Conflict
Based on the presence of the "stolen" U.S. artillery, and strong evidence of state militia conspiracy against the U.S. government, on May 10, Lyon marched on Camp Jackson with about 6,000 Federally enrolled Missouri Volunteers and U.S. Regulars, who forced the surrender of 669 members of the Missouri Volunteer Militia under General Daniel M. Frost. The militiamen refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Federal government, so Lyon placed them under arrest and marched the militia to the arsenal through downtown St. Louis. There, he provided them with a parole and ordered them to disperse.
But the lengthy march was widely viewed as a public humiliation for the state forces, and angered citizens who had gathered to watch the commotion. Tensions quickly mounted on the streets as civilians hurled rocks, paving stones, and insults at Lyon's troops. The heavily German Missouri Volunteer units were particularly targeted by the mob and shouts of "Damn the Dutch" were hurled at them from the crowd. Exactly what provoked the shooting remains unclear, but the most common explanation is that a drunkard stumbled into the path of the marching soldiers, and fired a pistol into their ranks, fatally wounding Captain Constantin Blandowski of the Third Missouri Volunteers. The volunteers, in reaction, fired over the heads of...and then into.... the crowd, killing some 28 people, some of whom were women and children, and wounding as many as 50 more.
The incident sparked several days of rioting and anti-German animosity in St. Louis. On May 11, German Volunteers were fired upon from windows at 5th and Walnut streets; they returned fire into the mob. Col. Henry Boernstein, publisher of the Anzeiger des Westens a prominent German Language newspaper in St. Louis and commander of the 2nd Regiment of Missouri Volunteers, remarked in his memoirs that he gave several of his men leave to visit their families on the morning of May 11 and that, “Most of them did not return…until it grew dark, with clothing torn, faces beaten bloody, and all the signs of having suffered mistreatment…Two of them never returned and they were never heard of again.”
Rumors spread throughout the city that the Germans were planning to murder the American population of the city; many wealthy St. Louisians fled to Illinois or the Missouri interior.
Martial law was imposed, and with the arrival of Federal Regulars to relieve the German volunteers, the violence came to an end.
Read more about this topic: Camp Jackson Affair
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