The United States Arsenal was situated in the southern part of the city by the river. It contained nearly thirty thousand percussion-cap muskets, about one thousand rifles, some cannon unfit for use, a few hundred flint-lock muskets, and a large quantity of ammunition.^[14] It was the settled policy of the seceding States to seize the United States arsenals and arms within their boundaries. So those, who were now trying to force Missouri out of the Union, were intent on following the pernicious example of the seceded States. Moreover, our secession Governor was about to call out the militia of the State and put it under military drill; the militia would need arms and ammunition; both were in the Arsenal; why should not these citizen soldiers have them? Why should the sovereignty of the United States override the sovereignty of Missouri? So secessionists reasoned.

And the fight for the Arsenal began early. Each party saw clearly that those who held it would hold the city, and those who held the city would hold the State. So all eyes were riveted on the coveted prize. Isaac H. Sturgeon, a Kentuckian by birth, was Assistant United States Treasurer at St. Louis. He belonged to the southern right wing of the Missouri Democracy. He consorted with secessionists. He heard their plans for seizing the Arsenal, and as the Subtreasury vaults contained four hundred thousand dollars in gold, he began to fear that they might also seize that. He therefore wrote a cautious letter to President Buchanan, setting forth the facts of the case, and suggesting that it might be wise to send a company of soldiers to guard the money belonging to the United States. The President turned this letter over to General Scott, who forthwith sent Lieutenant Robinson to St. Louis with a detachment of forty men and ordered that they be placed at the disposal of the Assistant Treasurer. They arrived on the 11th of January, and were quartered in the Government Building. Here, in addition to the Subtreasury, were the Post-office, the Custom-house and the Federal Courts. The report that Federal soldiers, under the control of the Assistant Treasurer, were on guard over the Subtreasury, flew like wild-fire over the entire city. To put it mildly, the excitement was intense. The papers sent out extras, that were carried by running, yelling boys to almost every house. A great angry, vociferating crowd packed the narrow streets on which the Government Building stood. They hurled dire threats of vengeance against the United States, the President, the general of the army and Mr. Sturgeon, that recreant States-rights democrat. Some of the crowd were red, some pale, with anger; they were hot for a fight. But nobody was in any special danger; their rage would unquestionably soon have spent itself in angry yells and in the shaking of empty fists; but in order to calm the secession mind, General Harney, the department commander, ordered Robinson and his detachment of soldiers to the Arsenal. As they went thither the tempest subsided, and no bones were broken.

But brief as the excitement was, it invaded the capital of the State, and agitated the lawmakers there. A grave and reverend State Senator forthwith offered some resolutions, in which he characterized “this act of the administration” at Washington “as insulting to the dignity and patriotism of this State,” and asked the Governor “to inquire of the President what has induced him to place the property of the United States within this State in charge of an armed Federal force?”

Since, however, the excitement was over in St. Louis, these resolutions were never passed; and it is now difficult for us to believe that a sane legislator should ever have felt it incumbent upon him to protest against the guarding of United States property by an armed Federal force. But so good men thought and felt then.

The incident at the Government Building, which aroused such passion both in our city and throughout the State, was a side-light which revealed the settled determination of the secessionists to get control of all United States property on the sacred soil of Missouri. Perhaps the fears of Mr. Sturgeon for the safety of the Subtreasury—fears that had been awakened by the declarations of the secessionists with whom he consorted—may have been groundless, but there was no mistake in reference to the determination of the disloyal to get into their possession, at the earliest possible moment, the Arsenal and all that it contained.

