The day before, General Harney had returned from Washington and resumed his old command. Before the gray dawn of the day of panic, some prominent citizens, incited by fear of which they could give no rational explanation, implored the General to protect them against the murderous Dutch (Germans), who were about to kill them and loot and burn their houses. When Harney asked them for the evidence of their declarations they had nothing more substantial to offer than Dame Rumor. Still, wishing to quiet their fears, he decided to yield to their entreaties so far as he could do so with dignity. So he sent from the Arsenal detachments of soldiers to those parts of the city, represented to be most exposed to the incursions of what he himself believed to be purely imaginary foes. He also issued a proclamation and posted it up in all of the most frequented streets and public places, declaring to the people that he nowhere saw any evidence of special danger, and appealed to them to lay aside their groundless fear. These considerate acts of the General had exactly the opposite effect from what he intended; instead of quieting the people they excited them still more; instead of allaying, they intensified, their alarm. And such an outcome was altogether natural. Bodies of armed men marching hither and thither through the city and stationed at different points as guards, and a proclamation hurriedly issued on Sunday morning, seemed to them to be tangible proof of the existence of greater danger than they had supposed. And, as the hours of the morning wore away, the apprehension of some awful calamity about to fall upon the inhabitants of the city grew until a great multitude were filled with terror.
At the usual hour for morning service, I went to church. On my way thither, I saw but few going to the different houses of worship. My own congregation was about one third of its usual size. Most of the church officers were absent. At the close of the service, groups of the small audience exchanged with each other a few words, declaring that in their judgment there was no danger, that the general fright was baseless, and then evidently with some degree of anxiety quickly departed for their homes.
It was now between twelve and one. The clouds of the morning were gone. The sun shone brightly. But the few people venturing out into the streets seemed even more cheerless and terror-stricken than earlier in the day. Here and there a carriage, filled with anxious faces, was driven hurriedly along. Just after my dinner, about two o’clock, my landlord and next-door neighbor, a moderate secessionist, cautious, conservative, phlegmatic, called to see me. He asked, apparently with great coolness: “Do you think that we are in any special danger?” I answered, “No, I do not think we are. The Germans, who have inspired so many with alarm, have no ill will towards us. The fear, now agitating so many in the city, has not a particle of foundation.” “Well,” he replied, “that is just what I think, but”—and here he betrayed his suspicion that there might be some danger which did not appear on the surface—“do you think when General Harney declared this morning in his proclamation that there was no cause for alarm, he concealed anything from the public?” I assured him that I fully believed that the general was acting a truthful and honorable part. He said: “I think so too,” and bade me good day; but within thirty minutes, an open two-horse carriage drove up to his door; his family brought out satchels, bags and pillow-cases, hastily stuffed with necessary articles of clothing, threw them pell-mell into the vehicle, and unceremoniously clambering in after them, drove away at breakneck speed as though they were pursued by some invisible demon.
This led me to go out and walk hither and thither through the central part of the city. The scene presented to my view was surpassingly strange. Carriages and wagons filled with trunks, valises, hastily made bundles, and frightened men, women and children were flying along the streets towards every point of the compass. Some scared souls, unable to obtain a vehicle of any kind, were walking or running with breathless haste, carrying all sorts of bundles in their hands, under their arms or on their shoulders. All these were fleeing from imaginary danger. But the fancied conflagration and slaughter which they believed themselves to be escaping were to them awful realities, enacted, with all their attendant horrors, over and over again within their minds.
Some of the panic-stricken fled into the country and found shelter in outside villages and farmhouses. A gentleman, who lived several miles northwest of the city, told me that these frightened fugitives filled all his spare beds, and lay all over the floors of his upper and lower hall and parlor. He was a Union man and poked fun at his unexpected secession guests on their senseless terror, but finding them just then incapable of mirth, and seeing that they were still keenly suffering from imaginary horrors, he mercifully desisted.
The scene at this farmhouse was representative of many similar scenes on that night in all the country about St. Louis. But many of the fugitives crossed the river on the ferry-boats and sought refuge in black-Republican Illinois. A host of them also filled the steamers at the levee and went north to Alton and Quincy, and South to Cairo and Columbus, while some of them refused to land till they reached Memphis. It is difficult for any one not an eye-witness to believe that such a stupid stampede could ever have taken place.
