From Fremont and '49, by F. S. Dcllenbaugh ; reprinted by courtesy of Harper & Bros, 
 
FREMONT'S EXPLORATIONS, 1838-1853 
 
II E> RAHY 
 
 OF THE 
 UN IVERSITY 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
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 F872ne 
 
 1961 
 
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 111. Hist. 3 in: 
 
FREMONT 
 
 Pathmarker of the West 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/frmontpathmarker02nevi 
 
AMERICAN CLASSICS 
 
 FREMONT 
 
 Pathmarker of the West 
 
 By 
 
 ALLAN NEVINS 
 
 Volume II 
 FREMONT IN THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 FREDERICK UNGAR PUBLISHING CO 
 
 NEfF YORK 
 
Copyright 1939, 1955 by 
 ALLAN NEVINS 
 
 Republished 1961 in the 
 American Classics Series 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form 
 
 without permission in writing from the author 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-7088 
 
1 
 
 ? 6> / 
 
 V. A. CONTENTS 
 
 Ccnp • ' 
 
 Volume I 
 FREMONT, THE EXPLORER 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Charleston Boyhood 1 
 
 II. An Explorer's Training 19 
 
 III. First View of the Great War 29 
 
 IV. Washington Courtship 46 
 V. A Runaway Marriage 60 
 
 VI. The Stakes of the West 72 
 
 VII. The First Expedition 89 
 
 VIII. South Pass and Fremont's Peak 104 
 
 IX. The First Report 116 
 
 X. The Second Expedition : Outward Bound 127 
 
 XL Over the Winter Sierras 147 
 
 XII. Sutter's Fort and California 161 
 
 XIII. Homeward Over the Rockies 175 
 
 XIV. Washington Expansionists and the Far West 190 
 XV. The Third Expedition 206 
 
 XVI. A Clash with Californians 217 
 
 XVII. The Message From Gillespie 234 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XVIII. The Bear Flag Outbreak 253 
 
 XIX. The California Battalion 287 
 
 XX. The Quarrel With Kearny 305 
 
 XXI. A Famous Court-Martial 327 
 
 Volume II 
 FREMONT IN THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 XXII. Starvation and Cannibalism 343 
 
 XXIII. Golconda and the Senate 373 
 
 XXIV. Managing the Mariposas 393 
 XXV. The Fifth Expedition 408 
 
 XXVI. The Republican Nomination 421 
 
 XXVII. The Campaign of 1856 439 
 
 XXVIII. New Mariposa Troubles 459 
 
 XXIX. Civil War in the West 473 
 
 XXX. Fremont vs. Blain and Lincoln 503 
 
 XXXI. The End of the "Hundred Days" 529 
 
 XXXII. The Mountain Department 550 
 
 XXXIII. The Defeat of the Blairs 564 
 
 XXXIV. A Financial Debacle 583 
 XXXV. Poverty and Labor 602 
 
 XXXVI. Character and Fame 612 
 
 XXXVII. Some New Light on Fremont 623 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 I. Fremont's Children 663 
 
 II. Corruption in St. Louis, 1861 663 
 
 III. E. M. Kern's Letter 667 
 
 Bibliographical Note 671 
 
 Index 675 
 
 MAPS 
 
 Minnesota-Dakota, showing places visited by Fremont 41 
 
 Western America, by Albert Gallatin 77 
 
 Western America, by B. L. E. Bonneville 78 
 
 Fremont's five exploring trips, 1842-54 211 
 
 The California Trail 243 
 
 Fremont's Mariposa Estate as finally laid out 379 
 
 The theater of war in the West 479 
 
 The theater of war in the East 557 
 
 Scene of Jackson's Shenandoah campaign 561 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Frontispiece: John Charles Fremont, the first United States Senator 
 from California; Following page 146: Jessie Benton Fremont; Kit 
 Carson; Thomas H. Benton; Fremont's party attacked by Klamath 
 Indians; San Juan Mountains, 1848; Among the Buffalo; Ports- 
 mouth Square, showing Parker House; Following page 494: Fillmore 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 as a representative of the Moderates ; The lunatic fringe of Republican- 
 ism; Fremont in 1861 ; Building General Fremont's bridge across the 
 Osage; Brilliant charge of General Fremont's bodyguard through 
 the town of Springfield, Missouri, on October 24, 1861; Fremont's 
 army on the march through southwestern Missouri ; The F. P. Blair 
 family in politics ; Bust of Fremont from the original by Austin James. 
 
Starvation and Cannibalism 
 
 PASSENGERS on the lake steamboat Saratoga, bound 
 from Buffalo westward in the early fall of 1848, saw 
 on its shelter deck an interesting family group: Fre- 
 mont, in civilian clothes, with close-cropped beard, long mus- 
 tache, and heavy curling dark hair, slightly grizzled in places; 
 his still girlish wife, carrying a baby in her arms; the little 
 girl of six, Lilly; and a servant. They kept to themselves and 
 invited no approaches. But to one or two fellow travelers who 
 won their confidence they spoke freely. They were on their 
 way to California, with the intention of making it their future 
 home. They frankly admitted that they were poor; they had 
 nothing but Fremont's savings from his small army salary, 
 and they faced the possibility that, if Congress refused to 
 pay the debts he had contracted in his California operations, 
 he would be held responsible for them. However, they hoped 
 quickly to gain a footing in that rich land. Fremont had placed 
 in the hands of Larkin, before leaving to undergo his court- 
 martial, a small sum — $3,000 — for the purchase of a ranch; 
 and friends in the East had furnished him credit to send around 
 Cape Horn the agricultural implements and milling machinery 
 he would need there. They had health and courage. It was 
 plain that Fremont was depressed by the verdict of the court- 
 martial, which he regarded as a deep injustice, but Jessie 
 assiduously comforted him. "And it was very pleasant," later 
 wrote a passenger, 1 "to see how he was cheered on and en- 
 couraged by the vast prospect of doing good which was opened 
 
 1 Letter of T. C. Rogers, Buffalo Republic, reprinted in New York Tribune, 
 July 8, 1856. 
 
 343 
 
344 FREMONT 
 
 to them in that new territory. Neither had any other thought or 
 expectation than to obtain an honorable and respected position 
 by their own industry and economy." 
 
 They were not going out, however, as mere emigrants. Jes- 
 sie was accompanying him only as far west as Westport on 
 the Missouri, when she would turn back and take a ship to 
 California by the Panama route. Fremont would meanwhile as- 
 sume command of a new exploring expedition to cross the 
 Rockies by a southern pass. Nothing shows better the buoyant 
 courage of the man than the fact that, a few months after the 
 court-martial, he had organized his own fourth expedition. 
 
 Though it was to prove the least fruitful of all his exploring 
 trips, and though it was destined to end in utter disaster, its 
 objects possessed real merit. Fremont had always wished to 
 cross the continent on a central line intersecting the head of the 
 Rio Grande, and he now intended to do so. But this was not 
 all. Throughout the middle west men were talking of a rail- 
 road to the Pacific; some wealthy citizens of St. Louis were 
 interested in making that city the eastern terminus, and Fre- 
 mont planned to ascertain for them whether a central route was 
 practicable. Since the chief question was whether the snow 
 would be an insuperable obstacle, he had determined to cross 
 the ranges in midwinter. Just how sufficient funds were obtained 
 for the expedition is not clear. Very probably the men planning 
 a Pacific railway subscribed a considerable sum; Senator Ben- 
 ton may have contributed some money; and it seems that 
 several of Fremont's followers, notably Edward M. Kern, re- 
 cently commander at Sutter's Fort, and his two brothers, fur- 
 nished their services free. Kern and several of Fremont's other 
 witnesses in Washington had eagerly urged the undertaking, 
 and preparations had been in progress since May. 2 
 
 Thus did Fremont cling to his career as an explorer. The 
 renown he had won in that calling was too great to permit him 
 to give it up. While the court-martial was still fresh in men's 
 minds, he had received from citizens of Charleston a gold- 
 
 2 St. Louis Weekly ReveilU, July 3, 1848. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 345 
 
 mounted sword and engraved gold scabbard, both of beautiful 
 workmanship, as a a memorial of their high appreciation of the 
 gallantry and science he has displayed in his services in Oregon 
 and California." 3 The bill to pay the various California claims 
 which he had incurred during his military service on the Coast, 
 seven hundred thousand dollars in all, gave a number of Sena- 
 tors, before its final passage, an opportunity to eulogize his 
 work. Benton, of course, was foremost, but Senator Clark of 
 Rhode Island paid him glowing compliments, while John A. 
 Dix of New York declared that he had "exhibited a combina- 
 tion of energy, promptitude, sagacity, and prudence, which in- 
 dicated the highest capacity for civil and military command," 
 and that his decisive movements had unquestionably "kept 
 California out of the hands of British subjects." 4 
 
 The magazines of the day united in praising him, for nearly 
 all the reviews had by now published appreciative articles upon 
 his explorations. An anonymous writer for the Southern Lit- 
 erary Messenger remarked that his reports on the West must 
 always be the basis of scientific information upon the regions 
 he had traversed, "and the name of Fremont is immortalized 
 among the great travelers and explorers, and will doubtless sur- 
 vive as long as those of the Sierra Nevada, or the Sacramento." 
 The Eclectic Review gave him many pages. The Democratic 
 Review thought that he had been insufficiently rewarded: 5 
 
 The personal merits of Capt. Fremont, in these expeditions, have 
 been great, and evince high talent for command and for enterprise. 
 With an average of 25 men, and no officer to aid him, he has made 
 10,000 miles of march among tribes of savages, without ever being 
 exposed to surprise or defeat, providing for the subsistence of men 
 and horses, and preserving order, subordination, and cheerful obedi- 
 ence throughout his command. Without the aid of scientific assist- 
 ants, he has so enriched his report with science as to seem to have 
 been the work of professional savants The honorary reward of 
 
 3 Charleston Mercury, September 21, 1847; Bigelow, Fremont, p. 222. 
 
 4 Congressional Globe, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, p. i75#. 
 
 5 Southern Literary Messenger, XV, pp. 528, 529; Democratic Review, XVII. 
 
346 FREMONT 
 
 brevet captain has been bestowed upon him. Lewis and Clark re- 
 ceived something more substantial — double pay, 1,600 acres of land 
 each, promotion to generals, appointment of government commission 
 to treat with Indians, and copyright in their Journal. Certainly, as 
 first explorers, they were entitled to great merit; but they lack the 
 science which Capt. Fremont carried into his expeditions. 
 
 Even abroad he was now well-known; a little later, Baron 
 von Humboldt, on behalf of the Prussian Government, trans- 
 mitted to him a gold medal for progress in the sciences, while 
 the Royal Geographical Society awarded him the Founder's 
 Medal for distinguished services to geography. 6 It was unfor- 
 tunate that he did not write a full scientific report of the third 
 expedition which culminated in the California fighting. Instead, 
 he contented himself with a careful map of Oregon and Cali- 
 fornia, of which the Senate ordered twenty thousand copies, 
 and a short Geographical Memoir accompanying it. This 
 Memoir, which was the first publication to give currency to 
 the phrase "the Golden Gate," might have rivaled the reports 
 of his earlier expeditions but for the court-martial, and the 
 inability of Jessie to help him; she served for a time as amanu- 
 ensis, and then her health broke down. Writing for Fremont 
 one evening, she suddenly said, "Do not move the lamp, it 
 makes it too dark," and went into a prolonged fainting fit, 
 from which she emerged a temporary invalid. 7 Thereafter, Fre- 
 mont spoke of his task as "the cursed memoir," and dismissed 
 it as summarily as his conscience would permit him. He offered 
 to furnish Congress with a much fuller record of his trip, but 
 although a committee under Senator Breese of Illinois reported 
 in favor of this, the work was never authorized, and a distinct 
 gap was thus left in the literature of the West. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Geographical Memoir was a valuable docu- 
 ment, which contained some of the most important of Fremont's 
 generalizations upon western geography. He divided America 
 beyond the Great Salt Lake into three regions, the Great Basin, 
 
 6 Bigelow, Fremont, 327^. 
 
 7 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 347 
 
 the Sierras, and the coastal belt; emphasizing the importance 
 of the mountain chain as a divide between the desert on the 
 east, the garden-lands on the west: 
 
 Stretching along the coast, and at the general distance of 150 
 miles from it, this great mountain wall receives the warm winds, 
 charged with vapor, which sweep across the Pacific ocean, precipi- 
 tates their accumulated moisture in fertilizing rains and snows on its 
 western flank, and leaves cold and dry winds to pass on to the east. 
 Hence the characteristic differences of the two regions — mildness, 
 fertility, and a superb vegetable kingdom on one side, comparative 
 barrenness and cold on the other. 
 
 His description of the partly arid plains of the Great Basin 
 was by far the best yet published. In this he emphasized the 
 importance of the grassy, wooded interior mountains, giving 
 rise to small streams which lost themselves in lakes or the dry 
 plains; and he justly remarked that the region seemed more 
 Asiatic than American, resembling the elevated district between 
 the Caspian Sea and northern Persia. Another illuminating pas- 
 sage was his comparison of the coastal slope of California to 
 Italy; while a very important feature was the emphasis which 
 he laid upon the Humboldt River Valley as a great avenue of 
 communication. As an English scholar has written, the Memoir 
 "shows that Fremont was not only a great explorer, but also 
 a geographer with a real understanding of the conception of 
 a region as a natural unit." 8 
 
 Other scientific fruits of the third expedition were of dis- 
 tinct importance. The map which Preuss drew from surveys by 
 Fremont and others was the most accurate yet made of the 
 Far West. More than a thousand botanical specimens had been 
 preserved, and John Torrey's treatise upon them was shortly 
 published by the Smithsonian Institution. 9 Geological speci- 
 mens had been collected, interesting sketches made of scenery 
 
 8 This Geographical Memoir upon Upper California was published as House 
 Misc. Doc, 30 Cong., 2d Sess., No. 5. E. W. Gilbert's comment is in his 
 Exploration of Western America, 1800-1850, p. 189. 
 
 9 Planbce Fremontiance, Smithsonian Contributions (1850). 
 
348 FREMONT 
 
 and animals, and a large number of bird skins prepared with 
 plumage intact. Fremont had been plunged in June, 1848, into 
 a controversy with Captain Wilkes regarding the accuracy of 
 his topographical work and the consequent figures for the Cali- 
 fornia coast line, from which he emerged with enhanced scien- 
 tific credit. He was regarded as the best American authority 
 upon the great new lands just acquired by the Mexican War 
 and the Oregon Treaty, and his writings were more than ever 
 in demand. When he set out on his fourth expedition, he felt 
 that he was continuing an invaluable national work, and with 
 new discoveries might wipe out old humiliations. 
 
 Once more, then, the frontier; once more the free open 
 prairies stretching before the explorer! Years later, in prepar- 
 ing to write the second volume of his Memoirs, never pub- 
 lished, Fremont jotted down some rough notes upon the ad- 
 venture which are still kept in his manuscripts: 
 
 A winter expedition — about snow obstacles and home for family — 
 preparations at St. Louis — Campbell and Filley — journey up the 
 river — death of the child — Mrs. Fremont at Maj. Cummins — camp 
 on the frontier — Mrs. Fremont's visits to the camp — Scott and the 
 quails. 
 
 Capt. Cathcart— personnel of the party (33 men) — Godey — the 
 Kerns — King — Brackenridge — Creutzfeldt (when was he with, me?) 
 — The two Indian boys Gregorio and Juan — Proue — the three 
 Canadians. 
 
 Route up the Southern Kansas — the Arkansas bare of timber and 
 exposed to snowstorms — for 400 miles abundant timber, grain, and 
 excellent grass — Valley of the Kansas the best approach to the moun- 
 tains — the valley soil of superior quality, well timbered, abundant 
 grasses, the route direct — would afford good settlement for 400 miles. 
 
 The big timber, thirty miles below Bent's Fort — Fitzpatrick and 
 the Indians, six hundred lodges, talks and feasts, Indians report snow 
 deeper than for many years — November 17, mountains show them- 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 349 
 
 selves for first time, covered with snow, the country around also — 
 not discouraged. 
 
 Thirty-three men, with horses and pack animals, made a 
 large expedition for an almost penniless leader, but numbers 
 were needed, for the Indian tribes before him, the Ute, Apache, 
 Navajo, and others, were hostile or uneasy. The Campbell and 
 Filley here mentioned were Robert Campbell and O. D. Filley, 
 who, with Thornton Grimsley, all three substantial St. Louis 
 business men, furnished financial and other assistance. Camp- 
 bell had been a traveler, trapper, and pioneer of the Far West; 
 Filley, the manufacturer of a Dutch oven then widely used 
 for baking, gave Fremont a large part of his camp equipment. 
 The expedition included many experienced men. Alexis Godey, 
 Fremont's old friend and companion, was again hunter; E. M. 
 Kern was again artist; Charles Preuss once more went out 
 as topographer. Others who had been with Fremont before 
 were Captain Henry King, Charles Taplin, and three moun- 
 tain-men, Thomas E. Brackenridge, John Scott, and Thomas 
 S. Martin. Among the new men were three French Canadians 
 well experienced in the West, F. Creutzfeldt, who was em- 
 ployed as botanist, E. M. Kern's two brothers, Richard H. 
 Kern, an artist, and Benjamin J. Kern, a physician, and a 
 roving Englishman, Captain A. Cathcart of the nth Prince 
 Albert Hussars, who hoped to enjoy some hunting and adven- 
 ture. Another new recruit was Micajah McGehee, a capable 
 young scion of a distinguished Mississippi family, who kept a 
 diary which in its full manuscript form is an invaluable source 
 of information. Others of the party were L. D. Vincenthaler, 
 who is called by Fremont and others Vincent Haler, Henry 
 Wise, and Raphael Proue. The three California Indians, Man- 
 uel, Joaquin, and Gregorio, went along. 
 
 At the outset Fremont was saddened by what his notes call 
 the "death of the child" — his before mentioned son, Benton. 10 
 The little boy had always been delicate and his physicians in 
 
 10 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
350 FREMONT 
 
 Washington knew that his span of life was likely to be short; 
 but the young mother (Jessie was still only twenty-four) had 
 no knowledge of this. The youngster died while the parents 
 were traveling up the Missouri by steamboat to the starting- 
 point of the fourth expedition. 
 
 The night after Fremont and his party set out from West- 
 port Landing for the west, Jessie and her colored servant slept 
 at the Indian Agency there. This agency, a queer, irregular 
 string of log houses, was in the charge of a Major Cummins. 
 Toward dawn Jessie and her servant were disturbed by the 
 piteous cries of a mother wolf hunting some cubs which Major 
 Cummins had just killed, and they had hardly settled to sleep 
 again when their rest was broken by Fremont himself. In his 
 usual impetuous way he had ridden ten miles back from camp 
 to have a final hour with his wife, and Kitty had to get up 
 and make a pot of tea. "And so," wrote Mrs. Fremont after- 
 ward, 11 "with our early tea for a stirrup-cup, 'he gave his bridle 
 rein a shake/ and we went our ways, one into the midwinter 
 snows of untracked mountains, the other to the long sea-voyage 
 through the tropics." 
 
 It was October 21, 1848, when Fremont's party set out, and 
 on November 16th they reached Bent's Fort. Already they had 
 encountered inclement weather. The Arkansas was full of ice 
 where they crossed it; they met a blizzard smiting the plains 
 on the fourth; and at Bent's Fort the snow was a foot deep. 
 The trappers and Indians at the fort told them that the depth 
 of the snow, the brilliant aurora borealis, and other signs be- 
 tokened an early and unusually severe winter. As they went on 
 the outlook continued gloomy. A short detour took them to the 
 "Big Timbers" near the fort, where Fremont visited his old 
 guide Fitzpatrick, now stationed there as Indian agent; per- 
 haps hoping to obtain his services again. According to Fre- 
 mont's notes, on the seventeenth they sighted the Rockies, 
 which were heavily mantled in white. Then on November 21st, 
 they reached Pueblo, a mere hamlet inhabited by a few old 
 
 11 Jessie Benton Fremont, A Year of American Travel, p. 20. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 351 
 
 mountain-men, some wintering there, some settled for life with 
 their Indian squaws. Once the fur trade had made it the seat 
 of a considerable activity, but now it was in decay. 
 
 Here again the old mountaineers warned them against the 
 season; they pointed to the heavy snow all about, declared that 
 the cold in the ranges was unprecedented, and asserted that 
 the high peaks to the west could not be crossed in winter. But 
 Fremont was determined to press on, for a bitter winter season 
 offered just such a test of the practicability of a railroad as he 
 desired. His plan was to march west from the headwaters of the 
 Rio Grande along the line of the thirty-eighth parallel, or near 
 it, for he believed that he would find a good pass over the Sier- 
 ras between the points marked by Walker Pass and Mono Lake. 
 Certain parts of this region had not then been visited even 
 by trappers, and few men knew that the Canon of the Colorado 
 cut like a tremendous gash through it. Here, between the upper 
 Rio Grande and harsh western rim of the Utah plateaus, lie 
 some of the worst mountain fastnesses in the United States; 
 formidable even in summer, and to men with the best maps 
 and equipment of the present day. One of the bitterest winters 
 in human memory was descending, and Fremont was heading 
 straight for this forbidding country. 
 
 Until he reached Pueblo, Fremont had no guide. Neither 
 Kit Carson nor Fitzpatrick had been available; he had found 
 nobody else. At Pueblo he belatedly engaged the noted trapper 
 and hunter "Old Bill" Williams, a personage rather more 
 typical of the frontiersmen of the time and region than the 
 honest, prudent Carson. Now almost sixty- two, William S. Wil- 
 liams, though spare, lean, and full of endurance, was badly 
 worn by his toils. A tall, stooped man, of hatchet face, nut- 
 cracker jaws, small restless eyes, and querulous voice, he was 
 as full of ludicrous eccentricities as any of Cooper's quaint 
 characters, and yet as expert a scout as Leatherstocking himself. 
 Though he had begun life as an itinerant backwoods preacher 
 in Missouri and a missionary to the Osage Indians, his speech 
 was the rough, illiterate lingo of the mountaineer of Southern 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 1IUN01S LIBRARY 
 
352 FREMONT 
 
 extraction and Western upbringing; "varmint," "plumb," 
 "nigh onto," "oncet," "haint gotter." His stories had a pio 
 turesqueness which has been preserved in several verbatim 
 reports. An indefatigable walker, who could cover enormous 
 distances, his gait was a queer, staggering waddle, which car- 
 ried him first to one side and then to another of a straight trail. 
 When he lifted his gun the onlooker had to check a smile at 
 the "double-wabble" with which he brought it into position, 
 but he could hit a coin unerringly at a hundred yards. He rode 
 on his piebald Indian pony with his chest bent over the pom- 
 mel, his stirrups ridiculously short, his trousers hitched up on 
 his bare calves, and his arms flopping up and down over his 
 arched knees. Usually he wore a buckskin hunting shirt, black 
 with dirt and grease, and for headpiece a blanket cap, so 
 roughly tailored that the two corners projected like wolves' 
 ears. In all, he was a remarkable character. 
 
 Yet "Old Bill" Williams, despite his age and growing in- 
 firmities, his oddities of speech and bearing, and an erratic 
 quality which kept him from ever gaining the reputation of 
 Carson, Fitzpatrick, or Milton Sublette, seemed an excellent 
 choice for Fremont's purposes. To be sure, he was personally 
 somewhat reckless; he had been in many an Indian fight, and 
 bore the marks of ball and arrow. Earlier in life, after selling 
 a load of furs, he would embark on a wild spree, drinking, 
 gambling, and tossing whole bolts of precious calico to the 
 vociferous squaws in the streets of Taos. He had never been 
 much troubled by scruples in his dealings with other races. He 
 had delighted to lift Indian scalps; at one time, along with 
 other "land-pirates," he had made excursions into California to 
 steal herds of horses from the missions and ranches. But his 
 great merit was that nobody, except perhaps Jim Bridger, knew 
 the Rocky Mountains so well. Twenty-three years earlier he 
 had been the guide of George C. Sibley, who had led the gov- 
 ernment party which in 1825 surveyed a road from the western 
 borders of Missouri to the American boundary in the direction 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 353 
 
 of Santa Fe. Since then, a man of iron nerve, he had often 
 gone into the wilderness to live for months alone, trapping, 
 shooting, and exploring. Like Bridger, Carson, Provot, and 
 others, he took an Indian wife (indeed, several squaws fol- 
 lowed one another in rapid succession), and ingratiated himself 
 with various tribes. With the ranges in front of Fremont he 
 was supposed to be completely familiar. "His knowledge of that 
 part of the country," declares the scout Antoine Leroux, "was 
 perfect." McGehee's diary informs us that Williams shared the 
 misgivings of experienced frontiersmen of the region regarding 
 a winter passage of the high Rockies; but when Fremont in- 
 sisted, he concluded to go, believing that the party could fight 
 its way, though not without great suffering, through the snow- 
 choked passes. 12 
 
 November 24th found the expedition at a little settlement 
 called Hardscrabble (Pueblo de San Carlos) at the foot of 
 the Rockies. Here one of the French Canadians, as McGehee 
 reports, daunted by the prospect of the deep snow piled on the 
 peaks, the storms they could see raging there, and the chill 
 blasts that blew down from the cliffs, abandoned the group, 
 predicting evil to those who went on. On the twenty-sixth the 
 party plunged into the mountain denies, though McGehee 
 writes that the ranges "presented to view one continued snow- 
 storm." One of the men, George A. Hibbard, looked up at the 
 icy slopes and storm-wreathed precipices as they slowly picked 
 their way through the valleys below, and apprehensively re- 
 marked: "Friends, I don't want my bones to bleach upon those 
 mountains." He little dreamed that they would, and that to 
 some of his comrades death would appear a welcome relief be- 
 fore they were through. Several others, with a premonition of 
 disaster, climbed to a little eminence that evening to take a 
 last look at the wintry prairies behind. "The sight was beauti- 
 ful," wrote McGehee; "the snow-covered plain far beneath us, 
 stretching eastward as far as the eye could reach, while on the 
 
 12 Mr. Stark Young kindly enabled me to obtain the original of McGehee's 
 diary, a most absorbing document, from his descendants. 
 
