General Scott's Plans--Criticized as the "Anaconda"--The Three Fields of
Conflict--Frémont Appointed Major-General--His Military Failures--Battle
of Wilson's Creek--Hunter Ordered to Frémont--Frémont's
Proclamation--President Revokes Frémont's Proclamation--Lincoln's Letter
to Browning--Surrender of Lexington--Frémont Takes the Field--Cameron's
Visit to Frémont--Frémont's Removal
The military genius and experience of General Scott, from the first,
pretty correctly divined the grand outline of military operations which
would become necessary in reducing the revolted Southern States to
renewed allegiance. Long before the battle of Bull Run was planned, he
urged that the first seventy-five regiments of three months' militia
could not be relied on for extensive campaigns, because their term of
service would expire before they could be well organized. His outline
suggestion, therefore, was that the new three years' volunteer army be
placed in ten or fifteen healthy camps and given at least four months of
drill and tactical instruction; and when the navy had, by a rigid
blockade, closed all the harbors along the seaboard of the Southern
States, the fully prepared army should, by invincible columns, move down
the Mississippi River to New Orleans, leaving a strong cordon of
military posts behind it to keep open the stream, join hands with the
blockade, and thus envelop the principal area of rebellion in a
powerful military grasp which would paralyze and effectually kill the
insurrection. Even while suggesting this plan, however, the general
admitted that the great obstacle to its adoption would be the impatience
of the patriotic and loyal Union people and leaders, who would refuse to
wait the necessary length of time.
The general was correct in his apprehension. The newspapers criticized
his plan in caustic editorials and ridiculous cartoons as "Scott's
Anaconda," and public opinion rejected it in an overwhelming demand for
a prompt and energetic advance. Scott was correct in military theory,
while the people and the administration were right in practice, under
existing political conditions. Although Bull Run seemed to justify the
general, West Virginia and Missouri vindicated the President and the
people.
It can now be seen that still a third element--geography--intervened to
give shape and sequence to the main outlines of the Civil War. When, at
the beginning of May, General Scott gave his advice, the seat of
government of the first seven Confederate States was still at
Montgomery, Alabama. By the adhesion of the four interior border States
to the insurrection, and the removal of the archives and administration
of Jefferson Davis to Richmond, Virginia, toward the end of June, as the
capital of the now eleven Confederate States, Washington necessarily
became the center of Union attack, and Richmond the center of
Confederate defense. From the day when McDowell began his march to Bull
Run, to that when Lee evacuated Richmond in his final hopeless flight,
the route between these two opposing capitals remained the principal and
dominating line of military operations, and the region between
Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River on the east, and the chain of the
Alleghanies on the west, the primary field of strategy.
According to geographical features, the second great field of strategy
lay between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi River, and the
third between the Mississippi River, the Rocky Mountains, and the Rio
Grande. Except in Western Virginia, the attitude of neutrality assumed
by Kentucky for a considerable time delayed the definition of the
military frontier and the beginning of active hostilities in the second
field, thus giving greater momentary importance to conditions existing
and events transpiring in Missouri, with the city of St. Louis as the
principal center of the third great military field.
The same necessity which dictated the promotion of General McClellan at
one bound from captain to major-general compelled a similar phenomenal
promotion, not alone of officers of the regular army, but also of
eminent civilians to high command and military responsibility in the
immense volunteer force authorized by Congress. Events, rather than
original purpose, had brought McClellan into prominence and ranking
duty; but now, by design, the President gave John C. Frémont a
commission of major-general, and placed him in command of the third
great military field, with headquarters at St. Louis, with the leading
idea that he should organize the military strength of the Northwest,
first, to hold Missouri to the Union, and, second, by a carefully
prepared military expedition open the Mississippi River. By so doing, he
would sever the Confederate States, reclaim or conquer the region lying
west of the great stream, and thus reduce by more than one half the
territorial area of the insurrection. Though he had been an army
lieutenant, he had no experience in active war; yet the talent and
energy he had displayed in Western military exploration, and the
political prominence he had reached as candidate of the Republican party
for President in 1856, seemed to fit him preëminently for such a duty.
