John C. Frémont

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Charles Frémont

Senior Senator, California
In office September 9, 1850 – March 3, 1851
Preceded by	(none)
Succeeded by	John B. Weller

Born	January 21, 1813 Savannah, Georgia, USA
Died	July 13, 1890 New York City, New York, USA
Political party	Democrat, Republican
Spouse	Jessie Benton Frémont
Profession	Politician

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.

1 Early life
2 Expeditions to the West
3 Politics
4 Civil War
5 Later life
6 Legacy
7 References
8 Notes
9 Further reading
10 External links

[edit] Early life

Frémont was born in Savannah, Georgia. His ancestry is disputed by historians. According to the 1902 genealogy^[1] of the Frémont family, he was the son of Anne Beverley Whiting, a prominent Virginia society woman, who remarried to Louis-René Frémont, a penniless French refugee and French teacher from Norfolk on May 14, 1807. Louis-René Frémont was the son of Jean-Louis Frémont, a Québec City merchant, who was the immigrant son of Charles-Louis Frémont from Saint Germain en Laye near Paris. H.W. Brands, however, in his biography of Andrew Jackson,^[2] states that Fremont was the son of Anne and Charles Fremon, and that Fremont added the accented "e" and the "t" to his name later in life. Many believe he was illegitimate, a social handicap he overcame by marrying Jessie Benton, the favorite daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, who was a leading Democrat and a slaveowner.

[edit] Expeditions to the West

Modern marker for site where two of Frémont's men were lost in Colorado

Frémont assisted and led multiple surveying expeditions through the western territory of the United States. In 1838 and 1839 he assisted Joseph Nicollet in exploring the lands between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and in 1841, with training from Nicollet, he mapped portions of the Des Moines River. From 1841 to 1846 he and his guide Kit Carson led exploration 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 Caucasian 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.^[3]

In 1846, Fremont ordered the murders of Jose R. Berreyesa and Ramon and Fransciso De Haro, the twin sons of Francisco De Haro, the first Alcalde of San Francisco, near present-day San Rafael. [1] The murder of these popular Californianos hindered Fremont's political career and prevented him from being the first American governor of California, a post he coveted. Writing about the murders a half-century later, the historian Robert A. Thompsen noted, "Californians cannot speak of it down to this day without intense feeling" (History of California. vol. 5, p. 174-5.)

That same year, he was Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Mounted Rifles (a predecessor of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment). In late 1846 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. He led his unit over the Santa Ynez Mountains at San Marcos Pass and captured the Presidio, and the town. General Pico, recognizing that the war was lost, later surrendered to him rather than incur casualties.

[edit] Politics

John Frémont

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.

He 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, but he lost (see U.S. presidential election, 1856) to James Buchanan. Frémont lost California in the Electoral College.

1856 Republican parade banner

[edit] Civil War

Frémont was 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 replaced William S. Harney who had negotiated the Harney-Price Truce which permitted Missouri to remain neutral in the conflict as long as it did not send men or supplies to either side.

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 he was re-appointed to a different post (in West Virginia), but lost several battles to Stonewall Jackson and resigned his post.

Historian James Ford Rhodes characterizes Frémont's behavior in the early stages of the war:^[4]

He worked closely with men who "were interested in securing fat contracts...and he was deaf to the entreaties of well-informed Union citizens for an order to re-enforce a capable general, who was actively engaged in the field. Distrusted by men of worth and influence in Missouri, flattered by speculators, it is little wonder that the charge was made that the department of Missouri was managed for purpose of making private fortunes rather than for the country’s weal. .... [On August 30 he suddenly] decided upon a proclamation freeing the slaves....declaring the slaves of all persons in the State of Missouri, taking up arms against the United States, freemen. That it was a play to retain his power was evident to hard-headed men. "The truth is," wrote Montgomery Blair to Charles Sumner, "with Frémont’s surroundings, the set of scoundrels who alone have control of him, this proclamation setting up the higher law was like a painted woman quoting Scripture." Lincoln learned through the newspapers of Frémont’s proclamation and of his "bureau of abolition," set up for the purpose of issuing deeds of manumission to slaves. Although this major-general of two month’s standing, without careful survey of the whole field, without comprehension of the important and various interests involved had, on a sudden impulse, assumed to solve a question which the President, his Cabinet and Congress were approaching only in a careful and tentative manner, Lincoln’s letter to Frémont of September 2, sent by a special messenger, was as full of kindness as of wisdom. "The liberating slaves of traitorous owners," he wrote, "will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify that paragraph 1 so as to conform to the” Confiscation act of Congress. “This letter is written in a spirit of caution and not of censure." Frémont was unwilling to retract the provision objected to and asked that the President should openly direct him to make the correction: this Lincoln cheerfully did by public order.

