Lincoln’s buoyant mood plummeted an hour or so later that evening when he received General Thomas W. Sherman’s request for more troops before his advance upon Port Royal, South Carolina. Frustrated by repeated calls from every general for reinforcements, he told Seward he would refuse Sherman’s request and would telegraph him to say he didn’t have “much hope of his expedition anyway.” Now it was Seward’s turn to moderate the president’s reply, much as Lincoln had softened Seward’s language in the famous May 21 dispatch. “No,” Seward replied, “you wont say discouraging things to a man going off with his life in his hand.” Lincoln rejected Sherman’s request for more troops but expressed no pessimism about the mission.
The long evenings of camaraderie at Seward’s, where interesting guests wandered in and out, probably rekindled memories of Lincoln’s convivial days on the circuit, when he and his fellow lawyers gathered together before the log fire to talk, drink, and share stories. Between official meetings and private get-togethers, Lincoln spent more time with Seward in the first year of his presidency than with anyone else, including his family. It was not therefore surprising that the possessive Mary felt rancor toward Seward and his family.
WHILE LINCOLN ENDURED complaints about the lack of forward movement in the East, he was forced to confront an equally thorny situation in the West, where the fighting between secessionists and Unionists in Missouri threatened to erupt into civil war. Though a majority of the state supported the Union, the new governor, Claiborne Jackson, commanded a sizable number of secessionists intent upon bringing the state into the Confederacy. Missouri initially succeeded in thwarting the rebel guerrillas, largely through the combined efforts of Frank Blair, who had left Congress to become a colonel, and his good friend, General Nathaniel Lyon. They had prevented rebel troops from seizing the St. Louis arsenal, and ingeniously captured Fort Jackson, where the Confederate troops were headquartered. Lyon had entered the rebel camp on a scouting mission, disguised as the familiar figure of Frank’s mother-in-law, a well-respected old lady in St. Louis. He wore a dress and shawl, with a “thickly veiled sunbonnet,” to hide his red beard. Hidden in his egg basket were revolvers in case he was recognized. The following day, with knowledge of the camp and seven thousand troops, Lyon marched in and took the fort.
In spite of these early successes, daring rebel raids soon destroyed bridges, roads, and property, and threw the state into a panic. To take charge of this perilous situation and command the entire Department of the West, Lincoln appointed General John C. Frémont, the dashing hero whose exploits in 1847 in the liberation of California from Mexico had earned him the first Republican nomination for president in 1856. Lincoln later recalled that it was upon the “earnest solicitation” and united advocacy of the powerful Blair family that he made Frémont a major general and sent him to Missouri.
Frémont’s appointment was initially greeted with enthusiasm. “He is just such a person as Western men will idolize and follow through every danger to death or victory,” John Hay wrote. “He is upright, brave, generous, enterprising, learned and eminently practical.” Frémont’s staunch antislavery principles found favor among the German-Americans who comprised a large portion of the St. Louis population. “There was a sort of romantic halo about him,” Gustave Koerner recalled. His name alone had “a magical influence,” inducing thousands of volunteers from the Western states to join the Union Army.
Within weeks of Frémont’s arrival, however, stories filtered back to Washington of “recklessness in expenditures.” Tales circulated that the Frémonts had set themselves up in a $6,000 mansion, where bodyguards deterred unwanted visitors, including Hamilton Gamble, the former Unionist governor of Missouri and brother-in-law of Edward Bates. Some worried that Frémont, like McClellan, had chosen to stay in the city to prepare for a move against the rebels rather than join his troops in the field. These unsettling rumors were followed by the shocking news of General Lyon’s death in a struggle at Wilson’s Creek on August 10. Weeks later, the Union forces suffered another devastating defeat when they were forced to surrender Lexington to the rebels. Among Missouri’s loyalists morale plummeted.
