(1813-1890)
In these days of rapid transit between New York and San Francisco,
of luxurious travel across desert and mountain, the story of John
Charles Frémont, the Pathfinder of the great West, is of peculiar
interest, a striking illustration that the history of the world is
in the biography of its leaders, in the pathfinders of the
unexplored.
The stormy tide of the French Revolution sent the father of John
Charles Frémont to the New World about the time, presumably, when
Napoleon Bonaparte was in the height of power. This M. Frémont came
of a good family living near Lyons, France. A British man-of-war
made prize of the ship in which he sailed for San Domingo, and he
was carried prisoner to one of the British West India islands, his
captivity lasting several years. Upon gaining his liberty he stopped
at Norfolk, Va., to refill an empty purse as a teacher of French,
and there met Anne Beverly Whiting, a leading belle of an old
Virginia family, who became his wife. One of the illustrious
connections of the Whitings was that with the family of George
Washington. M. Frémont's marked fondness for travel and adventure
was shared by his wife. They took long journeys through the wild
southern country, stopping at Indian villages, often sleeping by
camp-fires. On one of these expeditions, when making a halt at
Savannah, Ga., John Charles, their first child, was born, January
21, 1813. M. Frémont died a few years after.
The boyhood of John Charles was spent in Charleston. It is well to
remember, in a study of his life, his French blood and early
southern environment. His first choice of a profession was the law.
At the age of fourteen he became a student in the office of John W.
Mitchell, who placed him under a private tutor, Dr. Roberton, who
understood the lad thoroughly and developed his character in the
right direction. Dr. Roberton seems to have first discovered what
was made plain in Frémont's after-life--the makings of a poet, and
the foresight of a prophet. Translating the story of the battle of
Marathon in the Greek class, young Frémont catches the spirit with
which it was told by Herodotus, and writes verses in protest of
tyranny which are published in one of the Charleston papers. "In one
year," wrote his tutor, "he had read four books of Cæsar; Cornelius
Nepos; Sallust; six books of Virgil; nearly all of Horace, and two
books of Livy. In Greek--all of Græca Minora, about half of the
first volume of Græca Majora, and four books of the Iliad." At
fifteen he enters the junior class of Charleston College. At sixteen
he is confirmed in the Episcopal Church, entertaining at that time
thoughts of entering the ministry. His steady progress is
interrupted by his first love affair; his absorbing passion so gets
the better of his common sense, that he neglects his books and
classes and is expelled from college. We next find him teaching
higher mathematics, acting as private tutor, and devoting his
evenings to the charge of the _Apprentice's Library_, a school in
Charleston. At twenty years of age he received the appointment of
teacher of mathematics, and his long connection with the United
States Army had its beginning; his post the sloop of war Natchez. He
was to go on a cruise of two years and more along the coast of South
America. Here was a chance for him to unfit himself for further
advancement, but he improved his time upon the cruise to the utmost,
and his diligent scholarship won for him the double degree of
bachelor and master of arts from the college from which he had been
expelled. His application for a mathematical professorship in the
Navy resulted in his passing the severe examination, and in an
appointment to the frigate Independence. He declined the office,
however, having decided to become an engineer, to join Captain
Williams's survey of the mountain passes between South Carolina and
Tennessee. There was talk of a railroad between Charleston and
Cincinnati in those days.
That was Frémont's first experience in exploring expeditions. The
corps lived chiefly in camp. The survey was in wild mountainous
regions of the unexplored South, among Indians sullen against the
Government. Frémont liked this kind of a life. He enlisted under
Captain Williams the second time in 1837, as assistant engineer,
going with him upon a military reconnoissance of the Cherokee
country in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. A war cloud was
rising; the peril of the expedition was its charm to Frémont. "St.
Louis was then on the border of an immense and almost unexplored
Indian country. The caravans of merchandise going through it to
Santa Fé, ran all the risks you can read of among Bedouins in the
desert; the hunters and trappers, as well as the merchants, started
off into the unknown with only one certainty, that danger was there;
and when they came back--if they ever did--it was as from
underworld."[18]
[Footnote 18: Souvenirs of my Time. Jessie Benton Frémont.]
About this time a distinguished French geographer, M. Nicollet, was
sent to this country by France to explore the sources of the
Mississippi, "in the interests of geography." The United States were
also interested in the geography of the almost unknown Northwest. M.
Nicollet was appointed to make explorations for the United States,
and Frémont was honored with the position of principal assistant. It
was high time that something should be done in the interests of a
geography made up largely from travellers' tales. That there was a
great river, the Buena Ventura, running from the base of the Rocky
Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco, nobody doubted, for there it
was upon the map. The exploration of M. Nicollet, assisted by
Frémont, awakened great interest. They were absent two years; their
field, the territory between the Missouri and the upper rivers, as
far north as the British line. Their report was awaited with
impatience. Frémont came home to find that he had been appointed
second lieutenant of the United States Topographical Engineers. As a
scientific explorer his fame was established. The year following his
return he spent in Washington with M. Nicollet, preparing his report
for publication. Among those most deeply interested was Senator
Benton, of Missouri, "Tom Benton," as he was popularly called, and
"Old Bullion." Benton's hobby was the opening of a road for
immigrants to the Pacific coast, as a necessary step to the
acquisition of the territory held by Mexico--the California of
to-day. Senator Benton's interest in the report of the young
engineer, then about twenty-seven years of age, was surpassed by the
young engineer's interest in the senator's daughter, Jessie, then
only fifteen, an interest which ended in a betrothal contrary to the
wishes of older heads, owing to Miss Benton's youth and young
Frémont's connection with the army. The young engineer received an
unexpected and unwelcome order, sending him to the wild frontier of
Iowa at once, where the Sacs and Foxes, it was thought by Senator
Benton (who had a hand in his exile), might be made to help postpone
the marriage, at least. But banishment and red-skins were of no
avail in breaking the engagement.
Frémont performed his duty to the letter, returned to Washington,
and married Miss Benton, October 19, 1841--a "runaway match" which
happily brought life-long happiness to both parties--Mrs. Frémont
becoming the connecting link, to use her own words, between her
father's "fixed idea of the importance of the speedy acquisition of
the Pacific coast, and its actualization through the man best fitted
to be the pioneer of the undertaking."
Less than a year after his marriage, in the summer of 1842, Frémont
was sent by the War Department on the _first_ of the _five_
expeditions which gave him the name of Pathfinder.
The Mexican War was ripening fast. England had at that time
financial claims upon Mexico, and Mexico was bankrupt.
How to get California was a serious question, reminding United
States diplomatists of the old Quaker's advice to his son--"Get
money, Joseph, get money. Get it honestly if you can--_but get it_."
Acquisition of California by settlement was vigorously encouraged.
The best routes across the mountains must be discovered and
surveyed. Partial explorations of routes to Oregon and California
had been made. Emigrants had crossed the Rockies and were settled in
the Sacramento Valley. But the geography of the Great Basin was
inaccessible to science; the best and safest routes were only
guessed at. Emigration was checked by rumors of perils, alas! too
true. Frémont's order to go to the frontier beyond the Mississippi,
was changed at his request for something more definite--the
exploration of _the South Pass_ of the Rocky Mountains.
August 8, 1842, he reached the South Pass, and then the unexplored
was before him--untrodden ground. Kit Carson was his guide;
twenty-eight men made up his party--Canadian voyageurs, picked men,
well mounted and armed--only eight of the expedition driving wagons.
Randolph Benton, a lad of twelve, Frémont's brother-in-law, was one
of the number. The great event of this expedition, so full of
thrilling adventure, was the first ascent of that highest peak of
the Wind River Mountains, now called Frémont's Peak, 13,570 feet in
height. "We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit,"
Frémont wrote, "and fixing a ramrod in the crevice, unfurled the
national flag where never flag waved before.... While we were
sitting on the rock a solitary bumble-bee came winging its flight
from the eastern valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men."
They run a cañon in the Platte, singing a Canadian boat-song for all
the peril.... Their boat is whirled over, food, ammunition, and
valuable records lost. Climbing up and out of the cañon, they admire
the scenery in spite of their forlornity ... cacti and bare feet,
hunger and thirst ... but astronomical and barometrical observations
and drawings are made, botanical specimens collected, and a mass of
information, making the report of this expedition[19] what has been
called the most enduring monument of Frémont's fame. The report was
hailed in England as well as the United States, and was followed by
an increase of the wagon-trains across the mountains via the South
Pass.
[Footnote 19: Frémont's Oregon and California. (1849.)]
The first expedition was absent some six months. Frémont's Peak
marks the western point of that journey.
