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Camp
Jackson
Massacre
Daniel
Marsh
Frost,
Missouri
Volunteer
Militia
Nathaniel
Lyon, USA
Saint Louis May 9th '61.
Dear Bro-
Natchez Miss - Since I last wrote you we have had accessions to our number now making in all about 1800. men including the State troops-over that is the minute men have daily accessions, over yonder on corner of 5th, Pine are kept busy recruiting - in a short time we shall have enough to bring the Union men or black Republicans into our terms, or force them to leave the State. We have a governor who is true blue, he is trying to get a bill through the legislature that will force them to terms when we get say from 4 to 5000 minute men well armed, we shall be all ready for them, we pulled the wool over their eyes by making them think we only intended to stay in camp 6 days we intend to stay here till the governor gets all things right at Jefferson City by that time we shall have all the men we want we shall force them into measuring to suit us or leave the state, we are for the south.
I have just received news that Capt. Lyon intends to attacks us tomorrow I shall have to close writing for the present and go to work we shall whip the Damd U.S. forces our flag still flies at 5th and Pine and we shall conquer I expect hot work, we will make those Union Men cry for quarter yet hurrah for the Southern Confederacy and Jef Davis and Dam Lincoln and the Stars and Stripes. How is C. How is A. I am in hurry will finish after the battle is won and let you hear we have whipped them I have got some Jef Davis envelopes I enclose this letter in one - write soon
Yours truly G. W
P.S. I shall mail this on Saturday when I can give you all the particulars of our glorious victory
Such was the optimism that was prevalent throughout the south during the first few months after secession. Written on Friday, May 9, 1861 at Camp Jackson, this unfortunate soldier was unable to foresee the tragic incidents that would occur the next day.
Saint Louis was a hotbed of secessionist activity in the early months of 1861. After the election of Abraham Lincoln, southern states began to sever their ties with the United States. South Carolina was the first to go in December, 1860. That state called immediately for the evacuation of Fort Sumter, located in Charleston harbor, of Federal troops. This did not happen, and on April 4, 1861 South Carolina State Troops opened fire on the fort, ushering in four years of bloody civil war.
On May 6, 1861 the First Brigade, Missouri Volunteer Militia, under the command of Brigadier General Daniel Marsh Frost, assembled at 9:30 a.m. in downtown St. Louis to begin the march to Lindell's Grove, where they would encamp for their annual spring drill. Militia units all across Missouri had been ordered to assemble at their respective locales by newly elected Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson. A native of Kentucky, Jackson was known to be a staunch secessionist, and he had his eyes on two main targets: the United States Arsenals at
Liberty and St. Louis.
By 11:30 a.m. that morning, the First Brigade had reached Lindell's Grove, which was along the western edge of Grand Avenue between present-day Olive Street and Lindell Avenue. This area was actually General Frost's second choice for a location to assemble is brigade. His first choice was “along the heights near the Arsenal,” for, as he explained in a letter Governor Jackson, the arsenal contained arms for 40,000 men, along with machinery, annon, and ammunition. Major Bell, then in command at the arsenal, felt “...that Missouri had, whenever the time came, a right to claim it as being on her soil...” Bell also told Frost “...that he would not
suffer any arms to be removed from the place without first giving me timely information.”
Union sympathizers had not been sitting idly by during this period. Frank Blair, United States Congressman from St. Louis, had met with Major Bell and offered the services of his volunteer company to assist in guarding the arsenal. Bell refused, so Blair telegraphed his brother Montgomery, who had been recently appointed as Lincoln's Postmaster General. Arrangements were made for Bell's transfer, but he chose instead to retire to his farm near St. Charles. Brevet Major Peter Hagner was appointed commander at the arsenal, and additional
Federal troops soon were pouring into St. Louis, among them a company of the Second U.S. Infantry, commanded by Captain Nathaniel Lyon.
Lyon was a native of Connecticut. Graduating eleventh in a class of 55 at West Point in 1841, the then 23-year-old Lyon could have, in keeping with the tradition of the Point, requested assignment to the Corps of Engineers (a privilege reserved for high-ranking graduates). Instead, exhibiting the ambition and zeal which was to guide him throughout his military career, he requested assignment to the Infantry.
Events soon proceeded at break-neck speed. The Lyon-Blair relationship proved to be very fruitful. Lyon soon replaced Hagner as commander at the arsenal. Lyon and Blair soon began recruiting men from St. Louis' German population, drilling them in downtown warehouses with covered windows and straw spread on floors to muffle the sound of marching feet. Lyon had ordered most of the weapons and munitions stored at the arsenal to be shipped upriver to Alton, Illinois, keeping only 10,000 muskets and 400,000 rounds of ammunition to arm his German Home Guard troops and other Federal soldiers in Missouri.
General Frost had also been busy. Thanks to a successful mission by two of his officers, Captains Colton Greene and Basil Duke, heavy artillery arrived in his camp during the week of May 6, courtesy of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Lyon, thanks to his spies, knew of the arrival of this cargo on the steamer J.C. Swon in crates labeled “Marble” and “Ale.” He could have seized these items at the wharf, but he needed an excuse to capture the men of the militia, who by this time had named their bivouac Camp Jackson, in honor of the governor. After months of preparation on both sides, the stage was now set for the final act of this tragic
play.
