Mr. Blair reached St. Louis from Washington, April 17, and at once began acting with the boldness and foresight that the situation demanded. By his advice Col. Pritchard and other Union officers of the Militia resigned. He procured from the War Department an order placing 5,000 stands of arms at the disposal of Lyon for arming "the loyal citizens"—the Home Guards—and requested orders by telegraph for Capt. Lyon to muster men into the service to fill Missouri's requisition, and to have Hagner removed.
Lyon, determined not to be taken by surprise, had the streets leading to the Arsenal nightly patrolled and pickets stationed outside the walls. Gov. Jackson's Police Board complained that this was a violation of the City ordinances and in direct interference with their duties. They demanded that he should obey the law, but he refused. When they appealed to Harney, he at once ordered Lyon to quarter his men in the Arsenal and forbade him to issue arms to anyone without Harney's sanction. This brought Blair and Lyon to a parting of the ways with Harney. They demanded his removal, and April 21 Harney was removed from the command, and ordered to repair to Washington and report to the General-in-Chief.
On the same day Capt. Lyon was instructed to immediately execute the order previously given to "arm loyal citizens." He was also ordered to muster into the service four regiments, which the Governor had refused to furnish. As the men had long been in waiting, Lyon quickly organized the four regiments, which elected him their Brigadier-General. Some of the field officers of these regiments were notable men, and were to have brilliant careers during the war. The Colonel of the 1st Regiment was F. P. Blair, afterwards to become Major-General commanding a corps; the Lieutenant-Colonel was George L. Andrews, afterwards to be a Colonel in the Regular Army; the Major was John M. Schofield, later to be Major-General commanding the Twenty-third Corps, and still later Lieutenant-General commanding the Army of the United States. The Colonel of the 3d Regiment was Franz Sigel, afterwards Major-General commanding the Eleventh Corps and the Army of the Shenandoah.
The four regiments having been filled to the maximum, there were large numbers yet demanding muster. From these a fifth regiment of Missouri Volunteers and five regiments of "United States Reserves" were formed. The most notable among the field officers of these were John McNeil, Colonel of the 3d Regiment, who afterwards became a Brigadier-General, and B. Gratz Brown, Colonel of the 4th U. S. Reserves, afterwards Vice Presidential nominee on the Greeley ticket. These additional regiments formed another brigade, and elected Capt. Sweeny their Brigadier-General. After arming these 10,000 men Lyon secured the balance of the stores from all danger of treachery or capture by transferring them to Alton, Ill.., where they would be under the guardianship of loyal men.
Thus, in a few, swift weeks after the inauguration of President Lincoln, Blair and Lyon, bold even to temerity, and even more sagacious than bold, had snatched away from the sanguine Secessionists the great Arsenal, with its momentous contents, which were placed at the service of the Union.
More than 10,000 loyal men of Missouri were standing, arms in hand, on her soil to confront their enemies.
Above all, the Government showed that it would no longer tamely submit to being throttled and stabbed, but would fight, then, there, and everywhere, for its life.