To understand the fight for the Arsenal, it will be necessary for us to get before our minds as clearly as possible some of the principal characters that directed and controlled it. The first to claim our attention, though at the beginning of the contest subordinate in military rank is Captain, afterwards Brigadier-General, Nathaniel Lyon. He was a native of Connecticut, and a graduate of West Point. He had served with distinction in Florida, and in the Mexican War, brilliantly as an Indian fighter in northern California, and with moderation and wisdom in Kansas, when that territory was harassed by the lawless incursions of border ruffians. He was forty-two years old, just in his prime. He was only five feet seven inches in height. He was thin and angular, rough and rugged in appearance. He had deep-set, clear blue eyes, sandy hair and reddish-brown stubby beard. What he was in mind and heart, unfolding events soon clearly revealed. He reported for duty at the Arsenal about February 2d. He at once made himself familiar with its history. He learned that Major William H. Bell, by birth a North Carolinian, a graduate of West Point in 1820, had been its commander for several years; that the major, aside from his duties as an officer of the United States army, had amassed quite a fortune in our city in town lots and suburban property, and had come to regard St. Louis as his home; that his sympathies had been with the extreme pro-slavery men of Missouri; that in January he had pledged himself to General Frost that while he would defend the Arsenal against all mobs, he would not defend it against State troops; that as late as Jan. 24th, Frost had written this to Governor Jackson, at the same time claiming that Bell was in accord with them; that on the same day, to the honor of the military service of the United States, Bell had been removed from his command and ordered to report at New York; that he had refused to obey this order, and, instead, had had the good sense to resign his commission and retire to his farm in St. Charles County, Missouri.

So at the start, the real situation of affairs in our city was opened up to Captain Lyon.

He was now associated in military duty with Brigadier-General William Selby Harney and Major Peter V. Hagner. The former was the commander of the Department of the West. He was more than sixty years old, having been born in 1798. He was a Southerner; Louisiana was his native State. He had had large experience as a soldier in the Mexican War, and as an Indian fighter both in Florida and on the plains. He had acquitted himself with distinction as the commander of the military Department of the Pacific Coast. For several years he had lived in Missouri. And now in this time of stress no one could successfully question his patriotism, and unswerving loyalty to the Union; but he was so interlinked with Southern families, both by blood and friendships of long standing, that he was unfitted to command where grave and delicate questions, involving old neighbors and intimate friends, were constantly arising. So at last, without any stain on his honor, he was called by his government to serve in another field.

The latter, Major Hagner, was the successor of Major Bell in the command of the Arsenal. Washington, the national capital, was his birthplace. He too was a graduate of West Point and was older than Lyon. He was five years Lyon’s senior in service. But as to whether Hagner really outranked Lyon there was room for difference of opinion. Hagner had served in the ordnance department of the army, where promotions were slower than in the infantry, to which Lyon belonged. Lyon’s commission as captain in the regular army was twenty days earlier than Hagner’s; but Hagner, having received in 1847 the brevet rank of major, claimed to outrank him. Under this Lyon was restive. He saw at a glance what must be done if Missouri was to be kept in the Union. He was persuaded that Hagner was unequal to the demand made upon him by the exigencies of the hour. So, on the ground of the priority of his commission as captain, he claimed the right to supreme command. When his claim was denied, first, by Gen. Harney, and then by President Buchanan and Gen. Scott, he chafed under the decision of his superiors. He did not, however, sulk in his tent; he was too patriotic for that; yet, in his correspondence, he vigorously and somewhat ungraciously criticized those who differed from him.

While his superiors in command at St. Louis were both men of undoubted loyalty to their government, they did not have the same point of view that he had. He was originally a Connecticut democrat. In 1852 he had enthusiastically advocated the election of Franklin Pierce to the Presidency. But he was sent to do military duty in Kansas, while the people there were struggling in opposition to pro-slavery men from Missouri to make Kansas a free State. There his political views were almost completely changed. The full tide of his sympathy flowed out to the Free-State men and to the negro. He then and there became convinced that two civilizations so diametrically opposed to each other could not continue to exist peacefully under the same flag. He saw the coming of the inevitable conflict, and he was ready, not to say eager, for it.

