d Gen. Harney was relieved,
leaving Capt. Lyon in full command. This was the 23d of April. In a week
four full regiments were mustered in, and occupied the arsenal. A
memorial was prepared and sent to Washington by Frank Blair, now colonel
of the first of these regiments, asking for the enrolment of five other
regiments of Home Guards. Permission was given, and in another week
these regiments also were organized and armed. The conflict was now at
hand. Simultaneously with this arming on the part of the government for
the protection of the arsenal, the order went forth for the assembling
of the State troops in their camps of instruction. On Monday, the 6th of
May, the First Brigade of Missouri militia, under Gen. D.M. Frost, was
ordered by Gov. Jackson into camp at St. Louis, avowedly for purposes of
drill and exercise. At the same time encampments were formed, by order
of the governor, in other parts of the State. The governor's adherents
in St. Louis intimated that the time for taking the arsenal had arrived,
and the indiscreet young men who made up the First Brigade openly
declared that they only awaited an order from Gov. Jackson--an order
which they evidently had been led to expect--to attack the arsenal and
possess it, in spite of the feeble opposition they calculated to meet
from 'the Dutch' Home Guards enlisted to defend it. A few days
previously, an agent of the governor had purchased at St. Louis several
hundred kegs of gun-powder, and succeeded, by an adroit stratagem, in
shipping it to Jefferson City. The encampment at St. Louis, 'Camp
Jackson,' so called from the governor, was laid off by streets, to which
were assigned the names 'Rue de Beauregard,' and others similarly
significant; and when among the visitors whom curiosity soon began to
bring to the camp a 'Black Republican' was discovered by the
soldiers,--and this epithet was applied to all unconditional
Unionists,--he was treated with unmistakable coldness, if not positive
insult. If additional proof of the hostile designs entertained against
the federal authority by this camp were needed, it was furnished on
Thursday, the 9th, by the reception within the camp of several pieces of
cannon, and several hundred stand of small arms, taken from the federal
arsenal at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which was then in the possession of
the rebels. These arms were brought to St. Louis by the steamboat _J.C.
Swon_, the military authorities at Cairo having been deceived b