Sweeny replied affirmatively, when Wood rode off and Sweeney returned to Lyon, to find him slowly recovering. Lyon approved of Sweeny's answer, and directed Sweeny to take possession of the camp with two companies of Regulars. Frost's men stacked arms and marched off through a lane formed by the 1st Mo., which faced inward. Up to this time everything had gone on peacefully. The surrendered Militia, without any special protest or demonstration, took their places quietly under guard. Not so with the immense mob which had gathered, expecting to see the Militia make sanguinary havoc of their assailants. These were deeply chagrined at the tame issue of the affair, and after exhausting all the vile epithets at their command, began throwing stones, brickbats, and other missiles, which the soldiers received as patiently as they did the contumely, when the bolder of the mob began firing with revolvers. Presently one of Co. F, 3d Mo., commanded by Capt. C. Blandowski, was shot dead, several severely wounded, and the Captain himself fell with a bullet through his leg. As he fell he ordered his men to fire, which resulted in about 20 of the rioters dropping under a volley from the soldiers' muskets. The mob fled in dismay, and Gen. Lyon ordered his troops to cease firing.
One of the leaders of the mob had deliberately fired three times at Capt. Saxton, of the Regulars, and had laid his revolver across his arm for a fourth more deliberate shot, when one of Capt. Saxton's men bayoneted while another shot him. When the smoke cleared away, it was found that 15 had been killed. Three of these were prisoners from Camp Jackson, and two were women whose morbid curiosity, or worse, had led them to mingle with the mob, One was a child.
Capt. Blandowski died of his wounds the next day.
At 6 o'clock the troops and prisoners marched back to the Arsenal, leaving Gen. Sweeny with his Regulars in charge of Camp Jackson. On the way rioters thronged the line of march and vilely abused the soldiers, but Lyon was vigilant in restraining his men, and prevented their making any return by firing upon their assailants.
During the night and the next day the prisoners were all released, the privates taking an oath not to serve in any capacity against the Government during the war, and the officers giving a parole not to serve in any military capacity against the United States. It was provided that the parole should be returned upon anyone surrendering himself as a prisoner of war, and was accompanied with a protest against the justice of executing it. One exception, Capt. Emmett MacDonald, who had been efficient in bringing the Irishmen into opposition to the "Dutch," refused to accept the parole on the ground taken by all the others that they had done nothing wrong, and finally secured his release through a writ of habeas corpus.
The excitement that night in St. Louis was fearful, with the Secessionists raging. It is to the credit, however, of James McDonough, whom Governor Jackson's Secessionist Police Commissioners had appointed Chief of Police, that, whatever his sympathies, he did not allow them to interfere with his official duties, and exerted himself to the utmost to preserve the municipal peace. The violent Secessionists started to mob the offices of the Republican papers, and to attack the residences of Union leaders, but were everywhere met by squads of police backed up by an armed force of Home Guards, which, with the appeals of the conservative men of influence on both sides, managed to stay the storm.
McDonough could not, however, prevent a number of outrages, and several of the Home Guards caught alone were killed by the rowdies that night and the next day—Saturday. This incensed the Germans terribly, and stories reached the Secession parts of the city that they contemplated fearful revenge, which they could wreak, having arms in their own hands, while the "natural protectors" of the people—Frost's military companies—were prisoners of war and disarmed.