In late August, realizing he must act before the situation deteriorated further, Frémont issued a bold proclamation. Without consulting Lincoln, he declared martial law throughout the state, giving the military the authority to try and, if warranted, shoot any rebels within Union lines who were found “with arms in their hands.” Union troops were directed to confiscate all property, including slaves, of all persons “who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field.” These slaves, Frémont proclaimed, “are hereby declared freemen.” Frémont’s policy far exceeded the Confiscation Act passed by the Congress earlier that month, which applied only to slaves supporting Confederate troops and did not spell out their future status.
Lincoln learned of Frémont’s proclamation by reading it in the newspapers along with the rest of the nation. With this announcement, Frémont had unilaterally recast the struggle to preserve the Union as a war against slavery, a shift that the president believed would lead Kentucky and the border states to join the Confederacy. Lincoln wrote a private letter to Frémont, expressing his “anxiety” on two points: “First, should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, the Confederates would very certainly shoot our best man in their hands in retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely.” Even more troubling, he saw “great danger” in “liberating slaves of traiterous owners,” a move that would certainly “alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me therefore to ask, that you will as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform” to the recent Confiscation Act of Congress. Lincoln was anxious that Frémont change the language of his own accord, so that the president would not be officially forced to override him. He understood that if the controversy became public, radical Republicans, whose loyalty was crucial to his governing coalition, might side with Frémont rather than with him.
Moreover, as Lincoln later explained to Orville Browning, “Fremont’s proclamation, as to confiscation of property, and the liberation of slaves, is purely political, and not within the range of military law, or necessity.” As chief executive, he could not allow a general in the field to determine the “permanent future condition” of slaves. Seward fully supported Lincoln on principle as well as policy. “The trouble with Fremont was, that he acted without authority from the President,” Seward later maintained. “The President could permit no subordinate to assume a responsibility which belonged only to himself.”
Lincoln’s fears about the reaction to Frémont’s proclamation in the border states were justified. Within days, frantic letters reached Washington from Unionists in Kentucky. Joshua Speed wrote to Lincoln that Frémont’s proclamation had left him “unable to eat or sleep—It will crush out every vestage of a union party in the state—I perhaps & a few others will be left alone.” He reminded his old friend that there were “from 180 to 200000 slaves” in Kentucky, of whom only 20,000 belonged to rebels. “So fixed is public sentiment in this state against freeing negroes & allowing negroes to be emancipated & remain among us,” he continued, “that you had as well attack the freedom of worship in the north or the right of a parent to teach his child to read—as to wage war in a slave state on such a principle.”
Meanwhile, events in Missouri took a strange turn. On September 1, the same day that Frémont made his proclamation public, Colonel Frank Blair penned a long letter to his brother, Montgomery, that would lead to the colonel’s arrest and imprisonment two weeks later. “I know that you and I are both in some sort responsible for Fremonts appointment,” he admitted, but “my decided opinion is that he should be relieved of his command.” Blair was not reacting to the proclamation, as was assumed by contemporaries and historians alike. On the contrary, he told Monty he agreed with the proclamation, believing that stringent measures, includin
g the liberation of slaves, were necessary to dispel the illusions of impunity the marauding bands of rebel guerrillas seemed to harbor. He wished only that the proclamation had been issued earlier, when Frémont “had the power to enforce it & the enemy no power to retaliate.”
But since Frémont had taken command, Frank told his brother, the situation in Missouri had grown increasingly desperate. Through “gross & inexcusable negligence,” the rebels had accumulated a substantial following. “Oh! for one hour of our dead Lyon,” he lamented, adding that many now ascribed Lyon’s death to Frémont’s failure to reinforce him. Moreover, in the camps around St. Louis, there was “an active want of discipline” reminiscent of the disorganization in Washington that led to Bull Run. If his brother had information absolving Frémont, Frank continued, if the government knew more of Frémont’s plans than he, then Montgomery should “burn this paper and say that I am an alarmist”; but at this moment, his faith was shaken “to the very foundations.”