354 FREMONT 
 
 opposite side frowned the almost perpendicular wall of high 
 mountains. " 
 
 Of the character of this "almost perpendicular wall" it is 
 proper to say a word. Pueblo and Hardscrabble lie in south 
 central Colorado, in the valley of the upper Arkansas. To the 
 west looms up that outer escarpment of the Rockies called the 
 Sangre de Cristo or Sierra Blanca Mountains, with an eleva- 
 tion of from seven to fourteen thousand feet. This mountain 
 rampart runs northwestward from upper New Mexico into cen- 
 tral Colorado. Beyond it to the west is the valley of the upper 
 Rio Grande, whose headwaters in Colorado form a line which 
 runs sharply northwest, and at times almost west. In crossing 
 the Sangre de Cristo to the Rio Grande, three passes were used 
 by the mountain-men: the most northerly the Williams Pass 
 (now the Music Pass) ; the central and most direct route from 
 Pueblo the Robidoux Pass; and the southernmost the Sangre 
 de Cristo Pass. All were practicable for a party like Fremont's, 
 but difficult. His intention was to use the central route through 
 the Robidoux Pass, thus passing the outer wall of the Rockies. 
 Having gotten into the Rio Grande Valley, the traveler could 
 push up that river west by north until he found himself con- 
 fronted by a new wall of mountains, the central chain of the 
 Rockies and true continental divide, called at this point the 
 San Juan Range. It merged toward the north into the Un- 
 compahgre, La Garita, and Sawatch mountains, which succes- 
 sively carried the chain high up into Colorado. From the Rio 
 Grande Valley, the wayfarer had the choice of two routes well 
 known to mountain-men. He could bear northward into the 
 Sawatch Mountains, and cross the continental divide by 
 Cochetopa Pass; or he could bear south into lower Colorado 
 and cross the divide by Cumbres Pass, which is almost on the 
 present-day boundary line between New Mexico and Colo- 
 rado. 13 
 
 13 Compare Alpheus H. Favour, Old Bill Williams: Mountain Man, pp. 155, 
 156. The frontispiece shows Old Bill against the background of the Cochetopa 
 Pass. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 355 
 
 The first few days of travel beyond Hardscrabble were suffi- 
 cient to show that the party had embarked upon a grim under- 
 taking. They moved forward on foot, the mules they had 
 bought in Pueblo carrying one hundred and thirty bushels of 
 shelled corn. As they pushed into Huerfano Valley, just below 
 the high Sangre de Cristo peaks, their difficulties grew heavier. 
 The cold was intense, the ground beneath the fast-deepening 
 snow was rocky and treacherous, and the storms of sleet were 
 so terrific that at times it was almost impossible to make the 
 mules face them. The men suffered from frozen hands, ears, 
 and toes. Still greater were the sufferings of the animals, which 
 with no food but dry grain and no water but melted snow, 
 had to be driven to the last ounce of their strength. One by 
 one, the mules began to drop down by the trail to die. Every 
 climb upward made the cold more intense, until the mercury 
 sank entirely into the bulb of the thermometer and failed to 
 register the temperature. The men's breath congealed upon 
 their faces until their beards and eyelashes stood out stiff and 
 white, and they could hardly speak; the snow clogged the 
 mules' hooves until it formed balls six inches thick. In this 
 fashion they managed to cross the Roubidoux Pass, though 
 a hurricane had completely filled part of their road with a 
 tangle of fallen timbers — a veritable chevaux de frise, all the 
 more terrible for being half-concealed by snow. They came 
 down into the valley; but still, as McGehee writes, their diffi- 
 culties continued: 14 
 
 We descended into Grand River Valley. The snow lay deep as else- 
 where and there was no sign of vegetation. One broad, white, dreary- 
 looking plain lay before us bounded by white mountains. High, pre- 
 cipitous, and frozen mountains were behind us, and this broad, 
 dreary plain lay before us and the Rio Grande, fifty miles ahead of 
 us. So we entered with the determination of getting through it as 
 quickly as possible. We traveled late and camped in the middle of 
 it, without any shelter from the winds, and with no fuel but some 
 wild sage, a small shrub which grew sparsely around. The cold was 
 
 14 MS Diary. 
 
356 FREMONT 
 
 intense, the thermometer to-night standing at 17 degrees below zero, 
 and it was so cold during the day that Ducatel, a young fellow, came 
 very near freezing to death. 
 
 By collecting a quantity of the sage, we made sufficient fires to 
 cook or rather half-cook our supper of deer meat, five of these ani- 
 mals having been killed this evening by two of the men, and bolting 
 down the half-cooked meat, we quickly turned into our blankets, in 
 order to keep somewhat warm and for protection against the driving 
 snow, for since leaving the states we had scarcely ever stretched 
 tents. In the night, as ill-luck would have it, our mules, poor crea- 
 tures, which stood shivering in the cold with bowed backs and droop- 
 ing heads, suffering from their exposed situation and half starved, 
 being now reduced to a pint of corn a day, and having no other re- 
 sources for food, broke loose from their weak fastenings of sage 
 bushes, and started off en masse on the back trail in order to obtain 
 the shelter of the mountains we had left the day before or to find 
 some shrubbery they could eat. As soon as it was certain that they 
 were gone, in the middle of the night, we had to rise from our beds, 
 lifting half a foot of snow with our top blankets, and strike out in 
 pursuit of them through the severe cold. We overtook them several 
 miles from camp, and taking them back, made them secure. But we 
 rested little the balance of the night. 
 
 The next day we reached the Rio Grande del Norte, which we 
 found frozen over, and camped in the river bottom, which is thickly 
 timbered with cottonwood and willow. We had considerable diffi- 
 culty in crossing the river, the mules slipping upon the ice and fall- 
 ing or breaking through in places, when we would have to raise them 
 to their feet or draw them over the ice. We found some game, deer 
 and elk, in the river bottom, of which we killed a few. The snow was 
 deeper along here than we had seen it anywhere previously, and our 
 camps, pitched upon it, presented a dreary prospect. 
 
 They had reached the Rio Grande at about the site of the 
 present town of Monte Vista, Colorado. It was now December 
 nth. Before them rose the main chain of the Rockies, the high 
 San Juan Mountains to the west and southwest, the Uncom- 
 pahgre, La Garita, and Sawatch to the northwest and north. 
 The critical moment for the expedition had arrived — the mo- 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 357 
 
 merit when they must determine by which pass they would scale 
 this mountain wall. 
 
 By all accounts, this moment found Fremont and old Bill 
 Williams in fatal disagreement. Although the precise issue be- 
 tween them is not clear, Fremont certainly declared for one 
 route while the scout called for another. According to a story 
 told by T. E. Brackenridge, one of the mountain-men, many 
 years later, and related at second-hand in 1896, Williams 
 wished to go far to the south around the San Juan Mountains, 
 where the continental divide flattens out in northern New 
 Mexico, and then push west on what is now the Colorado-New 
 Mexico boundary. This trail was well known and not difficult; 
 but to have gone so far south would have defeated the whole 
 object of the expedition. The same authority states that Fre- 
 mont insisted on continuing in a westerly direction along the 
 thirty-eighth parallel, moving up the Rio Grande and past its 
 head. He would thus approach the 9,200-foot pass immediately 
 north of the river-head called the Stony Pass; and if they could 
 get through this, they would prove the thirty-eighth parallel 
 practicable for a railway. It seems probable that Fremont did 
 have this route in mind. But for some reason the party did not 
 really take it; instead, it pushed up the side of La Garita Moun- 
 tain, whose altitude was 12,000 feet, with some heights beyond 
 even higher. Whose fault was this? On this point the evidence 
 differs, and a clear decision is impossible. 15 
 
 According to Fremont and Alexis Godey, it was Bill Wil- 
 liams who led them astray. He it was who took them toward 
 the impracticable La Garita steep when they should have 
 headed for Cochetopa Pass. They probably did not get as far 
 west as the Gap before he turned them north into the moun- 
 tains. "The error of our journey," wrote Fremont, "was com- 
 mitted in engaging this man. He proved never to have known, 
 or entirely to have forgotten, the whole region of the country 
 through which we were to pass." Edward M. Kern at the time 
 believed Williams at fault. This is clearly shown by a recently 
 
 15 Dellenbaugh, Fremont and '49, p. 39i#. 
 
358 FREMONT 
 
 discovered letter written February n, 1849, to Robidoux. In 
 this he states: "We continued a couple of days on the [Rio 
 Grande] del Norte, and then turned up what Williams called 
 your pass on to the Compadne [Uncompahgre?]. In this he 
 was evidently mistaken, for a worse road I never saw." Later, 
 after a quarrel with Fremont, Kern turned about and blamed 
 Fremont. But we also have a full letter written by Alexis Godey 
 in 1856, contradicting Kern's later statement, and upholding 
 Fremont. He wrote: 16 
 
 And now as to the statement made by the Messrs. Kerns, in rela- 
 tion to which you wish my opinion. I will say that every man who 
 was with Col. Fremont on that unfortunate trip to the Carnero Pass 
 [Godey means the Wagon-Wheel] knows it to be untrue. I had the 
 honor of being in command under Col. Fremont on that expedition, 
 and I say now, as I have ever averred, that if there were blame to 
 be attached to any source, on Bill Williams, our guide, and myself 
 should its entire weight rest. 
 
 Col. Fremont was, from the time we first came in sight of the 
 Carnero Pass, on the 8th of December, to the 17th, a period of nine 
 days, strongly averse to taking it in our course, preferring to turn 
 off and go through the Cochetopy, a pass some thirty miles to the 
 right ; and scarcely a night passed without a consultation took place 
 between the Colonel, myself, Williams, and others; but Williams, 
 who had, as he said, frequently traveled it, evinced so much confi- 
 dence, and was so strenuous in his efforts to carry his point, that I 
 was completely in his favor, and always told the Colonel that I my- 
 self was perfectly willing to trust Williams and follow him; and in 
 this way we traveled on, Fremont unconvinced, yet without any 
 reason to urge, until the 12th instant, when Williams and myself, 
 being ahead, were overtaken by Fremont, who rode up and halted 
 us, and the entire party stopped in the middle of the day. The 
 Colonel then again expressed his fears of trouble ahead, and then it 
 was that Williams told him, that "if he doubted his capacity to carry 
 the party through, say so, and he could get another pilot"; he as- 
 
 16 For this illuminating document see New York Evening Post, October 30, 
 1856. For the very important new letter by Kern, which utterly discredits his 
 later attack on Fremont, see Chapter XXXVII of this book. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 359 
 
 serted in the most positive terms that "he knew every inch of the 
 country better than the Colonel knew his own garden." Having every 
 confidence myself in Williams, I advised the Colonel to let him go 
 on, that I was perfectly willing to follow him, and that everything 
 would result favorably. 
 
 This was the last consultation on the subject. Fremont acceded to 
 our united arguments, and, the die cast, we pushed on, with what 
 result is well known. For the subsequent misfortunes that befell us, 
 Fremont is not reprehensible. He trusted to his guides, in whose 
 representations he was bound to place confidence, and that they were 
 deceived was no fault of his. 
 
 This is strong and circumstantial evidence. Some support 
 for it is furnished by the fact that Bill Williams took special 
 pride in the Wagon- Wheel Pass, which he had discovered, and 
 which many called by his name. In summer it offered a road 
 through the San Juan Mountains to Grand River one day 
 shorter than by the Carnero Pass, and nearly two days shorter 
 than by the Cochetopa. Perhaps Williams did not know that in 
 winter the snows made it quite impassable. He seems to have 
 headed toward it for a time, and then turned blindly up Em- 
 bargo Creek into the roughest mountain country. On the other 
 hand, several witnesses besides Brackenridge are emphatic 
 that Fremont and not Williams was to blame for going astray. 
 Edward M. Kern's second story, so clearly prejudiced and 
 so flatly at variance with his first, must now be set aside. 17 
 But Richard Wootton, who was at Taos when the survivors 
 came in and talked to them, declared that if Fremont had 
 taken Williams' advice "he would never have run into the 
 death trap," and that the explorer, having "picked out the 
 route which he wanted to travel over the mountains," stuck to 
 it with blind stubbornness. The same view was expressed by 
 Dr. R. H. Wirz, an army surgeon at Taos at the time. John 
 Scott, a mountain-man with the party, testified that Fremont 
 had insisted on taking the fatal route after Williams proposed 
 the Cochetopa Pass. An even more expert witness, Antoine 
 
 17 Compare Fort Sutter Papers, Huntington Library, MS No. 125. 
 
360 FREMONT 
 
 Leroux, after gathering all the information he could find, wrote 
 Kern that Williams' knowledge of that part of the country was 
 excellent, and "the course which was taken by Colonel Fre- 
 mont was an impracticable one in winter " 18 
 
 What is certain is that Fremont's party, after pushing up 
 the Rio Grande canon for several days, plunged directly into 
 mountain denies which offered only a terrible cul de sac. When 
 they found their way blocked, they turned north into the La 
 Garita range, forty miles wide, and without any known pass. 
 Here they soon found themselves in perilous difficulties. The 
 ascending track lay through deep mountain gorges, amid tower- 
 ing precipices and crags, and along slopes so steep that again 
 and again, as they toiled along, a mule would lose its footing 
 and go rolling to the bottom. They had to cross rough-bottomed 
 and boggy streams which rushed precipitately down deep ra- 
 vines, and in which the pack animals would stick tight, some- 
 times half a dozen in a group. Thereupon Fremont and his men 
 would turn back, wade in up to their waists in the floating 
 ice, and shove, haul, and belabor the animals until they scram- 
 bled, dripping, up the banks. The obstacles multipled as they 
 went on. Every day the snowdrifts became more appalling in 
 depth, and the cold more intense. Every night more mules 
 succumbed and were found stark and stiff at dawn. "It seemed 
 like fighting fate to attempt to proceed," wrote McGehee, "but 
 we were bent on our course, and continued to advance." 
 
 Once, the men in advance returned with the hopeful news 
 
 18 On this vexed question of responsibility, see Favour, Old Bill Williams, 
 Chs. 14, 15, 16; Chauncey Pratt Williams, Lone Elk, The Life Story of Bill 
 Williams, Old West Series, Nos. 6, 7; Dellenbaugh, op. tit.; the Fort Sutter 
 Papers, especially MSS 125-130; Bigelow, Fremont, p. 391, which gives 
 Fremont's letter of December 11, 1849, on the subject. I see no justification 
 for dogmatic assertions on the immediate responsibility for losing the party 
 in the San Juan or La Garita Mountains; the evidence is too partial and con- 
 fused. Brackinridge's testimony was given so long after the event a priori 
 it seems less weighty than Godey's. It must also be remembered that the Kerns 
 had quarreled with Fremont, and their evidence was surely prejudiced. But 
 Godey's letter was written in part for campaign purposes. The question admits 
 of no certain answer. Fremont's larger responsibility for the disaster is of 
 course beyond doubt. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 361 
 
 that there was a clearer prospect ahead and that they thought 
 they saw grass; but when the main party came up, they found 
 that it was only the tops of trees and bushes peering from the 
 all-extending sea of snow. Repeatedly the expedition would 
 break camp in the morning and set off bravely, only to find 
 the tempest of snow too fierce to face. The bitter wind, sweep- 
 ing across the peaks with incredible velocity, cut like a knife. 
 Sometimes they were mocked at nightfall by a furnace sunset, 
 which seemed to give out cold rather than heat, but for the 
 most part the sky was a leaden pall. On one of the marches 
 into the teeth of a storm, Old Bill Williams was so nearly over- 
 come that he dropped down upon his mule in a drowsy stupor, 
 and was almost senseless when his companions dragged him 
 back to camp. 
 
 But it was the tortures which the fierce weather and the 
 rough trail inflicted upon the pack animals which were most 
 heartrending. The corn was now exhausted and the beasts were 
 crazed with hunger. They would roam about ravenously all 
 night, and being too weak to break a new path, would usually 
 wander back along the trail of the previous day, pawing in the 
 snow for vegetation. They began devouring the rawhide lariats 
 with which they were tied; they followed this by eating the 
 blankets which were thrown over them at night, the rigging of 
 the pack-saddles, and finally even one another's manes and tails. 
 They were mere specters of skin and bones; the weaker mules 
 collapsed every fifty yards, and the men, with frozen and 
 lacerated fingers, had to unfasten their packs and lift them up. 
 
 Finally they reached the naked, treeless crest of the Great 
 Divide. The cold here was more intense than ever, while the 
 storms on these high rocky ridges were almost incessant. Twice 
 Fremont, with unconquerable resolution, forced his men to 
 attempt a passage. On the first day, they encountered a bliz- 
 zard or pouderie, the dry snow driven so thick by the gale that 
 it was impossible to see more than a few feet in advance, while 
 the roar was deafening and at times it was difficult to catch 
 breath. After a brief fight, the men were forced back into camp. 
 
362 FREMONT 
 
 Dead mules were lying about the fires, and it continued all 
 night to snow steadily. Next day the storm had ceased; they 
 made mauls and, beating a road through the snow, crossed the 
 ridge in defiance of the gale, and pitched camp just below the 
 timber line. "The trail," Fremont wrote, "showed as if a de- 
 feated army had passed by; pack-saddles and packs, scattered 
 articles of clothing, and dead mules strewed along." Then the 
 blizzard returned and paralyzed the party. They were now 
 twelve thousand feet above the sea, and in an almost hopeless 
 position. The long rolling ranges and valleys to the westward 
 were buried in snow. It was impossible to go on, and almost 
 equally impossible to turn back. "We were overtaken," Fre- 
 mont writes, "by sudden and irretrievable ruin." 
 
 Under the circumstances, the only hope of escape lay in an 
 immediate retreat. Fremont determined to recross the crest, 
 but very mistakenly decided to try to take the baggage back 
 with him down to the Rio Grande. Along this stream he hoped 
 to find game. On the twenty-second of December they com- 
 menced their movement, and being now reduced to man-power, 
 required more than a week to move their camp and equipage 
 over the top of the pass, a distance of two miles, to the head 
 springs of a stream leading to the river. At this altitude the 
 slightest exertion was laborious, and sometimes caused long 
 attacks of nosebleed. The snow was from four to thirty feet 
 in depth; and when they built their camp-fires, cavernous pits 
 were formed, completely hiding the different messes from each 
 other. Deep in these holes the men slept, spreading their blan- 
 kets upon the snow. In the daytime some of them, half blinded 
 by the pine smoke and the frozen glare, staggered about un- 
 certainly. They had begun to suffer greatly from hunger, and 
 were living in the main upon the carcasses of the frozen mules, 
 which they supplemented by butchering the few feverish ani- 
 mals which remained. 
 
 Christmas Day was spent in an atmosphere of deep depres- 
 sion. The men were worn out and utterly discouraged; worse 
 than that, they were grumbling at Fremont for having obsti- 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 363 
 
 nately thrust them into all this suffering and danger. Three men 
 of the old exploring party, Godey, King, and Taplin, continued 
 loyal and cheerful, but even Kern had become morose and 
 resentful. Reduced to an emergency reserve of macaroni, sugar, 
 and bacon, they did not possess provisions for twenty days. Fre- 
 mont occupied the early hours of the day in despatching an 
 express party to the nearest settlements to bring relief. Call- 
 ing for volunteers, and choosing King, Brackenridge, Creutz- 
 feldt, and Bill Williams, he equipped them with rations and 
 instructed them to hurry with all speed to the nearest settle- 
 ments in New Mexico, and to bring back provisions and mules 
 to an agreed point upon the Rio Grande. Then, after seeing the 
 four men disappear among the snowy pines, he turned back to 
 the circle cowering about his snow-pit camp-fire. He thought 
 of the previous Christmas in Washington, and the merry faces 
 and abundant luxuries of Senator Benton's home. From the 
 Senator's library in the Brant house in St. Louis he had fetched 
 some volumes of Blackstone, to be the foundation for his pos- 
 sible entrance upon the practice of law in California; and, his 
 mind "filled with gloom and anxious thoughts," he now brought 
 these out to read and pass the hours. Then next day the re- 
 maining party set about removing the baggage back to the 
 Rio Grande. 
 
 Descending along the little stream, over ground so rugged 
 that they averaged scarcely a mile a day, Fremont's men finally 
 reached the Rio Grande again. While they were thus engaged, 
 their last regular provisions had been divided, and they began 
 boiling their rawhide ropes and parfleches to make a gluey 
 soup. The cold seemed to redouble in the final bleak seven 
 miles, and one of the men, Raphael Proue, becoming exhausted, 
 lay down beside the trail and froze to death. The others in trans- 
 porting the baggage passed and repassed his body, not daring to 
 stop long enough to bury him. At one point Cathcart, McGehee, 
 and two others were imprisoned in a cave for two days by a ter- 
 rific storm, with no subsistence except some rawhide shoe- 
 strings and old wolf -gnawed bones. When at last the expedition 
 
364 FREMONT 
 
 made camp on the river, they found as a fresh blow that there 
 was no game, the deer and elk having all been driven off by 
 the deep snow. 
 
 Fremont had given the party which he sent under King to 
 seek relief sixteen days as ample time to make the round trip, 
 and for a while simply waited on the Rio Grande. But when the 
 period elapsed, with the ebbing hopes of his men giving way 
 to despair, he grew too uneasy to stay longer. Either King 
 and his men had lost their way, he feared, or had been cut off 
 by hostile Ute or Apache Indians. There was just one course 
 to follow — to set out for relief himself. Taking Preuss, Godey, 
 and two other trusted men, with enough provisions for two or 
 three days, he started down the river. He left orders that the 
 men were to finish bringing all the baggage into camp, and 
 push on with it after him till they were met by the help he 
 would send back. He also made a statement which seems to 
 have increased the mutinous resentment in the breasts of some 
 of his followers: that if they wished to see him they would 
 have to hurry, for he was going on to California. 
 
 To tell in detail the horrors which attended the closing days 
 of the ill-fated expedition, now split into three groups, would 
 be unnecessary and repellent. Fremont made rapidly down the 
 ice of the Rio Grande. He hoped to meet the returning party 
 of Bill Williams; or failing that, to reach the Red River settle- 
 ment one hundred and sixty miles away, and twenty-five miles 
 north of Taos. On the sixth day, led by a friendly Ute whom 
 they met, they discovered a little smoke in a grove of timber 
 near the river bank, and went to investigate it. Here they found 
 the relief party which, twenty-two days earlier, they had sent 
 out from the main camp. Three tottering scarecrows were left, 
 Williams, Brackenridge, and Creutzfeldt, the most miserable 
 objects Fremont had ever seen; and they told him that King 
 had starved to death a few days before. Later on, charges were 
 made that they had partly eaten his body; and Fremont records 
 in his manuscript Memoirs a significant remark by Kit Carson 
 that "in starving times no man who knew him ever walked in 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 365 
 
 front of Bill Williams." 19 Some think this charge of cannibalism 
 dubious, and that if the body had been partly devoured, it was 
 probably by animals or vultures. Placing the three men on 
 some horses which he had obtained from the Utes, Fremont 
 hastened on to the Red River settlement, reaching it on the 
 tenth evening after leaving the main camp. He at once took 
 steps to hurry a relief party under Godey, with pack animals 
 and provisions which he obtained from Rio Hondo and Taos, 
 back to the half -starved men left far up on the Rio Grande. 
 
 The word half -starved is a euphemism; for, by Fremont's 
 own statement, the party was left with provisions for only two 
 or three meals, with some five pounds of sugar additional for 
 each man. Its position was desperate, and to stand still was 
 simply to wait for death. Two days after Fremont had left, 
 when they were down to their last crumb, they held a consulta- 
 tion and decided to start down the river at once, hunting as 
 they went along. Each man had a handful of sugar and they 
 divided some bits of candles and rawhide. Trembling from 
 weakness, their feet frozen and bleeding, they marched in 
 gloomy silence. The river was a white streak of snow-blan- 
 keted ice; the somber pines on each side were covered with 
 long thick plumes of frost; there was not a sound of life — not 
 the shriek of a jay, not the howl of a wolf. They had not gone 
 far on the first day when the California Indian Manuel, whose 
 feet were turning black, stopped, begged his mates to kill him, 
 and then started back to the camp. A little farther on another 
 man, exhausted and half frozen, threw away his gun and blan- 
 ket, staggered on a few hundred yards, fell into the snow, and 
 died. That night a third, Carver, raved so violently that his 
 companions became afraid of him, and in the morning, half- 
 crazed, he wandered off into the woods and was never seen 
 again. Thus the survivors went on, the strongest forging ahead, 
 the weakest straggling far behind, while death strode with 
 them. Some of the men were fortunate enough to knock over 
 
 19 Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. The Red River here mentioned is a small 
 branch of the Rio Grande, and not the well-known river of that name. 
 
366 FREMONT 
 
 two grouse, which they ate even to the entrails, and to find part 
 of a dead wolf along the river, which they also devoured; some 
 filled their stomachs with dried buds from the bushes, and 
 scooped up water bugs where the river ice had melted slightly. 
 Fremont has feelingly described the fate of several, and the 
 arrival of relief: 
 
 Ferguson and Beadle had remained behind. In the evening, Rohrer 
 came up and remained with Kern's mess. Mr. Haler learned after- 
 wards from that mess that Rohrer and Andrews wandered off the 
 next day and died. They say they saw their bodies. In the morning 
 Haler's party continued on. After a few hours, Hibbard gave out. 
 They built him a fire, gathered him some wood, and left him with- 
 out, as Haler says, turning their heads to look at him as they went 
 off. About two miles further Scott . . . gave out. They did the same 
 for him as for Hibbard, and continued on. In the afternoon the 
 Indian boys went ahead, and before nightfall met Godey with the 
 relief. Haler heard and knew the guns which he fired for him at 
 night, and starting early in the morning, soon met him. I hear that 
 they all cried together like children. Haler turned back with Godey, 
 and went with him to where they had left Scott. He was still alive, 
 and was saved. Hibbard was dead — still warm. 
 
 When the first far-off halloo told that relief had come, eleven 
 in all of the thirty-three hardy frontiersmen who had set out 
 from Pueblo into the mountains had lost their lives, and the 
 remainder were mere wrecks of humanity. 20 They were so ema- 
 ciated that they looked like walking skeletons; their hair and 
 beards were long and tangled; their faces were waxen under 
 a mask of smoke and grime. Some of them had to be lifted 
 upon the mules which Godey brought. In this condition they 
 were all taken down to Taos, and the tragic venture was ended. 
 
 While apparently a large part of the blame for the disastrous 
 
 20 Favour in Old Bill Williams, p. 168, gives the names: Raphael Proue, 
 died January 9th; Henry King, January 12th; Henry Wise, January 17th; 
 Manuel, January 21st or thereabouts; Vincent Sorel. January 22nd; Joseph 
 Moran, between the 22nd and 28th; E. T. Andrews and Henry Rohrer, 
 January 22nd; Benjamin Beadle, January 26th; George A. Hibbard and 
 Carver, January 27th. The remainder arrived in Taos destitute. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 367 
 
 failure rests upon Bill Williams, who was unable to impress 
 Fremont with his knowledge of the country, and upon King 
 and Williams jointly for their strange failure later to find the 
 right path down the Rio Grande toward Taos, Fremont him- 
 self cannot be acquitted of the principal responsibility. He 
 insisted upon attempting the crossing of the range after he 
 had been warned in the most solemn terms at Bent's Fort and 
 Pueblo that it would be highly dangerous and probably im- 
 possible, and after Williams had entered an emphatic protest. 
 It was therefore incumbent upon him, once the passage was 
 under way, to use every precaution to insure the safety of his 
 men. The weight of evidence indicates that instead he clung 
 stubbornly to his plan for moving westward along the upper 
 waters of the Rio Grande and the thirty-eighth parallel after 
 its perils had been forcibly pointed out. But his cardinal error 
 was committed when he turned back deliberately instead of 
 speedily. He should have taken what food and pack animals 
 remained, abandoned the luggage, and made all speed to the 
 nearest settlement, keeping his party a unit. By trying to ex- 
 tricate the baggage, he lost eleven men. A severe critic would 
 say that their lives were upon his head. To be sure, as Godey 
 explained later, he had provisions at the moment for eighteen 
 or twenty days, and felt almost sure that King and Williams 
 would return with help within that time; but he should have 
 taken into consideration the very real risk that they would 
 lose their way or be slain by savages. 
 
 Edward Kern later attacked Fremont for not using the 
 frozen mules, after the departure of King on Christmas Day, 
 for food. But Godey is no doubt right in answering that this 
 was impossible, inasmuch as the weather was too severe to per- 
 mit the men to get the carcasses out of drifts twenty feet deep. 
 As for the failure of King and Williams to keep on the straight 
 path to the settlements, this now seems inexplicable. By 
 Godey's testimony, before they started they and Fremont had 
 fixed and determined every day's journey, and the various 
 camping places, both going and coming; they were experienced, 
 
368 FREMONT 
 
 capable frontiersmen; and Williams supposedly knew the whole 
 region. Yet they did not get fifty miles from their starting 
 place. 
 
