This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [40]
Somewhat dazed, Schofield and Blair got out at last and went off down the street. Blair finally asked the inevitable question: “Well, what do you think of him?” Schofield took a deep breath and replied in words which, he confessed later, were too strong to print. Blair nodded and said that he felt the same way himself.7
It was an evil omen for Frémont. Missouri was a Blair fief, as far as the administration in Washington was concerned. Blair had struck the first blow there; he had raised Lyon from infantry captain to brigadier general and he had had distinguished General Harney deposed. The commander in St. Louis, whatever else he might do, had better show that he could get along with the Blair family. Frémont had come to St. Louis with Blair support, but he had already lost some of it. During the next few weeks he was to show a positive genius for losing all the rest of it.
For one thing, there were contracts to be signed. Of necessity, Frémont was buying enormous quantities of goods — doing it in a most irregular manner, the old-line quartermasters complained, with improperly commissioned officers signing orders that no right-minded quartermaster or disbursing officer could honor, and with rumors of graft and waste and favoritism spreading all across the Middle West. This was bad, although in view of the general disorganization and the imperative need for haste, it is probable that no officer in Frémont’s position could have avoided trouble. What was worse, as far as Frémont’s personal fortunes were concerned, was the fact that the innumerable contractors who bore Frank Blair’s endorsement could not seem to get aboard the gravy train at any price. Blair’s rising distaste for Frémont began to harden into active opposition.8
Then, too, there was Jessie.
Jessie was Mrs. Frémont — Jessie Benton Frémont, daughter of the famous Senator Thomas Hart Benton, a strong-minded and imperious woman who was completely devoted to her husband’s advancement and who was used to having her own way. She was often in view at headquarters; she liked to be there, she found it “a stirring, eager, hopeful time,” and she liked to see the halls and offices “humming with life and the clank and ring of sabre and spur.” She worked with her husband, a cross between confidential secretary and executive assistant. When he was away Jessie actually seemed to be in charge of the army, and she wrote fondly of her husband’s habit of “referring all manner of work and duties to me as acting principal in his absence.” She would issue orders in his name, and he would send messages to her: “Thank you for the sabres and guns; send any such things forward as best you can.” She shared his belief that a great victory was in the making. To her he confided: “My plan is New Orleans straight … I think it can be done gloriously.”9
It could be done gloriously. The adverb was to be emphasized; war was still a matter of romance and great words, it went to “the clank and ring of sabre and spur,” officers with golden sashes and foreign titles swung naturally in the orbit of the daring Pathfinder, and if the Pathfinder and his wife felt impelled to take the general direction of things out of the hands of the President in Washington, the times were, as General Scott had admitted, revolutionary. Also, the general had once been a candidate for Lincoln’s own office, he was still the great hero of the anti-slavery men, and anyway,