Nathaniel Lyon

• 1. Introduction

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  Nathaniel Lyon died on the 10th of August, 1861, shot through the heart at about 9:30 in the morning on a Missouri hillside. He was the first Union general killed in the American Civil War. At the moment he fell, his forces numbered roughly 6,000 soldiers against a Confederate force of about 12,000. His death came on a slope called Bloody Hill, and it made him a martyr within months. But Lyon's life is harder to sort than his death. He held Missouri in the Union at a moment when the state might have gone the other way. A decade earlier, he co-led the killing of Pomo Native Americans in California that left as many as 200 people dead. What kind of man was Nathaniel Lyon, and what does it mean that both things are true?

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• 2. The Making of a Soldier

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  Congressman Orrin Holt secured Lyon's appointment to West Point in early 1837, at the urging of family acquaintances. Lyon officially entered the Academy on the 1st of July, 1837. He was the son of Amasa Lyon, a sawmill operator who also farmed. His mother, Kezia, was related to Revolutionary War hero Thomas Knowlton. His cousin, Miner Knowlton, later served as an assistant professor at West Point and became his mentor there.

  Lyon earned a reputation from an early age for seriousness and a short temper. His father, Amasa, was strict and unaffectionate; his mother was a devoted Christian. Amasa's skepticism toward organized Christianity planted doubts about religion in Nathaniel's young mind. He was educated in local schools and briefly attended an academy in Brooklyn, Connecticut.

  He graduated in 1841, ranked 11th out of 52 cadets. He had struggled with calculus, drawing, and infantry tactics, but excelled in natural philosophy, engineering, and artillery. In February 1841, a single act of insubordination earned him 12 demerits: he angrily refused to hand his orders over to an officer. Biographer Christopher Phillips connects a failed early romance to Lyon's lifelong decision never to marry. The woman was known only as 'Miss Tot'; her identity was never recorded.

  Higher-ranked West Point graduates could enter the Corps of Engineers. Lyon chose the infantry instead, calculating that promotion would come faster there. He received his commission as second lieutenant on the 1st of July, 1841. At the Battle for Mexico City, during the Mexican-American War, he was promoted to first lieutenant. His orders cited 'conspicuous bravery in capturing enemy artillery.' He also received a brevet promotion to captain for the battles of Contreras and Churubusco. Despite being eligible, he declined to join the Aztec Club of 1847, formed in Mexico City that year. His next posting, to the California frontier, would reveal a very different kind of officer.

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• 3. Blood at Clear Lake

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  At Clear Lake in California in 1850, forces under Lyon's command descended on a Pomo Native American settlement on an island in the lake. Between 60 and 200 old men, women, and children were killed. The attack became known as the Bloody Island Massacre, and Lyon co-led it. Several days later, Lyon bore direct responsibility for a second attack at a place called Cokadjal. Between 75 and 100 people were killed there, and those who documented the event believed the actual toll was likely double.

  Lyon co-led the Clear Lake attack and bore direct responsibility at Cokadjal. Both events belong to the wider California genocide.

  His next assignment took him to Fort Riley in Kansas. Kansas in those years was split bitterly over slavery, a conflict known as Bleeding Kansas. Stationed there, Lyon became staunchly antislavery. He did not endorse the abolitionist movement's radicalism, but he aligned firmly with the Republican Party. By January 1861, with Southern states leaving the Union, Lyon's position was direct. 'It is no longer useful to appeal to reason,' he wrote, 'but to the sword.' Missouri, his next posting, was where he would act on that conviction.

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• 4. The Arsenal Gambit

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  In March 1861, Lyon arrived in St. Louis in command of Company B of the 2nd U.S. Infantry. Missouri was officially neutral, but Governor Claiborne F. Jackson was a committed Southern sympathizer. He was working with Confederate President Jefferson Davis on a secret plan for secession. Lyon guessed, correctly, that Jackson would move to seize the federal arsenal if Missouri left the Union.

  He worked to strengthen the arsenal's defenses, but his superior, Brigadier General William S. Harney of the Department of the West, pushed back. Lyon used his friendship with Congressman Francis P. Blair Jr. to have himself named commander of the arsenal outright. Once in command, he had most of the excess weapons secretly moved to Illinois. He was also deeply involved with the St. Louis Wide Awakes, a pro-Union paramilitary group. He armed them from the arsenal's stockpiles under cover of night, planning to enroll them in the federal army.

  Lyon also kept a close eye on the Missouri State Guard, which had set up a militia camp outside St. Louis. He allegedly disguised himself as a farm woman to spy on the camp. He returned claiming he had uncovered Jackson's plan to seize the arsenal for the state. The camp had also received captured artillery shipped from the U.S. arsenal in Baton Rouge by the Confederacy.