Monty Blair showed his brother’s frank letter to Lincoln and added a letter of his own. He asserted that he himself had reluctantly concluded that Frémont must be dismissed. He acknowledged that he had sponsored Frémont at the start, having enjoyed a warm friendship with the celebrated explorer, “but being now satisfied of my mistake duty requires that I should frankly admit it and ask that it may be promptly corrected.” Like Frank, he took no issue with the proclamation, believing a show of strength was necessary. Frémont’s removal, he concluded, was “required by public interests.”
Hearing similar testimony from other sources in Missouri, Lincoln sent General Meigs and Montgomery Blair on September 10 to talk with Frémont and “look into the affair.” At this point, the president still had not received confirmation from Frémont that he would modify the proclamation as requested.
That evening, Frémont’s spirited wife, Jessie, the daughter of former senator Thomas Benton, arrived in Washington after a three-day trip on a dusty, cramped train to hand-deliver Frémont’s delayed response. She sent Lincoln a card asking when she could see him and received the peremptory response: “A. Lincoln. Now.” Straightaway, Jessie left her room at the Willard in the wrinkled dress she had worn during her sweltering trip. As she later reported, when the president came into the room, he “bowed slightly” but did not speak. Nor did he offer her a seat. She handed him her husband’s letter, which he read standing. To Lincoln’s fury and dismay, Frémont had refused his private request to modify the proclamation, insisting that the president must publicly order him to do so. “If I were to retract of my own accord,” the general argued, “it would imply that I myself thought it wrong and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded. But I did not do so.”
When Lincoln remarked that Frémont clearly knew what was expected of him, Jessie implied that Lincoln did not understand the complex situation in Missouri. Nor did he appreciate that unless the war became one of emancipation, European powers were more than likely to recognize the Confederacy. “You are quite a female politician,” Lincoln remarked. He later recalled that Jessie Frémont had “taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarelling with her…. She more than once intimated that if Gen Fremont should conclude to try conclusions with me he could set up for himself.” As Jessie left, she asked Lincoln when she might return to receive his reply. He told her he would send for her when he was ready.
The next morning, Lincoln wrote his reply. This time, he issued “an open order” to Frémont to revise his proclamation to conform to the provisions of the Confiscation Act. Rather than allow Jessie to hand-deliver it, he sent it to be mailed. In keeping with Frémont’s own tactics, he made the reply public before Frémont would receive it.
While Jessie waited vainly at the Willard for word from Lincoln, Francis Blair, Sr., visited her room. “He had always been fond of me,” Jessie recalled, “I had been like a child in their family; but Mr. Blair was now very angry.” He told her that she and her husband had made a great mistake in incurring the enmity of the president. Talking too freely over a two-hour period, the elder Blair revealed that Frank had sent a letter to Monty describing the situation in Missouri, and that the president had sent Monty to St. Louis to “examine into that Department.”
Jessie was infuriated, assuming that Frank’s letter had precipitated the investigation. She “threatened the old man that Fremont should hold Frank personally responsible expecting that she could make [him] quail at the thought of losing the son of whom [he] is most proud in a duel with a skilled duellist.” Blair Senior told her “that the Blairs did not shrink from responsibility.” Frank’s sister, Lizzie, who, like the rest of the family, adored her high-spirited brother, believed her father had been “most incautious” in discussing Frank’s letter with Jessie, rightly fearing that the Frémonts would retaliate.
Meanwhile, Meigs and Monty Blair had assessed affairs in Missouri and were heading home. Meigs had come to the clear conclusion that Frémont was not fit to command the Department of the West. “The rebels are killing and ravaging the Unionmen throughout the state,” he wrote; “great distress and alarm prevail; In St. Louis the leading people of the state complain that they cannot see him; he does not encourage the men to form regiments for defence.” Monty Blair agreed. After what he described to Lincoln as “a full & plain talk with Fremont,” he claimed that the general “Seems Stupefied & almost unconscious, & is doing absolutely nothing.” Rumors circulated that Frémont was an opium-eater. “No time is to be lost, & no mans feelings should be consulted,” Blair concluded.
