yourselves in all that pertains to drill, Your enemies are implacable in their instruction and discipline. Let every officer and every soldier be emulous to teach and learn the firings, light infantry drill, guard duty, company discipline and police. Your Commanding General proposes to procure for you everything necessary to prepare you for your coming work, and will soon organize boards of examiners, who will rid the service of the disgrace, and soldiers of the incubus, of incompetent and worthless officers, who hold the positions and receive the pay without having the will or capacity to perform the duties of their positions. Remember, you are fighting for your country, for your flag, for your homes. you." hatred of you; there is no measure of falsehood to which they have not resorted to blacken your good name; and their leaders, Beauregard and Jeff. Davis, have dared, even in solemn proclamation, to calumniate you, charging you with crimes which you abhor. From these men you have nothing to expect. You must prepare to teach them, not only lessons of magnanimity and forbearance toward the unarmed and defenceless, but to thrust their calumnies and their boastings down their own traitorous throats. Let not a moment be lost in your preparations for the task before CHAPTER XXXVII. GENERAL FREMONT'S MISSOURI CAMPAIGN. their heights upon an uncultivated wilderness where now flourished a golden empire. The Republican creed which he had been chosen to represent, the promise of which had been symbolized in the freshness and purity of his fame, his youth and gallantry in the free mountain air among free men-the social and political hope of the people—was now a living, active policy, invigorating and directing the energies of the nation. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that when the arm of rebellion was raised against the State, and the Government was looking everywhere for representative men to sustain its authority, Fre AFTER the fall of Lyon, the interest in military affairs in Missouri centres in the movements of General Fremont. It is not necessary here to repeat the circumstances in his previous history which gave to his name a peculiar prestige in the West, which identified him with the exploration and settlement, the conquest of arms and civilization of the mighty region stretching from the Missouri to the Pacific; nor need we refer to the national importance of a name which, in the preceding Presidential election, had been familiar in every home and household in the land. The two ideas to which he had devoted his youth and early manhood were now incorporated in sub-mont should not be forgotten. He had, stantial realities of world-wide fame. When he first threaded the passes of the Rocky Mountains he had looked from indeed, no established military reputation as a great commander, for he had conducted no great military operations GENERAL FREMONT. in war; but as it was very evident that the choice of our Major-Generals was very limited if that qualification should be insisted upon, no one felt disposed to press the point in view of the many advantages which he possessed by the side of the crowd of civilians of no experience at all, who stood eager for promotion on the army list. It was, in fact, considered quite as a matter of course that Fremont should be invited to some distinguished military command. It would have been, in the opinion of many, the height of political ingratitude in the administration to pass him by. At the breaking out of the war he was on a visit to Europe. We have, on a previous page, recorded the temperate and patriotic speech* in which, at Paris in the month of May, in company with the American ministers, newly arrived at that capital, he pledged himself to the cause of the Union. He had, in fact, already been recalled to his country, and the short time which elapsed before setting out on his return was given by him to preparations for the now imminent conflict. Having made large purchases of arms in Belgium for the United States Government, he left England for America, arriving at Boston on the 27th of June. Speedily reporting himself at Washington, he was, on the 6th of July, appointed, with the rank of Major-General, to the command of a vast military district, now first constituted into a separate organization as the Western Department. It embraced the State of Illinois and the States and Territories west of the Mississippi and east of the Rocky Mountains, including New Mexico. The headquarters of the department were at St. Louis. Ante, p. 447, 579 It might have been thought that, on receiving so extensive a command, a particular line of policy or strategy would have been marked out by the administration. But nothing of the kind was prescribed. It was characteristic of the early period of the war that no very definite course of action could be laid down. The army had yet to be formed, and its employment determined by future events. There were discussions at Washington on the subject, and it was understood that the great object in view was the descent of the Mississippi, and that, for its accomplishment, General Fremont was to raise and organize an army, and, when he was ready to descend the river, inform the President of the fact.