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including every brigadier-general in the army, visited Gen. Fremont, in a body. They presented him a written address, full of sympathy and respect, and earnestly urged him to lead them against the enemy. Gen. Fremont replied to the address, that if Gen. Hunter did not arrive before morning, he would comply with their request. At eight o'clock in the evening, he accordingly issued the order of battle. The enemy occupied the same ground as that which they had occupied in the battle of Wilson's Creek. Gen. Lyon's plan of attack was to be substantially followed. The rebels were to be surrounded. Gens. Sigel and Lane were to assail them in the rear, Gen. Asboth from the east, Gens. McKinstry and Pope in front. The attack was to be simultaneous. Every camp was astir with the inspiriting news. Every soldier was full of enthusiasm.

But at midnight Gen. Hunter arrived. Gen. Fremont informed him of the condition of affairs, advised him of his plans, and surrendered the command into his hands. The order for battle was forthwith countermanded, and orders were issued to the army to prepare to turn their backs upon the foe, and retrace their march to St. Louis. The next morning, Gen. Fremont, with his staff, left the camp. As he passed along the lines, the soldiers crowded around him in a tumultuous throng, to seize his hands and receive a parting greeting. The crowd was so dense, that it was with difficulty the General made his way through it. Never was an officer more adored by his troops than was Fremont. He arrived in St. Louis on the 8th of November. The loyal citizens flocked to meet him. A long procession escorted him from the station. At night, a magnificent torch-light procession marched through the city to his headquarters. A triumphant general, clothed with the splendors of victory, could scarcely have received a more magnificent ovation than did Gen. Fremont, dishonored by the Government which he had so faithfully served. It is said by the St. Louis papers to have been one of the largest assemblages ever gathered in that city. Resolutions of confidence were passed, and an address of the warmest sympathy was presented to him. This voluntary and unexpected display of popular confidence and affection, in the city best acquainted with his military administration, completely overpowered Gen. Fremont. He could scarcely reply. His speech contained no word of bitterness against his traducers, no strictures upon the Government. And from that day to this, he has spoken but once in his own defense, lest he should be the means of distracting the country, and embarrassing the administration, surrounded by greater difficulties than any administration ever encountered before.

Slowly and sadly, the army, under the command of Gen. Hunter, prepared to retrace its steps. Accompanied by a mournful procession of exiles, who had fondly trusted to Fremont's expedition to render their homes henceforth safe, it marched back, and South Missouri was left to be overrun and pillaged by the rebels once more.

Months after, another army, under Gen. Curtis, pursuing the same plan which Gen. Fremont had formed, marched over the same ground, to obtain possession of Little Rock, and the control of the State of Arkansas. But it was now mid-winter; the troops toiled through mud and storm.

They met the foe at Pea Ridge, under the disadvantage of fearful odds, and fought that terrible battle, which vindicated Gen. Fremont's policy and strategy.

Why was Gen. Fremont removed? Not until the secret political history of the rebellion, which unmasks hearts and exhibits motives, shall be written, can this question be fully answered. No ground for his removal has ever been officially made known. It has, indeed, been charged that extravagance marked the financial management of his department. Very likely. Wherever there is carrion, the vultures flock. Wherever there is an opportunity for public plunder, corrupt men greedily gather. They abounded in Washington, in New York, in St. Louis. But it has never been shown that there was any greater extravagance or corruption in St. Louis, than existed in every branch of the Government. No definite charge has ever been made, that Gen. Fremont himself participated in any schemes for defrauding the country, or ever reaped any advantage therefrom; while it is certain that the finances of his department were mainly under the control of a man whom he did not appoint, and could not remove. Gen. McKinstry, moreover, deserves applause, not censure, for his energetic and sagacious administration of affairs.

It has also been averred that he was incompetent. And the specifications against him are the death of Gen. Lyon and the fall of Lexington. How far he was responsible for these two disasters, the only ones which ever occurred under his command, the reader can now judge for himself. But it is worth while to note what, in the short space of three months, this incompetant man had accomplished.

