Not that we feared for our personal safety. But we were often anxious lest the city, by some secret move, should be swept into the maelstrom of secession. True men could not help being anxious. Ugly rumors filled the air. The Post-office, the Custom-house, the Subtreasury, the Arsenal were all about to be seized. At last, on April 12th, the whole nation, North and South, burst into flame. Beauregard was bombarding Fort Sumter. Hostilities had not been formally declared. Without any preannouncement, the dread conflagration of war began to sweep over the land. But after all, this was but fanning into fiercer flame the fire that was already burning. For several months the seceding States had been committing acts of war in seizing the property of the United States. From the strong desire of averting armed conflict, such acts had been overlooked by the Federal authorities. The nation had been hoping for a peaceful solution of its difficulties. But now the belching cannon at Charleston, the very nest of secession, had swept away the last hope of peace. Every ear in St. Louis was attent. The shameful end came all too soon. The Old Flag, around which clustered so many glories, was lowered before a disunion army. On the 14th of April those brave troops that had so gallantly defended the fort marched out with the honors of war. There was now no longer any hesitation at the White House. The President’s call for seventy-five thousand men to put down the rebellion rang out trumpet-tongued all over the Republic. The lines that had separated political parties faded away. Persons of all shades of political opinion rallied as one man to save the Union.
To depict the effect in St. Louis of the capture of Fort Sumter and the President’s call for volunteer troops would require an abler pen than mine. At first the Union men were silent, but their thoughts were hot within them. The fall of Sumter stirred them to indignation; the call of the President inflamed their patriotism and strengthened their hope. Most of their secession neighbors for a time were also silent. They too were agitated by conflicting emotions. While the lowering of the Old Flag at the behest of Beauregard’s thundering guns lighted up their faces with smiles, they hotly protested against Lincoln’s call for troops as an invasion of State rights. But these national events that had so suddenly come upon us, producing in the minds of our fellow-citizens such varied and antagonistic effects, greatly intensified the determination of both Unionists and secessionists. Each party now began to struggle as never before to gain its end. And the immediate purpose of the one was to seize, and of the other to hold, the Arsenal.
Men of the same race, the same nation, the same State, the same city, hot with passion, stood face to face. One party declared: “Come what may, we will take the Arsenal.” The other responded: “At all hazards we will defend and retain it.” But those who determined to get possession of it did not yet understand the ability and resourcefulness of the officer who at last had secured supreme command over it. He was cool and clear-headed. He saw intuitively the manifold dangers by which he and his command were beset. He penetrated the designs of our acute and wily Governor. He unearthed his correspondence with the Confederate authorities at Montgomery. He also discovered what was going on in the rebel rendezvous of the city. He unerringly detected and unravelled the plots of the disloyal. Just how he did these things, no one knew. But his apprehension of what his enemy was doing was but the means to the end. When he made a discovery he knew just what to do. And in executing his plans he was resolute and decisive. In him, purpose and deed were yoked together, thought was crowned with act. He was admired and trusted by the loyal, but distrusted, feared and hated by the disloyal.
Even while he was in subordinate command, as early as April 16th, with perhaps unjustifiable officiousness, he had written to Governor Yates of Illinois, that it might be well for him “to make requisition for a large supply of arms, and get them shipped from the Arsenal to Springfield.”[[15]] Governor Yates, acting on his suggestion, made the requisition. But the execution of the enterprise was difficult and dangerous. Secession spies swarmed in the neighborhood of the Arsenal. Everything done there was promptly reported to the disloyal of the city in their various places of meeting. These segregated secessionists grew more and more determined, come what might, to make the coveted Arsenal their own. A rumor also got afloat that the Governor had ordered two thousand of his militia down from Jefferson City to assist the secessionists in seizing it, and that he had determined to plant cannon on the heights above it and bombard it. And even if the rumor were merely a creation of the imagination, it was none the less effective on that account. It now became doubly clear that if the munitions of war at the Arsenal were to be delivered from constant liability of seizure, no time should be lost in removing them to Springfield, Illinois. In this Captain Lyon and Governor Yates were agreed. To make sure the safe delivery of them at Springfield, Governor Yates summoned to his aid Captain James H. Stokes, late of the regular army. He chose the right man for this delicate and hazardous undertaking. Under the direction of the United States authorities, he commissioned him to remove ten thousand muskets from the Arsenal in St. Louis to the capital of Illinois. To accomplish this work Captain Stokes chartered the steamer “City of Alton.” She was, however, to remain at Alton until called for.
In the meantime, Stokes, in citizen’s dress, came quietly and unobserved to St. Louis. When he went to the Arsenal, he found it surrounded by a crowd of sullen, resolute secessionists. At first he was unable even to work his way through the compact throng; but by patience and good nature he finally elbowed his way to the coveted fortress and handed to Captain Lyon the requisition from Governor Yates. At first Lyon doubted if it were possible at that time to meet it, but promptly decided that, if it could be met at all, there must be no delay in action. Both Lyon and Stokes were resourceful. The latter sent a spy into the secession camp. He met him at a designated time and place, and through him learned every move that the secessionists proposed to make. On the 25th of April, a little more than twenty-four hours after his arrival, he telegraphed the “City of Alton” to drop down to the Arsenal landing about midnight. He then returned to the Arsenal and, with the help of the soldiers there, began moving the boxes of muskets from the upper to the lower floor. When this work had been done, he sent some boxes of old flint-lock muskets up the bank of the river, as if he intended to ship them by some steamboat lying at the levee; but it was merely a blind to divert attention from his real enterprise. The secessionists eagerly followed and seized these almost worthless guns; thinking that they had secured a rich prize, they made night hideous by their boisterous rejoicing. A few of them, however, still hung round the Arsenal. These Captain Lyon arrested and locked up.
