the incident sparked several days of civil unrest in st. louis. on may 11, volunteers were fired upon from windows at 5th and walnut streets; they returned fire into the mob. colonel henry boernstein, commander of the 2nd missouri volunteer infantry and publisher of the "anzeiger des westens", a german-language newspaper in st. louis, remarked in his memoirs that he gave several of his men leave to visit their families on the morning of may 11 and that "most of them did not return... until it grew dark, with clothing torn, faces beaten bloody, and all the signs of having suffered mistreatment... two of them never returned and they were never heard of again."