But some of the terror-stricken, who did not flee, acted with equal folly. A secession acquaintance of mine, living but two squares from my door, early in the day transformed his house into a fortress. He invited under his roof a dozen or more of his southern friends. Among them they had sixteen guns of various kinds. They barricaded the door and windows of the house, leaving loop-holes through which they could shoot. And there behind these hastily constructed defences, during all that Sabbath day, they waited with shivering apprehension for the coming of the dreaded foe, determined, if they should be called to lay down their lives, to sell them dearly.
But evening came. During the day no one had been injured. Nothing had transpired to justify the abject fear of so many thousands of people. Yet many of the terrified, who still remained in the city, were apprehensive lest the expected blow might fall under the cover of the gathering darkness. At the hour of evening service I was, as usual, in my pulpit. Only about sixty or seventy were in the pews. Only one officer of the church was present. Three neighboring pastors of other denominations were there. My wife and my sister were the only women in the congregation. I preached without making the slightest reference to the events of the day, believing that to be the wisest course. When the last word was spoken, the little company quickly and quietly dispersed. I learned the next day that we were the only Protestant congregation in the city that publicly worshipped on that anxious evening, and that the most prominent men in my church and congregation, belonging as they did to the Home Guards, were absent because engaged in military duty. With their muskets they were endeavoring to protect their terrified fellow-citizens against imaginary foes.
On Monday one of them gave me a detailed account of the movement of the Home Guards the night before. Early in the evening they threw a line of scouts across the city from east to west. Each soldier in the line was a square from his fellow. They then began to feel their way cautiously toward the southern part of the city, where most of the Germans lived, who were supposed to be so bloodthirsty. As they reached each street, running east and west, the scouts halted until word was passed from one to another along the whole extended line; then they crept on again toward that awful, invisible enemy. Nobody was abroad on the streets. The city was almost as still as a churchyard. The very stillness added to the general terror and made the flesh of the timid creep. A little before midnight these doughty scouts as they slowly moved southward, carefully scanning every street, alley and house for some lurking foe, saw before them armed men coming towards them from the south. They hailed each other. Word was passed along the whole of their respective lines; at last they were all gathered together. They were not enemies but friends, all equally intent on keeping the peace. Each man eagerly told what had been transpiring during the day in the part of the city to which he belonged. These scouts that had gone southward said that hosts of American-born citizens, living in the central part of the city, heard and fully believed that the Germans were coming up in force to loot and burn their houses and put them to the sword. On the other hand, the armed Germans said that the southern part of the city, where they lived, had all day been filled with terror, because a baseless rumor was firmly believed that the American-born citizens to the north of them were coming down to loot and burn their dwellings and kill them. Having thus told of the mutual fears of those whom they represented, and found their fancied foes to be their ardent friends, gloom gave way to merriment and joy. The whole day with all its fantastic scenes inspired by abject fear seemed now a huge joke. All anxiety gone, these mutual guardians of the peace shook hands with each other and shook their sides with laughter. Proud of the city in which they lived and grateful for its continued safety, they gave three cheers for her. The sound of those ringing cheers at midnight carried assurance and quietude to many that heard.
The next morning the lethargy of the city was as profound as the excitement of the preceding day had been intense. Before nine o’clock very few were astir. Here and there a pedestrian passed along on some necessary errand. On some streets market-wagons lumbered by. The morning markets, usually so full of life, were half deserted. However, as the day wore on, signs of returning activity multiplied; but when men met each other, they made scant allusion to the scenes of yesterday. There was evidently a good deal of thinking, but there certainly was very little talking. Many appeared to be ashamed of themselves. Those who had been terrorized manifestly desired to cover up and forget their folly; those who had not been much moved by the general alarm, in kindness restrained themselves from saying, “I told you so.” This was cheering. It showed that neighborly kindness and true manhood had not perished in the panic; that what was noblest and best in those who disagreed so radically on great questions of state policy, stretched itself over all their differences like a rainbow on the clouds of a passing storm.