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ML_fremont_bkp.htm
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John C. Fremont. (Courtesy Library of Congress Prints)
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Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont
Enterprising And Ambitious, Fremont Led A Life That Was One Adventure After Another
By Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Military.com Columnist
John C. Fremont's life story reads like an adventure novel. Son of a runaway Southern belle and her French lover Fremon, the illegitimate and penniless youth added a "t" to Americanize his name and set about gaining education and experience any way he could. During his lifetime, Fremont would be lionized by the press, elope with a politician's daughter, run as the first Republican presidential candidate, and lose a gold-rush fortune.
Fremont always sought out powerful men as mentors, patrons, and friends. Joel Poinsett, an important diplomat and explorer, helped the young Fremont gain an assignment helping the Army survey the southern Appalachian mountains. Later, as head of the Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers, Poinsett connected then-2nd Lt. Fremont with scientist Joseph Nicollet's survey of the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
Nicollet made his protege head of an 1841 survey of the Des Moines River. By now, Fremont had attracted the attention of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, a well-known proponent of "Manifest Destiny." The same year, Fremont eloped with Benton's headstrong and talented daughter Jessie, who cultivated her husband as "The Pathfinder" of the American West through her editing and writing of his reports.
From War Department duty surveying the route west to Wyoming, to mapping the mouth of the Columbia River with Christopher "Kit" Carson, Fremont's explorations won him widespread fame. Having won a double brevet to first lieutenant and captain, Fremont was promoted to major and sent to California to aid in its pre-Mexican War annexation. On Jan. 16, 1848, Commodore Robert Stockton appointed him civil governor of California. Caught between Stockton and Gen. Stephen Kearny, Fremont was nearly court-martialed for disobedience. Instead, he resigned from the Army and spent the next years amassing millions from his Mariposa gold mines.
In 1850, still popular and an abolitionist, Fremont was elected a California senator. In 1856, he was nominated as the Republican Party candidate against winner James Buchanan. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Fremont a major general in command of the Western Department of the Army at St. Louis. In 1861, as commander, Fremont famously issued a premature "Fremont's Emancipation Proclamation" for the state of Missouri, which was withdrawn. The move cost him Lincoln's confidence and he was removed from his post.
Bad speculation and neglect of his property caused Fremont to lose his $10 million fortune, and after serving as territorial governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1883, he once more resigned from active service and retired to New York. Restored to status as major general, retired, Fremont died on Staten Island on July 13, 1890. |
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