While Harney was not in sympathy with Lyon’s political views, he nevertheless showed that he admired him both as an officer and as a man; but between Lyon and Hagner there was but little if any real fellowship. Lyon therefore formed his friendly associations in the city, outside the Arsenal. His political views led him into the company of such men as Frank P. Blair, our brilliant congressman and aggressive free-soil leader; Oliver D. Filley, our popular mayor, a New Englander by birth and education; John How, a Pennsylvanian, a member of the Union Safety Committee; and others of the same ilk, whose trumpets never gave an uncertain sound in reference to the maintenance of the Union. These uncompromising loyalists at once saw in Lyon the man for the hour and the place, and he saw in them men who would do all in their power to help him realize his aims. He frequently visited the rendezvous of the Wide-Awakes, now, under the lead of Blair, transformed into Home Guards. He encouraged them in their work, suggested plans for their more perfect organization, and often personally drilled them in the manual of arms. They needed muskets. Blair thought that they should be armed from the Arsenal; and while this was contrary to the letter of the law, Lyon was in full accord with Blair.

In view of threatened attacks on the Arsenal, Lyon urged Hagner to fortify it. He refused. He then urged him to arm the Home Guards; this he regarded as illegal, and from his point of view justly decided against it. Not that Lyon was lawless, but his reasoning was, a law that was made to preserve the Republic must not be obeyed when such obedience would destroy the Republic. In such a case obedience to the letter of the law would be disobedience to its spirit. He held that the commandant at the Arsenal was bound to defend it at all hazards, and by all means within his reach, since on the holding of it depended the political destiny of Missouri. Nothing must stand in the way of securing an end so transcendently important. Laws good and wholesome in the “weak piping time of peace,” for the highest public good may be held in abeyance in a time of revolt against constituted authority. But this captain, all aflame with patriotism, and so impatient of restraint, must still wait a little longer before unhindered he can do his appointed work.

The first of February, Blair went to Washington and in person urged President Buchanan to give Lyon the supreme command of the Arsenal; but neither he nor General Scott would consent to this, having full confidence in Harney and Hagner. But a serious disturbance around the headquarters of the Minute Men, or organized secessionists, which threatened the peace of the whole city, led Harney, on March 13th, to give the command of the troops at the Arsenal to Lyon, while Hagner was still permitted to retain his command over the ordnance stores. Nothing could have been more impractical and absurd. The Arsenal now had two heads; one over the troops, the other over the arms. If the two had been in perfect accord, the doubleheaded arrangement might have worked efficiently; but in all their thinking and methods they were at sword’s points with each other. But strange to say, out of this apparent deadlock of authority came deliverance.

This anomalous state of affairs, seemingly so favorable to the secessionists, together with a legislative act expressly in their interest, resulted in their discomfiture. In March, the secession lawmakers at Jefferson City, disappointed and incensed because the Convention at St. Louis had voted that, for the present, at least, it was inexpedient for the State to secede from the Union, determined if possible to neutralize, or to overturn, this reasonable and wise decision. They saw clearly that if in any way they could get control of St. Louis, they could through it, in spite of the Convention, control the State. They thought that if the police of the city could by some device be put under the jurisdiction of their secession Governor, there would be a rational and strong hope of uniting the destiny of St. Louis and Missouri with that of the Southern Confederacy. Swayed by this thought, and intensely anxious to realize it, they framed and passed an act, authorizing the Governor to appoint four commissioners, who, together with the mayor, should have absolute control of the police, of the local voluntary militia, of the sheriff, and of all other conservators of the peace. This act virtually threw the whole police force of the city into the hands of the Governor, and seemed also to put under his absolute control not only the ordinary local volunteer militia, but also the Minute Men, and Wide-Awakes or Home Guards of St. Louis. On the heel of this sweeping and radical legislation came the municipal election of April 1st, when Daniel G. Taylor, a plastic, conditional Union man, openly opposed to Lincoln’s administration and to the coercion of the South, was elected mayor by a majority of two thousand six hundred and fifty-eight over John How, a very popular, unconditional Union man. In the preceding February, when the city chose delegates to the Convention, the unconditional Union men had triumphed by a majority of full five thousand; but now we had elected a mayor who would play into the hands of our disloyal Governor. The cause of this backset it was difficult to discover; and the alarming thing about it all was that with a pliant mayor under the thumb of our foxy Governor we seemed to be in the tightening grip of the secessionists.

