While his superiors in command at St. Louis were both men of undoubted loyalty to their government, they did not have the same point of view that he had. He was originally a Connecticut democrat. In 1852 he had enthusiastically advocated the election of Franklin Pierce to the Presidency. But he was sent to do military duty in Kansas, while the people there were struggling in opposition to pro-slavery men from Missouri to make Kansas a free State. There his political views were almost completely changed. The full tide of his sympathy flowed out to the Free-State men and to the negro. He then and there became convinced that two civilizations so diametrically opposed to each other could not continue to exist peacefully under the same flag. He saw the coming of the inevitable conflict, and he was ready, not to say eager, for it. While Harney was not in sympathy with Lyon’s political views, he nevertheless showed that he admired him both as an officer and as a man; but between Lyon and Hagner there was but little if any real fellowship. Lyon therefore formed his friendly associations in the city, outside the Arsenal. His political views led him into the company of such men as Frank P. Blair, our brilliant congressman and aggressive free-soil leader; Oliver D. Filley, our popular mayor, a New Englander by birth and education; John How, a Pennsylvanian, a member of the Union Safety Committee; and others of the same ilk, whose trumpets never gave an uncertain sound in reference to the maintenance of the Union. These uncompromising loyalists at once saw in Lyon the man for the hour and the place, and he saw in them men who would do all in their power to help him realize his aims. He frequently visited the rendezvous of the Wide-Awakes, now, under the lead of Blair, transformed into Home Guards. He encouraged them in their work, suggested plans for their more perfect organization, and often personally drilled them in the manual of arms. They needed muskets. Blair thought that they should be armed from the Arsenal; and while this was contrary to the letter of the law, Lyon was in full accord with Blair.