s Ewing and John Hunter had formed a
law-partnership in St. Louis, and agreed to board with us, taking
rooms on the third floor In the latter part of March, I was duly
elected president of the Fifth Street Railroad, and entered on the
discharge of my duties April 1, 1861. We had a central office on
the corner of Fifth and Locust, and also another up at the stables
in Bremen. The road was well stocked and in full operation, and
all I had to do was to watch the economical administration of
existing affairs, which I endeavored to do with fidelity and zeal.
But the whole air was full of wars and rumors of wars. The
struggle was going on politically for the border States. Even in
Missouri, which was a slave State, it was manifest that the
Governor of the State, Claiborne Jackson, and all the leading
politicians, were for the South in case of a war. The house on the
northwest corner of Fifth and Pine was the rebel headquarters,
where the rebel flag was hung publicly, and the crowds about the
Planters' House were all more or less rebel. There was also a camp
in Lindell's Grove, at the end of Olive, Street, under command of
General D. M. Frost, a Northern man, a graduate of West Point, in
open sympathy with the Southern leaders. This camp was nominally a
State camp of instruction, but, beyond doubt, was in the interest
of the Southern cause, designed to be used against the national
authority in the event of the General Government's attempting to
coerce the Southern Confederacy. General William S. Harvey was in
command of the Department of Missouri, and resided in his own
house, on Fourth Street, below Market; and there were five or six
companies of United States troops in the arsenal, commanded by
Captain N. Lyon; throughout the city, there had been organized,
almost exclusively out of the German part of the population, four
or five regiments of "Home Guards," with which movement Frank
Blair, B. Gratz Brown, John M. Schofield, Clinton B. Fisk, and
others, were most active on the part of the national authorities.
Frank Blair's brother Montgomery was in the cabinet of Mr. Lincoln
at Washington, and to him seemed committed the general management
of affairs in Missouri.

The newspapers fanned the public excitement to the highest pitch,
and threats of attacking the arsenal on the one hand, and the mob
of d--d rebels in Camp Jackson on the other, were bandied about. I
tried my best to keep out of the current, and only talk