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THE CAMP JACKSON AFFAIR
Activities in St. Louis soon threw the state into further frenzy.
Frank Blair returned to St. Louis on the day of Jackson's rejection of
Lincoln's call, armed with a War Department authorization of five
thousand stand of arms to those Home Guard units who would enlist in the
federal army. With an enlistment agent in the city (Lieutenant John M.
Schofield, a West Pointer on leave in the city with orders to act as
mustering officer in Missouri and whose presence Jackson had ignored),
Blair and Lyon by week's end had mustered and armed more than
twenty-five hundred recruits, most of them Germans, at the St. Louis
Arsenal, with authorization for as many as ten thousand. The action was
unconstitutional; Congress alone had authority to create federal
volunteers, who were neither state militia nor members of the U.S. Army.
As many Missourians saw the matter, such enlistment only implicated
government officials from Lyon and Blair to Lincoln in a vast conspiracy
against the states. Moreover, the St. Louis military leaders had
managed to secrete virtually the entire cache of arms and munitions from
the arsenal across the river to Illinois, thus thwarting any repeat of
the Liberty Arsenal predation and eliminating any threat of attack in
St. Louis.
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AN AUGUST 1861 ENGRAVING OF THE ARSENAL AT ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
(HARPER'S WEEKLY)
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As if scripted, Missouri's world turned upside down within four days
of the militia's encamping. On May 10, during the temporary absence of
the federal commander in St. Louis, William S. Harney, Lyon and Blair
marched some 6,500 troops from the St. Louis Arsenal to Camp Jackson, a
militia encampment on the western edge of St Louis, forcing the
surrender of those 669 militia (of 891 in camp) who had not managed to
escape the converging federal columns. Reports reached Lyon that the
Confederate cannon from Baton Rouge, poorly disguised in boxes marked as
marble, had arrived at night by steamer and that they, along with those
cannon held by the state and shipped "for repairs" to the encampment's
commander, Daniel M. Frost, were secreted to the camp. The federal
commander also had learned that Jefferson City was awash in troops,
powder, and arms—including the cannon taken from the Liberty
Arsenal—and he ordered a preemptive strike, reasoning dubiously
that the camp was a threat to the arsenal. Many of the militia were
clearly secessionist, naming their company streets "Beauregard" and
"Davis" for the Confederate general and president and displaying
secession flags; one even wrote the night before the incident to his
brother in Natchez, Mississippi, on Confederate stationery, a letter
that was never delivered for federal troops captured it the next day,
that "we shall conquer for the Southern Confederacy and Jef Davis
Dam Lincoln and the Stars and Stripes, we are for the south."
After capturing the militia, in a grandiose display of might Lyon
marched the prisoners under guard, through hostile throngs that now
packed the city streets, for nearly the entire six miles from the camp
to the arsenal. The humiliating procession soon erupted in violence; in
response to a small fracas near the center of the column, the barely
trained Home Guard units opened fire on the crowd, resulting in
twenty-eight deaths and as many as seventy-five injuries. For the next
two days rioting tore through St. Louis's normally quiet brick streets;
thousands fled the "Black Dutch" government troops who many frightened
residents believed were "shooting women and children in cold blood."
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FEDERAL TROOPS DRILL AT CAMP JACKSON IN MAY 1861. (USAMHI)
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GENERAL DANIEL M. FROST (GS)
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The "coup de tat at St. Louis," as one Missourian referred to
the Camp Jackson affair, was perhaps the single most catalytic event in
the state's history. Termed by one contemporary "the greatest military
blunder of the Civil War"—phraseology that historians have echoed
since—the action galvanized Missouri's countryside, turning
thousands of residents who had recently given support to the federal
government into strong southern rights advocates. By representing that
government as a coercive power, the military junto in St. Louis now
caused shoestring Unionists to regard them—and not the
Confederates—as warmongers. "Frank Blair is dictator," moaned one
resident, "and if the slightest show of resistance is made we will be
crushed out," while another predicted that "the rain of perfect teror
[sic] has commenced." Even Unconditional Unionists now found their
allegiance tested, if not ended, in the aftermath of Camp Jackson. Uriel
Wright, a member of the convention that had voted so decisively against
secession, declared emphatically: "If Unionism means such atrocious
deeds as I have witnessed in St. Louis, I am no longer a Union man."
