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.

His camp, which was in a beautiful grove, then in the first flush of
the charms of early Springtime, was quite an attractive place for the
"knightly" young Southerners who, filled with the chivalrous ideas of
Sir Walter Scott's novels, then the prevalent romantic literature of the
South, had made much ado before their "ladye loves" of "going off to
the warres," and the aforesaid "ladye loves," decorated with Secession
rosettes and the red-white-and-red colors then emblematic of Secession,
followed their "true-loves" to the camp, and made Lindell Grove bright
with the gaily-contrasting hues in bonnets and gowns. There were music
and parades, presentations, flags and banners, dancing and feasting,
and all the charming accessories of a military picnic. But some how
the material for common soldiers did not flock to the Camp as the
Secessionists had hoped. Possibly the stern uprising of the loyal
people of the North in response t