A misplaced but generous confidence has, for years past, prevented the Southern States from making the preparation required by the present emergency, and our power to supply you with ordnance is far short of the will to serve you. After learning as well as I could from the gentlemen accredited to me what was most needful for the attack on the Arsenal, I have directed that Capts. Greene and Duke should be furnished with two 12-pounder howitzers and two 32- pounder guns, with the proper ammunition for each. These, from the commanding hills, will be effective, both against the garrison and to breach the inclosing walls of the place. I concur with you as to the great importance of capturing the Arsenal and securing its supplies, rendered doubly important by the means taken to obstruct your commerce and render you unarmed victims of a hostile invasion. 70 We look anxiously and hopefully for the day when the star of Missouri shall be added to the constellation of the Confederate States of America. With best wishes, I am, very respectfully, yours, JEFFERSON DAVIS. This promise was at once made good by a letter to the Governor of Louisiana to deliver the required war material from the stores in the lately-captured arsenal at Baton Rouge. These, carefully disguised as marble, ale, and other innocent stores, were shipped upon the steamboat J. C. Swan, and consigned to a well-known Union firm in St. Louis, with private marks to identify them to the Secessionists, who, on the watch for them, had them at once loaded on drays and taken to Camp Jackson. Their movements, however, were made known to Blair and the Committee of Safety by their spies, and Capt. Lyon was urged to seize the stores upon their arrival at the wharf, but he preferred to allow them to reach their destination, where they would serve to fix the purpose of the camp upon those commanding the garrison. Lyon, who as a soldier had naturally chafed under the insulting presence on the hills of a force hardly concealing its hostility under a thin vail of professed loyalty, at once resolved upon the capture of the camp. The more cautious of the Union men tried to restrain him. They argued that the camp would expire by legal limitation within a few days. To this Lyon opposed the probability that the Legislature would pass the military bill in some form and make the camp a permanent one. 71