ll that proclamation was modified; and General Anderson
telegraphed me that on the news of General Fremont having actually
issued deeds of manumission, a whole company of our volunteers threw
down their arms and disbanded. I was so assured as to think it probable
that the very arms we had furnished Kentucky would be turned against us.
I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.
Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These
all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would
as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this
capital."

If it be objected that the President himself decreed military
emancipation a year later, then it must be remembered that Fremont's
proclamation differed in many essential particulars from the President's
edict of January 1, 1863. By that time, also, the entirely changed
conditions justified a complete change of policy; but, above all, the
supreme reason of military necessity, upon which alone Mr. Lincoln based
the constitutionality of his edict of freedom, was entirely wanting in
the case of Fremont.

The harvest of popularity which Fremont evidently hoped to secure by his
proclamation was soon blighted by a new military disaster. The
Confederate forces which had been united in the battle of Wilson's Creek
quickly became disorganized through the disagreement of their leaders
and the want of provisions and other military supplies, and mainly
returned to Arkansas and the Indian Territory, whence they had come. But
General Price, with his Missouri contingent, gradually increased his
followers, and as the Union retreat from Springfield to Rolla left the
way open, began a northward march through the western part of the State
to attack Colonel Mulligan, who, with about twenty-eight hundred Federal
troops, intrenched himself at Lexington on the Missouri River. Secession
sympathy was strong along the line of his march, and Price gained
adherents so rapidly that on September 18 he was able to invest
Mulligan's position with a somewhat irregular army numbering about
twenty thousand. After a two days' siege, the garrison was compelled to
surrender, through the exhaustion of the supply of water in their
cisterns. The victory won, Price again immediately retreated southward,
losing his army almost as fast as he had collected it, made up, as it
was, more in the spirit and quality of a sudden border foray than a