 It would have been much more in keeping with Fremont's 
 usual gallantry of conduct had he returned up the Rio Grande 
 with the relief party from Taos which, under Godey, did the 
 actual work of rescue. Possibly he was too exhausted; one leg 
 was badly frozen, and reports to the eastern press from a Taos 
 correspondent declared that he was "very severely frosted and 
 scarcely able to get about." Members of his party reported 
 him almost snow-blind. But if he was at all able to travel, he 
 should never have rested while one of his men remained in 
 danger in the wilderness. He took shelter in Kit Carson's hos- 
 pitable home, where on January 27, 1849, we nn d him writing 
 Jessie: 21 "This morning a cup of chocolate was brought to me, 
 while yet in bed. To an overworn, overworked, much fatigued, 
 and starving traveller, these little luxuries of the world offer 
 an interest which in your comfortable home it is not possible 
 for you to conceive." He spoke of Kit Carson's care, "con- 
 stantly occupied and constantly uneasy in endeavoring to make 
 me comfortable." After laying the blame for the debacle upon 
 Williams, he spoke harshly of the want of nerve among many 
 of his party, whose courage in the crisis had "failed fast." 
 Unquestionably, his failure to go back, and the freedom with 
 which he criticized his associates, accentuated the bitterness 
 with which the three Kern brothers and others of his men 
 always spoke of his leadership of the expedition. 
 
 Fremont was never a man for useless repining; he wrote 
 Jessie that he had an "almost invincible repugnance" for the 
 task of describing his sufferings, and his whole attention was 
 now centered upon proceeding overland to California. From 
 Major Edward F. Beale, who had been in the California fight- 
 
 '• 21 Bigelow, FrSmont, pp. 365-376, contains two letters from Fremont to 
 Jessie, one dated January 27th, one February 6, 1849. In the second letter he 
 speaks of "a persistence of misfortune which no precaution has been adequate 
 on my part to avert." It is a pity that he did not detail some of his pre- 
 cautions. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 369 
 
 ing, had been Carson's associate in the heroic crawl through 
 the Mexican lines after the battle of San Pasqual, and was now 
 commanding the army forces in northern New Mexico, he re- 
 ceived the kindest assistance, including the loan of horses and 
 the sale of provisions from the commissary's department. Al- 
 most all his clothing and money had been lost; the saddles, in- 
 struments, and baggage had been cached in the mountains. 
 Before leaving Taos, Fremont made an effort to regain this 
 material, but the deep snow prevented the party he sent out 
 from getting through. Other men besides Carson and Beale came 
 to his aid, for Taos was full of old friends — Dick Owens, Lu- 
 cien Maxwell, and Francis Aubrey among them; and Aubrey 
 lent him a thousand dollars to purchase animals to continue 
 his journey. 
 
 Before he left Taos, Fremont told the men of his reunited 
 party that he would be glad to mount and equip all who would 
 accompany him to the Pacific. Most of them, including Godey, 
 volunteered to go. The three Kern brothers, who were im- 
 patient to return to the States, Bill Williams, and a few others 
 declined. It may be mentioned that the following spring, Wil- 
 liams and Dr. Kern returned to the scene of the disaster to 
 recover the baggage, Brackenridge's twelve hundred dollars in 
 money, and Edward Kern's collection of specimens in natural 
 history, and that they were attacked and killed, either by 
 Indians or by some treacherous Mexicans who accompanied 
 them. To increase the ill-feeling among those who were left 
 behind, they received the impression that Fremont had made 
 an unfair division of the stores bought from the commissary, 
 though later Godey earnestly denied that this was the fact. It 
 was not until they reached Albuquerque, according to Godey, 
 that Fremont was able to obtain military supplies in any quan- 
 tity. The new party which the explorer outfitted here and in 
 Santa Fe consisted of twenty-five men and sixty horses, and 
 he planned to use them in going south of the Sierras by way 
 of the Gila River. 
 
 The early incidents of this final stage of his trip, Fremont 
 
370 FREMONT 
 
 has jotted down in his usual crisp English in the rough notes 
 previously referred to: 22 
 
 With 25 men all told and outfit renewed I resume journey, follow- 
 ing down the Del Norte and intending to reach the Rio Grande by a 
 route south of Gila River. The snows this season too heavy to insist 
 on a direct route through the mountains. Engage a New Mexican for 
 guide — spring weather in the valley — fruit trees in bloom — hospital- 
 ity. Leave the river — open country — snowed on again — no wood and 
 weather cold. Retreat into the Membres Mountains. Pleasant coun- 
 try, well wooded, resembling the oak region of the Sierra Nevada — 
 color of soil — grass and water abundant. Travel along foot of moun- 
 tains. Apaches around the camp — watch and watch — McGehee fired 
 on — halt and have parley with chief — make friends. The Indians go 
 to Membres River with us. Breakfast and presents. Indians direct 
 us to watering place in the open country — appoint to meet us there 
 — their war parties out in Chihuahua and Sonora. I push forward 
 and avoid them. 
 
 The Apache visitor — Santa Cruz. The Mexican and the bunch of 
 grass. Follow down the Santa Cruz River — Tucson. Spring on the 
 Santa Cruz — peach orchard — the ruined missions. River lost in the 
 sand. The grass field and water at foot of the hills. Reach the Gila 
 River. The Pimah village (see Johnson's report) — Indian faces 
 painted with black lead. 
 
 Follow the river around the bend. Meet large party of Sonorans 
 going to California. Their pleasure in meeting us. Their fear of In- 
 dians. They urge nie to travel with them. I consent. Many presents 
 of fruit and provisions in various forms. Reach the Gila River. De- 
 termine position of the junction with the Rio Grande. Make bull- 
 boat — ferry women and children of the Sonorans across, with my 
 party, and leave the bullboat for the men to complete their crossing. 
 
 Fremont was not merely undaunted; he believed that his 
 fourth expedition had succeeded in its main object. "The sur- 
 vey has been uninterrupted up to this point," he wrote bravely 
 from Taos to Jessie, "and I shall carry it on consecutively." 
 Later, he publicly declared: "The result was entirely satis- 
 
 22 Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
STARVATION AND CANNIBALISM 371 
 
 factory. It convinced me that neither the snow of winter nor 
 the mountain ranges were obstacles in the way of the road, 
 and furnished me with a far better line [for a railway] than 
 any I had previously known." He had hopes that, if the con- 
 tinuance of his labors as an explorer proved to have been 
 useful, President Zachary Taylor would take him back into 
 government service for work upon the West coast. 
 
 For the rest, he looked forward to making a new home for 
 Jessie, whose arrival he expected in March. The immediate 
 prospect was that he would have to wage a legal battle before 
 he could even claim the land upon which he had set his heart. 
 When he gave Larkin $3,000, it was to purchase a chosen 
 property on the hills some distance back of San Francisco. Its 
 old orchards and vines and its atmosphere of peace and rest 
 had appealed strongly to him, while its view over the sea re- 
 called his Charleston boyhood. But by some error Larkin 
 bought instead from Juan Alvarado a wild tract in the Sierra 
 foothills, more than a hundred miles from the ocean and nearly 
 that far from any settlement — the famous Mariposas tract, 
 seventy square miles in area. Hostile Indians of the sturdy 
 Cauchile tribe roamed the region in such numbers that it was 
 impossible to reside there, or to pasture cattle, which would 
 have been quickly destroyed. The land was apparently almost 
 worthless. Fremont had felt outraged when, just before leaving 
 California as Kearny's prisoner, he learned of this, and had 
 told Larkin that he would return to demand a just settlement. 
 He had consulted Senator Benton, whose long experience in 
 land cases arising from the Louisiana Purchase had made his 
 advice valuable, and had laid plans to institute a lawsuit. He 
 meant to get either the property originally selected, or his 
 $3,ooo. 23 
 
 Despite such worries, he wrote in confident vein to Jessie. 
 "I make frequent pleasant pictures," he told her, "of the 
 
 23 Details of the legal history of this purchase are given in Bigelow, Fremont, 
 PP- 379#- It was bought under a Mexican title after California became a 
 territory of the United States. Alvarado executed the deed to Fremont on 
 February 10, 1847. 
 
372 FREMONT 
 
 happy home we are to have, and oftenest and among the pleas- 
 antest of all I see our library with its bright fire in the rainy 
 stormy days, and the large windows looking out upon the sea 
 in the bright weather. I have it all planned in my own mind." 
 But all his schemes for exploring, for a career at the bar, for 
 developing a ranch, were suddenly forgotten when he learned 
 the news which, coming from California during 1848, had elec- 
 trified the civilized world. 
 
Golconda and the Senate 
 
 THE dramatic vicissitudes which make Fremont's life 
 so romantic, the extraordinary alternations of disaster 
 and good fortune which mark its course, were never 
 better illustrated than now. Emerging from a humiliating court- 
 martial, he had just been thrown into the jaws of death, and 
 had escaped only after terrible suffering and loss. But already 
 Fortune was spinning her wheel. She was about to toss into his 
 lap a seat in the Federal Senate, and an estate of such wealth 
 that within a few years it would be valued by cool-headed 
 business men at ten million dollars. 
 
 The rough notes of Fremont's which we have just printed 
 indicate the general course of his overland journey from Taos. 
 At Santa Fe, he dined with the military governor of the ter- 
 ritory, Colonel Washington, and at Socorro with the local com- 
 mandant. Pursuing a general southwesterly line, he penetrated 
 well into Mexico, touching Santa Cruz in that republic, and 
 then turned northwest toward Tucson in what is now Arizona. 
 From the point where he reached the Gila, his line of march 
 was along its south bank. Here one blazing forenoon he de- 
 scried in the distance a cloud of dust, in which vague figures 
 drifted along the river margin. Hurrying on, he overtook a 
 whole community on the move — Jessie Fremont says twelve 
 hundred men, women, and children; babies crying, drivers 
 hallooing, mules dragging lurching carts, and horses burdened 
 with packs. Spurring up beside the rear guard, he asked, 
 "Where are you going?" "Alta California," came the reply. 
 "Why such a crowd of you?" demanded the puzzled Fremont. 
 "Gold! Gold!" was the answer. 
 
 373 
 
374 FREMONT 
 
 It was the first news Fremont had received of the discovery 
 of gold on Sutter's property. Word had traveled most rapidly 
 by sea; it had reached the ports of western Mexico — Guay- 
 mas, Mazatlan, Colima — before it penetrated to Tucson; and 
 all Sonora was alive with the excitement which had emptied 
 San Francisco and Monterey in a rush for the gold-fields. These 
 Sonora Mexicans were on their way to the diggings. Fremont 
 acted with characteristic impetuosity. Mariposa might be the 
 best property after all. He leaped to the conclusion that gold 
 would be found on his new lands, and promptly engaged 
 twenty-eight Mexicans to work for him. He was to grubstake 
 them, they were to contribute their muscle and skill, and the 
 gold was to be equally divided. 
 
 Fremont, with his now impressive cavalcade, pressed on 
 rapidly to Los Angeles and Monterey, where he expected 
 Jessie to be already waiting for him. He little guessed what 
 his wife had been through. She had crossed the Isthmus safely 
 under the escort of her brother-in-law, Jacobs. It had been a 
 horrible trip; she went up the Chagres River by slowly poled 
 boats, burned by the sun, tormented by flies and mosquitoes, 
 drinking dirty water, eating hastily cooked food, fearing the 
 fever at every move; thence she crossed the rest of the way 
 by mule train, sleeping at the camps of railway surveyors. Her 
 brother-in-law marveled at her courage. "He judged, as we all 
 do," she wrote later, 1 "by appearances. As there were no com- 
 plaints or tears or visible breakdown, he gave me credit for 
 high courage, while the fact was that the whole thing was so 
 like a nightmare, that one took it as a bad dream — in helpless 
 silence." When she arrived in Panama on the West coast, she 
 was overtaken by "forty-niners" from New York, who brought 
 word of the tragic fate of the fourth expedition; and here she 
 also received Fremont's long letter from Taos, giving a full 
 account of the disaster. At the same time, she learned that 
 there was no boat to take her on north. 
 
 The vessel on which she had expected to proceed to Califor- 
 
 1 Jessie Benton Fremont, A Year of American Travel, p. 56. 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 375 
 
 nia had not returned, for all its men had deserted to rush for 
 the mines, and the captain was fuming helplessly in San Fran- 
 cisco Bay. Steamer after steamer was arriving on the Atlantic 
 side of the Isthmus, and discharging thousands of eager gold 
 hunters, who hurried across to the Pacific — and then sat down 
 and swore. Fortunately, Jessie bore letters of introduction, 
 which soon rescued her from the intolerable heat, noise, and 
 dirt of the hotel. She went to the home of Mme. Arce, a cul- 
 tivated widow, and, worn out by anxiety for Fremont and by 
 hardship, promptly collapsed. A friend named Mr. Gray one 
 morning brought her a newspaper containing a letter of her 
 father's describing the Fremont expedition, and in the evening, 
 when he returned with further news, found her sitting exactly 
 as he had left her, the paper in her hand and her forehead 
 purple from congestion of the brain. All Mme. Arce's tender 
 nursing was needed. 
 
 As she was regaining her strength after a fever which had 
 almost brought her to a sudden grave, one night in the stillness 
 she heard the signal gun of a steamer far out at sea. There 
 was an instant uproar in the town. By scores, by hundreds, 
 the Americans rushed clattering and shouting down the streets 
 to the ramparts, while the excitable natives filled the streets 
 screaming "El vapor!" When the hubbub was at its height, 
 there suddenly came, from another quarter, a second signal 
 gun. Two steamers were in the offing. Wrapped in her dressing- 
 gown, and watching from a balcony, Jessie saw men weeping 
 and hugging one another as if they were Crusoes being taken 
 from some desert island. One ship, the Panama, had rounded 
 the Horn; the other, the California, had scraped together a 
 crew and come down from San Francisco. The next morning 
 Jessie was waited upon by the captain of the Panama and by 
 a naval officer, who told her she was to take their vessel. Among 
 her fellow-passengers were William M. Gwin and the handsome 
 young army officer later famous as "Fighting Joe" Hooker. 
 She went aboard still beset by fears for Fremont's safety, but 
 at San Diego was greeted by news that he had arrived before 
 
376 FREMONT 
 
 her and had hurried on to San Francisco. "I think every man 
 on the ship," she says, "came to tell me and say a choking 
 word for joy for me." 2 
 
 As her daughter Lilly relates the story, when the ship ran 
 into San Diego, Jessie locked herself into her cabin, fearful 
 of the tidings she might hear. The first men to board the vessel 
 knocked at her door and called out: "The colonel's safe; riding 
 up to San Francisco to meet you there; he didn't lose a leg — 
 was only badly frostbitten!" 3 
 
 Carried ashore through the surf to what is now the foot of 
 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, Jessie found that Fre- 
 mont had not yet arrived. She also found the region wild with 
 excitement. San Francisco was a half -deserted town; deserted, 
 that is, by its original inhabitants, and peopled mainly by new- 
 comers counting the hours until they could get away to the 
 interior. No servants could be had except half -trained Indians 
 and Chinese. Mrs. Fremont was told that "time was worth 
 fifty dollars a minute." The people lived as transients would 
 be expected to live, in tents of dirty canvas, shanties knocked 
 together with odd pieces of wood, or ragged shelters of blan- 
 kets. The one really good private house in these first roaring 
 "days of old, and days of gold, and the days of '49," was a two- 
 story frame structure shipped out complete by a New Yorker, 
 with furniture to fill it, at a cost said to reach ninety thousand 
 dollars. It had been intended for a bride, and had witnessed 
 her death a few weeks after it was erected. The only settled 
 residents, besides a small corps of tradesmen who realized that 
 the retail business was surer and richer than any placer ven- 
 ture they were likely to find, were the military officers, who 
 stuck courageously to their posts. As there were no warehouses 
 for the storage of goods, consignments were auctioned off as 
 quickly as they arrived; and these auctions, advertised some- 
 times by brass bands, were a feature of the place. The hotels 
 and lodging-houses being comfortless, at night almost the 
 
 2 Jessie Benton Fremont, Souvenirs of My Time, p. 188. 
 8 Elizabeth Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 377 
 
 whole population betook itself to the saloons and gambling- 
 dens. Within a few months, many of these places assumed the 
 trappings of luxury: plate-glass mirrors, fine chandeliers, gaudy 
 oil-paintings. Public improvements were conspicuously lack- 
 ing: the streets were rivers of mud, which men tried to pave 
 sometimes with bags of flour, bales of cotton, or other goods 
 — for wood was not to be had. Water was one of the most 
 precious of commodities, and laundry-work cost fabulous sums. 
 With inadequate sanitary arrangements, cholera and fever were 
 a grim menace, and the death-rate was high.* 
 
 Ships were now coming into the port in a steady stream, 
 many of them fifty or sixty days from New York, some forty 
 days from Australia, and some direct from Europe. As they dis- 
 charged their cargoes and men, San Francisco underwent a 
 swift change in appearance. High piers were hurriedly built out 
 into the Bay. The ragged streets of shanties and tents, with 
 the winds blowing furious clouds of dust down them, stretched 
 farther and farther back over the hills. Everywhere arose build- 
 ings of all shapes and sizes, in all stages of construction. Many 
 were mere canvas-covered sheds, open in front. Masses of mer- 
 chandise were piled higgledly-piggledly in the open air, some- 
 times under a dirty tarpaulin, sometimes exposed. They dis- 
 played rudely painted signs in every European tongue and 
 advertising every ware; while prominent among these "stores" 
 rose several hotels — the Fremont Family Hotel, a two-story 
 structure, the Parker House, the City Hotel, and others — all 
 crammed to bursting. 
 
 Along the public ways, ankle-deep in mud or dust, crowded 
 people of every nationality and description: Yankees nasal and 
 electric, guttural Germans, nervous Frenchmen, burly Britons, 
 Chinese with swinging pigtails, Californians wrapped in ser- 
 apes, Chileans, Kanakas, and Malays with long creeses. Far 
 back from the water-front lay the plaza (called Portsmouth 
 Square after the warship which Fremont had found here in 
 
 4 Stewart Edward White, The Fortyniners, Chs. 8, 9, and 10, picture early 
 San Francisco. 
 
378 FREMONT 
 
 '47), with a high flagpole marking the adobe customhouse. 
 Military forces policed the town. The atmosphere was one of 
 feverish activity. Everybody was talking of claims, of diggings, 
 of town lots, of the new cities of Sacramento and Stockton; 
 everybody hoped to get rich. 5 
 
 The hurry, the wild new monetary standards, and the specu- 
 lative spirit bewildered the newcomer. A porter who carried 
 one's bags a few blocks demanded $2 in payment; an old New 
 York newspaper sold at $1 a copy; and truckmen driving for 
 merchants of the town made $15 or $20 a day. The sudden 
 wealth had attracted an army of gamblers and saloon-keepers. 
 At least $60,000 a year in rent was paid by the gamblers who 
 at one time occupied most of the second story of the Parker 
 House. A canvas tent near-by, called "Eldorado" by the faro 
 and monte men who occupied it, only 15 by 20 feet in size, 
 was rented for $40,000 a year. A wandering Easterner who 
 wished to hang out his shingle as a lawyer was shown a cellar 
 dug in the ground and told he could have it for $250 a month. 
 All business was transacted with a rush, and men who tried to 
 bargain were brushed impatiently aside. 
 
 If a customer entered a store, the owner eyed him with in- 
 difference, named the price he wanted for a given article, and 
 turned away if the customer objected. Money in smaller 
 amounts than a quarter-dollar did not pass current. The large- 
 minded attitude toward financial affairs was seen at its best in 
 the implicit trust which men were perforce compelled to place 
 in one another's honesty. Loans were made without security, 
 and repaid punctually. Yet the gambling spirit pervaded every 
 group. Bayard Taylor, watching curiously one of the crowded 
 "hells" where sperm-oil lamps lighted up the players' excited 
 features, saw a boy of fifteen coolly pocket $500; one of his 
 fellow-travelers from Panama lose $2,400; and a hard-bitten 
 miner betting great piles of gold dust on a single throw, and 
 finally losing his last hundred ounces at a stroke. 
 
 It was here that, ten days after Jessie landed, Fremont 
 
 5 Bayard Taylor, Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire, p. 55. 
 
380 FREMONT 
 
 arrived from Monterey. She was sitting in her cheerless room 
 in the Parker House when she heard a shout from Portsmouth 
 Square: "Your wife's inside the house, Colonel." A moment 
 later her husband was kneeling by her chair; both of them 
 too much overcome to utter a sound. She has described the 
 scene with her usual feeling: 
 
 Then we both spoke at once, each wanting the other to begin at 
 the moment we had parted over a stirrup-cup of tea that morning 
 on the Missouri. Suddenly he looked at me closely with fear in his 
 eyes. "You have been ill, you are ill now, my darling." I was about 
 
 to deny it when Lilly came in She looked at her father gravely as 
 
 he knelt beside me. As he rose and hugged her, then drew a chair 
 up close, and took her on his knee, she said bluntly: "You didn't 
 come. Mother almost died. A lady downstairs says she will die." 
 
 There was nothing to say in refutation, but I answered his stricken 
 look: "In her innocence she is partly right. Being away from you is 
 a kind of death. Only with you I am fully alive and well." 6 
 
 When Fremont had exchanged with Jessie the history of the 
 past eventful six months, the two looked earnestly for a home 
 in this rushing beehive. The town changed with visible speed 
 — men said that it grew daily by from fifteen to thirty houses. 
 There was now an ebb-tide or backwash from the mines, as 
 well as a tide setting steadily toward them. Broken-down, sick, 
 and disheartened prospectors were returning from the diggings, 
 and doing what they could to dampen the ardor of the new- 
 comers. As the town leaped up to a population of six thousand 
 its business and professional life increased in vigor. Here the 
 Fremonts met well-known men: Major George H. Derby 
 ("John Phoenix"), who had come on Jessie's ship and had 
 organized theatricals to divert her; Edwin Bryant of Ken- 
 tucky; the artist Osgood, who after three months in the hills 
 had set up his easel as a portrait painter; and T. Butler King. 
 For a time they lived in a house which had been occupied by 
 the late vice-consul, Leidesdorff. But they could not make 
 
 6 Catherine Coffin Phillips, Jessie Benton Frimont, pp. 142, 143. 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 381 
 
 themselves quite comfortable in San Francisco. The trade 
 winds and fogs injured Jessie's lungs; moreover, it was too far 
 from their new ranch, Mariposa, They therefore betook them- 
 selves south to Monterey, where they were only one hundred 
 and twenty-five miles as the crow flies (about one hundred and 
 forty miles by road) from the estate. A wing of the governor's 
 house, the largest and best building in town, was thrown open 
 to them, Mme. Jose Castro and her children occupying the 
 other half. 
 
 For the next few months Jessie, rapidly recovering her health, 
 enjoyed with characteristic zest her life in this long, low adobe 
 house of red-tiled roof, with its spacious gardens and hedge of 
 pink roses of Castile. They had Indian men for kitchen service, 
 and she soon mastered the art of cookery with little meat, no 
 fowls or eggs, no milk or butter, and not even potatoes — for 
 the swarming gold-seekers had devoured all. She made friends 
 with Mme. Castro, whose husband was still exiled in Mexico, 
 but who felt no resentment for their lost position and fortune. 
 Among the army officers then in Monterey, General Bennet 
 Riley, General P. F. Smith, and young W. T. Sherman, who 
 was thin and consumptive-looking, with a bad cough, she found 
 congenial acquaintances. Fremont made a trip to San Fran- 
 cisco, and "with manlike prodigality, sent down what would 
 have fitted up the whole large Castro House." They had bales 
 of Chinese satins and French damasks to use for draperies and 
 hangings, boxes of French and Chinese porcelain, bamboo 
 couches and chairs, and wonderfully carved and inlaid Chinese 
 furniture. Two English-china punchbowls served for wash 
 basins. The house had a large fireplace, and Jessie threw down 
 grizzly-bear skins to give warmth to the mat-covered floors, and 
 to lend a cozy air to recesses between the satin-cushioned sofas 
 and armchairs. Her Indian boys, Gregorio and Juan, shot doves 
 and squirrels, and, broiling them upon sticks before the fire, 
 would bring them at the most unusual hours. Jessie later wrote 
 of the whole experience with enormous pleasure: 7 
 
 7 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
382 FREMONT 
 
 This was my first house and my first housekeeping — without any 
 of what we consider indispensable necessities of servants, or usual 
 supplies, but most comfortable and most charming. We had the 
 luxuries of life, if not its necessities. Youth, health, and exultant 
 happiness can do without commonplaces, though it is awkward to 
 have only Indian men for kitchen service, and to study a cookery 
 book and try to follow its directions with no staples. Whatever could 
 be put up in glass or tins we had in quantity — and rice is a great 
 reliance when you learn its many uses Again, I was in the home- 
 keeping domestic atmosphere of Spanish women, who offered me 
 every help, though they could not give what they themselves did not 
 have in this locust-like sweeping away of every green thing and no 
 replanting, for Californians too were off to the placers, and specu- 
 lators had bought up all attainable cattle and sheep for San Fran- 
 cisco. The expenses for army people were too great up there, so 
 headquarters were at Monterey, and there General Riley planted 
 cabbages and sweet women grew tired but laughed over their con- 
 trivances, and were hospitable and helping in spite of all drawbacks. 
 General, then Major Canby, was stationed there, and his most ami- 
 able gentle wife was a center of helping good will. They had an ex- 
 cellent cook, a Mexican who had followed the general after the war, 
 and who did not leave them now even to go to the placers. Mrs. 
 Canby took pity on my tinned biscuit diet, and regularly her man 
 came with the fragrant loaf of fresh bread wrapped in its delicate 
 napkin and set on a plate of fine green enameled Chinese china. 
 Who could need cream with tea, to make that a breakfast of delight 
 to mind as well as palate? Mme. Castro, true to the gentle nature 
 of Spanish women, sent daily a cup of milk for my little girl, for she 
 had saved a cow for her children. This was another turn of the 
 wheel. I had the name which represented to her total loss, for her 
 husband had not returned from Mexico after we took her country, 
 and yet her motherly feelings were stronger than the natural resent- 
 ment for lost position and fortune. She had, though, the innate 
 Spanish pride. A birthday among her children made the opportunity 
 for giving a coral necklace they had admired on my child. The little 
 Modesta brought it back with her soft-voice message. "My mamma 
 says, if it is a present, yes; if it is pay for the milk, no." 
 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 383 
 
 Fremont was now spending all the time he could spare at the 
 Mariposa ranch, which he found a singularly attractive place. 
 From high up in the central Sierras, the Mariposa River flows 
 west to join the San Joaquin. To the northeast, some forty miles 
 away, lies the Yosemite; below, toward the Pacific, stretches 
 the hot central valley. Covering a large segment of the Mari- 
 posa basin, the estate comprised the high eminence which they 
 called Mount Bullion, in honor of Senator Benton— "Old Bul- 
 lion" — picturesque wooded foothills of the Sierras, and broad 
 green flats waving with grass. To reach it in summer from 
 Monterey, the traveler had to ride across the scorching plains 
 of the San Joaquin Valley, where the temperature often rose 
 high above one hundred degrees, and ford a number of rushing 
 streams like the Tuolumne. When, through clouds of suffocat- 
 ing dust, he came to slopes covered with the butterfly tulips 
 which gave the ranch its name, and caught a breath of cooler 
 air, he was nearing his destination. Farther up, where Fremont's 
 estate lay, the sparkling atmosphere and the freshness and elas- 
 ticity it gave every breath made the sun, still very hot, quite 
 endurable. Bear Valley, in which the Colonel soon built a pleas- 
 ant two-story frame house, was a little natural paradise. Pine 
 trees, six or eight feet in diameter, towered two hundred feet 
 into the air; the streams were full of salmon; the ground was 
 covered with red clover ; at night in summer, blankets were re- 
 quired. Not many years before, this spot had been the favorite 
 hunting ground of the Cauchile Indians. The precise boundaries 
 of the 43,000-acre estate, according to the frequent Mexican 
 practice, were not fixed, and the grantee, as the government 
 decided later, had the right of locating the land on any claim 
 within a large area. 8 
 
 Making Monterey his headquarters, Fremont led a life of 
 incessant activity, and Jessie was much of the time at his side. 
 They had a six-seated surrey, the only carriage in the territory, 
 fitted with every convenience. Lilly recalls that for a time after 
 
 8 John R. Howard, Remembrance of Things Past, Ch. 9 ; Bigelow, Frimont, 
 P- 379#- 
 
384 FREMONT 
 
 mules were obtained for this vehicle they were perfect nomads, 
 sleeping as much in the open as under a roof. Jessie would 
 have the cushions drawn together in the surrey to form a mat- 
 tress; the little girl would go to sleep in the boot; and Fremont 
 and the other men would bunk in the open on their blankets 
 or in hammocks strung to the trees. In time they obtained an 
 Englishwoman, newly landed from Australia, as their house- 
 keeper in Monterey, and Jessie writes that "she brought Eng- 
 lish comfort and thoroughness into everything about me." 
 