Within hours of the incident, news of the federal coup reached the
state capital. The legislature was in special session, debating a
military bill that Jackson had requested that would have given him
unprecedented power to mobilize the state for war. Late in the
afternoon, the governor himself rushed into the chamber, fresh from St.
Louis, where he likely had witnessed the repercussions of the Camp
Jackson fracas, and relayed the news to several confidants. Within
fifteen minutes the legislature had passed Jackson's long-debated
military bill and soon adjourned. Just after midnight, summoned by the
alarming peals of church bells that Jackson had ordered rung,
legislators met again in emergency session amid rumors that three
regiments of federal troops were heading for Jefferson City. In wild
haste, the armed and anxious state legislature passed another act
declaring that "the City of St. Louis has been invaded by citizens of
other states, and a part of the people of said city are in a state of
rebellion against the laws of the state," and granting the governor
sweeping military powers "to take such measures as in his judgment he
may deem necessary or proper to repel such invasion or put down such
rebellion." Anxious legislators—including the governor—sent
their families from the state capital in anticipation of a federal
advance. Within a week, the legislature had given Jackson authorization
to take possession of the state's railroads and telegraph lines
"whenever in his opinion the security and welfare of the State may
require it" and requested that Jackson mobilize the state militia.
Missouri careened toward another type of conflict: a war within a
war.
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THIS WOOD ENGRAVING TITLED TERRIBLE TRAGEDY AT ST. LOUIS APPEARED
IN THE MAY 25, 1861 NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED NEWS. (NPS)
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Governor Jackson's gambit had worked, at least for the moment, for
virtually all of the state's newspapers condemned the Camp Jackson
capture. The governor quickly sought to capitalize on the emotion
surrounding Missouri's apparent atavism. Within minutes of passage of
the legislature's late-night defense act, Jackson dispatched squads from
the newly reorganized state militia (now called, fittingly, the Missouri
State Guard, and soon to number as many as two thousand, though poorly
if at all armed) in Jefferson City to guard and if necessary to burn the
railroad bridges spanning the Gasconade and Osage Rivers. He ordered the
state's powder stores dispersed around the countryside to militia
commanders throughout the state, removed the state's treasury funds, and
appointed Sterling Price—a former Mexican War general and governor
who had recently chaired the secession convention but who now, in the
aftershock of Camp Jackson, had cast his lot with the governor—as
commander of the State Guard. Called "Old Pap" by the militia, Price was
enormously popular in the state, and his appointment offered
legitimacy—both from his martial experience and his moderate
politics—to both the Guard and the governor's effort to mobilize
the state.
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CAPTAIN EMMETT MACDONALD OF THE MISSOURI STATE MILITIA WAS CAPTURED AT
CAMP JACKSON BUT REFUSED PAROLE. (GS)
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THIS NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION DEPICTS UNITED STATES VOLUNTEERS ATTACKED BY
THE MOB, CORNER OF FIFTH AND WALNUT STREETS, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
(HARPER'S WEEKLY)
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As extremists inflamed the state, moderates attempted to bring order
to the onrushing chaos. State Guard commander Sterling Price traveled to
St. Louis to meet with the conservative commander of the federal
Department of the West, General William S. Harney, who had returned to
the city in the aftermath of Camp Jackson and was horrified at the
results of Lyon's rash act. A Tennessean, Harney was well-regarded in
the army as a Plains Indian fighter whose long career and unquestioned
loyalty could effect peace in the volatile state. On May 21, Price
worked out an agreement with Harney that maintained the fragile balance
between state and federal authorities in the state. So long as the state
government kept order in Missouri, federal troops would not intervene
militarily in its affairs and then only in cooperation with the state
troops. "The united forces of both governments," read the proclamation,
"are pledged to the maintenance of the peace of the State, and the
defense of the rights and the property of all persons without
distinction of party." Harney in effect, had pledged the federal
government's own neutrality in Missouri.
