Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[465] publish a proclamation to the people, warning them that the President's call for troops was illegal, and that they should prepare to defend their rights as citizens of Missouri, and to form a military camp at or near St. Louis, whereat the commander might be authorized to “muster military companies into the service of the State, erect batteries,” et coetera.¹

In accordance with General Frost's advice, the Governor, on the day when he issued his call for the meeting of the Legislature, caused his Adjutant-General (Hough) to send orders to the militia officers of the State to assemble their respective commands on the 3d of May, and go into encampment for a week, the avowed object being for the militia “to attain a greater degree of efficiency and perfection in organization and discipline.” In all this the treasonable designs of the Governor were so thinly covered by false pretense that few were deceived by them. The intention clearly was to give to the Governor and his friends military control and occupation of the State, that they might, in spite of the solemn injunctions of the people, expressed in their Convention, annex Missouri to the “Southern Confederacy.” Had evidence of his treasonable designs been wanting, the Governor's Message to the Legislature on the 2d of May would have supplied it. “Our interests and our sympathies,” he said, “are identical with those of the Slaveholding States, and necessarily unite our destiny with theirs. The similarity of our social and political institutions, our industrial interests, our sympathies, habits, and tastes, our common origin and territorial contiguity, all concur in pointing out our duty in regard to the separation which is now taking place between the States of the old Federal Union.” He denounced the President's call for troops as “unconstitutional and illegal, tending toward a consolidated despotism.” He said all that he dared, short of calling the people to arms in set terms, to over-throw the Republic. The Legislature obsequiously acquiesced in

United States Arsenal at St Louis.2

the demands of the Governor, and he began at once to work the machinery of revolution vigorously.

The capture of the United States Arsenal at St. Louis, with its large supply of munitions of war, and the holding of that chief city of the State and of the Mississippi Valley, formed a capital feature in the plan of the conspirators. Already an unguarded Arsenal at Liberty, in Clay County, had been seized

April 20, 1861.

and garrisoned by the secessionists, under the direction of the Governor, and its contents distributed