LIFE OF GENERAL LYON. 305 CHAPTER XXVII. Failure in Missouri of General Harney's League.--Harney's Successor of “sterner stuff."—Life of General Lyon.-Birth and early Life.-Parentage.-His rustic home.-Early fondness for Mathematics.-A cadet at West Point.-Graduation.-Service in the Army.-Mexican Campaign.-Good deeds and just recompenses.-Service in California.— Indian Warfare.-In Kansas.-Sympathies with the Free-soilers.-Takes up the pen in their defence.-His writings and opinions.-Captain Lyon in command of the Arsenal at St. Louis.-His prompt action at the beginning of the Civil War.-Capture of Fort Jackson.-Seizure of the J. C. Swan.-Capture of lead at Ironton.-Lyon succeeds Harney.-Unsuccessful attempt of the secessionist Price to wheedle him.-Lyon refuses to be governed by the Harney League.-Alarm of the Secessionists.-The muster of the Secessionists in Jefferson City.-Personal interview of Governor Jackson with General Lyon.-Firmness of Lyon.-The Secessionists giving up all hope of promoting their cause by diplomacy.-Making a stand at Jefferson City.--Destruction of Telegraph and Railway bridges. Proclamation of Governor Jackson.-Counter-proclamation of General Lyon.-General Lyon determines to rout out the disunion plotters from Jefferson City. 1861. THE league which General Harney had, with a too yielding confidence in their professions of peace, made with the secession leaders of Missouri, failed, as has been recorded, to check rebellion in that State. After his recall, and the succession to the command of General Lyon, a man of sterner stuff, Missouri promised to vindicate more decidedly its loyalty to the Union. Nathaniel Lyon was born in Ashford, Wyndham County, Connecticut. His father was Amasa Lyon, a hard-working and thriving farmer of the place, where his intelligence and integrity won the appreciation of its inhabitants, who elected him a justice of the peace. His wife, whose family name was Kezia, was a descendant of the Knowltons, one of whom, Colonel Thomas Knowlton, had served in the French colonial war, and in the Revolutionary struggle, having commanded a Connecticut company at Bunker's Hill, and fallen on the plains of Harlem. Washington honored his memory with the tribute: "He would have been an honor to any country." There is little record left of the boyhood of General Lyon. It was passed among the simple associations of his rustic home. In the winter he was sent to the village school, and in seed-time and harvest he aided his father or his neighbors in farm-work. An aged fellow-townsman in recalling, at the grave of the heroic soldier, his recollections of the country boy, said: "Nathaniel worked for me on my farm when he was a boy. He was smart, daring, and resolute, and wonderfully attached to his mother." General Lyon, on the night before his last battle, while lying with a fellowofficer between two steep rocks, where the space was so narrow that there was hardly room to move, made light of the inconvenience, and playfully remarked, with a fond allusion to his home, that he was "born between two rocks." He referred to the position of the house where he was born, and the homestead of his family, which "stands about four miles from Eastford (Ashford was divided in 1847, and the name of the northern portion of the township changed to Eastford), on the road to Hampton. Leaving the little hamlet of Phoenixville," says his biographer,* "we climb a long hill, thence over a rough road to a valley, nestled in which, between two steep and rocky hills, about twenty rods from the highway, is the house-a small, old building, somewhat out of repair, with rusty clapboards, which were once painted red." Though he found in the village school little opportunity for the development of his talent, he is reported to have shown a natural aptitude and fondness for the study of mathematics. This early taste probably induced his parents to obtain for him an appointment to a cadetship in West Point, where he entered at the age of eighteen. He graduated in 1841, ranking the eleventh of his class, a position which proved a fair degree of successful study. He commenced his military service, on leaving the academy, as a second lieutenant of infantry, and first entered upon active duty in Florida, during the campaign against the Seminole Indians. He was subsequently stationed at various points on our Western frontier, and on the breaking out of the war with Mexico, accompanied the army of Scott as first lieutenant. He took part in the siege of Vera Cruz, and at the battle of Cerro Gordo, where his good service was acknowledged by the commander of his regiment. No sooner," said he, "had the height become ours, than the enemy appeared in large force on the Jalapa road, and we were ordered to that point. Captain Canby, with a small detachment, accompanied by Lieutenant Lyon, pressed hotly in their rear, and were soon in possession of a battery of three pieces which had been firing upon us in reverse." At Contreras, too, he bore a gallant part, and in the