Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [255]
Meanwhile, Meigs and Monty Blair had assessed affairs in Missouri and were heading home. Meigs had come to the clear conclusion that Frémont was not fit to command the Department of the West. “The rebels are killing and ravaging the Unionmen throughout the state,” he wrote; “great distress and alarm prevail; In St. Louis the leading people of the state complain that they cannot see him; he does not encourage the men to form regiments for defence.” Monty Blair agreed. After what he described to Lincoln as “a full & plain talk with Fremont,” he claimed that the general “Seems Stupefied & almost unconscious, & is doing absolutely nothing.” Rumors circulated that Frémont was an opium-eater. “No time is to be lost, & no mans feelings should be consulted,” Blair concluded.
The day after Monty Blair and Meigs departed for Washington, Frémont imprisoned Frank Blair, claiming that the letter he had written his brother on September 1 was an act of insubordination. By criticizing his commanding officer “with a view of effecting his removal,” Frank was guilty of conduct “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”
Frémont and Jessie had concluded that the Blairs had betrayed them. Monty interceded, writing a conciliatory letter to Frémont that led to Frank’s release from jail. Frank insisted on fighting the charges, however, and was soon arrested again. Opinion in Missouri was equally divided between Frank Blair and General Frémont, each intent on destroying the other. General Scott had finally stepped in, ordering a suspension of Frank’s arrest and postponing the trial, which would never take place. But the quarrel between the two old allies would have serious consequences in the years ahead.
Lincoln’s public abrogation of Frémont’s proclamation produced a sigh of relief in the border states but, as Lincoln had apprehended, it profoundly disappointed radical Republicans and abolitionists. Only days earlier, Frances Seward had happily asked her sister, “Were you not pleased with Fremont’s proclamation?” Now Lincoln had once again dashed her hopes. In Chicago, Joseph Medill lamented that Lincoln’s letter “has cast a funeral gloom over our patriotic city…. It comes upon us like a killing June frost—which destroys the comming harvest. It is a step backwards.” Senator Ben Wade blamed Lincoln’s “poor white trash” background for his revolting decision, while Frederick Douglass despaired: “Many blunders have been committed by the Government at Washington during this war, but this, we think, is the largest of them all.”
While radicals hoping to make emancipation the war’s focus rallied behind Frémont, his antislavery credentials could not compensate for his flagrant mismanagement of the Department of the West. On September 18, Monty Blair and Meigs delivered their negative report to the cabinet. Still, Lincoln hesitated. The president “is determined to let Fremont have a chance to win the State of Missouri,” the frustrated postmaster general told Francis Blair, Sr. Bates, too, was irritated by the president’s lack of resolution. With much of his large family still in Missouri, Bates had followed the state’s troubles closely. He had spoken against Frémont on numerous occasions in the cabinet, certain that Frémont was doing “more damage to our cause than half a dozen of the ablest generals of the enemy can do.” Having assured Unionist friends in his home state that Frémont’s removal was imminent, Bates felt “distressed & mortified” by the president’s inaction.
Anxious about Missouri’s troubles and anguished by the illness of his wife, Julia,