Fremont the Pathfinder

John Charles Frémont (January 21, 1813 – July 13, 1890), born John Charles Fremont, was an American military officer, explorer, the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States, and the first Presidential candidate of a major party to run on a platform in opposition to slavery. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the epithet The Pathfinder.

Fremont married the beautiful and tallented Jessie Benton, daughter of the influencial senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton. Senator Benton, Democratic Party leader for over 30 years in the Senate, championed the expansionist movement, a political cause that became known as "Manifest Destiny." This movement became a crusade for politicians like Benton, and in his new son-in-law, making a name for himself as a western topographer, he saw in Frémont a great political asset. Benton was soon pushing through Congress appropriations of money to be used for surveys of the Oregon Trail (1842), Oregon Territory (1844), and the Great Basin and Sierra Mountains to California (1845). Through his power and influence, Benton got Frémont the leadership of these expeditions.

Frémont first met American frontiersman Kit Carson on a Missouri River steamboat in Missouri during the summer of 1842. Frémont was preparing to lead his first expedition and was looking for a guide to take him to South Pass. The two men made acquaintance, and Carson offered his services, as he had spent much time in the area. The five month journey, made with 25 men, was a success, and Fremont's report was published by the U.S. Congress. The Frémont report "touched off a wave of wagon caravans filled with hopeful emigrants" heading West.

From 1842 to 1846 Frémont and his guide Carson led expedition parties on the Oregon Trail and into the Sierra Nevada. During his expeditions in the Sierra Nevada, it is generally acknowledged that Frémont became the first European American to view Lake Tahoe. He is also credited with determining that the Great Basin had no outlet to the sea. He also mapped volcanoes such as Mount St. Helens.

On June 1, 1845 John Frémont and 55 men left St. Louis, with Carson as guide, on the third expedition. The stated goal was to "map the source of the Arkansas River", on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. But upon reaching the Arkansas, Frémont suddenly made a hasty trail straight to California, without explanation. Arriving in the Sacramento Valley in early winter 1846, he promptly sought to stir up patriotic enthusiasm among the American settlers there. He promised that if war with Mexico started, his military force would "be there to protect them." Frémont nearly provoked a battle with General Jose Castro near Monterey, which would have likely resulted in the annilation of Frémont's group, due to the superior numbers of the Mexican troops.

In 1846, Frémont was Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Mounted Rifles. Late in the year, Frémont, acting under orders from Commodore Robert F. Stockton, led a military expedition of 300 men to capture Santa Barbara, California, during the Mexican-American War. Frémont led his unit over the Santa Ynez Mountains at San Marcos Pass and captured the Presidio, and the town. Mexican General Pico, recognizing that the war was lost, later surrendered to him rather than incur casualties.

On January 16, 1847, Commodore Stockton appointed Frémont military governor of California following the Treaty of Cahuenga, which ended the Mexican-American War in California. However, U.S. Army general Stephen Watts Kearny, who outranked Frémont and believed that he was the legitimate governor, arrested Frémont and brought him to Washington, D.C., where he was convicted of mutiny. President James Polk quickly pardoned him in light of his service in the war.

Frémont served (from 1850 to 1851) as one of the first pair of Senators from California. In 1856, the new Republican Party nominated him as their first presidential candidate. He lost to James Buchanan, though did surpass the American Party candidate, Millard Fillmore. Frémont lost California in the Electoral College.

Frémont later served as a major general in the American Civil War and served a controversial term as commander of the Army's Department of the West from May to November 1861.

Frémont ordered his General Nathaniel Lyon to formally bring Missouri into the Union cause. Lyon had been named the temporary commander of the Department of the West to succeed Harney before Frémont ultimately replaced Lyon. Lyon in a series of battles evicted Governor Claiborne Jackson and installed a pro-Union government. After Lyon was killed in the Battle of Wilson's Creek in August Frémont imposed martial law in the state, confiscating private property of secessionists and emancipating the state's slaves.

Abraham Lincoln, fearing the order would tip Missouri (and other slave states in Union control) to the southern cause, asked Frémont to revise the order. Frémont refused and sent his wife to plead the case. Lincoln responded by revoking the proclamation and relieving Frémont of command on November 2, 1861. In March 1862 Frémont was re-appointed to a different post (in West Virginia), but lost several battles to Stonewall Jackson and was relieved at his own request when ordered to serve under General John Pope.

Frémont was briefly the 1864 candidate of the Radical Republicans, a group of hard-line Republican abolitionists upset with Lincoln's position toward both the issues of slavery and post-war reconciliation with the southern sates. This 1864 fracturing of the Republican Party splintered off into two new political parties: the Anti-Lincoln Radical Republicans (convening in Cleveland starting on May 31, 1864) nominating Frémont, the Republicans' first standard-bearer from 1856, and; the political collaboration between pro-Lincoln Republicans and Democrats to form a new National Union Party (in convention in Baltimore during the first week in June 1864 Presidential Election) in order to accommodate War Democrats who wished to separate themselves from the Copperheads.

The Frémont-Radical Republicans political campaign was abandoned in September 1864 immediately after Frémont brokered a political deal with National Union Party candidate Lincoln to remove U.S. Posmaster General Montgomery Blair from his appointed federal office.

The state of Missouri took possession of the Pacific Railroad in February 1866 when the company defaulted in its interest payment, and in June 1866, the state, at private sale, sold the road to Fremont. Frémont reorganized the assets of the Pacific Railroad as the Southwest Pacific Railroad in August 1866, which in less than a year (June 1867) were repossessed by the state of Missouri when Frémont was unable to pay the second installment on his purchase price.

From 1878 to 1881, Frémont was the appointed Governor of the Arizona Territory. The family eventually had to live off the publication earnings of wife Jessie. The Pathfinder died in 1890 a forgotten man, of peritonitis in a hotel in New York City and is buried in Rockland Cemetery, Piermont-on-Hudson, New York.   Cigar Box Fremont   POLITICS   Fremont for President 1856