—James Ford Rhodes, History of the Civil War, 1861–1865

[edit] Later life

Frémont was briefly the candidate of the Radical Republicans, a group of hard-line abolitionists upset with Lincoln's position toward slavery. The campaign was abandoned in September 1864.

In 1866, Frémont reorganized the assets of the Pacific Railroad as the Southwest Pacific Railroad, which a year later was repossessed by the U.S. state of Missouri.^[5].

Frémont was appointed Governor of the Arizona Territory from 1878 to 1881. He died of peritonitis in a hotel in New York City and is buried in Rockland Cemetery, Piermont-on-Hudson, New York.

[edit] Legacy

Frémont collected a number of plants on his expeditions, including the first recorded discovery of the Single-leaf Pinyon by a Caucasian. The standard botanical author abbreviation Frém. is applied to plants he described.

Many places are named for him (See Fremont). Four U.S. states named counties in his honor: Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, and Wyoming. Several cities are also named after him, such as Fremont, California, Fremont, Michigan, Fremont, Nebraska, and Fremont, New Hampshire. Likewise, Fremont Peak in the Wind River Mountains is also named for the explorer.

Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada is named in his honor, as are streets in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kiel, Wisconsin, Manhattan, Kansas, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. Portland also has several other locations named after Frémont, such as Fremont Bridge. Other places named for him include John C. Fremont Senior High School and the John C. Fremont Branch Library, located on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, California, and John C. Fremont Junior High School in Mesa, Arizona. In addition, the John C. Fremont Hospital, in Mariposa, California — where Fremont and his wife lived and prospered during the Gold Rush — is named for him.

In James Michener's novel SPACE, much of the action occurs in the fictional state of "Frémont", and several of the novel's main characters are natives of this state. The novel's endpapers include a map of the United States which shows the precise borders of Michener's fictional Frémont, but (necessarily) omits the borders of the neighboring states. The fictional Frémont's location roughly corresponds to our world's Nebraska.

[edit] References

Nevins, Allan. Fremont: Pathmarker of the West, Volume 1: Fremont the Explorer; Volume 2: Fremont in the Civil War (1939, rev ed. 1955)

[edit] Notes

^ Roy, Pierre-Georges. La famille Frémont, Lévis, 1902. p. 84.
^ Brands, H.W. Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, Doubleday, 2005. p. 190.
^ Nevins, p. 194.
^ James Ford Rhodes, History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 (1917) pp. 51-52.
^ 100 Years of Service (1960). Retrieved on 2006-04-20.

[edit] Further reading

Harvey, Miles, The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime, Random House, 2000, ISBN 0375501517, ISBN 0767908260.
David H. Miller and Mark J. Stegmaier, James F. Milligan: His Journal of Fremont's Fifth Expedition, 1853-1854; His Adventurous Life on Land and Sea, Arthur H. Clark Co., 1988. 300 pp.
NY Times, Harper's Weekly political cartoon, "That's What's the Trouble with John C."; Fremont's 1864 challenge to Lincoln's re-nomination. [2]

[edit] External links

The standard author abbreviation Frém. may be used to indicate this person in citing a botanical name.

Preceded by Robert Field Stockton	Military Governor of California 1847	Succeeded by Stephen W. Kearny
Preceded by (none)	U.S. Senator (Class 1) from California 1850 – 1851	Succeeded by John B. Weller
Preceded by (none)	Republican Party presidential candidate 1856 (lost)	Succeeded by Abraham Lincoln
Preceded by John Philo Hoyt	Governor of Arizona Territory 1878–1881	Succeeded by John Jay Gosper

United States Republican Party Presidential Nominees
Frémont • Lincoln • Grant • Hayes • Garfield • Blaine • Harrison • McKinley • Roosevelt • Taft • Hughes • Harding • Coolidge • Hoover • Landon • Willkie • Dewey • Eisenhower • Nixon • Goldwater • Nixon • Ford • Reagan • GHW Bush • Dole • GW Bush