At the extreme West Missouri gave the President some trouble. The bushwhacking citizens of that frontier State, divided not unequally between the Union and Disunion sides, entered upon an irregular but energetic warfare with ready zeal if not actually with pleasure. Northerners in general hardly paused to read the newspaper accounts of these rough encounters, but the President was much concerned to save the State. As it lay over against Illinois along the banks of the Mississippi River, and for the most part above the important strategic point where Cairo controls the junction of that river with the Ohio, possession of it appeared to him exceedingly desirable. In the hope of helping matters forward, on July 3, 1861, he created the Department of the West, and placed it under command of General Fremont. But the choice proved unfortunate. Fremont soon showed himself inefficient and troublesome. At first the President endeavored to allay the local bickerings; on September 9, 1861, he wrote to General Hunter: "General Fremont needs assistance which it is difficult to give him. He is losing the confidence of men near him.... His cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself;... he does not know what is going on.... 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;... but will you not serve the country, and oblige me, by taking it voluntarily?" Kindly consideration, however, was thrown away upon Fremont, whose self-esteem was so great that he could not see that he ought to be grateful, or that he must be subordinate. He owed his appointment largely to the friendly urgency of the Blair family; and now Postmaster-General Blair, puzzled at the disagreeable stories about him, went to St. Louis on an errand of investigation. Fremont promptly placed him under arrest. At the same time Mrs. Fremont was journeying to Washington, where she had an extraordinary interview with the President. "She sought an audience with me at midnight," wrote Lincoln, "and taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarreling with her.... She more than once intimated that if General Fremont should decide to try conclusions with me, he could set up for himself." Naturally the angry lady's threats of treason, instead of seeming a palliation of her husband's shortcomings, tended to make his displacement more inevitable. Yet the necessity of being rid of him was unfortunate, because he was the pet hero of the Abolitionists, who stood by him without the slightest regard to reason. Lincoln was loath to offend them, but he felt that he had no choice, and therefore ordered the removal. He preserved, however, that habitual strange freedom from personal resentment which made his feelings, like his action, seem to be strictly official. After the matter was all over he uttered a fair judgment: "I thought well of Fremont. Even now I think well of his impulses.