the suburbs of St. Louis, with the openly-declared intention of capturing the United States arsenal, which stood on the bank of the river just below the city.

At the same time the Union men were equally active, and, under the leadership of Blair, those who were ready to fight for the preservation of the nation were organized into a military force called the "Home Guards." While the plotting was going on and matters were progressing toward actual warfare, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, who commanded at the arsenal, caused the garrison to be strengthened, sent away the superfluous arms and ammunition to a place of greater safety, armed the Home Guards, and on the tenth of May surprised the secessionists by marching out in force and capturing Camp Jackson, the camp of instruction already mentioned.

In order to have good reason for making the capture, Captain Lyon visited Camp Jackson in disguise and went through it from one end to the other. What he found in the camp gave him sufficient reason for action. Here it is:

When the state of Louisiana seceded from the Union the United States arsenal at Baton Rouge was seized by the state authorities, who took forcible possession of the arms and munitions of war that they found there. When he was planning to capture the arsenal at St. Louis, Governor Jackson found that he needed some artillery with which to open fire from the hills that command the arsenal, which is on low ground on the bank of the river.

Governor Jackson sent two officers to the Confederate capital, which was then at Montgomery, Alabama, to make an appeal to Jefferson Davis for artillery from the lot taken at Baton Rouge, and explain for what it was wanted. President Davis granted the request, ordered the commandant at Baton Rouge to deliver the artillery and ammunition as desired, and he wrote at the same time to Governor Jackson as follows:

* * * After learning as well as I could from the gentlemen accredited to me what was most needed for the attack on the arsenal, I have directed that Captains Greene and Duke should be furnished with two 12-pound howitzers and two 32-pound guns, with the proper ammunition for each. These, from the commanding hills, will be effective against the garrison and to break the inclosing walls of the place. I concur with you in the great importance of capturing the arsenal and securing its supplies. * * * We look anxiously and hopefully for the day when the star of Missouri shall be added to the constellation of the Confederate States of America.

With the best wishes I am, very respectfully, yours,

Jefferson Davis.

The cannon and ammunition reached St. Louis on the eighth of May, and were immediately sent to Camp Jackson. The negotiations for them had been known to Blair and Lyon, and as soon as they learned of the arrival of the material which would be so useful in capturing the arsenal, they determined to act. Captain Lyon, as before stated, went in disguise through the camp on the ninth, saw with his own eyes the cannon and ammunition, learned that they had come from Baton Rouge, and was told for what purpose they were intended.

Here was the stolen property of the United States in the hands of the enemies of the government, and intended to be used for further thefts by violence. There could be no doubt of his duty in the matter, except in the mind of a secessionist or his sympathizer.

By the secessionists the capture of Camp Jackson was looked upon as a great outrage, for which the Union men had no authority under the Constitution and laws either of the United States or of the state of Missouri. It was a peculiar circumstance of the opening months of the rebellion, and in fact all through it, that the rebels and their sympathizers were constantly invoking the Constitution of the United States wherever it could be brought to bear against the supporters of the government; so much was this the case that in time it came to be almost a certainty that any man who prated about the Constitution was on the side of the rebellion. The men who were ready to violate it were those who constantly sought to shield themselves behind it.

As an illustration of this state of affairs, may be cited the letter of Governor Jackson in reply to the proclamation of President Lincoln calling for seventy-five thousand troops for three months, "to maintain the honor, the integrity and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; * * * and to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union."

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Missouri was called upon for four regiments of militia as her quota of the seventy-five thousand. Governor Jackson replied to the president that he considered the requisition "illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary in its objects, inhuman and diabolical, and cannot be complied with." At the same time he was going on with preparations for carrying the state out of the Union, contrary to the desires of a majority of its inhabitants, as if they had no rights that he was bound to respect!

As before stated, the arsenal at St. Louis is completely dominated by the range of hills beyond it, and a military force having possession of these hills would have the arsenal in its control. The secession leaders laid their plans to take possession of these hills in order to capture the arsenal. Learning of their intentions, Captain Lyon threw up a line of defensive works in the streets outside the walls of the arsenal, whereupon the secessionists invoked the local laws and endeavored to convince him that he had no right to do anything of the kind. The board of police commissioners ordered him to keep his men inside the walls of the arsenal, but he refused to do so, and for this he was loudly denounced as a violator of the law.

There were about seven hundred men in Camp Jackson, under command of General Frost. Captain Lyon had issued arms to several regiments of the Home Guards of St. Louis, in spite of the protest of the police commissioners, who considered his action in doing so highly improper. These regiments, added to the regular soldiers composing the garrison at the arsenal, gave Captain Lyon a force of six or seven thousand men, with which he marched out on Friday, the tenth of May, surrounded Camp Jackson, and demanded its surrender. Under the circumstances General Frost could do nothing else than surrender, which he did at once. The militia stacked their arms and were marched out on their way to the arsenal. A short distance from the camp they were halted for some time, and during the halt a large crowd of people collected, nearly all of them being friends of the prisoners or sympathizers with secession.

Most of the Home Guards were Germans, and during the halt they were reviled with all the epithets with which the tongues of the secession sympathizers were familiar. These epithets comprised all the profanity and vulgarity known to the English language in its vilest aspects, and added to them was the opprobrious name of "Dutch blackguards," which was applied in consequence of one of the companies calling itself Die Schwartze Garde. Without orders, some of the soldiers fired on the jeering mob; the fire passed along the line until several companies had emptied their rifles, and twenty-eight people fell, killed or mortally wounded, among them being three prisoners. Then the firing ceased as suddenly as it began, and the prisoners were marched to the arsenal.

On the eleventh all the captured men were liberated on their parole not to bear arms against the United States. One officer, Captain Emmett McDonald, refused to accept release on this condition, and like a true secessionist sought his remedy through the Constitution and the laws of the