t a word of command? One of the darkest pages in American
history records the way in which the crowd, undisciplined to endure
strain, turned upon Lincoln in its desire to find in the conduct of
their leader a pretext for venting upon him the fierceness of their
anxiety. Such a pretext they found in his treatment of Fremont.

The singular episode of Fremont's arrogance in 1861 is part of the
story of the border States whose friendship was eagerly sought by both
sides--Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and those mountainous counties
which in time were to become West Virginia. To retain Maryland and thus
to keep open the connection between the Capital and the North was one
of Lincoln's deepest anxieties. By degrees the hold of the Government
in Maryland was made secure, and the State never seceded. Kentucky, too,
held to the Union, though, during many anxious months in 1861, Lincoln
did not know whether this State was to be for him or against him. The
Virginia mountains, from the first, seemed a more hopeful field, for the
mountaineers had opposed the Virginia secession and, as soon as it was
accomplished, had begun holding meetings of protest. In the meantime
George B. McClellan, with the rank of general bestowed upon him by the
Federal Government, had been appointed to command the militia of Ohio.
He was sent to assist the insurgent mountaineers, and with him went the
Ohio militia. From this situation and from the small engagements with
Confederate forces in which McClellan was successful, there resulted the
separate State of West Virginia and the extravagant popular notion that
McClellan was a great general. His successes were contrasted in the
ordinary mind with the crushing defeat at Bull Run, which happened at
about the same time.

The most serious of all these struggles in the border States, however,
was that which took place in Missouri, where, owing to the strength
of both factions and their promptness in organizing, real war began
immediately. A Union army led by General Nathaniel Lyon attacked the
Confederates with great spirit at Wilson's Creek but was beaten back in
a fierce and bloody battle in which their leader was killed.

Even before these events Fremont had been appointed to chief command
in Missouri, and here he at once began a strange course of dawdling and
posing. His military career must be left to the military historians--who
have not ranked him among the great generals. Civil history accuses him,
if