For two or three days rumors had reached General Frost that Captain Lyon was preparing to attack his encampment, and these rumors were so numerous and persistent, that Frost, on the morning of May 10th, addressed a letter to Captain Lyon referring to these ominous reports and wishing to know if there was any truth in them; also declaring that neither he nor his command intended any hostility “towards the United States, or its property or representatives.” How Frost could say this is a mystery. In January he secured from the disloyal Major Bell the pledge that he would not defend the Arsenal against State troops and so reported to Governor Jackson; in April he was in conference with the Governor and chief secessionists of St. Louis; in a formal memorial he had already prayed the Governor to authorize him to form a military encampment near the city, and advocated placing it on the heights above the Arsenal; immediately thereafter the Governor in an autograph letter, sent by two of the secessionists with whom he and Frost had been plotting to take the very property of the United States that Frost now declared he had no intention of touching, solicited personally from Jefferson Davis cannon to be planted on those heights, where Frost contended that his encampment should be formed. This very loyal man a little later went straight into the rebel army. He evidently went to his own place. On June 12th, 1861, he openly proclaimed himself a rebel.[[24]] In December of that year he was doing for the Southern Confederacy the work of a spy at St. Louis.[[25]] The sandy-haired, blue-eyed Captain at the Arsenal knew Frost’s real character; and did not deign to answer his letter that was so full of professed loyalty to the United States.
All of Lyon’s forces were at noon gathered at the Arsenal and ready to do his bidding. About two o’clock he divided his brigade into three detachments and ordered them to proceed by different routes to Camp Jackson. Two of them went on different streets up through the central part of the city, one along its western boundary. They arrived simultaneously on different sides of the camp and took possession of every approach to it. The artillery took positions on the higher points of ground around the encampment. The whole movement was executed with skill and precision. Lyon now sent a communication to Frost, setting forth what he considered to be the real character of his camp. He demanded the immediate and unconditional surrender of his entire command. He gave him thirty minutes to decide what he would do. Frost now had a brief consultation with his staff. They saw that they were surrounded by a force greatly superior to their own. To fight would be worse than folly. They chose the part of wisdom and surrendered. They turned over to the United States forces all their arms, ammunition, accoutrements and camp equipage.
The excitement produced in the city by the marching of Lyon’s troops through it, and by his investment and capture of the secession camp, was wide-spread and intense. To what deeds of violence it might lead no one could conjecture, but all feared some catastrophe. When the troops were moving towards the encampment, almost involuntarily I joined the throngs on the street that were hurrying thitherward. I met a large sandy-haired man, fully six feet in height, hat in hand, head partially bald, with shaggy over-hanging eyebrows. He was a stranger to me. He was not apparently in a rage, but his massive frame shook with emotion. He knew me, and with nervous, jerky gesticulation and in a loud tone of voice he cried, “This is the result of just such preaching as yours!” I replied, “What do you think Lyon is going to do?” With still greater vehemence he cried out, “He’s gone out to kill all the boys,—to kill the boys,” and strode on faster than I cared to go. He was a slightly exaggerated example of the agitation that swayed and impelled the thousands that were gathering in the neighborhood of that fated camp. It was invested at half past three in the afternoon. Then men came running from all directions with rifles, shot guns and pistols. When they heard of the movement of Lyon and Blair they had, by common impulse, started out, with such weapons as they could command on the spur of the moment, to re-enforce the brigade of Frost. It was a pity that they arrived too late. If they had been thirty minutes earlier the number of prisoners taken by Lyon would have been largely increased, and possibly the unfortunate and needless effusion of blood, which marked the close of the scene at Camp Jackson, would have been avoided.
Lyon offered to release the prisoners if they would swear to support the Constitution of the United States, and not to take up arms against the Federal government. This they then refused to do on the ground that they had already taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, and to repeat it would be a confession of disloyalty. So they were marched out of the camp, forming a long column between two lines of Union soldiers. While this column of prisoners was being completed those farthest in advance were brought to a halt. That brief delay resulted in bloody disaster. Many of the prisoners belonged to families of high social standing in the city. The soldiers that were in line on either side of them were mostly Germans, always scornfully called Dutch by the secessionists. Throngs of angry men and women pressed up close to them, gesticulating and heaping upon them opprobrious, stinging epithets. It was difficult for them to endure this without retaliation. Among those who upbraided them were the men who had hurried thither with arms to re-enforce the camp. With their rifles, shotguns and pistols in hand they bitterly taunted, and struck with their fists, the captors of their relatives and friends. Human nature at last gave way. A few of the soldiers at the head of the column turned and fired into the mocking, vituperative crowd and for their rash act were promptly put under arrest. By that volley happily no one was injured. But the firing enhanced the fury of the disloyal in the gathered and gathering multitude. Some, pressing upon the soldiers, spat upon them. Some threw stones into their ranks; there were two or three shots from the turbulent throng, when, at the lower end of the columns of soldiers, one or two volleys were poured into the excited throng. It was positively denied that any officer commanded the soldiers under him to fire. These undisciplined volunteers were unable to stand motionless and in silence when attacked by stones and guns. The result was pitiable. The number of killed and wounded was about twenty-five. Not alone those guilty of jeering and attacking the soldiers were struck down, but chiefly the innocent, who had been attracted to the spot by the general and unusual excitement, and some of them were women and children. This catastrophe stirred the city to its depths. While the loyal rejoiced over the capture of the camp, they deplored the unnecessary bloodshed that had attended it; still, taking into account the irritating provocation, they could not lay the blame wholly on the raw German troops; nevertheless, the secessionists, humiliated and exasperated, swore that they would avenge the capture of their camp.
