tate. He denounced President Buchanan's distinction between
"coercing a State" and "compelling the citizens of the State to obey
the laws of the United States" as a "transparent sophistry." "To levy
tribute, molest commerce, or hold fortresses, are as much acts of war as
to bombard a city." He also urged immediate and thorough organization
of the militia and other preparations for "putting the State in complete
condition for defense." If the present controversy could not be adjusted
before March 4, the State of Missouri "should not permit Mr. Lincoln to
exercise any act of Government" within her borders.

This was certainly distinctly defiant, and shrewdly calculated to gather
about the new administration all the wavering men who could be attracted
by inflammatory appeals to their prejudices against the North, to their
State pride, and to their hopes of making Missouri the arbiter in
the dispute. Lieut.--Gov. Reynolds followed up his pronunciamento by
carefully organizing the Senate committees with radical Secessionists at
the head, and the immediate introduction of bills ably contrived to put
the control of the State in the hands of those who favored Secession.
These committees promptly reported several bills.

33

One provided for calling a State Convention, an effective device by
which the other Southern States had been dragged into Secession. Another
provided for the organization of the Militia of the State, which would
be done by officers reliable for Secession, and the third was intended
to extinguish resistance by taking away much of the police power of the
Republican Mayor of St. Louis, who had at his back the radical Germans,
organized into semi-military Wide-Awake Clubs. All these bills seemed to
be heartily approved all over the State, and the Southern Rights leaders
were exultant at their success. Apparently the 117 "Doubtfuls" were
flocking over to them.

It seemed for a few momentous days in the opening of 1861 that Missouri
would be inevitably swept into the tide of Secession, and even in St.
Louis, the stronghold of Republicanism, a monster mass meeting, called
and controlled by such afterwards--strong loyalists as Hamilton R.
Gamble, later the Union Governor of the State, Nathaniel Paschall,
James E. Yeatman, and Robert Campbell, unanimously passed resolutions
declaring slave property to be held as a Constitutional right which the
Government should secure, and if it did not, Missouri "would join wi