II
Two days after Bull Run, Lincoln penned a memorandum on future Union strategy. Efforts to make the blockade effective were to be pushed forward; Maryland was to be held "with a gentle [!], but firm, and certain hand"; Union troops in Virginia were to be reinforced, thoroughly trained, and prepared for a new invasion; the inept Patterson was to be replaced by a new commander of the army at Harper's Ferry (Nathaniel P. Banks); Union armies in the western theaters were to take the offensive, "giving rather special attention to Missouri."17
Lincoln had high expectations of his newly appointed commander of the Western Department (mainly Missouri), John C. Frémont. Famed as the Pathfinder of the West, Frémont's eleven years' experience in the army's topographical corps gave him a military reputation unmatched by most other political generals. But the formidable difficulties of a Missouri command—a divided population, guerrilla warfare, political intrigue, war contract profiteering, impending Confederate invasions from Arkansas and Tennessee—quickly brought out the weaknesses in Frémont's character. He was showy rather than solid. His naiveté and his ambition to build quickly a large army and navy for a grand sweep down the Mississippi made him easy prey for contractors whose swollen profits produced a new crop of scandals. Frémont could have survived all this if he had produced victories. But instead, soon after he arrived in St. Louis on July 25, Union forces in Missouri suffered reverses that came as aftershocks to the earthquake at Bull Run.
Frémont's appointment brought Nathaniel Lyon under his command. After chasing Sterling Price's militia to the southwest corner of the state, Lyon's small army of 5,500 men occupied Springfield at the
16. For an astute development of this thesis, see Michael C. C. Adams, Our Masters the Rebels: A Speculation on Union Military Failure in the East, 1861–1865 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978).
17. CWL, IV, 457–58.
end of a precarious supply line nearly 200 miles from St. Louis. Lyon faced a motley southern force composed of Price's 8,000 Missourians and 5,000 other Confederate troops under General Ben McCulloch, a rough-hewn frontiersman who had won his spurs as an Indian fighter, Mexican War officer, and Texas Ranger. Price was eager to redeem Missouri from the Yankee and "Dutch" troops under Lyon. McCulloch distrusted the reliability of Price's Missourians, two or three thousand of whom lacked weapons while the rest carried an indiscriminate variety of hunting rifles, shotguns, and ancient muskets. McCulloch finally yielded, with great reluctance, to Price's entreaties for an offensive.
In the meantime, Lyon learned that Frémont could send him no reinforcements. All Union troops seemed to be needed elsewhere to cope with guerrillas and to counter a rebel incursion into southeast Missouri that threatened the Union base at Cairo, Illinois. Outnumbered by more than two to one, with the ninety-day enlistments of half his men about to expire, Lyon's only choice seemed to be retreat. But the fiery red-haired general could not bear to yield southwest Missouri without a fight. He decided to attack McCulloch and Price before they could attack him.
Disregarding the maxims of military textbooks (just as Robert E. Lee later did to win his greatest victories), Lyon divided his small army in the face of a larger enemy and sent a flanking column of 1,200 men under Franz Sigel on a night march around to the south of the Confederate camp along Wilson's Creek, ten miles south of Springfield. While Sigel came up on the Confederate rear, Lyon would attack from the front with the main Union force. The Federals carried out this difficult maneuver successfully, achieving surprise in a two-pronged attack at sunrise on August 10. But McCulloch and Price kept their poise and rallied their men for a stand-up, seesaw firefight at short range along the banks of Wilson's Creek and on the slopes of a nearby hill.
The battle was marked by two turning points that finally enabled the rebels to prevail. First, after initially driving back the Confederates on the southern flank, Sigel's attack came to a halt after another incident of mistaken identity. A Louisiana regiment clad in uniforms similar to the militia gray of Lyon's 1st Iowa approached close enough to Sigel's vanguard to pour in a murderous volley before the unionists recognized them as enemies. Sigel's attack disintegrated; a Confederate artillery barrage and infantry counterattack soon scattered his demoralized brigade to the four winds. The Louisianians and Arkansans in this part of the field then joined the Missourians fighting Lyon's main force, whom they now outnumbered by three to one. In the thick of the fighting, Lyon was twice wounded slightly and his horse was shot from under him before a bullet found his heart. This demoralized the unionists, who in addition had almost run out of ammunition. Slowly they pulled back, yielding the battlefield to the enemy and withdrawing to Springfield unpursued by the equally battered southerners.
