CHAPTER II. ST. LOUIS AND CAMP JACKSON.
|While Jack and Harry are waiting impatiently for the order that willgive them a taste of military life, we will leave them for a while andgo down the Mississippi river to the great city of St. Louis.
The state of Missouri was one of those known as the “Border States,” asit lay on the border between North and South. It was the most northerlyof the slaveholding states west of the Mississippi river, and thesystem of slavery did not have a strong hold upon her people. Probablythe majority of her native-born citizens were in favor of slavery, oronly passively opposed to it, but it contained two hundred thousandresidents of German birth, and these almost to a man were on the sideof freedom. When the question of secession was submitted to the popularvote, the state, by a majority of eighty-thousand votes, refusedto secede; but the governor and nearly all the rest of the stateauthorities were on the side of secession, and determined to takeMissouri 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 hisopportunities. General Sterling Price, who commanded the Missouristate militia, was equally on the side of slavery and its offspring,secession, though at first he opposed the movement for taking the stateout of the Union, and was far more moderate in his councils than was thegovernor and others of the state officials. Earnestly opposed to thesemen were Francis P. Blair, junior, and other unconditional Union men,most of whom lived in St. Louis, and had for years been fighting thebattle of freedom on behalf of the state. They believed and constantlyargued that Missouri would be far better off as a free state than aslave one, while the opponents of slavery in the Eastern and extremeNorthern states had based their arguments mainly on the ground ofjustice to the black man. The Free-State men of Missouri gave therights of the negro a secondary place and sometimes no place at all, butconfined themselves to showing that the state would be better offand more prosperous under freedom than under slavery. They had a goodknowledge of human nature, similar to that displayed by the author ofthe old maxim that “Honesty is the best policy.”
“Be honest,” he would say, “because it is the best policy to be so, andlet the question of right or wrong take care of itself.”
All through the month of April, 1861, the plotting to take Missouri outof the Union was carried on by the secession party, and at the sametime there was counterplotting on the part of the Union men. Thesecessionists, having the aid and sympathy of the state authorities,had the advantages on their side, and were not slow to use them. Theyorganized forces under the name of minute men, and had them constantlydrilling and learning the duties of soldiers. Later, under an orderissued by the Governor, they formed a camp of instruction, undercommand of General D. M. Frost, in the suburbs of St. Louis, with theopenly-declared intention of capturing the United States arsenal, whichstood on the bank of the river just below the city.
At the same time the Union men were equally active, and, under theleadership of Blair, those who were ready to fight for the preservationof the nation were organized into a military force called the “HomeGuards.” While the plotting was going on and matters were progressingtoward actual warfare, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, who commanded atthe arsenal, caused the garrison to be strengthened, sent away thesuperfluous arms and ammunition to a place of greater safety, armedthe Home Guards, and on the tenth of May surprised the secessionistsby marching out in force and capturing Camp Jackson, the camp ofinstruction already mentioned.
In order to have good reason for making the capture, Captain Lyonvisited Camp Jackson in disguise and went through it from one end to theother. 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 Statesarsenal at Baton Rouge was seized by the state authorities, who tookforcible possession of the arms and munitions of war that they foundthere. When he was planning to capture the arsenal at St. Louis,Governor Jackson found that he needed some artillery with which to openfire from the hills that command the arsenal, which is on low ground onthe bank of the river.
Governor Jackson sent two officers to the Confederate capital, which wasthen at Montgomery, Alabama, to make an appeal to Jefferson Davis forartillery from the lot taken at Baton Rouge, and explain for what it waswanted. President Davis granted the request, ordered the commandant atBaton Rouge to deliver the artillery and ammunition as desired, and hewrote at the same time to Governor Jackson as follows:
* * * After learning as well as I could from the gentlemen accredited tome what was most needed for the attack on the arsenal, I have directedthat Captains Greene and Duke should be furnished with two 12-poundhowitzers and two 32-pound guns, with the proper ammunition for each.These, from the commanding hills, will be effective against the garrisonand to break the inclosing walls of the place. I concur with you in thegreat importance of capturing the arsenal and securing its supplies.* * * We look anxiously and hopefully for the day when the star of Missourishall be added to the constellation of the Confederate States ofAmerica.