 Meanwhile, fortune smiled as never before. The Sonora 
 miners had been sent to Mariposa without delay and were busy 
 prospecting and extracting the gold from the river gravel. Bay- 
 ard Taylor, riding into San Jose as a correspondent for the 
 New York Tribune, happened upon Fremont as the explorer 
 was returning from his first trip to the diggings. They shook 
 hands upon the porch of a private house. The Colonel wore 
 California garb, with sombrero and native-style jacket. Taylor 
 was struck by his deep-set, hawklike eyes, bold aquiline nose, 
 and thin, weather-beaten face; above all, by the compactness 
 of his bodily build — "I have seen in no other man the qualities 
 of lightness, activity, strength, and physical endurance in so 
 perfect an equilibrium." His refinement of manner and polished 
 address, unroughened by the camp life of months, also im- 
 pressed the journalist. Fremont, despite his recent disasters, 
 was now a man of greater note than ever; for the East, its 
 curiosity aroused by the gold rush, was reading his reports on 
 the West with insatiable appetite. 
 
 After a brief period in the old capital the Fremonts tempo- 
 rarily went back to San Francisco, where they established a 
 home on some land which the Colonel had purchased, later 
 (Jessie says) the site of the Palace Hotel. He bought and set 
 up a ready-made Chinese-built house, which fitted together 
 like a puzzle, the only nails being those which fastened the 
 shingles to the roof. Walls and floors were grooved together, 
 and doors and windows slid into their places like some exquisite 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 385 
 
 piece of cabinet-work. The family slept on grass hammocks 
 covered with navy-blue blankets. Since the house was small, 
 Fremont often placed his own bunk in the carriage on the sand 
 dunes outside. Some of the most interesting men of the booming 
 new city rode over frequently when the day's work was done 
 and in frontier fashion ate a hearty dinner with the Colonel. 
 A house-man whom they had luckily kept served as cook; they 
 had all the resources of the San Francisco markets for food; 
 and they drank choice wines which had come out from France. 
 In good weather the dinner was served outdoors, with the tables 
 placed on the sand dunes, the blue sky overhead, the bay at 
 their feet, and a strong touch of color added by the flowering 
 lupines all about. Jessie relished the deference, amounting 
 sometimes almost to worship, which was paid her, for women 
 were rarities and men would walk many miles merely to see 
 one. Among her friends were Joseph Hooker, later the Civil 
 War general, then a slim young officer; a Dr. Bowie of Mary- 
 land; Samuel Ward of epicurean fame; and adventurers who 
 had roved in India, South America, and all parts of the world. 
 This interlude pleased them all, but it closed when the rainy 
 season sent Jessie and the children to Monterey again. 9 
 
 As soon as the news spread that Fremont's Sonoran helpers 
 were washing out gold literally by the bucketful, crowds of 
 other prospectors rushed to the region. Before long two or three 
 thousand were on the ground. Under the Mexican law such a 
 grant as Fremont had obtained gave no title to mineral rights, 
 and public opinion regarded placer deposits, no matter on 
 whose land, as general and unrestricted property. Fremont 
 naturally made no effort to interfere with the army of prospec- 
 tors swarming over his land. But the Sonorans, as the first 
 comers, had an advantage over others. They washed out the 
 gold in such quantities that it was sent down to his home in 
 Monterey, so Jessie tells us, in hundred-pound buckskin sacks, 
 
 9 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
 10 Jessie Benton Fremont, A Year of American Travel, p. 125. 
 
386 FREMONT 
 
 worth not far from $25,000 each. 10 The quantity sounds like 
 an exaggeration, but unquestionably enormous sums were 
 taken out; the Fremonts kindly sent a Negro servant named 
 Saunders, whose family were still in slavery, but who had been 
 offered them by the owner for $1,700, up to Mariposa to dig 
 enough gold for the purchase, and he soon obtained it. Unfor- 
 tunately, the Sonorans did not get on well with the American 
 newcomers. They left near Christmas for home; and as the 
 Colonel was too busy with politics at the moment to go to 
 Monterey and divide the gold, he sent the miners the keys to 
 his store-room there. They made the division themselves, and 
 took not a single ounce more than their just share. 
 
 To say that Fremont was busy with politics is to say merely 
 that as one of the prominent citizens of California he was in- 
 evitably caught into the current of public affairs. With un- 
 exampled rapidity, a new state had been built out of an almost 
 unpeopled land. In the year 1849 more than eighty thousand 
 emigrants, three-fourths of them Americans, reached the Coast. 
 The population at the end of the year was well above a hundred 
 thousand, exclusive of Indians, and still growing by tremen- 
 dous leaps. Already a convention of delegates, sitting at Monte- 
 rey during September, had framed an anti-slavery constitution 
 and applied for admission to the Union. Of this convention, one 
 of the most picturesque bodies of its kind ever seen in America, 
 Fremont was, rather strangely, not a member. The president 
 was none other than the seven-foot Dr. Robert Semple, familiar 
 to us as one of the leaders and, later, the Thucydides of the 
 Bear Flag War; he was escorted to his seat by Captain Sutter 
 and General Vallejo; the official reporter was that rhetorical 
 journalist and traveler, J. Ross Browne; and the members 
 chose as the first secretary of state Henry Wager Halleck, who 
 was later to command the armies of the North in the Civil War. 
 Bayard Taylor was an onlooker, and attended a gay dress ball 
 in pantaloons lent him by an officer who weighed considerably 
 more than two hundred pounds. It was a distinguished as well 
 as an amusing assemblage (one member objected to trial by a 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 387 
 
 jury of peers on the ground that only aristocratic England had 
 a peerage), and Fremont should have been present. 11 
 
 But he did use his influence, so far as it was needed, on be- 
 half of free-soil principles. There proved to be surprisingly little 
 opposition to the clause in the bill of rights prohibiting slavery 
 forever in California, many even of the Southerners supporting 
 it. Men realized that the climate and the whole social order 
 were inimical to slavery; that, as one grizzled mountaineer put 
 it in haranguing an election-day crowd, "in a country where 
 every white man makes a slave of himself there is no use in 
 keeping niggers." 12 The Fremonts themselves had resolutely 
 treated slavery as a disgrace. A Texas gold-seeker offered to sell 
 them a strong young mulatto woman, but Jessie indignantly 
 refused. The Colonel was told by advocates of slavery that 
 "You will be the richest man in the world if your mines are 
 worked by slave labor," but he rejected the idea with scorn. 
 Jessie informs us that fifteen members of the convention came 
 in a body to hear from Thomas Hart Benton's daughter that 
 under no circumstances would she consent to own or use a 
 slave. She entertained largely as long as the convention lasted — 
 Sutter was her first guest — and argued that the land her hus- 
 band had called "the Italy of America" was an ideal place for 
 moderate holdings, well-cultivated farms and orchards, and free 
 institutions. 
 
 From the beginning of the agitation for statehood, Fremont's 
 name was informally before the people of California as a can- 
 didate for the Senate. He was known to be a Democrat, and to 
 belong nationally to the free-soil wing of that party. He and 
 Jessie, influenced by their deepest instincts and by Senator 
 Benton's views, had long been opposed to the extension of slav- 
 ery into the territories. Already the California Democracy was 
 showing signs of a decided split upon the question, and lines 
 were being drawn which later resulted in the protracted political 
 
 11 Bayard Taylor, Eldorado, Ch. 16; see J. Ross Browne, Report of De- 
 bates in the Convention of California, passim. 
 
 12 New York Tribune, October %2 } 1849. 
 
388 FREMONT 
 
 duel between the slavery leader, William M. Gwin, and the 
 free-soil leader, Broderick. To a politician who sent him a set 
 of political questions, Fremont replied explicitly and at length. 
 "By association, feeling, principle, and education," he wrote, "I 
 am a Democrat." He believed in a central national railroad 
 from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and would labor for its 
 immediate location and construction. He defended his purchase 
 of the Mariposa claim, and his financial transactions during his 
 brief civil governorship in 1847. 
 
 That was in December, 1849. The same month, by a com- 
 promise between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions, the 
 California legislature elected Fremont and William M. Gwin 
 senators, and later, in drawing lots, Fremont received the short 
 term. On the first ballot, he had received twenty-nine votes, 
 Gwin twenty-two, Halleck twelve, and others scattering votes. 
 Of course, the election had no validity until California was 
 actually admitted to the Union. But Congress had already met; 
 the question of bringing California and New Mexico in was the 
 paramount issue before it, and it was believed that the famous 
 explorer, with the influence of Benton to assist him, might 
 prove a useful lobbyist in the national capital. He was expected 
 to start for the East at once. It was further believed that, with 
 his unequaled knowledge of the West, and his conviction that 
 by his last exploring trip he had found the ideal route, he could 
 do more than any one else to hasten the building of the Pacific 
 railroad. Jessie tells us how characteristically Fremont re- 
 sponded to the new challenge: 13 
 
 One evening of tremendous rain, when we were, as usual, around 
 the fire, Mrs. McEvoy, with her table and lights, sewing at one side, 
 myself by the other, explaining pictures from the Illustrated Times 
 to my little girl, while the baby rolled about on the bearskin in front 
 of the fire, suddenly Mr. Fremont came in upon us, dripping wet, 
 as well he might be, for he had come through from San Jose — 
 seventy miles on horseback through the heavy rain. He was so wet 
 that we could hardly make him cross the pretty room ; but . . . the 
 
 13 A Year of American Travel, p. 159. 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 389 
 
 footmarks were all welcome, for they pointed home. He came to tell 
 me that he had been elected Senator, and that it was necessary we 
 should go to Washington on the steamer of the first of January. 
 
 At daybreak the next morning he was off again, having to be back 
 in San Jose. A young sorrel horse, of which Mr. Fremont was very 
 fond, brought him down and carried him back this 140 miles within 
 36 hours, without fatigue to either. 
 
 On New Year's night of 1850, with the rain pouring torrents 
 and every street in Monterey a stream, Fremont bore Jessie in 
 his arms down to the wharf and they embarked on the steamer 
 Oregon for New York via the Panama route. Among those 
 aboard were Gwin, Sam Ward, and T. Butler King; and the 
 vessel was estimated to be carrying three million dollars in gold 
 dust. The sudden return East meant an abandonment by the 
 Fremonts of many plans. Mariposa had to be left under the 
 oversight of California friends. Their hopes for a quiet life, a 
 cessation of struggle, had to be given up. They had meant to 
 stay seven years, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot, 
 our first object to live our lives in independence," but the gold 
 rush and statehood had made that impossible. It cost them 
 both a pang to leave the free outdoor life of the West. Jessie 
 had brought all her natural vivacity and gusto to the camping 
 excursions, when in some mountain glade they would eat veni- 
 son, drink claret, and afterward enjoy the camp-fire talk of old 
 Knight, the hunter, or the naval lieutenant, Edward F. Beale; 
 she had delighted in the gay, hospitable Californians, with their 
 families of twelve or fifteen children, their profuse hospitality, 
 their folk songs and serenades, their guisada and other dishes, 
 their three-day marriage feasts, their incomparable horseman- 
 ship, and their picturesque dress — the velvet jackets, gold em- 
 broidery, slashed trousers, and jingling bells of the men making 
 them look like figures out of an opera. She had enjoyed playing 
 the hostess herself, and during the progress of the constitutional 
 convention, when Fremont was fearful lest the slavery element 
 might prove strong, and when many of his old friends and 
 
390 FREMONT 
 
 opponents, from Sutter to Castro, were in town, she had kept 
 open house and laden her table with dainties. 
 
 Yet Fremont would have been more than human had he not 
 felt a certain exultation in the changed circumstances of his 
 return East. A year and a half earlier he had been traveling 
 west on the Great Lakes, an impoverished young man of bleak 
 prospects, just resigned under attack from the army. Now he 
 was coming back a Senator-elect, his trunk full of buckskin 
 bags of gold dust, with the title to one of the richest tracts on 
 the Coast in his possession. What a transformation! An English 
 man-of-war, at anchor off Mazatlan, fired a salute in his honor 
 and that of Senator-elect Gwin, and lowered the captain's gig 
 to put Fremont and Jessie ashore. He had even been gratified 
 by an expression of Zachary Taylor's confidence in him. The 
 President, no doubt partly to please Benton, had in June, 1849, 
 appointed him a commissioner to run the boundary line with 
 Mexico, and Fremont had accepted the place, resigning it, 
 however, immediately afterward. No one in Washington would 
 be able to sneer at him. Jessie, too, who was still ailing in health 
 and had grown homesick, was glad to return with her small 
 daughter to her father and invalid mother. 
 
 Before Fremont and his wife had reached Panama both were 
 ill, Jessie with some unnamed malady which she says put her 
 in danger of dying, and the Colonel with an attack of rheumatic 
 fever in the leg which had been so badly frostbitten in the San 
 Juan Mountains. They were taken to Mme. Arce's home and 
 nursed back to sufficient health to enable them to continue 
 their travels. Lying on cots in her big ballroom, which was 
 made the sick chamber because of its coolness, they were regu- 
 larly visited by the explorer John L. Stephens, now vice-presi- 
 dent of the Panama Railroad Company, who was also fever 
 ridden, and who used to say, "I have come to take my chill 
 with you." Running up from Colon to New York on the mail 
 steamer Georgia, Jessie was again attacked and grew worse; 
 a gale which buffeted the ship till she had to be lashed to a 
 sofa made her so desperately ill that she was later told that by 
 
GOLCONDA AND THE SENATE 391 
 
 all the laws of medicine she should have died. Fremont himself 
 had meanwhile been seized with "Chagres fever," and was in 
 bed. But at last they were safe home; they went immediately 
 to the Irving House, and the press announced: "Mrs. Fremont 
 has entirely recovered from her illness. The colonel has been 
 indisposed for some time past with intermittent fever, but is 
 now convalescent." 
 
 On September 9, 1850, California was admitted to the Union, 
 and shortly afterward Fremont took his seat as one of her Sena- 
 tors. 
 
 Still half-ill, he was actually in the Senate only twenty-one 
 working days. In this time he introduced eighteen measures, 
 the principal ones being a bill to regulate the working of the 
 mines in California; a bill to grant the State public lands for 
 educational purposes; a bill to grant it six townships to found 
 a university; a bill to give it land for asylums for the deaf, 
 dumb, blind, and insane ; and a bill to open a wagon-road across 
 the continent. He meanwhile distinguished himself for his anti- 
 slavery temper. He voted for the suppression of the slave-trade 
 in the District of Columbia, and against a measure which pro- 
 vided a heavy prison-sentence for any one who should entice a 
 slave to run away. During the session he came into collision, in 
 none too creditable a way, with Senator Foote of Mississippi. 
 In debate the half-tipsy Foote angered Fremont by charging 
 that his bill to regulate the operation of the mines in Cali- 
 fornia was drafted for his own private advantage. A hot alterca- 
 tion in the antechamber followed. Thereupon the Colonel sent 
 Foote a letter demanding a retraction of his language, to be 
 signed in the presence of witnesses, and penned also a chal- 
 lenge to a duel if he refused. Foote, though declining to sign 
 the retraction, wrote Fremont to disclaim any intention of giv- 
 ing offense in his language; and this satisfied every one, includ- 
 ing Benton, to whom the explorer referred the matter. Mean- 
 while, the young Senator's stern anti-slavery temper gave 
 offense in California, and the Southern forces there began to 
 rally to prevent his reelection. 
 
392 FREMONT 
 
 Living again at Benton's house in Washington, Jessie and he 
 enjoyed the social life of the capital. Mayor Seaton has 
 sketched him for us as he appeared at a dinner party, a man of 
 "arresting dignity," but looking worn and thin. "His black hair, 
 heavily streaked with gray, gave distinction to his weather- 
 worn features. His eyes shone youthfully as he answered ques- 
 tions as to the possibilities of the coast under a railway proj- 
 ect." Often silent, he watched with frank admiration his wife, 
 talking and laughing with the sparkle of a care-free girl. "When 
 Jessie caught his glance upon her, there was an exchange which 
 I can only describe as a mental wink, a flash of eye, a fleeting 
 smile, discreet flirtation throughout the long dinner." 14 Grad- 
 ually he gained strength. But when the Mississippi and Pacific 
 Railroad Convention met in Philadelphia in the spring of 185 1, 
 a convention to which he sent a long letter urging the route 
 between the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth parallels for the rail- 
 road, he was still confined to his room by "Chagres fever." 
 
 14 Catherine Coffin Phillips, Jessie Benton Frimont, p. 171. 
 
XXIV 
 Managing the Mariposas 
 
 FREMONT had now risen to a pinnacle where his oppor- 
 tunities seemed far greater than ever before. He com- 
 manded wealth; he had held political office and power; 
 he possessed a reputation as the foremost explorer of the West. 
 He was a busy man of affairs, supervising his estate, laboring 
 for the cause of free-soil democracy in Washington and Cali- 
 fornia, answering scientific inquiries, and keeping abreast of 
 geographical advances. His ambitions were increasingly com- 
 plex, for he hoped to be one of the statesmen of the new West 
 and one of her business entrepreneurs as well as the pathmarker 
 who mapped her highways. Five years were to pass before he 
 was to be widely discussed as a presidential candidate. How 
 fruitfully was he to spend them? 
 
 Thus far his life had been shaped largely by personal forces 
 — by Poinsett, Nicollet, Benton, Jessie, Stockton; now there 
 enters the drama a powerful and on the whole sinister imper- 
 sonal force, the Mariposa estate. For the next fifteen years this 
 ten-league grant, rich in gold and grazing land, was to dominate 
 all too much of Fremont's activities. Promising him wealth and 
 happiness, it was to bring him in the end little but trouble and 
 disappointment. Seeming a beneficent gift of luck, it was des- 
 tined before it vanished — vanished as suddenly as a rainbow 
 bubble — to appear rather like some malignant stroke of Fate. It 
 did more to govern the central part of his career, and in the 
 large view to warp it, than any other element; for it led him 
 from the scientific pursuits for which he had been trained into 
 the alien world of business. 
 
 To give Mariposa its true significance it must thus be treated 
 
 393 
 
394 FREMONT 
 
 not as a mere mining enterprise, but as one of the great con- 
 trolling influences upon Fremont's career. Its business history 
 is a thorny and profitless maze. From the outset the estate 
 proved to be a perfect Pandora's box of complications. Its 
 boundaries were undetermined; it was difficult to obtain an 
 American title, for Congress in 1851 passed an act refusing 
 confirmation to any California titles without absolute written 
 proof, and the papers of the Mexican administration were 
 nailed up in various repositories; while the region abounded in 
 land-jumpers. The state witnessed a half-dozen years of partial 
 chaos in landholding, many settlers taking up unauthorized 
 abodes wherever they pleased, and defending them with shot- 
 guns. Fremont's Sonoran workers, with the first flood of other 
 miners, shortly exhausted the rich placer deposits in the Mari- 
 posa area. There remained not merely its vast possibilities in 
 grain and cattle-growing, but plain evidences of gold-bearing 
 quartz — Alexis Godey picked up the first gold-veined rock — 
 which would pay well, but would first require a heavy capital 
 investment in mining tools and ore-crushing machinery. 1 Study 
 of these possibilities filled the sanguine Fremont with an un- 
 
 1 News of this find was given in the California correspondence of the 
 Trenton, New Jersey, Daily True American, November 13, 1849: "But by far 
 the most magnificent discovery is that recently made upon the rancho of 
 Col. Fremont, on the Mariposas River. It is nothing less than a vein of 
 gold in the solid rock — a bona fide mine, the first which has been found in 
 California. I saw some specimens which were in Col. Fremont's possession. 
 The stone is a reddish quartz, filled with rich veins of gold, and far sur- 
 passing the specimens brought from North Carolina and Georgia. Some stones 
 picked up on the top of the quartz strata, without particular selection, yielded 
 two ounces of gold to every twenty-five pounds. Col. Fremont informed me 
 that the vein had been traced for more than a mile. The thickness on the 
 surface is two feet, gradually widening as it descends, and showing larger 
 particles of gold. The dip downward is only about twenty feet, so that the 
 mine can be worked with little expense. These are the particulars first given 
 me, when the discovery was announced. Still more astonishing facts have 
 just come to light. 
 
 "A geologist sent out to examine the place arrived here [San Francisco] 
 last night. He reports having traced the vein a distance of two leagues, with 
 an average breadth of 150 feet. At one extremity of the mine he found large; 
 quantities of native silver, which he calculates will fully pay the expenses 
 of setting up machinery and working it. . . . This discovery has made a great 
 sensation throughout the country. . . ." 
 
MANAGING THE MARIPOSAS 395 
 
 fortunate conviction that he could be a highly successful busi- 
 ness-man. 
 
 Within a year he began to learn that the Mariposa was a 
 will-of-the-wisp, beckoning him forward with promises of stu- 
 pendous wealth, sometimes placing small gifts within his grasp, 
 and yet always cheating him. In June, 1850, he authorized an 
 agent named David Hoffman to act for him in London and to 
 organize mining companies upon the basis of leases. At the 
 same time, he made out some other leases to Thomas Denny 
 Sargent, who proceeded to California, duly located them on the 
 property, obtained surveys and other necessary papers, and 
 then going to London in the early spring of 1851, disposed of 
 them in Great Britain at a large profit. Senator Benton was 
 struck by Sargent's enterprise, and having received a power-of- 
 attorney from Fremont, agreed with Sargent that he should 
 take over the whole tract for a million dollars. Sargent seems 
 to have made his first payment, to have proceeded to England, 
 hustled about there, convinced capitalists of the value of the 
 property, and concluded arrangements for its resale at a hand- 
 some price. Meanwhile, Hoffman had concluded important busi- 
 ness arrangements of his own in London, and was filled with 
 consternation to learn that the area had suddenly been whisked 
 from beneath his feet. He protested, while Fremont declared 
 that he had never authorized a sale. It was a very pretty and 
 complicated quarrel till the Colonel cut through it in the fall of 
 1852 by ordering a temporary suspension of all transactions 
 with regard to Mariposa. 2 
 
 It was high time that he did so, for he was by no means 
 certain that the government would recognize his claim to the 
 land, and a long course of litigation, which finally landed him 
 in the Supreme Court, was looming up ahead. His claim was 
 duly filed before the Federal commissioners in the opening days 
 of 1852, and by the autumn of 1853 was being fought out with 
 
 2 David Hoffman, The Fremont Estate: An Address to the British Public. 
 See also the anonymous pamphlet of 1856, Who is Fremont? By One who 
 has Known Him Socially, Financially, and Politically. 
 
396 FREMONT 
 
 Attorney-General Caleb Cushing in the Federal District Court. 
 Even if Fremont got the land, he might well be refused title to 
 the minerals. But the explorer was still exuberantly confident 
 of becoming a millionaire, and had embarked upon efforts to 
 develop the property with money of his own, and funds of the 
 San Francisco banking house of Palmer, Cook & Co. This 
 house, which was also interested in the defense, seems to have 
 taken a certain part of the estate as security, and to have cut 
 this part up into shares which were sold to certain other capi- 
 talists. 3 
 
 Fremont had the more time for Mariposa in that his sena- 
 torial career had been brief, and his ambitions to succeed him- 
 self had proved abortive. The needs of the estate and his desire 
 to campaign for reelection took him hurriedly back to Cali- 
 fornia in the fall of 1850. In San Francisco, after a long search, 
 he finally bought an ugly but comfortable domicile high on 
 Stockton Street, overlooking the Plaza. Here Fremont found 
 that the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic party had grown 
 in strength. Had his health been good, he might have done more 
 to rally the free-soil element. But in December he was taken 
 ill, and, as Senator Benton said in Congress, was chained to his 
 bed "by sciatica, rheumatism, neuralgia," paying the penalty of 
 his past exposures. Jessie hurried out from the East to nurse 
 him. The legislative balloting came on in February, 1851; more 
 than one hundred and forty votes were taken, and he was de- 
 cisively defeated, though no choice was made. Nearly a year 
 later, Colonel John B. Weller, of the now dominant slavery 
 faction, was elected in his stead. 
 
 Fremont would have liked nothing better than to continue 
 in the area of state and national politics, but the situation was 
 unfavorable to a man of his temperament. The population of 
 California was still rising like an irresistible tide, and the voters 
 were a rough, heterogeneous lot who responded readily to the 
 arts of the demagogue. The census of 1850 gave the state 
 
 3 Montgomery Blair was retained as Fremont's attorney; W. E. Smith, 
 The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics, II, pp. 53, 54. 
 
MANAGING THE MARIPOSAS 397 
 
 122,000 people. That summer the tide of emigration was so 
 great that 9,270 wagons passed Fort Laramie on the California 
 and Oregon Trail, and 42,000 persons registered with the com- 
 mandant. 4 In 1852, the torrent overflowed all bounds. Before 
 the close of May more than 2,600 wagons, more than 26,000 
 cattle, and some 11,000 men, women, and children had reached 
 Fort Kearny on the way to the Coast. On the principal trails, 
 the road showed almost a continuous line of covered wagons. 
 San Francisco had sprung up into a great sprawling city, with 
 many miles of graded streets, ambitious blocks of business 
 buildings, and flimsy residences which proved food for a series 
 of conflagrations. The majority of the new-comers were rude 
 and illiterate frontier folk, or urban adventurers. They mingled 
 in city and mining-camp with Mexicans, Chileans, swarms of 
 Europeans, men from the British penal colonies, and Chinese. 
 The French Government had taken deliberate measures for 
 sending over a large part of the Garde Mobile, a turbulent body 
 which Louis Napoleon had at one time found useful, but which 
 had proved too troublesome to keep in Paris. But the convicts 
 and ne'er-do-wells from Botany Bay and Sydney, who "es- 
 caped" to California in shiploads, were the most vicious of all; 
 and they gave the English immigrants in general a bad name. 
 
 Racial antagonisms were intense; while the resentment which 
 the landless squatters felt against the great estate owners like 
 Fremont was strong. Disorder seemed to increase steadily. The 
 electorate was easily played upon by such adept politicians of 
 southern sympathies as Gwin, Weller, and the unprincipled 
 Governor John Bigler, 5 but it was instinctively hostile to such 
 a man as Fremont. 
 
 To Mariposa and other business, therefore, Fremont gave 
 most of 185 1. Always restless, always inclined to speculation, 
 he did not confine himself, as common sense dictated, to his 
 estate. His most impetuous venture was a contract for supply- 
 
 4 John Bach McMaster, History of the People of the United States, VIII, 
 P- 58. 
 
 5 Compare Cardinal Goodwin, Establishment of State Government in Cali- 
 fornia, passim. 
 
398 FREMONT 
 
 ing beef to the Indians. The overrunning of the foothills and 
 valleys by miners had driven many of the savages from their old 
 hunting grounds; and pressed by hunger, they commenced kill- 
 ing live stock belonging to the whites. The settlers retaliated. 
 There seemed danger of a general Indian war, which would 
 wipe out isolated miners and prospectors, and Federal commis- 
 sioners were hastily sent to treat with the tribes. These com- 
 missioners adopted the wise principle that it was better to 
 feed the Indians than to fight them; but when they sought for 
 beef they found that the ranchers were trying to take advan- 
 tage of the emergency by demanding exorbitant prices. Fremont 
 happened to have cattle interests, and he offered to furnish 
 some $180,000 worth of beef at the usual rates; an offer which 
 the commissioners accepted as "the lowest and best yet made 
 by any responsible man." 6 The commissioners gave him drafts 
 upon the Treasury, but they had heavily overdrawn their 
 credit, and he met a great deal of trouble in getting his money. 
 Special legislation by Congress was ultimately necessary to 
 compensate the explorer for what was not merely a fair but a 
 public-spirited transaction. 7 He had other irons in the fire at 
 the same time. Leaving Jessie in San Francisco, where the dis- 
 orders were growing dangerous and were resulting in incendiar- 
 ism, he spent much time in the saddle or at Mariposa. 
 
