ity
of General Fremont which had very generally been held in the army.

ORIGIN OF THE OPPOSITION OF THE BLAIRS TO FReMONT

Immediately after my arrival Colonel Frank P. Blair, Jr., said he
wanted me to go with him to see Fremont; so we went the next morning.
The headquarters palace was surrounded by a numerous guard, and
all ingress by the main entrance appeared to be completely barred.
But Blair had some magic word or sign by which we passed the
sentinels at the basement door. Ascending two flights of stairs,
we found the commanding general with a single secretary or clerk
occupying the suite of rooms extending from front to rear of the
building. The general received me cordially, but, to my great
surprise, no questions were asked, nor any mention made, of the
bloody field from which I had just come, where Lyon had been killed,
and his army, after a desperate battle, compelled to retreat. I
was led at once to a large table on which maps were spread out,
from which the general proceeded to explain at length the plans of
the great campaign for which he was then preparing. Colonel Blair
had, I believe, already been initiated, but I listened attentively
for a long time, certainly more than an hour, to the elucidation
of the project. In general outline the plan proposed a march of
the main Army of the West through southwestern Missouri and
northwestern Arkansas to the valley of the Arkansas River, and
thence down that river to the Mississippi, thus turning all the
Confederate defenses of the Mississippi River down to and below
Memphis. As soon as the explanation was ended Colonel Blair and
I took our leave, making our exit through the same basement door
by which we had entered. We walked down the street for some time
in silence. The Blair turned to me and said: "Well, what do you
think of him?" I replied, in words rather too strong to repeat in
print, to the effect that my opinion as to his wisdom was the same
as it had always had been. Blair said: "I have been suspecting
that for some time."

It was a severe blow to the whole Blair family--the breaking, by
the rude shock of war, of that idol they had so much helped to set
up and make the commander of a great army. From that day forward
there was no concealment of the opposition of the Blairs to Fremont.

I had another occasion at that time to learn something important
as to Fremont's character. He had ordered me to convert the 1