Far away to the south we now began to hear, like the low growling of distant thunder, a rumbling of the approaching conflict. Early in 1861, secession ordinances in quick succession were passed by the Gulf States. By February 1st all of them, following the lead of South Carolina, through the action of their respective State conventions, had severed their relations with the Union. They also forcibly seized United States forts, arsenals, arms, custom-houses, lighthouses and subtreasuries. In Texas the United States troops had been treacherously surrendered. The Federal government offered no resistance to those who thus trampled on its authority, inaugurated revolution, and resorted to acts of war.

These hostile movements, coming before the inauguration of the President-elect, made all classes in St. Louis anxiously thoughtful. To be sure a few extreme pro-slavery men, who were pronounced secessionists, heartily approved of what the Cotton States had done, and were secretly rejoicing over it. From prudential motives they refrained from open and noisy support of the acts of the seceding States; but most of our fellow-citizens, who had formerly lived in States further south, regarded these early acts of secession as at least ill-timed and precipitate, as born of thoughtless, groundless hatred and blind passion. They were not at all prepared to join this open and violent revolt against the Federal government, and to engage in the unlawful seizure of its property. And in this conservative, pro-slavery class lay the hope of the unconditional Union men of St. Louis and Missouri. If its undivided influence, through any motives, however diverse, could be directed firmly against the secession of our State, we might remain in the Union.

Very few in St. Louis had at all anticipated such early, radical, revolutionary action on the part of the Gulf States, and perhaps least of all was it foreseen by those who were unconditionally loyal. They had fondly hoped that threatened secession would expend itself simply in violent talk; that a second and sober thought would come to control the acts of the pro-slavery States; that the ill wind would blow over without doing any serious damage. They knew, to be sure, that a messenger from Alabama had, in December, visited our Governor and Governor-elect, urging them to join in a concerted secession movement of the slave States; that in that same month South Carolina had passed an ordinance of secession; but they could not believe that this madness would continue, that the slave States would generally be infected by it. To their minds abrupt and violent secession was so palpably foolish that it seemed to them impossible that it could be approved by any large number of men in the South. But when in January one State after another seceded, and these seceded States on the 4th of February assembled by their delegates at Montgomery, Alabama, formed a confederacy, adopted a provisional government, and elected a president and vice-president, they unmistakably heard in the distance the angry growl of the coming bloody conflict.^[6]

The loyal men of St. Louis turned their eyes to Washington, hoping that they might discern something there which would quiet their baleful apprehensions. But instead of sunshine and hope, they saw there the same black war-cloud. The representatives and senators of the seceding States were shamelessly plotting the overthrow of the very government in whose legislative councils they still continued to sit. In the Cabinet of the President were some who were aiding and abetting secession. The Secretary of War, John Buchanan Floyd of Virginia, had sent large detachments of the standing army to distant and not easily accessible parts of the country, and had removed large quantities of arms and ammunition from Northern to Southern arsenals, that, at the beginning of the conflict, which he evidently believed to be close at hand, the South might be better prepared for battle than the North. In the midst of all this treachery the chief executive sat nerveless. In his last annual message, he declared that the general government had no power to coerce a State. He said: “After much serious reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress, nor to any other department of the Federal government.” He again declared: “The power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution.” Moreover, he asserted: “Congress possesses many means of preserving it (the Union) by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in its hand to preserve it by force.” This message for a moment quite disheartened the loyal men of our city. The executive of a great nation, by his own public confession, stood powerless before those domestic foes that were tearing down the government bequeathed us by our fathers. In his message he assured them that with impunity they could complete their work of dismembering the Republic. So for a time the secessionists seemed to have the upper hand all around; at Montgomery they ruled over the seceded States; at Washington they subsidized to their own interests the Federal government; its President openly proclaiming that, do what they might, he had no constitutional power to lay upon them punitively even the weight of a finger.

We had no Andrew Jackson in the presidential chair. In 1832, when South Carolina arrayed herself against the general government and proceeded to nullify its legislative acts, he said with an emphasis which showed that he was conscious of having the whole constitutional power of the nation behind him to make his words effective, “The Union, it must, and shall be, preserved;” and nullification in weakness and shame hid itself. If we had had such a President in December, 1860, when South Carolina seceded, we might have been saved from the awful conflict that, unchecked in its beginning, daily gathered to itself power until it was almost beyond control.

