in 1856, had polled the votes so handsomely. When the
war broke out, Fremont, being then abroad, offered patrioti
cally his services, and something, the administration felt,
ought to be done for him. He was talked of for Secretary
of War, for the French mission ; but a high command in the
field was fixed upon as his most appropriate station. Soon
after arriving from Europe, he found himself appointed,
about the 1st of July, one of the four major-gen
erals of the regular army, ranking, in fact, like
McClellan, as secondary to Scott alone. On the 3d was
created for him the department of the West, embracing
Illinois and the whole region beyond the Mississippi River
to the Rocky Mountains, with headquarters at St. Louis.
The opportunity was magnificent, the theatre a splendid
one, for any general whose genius could have risen to the
difficult requirements. But Fremont, unfortunately, had no
genius, and such talents and energy as he possessed were
greatly overrated. The influence of the Blairs, cast strongly
for his selection, augured well for his control of Missouri ;
his wife, daughter of the great Benton, now deceased, who
for thirty years had represented that State in the Senate of
the Union, had a family name to conjure with ; the govern
ors, too, of the free Northwestern States, who had urged
upon the President the appointment of some commander
competent to organize and direct the vast resources they
were placing at military disposal, welcomed the choice.
But Fremont s record was not consulted as carefully as his
popularity. Rashness and romance had made him a repu
tation, rather than the realities of life or solid public ser
vice. His remembered energy was that of youthful years
98 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
commingled with indiscretion; his past exploits showed
individual dash, but no great skill to combine ; and though
a dramatic figure in the conquest of California, he had
manifested in that episode of mature life an immature sen
sitiveness to affront and a propensity to personal quarrels.
In short, granting freely his patriotism, integrity, and
humane sentiment, Fremont was unquestionably destitute
of the training or temperament for the immense responsi
bilities, civil and military, so confidingly thrust upon his
inexperience. His start in this new command was not aus
picious. A lot of firearms which he had purchased for the
government while abroad, and brought home with him, were
found exorbitant in cost, and so poor when distributed that
they could not be used to advantage. Moreover, instead of
proceeding at once to his post of duty, where the emergency
was highly critical, he lingered about New York City, largely
absorbed in personal matters, and did not start for St. Louis
until after the battle of Bull Hun. When, on July 25th, he
at last reached headquarters in Missouri and assumed formal
command, the atmosphere of the situation soon dispelled his
halo of popularity. Lyon was then far distant and dis
regarded, Blair was attending the Congress at Washington,
and just as Fremont most needed sound counsel he seemed
to do his best to exclude it. He was reticent and reserved
towards his most distinguished military subordinates ; he
set up great state at St. Louis, surrounded by sentries and
guards, and kept governors and the first citizens dancing
attendance for days before granting an audience, at the
same time that old civil favorites of doubtful repute found
special access to him, some of whom served in confidential
positions upon his staff, or under the irregular commissions
that he arbitrarily bestowed. The error, extravagance, de
lay, and waste, almost inseparable from administration in
this distant department, where government checks were
imperfect, became doubled under such misdirection. Cor
rupt contractors for horses, forage, clothing, and supplies
swarmed about headquarters like hungry locusts, while the
general in command, ignorant, and remaining in ignorance,
of his most pressing duties, repelled educated advisers of
1801. FREMONT AT THE WEST. 99
the regular army familiar with organization and routine,
and suffered scandals to be bred from too close intercourse
with patronage-mongers and the dividers of prospective
profits who wormed themselves into his employ. 1
In military plans Fremont dwelt much upon the distant,
but too little upon what was close at hand. He saw him
self conducting a conquering campaign down the Missis
sippi, but the enormous detail of preparatory campaigning
he seemed hardly to imagine. Indeed, details vexed him, and
the drudgery of economies most of all. Three great military
tasks might well have absorbed his earliest attention. First
was the lawless guerilla warfare, known as " bushwhacking,"
which, begun in political dissension throughout Missouri s
sparsely settled towns, would degenerate rapidly into family
feuds and the bloody reprisals of neighbors. For suppress
ing outrages of this character in northern Missouri, General
John Pope, as Lyoii had desired, was employed under wired
sanction before Fremont left New York. Next, Cairo was
in danger, for the Confederate Pill w had moved a force to
New Madrid about the time of Fremont s arrival. This,
the strategic key to the Mississippi, was threatened, and
Fremont, promptly gathering after his arrival and loading
on steamboats the nearest available reenforcements, led
thorn to Cairo s relief, a demonstration both opportune
and salutary.
