Reynolds, being the presiding officer of the joint session, required that the members should rise when these traitors entered, and receive them standing and uncovered.  The commissioners were allowed to harangue the representatives of Missouri, by the hour, in unmeasured abuse of the federal government, in open rejoicings over its supposed dissolution, and in urgent appeals to the people of Missouri to join the rebel States in their consummated treason.  Noisy demonstrations of applause greeted these commissioners; and legislators, and the governor himself, in a public speech in front of the executive mansion, pledged them that Missouri would shortly be found ranged on the side of seceded States.  The treason of the governor and legislature did not stop with these manifestations.  They proceeded to acts of legislation, preparatory to the employment of force, after the manner of their ‘Southern bretheren.’  First, it was necessary to get control of the city of St. Louis.  The Republican party held the government of the city, mayor, council, and police force—­a formidable Union organization.  The legislature passed a bill repealing that part of the city charter that, gave to the mayor the appointment of the police, and constituting a board of police commissioners, to be appointed by the governor, who should exercise that power.  He named men that suited his purposes.  The Union police were discharged, and their places filled by secessionists.  Next, the State militia was to be organized in the interests of rebellion, and a law was passed to accomplish that end.  The State was set off into divisions; military camps were to be established in each; all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and fifty were liable to be called into camp and drilled a given number of days in the year; and, when summoned to duty, instead of taking the usual oath to support the Constitution of the United States, they were required only to be sworn ‘to obey the orders of the governor of the State of Missouri.’  These camps were styled camps of instruction.  One of them was established at St. Louis, within the corporate limits of the city, about two miles west of the court-house, on a commanding eminence.

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.