Liberty Arsenal

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The Liberty Arsenal was an United States Army arsenal at Liberty, Missouri in Clay County, Missouri that was seized by Confederate sympathizers on April 20, 1861, sparking a sequence of skirmishes and battles that was to define Missouri in the American Civil War. It has sometimes been called the "Missouri Fort Sumter."

After states began seceding from the Union the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1861 by a vote of 98-1 voted on March 21, 1861 to stay in the Union but not supply men or money to either side^[1]

On April 12, 1861, the Civil War officially began with the firing on Fort Sumter.

In the the earlier Bleeding Kansas skirmishes and battles, western Missouri around Kansas City, Missouri showed it had strong Southern leanings. On on April 20, about 200 men from Clay and Jackson County, Missouri seized the lightly guarded arsenal leaving the St. Louis Arsenal as the only other military arsenal in the entire state.

The Confederates got about one thousand muskets, four brass field pieces and a small amount of ammunition. ^[2] but this was small compared to the 37,000 muskets and rifles believed to have been kept at St. Louis.^[3]

The munitions were to be hidden at the home of Henry Lewis Routt near what is now William Jewell College. Routt was eventually captured and tried for treason and sentenced to hang but was pardoned by Lincoln.^[4]

Union General Nathaniel Lyon fearing that the much larger St. Louis arsenal could also fall seized the arsenal on April 29 and began sending most of its munitions to Illinois.

Around the May 1, Governor Claiborne Jackson called the Missouri State Militia up for "maneuvers" at Lindell's Grove about 4.5 miles to the northwest of the armory near the present campus of St. Louis University.^[5]

Lyon suspected the maneuvers were a thinly veiled attempt to seize the arsenal (suspicions enforced by the discovery that Jefferson Davis had sent artillery to the maneuvers.^[6]

On May 10, Lyon surrounded the militia who surrendered. While parading them through the streets of St. Louis back towards the arsenal, a riot erupted. The troops opened fire on the crowd killing 28 and wounding 90 civilians outright and then killing another seven as the night progressed in what is called the St. Louis Massacre. ^[7]

On May 11, the Missouri General Assembly approved a measure to create the Missouri State Guard to resist the Union invasion with Sterling Price as its major general.

On May 12, Price and William S. Harney signed the Price-Harney Truce maintaining the earlier agreement to stay in the Union.

On May 30, Harney was relieved of command by Abraham Lincoln for failing to deliver Missouri soldiers to the Union cause.

On June 11, Lyon and Jackson failed to reach an agreement to deliver the troops which was to result in Lyon pursuing Jackson and the elected government across the state until evicting Jackson and installing a new governor. In the process Lyon was to be killed in the Battle of Wilson's Creek. The St. Louis Arsenal is a large complex of military weapons and ammunition storage buildings owned by the United States Army in St. Louis, Missouri. During the American Civil War, the arsenal's contents were seized and removed to Illinois by Union Captain Nathaniel Lyon, an act that helped fuel tension between secessionists and those citizens loyal to the Federal government.