But while eight regiments went to Pope, and eight more
to Prentiss at Cairo, Fremont neglected the third and great
est point of immediate danger, the safety of Lyon and
his dwindling force in southwestern Missouri. Again and
again was he urged, before leaving New York, to relieve
that critical situation, where a junction of disunion forces
was threatened just beyond the Arkansas line. Three spe
cial messengers from Lyon awaited Fremont on his arrival
at St. Louis, to emphasize the needs and danger. Fremont,
if unable to send reenforcements for a fight, might at least
have assisted the chief soldier that he superseded to with
draw safely to his railroad base at Kolla. But, though
1 See 1 Sherman, 223; 4 N. & H. c. 23.
100 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
repeatedly warned, he was heedless, and did nothing; he
neither recalled nor strengthened in this quarter. Lyon s
situation was truly distressing. Over a hundred miles from
a railroad base, neither men nor supplies reached him such
as he had entreated; his army, ill-clad and nearly bare
footed, with pay in arrears, was already reduced in num
bers as the terms of his three months men expired, many of
whom, nevertheless, reenlisted in their eagerness to serve
him. 1 Fremont was heedless and indifferent to his wants,
too much absorbed in other schemes, and he did not, as he
should have done, divide his forces and hasten to give Lyon
his due share. By the end of July, McCulloch s formidable
force, aided by Sterling Price and his Missouri recruits,
approached Springfield, and Lyon concluded to go forth
and give them battle at Wilson s Creek ; for, if he should
fall back upon Rolla, his retreat might be turned to a rout.
His own troops had now dwindled to about half the com
bined forces of invasion. As lately happened at Bull Kun,
each contestant had planned to attack the other; but the
Union general in command forced the fighting. The battle
of Wilson s Creek, which took place on the 10th of
August, was the bloodiest of engagements thus far
in the Civil War, and one of the most unequal, in point of
numbers, of them all. With immense odds against him,
Lyon fell upon the enemy with great fury, and inspired his
men to deeds of almost superhuman daring; but while lead
ing his column in a bayonet charge at the supreme moment,
after having been already wounded, he fell from his horse,
pierced by a bullet, and expired in an instant. Major Stur-
gis, on whom the command now devolved, many of his
senior officers having been disabled, ordered a retreat, and
through the dense undergrowth of woods withdrew to
Springfield ; from which point, under Siegel, the remnant,
unpursued, began falling back upon Rolla and a railroad
base the following day. 2 By Lyon s untimely sacrifice was
1 3 W. R. 408, 424 ; 4 N. & H. 407.
2 See 4 N. & H. 411 ; 3 W. R. 72, 106 ; 1 B. & L. 289-306. The
strength of the opposing forces in battle is estimated : Union, 5400 ;
1861. DEATH OF LYON. 101
lost an officer of extraordinary promise, one whose pro
longed life for another year might have been worth to the
Union cause an army corps. For grand armies and opera
tions, Lyon was of course never tested, but McClellan him
self could not yet show such a fighting record. With grow
ing sphere and opportunity such as his service merited, he
would have been, we may fairly believe, the Union counter
part, at least, of Stonewall Jackson. The same celerity of
movement, the same fearlessness, was shown; while t his in
tense love of freedom and his country s flag inspired almost
to fanaticism all who fought under him. They whom he
baffled have generously testified to the respect they felt
for him. 1
This battle disaster, and, above all, the death of that
brave general to whom loyal Missouri owed the most,
turned censure sharply upon Fremont, whose other short
comings had been noticed. Lyon s complaints were re
ported to show that his life had been sacrificed through the
neglect of his new commander. Turning at last his tardy
attention to that remote quarter, Fremont sent reinforce
ments to Rolla, calling upon the northwestern governors for
all the regiments at their disposal, and declaring martial
law in St. Louis. 2 But at the same time he needlessly
increased instead of diminishing that factional feeling in
Missouri which the government had expected him to soothe.
