Chapter 2

Fan the Fire of Enthusiasm

Franz Sigel came to America to escape war. Like William Watson, Sigel fought in 1861 because he was part of a community, in this case St. Louis, Missouri. But in addition to his patriotic motivations, he hoped that his participation would win greater community acceptance for himself and other German Americans. His experiences in St. Louis marked the beginning of the campaign that culminated on August 10 at Wilson’s Creek. They also reveal the significant role ethnicity played at the community level in shaping the forces that fought the battle.

Sigel was born in Baden, Germany, in 1824. A graduate of the military academy at Karlsruhe, he resigned from the German army after brief service but eventually participated in the democratic revolutions that swept his homeland beginning in 1848. He led troops in several engagements against great odds and under very difficult circumstances, proving to be a courageous but not particularly talented commander. A recent biography concludes that “Sigel’s strength did not lie in a spirited and firm grasp of momentary military situations.” Nevertheless, he won a considerable reputation.¹

Sigel immigrated to the United States in 1852 and eventually settled with his family in St. Louis (where half the population was foreign-born by 1860), teaching at the Deutsches Institut. A keen intellectual who spoke five languages, he was soon appointed a district superintendent in the public school system and was widely recognized as a leader of the city’s large German American population. He was also heavily involved in the local Turner Society, a fact that proved highly significant in 1861.²

The Turners played a crucial role at Wilson’s Creek. The name was an Americanization of Turnverein, an organization founded in Berlin, in 1811, devoted largely to physical fitness. When Germans emigrated in large numbers following the failed revolutions of 1848, they established Turnverein in metropolitan areas across America. In addition to gymnastics, a typical Turner Society included a chess club, literary study group, choir, and fencing team. The St. Louis Turnverein was established in 1850. It was not overtly political, but Germans made up the largest ethnic group in St. Louis, a city of 200,000. Although most were Democrats, a slowly increasing number supported the Republican Party following its creation in 1854.³

The St. Louis Turners had their own rifle company, which exercised weekly at Turner Hall on the corner of Tenth and Walnut Streets. They participated in Prussian drill competitions and target practice with Turner companies in other cities. Sigel lectured them on military tactics and in the fall of 1860 convinced them to switch to the drill manual used by the U.S. Army. In November 1860, the same week that Abraham Lincoln was elected president, the society made military training obligatory for all of its 500-odd members. A week after Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, the Turners barricaded the doors and windows of their meeting hall with sandbags and began stockpiling arms. If the Federal government needed them to defend their adopted country, they intended to be ready.⁴

At Wilson’s Creek the Turners would retain a strong community identity because, among other things, they were playing out the final scene of a community-level struggle that began in the streets of St. Louis and ended in the hills of southwestern Missouri. The city had a long history of volunteer militia companies, including the St. Louis Grays (organized in 1832), Boone Guards (1832), Native American Rangers (1841), Washington Blues (1857), Montgomery Guards (1843), and Washington Guards (1854). The two last-named companies were composed almost exclusively of Irish Americans serving with the city’s volunteer fire companies. Some of these units fought in the Mexican War, and many of them were called out to restore order during ethnic riots that plagued the city during the 1850s. By the eve of the Civil War, some St. Louis units strongly identified with secession and made no secret of their anti-German sentiments. The result was “xenophobic hostility.”⁵ Added to this ferment, beginning in 1860, were a diverse host of “Union Clubs,” some armed and uniformed, which marched and paraded in opposition to secession. Largest and best organized of these were the St. Louis Wide-Awakes, the local branch of a Republican organization that by 1860 had become overtly paramilitary in character.⁶

The ethnic tensions and political rivalries that Sigel witnessed in St. Louis occurred within a wider context. Claiborne Fox Jackson, the Democrat recently elected governor of Missouri, headed a state distinctly Southern in character but undergoing rapid changes. Slavery was largely concentrated in the Missouri River valley, and slaves made up only a little more than 10 percent of the population, but, though in the minority, white Missourians holding slaves were determined to keep them. With free states adjacent to the north and east, Missourians had waged a vicious guerrilla war with Kansans between 1854 and 1856 in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to establish a proslavery government in the neighboring territory to the west.⁷

It was hardly surprising that secession fever ran high in the Missouri River valley, where slave-produced crops were exported downriver and economic interests combined with culture to link the local populace to the rest of the South. However, support for the Union ran strong in the more economically independent Ozarks mountain region south of the river. In urban areas such as St. Louis, Jefferson City, and Kansas City, the population was divided. But recently established railroads linked the state to neighboring Illinois and provided connections with the rest of the North. These ties were strengthened by a tremendous number of Northern-born and foreign-born people who went to Missouri during the 1850s, enough to give them parity with those of Southern birth by 1860. Missouri society was both diverse and complex.⁸