The Governor, under the recent enactment of the legislature, now appointed the police commissioners. In doing this he carried into effect this new and pernicious statute both in its letter and spirit. He had probably originally suggested it. At all events it was evidently a legislative act after his own heart. Under it he named as commissioners three of the most outspoken, virulent secessionists in the city, and a man of Northern birth, who was strongly opposed to any attempt to coerce seceded States. At the head of this interesting quartette stood Basil Wilson Duke, the acknowledged leader of the Minute Men, the organized secessionists of St. Louis. This man inspired those who hung out a rebel flag over their rendezvous on Pine Street, and defied the Union men of the city. He was a man of ability and conviction. He fought for what he believed to be right. Like the Governor that appointed him, he regarded the coming of United States troops, even for the purpose of defending United States property, as an invasion of the State that should be met and repelled by force.

But out of apparent defeat came victory; out of the gloom light streamed. Lyon at the Arsenal was undaunted. While he chafed under his limitations, he used energetically all the power that he had. Rightly regarding the holding of the Arsenal as of paramount importance, he declared, perhaps unwisely, that if the secessionists attempted to seize it, he would issue arms to the Home Guards and other Union men, and if Hagner interfered he would “pitch him into the river.” Harney, at last convinced that right there in St. Louis war was imminent, enlarged the powers of Lyon so that for the time being he had supreme command over the arms at the Arsenal as well as over the soldiers.

Lyon now, as a precautionary measure, patrolled the streets beyond the Arsenal, and planted his artillery on the bluffs above it. Against this the police commissioners protested, but Lyon would not budge. So they appealed to Harney. For the sake of peace he ordered the patrols back into the limits of the Arsenal, and forbade Lyon to issue arms to any one without his consent. This reactionary and disheartening movement on the part of Harney soon made Lyon the master of the situation. Blair appealed for relief to the Secretary of War, who at once summoned Harney to Washington. In obeying this summons on the 23d of April, he temporarily retired from his command.

Lyon had now what he and Blair had so intensely desired, supreme command at the Arsenal. He at once re-enforced it. He fortified it. All approaches to it were vigilantly guarded. Lyon was now empowered by the Federal government to arm the Home Guards; to raise and arm additional regiments and muster them into the United States’ service. So the battle within the Arsenal for the Arsenal was at last won. But what of the battle for it without?

Taken as a whole, the city at this time was tossed and torn with doubt and fear. That there was a mighty struggle on the part of the disloyal, in some way to get possession of the Arsenal, we all knew. How many of them there were, and what were their resources, we could not with any certainty ascertain. Our imaginations were often active. When we retired at night we thought it at least possible that, by some strategic stroke, we might wake up in the morning and find our city turned over into the hands of the secessionists. The very indefiniteness of the force which threatened us made our situation peculiarly weird, and filled us at times with apprehension. This hostile force was as vague and indeterminate as the shadowy power that passed before Eliphaz, concerning which he said (Job 4: 12):

