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. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the epithet The Pathfinder, which remains in use, sometimes as "The Great Pathfinder".^[1][2]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Expeditions to the West 3 Politics 4 Civil War 5 Later life 6 Legacy 7 Trivia 8 References 9 Notes 10 Further reading 11 External links

[edit] Early life

Frémont was born in Savannah, Georgia. His ancestry is disputed by historians. According to the 1902 genealogy^[3] of the Frémont family, he was the son of Anne Beverley Whiting, a prominent Virginia society woman, who after his birth, married Louis-René Frémont, a penniless French refugee, in 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,^[4] 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 confirm he was illegitimate, a social handicap he overcame by marrying Jessie Benton, the favorite daughter of the very influential senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858).

Benton, Democratic Party leader for over 30 years in the Senate, championed the expansionist movement, a political cause that became known as "Manifest Destiny." Basically the expansionists believed that the North American continent, from one end to the other, should belong to the citizens of the United States—and that getting those lands was the country’s 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.

[edit] Expeditions to the West

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 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.^[5]

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.^[6] 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."^[7]

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

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 (see U.S. presidential election, 1856) to James Buchanan, though did surpass the American Party candidate, Millard Fillmore. Frémont lost California in the Electoral College.

[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.

[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, even his father-in-law publicly sided against him. In 1866, he reorganized the assets of the Pacific Railroad as the Southwest Pacific Railroad, which a year later were repossessed by the state of Missouri.^[8].

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.

[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. The California Flannelbush, Fremontodendron californicum, is named for him.

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. The Fremont River, a tributary of the Colorado River in southern Utah, was named after Frémont, and in turn, the prehistoric Fremont culture was named after the river — the first archaeological sites of this culture were discovered near its course.

A barbershop chorus in Fremont, Nebraska is named The Fremont Pathfinders in homage to the explorer,^[9] as is the Fremont Pathfinders Artillery Battery,^[10] an American Civil War reenactment group from the same community.

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, and the Grant City section of Staten Island, New York. 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 in Los Angeles and Oakland, California and the John C. Fremont Branch Library, located on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, California, and a John C. Fremont Junior High School in Mesa, Arizona, and one in Oxnard, California. 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 that 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] Trivia

• Frémont took on the thirteen year old Jesse Shepard as his page, a role he filled for two years, until 1863. It is claimed that he chose Jesse to be his page for a love relationship because the boy was queer, and the two were constantly together, the boy displaying a great affection for Frémont.^{[11] [Quotation from source requested on talk page to verify interpretation of source]}
• Frémont's great-grandfather, Henry Whiting, was a half-brother of Catherine Whiting who married John Washington, uncle of George Washington.^[12][13][14]

[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

1. ^ Adams, Dennis. "The Man for Whom Fort Fremont was Named". Beaufort County (SC) Library. URL retrieved on February 1, 2007.
2. ^ John Charles Fremont. Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum. Biographies. URL retrieved on February 19, 2007.
3. ^ Roy, Pierre-Georges. La famille Frémont, Lévis, 1902. p. 84.
4. ^ Brands, H.W. Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, Doubleday, 2005. p. 190.
5. ^ Nevins, p. 194.
6. ^ "San Francisco History: The Beginnings of San Francisco, Appendix D". San Francisco Genealogy. URL retrieved on January 24, 2007.
7. ^ Thompsen Robert A. (1905) History of Calfiornia, Vol. 5. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 174-75.
8. ^ 100 Years of Service (1960). Retrieved on 2006-04-20.
9. ^ The History of the Fremont Pathfinders. Barbershop Chorus. URL retrieved on February 19, 2007.
10. ^ History of the Pathfinders. Fremont Pathfinders Artillery Battery. URL retrieved on February 19, 2007.
11. ^ Charley Shively, Drum Beat: Walt Whitman's Civil War Boy Lovers, pp.47-48, ISBN 0940567067
12. ^ Robert H. Wynn, "John Charles Fremont, Explorer!", 'Bob and Brenda Exploring' Newsletter, March 2006, Issue No. 16. URL retrieved on January 7, 2007.
13. ^ "The Diaries of George Washington", Vol. 2, 1976. The George Washington Papers, The Library of Congress. URL retrieved on January 7, 2007.
14. ^ Geneological convolution, RootsWeb. URL retrieved on January 7, 2007.

[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. [1]
• Chaffin, Tom, "Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire," New York: Hill and Wang, 2002 ISBN 0809075571 ISBN 978-0809075577

[edit] External links

• Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: John C. Frémont
• Crossing the Sierra Nevada 1844
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Preceded by Robert Field Stockton	Military Governor of California 1847	Succeeded by Stephen W. Kearny
Preceded by None	United States Senator (Class 1) from California 1850–1851 Served alongside: William M. Gwin	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