To depict the effect in St. Louis of the capture of Fort Sumter and the President’s call for volunteer troops would require an abler pen than mine. At first the Union men were silent, but their thoughts were hot within them. The fall of Sumter stirred them to indignation; the call of the President inflamed their patriotism and strengthened their hope. Most of their secession neighbors for a time were also silent. They too were agitated by conflicting emotions. While the lowering of the Old Flag at the behest of Beauregard’s thundering guns lighted up their faces with smiles, they hotly protested against Lincoln’s call for troops as an invasion of State rights. But these national events that had so suddenly come upon us, producing in the minds of our fellow-citizens such varied and antagonistic effects, greatly intensified the determination of both Unionists and secessionists. Each party now began to struggle as never before to gain its end. And the immediate purpose of the one was to seize, and of the other to hold, the Arsenal. Men of the same race, the same nation, the same State, the same city, hot with passion, stood face to face. One party declared: “Come what may, we will take the Arsenal.” The other responded: “At all hazards we will defend and retain it.” But those who determined to get possession of it did not yet understand the ability and resourcefulness of the officer who at last had secured supreme command over it. He was cool and clear-headed. He saw intuitively the manifold dangers by which he and his command were beset. He penetrated the designs of our acute and wily Governor. He unearthed his correspondence with the Confederate authorities at Montgomery. He also discovered what was going on in the rebel rendezvous of the city. He unerringly detected and unravelled the plots of the disloyal. Just how he did these things, no one knew. But his apprehension of what his enemy was doing was but the means to the end. When he made a discovery he knew just what to do. And in executing his plans he was resolute and decisive. In him, purpose and deed were yoked together, thought was crowned with act. He was admired and trusted by the loyal, but distrusted, feared and hated by the disloyal.