Not that we feared for our personal safety. But we were often anxious lest the city, by some secret move, should be swept into the maelstrom of secession. True men could not help being anxious. Ugly rumors filled the air. The Post-office, the Custom-house, the Subtreasury, the Arsenal were all about to be seized. At last, on April 12th, the whole nation, North and South, burst into flame. Beauregard was bombarding Fort Sumter. Hostilities had not been formally declared. Without any preannouncement, the dread conflagration of war began to sweep over the land. But after all, this was but fanning into fiercer flame the fire that was already burning. For several months the seceding States had been committing acts of war in seizing the property of the United States. From the strong desire of averting armed conflict, such acts had been overlooked by the Federal authorities. The nation had been hoping for a peaceful solution of its difficulties. But now the belching cannon at Charleston, the very nest of secession, had swept away the last hope of peace. Every ear in St. Louis was attent. The shameful end came all too soon. The Old Flag, around which clustered so many glories, was lowered before a disunion army. On the 14th of April those brave troops that had so gallantly defended the fort marched out with the honors of war. There was now no longer any hesitation at the White House. The President’s call for seventy-five thousand men to put down the rebellion rang out trumpet-tongued all over the Republic. The lines that had separated political parties faded away. Persons of all shades of political opinion rallied as one man to save the Union.

To depict the effect in St. Louis of the capture of Fort Sumter and the President’s call for volunteer troops would require an abler pen than mine. At first the Union men were silent, but their thoughts were hot within them. The fall of Sumter stirred them to indignation; the call of the President inflamed their patriotism and strengthened their hope. Most of their secession neighbors for a time were also silent. They too were agitated by conflicting emotions. While the lowering of the Old Flag at the behest of Beauregard’s thundering guns lighted up their faces with smiles, they hotly protested against Lincoln’s call for troops as an invasion of State rights. But these national events that had so suddenly come upon us, producing in the minds of our fellow-citizens such varied and antagonistic effects, greatly intensified the determination of both Unionists and secessionists. Each party now began to struggle as never before to gain its end. And the immediate purpose of the one was to seize, and of the other to hold, the Arsenal.

Men of the same race, the same nation, the same State, the same city, hot with passion, stood face to face. One party declared: “Come what may, we will take the Arsenal.” The other responded: “At all hazards we will defend and retain it.” But those who determined to get possession of it did not yet understand the ability and resourcefulness of the officer who at last had secured supreme command over it. He was cool and clear-headed. He saw intuitively the manifold dangers by which he and his command were beset. He penetrated the designs of our acute and wily Governor. He unearthed his correspondence with the Confederate authorities at Montgomery. He also discovered what was going on in the rebel rendezvous of the city. He unerringly detected and unravelled the plots of the disloyal. Just how he did these things, no one knew. But his apprehension of what his enemy was doing was but the means to the end. When he made a discovery he knew just what to do. And in executing his plans he was resolute and decisive. In him, purpose and deed were yoked together, thought was crowned with act. He was admired and trusted by the loyal, but distrusted, feared and hated by the disloyal.

Even while he was in subordinate command, as early as April 16th, with perhaps unjustifiable officiousness, he had written to Governor Yates of Illinois, that it might be well for him “to make requisition for a large supply of arms, and get them shipped from the Arsenal to Springfield.”^[15] Governor Yates, acting on his suggestion, made the requisition. But the execution of the enterprise was difficult and dangerous. Secession spies swarmed in the neighborhood of the Arsenal. Everything done there was promptly reported to the disloyal of the city in their various places of meeting. These segregated secessionists grew more and more determined, come what might, to make the coveted Arsenal their own. A rumor also got afloat that the Governor had ordered two thousand of his militia down from Jefferson City to assist the secessionists in seizing it, and that he had determined to plant cannon on the heights above it and bombard it. And even if the rumor were merely a creation of the imagination, it was none the less effective on that account. It now became doubly clear that if the munitions of war at the Arsenal were to be delivered from constant liability of seizure, no time should be lost in removing them to Springfield, Illinois. In this Captain Lyon and Governor Yates were agreed. To make sure the safe delivery of them at Springfield, Governor Yates summoned to his aid Captain James H. Stokes, late of the regular army. He chose the right man for this delicate and hazardous undertaking. Under the direction of the United States authorities, he commissioned him to remove ten thousand muskets from the Arsenal in St. Louis to the capital of Illinois. To accomplish this work Captain Stokes chartered the steamer “City of Alton.” She was, however, to remain at Alton until called for.

