St. Louis. There were many Southern sympathizers among the crowds
in the streets; one of them fired a pistol; and the Home Guards
fired back, killing several women and children by mistake. This
unfortunate incident hardened many neutrals and even Unionists
against the Union forces; so much so that Sterling Price, a
Unionist and former governor, became a Confederate general, whose
field for recruiting round Jefferson City on the Missouri
promised a good crop of enemies to the Union cause.

Lyon and Blair wished to march against Price immediately and
smash every hostile force while still in the act of forming. But
General Harney, who commanded the Department of the West,
returned to St. Louis the day after the shooting and made peace
instead of war with Price. By the end of the month, however,
Lincoln removed Harney and promoted Lyon in his place; whereupon
Price and Governor Jackson at once prepared to fight. Then sundry
neutrals, of the gabbling kind who think talk enough will settle
anything, induced the implacables to meet in St. Louis. The
conference was ended by Lyon's declaration that he would see
every Missourian under the sod before he would take any orders
from the State about any Federal matter, however small. "This,"
he said in conclusion, "means war." And it did.

Again a single week sufficed for the striking of the blow. The
conference was held on the eleventh of June. On the fourteenth
Lyon reached Jefferson City only to find that the Governor had
decamped for Boonville, still higher up the Missouri. Here, on
the seventeenth, Lyon attacked him with greatly superior numbers
and skill, defeated him utterly, and sent him flying south with
only a few hundred followers left. Boonville was, in itself, a