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 1861-a] BueWs inactivity. 493 Halleck found plenty of work on his hands when in November, 1861, he reached St Louis and assumed command. To say nothing of pre- vailing local maladministration, provincial feuds and guerrilla risings were breaking out at many points in different parts of the State with alarming frequency and fierceness. The deposed Secessionist Governor, Jackson, lingering in Confederate camps in the south-west corner of Missouri, made a pretence of organising a hostile legislature and State government; and the Confederate Congress at Richmond passed an Act admitting Missouri to the Confederate States. Fre'mont had com- mitted the political blunder of declaring local military emancipation. Halleck now committed an equal political blunder by issuing his Order No. 3, excluding fugitive slaves from Federal camps on the allegation that they carried military information to the enemy ; whereas as a rule the very opposite was true. This order brought upon him the severe censure of the anti-slavery press and sentiment of the whole country, and rendered him for a time extremely unpopular, until, a month later, he practically annulled the order by an explanatory letter. It was about this time that the perplexities of President Lincoln culminated in the illness of General McClellan ; causing him to declare, not long after, that if something were not done soon, the bottom would drop out of the whole affair. With the close of the year 1861, the entire military machine seemed to have come to a standstill. To the casual observer McClellan had nothing to show for his five months of command at Washington. Buell in Kentucky had for sound military reasons neglected the urgent and repeated directions to send a Union column into East Tennessee. Fremont had proved a lamentable military disappointment and political embarrassment; and when on December 31 the President sent a joint telegram to Halleck and Buell, asking the pregnant question whether they were acting in concert, Buell replied, "There is no arrangement between General Halleck and myself"; while Halleck said, " I have never received a word from General Buell ; I am not ready to co-operate with him." The President's telegram also contained a more pertinent inquiry. "When he (Buell) moves on Bowling Green, what hinders its being reinforced from Columbus?" No satisfactory reply came from either general, but the President's questions had the effect of starting a correspondence between them on the subject of a forward movement, in which General McClellan, now somewhat recovered, took part. Neither general, however, evinced any readiness to co-operate or to act singly; and on January 7, 1862, President Lincoln followed up his inquiries with a still more energetic monition. " Please name as early a day as you safely can, on or before which you can be ready to move southward in concert with Major-General Halleck. Delay is ruining us, and it is indispensable for me to have something definite. I send a like dispatch to Major-General Halleck." CH. XV.