May 10, coincidentally, was the day the state militiamen were scheduled to go home, and they had passed the day bragging about what they would have done to the “Dutch,” given half a chance. When Lyon arrived with four regiments of Home Guards and a battalion of regulars, he surrounded the camp on all sides, placed artillery in position to rake the camp and demanded its immediate and unconditional surrender. Frost, seeing he was outnumbered 3-to-1, recognized the folly of resisting and promptly surrendered.

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As the Home Guards and U.S. troops marched the prisoners through the city, a crowd began to line the route, and soon cries of “Hurray for Jeff Davis!” and “Damn the Dutch!” filled the air. Clods of dirt and stones accompanied the taunts. The catalyst for what happened next remains unclear. After the war, Southern historians claimed that the Home Guards fired into the crowd in response to the thrown missiles, while Northern historians claimed a member of the pro-Southern mob fired first and mortally wounded a German Home Guard officer.

There is no doubt about ensuing events. The Home Guards fired several volleys, and some members of the crowd drew their own weapons and returned the fire. Twenty-eight people were killed or wounded; among the dead were three of the prisoners, two women and a small child. Dubbed the “Camp Jackson Massacre,” the conflict raised tensions to a fever pitch throughout the city. On the evening of the 10th, a regiment of Home Guards, returning to its barracks from guard duty at the arsenal, halted momentarily on the corner of 6th and Walnut streets. Someone fired a pistol, and the Home Guards’ muskets blazed again, killing eight more civilians. The next day, another Home Guard regiment was accosted on 6th Street, between Pine and Olive streets, and fired into the crowd lining the sidewalks, killing or wounding several more.

Although Blair and Lyon had saved the arsenal for the Union, their tactics resulted in a strong backlash amongst the citizenry. Thousands of Missourians immediately declared for secession. Many felt their loyalty to the Federal government had been badly strained, and in outlying towns armed bands formed with the expressed intent of marching on St. Louis to rescue its inhabitants from the “bloodthirsty Dutch,” who, “drunk with beer and reeking of sauerkraut,” were alleged to be running rampant through the city. The Unionists had almost driven the Federal cause to the edge of catastrophe.

Sterling Price was a witness to the Camp Jackson events, and he denounced the affair as an “outrage” before a large crowd gathered in front of his St. Louis hotel on the evening of May 10. Saying that he regarded it as an affront to Missouri’s sovereign rights, Price departed the next morning for Jefferson City, the state capital, to confer privately with Jackson.

Blair and Lyon, for their part, wanted to march immediately on Jefferson City. Harney, as the highest ranking Federal military commander in the area, refused to grant permission for such a move and threatened to remove Lyon from command should he do so. Meanwhile, the city police and elected officials appealed to Harney for aid in quelling the unrest within St. Louis, and he swiftly replied, sending two companies of infantry and two artillery batteries from Jefferson Barracks to the city to protect the peace, property and lives of the citizens. The situation quieted, and the high tide of secessionist sympathy passed.

At Jefferson City, Jackson called for an immediate emergency session of the state Legislature, and on May 11 a bill was passed authorizing the recruitment of the Missouri State Guard, dividing the state into eight military districts and empowering Jackson to appoint eight brigadier generals and a major general of all state forces. The bill also appropriated all the money in the state treasury, some $82 million, for the purchase of war materiel, and gave Jackson almost dictatorial powers to repel invasions and crush “rebellion.” On May 12, Price was offered the major generalship of the state guard. He promptly accepted.

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