August 14, 1861. |
August. |
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[63]
News of the Battle of Wilson's Creek,1 and the death of Lyon, reached Fremont on the 13th of August.
The secessionists in St. Louis were made jubilant and bold by it. This disposition was promptly met by the Commander-in-Chief.
Martial law was declared,
and General Mc-Kinstry was appointed Provost-Marshal.
Some of the most active secessionists were arrested, and the publication of newspapers charged with disloyalty was suspended.2 So tight was held the curb of restraint in the city that an outbreak was prevented.
More free to act in the rural districts, the armed secessionists began again to distress the loyal people.
In bands they moved over the country, plundering and destroying.
Almost daily, collisions between them and the Home Guards occurred.
One of the most severe of these conflicts took place at Charleston, west of Bird's Point, on the 19th,
when three hundred Illinois Volunteers, under Colonel Dougherty, put twelve hundred Confederates to flight.
Two days afterward, a battery planted by Thompson, at Commerce, was captured by National troops sent out from Cape Girardeau; and everywhere the loyalists were successful in this sort of warfare.
But the condition of public affairs in Missouri was becoming daily more alarming.
The provisional government was almost powerless, and Governor Gamble, by a mistaken policy, seriously injured the public service at that critical time by refusing to commission military officers appointed by Fremont.
The President commissioned them himself, and the work of organizing a force for the
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