We all now saw that General Harney was acting up to his brave and true words, and that the judges and officers of the United States courts were intent on recovering, so far as possible, the stolen property of the general government; that both the civil and military powers were joining hands in enforcing the law and in suppressing secession and revolt. But very soon after this exhibition of energy and loyalty on the part of Harney, anxious to preserve the peace of his beloved Missouri, on the 21st of May, just four days after the search and seizure narrated above, he entered into a formal agreement with Price,[33] then the major-general of the Missouri militia, in which he committed the whole military care of the State to the latter, binding himself not to use United States troops in Missouri for the suppression of disorder or the defence of any of its inhabitants, unless asked to do so by the State authorities. In short he covenanted to abandon utterly all initiative in military operations within our commonwealth, and to subject himself to the lead of the commander of the State militia. This agreement pledged the Federal government to uphold in the most practical fashion the doctrine of State sovereignty; it sustained the very thing which the United States was marshalling its armies to oppose and if possible to crush out forever. Over this ill-starred covenant with our enemies, every Unionist of St. Louis and Missouri was sick at heart. Such an agreement carried out would have been the death-blow to all loyalty throughout the State. The Unionists of St. Louis wondered how a general, who had been so outspoken against disunionism a few days before, could be so hoodwinked as to enter into a solemn compact by which he permitted the enemy of his country to bind him hand and foot. As he ought to have expected, the government which he had so utterly misrepresented in this strange compact with Price promptly removed him from his command, and put in his place Lyon, who a few days before had been made brigadier-general.