At the time of taking command he found the State of Missouri seething in every county with rebellion, and overrun with guerillas; he found it threatened with two large armies entering its borders from different quarters; he found the United States forces scattered, discouraged and many of them on the point of disbanding; he found the entire department disorganized and himself in the midst of a rebellious city, without coöperation from the General Government, without arms or equipments, without money and with but imperfectly sustained credit. He had to redeem the State from rebellion, protect the border of Illinois against a rebel advance through Kentucky, and make preparations for the descent of the Mississippi river. He carried on his operations in spite of public detractions, private machinations, and a constantly increasing and unconcealed distrust on the part of the National Government.

At a time when the Baltimore and Ohio railroad was repeatedly destroyed, and the Potomac river blockaded, he guarded over one thousand miles of river and railroad communication in a rebellious territory and without the aid of a navy, not once allowing a single railroad in the State of Missouri to pass from under his control. At a time when Western Virginia and East Tennessee were overrun with guerillas he had restored comparative order throughout nearly the whole State of Missouri, and confined the contest to one between armies in the field. By a mere show of strength which he did not actually possess, he successfully defended the south-eastern border from an army of twenty thousand men,

and by taking possession of well-selected points in Kentucky, effectually guarded the southern border of Illinois from threatened attack. He formed an ingenious plan for piercing the centre of the Southern Confederacy by means of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers; the subsequent successful accomplishment of which, though at a terrible expense of life which Fremont's earlier energy would have saved, afforded the country its first real encouragement, and gave the loyal arms their greatest success. And in addition to all this, at a time when no other Division General had left his intrenchments, he had organized an army of nearly forty thousand men, put himself at its head, and marched through an enemy's country over three hundred miles, in pursuit of a retreating foe, bridging a deep and broad river on his march, and pursuing his course in spite of obsta cles, which the Adjutant-General of the United States had declared to be insurmountable. If to all these successes he did not add that of a glorious victory upon the field, it is only because, on the eve of a decisive battle, the result of which no one can doubt, the Government yielded to the persuasions of his enemies, and removed him from command.

No! Gen. Fremont's removal was owing neither to financial nor military mismanagement on his part. Two causes conspired to produce it— political jealousies and pro-slavery partisanship. Gen. Fremont had been a popular presidential candidate. The West admired the man, the East his principles. A successful military career would make him a dangerous rival in the future. He was constantly rising in popular esteem. Men who loved office more than country, sought to be rid of him. They feared not that he would be defeated, but that he would be victorious. And they set in motion every possible political machination to secure his overthrow.

They were assisted in their effort by a powerful pro-slavery faction, whose good-will it was thought good statesmanship to conciliate. Gen. Fremont loved freedom for the human race, as well as for himself. No fugitive slave was ever refused admittance within his lines. None was ever returned to the tender mercies of rebel masters. With energy and vigor he entered upon the work of his campaign, as though that policy was the truest and the best, which should most speedily crush the rebellion. Those who thought that the utmost care must be taken, in making war upon slave-holding rebels, not to hurt slavery, were shocked that Gen. Fremont struck his country's enemy, in his most vulnerable part. BorderState men demanded a different policy, and Border States were to be satisfied at every hazard. Those, too, who imagined that the rebellion was a mere temporary excitement which would spend itself soon by its own want of enduring energy, thought Gen. Fremont formed plans on too large a scale, and prepared for movements of unnecessary magnitude. Months have sinced passed away. Every plan which he formed has since been successfully carried out. The military campaign which he planned, and as he planned it, has been executed by his successor. The gun-boats which were built under his direction, if not indeed planned by his inventive genius, have given us our most glorious victories. While the Government which removed him, because his action was too energetic and his

principles too radical, adopts, ten months after, those principles as its own, and at the time of this writing, encourages a people yet to hope, under serious reverses, for ultimate success, by the promise to inaugurate, at last, that vigorous war policy, the adoption of which by Gen. Fremont in the Fall of 1861 resulted in his removal from command.

