persons in the State who shall have taken up arms against the Union, or who shall have taken part with the enemies of the Union, and that he will make free all slaves belonging to such persons. This proclamation was not approved at Washington, and was modified by the order of the President. It was understood also that he issued orders for military expenditure, which were not recognized at Washington, and men began to understand that the army in the West was gradually assuming that irresponsible military position, which in disturbed countries and in times of civil war has so frequently resulted in a military dictatorship. Then there arose a clamour for the removal of General Fremont. A semi-official account of his proceedings, which had reached Washington from an officer under his command, was made public; and also the correspondence which took place on the subject between the President and General Fremont's wife. The officer in question was thereupon placed under arrest, but immediately released by orders from Washington. He then made official complaint of his General, sending forward a list of charges in which Fremont was accused of rashness, incompetency, want of fidelity of the interests of the Government, and disobedience to orders from head quarters. After a while the Secretary of War himself proceeded from Washington to the quarters of General Fremont at St. Louis, and remained there for a day or two, making or pretending to make inquiry into the matter. But when he returned he left the General still in command. During the whole month of October the papers were occupied in declaring in the morning that General Fremont had been recalled from his command, and in the evening that he was to remain. In the mean time they who befriended his cause, and this included the whole West, were hoping from day to day that he would settle the matter for himself and silence his accusers, by some great military success. General Price held the command opposed to him, and men said that Fremont would sweep General Price and his army down the valley of the Mississippi into the sea. But General Price would not be so swept, and it began to appear that a guerilla warfare would prevail; that General Price, if driven southwards, would reappear behind the backs of his pursuers, and that General Fremont would not accomplish all that was expected of him with that rapidity for which his friends had given him credit. So the newspapers still went on waging the war, and every morning General Fremont was recalled, and every evening they who had recalled him were shown up as having known nothing of the matter.

"Never mind; he is a pioneer man, and will do a'most any

thing he puts his hand to," his friends in the West still said. "He understands the frontier." Understanding the frontier is a great thing in Western America, across which the vanguard of civilization continues to march on in advance from year to year. "And it's he that is bound to sweep slavery from off the face of this Continent. He's the man, and he's about the only man." I am not qualified to write the life of General Fremont, and can at present only make this slight reference to the details of his romantic career. That it has been full of romance, and that the man himself is indued with a singular energy and a high romantic idea of what may be done by power and will, there is no doubt. Five times he has crossed the continent of North America from Missouri to Oregon and California, enduring great hardships in the service of advancing civilization and knowledge. That he has considerable talent, immense energy, and strong self-confidence, I believe. He is a frontier man; one of those who care nothing for danger, and who would dare anything with the hope of accomplishing a great career. But I have never heard that he has shown any practical knowledge of high military matters. It may be doubted whether a man of this stamp is well fitted to hold the command of a nation's army for great national purposes. May it not even be pre

sumed that a man of this class is of all men the least fitted for such a work? The officer required should be a man with two specialities-a speciality for military tactics, and a speciality for national duty. The army in the West was far removed from head quarters in Washington, and it was peculiarly desirable that the General commanding it should be one possessing a strong idea of obedience to the control of his own Government. Those frontier capabilities, that self-dependent energy for which his friends gave Fremont, and probably justly gave him,-such unlimited credit are exactly the qualities which are most dangerous in such a position.

I have endeavoured to explain the circumstances of the Western command in Missouri, as they existed at the time when I was in the North-Western States, in order that the double action of the North and West may be understood. I, of course, was not in the secret of any official persons, but I could not but feel sure that the Government in Washington would have been glad to have removed Fremont at once from the command, had they not feared that by doing so they would have created a schism, as it were, in their own camp, and have done much to break up the integrity or oneness of Northern loyalty. The western people almost to a man desired abolition.

The States there were sending out their

tens of thousands of young men into the army with a prodigality as to their only source of wealth which they hardly recognized themselves, because this to them was a fight against slavery. The western population has been increased to a wonderful degree by a German infusion ;-so much so that the western towns appear to have been peopled with Germans. I found regiments of volunteers consisting wholly of Germans. And the Germans are all abolitionists. To all the men of the West the name of Fremont is dear. He is their Hero, and their Hercules. He is to cleanse the stables of the southern king, and turn the waters of emancipation through the foul stalls of slavery. And, therefore, though the Cabinet in Washington would have been glad for many reasons to have removed Fremont in October last, it was at first scared from committing itself to so strong a measure. At last, however, the charges made against him were too fully substantiated to allow of their being set on one side, and early in November, 1861, he was superseded. I shall be obliged to allude again to General Fremont's career as I go on with my narrative.