In a proclamation of martial law, which he issued on the
30th of the month, he raised two points for controversy :
he announced that " all persons taken with arms in their
hands" would be tried by court-martial and summarily
shot; and he threatened, moreover, to confiscate the slaves
of active enemies of the government, declaring free all such
persons held to bondage. The President at once cautioned
Confederate, 10,175, and perhaps more. The Union loss is officially
reported, 1235 in killed, wounded, and missing ; that of the opposing
force, 1095. 1 B. & L. 273, 306. It is observable that, in spite of so
great inequality in point of numbers, the Union and Confederate losses
were nearly the same.
1 See 1 B. & L. 273.
2 3 W. K. 437.
102 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
his high subordinate, confidentially and not unkindly, that
September- any such shooting of civilians must be done sub-
October. j ec k to his own approbation, and that all confis
cation must conform to the recent act of Congress. 1 The
threat of military emancipation at so early a date must have
been like throwing a new firebrand upon flames already diffi
cult to check, and Lincoln, as commander-in-chief , meant to
keep that whole vexed policy towards slaveholding States
under Jiis immediate control. But Fremont refused to be
cautioned on this latter point; and, compelling the Presi
dent to modify by formal order the objectionable passage
of his proclamation, he made himself seem to the country
the better philanthropist of the two. 2 Whether in this he
was uninfluenced by political ambition and vanity may be
questioned.
While Fremont was intent upon such manifestoes and
his far-away campaigns down the Mississippi, 3 he suffered
Price to sweep unopposed across this turbulent State to the
Missouri River. On the 20th of September this adversary
captured Lexington, the place from which Lyon had once
put him to flight, and compelled a small Union garrison at
Fort Mulligan to surrender to his vastly superior force. 4
Stung by the new disgrace, which precaution might have
averted, Fremont now took the field in person and sum
moned about him a nominal army of about thirty-nine thou
sand men, under generals who were destined to eclipse him
in permanent fame. 5 His incapacity to organize, his chronic
inattention to details, and his utter inexperience for such
high command, now grew manifest; and about the 13th of
October, while his force assembled all too slowly, the Sec
retary of War and Adjutant-General reached his camp at
Tipton, sent on from Washington to investigate the com
plaints of extravagance and inefficiency which were already
notorious. They found all in confusion, and the complaints
1 Supra, p. 87.
2 4 N. & H. c. 24 ; 3 W. R. 466-486.
3 See 3 W. R. 478 ; 1 B. & L. 285.
* 1 B. & L. 307-313 ; 4 N. & H. 426-428.
5 3 W. R. 184, 185, 504. (September 23d.)
1861. COMPLAINTS AGAINST FREMONT. 103
well founded. The means of transportation for so large a
force as Fremont sent for were quite inadequate. Soldiers
who had been on the march, exposed all night to violent
rains, went without food for twenty-four hours, and were
then regaled upon beef already spoiled. Divisions were
scattered, half organized, not brought within supporting
distance. Pope s marching orders found him utterly with
out supplies and transportation, and he had written to that
effect. The highest subordinates under Fremont knew noth
ing of his plans, not even Hunter, the second in command,
having ever been consulted by him ; and regular officers of
high talent and experience waited for him to reveal what
they should undertake. His reserve indicated, in their
belief, either vanity or a professional incompetence which
he feared to betray. He had not a single Missourian on his
staff, not a man personally acquainted with the topogra
phy of the State, or its people, and he was on ill terms with
the governor and other loyal civil leaders. He had issued
some two hundred irregular commissions ; he had made
verbal and indirect demands upon the Federal disburs
ing officers; and corrupt contracts for supplies, in which
his clique of adventurers shared, had been awarded with
out competition, in disregard of the statute and army regu
lations. Costly barracks were needlessly constructed at
St. Louis, costly quarters rented ; and even upon the inarch,
erections were more permanent and expensive than any
moving army would require. Fremont seemed to compe
tent observers unable to concentrate his attention ; his pres
ent campaign promised to be barren of results ; and by vac
illation and mismanagement since his arrival here, he had,
in less than three months, almost lost the State he was sent
out to confirm in loyalty. 1
With such arraignment added to the multitude of miscel
laneous complaints, Fremont s military displacement was
inevitable. Before returning east Secretary Cameron issued
orders checking the prodigal expenditure of this Western
1 See Adjutant-General Thomas s "Report (October 21st); 3 W. ft.
538-545.