The day after Monty Blair and Meigs departed for Washington, Frémont imprisoned Frank Blair, claiming that the letter he had written his brother on September 1 was an act of insubordination. By criticizing his commanding officer “with a view of effecting his removal,” Frank was guilty of conduct “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”
Frémont and Jessie had concluded that the Blairs had betrayed them. Monty interceded, writing a conciliatory letter to Frémont that led to Frank’s release from jail. Frank insisted on fighting the charges, however, and was soon arrested again. Opinion in Missouri was equally divided between Frank Blair and General Frémont, each intent on destroying the other. General Scott had finally stepped in, ordering a suspension of Frank’s arrest and postponing the trial, which would never take place. But the quarrel between the two old allies would have serious consequences in the years ahead.
Lincoln’s public abrogation of Frémont’s proclamation produced a sigh of relief in the border states but, as Lincoln had apprehended, it profoundly disappointed radical Republicans and abolitionists. Only days earlier, Frances Seward had happily asked her sister, “Were you not pleased with Fremont’s proclamation?” Now Lincoln had once again dashed her hopes. In Chicago, Joseph Medill lamented that Lincoln’s letter “has cast a funeral gloom over our patriotic city…. It comes upon us like a killing June frost—which destroys the comming harvest. It is a step backwards.” Senator Ben Wade blamed Lincoln’s “poor white trash” background for his revolting decision, while Frederick Douglass despaired: “Many blunders have been committed by the Government at Washington during this war, but this, we think, is the largest of them all.”
While radicals hoping to make emancipation the war’s focus rallied behind Frémont, his antislavery credentials could not compensate for his flagrant mismanagement of the Department of the West. On September 18, Monty Blair and Meigs delivered their negative report to the cabinet. Still, Lincoln hesitated. The president “is determined to let Fremont have a chance to win the State of Missouri,” the frustrated postmaster general told Francis Blair, Sr. Bates, too, was irritated by the president’s lack of resolution. With much of his large family still in Missouri, Bates had followed the state’s troubles closely. He had spoken against Frémont on numerous occasions in the cabinet, certain that Frémont was doing “more damage to our cause than half a dozen of the ablest gen
erals of the enemy can do.” Having assured Unionist friends in his home state that Frémont’s removal was imminent, Bates felt “distressed & mortified” by the president’s inaction.
Anxious about Missouri’s troubles and anguished by the illness of his wife, Julia, who had suffered a slight paralytic stroke, Bates uncharacteristically lashed out at Lincoln. “Immense mischief is caused by his lack of vim,” he wrote his brother-in-law, the former governor of Missouri; “he has no will, no power to command—He makes no body afraid of him. And hence discipline is relaxed, & stupid inanity takes the place of action.”
Frank Blair was more scathing in his criticisms of Lincoln and his cabinet. “I think God has made up his mind to ruin this nation,” he wrote his brother Monty. “The only way to save it is to kick that pack of old women who compose the Cabinet into the sea. I never since I was born imagined that such a lot of poltroons & apes could be gathered together from the four quarters of the Globe as Old Abe has succeeded in bringing together in his Cabinet.” His anger was focused on Seward and Cameron, and indirectly, of course, on Lincoln himself.
In fact, Lincoln had already dispatched Secretary of War Simon Cameron, accompanied by Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, to St. Louis to examine the situation once more and deliver, at his discretion, “a letter directing [Frémont] to surrender his command to the officer next below him.” When Cameron arrived in St. Louis, he talked with Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis, who “spoke very freely of [Frémont’s] qualities and conduct” and warned the secretary of war that Missouri’s safety could be guaranteed only by the termination of Frémont’s command. Upon receiving the letter of dismissal, Frémont “was very much mortified.” He told Cameron that “he was now in pursuit of the enemy, whom he believed were now within his reach, and that to recall him at this moment would not only destroy him, but render his whole expenditure useless.” Cameron was swayed to withhold the order until he returned to Washington and talked with the president.
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