With the best wishes I am, very respectfully, yours,
Jefferson Davis.
The cannon and ammunition reached St. Louis on the eighth of May, andwere immediately sent to Camp Jackson. The negotiations for them hadbeen known to Blair and Lyon, and as soon as they learned of the arrivalof the material which would be so useful in capturing the arsenal, theydetermined to act. Captain Lyon, as before stated, went in disguisethrough the camp on the ninth, saw with his own eyes the cannon andammunition, learned that they had come from Baton Rouge, and was toldfor what purpose they were intended.
Here was the stolen property of the United States in the hands of theenemies of the government, and intended to be used for further thefts byviolence. There could be no doubt of his duty in the matter, except inthe mind of a secessionist or his sympathizer.
By the secessionists the capture of Camp Jackson was looked upon asa great outrage, for which the Union men had no authority under theConstitution and laws either of the United States or of the state ofMissouri. It was a peculiar circumstance of the opening months ofthe rebellion, and in fact all through it, that the rebels and theirsympathizers were constantly invoking the Constitution of the UnitedStates wherever it could be brought to bear against the supporters ofthe government; so much was this the case that in time it came to bealmost a certainty that any man who prated about the Constitution wason the side of the rebellion. The men who were ready to violate it werethose who constantly sought to shield themselves behind it.
As an illustration of this state of affairs, may be cited the letterof Governor Jackson in reply to the proclamation of President Lincolncalling for seventy-five thousand troops for three months, “to maintainthe honor, the integrity and the existence of our National Union, andthe perpetuity of popular government; * * * and to repossess the forts,places, and property which have been seized from the Union.”
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Missouri was called upon for four regiments of militia as her quota ofthe seventy-five thousand. Governor Jackson replied to the presidentthat he considered the requisition “illegal, unconstitutional andrevolutionary in its objects, inhuman and diabolical, and cannot becomplied with.” At the same time he was going on with preparationsfor carrying the state out of the Union, contrary to the desires of amajority of its inhabitants, as if they had no rights that he was boundto respect!
As before stated, the arsenal at St. Louis is completely dominated bythe range of hills beyond it, and a military force having possession ofthese hills would have the arsenal in its control. The secession leaderslaid their plans to take possession of these hills in order to capturethe arsenal. Learning of their intentions, Captain Lyon threw up a lineof defensive works in the streets outside the walls of the arsenal,whereupon the secessionists invoked the local laws and endeavored toconvince him that he had no right to do anything of the kind. The boardof police commissioners ordere
d him to keep his men inside the wallsof the arsenal, but he refused to do so, and for this he was loudlydenounced as a violator of the law.
There were about seven hundred men in Camp Jackson, under command ofGeneral Frost. Captain Lyon had issued arms to several regiments ofthe Home Guards of St. Louis, in spite of the protest of the policecommissioners, who considered his action in doing so highly improper.These regiments, added to the regular soldiers composing the garrisonat 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 CampJackson, and demanded its surrender. Under the circumstances GeneralFrost could do nothing else than surrender, which he did at once. Themilitia stacked their arms and were marched out on their way to thearsenal. A short distance from the camp they were halted for some time,and during the halt a large crowd of people collected, nearly all ofthem being friends of the prisoners or sympathizers with secession.
Most of the Home Guards were Germans, and during the halt they werereviled with all the epithets with which the tongues of the secessionsympathizers were familiar. These epithets comprised all the profanityand vulgarity known to the English language in its vilest aspects, andadded to them was the opprobrious name of “Dutch blackguards,” whichwas applied in consequence of one of the companies calling itself _DieSchwartze Garde_. Without orders, some of the soldiers fired on thejeering mob; the fire passed along the line until several companies hademptied their rifles, and twenty-eight people fell, killed or mortallywounded, among them being three prisoners. Then the firing ceased assuddenly as it began, and the prisoners were marched to the arsenal.
On the eleventh all the captured men were liberated on their parolenot to bear arms against the United States. One officer, Captain EmmettMcDonald, refused to accept release on this condition, and like a truesecessionist sought his remedy through the Constitution and the lawsof the country. It took a long time to secure it, but eventually he wasliberated 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 readerasks. We shall very soon find out.