The next order from the Government sent Frémont, in the spring of
1843, to begin exploring where he had left off in 1842; to connect
his survey with that of Commodore Wilkes on the Pacific coast. Kit
Carson was again his guide; many of the previous expedition
enlisted, 32 men in all. Across the forks of the Kansas the route
lay west of Fort Laramie, through the Medicine Butte Pass and the
South Pass to the northern end of Great Salt Lake. Frémont's report
of this region led the Mormons to settle at Salt Lake afterward,
believing they would be in Mexican territory. The record of this
expedition, like the preceding one, is a story of fearful suffering
and heroic endurance. It is given in detail in Frémont's "Memoirs,"
and Benton's "Thirty Years in the Senate." Deep snows on the
mountains, no sign of the Buena Ventura River, Indians refusing to
guide such a foolhardy venture; "skeleton men leading skeleton
horses;" the descent into the Sacramento Valley at last, and the
arrival at Fort Vancouver, November 1843, gives but a glimpse of the
heroism of this second expedition. The suffering endured in reaching
the coast was as nothing to that of the return through the great
valley between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, looking for the
river they were the first to prove did not exist at all. From San
Francisco back to Salt Lake, three thousand five hundred miles in
eight months, not once out of the sight of snow. Geography had
gained an important fact--the Colorado was the only river flowing
from the Rocky Mountains on that part of the continent. For eight
months not a word had been heard from the party, at the East, and
then Frémont came home "thin as a shadow," and Mrs. Frémont could
tell him that she might have prevented his going at all had she
chosen, for an order from Washington, countermanding the expedition,
had been received by her addressed to her husband, soon after his
departure from St. Louis. The expedition was not too far away when
the despatch came for her to get it to him, but she decided to
withhold it. Because he had taken a mountain howitzer in his outfit
he was ordered to stay at home. What a scientific expedition could
want of a howitzer was not plain to the authorities, who seemed to
think that hostile Indians knew at sight the difference between a
military and a scientific party and would respect it. Mrs. Frémont
tells the story in _The Century_ for March, 1891, how she not only
did not send on the despatch, but a messenger instead, bidding
Frémont "Go on at once without asking why," so fearful was she a
duplicate order might defeat his going at all.
General Scott was Commander in Chief of our Army in 1845. At his
instance Lieutenant Frémont was made captain in the United States
Army, and in the fall of that year was sent by the Government on
another expedition ... this time to find the best road to the
Pacific coast. Trouble with Mexico was growing fast. Our
southwestern territory needed looking after; the northwestern of
Mexico as well. Frémont was to follow the Arkansas River to its
source in the Rocky Mountains, explore the Great Basin, the
Cascades, and the Sierra Nevada, and define a route in a southern
latitude for emigrants. Kit Carson was among the sixty men of this
party, and several veterans of the two former expeditions. They
struck out for the Sierra by the way of the Humboldt River. The war
with Mexico broke out soon after their departure.
It was another story of fearful hardship--the Sacramento Valley was
reached at last, and Frémont hastened to Monterey to get permission
from the Mexican authorities to make a scientific exploration of the
region. His request was granted, and permission given to replenish
his exhausted supplies. Why the Government revoked this permission
almost as soon as granted, ordering him and his men to quit the
country at once or they would be sent as prisoners to Mexico, is a
source of much controversy between historians of that day and this.
Frémont could not retreat into the desert with his scanty outfit. A
rude fort was built at once on Hawk's Peak, some thirty miles from
Monterey, and the Stars and Stripes flung out, Frémont and his men
ready to take the consequences of such defiance. When they withdrew,
as they did in a few days, overtures from the Mexicans followed
them, even a proposition from the Spanish officer that Frémont
should join with him and declare the country independent of Mexico.
Frémont moved northward. He had reached Tlamath Lake when overtaken
by a special messenger from Washington, the bearer of a despatch
which had been memorized by the messenger to prevent its falling
into the hands of the Mexicans, and which Frémont interpreted to
mean that it was the wish of the Cabinet that he should aid in
taking and holding California, in the event of any occurrence which
he thought justification for so doing. The English must not
strengthen their foothold on the coast. Someone must look after the
interest of the United States; he was on the ground. If a crisis
came he must act without written authority, promptly and
discreetly--"Get it honestly if you can--_but get it_." He returned
at once to California, and found it in a revolutionary state. The
American settlers had hoisted what was called the Bear Flag, and
were eager to fight for the overthrow of the Mexican authority in
California.
