The Secessionists of St. Louis had been encouraged by the untoward course of events in the East. After Bull Run had come the shocking disaster of Ball's Bluff, and with Gen. Price only a short distance away on the Osage threatening Jefferson City and north Missouri, they felt their star in the ascendant, and became unbearably insolent. Gen. Halleck repressed them with a vigorous hand, yet without causing the wild clamor of denunciation which characterized Gen. Butler's Administration of New Orleans. 258 It will be remembered that at that time it was thought quite the thing for young Secessionist women to show their "spirit" and their devotion to the South by all manner of open insult to the Yankee soldiers. Spitting at them, hurling epithets of abuse, and contemptuously twitching aside their skirts were regarded as quite the correct thing in the good society of which these young ladies were the ornaments. This had become so intolerable in New Orleans, that Gen. Butler felt constrained to issue his famous order directing that women so offending should be treated as "women of the town plying their vocation." This was made the pretext of "firing the Southern heart" to an unwarranted degree, and Jeff Davis issued a proclamation of outlawry against Ben Butler, with a reward for his head. Sanguine Secessionists hoped that this "flagrant outrage" by "Beast Butler" would be sufficient cause for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy by France and England. Gen. Halleck met the same difficulty as Butler very shrewdly. The Chief of Police of St. Louis had some measure of control over the disreputable women of the city, and made law for them. Under Gen. Hal-leek's order he instructed these women to vie with and exceed their respectable sisters in their manifestations of hostility to the Union cause and of devotion to the South. Where the fair young ladies of the Southern aristocracy were wearing Secession rosettes as big as a rose, the women of the demimonde sported them as big as a dahlia or sunflower. Where the young belle gave a little graceful twitch to her skirts to prevent any possible contamination by touching a passing Yankee, the other class flirted theirs' aside in the most immodest way. It took but a few days of this to make the exuberant young ladies of uncontrollable rebel proclivities discard their Secession rosettes altogether, and subside into dignified, self-respecting persons, who took no more notice of a passing Union soldier than they did of a lamp-post or tree-box. 259 Another of Gen. Halleck's orders did not result so happily. It will be remembered that Gen. Fremont declared free the slaves of men in arms against the Government, and that their freedom would be assured them upon reaching the Union lines. In the inflamed condition of public sentiment in the Border States on the negro question this was very impolitic, and the President promptly overruled the order.