to the defunct Governor, was solemnly voted out by his defunct legislature. The secession State government manifestly died hard. Even its expiring spasms were comical. Its proclamations and legislative acts were wild and futile. Rather than to have committed such folly it would have been better “to be a dog, and bay the moon.” And all the loyal of Missouri looked on and laughed. But the action of our officeless Governor flowed out of his agreement with the Confederate authorities at Richmond. Three days after Jackson declared the sovereign independence of Missouri, the Confederate Congress authorized Jefferson Davis to raise troops in Missouri for the Southern army, and to establish recruiting stations to facilitate this work; and on the 19th of August voted to admit Missouri into the Southern Confederacy, when, by her legally constituted authority,—the authority being the overturned State government,—she shall have ratified the constitution of the Confederate States.[77] This act of the Confederate Congress was duly approved by President Davis.[78] This hostile legislation at Richmond was followed by a proclamation of General Price at Springfield, on the 21st, declaring all Missouri Home Guards enemies of the Southern Confederacy, and that they would be treated as such. What the general proclaimed was unquestionably true, what he threatened was expected. However, all that transpired at Richmond we did not at that time know fully. We got some inkling of it; just enough to stimulate our imaginations, and to spur us to greater vigilance and to unremitting effort to keep Missouri true to the general government. We well knew that the seceded States would do their utmost to secure her for the Confederacy; that St. Louis was the key of the situation; that it was the objective point of every movement of the State Guards,[79] and of every invading army from the South, and that our position would not be secure until the battle for the Union had been fought to a finish. Hence all military movements within our borders, all armed conflicts great and small, all secret plottings of the disloyal, all acts of the Convention or of the defunct legislature, all proclamations, hostile or friendly, demanded and received our unremitting, earnest attention. By midsummer of 1861, all loyal citizens of St. Louis had fully made up their minds that adhesion to the Union, and security in it, were to be purchased only by the price of eternal vigilance. CHAPTER XVI HALLECK AND HIS MANIFESTOES