The President's troubles were not confined to the Army of the Potomac, nor were they bounded by the Alleghany Mountains, but extended wherever there were military movements; wherever there were offices to be filled the same conditions existed; the same jealousies, rivalries, and incompetence interfered with the proper administration of the government. And the most popular heroes, the idols of the public, invariably caused the most confusion and showed the most flagrant indiscretion and incompetence. Second only in popularity to McClellan, perhaps even higher in the esteem of the Republican party, was John C. Frémont, the first candidate of that party for the Presidency, a man whose adventures as an explorer had excited the admiring interest of every school-boy, and whose activity in making California a state had given him a reputation for romance, gallantry, and patriotism. He was "the Pathfinder," and second only to Daniel Boone as a frontier hero. Seward had pressed him for appointment as Secretary of War; at one time Lincoln put him down on the slate as minister to France, and when the war broke out his name was among the first to suggest itself to the people as that of a savior of the country. He had been in France during the winter, and had sailed for home when Sumter was fired upon. Upon his arrival in New York he was handed a commission as major-general in the regular army and orders to take command in the Mississippi Valley. It was an opportunity that any soldier might have envied, and the President expected him to proceed at once to his head-quarters at St. Louis, where his presence was imperatively needed; but the ovations he received in the East and the adulation that was paid him everywhere were too gratifying for his self-denial, and it was not until he received peremptory orders, twenty-five days after his appointment, that he proceeded leisurely westward to find his department in a state of the greatest confusion and apprehension. Instead, however, of devoting himself to the task of organization and getting an army into the field to quell disloyal uprisings and exterminate the bushwhackers who were burning towns, plundering farm-houses, tearing up railroads, murdering loyal citizens, and committing other crimes, he remained in St. Louis, taking more interest in political than in military questions, issuing commissions to his friends, and giving contracts with such a lavish hand and in such an irregular way as to provoke protest from the accounting officers of the government. Political intrigue and distrust were so prevalent that Frémont was accused of an ambition to lead a new secession movement, separate the Western States from the Union, and establish an empire under his own sovereignty similar to that of which Aaron Burr is supposed to have dreamed.