The whole affair was investigated; not very thoroughly, many of us thought. Those who attempted it, found it difficult to get at the bottom facts. Their investigation at last came to a rather inglorious end, leaving the community in doubt as to whether any one fired upon the soldiers. Several in the neighborhood testified that they saw no one shoot from the building; but one man declared that he saw the shot from the second-story window, and described the position of the man’s arm when he discharged his revolver into the ranks of the unoffending soldiers; but there was no other witness, aside from the soldiers themselves, to confirm this testimony, and as only in the mouth of two or three witnesses so grave a matter could be satisfactorily established, the investigators returned the Scotch verdict, “Not proven.” This, however, was quite unsatisfactory to thinking men. Very few believed that these soldiers, without provocation, fired into the room of a civil magistrate with whom they were unacquainted, and against whom they could have had no ill will. Still, the lamentable event was part and parcel of the mad effort to dismember the Republic, and hardly surprising in a city where earnest, passionate men on both sides of the great national conflict daily looked each other in the eye. But as it has often happened, so in this sad case, the innocent suffered, while the undetected guilty went free. However, in the onrushing tide of events, the deplorable incident was soon lost sight of and forgotten. CHAPTER XIV FREMONT AND FIASCO On the 3d of July, the States and territories west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, including New Mexico, were constituted the Western Department, under the command of Major-General John Charles Fremont.[43] On the 26th he arrived in our city and took up the vastly important work confided to his hands. All the loyal wished him well. Many of them received him with exultation. He came with prestige. He was a renowned path finder to the Pacific. He had been the standard-bearer of the Republican party in 1856, and though defeated had polled a heavy vote in the most intelligent and progressive States of the Union. No one ever assumed military command under more favorable auspices. [Illustration: GENERAL FREMONT’S HEADQUARTERS, EIGHTH STREET AND CHOUTEAU AVENUE, ST. LOUIS. [_Page 206_ ]