Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/88

68 listening to the debates in congress over the Kan- sas-Nebraska bill, his sympathies were engaged in behalf of the negro, although he had been hitherto an earnest Dergocrat. In 1854 he was sent to Fort Riley, and dming the height of the contest for the possession of Kansas manifested his sympathy with the Free - state party, and gave it his aid and support. In 1856, when the troops were ordered to enforce the laws against the Abolitionists, Lyon seriously contemplated resign- ing his commission, that he might not be employed " as a tool in the hands of evil rulers for the ac- complishment of evil ends " ; but he was saved from the necessity of doing so by being ordered to the Dakota frontier. He was on duty again in Kansas in 1859, and was with Gen. William S. Har- ney in December, 1860, when the governor of Mis- souri sent a brigade of militia to co-operate with the National troops in arresting James Montgomery. He was left by Harney at Fort Scott, but wished to be nearer the scene of the impending conflict, in which, he wrote on 27 Jan., 1861, " I certainly ex- pect to expose, and very likely shall lose, my life." In the beginning of February he was ordered to St. Louis. ■ There he contested with Maj. Peter V. Hagner, whom he suspected of southern sympa- thies, the command of the arsenal ; but his appeal to Gen. Harney, and then to President Buchanan, was unavailing. He was soon in close accord with Francis P. Blair, Jr., and the other Unionist lead- ers, and at once began to drill and organize the Home-guards. A few days before President Lin- coln's inauguration Blair went to Washington to persuade Gen. Scott and the president of the neces- sity of giving the command of the arsenal to Lyon, but without success. An attempt of the secession- ist minute-men to provoke a conflict on inaugura- tion-day decided the new administration to place Lyon in command of the troops on 13 March, 1861 ; yet the order was qualified by instructions from Gen. Harney still leaving in charge of Maj. Hagner the arms and materials of war which Lyon intended in the event of a collision to distribute among the Home-guards. While Gov. Claiborne F. Jackson was promoting the organization of secessionist militia, and after he had placed the police of St. Louis under the control of Basil W. Duke, the leader of the minute-men, and after the municipal election of 1 April, 1861, had transferred the city government into the hands of secessionists. Gen. Harney revoked his recent order and gave Lyon entire charge of the arsenal, arms, and stores. Be- fore the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Lyon had strengthened the fortifications and mounted heavy siege-guns and mortars that commanded the city, and its river approaches. On the president's call for troops Gov. Jackson prepared to plant batteries on the hills overlooking the arsenal. Lyon at once communicated with Gov. Richard Yates, who, by the president's orders, sent three regiments of the Illinois quota to support the garrison in St. Louis. Lyon WHS at the same time commanded, according to his own suggestion, to turn over 10,000 stand ol: arms to the Illinois state authorities. Blair had procured in Washington another order authorizing Capt. Lyon to issue 5,000 stand of arms for arming loyal citizens. Harney interfered to prevent the arming of volunteers, and ordered Lyon, who had placed guards in the streets in violation of the city ordinances, to withdraw his men within the arsenal, but for this was removed from the command of the department on 21 April. On the same day Capt. Lyon was ordered to muster into the service the four regiments, constituting Missouri's quota, which the governor had refused to furnish. Without re- gard to seniority he assumed command on the de- parture of Harney, and from that time was rec- ognized by the government as commanding the department. On the night of 26 April he secretly sent away to Illinois all the munitions of war that were not needed for the four regiments, which were speedily organized and equipped. Although the removal of the arms from the arsenal frustrated the governor's object in ordering the militia into camp at St. Louis, it was decided to hold the en- campment nevertheless. Daniel M. P'rost's brigade, numbering now, after all the Union men had with- drawn, about 700 men, went into camp on 6 May in a grove in the western part of the city, which they called Camp Jackson. Having been author- ized by a despatch from the secretary of war, Lyon in May mustered in five regiments, called the Home- guards or U. S. reserve corps, in addition to five regiments of Missouri volunteers that had been or- ganized in April. The volunteers were recruited almost entirely from the German population, as the native-born and the Irish were secessionists. On 10 May he surrounded Camp Jackson, and made prisoners of war of the entire corps of militia. In the camp were siege-guns that Jefferson Davis had sent from New Orleans at the request of Gov. Jack- son. When Gen. Harney resumed command he approved the capture of Camp Jackson, but refused to carry out Lyon's plan for immediate operations against the hostile forces that the governor was organizing in pursuance of an act of the legisla- ture. On 31 May, in accordance with an order that Blair had obtained from the president, Lyon, who had been commissioned as brigadier-general of volunteers on 17 May, and appointed to the com- mand of the brigade of German recruits, relieved Gen. Harney of the command of the Department of the West. The governor and Gen. Sterling Price, in an interview with Gen. Lyon, sought to obtain from him a renewal of the agreement Gen. Harney had made to respect the neutrality of the state ; but Lyon insisted on the right of the U. S. government to enlist men in Missouri, and to move its troops within or across the state. Open hostilities fol- lowed. Lyon sent troops to the southwestern part of the state in order to meet an apprehended ad- vance of Confederate troops from Arkansas, and cut off the retreat of the governor and the state troops, while with another force he advanced on Jefferson City, of which he took possession on 15 June, the state forces having evacuated it two days before, and then on the enemy's new headquar- ters at Booneville, where he routed Col. John S. Marmaduke's force on 17 Juntc. His sudden move- ment placed him in command of the entire state except the southwestern corner. On 3 July he left Booneville to continue the pursuit of Price, but when he leai'ned that the Missourians had defeated Sigel at Carthage, and effected a junction with the Confederate troops itnder Gen. Ben McCuUoch, he halted at Springfield to await re-enforcements. On learning that the Confederates were marching on his position, he advanced to meet them, although he supposed that they outnumbered his force four to one, but, after a skirmish at Dug Spring, re- treated to Springfield again when he found that their three columns had joined. On 9 Aug., con- sidering a retreat more hazardous than a battle, he decided to surprise the Confederates in their camp on Wilson's Creek at daybreak the next morning. He turned their position and attacked their rear, while Gen. Franz Sigel, at the head of another col- umn, assailed their right flank. Sigel, after driving back the enemy, was defeated through mistaking one of their regiments for Iowa troops. Lyon, per-