While Sigel and the Turners prepared for war, Governor Jackson schemed to take Missouri out of the Union, whether the majority of Missourians wanted to leave or not. Jackson was born in Kentucky but had resided in Missouri since his early manhood. He briefly pursued a career in business, but after his election to the state legislature in 1836 he made politics his career. A longtime advocate of the expansion of slavery, he was bitterly disappointed when in March 1861 a convention that had initially assembled at the state capital, Jefferson City, but then moved to better quarters in St. Louis, rejected secession. The convention’s action reflected the people’s widespread ambivalence and hope for compromise. But when Lincoln called for volunteers in April following the surrender of Fort Sumter, many Missourians of Southern heritage endorsed Governor Jackson’s sharp reply, which rejected coercion of the seceded states as “illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary in its object, inhuman and diabolical.” Missouri, Jackson asserted, would not furnish a single man “to carry on any such unholy crusade.”⁹

Within days, meetings were held in cities and towns across the state, and Home Guard units organized spontaneously. For example, the citizens of Richmond, a small town near Kansas City, adopted a resolution approving and endorsing Jackson’s refusal to “furnish troops for the purpose of coercing or subjugating our sister Southern States.” Although they condemned secession, if “reduced to the necessity of engaging in the present war” the men of Richmond pledged to “cooperate with our sister Slave States.” But citizens in the area were hardly united concerning the proper course. Many counseled neutrality. In a letter to the local paper E. M. Samuel warned that Missouri must not take sides. “To go either way, exclusively, is annihilation,” he wrote.¹⁰

Some Missourians were genuinely neutral and only wanted to protect themselves. Such a stance was reflected in the rules adopted by the Huntsville Home Guard. These declared that the company “is intended not to make any aggression on the rights of any community or country, but is intended to secure our own homes, and the homes and firesides of our community from lawless mobs, or any insurrection or treason in our midst.” Most Home Guard units, however, were conspicuously pro-Union or pro-Secession, despite claims that self-defense was their only motive for organizing. The citizens of Hardin adopted resolutions defending their “Southern Rights,” whereas at Elk Horn the men who met to consider their options received a Confederate flag manufactured by the local women. But Springfield, Rolla, West Plains, Carthage, and a host of towns across the state were so divided in sentiment that competing military organizations were raised. In Johnson County, the pro- and anti-secession companies actually drilled together, fully aware that if war came they might face each other in battle. “Men who were fighting for principle and what they believed to be right could do this,” a participant explained.¹¹

In St. Louis events soon took an extraordinary turn, bringing together within a few weeks a group of men who virtually embodied the Union cause in Missouri. Most of them would fight at Wilson’s Creek. First Lieutenant John M. Schofield was on an extended leave of absence from the army, teaching natural philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, when he received a letter from the secretary of war appointing him the mustering officer in Missouri for “the troops called out by the President’s proclamation.” A New York native raised in Illinois, Schofield had graduated from West Point in 1853. Twenty-nine and balding rapidly, his pudgy features gave him a somewhat jovial and cherubic appearance, despite a formidable beard. Schofield approached Governor Jackson for the men, as under the Constitution the sole way the president could raise a military force without congressional authorization was by calling the state militia into Federal service. The Missouri governor, of course, made no reply, having already spurned Lincoln’s call.¹²

The need for pro-Union troops in St. Louis was acute, as the city was the site of the largest Federal arsenal in the slave states. The walls of this three-story building on the banks of the Mississippi contained “sixty thousand muskets, ninety thousand pounds of powder, one-and-a-half million ball cartridges, forty field pieces, siege guns, and machinery for the manufacture of arms.” These were guarded by fewer than one hundred enlisted men, but also by one “Damned Yankee,” Nathaniel Lyon, an infantry captain recently transferred from Kansas.¹³

Lyon would lead the Northern forces at Wilson’s Creek, die on the field of battle, and become one of the North’s first martyrs—the man who “saved Missouri for the Union.” His role as savior so dominates postwar accounts, and even modern histories, that the story of Wilson’s Creek has almost become subordinated to the story of Nathaniel Lyon, with little room for the other players, particularly the common soldiers. Fortunately, recent scholarship presents a balanced view, detailing the negative as well as the positive impact of this complex man on the war in Missouri.

Lyon was born in 1818 in Ashford, Connecticut, inheriting from his family a temper “that often exploded with surprising fury beyond all sense of reason.” Well educated in local schools, he attended West Point, graduated in 1841, and participated in the closing stages of the Second Seminole War. He did not see combat, however, until the Mexican War, when he served with the Second U.S. Infantry under General Winfield Scott. There his creditable conduct earned him promotion to brevet captain.¹⁴

Lyon’s operations against Native Americans and Mexicans gave him practical experience in the conduct of war that would later prove invaluable. But his reaction to his superiors during this time is particularly revealing. He found his battleless forays against the Seminoles in the Florida swamps frustrating, as they seemed to do nothing to bring the conflict to an end. Similarly, during the Mexican War he privately criticized his superiors for not pressing their attacks with sufficient vigor and for not following up on their victories. He was livid when Scott paused for negotiations with the enemy during the American army’s march on Mexico City, believing anything short of “total victory would be a travesty.” In 1850 Lyon led an attack on a village of Native Americans in California. He not only defeated the warriors, he also massacred the women and children, virtually exterminating the group.¹⁵ Complete destruction of the enemy seemed to be Lyon’s only definition of victory, a fact that had significant consequences for Missouri in 1861.

