The first act of the Union authorities was to remove by night all the munitions from the United States Arsenal near St. Louis, to Alton, Illinois. When the Rebels learned it, they were intensely exasperated. The Union troops were commanded by a quiet, slender, stooping, red-haired, pale-faced officer, who walked about in brown linen coat, wearing no military insignia. He was by rank a captain; his name was Nathaniel Lyon.
On the tenth of May, Capt. Lyon, with three or four hundred regulars, and enough volunteers to swell his forces to five thousand, planted cannon upon the hills commanding Camp Jackson, and sent to Gen. Frost a note, reciting conclusive evidence of its treasonable intent, and concluding as follows:
"I do hereby demand of you an immediate surrender of your command, with no other conditions than that all persons surrendering shall be humanely and kindly treated. Believing myself prepared to enforce this demand, one-half hour's time will be allowed for your compliance."
This contrasted so sharply with the shuffling timidity of our civil and military authorities, usual at this period, that Frost was surprised and "shocked." His reply, of course, characterized the demand as "illegal" and "unconstitutional." In those days there were no such sticklers for the Constitution as the men taking up arms against it! Frost wrote that he surrendered only upon compulsion—his forces being too weak for resistance. The encampment was found to contain twenty cannon, more than twelve hundred muskets, many mortars, siege-howitzers, and shells, charged ready for use—which convinced even the most skeptical that it was something more than a school for instruction.
The garrison, eight hundred strong, were marched out under guard. There were many thousands of spectators. Hills, fields, and house-tops were black with people. In spite of orders to disperse, crowds followed, jeering the Union troops, throwing stones, brickbats, and other missiles, and finally discharging pistols. Several soldiers were hurt, and one captain shot down at the head of his company, when the troops fired on the crowd, killing twenty and wounding eleven. As in all such cases, several innocent persons suffered.
Intense excitement followed. A large public meeting convened that evening in front of the Planter's House—heard bitter speeches from Governor Jackson, Sterling Price, and others. The crowd afterward went to mob The Democrat office, but it contained too many resolute Unionists, armed with rifles and hand-grenades, and they wisely desisted.
Sterling Price Joins the Rebels.
Sterling Price was president of the State Convention—elected as an Unconditional Unionist. But, in this whirlwind, he went over to the enemy. An old feud existed between him and a leading St. Louis loyalist. Price had a small, detached command in the Mexican war. Afterward, he was Governor of Missouri, and candidate for the United States Senate. An absurd sketch, magnifying a trivial skirmish into a great battle, with Price looming up heroically in the foreground, was drawn and engraved by an unfortunate artist, then in the Penitentiary. It pleased Price's vanity; he circulated it largely, and pardoned out the suffering votary of art.
Severe Loss to the Unionists.
When the Legislature was about voting for United States Senator, Frank Blair, Jr., then a young member from St. Louis, obtained permission to say a few words about the candidates. He was a great vessel of wrath, and administered a terrible excoriation, pronouncing Price "worthy the genius of a convict artist, and fit subject for a Penitentiary print!" Price was defeated, and the rupture never healed.