Thus the lines began to be drawn closely around the Unionists of St.
Louis. The State convention had adjourned, and its members had gone
home, having done but little to re-assure the loyalists. They had,
indeed, passed an ordinance declaring that Missouri would adhere to the
Union; but the majority of the members had betrayed such hesitancy and
indecision, such a lack of stomach to grapple with the rude issues of
the rebellion, that their action passed almost without moral effect.
Their ordinance was treated with contempt by the secessionists, and
nearly lost sight of by the people; so thoroughly were all classes
lashed into excitement by the storm of revolution now blackening the
whole Southern Hemisphere.

The friends of the Union could look to but one quarter for aid, that was
Washington, where a new administration had so recently been installed,
amid difficulties that seemed to have paralyzed its power. The
government had been defied by the rebellion at every point; its ships
driven by hostile guns from Southern ports; its treasures seized; its
arsenals occupied, and its abundant arms and munitions appropriated.
Nowhere had the federal arm resented insult and robbery with a blow.
This had not been the fault of the government that was inaugurated on
the fourth of March. It was the fruit of the official treason of the
preceding administration, that had completely disarmed the government,
and filled the new executive councils with confusion, by the numberless
knaves it had placed in all departments of the public service, whose
daily desertions of duty rendered the prompt and honest execution of the
laws impossible. But the fact was indisputable; and how could St. Louis
hope for protection that had nowhere else been afforded? The national
government had an arsenal within the city limits. It comprised a
considerable area of ground, was surrounded by a high and heavy stone
wall, and supplied with valuable arms. But so far from this