These commanders were most of them educated military officers, but possessed of limited experience. Their lives had been passed on a peace establishment, and they were consequently without practical knowledge. Many of these, as well as such officers as were selected from civil life, seemed bewildered by their sudden preferment, and appeared to labor under the impression that they were clothed not only with military but civil authority. Some in the higher grades imagined that in addition to leading armies and fighting battles, they had plenary power to administer the Government and prescribe the policy to be pursued in their respective departments. Much difficulty and no small embarrassment was caused by their mistaken assumptions and acts, in the early part of the war. J. C. Fremont, the western explorer, a political candidate for the Presidency in 1856, and made a major general by President Lincoln at the beginning of the rebellion in 1861, was assigned to the command of the western department. He evidently considered himself clothed with proconsular powers; that he was a representative of the Government in a civil capacity as well as military commander, and soon after establishing his headquarters at St. Louis assumed authority over the slavery question which the President could neither recognize nor permit. General Hunter, at Port Royal, and General Phelps, in the Gulf, each laboring under the same error, took upon themselves to issue extraordinary manifestoes that conflicted with the Constitution and laws, on the subject of slavery, which the President was compelled to disavow. The subject, if to be acted upon, was administrative and belonged to the Government and civil authorities--not to military commanders. But there was a feeling in Congress and the country which sympathized with the radical generals in these anti-slavery decrees, rather than with the law, and the Executive in maintaining it. The Secretary of War, under whom these generals acted, not inattentive to current opinion, also took an extraordinary position, and in his annual report enunciated a policy in regard to the slavery question, without the assent of the President and without even consulting him. Mr. Lincoln promptly directed the assuming portion of the report, which had already been printed, to be cancelled; but the proceeding embarrassed the Administration and contributed to the retirement of Mr. Cameron from the Cabinet. These differences in the army, in the Administration, and among the Republicans in Congress, extended to the people. A radical faction opposed to the legal, cautious, and considerate policy of the President began to crystallize and assume shape and form, which, while it did not openly oppose the President, sowed the seeds of discontent against his policy and the general management of public affairs.