Loyal men throughout the nation utterly repudiated the President’s interpretation of the Constitution. The unconditional Unionists of St Louis shared the thoughts that were pervading and agitating the minds of all true patriots. But they had anxieties which were peculiar to all, in the border slave States, who were uncompromisingly loyal to the Federal government. These States, largely on strictly economic grounds, hesitated to join in the secession movement; still a large majority of their inhabitants were in profound sympathy with the underlying cause of secession, the preservation and perpetuation of slavery. So the absorbing thought of the uncompromisingly loyal men of St. Louis was, whether, in the sweep of events, they would be drawn with their State, against their will, into the vortex of secession. What could they do to avert such a dire calamity? They still hoped, even when hope was seemingly baseless, that as muttering storms which blacken the horizon often pass on and away forever, so in some way, hidden from their view, this rising, growling storm of rebellion and revolution would be finally dissipated, leaving the southern sky once more clear and serene. Nevertheless, while they were thoughtful and anxious, they were undaunted. There never was a band of braver men. The precipitate acts of the Gulf States, the disintegration of the national Congress, the unrebuked intrigues in the Cabinet of the subservient President saddened, but did not terrify them. By these untoward and ominous events their courage was re-enforced, their vision cleared, their purpose made definite and robust. They resolved anew to resist with all their heart, and with all their mind, and with all their strength the secession of Missouri from the Union. Any that had been timid became suddenly courageous; any that had been weak became strong in spirit. These unconditional loyal men, surrounded by a morass of difficulties, beset on every side by insidious, plotting political foes, often utterly at a loss in whom to confide, with everything seemingly against them, at last, fully aroused and braced for the conflict, became the hope, and, as it proved, the political salvation of St. Louis and Missouri. They became the leaders who, by wise counsels and sane action, gathered around them the conservative pro-slavery men of the city and the commonwealth, and these two classes standing together saved the State from the disaster of secession.

The fourth of March drew near. Mr. Lincoln, in tender, pathetic speech, bade adieu to his neighbors at Springfield and hastened on to Washington. As he journeyed towards the national capital the loyal of St. Louis followed him with almost breathless interest. They pored over his short speeches to the crowds that gathered to greet him at railway stations. They were thrilled with his brave and patriotic utterances at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In the malicious plot laid at Baltimore, they heard once more the rumbling of the approaching conflict; and when, in his great inaugural address, he said, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one ‘to preserve, protect, and defend’ it;” we knew that, if neither the Federal government nor the secessionists yielded, the civil war of which the President spoke would inevitably burst upon us.

But the rumblings of the bloody conflict were not heard alone in the black war-clouds that hung threateningly over the Gulf States and the national capital, but at last directly over the streets along which we daily walked.

Succeeding the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln there was a period of silence more painful than actual battle. To us who were straining our eyes toward Washington, to see what the President, of whom we expected so much, was doing; who, intent, were listening that we might hear from his lips words of cheer and wisdom, he seemed to be paralyzed. We saw nothing. We heard nothing. Perhaps he was vainly hoping that those already in rebellion against the general government would yield to his eloquent appeal at the close of his famous inaugural. “I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” But he could not, by any appeal however reasonable and urgent, persuade men in the Cotton States. It was too late. He could not extinguish a conflagration by pouring oil upon it. Perhaps, however, he himself had no hope of peace, but was noiselessly preparing for the inevitable conflict. But whatever was the cause of these days of silence, they were days of sorest trial to the loyal of our city.

During all this time the secessionists were active; active everywhere south of Mason and Dixon’s line; active in St. Louis. For the sake of peace in our city, loyal men still withheld from the public gaze the Stars and Stripes, but just at this time, when the Unionists were greatly depressed, when the tension of mind and heart was so great that it seemed that the addition of another grain would be unendurable, a rebel flag, attached to a wire, was hung out over Sixth Street near one of the central avenues of the city. The war-cloud was now right over our heads. From its black belly a thunderbolt might fall at any moment. I saw the whole street under that defiant, revolutionary flag packed with angry men. They had flocked together without collusion, from a spontaneous and common impulse. They were a unit in their determination to tear down that symbol of revolt and destroy it. My whole soul was knit in sympathy with that pulsating, heaving, throbbing throng all aflame with patriotic passion. But there soon appeared, mounted on a barrel, at the side of the street, a citizen, southern-born, and highly respected by all. He spoke from a full heart earnest words to his friends and neighbors. The din of voices gradually died away. The speaker was master of the situation. He assured that excited, indignant multitude that he was in full tide of sympathy with them, that he too ardently longed to tear down that insulting banner, but in eloquent, impassioned words he entreated them to bear patiently the stinging indignity offered to a loyal city, and not needlessly to precipitate mortal combat between those who had been for years neighbors and friends. He assured them that the secession flag would soon be taken down by the authority and arm of the government, the star-spangled banner would be vindicated and would float in honor and triumph over our streets. The quieted but resentful crowd by degrees melted away and the stars and bars, oh, the shame of it! was left there for a few days to flutter undisturbed in the breeze. It however did a good work. Every loyal man that saw it, determined as never before to stand for, and, if need be, to fight for the integrity of the Union. So that over-hanging, growling, threatening cloud did not hurl its bloody bolt among us. We were, in spite of it, mercifully still at peace.