Lyon had an aggressive personality that combined with an obsessive sense of duty to make him a true martinet. U.S. Army regulations sanctioned punishments that appear shocking by modern standards, but Lyon went well beyond his contemporaries in dealing with miscreants. When enforcing discipline he was a sadist. In 1842, during one of his first command assignments, a drunken sergeant protested one of his orders. Lyon lost his temper and beat the man repeatedly with the flat of his sword, drawing blood. Shortly thereafter he had the man bound and gagged for an hour. Lyon was subsequently court-martialed, and because his actions were judged to have become personal, going beyond the enforcement of discipline, he was suspended from duty for five months. He did not change his behavior, however. Following the Mexican War, while serving in Kansas, Lyon’s propensity for inflicting the most severe punishments for even minor infractions won him a reputation as “the most tyrannical officer in the Army.” He possessed “a nearly psychopathic appetite for inflicting pain.”¹⁶

Given Lyon’s personality and obsessions, anyone well acquainted with the new officer at the St. Louis arsenal in 1861 might have considered him particularly ill-suited to cooperate in an emergency with imperfectly disciplined Unionist volunteers, such as the Turners, to defend Federal property against Secessionists. But Lyon was not alone. He had the help of Missouri congressman Francis P. Blair Jr. The Blair family had roots in Kentucky and some of the Blairs had owned slaves, but they were prominent Unionists nevertheless. Blair’s father, Frank Sr., was one of the founders of the Republican Party, and his brother, Montgomery, became Lincoln’s postmaster general. During the 1860 presidential election, Frank Blair Jr. successfully courted many of the St. Louis Germans, including Sigel, for the Republican Party, and thereafter he assisted the Turnverein in obtaining additional firearms. In the spring of 1861 he helped establish a Committee of Public Safety and cooperated with Sigel to maintain a force of Unionists capable of responding rapidly to any crisis.¹⁷

Blair was a close friend to Lincoln and kept him informed of conditions in Missouri. It was due to Blair’s influence that Lyon had arrived in February with reinforcements for the virtually unmanned arsenal and that Lyon soon received command of the post. Blair connived to have General William S. Harney, who commanded the army’s vast Department of the West from a headquarters in St. Louis, called to Washington. Harney was a Southerner whom Blair wrongly suspected of disloyalty and wanted out of the way. Harney’s temporary absence gave Blair, Lyon, and Sigel, who worked together to train Unionists throughout the city, virtually a free hand when Lincoln’s call for volunteers precipitated a crisis in Missouri.¹⁸

On April 20 Secessionists seized the Missouri Depot, a small Federal arsenal four miles outside of Liberty, in northwestern Missouri. Usually called the Liberty Arsenal, it contained four antiquated pieces of artillery and about 1,500 small arms. Fearing that the St. Louis arsenal might be attacked next, Blair and Lyon decided to cut through red tape. Near midnight on April 21, in response to their repeated telegraphic requests to Washington, Lyon received instructions to “arm the loyal citizens, to protect the public property and execute the laws.” The first enlistees were three hundred members of the Turnverein trained by Sigel.¹⁹

German Americans who were not members of the Turners also responded eagerly. John T. Buegel, a native of Mecklenberg who worked as a builder, felt such hostility from the pro-Secessionist elements in St. Louis that he feared for his safety. He therefore accompanied a friend to a recruitment meeting held on April 22 at the corner of Second and Elm Streets. Buegel recalled:

By April 27 Lyon had 2,100 men under arms. Two weeks later more than twice that number had been supplied with weapons and sworn into Federal service by Lieutenant Schofield, who was himself elected major of the First Missouri Infantry. The president’s orders to Lyon directly violated the Constitution, which reserves to Congress the right to expand the armed forces.²¹ But Lincoln deliberately abstained from calling Congress into session to ask for authorization. Lyon did not care, as his thinking on the crisis was straightforward. Slavery was evil because slaveholders threatened secession. Secession was treason and treason must be punished. Moreover, Lyon saw himself as God’s special instrument, chosen to inflict the severest possible punishment on Secessionists.²²

