At the June election nine Union congressmen were chosen, and
only one secessionist; while in August a new legislature was elected
with a three-fourths Union majority in each branch. Other secession
intrigues proved equally abortive; and when, finally, in September,
Confederate armies invaded Kentucky at three different points, the
Kentucky legislature invited the Union armies of the West into the State
to expel them, and voted to place forty thousand Union volunteers at the
service of President Lincoln.
In Missouri the struggle was more fierce, but also more brief. As far
back as January, the conspirators had perfected a scheme to obtain
possession, through the treachery of the officer in charge, of the
important Jefferson Barracks arsenal at St. Louis, with its store of
sixty thousand stand of arms and a million and a half cartridges. The
project, however, failed. Rumors of the danger came to General Scott,
who ordered thither a company of regulars under command of Captain
Nathaniel Lyon, an officer not only loyal by nature and habit, but also
imbued with strong antislavery convictions. Lyon found valuable support
in the watchfulness of a Union Safety Committee composed of leading St.
Louis citizens, who secretly organized a number of Union regiments
recruited largely from the heavy German population; and from these
sources Lyon was enabled to make such a show of available military force
as effectively to deter any mere popular uprising to seize the arsenal.
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