Frémont << FREE mont >>, John Charles (1813-1890), sometimes called “The Pathfinder,” explored much of the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. In 1856, he was the first Republican candidate for president of the United States, but he lost to James Buchanan, a Democrat. He served in the Army and Navy, and as a United States senator.
As a second lieutenant in the Army Topographical Corps, Frémont worked as a surveyor in the Carolina mountains. He made his first important independent survey to the Wind River chain of the Rockies in 1842. During this trip, he met the frontiersman Kit Carson, who became the guide for his expeditions. Frémont’s Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains described this trip, and established his reputation.
Frémont explored part of the Oregon region in 1843. He visited Fort Vancouver, and then moved to the Carson River in Nevada early in 1844. From there he went to California, which was then a Mexican province. After exploring the Southwest, he returned to St. Louis, Missouri, in August 1844. Frémont helped produce the first scientific map of the American West.
The third expedition, in 1845, was organized with the Mexican War (1846-1848) in prospect. Frémont aroused the suspicions of the Mexican authorities in California, and they ordered him to leave. However, by the summer of 1846 he was inspiring discontented Americans in the Sacramento Valley to organize the Bear Flag Revolt, see California (The Mexican War).
Commodore Robert Stockton of the Navy and General Stephen W. Kearny of the Army became involved in a dispute over conflicting orders, and Frémont sided with Stockton. When Kearny won, he had Frémont court-martialed for insubordination (see Kearny, Stephen W.). The Army dismissed Frémont from the service. President James K. Polk overruled the dismissal, but Frémont then resigned from the Army. He made a fourth expedition in 1848, searching unsuccessfully for a possible route for a transcontinental railroad. He then settled in California and served as a U.S. senator from September 1850 until March 1851. In a fifth expedition in 1853, he again failed to find a railroad route.
In June 1856, Frémont became the presidential candidate of the newly formed Republican Party. He had been asked to be the Democratic presidential candidate, but declined because that party supported slavery. One Republican slogan was “Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, Free Men, Frémont, and Victory!” During the campaign, Democrats argued that Frémont’s election would cause the Southern States to separate from the Union and possibly lead to civil war. Frémont carried 11 states in the election of 1856. Buchanan, his Democratic rival, carried 19 and won the election.
Early in the American Civil War (1861-1865), President Abraham Lincoln gave Frémont command of the Union Army’s Western Department. But Frémont issued a proclamation taking over the property of rebelling Missouri slaveholders, and freeing the people held in slavery. His act aroused the public and angered Lincoln, who transferred him to western Virginia. Later, he served from 1878 to 1883 as territorial governor of Arizona. He died on July 13, 1890.
Frémont was born on Jan. 21, 1813, in Savannah, Georgia, and studied at Charleston (South Carolina) College. In 1841, he married Jessie Benton, the daughter of the powerful Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. Mrs. Frémont, who had helped her husband write stirring accounts about his Rocky Mountain expeditions, became a regular magazine writer after her husband lost his wealth in the 1870’s. She also wrote several books describing her own experiences.