Over the course of his life, Lyon had developed unorthodox religious views that shocked his colleagues and caused them to question his sanity. Rejecting Christianity, he came to believe that “God’s will could be exerted only by those rare individuals who not only possessed the perspicacity to unfetter themselves from the obsequious tenets of their faith and to develop a true relationship with him, but who also wielded enough power among men to mete out his justice.” In place of Christ, Lyon worshiped the West Point trinity of Duty, Honor, and Country. Anyone who fell short of his own extreme standards of devotion to nationalism was a target of Lyon’s wrath.²³

Lyon was a man of “strong convictions and unyielding purpose,” his manner “quick and nervous, his keen eyes penetrating, at times blazing fiercely.” He did not consider himself to be an abolitionist, but during his service at various posts in the Kansas Territory from 1854 to 1861 he developed such an intense hatred for slaveholders that at times he seemed to welcome a violent breakup of the Union. As a witness to “Bleeding Kansas” and the atrocities of the “border ruffians,” he had reason to despise Missouri slaveholders above all others. By 1855 Lyon had concluded that “the aggressions of the pro-slavery men will not be checked till a lesson has been taught them in letters of fire and blood.” Nor was he concerned with the local scene alone. That same year he wrote a friend, “I despair of living peaceably with our Southern brethren . . . I foresee ultimate sectional strife, which I do not care to delay.” In 1856 he joined the Republican Party, supporting it with tremendous enthusiasm.²⁴

Lyon’s attitude and prior experiences directly shaped his conduct in St. Louis, setting in motion a train of events that led to Wilson’s Creek. Long anticipating a national crisis, he did not hesitate to take action or assume responsibility. But at the same time Lyon was arming and organizing Unionists, Claiborne Jackson continued to work for secession. The Missouri governor, however, gave the appearance in public of staying within the boundaries of the state and national constitutions. As allowed by law, Jackson ordered the Volunteer Militia of Missouri to assemble in their respective districts for six days of training. This force, created by the Militia Act of 1858, was not the county-based militia existing under the state constitution, but, as the name suggests, a collection of volunteer companies. Most states possessed such volunteers units, and they were often more social than military in character. In Missouri, on the other hand, as a result of the border troubles with Kansas dating to 1854, many of the volunteers had significant military experience. The northeastern units of the Volunteer Militia gathered on May 6 at the outskirts of St. Louis. Two regiments of infantry, three troops of cavalry, and an artillery battery established a tent city at Lindell Grove, naming it Camp Jackson in the governor’s honor.²⁵

Despite regimental structures, these militiamen’s primary identity lay at the company level, reflecting their community orientation. Long-established units like the St. Louis Grays and the Washington Blues, neatly uniformed in those colors, mingled with more recently raised companies in civilian garb, such as the Southern Guards and Dixie Guards. Two companies were named after Governor Jackson, and three were simply called Missouri Guards or Missouri Videttes. Captain Joseph Kelly’s Washington Blues and Captain Philip Coyne’s Emmett Guards were overwhelmingly Irish, traditional rivals of the city’s Germans.²⁶

Although the Missouri militiamen were legally assembled, the majority of them clearly favored secession. The Stars and Stripes flew over the camp, but Confederate banners were also displayed openly, for Jackson had used his patronage to commission officers and call up units sharing his sentiments. The governor and Brigadier General Daniel M. Frost, who commanded the encampment, hoped that the militia could seize the Federal arsenal. In fact, unknown to the public at that time, Jackson had already requested arms from the Confederate government. On May 8 two pieces of artillery arrived in St. Louis from Baton Rouge, disguised in packing crates marked “marble.” These were brought to the camp, but they were never assembled and there was no opportunity to use them. Frost had just under nine hundred men, whereas Lyon now had nearly eight thousand and had fortified the arsenal. The St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, a staunchly pro-Union paper, assured its readers of the impotence of the state militia in the face of Lyon’s thorough preparations. With nothing to do but drill until their muster period expired on May 11, Frost’s men relaxed. Visitors flocked to the camp, and a carnival-like atmosphere prevailed.²⁷

Lyon kept well informed of the happenings at Lindell Grove, including Frost’s receipt of arms from the Confederacy. By some accounts he even passed through Camp Jackson in a carriage, disguised as Frank Blair’s aged, blind mother-in-law. Although a heavy veil concealed his face and beard, Lyon took no chances, hiding a brace of revolvers beneath a lap robe. As he had already shipped all of the surplus arms from the arsenal to safety in Illinois, the real danger from Lyon’s perspective was that the pro-Secessionist Missourians might disperse peaceably on May 11 before he could inflict on them the punishment that traitors deserved and that he alone was divinely sanctioned to administer. The force at his disposal to quash the Secessionists was formidable. He had five regiments of infantry and a company of artillery, enlisted for ninety days. These he declared by fiat to be the only legal militia representing the state of Missouri, and he modestly allowed the colonels he appointed to elect him brigadier general. Lincoln not only sanctioned Lyon’s action, he authorized the unconstitutional creation in Missouri of a U.S. Reserve Corps, which Lyon promptly filled with five additional regiments of infantry.²⁸

