Then, at what may have been the worst possible moment, the column was ordered to halt for some unknown reason. While the men waited nervously in line, a member of the crowd who had perhaps had a little too much to drink stepped forward, and attempted to force his way past the Federal column.
Their nerves already on edge, the men responded by pushing him to the ground. Hard. As the angry citizen got to his feet, he pulled out a gun, pointed it at the Union troops...and fired.
The effect was instantaneous.
Hearing the shot, and perhaps thinking it had come from one of the soldiers, several armed members of the crowd responded by opening fire on the column. The panicked troopers responded in kind.
In a flash, pandemonium reigned. Gunfire ripped through the streets of St. Louis, mingled with the terrified screams of hundreds of people trying desperately to get away.
Not all of them did so. By the time the nightmarish scene had ended and order finally restored, some twenty-eight citizens lay dead, along with two Union soldiers and three members of the Missouri State Guard. Many other people had been hit but survived. One of those killed in the exchange of gunfire had been a small baby, struck by a stray bullet. Sherman and his son, both thoroughly frightened, had managed to come through unscathed.
The badly shaken Union troops and their prisoners resumed the march to the arsenal, arriving a short time later without further incident. But the damage had been done.
The events of this tragic day would go down in history as The Camp Jackson Affair. For many however, only one name was appropriate - The Camp Jackson Massacre. The bitter phrase was an effective means of pinning full responsibility on Lyon and his men, while overlooking the role played by the rock-throwing, gun-toting members of the assembled crowd.
By whatever name the incident was known, there was little doubt about what it meant. Missouri's long, bitter war of bullets had begun.
Part VIII of this series will be posted on Sunday, December 7th.
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