ike disrespect for the Union. The secessionists
became quiet but were filled with suppressed rage. They had been
playing the bully. The Union men ordered the rebel flag taken down from
the building on Pine Street. The command was given in tones of
authority and it was taken down, never to be raised again in St. Louis.

I witnessed the scene. I had heard of the surrender of the camp and
that the garrison was on its way to the arsenal. I had seen the troops
start out in the morning and had wished them success. I now determined
to go to the arsenal and await their arrival and congratulate them. I
stepped on a car standing at the corner of 4th and Pine streets, and saw
a crowd of people standing quietly in front of the head-quarters, who
were there for the purpose of hauling down the flag. There were squads
of other people at intervals down the street. They too were quiet but
filled with suppressed rage, and muttered their resentment at the insult
to, what they called, "their" flag. Before the car I was in had
started, a dapper little fellow--he would be called a dude at this day
--stepped in. He was in a great state of excitement and used adjectives
freely to express his contempt for the Union and for those who had just
perpetrated such an outrage upon the rights of a free people. There was
only one other passenger in the car besides myself when this young man
entered. He evidently expected to find nothing but sympathy when he got
away from the "mud sills" engaged in compelling a "free people" to pull
down a flag they adored. He turned to me saying: "Things have come to
a ---- pretty pass when a free people can't choose their own flag.
Where I came from if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we
hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to." I replied that "after
all we were not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be; I had not
seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one; there were plenty of
them who ought to be, however." The young man subsided. He was so
crestfallen that I believe if I had ordered him to leave the car he
would have gone quietly out, saying to himself: "More Yankee
oppression."

By nightfall the late defenders of Camp Jackson were all within the
walls of the St. Louis arsenal, prisoners of war. The next day I left
St. Louis for Mattoon, Illinois, where I was to muster in the regiment
from that congressional district. This was the 21st Illinois infantry,
the regi