The majority of these men were German Americans. Although Frank Blair led the First Missouri Infantry, seven of Lyon’s remaining nine infantry colonels were of German birth or ancestry, with the nativity of the enlisted men in like proportion. Many regimental and company officers were “Forty-Eighters,” refugees from Europe with combat experience. Besides Sigel, who led the Third Missouri, they included Heinrich Boernstein, bespectacled Jewish editor of a St. Louis German-language newspaper, who had served for five years in the Austrian army and now commanded the Second Missouri, and Friedrich Salomon, captain in the Fifth Missouri, a native of Saxony who had held a lieutenant’s commission prior to emigrating. Others, though not former soldiers, had at least some military training through the Turnverein.²⁹

The Reserve Corps, also called the Home Guard, contained a somewhat larger percentage of American-born enlisted men, including many Republican Wide-Awakes, Blair’s personal paramilitary force. More than a few Irish Americans were present, as the Irish of St. Louis split over the issue of secession.³⁰

Lyon’s Missouri Light Artillery, under Major Franz Backof, contained a mixture of experienced and amateur gunners to man its half-dozen six-pounders, but the training of its commander boded well. A forty-year-old native of Baden, Backof had been conscripted into the German military as a young man. He rose quickly to the rank of sergeant major in the artillery service and shocked his superiors by joining the revolutionary forces in 1848. He served with distinction, including a stint on Franz Sigel’s staff, but was captured and sentenced to ten years in prison. Released in 1851 on the condition that he emigrate, he moved to St. Louis and renewed his friendship with Sigel. He earned his living as a contractor and served several terms on the city council.³¹

Lyon’s best men were his Regulars, two companies of the Second U.S. Infantry. These were commanded by an old friend, Captain Thomas W. Sweeny, a native of Ireland who had fought in the Mexican War, losing his right arm but winning an officer’s commission. If Sweeny’s soldiers matched the national pattern for enlisted men in the U.S. service at the outbreak of the Civil War, two thirds of them were either German or Irish by birth.³²

The connection between Lyon’s highly ethnic force and the local community was exemplified during the first week in May, when Mrs. Josephine Weigel of the Women’s Union presented a silver-starred silk flag to Sigel’s Third Missouri with these words:

The Germans of St. Louis could be as racist as other white Americans. They had not flocked to arms over the issue of slavery but to preserve the Union. Most of them probably assumed that Lyon’s authority was legitimate and had no idea that their enlistments were unconstitutional. Like Lincoln, they saw the conflict not in terms of the enforcement of any single law or particular portion of the Constitution, but the preservation of a system of government by majority rule. Mislabeled “Dutch” and made the butt of jokes that portrayed them as dim-witted and slow, the sons of Deutschland saw the crisis as an opportunity to gain respect through loyal service, to break down the barriers of prejudice and win acceptance in American society. Sigel felt truly American for the first time when he grasped the flag from Mrs. Weigel.³⁴

Early on the morning of May 10, Sigel and Lyon led their men through the streets of St. Louis, separate columns converging on Lindell Grove. They made a remarkable pair, for they were determined, energetic men in the prime of life. Lyon was approaching his forty-third birthday, and Sigel was thirty-seven. Both were slender and nearly the same height, Lyon standing five foot five and Sigel five foot seven, but there any resemblance ended. Sigel’s jet black hair, thin goatee, and piercing gaze gave him an intellectual appearance. A soldier who served under him in Europe described him as “a man of fine education and a close thinker.” Sigel was neither tactful nor dashing, but trim, correct, and Prussian in appearance and conduct. Lyon had a high forehead, a florid complexion, and a large Roman nose. Some contemporaries described his wavy hair as frizzy, full beard as sandy in color, while others called it red. A newspaper reporter saw “acuteness, decision, and firmness” in Lyon’s countenance but noted that he spoke slowly, hesitating often while searching for the proper words. In conversation his blue-gray eyes often lit up with a curious “moody gleam” and his expression clouded over like a thunderstorm.³⁵

Word of Lyon’s march soon reached Frost at Lindell Grove, but given the Unionists’ overwhelming strength there was little he could do. The militia general offered no resistance when the Unionists surrounded Camp Jackson, and after protesting that Lyon had no authority for his actions he surrendered to the Connecticut Yankee. Lyon’s triumph was swift and bloodless, but it left him with a dilemma. Lacking a prison camp, he had no choice but to parole the state militiamen, to make them swear allegiance to the Federal government and then let them go. But as Lyon believed that “no punishment was too great” for Secessionists, this was hardly satisfying. Therefore, as an object lesson to others of doubtful loyalty, he subjected his disarmed prisoners to a humiliating march through the main streets of the city to the arsenal.³⁶

