government as but a partial sovereignty, and limited to the occupation,
for purposes exclusively military, of the certain tracts of land now
pending in this novel court of chancery. This highly enigmatical
exposition of State rights, pompous and inflated though it was, failed
to convince or convert Captain Lyon, who, being unable to detect, in his
occupancy of the arsenal, any exaggeration of the rights vested by the
Constitution in the general government, declined to abandon his post,
and proceeded to call out the Home Guard, then awaiting the arrival of
General Harney, and temporarily under his command. His little army of
ten thousand men was then drawn up upon the heights commanding Camp
Jackson, then occupied by the Missouri militia under Col. Frost, whoso
command had been increased by the addition of numerous individuals of
avowed secession principles. Uninfluenced by the reception of a note
from this officer asserting his integrity and his purpose to defend the
property of the United States, and disavowing all intention hostile to
the force at the arsenal, Captain Lyon replied by a peremptory summons
for an unconditional surrender. He found it incredible that a body
assembled at the instigation of a traitorous governor, and acting under
his instructions and according to the 'unparalleled legislation' of a
traitorous legislature, receiving under the flag of the Confederate
States munitions of war but lately the acknowledged property of the
general government, could have any other than the as most unfriendly
designs upon its enemies. The force of Camp Jackson (which
notwithstanding its professed character, boasted its streets Beauregard
and Davis) being numerically inferior, and perhaps not entirely prepared
to do battle for a cause whose legitimacy must still have been a
question with many of them, decided, after a council of war, to comply
with the demands of Capt. Lyon, and became his prisoners. A few days
afterward General Harney arrived, and Captain Lyon was elected Brigadier
General by the 1st Brigade Missouri Volunteers.