General Rosecrans himself came to us from active campaigning, where he had rendered the most patriotic and arduous service, but had failed in attaining the highest success. At the eleventh hour he had lost the great and hotly contested battle of Chickamauga by giving a blundering order to one of his subordinate generals.[[94]] His intimate friends thought that ever after he carried in his face the sadness of that defeat. But his spirit was not soured. He was still ready to serve his country in any way that he could, and in any position to which he might be called. So he could heartily congratulate one, then subordinate in rank, upon entering the service that he had been compelled to abandon, while he himself cheerfully took up the military administration of the most distracted region in the Union.
We have already seen him filling the office of president of the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair, and doing all that he could to promote its interests by being present evenings with his staff. To those who did not, or could not, look below the surface, the battle in Missouri for the Union seemed to have been fought out. So, I am sure, most of the loyal in St. Louis at that time regarded it. But the general, and a few of the inner circle, already had an inkling of a deep-laid plot to promote the rebellion of the Southern States and if possible to make it successful. They were persuaded that the surface of things was deceptive; that beneath the dead ashes there were smouldering fires that might suddenly burst out into flame; that there never had been a more urgent demand for diligence than at that hour of superficial quiet.
Having found a clue to the furtive foe, the general, through wisely chosen and trusted lieutenants, followed it up. He discreetly kept his own counsels. He was sleeplessly persistent. His adroit agents or spies wormed themselves into the confidence of the clandestine enemies of the Republic, joined their secret organization and learned all their plots; at the same time they kept constantly in touch with their chief, by whom they were directed. They reported to him each startling fact that they unearthed. One discovery quickly led to another. To be sure the existence of a hostile secret organization had been hazily known for many months, but through the efforts of General Rosecrans its extensive ramifications were traced out, and its treasonable designs were laid bare. It proved to be the most formidable secret political organization that probably ever existed in America; it was conceived in treason; its avowed object was the dismemberment of the Union, the overthrow of the government of the United States. Its members were bound by oath to effect this nefarious purpose. They were to hesitate at no crime in order to reach their end. Rather than fail in it, they swore that they would commit perjury, arson, pillage, assassination. The penalty for disobedience of any command, even one that demanded the committing of these diabolical crimes, was death.
The organization, while one brotherhood, bore in different localities different names: the most notorious of which were: “The Knights of the Golden Circle,” “The Order of American Knights,” “The Order of the Star,” and “The Sons of Liberty.”[[95]]
Its ramifications were found both north and south of Mason and Dixon’s line. It claimed in Missouri twenty-five thousand members; in Illinois one hundred and forty thousand; in Indiana one hundred thousand; in Ohio eighty thousand; in Kentucky seventy thousand; and some in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Vallandigham of Ohio was supreme commander of the northern wing of this secret organization, while General Sterling Price was the supreme commander of the southern wing. The northern wing for many months had done what it could to supply the rebels with provisions and war material; it had also done for them the work of spying, keeping them informed as to what was transpiring in the North. It was still committing these treasonable acts, and even a few officers in our army were suspected of lending a hand to help on this villainous work. And, in that summer of 1864, the northern part of this oath-bound society had planned to put forth a united and desperate effort to aid the rebels in invading and revolutionizing the northern States of the Middle West[[96]].
Now all this our general had quietly ferreted out. The knowledge acquired by his skilful manipulation was of vast importance not only to our city and State, but also to the general government. All the evidence pertaining to this secret organization was carefully written out and transmitted to President Lincoln. It covered one thousand pages of foolscap.
But at first only a very few of the loyal of St. Louis, and, in fact, of the nation, had any definite knowledge of the existence of this secret, insidious foe. The great mass of our fellow-citizens stood in blissful ignorance over a destructive mine, that might at any moment be exploded. But thanks to our general, the President and his counsellors knew it more perfectly than heretofore. He made known what he had recently discovered to a few in our city in whom he reposed special confidence. He also revealed it to his most trusted lieutenants. And what was all-important to us, he knew the facts of the whole case probably more thoroughly than any loyal man in the nation. And this knowledge shaped every order that he issued and inspired his most weighty acts.
It was still necessary to garrison all parts of the State. Those in command of the garrisons were instructed to keep the sharpest possible watch of all whose loyalty was suspected; to break up all rendezvous of such men wherever found; to permit no illicit gatherings of secessionists, and to deprive of arms all who expressed sympathy with the rebellion. Thus the general laid a strong, repressive hand upon “The Knights of the Golden Circle” in our State. And before our story ends we shall see how wise such action was.
Evidently with his eye on this secret fraternity of the disloyal, that a little later he so fully unearthed, on March 1st, he forbade any one to take negroes from the State, but demanded that by every legitimate method they should be encouraged to enlist as soldiers. He declared that in all such enlistments the property rights of the master would be guarded; the government would compensate him for his chattels, but the slaves by their enlistment would become freemen. The general felt that he should soon need, to circumvent any threatened disloyal uprising, as many soldiers as he could secure, whether they were white or black.
To diminish as far as possible the incitement of the secretly disloyal to open rebellion, on the 26th of March, he prohibited the circulation, in the Department of Missouri, of the Metropolitan Record. This was a bitter rebel sheet published in New York. It professed to be a Catholic family newspaper. On that account it was specially offensive to the general, who was a devout Catholic. He felt that by it not only was his country betrayed, but also his church was greatly misrepresented and traduced. He declared it to be “without ecclesiastical sanction,” and so “traitorous” that it could not be tolerated even by the most liberal interpretation of the freedom of the press.[[97]] Nor did he relish the fact that such a journal found so many eager readers in St. Louis and in the State at large. It was an alarming symptom of what was going on hidden from the public view.