LYON, NATHANIEL 0818-1860, American soldier, was born in Ashford, Conn., on July 14, 1818, and graduated at West Point in 1841. He was engaged in the Seminole War and the war with Mexico. In 1851, while serving in California, he was pro moted captain, and two years later was ordered to the East, when he became an ardent opponent of "States' Rights" and slav ery. He was stationed in Kansas and in Missouri on the eve of the Civil War. Lyon took an active part in organizing the Union Party in Missouri, though greatly hampered, at first by the Federal Government which feared to provoke hostilities, and afterwards by the military commander of the department, Gen. W. S. Har ney. On Harney's temporary removal in April, 1861, Lyon promptly assumed the command, mustered the Missouri con tingent into the United States' service, and broke up the militia camp at St. Louis established by the secessionist governor of Missouri, Claiborne F. Jackson. In all this Lyon had co-operated closely with Francis P. Blair, Jr., who now obtained from Presi
dent Lincoln the definitive removal of Harney and the assignment of Lyon to command the department of the West, with the rank of brigadier-general. On Lyon's refusal to accede to the seces sionists' proposal that the State should be neutral, hostilities opened in earnest, and Lyon, having cleared Missouri of small hostile bands in the central part of the State, turned to the south ern districts, where a Confederate army was advancing from the Arkansas border. The two forces came to action at Wilson's Creek on Aug. Io, 1861. The Union forces, heavily outnumbered, were defeated, and Lyon himself was killed. He bequeathed al most all he possessed, some $30,000, to the war funds of the Na tional Government.
See A. Woodward, Memoir of General Nathaniel Lyon (Hartford, 1862) ; James Peckham, Life of Lyon (i866) ; and T. L. Snead, The Fight for Missouri (1886). Also Last Political Writings of General Nathaniel Lyon (1862).