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MISSOURI STATE GUARD
The Missouri State Guard, victorious at Wilson's Creek, was the
militia guaranteed to Missourians under the Second Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States. Created by the Missouri legislature
on May 11, 1861, the Guardsmen swore allegiance to their state and were
authorized to carry only the Missouri flag. Their commander, Major
General Sterling Price, initially pledged to defend the state against
all incursions, whether from the North or the South. Governor Claiborne
Fox Jackson hoped to use the State Guard as the nucleus of a Confederate
army in Missouri, and most of the State Guard's officers and many of its
men favored secession. Historian E. B. Long expressed it best: "Nothing
was clear cut — it was simply Missouri." The Missouri State Guard
was born amid controversy. It existed as a separate entity of
significant size for only a brief time, as almost all of its members
voluntarily transferred to the Confederate army during the fall of 1861,
after the Confederate Congress voted to admit Missouri to the southern
nation. Thousands refused Confederate service, however, either from a
desire to end their military careers or because they had never
considered themselves as fighting for anything but their home state.
During the first months of the war the State Guard was a major strategic
factor in the Trans-Mississippi theater. From its ranks came several
soldiers who rose to prominence, such as Sterling Price, Jo Shelby, and
John S. Marmaduke.
An appreciation of the Missouri State Guard must begin with the
complex events that brought it into being. When the Civil War broke out
following the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Governor Jackson
rejected President Abraham Lincoln's call for state militia to put down
the "rebellion." Instead, early in May 1861, he called units of the
pro-secessionist Volunteer Militia of Missouri into camp at St. Louis,
thereby potentially threatening the St. Louis Arsenal, the largest
repository of weapons west of the Mississippi River. The commander of
the arsenal, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, took no chances. On May 10 he
marched out with a small party of U.S. Army Regulars and a large number
of volunteers. They captured the Volunteer Militia without a fight, but
while the prisoners were being marched back through the streets of St.
Louis a riot erupted in which more than two dozen civilians were killed.
The Volunteer Militia were eventually paroled.
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MAJOR GENERAL STERLING PRICE (BL)
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Lyon's actions brought the Missouri State Guard into being. Despite
its prosecessionist leanings, the Missouri Volunteer Militia had
violated neither state nor federal law, while Lyon's volunteers had been
raised and armed illegally. The federal commander seemed bent on making
war against a state that had not left the Union. In response, the
Missouri legislature passed laws reorganizing the county-based militia
guaranteed to the state by the Bill of Rights, giving it the name
Missouri State Guard.
The structure and organization of the new State Guard itself was for
the most part quite ordinary. The governor was its commander in chief.
He was assisted by a personal staff and a Military Board, which was to
draw up rules and regulations for the Guard and oversee its
administration. In times of "insurrection, invasion, or war," the
governor could appoint a major general to command all forces in the
field. The state was divided by counties into nine districts, and the
troops therein were assigned to a correspondingly numbered division.
Thus "First Division, Missouri State Guard," was a geographic,
organizational term and did not denote the number of soldiers in the
command. Each division was commanded by a brigadier general, initially
appointed by the governor. These officers were charged with enrolling
the local citizens and organizing them into military units. After a
minimum of twenty-four companies were organized, the soldiers therein
were to elect a brigadier general, who would replace the governor's
appointee and serve for good behavior. Each division was to maintain
infantry, cavalry, and artillery, raised at the company level and
organized first into battalions and then into regiments. While the types
of arms were to be separate on paper, the regulations allowed them to be
combined for expediency under the most senior officer present. Thus
while on actual service a single battalion of the State Guard might
contain not only foot soldiers but also mounted men and attached
artillery. It was a highly flexible, community-based structure,
following the American militia tradition, which dated to colonial
times.
All physically fit free white male residents between the ages of
eighteen and forty-five were subject to duty in the State Guard.
Enlistees served for seven years, during which time they could be called
up for both annual training and emergency service. If field service
exceeded six months, the commander in chief was to apportion troops so
all nine divisions contributed. Volunteers were desired, but division
commanders had the power to institute a draft. Persons drafted could
escape service by paying a commutation of $150. Interestingly,
volunteers under the age of twenty-one needed written permission from a
parent or guardian to enlist but could be drafted without their
consent.
