[Illustration: MAP SHOWING LOYAL AND SECEDING STATES.]
At the winter session of the Missouri Legislature an act had been passed that placed the city of St. Louis under the control of police commissioners to be appointed by the Governor, Claiborne F. Jackson. Four of his appointees were secessionists, and three of these were leaders of bodies of "minutemen," half-secret armed organizations. The mayor of the city, who { 38} was also one of the commissioners, was known as a "conditional Union man." Other acts showed plainly the bent of the Legislature. One made it treason to speak against the authority of the Governor, and gave him enlarged powers, while another appropriated three million dollars for military purposes, taking the entire school fund for the year, and the accumulations that were to have paid the July interest on the public debt.
A State convention called to consider the question of secession met in February, and proved to be overwhelmingly in favor of Missouri's remaining in the Union, though it also expressed a general sympathy with slavery, assumed that the South had wrongs, deprecated the employment of military force on either side, and repeated the suggestion that had been made many times in other quarters for a national convention to amend the Constitution so as to satisfy everybody. The State convention made its report in March, and adjourned till December.
This proceeding appeared to be a great disappointment to Governor Jackson; but he failed to take from it any hint to give up his purpose of getting the State out of the Union. On the contrary, he proceeded to try what he could do with the powers at his command. He called an extra session of the Legislature, to convene May 2d, for the purpose of "adopting measures to place the State in a proper attitude of defence," and he called out the militia on the 3d of May, to go into encampment for six days. There was a large store of arms (more than twenty thousand stand) in the St. Louis arsenal; but while he was devising a method and a pretext for seizing them, the greater part of them were suddenly removed, by order from Washington, to Springfield, Illinois. The captain that had them in charge took them on a steamer to Alton, and there called the citizens together by ringing a fire-alarm, told them what he had, and asked their assistance in transferring the cargo to a train for Springfield, as he expected pursuit by a force of secessionists. The many hands that make light work were not wanting, and the train very soon rolled away with its precious freight. The Governor applied to the Confederate Government for assistance, and a quantity of arms and ammunition, including several field-guns, was sent to him in boxes marked "marble." He also ordered a general of the State militia to establish a camp of instruction near the city, and gathered there such volunteer companies as were organized and armed.