Immediately after the taking of Camp Jackson, a rebel flag at Fifth and Pine Streets came down never to be run up again. This was the first visible effect of Lyon’s victory. The lowering of that symbol of disunion was witnessed by a modest man, before whom was opening a marvellously brilliant career of which as yet he had not even dreamed. He was then thirty-nine years old. He too was a graduate of West Point, and while an officer of lower rank had distinguished himself by efficient and brilliant service. But for a time, turning aside from a military life, he had been a farmer, a speculator in real estate, and a leather-dealer. But now, when needed in defence of the Union, he had offered his services to his country through the Governor of Illinois, and had come over to St. Louis on a tour of observation. He heard the shouts that the taking of Camp Jackson and the coming down of the Stars and Bars from the roof of the secession rendezvous drew from loyal throats. Soon after he started in a horse-car for the Arsenal that he might personally congratulate Captain Lyon on the wise and timely work that he had so resolutely and skilfully done. In the car a young Southerner, full of anguish and wrath over the lowering of the secession flag, said to him: “Things have come to a d——d pretty pass when a free people can’t choose their own flag. Where I came from, if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union, we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to.” The modest man, into whose ears he poured this vengeful screed, quietly replied: “After all, we are not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be; I have not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one; there are plenty of them who ought to be, however.”[26] To this stinging rebuke there was no response. The young and fiery secessionist was dumb before a man of power; he felt, but could not understand, the humbling force of his simple words. The name of that unswerving Unionist and patriot, Ulysses Simpson Grant, is now in our own nation, and in all nations that love freedom, a household word.