In 1856 he knew his work so well that he went to Washington and proposed to Congress to remove all the snags and wrecks from the Western rivers,--the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Ohio,--and to keep their channels open for a term of years. A bill to that purpose passed the House, but in the Senate it was defeated by Jefferson Davis and others. The next year, on account of poor health, Eads retired from business, but he carried with him a fortune. He had not succeeded in his purpose at Washington, but his name was known there and remembered.
Meanwhile his wife had died, and two years later he had married the widow of a first cousin. With his second wife he made his first trip to Europe,--the first of very many he was destined to make. In 1857, being thirty-seven years old, he retired, as I have said, from business.
His youthful hopes, the ordinary ambitions of men, were realized. He had been a poor boy: at only thirty-seven he was rich,--very rich for the times and for the place. From his proposals to the government, we may imagine that he now had broader dreams of usefulness. But his first proposition toward river improvement had been checked. He had bought a large house and grounds. He made for himself a rose-arbor, and for four years he was as much unoccupied as his lively mind permitted. He was at any rate what is called a man of leisure.
Then, four years being passed, he received from Washington, from his friend Attorney-General Bates, a letter written three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter, which said: "Be not surprised if you are called here suddenly by telegram. If called, come instantly. In a certain contingency it will be necessary to have the aid of the most thorough knowledge of our Western rivers, and the use of steam on them, and in that event I advised that you should be consulted."
The government was thinking of placing gunboats to occupy and to defend the Western waters.
At the beginning of the Civil War the State of Missouri and the city of Saint Louis were in a very confused condition. A border slave State, Missouri contained a great many persons of Southern birth and Southern sympathies; and besides a good many strong Northern men, Saint Louis had also a considerable German population, all stanch Unionists. But excepting the Germans and one or two dauntless clear-seeing men, who read the future, few persons in either party wished to fight if fighting could possibly be avoided. The governor, a Southern man, while hesitating at actual secession, wished and tried to control the power of the State so that at need it might help the South; and while professing loyalty, he did all he could to prove his disloyalty to the Union. The legislature, however, would not pass a bill to arm the State, thereby, says an historian, causing the South to sustain "a defeat more disastrous to its independence than any which thereafter befell its arms, down to the fall of Vicksburg." In response to Lincoln's call for troops, the governor refused to send any from Missouri. An extraordinary state convention, called in this crisis, voted against secession. Seeing that the governor, notwithstanding this, was covertly aiming at throwing himself and the State, so far as he could, in with the Confederacy, young Frank Blair and General Nathaniel Lyon, carrying things with a high hand, seized and dispersed the state militia encamped in Saint Louis, got control of almost all the Federal arms in the State, and with outside aid and help from the regular army, chased the governor from the capital, and held him at bay long enough for the convention to depose him and the General Assembly, and to establish a state government loyal to the Union.