Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [254]
Monty Blair showed his brother’s frank letter to Lincoln and added a letter of his own. He asserted that he himself had reluctantly concluded that Frémont must be dismissed. He acknowledged that he had sponsored Frémont at the start, having enjoyed a warm friendship with the celebrated explorer, “but being now satisfied of my mistake duty requires that I should frankly admit it and ask that it may be promptly corrected.” Like Frank, he took no issue with the proclamation, believing a show of strength was necessary. Frémont’s removal, he concluded, was “required by public interests.”
Hearing similar testimony from other sources in Missouri, Lincoln sent General Meigs and Montgomery Blair on September 10 to talk with Frémont and “look into the affair.” At this point, the president still had not received confirmation from Frémont that he would modify the proclamation as requested.
That evening, Frémont’s spirited wife, Jessie, the daughter of former senator Thomas Benton, arrived in Washington after a three-day trip on a dusty, cramped train to hand-deliver Frémont’s delayed response. She sent Lincoln a card asking when she could see him and received the peremptory response: “A. Lincoln. Now.” Straightaway, Jessie left her room at the Willard in the wrinkled dress she had worn during her sweltering trip. As she later reported, when the president came into the room, he “bowed slightly” but did not speak. Nor did he offer her a seat. She handed him her husband’s letter, which he read standing. To Lincoln’s fury and dismay, Frémont had refused his private request to modify the proclamation, insisting that the president must publicly order him to do so. “If I were to retract of my own accord,” the general argued, “it would imply that I myself thought it wrong and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded. But I did not do so.”
When Lincoln remarked that Frémont clearly knew what was expected of him, Jessie implied that Lincoln did not understand the complex situation in Missouri. Nor did he appreciate that unless the war became one of emancipation, European powers were more than likely to recognize the Confederacy. “You are quite a female politician,” Lincoln remarked. He later recalled that Jessie Frémont had “taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarelling with her…. She more than once intimated that if Gen Fremont should conclude to try conclusions with me he could set up for himself.” As Jessie left, she asked Lincoln when she might return to receive his reply. He told her he would send for her when he was ready.
The next morning, Lincoln wrote his reply. This time, he issued “an open order” to Frémont to revise his proclamation to conform to the provisions of the Confiscation Act. Rather than allow Jessie to hand-deliver it, he sent it to be mailed. In keeping with Frémont’s own tactics, he made the reply public before Frémont would receive it.
While Jessie waited vainly at the Willard for word from Lincoln, Francis Blair, Sr., visited her room. “He had always been fond of me,” Jessie recalled, “I had been like a child in their family; but Mr. Blair was now very angry.” He told her that she and her husband had made a great mistake in incurring the enmity of the president. Talking too freely over a two-hour period, the elder Blair revealed that Frank had sent a letter to Monty describing the situation in Missouri, and that the president had sent Monty to St. Louis to “examine into that Department.”
Jessie was infuriated, assuming that Frank’s letter had precipitated the investigation. She “threatened