Each side in this bloody battle suffered about 1,300 casualties, a considerably higher proportion of losses than at Bull Run. Although the Confederates' tactical victory at Wilson's Creek was much less decisive than at Manassas and its impact on public opinion outside Missouri was small, its strategic consequences at first seemed greater. The Union forces retreated all the way to Rolla, 100 miles north of Springfield. Having gained confidence and prestige, Price marched northward to the Missouri River, gathering recruits on the way. With 18,000 troops he surrounded the 3,500-man garrison at Lexington, the largest city between St. Louis and Kansas City. Frémont scraped together a small force to reinforce the garrison, but it could not break through Price's ring. After three days of resistance, Lexington surrendered on September 20.
Price's reputation soared, while Frémont's plummeted. In two months of command he appeared to have lost half of Missouri. Confederate guerrillas stepped up their activities. The Blair family, once Frémont's sponsors, turned against him and began intriguing for his removal. And a bold step that Frémont had taken to reverse the decline of his fortunes backfired and helped to seal his fate.
On August 30 Frémont issued a startling proclamation. As commanding general he took over "the administrative powers of the State," declared martial law, announced the death penalty for guerrillas caught behind Union lines, confiscated the property and freed the slaves of all Confederate activists in Missouri.18 Two motives seem to have impelled this rash action: first, the felt need for draconian measures to suppress guerrillas and to intimidate rebel sympathizers; second, a desire to win favor with antislavery Republicans. Frémont accomplished his second goal, but at the cost of alienating Lincoln, who was engaged in sensitive efforts to keep Kentucky in the Union. The president wrote privately to Frémont ordering him to shoot no guerrillas "without first having my approbation," for if he were to execute captured guerrillas indiscriminately, "the Confederates would very certainly shoot our best men in
18. O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 3, pp. 466–67.
their hands, in retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely."19 Second, Lincoln warned Frémont that freeing the slaves of rebels would "alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky." The president asked (not ordered) Frémont to modify this part of his proclamation to conform with an act passed by Congress on August 6, which confiscated only the property (including slaves) used directly in the Confederate war effort.20
A wiser man would have treated Lincoln's request as an order. But with a kind of proconsular arrogance that did not sit well with Lincoln, Frémont refused to modify his proclamation without a public order to do so. He also sent his high-spirited wife (daughter of the legendary Thomas Hart Benton) to Washington to persuade Lincoln of his error. Jessie Frémont offended the president by hinting at her husband's superior wisdom and greater prestige. She did Frémont's cause considerable harm. Even as she spoke, letters from border-state unionists were arriving at the White House expressing alarm and disaffection. "We could stand several defeats like that at Bulls Run, better than we can this proclamation if endorsed by the Administration," wrote Kentuckian Joshua Speed, Lincoln's oldest and best friend. "Do not allow us by the foolish action of a military popinjay to be driven from our present active loyalty." On the day after Jessie Benton Frémont's visit, Lincoln publicly ordered her husband to modify his emancipation edict.21
After this, Frémont's days as commander in Missouri were numbered. Knowing that he could save himself only by a military victory, he pulled together an army of 38,000 men and set forth to destroy Price's militia. Since capturing Lexington, Price had learned the difference between an invasion and a raid. He lacked the manpower and logistical capacity to turn his raid into a successful occupation of captured territory. More than half of his troops melted away to harvest crops or to go off bushwhacking on their own. Price retreated again to the southwest
19. Even as Lincoln wrote these words, the rebel guerrilla chieftain M. Jeff Thompson in southeast Missouri issued a proclamation promising that for every man executed under Frémont's edict, he would "HANG, DRAW AND QUARTER a minion of said Abraham Lincoln." Jay Monaghan, Civil War on the Western Border 1854–1865 (Boston, 1955), 185.
20. CWL, IV, 506.
21. Speed to Lincoln, Sept. 7, 1861, Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress; CWL, IV, 517–18.
corner of the state. Before the Federals caught up with him, Lincoln removed Frémont from command. Union forces would eventually defeat and scatter Price's army, but when that happened Frémont would be far away in western Virginia about to embark on another failure.