 The first great San Francisco fire of 185 1, that of May 4th, 
 which destroyed at least seven million dollars' worth of prop- 
 erty, 8 cost Jessie — who had given birth to another son two 
 weeks earlier, and was confined to her bed at the time — a night 
 of feverish excitement, but that was all. The Fremont home on 
 Stockton Street, near the Plaza, was high up on the hillside, 
 and her windows looked down into the sea of flames. At one 
 time, it was necessary to hang soaking-wet carpets over the 
 sides of the house to counteract the fierce heat; boxes of legal 
 papers and silverware were taken to a friend's house on Russian 
 
 6 MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
 7 See full history of the matter in Senator Weller's speech, Congressional 
 Globe, August u, 1856; 34th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2022. 
 
 8 J. S. Hittell, History of San Francisco, p. 168. 
 
MANAGING THE MARIPOSAS 399 
 
 Hill; while the hammock and blankets in which she was to be 
 carried away, if necessary, were placed ready beside her bed. 
 But friendly fire-fighters, scorched and wet, ran in from time to 
 time to reassure her. The second fire, occurring late in June 
 while Fremont was at the Mariposas, proved much more dan- 
 gerous. 
 
 This conflagration started at ten o'clock on a Sunday morn- 
 ing, and it was soon clear that it would sweep away the Fremont 
 residence. Jessie and her baby were taken to the home of a 
 hospitable South Carolinian on a safe elevation not far away. 
 Other refugees were gathered there. One of them was a young 
 Frenchwoman who had been very ill, and who took a large 
 chair by a window overlooking the advancing fire. "Her wild 
 fevered gaze was fixed on her burning home," writes Jessie. 
 "Suddenly, with a crazy laugh, she rose and offered me her 
 seat — 'C'est votre tour, Madame; your house goes next,' she 
 said. And after we had made her lie down and let wet cloths 
 be applied to the poor fevered head, I in my turn watched from 
 that window the burning of my home." Suffering from the 
 shock, Jessie was transferred to one of the few houses avail- 
 able, a lonesome bare place, where she could do little more than 
 camp out. Here, however, she met an unexpected piece of good 
 fortune. Fremont had invested in a considerable tract of land 
 in the city, and had leased it to an industrious, cleanly colony 
 of English people, who had erected there a brewery and a num- 
 ber of cottages. They now came to the rescue in dramatic 
 fashion: 9 
 
 A procession of our English tenants came to me carrying parcels 
 and bundles, and leading small carts over the uneven sand drives. A 
 middle-aged man and his wife led them and spoke for the others. 
 When the fire began on Sunday, they said, they thought it might 
 take the direction of our house; assuring themselves of this, they 
 at once started in force to offer their services, but I had already gone. 
 Then they proceeded to save everything; working with such cool 
 method that mirrors, china, and glass, several hundred books, fur- 
 
 9 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
400 FREMONT 
 
 niture, even kitchen utensils, and all our clothing, were saved in good 
 condition. The motherly woman apologized for having laundered the 
 soiled clothing, but, she said, "I thought you might be so put about 
 with the changing, the clothes would have long to wait." Then the 
 man put down on the table a smaller but heavy parcel tied in a 
 big red silk handkerchief. "We knew the master was from home," 
 he said, "and there was a young babbie in the house, and we thought 
 money might come in handy, so we brought a quarter's rent in ad- 
 vance"; untying the heavy red bundle and showing the heaps of 
 silver and some gold. That made me cry — it was all so kind, so un- 
 expected, and from people who were kept chilled by public ill-will. 
 
 When Fremont returned from Mariposa, he saw the sun 
 shining on many acres — more then ten blocks — of smoking 
 ashes. Of his own home, only a single shattered chimney re- 
 mained. The city hospital had been burned; so had the office of 
 the Alt a California, the Jenny Lind Theatre, where the miners 
 were entertained by rough and ready farces, and the "old 
 adobe" on the Plaza, the last relic of the village of Yerba 
 Buena. He learned that Mrs. Fremont and the children were 
 somewhere upon the hill near Grace Church — that was all his 
 informants could tell him. Thousands were utterly homeless, 
 shivering amid the chaparral and sand beside what fragments 
 of their household possessions they had been able to save. 
 Standing near the church, Fremont gazed about and identified 
 Jessie's temporary habitation by a set of upper windows where 
 white muslin curtains with pink ribbons were fluttering in the 
 fresh morning air; for, like her father, she insisted upon 
 thorough ventilation. When he heard what the English tenants 
 had done, he sent at once to thank them. They had previously 
 asked him to sell them their home sites, and he had refused; 
 but now he told them that as a mark of gratitude he would 
 have deeds of sale prepared at once, at a low valuation. Decades 
 later, Jessie could "remember clearly the dawning surprise and 
 happiness lighting up the large-featured heavy faces, the hearty 
 words of gratitude, and the large grip of the very big hands as 
 they thanked us." 
 
MANAGING THE MARIPOSAS 401 
 
 Jessie's health had been affected by the ordeal of the two 
 fires. She frequently woke at night to find herself groping at 
 the window or the door, with the sound of fire bells haunting 
 her ears. Both she and her husband disliked the rough society 
 of the state, where lynch law was now in full ascendancy, and 
 a vigilance committee had just been organized in San Francisco 
 as a last desperate means of stopping the disorder and vio- 
 lence. Moreover, he was badly in need of capital to develop 
 the Mariposa mines, and it was only in Europe that he could 
 obtain the funds to buy machinery and erect ore mills. One 
 evening in December, 1851, he suddenly asked Jessie, "How 
 would you like a trip to Paris as a New Year's gift?" She uttered 
 some incredulous words about a trip to the moon being equally 
 nice. Thereupon he took from his wallet brightly colored 
 steamer tickets for passage to Chagres and thence to France. 
 To her ecstatic exclamation that it would be his first vacation, 
 he replied that it would also be hers: "The first rest since you 
 spoke those fateful words, 'whither thou goest, I will go.' " 10 
 
 What impression the history, the monuments, and the society 
 of Europe made upon Fremont, who loved a lonely mountain- 
 scape better than a royal dinner party, we do not know; but 
 the alert and social Jessie was in her element. Her pen has 
 given us an animated record of the delights of transatlantic 
 travel. Even the discomforts were remembered later with pleas- 
 ure. Missing the European steamer at Chagres, they went to 
 New York, stayed four days (March 6 to 10, 1852) at the 
 Irving Hotel, and took the Cunard side-wheel steamer Africa 
 for Liverpool, the bracing cold of the North Atlantic driving 
 away their touch of the Isthmus fever. The roomy, rolling old 
 vessel, where they were quartered in the ladies' parlor, with 
 the ship's library and an open fire all the way over, was delight- 
 ful. In London rooms had been prepared for them at the 
 Clarendon Hotel by the Marchioness of Wellesley, who had 
 been one of the three beautiful Misses Caton of Maryland, and 
 who had long known Jessie; while Abbott Lawrence, the Amer- 
 
 10 Catherine Coffin Phillips, Jessie Benton Fremont, p. 178. 
 
402 FREMONT 
 
 ican minister, and his daughter, exerted themselves from the 
 first day to make the newcomers welcome, and arranged what 
 Mrs. Fremont called a terrifying program. 
 
 Jessie, it is clear, found every hour of the foreign sojourn 
 enchanting. In her pages we find a description of meetings 
 with the Duke of Wellington, stooped and abstracted in his old 
 age; of dinners and teas at the important London houses; of 
 an evening with Sir Roderick Murchison, president of the 
 Royal Geographical Society; and of her presentation to Queen 
 Victoria, who made an "impression of womanly goodness com- 
 bined with a look of power." From London they went on to 
 Paris early in May. Here they met a grand seigneur, the Comte 
 de la Garde, who was connected by marriage with the Bona- 
 parte family, and who was captivated by Jessie's vivacity and 
 interest in life. He introduced them to the best Parisian society, 
 and his talk and personality gave them glimpses into the most 
 romantic and highly colored pages of French history. Later, 
 when he died, he bequeathed Jessie a precious collection, chosen 
 from among his treasures, to illustrate the topics of which they 
 had often chatted: autographs, paintings by Isabey, water- 
 colors of Queen Hortense, and so on. Through his kindness, 
 they were allotted places on the official tribune to view the 
 grand military parade before the Prince-President, Louis 
 Napoleon, at which the imperial eagles were restored to the 
 French standards — a symbol that the end of the Republic was 
 near. 11 
 
 To both Fremont and Jessie, Paris seemed very homelike: 
 to him because his father had been French, to her because the 
 city was only a splendid amplification of the old French St. 
 Louis with which she had been so familiar. She surrounded 
 herself with French servants, two of whom came back with her 
 to America, where they remained fifteen and twenty years re- 
 spectively in the Fremont household. They took a whole house 
 to themselves, Lady Dundonald's mansion in the Italian style 
 on the Champs Elysees, between the Place de l'fitoile and Rond 
 
 11 See Jessie Benton Fremont, Souvenirs of My Time, Chs. 14-21 inclusive. 
 
 
MANAGING THE MARIPOSAS 403 
 
 Point, and kept the children at home, with a governess to teach 
 them. They kept a brougham and pair with an Irish coachman, 
 had ponies for the youngsters, and every luxury that heart 
 could desire. They drove out to Versailles, Fontainebleau, and 
 other points near Paris, staying overnight. They saw Rachel at 
 the Theatre Frangaise, and went to the opera. Fremont spent 
 a good deal of time in fencing and in long walks. He made 
 numerous friends in the scientific world, obtained an introduc- 
 tion to Arago, and entertained lavishly. It is plain that the 
 Mariposa estate was furnishing, in spite of all financial and 
 legal tangles, a handsome revenue. Jessie relates a revealing 
 incident of her husband. He was fascinated, she says, by a 
 magnificent Cedar of Lebanon which shaded part of the lawn 
 of the Lauriston Hotel near by; in all his camp life he had 
 never seen anything like its great layered boughs. Under this 
 spell, he "opened negotiations for the purchase of the hotel 
 when we were told it was for sale." 
 
 From the Tuileries, thanks to the Comte de la Garde, came 
 cards to every fete, ball, or other court occasion. Many of these 
 affairs were dreams of splendor to the Americans. Once, for 
 example, they went to the dansant given by the Prince-Presi- 
 dent at St. Cloud, and found the magnificent rooms, the endless 
 mirrors, and the brilliantly dressed company a delightful sight. 
 "Far below the steep hill was the Seine, and the Bois du 
 Boulogne lay between the river and the city four or five miles 
 away. A full moon was shining on this, and made a perfect 
 picture as we sat by one of the great open windows." Louis 
 Napoleon, short, fat, dull-eyed, and yet impressive, entered, 
 followed by a train of ladies and gentlemen in gay uniforms and 
 lace and silk dresses ; walked through the parted lines of guests, 
 and seated himself above the diplomatic corps; and Jessie, who 
 loved the theatrical, drew a sharp breath of admiration. 
 
 As a double climax, the Fremonts witnessed, in the closing 
 days of 1852, the official entrance of Louis Napoleon as Em- 
 peror, and, in the first days of 1853, the pomp and pageantry 
 which accompanied his marriage to Eugenie de Montijo. Jessie's 
 
404 FREMONT 
 
 house, with its balcony overlooking the Champs Elysees, was 
 crowded with American friends and acquaintances when the 
 new-made Emperor rode bowing through the avenue, twisting 
 his long mustaches, and apparently quite unafraid — "alone, no 
 troops, not a single officer within forty feet of him." From a 
 different balcony, commanding a view of the Tuileries, they saw 
 all the blare and pomp of the imperial wedding: the grenadiers, 
 Cent Gardes, and cavalry, emerging from the Grand Court and 
 pouring like a river into the streets, where they made a com- 
 pact military order with tens of thousands of brightly dressed 
 people pressing behind; the military escort; the Marshal de 
 Loestine, representing the First Empire, riding alone; and then 
 the bride and groom in their glass coach, surmounted by a 
 gold crown and swung like some great bonbonniere between 
 the front and rear wheels. The Emperor and Empress sat beside 
 each other on white satin seats, the former stiff and upright in 
 brilliantly decorated uniform, with half -shut eyes, the latter as 
 pale as some waxen image, and as rigidly still, like some figure 
 in a painful dream. A far cry, all this, from the deserts and for- 
 ests of the West, the crudity of the California mining-camps I 
 As "Mariposa business" helped take Fremont to Europe, so 
 now it and other financial perplexities quickly summoned him 
 home. His title to the estate was still uncertain. His claim upon 
 the Treasury for $180,000 upon the Indian beef contract was 
 still unsettled. As yet the government had not paid the bills 
 which he had incurred for the California Battalion, and he had 
 received a sharp reminder that he might be held personally 
 liable for them. In London, early in April, 1852, as he was 
 stepping into a carriage with Jessie to go to a dinner, he was 
 arrested by a party of Bow Street officers, who were accom- 
 panied by an insolent clerk from a solicitor's firm. The four 
 constables hurried him off to prison, and, despite his protests, 
 he was kept there until next day, when George Peabody fur- 
 nished the necessary bail. This arrest was for the nonpayment 
 of four drafts, amounting to $19,500 and interest, which he had 
 drawn as governor of California upon Mr. Buchanan as Secre- 
 
MANAGING THE MARIPOSAS 405 
 
 tary of State, for supplies furnished to the Battalion by one 
 F. Huttman. 12 Buchanan could not pay these drafts when they 
 were presented, for Congress had made no appropriation. Since 
 the government could not be sued, the holders of the notes 
 concluded that the shortest way to get their money was to take 
 the position that Fremont had acted upon his own responsi- 
 bility in California. An expensive lawsuit against him at once 
 began; and seeing that it might be followed by others, for 
 amounts far beyond his ability to pay, Fremont hastily appealed 
 to his friend Senator Gwin to press in Congress an old bill for 
 payment of the claims arising from the conquest of California. 13 
 
 While these affairs required his presence in America, Jessie 
 had her own family reasons for returning. Benton had written 
 her from St. Louis, in March, 1852, that her only brother 
 Randolph was dead. A sudden illness had seized him just as he 
 was about to enter St. Louis University. "His disease had all the 
 violence of cholera, though bilious," wrote the Senator, 14 "and 
 quickly set his bowels on fire with inflammation. On the second 
 day he became delirious, not from fever but agony, and with 
 three lucid intervals towards the last day, knew little but the 
 torment he suffered." Deeply attached to her brother, Jessie 
 was for a time almost prostrated, and her eyes were weakened 
 by her constant weeping. Finally, as a decisive reason for 
 hurrying home, Fremont learned that an important piece of 
 government exploration was about to be carried out. He im- 
 mediately determined to share in it, and Arago himself helped 
 him select his scientific instruments. 
 
 The Pacific railway enterprise had taken another long stride 
 ahead. Congress, early in 1852, had ordered several routes to 
 be explored to the Pacific, to afford a wide choice for the site; 
 
 12 New York Tribune, July a, 1853. Ultimately Congress by act of March 
 3, 1854, paid the interest on the debt and the cost of the judgment against 
 Fremont, amounting in all to $48,814. But the original $15,000 borrowed by 
 Fremont was charged against him until he should prove that he had spent 
 this money in the public service. He apparently never made any effective 
 effort to do so. H. H. Bancroft, History of California, V, p. 465.^. 
 
 13 Congressional Globe, April 28, 1852; 34th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1205.^. 
 
 14 In Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
4 o6 FREMONT 
 
 and it had apparently been understood by Benton that Fremont 
 should head one of the various parties. If this were so, the ex- 
 pectation was disappointed. Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of 
 War, designated five different lines to be explored, and five 
 different sets of men to do the work. One route, running along 
 the forty-seventh parallel through the Dakota and Montana 
 country, was assigned to Captain George B. McClellan and 
 Isaac I. Stevens; one running through Salt Lake City and the 
 Humboldt Valley, to Lieutenant E. J. Beckwith; one between 
 the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth parallels, to Captain John W. 
 Gunnison; one along the thirty-fifth parallel, west of Fort Smith 
 in Arkansas, to Lieutenant A. W. Whipple; and the one farthest 
 south, running through El Paso and Yuma, to Captain John 
 Pope and others. Fremont was passed over. 
 
 Unquestionably the explorer felt a grievance in the fact, and 
 with some reason. His fourth expedition had been specifically 
 designed to blaze a path for a railway between the thirty- 
 seventh and thirty-eighth parallels, and he had given much pub- 
 licity to his belief that he had found there the best possible 
 route. He had written the Philadelphia railroad convention in 
 1850 his reasons for the preference: it was direct, was cen- 
 trally situated, had marked advantages of wood, water, and 
 soil, was healthy, ran through an area fitted for general habi- 
 tation, and had a much milder climate than any route running 
 farther north. Senator Benton had been the foremost advocate 
 in America of the transcontinental railway. No officer of the 
 army possessed so much practical experience of western ex- 
 ploration and surveying as Fremont; the name of none would 
 carry so much weight in any official recommendation. But 
 Jefferson Davis, a West Pointer who had been with the regular 
 army till 1835 and had fought in it again during the Mexican 
 War, felt that regular army officers were entitled to prefer- 
 ence. Fremont could not even protest. But he was not to be 
 easily thwarted in his ambition to be a pathmarker for steam 
 transportation, as he had been for the wagon trains of the emi- 
 grants; and he prepared to set on foot an expedition of his own. 
 
MANAGING THE MARIPOSAS 407 
 
 Jessie had given birth to a daughter, Anne Beverley, in Paris 
 on February 1, 1853 — a petite Parisienne, as the Comte said. 
 They waited in France till mother and baby were able to travel, 
 and then returned to Washington, where Jessie settled herself 
 near her father. Fremont was busy with preparations for his 
 western trip. For a time all went well. Then the heat of early 
 summer affected the baby, and Jessie took her at once to the 
 Francis Blair estate at Silver Springs, Maryland, just outside 
 Washington. On July 12 th, the child suddenly died in her arms. 
 It was the second loss of the kind the family had sustained, 
 and it helps explain the entry Jessie made in her family Bible 
 after the list of births and deaths: "Care and sorrow and child- 
 birth pain." Yet Fremont told Benton that she had shown 
 more courage than he: "It was she who remained dry-eyed to 
 comfort me, for I was unmanned over the cruelty of this be- 
 reavement. Her calm stoicism, so superior to mere resignation, 
 soon shamed me into control." 15 
 
 15 Catherine Coffin Phillips, op. cit., pp. 190, 191. 
 
The Fifth Expedition 
 
 THE background of Fremont's fifth and last expedition 
 was the now fully awakened rivalry of North and 
 South over the route of the first transcontinental rail- 
 road. It was evident to every one acquainted with the West that 
 the plains and mountains could be traversed by not merely one 
 but numerous railways. But the nation was unlikely to give 
 Federal aid to more than one at a time, and each section 
 felt it important to prove that the most practicable and eco- 
 nomical route lay westward from its own portals. Many 
 Northerners were suspicious of the five surveys for which Con- 
 gress had appropriated $150,000; they were not astonished 
 when Secretary Jefferson Davis, after their completion, de- 
 clared that the line along the thirty-second parallel — that is, the 
 southernmost route — was clearly the best. It was to counteract 
 the plans of the Southerners that Benton and other advocates 
 of a central route encouraged Fremont, doubtless by financial 
 assistance as well as applause, in his new expedition. 1 
 
 Indeed, Benton believed that Southern interests had laid 
 an elaborate plot to defeat a central railroad to the Pacific and 
 build a line westward from Texas instead. In a letter to citizens 
 
 1 As early as the spring of 1850 Benton's interest in a railroad to the 
 Pacific was keen. He, Asa Whitney, and Robert J. Walker all had plans, and 
 Benton obtained a good deal of newspaper publicity for his ideas. He pro- 
 posed to build a railroad from St. Louis to San Francisco, with branches 
 to the Columbia River, Salt Lake City, and Santa Fe; to apply the proceeds 
 of public-land sales to the object; and to sell mortgage bonds in anticipation 
 of this revenue. He wished the government to complete a wagon-road to the 
 Pacific within a year, and a railroad within seven years. Like Fremont, he 
 believed the line between the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth parallels would 
 furnish the best route. Indeed, he and Fremont were partners in supporting 
 the consideration of this line. See New York Tribune, April 3, April 5, 1850. 
 
 408 
 
THE FIFTH EXPEDITION 409 
 
 of Green County, Missouri, early in the summer of 1853, ne 
 declared that the first plans "for a southern sectional route," 
 had been devised six years earlier. A provision had been in- 
 serted in the treaty of peace with Mexico to make possible the 
 construction of a road along the Gila, or within a marine league 
 on either side. "With the design for the Gila road went the 
 amputation of El Paso from New Mexico, and its surrender, 
 with about 70,000 square miles of New Mexico, to Texas, all 
 for the purpose of helping the Gila road." Now it was learned 
 that the Gila route was impracticable, and Southern leaders 
 were trying to find a new one. Benton was instrumental during 
 the summer of 1853 in sending westward by the central route 
 a party which included two active young men, Harris Heap and 
 Lieutenant Edward F. Beale, and the aged Washington banker 
 Riggs. Beyond doubt the Senator was one of the chief pro- 
 moters of Fremont's expedition, which expected to cover the 
 same route during the winter months. We find Benton writing 
 in the National Intelligencer of September 6, 1853, on these 
 parties: 
 
 I sent you two letters just received from Superintendent Beale 
 and Mr. Harris Heap, and giving information of their having 
 reached the Great Colorado of the West, and found the country 
 good for a railway and for settlement all the way out to that river, 
 which they reached in five days after crossing the divorce line of 
 the waters . . . between the Atlantic and the Pacific, in the middle of 
 that pass, Coo-che-topa, which Fremont went to find, which Leroux 
 said was there, and which Beale's party had gone through. It is not 
 merely a pass, but a valley between two mountains, with a distinct 
 name of its own, Sah-wah-che Valley, some forty miles long, good 
 for railways and settlements, and only wanting the hand of man to 
 make it a perfect garden; and this in addition to the Valley of San 
 Luis, which connects with it. So that problem is solved, at least so 
 far as summer travel is concerned, and Fremont has gone out to 
 solve it in winter 
 
 These letters from Beale and Heap cover the only debatable 
 ground on the Central Route. The whole route has now been seen 
 
410 FREMONT 
 
 (for Fremont knows the Grand River, and all beyond), and the 
 passes traversed ; and all found to be good for roads and settlements, 
 and inviting the hand of the farmer to improve it. Nothing is now 
 wanting but the winter exploration which Fremont has set out to 
 give. He is not afraid of snows in the mountains where there are 
 
 valleys and passes and wood He has been safe in his camp in a 
 
 grove in a snowstorm which killed all animals on the prairies; wit- 
 nessed the loss of about a thousand head of government oxen return- 
 ing from New Mexico in 1848, while he, in the same snowstorm, 
 sheltered by woods, lost not an animal, and his men amused them- 
 selves in hunting and killing buffalo He means to stand in the 
 
 most elevated of these passes on the Central Route in January next. 
 He will have with him Indians and mountainmen who are no more 
 afraid of snow than himself. 
 
 The press told readers in July, 1853, that Fremont had 
 arrived from England with the finest instruments that money 
 could buy, and would do his utmost to demonstrate the supe- 
 riority of the line crossing the Rockies at about the thirty- 
 eighth parallel. "He proposes to start in November," remarked 
 the St. Louis Democrat, "and thus to test the practicability of 
 the route during the season of snows. This intelligence will be 
 hailed with pleasure by the people of Missouri We under- 
 stand that Colonel Fremont undertakes this survey without aid 
 from the government, and if so, it gives him an additional claim 
 to the gratitude of the whole country." The newspapers which 
 carried this news also published an advertisement of a mil- 
 lion dollar seven per cent bond issue which the Pacific Rail- 
 road of Missouri was selling. This company was already build- 
 ing from St. Louis to Independence, about two hundred and 
 eighty miles, "on the line advocated by Colonel Benton as 
 the central route to the Pacific"; it also proposed to construct 
 a branch into southwestern Missouri, about three hundred 
 miles. "Whichever route may be adopted for the national 
 road," remarked the New York Tribune, "the Missouri com- 
 pany claims to be on the track." 
 
 The fifth expedition counted twenty-two members, ten being 
 
THE FIFTH EXPEDITION 411 
 
 Delaware Indians and two Mexicans. It included a topographer 
 named Egloffstein, two other scientific assistants, and most in- 
 teresting of all, an artist and daguerreotypist named Solomon 
 N. Carvalho — the first official photographer ever attached to 
 an exploring expedition. 2 Carvalho, who was of American birth 
 despite his Portuguese name, had lived in Charleston in his 
 early days, but was now owner of a daguerreotype studio in 
 Baltimore. He had met Fremont in New York, and possessing 
 no experience of life in the open, having never even saddled a 
 horse, accepted the appointment on the spur of the moment, 
 without consulting his family. It was the fascinating personality 
 of the explorer which conquered him, he writes: "I know of 
 no other man to whom I would have trusted my life under 
 similar circumstances." 3 In thus hiring a photographer Fre- 
 mont displayed no little enterprise; it was to be more than a 
 year before the Englishman Roger Fen ton joined the British 
 forces in the Crimea as the first official war photographer. The 
 daguerre process consisted essentially of exposing a highly 
 polished silver plate to iodine vapor until the silver surface 
 turned a bright golden yellow; the image from this exposed 
 plate was then developed by subjecting it to the fumes from 
 mercury heated in a saucer by a spirit lamp. Carvalho tells us 
 that his friends asked how he could do all this on the summit of 
 the Rockies, standing up to his waist in snow; but he success- 
 fully performed the feat. One W. H. Palmer joined the expedi- 
 tion as passenger. Preuss wished to go, but after his sufferings 
 in 1849 ms wi^ would not let him, and Jessie tells us that 
 when he definitely saw that his glad free days in the open 
 were over, he went into the woods near Washington and hanged 
 himself. 4 
 
 On the first part of this expedition Fremont was less a path- 
 finder than ever before. The route he had planned to travel 
 
 2 See Charles Macnamara, The First Official Photographer, Scientific Monthly, 
 January, 1936, XLII, pp. 68-74. 
 
 3 S. N. Carvalho, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West With 
 Col. Fremont's Last Expedition, pp. 17, 18. 
 
 4 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
412 FREMONT 
 
 by Cochetopa Pass had just been covered not only by the 
 Beale-Heap party, but by one of the men appointed by Jef- 
 ferson Davis, Captain Gunnison. The latter this summer went 
 up the Arkansas River, followed the Huerfano Valley, and 
 crossed the Cochetopa Pass into the arid basin of the Uncom- 
 pahgre. In October, just as Fremont was about to set out, 
 Gunnison and seven of his men, including two who had been 
 on the 1848 expedition, R. H. Kern and Creutzfeldt, were 
 killed by Utes near Sevier Lake. But Fremont made no pre- 
 tense to pathfinding. He had insisted ever since 1848 that the 
 trail he had then partially blazed along the thirty-eighth par- 
 allel offered the best railroad route, and he believed that the 
 Beale-Heap and Gunnison expeditions were simply proving his 
 point. He would still further prove it by doing in winter what 
 they did in summer. 
 