  On the 10th of May, 1861, Lyon directed Union volunteer regiments and the 2nd Infantry to surround the militia camp and force its surrender. As he marched his prisoners through St. Louis back to the arsenal, riots broke out. Lyon's troops fired into the crowd, killing 28 civilians and injuring at least 75. Two federals and three militia were also killed. The source of the first shot was disputed: some witnesses blamed a drunken rioter; others said the firing was unprovoked. On the 17th of May, Lyon was promoted to brigadier general. On the 31st of May, he was given command of all Union forces in Missouri. Governor Jackson was already making his next move.

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• 5. Conference and Pursuit

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  On the 12th of June, 1861, Lyon met Governor Jackson and Major General Sterling Price at the Planter's House hotel in St. Louis. Price commanded the Missouri State Guard. Congressman Francis P. Blair Jr. accompanied Lyon. Both Jackson and Price had traveled under a safe conduct that Lyon himself had issued. The central dispute was whether federal forces had the right to move anywhere in Missouri. Lyon said yes; Jackson insisted Union troops should be confined to the St. Louis area. After four hours, neither position had moved.

  Lyon ended the meeting with a direct statement to the governor. Jackson's demands on federal movement, Lyon said, 'means war.' He then honored the safe conduct and allowed Jackson and Price to leave St. Louis by train for Jefferson City. Jackson immediately ordered the railroad tracks destroyed behind him.

  Lyon moved up the Missouri River by steamer. He occupied Jefferson City on the 13th of June without a fight. He continued southwest, and on the 17th of June he defeated a portion of the State Guard at the Battle of Boonville. The governor, his administration, and the Guard fell back into the southwest of the state.

  Lyon had assumed command of the Army of the West on the 2nd of July. On the 22nd of July, the Missouri State Convention reconvened and declared the offices of governor and other state officials vacant. Former Missouri Chief Justice Hamilton Gamble was appointed to lead a provisional Unionist state government. Lyon reinforced his army and continued southwest toward Springfield. By the 13th of July, he was encamped there with roughly 6,000 soldiers. About 75 miles to his southwest, Confederate forces were consolidating under Major General Sterling Price and Brigadier General Benjamin McCulloch. Their combined strength reached about 12,000. They marched northeast on the 31st of July.

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• 6. Bloody Hill

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  At dawn on the 10th of August, 1861, the armies met a few miles southwest of Springfield. The engagement became known as the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Lyon was wounded early in the fighting, shot in the head and in the leg. His horse was also shot from under him. He made his way back to Union lines and commandeered a bay horse from Major E.L. McElhaney of the Missouri Infantry.

  Despite his wounds, Lyon led a countercharge of the 2nd Kansas Infantry up the slope called Bloody Hill. At about 9:30 in the morning, he was shot through the heart and died. The Union Army lost the battle. Missouri, however, never joined the Confederacy. Lyon's actions in the months before Wilson's Creek had already stripped pro-Confederate forces in the state of their most effective support.

  In the confusion of the Union withdrawal, Lyon's body was mistakenly left on the battlefield. Confederate forces found it. His remains were briefly buried on a Union soldier's farm outside Springfield before being returned to his family. They were interred at the family plot in Eastford, Connecticut. An estimated crowd of 15,000 attended the funeral. The United States Congress would pass a formal resolution of thanks before the year was out.

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• 7. What His Name Carries

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  On the 24th of December, 1861, the United States Congress passed a formal resolution thanking Lyon for his 'eminent and patriotic services.' It credited those officers who served under him with achieving 'victory against overwhelming numbers at the battle of Springfield, Missouri.' The 24th Missouri Volunteer Infantry was organized in his honor and called 'The Lyon Legion.' Its regimental color depicted a lion beneath a constellation of six stars.

  Counties in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nevada took his name. Two forts were named for him: Fort Lyon in Colorado and Fort Lyon in Virginia, which helped defend Washington during the Civil War. Lyon Park in St. Louis, Lyon Street in San Francisco, and Lyon Lane in Carson City, Nevada also carry his name. In 1862, Stephen C. Foster included a mention of Lyon in his song 'Better Times Are Coming.'

  A monument to Lyon was erected on Grand Boulevard in St. Louis in 1927. It stood there for thirty-three years. In 1960, a St. Louis philanthropist named Harriet Frost Fordyce offered one million dollars toward expanding St. Louis University's campus. Her condition was that Lyon's statue be removed. Fordyce was the youngest child of Confederate General Daniel Frost, whose militia Lyon had defeated at Camp Jackson in May 1861. The city complied. St. Louis University later renamed its main campus the Frost Campus, in honor of the Confederate general. The statue was relocated to Lyon Park, a small park near the Anheuser-Busch Brewery.

  Lyons Peak in San Diego County also carries his name. As an army captain in 1851, Lyon had passed by the peak while scouting a new route east to the Colorado Desert. Congress included one more line in that December 1861 resolution: that the country Lyon served would guard and preserve his fame as part of its own glory. The Frost Campus at St. Louis University, built on the ground his statue once occupied, remains the sharpest test of that promise.

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