In the meantime, Stokes, in citizen’s dress, came quietly and unobserved to St. Louis. When he went to the Arsenal, he found it surrounded by a crowd of sullen, resolute secessionists. At first he was unable even to work his way through the compact throng; but by patience and good nature he finally elbowed his way to the coveted fortress and handed to Captain Lyon the requisition from Governor Yates. At first Lyon doubted if it were possible at that time to meet it, but promptly decided that, if it could be met at all, there must be no delay in action. Both Lyon and Stokes were resourceful. The latter sent a spy into the secession camp. He met him at a designated time and place, and through him learned every move that the secessionists proposed to make. On the 25th of April, a little more than twenty-four hours after his arrival, he telegraphed the “City of Alton” to drop down to the Arsenal landing about midnight. He then returned to the Arsenal and, with the help of the soldiers there, began moving the boxes of muskets from the upper to the lower floor. When this work had been done, he sent some boxes of old flint-lock muskets up the bank of the river, as if he intended to ship them by some steamboat lying at the levee; but it was merely a blind to divert attention from his real enterprise. The secessionists eagerly followed and seized these almost worthless guns; thinking that they had secured a rich prize, they made night hideous by their boisterous rejoicing. A few of them, however, still hung round the Arsenal. These Captain Lyon arrested and locked up.

Between eleven and twelve o’clock the “City of Alton” tied up at the landing. The seven hundred men in the Arsenal quickly put aboard of her the ten thousand muskets demanded. Captain Stokes then urgently asked permission to empty the Arsenal of all guns except those that were immediately needed to arm the volunteers that Lyon was gathering around him. He was told to go ahead. With marvellous celerity, he then put aboard the steamer ten thousand more muskets, five hundred new rifle carbines, five hundred revolvers, one hundred and ten thousand musket cartridges, and a considerable quantity of miscellaneous war material. Seven thousand muskets were left to arm the St. Louis volunteers.

When in hot haste the steamer had been loaded, the word was given to push off from the landing; but she could not be moved. The boxes of muskets had been piled up around the engine-room to guard it against any shot that might be sent from the battery planted by our plausible Governor for the defence of the State on the levee above, and their weight had pressed the prow of the steamer down into the clay of the river-bank, and she stuck fast. Such a moment would have paralyzed many men; but the undaunted Stokes was cool and equal to the occasion. He cried to his energetic helpers, “Move the boxes aft.” With right good will the order was obeyed. Two hundred boxes of muskets were quickly carried astern, when the steamer’s prow was lifted free from the clay and she floated out upon deep water. “Which way?” said the captain of the “City of Alton.” Stokes replied, “Out to the channel of the river, then north to Alton.” “But,” said Captain Mitchell of the steamer, “what if the battery on the levee fires upon us?” “We will defend ourselves,” said Stokes. “What if they beat us?” asked Mitchell. “Push her to the middle of the river and sink her,” replied Stokes. “I’ll do it,” said Mitchell. On he steamed. He came abreast the battery; he passed it. Cannoneers and cannon seemed to be asleep. There was no sound from human or brazen throat. Plash, plash went the steamer’s wheels; on, on she ploughed through the murky waters, and at five in the morning reached her destination.

