The watchfires of freedom were kindled, and on every hill and through the valleys poured a tide of armed men, unconquerable and resistless. These western men took the field, ready at once for the deadly strife. Their entire lives had been one incessant training for the hardships and dangers of war. They had but one regret—that their march was against brothers armed against the nation—all else was merged in the glorious thought that they, the very children of liberty, had the power to yield up everything, even life, and home, that a great country should be maintained in every inch of its soil and every right of its people.
Long had the great West toiled to feed the starving nations of the earth. Long had she poured from her overflowing storehouses countless millions of food into the waiting lap of the needy manufacturing countries. From her great wealth of food she had always been ready to feed the world. When the war-cry aroused her, she was just as strong and just as prompt to fight the world. The national honor was hers to reverence and avenge. The old flag—its emblem and its glory—who should spring to its rescue if not the West? Did not a chain of crystal lakes crown her at the north, clasped together by the eternal emeralds of Niagara? Was not the Mississippi, her great highway to the gulf, a mighty thoroughfare, which no force should wrest from her while she had power to hold its banks with serried walls of steel? Was this river, the pathway of her greatness, one source of her renown, to be blocked up while she could cleave her own mountains asunder, and force them to give forth iron for gunboats, or gather lead from her bosom to mould into bullets? Not while these people could turn their workshops into manufactories of war-missiles, and their prairie steeds into chargers, should an enemy—brother or stranger—take one right from the West by force. This was the stern resolve of our pioneer men when the war-trumpet rang over the prairies of the West, and quick to act as prompt to resolve, her people arose as one man. There was no cavil about trifles then. Her fertile fields were stripped of their wealth, and her prairies of their cattle to furnish food—not alone to furnish food for themselves, but for the armies of the East. Soon her rivers swarmed with iron-clad gunboats, and her railways became military roads—her cities tented fields, her palaces recruiting offices, her cabins free homes for soldiers when their faces turned toward the war.
The West was impatient of nothing but delay—but she chafed wildly at any obstacle that impeded the progress of her armies.
How well these men have fought, and with what heroism they have suffered, let the record we are about to make of Henry, Donelson, Pittsburgh Landing, and many another bravely contested point, answer. Let the noble hearts stilled in death, and countless graves upon which the tender grass is now springing, answer.
With battle songs on their lips they marched away from their homes, with battle cries upon their lips many of them fell gloriously, never to see those homes again. If the West has been brave in war, so will she prove generous when Peace shall come. The nation they have helped to save, and those in revolt, when true brotherhood comes back, will yet give the West a monument worthy of its fame.
MISSOURI.
The geographical position of Missouri is such, that if thrown into the scale, she would weigh heavily either for or against the Union. When the war broke out her people were divided, though the majority were believed to be loyal to the Constitution; and when the Governor refused to meet the requisition of the President for troops to sustain the national flag, Hon. Frank P. Blair and other prominent citizens of the State, replied, on their personal responsibility, that the quota of four regiments should be raised, without either the aid of the Governor or his consent. In order to give character and legality to their proceedings, and to guard against the power of the State rulers, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, of the United States army, then in command of the Arsenal at St. Louis, was directed by the Government, on the 30th of April, to enrol in the military service of the United States, from the loyal citizens of the city and vicinity, 10,000 men, for the purpose of maintaining the authority of the Government—for the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of Missouri, and to guard against any attempt on the part of the secessionists to gain military possession of the city of St. Louis. Captain Lyon was also instructed that this force should be disbanded when the emergency ceased to exist.
Recruiting offices were opened, under his direction, the loyal citizens were prompt in their response, and on the 2d of May, Colonel F. B. Blair announced that the four regiments called for from that State had been enrolled, equipped, and mustered into service.
The Police Commissioners of St. Louis had called upon Captain Lyon, on the opening of recruiting stations, and demanded the removal of the United States troops from all places and buildings occupied by them in the city outside of the Arsenal grounds, but he declined compliance, and the Commissioners referred the matter to the Governor and the Legislature, alleging that such occupancy was derogatory to the Constitution of the United States—that Missouri had “sovereign and exclusive jurisdiction over her entire territory,” and had delegated a portion of that territory only (the Arsenals, etc.,) to the United States for military purposes.