It is a long story, that of the conquest of California. Frémont's
right to be called the Conqueror or the Emancipator is bitterly
disputed by some, who claim that he attacked the Californians by
irregular warfare, and so thwarted the conciliatory designs of the
Government. Be that as it may, by July 5, 1846, the Bear Flag
insurgents under Frémont had declared their independence of Mexico,
and Frémont had been appointed Governor of California, and had
hauled down the Bear Flag and raised the Stars and Stripes. A
constitution had been drawn up and the territory declared to be in
the possession of the United States. January, 1847, "the enemy"
capitulated to Frémont. "The celerity and boldness of his movements
in the conduct of the affair were only surpassed," says a
contemporary, "by the moderation and clemency of his policy." "The
decisive point," wrote George Bancroft, "in the establishment of the
Union on a firm basis had been gained."
The seizure of California in 1846 has been called, from another
outlook, "one of the least creditable affairs in the highly
discreditable Mexican War," and Frémont nothing more than a
filibuster seeking private ends. California had been made ours,
nevertheless, and Frémont had secured the prize.
In the meantime the Mexican War had begun, and Commodore Stockton,
of the U. S. Navy, was hastening to California _by sea_ under orders
to subjugate the country. General Kearney was marching westward _by
land_ under like orders. Of course there was a dispute about
precedence when both were upon the ground, each asserting his right
to command the other, both issuing orders and insisting upon the
right to precedence. The difficulty of serving under two masters was
experienced by Frémont. General Vallejo testified that he received
in one day, letters from Commodore Stockton, General Kearney, and
Colonel Frémont, each signing himself "Commander-in-Chief." Frémont
believed he had sufficient reason for choosing to serve under
Stockton, which he did. Upon Stockton's return to his squadron and
Kearney's assignment to full command, Kearney brought charges
against Frémont for mutiny and fraud, defeating his re-appointment
as governor of the State besides. Frémont was ordered home, and it
was said "that, like Columbus, he returned from the discovery and
conquest of a new world, a prisoner and in disgrace." He went back
to Washington under arrest. Great honors awaited him, nevertheless,
his troubles only adding to his laurels. The citizens of Charleston
gave him a sword, the ladies the gold-mounted belt of the same. He
demanded immediate trial, which was granted, the court-martial
lasting three months, his defence filling three sessions. He was
pronounced guilty of mutiny, disobedience of the lawful command of a
superior officer, and conduct to the prejudice of good order and
military discipline--a conviction based, some said, upon technical
grounds. President Polk remitted the penalty--dismissal from the
army--but Frémont resigned at once, the President reluctantly
accepting his resignation.
Frémont was then thirty-four years old. As the leader of three great
exploring expeditions he had become not only famous, but a popular
hero. He had done much for science. He had made the most accurate
map of the region between the one hundred and fourth meridian and
the Pacific. He had added a large collection of botanical,
geological, and other specimens to the national museums. He was
eager to resume explorations of routes to the Pacific, having
decided to settle his family in California--upon the Mariposa
estate, in the Sacramento Valley, which he had bought in 1847,
before the discovery of gold, seventy square miles, for $3,000, "the
only Mexican grant that covered any part of the gold regions."
Frémont's claims against the Government for expenses incurred in the
conquest and defence of California, amounted to some $700,000, which
was paid to him. Among those advocating the payment were Senators
Benton, and Dix of New York. Twenty thousand copies of Frémont's map
of Oregon and California were ordered by the Senate.
It was by no means in the rôle of a defeated man that he started out
upon his fourth expedition, in the fall of 1848--when the gold fever
was at its height--a venture of his own and Colonel Benton's; its
object, a route to the Pacific by way of the Rio Grande. Thirty-two
men were enlisted, picked men as before. It was a superb and costly
outfit, no less than one hundred and twenty mules. Lacking Kit
Carson for a guide, they were lost in crossing the Rocky Mountains,
every mule and horse and one-third of the men perishing from cold or
starvation. At last, as he wrote home, "the mules, huddled together
in the deep snow, froze stiff as they stood and fell over like
blocks." The freezing men recrossed the summit in retreat, some of
them driven to cannibalism. Wading through the snow to the waist,
the remnant reached the home of Kit Carson at Taos, N. M., where
Frémont reorganized the expedition, reaching the Sacramento in the
spring of 1849.