As soon as she touched the landing at Alton, Captain Stokes ran to the market-house and rang the fire-bell. The inhabitants roused from their morning slumbers, came pouring out of their houses, some of them half-dressed, to fight fire as soon as they found it. The Captain told them, “There is no fire; but at the landing is that steamer which you all know; it is now loaded with arms and ammunition from the Arsenal at St. Louis; to get them we outwitted and of course disappointed the secessionists; they may pursue us; so we wish as speedily as possible to get these guns to the capital of your State. Will you help us carry them from the ‘City of Alton’ to these empty freight-cars?” With a shout that rolled across the Father of Waters to the opposite shore, men, women, and children laid hold of this hard task. They tugged at the heavy boxes of muskets, carrying, dragging, wheeling them. Their enthusiasm rose every moment to a higher pitch; and just as the clock struck seven the work was done. The cargo of the steamer was on the cars. The doors were shut and padlocked. The locomotive whistled, the bell rang, the steam puffed, the wheels moved, on went the ponderous train with its coveted load amid the shouts and huzzas of the patriotic Altonians.^[16] Nor did they forget that morning their own martyred Lovejoy, who, fighting against slavery and for the freedom of the press, poured out his blood on the same spot where they then stood; and that his blood so ruthlessly spilled foretokened the awful conflict into which the whole nation was then rapidly drifting.

When the morning of April 26th dawned, to say that the secessionists of St. Louis were unhappy would be an inadequate expression of their mental state. They then discovered that they had immoderately exulted over a few worthless, flint-lock muskets; and that while they had shouted, most of the arms for which they had been scheming, had, in the darkness, slipped forever beyond their reach. When they fully apprehended that they had been artfully outwitted, their mortification was unbounded. Covered with shame, they crept into their holes. That night’s work by Lyon and Stokes was decisive and pivotal. On it the political destiny of St. Louis seemed to turn. Every day thereafter both the Arsenal and city grew more and more secure, and volunteers to defend the city gathered in ever increasing numbers.

The foundation for this volunteer movement had been laid weeks before. In February, or early in March, many of our most influential loyal citizens petitioned the Minute Men or secessionists to lay down their arms, to quit their rendezvous, and to dissolve all their military organizations, promising if they would do this, that the Wide-Awakes or Union men would do the same. This very earnest petition was for the purpose of maintaining peace within the city; but the secessionists rejected it with scorn. So some days later a regiment of Wide-Awakes appeared on the streets, bearing on their shoulders bright, burnished muskets. These were the guns of which we have before spoken, that were sent as plaster casts to our Art Exhibition. Most of this regiment were ready, when the call came, to enter the volunteer service of the United States. Many Germans of the city eagerly volunteered. Soon Captain Lyon had over three thousand men from St. Louis, all well armed and under drill. The number continued to swell till all anxiety for the safety of the Arsenal at last died away.

Now, however, a strange phenomenon arrested our attention. Many of those who were bent on forcing Missouri out of the Union, for the time being relaxed all effort. They seemed to have given up the contest. What led them thus to lay aside their open belligerency? We were able soon to solve this mystery. It had been often and confidently asserted that the Federal government was to send, from the adjoining free States, several thousand men to defend the Arsenal and other property of the United States. A little later some regiments from Illinois came. This wrought up the secessionists to fever heat. To their minds the introduction of troops from other States was an outrageous invasion of State sovereignty.

Moreover there had been for several weeks a persistent effort to misrepresent the attitude of the general government. While it was simply endeavoring to defend its property and domain, it had been dinned into the ears of the secessionists, in the most emphatic terms, that the object of the United States was invasion and subjugation; and as true men they must arise and defend their hearths and homes, wives and children against Lincoln’s minions. So our fellow-citizens, who had been devising every possible scheme to secure the secession of Missouri, thought it quite unnecessary for them to put forth any further effort to attain their object, since the incoming of soldiers from other States would produce such a revulsion of feeling against the Federal government, that the people without any further incentive would speedily determine to secede. They began to talk confidently of setting aside the decree of the Convention. But without proposing any further effort, they were quietly awaiting the natural drift of events. They believed that by the force of circumstances the State would be carried out of the Union and into the Southern Confederacy.

Their confident expectation was not altogether baseless. Clear-headed Union men saw the danger of introducing troops at that time from other States into our city. The authorities at Washington were induced to take this view of the case into serious consideration. The result was that for the time being they wisely changed their policy. Some regiments that had been ordered from Illinois to St. Louis were sent elsewhere.