104 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
department and discharging all officers irregularly commis
sioned. 1 In consideration of his friends and high character,
Fremont himself had been gently dealt with, 2 and the Presi
dent despatched an order of recall, not to be delivered if he
had personally fought, or was on the eve of fighting, a battle.
Fremont was now at Springfield, where Lyon so long awaited
his fate ; the order was served, Hunter assumed the corn-
November mand, and, much to the President s relief, Fremont
2 ~ 9 - showed no sign of disobedience, but retired with
becoming grace. 3 A few days later the Western depart
ment was reorganized; Hunter was assigned elsewhere;
while Henry W. Halleck, another regular of high repute,
became Fremont s full successor, with a portion of Ken
tucky annexed to his command. 4
While Missouri felt a forcible grasp, Kentucky was per
mitted to test for herself the hollowness of State neutrality
in a conflict like the present. President Lincoln, who felt
the pulse of every border slave State, to know what treat
ment it would bear, guided with consummate tact and pa
tience the Union sentiment of his native commonwealth.
Lieutenant William Nelson of the navy, a man heroic and
of impulsive spirit, aided him in his plans ; and Major An
derson, too, the hero of Sumter, whom he sent to Cincinnati
in May on a special commission to receive volunteer regi
ments from Kentucky and western Virginia. 5 The Kentucky
1 3 W. R. 532 (October 14th).
2 Lincoln had delicately sent the Postmaster-General to St. Louis,
September 9th, to give Fremont some judicious advice. And see
Meigs to Francis P. Blair, Jr., August 28th; 3 W. R. 463.
4 N. & H. c. 24 ; 3 W. R. 555, 560. Cf . Fremont in 1 B. & L.
287, 288.
4 4 N. & H. c. 24. Price, whose soldiery had very little cohesion
after the Lexington raid, now retreated towards Arkansas.
6 Joshua F. Speed was an intimate friend, of much service at this
time ; Crittenden threw his own vast influence in the right direction ;
and Holt, at Washington, Guthrie, Garrett Davis, and others, of this
State, assisted. See 4 N. & H. c. 12. The "Union Club" of Louis
ville rendered important aid. 1 B. & L. 377, 380.
1861. NEUTRALITY IN KENTUCKY. 105
legislature, which was loyal, baffled Magoffin, the governor,
in his disloyal purposes. The latter having proclaimed
" neutrality " as between the " two sovereignties," placed
Simon B. Buckner, a man of Southern sympathies, in charge
of the State militia ; but the legislature, recognizing a Union
" home guard " besides, which Nv>l&on secretly sup- May _
plied with government muskets, required that mill- August.
tia and home guards should alike swear allegiance to both
Kentucky and the United States. That searching test
threw out the disloyal, who, with Buckner himself, went
south and joined openly the Confederacy. 1 For Kentuckians
had too keen a sense of honor to dissemble long their senti
ments or perjure themselves.
On the 30th of June Union representatives to Congress
were chosen in nine out of ten of Kentucky s districts. At
the August State election a new legislature gave to the
Union cause a safe two-thirds vote in each branch, for over
ruling the executive. The new Kentucky legislature as
sembled at Frankfort on the 2d of September, and by a
decisive vote ordered that the stars and stripes
should be displayed above the State House. Al- "
ready were Union troops encamped within the State, and
the President refused to remove them on Governor Magof-
fin s demand. 2 When, on the other hand, Leonidas Polk, 3
who had been operating since July from Memphis with
ambitious plans, advanced over the border and took pos
session of Columbus, excusing this action on military
grounds, and offering to withdraw if the Federal forces
would do the same, this legislature resolved that Ken
tucky s neutrality had been grossly violated, and called upon
the Union troops and militia to cooperate in expelling him.
In vain did Magoffin interpose his veto; the resolutions
passed in spite of it, and at the peremptory command of
that body he issued his proclamation commanding the Con-
1 4 N. & H. c. 12.
2 See correspondence (August 19th-24th), 4 N. & II. 242.
3 Polk, a West Pointer by education, but ordained to the Episcopal
ministry, was bishop of Louisiana when the war broke out. He re
signed and was made a Confederate general.