Around 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 10, 1861, Captain Lyon, leading a column of troops from the arsenal (estimates of the size of his force vary, ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 men), began the march to Camp Jackson. He divided his column, marching them along Market Street, Olive Street, and Washington Avenue. Shortly after 3 p.m., General Frost and his regimental commanders. Colonel John Knapp of the First Regiment and Colonel John Bowen of the Second Regiment, looked up from their headquarters tent to see Lyon's men posting artillery on the hill above Camp Jackson, with his infantry appearing along the line behind the guns. Earlier that
morning, Knapp had penned a note to his wife:
We have reliable information that there is a large force on the way here. We await their arrival when we will make no reaction to their demands. If they come, I will be home to-night. Do not speak of this.
Bowen was a former U.S. Army officer, and he now wished that the force of about 700 men in Camp Jackson were ready for battle.
Lyon completed the disposition of his troops. Realizing that the only men he could count on under fire were the United States Regulars in his command, he ordered Captain Thomas Sweeney, in command of the Regulars in the force, to charge the militia batteries if they made any movement to open fire on the Federal line. He then gave a message to Major Benjamin Farrar to carry to General Frost. It read, in part:
Sir - Your command is regarded as evidently hostile to the Government of the United States. It is for the most part made up of secessionists who have openly avowed their hostility to the General Government, and have been plotting at the seizure of its property and the overthrow of its authority. You are openly in communication with the so-called Southern Confederacy, which is now at war with the United States; and you are receiving at your camp, from said Confederacy and under its flag, large supplies of the material of war, most of which is known to be the property of the United States. These extraordinary preparations plainly indicate none other than the purpose of the Governor of this State...having in direct view hostilities to the General Government and co-operation with its enemies.
In view of these considerations...it is my duty to demand, and I do hereby demand of you, an immediate surrender of your command...
Lyon gave Frost a half hour to surrender. Frost sent a message back to the Federal commander via Farrar, requesting a meeting. Lyon angrily declined, and he sent a message back to Frost stating that, unless he received his unconditional surrender in ten minutes, he would order his troops to open fire. Frost received this message, and he replied:
Sir - I never for a moment conceived the idea that illegal and unconstitutional demands as I have just received from you, would be made by an officer of the United States Army.
I am wholly unprepared to defend my command from this unwarranted attack, and shall, therefore, be forced to comply with your demand.
Receiving this notice of Frost's capitulation, Lyon dismounted and called his officers together, As he passed the rear of a horse, it lashed out and kicked him in the stomach, knocking him unconscious for a brief period. Lyon, however, was soon back on his feet. As his men moved into the militia camp to collect the equipment and the personal effects of the men, many officers, such as John Knapp (who would later serve as an officer in the Union army), broke their swords over a nearby fence. Lieutenant Governor Thomas Reynolds would later commend Knapp for this action, praising his “chivalrous conduct,” especially since his “well known devotion to the Union guaranteed” that he was “guided solely by a high sense of military honor, consistent with respect to the lawful authority of the U.S. but not with tame submission to outrages by their servants.”
Around 5:30, Lyon re-formed his column to march his prisoners back to the arsenal. Near the head, he split Blair's brigade into to files, one on each side of Olive Street, and the men of Frost's command marched between the two files. As they stepped off, Frost immediately ordered his band to strike up the tune “Yankee Doodle.” Many people began to wonder why this group of secessionist militia would play that particular song. Something then happened near the head of the column that caused a fatal delay of several hours. The men of the Missouri Volunteer Militia were near the present-day intersection of Olive and Cardinal streets.
An already volatile situation now began to flame totally out of control. The “damn Dutch,” as the German Home Guards were called by nearby civilians, were marching the men of the predominantly Irish militia along the edge of St. John the Baptist parish, the largest Irish Catholic neighborhood in the city. Old tensions began to flare. Soon angry words were flying through the air, along with bricks, stones, and sticks. Blair's German troops pulled the hammers on their rifled muskets back to “full cock.”
A shot rang out. There are numerous statements concerning who fired that first shot. Some sources claim it was fired by one of the German troops into the crowd, another source says someone in the crowd fired into the column, and another states that one of the soldiers muskets accidentally discharged into the air. However, within a few seconds of that first shot, firing became general along the line. One of the first to be wounded was Captain Constantin Blandowski, of the 3rd Missouri Volunteers, USA. He went down with a severe leg wound that would take his life a few days later. Three of Frost's men, Peter Doane, William Eisenhardt, and
Nicholas Knoblock, were shot dead. Two of the German Home Guards were also killed. Fourteen-year-old Emily Somers was shot through the head. She was found seated against a wall with her head slumped forward. People had assumed she was sleeping.
William T. Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant were in the crowd on that fateful day. Sherman later wrote that the firing seemed to last about 15 minutes. Sarah Jane Hill was at home, sewing, when she heard the gunfire. Twenty-eight people died in the short span of a few minutes on that terrible day.
On June 11, 1861, Governor Jackson, General Sterling Price (commander of the newly-formed Missouri State Guard, which would fight for four long years in Confederate service), newly-promoted Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon, and Colonel Frank Blair met at the Planters House in St. Louis. Jackson and Price were hear to try to work out a neutrality agreement, stating that they wished to keep both Union and Confederate troops out of the state. Lyon sat quietly by most of the time, listening. After nearly 5 hours, he rose and spoke:
“Rather than concede to the State of Missouri the right to demand that my Government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops into the State whenever it pleases, or move its troops at its own will into, out of, or through the State; rather than concede to the State of Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in any matter, however unimportant, I would see you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and every man, woman, and child in the State, dead and buried. This means war. In an hour one of my officers will call for you and conduct you out of my lines.”
The war would end four years later.