 The exploring party, which had no guide, was delayed in 
 starting by the sudden illness of Fremont, who wrote Jessie 
 that a wet saddle no longer made him a good pillow. He finally 
 joined the camp on the Saline Fork of the Kansas on October 
 31st, and found it uneasily watching a great prairie fire ap- 
 proaching from the east. That night the fire jumped the Kan- 
 sas. The next day on starting their "only escape was through 
 the blazing grass; we dashed into it, Colonel Fremont at the 
 head . . . passed through the fiery ordeal unscathed; made that 
 day over fifteen miles, and camped that night on the dry 
 bed of a creek, beyond the reach of the devouring element." 5 
 They crossed to the Arkansas and reached Bent's Fort on 
 November 30th. From this point they traveled up the Arkansas 
 and the Huerfano, finding the country hilly, well-watered, and 
 abounding in grass and pine. Of the latter part of this journey 
 Carvalho exuberantly exclaims: "If ever a railroad is built 
 through this valley, I suggest that an equestrian statue of Col. 
 J. C. Fremont be placed on the summit of Huerfano Butte; 
 his right hand pointing to California, the land he conquered." 
 On December 3rd they plunged into the mountains, and cross- 
 
 5 Carvalho, Incidents of Travel, p. 51. 
 
THE FIFTH EXPEDITION 413 
 
 ing the divide between the Huerfano and the Rio Grande at 
 Sand Hill or Williams Pass, proceeded to the Cochetopa Pass. 
 This they surmounted on December 14th, finding only four 
 inches of snow, and thus confirming Fremont's opinion that a 
 railroad would be perfectly feasible. 
 
 From here they struck westward to the Uncompahgre River, 
 and followed it, the Gunnison, and the Grand River till they 
 arrived on the Green River in Utah. In part of this area he 
 was again a true pathfinder; Dellenbaugh tells us that even on 
 the War Department map of i860 much of the region he trav- 
 ersed was a blank. Of the rest it is sufficient to say that his 
 travels beyond the Green, through a difficult country of moun- 
 tains and canons, almost every league of it toilsome and danger- 
 ous, carried him across a great part of central Utah, and finally 
 brought him out at the Mormon town of Parowan, in the south- 
 west corner of the state, some sixty miles from the Nevada 
 line. Long before they reached this isolated settlement, they 
 were suffering terribly from want of food and proper clothing. 
 They had to kill the animals for rations; the men lost heart 
 and believed death was near; and at one time even Fremont's 
 strength seemed utterly exhausted. 
 
 Carvalho's book on the expedition contains a vivid picture 
 of Fremont as leader, and is warm in its tribute to his qualities 
 of courage, endurance, and resourcefulness. Many of its pages 
 illustrate the Colonel's incessant vigilance. In the after-mid- 
 night cold, when the sentries least expected it, he would sud- 
 denly appear, and the man who was caught napping had to 
 expiate his offense by walking for a day or week while the 
 others rode. Once his vigilance, when other watchers nodded, 
 prevented a band of Cheyennes from stampeding the whole 
 body of horses and mules, and thus leaving the expedition with- 
 out transport, six hundred miles from the frontier, at the onset 
 of bitter winter weather, with hostile Comanche, Pawnee, and 
 Sioux Indians awaiting a chance to wipe them out. At every 
 alarming incident the guards were doubled and guns examined; 
 and any one who, like Carvalho on one occasion, let snow get 
 
4 i4 FREMONT 
 
 into the barrel of his piece, was severely lectured. 6 Other pages 
 in Carvalho's book illustrate Fremont's prudence and tact. He 
 made it a strict rule never to give any Indian, in barter for 
 food or horses, either firearms or ammunition. Once on the 
 Grand River the camp was alarmed at supper by the approach 
 of three-score mounted Utes, who, armed with rifles, bows, 
 and knives, galloped at full speed upon the whites. Displaying 
 their powderhorns and cartridges conspicuously, they de- 
 manded payment for a fat young horse which the party had 
 recently killed for food, and for which they had already in- 
 demnified another band of savages. Fremont, as was his custom 
 at such times, never showed himself, a fact which increased the 
 respect of the savages for "the great Captain" and gave a 
 mysterious impressiveness to the orders he issued from his tent. 
 
 In this instance Carvalho was much disturbed by the threat- 
 ening demeanor of the Indians, but Fremont reassured him. 
 He knew them thoroughly, he said; they were simply blus- 
 tering and did not have powder enough to load a single rifle; 
 "if they had any ammunition, they would have surrounded and 
 massacred us, and stolen what they now demand and are 
 parleying for." It proved true that their horns and cartridge- 
 boxes were empty. 
 
 Carvalho makes it clear that the hardships and sufferings 
 which rose in a seemingly interminable crescendo simply 
 brought out Fremont's highest qualities. He never allowed 
 himself or others to be discouraged. On one occasion when he 
 felt himself collapsing, he simply pointed out a spot near by 
 as an admirable situation for a camp, and ordered a stop there; 
 the next morning he was able to go on, and he never mentioned 
 his weakness to his subordinates. No matter how much he was 
 suffering for want of food, no matter how intense the cold or 
 stormy the weather, he kept up his astronomical observations, 
 sometimes standing for hours in the deep snow taking his 
 bearings. He never lost his temper; he never dropped his dig- 
 nity or acted with excitement. Not once, amid vicissitudes 
 
 6 Ibid., pp. 89, go. 
 
THE FIFTH EXPEDITION 415 
 
 which tried everybody's patience, and in the face of stupidly 
 irritating mistakes by his men, did Fremont forget that he was 
 a gentleman; not once was there an oath or a display of un- 
 controlled anger. He gave his orders calmly, and they were 
 always obeyed. The starvation and cold would have rendered 
 some of the party insubordinate had the men not been handled 
 with great tact, but "in no instance was a slight request of his 
 received with anything but the promptest obedience." So de- 
 voted were the Delaware Indians that they would have gone 
 to certain death for him. He never asked an officer or man 
 to undertake duties which he was not willing to share. And, 
 says Carvalho: 7 
 
 Although on the mountains and away from civilization, Col. Fre- 
 mont's lodge was sacred from all and everything that was immodest, 
 light, and trivial; each and all of us entertained the highest regard 
 for him. The greatest etiquette and deference were always paid to 
 him, although he never ostensibly required it. Yet his reserved and 
 unexceptionable deportment demanded from us the same respect 
 with which we were always treated, and which we ever took pleasure 
 in reciprocating. 
 
 Only twice did Fremont betray in any fashion the strain 
 under which he labored. In the worst days of starvation, he 
 took his scanty meal of mule-gristle or horse-entrail soup alone 
 in his tent. This he explained by saying that it brought back 
 such vivid memories of the tragic experience of 1848-49 that 
 he wished for solitude; but Carvalho thought that the actual 
 reason was that he wished to allow his companions free speech 
 during their meals. He knew that they would grumble over their 
 hard fate, and to save his feelings from being hurt he retired 
 to his lodge. Again, when the first horse was killed for food, 
 Fremont called his men together and addressed them with evi- 
 dent emotion. After emphasizing the terrible necessities to 
 which they were reduced, he recalled the suspicion that during 
 his last expedition a party of men whom he sent out for succor 
 
 7 Ibid., pp. 133, 134. 
 
416 FREMONT 
 
 had been guilty of eating one of their own number. He proposed 
 that they should make a solemn compact that if they suc- 
 cumbed, they should die together like men, and he threatened 
 to shoot the first person who hinted at cannibalism. It was a 
 solemn and impressive sight, says Carvalho, to see this body 
 of Americans, Indians, and Mexicans, on a snowy mountain- 
 side at night, the stars sparkling above in the cold sky, enter- 
 ing into their fervent agreement. 
 
 Evidently the idea of cannibalism preyed upon Fremont's 
 mind as it did upon the hero of Joseph Conrad's Falk. Because, 
 later, one or two disgruntled followers of Fremont spread mali- 
 cious stories of his poor qualities as leader, Carvalho's testi- 
 mony is important. We may pause here to note that it is sup- 
 ported by other men. A Captain Aram of Santa Clara, Cali- 
 fornia, who had served with Fremont in the California Bat- 
 talion, a little later, in a campaign speech of 1856, told an 
 anecdote illustrative of his consideration for his men. He said: 
 
 On his march down the coast the supplies were furnished by a com- 
 missary named King, who, finding the stock of groceries running 
 short, being enabled to procure a limited quantity along the route, 
 concluded to use them only at the officers' mess. Fremont noticing 
 some new articles on the table, inquired how they came there. Upon 
 being informed, he immediately ordered a parade next morning. 
 After the battalion was formed, Fremont ordered the commissary 
 to give a history of the transaction, and his inquiry as to whether 
 the rations had been distributed for the soldiers as well as officers 
 being answered in the negative, he reprimanded Mr. King and in- 
 formed him that upon a repetition of the offense he should be dis- 
 missed from the service. 
 
 To this testimony may be added that of Alexis Godey, who 
 praised "his daring energy, his indomitable perseverance, and 
 his goodness of heart": 8 
 
 And now as to Fremont's private character, his tyranny, his arro- 
 gance, his exclusiveness, and others of like nature, as alleged against 
 8 New York Evening Post, October 30, 1856. 
 
THE FIFTH EXPEDITION 417 
 
 him. No man who ever traveled with him but knows their falsity. 
 Fremont, more than any other man I ever knew, possessed the re- 
 spect and affection of his men; he ever lived on terms of familiarity 
 with them. Yet never did commander possess more complete control. 
 He ever partook of the same fare; underwent like hardships; rode 
 when they rode — walked when they walked; and unhesitatingly ex- 
 posed himself to every danger and privation. 
 
 In his private character he is a model; singularly temperate and 
 abstemious in his habits, he never uses spirituous liquors; profane 
 language is a stranger to his lips ; and I never recollect to have heard, 
 during my long intercourse with him, anything like blasphemy issue 
 from his lips. I never knew him to have any difficulties with his men ; 
 disturbances were a stranger to his camp. He had a manner and a 
 bearing toward his men which admitted of none of those petty alter- 
 cations, or more serious occurrences, which are so common among 
 parties beset with hardships and dangers, which are ever all-powerful 
 to develop the most unfavorable features in the character of those 
 composing them; and the truth of these things can be attested by 
 all of the old companions of Fremont. 
 
 It was to Fremont's assiduity and skill that the expedition, 
 when on its last legs, owed its final extrication. After one of 
 his observations, apparently in Circle Valley, he told his asso- 
 ciates that the Mormon hamlet Parowan, forty rods square, 
 was just over the mountains in the Little Salt Lake Valley, and 
 that he would reach it in three days. 9 The mountain ranges 
 loomed tremendously ahead; the ascent was so steep and the 
 snow so deep that the surviving animals could hardly be got 
 up; and at the top of the first peaks the prospect seemed hope- 
 less. "When I surveyed the distance," says Carvalho, "I saw 
 nothing but continued ranges of the everlasting snow, and for 
 the first time my heart failed me." But Fremont plunged con- 
 
 9 Carvalho's account throws some light upon the endurance Fremont often 
 showed in making his observations. "I selected a level spot on the snow, and 
 prepared the artificial horizon. The thermometer indicated a very great degree 
 of cold; and standing almost up to our middle in snow, Col. Fremont remained 
 for hours making observations, first with one star, then with another, until the 
 occultation took place. Our lantern was illuminated with a piece of sperm 
 candle." Incidents of Travel, p. 129. 
 
4 i8 FREMONT 
 
 fidently onward; he took out his pocket compass, and pointing 
 in a certain direction, began the descent. It led through a 
 seemingly incomprehensible maze of denies, slopes, canons, and 
 valleys. Thus they went on. 
 
 . . . and on the very day and hour previously indicated by Colonel 
 Fremont, he conducted us to the small settlement of Parowan, which 
 could not be distinguished two miles off, thus proving himself a most 
 correct astronomer and geometrician. Here was no chance work — no 
 guessing — for a deviation of one mile, either way, from the true 
 course, would have plunged the whole party into certain destruction. 
 
 It was on February 8, 1854, that the four hundred people 
 of Parowan welcomed Fremont's party, who had been for 
 forty-eight hours without food of any kind. Every family took 
 in one or several members. The kindness of these Mormons 
 completely altered the explorer's views of the sect, and many 
 years later he refused to introduce Kate Field in a hostile 
 lecture in Los Angeles on the ground that "the Mormons saved 
 me and mine from death by starvation in '54." One man, and 
 one only, the assistant engineer Oliver Fuller of St. Louis, had 
 died just before they reached safety. 
 
 Mrs. Fremont and her family always believed that she had a 
 strange psychic revelation, precise to the day and hour, of her 
 husband's emergence from the jaws of death. 10 She had been 
 almost ill from anxiety during the last fortnight of the period 
 of his perilous exposure. Then, she relates, on the very evening 
 that he reached shelter her sister Susan and a young cousin 
 came to spend the night with her. The fire needing fuel, she 
 went to an adjoining room for some wood. As she stooped for 
 it she felt a touch on her shoulder, and heard Fremont gaily 
 whisper her name as he used to do when he meant to play 
 some practical joke; and at once her heart grew light. Hurry- 
 
 10 While Fremont states that he reached Parowan on the 8th, the Deseret 
 News of March 16, 1854, contains a letter from J. C. L. Smith, who left 
 Parowan on the 20th, saying that Fremont had arrived there on the 7th. 
 This would overthrow Dellenbaugh's objections to the psychic communication 
 story on the basis of time. 
 
THE FIFTH EXPEDITION 419 
 
 ing into the other room, she found Susie half-fainting from the 
 sense of a mysterious presence. Whether some thought-trans- 
 ference had actually occurred or not, the incident completely 
 revived Jessie's spirits. 
 
 Fremont left the hospitable Mormons on February 21, 1854. 
 Two routes, he wrote later, suggested themselves for examina- 
 tion: one directly across the plateau between the thirty-seventh 
 and thirty-eighth parallels, the other keeping south of the 
 mountains, following for about two hundred miles the Virgin 
 River, and thence running direct to the Tejon Pass at the head 
 of the San Joaquin Valley. As the latter route had been ex- 
 amined by himself in 1844, he determined to take the more 
 direct road. He struck west from the new Mormon settlement 
 of Cedar City across the Escalante Desert into unknown terri- 
 tory; and passing the Utah boundary, crossed all of Nevada 
 until his party met the California boundary at about the thirty- 
 seventh parallel. West of this they found the Sierras blocked 
 by deep snow. Fremont therefore turned southward, and 
 crossed the range at the first favorable point, apparently a 
 little south of Walker's Pass. The approach to the pass was so 
 gradual and the terrain so smooth that he said later he could 
 have set off in a buggy from a point fifteen miles east of the 
 crest, and driven without difficulty to a point thirty-five miles 
 west of it. Many of the party, indeed, would not believe that 
 they had reached the summit. 
 
 On April 16, 1854, Fremont was in San Francisco, where the 
 Alta California reported him "well, and so hearty that he is 
 actually some fourteen pounds heavier than ever before." De- 
 clining a public dinner because he was eager to get back to 
 the East, he was soon in New York again. Here he published 
 in the press a long letter, setting forth the advantages of his 
 easy central route to the Pacific. Though he called it central, 
 actually its remoter section was a southwestern route. He de- 
 clared against throwing a railroad across the high Sierras in 
 the area later traversed by the Union Pacific-Central Pacific 
 line, and in favor of "the low dry country, the long slope" to 
 
4 20 FREMONT 
 
 the southward, not far from the line subsequently used by the 
 Santa Fe. The precise route which he advocated was never 
 used, though some of his information, given by Jessie to the 
 builders of the Santa Fe, was of value to them. Nor, unfor- 
 tunately, did he find leisure to prepare a detailed account of 
 his expedition. The daguerre plates taken by Carvalho were 
 printed in the studio of the photographer Brady in Washington, 
 and Jessie tells us that almost all of them were "beautifully 
 clear." For a time Fremont planned to bring out the journals 
 of all his expeditions under the imprint of George Childs of 
 Philadelphia, as a companion-volume to the book of Elisha 
 Kent Kane's Arctic travels, published by the same house. But 
 first his business affairs and then his immersion in the Presi- 
 dential campaign of 1856 forbade. The notes and plates alike 
 were placed in a warehouse, where long years later they were 
 destroyed by fire. 
 
 On the whole, the expedition was not much more fruitful 
 than that of 1848-49. Its principal result was simply to en- 
 courage the general idea of a transcontinental railroad; and 
 Fremont perhaps instinctively felt this when he penned the last 
 sentence of his newspaper letter. 
 
 It seems a treason against mankind and the spirit of progress which 
 marks the age to refuse to put this one completing link to our na- 
 tional prosperity and the civilization of the world. Europe still lies 
 between Asia and America; build this railroad and things will have 
 revolved about; America will lie between Asia and Europe — the 
 golden vein which runs through the history of the world will follow 
 the iron track to San Francisco. 
 
The Republican Nomination 
 
 WHILE Fremont had been dining in London and 
 watching the pageantry of Versailles, while he was 
 making his last invasion of the Rockies, while he was 
 defending his property at Mariposa, the sectional antagonism 
 of North and South had been rapidly rising. The Compromise 
 of 1850 had proved but the briefest of truces. Before Clay 
 was carried in 1852 to his grave at Lexington and Webster was 
 laid by the sea at Marshfield, northern opposition to the new 
 Fugitive Slave Act had excited a fierce southern resentment. 
 The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin converted hundreds of 
 thousands to anti-slavery views. Extremists on both sides of 
 the border, as the Pierce Administration proved subservient to 
 the South, grew fiercer in their denunciation of each other. 
 Then at the beginning of 1854 Douglas placed his Kansas- 
 Nebraska Bill before an excited Congress, and a new and 
 blacker storm began to arise. The intensity of the northern 
 wrath over this repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening 
 the plains of Kansas to possible occupation by slaveholders, 
 took Douglas and Pierce by surprise. From that moment the 
 old Whig Party was doomed, and a new party dedicated to 
 the exclusion of slavery from all the territories began to rise 
 in its place. The bill passed Congress amid southern cheers 
 and northern execration; and as Chase walked at dawn down 
 the Capitol steps with the boom of exultant Democratic cannon 
 in his ears, he truly said to Sumner, "They celebrate a present 
 victory, but the echoes they awake shall never rest until slavery 
 itself shall die." 
 
 The year 1855 opened with sectional tension at an alarming 
 
 421 
 
422 FREMONT 
 
 pitch. The Fugitive Slave Act had now been proved impossible 
 of enforcement in many northern states ; when the slave Burns 
 had been delivered to his master in Boston, it required the 
 force of the whole city police, the state militia, and the Federal 
 army and navy to carry him a few blocks through the aroused 
 populace. Men were organizing both North and South to gain 
 a secure grip upon Kansas. The first ebullition of violence in 
 that territory sent a tremor of foreboding throughout the 
 country. In the spring elections of 1855, some five thousand 
 boisterous pro-slavery Missourians, armed with revolvers, 
 bowie-knives, and guns, crowded over the boundary to vote. 
 Northern ministers were making pleas for money to equip 
 anti-slavery settlers with Sharp's rifles. Fremont had especial 
 reason to be aware of the rising passion of the day. In Missouri 
 the animosity had risen so high that his father-in-law Benton, 
 hated by many for his free-soil views, had been ejected in 
 185 1 from the Senate seat he had so long and ably occupied. 
 But the indomitable old statesman refused to be silenced, and 
 promptly obtained a seat in the House. Benton was in fact one 
 of the men whom the crisis most deeply alarmed. He attacked 
 the Kansas-Nebraska Bill as a clumsy attempt to smuggle 
 slavery into the territories, and indeed throughout the whole 
 West up to the Canadian line. The year 1855 found him pro- 
 claiming on every side that the extension of slavery must be 
 opposed by all constitutional means; and even more fervently 
 proclaiming that the Union was in danger of dissolution, and 
 its friends must rally to its defense. Losing even his seat in 
 the House in the fall elections of 1854, he prepared to go on 
 the lecture platform to arouse the country to its danger. He 
 would be a new Peter the Hermit, he declared, and if the people 
 now called him mad, later they would admit that he had been 
 inspired. As the year 1855 piled the explosives higher in Kan- 
 sas, other moderate leaders in both parties showed the same 
 anxiety. 
 
 The Fremonts in the spring of 1855 definitely gave up their 
 residence in Washington, where a succession of sorrows had 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 423 
 
 fallen upon Jessie's father. Mrs. Benton had died the previous 
 September. On her last day she had asked Jessie to help her 
 walk into the library, had gazed about the book-lined room, had 
 fondly touched Benton's desk and chair, and then tottering 
 back to her couch, had fallen into a sleep from which she did 
 not awake. The following February, while Benton was at the 
 Capitol and Jessie with her cousin Mrs. Preston, word came 
 that the family home was on fire. Half the town hurried to 
 watch, but the struggles of the firemen were useless; books, 
 furniture, and papers, including the manuscript of the second 
 volume of Benton's Thirty Years' View — which Jessie's older 
 sister Eliza risked her life in trying to save — were lost. It was 
 a severe shock to them all. President Pierce, who embraced 
 Jessie and called her by her first name as in childhood days, 
 asked the family to stay at the White House, but they declined. 
 The rising political bitterness made Washington uncongenial 
 to all of them. Jessie, who had borne another son, named Frank 
 Preston, while the battle over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was 
 raging, has recorded her feeling: "Before my baby was a month 
 old, the bitterness of the coming strife invaded even my 
 guarded room. I felt the ground-swell — I felt I was no longer 
 in my place — it was certainly too hard on Mr. Fremont, and 
 as soon as I could be moved, New York became our city of 
 refuge." 
 
 More squatter troubles at Mariposa again called Fremont to 
 California; and while he was absent, Jessie took the children 
 to spend the summer of 1855 at Siasconset, Nantucket. Here 
 she was visited by Benton, who told her of his lecture-engage- 
 ments in New York and Boston. Deeply depressed, he re- 
 called John Quincy Adams's assertion in 1843: "I am satisfied 
 slavery will not go down until it goes down in blood." By this 
 time both great parties were looking anxiously to the cam- 
 paign of 1856. 
 
 During the late summer or fall of 1855 the first clear intima- 
 tion that he might be nominated for the Presidency came to 
 Fremont from leaders of the Democratic Party. According to 
 
424 FREMONT 
 
 his daughter Elizabeth, her cousin William Preston, later Min- 
 ister to Spain, brought the first proposals from that party. A 
 writer in the Detroit Tribune the following year states that 
 Fremont was about to sail for California in October, 1855, 
 when John B. Floyd, recently governor of Virginia, came to 
 offer the assistance of various Democratic leaders in obtain- 
 ing the nomination, and that in two interviews the offer took 
 explicit form. These two stories are not inharmonious. Floyd's 
 wife had been Sally B. Preston of Virginia, a relative of Wil- 
 liam Preston and a member of Jessie's connection; and Floyd 
 and Preston were doubtless working together. Their object 
 was to have Fremont nominated as head of a Democratic- 
 Know-Nothing combination. But Fremont in his manuscript 
 Memoirs has told a fuller story. 
 
 He relates that in Washington he had become acquainted 
 with Edward Carrington, a nephew of John B. Floyd and 
 a relative of the Bentons, and through him was drawn into 
 a number of discussions with southern leaders. That secret 
 political order called the Native American or Know-Nothing 
 Party was then rising to the height of its brief strength, having 
 just swept Massachusetts and Delaware. Such leaders as Mil- 
 lard Fillmore and John B. Clayton thought that the new party 
 might offer a strong haven from sectional strife. Fremont, im- 
 pressed like many others by the disorderliness of the Irish 
 in New York and other cities, felt some sympathy for its 
 restrictionist aims. Though without prejudice against any 
 nationality, he believed that America might be happier and 
 better-governed if it granted citizenship less easily to a mass of 
 ill-assimilated immigrants. His views interested those south- 
 erners who hoped for an alliance of the Native Americans and 
 Democrats; and a group headed by John B. Floyd undertook to 
 negotiate with him upon his possible nomination for the presi- 
 dency. They wished an attractive and popular leader who was 
 not connected in any way with the horrible Kansas struggle. 
 
 Finally, a conference lasting several days took place at the 
 St. Nicholas Hotel in New York; at which place, writes Fre- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 425 
 
 mont, the southern agents offered to support him for the Demo- 
 cratic nomination if he would subscribe to stringent conditions. 
 Fremont took to the conference Nathaniel P. Banks of Massa- 
 chusetts, his friend and admirer since 1853, wno ne ld pre- 
 cisely his own political tenets; Banks was a former Democrat, 
 who had been reelected to Congress the previous fall as a 
 Know-Nothing, but was now actually an ardent Free Soiler, 
 and was soon to be the successful candidate of that group for 
 Speaker. Both men objected vehemently to the proposal that 
 Fremont should endorse the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Fugi- 
 tive Slave Law, and Banks denounced these measures so vio- 
 lently that he broke up one conference. Jessie recalls that be- 
 fore her husband gave his final no, he came to Siasconset to 
 consult her: * 
 
 One of them [the Democratic agents] said, "the Democratic party 
 was sure to win, and no woman could refuse the Presidency." After 
 tea Mr. Fremont said if I could walk as far as he wished me to with 
 him to the Lighthouse Hill he had something to say to me without 
 interruption. And so there and then he told me of the offered nomi- 
 nation, and of the conditions attached. 
 
 There was no shadow of doubt in our minds. At the foot of the 
 bluff on which the lighthouse stood were the remains embedded in 
 the sands of a ship, the seas washing into her ribs. Above, steady and 
 brilliant, flashed out the recurring light. "It is the choice between a 
 wreck of dishonor, or a kindly light that will go on its mission of 
 doing good. You cannot give in to the execution of all the laws. [The 
 fugitive slave law was specified.] And so his decision was made. 
 
 After Fremont had rebuffed the Democrats, certain leaders 
 of the new Republican Party turned to him. Both Banks and 
 Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts were intensely inter- 
 ested in the Republican organization, and they caught with 
 enthusiasm at the suggestion that Fremont would make an ideal 
 nominee. Joseph Palmer, head of Palmer, Cook & Co., was in 
 the city in November, 1855, and at the Metropolitan Hotel 
 
 1 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
426 FREMONT 
 
 conferred with Banks, Wilson, and Senator John P. Hale of 
 New Hampshire, doing his utmost to persuade them that Fre- 
 mont was their best candidate. He advised the explorer to stay 
 and await developments. In consequence, instead of returning 
 to California, Fremont took up his residence in the city. We 
 find him writing Francis Lieber from 176 Second Avenue on 
 November 18th that he regretted missing the latter: 
 
 The day after your departure I arrived here with my family with 
 the intention of establishing ourselves for the winter. We have suc- 
 ceeded in doing this comfortably, and now in our temporary resting- 
 place have leisure to look around and inquire how it fares with our 
 friends and among the first of those who rise before us, is yourself. 
 With some little amusement I am about to combine a good deal of 
 labor in writing, and a kindred occupation naturally recalls you more 
 to my mind. 
 