* With no more precise instructions—with none whatever in writing-General Fremont, the day after the battle of Bull Run, having made such arrangements as he could in the fortnight for the equipment of an army corps of twenty-three thousand men, set off for St. Louis, which he reached on the 25th of July. The political and military condition in which he found Missouri on his arrival he has himself thus described: "The State was throughout rebellious. A rebel faction in every county, at least equal to the loyal population in numbers, and excelling it in vindictiveness and energy. The local government was in confusion and unable to aid. St. Louis itself was a rebel city, and, as a rule, the influential and wealthy citizens were friendly to secession. Of the new levies of the Federal troops, few were in the field-the term of enlistment of the three months' men was just expiring the troops in service had not been paid, were badly equipped and badly * Statement of General Fremont to the Hon. Mr. Wade, Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, etc. supplied; and in addition to the rebel drawn from Springfield. General Freparties which swarmed throughout the mont tells us how time was then gained State, a Confederate army of nearly fifty by the dissentions in the camp of the enthousand men was already on its south-emy to secure the defence of the State, ern frontier. General Pope was in which he now undertook on the most North Missouri with nearly all my dis- comprehensive plan. His design was posable forces; General Lyon was at Springfield with about seven thousand eight hundred men; and General Prentiss was holding Cairo with seven regiments. General Lyon's troops were, in greater part, three months' men whose term of service was ending, and all of General Prentiss' force was in the same condition." The first military movement of General Fremont was the reinforcement, within a few days after his arrival in St. Louis, of the threatened posts at Cairo and Bird's Point. He carried with him for this purpose, in a fleet of eight steamboats, thirty-eight hundred men. The expedition, a few months after, when the operations of the war were vastly multiplied, would have attracted little attention; it was then paraded with great effect. Happily the enemy were, as it would appear, duly impressed by it, for we now tremble as we read that General Prentiss had but twelve hundred men at the time at Cairo, while General Pillow had a force a few miles below, at New Madrid, not over-estimated, says General Fremont, at twenty thousand. Looking back upon it by the light of subsequent events, it was certainly one of the most critical moments of the war. Cairo, as the most important point in danger, having thus been secured, General Fremont bent his efforts for the relief of General Lyon. Before, however, he could equip the raw recruits hastening to St. Louis, the battle of Wilson's Creek was fought, and the small army had with to fortify Girardeau, Ironton, Rolla and Jefferson City, with St. Louis as a base, holding these places with sufficient garrisons, and leaving the army free for operations in the field." In accordance with this intention, he laid out and completed a series of fortifications about St. Louis commanding the city and its approaches. While provision was thus made against the approach of the enemy from without, the administration of his department within was conducted with determination and energy. Much had been said of the losses which the nation had sustained by the hesitation or inactivity of its officers in various branches of the Government. General Fremont, it was soon apparent, was not reluctant, when he thought the exigencies of his position demanded it, to proceed on his own responsibility. One of his first acts, immediately after his arrival, at a time when the few troops he had about him were in danger of being lost to the service for want of their stipulated pay--and he had no other remedy at hand-was to compel the Treasurer of the United States at St. Louis, by force, to furnish the requisite funds. On the 14th of August he proclaimed martial law in the city, and suppressed the publication of the War Bulletin and the Missourian, two newspapers "shamelessly devoted to the publication of transparently false statements respecting military movements in Missouri."* On the 30th of the month, by the following *St. Louis Democrat, August 15, 1861. PROCLAMATION OF MARTIAL LAW. 581 proclamation, he brought the State under public use, and their slaves, if any they martial law : 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 State. Its disorganized condition, helplessness of civil authority, and the total insecurity of life and devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders, who infest nearly every county in the State, and avail themselves of public misfortunes, in the vicinity of a hostile force, to gratify private and neighborhood vengeance, and who find an enemy wherever they find plunder, finally demand the severest measures to repress the dailyincreasing crimes and outrages, which are driving off the inhabitants and ruining the State. In this condition, the public safety and success of our arms require unity of purpose, without let or hindrance to the prompt administration of affairs. In order, therefore, to suppress disorders, maintain the public peace, and give security to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend and declare established martial law throughout the State of Missouri. The lines of the army of occupation in this State are for the present declared to extend from Leavenworth, by way of posts of Jefferson City, Rolla, and Ironton, to Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi river. 