GENERAL FREMONT AND COLONEL BLAIR.
FEW things which have happened during the American war have so disheartened the friends of the North as the action of the Government in the " Fremont affair." Regard it from what point we may, the story still reads as if the Washington Cabinet were unacquainted with the first principles on which States can be governed. General Fre- mont, as our readers know, is a soldier of some local distinc- tion, who has gained no battles, but who has served through one great war, has led three different expeditions, and has displayed a talent, rare even in generals, for licking half- civilized men into useful and obedient followers. Nominated in 1856 for President, Colonel Fremont carried the entire Republican vote, and but for his notorious Freesoil opinions, might have carried the chair, in which case the South would have been taken unprepared and half armed. The Republi- cans, though defeated, did not lay aside their candidate, and on the outbreak of the rebellion a strong pressure was placed on the President to give Colonel Fremont a high command. The pressure was the more effectual because applied by "the Blairs," a family as influential with the Republican party as the House of Russell is with the Whigs. This family wanted a popular soldier to balance Mr. Seward, and accordingly the President offered General Fremont the command of the West, and sent Colonel F. P. Blair to look after him. The family had a little mistaken their man. General Fremont, whatever his defects, considers that his business in an army is to rule, and he is able to do it. His first act on arriving at his Missouri command was to surround himself with what Colonel Blair calls a " barricade"—a system of sentries, appointments by letter, and other devices well known to European statesmen, which left him command of his time and shrouded him from the public gaze. Meanwhile his name brought him men in thousands, and his personal following, a set of able, unscrupulous, daredevil Californians, collected the materials for a campaign, and brought the wild "Hoosiers into order. In a short time the General had a flotilla, a respectable campaigning train, and some twenty thousand troops, devoted to himself far more than to the Federal Go- vernment. It is allowed, even by his enemies, that this army is due to himself, that his presence spread confidence through the West, and that his followers overcame difficul- ties, in the way of transport, ordinance supplies, and com- missariat, no men less determined could have survived. In Missouri itself, where the facts must be known, the General is still the idol of the people, and more especially of the Germans, while the soldiery, always fair judges at least of capacity, still openly proclaim that he is their only chief. It may be readily imagined that, thus far successful, General Fremont did not relax his "isolation" or his quasi-Wallen- stein tone. Colonel Blair did not like it .at all. That anybody who chooses, shall have access to anybody else in the Federal service, shall make him shake hands, shall worry him with recommendations, shall have any absurd scheme cordially considered, and shall have small jobs promptly effected, is a cardinal point in modern American politics. Mr. Russell has described the Secretary at War as literally besieged by applicants. That General Fremont should venture to vio- late such an unwritten law, was of itself almost an insult • but that he should extend the non-intercourse rule to ; Colonel F. P. Blair was treason worse than secession.
Why, I made Fremont," said Colonel Blair; and one day he actually told his General so in so many words. The General took no notice, but on the next visit Colonel Blair found his road barred by sentries, and, disregarding the obstacle, was placed in arrest. He was released, but revenged himself by transmitting to his brother, the Postmaster- General, a string of charges, which are, we think, almost without a parallel in the history of courts-martial. The charges, twenty-two in number, resolve themselves into three distinct classes of accusation—corruption, tyranny, • and isolation. Under the first head, General Fremont is accused of giving contracts to his private friends and Californian followers, of paying too high for everything, and of general and specific acts of waste. Under the second, we have the proclamation of enfranchisement, the suppression of an evening journal, and some acts of disobedience to orders for military movements. Under the third, we have first a general charge which we must quote, and then specific cases alleged, in which want of in- formation produced loss to the public service. The general charge is : " Specification 10.—In establishing about his head-quarters in the city of St. Louis a barricade, whereby information absolutely indispensable to the public service was repelled and shut out from his mind, he, the said General Fremont, refusing and preventing himself by such means from be- ing informed of matters of the utmost importance for hours, and even days, to the great detriment of the public service."