 He asked for Lieber's views on public affairs. 2 
 
 During the winter the movement to make Fremont the Re- 
 publican candidate gathered strength as rapidly as the new 
 party itself. His boom fairly opened about Christmas, and 
 moved forward with a simultaneous rush in Washington, New 
 York, and Boston. At all three points Banks, later called by 
 Boutwell the discoverer of Fremont as a presidential candidate, 
 was the most active agent. Though engrossed during early 
 December in his Speakership fight, he took some days at 
 Christmas to work for his friend, visiting several cities. Carry- 
 ing his message to influential newspapermen like John Bigelow 
 of the New York Evening Post and Charles Congdon of the 
 Boston Atlas, as well as politicians like ex-Representative 
 Charles W. Upham, later one of Fremont's campaign workers 
 and biographers, Banks told them that the free soil cause could 
 make no headway till they had a man as well as a platform, 
 and that Fremont was ideal; the others had been too active 
 partisans to run well. Bigelow, Congdon, and Upham were all 
 won over, and Bigelow began to convert his chief, William 
 
 2 Lieber Papers, Huntington Library. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 427 
 
 Cullen Bryant. Then Fremont's old friend Francis P. Blair, the 
 veteran Washington journalist, and his son Frank P. Blair 
 of St. Louis, took up the cause. The snowball was growing. 8 
 
 At the famous conference at Blair's Silver Spring estate late 
 in December, 1855, called to lay plans for a national anti- 
 slavery party, Fremont's name was discussed. According to 
 one newspaper, the members — Blair, Banks, Preston King, 
 Chase, Sumner, and others — decided that he would be the 
 most suitable candidate. And there is no doubt that another 
 conference summoned by John Bigelow in New York in the 
 first days of 1856, with the elder Blair, Edwin D. Morgan, and 
 some lesser politicians present, determined to back Fremont to 
 the limit. Early in the year a strong machine was being set up. 
 Capable men were obtained as organizers — Isaac Sherman of 
 New York, Israel D. Andrews of Massachusetts, Colonel 
 Charles James of Wisconsin, and others. Bigelow reported: 
 "Thurlow Weed says he is contented with Fremont, and if so, 
 of course Seward is." 
 
 Before spring fairly opened, a strong current of Fremont 
 sentiment was manifest among Republicans all over the North. 
 First various Massachusetts newspapers, such as the Worces- 
 ter Spy, influenced by Banks, Wilson, and John R. Andrew, 
 came out for the explorer. The Blair organ in St. Louis, the 
 Democrat, echoed the demand, and Bryant's Evening Post 
 took up the cry. The Cleveland Herald pronounced for Fre- 
 mont in March; and "Fremont is very popular in Ohio," wrote 
 the Cleveland correspondent of the New York Tribune on 
 April 3rd. The Herald of Freedom, organ of the Emigrant Aid 
 Society, had published a laudatory article in January, and at 
 
 3 On this subject a main source of material is the Fremont MSS in the 
 Bancroft Library. But see also A. W. Crandall, Early History of the Republican 
 Party; R. J. Bartlett, John C. Fremont and the Republican Party; W. E. 
 Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics, Vol. I; Roy F. Nichols, 
 "Some Problems of the First Republican Campaign," American Historical 
 Review, XXVIII, pp. 492^.; and Fred Harvey Harrington, "Fremont and 
 the Nomination of 1856," American Historical Review, XXIX, p. 92 iff. Mr. 
 Reinhard H. Luthin has kindly furnished me transcripts from the Seward 
 Papers in Auburn, New York, and the Thurlow Weed Papers at Rochester 
 University. 
 
428 FREMONT 
 
 the beginning of April placed his name at its masthead: "Our 
 Candidate: John C. Fremont." Meanwhile, on February 2nd, 
 the day Banks was elected Speaker, Ben: Perley Poore wrote 
 the Boston Journal that the Republicans would undoubtedly 
 nominate the explorer. New York organizers, abetted by Thur- 
 low Weed, were earnestly at work, and Isaac Sherman told 
 Banks early in February that he considered it settled that both 
 the Republicans and Barnburners — the free-soil Democrats — 
 desired Fremont as their candidate. By the time of the Pitts- 
 burgh Convention (February 22nd to 23rd), which officially or- 
 ganized the Republican party, his lead was established. An 
 interesting feature of his strength was the support of German 
 newspapers and such German leaders as Philip Dorsheimer of 
 Buffalo, who believed him the least anti-foreign of the Repub- 
 lican aspirants. 
 
 As the spring advanced the argument of his "availability" 
 rapidly became irresistible. Many Eastern Republicans would 
 have preferred Seward, Chase, or some other leader who, as 
 Bryant put it, bore the scars of long warfare against slavery. 
 But it seemed clear that none of these veterans could win. 
 Seward and Chase had taken too extreme a stand upon the 
 slavery issue, both demanding the abolition of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia and the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act; 
 both, and especially Seward, were repugnant to the Native 
 Americans. A third possibility was John McLean of Ohio, 
 associate justice of the Supreme Court, who had many adher- 
 ents in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois — among them 
 Abraham Lincoln. But he was an old man, past seventy, and an 
 uninspiring, colorless figure. Dana of the Tribune called him "an 
 old fogy," "a marrowless old lawyer," and the younger and 
 more aggressive Republicans turned away from him. To this 
 element Fremont seemed by far the most effective candidate. 
 He was just forty-three; he had no embarrassing record on 
 the slavery question; a romantic aura hung about his name, 
 and his activity and daring made him seem just the leader to 
 typify a crusading new party. Such was his strength that cer- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 429 
 
 tain supporters of Millard Fillmore, after his nomination this 
 spring by the pro-slavery Know-No things, considered desert- 
 ing him to support Fremont. 
 
 During May the race narrowed to a contest between McLean 
 and Fremont, with the latter almost certain of the prize. Seward 
 had been definitely withdrawn by Thurlow Weed, who believed 
 that he should wait until i860 for his chance. Chase was un- 
 acceptable, for it was now evident that the cry of Abolitionism 
 would cost him tens of thousands of votes in southern Indiana 
 and Illinois. Samuel Bowles wrote that the Fremont movement 
 in the West was "going like a prairie fire"; Greeley, though 
 noncommittal, was arguing that the paramount consideration 
 was the ability to draw votes — and this meant Fremont. A 
 letter of sympathy from the explorer to the free-soil governor 
 of Kansas, Charles Robinson, published early in April, im- 
 pressed all northern free-soilers. According to the Chicago 
 correspondent of the New York Tribune, he was more fre- 
 quently spoken of in Illinois than any other man. "A sort of 
 intrusive feeling pervades the people that he will be nominated 
 and elected. The same sentiment is extending over Iowa and 
 spreading into Wisconsin. He seems to combine more elements 
 of strength than any man who has yet been named." 
 
 But one great threat still menaced Fremont's ambitions, a 
 threat from an extraordinary quarter. The anti-slavery Know- 
 No things, who had tentatively parted from the pro-slavery 
 wing during 1855, constituted a strong party; one which many 
 observers as late as the fall of 1855 thought stronger than the 
 Republicans. They were still a powerful factor in the situa- 
 tion when, in February, 1856, they cut entirely loose from the 
 pro-slavery or Fillmore Know-Nothings to set up a national 
 party of their own. Leaders in this party had no intention of 
 making an independent fight, for that would mean certain de- 
 feat; but they wished to join the Republicans on equal terms, 
 not to be swallowed by them. They felt that they would gain 
 more by fusion if they had their own national committee and 
 nominating convention; and they called this convention for 
 
430 FREMONT 
 
 June 1 2 th, five days before the Republicans were to meet. It 
 was evident that they hoped to use it to dictate the choice of 
 a candidate for both parties! This impaled the followers of 
 Fremont upon the horns of a dilemma. If the anti-slavery 
 Know-Nothings nominated McLean or Stockton, and the Re- 
 publicans ratified the nomination, all would be lost. If the 
 Know-Nothings nominated McLean and the Republicans Fre- 
 mont, two anti-slavery tickets would divide the vote and make 
 victory impossible. But if the Know-Nothings nominated Fre- 
 mont on June 12 th, then this action would weaken him with 
 foreign-born voters, and might defeat him in the Republican 
 Convention or afterwards. "I cannot solve the problem," Isaac 
 Sherman despairingly wrote Banks; "it is out of my reach." 
 Greeley was also deeply worried. "Our real trouble is the K.N. 
 convention on the 12 th," he declared. 
 
 It was while faced with this dilemma that Fremont pre- 
 pared a letter to one of his supporters, Governor Ford, which 
 was held in reserve for possible use. It was a stiff refusal to 
 accept the Know-Nothing nominations on terms that might 
 embarrass the Republican party. He spoke out plainly against 
 racial or national prejudices: 4 
 
 The people throughout the free States, with extraordinary una- 
 nimity and enthusiasm, appear to be rising in a simultaneous effort 
 upon a single and great issue, regardless of the minor questions of 
 party policy which in quieter times have sundered the north and 
 nullified its power. On all sides there is a generous disposition to 
 rise above all political animosities and all prejudices of birth and 
 religion. With the feelings which are actuating the body of the peo- 
 ple at this moment I take pleasure in saying that I am thoroughly 
 imbued. I am hostile to slavery upon principle and feeling. While I 
 feel myself inflexible in the belief that it ought not to be interfered 
 with where it exists under the shield of state sovereignty, I am as 
 inflexibly opposed to its extension on this continent beyond its 
 present limits. Animated with these views, confident of their suc- 
 cess, and earnestly disposed to do battle persistently in their behalf, 
 
 4 Copy in Bigelow MSS, New York Public Library. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 431 
 
 and having but little active sympathy with secondary questions, 
 which are not involved in the great issue, I am naturally identified 
 with the cause represented by the great Republican Convention 
 about to assemble in Philadelphia. I could not therefore accept un- 
 conditionally the candidateship of the American party, inasmuch as 
 I would feel bound by the decisions of that party with which I am 
 identified. 
 
 But the problem was solved without issuance of such a 
 drastic letter. Great numbers of Fremont men descended upon 
 the Native American Convention in Philadelphia as its dele- 
 gates gathered in early June. Thurlow Weed was busy button- 
 holing delegates; so were Preston King, E. D. Morgan, and 
 other shrewd politicians. Money flowed freely, and one par- 
 ticipant said later that the Fremont men spent $30,000 to 
 control the gathering. With this to assist, agreement was easy. 
 Isaac Sherman had broached a shrewd plan — a plan that the 
 Know-No things should nominate Banks for President and 
 some good Whig for Vice-President; and that as soon as the 
 Republican Convention nominated Fremont, Banks should re- 
 sign in his favor. 
 
 This plan was duly carried out. On June 16th the Know- 
 Nothings nominated Banks and William F. Johnston of North 
 Carolina, though a rump bolted in order to name Commodore 
 Stockton of New Jersey and Kenneth Raynor of North Caro- 
 lina. Next day the Republican Convention opened, and on the 
 nineteenth nominated Fremont and William L. Dayton of New 
 Jersey. Some of the Know-Nothings were offended that not 
 even their vice-presidential candidate had been accepted, and 
 threatened to kick over the traces. But the explorer's managers 
 were determined and adroit. They took a group of the hesitant 
 Native Americans to New York to call on Fremont at his Ninth 
 Street home, and these men came away satisfied. The candi- 
 date, whose above-quoted letter to Ford would utterly have 
 ruined him with the Nativists, gave such assurances as were 
 necessary to satisfy his guests on points of principle. More- 
 over, he or the other Republican leaders promised that Day- 
 
432 FREMONT 
 
 ton would be withdrawn in favor of Johnston. Next day, the 
 20th, the requisite program was carried through by the Know- 
 Nothings. They let Banks withdraw, and substituted Fre- 
 mont and Johnston. But as Johnston was persuaded to resign 
 in favor of Dayton, the final ticket of both parties was Fre- 
 mont and Dayton. Such were the virtuous circumstances amid 
 which the Republican party, destined to so virtuous a career, 
 entered upon its first race. 
 
 Upon some details of this first Republican National Con- 
 vention we may well pause. Its delegates, nearly a thousand 
 strong, met in the Musical Fund Hall of Philadelphia at 
 eleven o'clock on the morning of June 17, 1856. Certain char- 
 acteristics were strongly stamped upon it. It was a sectional 
 gathering; only four slave states were represented, Delaware, 
 Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, and they sent but a hand- 
 ful of members. All the free states and the territories of Kan- 
 sas, Nebraska, and Minnesota had sent delegates. It was also 
 a gathering in which the evangelical element — there were many 
 vociferous ministers present — and the radical anti-slavery ele- 
 ment, led by Wilmot, Lovejoy, and Giddings, were prominent. 
 From the outset a camp-meeting fervor, a crusading enthusiasm 
 such as was hardly known again in American politics till the 
 Progressive Convention of 19 12 in Chicago, marked the public 
 proceedings. Most of the delegates believed that a great move- 
 ment for free men, free speech, and free thought was being 
 launched. They boasted that the moral elevation of the assem- 
 blage, its dignity and decorum, stood in bright contrast with 
 the rowdy bar-room atmosphere of the Democratic Conven- 
 tion which had just named Buchanan at Cincinnati. 
 
 One name was plainly in the ascendancy — Fremont. Before 
 the doors swung open, J. S. Pike wrote the Tribune that two 
 days of investigation had satisfied him that Fremont's nomina- 
 tion was inevitable. The New York delegation, ruled by Thur- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 433 
 
 low Weed, was, he said, almost unanimously for the explorer; 
 the majority of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey delegations 
 were for McLean; Ohio's delegation was divided, some for 
 Fremont, some for McLean, and most for Chase; a majority 
 of the Illinois members were at least nominally for McLean; 
 and the remainder of the country had generally chosen Fre- 
 mont delegates. "The fact is not disguised," Pike concluded, 
 "that as a general thing the outright, progressive-movement 
 men are in favor of Fremont, while McLean is the candidate 
 for the slow and hunkerish part of the convention. The general 
 sentiment of all is conciliatory." But the "progressive" men 
 were obviously in control, applauding every radical utterance 
 and distributing such inflammatory literature as the House 
 Committee Report on the assault of Brooks upon Sumner. 5 
 
 The first important task was the platform. Edward D. Mor- 
 gan called the Convention to order, and Robert Emmet of New 
 York was made temporary chairman. With eighty-odd reporters 
 scribbling like mad before him, and the delegates wild with 
 enthusiasm, David Wilmot on the second morning read the 
 platform. It was a brief document of nine "resolutions," which 
 did not take ten minutes to recite. Each separate plank rang 
 out like the report of a cannon and was followed by a salvo 
 of applause. The denunciation of the Kansas atrocities was the 
 signal for a tremendous demonstration. The band played and 
 cheer followed cheer as Wilmot disclaimed that: "It is our 
 fixed purpose to bring the perpetrators of these atrocious out- 
 rages, and their accomplices, to a sure and condign punish- 
 ment hereafter." The platform upheld the Missouri Com- 
 promise, opposed the extension of slavery, demanded the ad- 
 mission of Kansas as a free state, denied the power of Con- 
 gress or any local legislature to establish slavery within a 
 territory, and declared that the Ostend Circular was "the high- 
 wayman's plea that 'might makes right.' " Mormon polygamy 
 
 5 Upon the preference of the younger, more aggressive Republicans for 
 Fremont see J. S. Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, p. 338. 
 
434 FREMONT 
 
 and southern slavery were linked together as "twin relics of 
 barbarism." 6 
 
 On the third day came the balloting. Ex-Governor George 
 W. Patterson of New Jersey formally withdrew the name of 
 Seward; he was followed by Ex- Judge Rufus P. Spalding of 
 Ohio, who by authority withdrew the name of McLean; and 
 Thomas J. Mitchell of Ohio in the same way withdrew Chase. 
 The convention, tense with excitement, expected Fremont's 
 nomination to follow at once. Frank P. Blair, who had in his 
 pocket a letter from Fremont authorizing him to do anything 
 except permit the explorer to be named for Vice-President, felt 
 that victory was within his grasp. At this moment, Thaddeus 
 Stevens rose and begged for delay. One man only, he said, could 
 carry Pennsylvania; that man, McLean, had been withdrawn; 
 and it was necessary for the delegates from his state to con- 
 sult on the situation. All the previous day Stevens, Wilmot, and 
 other McLean men had done their best to make converts from 
 the Fremont ranks, and had succeeded in winning over a num- 
 ber of Maine delegates. Now, during the recess, Stevens made 
 a passionate appeal to the Pennsylvania delegation to stand 
 fast for McLean; if Fremont were nominated, he told them, 
 the Republicans would lose not only Pennsylvania but the 
 whole election. 
 
 Stevens's effort was in vain, though immediately after the 
 Convention reopened McLean was again put in nomination. An 
 informal ballot at once showed that Fremont had 359 votes, 
 McLean 196, Sumner 2, and Seward 1. David Wilmot then 
 took the floor and made a plea for unanimity, after which the 
 formal ballot resulted in Fremont's nomination with 529 votes 
 against 37 for McLean. The usual scene of mass excitement 
 ensued. The band blared forth, the floor and galleries were 
 a sea of tossing hats and waving handkerchiefs, and as an 
 American flag bearing Fremont's name was raised from the 
 platform, and a broad pennant inscribed "John C. Fremont 
 for President" was drawn the full width of the hall, the cheer- 
 
 6 Charles W. Johnson, First Three Republican National Conventions, p. 35$. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 433 
 
 ing became deafening. Banners were flung from the windows, 
 and applause from crowds in the streets mingled with that in 
 the hall. "The enthusiasm is tremendous," Greeley wired his 
 office while the demonstration still continued. 
 
 Then followed what Fremont thought the great error of the 
 Convention — the nomination of W. L. Dayton for Vice-Presi- 
 dent. He had no personal objection to the man, but held that 
 Simon Cameron should have been named instead, thus per- 
 mitting a stronger fight against Buchanan in Pennsylvania. 
 Fremont believed that Cameron would perhaps have received 
 the nomination had not Francis P. Blair, whose antagonisms 
 were always intense, sternly vetoed the suggestion. Thurlow 
 Weed, who shared his view of Dayton, later placed the blame 
 elsewhere. He wrote Cameron: 7 "The first, and as I still 
 think fatal error, was in not taking a Vice-President in whose 
 nomination the North Americans would have concurred cor- 
 dially. The McLean men, aided by Greeley, threw us off the 
 track." 
 
 * * * 
 
 The Republican press rallied to Fremont with unaffected 
 liking and hope. Few editors knew much about him, but all that 
 they did know seemed highly favorable. The Tribune declared 
 that "having exhibited a singular force of character and a dis- 
 tinguished ability in every undertaking to which he applied 
 himself," he had now been called to the difficult but glorious 
 enterprise "of rescuing the government and the Union from the 
 hands of a body of unprincipled politicians." Bryant asked 
 what was the secret of his overwhelming popularity. "The 
 times require in the chief magistrates of the nation an unshaken 
 courage, perfect steadiness of purpose, and a ready command 
 of resources. The times require a man who has something 
 heroic in his character"; and the people believed that the Fre- 
 mont who had so firmly surmounted western perils possessed 
 these qualities. Raymond in the Times declared that the citi- 
 
 7 Weed to Cameron, November 12, 1856, Cameron Papers, Library of 
 Congress. 
 
436 
 
 FREMONT 
 
 zens could not fail to elect him if they had "any admiration 
 for high personal qualities, for perseverance, bravery, disin- 
 terested benevolence, generosity, heroism, for noble-minded- 
 ness, high attainments, and devotion to duty." The Fremont 
 legend was approaching its rather absurd zenith. Republican 
 writers and orators began to magnify the explorer into a figure 
 
 FOR 
 
 R 
 
 DIRECT!! 
 
 THE FAST SAILING STEAMER 
 
 BLACK REPUBLICAN! 
 
 Capt J. O. FREMONT, "No. 1." 
 
 Has tier Fieight on board, and will have quick dispatch on 
 NOVEMBER 4TIT, 1856. 
 
 The following is a list of the Officers and Crew for the voyage: 
 •DUDAII-DAY 
 
 -HOLY RIFLS- BEECHES. 
 FRF.O DOUGLASS. 
 
 PUR82B8. 
 KANSAS WAR COMMITTEE. 
 
 'SAUNF.V BENNETT. 
 
 ' LET THE UNION SLIDE • BANKS. 
 
 A paMQl " Calbpe ' is eegaged, aad wiD giro Mrenl « SkrUb ft, Kauat* 
 The •• Shaking- Quaker* " fro« Ptmujlwama, -who did not votc'oa (bo I lib 
 
 iaaL, will amuse (be Conpaoy ianmg the trip. 
 
 Thi. Boat it of Eght draft, and win reach seam lb* * Bead Waters of' SALT 
 
 H VEJt " than any otWr craft. 
 
 zrno HIGGXBS ALLOWED OH BOAm>,«a 
 
 Vtt Parage only, apply lo the Aoifai «/ lit Fremont CUi, at (he « HOT.* 
 N. B— raMengm an to be on bout! at 6 o'clock. After that bear the/win bo 
 t — o g i i t on beard on Hum, Whu tta rrem out Ceffitu. 
 
 V a— Ship Stem Bar) to teal oo hoard as eariy ■ poarfUc, for a 4 jean craiaa, 
 
 of heroic proportions, a combination of Lochinvar, Deerslayer, 
 and William Pitt; and some newspapers even instituted a com- 
 parison between his achievements in his first forty years and 
 the lesser feats of George Washington. 
 
 Fremont, waiting quietly at 56 Ninth Street, accepted his 
 nomination in a serious spirit. Having been fairly certain of it, 
 he had written Frank Blair several days earlier that he felt 
 as men do who, after preliminary tremor of an earthquake, 
 
 are momentarily expecting the great shock. But my nerves seem to 
 preserve their usual tranquillity, and I am well satisfied with myself. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION 437 
 
 From the anxious inquiries of friends for some days past it seems to 
 have been expected that I should be ill, but I continue in rather 
 better than ordinary health, which it will please you to know. 
 
 At once, friends crowded to congratulate him; he was over- 
 whelmed with the usual mass of telegrams and letters; and, on 
 June 25 th, there was a great ratification meeting at the Taber- 
 nacle, with bands, speeches by Robert Emmet, Lyman Trum- 
 bull, and others, and an enthusiastic torch-light procession 
 afterward up Broadway to the Colonel's home. Fremont spoke 
 a few words, and Jessie was called forth to acknowledge a 
 round of cheers. A fortnight later, on July 9th, his brief formal 
 acceptance of the nomination was published. One passage, in 
 which he declared against filibustering expeditions or aggres- 
 sions upon the domain of other nations, attracted attention 
 abroad and was warmly commended in London by The Times. 
 But Americans were interested chiefly in his remarks upon 
 slavery. He alined himself with the explicit declarations of the 
 Republican platform: 
 
 Nothing is clearer in the history of our institutions than the de- 
 sign of the nation, in asserting its own independence and freedom, to 
 avoid giving countenance to the extension of slavery. The influence 
 of the small but compact and powerful class of men interested in 
 slavery, who command one section of the country and wield a vast 
 political control as a consequence in the other, is now directed to 
 turn back the impulse of the Revolution and reverse its principles. 
 The extension of slavery across the continent is the object of the 
 power which now rules the government; and from this spirit have 
 sprung those kindred wrongs of Kansas so truly portrayed in one 
 of your resolutions, which prove that the elements of the most arbi- 
 trary governments have not been vanquished by the just theory of 
 our own. 
 
 It would be out of place here to pledge myself to any particular 
 policy that has been suggested to determine the sectional contro- 
 versy engendered by political animosities, operating on a powerful 
 class banded together by common interest. A practical remedy is the 
 admission of Kansas into the Union as a free state. The South 
 
438 FREMONT 
 
 should, in my judgment, earnestly desire such a consummation. It 
 would vindicate its good faith. It would correct the mistake of the 
 repeal; and the North, having practically the benefit of the agree- 
 ment between the two sections, would be satisfied and good feeling 
 be restored. 
 
 With this acceptance — the first and last public utterance of 
 any note by Fremont in the campaign — the battle of 1856 
 opened. 
 
The Campaign of 1856 
 
 ELEVATED thus suddenly to a conspicuous political 
 pedestal, chosen by a powerful party as its leader in a 
 ^ great moral crusade, the unexperienced Fremont might 
 have been pardoned some display of awkwardness, at least 
 some tactical misstep. Fifteen years before he had been an 
 obscure, impoverished army lieutenant, without resources or 
 prospects. Now he was rich, famous, and admired, his name 
 written large on the Golden West, the reputed conqueror of 
 California, the dashing young marshal of a gallant cause. It 
 illustrates his modesty and tact that his conduct was exemplary. 
 Fremont had his faults, but lack of taste was never among 
 them. The critical Gideon Welles, in a severe passage written 
 some years after, did him the justice to remember that at this 
 time his public demeanor was winning. "His bearing was very 
 well so far as he appeared before the public. I saw that he 
 was anxious to be elected but not offensively so; he was not 
 obtrusive, but, on the contrary, reserved and retiring." x If his 
 part in the campaign was open to criticism, it was on the 
 ground that, with his public views and capacities still largely 
 unknown, he kept too much in the background and made 
 altogether too few statements. The nation was asked to accept 
 this untrained man quite too completely on faith. 
 
 From the beginning of the campaign, Fremont and the other 
 leaders had genuine hope of victory, which rapidly mounted as 
 news of an increasing free-soil enthusiasm came in from many 
 parts of the North and West. The strategic elements of the 
 situation, as Greeley insisted, were simple. The Republicans 
 
 1 Gideon Welles, Diary, II, p. 41. 
 
 439 
 
440 FREMONT 
 
 were certain of 114 electoral votes — those of the New England 
 states, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The 
 Democrats were certain of 108 electoral votes from the South 
 and the border states. The doubtful factors were Pennsylvania 
 with 27 electoral votes; Indiana with 13; Illinois with 11; 
 Maryland with 8; New Jersey with 7, and California with 4 
 — that is, 70 in all. Since 149 were sufficient to elect, the 
 Republicans needed only to carry Pennsylvania and Indiana, 
 or Pennsylvania and Illinois, to be victorious. Was this im- 
 possible? The best judges thought not. 
 
 Three tickets were in the field: Buchanan and Breckinridge 
 for the Democrats; Fremont and Dayton for the Republicans 
 and one section of Know-Nothings; and Millard Fillmore and 
 Donelson for the expiring Whigs and another section of Know- 
 Nothings. The great danger was that Fillmore would draw 
 enough votes from Fremont to defeat him; but, as the canvas 
 proceeded, the energy of the Republican organization surprised 
 even its members. 
 
 Throughout the North, indeed, the Republican campaign 
 awakened a fervor recalling the log-cabin campaign of 1840, 
 but possessing a moral character and a degree of statesman- 
 ship which the Harrison campaign had lacked. Mass meeting 
 followed mass meeting; torch-light procession, with red fire 
 and marching bands, followed torch-light procession. The nom- 
 ination was immediately "ratified" by gatherings all over the 
 country. Then came a series of tremendous "rallies." Rock- 
 wood Hoar and Hannibal Hamlin spoke in Faneuil Hall; 
 Bryant, Franz Sigel, Friedrich Kapp, and Charles A. Dana 
 were heard in the Tabernacle in New York. Little preliminary 
 organization was needed in many parts of the North besides 
 that supplied by the existing Emigrant Aid Societies and other 
 agencies for the relief of Kansas, which already reached into 
 every county and almost every township. The gatherings 
 seemed to spring spontaneously from some pent-up popular 
 feeling. A Fremont demonstration of 25,000 people took place 
 at Massilon, Ohio, another of 30,000 at Kalamazoo, Michigan; 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 441 
 
 and a third of equal size at Beloit, Wisconsin, where the 
 crowds cheered a procession six miles in length. Illinois was 
 not behind her neighbors. Lincoln spoke to 10,000 at Prince- 
 ton, and at Alton addressed an enormous concourse — some said 
 35,000 people — brought together by the State Fair; while at 
 Jacksonville Lyman Trumbull reviewed a procession a mile and 
 a quarter long. Perhaps most striking of all was the tremen- 
 dous Fremont rally in Indianapolis in July, which attracted 
 the most attention. 
 
 Here, while cannon roared all day, the procession took hours 
 to pass a given point; a single delegation numbered almost 
 4,500 men; 50 blaring bands were in line; 25 marshals kept 
 the ranks in order; uncounted gay floats rolled down the 
 streets, the chief carrying 32 young women in white, one for 
 each state, with a 33rd girl in black for bleeding Kansas; hun- 
 dreds of banners and transparencies waved above the long line ; 
 and platoon after platoon of Germans, with their own flags, 
 formed a special section of the pageant. At 5 different stands 
 orators took turns exhorting the crowd to stand fast against 
 slavery and polygamy, against border ruffians and Bully 
 Brooks. That night a huge torch-light procession turned the 
 streets into streams of fire, above which rose the voices of 
 haranguing orators. 
 