106 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
federate or Tennessee force to withdraw. State neutrality
had now been blown to a climax of absurdity, and the
bubble burst. Anderson assumed command of the State
and national forces, and called upon all true citizens of the
Union to repel invasion. At disunion s instance Confeder
ate troops were poured into the State at different points
Polk and Pillow concentrating west, and near the Missis
sippi, and Zollicoffer guarding the mountain gaps at the east,
while Buckner, now serving under his commission from the
Davis government, seized Bowling Green, an important
strategic point and railway junction near the centre of the
State. To command all these western forces of the Confed
eracy Jefferson Davis sent his favorite general, Albert Sidney
Johnston, who made Bowling Green his headquarters. 1
When the hero of Sumter, now promoted to a brigadier,
prepared to take formal command in Kentucky, he invited
two officers to accompany him who had served in the Bull Run
campaign William T. Sherman and George H. Thomas.
Both of these won immortal renown in the Mississippi Val
ley, with whose operations they were henceforth identified.
Thomas, a Virginian true as the steel he wore at his
side, was but gradually trusted by Lincoln s administration
because so many high officers from his State proved recreant
to the Union; Sherman, on the other hand, had political
influence, and that of the strongest kind, at his service, but
October- was too much of a soldier to use it. On the 8th of
November. October, Anderson, worn, harassed, and quite un
equal to the new strain imposed upon him, relinquished this
department to Sherman, his next in command ; much, how
ever, to the regret of the latter, who had left Washington
intending to remain a subordinate. He, too, became vexed
in mind over his inadequate strength in men and supplies,
and the immense task of organizing, which would hinder all
plans for active warfare. When the Secretary of War paid
1 4 N. & II. c. 12 ; Am. Cycl. 1861, 400-407. Breckinridge now
joined the Confederates cause, declaring in a letter that he exchanged
with proud satisfaction a term of six years in the United States Senate
for the musket of a soldier.
1861. SHERMAN AND BUELL. 107
him a flying visit on the return from St. Louis, about the
middle of October, Sherman, then in quite a despondent
mood, announced no plans, but on being asked how many
soldiers he wished, answered in his brusque and hasty way,
that he needed sixty thousand at once, and for taking the
offensive two hundred thousand. "My God!" exclaimed
Cameron, " where do you expect to get them ? " The report
soon spread at the capital that Sherman was mentally de
ranged by his responsibilities, and he was sent to St. Louis
about the middle of November, to report to General Halleck,
Don C. Buell, a more phlegmatic officer and a strong personal
friend of McClellan s, succeeding him. 1 But it was not a
misconception of this kind that caused Shernian s transfer,
so much as his own expressed dislike of the responsibility,
his depression of spirits and desire to be relieved from the
post. Sherman, when next he soared, rose by the more
gradual flight that he wished ; his constant preference was
to be second, and there fame has finally fixed him. It was
not, however, until Shiloh revealed his greatness in the
field, that favor came to him again. Racy and frank in
expression, warm-hearted, original in the point of view from
which events impressed him, impetuous and fond of action,
this genuine companion-iii-arms has confessed himself defi
cient in that temper which calmly manages political com
munities and conceals within a glove the iron hand.
The friendship and the operations fitted to draw out
Sherman s best traits of character were happily in store for
him among his Missouri surroundings. It was the saving
grace of Fremont s unfortunate career at the West that he
initiated the brilliant movement on lesser rivers that first
clove the Confederacy apart and started upon a conquering
progress the obscure officer under whom our Union arms
finally triumphed. Yet this was something of an accident.
Ulysses S. Grant, born in Ohio in 1822 and four years older
than McClellan, had graduated at West Point a moderate
i 1 Sherman, 227-242. Cf. 5 N. & H. 65 ; 4 W. R. 297.
108 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
scholar and an excellent horseman. Bearing, like McClellan,
a youthful part in the Mexican War, he performed the duties
of a regimental quartermaster, and did deeds of gallantry
besides. In July, 1854, he resigned from the army with the
full rank of captain, to enter upon civil pursuits. But fortune
did not continue to befriend him as it did McClellan ; and
failing to make a living in St. Louis as a real estate agent,
Grant, with now a wife and four children, moved to Galena
in the spring of 1860, there to share a livelihood with two
brothers in carrying on his father s tannery. Fighting
poverty in this uncongenial pursuit when Eort Sumter fell,
he was brought forward by Galena friends and neighbors as a
fellow-townsman trained to arms ; and helping raise the first
Galena company for three months, he accompanied it to the
State capitol at Springfield, where Governor Yates installed