Moreover, the President, carefully humoring the prejudices of those who tenaciously held the doctrine of State sovereignty, on April 30th, ordered Captain Lyon “to enroll in the military service of the United States the loyal citizens of St. Louis and vicinity, not exceeding, with those heretofore enlisted, ten thousand in number, for the purpose of maintaining the authority of the United States, and for the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of Missouri.” So the State rights men were beaten at their own game and on their own ground. In his order the President seemed carefully to respect the doctrine of State sovereignty. Only Missourians, and they from “St. Louis and vicinity,” were to defend the Arsenal and city. Could anything have been more fitting and beautiful? But the secessionists were altogether unwilling to take their own medicine. The order of the President was not to their liking. It took the wind out of their sails; it upset their calculations. If ten thousand volunteers were to be gathered from their own city and vicinity, and no troops were to come from adjoining States, State sovereignty would not apparently be infringed, and there would be no revulsion of feeling against the Federal government; and, most of all, if the secessionists should attempt to rise in force, these ten thousand local volunteers would in all probability quickly and sternly suppress them. The very care that the President had taken to humor their prejudices aroused them to intense and bitter activity against the Federal government. With warmth they asked if these ten thousand Missourians were not to be used in defending the property of the United States, the very property that they had vainly tried to get into their own hands? Was it not as unjust to use Missourians to guard Federal property within the boundaries of their own State as it was to use them to guard like property in Maryland or Virginia? Did not the President’s plausible policy ruthlessly override State sovereignty? Had not our Governor peremptorily refused to furnish the Federal government with Missouri soldiers to put down rebellion in the seceded States? Had he not already replied to Mr. Cameron, President Lincoln’s Secretary of War, that the requisition for troops from Missouri by the United States “is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and cannot be complied with?”^[17] They did not propose to submit quietly to such indignities. They were once more on fire for action, but their activity now showed itself not in any attempt to take the Arsenal, but in sharp denunciation of the Federal authorities, and in aiding in every possible way those already in open revolt.

On May 6th, an event transpired which excites laughter now, but to a large number of our fellow-citizens was natural and very serious then. The disloyal police commissioners of St. Louis, appointed by our secession Governor, in a solemn and weighty document, formally demanded of Captain Lyon the removal of all United States troops from all places and buildings occupied by them outside the Arsenal grounds. The commissioners declared that such occupancy was “in derogation of the Constitution and laws of the United States.”^[18] Captain Lyon in his reply to them asked: “What provisions of the Constitution and laws were thus violated?” The commissioners replied that originally “Missouri had sovereign and exclusive jurisdiction over her whole territory,” that she had delegated a portion of her sovereignty to the United States over certain tracts of land for military purposes, such as arsenals and parks, and asserted that outside of such places the United States had no right to occupy her soil. The whole thing was so ludicrous that thousands in St. Louis were merry over it. Police commissioners dictating as to where the United States should house the officers of its army and quarter its troops! But it was an object lesson that vividly revealed the absurdity of State sovereignty, in which so many at that time implicitly believed. Captain Lyon of course positively refused to comply with a demand so preposterous, and the commissioners with great gravity referred it to the Governor and legislature. Nothing more was ever heard of it.

During all this time the work at the Arsenal went right on. The number of volunteer soldiers daily increased. By the middle of June there were more than ten thousand of them, three fourths of whom were Germans. This latter fact should be specially noted since it alone can explain some events with which we yet shall have to deal. And under the command of Captain Lyon, the Arsenal ceased to be a bone of contention. It was no longer regarded with solicitude by the loyal of the city. It had become a bulwark of Unionism. Whatever came we felt measurably safe, since all the force of the Arsenal was now wielded to prevent the secession of Missouri, and to maintain the integrity of the Union.