" he said in conclusion, "means war." And it did.

Again a single week sufficed for the striking of the blow. The
conference was held on the eleventh of June. On the fourteenth
Lyon reached Jefferson City only to find that the Governor had
decamped for Boonville, still higher up the Missouri. Here, on
the seventeenth, Lyon attacked him with greatly superior numbers
and skill, defeated him utterly, and sent him flying south with
only a few hundred followers left. Boonville was, in itself, a
very small affair indeed. But it had immense results. Lyon had
seized the best strategic point of rail and river junction on the
Mississippi by holding St. Louis. He had also secured supremacy
in arms, munitions, and morale. By turning the Governor out of
Jefferson City, the State capital, he had deprived the Confederates
of the prestige and convenience of an acknowledged headquarters.
Now, by defeating him at Boonville and driving his forces south in
headlong flight he had practically made the whole Missouri River a
Federal line of communication as well as a barrier between would-be
Confederates to the north and south of it. More than this, the
possession of Boonville struck a fatal blow at Confederate recruiting
and organization throughout the whole of that strategic area; for
Boonville was the center to which pro-Southern Missourians were
flocking. The tide of battle was to go against the Federals at
Wilson's Creek in the southwest of the State, and even at Lexington
on the Missouri, as we shall presently see; but this was only the
breaking of the last Confederate waves. As a State, Missouri was
lost to the South already.

In Kentucky, the next border State, opinions were likewise divided;
and Kentuckians fought each other with help from both sides. Anderson,
of Fort Sumter fame, was appointed to the Kentucky command in May.
But here the crisis did not occur for months, while a border campaign
was already being fought in West Virginia.

West Virginia, which became a separate State during the war, was
strongly Federal, like eastern Tennessee. These Federal parts of
two Confederate States formed a wedge dangerous to the whole South,
especially to Virginia and the Carolinas. Each side therefore tried
to control this area itself. The Federals, under McClellan, of
whom we shall soon hear more, had two lines of invasion into West
Virginia, both based on the Ohio. The northern converged by rail,
from Wheeling and Parkersburg, on Graft