264
Carolina, he had begun to organize his adherents as Home Guards and hadarmed some of them, and was drilling the rest for the field, when the electionof delegates to the State Convention took place. To complete the arming ofthese men was his first aim. In the city of St. Louis the United States hadan arsenal within which were more than enough arms for this purpose—60,000 stand of arms and a great abundance of other munitions of war. Solong as Buchanan was President, Blair could not get them, but the 4th ofMarch was near at hand and he could well wait till then, for the Southern-rights men had been so demoralized by the defeat which they had sustainedin the election of delegates to the Convention, that they were in no conditionto attack the arsenal, as they had intendedto do if the election had gone in theirfavor. It was, indeed, more than a monthafter the inauguration of Lincoln beforethe Southern-rights men ventured to makeany move in that direction. The Governorthen came to St. Louis to concert withGeneral D. M. Frost (who commanded asmall brigade of volunteer militia) meas-ures for seizing the arsenal in the name ofthe State. While the matter was still underconsideration the bombardment of FortSumter took place, and the President calledfor 75,000 troops to support the Govern-ment. To his call upon Missouri for herquota of such troops, the Governor repliedthat the requisition was, in his opinion,
“ illegal, unconstitutional, and revolution-ary in its object, inhuman and diabolical,”and that Missouri would not furnish oneman “to carry on such an unholy crusade.”
A few days later he convened the General Assembly, to adopt measuresfor the defense of the State.
In the consultation with Frost it had been decided that the Governor, inpursuance of an existing law of the State, should order all its militia intoencampment for the purpose of drill and discipline; and that, under cover ofthis order, Frost should camp his brigade upon the hills adjacent to and com-manding the arsenal, so that when the opportunity occurred he might seizeit and all its stores. A great difficulty in the way of the execution ofthis plan was the want of siege-guns and mortars. To remove this difficultythe Governor sent Captains Colton Greene and Basil W. Duke to Mont-gomery, Alabama, and Judge Cooke to Virginia to obtain these things ByMr. Davis’s order the arms were turned over to Duke and Greene at BatonRouge, and were by them taken to St. Louis . Before they arrived there,however, the scheme to seize the arsenal had been completely frustrated byits commandant, Captain Nathaniel Lyon , who distributed a part of the