John
Fremont was
born in Savanannah, Georgia, on 21st January, 1813. Educated at Charleston
College, he taught mathematics before joining the Army Topographical
Engineers Corps in 1838. The following year Fremont joined a party
led by Joseph N. Nicollet, that surveyed
and mapped the region between the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
Fremont surveyed the Des Moines River in 1841. Sponsored by the Missouri
senator, Thomas Hart Benton, in 1842
Fremont mapped most of the Oregon
Trail and
climbed the second highest peak in the Wind River Mountains, afterwards
known as Fremont Peak.
In 1843, with Kit Carson and Tom
Fitzpatrick as
his guides, Fremont's party followed the Cache de la Poudre River
into the Laramie Mountains. He then crossed the Rocky
Mountains via
the South Pass and Green River. He then followed the Bear River until
it reached the Great Salt Lake.
After
spending time at Fort
Hall he
followed the Snake River past Fort
Boise to
Fort
Vancouver,
where he met John
McLoughlin.
Fremont then turned south where he explored Klamath Lake and the Great
Basin before making a
midwinter crossing of the Sierra
Nevada mountains
and despite great hardships reached Sutter
Fort.
Fremont eventually reached St.
Louis
on 6th August,
1844.
Fremont made his third expedition in 1845 during which he explored
the Great Basin and the Pacific coast. While this was taking place
the Mexican War started. Fremont was
given the rank of major in the United States
Army and helped annex California. Commodore Robert
Stockton appointed Fremont as governor of California. However,
in 1847 Fremont clashed with General Stephen
Kearny
and as a result was arrested for mutiny and insubordination and was
subsequently court-martialed. President James
Polk intervened and Fremont was eventually released.
In the winter of 1848 and 1849 Fremont led an expedition to locate
passes for a proposed railway line from the upper Rio Grande to California.
During the Californian Gold Rush gold
was discovered on his estate and he became a multi-millionaire.
In 1850 Fremont was elected as senator for California. A strong opponent
of slavery, Fremont founder member of
the Republican Party. In 1856 Fremont
was chosen as its first presidential candidate and although the Democratic
Party candidate, James Buchanan,
won with 1,838,169 votes, he did well to obtained the support of 1,335,264
electors.
When
Abraham Lincoln was elected president
in 1860, Fremont was expected to be appointed to the Cabinet. Lincoln
was reluctant to do this and instead proposed that Fremont should
be appointed minister of France. William
H. Seward, Secretary of State, objected, claiming that as Fremont
had been born in Georgia, he could not be trusted to remain loyal
during a conflict with the South.
On the outbreak of the American Civil War
Fremont was appointed as a Major General in the Union
Army and put in command of the newly created Western Department
based
in St. Louis.
On
30th August, 1861, Freemont proclaimed that all slaves owned by Confederates
in Missouri were free. Abraham Lincoln
was furious when he heard the news as he feared that this action would
force slave-owners in border states to join the Confederate forces.
Lincoln asked Fremont to modify his order and free only slaves owned
by Missourians actively working for the South. Fremont refused claiming
that "it would imply that I myself thought it wrong and that
I had acted without reflection which the gravity of the point demanded."
Montgomery Blair, the
Postmaster General,who
had originally supported the appointment of Fremont, now urged Abraham
Lincoln to sack him. Lincoln
responded by sending Simon
Cameron, Secretary of War, Congressman Elihu
Washburne
and General Lorenzo Thomas
to investigate the situation in St.
Louis. After they reported
back to Lincoln he decided to relieve Fremont of his command. He was
replaced by the conservative General Henry
Halleck.
Horace Greeley, editor of the New
York Tribune, wrote an open letter to Abraham
Lincoln defending Fremont and criticizing the president for failing
to make slavery the dominant issue of the war and compromising moral
principles for political motives. Lincoln famously replied: "My
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not
either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing
all the slaves, I would do it."
Fremont was a popular figure with Radical
Republications
and in March, 1862, Abraham
Lincoln agreed to appoint him
as the commander of the newly established Mountain Department. However,
Fremont was severely criticized for failing to deal with Thomas
Stonewall Jackson during his Shenandoah
Valley.
On 26th June, Freemont's troops came under the command of General
John Pope. Fremont refused to serve under
Pope and spent the rest of the war in New
York.
In May, 1864 a convention of Radical
Republications
selected Fremont as their candidate for president. Fremont accepted
the nomination and told the audience: "Today we have in this
country the abuses of a military dictation without its unity of action
and vigor of execution." The idea of a radical candidate standing
in the election worried Abraham
Lincoln and negotiations began
to persuade him to change his mind. Fremont's price was the removal
of his old enemy, Montgomery
Blair, from the
Cabinet. On 22nd September, 1864, Fremont withdrew from the contest.
