is itself
the surrender of the Government. Can it be pretended that it is any
longer the Government of the United States--any government of
constitution and laws--wherein a general or a president may make
permanent rules of property by proclamation?" Fremont preferred to
make Lincoln publicly overrule him, which he did; and the inevitable
consequence followed. When some months later, the utter military
disorganisation, which Fremont let arise while he busied himself with
politics, and the scandalous waste, out of which his flatterers
enriched themselves, compelled the President to remove him from his
command, Fremont became, for a time at least, to patriotic crowds and
to many intelligent, upright and earnest men from St. Louis to Boston,
the chivalrous and pure-hearted soldier of freedom, and Lincoln, the
soulless politician, dead to the cause of liberty, who, to gratify a
few wire-pulling friends, had struck this hero down on the eve of
victory to his army--an army which, by the way, he had reduced almost
to nonentity.

This salient instance explains well enough the nature of one half of
the trial which Lincoln throughout the war had to undergo. Pursuing
the restoration of the Union with a thoroughness which must estrange
from him the Democrats of the North, he was fated from the first to
estrange also Radicals who were generally as devoted to the Union as
himself and with whose over-mastering hatred of slavery he really
sympathised. In the following chapter we are more concerned with the
other half of his trial, the war itself. Of his minor political
difficulties few instances need be given--only it must be remembered
that they were many and involved, besides delicate questions of
principle, the careful sifting of much confident hearsay; and, though
the critics of public men are wont to forget it, that there are only
twenty-four hours in the day.

But the year 1861 was to close with a further vexation that must be
related. Secretary Cameron proved incapable on the business side of
war administration. Waste and alleged corruption called down upon him
a searching investigation by a committee of the House of
Representatives. He had not added to his own considerable riches, but
his political henchmen had grown fat. The displeasure with the whole
Administration was the greater because the war was not progressing
favourably, or at all. There were complaints of the Naval Department
also, but politicians testif