Between eleven and twelve o’clock the “City of Alton” tied up at the landing. The seven hundred men in the Arsenal quickly put aboard of her the ten thousand muskets demanded. Captain Stokes then urgently asked permission to empty the Arsenal of all guns except those that were immediately needed to arm the volunteers that Lyon was gathering around him. He was told to go ahead. With marvellous celerity, he then put aboard the steamer ten thousand more muskets, five hundred new rifle carbines, five hundred revolvers, one hundred and ten thousand musket cartridges, and a considerable quantity of miscellaneous war material. Seven thousand muskets were left to arm the St. Louis volunteers.
When in hot haste the steamer had been loaded, the word was given to push off from the landing; but she could not be moved. The boxes of muskets had been piled up around the engine-room to guard it against any shot that might be sent from the battery planted by our plausible Governor for the defence of the State on the levee above, and their weight had pressed the prow of the steamer down into the clay of the river-bank, and she stuck fast. Such a moment would have paralyzed many men; but the undaunted Stokes was cool and equal to the occasion. He cried to his energetic helpers, “Move the boxes aft.” With right good will the order was obeyed. Two hundred boxes of muskets were quickly carried astern, when the steamer’s prow was lifted free from the clay and she floated out upon deep water. “Which way?” said the captain of the “City of Alton.” Stokes replied, “Out to the channel of the river, then north to Alton.” “But,” said Captain Mitchell of the steamer, “what if the battery on the levee fires upon us?” “We will defend ourselves,” said Stokes. “What if they beat us?” asked Mitchell. “Push her to the middle of the river and sink her,” replied Stokes. “I’ll do it,” said Mitchell. On he steamed. He came abreast the battery; he passed it. Cannoneers and cannon seemed to be asleep. There was no sound from human or brazen throat. Plash, plash went the steamer’s wheels; on, on she ploughed through the murky waters, and at five in the morning reached her destination.
As soon as she touched the landing at Alton, Captain Stokes ran to the market-house and rang the fire-bell. The inhabitants roused from their morning slumbers, came pouring out of their houses, some of them half-dressed, to fight fire as soon as they found it. The Captain told them, “There is no fire; but at the landing is that steamer which you all know; it is now loaded with arms and ammunition from the Arsenal at St. Louis; to get them we outwitted and of course disappointed the secessionists; they may pursue us; so we wish as speedily as possible to get these guns to the capital of your State. Will you help us carry them from the ‘City of Alton’ to these empty freight-cars?” With a shout that rolled across the Father of Waters to the opposite shore, men, women, and children laid hold of this hard task. They tugged at the heavy boxes of muskets, carrying, dragging, wheeling them. Their enthusiasm rose every moment to a higher pitch; and just as the clock struck seven the work was done. The cargo of the steamer was on the cars. The doors were shut and padlocked. The locomotive whistled, the bell rang, the steam puffed, the wheels moved, on went the ponderous train with its coveted load amid the shouts and huzzas of the patriotic Altonians.[[16]] Nor did they forget that morning their own martyred Lovejoy, who, fighting against slavery and for the freedom of the press, poured out his blood on the same spot where they then stood; and that his blood so ruthlessly spilled foretokened the awful conflict into which the whole nation was then rapidly drifting.
When the morning of April 26th dawned, to say that the secessionists of St. Louis were unhappy would be an inadequate expression of their mental state. They then discovered that they had immoderately exulted over a few worthless, flint-lock muskets; and that while they had shouted, most of the arms for which they had been scheming, had, in the darkness, slipped forever beyond their reach. When they fully apprehended that they had been artfully outwitted, their mortification was unbounded. Covered with shame, they crept into their holes. That night’s work by Lyon and Stokes was decisive and pivotal. On it the political destiny of St. Louis seemed to turn. Every day thereafter both the Arsenal and city grew more and more secure, and volunteers to defend the city gathered in ever increasing numbers.
The foundation for this volunteer movement had been laid weeks before. In February, or early in March, many of our most influential loyal citizens petitioned the Minute Men or secessionists to lay down their arms, to quit their rendezvous, and to dissolve all their military organizations, promising if they would do this, that the Wide-Awakes or Union men would do the same. This very earnest petition was for the purpose of maintaining peace within the city; but the secessionists rejected it with scorn. So some days later a regiment of Wide-Awakes appeared on the streets, bearing on their shoulders bright, burnished muskets. These were the guns of which we have before spoken, that were sent as plaster casts to our Art Exhibition. Most of this regiment were ready, when the call came, to enter the volunteer service of the United States. Many Germans of the city eagerly volunteered. Soon Captain Lyon had over three thousand men from St. Louis, all well armed and under drill. The number continued to swell till all anxiety for the safety of the Arsenal at last died away.