At this time the North was looking for a victory on the Potomac; but they were no longer looking for it with that impatience which in the summer had led to the disgrace at Bull's Run. They had recognized the fact that their troops must be equipped, drilled, and instructed; and they had also recognized the perhaps greater fact, that their enemies were neither weak, cowardly, nor badly officered. I have always thought that the tone and manner with which the North bore the defeat at Bull's Run was creditable to it. It was never denied, never explained away, never set down as trifling. "We have been whipped!" was what all Northerners said, "We've got an almighty whipping, and here we are." I have heard many Englishmen complain of this, saying that the matter was taken almost as a joke,—that no disgrace was felt, and the licking was owned by a people who ought never to have allowed that they had been licked To all this, however, I deTheir only chance of speedy success consisted in their seeing and recognizing the truth. Had they confessed the whipping and then sat down with their hands in their pockets,-had they done as second-rate boys at school will do, declare that they had been licked, and then feel that all the trouble is over,-they would indeed have been open to reproach. The old mother across the water would in such case have disowned her son. But they did the very reverse of this. "I have been whipped," Jonathan said, and he immediately went into training under a new system for another fight.

mur.

And so all through September and October the great armies on the Potomac rested comparatively in quiet, the Northern forces drawing to themselves immense levies. The general confidence in Maclellan was then very great, and the cautious measures by which he endeavoured to bring his vast untrained body of men under discipline were such as did at that time recommend themselves to most military critics. Early in September the northern party obtained a considerable advantage by taking the fort at Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina, situated on one of those long banks which lie along the shores of the Southern States; but towards the end of October they experienced a considerable reverse in an attack which was made on the Secessionists by General Stone, and in which Colonel Baker was killed. Colonel Baker had been senator for Oregon, and was well known as an orator. Taking all things together, however, nothing material had been done up to the end of October; and at that time northern men were waiting-not perhaps impatiently, considering the great hopes, and perhaps great fears which filled their hearts, but with eager expectation for some event of which they might talk with pride.

The man to whom they had trusted all their hopes was young for so great a command. I think that at this time (October 1861) General Maclellan was not yet thirty-five. He had served early in life in the Mexican war, having come originally from Pennsylvania, and having been educated at the military college at West Point. During our war with Russia he was sent to the Crimea by his own Government in conjunction with two other officers of the United States army, that they might learn all that was to be learned there as to military tactics, and report especially as to the manner in which fortifications were made and attacked. I have been informed that a very able report was sent in by them to the Government, on their return, and that this was drawn up by Maclellan. But in America a man is not only a soldier or always a soldier; nor is he always a clergyman if once a clergyman. He takes a spell at anything suitable that may be going. And in this way Maclellan was for some years engaged on the Central Illinois Railway, and was for a considerable time the head manager of that concern. We all know with what suddenness he rose to the highest command in the army immediately after the defeat at Bull's Run.

I have endeavoured to describe what were the feelings of the West in the autumn of 1861 with regard to the war. The excitement and eagerness there were very great, and they were perhaps as great in the North. But in the North the matter seemed to me to be regarded from a different point of view. As a rule, the

men of the North are not abolitionists. It is quite certain that they were not so before secession began. They hate slavery as we in England hate it; but they are aware, as also are we, that the disposition of four million of black men and women forms a question which cannot be solved by the chivalry of any modern Orlando. The property invested in these four million slaves forms the entire wealth of the South. If they could be wafted by a philanthropic breeze back to the shores of Africa,—a breeze of which the philanthropy would certainly not be appreciated by those so wafted, the South would be a wilderness. The subject is one as full of difficulty as any with which politicians of these days are tormented. The Northerners fully appreciate this, and as a rule are not abolitionists in the western sense of the word. To them the war is recommended by precisely those feelings which animated us when we fought for our colonies,-when we strove to put down American independence. Secession is rebellion against the government: and is all the more bitter to the North because that rebellion broke out at the first moment of northern ascendancy. "We submitted," the North says, "to southern Presidents, and southern statesmen, and southern councils, because we obeyed the vote of the people. But as to you—the voice of the people is nothing in your estimation! At the first moment in which the popular vote places at Washington a President with Northern feelings, you rebel. We submitted in your days; and by heaven, you We submitted loyally; through love of the law and the Constitution. You have disregarded the law, and thrown over the Constitution. But you shall be made to submit, as a child is made to submit to its governor."

shall submit in ours!

It must also be remembered that on commercial questions the North and the West are divided. The Morrill tariff is as odious to the West as it is to the South. The South and West are both

agricultural productive regions, desirous of sending cotton and corn to foreign countries and of receiving back foreign manufactures on the best terms. But the North is a manufacturing country. A poor manufacturing country as regards excellence of manufacture and therefore the more anxious to foster its own growth by protective laws. The Morrill tariff is very injurious to the West, and is odious there. I might add that its folly has already been so far recognized even in the North, as to make it very generally odious there also.

So much I have said endeavouring to make it understood how far the North and West were united in feeling against the South in the autumn of 1861, and how far there existed between them a diversity of interests.