Litigation concerning his title to the Mariposa estate did not
prevent Frémont from developing its mineral and agricultural
resources. He engaged some twenty-eight Spaniards to work its gold
mines upon shares. His prospects of boundless wealth were most
flattering. The Pathfinder was now a millionaire, and in 1855 his
title to Mariposa was established by the Supreme Court. Following
his appointment in 1849 to run the boundary line between the United
States and Mexico, the political party of the Territory seeking its
admission as a free State, elected him to the United States Senate.
Many honors were bestowed upon him at this time--the medal of the
Royal Geographical Society of London, the Founders medal from the
King of Prussia, an honorary membership of the Geographical Society
of Berlin, etc.
In the California State election of 1851, Frémont stood with the
Anti-Slavery party, opposed to the extension of slavery in free
territories. He was defeated, and went to Europe with his family in
1852, where he was fêted by royalty generally. Mrs. Frémont, in her
"Souvenirs of My Time," has given charming glimpses of this part of
their life. Hearing that Congress had made appropriation for further
surveys of great Western routes, Frémont hastened home in 1853, to
explore by a fifth expedition, what he believed to be the most
central and practicable route. This was his second private venture.
He would follow the path he had lost when the guide led him astray
on his fourth expedition. He would cross the Rockies at Cochetopa
Pass, and that in winter.
He made the passage, but it was at the cost of frightful suffering;
fifty days on frozen horse-flesh, days without even that;
forty-eight hours without a morsel of food; the entire party
barefooted in the snow; Frémont, in the hour of extreme peril on the
storm-swept mountain-side, making his men take oath that, come what
might, nothing should tempt them to cannibalism. Benton tells us how
Frémont went straight to the spot where the guide had gone astray in
1848, and found safe and easy passes all the way to California, upon
the straight line of 38° and 39°. Great railroads of to-day follow
the line it took those starving and half-frozen men fifty days to
pass in that winter of 1854. For three months nothing was heard from
the party. Frémont's arrival in San Francisco was an ovation.
"Europe lies between Asia and America," we read in his report;
"build the road, and America lies between Europe and Asia.... The
iron track to San Francisco will be the thoroughfare of the world."
The issues at stake in the presidential campaign of 1856 make that
campaign the most important of any in the history of our country.
"The question now to be decided," said Seward, "is whether a
slave-holding class shall govern America or not." The nomination of
John Charles Frémont as the candidate of the Republican party was
hailed with enthusiasm at the North. The Civil War was impending.
The lines between the defenders of slavery and its opponents were
sharply defined. Frémont was the first nominee of the Republican
party. The romance and adventure of his career, his upright life,
the hero-worship of the Pacific coast, the antagonism of the South,
gave the canvass a vitalizing force that his defeat by James
Buchanan did not lessen, but simply changed into a new phase of
strength. Frémont's popular vote was 1,341,000 against 1,838,000 for
Buchanan and 874,000 for Fillmore (Know-Nothing). Frémont received
114 electoral votes, and Buchanan 174.
When the Civil War broke out, in 1861, Frémont was in Europe. He
offered his services to the Government at once, and was appointed
one of the four major-generals of the regular army, and given his
choice of a command at the East or the West. He chose the West. "Who
holds the Mississippi will hold the country by the heart," he said.
His head-quarters were at St. Louis, where secession was rampant.
"You must use your own judgment," wrote President Lincoln, "and do
the best you can. I doubt if the States will ever come back."
Frémont's policy differed from Lincoln's essentially; it lacked that
patient, conciliatory spirit with the South which made it hard for
many at the North to approve of the compromising policy of the Chief
Executive, seeking to hold the neutral States from seceding.
Frémont's hatred of the rebellion led him to deal with it just as he
would have done with a mutiny on a perilous expedition. He
proclaimed martial law. Rebels were to pay some penalty for
rebellion--rebel newspapers were silenced--and what was the notable
feature of Frémont's administration--the slaves of those in arms
against the Government were declared emancipated; his emancipation
proclamation antedating Lincoln's of September 22, 1862, by a little
more than a year. But Frémont's policy was censured rather than
approved by the country at large. Petty intrigues of officers in
close relation with the Cabinet did much to defeat his plans. His
fleet of gunboats was called a useless extravagance--his staff "the
California Gang." His emancipation proclamation was pronounced
premature and unwise by Lincoln, and revoked. Frémont again was the
cause of an intense public partisanship, "Frémont's career at the
West was brief," says "Patton's Concise History of the United
States," "only one hundred days; but, being a man of military
instincts and training, he showed in that time a sagacity which was
not allowed fair practical development. In that brief time he was
the first to suggest and inaugurate the following practices, then
widely decried, but without which the war would not have been
successfully concluded: the free use of cavalry (strongly opposed by
General Scott and others); exchange of prisoners with the enemy;
fortification of large cities, to allow armies to take the field;
building of river gunboats for the interior operations at the West;
and the emancipation of the slaves. In short, he contributed more
than is generally credited to him." "To get rid of Frémont," says
Major-General Sigel, "the good prospects and honor of the army were
sacrificed to the jealousy of successful rivals." Frémont was
relieved of his command in 1861, and shortly after appointed
commander of the Mountain District of Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee, where he did most honorable service, Stonewall Jackson
retreating before him after eight days' sharp skirmishing, ending in
the battle of Cross Keys.
