For this new loss, Fremont was subjected to a shower of fierce criticism, which this time he sought to disarm by ostentatious announcements of immediate activity.  “I am taking the field myself,” he telegraphed, “and hope to destroy the enemy either before or after the junction of forces under McCulloch.”  Four days after the surrender, the St. Louis newspapers printed his order organizing an army of five divisions.  The document made a respectable show of force on paper, claiming an aggregate of nearly thirty-nine thousand.  In reality, however, being scattered and totally unprepared for the field, it possessed no such effective strength.  For a month longer extravagant newspaper reports stimulated the public with the hope of substantial results from Fremont’s intended campaign.  Before the end of that time, however, President Lincoln, under growing apprehension, sent Secretary of War Cameron and the adjutant-general of the army to Missouri to make a personal investigation.  Reaching Fremont’s camp on October 13, they found the movement to be a mere forced, spasmodic display, without substantial strength, transportation, or coherent and feasible plan; and that at least two of the division commanders were without means to execute the orders they had received, and utterly without confidence in their leader, or knowledge of his intentions.

To give Fremont yet another chance, the Secretary of War withheld the President’s order to relieve the general from command, which he had brought with him, on Fremont’s insistence that a victory was really within his reach.  When this hope also proved delusive, and suspicion was aroused that the general might be intending not only to deceive, but to defy the administration, President Lincoln sent the following letter by a special friend to General Curtis, commanding at St. Louis: 

“DEAR SIR:  On receipt of this, with the accompanying inclosures, you will take safe, certain, and suitable measures to have the inclosure addressed to Major-General Fremont delivered to him with all reasonable dispatch, subject to these conditions only, that if, when General Fremont shall be reached by the messenger—­yourself, or any one sent by you—­he shall then have, in personal command, fought and won a battle, or shall then be actually in a battle, or shall then be in the immediate presence of the enemy in expectation of a battle, it is not to be delivered, but held for further orders.  After, and not till after, the delivery to General Fremont, let the inclosure addressed to General Hunter be delivered to him.”

The order of removal was delivered to Fremont on November 2.  By that date he had reached Springfield, but had won no victory, fought no battle, and was not in the presence of the enemy.  Two of his divisions were not yet even with him.  Still laboring under the delusion, perhaps imposed on him by his scouts, his orders stated that the enemy was only a day’s march distant, and advancing to attack him.  The inclosure mentioned in the President’s letter to Curtis was an order to General David Hunter to relieve Fremont.  When he arrived and assumed command the scouts he sent forward found no enemy within reach, and no such contingency of battle or hope of victory as had been rumored and assumed.