Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/490

 458 Missouri divided Polk to command in the Mississippi country, with his headquarters at Memphis; and his earliest enterprise was an aggressive campaign to seize and hold Missouri, which would form the strong north-western bastion of the contemplated Slave-Dominion. Certain conditions were very favour- able to this plan. An influential minority of the people of Missouri was enthusiastic in favour of slavery, and had furnished the daring and reckless frontier material for the border-ruffian invasions and episodes in Kansas, from 1854 to 1857. Here also, as in other Slave States, the State officials, as well as a majority of the legislature, were active supporters of secession. The usual Secessionist programme was begun in January by a law to assemble a State convention, and a well-understood agreement that the Federal arsenal at St Louis should be surrendered to the Secessionist commander of the State militia. These intrigues were however effectually foiled by the help of an active Union Safety Committee in St Louis, the principal city of the State, where a large German population furnished a compact element of loyalty. The safety of the arsenal was insured by sending Captain Nathaniel Lyon with a company of regulars to command and guard it. The State convention, instead of adopting the secession scheme, voted it down. Under President Lincoln's authority, six regiments of Unionist volunteers were organised, with which and his company of regulars Captain Lyon on May 10 surrounded, captured, and dispersed Camp Jackson, near St Louis, where Governor Jackson had assembled several regiments of State militia to form the beginning of a Secessionist army. On June 12 the governor threw off all disguise by issuing a proclama- tion of war, and calling into service 50,000 State militia. Lyon met this demonstration with decisive energy. Embarking a portion of his force on swift steam-boats he chased the Governor and his legislature from Jefferson City, the capital, to Boonville, fifty miles further up the river, and thence, after a slight skirmish, to the south-west corner of the State, where the fugitives set up the pretence of a Secession-State administration. A new and loyal State government was immediately substituted, through the action of the Missouri State convention, which, after voting down secession, had taken a recess till December. A loyal majority of its members was reassembled; and these in a series of ordinances declared the State offices vacant, abrogated treasonable legislation, provided for new elections, and, on July 31, inaugurated H. R. Gamble as provisional governor. His authority was immediately recognised by the greater portion of the State. Missouri remained both in form and substance a State of the Union; but such was the prevalence and intensity of pro-slavery sentiment, and the ramification of Secessionist conspiracy, that there ensued almost immediately a condition of smouldering rebellion and sporadic guerrilla warfare, which, shifting from point to point, disturbed public order throughout the State during the whole of the war and rendered