While most of the volunteers from New England and the Middle States were
concentrated at Washington and dependent points, the bulk of the Western
regiments was, for the time being, put under the command of Frémont for
present and prospective duty. But the high hopes which the
administration placed in the general were not realized. The genius which
could lead a few dozen or a few hundred Indian scouts and mountain
trappers over desert plains and through the fastnesses of the Sierra
Nevada, that could defy savage hostilities and outlive starvation amid
imprisoning snows, failed signally before the task of animating and
combining the patriotic enthusiasm of eight or ten great northwestern
States, and organizing and leading an army of one hundred thousand eager
volunteers in a comprehensive and decisive campaign to recover a great
national highway. From the first, Frémont failed in promptness, in
foresight, in intelligent supervision and, above all, in inspiring
confidence and attracting assistance and devotion. His military
administration created serious extravagance and confusion, and his
personal intercourse excited the distrust and resentment of the
governors and civilian officials, whose counsel and coöperation were
essential to his usefulness and success.
While his resources were limited, and while he fortified St. Louis and
reinforced Cairo, a yet more important point needed his attention and
help. Lyon, who had followed Governor Jackson and General Price in their
flight from Boonville to Springfield in southern Missouri, found his
forces diminished beyond his expectation by the expiration of the term
of service of his three months' regiments, and began to be threatened by
a northward concentration of Confederate detachments from the Arkansas
line and the Indian Territory. The neglect of his appeals for help
placed him in the situation where he could neither safely remain
inactive, nor safely retreat. He therefore took the chances of
scattering the enemy before him by a sudden, daring attack with his five
thousand effectives, against nearly treble numbers, in the battle of
Wilson's Creek, at daylight on August 10. The casualties on the two
sides were nearly equal, and the enemy was checked and crippled; but the
Union army sustained a fatal loss in the death of General Lyon, who was
instantly killed while leading a desperate bayonet charge. His skill and
activity had, so far, been the strength of the Union cause in Missouri.
The absence of his counsel and personal example rendered a retreat to
the railroad terminus at Rolla necessary. This discouraging event turned
public criticism sharply upon Frémont. Loath to yield to mere public
clamor, and averse to hasty changes in military command, Mr. Lincoln
sought to improve the situation by sending General David Hunter to take
a place on Frémont's staff.
"General Frémont needs assistance," said his note to Hunter, "which it
is difficult to give him. He is losing the confidence of men near him,
whose support any man in his position must have to be successful. His
cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself, and allows nobody to see
him; and by which he does not know what is going on in the very matter
he is dealing with. He needs to have by his side a man of large
experience. Will you not, for me, take that place? Your rank is one
grade too high to be ordered to it; but will you not serve the country
and oblige me by taking it voluntarily?"
This note indicates, better than pages of description, the kind,
helpful, and forbearing spirit with which the President, through the
long four years' war, treated his military commanders and subordinates;
and which, in several instances, met such ungenerous return. But even
while Mr. Lincoln was attempting to smooth this difficulty, Frémont had
already burdened him with two additional embarrassments. One was a
perplexing personal quarrel the general had begun with the influential
Blair family, represented by Colonel Frank Blair, the indefatigable
Unionist leader in Missouri, and Montgomery Blair, the
postmaster-general in Lincoln's cabinet, who had hitherto been Frémont's
most influential friends and supporters; and, in addition, the father of
these, Francis P. Blair, Sr., a veteran politician whose influence dated
from Jackson's administration, and through whose assistance Frémont had
been nominated as presidential candidate in 1856.
The other embarrassment was of a more serious and far-reaching nature.
Conscious that he was losing the esteem and confidence of both civil and
military leaders in the West, Frémont's adventurous fancy caught at the
idea of rehabilitating himself before the public by a bold political
manoeuver. Day by day the relation of slavery to the Civil War was
becoming a more troublesome question, and exciting impatient and angry
discussion. Without previous consultation with the President or any of
his advisers or friends, Frémont, on August 30, wrote and printed, as
commander of the Department of the West, a proclamation establishing
martial law throughout the State of Missouri, and announcing that:
"All persons who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these
lines shall be tried by court-martial, and if found guilty will be shot.
The property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of
Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall
be directly proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in
the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their
slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared freemen."