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 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. All persons engaged in treasonable correspondence, in giving or procuring aid to the enemy, in fermenting turmoil, and disturbing public tranquility, by creating or circulating false reports or incendiary documents, are warned that they are exposing themselves. All persons who have been led away from allegiance are required to return to their homes forthwith. Any such absence, without sufficient cause, will be held to be presumptive evidence against them. The object of this declaration is to place in the hands of military authorities power to give instantaneous effect to the existing laws, and supply such deficiencies ast the conditions of the war demand; but it is not intended to suspend the ordinary tribunals of the country, where law will be administered by civil officers in the usual manner, and with their customary authority, while the same can be peaceably administered. The commanding General will labor vigilantly for the public welfare, and, by his efforts for their safety, hopes to obtain not only acquiescence, but the active support of the people of the country." The terms of this Proclamation were thought by many to be too summary in the threatened execution of the insurgents, and to exceed the authority given by Congress in the act for the confiscation of rebel property. The authoritative declaration of the freedom of the slave, while it was hailed by the increasing class of emancipationists, was pronounced by others an injudicious in terference with the institution, and par- plied on receipt of the communication at ticularly prejudicial to the Union cause St. Louis on the 8th. He had not, he in the yet unsettled border States. The said, troubled the President with the dePresident himself, whose sympathies tails of affairs in his administration, with a liberal policy of emancipation, which were changing incessantly, but admitted of no question, and who had had left it to time to show that he was shown himself friendly to the author of acting in consonance with his ideas. In the Proclamation, shared these opinions, reference to the Proclamation, he said, as appears by the private letter which "Between the rebel armies, the Prohe almost immediately addressed to Gen-visional Government and home traitors, eral Fremont. It was dated Washington, I felt the position bad, and saw danger. September 2, and read thus: "My dear In the night I decided upon the proclaSir: Two points in your proclamation mation and the form of it. I wrote it of August 30 give me some anxiety. the next morning, and printed it the First: Should you shoot a man, accord- same day. I did it without consultation ing to the proclamation, the Confederates or advice with any one, acting solely would very certainly shoot our best men with my best judgment to serve the in their hands in retaliation; and so, country and yourself, and perfectly willman for man, indefinitely. It is, there- ing to receive the amount of censure fore, my order that you allow no man to which should be thought due if I made a be shot, under the proclamation, without false movement. This is as much a first having my approbation or consent. movement in the war as a battle, and in Second: I think there is great danger going into these I shall have to act acthat the closing paragraph, in relation to cording to my judgment of the ground the confiscation of property, and the before me, as I did on this occasion. If liberating slaves of traitorous owners, upon reflection, your better judgment will alarm our Southern Union friends still decides that I am wrong in the arand turn them against us-perhaps ruin ticle respecting the liberation of slaves, our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. I shall have to ask that you will openly Allow me, therefore, to ask that you direct me to make the correction. The will, as of your own motion, modify that implied censure will be received as a paragraph so as to conform to the first soldier always should, the reprimand of and fourth sections of the Act of Con- his chief. If I were to retract of my gress entitled An Act to Confiscate own accord it would imply that I myself Property Used for Insurrectionary Pur- thought it wrong, and that I had acted poses,' approved August 6, 1861, and a without the reflection which the gravity copy of which I herewith send you. of the point demanded. But I did not. This letter is written in a spirit of cau- I acted with full deliberation, and upon tion, and not of censure. I send it by a the certain conviction that it was a special messenger, in order that it may measure right and necessary-and I certainly and speedily reach you. Yours, think so still." very truly, A. LINCOLN." To this direction, thus kindly and considerately worded, General Fremont re In regard to the treatment of the insurgents, he explained that it did not refer to prisoners of war, but to men |