Thanks, Anita. That sounds like a good book, but I am very busy studying what was happening on the other side of the state. I am not pro-confederate, nor am I pro-union. My own German ancestors were living in Eudora, Kansas, at the time. Since the Vitts nearly disappeared from Baden in the mid-nineteenth century, and went to every continent on the globe, I strongly suspect that they were well known leaders of the Revolution of 1848. References I have found to the family tend to emphasize the fact that they had to flee Baden. They were probably followers of Karl Schurz and Franz Sigel.

As to the soldiers that fired on the crowd while marching the State Guard through the streets, I suspect they were quite as innocent as the "Red Coats" who fired on a similar mob in Boston over eighty years before. John Adams proved that they acted in self-defense, and that they were in serious danger from the mob. One of the soldiers in St Louis was a cousin of my Birchler ancestors who were living in Louisville at that time. Given Captain Lyon's personality, I stongly suspect that he ordered them to march the prisoners through neighborhoods that would be most likey to riot.