pursuit aided in capturing several pieces of artillery, which were turned upon the fugitives. For his good conduct and spirit at Churubusco, he was recommended by his superior to "the special notice of the colonel commanding the brigade," and was rewarded for his services with the rank of brevet captain. At the capture of the Mexican capital, he was with the advance, and while fighting spiritedly at the Belen gate, was wounded with a musket-ball. On the declaration of peace with Mexico, Lyon, now captain, was ordered to Jefferson barracks, in Missouri, preliminary to a proposed march across the Rocky Mountains to California. He was, however, finally despatched by sea around Cape Horn, and reached California soon after its acquisition by the United States. Here he was chiefly occupied with frontier duty, and proved his activity and his capability as a skir * The Last Political Writings of General Nathaniel Lyon, mishing officer in Indian warfare. United States Army, with a Sketch of his Life and Military Subsequently ordered to the territo ries of Kansas and Nebraska, he found himself in the midst of the violent agitation to which that part of the country had become exposed. His sympathies were at once aroused in favor of the principles of the free-soilers, and with such fervor, that he was induced to take up the pen, though more used to the sword, in their defence. While stationed at Camp Riley, in Kansas, in the summer and autumn of 1860, he wrote a series of anonymous articles for the Manhattan Express, a weekly journal published at one of the neighboring settlements. 307 must involve her people in suffering and shame." Again he wrote, "Our cause is to honor labor and elevate the laborer; our candidate, Abe Lincoln." In the following exposition of the degradation of labor by slavery, he shows a thoughtful consideration of the subject. "In countries," he wrote, "where slavery exists, labor devolves for the most part upon the slaves, and is therefore identified with slavery; and the white free laborer being valued by slaveowners, who control public opinion, only so much physical organism (bone, muscle, etc.) for producing means, is degraded to the level of the slave, so His private as well as his published writings show him to have been an earnest advocate of the Republican | far as his influence and moral status go, cause. Of the rebellious designs of the and is even lower in physical comforts, cotton States he seemed to have been for the want of the intelligent care the fully conscious, and at the same time slave-owner bestows upon the slave, and persuaded that they could be thwarted of which he, the free laborer, has beby a prompt exercise of executive au- come incompetent by a mental depravity thority. "There seems to be," he corresponding to his moral degradation. wrote, “little doubt that several of the This is a truth of philosophy and politSouthern States will precipitate them- ical economy, that man rises to a posiselves into disaster and disgrace, if al- tion corresponding to the rights and lowed to do so; but this can be pre- responsibilities devolved upon him; and vented by the President, if he chooses therefore the only true way to make a to exercise his authority as becomes the man is to invest him with the rights, chief magistrate of our great and power- duties, and responsibilities of a man, ful country. But unfortunately, Mr. and he generally rises in intellectual Buchanan seems to regard himself as and moral greatness to a position corelected to submit tremblingly to any and responding to these circumstances; and every demand of the South, and I fear it is the very want of them that makes he can never rouse himself to take such the free non-slaveholding persons of the action as our emergencies now require, slave States so degraded and imbecile, as due to the country from him. Time that the slaves themselves feel a conmust show the only thing safe to pre-scious superiority, in which they are dict is, that the conduct of the South encouraged by their owners, to the ex : tent of thinking it better to be a nigger than a poor white man; and this is done to pacify the slave and thus secure this artificial system of securing the products of labor to the non-laboring classes, and also, by degrading white laborers, prevent their industry from competing with slave labor, to reduce thereby the value of slaves." From Kansas, Captain Lyon was transferred to the command of the arsenal at St. Louis, where he was when the present civil war broke out. His prompt action in surrounding and capturing Camp Jackson, and his active measures toward checking the secession movement at Liberty and Potosi, have been already recorded. His subsequent action while commanding the Federal forces in Missouri, as a brigadier-general, was characterized by a spirit and promptitude which gave promise of security to the State and a certainty of renown to himself, which have won for him the gratitude of the country, and fixed him forever in its annals as among the bravest