The reason given in the proclamation for this drastic and dictatorial
measure was to suppress disorder, maintain the public peace, and protect
persons and property of loyal citizens--all simple police duties. For
issuing his proclamation without consultation with the President, he
could offer only the flimsy excuse that it involved two days of time to
communicate with Washington, while he well knew that no battle was
pending and no invasion in progress. This reckless misuse of power
President Lincoln also corrected with his dispassionate prudence and
habitual courtesy. He immediately wrote to the general:
"MY DEAR SIR: Two points in your proclamation of August 30 give me some
anxiety:
"_First_. Should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, the
Confederates would very certainly shoot our best men in their hands, in
retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely. It is, therefore, my
order that you allow no man to be shot under the proclamation, without
first having my approbation or consent.
"_Second_. I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph, in
relation to the confiscation of property and the liberating slaves of
traitorous owners, will 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 first and fourth sections of the act
of Congress entitled, 'An act to confiscate property used for
insurrectionary purposes,' approved August 6, 1861, and a copy of which
act I herewith send you.
"This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not of censure. I
send it by a special messenger, in order that it may certainly and
speedily reach you."
But the headstrong general was too blind and selfish to accept this mild
redress of a fault that would have justified instant displacement from
command. He preferred that the President should openly direct him to
make the correction. Admitting that he decided in one night upon the
measure, he added: "If I were to retract it of my own accord, it would
imply that I myself thought it wrong, and that I had acted without the
reflection which the gravity of the point demanded." The inference is
plain that Frémont was unwilling to lose the influence of his hasty step
upon public opinion. But by this course he deliberately placed himself
in an attitude of political hostility to the administration.
The incident produced something of the agitation which the general had
evidently counted upon. Radical antislavery men throughout the free
States applauded his act and condemned the President, and military
emancipation at once became a subject of excited discussion. Even strong
conservatives were carried away by the feeling that rebels would be but
properly punished by the loss of their slaves. To Senator Browning, the
President's intimate personal friend, who entertained this feeling, Mr.
Lincoln wrote a searching analysis of Frémont's proclamation and its
dangers:
"Yours of the seventeenth is just received; and, coming from you, I
confess it astonishes me. That you should object to my adhering to a law
which you had assisted in making and presenting to me, less than a month
before, is odd enough. But this is a very small part. General Frémont'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. If a commanding general finds a necessity to seize the farm
of a private owner, for a pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he
has the right to do so, and to so hold it as long as the necessity
lasts; and this is within military law, because within military
necessity. But to say the farm shall no longer belong to the owner or
his heirs forever, and this as well when the farm is not needed for
military purposes as when it is, is purely political, without the savor
of military law about it. And the same is true of slaves. If the general
needs them he can seize them and use them, but when the need is past, it
is not for him to fix their permanent future condition. That must be
settled according to laws made by law-makers, and not by military
proclamations. The proclamation in the point in question is simply
'dictatorship.' It assumes that the general may do anything he
pleases--confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as
well as of disloyal ones. And going the whole figure, I have no doubt,
would be more popular, with some thoughtless people, than that which has
been done! But I cannot assume this reckless position, nor allow others
to assume it on my responsibility.
"You speak of it as being the only means of saving the government. On
the contrary, it is itself the surrender of the government. Can it be
pretended that it is any longer the government of the United States--any
government of constitution and laws--wherein a general or a president
may make permanent rules of property by proclamation? I do not say
Congress might not, with propriety, pass a law on the point, just such
as General Frémont proclaimed. I do not say I might not, as a member of
Congress, vote for it. What I object to is, that I, as President, shall
expressly or impliedly seize and exercize the permanent legislative
functions of the government.
"So much as to principle. Now as to policy. No doubt the thing was
popular in some quarters, and would have been more so if it had been a
general declaration of emancipation. The Kentucky legislature would not
budge till that proclamation was modified; and General Anderson
telegraphed me that on the news of General Frémont having actually
issued deeds of manumission, a whole company of our volunteers threw
down their arms and disbanded. I was so assured as to think it probable
that the very arms we had furnished Kentucky would be turned against us.
I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.
Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These
all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would
as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this
capital."
If it be objected that the President himself decreed military
emancipation a year later, then it must be remembered that Frémont's
proclamation differed in many essential particulars from the President's
edict of January 1, 1863. By that time, also, the entirely changed
conditions justified a complete change of policy; but, above all, the
supreme reason of military necessity, upon which alone Mr. Lincoln based
the constitutionality of his edict of freedom, was entirely wanting in
the case of Frémont.