The following day, Lincoln sacked Blair and replaced him with the
radical, William
Dennison.
After the American Civil War Fremont
became involved in railroad financing and building. This was a failure
and he lost the fortune that he made during the Californian
Gold Rush.
He returned to politics when he became governor of Arizona Territory
(1873-83).
Fremont wrote several books including several about his expeditions
and his autobiography, Memories of My Life
(1887). John
Fremont died in New
York City on July 13, 1890.
(1)
Carl
Schurz
served as an officer under General John Fremont during the American
Civil War.
I
joined General Fremont's army at Harrisonburg, Virginia, on June 10th,
1862, and reported myself for duty. At the beginning of the Civil
War I heard him spoken of in Washington as one of the coming heroes
of the conflict, in most extravagant terms. I remember especially
Mr. Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General in Mr. Lincoln's administration,
insisting that Mr. Fremont must at once be given large and important
military command, and predicting that the genius and energy of this
remarkable man would soon astonish the country. Fremont was, indeed,
promptly made a major general in the regular army, and entrusted with
the command of the Department of the West, including the State of
Illinois and all the country from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains,
with headquarters at St. Louis. But he sorely disappointed the sanguine
expectations of his friends. He displayed no genius for organization.
Fremont's headquarters seemed to have a marked attraction for rascally
speculators of all sorts, and there was much scandal caused by the
awarding of profitable contracts of persons of bad repute.
(2)
In September, 1861, The New York Post commented on Abraham
Lincoln's decision to modify John Fremont's order on slaves.
He (Lincoln) should not
allow himself to be outstripped by his Cabinet, by Congress, by the
Major Generals, and by the people. He is the head of the nation, to
which it naturally looks for forward movements. But in the reluctance
with which he signed the Confiscation act and in his late modification
of Fremont's order, it almost appears as if he desired to go backward.
(3)
Horace Greeley, letter to President Abraham
Lincoln (19th August, 1862)
I do not intrude to tell
you - for you must know already - that a great proportion of those
who triumphed in your election, and of all who desire the unqualified
suppression of the rebellion now desolating our country, are solely
disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing
with regard to the slaves of the Rebels.
We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge
of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating
provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed
to fight slavery with liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the
Union, and willing to shed their blood in the behalf, shall no longer
be held, with the nation's consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant
traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen
months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these
traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice
of the dearest rights of loyal men, we cannot conceive.
Fremont's Proclamation and Hunter's Order favoring emancipation were
promptly annulled by you; while Halleck's Number Three, forbidding
fugitives from slavery to Rebels to come within his lines - an order
as unmilitary as inhuman, and which received the hearty approbation
of every traitor in America - with scores of like tendency, have never
provoked even your remonstrance.
(4)
President Abraham
Lincoln, letter to
Horace Greeley (22nd August, 1862)
If there be those who
would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy
slavery. I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle
is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it;
and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and
if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would
also do that.
(5)
Carl Schurz, Autobiography of Carl
Schurz (1906)
Fremont won the favour
of advanced and impatient anti-slavery men by the issue of an order
looking to the emancipation of slaves within his department, which
Mr. Lincoln found himself obliged to countermand, seeing in it an
act of military usurpation, and a step especially inopportune at a
time when the attitude of some of the Border States was still undetermined.
But it gave Fremont a distinct political position and he was given
another chance of service at the head of the Mountain Department.
But in that sphere of action he was no more fortunate. He was operating
in West Virginia, protecting railroads and putting down guerrillas,
when the renowned rebel general, Stonewall Jackson, made his celebrated
raid into the Shenandoah Valley, driving Banks before him to the Potomac,
and apparently threatening to cross that river, and to make an attack
upon Washington. This, however, Jackson did not attempt, but having
succeeded in gathering up stores and in disturbing the plans of the
Washington government, he turned back and rapidly retreated up the
Shenandoah Valley. Fremont was ordered to intercept, and, with the
co-operation of Banks' and McDowell's troops, to "bag" him.
This required some forced marches, which Fremont failed to execute
with the expected promptness, a failure which excited the dissatisfaction
of the administration in a marked degree.
(6)
John Fremont, speech at a meeting of Radical
Republications
(31st May, 1864)
Today we have in this country the abuses of a military dictation without
its unity of action and vigor of execution.
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