John C. Frémont, explorer, 1856 Republican
presidential nominee, and Union general, was born in Savannah, Georgia, to Anne
Whiting Pryor, scion of an upper-crust Virginia family, and Jean Charles Fremon,
an instructor of French and dance. In 1811 Anne Pryor had deserted her much
older husband to elope with Fremon, a French immigrant. Moving repeatedly, the
couple evidently never wed but had several children. After Anne Fremon was
widowed in 1818, she raised her family in genteel poverty in Charleston, South
Carolina. At some point after his father’s death, John Charles added a
"t" and accent to his family name. Young Frémont worked in a law
office, then studied at the College of Charleston from 1829 until his expulsion
in 1831, shortly before graduation, for "incorrigible negligence." The
school, however, bestowed on him a Bachelors of Arts degree five years later.
Joel Poinsett, a South Carolina politician and
botanist, became Frémont’s patron. In 1833 he secured Frémont a position
aboard the USS Natchez as the crew’s civilian math teacher. After the
ship returned from a two-year voyage to South America, Poinsett got Frémont
placed in a topographical survey of a proposed railroad route in the Smokey
Mountains, then in a survey of Cherokee lands centering in Georgia. As President
Martin Van Buren’s secretary of war, Poinsett arranged for Frémont to
accompany Joseph Nicollet, a French-born scientist and explorer, on two surveys
(1838, 1839) of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The U.S. Army Corps of
Topographical Engineers commissioned Frémont as a second lieutenant. In 1841
the 28-year-old Frémont eloped with the Jessie Benton, the 17-year-old daughter
of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. They had five children; three
whom attained adulthood.
In 1842 Senator Benton secured Congressional
authorization for an expedition, headed by his new son-in-law, to explore,
survey, and map the Oregon Trail. John and Jessie Frémont’s published report
of the expedition (1843) captivated American readers with such romantic images
as Frémont planting Old Glory atop the Rocky Mountains and guide Christopher
"Kit" Carson galloping bareback across the plains. Ignoring the
governmental directive to return via the same path, Frémont and his party
traveled into Nevada, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and into the Mexican
territory of California. In all, the expedition covered almost 6500 miles. The
Frémonts’ second published report (1845)— part science text, part adventure
story, and part travel guide, illustrated with detailed maps—was also a
bestseller.
Frémont’s third expedition (1845-1847) took
him across the Rockies again and to the Pacific Coast. President James Polk
wanted his presence there in case of war with Mexico. When Mexican officials
ordered him out of California, he hoisted the American flag and remained defiant
until the American consul convinced him to retreat. Frémont and his sixty men
traveled to Oregon, but upon receiving a message from President Polk, they
returned to California and participated in the Bear Flag Revolt against Mexican
rule. In California, Frémont became embroiled in a dispute between Admiral
Robert Stockton and General Stephen Kearny. He sided with Stockton, so Kearny
had the explorer court-martialed. After a guilty verdict, Polk reinstated him,
but the indignant Frémont resigned.
In 1847 Frémont bought a tract of land in
California on which gold was soon discovered, making him a rich man. The next
year his fourth expedition ended with the death of ten of his men in the harsh
Rocky Mountain winter, but the party continued to California. Frémont was
elected as one of California’s first two U.S. Senators, serving the short term
(1850-1852). In Congress he voted against the new Fugitive Slave Act and for the
ban on the slave trade in Washington D.C. The state legislature denied him a
second term, choosing a proslavery Democrat, instead. Frémont undertook his
final expedition in the 1853-1854 winter. Like the fourth, it was privately
funded and was plagued by severe weather.
In 1856, backed by U.S. Speaker of the House
Nathaniel Banks and newspaper editor Francis Blair Sr., Frémont became the new
Republican party’s first presidential nominee. His heroic public persona as
"the Pathfinder" generated an enthusiastic following in the North, but
in the South he was tainted as a "Frenchman’s bastard" and
(incorrectly) as a Roman Catholic. In a three-way race, Democratic nominee James
Buchanan defeated Frémont and former President Millard Fillmore of the American
party by a comfortable margin. Frémont, however, finished second with 33% of
the popular vote and 114 electoral votes (to Buchanan’s 45% and 174 votes),
thereby establishing the Republican party as a real political force and the main
rival to the Democratic party.
Frémont returned to management of his gold mines
which were having financial problems. At the onset of the Civil War, he took the
assignment of commanding the Department of the West, headquartered in St. Louis,
at the rank of major general. Missouri was bitterly divided by the war and
Confederates quickly gained control of the southwestern region. On August 30,
1861, Frémont established martial law and issued a decree freeing the slaves of
Missouri’s Confederate sympathizers. President Lincoln rescinded the
emancipation proclamation, fearing it might push other border states into the
Confederate camp. Staff corruption, opposition from Missouri’s Blair family,
and military defeats caused Lincoln to relieve Frémont of his command on
November 2.
On March 29, pressured by radical Republicans who
looked favorably upon Frémont’s antislavery views and policies, Lincoln
placed the general in charge of the Mountain Department in western Virginia. In
late June his department was subsumed within Union General John Pope’s Army of
Virginia. Frémont, however, refused to recognize Pope’s authority and was
therefore removed from his position. In late May 1864 a group of radical
Republicans, dissatisfied with Lincoln, nominated Frémont for president on the
Radical Democracy ticket. His campaign, though, never took off and, fearing his
candidacy might help elect a Democratic president, he withdrew from the race in
late September.
Thereafter, Frémont focused on his railroad and
other investments. In 1873 he was convicted of defrauding the French government
concerning his Memphis, El Paso, and Pacific Railroad. Associated fines and
other financial woes during the contemporaneous economic depression brought
Frémont to poverty’s doorstep. In 1878 President Rutherford Hayes appointed
him as governor of the Arizona Territory. He tried to use the new political
power to regain his wealth through mining and land investments, but such
entanglements led to his forced resignation in 1881. In retirement, he published
a two-volume memoir. Congress awarded him an annual $6000 military pension in
1890. He died in New York City a few months later.
Sources consulted: American National Biography; Mark Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents.