This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [20]
He was transferred to St. Louis, which, as it developed, was just the place where his dream could come true. In St. Louis he met Francis P. Blair, Jr., the one man in the state who could give him the leverage with which he could act to the best effect.
Blair was one of the Blairs of Maryland, son and namesake of Andrew Jackson’s trusted adviser of the long ago, brother of Montgomery Blair, who sat in Lincoln’s cabinet; a powerful man of strong opinions, almost unlimited political influence in Washington, and a passion equal to Lyon’s own. He had been a principal organizer of the Republican party in Missouri; working closely with the anti-slavery, pro-Unionist German population in St. Louis, he had set up a little committee of public safety which, although entirely unofficial, was nevertheless relied on by Lincoln as a potential action arm in case matters came to a showdown. He and Lyon — who, technically, was on the scene merely to command a company of regulars in the U. S. Arsenal — quickly discovered that they could work together. They shared many traits, among them a conviction that what was going on in the country was in fact a revolution, and an instinctive feeling that a time of revolution was no time for crippling legalisms.
The legalisms would not bother them very much. Governor of Missouri was Claiborne Jackson, strongly secessionist, who tried to get a state convention to take the state out of the Union, saw the convention controlled by a Unionist majority, and was quietly waiting for a more favorable turn of events. Like Blair, he kept his eyes on the arsenal. It contained sixty thousand muskets, a million and a half ball cartridges, a number of cannon, and some machinery for the manufacture of arms. If the secessionists could seize it they could equip a whole army and control the entire state. To prevent such a seizure there was nothing much but Blair’s iron determination and the presence of energetic little Captain Lyon.
Pulling wires that led to Washington, Blair moved to make the arsenal safe. Lyon’s superior officer there seemed to feel that if the state government should call on him to surrender the arsenal he could do nothing except comply, so Blair had him transferred to other parts, and defense of the arsenal was entrusted to Lyon. Top Federal commander at St. Louis was Brigadier General W. S. Harney, a hard-boiled old Indian-fighting regular who was thoroughly loyal to the Union but who could not make himself believe that Governor Jackson actually meant any harm. Blair sent more messages to Washington, and late in April — after Fort Sumter had been surrendered, after Governor Jackson flatly refused to raise troops for war against the Confederacy — Harney was suddenly called to Washington. (En route the old soldier managed to get himself captured by Confederates when his train stopped at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where a thriving government arsenal had just been taken over by Virginia troops. The experience prolonged Harney’s absence from St. Louis and may have given him a new insight into the things that could happen to government property in a time of crisis.)3
In his absence command of everything in and around St. Louis devolved on Lyon, who then got as extraordinary a set of instructions from the War Department as any mere infantry captain ever received. To maintain order and defend national property he was empowered at his discretion to enroll up to ten thousand