This was a tragic mistake. As word of the parade spread, men, women, and children lined the streets. Angry remarks, epithets, and ethnic slurs rose from the crowd, revealing the presence of a large number of Secessionists. They threw rocks and bottles at first, but finally someone fired on Lyon’s soldiers. Other shots followed, and before Lyon could prevent it his men fired back into the crowd. By the time Lyon regained control of the situation, twenty-eight civilians had been killed and about seventy-five wounded. The dead included one woman and five teenaged children, one of whom was female. Two of Lyon’s men were killed, as were three Missouri militiamen.³⁷

Lyon finally herded his prisoners to the arsenal, where he held them overnight without food or water. Although he made them sign paroles in the morning, the propaganda value of his victory parade had not merely been lost, but passed to the Secessionists.³⁸ The “Camp Jackson Massacre” had profound repercussions. Among other things, it strengthened Governor Jackson’s influence immeasurably and led to the creation of the Missouri State Guard, a major portion of the Southern forces that would fight at Wilson’s Creek.

No one can say what form the Civil War would have taken in Missouri but for the precipitous action of Nathaniel Lyon. It was a terrible war everywhere, but no state suffered as severely as Missouri, where shifting campaigns and vicious guerrilla warfare caused human misery and property damage to be more widely spread than in other Southern states. Though Lyon’s actions did not create Missouri’s internecine strife, they did shape and accelerate the pace of events, as they “forced Missourians to get off the fence and make immediate personal choices.”³⁹

The majority of state legislators opposed secession, but when news of the massacre in St. Louis reached Jefferson City, they took radical action, just short of taking the state out of the Union. Noting that a portion of the people of St. Louis were in rebellion against the laws of the state, they passed legislation making it illegal for political or social organizations, such as the Wide-Awakes or the Turnverein, to possess firearms. Next, they took steps to raise two million dollars for defense and created a new organization, the Missouri State Guard, to replace both the old county-based state militia and the volunteer militia companies. The state was divided into nine numbered geographic districts, each commanded by a brigadier general who was charged with raising therein the troops that would constitute his military division.⁴⁰

Jackson appointed Nathaniel W. Watkins, Thomas Beverly Randolph, John Bullock Clark Sr., William Yarnel Slack, Alexander William Doniphan, Mosby Monroe Parsons, James Haggin McBride, James S. Rains, and Meriwether Lewis Clark as district/division commanders. Of these men, John Clark, Slack, Parsons, McBride, and Rains fought at Wilson’s Creek.⁴¹

Clark, a wealthy fifty-nine-year-old native of Kentucky who owned 160 slaves, was one of the state’s leading Secessionists. Described as a “born politician,” he held a variety of state offices and was representing Missouri in the U.S. Congress when Jackson made him a brigadier general of the State Guard. Active in the old state militia, he had led a group of Missouri volunteers in the Black Hawk War of 1832 and thus brought significant experience to his new position as commander of the Third District in north-central Missouri. The neighboring Fourth District, just to the west, was commanded by Slack, also a Kentuckian by birth, but a resident of Missouri since childhood. A forty-five-year-old lawyer, he had been a captain in the Second Missouri Volunteers during the Mexican War. Parsons, who commanded the Sixth District in south-central Missouri, was a close political ally of the governor and had served in the state legislature, where he staunchly upheld the interests of slaveholders. Thirty-nine on his appointment as brigadier general, he was a Virginia native who had resided in Missouri since his youth. As captain of a company of Missouri volunteers with Doniphan’s Expedition, he had won commendations for his gallantry at the Battle of Chihuahua during the Mexican War. The Seventh District, which shared a southern border with Arkansas, went to McBride, who had moved to Missouri from Kentucky at a young age. He eventually settled in Springfield and became a lawyer and banker. After a brief sojourn in California in the early 1850s, he returned to Missouri and served as a circuit judge. Forty-seven years old and the only division commander without even a pretense of military experience, McBride filled his staff with fellow lawyers and ran his command as if it were a courtroom. The large Eighth District encompassed most of the border with potentially volatile Kansas. Its commander, Rains, was a Tennessean by birth, but he had lived in Missouri for most of the last two decades, immersing himself in state politics. Part-time farmer, judge, and Indian agent, he cut a dashing figure, however, sporting bushy sidewhiskers in the style later popularly associated with Ambrose Burnside. He served in the Missouri state senate and house of representatives. Like many of his generation, the forty-four-year-old Rains went to California during the gold rush. Riches eluded him, but he did obtain a general’s commission in the California state militia. In theory this modest service made him at least more qualified than McBride, but events would prove Rains to be the poorest commander in the Missouri State Guard.⁴²

To command the State Guard, with the rank of major general, Jackson chose Sterling Price. By the time the Civil War ended in 1865, the fortunes of the state had become so closely intertwined with those of this quixotic and often ineffectual man that he came to personify the Confederacy’s miniature “lost cause” in Missouri. Price turned out to be a man of very limited military ability, and this had consequences from the first. But he was the right person to lead the State Guard during the crisis summer of 1861, when Missouri’s resources were severely restricted and the ability to inspire devotion was as important as expertise in strategy or tactics. The tragedy of Southern fortunes in Missouri was not that Price was initially tapped for the job, but that a more talented military leader neither later emerged nor was appointed to take the reins from his hands.

