|While Jack and Harry are waiting impatiently for the order that will
give them a taste of military life, we will leave them for a while and
go down the Mississippi river to the great city of St. Louis.
The state of Missouri was one of those known as the “Border States,” as
it lay on the border between North and South. It was the most northerly
of the slaveholding states west of the Mississippi river, and the
system of slavery did not have a strong hold upon her people. Probably
the majority of her native-born citizens were in favor of slavery, or
only passively opposed to it, but it contained two hundred thousand
residents of German birth, and these almost to a man were on the side
of freedom. When the question of secession was submitted to the popular
vote, the state, by a majority of eighty-thousand votes, refused
to secede; but the governor and nearly all the rest of the state
authorities were on the side of secession, and determined to take
Missouri out of the Union in spite of the will of the people.
Governor Jackson was in full sympathy with the secession movement,
and with the reins of power in his hands he made the most of his
opportunities. General Sterling Price, who commanded the Missouri
state militia, was equally on the side of slavery and its offspring,
secession, though at first he opposed the movement for taking the state
out of the Union, and was far more moderate in his councils than was the
governor and others of the state officials. Earnestly opposed to these
men were Francis P. Blair, junior, and other unconditional Union men,
most of whom lived in St. Louis, and had for years been fighting the
battle of freedom on behalf of the state. They believed and constantly
argued that Missouri would be far better off as a free state than a
slave one, while the opponents of slavery in the Eastern and extreme
Northern states had based their arguments mainly on the ground of
justice to the black man. The Free-State men of Missouri gave the
rights of the negro a secondary place and sometimes no place at all, but
confined themselves to showing that the state would be better off
and more prosperous under freedom than under slavery. They had a good
knowledge of human nature, similar to that displayed by the author of
the old maxim that “Honesty is the best policy.”
“Be honest,” he would say, “because it is the best policy to be so, and
let the question of right or wrong take care of itself.”
All through the month of April, 1861, the plotting to take Missouri out
of the Union was carried on by the secession party, and at the same
time there was counterplotting on the part of the Union men. The
secessionists, having the aid and sympathy of the state authorities,
had the advantages on their side, and were not slow to use them. They
organized forces under the name of minute men, and had them constantly
drilling and learning the duties of soldiers. Later, under an order
issued by the Governor, they formed a camp of instruction, under
command of General D. M. Frost, in the suburbs of St. Louis, with the
openly-declared intention of capturing the United States arsenal, which
stood on the bank of the river just below the city.
At the same time the Union men were equally active, and, under the
leadership of Blair, those who were ready to fight for the preservation
of the nation were organized into a military force called the “Home
Guards.” While the plotting was going on and matters were progressing
toward actual warfare, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, who commanded at
the arsenal, caused the garrison to be strengthened, sent away the
superfluous arms and ammunition to a place of greater safety, armed
the Home Guards, and on the tenth of May surprised the secessionists
by marching out in force and capturing Camp Jackson, the camp of
instruction already mentioned.
In order to have good reason for making the capture, Captain Lyon
visited Camp Jackson in disguise and went through it from one end to the
other. What he found in the camp gave him sufficient reason for action.
Here it is:
When the state of Louisiana seceded from the Union the United States
arsenal at Baton Rouge was seized by the state authorities, who took
forcible possession of the arms and munitions of war that they found
there. When he was planning to capture the arsenal at St. Louis,
Governor Jackson found that he needed some artillery with which to open
fire from the hills that command the arsenal, which is on low ground on
the bank of the river.
Governor Jackson sent two officers to the Confederate capital, which was
then at Montgomery, Alabama, to make an appeal to Jefferson Davis for
artillery from the lot taken at Baton Rouge, and explain for what it was
wanted. President Davis granted the request, ordered the commandant at
Baton Rouge to deliver the artillery and ammunition as desired, and he
wrote at the same time to Governor Jackson as follows:
* * * After learning as well as I could from the gentlemen accredited to
me what was most needed for the attack on the arsenal, I have directed
that Captains Greene and Duke should be furnished with two 12-pound
howitzers and two 32-pound guns, with the proper ammunition for each.
These, from the commanding hills, will be effective against the garrison
and to break the inclosing walls of the place. I concur with you in the
great importance of capturing the arsenal and securing its supplies.
* * * We look anxiously and hopefully for the day when the star of Missouri
shall be added to the constellation of the Confederate States of
America.