The supposed necessity of uniting all parties, led the Government, at the commencement of the rebellion, to place the command of the armies in the hands of men of known pro-slavery proclivities. It could hardly be expected that such men would vigorously press the war. They were committed to the idea that the war was needless, and that the North ought to have assented to the requirements of the slaveholders, and to have adopted those changes in the Constitution which slavery demanded. Many of our leading military officers manifested far more hostility to the spirit of emancipation, than to the spirit of slavery, and were less reluctant to sustain, than to abolish the institution. But we were fighting the great battle of freedom against slavery. No general can be expected to be victorious who has not faith in his cause. The great generals of the past, Cæsar, Napoleon, Cromwell, Washington, were profoundly earnest in the great principles for which they had drawn their swords. They had no sympathy with the antagonistic principles of their foes. The rebels were ferociously in earnest. But we sent against them many men, as leaders of our armies, who open y affirmed that the rebels were half right. Such men fought merely from a sense of military etiquette, and from no profound conviction of the justice of the national cause. Of several of them, it is reported that they long hesitated which side to choose. In so fierce a conflict between freedom and slavery, no man was fit to be in command of the armies of freedom, whose head and whose heart were in sympathy with slavery. These influences for months paralyzed our energies. Generals intensely pro-slavery, and with wives openly and avowedly Secessionists, were hardly in the right moral position, to meet Jackson, and Lee, and Beauregard. That we had such, none will deny. Hence our arms were, at times, sadly dishonored.

It is true that the North did not take up arms for the overthrow of slavery. Over slavery in the slaveholding States, it admitted that neither the General Government nor the free States had a right to exert any control. The South took up arms to overthrow the Constitution, to carry slavery into all the States and Territories, and to confer upon the slaveholders new guarantees of power, and the efficient support of the National Government. Those who urged the emancipation of the slaves, urged it, not as the end and object of the war, but as the cheapest, the most bloodless, and, in fact, the only efficient means of bringing the war to a close. Much as the North abhorred slavery-criminal as they deemed it in the sight of God, in this terrible conflict they were constrained to regard emancipation merely as a potent instrument of war, with which to save the blood of their sons, and to rescue the Union from destruction.

CHAPTER XII.

THE TRENT AFFAIR.

SECESSION PLANS FOR SECURING FOREIGN AID.-PRIVATEERS.-TREATY AT PARIS IN 1856.ISSUE OF LETTERS OF MARQUE.-SHORT SUCCESS OF PRIVATEERS.-THE SAVANNAH.-THE JEFF. DAVIS.-RETALIATION OF THE REBELS.-LETTER OF THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.-ATTITUDE OF OTHER MONARCHS OF EUROPE.-JOHN M. MASON.-JOHN SLIDELL.-CAPT. WILKES.SEIZURE OF THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS.-CAPT. WILKES' REASONING AND ACTION IN CASE OF THE TRENT.-EXCITEMENT CAUSED BY THE TRENT AFFAIR IN THE UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND.-SECRETARY SEWARD'S OPINION.

THE same acts of violence at the South, which closed the door to any peaceful and lawful settlement of the questions at issue, between the slave States and the free States, threw wide open the broad road which invited foreign nations to embroil themselves in the conflict. It was doubtless one of the objects of the Secessionists, in refusing a constitutional solution, and raising arms against the Government, that war might create motives, and give opportunity, for aid from abroad, which could not otherwise be had. So long as the struggle was a political debate, the interests of slavery never could invite sympathy. But to break the peace of the world, was to compel the attention of other nations, and bring into play causes which might at last subserve those interests, and which could not make them more hopeless of prevailing than they were under peaceful discussion. Every thing favored this design. The manufactures and the commerce, alike, of England and France, would stand opposed to any efforts which the Government would make to regulate the exportation of the Southern staples. The blockade of rebellious seaports would stop the wheels which gave employment to millions of Europeans. Governments which draw their revenues from commerce, can not stand idle while commerce is suppressed, even in the name of liberty. Governments which dread the discontent of their own common people, can not suffer those people to spend year of idleness, even though the future of a foreign continent depended on the event. Once fairly at war, the Confederacy, claiming the position of a belligerent, and offering a free trade to European commerce, could invite alliance from those nations whose intervention the North would most dread. The original cause of the struggle would be forgotten, in the new conditions to which war would give rise. The scene would be changed, in the eyes of Europeans, from a political debate, which every American loves, and few foreigners appreciate or much care for, into a war, which would bring both parties irresistibly before their notice. Immediate motives of interest would countervail sympathy throughout

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