The harvest of popularity which Frémont evidently hoped to secure by his
proclamation was soon blighted by a new military disaster. The
Confederate forces which had been united in the battle of Wilson's Creek
quickly became disorganized through the disagreement of their leaders
and the want of provisions and other military supplies, and mainly
returned to Arkansas and the Indian Territory, whence they had come. But
General Price, with his Missouri contingent, gradually increased his
followers, and as the Union retreat from Springfield to Rolla left the
way open, began a northward march through the western part of the State
to attack Colonel Mulligan, who, with about twenty-eight hundred Federal
troops, intrenched himself at Lexington on the Missouri River. Secession
sympathy was strong along the line of his march, and Price gained
adherents so rapidly that on September 18 he was able to invest
Mulligan's position with a somewhat irregular army numbering about
twenty thousand. After a two days' siege, the garrison was compelled to
surrender, through the exhaustion of the supply of water in their
cisterns. The victory won, Price again immediately retreated southward,
losing his army almost as fast as he had collected it, made up, as it
was, more in the spirit and quality of a sudden border foray than an
organized campaign.
For this new loss, Frémont was subjected to a shower of fierce
criticism, which this time he sought to disarm by ostentatious
announcements of immediate activity. "I am taking the field myself," he
telegraphed, "and hope to destroy the enemy either before or after the
junction of forces under McCulloch." Four days after the surrender, the
St. Louis newspapers printed his order organizing an army of five
divisions. The document made a respectable show of force on paper,
claiming an aggregate of nearly thirty-nine thousand. In reality,
however, being scattered and totally unprepared for the field, it
possessed no such effective strength. For a month longer extravagant
newspaper reports stimulated the public with the hope of substantial
results from Frémont's intended campaign. Before the end of that time,
however, President Lincoln, under growing apprehension, sent Secretary
of War Cameron and the adjutant-general of the army to Missouri to make
a personal investigation. Reaching Frémont's camp on October 13, they
found the movement to be a mere forced, spasmodic display, without
substantial strength, transportation, or coherent and feasible plan; and
that at least two of the division commanders were without means to
execute the orders they had received, and utterly without confidence in
their leader, or knowledge of his intentions.
To give Frémont yet another chance, the Secretary of War withheld the
President's order to relieve the general from command, which he had
brought with him, on Frémont's insistence that a victory was really
within his reach. When this hope also proved delusive, and suspicion was
aroused that the general might be intending not only to deceive, but to
defy the administration, President Lincoln sent the following letter by
a special friend to General Curtis, commanding at St. Louis:
"DEAR SIR: On receipt of this, with the accompanying inclosures, you
will take safe, certain, and suitable measures to have the inclosure
addressed to Major-General Frémont delivered to him with all reasonable
dispatch, subject to these conditions only, that if, when General
Frémont shall be reached by the messenger--yourself, or any one sent by
you--he shall then have, in personal command, fought and won a battle,
or shall then be actually in a battle, or shall then be in the immediate
presence of the enemy in expectation of a battle, it is not to be
delivered, but held for further orders. After, and not till after, the
delivery to General Frémont, let the inclosure addressed to General
Hunter be delivered to him."
The order of removal was delivered to Frémont on November 2. By that
date he had reached Springfield, but had won no victory, fought no
battle, and was not in the presence of the enemy. Two of his divisions
were not yet even with him. Still laboring under the delusion, perhaps
imposed on him by his scouts, his orders stated that the enemy was only
a day's march distant, and advancing to attack him. The inclosure
mentioned in the President's letter to Curtis was an order to General
David Hunter to relieve Frémont. When he arrived and assumed command the
scouts he sent forward found no enemy within reach, and no such
contingency of battle or hope of victory as had been rumored and
assumed.
Frémont's personal conduct in these disagreeable circumstances was
entirely commendable. He took leave of the army in a short farewell
order, couched in terms of perfect obedience to authority and courtesy
to his successor, asking for him the same cordial support he had himself
received. Nor did he by word or act justify the suspicions of
insubordination for which some of his indiscreet adherents had given
cause. Under the instructions President Lincoln had outlined in his
order to Hunter, that general gave up the idea of indefinitely pursuing
Price, and divided the army into two corps of observation, which were
drawn back and posted, for the time being, at the two railroad termini
of Rolla and Sedalia, to be recruited and prepared for further service.