Next to Gov. Jackson,—surpassing him in intellectual acuteness and fertile energy,—was Lieut.-Gov. Thos. C. Reynolds, then in his 40th year, a short, full-bodied man, with jet-black hair and eyes shaded by gold-rimmed glasses. He boasted of being born of Virginia parents in South Carolina, but some of the Germans claimed to know that his right name was Reinhold, and that he was a Jew born in Prague, the Capital of Bohemia, and brought to this country when a child. He was a man of more than ordinary ability, and had accomplishments quite unusual in that day.
He spoke French, German and Spanish fluently, wrote profusely and with considerable force, and prided himself on being a diplomat. He had seen some service as Secretary of Legation and Charge d' Affaires at Madrid. He had been elected as a Douglas Democrat, but was an outspoken Secessionist, and as he was ex-officio President of the Senate, he had much power in forming committees and shaping legislation. He clung to the wrecked rebel ship of state to the last, went with Gov. Jackson and the rest when they were driven out of the State, assumed the Governorship when Jackson—worn out by the terrible strains and vicissitudes—died at Little Rock, Ark., in December, 1862—and was last heard from near the end of the war, with the shattered and melancholy remnants of the Missouri State Government and troops, on the banks of the Rio Grande, writing furious diatribes against Gen. Sterling Price, the admired leader of the Missouri Confederates.
Another man of great influence in the State was United States Senator James S. Green, a Virginian by birth, but who had been a resident of Missouri for about a quarter of a century. He was a lawyer of fine talents, and in the Senate ranked as a debater with Douglas, Seward, Chase, Toombs, Wigfall, Fessenden, Wade, and others of that class. In Missouri he was one of the leaders of the Ultra-Slavery "Softs" against Thos. H. Benton; had been Minister to New Granada, and Representative in Congress, and in the Senate belonged to the Jefferson Davis-Toombs-Wigfall cabal, which was planning the disruption of the Union. His term expiring March 3, 1861, he was now in Jefferson City for the rather irreconcilable purposes of securing his re-election to the United States Senate and of fulfilling his pledge to his Secessionist colleagues to carry Missouri out of the Union.
His colleague—Senator Trusten Polk—a strong, kindly, graceful man—was there to assist him in both purposes. Born in Delaware, he had been a resident of Missouri since 1835, elected Governor of the State in 1856, resigned to accept Benton's seat in the Senate, from which he was to be expelled in 1862 for disloyalty, and to follow the failing fortunes of the Missouri Confederates to the banks of the Rio Grande.
The problem of absorbing intensity for the Secession leaders—Messrs. Jackson, Reynolds, Green, Polk and others—was to win over, entrap or constrain a sufficient number of the 117 "Doubtful" voters out of every 165, to give them a working majority in the State. There was fiery zeal enough and to spare on the Secession side; what was needed was skillful management to convince the Union-loving peace-loving majority that the Northern "Abolitionists," flushed with victory, meant unheard-of wrongs and insults to the South; that Missouri must put herself in shape to protect her borders, call a halt on the insolent North, and in connection with the other Border States be the arbiter between the contending sections, and in the last resort ally herself with the other Slave States for mutual protection.
A man to be reckoned with in those days was the Commander of the Department of the West, which included all that immense territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, except Texas, New Mexico, and Utah. This man was the embodiment of the Regular Army as it was developed after the War of 1812. At this time that Army was a very small one—two regiments of dragoons, two of cavalry, one of mounted riflemen, four of artillery, and 10 of infantry, making, with engineers, ordnance and staff, a total of only 12,698 officers and men—but its personnel and discipline were unsurpassed in the world. Among its 1,040 commissioned officers there was no finer soldier than William Selby Harney. A better Colonel no army ever had. A Colonel, mind you—not a General; there is a wide difference between the two, as we found out during the war. There are very many Americans—every little community has at least one—who, given a regiment, where every man is within reach of his eye and voice, will discipline it, provide for it, rule it, and fight it in the very best fashion. Give him some piece of work to do, of which he can see the beginning and the end, and he will make the regiment do every pound of which it is capable. But put in command of a brigade, anything beyond voice and eye, set to a task outreaching his visual horizon, he becomes obviously unequal to the higher range of duty.
