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 presumed 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 specialties - a specialty
for military tactics and a specialty for national duty. The army
in the West was far removed from headquarters 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 endeavored to explain the circumstances of the Western
command in Missouri as they existed at the time when I was in the
Northwestern 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 so
doing 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.
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