With peak strength of about twenty-five thousand men scattered
across the state, the Missouri State Guard forced the Federals to
concentrate more than sixty thousand men in Missouri from May through
November.
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Following the Battie of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington,
Missouri, the Confederate Congress voted to admit Missouri and Sterling
Price began transferring his men to Confederate service. This marked the
end of the most important phase of the State Guard's existence. For a
period of over twenty-nine weeks these American citizens in Missouri had
opposed the power of the federal government. With peak strength of about
twenty-five thousand men scattered across the state, the Missouri State
Guard forced the Federals to concentrate more than sixty thousand men in
Missouri from May through November. Had those Union soldiers been
available for service elsewhere, the first year of the war might have
gone differently for the North.
Thousands of Missourians who had been members of the State Guard took
part as Confederate soldiers in the various campaigns in Missouri,
Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama between 1862
and 1865. Price commanded Missouri Confederates at the Battle of Pea
Ridge in March 1862 and the unsuccessful campaign to defend Little Rock
in the summer of 1863. In September and October 1864 he led a raid
across Missouri designed to disrupt federal operations and gain
recruits. Only partially successful, it was the longest cavalry raid in
American military history. Former State Guardsmen were also caught up in
the guerrilla fighting that plagued much of the Trans-Mississippi
region.
The Missouri State Guard contributed significantly to the leadership
of the Confederate cause. Generals Daniel Frost, Martin Green, Mosby
Parsons, Sterling Price, and William Slack obtained equal rank in the
Confederate army. Other Guardsmen who eventually wore a general's star
were John B. Clark, Jr., Francis Cockrell, Basil Duke, Henry Little,
John S. Marmaduke, James Major, and Joseph O. Shelby.
— by William Garrett Piston and Thomas P. Sweeney
THIS IS A CONDENSED VERSION OF AN ARTICLE FROM THE JUNE 1999 ISSUE OF
NORTH & SOUTH MAGAZINE.
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The action cost the veteran general his command. Just a week after
the Harney-Price agreement, Frank Blair managed to obtain orders from
the War Department relieving Harney of command of the western
department, which Lyon would assume in the interim. Radicals would now
move federal authority in Missouri. The effects would be both immediate
and catastrophic. Seeking to buy time with Lyon in charge, Jackson
solicited a meeting with the federal commander, now a brigadier general
of volunteers. On June 11, Lyon and Blair, accompanied by an aide, met
with the state leaders in the governor's suite at the Planters' House, a
sumptuous hotel in St. Louis, Unlike Price's interview with Harney, this
meeting was anything but cordial. For the first half hour, Jackson and
Price spoke conciliatively, proposing strict neutrality and offering
such concessions as the disbanding of the State Guard and discontinuance
of further militia musters in return for the same for the Home Guard now
under federal arms. Quickly, Lyon came to dominate the meeting, refusing
to concede any point on federal authority, rejecting the state leaders'
calumet. After four heated hours, Lyon declared bluntly, "Better, sir,
far better that the blood of every man woman and child within the limits
of the State should flow, than that she should defy the federal
government. This means war." Turning on his heels, Lyon strode
briskly out of the room, leaving the remaining five men in stunned
silence. The governor and militia commander hastened back to Jefferson
City.
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GENERAL WILLIAM S. HARNEY (MHS)
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Neither Claib Jackson nor Sterling Price could have predicted Lyon's
peremptory declaration of war. Yet clearly they understood its
implications in the fullest sense. Hastening back to Jefferson City and
ordering the destruction of the Gasconade River bridge and the cutting
of the telegraph wires in the event Lyon would send troops, the governor
prepared a proclamation for public release the following day. Now
presented with the opportunity to bring to fruition his
passive-aggressive strategy for Missouri's secession, Jackson used the
proclamation to reiterate the theme that he was confident would sound
most clearly among the state's residents: that the federal government
was the aggressor bent on coercing peaceable Missouri. The governor
called for fifty thousand militia volunteers "for the protection of the
lives, liberty, and property of the citizens of this State. . . . Rise,
then, and drive out ignominiously the invaders who have dared to
desecrate the soil which your labors have made fruitful, and which is
consecrated by your homes."
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