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In early 1861 secession tension in Missouri was at an all time high. With news of Abraham Lincoln’s election, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860. Missouri held its secession convention in St. Louis, just three weeks after Lincoln’s inauguration. The convention, however, was controlled by Unionists and Missouri elected to remain in the Union. Disappointed by the convention’s decision, Missouri’s pro-secession Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson took the position of armed neutrality. He publically proclaimed Missouri’s neutrality in the war, but vowed to defend her border from federal aggression. Privately he worked to usher Missouri into the Confederacy.

Three days after the attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for 75,000 militia volunteers to confront the rebellion. Missouri was requested to supply just over 3,000 men. Governor Jackson famously replied, “Sir - Your requisition is illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary; in its object inhuman & diabolical. Not one man will Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade against her Southern sisters.”

In May 1861, Jackson ordered the Volunteer Militia to train for six days in Lindell Grove on the outskirts of St. Louis. St. Louis was the home of the largest arsenal west of the Mississippi River, housing approximately 36,000 muskets. Captain Nathaniel Lyon had recently been given command of the Arsenal and worked to boost its defenses. While the encampment at Lindell Grove posed little threat to the Arsenal, Lyon elected to surround the 669 militiamen with his force of 6,500 men, forcing their surrender. Lyon then marched his prisoners through the streets of St. Louis, where they encountered an angry mob of citizens. Many of these citizens shouted insults at Lyon’s men as they marched to Lindell Grove, and now that they had taken militiamen as prisoners, they began hurling rocks and bottles. Lyon’s command attempted to disperse the citizens by firing a volley over their heads. When this failed to restore order, the nervous soldiers turned their muskets on the crowd. Twenty-eight civilians were killed, another seventy-five wounded in the melee. Two Union soldiers and three militiamen also died.

One last attempt to restore peace in Missouri came in early June 1861. Governor Jackson and Sterling Price, recently appointed commander of the newly formed Missouri State Guard, met with Lyon at the Planters House Hotel in St. Louis. Their goal was to negotiate peaceful overtures between state officials and federal troops. Lyon refused to make any accommodations and abruptly ended the meeting by declaring,

Rather than concede to the State of Missouri the right to demand that my government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops into the State whenever it pleases, or move its troops at its own will into, out of, or through the State; rather than to concede to the state of Missouri for once single instant the right to dictate to my Government in any matter however unimportant, I would (rising as he said this, and pointing in turn to everyone in the room) see you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and every man, woman and child in the state dead and buried. (Then turning to Governor Jackson) This means war.

The following day, Jackson issued a proclamation calling for 50,000 men to join him in defending the state from Federal forces. Jackson and the state legislators then evacuated the capital at Jefferson City and headed south. Lyon sailed his command of Federal troops on steamboats from St. Louis to Jefferson City and occupied the abandoned capital. In late July 1861, the secession convention appointed Hamilton R. Gamble as the Provisional Governor of Missouri and replaced the vacated seats with a pro-Union Provisional Government. Beginning in August, Missouri technically had two state governments, one pro-Union and one pro-Confederate.