While the weary President was spending sleepless nights planning the reorganization of the Army of the Potomac and an offensive campaign to satisfy public clamor, he endeavored to arbitrate the quarrel between Frémont and the Blairs. In the midst of his efforts at conciliation, General Frémont startled the country and almost paralyzed the President by issuing an emancipation proclamation and an order that all persons found with arms in their hands should be shot. The President wrote him a gentle but firm remonstrance, "in a spirit of caution and not of censure," he said, and sent it by special messenger to St. Louis, "in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you." Mrs. Frémont brought the reply to Washington. It was an apology mixed with defiance. Frémont asserted that he had acted from convictions of duty with full deliberation, and proceeded at length to argue the justice and expediency of the step; and he was as much encouraged in his defiance as Lincoln was embarrassed by the radical Republican leaders and newspapers of the North. Frémont's proclamation was revoked by order of the President, but it was not so easy to correct the mistakes he had made in administration. Finally, after long deliberation and upon the advice of three experienced officers in whom he had great confidence and who had been with Frémont and were familiar with his conduct and the political and military situation, the President relieved him from command. Frémont accepted the inevitable with dignity. He issued a farewell address to his army, was given ovations by radical Republicans in different parts of the country, but was not again intrusted with an independent command.