The story of a border city during the Civil War

by Galusha Anderson

But even this pales before the irate utterance of a woman, who lived hardly a block from my own door. A few weeks after the battle of Wilson’s Creek, the body of General Lyon, who fell on that well-fought field, was being borne through the city on its way for burial in his native State of Connecticut. Some one said to this woman: “The hearse with the body of General Lyon is coming down the street;” to which in a flash she responded, “Good! if I had a piece of his liver, I’d fry it and eat it.” Nobody but a woman could have compressed so much gall into so few words. Shakespeare, who sounded the depths of woman’s soul, and understood her power of passion as no other English writer ever did, in his “Much Ado about Nothing,” put into the mouth of “Sweet Beatrice,” as she raged against Claudio, “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place.” What the prince of dramatists in imagination attributed to woman, we saw in real life in St. Louis, in 1861.

If now in what we further relate in illustration of the bitterness of feeling which for a season was manifested in our city, we shall find amid the grave and solemn conflicts of civil war much that is ludicrous and laughable, we must not forget, that by a merciful Providence this tended to lighten burdens that otherwise might have been insupportable; that the grave and the gay, the sad and mirth-provoking, the sublime and the ridiculous often keep very close company, and that we are responsible neither for the facts, nor for the strange juxtapositions in which at times they presented themselves.

Into the two words, abolitionist and Yankee, a genuine Southerner and secessionist, by his intonation and emphasis, condensed an amazing amount of bitterness. To hurl either epithet at some despised Northerner was the climax of vituperation. Nothing could be, nothing needed to be, added. And such objurgation, harmless to the recipient, was often freely indulged in, in our city.

I sat one morning in the study of Rev. G. J. Johnson, D. D., pastor of a Baptist church on Sixth Street, when a Kentuckian came in to see us. In a moment we saw that he was an ardent, impulsive soul. Without a break, for some time he talked right on about the war and those who were conducting the government. With rare volubility he denounced the Yankees; but soon checked himself for a moment and asked if we were Yankees? We assured him that we were not; so he went on with his bitter tirade against the hated and despised Yankees. At last he stopped, apparently to take breath, and asked, “Where were you born?” We replied that we were both born and brought up in western New York. “Western New York!” he excitedly exclaimed, “Western New Yorkers are the meanest kind of Yankees!” We greeted his discourteous declaration with a peal of laughter. At which he blushed, and, partially infected by our merriment, with a smile, but without an apology, bade us good day.

In my church and congregation were two bright, attractive Southern women. In sentiment however they were politically divided; one was for secession, the other was for the Union. In January, 1861, the latter, in some way, discovered that she was a distant relative of Mr. Lincoln. Thereupon she visited Springfield, and called upon him. He heartily urged her to spend several days under his roof. She was delighted to accept this cordial invitation, and was charmed with her new-found blood relation. She returned to St. Louis full of enthusiasm for the President elect, and embraced every fitting opportunity to lavish upon him her praises. By chance she and the other woman of opposite political sentiment, of whom I have spoken above, making a social call, met, without any collusion, in my parlor. The conversation soon drifted into a discussion of the ominous events which were then agitating all minds. Very soon Mr. Lincoln was spoken of and the lady who favored secession called him a clown and a mountebank. This brought her Southern friend, who was a Unionist, to his defence. Her words had in them no tinge of bitterness, but they were positive and cordial. She said that Mr. Lincoln was a relative of hers, a warm personal friend, that she had recently spent, by his urgent invitation, ten days in his house, and that he was no clown; if she had ever met a kind, warm-hearted gentleman he was one. To hear Mr. Lincoln so warmly eulogized as a gentleman, and that by a Southern woman, was a little more than the secession lady could endure. She burst into tears, and said in broken accents, “I—can—never speak—to you again.” She rose to depart. Confounded by this unexpected explosion of spleen, and hardly knowing whether I was at home or somewhere else, I managed to help my tearful friend to the door, where, as politely as I could, I bade her good day. She did not respond. Her choking emotions forbade it. With her handkerchief to her eyes, she went sobbing down the street, because one of her own dear friends had, in the most lady-like manner, declared that Mr. Lincoln was not a clown.