and most devoted of its heroes and patriots. General Lyon, even while General May Harney was in command, seeing 22. how that officer had been deceived by the secession leaders, who, while pretending peace, were preparing for war, did not intermit his vigilance for a moment. He seized, on the very next day after the signing of the Harney league, the steamer J. C. Swan, at a point thirty miles below St. Louis, and caused her to be brought up and secured at the arsenal in the city. This was the vessel which had been employed by the secessionists to convey the arms from Baton Rouge, which Lyon had seized after capturing Camp Jackson. He also succeeded, in spite of considerable resistance, in seizing five thousand pounds of lead at Ironton, on the Iron Mountain Railroad, while in transit to the Confederates in the South. Price, the military leader of the secessionists, was evidently disturbed by the recall of his unsuspecting ally, and the transfer of power to the hands of the less confiding and more decided Lyon. Price, however, strove to wheedle him as he had done his predecessor, by fair words. In a proclamation issued to the brigadier-generals commanding the various military districts of Missouri, he expressed the desire that the State, in accordance with the Harney league, should exercise the right of determining its position in the contest, without the aid of any military force on either side. At the same time, alluding to the change in the command of the Federal forces, he said, with evident anxiety, though affected confidence, "The Government has thought proper to remove General Harney from the command of the Department of the West; but as the successor of General Harney will certainly consider himself and his Government in honor bound to carry out this agreement in good faith, I feel assured that his removal should give no cause of uneasiness to our citizens for the security of their liberties and property. I intend on my part to FIRMNESS OF LYON. adhere both in its spirit and to the letter. The rumor in circulation, that it is the intention of the officers now in command of this Department to disarm those of our citizens who do not agree in opinion with the administration at Washington, and put arms in the hands of those who, in some localities of this State, are supposed to sympathize with the views of the Federal Government, are, I trust, unfounded. The purpose of such a movement could not be misunderstood, and it would not only be a violation of the agreement referred to, and an equally plain violation of our constitutional right, but a gross indignity to the citizens of the State, which would be resisted to the last extremity." Notwithstanding this affected confidence, that General Lyon would thus carry out a league so dangerous to the loyalty of the State, and for the forming of which General Harney had been recalled, the secessionists became alarmed for their safety. Hurrying from the faithful St. Louis, they gathered together in Jefferson City, the capital of the State, where, under the sanction of the disloyal Governor, they were pursuing their machinations for wresting Missouri from the Union. Governor Jackson himself now strove, by a personal interview with General Lyon, to make with him an agreement such as had paralyzed the Federal authority under Harney's league. He proposed to disband the militia, or State guard as it was termed, provided Lyon would consent to disarm the Union volunteers. This the latter resolutely refused, insisting that the 309 Federal Government should enjoy the unrestricted right to move and station its troops throughout the State whenever and wherever, in the opinion of its officers, it might be necessary, either for the protection of loyal subjects of the Federal Government or for repelling invasion. General Lyon in this memorandum specified in detail his answer to June the Governor's wily proposition. II. General Lyon," he wrote, "sets forth as his conviction that if the Government withdrew its forces entirely, secret and subtle measures would be resorted to to provide arms and effect organizations which, upon any pretext, could put forth a formidable opposition to the General Government, and, even without arming, combinations would doubtless form in certain localities to oppress and drive out loyal citizens, to whom the Government is bound to give protection, but which it would be helpless to do, as also to repress such combinations, if its forces could not be sent into the State. A large aggressive force might be formed and advanced from the exterior into the State, to assist it in carrying out the secession programme, and the Government could not, under the limitation proposed, take posts on these borders to meet and repel such force. The Government could not shrink from its duties nor abdicate its corresponding rights; and, in addition to the above, it is the duty of its civil officers to execute civil process, and in case of resistance to receive the support of military force. The proposition of the Gov |