But the headstrong general was too blind and selfish to accept this mild redress of a fault that would have justified instant displacement from command.  He preferred that the President should openly direct him to make the correction.  Admitting that he decided in one night upon the measure, he added:  “If I were to retract it of my own accord, it would imply that I myself thought it wrong, and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded.”  The inference is plain that Fremont was unwilling to lose the influence of his hasty step upon public opinion.  But by this course he deliberately placed himself in an attitude of political hostility to the administration.

The incident produced something of the agitation which the general had evidently counted upon.  Radical antislavery men throughout the free States applauded his act and condemned the President, and military emancipation at once became a subject of excited discussion.  Even strong conservatives were carried away by the feeling that rebels would be but properly punished by the loss of their slaves.  To Senator Browning, the President’s intimate personal friend, who entertained this feeling, Mr. Lincoln wrote a searching analysis of Fremont’s proclamation and its dangers: 

“Yours of the seventeenth is just received; and, coming from you, I confess it astonishes me.  That you should object to my adhering to a law which you had assisted in making and presenting to me, less than a month before, is odd enough.  But this is a very small part.  General Fremont’s proclamation as to confiscation of property and the liberation of slaves is purely political, and not within the range of military law or necessity.  If a commanding general finds a necessity to seize the farm of a private owner, for a pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he has the right to do so, and to so hold it as long as the necessity lasts; and this is within military law, because within military necessity.  But to say the farm shall no longer belong to the owner or his heirs forever, and this as well when the farm is not needed for military purposes as when it is, is purely political, without the savor of military law about it.  And the same is true of slaves.  If the general needs them he can seize them and use them, but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition.  That must be settled according to laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations.  The proclamation in the point in question is simply ‘dictatorship.’  It assumes that the general may do anything he pleases—­confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as well as of disloyal ones.  And going the whole figure, I have no doubt, would be more popular, with some thoughtless people, than that which has been done!  But I cannot assume this reckless position, nor allow others to assume it on my responsibility.