At about half past five, soldiers and prisoners began their long march to the Arsenal. The streets through which they passed were lined with people agitated with deep but diverse emotions. Some viewed with smiles, if not with open-mouthed exultation, the column of disarmed, tramping prisoners, shut in between files of newly armed Germans; the same scene stirred others to bitter execration. From the windows of some houses the soldiers were saluted by the waving of handkerchiefs; from the windows of others women expressed their bitter scorn by spitting at them. These troops with their crestfallen prisoners marched along a street which crossed the one on which I lived. A lady from the South was spending a few days with a family that lived next door to me. She was a very pleasant person, and altogether sane on every subject except that of secession. Any allusion to that seemed at once to unbalance her. She stood with quite a large group of spectators at the intersection of the streets, viewing the troops as they began to file past with the prisoners. She trembled with excitement. She forgot her ladyhood. She clenched and shook her fist at the soldiers, and cried, “They’ve got my lover.” A moment after she ran up to, and spat upon, a soldier; in a twinkling he broke ranks, leveled his bayonet toward her, and chased her down the street before my door. A sergeant followed him, seized him by the collar and led him back to his place in the marching column.
When night was slowly shutting down on the city, soldiers and prisoners arrived at the Arsenal; the former to stand guard over their new charge, the latter to think after the excitement of the day was over on this sudden and unexpected change in their affairs.
For supper they were offered ordinary soldier’s fare; but having been luxuriously fed at Camp Jackson from the tables of their secession friends, they scorned army rations. They not only refused to eat but, to show their contempt for their captors and their resentment for being treated as prisoners of war, they kicked over the buckets of coffee provided for them, and tossed the hardtack and bacon over the enclosing wall of the Arsenal. They were not very hungry, but some of them afterwards reported that they were treated with indignity and that the Yankees tried to starve them.
At the taking of Camp Jackson there was a spectator, then comparatively unknown, who was destined to fill a large place in his country’s history. He was a graduate of West Point and had served with fidelity as a subordinate officer in the regular army. Besides such service he had been by turns a banker in San Francisco and New York, an attorney in Leavenworth, Kansas, and superintendent of a military academy in Louisiana. Just then he was president of a street horse-car railway in St. Louis. Such, up to that time, had been the checkered career of William Tecumseh Sherman.
Immediately after the taking of Camp Jackson, a rebel flag at Fifth and Pine Streets came down never to be run up again. This was the first visible effect of Lyon’s victory. The lowering of that symbol of disunion was witnessed by a modest man, before whom was opening a marvellously brilliant career of which as yet he had not even dreamed. He was then thirty-nine years old. He too was a graduate of West Point, and while an officer of lower rank had distinguished himself by efficient and brilliant service. But for a time, turning aside from a military life, he had been a farmer, a speculator in real estate, and a leather-dealer. But now, when needed in defence of the Union, he had offered his services to his country through the Governor of Illinois, and had come over to St. Louis on a tour of observation. He heard the shouts that the taking of Camp Jackson and the coming down of the Stars and Bars from the roof of the secession rendezvous drew from loyal throats. Soon after he started in a horse-car for the Arsenal that he might personally congratulate Captain Lyon on the wise and timely work that he had so resolutely and skilfully done. In the car a young Southerner, full of anguish and wrath over the lowering of the secession flag, said to him: “Things have come to a d——d pretty pass when a free people can’t choose their own flag. Where I came from, if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union, we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to.” The modest man, into whose ears he poured this vengeful screed, quietly replied: “After all, we are not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be; I have not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one; there are plenty of them who ought to be, however.”[[26]] To this stinging rebuke there was no response. The young and fiery secessionist was dumb before a man of power; he felt, but could not understand, the humbling force of his simple words. The name of that unswerving Unionist and patriot, Ulysses Simpson Grant, is now in our own nation, and in all nations that love freedom, a household word.
But the excitement that was created in the city by the capture of Frost and his brigade is indescribable. Throngs gathered on all the principal thoroughfares. On Fourth Street, then the centre of the retail trade of the city, crowds moved to and fro eager for news. They bore banners of various and diverse devices. One band of men as they pushed excitedly along cheered, another going in the opposite direction answered the cheer by a groan. Distinguished and influential citizens addressed an excited multitude in front of the Planters’ Hotel, endeavoring to allay their seething passions. At different places in the city men were speaking to impromptu audiences, in which some were cheering while others were yelling defiance, to bring them if possible to calmness and reason. In different directions a shot could now and then be heard. As soon as it was dark, from fear of riot, the saloons and restaurants were closed and their doors were bolted and barred. The windows of many private houses were also shut and securely fastened. The theatres and all places of public amusement were empty. The police were on the alert, but were taxed to the utmost to nip in the bud any show of disorder. In spite of their vigilance and efficiency a crowd made a charge on Dimick’s gun-store on Main Street, broke open the door and secured fifteen or twenty guns, when the gathering mob was dispersed by about twenty policemen armed with muskets. But as the night wore on the excitement abated; men by degrees sought their homes and their beds; some in quietude to rejoice over the brightening prospects of Unionism, others to mourn over the fading hopes of secession.