But the unseemly virulence of some prompted them to deeds of violence. In the autumn of 1861, a young Southern fire-eater appeared one morning on Fourth Street before the Planters’ Hotel, with a loaded revolver. He flourished it around and above his head, boasting that as soon as he should get a sight of Frank Blair, he would shoot him. A gentleman who heard his braggadocio felt keenly solicitous for Mr. Blair’s safety. Just then he caught sight of him on Fourth Street, about a square and a half north of the hotel. Hastening to him, he reported what the hot Southerner had just said, and pointed out to him his would-be murderer. Mr. Blair was a tall, well-proportioned, vigorous man. He was among the bravest of the brave. He never feared the face of clay. That chilly morning he wore an overcoat with a cape. He at once threw the cape across his breast and over his shoulder, and, to the consternation of the friend, who had warned him of his imminent danger, walked directly to the hotel, before which, with loaded revolver in hand, stood the swaggerer, who, a few minutes before, had so loudly threatened to take his life. Mr. Blair went past him, came within six feet of him, looked him in the eye, but the poltroon did not shoot. He found it easier to boast than to act. The piercing glance of his enemy cooled his heated passion and made him a shivering coward. When Mr. Blair reached the street south of the hotel, he turned on his heel and walked back, and once more brushing by his cowed foe went on his way unhurt.

But even in the fair sex, bitterness sometimes manifested itself with bloody intent. A lady who lived only a few rods from my door told me one day that she intended to shoot Frank Blair. Mr. Blair was intensely hated by Southerners for his pronounced free-soil views, and on account of the leading part he was taking in saving Missouri from the madness of secession. The more malignant disunionists determined if possible to put him out of the way. It was more than once whispered that in due time he would be assassinated. And here was a lady that was aspiring for the honor of shedding his blood. Just why she so frankly declared her intention to me, I could never understand. However, we were well acquainted with each other, and she, knowing how warmly I contended for the Union, evidently meant to annoy me by declaring her fell purpose. Nevertheless, I made light of it, and said to her, “I don’t think Mr. Blair will suffer much from you.” “Ah!” she replied, “I have a revolver, and I am practising with it every day in the back yard and have already become a good shot.” “Still,” I said, “I don’t think you will seriously injure him.” She responded, “You will see pretty soon.” And sure enough her opportunity for doing that meditated deed of blood soon came.

We have already noted the fact that when Lyon took Camp Jackson, he divided his force and sent different detachments of it along different routes, all converging on the encampment in Lindell’s Grove. A regiment of artillery went through Chestnut Street, on which this lady of bloody intent lived. Mr. Blair rode on horseback at the head of it. The street was not very wide. He sat majestically on his horse. He was a splendid target, enticing to any one who longed to shoot him. The house in which our lady lived had at the second story an iron balcony on which French windows opened. Some one said to her, “Frank Blair is coming.” She seized her loaded revolver. She panted to become famous, and saw not that at the same time, if she carried out her purpose, she would become infamous. She grasped and turned the knob of the window; it swung back on its hinges into the room; she put one foot out upon the balcony; Blair was now nearly abreast of her, and only a few feet from her; just behind him was a battery of artillery; this was the first time that she had seen the brazen throats of cannon. Did she fire at that living target on horseback? She utterly failed to act the assassin; the sight of those six and eight pounders sent the blood from her head to her heart; things went swirling around her; she faintly whispered “Oh! Oh!” and fell back into the room in a dead faint. Blair rode on all unconscious of his feminine foe, while the members of her family, with cold water and hartshorn, anxiously labored to restore her to consciousness. She at last opened her eyes, a sadder but wiser woman. During the years of the war that followed, her neighbors, when they greeted her, often asked, “And how is Frank Blair?” Just how we then made merry over intended murder, it is now difficult to explain. The lady of whom I write would have been shocked to have heard it so characterized. She simply meditated the deed of a patriotic heroine. But after her vaunted violence ended in a faint she seemed to lose all interest in the war. The sight of a few brass field pieces drove out of her forever all bitterness of spirit.

Belonging to the Presbyterian Church at the corner of Eighth and Locust Streets was a good deacon by the name of Tucker. He was editor of an evening paper. Believing with all his heart in the righteousness of secession, and wishing both in season and out of season, to strike telling blows against all advocates of Unionism, he came out in an editorial, one Saturday evening, in which he said: “The devil preaches at the corner of Sixth and Locust Streets, and he is just the same sort of a being that he was more than eighteen hundred years ago; he wants everybody to bow down and worship him.” Now since that was just where I preached, the editorial was rather personal, and was intended to be offensive. The deacon, fearing that I might miss reading his highly complimentary words, and so lack the stimulus that they might impart to my Sunday ministrations, early on the morning of the Lord’s day, sent a copy of his paper to me by special messenger, having thoughtfully marked his amiable editorial with his blue pencil. Instead of demanding satisfaction of the pious editor as almost any hot-blooded Southerner of that day would have done, the blue-penciled editorial was read at my breakfast-table amid roars of laughter.

The good deacon a little while after left St. Louis, became a member of Claybourn F. Jackson’s political family, fled with the Governor and his staff to Arkansas and printed the proclamations of the discarded, peripatetic government of Missouri, as it wandered here and there in exile. About two years thereafter he died and, by the special permit of the general in command of the department of Missouri, was buried from the church where for many years he had filled the office of deacon. He was an honest, earnest soul, striving according to his light to do his duty.