I do not think Missouri should secede today or tomorrow, but I do not think it good policy that I should so disclose. I want a little time to arm the State, and I am assuming every responsibility to do it with all possible dispatch. Missouri should act in concert with Tennessee and Kentucky. They are all bound to go out, and should go together, if possible. My judgment is that North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas will all be out in a few days, and when they go Missouri should follow. Let us, then, prepare to make our exit. We should keep our own counsels. Every man in the State is in favor of arming the State. Then let it be done. All are opposed to furnishing Mr. Lincoln with soldiers. Time will settle the balance. Nothing should be said about the time or the manner in which Missouri should go out. That she ought to go, and will go at the proper time, I have no doubt. She ought to have gone out last Winter, when she could have seized the public arms and public property, and defended herself. That she has failed to do, and must wait a little while. Paschall is a base submissionist, and desires to remain with the North, if every Slave State should go out. Call on every country paper to defend me, and assure them I am fighting under the true flag. Who does not know that every sympathy of my heart is with the South? The Legislature, in my view, should sit in secret session, and touch nothing but the measures of defense. Though in point of fighting and losses this initial campaign ending with the skirmish at Boonville had been insignificant, its results far surpassed those of many of the bloodiest battles of the rebellion. The Governor of the State was in flight from his Capital; his troops had been scattered in the first collision; control had been gained of the Missouri River, cutting the enemy's line in two; and above all, there was the immense moral effect of the defeat in action of the boastful Secessionists by the much denounced "St. Louis Dutch." This alone accounted for the acquisition of many thousand wavering men to the side of the Union. Missourians were not different from the rest of mankind, and every community had its large proportion of those who, when the Secessionists seemed to have everything their own way, inclined to that side, but came back to their true allegiance at the first sign of the Government being able to assert its supremacy. The Government was now aroused and striking--and striking successfully. Its enemies were immensely depressed, and its friends correspondingly elated. 129