On the 19th of May, 1862, Edward Everett came to us and delivered his famous oration on Washington. Very few in our city had ever before seen him. A large audience of the most intelligent and cultured among us gathered to hear him. The style of his great speech was clear and finished; his elocution, while a little stately, was nearly faultless; his voice was agreeable and reaching; his gestures graceful and fitting, but he lacked magnetism. His whole effort seemed somewhat studied and a bit mechanical. When pronouncing a given phrase he stretched out his arm and from the palm of his hand extended one finger; when uttering another, he extended two fingers; when enunciating another, three fingers; and now and then in making a full-arm gesture he opened the whole hand. One could not help thinking that before appearing in public he had carefully drilled himself before a looking-glass.

His audience listened intently, but was not much moved. He appealed to the head far more strongly than to the heart. Still to sit at the feet of so distinguished an orator was to us all a rare treat.

He was not only gathering funds to complete the Washington monument at the national capital, but was still endeavoring, through the love borne to Washington by the people both of the North and South, to unite a divided and warring nation. Amid the clash of arms he was eloquently pleading for peace. His purpose was noble, but his effort was futile. The ears of contending hosts, seething with the passions of war, were deaf to all appeals for peace. One might as well have undertaken to put out the fires of a conflagration by a speech, as to stay the bloody national conflict then raging by an oration on Washington.

Fiercer war soon followed this eloquent pleading for good will and harmony. When, in April, General Halleck departed for Corinth, Mississippi, he left General Schofield in command of the greater part of our State, and on the 1st of June he put him in temporary command of the entire Department of Missouri. General Schofield now sent all the soldiers that could possibly be spared from St. Louis and Missouri to swell the ranks of the army in Mississippi. The ever watchful enemy learned from spies among us that we were largely denuded of national troops, and determined to put forth one more vigorous effort to secure the secession of Missouri.

Their hostile campaign had been manifestly skilfully planned. Their open and aggressive movement began in the latter part of June. All at once guerrillas swarmed in every part of the State. It is estimated that there were full ten thousand of them.^[89] They were first in northeast, then in central and western, Missouri; now here, now there, they looted and burned the houses of Union men; plundered farms and villages; tore up railroad tracks; destroyed bridges; attacked different detachments of militia; were by turns victorious and defeated; but on August 13th, having massed their forces, they won a signal victory over the Union troops at Independence, and two days later ambushed eight hundred of them in Jackson County. No one now cares for the rebel Colonels Porter, Quantrell, Cobb, Poindexter, Coffee, McBride and Hughes; but they were then the chief figures in these scenes of desolation. But when they were at the height of their success, the scale turned. General Blunt from Kansas appeared with a small but well-appointed army and drove them with their ill-gotten plunder into Arkansas.

But as flies when brushed away at once return again, so they appeared again in September, in northeast Missouri, and so effective were their movements that for the time being they took possession of that part of the State, except posts adequately garrisoned by United States troops.

But during this period of turmoil General Schofield was wide awake. On June 22d, very soon after these devastating raids began, he issued an order in which he held “rebels and rebel-sympathizers responsible in their property, and, if need be, in their persons, for damages thereafter committed by guerrillas or marauding parties.” And while this had no immediate effect the order was not in vain. It was the precursor of energetic action. On the 22d of July, Governor Gamble authorized the general to organize the entire militia of the State, and to order so much of it into active service, as he should deem necessary to put down all marauders, and to defend the peaceable citizens of the commonwealth. On the same day, Schofield commanded the immediate organization of the militia “for the purpose of exterminating the guerrillas infesting the State.” This difficult work was pushed with great rapidity and was soon effected.

In September, Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas were made a single military district, and over it was put in command General Curtis, with headquarters at St. Louis. General Schofield now took the field. It is important that each army have a name, and the one that he led, made up largely of State militia, was quite appropriately called the “Army of the Frontier.” He moved his forces wisely, and with great energy. He vanquished his enemies in battle, and by October 10th had cleared southwest Missouri of them, and driven them into Arkansas, which was a refuge for rebels worsted in our State. By the close of the month, two able Union colonels had driven all rebel guerrillas from southeast Missouri into the same haven. So ended that memorable guerrilla uprising, and for a season our State was quite generally free from the turmoil of war.

Now we in St. Louis were bound up, as in one bundle, with all that transpired in the State. We learned by manifold experiences that there was a depth of meaning in the phrase, “body politic.” The sensation from a stinging blow on toe or finger is no more certainly conveyed to the brain, than were the distresses in the State quickly felt in our city. When any part of our commonwealth suffered, we suffered. So we realized with ever-increasing clearness that our destiny was one with that of the State at large. Whatever our differences might be, together we should stay in the Union, or together go out of it. So when in June came the unexpected guerrilla uprising, that seemed simultaneously to burst out of the earth in all parts of the commonwealth, it put all St. Louis in an attitude of defence. Most of the army that had been our protection were in the field far to the south. For many months we had had an organization of Home Guards, and now with fresh zeal they gave themselves to military drill. Many hitherto supine joined them. One regiment was made up of old men. To see them in uniform and under arms was an inspiration. Their ranks were full. They marched along the streets with firm, determined tread, their gray hair and white beards speaking eloquently of their devotion and patriotism.

New regiments were formed. I joined one of them. We were drilled on the ground floor of a defunct brewery. There we marched and countermarched and went through with the manual of arms, so that if the city should be attacked we might defend it with some degree of efficiency.

But stirring us up to make more complete preparation for the defence of the city was not the sole outcome of the guerrilla uprising; the devastation wrought by it in the State sent flying to us for succor another swarm of refugees. Fortunately, many of them could care for themselves, still a large contingent were dependent on the government and on private charity for the necessaries of life.

But the saddest result of the ruthless guerrilla campaign was the shutting up for many months of the common schools in nearly every county of the State. Such a calamity was measureless. And while our city schools were undisturbed, we keenly sympathized with our fellow-citizens in the State, and learned anew that, in what was of highest worth, we were kin.