With the best wishes I am, very respectfully, yours,
Jefferson Davis.
The cannon and ammunition reached St. Louis on the eighth of May, and
were immediately sent to Camp Jackson. The negotiations for them had
been known to Blair and Lyon, and as soon as they learned of the arrival
of the material which would be so useful in capturing the arsenal, they
determined to act. Captain Lyon, as before stated, went in disguise
through the camp on the ninth, saw with his own eyes the cannon and
ammunition, learned that they had come from Baton Rouge, and was told
for what purpose they were intended.
Here was the stolen property of the United States in the hands of the
enemies of the government, and intended to be used for further thefts by
violence. There could be no doubt of his duty in the matter, except in
the mind of a secessionist or his sympathizer.
By the secessionists the capture of Camp Jackson was looked upon as
a great outrage, for which the Union men had no authority under the
Constitution and laws either of the United States or of the state of
Missouri. It was a peculiar circumstance of the opening months of
the rebellion, and in fact all through it, that the rebels and their
sympathizers were constantly invoking the Constitution of the United
States wherever it could be brought to bear against the supporters of
the government; so much was this the case that in time it came to be
almost a certainty that any man who prated about the Constitution was
on the side of the rebellion. The men who were ready to violate it were
those who constantly sought to shield themselves behind it.
As an illustration of this state of affairs, may be cited the letter
of Governor Jackson in reply to the proclamation of President Lincoln
calling for seventy-five thousand troops for three months, “to maintain
the honor, the integrity and the existence of our National Union, and
the perpetuity of popular government; * * * and to repossess the forts,
places, and property which have been seized from the Union.”
[Illustration: 025]
Missouri was called upon for four regiments of militia as her quota of
the seventy-five thousand. Governor Jackson replied to the president
that he considered the requisition “illegal, unconstitutional and
revolutionary in its objects, inhuman and diabolical, and cannot be
complied with.” At the same time he was going on with preparations
for carrying the state out of the Union, contrary to the desires of a
majority of its inhabitants, as if they had no rights that he was bound
to respect!
As before stated, the arsenal at St. Louis is completely dominated by
the range of hills beyond it, and a military force having possession of
these hills would have the arsenal in its control. The secession leaders
laid their plans to take possession of these hills in order to capture
the arsenal. Learning of their intentions, Captain Lyon threw up a line
of defensive works in the streets outside the walls of the arsenal,
whereupon the secessionists invoked the local laws and endeavored to
convince him that he had no right to do anything of the kind. The board
of police commissioners ordered him to keep his men inside the walls
of the arsenal, but he refused to do so, and for this he was loudly
denounced as a violator of the law.
There were about seven hundred men in Camp Jackson, under command of
General Frost. Captain Lyon had issued arms to several regiments of
the Home Guards of St. Louis, in spite of the protest of the police
commissioners, who considered his action in doing so highly improper.
These regiments, added to the regular soldiers composing the garrison
at the arsenal, gave Captain Lyon a force of six or seven thousand men,
with which he marched out on Friday, the tenth of May, surrounded Camp
Jackson, and demanded its surrender. Under the circumstances General
Frost could do nothing else than surrender, which he did at once. The
militia stacked their arms and were marched out on their way to the
arsenal. A short distance from the camp they were halted for some time,
and during the halt a large crowd of people collected, nearly all of
them being friends of the prisoners or sympathizers with secession.
Most of the Home Guards were Germans, and during the halt they were
reviled with all the epithets with which the tongues of the secession
sympathizers were familiar. These epithets comprised all the profanity
and vulgarity known to the English language in its vilest aspects, and
added to them was the opprobrious name of “Dutch blackguards,” which
was applied in consequence of one of the companies calling itself _Die
Schwartze Garde_. Without orders, some of the soldiers fired on the
jeering mob; the fire passed along the line until several companies had
emptied their rifles, and twenty-eight people fell, killed or mortally
wounded, among them being three prisoners. Then the firing ceased as
suddenly as it began, and the prisoners were marched to the arsenal.
On the eleventh all the captured men were liberated on their parole
not to bear arms against the United States. One officer, Captain Emmett
McDonald, refused to accept release on this condition, and like a true
secessionist sought his remedy through the Constitution and the laws
of the country. It took a long time to secure it, but eventually he was
liberated on a technicality, went South and joined the Southern cause,
and was killed in battle not long afterward.
“What has all this to do with Jack and Harry?” the impatient reader
asks. We shall very soon find out.