When the Secretary arrived at Washington and made his report, the removal of Fremont from his command soon followed. He was apprised of it on November 2d,[68] and immediately took leave of his army. To most of us, this seemed at the moment a calamity. Not that we could justly find fault with the decision reached by the government, but we keenly felt that the time for promulgating this decision was most inopportune. The general was apparently on the eve of a great battle; his army glowed with enthusiasm; the prospect of complete victory was unusually bright; he had in fact, with the smallest modicum of fighting, nearly driven the rebel army from our State. The strong, instinctive feeling of the great body of loyal men and women of our city was that he ought to have had the chance to finish the campaign so auspiciously begun. But the authorities at Washington had, with apparently abundant justification, decreed otherwise. There was only one thing to be done; that was to submit without murmuring. By the removal of Fremont his patriotic army was greatly disheartened. Some of them, in the first flush of disappointment, declared that they would not serve under another leader; that when he left they would throw down their arms and return to their homes. But in his farewell address to his troops, Fremont rose above all personal resentment, and in a tender patriotic appeal exhorted them to be as faithful to his successor as they had been to him.[69] Their sober second thought responded to his manly, unselfish words, and, in spite of their personal attachment to him, sinking all individual preferences, they determined unswervingly to fight on for the Union under any general that might be placed over them. So, as we generally anticipated, the highest motive prevailed. Fremont returned to St. Louis. The loyal Germans, to whom we and the whole country owed so much, received him with unshaken confidence, and with the warmest expressions of affection. At the time they were firmly convinced that those who had so strenuously urged his removal had treated him with marked injustice. These tokens of personal loyalty and confidence touched his heart. In response to the assurances of his steadfast friends, he complained of the unjust charges that, in his absence, had been “rained on his defenceless head—defenceless because his face was turned to the public enemy.” But, though smarting under what he deemed grievous personal wrong, there was no note of recreancy to his country.