Like so many of that westering generation, Price immigrated to Missouri from the east. Born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1809, he grew up the privileged son of a wealthy planter. After only one year at Hampden-Sydney College, he withdrew to study law but never practiced that profession. When his family decided to exchange genteel central Virginia for the frontiers of Missouri, he followed. By the early 1840s Price was married and starting a large family, residing at Keytesville in the Missouri River valley region, where he farmed tobacco with slave labor. As his wealth accumulated, he turned his attention to Democratic Party politics and rose quickly in prominence. He served as speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives and had nearly completed a term as his district’s U.S. congressman when the war with Mexico erupted. Resigning from office, Price returned to Missouri and raised a regiment of mounted volunteers, which was dispatched to New Mexico to bolster the American occupation forces. Soon after his arrival in Santa Fe, Price, though only a colonel, succeeded to the top military command in the new territory. Whereupon, according to one critic, he “displayed a laxness in enforcing discipline, a tendency to quarrel with other officials, and a penchant for acting in a highly independent, almost insubordinate fashion—characteristics that were to manifest themselves in a subsequent war.”⁴³

Although there is much truth in this judgment, it is too harsh. After the departure of his superiors for other assignments, leaving Price with the daunting task of holding a vast expanse of land with few resources, he did tighten discipline, although not nearly enough. When a disastrous revolt occurred in January 1847, as Part of the populace in Taos rose up and killed the newly arrived civilian governor, Charles Bent, Price responded quickly. Leaving Santa Fe with a force of fewer than four hundred men, he marched on Taos despite wretched weather and won several skirmishes against the “rebels” en route. On reaching the town, he attacked and defeated a well-positioned force of strength equal to, or greater than, his own.⁴⁴

When an attorney general for the new territory arrived from Washington, he indicted two dozen “rebels” in connection with Governor Bent’s death. The martyred governor’s brother was allowed to serve as foreman of the grand jury, and more than two dozen New Mexicans were quickly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. When Price pardoned one of them, the attorney general protested so vigorously that Price arrested him temporarily. This sparked a lifelong political feud between the two men. The attorney general was Frank Blair Jr.⁴⁵

Price went back to Missouri with his troops when their enlistments expired, but he was soon in action once more. Appointed a brigadier general of volunteers, he returned to Santa Fe in November 1847. Three months later he disobeyed orders by launching an invasion of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. He also ignored Mexican protests that, following Winfield Scott’s victories to the south, an armistice now existed between the two nations. In March 1848 Price won a stunning, hard-fought, but pointless battle against a substantial Mexican force at Santa Cruz de Rosales. This allowed him to return home a hero and avoid any consequences for his unauthorized action.⁴⁶

The Mexican War revealed much about Price. He was ambitious, querulous, insubordinate, and convinced of the righteousness of his own judgments and actions. His military abilities, though limited, were substantial. He knew how to motivate volunteer soldiers, and his experiences apparently led him to believe that such men, if not subjected to onerous discipline, could march rapidly with minimal supplies to attack and defeat a superior enemy.

After the war Price concentrated on business and politics. He was elected governor of Missouri in 1852, serving a four-year term. But as a strong Unionist he had little use for Claiborne Fox Jackson. After being elected president of the convention that met in the spring of 1861 to consider Missouri’s place in the Union, Price supported the convention’s rejection of secession. But he also endorsed a failed resolution asserting that if Lincoln attempted coercion, Missouri should stand by its sister states of the South.⁴⁷

When Jackson appointed Price to head the State Guard in May 1861, the former governor and Mexican War hero brought to his new position a reputation for political moderation and the prestige of past military success. Portly at age fifty-two, the clean-shaven, silver-haired Price was charged with suppressing insurrection and repelling invasion. This was a formidable task. Although in theory he was supposed to defend against invasion from any direction, the borders that troubled Price were those that Missouri shared with the free states of Kansas, Iowa, and Illinois—a total of almost nine hundred miles. By comparison, in 1861 Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston’s department, running west from Cumberland Gap, on the Tennessee-Virginia line, to the Mississippi River, had a boundary only half as long. And as events turned out, Price had less time to prepare to defend Missouri, which was still in the Union, than the Confederates did to defend Tennessee or Virginia.

