The story of a border city during the Civil War

by Galusha Anderson

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.