force upon the people of Kansas an institution which they condemned as
unproductive and expensive, to say nothing of their moral repugnance to
the very A B C of its principles. It was at this time that Captain Lyon
contributed to the _Manhattan Express_, a weekly journal of the
neighborhood, a series of papers in which he took an earnest, manly and
decided stand in favor of the principles which his thoughtful mind
recognized as alone 'reliable,' and harmonious with the grand design and
end of the great Republic of the West. To these articles we shall
hereafter refer, at present hastening through the career, so striking
and so sad, which a few brief months cut short, leaving only the memory
of General Lyon as a legacy to the country his single aim and wise
counsels would have saved.

The guns of Fort Sumter had flashed along our coast an appeal whose
force no words can ever compute. The days had been busy with the
assembling of armies, the nights restless with their solemn marches, and
forge and factory rang with the strokes of the hammer and the whirr of
flying shafts, whose echoes seemed measured to the air of some new
Marseillaise. From our homes rushed forth sons, husbands, brothers,
fathers, followed by the prayers and blessings of dear women, who
yielded them early but willingly to their country. And while regiments
clustered along the Potomac, and Washington lay entrenched behind white
lines of tents, we find our soldier, fresh from Kansas strifes, in
command of the United States Arsenal at St. Louis; and to his prompt
action and decided measures at this important juncture the early success
of the Union cause in Missouri is to be attributed. For a time St. Louis
was the theatre of action. The police commissioners, backed by Governor
and Legislature, in the demanded the removal of the Union troops from
the grounds of the arsenal, claiming it as the exclusive property of the
State, and asserting that the authority usurped by the general