Once more Gen. Lyon was in the saddle, this time for good, with Frank Blair and the Radicals massed behind him.
CHAPTER VI. THE LAST WORD BEFORE THE BLOW
Brig.-Gen. Nathaniel Lyon was now in full command, not only of the City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri, but of all the vast territory lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, except Texas, New Mexico, and Utah.
His sudden elevation from a simple Captain heading a company to wide command did not for an instant dizzy him as it seemed to McClellan and Fremont, who had made similar leaps in rank. Where McClellan surrounded himself with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war as he had seen it exemplified by officers of his rank in Europe, where he was followed at all times by a numerous and glittering staff, resplendent with military millinery; and where Fremont set up a vice-regal court, in which were heard nearly all the tongues of the Continent, spoken by pretentious adventurers who claimed service in substantially every war since those of Napoleon, and under every possible flag raised in those wars, Lyon did not change a particle from the plain, straightforward, earnest soldier he had always been. His common dress was the private soldier's blouse with the single star of his rank, and a slouch hat. He was accoutered for the real work of war, not its spectacular effects. Grant was not simpler than he. Dominated by a great purpose, he made himself and every one and every thing about him tend directly towards that focus. He had only enough of a staff to do the necessary work, and they must be plain, matter-of-fact soldiers like himself, devoting their energies through all their waking hours to the cause he had at heart.
His first Chief of Staff was Chester Harding, a Massachusetts man, a thoroughgoing, practical, businesslike Yankee, animated by intense love of the Union. He preferred, however, service in the field, and became Colonel of the 10th Mo., then of the 25th, and later of the 43d Mo., doing good service wherever placed, and receiving at the last a well-earned brevet as Brigadier-General of Volunteers.
While Gen. Lyon was organizing the Home Guards into volunteer regiments at the Arsenal, there came to his assistance a rather stockily-built First Lieutenant of the Regular Army, who was in the prime of manhood, with broad, full face and well-developed and increasing baldness, a graduate of West Point, and of some eight years' experience in the military establishment.
John McAllister Schofield was born in Illinois, the son of an itinerant Baptist preacher, who mainly devoted himself to the cause of church extension. Schofield's name would indicate Germanic extraction. His face and figure supports the same theory, as do most of his mental habits. The McAllister in his name hints at an infusion of Celtic blood, of which we find few if any intellectual traces. Without any special enthusiasm or public demonstration of his attachment to principle, with a great deal of the courtier in his ways, he was yet firm, courageous and persistent in the policy he had marked out for himself. He was true to the Union cause, in his own way, from the time he offered his services to Gen. Lyon, was obedient and helpful to his superiors, always did more than respectably well what was committed to his charge, and no failure of any kind lowers the high average of his performance.