Moreover, the President, carefully humoring the prejudices of those who tenaciously held the doctrine of State sovereignty, on April 30th, ordered Captain Lyon “to enroll in the military service of the United States the loyal citizens of St. Louis and vicinity, not exceeding, with those heretofore enlisted, ten thousand in number, for the purpose of maintaining the authority of the United States, and for the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of Missouri.” So the State rights men were beaten at their own game and on their own ground. In his order the President seemed carefully to respect the doctrine of State sovereignty. Only Missourians, and they from “St. Louis and vicinity,” were to defend the Arsenal and city. Could anything have been more fitting and beautiful? But the secessionists were altogether unwilling to take their own medicine. The order of the President was not to their liking. It took the wind out of their sails; it upset their calculations. If ten thousand volunteers were to be gathered from their own city and vicinity, and no troops were to come from adjoining States, State sovereignty would not apparently be infringed, and there would be no revulsion of feeling against the Federal government; and, most of all, if the secessionists should attempt to rise in force, these ten thousand local volunteers would in all probability quickly and sternly suppress them. The very care that the President had taken to humor their prejudices aroused them to intense and bitter activity against the Federal government. With warmth they asked if these ten thousand Missourians were not to be used in defending the property of the United States, the very property that they had vainly tried to get into their own hands? Was it not as unjust to use Missourians to guard Federal property within the boundaries of their own State as it was to use them to guard like property in Maryland or Virginia? Did not the President’s plausible policy ruthlessly override State sovereignty? Had not our Governor peremptorily refused to furnish the Federal government with Missouri soldiers to put down rebellion in the seceded States? Had he not already replied to Mr. Cameron, President Lincoln’s Secretary of War, that the requisition for troops from Missouri by the United States “is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and cannot be complied with?”[17] They did not propose to submit quietly to such indignities. They were once more on fire for action, but their activity now showed itself not in any attempt to take the Arsenal, but in sharp denunciation of the Federal authorities, and in aiding in every possible way those already in open revolt.