Upon the appointment of General Pope as Commander of the Army of
Virginia, making him Frémont's superior officer, Frémont asked to be
relieved; his request was granted.
A minority of the Republican party, the radical wing, opposed to the
renomination of Lincoln in 1864, nominated Frémont as their
candidate. He accepted, but finally withdrew. "Not to aid in the
triumph of Lincoln," he said, "but to do my part toward preventing
the election of the Democratic candidate." One of the Republican
candidates would have to retire to save the party. Here is a subject
for debating clubs: Was the interest of the country best served by
Frémont's withdrawal from the canvass of 1864?
After 1864 Frémont took little part in public life. He became
absorbed in his great trans-continental railroad scheme of a line
from Norfolk to San Diego and San Francisco, in which he ultimately
lost his large fortune. French agents, in disposing of his bonds in
France, made false representations. He was prosecuted by the French
Government in 1873, and sentenced by default to fine and
imprisonment, although no judgment was given on the merits of the
case.
The sale of his Mariposa grant brought him several millions, which
he invested in railroads soon after the war, buying the properties
that now constitute a large part of the Texas Pacific and other
roads belonging to the Atchison and Santa Fé. In the great
consolidation entailed by the foreign litigation, his confidence was
abused, and he met with heavy and irreparable loss.
From 1878 to 1881 he was Governor of Arizona. His "Memoirs" appeared
in 1886. The closing years of his life were spent in comparative
retirement.
Not long before his sudden death in New York City July 14, 1890, at
the age of seventy-seven years, he had been placed on the retired
list of the United States Army with the rank of Major-General. When
he passed away the Pathfinder of Africa was filling the public
ear--the wedding of Stanley in Westminster Abbey was the theme of
the hour.
He was buried in Kensico Cemetery, Piermont-on-the-Hudson, about
thirty miles from New York City, near the country home of his
prosperous days. His widow, Jessie Benton Frémont, is at this
writing (1893), a resident of Los Angeles, Cal. Three children
survive their father, an unmarried daughter, Elizabeth McDowell
Benton, Lieutenant Frank Preston Frémont, U. S. A.; and Lieutenant
John Charles Frémont, U. S. N. After his death Mrs. Frémont demanded
compensation for, or restitution of the property appropriated by the
United States Government for military purposes in San Francisco
harbor, in 1863, and for which she has never received a dollar
(1893). The settlement of this claim in her favor is anticipated by
the bench generally, long as justice to her has been delayed. At
present she has a pension from the Government.
Some profess to find it hard reading the character of John Charles
Frémont, calling it enigmatical and baffling. Not so with those who
knew him best. "His unwritten history," writes one of these, "gives
the clew to his life."
That he was a man of indomitable courage none can deny; a man of
lofty principle and unblemished character. An atmosphere of romance
makes him the American Chevalier.
He did more than any other man to open the pathways to the Pacific
coast. The bitter feeling engendered by the California conquest, and
his policy in the Civil War, is not yet extinct. Partisanship has
biassed the most of his biographers. The intense feeling underlying
the presidential campaign of 1856 did not conduce to a fair estimate
of the man, who has suffered hardly less from the intense admiration
of his friends than from jealousies of rivals and foes. "I tried to
do my duty," he would say in his old age, when asked to explain
knotty points about the conquest.
"All that he ever did for the Government," says one who knew him
well, "was uniformly repaid with injury." That is the verdict of one
side of the controversy. The sifting and weighing of a mass of
conflicting evidence, preceding the final verdict of permanent
history, is not yet ended in Frémont's case. That the outcome will
be illumination of his fame rather than obscuration, his unswerving
defenders do not doubt.
"Though the Pathfinders die, the paths remain open."
[Signature: Jane Marsh Parker.]