Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/402

 the country. Frémont was, indeed, promptly made a major general in the regular army, and entrusted with the command of the Department of the West, including the State of Illinois and all the country from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, with headquarters at St. Louis. But he sorely disappointed the sanguine expectations of his friends. He displayed no genius for organization. There was much sluggishness and confusion in the assembling of troops, most of whom were wretchedly equipped for active duty. There was no unity of command. The administrative branches of the service were in a most unsatisfactory condition. Frémont's headquarters seemed to have a marked attraction for rascally speculators of all sorts, and there was much scandal caused by the awarding of profitable contracts to persons of bad repute. But Frémont won the favor of advanced and impatient anti-slavery men by the issue of an order looking to the emancipation of slaves within his department, which Mr. Lincoln found himself obliged to countermand, seeing in it an act of military usurpation, and a step especially inopportune at a time when the attitude of some of the Border States was still undetermined. But it gave Frémont a distinct political position which, when in consequence of the disorder in the Department of the West, his removal from that command had become necessary, may have induced the administration not to drop him altogether, for, under the circumstances then existing, this might have looked like a political punishment, and disaffected many good people. Thus he was given another chance of service at the head of the Mountain Department.

But in that sphere of action he was no more fortunate. He was operating in West Virginia, protecting railroads and putting down guerrillas, when the renowned rebel general, Stonewall Jackson, made his celebrated raid into the