General D. M. Frost, a Northern man, a graduate of West Point, in
open sympathy with the Southern leaders. This camp was nominally a
State camp of instruction, but, beyond doubt, was in the interest
of the Southern cause, designed to be used against the national
authority in the event of the General Government's attempting to
coerce the Southern Confederacy. General William S. Harvey was in
command of the Department of Missouri, and resided in his own
house, on Fourth Street, below Market; and there were five or six
companies of United States troops in the arsenal, commanded by
Captain N. Lyon; throughout the city, there had been organized,
almost exclusively out of the German part of the population, four
or five regiments of "Home Guards," with which movement Frank
Blair, B. Gratz Brown, John M. Schofield, Clinton B. Fisk, and
others, were most active on the part of the national authorities.
Frank Blair's brother Montgomery was in the cabinet of Mr. Lincoln
at Washington, and to him seemed committed the general management
of affairs in Missouri.

The newspapers fanned the public excitement to the highest pitch,
and threats of attacking the arsenal on the one hand, and the mob
of d--d rebels in Camp Jackson on the other, were bandied about. I
tried my best to keep out of the current, and only talked freely
with a few men; among them Colonel John O'Fallon, a wealthy
gentleman who resided above St. Louis. He daily came down to my
office in Bremen, and we walked up and down the pavement by the
hour, deploring the sad condition of our country, and the seeming
drift toward dissolution and anarchy. I used also to go down to
the arsenal occasionally to see Lyon, Totten, and other of my army
acquaintance, and was glad to see them making preparations to
defend their post, if not to assume the offensive.