pierced by a rifle ball, and he fell lifeless from the saddle. The charge was successful, and the action continued yet for more than two hours.

Meanwhile, two miles away, Sigel had struck the enemy's right with effect at an early hour. McCulloch moved in that direction in person and ordered up heavy reinforcements. Finally, Sigel was compelled to retreat, losing five guns, and with the rest of the army - Major Sturgis, of the regulars succeeding Lyon in command— fell back the next day to Rolla, in railway communication with St. Louis. The losses in the battle of Wilson's Creek, as shown by the war records, were: Union, 238 killed, 761 wounded; Confederate, 279 killed, 951 wounded.

Near the end of August, Price, from whom McCulloch and his men had withdrawn, set out on his march northward from Springfield. By the Missouri River Fremont had easy communication across the State, if properly secured by garrisoned forts above Jefferson City. It was not until after the 1st of September that Price was thought to be getting dangerously near, or that forces were sent up for the defense of Lexington. Yet Fremont, who, in the excitement following the death of General Lyon and the retreat of his army, had proclaimed martial law in St. Louis, now-two weeks later extended that extreme measure over the whole State, saying in an order dated August 30th:

Circumstances in my judgment are of sufficient urgency to render it necessary that the commanding General of this department should assume the administrative powers of the . I do hereby extend and declare established martial law throughout the State of Missouri. . . . 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. Real and personal property of those 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 confiscated to public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men.

All persons who shall be proven to have destroyed, after the publication of this order, railroad tracks, bridges, or telegraph lines, shall suffer the extreme penalty of the law.

At once, on reading this order, the President wrote privately to Fremont (September 2d):

Two points in your proclamation of August 30th 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 and consent. Second-I think there is a great danger that the closing paragraph in relation to the confiscation of property, and the liberating of 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 6th, 1861 — 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 special messenger in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you.

The General, who had actually begun to issue deeds of manumission to slaves, replied on the 8th, declining to recede except under a positive order, whereupon the President wrote him on the 11th:

Assured that you, upon the ground, could better judge of the necessities of your position than I could at this dis

tance, on seeing your proclamation of August 30, I perceived no general objection to it; the particular clause, however, in relation to the confiscation of property and the liberation of slaves appeared to me to be objectionable in its nonconformity to the act of Congress, passed the 6th of last August, upon the same subject, and hence I wrote you, expressing my wish that that clause should be modified accordingly. Your answer, just received, expresses the preference on your part that I should make an open order for the modification, which I very cheerfully do. It is, therefore, ordered that the said clause of the said proclamation be so modified, held, and construed as to conform with and not to transcend the provisions on the same subject contained in the act of Congress entitled "An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes," approved August 6, 1861, and that said act be published at length with this order.

For thus restraining Fremont within the limits which Congress deemed proper in regard to slavery, the President did not escape criticism. Undue prominence was given to the incident for a time by many ardent persons, who thought something important in principle had been sacrificed to conciliate Kentucky and conservative Unionists. The wisdom of the President in annulling a subordinate's unauthorized order conflicting with the military policy which the Government had adopted must, however, have been generally conceded, even in the excitement of the period.

General Polk was pushing forward, early in September, regardless of Kentucky "neutrality," to occupy Columbus and Paducah; and Fremont wished his department extended so as to include Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana - proposing a grand plan of operations in the West. Whatever Lincoln thought of these suggestions, he did not adopt them. Fremont had already

fallen into disfavor with some of the more radical men in Missouri, while conservatives like Attorney-General Bates and Provisional-Governor Gamble gave him no confidence after his manumission order. There were complaints, amounting to serious charges, in regard to contracts and the men who surrounded him, to the exclusion of others from a share in his councils; his ostentatious body-guard, and in general his assumption of the airs of a dictator. To many of his earliest friends -the Blair family included—he seemed wanting in tact, if not absolutely in administrative skill.

Fremont's ideas about the importance of the Cairo district and the organization of a gunboat service for co-operation in opening the river below were good, and his action in that direction was judicious. Credit is due him for the early and earnest attention he gave to the creation of the fleet of which Flag-officer Andrew H. Foote was put in command on the 26th of August. A former captain of the regular army, who had been commissioned as Colonel of the Twenty-first Regiment of Illinois volunteers in June, and as a Brigadier-General in August-Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant - was given command of the district of Southeastern Missouri, including Cape Girardeau and Bird's Point, as well as Cairo and its immediate surroundings. By a timely movement in anticipation of the enemy already at Hickman and Columbus, Grant occupied Paducah, at the mouth of the Tennessee River, on the 6th of September.

Up the Missouri River, Price with his increasing army moved near the same time to get possession of Lexington, Missouri,― an important post, quite insufficiently guarded,-which Colonel Mulligan, of the Chi

cago brigade, was now hastily dispatched from Jefferson City, with a total force of less than three thousand men, to occupy and fortify. Price arrived there on the 12th with a largely superior force. The garrison bravely repulsed Price's assaults, and it was only after close siege and the exhaustion of all resources that the place and its defenders were surrendered on the 20th. The commanding General, having full control of the river up to that point, was naturally blamed, not only for leaving Lexington so exposed, but especially for getting no effective relief to Mulligan during the eight days of his heroic defense.

Fremont, with the largest force available, presently took the field in person against Price, who, before the close of September, was again on his way southward. On the 8th of October Fremont paused at Tipton, on the Pacific Railway. Here he was visited by Secretary Cameron, accompanied by Adjutant-General Thomas and others, for conference with the General and for inspection of his army of thirty thousand men in camp. Cameron had the President's order relieving Fremont, to be used or not, at discretion, and decided to withhold it for the present. Before the General reached Springfield, his removal was positively determined, and he there received an order from the War Department to turn over his command to General Hunter. At that date, November 2d, Price and his main force were fifty miles away, at Pinesville.

In Kentucky a new Legislature was chosen at the August election. About three-fourths of the members of either branch were Unionists; and at the September session resolutions were passed which, after stating that