A striking figure among them was M. Jeff Thompson, called the "Missouri Swamp Fox" by his admirers, and who aspired to become the Francis Marion of the Southern Confederacy. He was a tall, lank, wiry man, at least six feet high, about 35 years old, with a thin, long, hatchet face, and high, sharp nose, blue eyes, and thick, yellow hair combed behind his ears. He wore a slouch white hat with feather and a bob-tailed coat, short pantaloons, and high rough boots. A white-handled bowie-knife, stuck perpendicularly in his belt in the middle of his back, completed his armament, and he was never seen without it. His weakness was for writing poetry, and he "threw" a poem on the slightest provocation. Fortunately none of these has been preserved.
Each Brigadier-General soon raised in his Division several regiments and battalions of infantry, troops of cavalry, and batteries of artillery, composed of very excellent material, for the young men of the Middle Class were persuaded that it was their duty to respond to the State's call to defend her. The strongest political, social and local influences were brought to bear to bring them into the ranks, and the Missouri State Guard was formed, which was to fight valorously against the Government on many bitterly contested fields.
The White Trash, always impatient of the restrains of law and organization, did not enter so largely into these forces, but remained outside, to form bands of bushwhackers and guerrillas, to harry Union men and curse the State with their depredations, in which the Secessionists were scarcely more favored than the Union men.
The influence of Gen. Scott and Attorney-General Bates, added to the passionate representations of the Gamble-Yeatman delegation, and the frantic telegrams from Missouri, had restored Harney to full power, with Lyon, who had been commissioned a Brigadier-General of Volunteers, as his subordinate.
Harney was exerting himself to the utmost to restore peace and confidence in Missouri, and when free from the social influence of the Secessionists who surrounded him his soldierly instincts made him perceive that the emergency was greater than he had calculated upon. In one of these better moods he telegraphed to the Adjutant-General, May 17, that he ought to have 10,000 stand of arms placed at his disposal to arm the Union men of Missouri; that Iowa be called upon to send him 6,000, and Minnesota 3,000 men. Then the Secessionists would get hold of him again, and induce another mood, such as brought about a conference between him and Gov. Jackson and Gen. Price, leading to an agreement which Gen. Harney published in a proclamation. The agreement was as follows: