Thread 18134411

John Fremont took command of the Department of Missouri July 3, 1861 and it took him nearly three weeks to get from Washington to the Show Me State by way of New York, which he lingered in for two weeks tending to business matters, and it was near the end of the month before he arrived in St. Louis. He had an unenvious job ahead. Confederate armies numbering around 50,000 men were amassing in the south of the state, another 5,000 gathered around New Madrid, and an unknown number in west Tennessee. It was also believed another 10,000 armed Rebels were preparing to advance on the critical point of Cairo, Illinois. Northeastern Missouri was swarming with guerilla bands whose destruction threatened to spill over into Iowa and St. Louis itself was full of secessionists who might seize control of the city if given the chance.

To counter this Fremont had all of 23,000 troops, many of these 90 day regiments about to go home shortly. There was little in the way of equipment or supplies, the army's war chest was empty, and the government's credit in St. Louis was nearly exhausted. All in all, this situation required a man who could spin straw into gold, and John Fremont, while a glibe speaker who had gone far in life, didn't necessarily have the talents needed to deal with a civil war.

Well, he tried. Firstly Fremont had to tackle the immediate threats and probably did as well as he could under the circumstances. Cairo had to be held at all costs and he realized to his horror that only eight regiments were present there, six of them 90 day outfits ready to go home soon, most of the men were sick, nobody had been paid, morale had nearly collapsed, and only 600 total were PFD. Somehow Fremont was able to scrape together 3,800 more men and sent them to Cairo, sent other troops to the northeast of the state to suppress guerillas, and with the help of German militias, all of whom nearly deified Fremont, held onto St. Louis. This was all well and good, but it did prevent Nathaniel Lyon from getting any reinforcements as he rode to his fate at Wilson's Creek. Shortly after that battle, the triumphant Rebels rampaged across western Missouri, cutting off and capturing whole a Union garrison of 3,500 men at Lexington, but at least St. Louis and the main rivers were secure.

Getting his troops properly equipped and organized would have tried the patience of a much more able man. Fremont was frantically demanding reinforcements and the governors of the Western states were sending down new regiments as quickly as they could be mustered in, but most of these men were totally untrained and had no tents, blankets, or weapons. The army's supply offices at St. Louis were swamped. The War Department was chiefly concerned with outfitting McClellan's army and anyway Washington was a long way off, and Fremont was pretty well on his own.

Reminder that Lincoln was a tyrant and he destroyed the country the founders created.

Fremont's headquarters had a romantic touch. He had become a celebrity in Europe and scores of emigres and soldiers of fortune were flocking to his call. Fremont needed officers and handed out commissions freely to many of these Europeans, all extra-legally and ignoring the fact that only the president and War Department could authorize officers' commissions. The problems of Missouri were debated in German, Hungarian, Italian, Czech, and more. One Hungarian emigre named Asboth insisted the troops didn't need any tents; the revolutionaries in his home country in 1848 hadn't used them, after all. This was all forgivable given how famed Fremont was across the pond, but the glamour of these Europeans stood in contrast with Missouri reality and the army he was raising was not an army at all, at least not any kind of army that a German or Hungarian would recognize. It was just the Midwest, preparing in its own way to make history.

Look no further than the 15th Illinois. The colonel of the 21st Illinois, outranking the 15th's colonel, ordered some of its men to clean the camps of his own regiment. The men refused to do it, they had enlisted to be soldiers, not menial laborers, and would not budge. They protested so bitterly that the 21st's colonel finally gave up and cancelled the order, but the 15th held a grudge against him for some months afterward. That officer's name was Ulysses S. Grant.

Near the end of August, Major John Schofield, a plump young West Pointer in his early 30s, a serious, scholarly soldier, and formerly Lyon's chief of staff, arrived in St. Louis to inform Fremont about Wilson's Creek. Accompanying him was Frank Blair, recently made a colonel. The two were admitted to the general's headquarters after some delay and were surprised when Fremont didn't ask a word about the battle and instead proceeded to show them a large map on his desk. He talked of the great campaign he had planned out, going down Missouri and Arkansas, to the Mississippi River, and eventually to capture Memphis. This would outflank and scatter all Rebel defenses on the river. New Orleans could be taken by year's end and the war would be over by next summer.

Schofield and Blair departed, both shaking their heads. The latter finally asked the obvious. "Well, what do you think of him?" "I feel my thoughts would be too strong to put into words," Schofield replied. Blair replied that he felt the same way.

It was a bad sign for Fremont. Missouri was a Blair fiefdom and it followed that any commanding general in the state had better get along with the Blairs, and now Fremont had had a number of disagreements with them. Blair after all had struck the first blow there, he had made Nathaniel Lyon a brigadier general, and he removed General Harney from command. The next few weeks saw Fremont lose all remaining good will with the Blairs. For one, there were a vast number of military contracts to be signed and most goods being procured in a highly irregular and sketchy manner. Rumors of graft and favoritism ran rampant and many contractors endorsed by Frank Blair could not seem for the life of them to get aboard the gravy train. Blair's distaste for Fremont was hardening into active hostility.

And then there was Jesse Fremont. The general's wife was the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton and a bossy, domineering woman who devoted her life to advancing her husband's fortunes and did not like taking no for an answer. She greatly enjoyed the atmosphere around army headquarters and served as her husband's personal secretary, advisor, and confidante. To his wife, Fremont confided his plans for a great push down to New Orleans. "I think it can be done gloriously." "Gloriously" was the operative word, for in 1861 the idea that war was a romantic, dashing adventure still held sway. Also, Fremont had run for president five years ago as the Republican Party's first presidential candidate and he was the hero of abolitionists, and so he must give the war a reason for happening.

That Fremont did on August 30 when he wrote down a manifesto declaring that rebellion in Missouri would be put down with force. Martial law was declared, all enemies of the Union caught within friendly lines would be shot, and the slaves of all men with secessionist sympathies were to be freed at once. In short, all rebels were to be punished with the loss of their slaves.

The situation was confused. Jesse Fremont had written that Missouri was a "rebel state with rebel sympathies" but this was patently untrue--Missouri had not seceded from the Union and the majority of its inhabitants did not favor secession either. After all, Nathaniel Lyon could not have done what he did if he didn't have plenty of support. Nor was St. Louis truly a "rebel" city--when the 8th Wisconsin arrived there, wearing gray uniforms their state had supplied them with instead of blue ones, angry locals, mistaking them for Confederates, jeered and threw garbage at them--the rioting only ended when the soldiers remembered that they had blue overcoats with them and put them on despite the hot weather.

Fremont's hastly proclamation threatened to disrupt the careful political balance Lincoln had been trying to establish in the state, knowing men who otherwise did not care about the slavery question would otherwise fight for the Union, and Fremont was threatening to cause an armed revolt in the whole state. Further, the emancipation edict would alienate Unionist sentiment in the South and significant parts of Kentucky. The president sent a message to Fremont asking if he might not retract his edict.

This Fremont would not do. He had come up with the proclamation himself, would look foolish if he retracted it now, and declared he would only renounce it if the president publicly ordered him to do so. And so he wrote this down, gave it to Jessie, and sent her to Washington to deliver it to Lincoln in person. She obliged and had what appears to be an extraordinarily unpleasant interview with the president, who greeted her with a cold "Well?" Jessie handed him the letter, explained her case, and said if the people of Missouri had to choose between him and Fremont, they would go with the latter. She took her leave and headed back to St. Louis, and shortly afterwards the orders came down from the White House revoking his proclamation.

By now it was obvious that Fremont was useless and the Confederates knew it too--a short time later their Secretary of War Judah Benjamin wrote that his ineptitude was a safeguard to the Confederacy against immediate peril. Meanwhile, a commission was sent from Washington to investigate reports of graft and fraud at army headquarters. They found plenty of it, but nothing personally involving Fremont--as much of a romantic and a flake as he was, he did not have his own hands in the till. Meanwhile, the break between Fremont and Blair was near complete. Blair wrote him off as an incompetent and Fremont saw Blair as an unscrupulous alcoholic and finally had him arrested for insubordination. Rookie soldiers of the 16th Ohio Artillery, unhappy that they still had no cannons, were assigned to stand outside Blair's tent and guard the prisoner. They found him a pleasant enough fellow--one evening when it was raining out, Blair invited one of the men into his tent and asked him if he wanted to share a drink. He was surprised and dismayed when the soldier shook his head and replied that he was a teetotaler.

>>18134444
>The situation was confused. Jesse Fremont had written that Missouri was a "rebel state with rebel sympathies" but this was patently untrue--Missouri had not seceded from the Union and the majority of its inhabitants did not favor secession either.
was that before or after Lincoln and his hired German goons illegally expelled the governor and arrested the state legislators for favoring secession and installed his puppets in charge?

>>18134480
>>18134416
You lost, Cletus.

>>18134444
>The situation was confused. Jesse Fremont had written that Missouri was a "rebel state with rebel sympathies" but this was patently untrue--Missouri had not seceded from the Union and the majority of its inhabitants did not favor secession either.
Fremont was embezzling union dollars the entire time and was completely incompetent as a leader. He was basically shamed out of his position and retired in poverty. He was only given the position because he had helped the north steal california

The Missouri theater is underrated in the ACW— a true civil war with so many factions and wacky characters. Any long shot scenario for a CSA victory in the war means them running the table in 1861 across the region, taking St. Louis and Cairo, blunting the Union offensive down the Mississippi and swinging Missouri and Kentucky into the Secesh.
In 1861-early 1862, most Missouri rebels fought in the Missouri State Guard, a quasi-independent force led by Sterling Price. One of my ancestors was in the 1st Missouri Cavalry (MSG) before joining a regular Confederate infantry regiment.

>>18134515
California was never in any real risk of seceding. Some Confederate sympathy existed in SoCal but the state government was located in Sacramento, in NorCal.

The one thing that might yet keep Fremont in command was winning a decisive battlefield victory and he set himself to this task. He had a sizeable army by mid-September and although the troops were still short on equipment they had enough by now to begin moving. After all, the Hungarian revolutionaries 13 years ago had made do without tents and Jessie, predicting Sherman's March to the Sea, wrote that the army could just live off the land and seize food from farmers as needed, and not require supply trains. As October began, an army of around 40,000 men was heading for southwest Missouri where the main body of Confederate troops under Sterling Price were stationed. Fremont also thought of capturing New Orleans, and he wrote to Jessie, who was often effectively in charge at headquarters in his absence and issued orders in his name, that the war would be wrapped up swiftly.

His predictions were optimistic. The officers and enlisted men were simply too green at this point to do the kind of things they were able to do in 1863-64 almost effortlessly. The soldiers noticed that Fremont seemed more concerned with pomp and ceremony at headquarters than keeping them properly fed and clothed. The soldiers were enthusiastic but also worried about their deficient equipment, leadership, and training, and as they advanced further south into enemy territory, they felt more and more worried--one Iowan wrote that they had "unserviceable foreign-made guns", the campaign was extremely poorly handled, and many regiments were almost totally undisciplined. Some Illinois soldiers remarked that Missouri was perhaps better than being in Hell itself and one volunteer, complaining about the lack of supplies and equipment, called Fremont the biggest empty, horn-tooting bag of wind he'd ever seen.

Somehow this ragtag mob of an army inched towards southwest Missouri. The outnumbered Confederates mostly declined to give battle and retreated before Fremont's advance so that his troops quickly occupied the area around Springfield by late October. A few small skirmishes were fought, all of which Fremont hyped up in his rememberances of the war to sound like Austerlitz or Jena. The Confederates had no interest in a direct confrontation with Fremont, who somehow still imagined them to be concentrated around the old Wilson's Creek battlefield when in reality they were about 60 miles further south and able to go still further south if need be.

His goals were chiefly to bag the Confederate army and take Memphis as a first step to seizing New Orleans. In distant Washington, it was obvious that he wasn't going to accomplish either task. In St. Louis near month's end, a sealed envelope was handed to a subordinate officer from the White House with the notice that it was to be delivered to the general ASAP. However, Lincoln had attached a condition to this. If Fremont had won a battle against the enemy or was currently fighting one when the letter reached him, it was instead to be not delivered but the messenger would keep it and await further orders. In short, Lincoln was ready to fire him but if he actually took the fight to the enemy, then he would be retained in command--the president was still diplomatic enough to give Fremont one more chance if he actually won a battle.

The messenger took off. Since it was known that Fremont had taken steps to prevent any message removing him from command from actually reaching him, the messenger was disguised as a local farmer. He arrived at Fremont's camp and said he was bringing the general some intelligence information gotten from inside the Confederate lines. Some staff officers greeted the man and told him he couldn't see the general, but if he had information, to inform them about it. The messenger replied that he could not do this; the info he had was for the general's ears and eyes only. After some delay, the staffers finally decided this man must be harmless and they invited him into Fremont's tent to present him with the letter.

He opened it, read Lincoln's notice, and fumed over how this man had gotten past all of his security efforts. The letter, which included Winfield Scott's signature in addition to the president's, informed him that he was to turn over his command to General David Hunter, the ranking officer in the department after him, and who had long been lobbying for Fremont's removal from command, and to take a train at once to Washington and await further orders. For the time being, the Pathfinder had come to the end of the trail..

>>18134764
>California was never in any real risk of seceding.
Fremont was one of the main power players in securing California, he was originally sent there by Polk. He tried to make himself the main political leader in the whole state. He gave a bunch of land to northern interests in California and was awarded an honorary military position in Missouri and still managed to fuck up

>>18134905
>and more worried--one Iowan wrote that they had "unserviceable foreign-made guns"
They were mostly toting old smoothbore muskets and various European castoff weapons. Again, the Army of the Potomac got all the best equipment and by the start of the Peninsula Campaign at least 60% of them had Springfield or Enfield rifles and by Antietam it was over 80%.

>>18134503
Lost fighting harder and better for a nobler cause, aye. The real question is who won? Certainly not Lincoln, nor the people of the North, nor even the blacks. The kind of men who won were a small handful of madmen like Stephens, Sumner, Butler, and Wade whose sole mission in life was to inflict death and destruction on white men.

Fremont was a character alright.

>his mother was married as a teenager to a rich old man in an arranged marriage she didn't want
>she immediately cheated on him with her tutor, a handsome, studly French-Canadian, and became pregnant
>Fremont was often ridiculed by political opponents over his life for the circumstances around his birth

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