Above all, the Government showed that it would no longer tamely submit to being throttled and stabbed, but would fight, then, there, and everywhere, for its life. 67 CHAPTER IV. THE CAPTURE OF CAMP JACKSON Up to the time that Gen. Harney was relieved and ordered to Washington, and Capt. Lyon was given a free hand, Gen. D. M. Frost's course and advice were worthy of his reputation as a resolute, far-seeing commander. With the organized military companies of his district and the Minute Men he had a good nucleus for action, and had he made a rush on the Arsenal at any of the several times that he seems to have contemplated, it would have been backed up by several thousand young Irishmen and Americans in St. Louis, as well as by tens of thousands from the country swarming in as fast as they could have gotten railroads and steamboats to carry them. Then the capture of the Arsenal would have opened the war instead of the firing on Fort Sumter. He was then, however, restrained by Gov. Jackson and his coterie, who expected to gain their ends by intrigues and manipulations which had proved so successful in the other States. After, however, Capt. Lyon had equipped some 10,000 Missourians from the Arsenal and sent most of the rest of the arms across the river into Illinois, Frost seems to have suddenly become doddering. The Rev. Henry W. Beecher used to tell a very effective story about an old house dog named Noble. Some time in the dim past Noble had found a rabbit in a hole under an apple tree. Every day ever after, for the rest of his life, Noble would go to the hole and bark industriously at it for an hour or so, with as much zeal as if he had found another rabbit there, which he never did. 68 There seemed to be something of this in Gen. Frost's carrying out his idea of establishing a camp ostensibly for the instruction of his Militia, on the hills near the Arsenal, which he did May 3. It is hard to reconcile this with any clear purpose. If he intended to assault and capture the Arsenal, the force that he gathered was absurdly inadequate, in view of what he must have known Lyon had to oppose him. Accounts differ as to the highest number he ever had assembled, but it must have been less than 2,000.