When General Harney returned from Washington to St. Louis on May 11, he was shocked by Lyon’s actions and did what he could to keep Missouri from splitting into warring factions. In reality it was already too late. On May 21 Harney reached an agreement with Price for a truce between the Federal forces, including Lyon’s illegally raised volunteers, and the legal but strongly pro-Secessionist State Guard. Ignoring this, independent Secessionist companies sprang up throughout the state. On May 30 Harney was removed from command, leaving Lyon, whom the War Department had just promoted to brigadier general, in sole control of Federal fortunes in Missouri. This was Blair’s work, as he had convinced Lincoln that the situation called for a firm hand, not a pretense of neutrality.⁴⁸

Lyon immediately began recruiting additional forces, and arming those on hand. Ironically, the arms he had shipped out of the St. Louis arsenal for safety were no longer available. Schofield, who acted unofficially as Lyon’s quartermaster and was soon appointed his adjutant general, had to send all the way to Pennsylvania for equipment. The shoulder arms, cartridge boxes, belts, and bayonets that arrived were largely Mexican War surplus, although some units, such as Blair’s First Missouri, got modern rifles. But even Blair, with all his influence, could not obtain uniforms for the men from the Federal government. Consequently, the women of St. Louis began sewing for their loved ones who had volunteered. There was no consistency in style or color. Blair’s unit wore blue, but many of the others wore gray, apparently because a local store, Woolf’s Shirt Depot, stocked hundreds of gray overshirts and sold them at discount prices. Some of the German companies were described as having “gray flannel shirts and dark-blue trousers and kepis.” Sigel’s Third Missouri had outfits consisting of “a gray hat, gray shirt, and gray pants, all trimmed in red.” The Federal government did supply some blankets, canteens, haversacks, and knapsacks, but not enough to go around. Blair therefore appealed through the newspapers for public donations. Money came in from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. August Belmont, the well-known New York City socialite and businessman, contributed $500. By the first week in June more than $14,000 had been raised, $7,000 having come from out of state. No one did more than the citizens of Philadelphia, who donated 1,800 pairs of socks, 614 gray flannel shirts, and 900 pairs of shoes. The fact that Northern citizens from across the United States contributed to the support of Lyon’s volunteers suggests a wide public recognition of Missouri’s significant role in the developing crisis.⁴⁹

Lyon now commanded almost 11,000 men, a force large enough to have been called an army in any of America’s previous conflicts. On the morning of June 11, he and Blair met with Price, Jackson, and the governor’s secretary, Thomas L. Snead, at the Planters’ House hotel in St. Louis. The Missouri officials hoped to buy time, as they were woefully unprepared for any armed confrontation. In fact, Jackson proposed a mutual disarmament, requiring that Lyon’s volunteers and Price’s nascent Guardsmen disband. This was a sham, as Price had already urged the governor to seek help from the Confederacy, and Jackson’s Secessionist goals were well known. Lyon responded by leaping to his feet and declaring, “Rather than concede to the State of Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my government in any matter however important, I would see you, and you, and you, and you, and every man, woman and child in the State, dead and buried!” He stomped out of the meeting with unequivocal parting words: “This means war.”⁵⁰

Historians have long debated whether Lyon acted wisely at the Planters’ House meeting. Some argue that prolonging Missouri’s pretense of neutrality would have ultimately benefited the Union cause in the state more than the Secessionist cause. But two things should be noted. First, Lyon’s motives were highly personal, the result of his peculiar personality and egocentric views. “Though he couched his objections to Jackson’s proposals in terms of federal authority, in truth Lyon now refused to accept any restriction of his own omnipotence. Once, he had had no power. Now, Lyon was the power. His duty was not—and never had been—to make peace with the Secessionists. His duty, his calling, was to punish them. No one else knew how. And now, no one could stop him. God was in him.”⁵¹ This does not mean, however, that Lyon’s actions should be interpreted exclusively in terms of his mental state. Many talented, accomplished people are driven by their personal views.

The second thing to note is that Lyon was in most respects an excellent military commander, one of his country’s best. Across the North in 1861 Union generals bombarded Lincoln with pessimistic assessments and unrealistic demands for men and materiel. Lyon did his own begging for reinforcements and supplies. Indeed, before the campaign ended he was almost obsessed by his shortages. But he was willing to work with what he had on hand. In June 1861 Lyon seemed to realize that the forthcoming struggle would be as much political as military, that time was the enemy of the Union and that there was no substitute for the immediate suppression of rebellion. Lyon seized the initiative. Although there would be tremendous negative consequences for his decision, in retrospect it was the greatest single factor in saving Missouri for the Union.

None of this was clear, of course, as Jackson and his party departed for Jefferson City. Lyon’s declaration sent Missourians flocking to join Price, transforming the Missouri State Guard from a theoretical organization into a reality. As Price struggled to create an army, Lyon received reinforcements from out of state, bringing into the picture additional forces that eventually clashed at Wilson’s Creek.