The answer to this monstrous indictment has never been published, nor, we believe, forwarded, but General Fremont's explanation has been informally circulated, and bears truth on its very face. It is quite true that he has given enormous prices for many articles ; and quite true, also, that if he had not given them the army must have been left without sup- plies. The imminence of the danger justified purchases with- out indent, and as a matter of fact the army, which was at first a collection of ploughmen with rifles, was in three months admirably equipped. As to the rate of the purchases, he had to bid against the Confederates, against the Governments of several States, and against the unmanageable avarice created by an unprecedented demand. To have applied to the capital for indents, the necessity of which was only apparent on the spot, and receive replies from a hostile office and telegraph explanations over a thousand miles, would have been to give up Missouri. As to information, the General only repelled the hosts of panic-struck men who volunteered information that he had already obtained, and advice which was simply obtrusive. As to employing his Meads, whom else was he to employ ? There were no " regular departments" obtainable. The contracting politicians of Pennsylvania would have charged just as much, and not done their work half as well. A man must work with the tools he has, and General Fremont could trust to the un- scrupulous energy of his Californians work which better dressed men would have utterly failed to do. As to the tyranny, the order of emancipation, if not within his power, was received by the people with acclamation, and by the Cabinet with approval, and the suppression of one newspaper only followed the proclamation of martial law, and was, at all events, an imitation of the policy of the President. On receipt of these charges, the duty of the American Government became clear., They had only two courses to pursue : to recal their General, or to dismiss Colonel Blair; and no European Cabinet would have hesitated for an hour. An English soldier can scarcely be placed in the position of General Fremont, but Indian officers have often assumed a responsibility equally great under circum- stances much less pressing. We question if there ever was even an abstract of the orders under which the Arly. of the Punjab was saved from starvation in • 1845 by irregular but indispensable outlay. General Napier, is the same province, is said to have spent a million on public works without Uny sufficient authority, and was most justly sustained. During the mutiny, when nothing but personal credit would raise money, dozens of officers pledged the faith of the State without orders, and Lord Canning, in every case, even in one very doubtful one, refused to destroy all hope of similar courage by over-minute inquiry. Prof- fered by a subordinate known to be irritated and suspected of private malice, charges like these would simply have pro- duced a contemptuous rebuke, or a summary punishment. If, indeed, the evil was so enormous as to threaten danger to the finances, a Government might, as an extreme mea- sure, justified by the plea of necessity, have recalled the General ; but that plea has not been raised. The American Government adopted a course of its own. The Presi- dent entered into a correspondence with Mrs. Fremont, of all persons on earth, in which, by some extraordinary fatality, Mrs. Blair's name was also mixed up, and allowed the charges to become, in some unexplained manner, public pro- perty. A. summons to Washington was spoken of, and General Fremont, just about to march for the South, found himself arraigned as a felon. He did nothing—his wisest course ; but the Western men, who had seen all the suspected transactions and watched the growth of his armament, were wild with rage. Recruiting stopped at once, mass meetings were called by torchlight, the soldiery openly sympathized with the citizens, and it seemed certain that an order of recal would be followed by an explosion throughout the West. Whatever the original design of the Cabinet, they at once " bowed to the will of the people," and Mr. Seward, with sulky humility, telegraphed to St. Louis that no court- martial would be called, and that no summons whatever had been issued to General Fremont. The emotion subsided, and General Fremont prepared to pursue the Confederates, who had evacuated Lexington. The Government, however, had not done with him. They ordered General Wool, an old and otherwise inferior man, to Missouri to watch General Fremont, and if a defeat restored their authority, to super- sede him. And then to put a crowning stroke to the whole affair, the Commander-in-Chief, by peremptory order, re- stored Colonel Blair to freedom and to his regimental com- mand. In other words, the Government of America either considers that an officer against whom true charges of peculation have been preferred, is worthy of its second highest command; or else, holds that the officer who has untruly or recklessly brought :these charges is worthy of honour and high command. Or, as the third and only alternative, it is too weak to remove a subordinate whom it suspects on pecu- niary grounds, and must perforce submit to peculation com- mitted by a General in high office.
We state the case as it will appear on the face of it to all Englishmen. To Americans, we believe, it appears even worse. They know that had any officer save Colonel Frank Blair attempted to bring such charges, he might have been left in arrest for ever. But Colonel F. Blair is of the blue blood of politicians, the brother of a Cabinet Minister, the son of a man who makes Presidents ; and they believe that the official orders have really been issued by personal influence. The mere fact that this is suggested openly is sufficient evidence that something is rotten in American politics. England is supposed to be the land of family influences, and we heard enough at one time of Greys, and Elliots, and all the clans which were supposed to monopolize patronage. But even here, family influence could not shield a man in Colonel Blair's position from the peremptory order to " sell," nor can we conceive the circumstances under which a man who has accused his Commander of felony could be set at the head of a regiment to carry 'out that Commander's orders. The ne- cessity of keeping up discipline which civilized Governments instinctively feel, would prevent such a course. It would be felt, and justly, that to allow a subordinate to forward to the Cabinet secret attacks against a General still in the field, would be to destroy authority without preventing pecula- tion. If this system is to continue, no General at a distance is safe, and the Commander-in-Chief of a frontier army must either descend to court his subordinates, or live in the cer- tainty that his acts are misrepresented in secret despatches to his superiors. Success is not to be obtained on such terms, and the transaction raises more doubt in our minds of the capacity of the Federal Government to direct the machine it is constructing, than any defeat like that of Bull's Run, or any disaster like that of Lexington.
Previous page
