Abraham Lincoln

“In This Matter Lincoln Is Too Easy-going”

Posted on April 22, 2016 Updated on April 22, 2016

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 4.
To John C. Fremont

Private and confidential. Major General Fremont: Washington D.C. Sept. 2, 1861.
My dear Sir: Two points in your proclamation of August 30th give me some anxiety. First, [2] should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, the Confederates would very certainly shoot our best man in their hands in retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely. It is therefore my order that you allow no man to be shot, under the proclamation, without first having my approbation or consent.

Secondly, [3] I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph, in relation to the confiscation of property, and the liberating slaves of traiterous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me therefore to ask, that you will as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform to the first and fourth sections of the act of Congress, entitled, “An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes,” approved August, 6th, 1861, and a copy of which act I herewith send you. This letter is written in a spirit of caution and not of censure.

I send it by a special messenger, in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you. Yours very truly A. LINCOLN

Here in St. Louis, likewise, there is a handsome general mounted on a fine horse and attended by a brilliant retinue ; but Fremont, at any rate, has a great past, or the legend of one. He is the Western pioneer, the pathfinder, the romantic figure, the man whom the newly formed Republican Party had nominated as its first presi- dential candidate, and for whom Lincoln had fought. Did all that happen only five years ago? Too recently for Fremont to have forgotten it himself; too long ago for the public to remember without fresh laurels. For the time being, however, he is prized by Lincoln and the cabinet. Glitter, the power of silence, and the lack of experience as a commander in the field are qualities he shares with his colleague beside the Potomac ; but he has worked out a specialty, creating a bodyguard, within which he ensconces him- self, secludes himself undiscoverably, and under whose protection he is tardy in answering letters and telegrams from the government – or will not answer them at all. In their contempt for Washing- ton and the government, the Eastern general and the Western make common cause ; only in this, however, for in other matters they seem determined to work against one another.
But in contradiction to the Eastern organizer, the Western war lord is inactive in respect of the peaceful doings of the army as well, while his vanity makes him an easy prey to fraudulent army contractors (who perhaps are not unknown to the Secretary of War as well), and his main industry is to appoint brigadiers on his own initiative and without consulting the President. Within a few weeks, despite the iron wall of silence with which he has surrounded himself, materials for grave accusations against Fre- mont make their w?^y to Washington. The man who was formerly an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency is said to aim at found- ing a Northwestern Union. The rumors lack foundation, and Lincoln does not credit them, but the fact that they are current serves to show what people regard as possible.
One morning in August, the President reads in a newspaper that General Fremont has issued a proclamation to the effect that the property of all Missourians who shall take up arms against the Union or shall in any other way help the South, will be confiscated forthwith, and their slaves, if they have any, will be declared free. What does Lincoln think and feel as he reads this ? With the self- restraint of a statesman, with the sense of responsibility proper to a reigning sovereign, in defiance of his natural sentiments and wishes, he has, since the beginning of the war, refrained from opening the slavery question, being convinced that his first business is not to free the slaves , but to save the Union. Only if the preservation of the Union remains his war cry, can he count upon a Democratic majority in the loyal States, and upon the neutrality of the border States. If by any war measures on behalf of the slaves he shows that this is a war for abolition and not a war for the maintenance of the Union, he will lose ground, and therewith lose the war; and even in the confiscation ordinances customary in war time he has been careful to avoid mentioning slaves. Now comes one of his generals thrust- ing clumsy fingers into this political web, completely ignoring the subordination of the military arm to the political ! Next day the dormant controversy has been reawakened all over the country. The radical press of the North applauds the bold soldier who has outdistanced the hesitating President. The border States, on the other hand, and Kentucky first of all, are infuriated at what is now, they say, openly disclosed as the purpose of the war, and once more they threaten to secede. Will not the general be cashiered ? Not a bit of it. Lincoln writes him a friendly letter : “I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph [of the proclamation] . . . will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform to the first and fourth sections of the act of Congress. . . . This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not of censure. I send it by special messenger, in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you.” Amazing! In this matter Lincoln is too easy-going. His endeavor to avoid harsh measures against men whom he considers possessed of a wider national reputation than his own, his wish to repudiate the formal exercise of authority, lead him to be more complaisant than the risks of the situation justify. What is the upshot? First the general cannot be found; then he writes, asking the President himself to modify the relevant clause in the proclamation ; and he sends this letter by Mrs. Fremont, an able and ambitious woman who has been described as the real chief of staff.
No, this is not a burlesque ; things really happened that way !
The general’s lady, fearing lest her husband may be removed, determines to take the offensive. Arriving at midnight, she insists on seeing the President then and there, berates him, threatens him with the possibility of Fremont’s setting up an independent govern- ment. Will Lincoln pay her back in her own coin ? He is said to be half a farmer, mannerless and boorish. “I had to exercise all the rude tact that I possess to avoid quarreling with her,” he says afterwards. He does not want to use the iron hand; neither he nor the country is strong enough for that yet, and it is never his main purpose to seek popularity. He therefore proves accom- modating in a way that is most injurious to himself — agrees to modify the clause under his own name as Fremont has requested, and incurs the anger of hundreds of thousands of Northerners, who regard him as cowardly and the general as a hero. Some of the newspapers declare that it would be well if Fremont were to take Lincoln’s place, and one writer asks : “How many times are we to save Kentucky and lose our self-respect?”
In this matter, too, for Lincoln, policy outweighs ambition, and philosophy policy. Quite unconcerned, he ponders after his own fashion the underlying factors at work in this interlude :
“I have great respect for General Fremont and his abilities, but the fact is that the pioneer in any movement is not generally the best man to carry that movement to a successful issue. It was so in old times ; Moses began the emancipation of the Jews, but didn’t take Israel to the Promised Land after all. He had to make way for Joshua to complete the work. It looks as if the first reformer of a thing has to meet such a hard opposition and gets so battered and bespattered, that afterwards when people find they have to accept his reform they will accept it more easily from another man.”
Thereupon he writes asking General Hunter to go to Missouri : “He [Fremont] needs to have at his side a man of large experience. Will you not, for me, take that place ? Your rank is one grade too high to be ordered to it, but will you not serve the country and oblige me by taking it voluntarily?”
Hunter, however, achieves very little, and writes letters no less arrogant than Fremont’s. Thereupon he is reproved by his chief in this mild way :
“I am constrained to say it is difficult to answer so ugly a letter in good temper. I am as you intimate, losing much of the great confidence I placed in you, not from any act or omission of yours touching the public service . . . but from the flood of grumbling despatches and letters I have seen from you. … I have been and am sincerely your friend, and if, as such, I dare to make a suggestion, I would say that you are adopting the best possible way to ruin yourself. ‘Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’ ”
And when, in the end, he finds it necessary to recall Fremont, his messengers cannot at first get access to the general at all, upon whom the letter has to be forced by a stratagem.
Thus delicately and grotesquely must the President of the Union handle his army commanders.

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