While his resources were limited, and while he fortified St. Louis and reinforced Cairo, a yet more important point needed his attention and help.  Lyon, who had followed Governor Jackson and General Price in their flight from Boonville to Springfield in southern Missouri, found his forces diminished beyond his expectation by the expiration of the term of service of his three months’ regiments, and began to be threatened by a northward concentration of Confederate detachments from the Arkansas line and the Indian Territory.  The neglect of his appeals for help placed him in the situation where he could neither safely remain inactive, nor safely retreat.  He therefore took the chances of scattering the enemy before him by a sudden, daring attack with his five thousand effectives, against nearly treble numbers, in the battle of Wilson’s Creek, at daylight on August 10.  The casualties on the two sides were nearly equal, and the enemy was checked and crippled; but the Union army sustained a fatal loss in the death of General Lyon, who was instantly killed while leading a desperate bayonet charge.  His skill and activity had, so far, been the strength of the Union cause in Missouri.  The absence of his counsel and personal example rendered a retreat to the railroad terminus at Rolla necessary.  This discouraging event turned public criticism sharply upon Fremont.  Loath to yield to mere public clamor, and averse to hasty changes in military command, Mr. Lincoln sought to improve the situation by sending General David Hunter to take a place on Fremont’s staff.

“General Fremont needs assistance,” said his note to Hunter, “which it is difficult to give him.  He is losing the confidence of men near him, whose support any man in his position must have to be successful.  His cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself, and allows nobody to see him; and by which he does not know what is going on in the very matter he is dealing with.  He needs to have by his side a man of large experience.  Will you not, for me, take that place?  Your rank is one grade too high to be ordered to it; but will you not serve the country and oblige me by taking it voluntarily?”

This note indicates, better than pages of description, the kind, helpful, and forbearing spirit with which the President, through the long four years’ war, treated his military commanders and subordinates; and which, in several instances, met such ungenerous return.  But even while Mr. Lincoln was attempting to smooth this difficulty, Fremont had already burdened him with two additional embarrassments.  One was a perplexing personal quarrel the general had begun with the influential Blair family, represented by Colonel Frank Blair, the indefatigable Unionist leader in Missouri, and Montgomery Blair, the postmaster-general in Lincoln’s cabinet, who had hitherto been Fremont’s most influential friends and supporters; and, in addition, the father of these, Francis P. Blair, Sr., a veteran politician whose influence dated from Jackson’s administration, and through whose assistance Fremont had been nominated as presidential candidate in 1856.