 The West and North were rallying against slavery with a 
 new ardor. An intense resentment had been aroused in the 
 breasts of millions by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and it was 
 finding a sudden release in acclamation of Fremont and the 
 Republican cause. Companies of Wide- Awakes, carrying torches 
 and transparencies, sprang up everywhere. Fife and drum 
 corps shrilled and rattled. Fremont glee clubs shook the village 
 lyceum halls and opera houses. Long lines of gigs and wagons 
 raised the dust on prairie roads as farming people streamed to 
 Fremont picnics and rallies. A powerful array of Republican 
 campaign speakers took the stump. In the East they included 
 Banks, Chase, Greeley, Sumner, William M. Evarts, and John 
 P. Hale, while even the aloof Emerson and the retiring Bryant 
 
442 FREMONT 
 
 made speeches. In the West, Schuyler Colfax of Indiana wa3 
 active, Carl Schurz was busy addressing the Germans, and 
 striplings like Whitelaw Reid were pressed into service. Lin- 
 coln, speaking ninety times in all, made some of the ablest 
 addresses he had yet delivered. On every hand, newspapers 
 which for years had been Whig or Democratic were turning to 
 the new party. 
 
 Song, slogan, and picture lent their aid in the campaign. 
 Banners were flung across village streets, emblazoned with 
 such devices as "We Follow the Pathfinder"; "We Shall Be 
 Redeemed From the Rule of Nigger Drivers"; "We Are Buck- 
 Hunting"; or with a still bolder pun, "Jessie Bent-on Being 
 Free." 2 The Democrats were taunted as Buchaneers. One 
 slogan was repeated everywhere in Republican newspapers and 
 on Republican posters: "Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, 
 Free Men, Fremont and Victory." Jessie played only a slighter 
 part in the campaign than her husband, and "Fremont and 
 Jessie" seemed to constitute the Republican ticket rather 
 than Fremont and Dayton. "We go for our country and Union, 
 and for brave little Jessie forever," ran one ditty. A Philadel- 
 phia rally in June popularized a campaign song, chanted to 
 the tune of "Camptown Races," which spread rapidly all over 
 the North: 
 
 There's an old gray horse whose name is Buck; Du da, du da, 
 His dam was Folly and his sire Bad Luck; Du da, du da day. 
 
 Chorus: — We're bound to work all night, 
 We're bound to work all day, 
 I'll bet my money on the Mustang Colt, 
 Will anybody bet on the Gray? 
 
 The Mustang Colt is strong and young, Du da, du da, 
 
 His wind is sound and his knees not sprung, Du da, du da day. 
 
 The old gray horse when he tries to trot, Du da, du da, 
 
 Goes round and round in the same old spot, Du da, du da day. 
 
 The mustang goes a killing pace, Du da, du da, 
 
 He's bound to win in the four mile race, Du da, du da day. 
 
 2 New York Evening Post, September i, 1856. 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 443 
 
 The most powerful Northern newspapers supported Fre- 
 mont. In New York he had the loyal assistance of not only th© 
 Tribune, Evening Post, and Times, all possessing a national 
 circulation, but also of James Gordon Bennett's Herald, which 
 had long been Democratic and which four years later was 
 panic-stricken in its desire to let the South have its way. The 
 Philadelphia North American, edited by Morton McMichael, 
 took the Republican side; so did the Chicago Tribune of Medill 
 and Horace White. The German press did as valiant service 
 as the German speakers, who included Philip Dorsheimer, 
 Gustav Koerner, and Schurz. German songs were written, for 
 one of which, by E. V. Scherb, the poet-editor Bryant paid a 
 prize of $100: 
 
 Hurrah I Bald font der Jubelschreil 
 
 Kansas ist jetzt gerochen, 
 
 Vie Knechtschaft ist gebrochen, 
 
 Frei ist Amerikaf 
 Fremont der Siegeskrdftige, 
 Er hat den Feind bezwungen, 
 Drum jauchzen alle Zungen; 
 
 Fremont! Victoria! 
 
 Large lithographed portraits of Fremont, manufactured in 
 New York and retailed at a dollar each, blazed forth in shop- 
 windows and local headquarters. Two extended campaign 
 biographies were prepared, one by John Bigelow, with the aid 
 of Jessie Fremont, which Derby & Jackson of New York sold 
 in huge quantities at a dollar, and one by Charles Wentworth 
 Upham, published by Ticknor & Fields in Boston. The Tribune 
 also issued an excellent pamphlet life by Greeley. All the larger 
 newspapers made a special campaign price to summer sub- 
 scribers. John G. Whittier celebrated Fremont's achievements 
 in his poem, "The Pass of the Sierras," recalling the day when 
 the explorer bade his men press on "and look from Winter's 
 frozen throne on Summer's flowers and grass!" and urging him 
 now to lead the nation into the promised land; while such 
 
444 FREMONT 
 
 minor poets as T. B. Read and the Cary sisters lent their pens. 
 Above all, the women -of the North enlisted under Fremont's 
 banner as never before in politics, while most of the Protestant 
 clergy of the section boldly used the pulpit to urge his election. 
 
 The Democrats were sufficiently shrewd enough to take the 
 offensive, and their tactics embraced two main sets of opera- 
 tions. Although the Republicans made no attack upon the 
 private character of Buchanan except to insinuate that a 
 bachelor ought not to be President, the Democrats leveled 
 scurrilous charges against Fremont. Their main accusation, 
 made with ceaseless iteration for its effect upon the Know- 
 Nothing vote, was that Fremont was secretly a Catholic. As 
 "proofs," they declared that in his first western expedition he 
 had carved a cross upon Rock Independence; that he and 
 Jessie Benton had been married by a Catholic priest; that he 
 had sent a ward and relative, his niece Nina, to a Catholic 
 school; and that his father was a French Catholic. The New 
 York Express fortified these allegations by a half-dozen ab- 
 surd stories. It declared that he had been seen crossing himself 
 in the Catholic cathedral in Washington, that he had once 
 told a West Point professor that he was a Catholic, and that 
 over a hotel table he had avowed the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation! Of course John Bigelow and others had no diffi- 
 culty in proving that Fremont was a good Episcopalian. A 
 committee of Protestant clergymen, including several profes- 
 sors at the Union Theological Seminary, called upon Fremont 
 and received proofs that he worshiped at Grace Episcopal 
 Church; that Mrs. Fremont, reared as a Presbyterian, had 
 united with the Episcopal Church on her marriage with him; 
 and that the children had been baptized as Episcopalians. 3 
 
 Nevertheless, these charges did Fremont substantial harm. 
 Schuyler Colfax wrote Bigelow at the end of August that of 
 hundreds of letters from the Northwest, "scarcely any omits a 
 reference to the fact that the Catholic story injures us ma- 
 
 3 Bigelow MSS, New York Public Library; compare the campaign pamphlet, 
 Col. Frimont's Religion; also the pamphlet Republican's Outfit, 1856. 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 445 
 
 terially, both in keeping men in the Fillmore ranks who ought 
 to be with us, and in cooling many of our friends who fear 
 from Colonel Fremont's silence and the cloud of rumors on the 
 subject that there may be some truth in it." He added that 
 unfortunately they made nothing on the other side, the Cath- 
 olics being solidly against the Republicans. 4 So they were, 
 chiefly because they believed the Know-Nothings to be behind 
 Fremont; of nearly forty Catholic journals, not one in July 
 was found on the Republican side. 5 
 
 At the height of the campaign, some forty Republican lead- 
 ers, meeting at the Astor House, discussed the charge with 
 Fremont, and Thurlow Weed declared that he ought to make 
 a public disavowal. This the candidate declined to do. He took 
 the position that the main issue of the campaign was freedom, 
 intellectual as well as physical, that under the Constitution 
 no religious belief disqualified a man for office, and that he 
 would not ask for a single vote if in so doing he had to appeal 
 to the religious fanaticism which had long cursed certain na- 
 tions of Europe. After the conference, he decided to consult 
 James Gordon Bennett. "What are your convictions?" asked 
 the editor, and Fremont told him. "Follow those convictions, 
 Colonel, and I will sustain you," was the reply. 
 
 A multitude of other charges, many of them silly, were 
 brought against the explorer. The most abstemious of men, 
 he was accused of being a hard drinker. It was said that he had 
 owned seventy-five slaves, whom he had hired to Colonel Brant 
 of St. Louis. The fact was, of course, that both Fremont and 
 Jessie had again and again declined to accept a single slave 
 from their southern relatives, though often pressed to do so 
 during their privations on the frontier; for both had an uncon- 
 querable aversion to slavery. The Democratic press made much 
 of Fremont's financial perplexities. He had signed a note for 
 $1,891, it said, due in a year, and when the brokers refused 
 to discount it, had offered it to Horace Greeley at 2 per cent 
 
 4 Bigelow MSS, August 20, 1856. 
 5 New York Tribune, July 21, 1856. 
 
446 FREMONT 
 
 a month. Greeley angrily rejoined that in the first place he was 
 not a note-shaver, and in the second everybody knew he did 
 not have $1,891! Stories were printed that Fremont was in- 
 eligible to the presidency, having been born abroad, and a man 
 came forward who recalled the very house in Montreal in 
 which he had first seen the light! Most painful of all to Fre- 
 mont's friends, the Democrats seized upon the whole dark story 
 of his mother and her Anna Karenina elopement with a man 
 of her own age, and magnified its unpleasant aspect. 
 
 Much more nearly legitimate were the attacks directed 
 against Fremont's military and financial transactions in Cali- 
 fornia. During the previous session of Congress, a foundation 
 for these assaults had been laid by Senators Thompson of New 
 Jersey and Bigler of Pennsylvania, who in bitterly partisan 
 speeches raked over all Fremont's campaigns and California 
 contracts. At the same time, the Los Angeles Star charged the 
 explorer with cruelty and rapacity in his treatment of the native 
 Californians during and after the Bear Flag War. So far as his 
 share in the American acquisition of the Coast went, the Re- 
 publicans had a sweeping answer ready. They simply quoted the 
 testimony of Buchanan himself, in the British judicial inquiry 
 into the suits against Fremont in 1852, that "his services were 
 very valuable; he bore a conspicuous part in the conquest of 
 California, and in my opinion is better entitled to be called the 
 conqueror of California than any other man." The answer to 
 the charges of cruelty was equally decisive. At Los Angeles 
 and San Jose many native Californians, led by Don Pio Pico, 
 signed statements denying them completely and appealing for 
 the election of Fremont. 6 Thomas O. Larkin, former American 
 consul, testified that Fremont had lived in his house for weeks 
 or months at a time, from 1850 to 1854. Seeing the explorer 
 at this close range, he had found him a of reserved and dis- 
 tant manners, active and industrious in his official duties, anx- 
 ious to finish the business on hand and before him and to be 
 on the march to accomplish more"; never coarse or profane; 
 
 6 New York Evening Post, October 20, 1856. 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 447 
 
 always "polite, kind, and courteous." Larkin concluded with 
 an emphatic sentence: "I consider Mr. Fremont a just, cor* 
 rect, and moral man, abstemious, bold, and persevering." 7 
 
 Nevertheless, in California especially, the history of Fre- 
 mont's share in the Indian beef contract and his connection 
 with Palmer, Cook & Co., financial agents of the state of Cali- 
 fornia and city of San Francisco, who had defaulted owing 
 those bodies $100,000, was so retold as to cost the explorer 
 heavily. Actually, he had performed a public service in fore- 
 stalling a threatened Indian war. But his handling of the con- 
 tract, his protracted siege of Congress to obtain payment, and 
 his negotiations with his creditors, were all interpreted in hos- 
 tile manner. The San Francisco Globe, in a long and venomous 
 article, reviewed these business affairs and also accused Fre- 
 mont of complicity with Palmer, Cook & Co., in trying to 
 swindle the public in exploiting the Mariposa mines. This 
 article was an adroit tissue of lies. Fremont and his friends did 
 everything in their power to disassociate his name from that 
 of the discredited banking firm, making it clear that he had 
 never been a partner or associate. But many Republicans on 
 the coast feared that there was some basis of truth for the 
 reports. 
 
 Dozens of "Bear Clubs" and similar organizations were 
 founded in California to support Fremont — sixteen in San 
 Francisco alone; six or seven newspapers vigorously defended 
 him. Nevertheless, a good deal of the mud stuck. The San Fran- 
 cisco Bulletin, James King of William's paper, was friendly 
 toward the Republican nominee. But it declared its firm con- 
 viction that "this disreputable firm has lost thousands of votes 
 for Fremont in this state," and that it had injured him more 
 than any other factor. 8 
 
 The second main element in Democratic strategy lay in 
 systematic use of the bogey of secession as a consequence of 
 
 7 Letter to Alpheus Hardy, August 2, 1856; Larkin Papers, Bancroft Library. 
 
 8 San Francisco Morning Globe, August 19, 1856; San Francisco Bulletin, 
 November 5, December 2, 1856. 
 
448 FREMONT 
 
 Fremont's election. Buchanan men declared that the Black 
 Republicans, the party of "free soilers, Fremonters, free nig- 
 gers, and freebooters," were the first sectional party in our 
 history. Buchanan himself in his letter of acceptance recalled 
 the warning of Washington against political organizations 
 formed upon geographical lines. The Democratic platform re- 
 pudiated "all sectional parties and platforms concerning do- 
 mestic slavery," saying that they must eventuate in civil war 
 and disunion. A multitude of patriotic men who disliked slavery 
 as much as Fremont himself were converted to this point of 
 view. One was Thomas Hart Benton, who with his usual high 
 devotion to principle uncompromisingly opposed his son-in-law, 
 and published an open letter attacking the proposed Fremont 
 ticket in Missouri; the whole Republican movement, he said, 
 was accentuating the hostility between the two sections. De- 
 nouncing any political party which tried to elect candidates 
 from one part of the Union to rule over the whole of it, he 
 asked if the people believed that the South would submit to 
 such a President as Fremont? "We are treading," he said, 
 "upon a volcano that is liable at any moment to burst forth 
 and overwhelm the nation." 9 
 
 Numerous Democratic newspapers, like the Washington 
 Union, Richmond Enquirer, and Charleston Mercury, pre- 
 dicted disunion in emphatic terms if Fremont were elected. 
 John Forsyth of Alabama wrote that "the South ought not to 
 submit to it, and will not submit. The government of the United 
 States will be at an end." Preston Brooks, the assailant of 
 Sumner, fierily addressed a great mass meeting at Ninety-Six, 
 South Carolina. "I believe the only hope of the South," he 
 said, "is in dissolving the bonds which connect us with the 
 government — in separating the living body from the dead car- 
 cass." If Fremont were actually chosen, he added, the news 
 should be the signal for an instant southern march upon Wash- 
 ington, for it would be a patriotic duty to "lay the strong arm 
 of Southern freemen upon the treasury and archives of the gov- 
 
 9 New York Tribune, August 18, 1856. 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 449 
 
 ernment." 10 Senator Slidell asserted that if the Republicans 
 triumphed, "the Union cannot and ought not to be preserved.'* 
 Senator Mason declared that only one course would be open — 
 "immediate, absolute, eternal separation." The editor of the 
 Charleston Mercury believed that such an event "will be and 
 ought to be the knell of the Union." When John Minor Botts 
 defended the idea of an indissoluble Union, the Richmond En- 
 quirer called him a traitor and threatened him with lynching. 
 That the threat of secession was real is evident from a letter 
 that a Southerner, T. Turner, wrote Hamilton Fish in Sep- 
 tember: xl 
 
 I live farther South, see more and know more of Southern people 
 than you do. Last evening was with Cobb of Ga. and Judge Stuart 
 of Maryland — if I am wrong, they are wrong — they both emphati- 
 cally declare, and with great calmness, that if Fremont is elected, 
 secession follows fast as soon as they can receive the news. Cobb told 
 me that Georgia has already taken the first step, in anticipation of 
 this crisis, by the enactment of a law by the last Legislature empower- 
 ing the Gov. to call a state convention, as soon as he might deem it 
 necessary. I saw other Southern gentlemen — who talk precisely in the 
 same way. 
 
 While many Republican newspapers and speakers affected 
 to scoff, these secessionist utterances awakened a profound 
 dread among conservative Northerners. Bryant's Evening Post 
 felt it necessary to publish long editorials assuring the nation 
 that Fremont was not a radical, and would not countenance 
 Sumner in his denunciation of the South, or Seward in his in- 
 sistence upon repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. An impressive 
 list of northern Whigs were so affected by the southern threats 
 that they alined themselves with Buchanan, and appealed to 
 the voters to take the same position. Rufus Choate, in a long 
 public letter, well reasoned and well written, declared that it 
 was the first duty of Whigs "to defeat and dissolve the new 
 
 10 New York Evening Post, October 9, 1856. 
 "Fish MSS, Library of Congress. 
 
450 FREMONT 
 
 geographical party," and that in these circumstances he would 
 vote for Buchanan. 12 Webster's son Fletcher violently assailed 
 the new party, and so did James B. Clay, son of Henry Clay. 
 Such other old-time Whigs as Caleb Cushing, Robert Winthrop, 
 and Amos A. Lawrence, all influential, took their stand by 
 Choate to "pr event the madness of the times from working its 
 maddest act." Meanwhile, Wendell Phillips gloried in the sec- 
 tional nature of the new party, and asked why the North had 
 never before dared to assert its sectional convictions. 
 
 It was one of the paradoxes of the campaign that while the 
 South was thus fulminating against the "Black Republicans" 
 for their hostility to slavery, the Abolitionists were assailing 
 them for their tolerance of the institution. William Lloyd Gar- 
 rison abused the Republican organization as feeble and in- 
 definite, and sneered at the leaders for reassuring men of mod- 
 erate views in order to poll a large vote at the election. An 
 abolitionist ticket was placed in the field, with Gerrit Smith 
 as its candidate, and its mouthpiece, the Radical Abolitionist, 
 attacked Fremont in every issue as a leader who would com- 
 promise with a great evil. 13 
 
 As the campaign drew toward its close, Fremont continued 
 to play a role of dignified aloofness. He greeted the curious and 
 for the most part friendly crowds of people who came to his 
 Ninth Street home, made brief and perfunctory speeches to 
 various delegations, and carried on a wide correspondence. He 
 maintained his health by fencing every morning and taking 
 long walks after dark, while in the middle of October he made 
 a brief run into Vermont. The actual management of the cam- 
 paign was in the hands of E. D. Morgan, Francis P. Blair, 
 John Bigelow, Isaac Sherman (who took New York for his 
 special province), a Charles James, and Thurlow Weed, men 
 in whom Fremont had full confidence. Bigelow, James, and 
 
 12 S. G. Brown, Life of Rufus Choate, p. 321; New York Times, August 15, 
 1856. 
 18 W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, IV, p. 442^. 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 45 1 
 
 Sherman made up a private committee which, together with 
 Mrs. Fremont, handled the mail. 
 
 The most painful aspect of the campaign was the growing 
 intensity of the personal and sectional animosity which accom- 
 panied it. A fair illustration of the vituperation which South- 
 erners of the Rhett and Brooks type poured forth is furnished 
 by a speech of Henry A. Wise in Richmond: 
 
 Fremont is nothing. (Cheers.) He is less than nothing in my esti- 
 mation. (Enthusiastic cheering.) He is but a mere personification of 
 Black Republicanism, the bearer of the black flag. (Cheers.) The 
 question will not be, shall Fremont reign over you and me? but it 
 will be, shall the black flag be erected, shall the higher law be exe- 
 cuted by the President of the United States over the reign of the 
 Constitution and the laws? Shall property be invaded with impu- 
 nity? Yes, you will find hundreds that will say — they begin already 
 to say — "O, wait, wait for some overt act! — wait for him to do some 
 wrong!" Tell me, will any person entertaining feeling of self-respect, 
 having the spirit and courage of a man, wait to prepare for war while 
 its cloud is on the horizon until after the declaration of war is made? 
 
 Tell me, if the hoisting of the Black Republican flag in the hands 
 of an adventurer, born illegitimately in a neighboring State, if not 
 ill-begotten in this very city — tell me, if the hoisting of the black 
 flag over you by a Frenchman's bastard, while the arms of civil war 
 are already clashing, is not to be deemed an overt act and declara- 
 tion of war? 
 
 One southern friend and relative after another, both of 
 Fremont and his wife, now renounced them forever. From a 
 former comrade, later a distinguished soldier and historian — 
 Edward McCrady — with whom Fremont had grown up in 
 Charleston, and for whom he had named a stream in the Far 
 West, he received a note in explanation of the unauthorized 
 publication of a private letter; and McCrady closed thus: 14 
 
 Mrs. Johnson and myself keenly feel the gross outrage committed 
 upon us, by this most unwarranted reference to our private, cor- 
 
 !* Fremont, MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
452 FREMONT 
 
 respondence. After your course in reference to the Presidential elec- 
 tion, any correspondence with you is painful to me, and nothing but 
 the necessity of vindicating myself and family from a suspicion of 
 such gross indelicacy as is implied in that reference, could have 
 induced me again to address you. 
 
 The chief compensating feature of the campaign was the 
 enthusiasm with which the youth, the womanhood, the clergy, 
 the cultural and intellectual leaders of the North, united in 
 what seemed to them a great moral crusade. The universities, 
 with such spokesmen as Felton of Harvard and Silliman of 
 Yale, were almost unanimously for Fremont. The literary lead- 
 ers of New England and New York had actively espoused his 
 candidacy — Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Bayard 
 Taylor, and even the venerable Washington Irving. One of 
 George W. Curtis 's campaign utterances, a felicitous address 
 to the students of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, at once 
 became a classic of American politics — "The Duty of the 
 American Scholar." The religious press rallied under the leader- 
 ship of Henry Ward Beecher, whose pen in the pages of the 
 Independent was only less effective than Greeley's in the 
 Tribune. On the Sunday preceding the election, most of the 
 New England ministers preached and prayed for the defeat of 
 Buchanan, and the pulpits of the Middle West poured forth a 
 thousand pleas for the Republican cause. 
 
 The critical event of the early autumn was Pennsylvania's 
 state election of October 14th, which was universally expected 
 to show how her twenty-seven electoral votes would be cast. 
 Both sides girded up their loins. Two state parties were in the 
 field, one the Democratic and the other the Union, the latter 
 supposedly comprising the Republicans, Whigs, and Native 
 Americans. At the beginning of the battle, all Republican 
 strategists had pointed to Pennsylvania as the crucial ground 
 and urged that money be poured into it. Unfortunately, the 
 party was straitened for funds, while its state organization was 
 weak and defective. It was said later that the Democrats had 
 spent nearly $500,000 in Pennsylvania, and it is certain that 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 453 
 
 John W. Forney and others came to New York, demanded 
 large sums from merchants in the southern trade, and used 
 the funds to subsidize not merely the Democratic but also the 
 Native American party. August Belmont was reported to have 
 given $50,000, and other Wall Street bankers and brokers 
 $100,000 more. The Republicans loudly lamented their pov- 
 erty. "When Fremont was nominated," Russell Errett wrote 
 reproachfully from Pittsburgh to Salmon P. Chase, "our friends 
 in New York, and Ohio, and everywhere, assured us that we 
 could and should have whatever aid we needed, both in money 
 and speakers, to carry the State; yet, so far., .we have failed 
 to get either." "We Fremonters of this town," Greeley wrote 
 from New York, "have not one dollar where the Fillmoreans 
 and Buchanans have ten each, and we have Pennsylvania and 
 New Jersey both on our shoulders. Each State is utterly miser- 
 able, so far as money is concerned." 15 
 
 The Republicans placed a brigade of speakers in the field 
 in the closing days of the fight, Charles A. Dana writing 
 jubilantly, "I suppose there are about two hundred orators, 
 great and small, now stumping Pennsylvania for Fremont"; 
 but they included few men of national renown. The ablest cam- 
 paigners were Robert Collyer, the great-hearted Yorkshire 
 workingman and minister, whose rugged eloquence went 
 straight to the hearts of the laborers, David Wilmot, and Han- 
 nibal Hamlin. State affection for Buchanan, as a favorite son, 
 
 15 C. B. Going, David Wilmot, Free S oiler, p. 493 ; J. S. Pike, First Blows 
 of the Civil War, p. 346. The Gideon Welles Papers in the Library of Congress 
 contain several letters from Chairman E. D. Morgan to Welles on money 
 matters. He writes September 30th: "It rained hard last night, and yet I 
 succeeded in getting 38 to 40 pretty good men, and got subscribed $8,000. 
 If it had been pleasant we would have got from $12,000 to $15,000, which we 
 will get, but with more effort." On October 8th: "We are still at work for 
 
 Pennsylvania I have raised something near $15,000, and have appropriated 
 
 it, since which under the arrangement with Ford he has turned up suddenly 
 with a list of 15 or 18 persons in Pa. and drafts on Howard for $8,000." On 
 October 22nd: "We have been and are now exerting ourselves to raise money 
 for Pa. I authorized a draft on me yesterday for $8,000 — and for $25,000 
 in event of Fremont's election. At Boston the true men meet at three o'clock 
 today for the same purpose. At Philadelphia Mr. Lindley Smith, a merchant, 
 is at the same thing." 
 
454 FREMONT 
 
 counted for a great deal; the Republican press, outside of 
 Philadelphia, counted for little. Moreover, the Union leader- 
 ship was weak and divided. Simon Cameron wrote Thurlow 
 Weed later : "From the first I saw little hopes of Pennsylvania. 
 I saw the error committed in placing the movement in the 
 hands of ignorant and conceited men. The Whigs of this State 
 cannot control a campaign; and they would not permit Demo- 
 crats to advise or help them." 16 But perhaps the decisive fac- 
 tor was the fear of the conservative, peace-loving " Pennsylvania 
 Dutch" that Fremont's election would produce a costly up- 
 heaval, and their consequent decision to cling to the older 
 parties. 
 
 Election day in Pennsylvania dawned with party feeling so 
 intense that sober men were glad to find the weather raw and 
 drizzling, for they feared a clash of turbulent crowds. The 
 streets of Philadelphia that night were jammed with people 
 eager to hear the news. Two days elapsed before it was certain 
 that the Buchanan state ticket was elected, and a still longer 
 period before it was known that its majority fell short of 3,000. 
 A change of 1,500 votes would have given Fremont's Union 
 party the victory. Yet this close result was decisive; it was at 
 once seen that if the free-soil forces, uniting Whigs, Know- 
 Nothings, and Republicans under one banner, could not carry 
 Pennsylvania, the Republicans single-handed could not do so. 
 The same day also witnessed elections in Ohio and Indiana, and 
 although Ohio went Republican, Indiana proved safely Demo- 
 cratic. Buchanan's election thus seemed doubly sure. Young 
 Rutherford B. Hayes expressed the opinion of a host of Re- 
 publicans. "Before the October elections in Pennsylvania and 
 Indiana," he wrote, "I was confident Colonel Fremont would 
 be elected. But the disastrous results in those states indicate 
 and will probably do much to produce his defeat. The majori- 
 
 16 November 9, 1856, Weed Papers, University of Rochester. Cameron added 
 that he believed that if he and Weed had met in July and laid complete 
 plans for Pennsylvania they could have carried the state. Weed replied on the 
 twelfth: "Our organization in your State was sadly neglected. We had feeble 
 men in Philadelphia." 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 455 
 
 ties are small — very small — but they discourage our side." 17 
 More than a fortnight before the final election, therefore, 
 Republican leaders knew that they were virtually beaten. They 
 still affected to look forward confidently to the result, but their 
 hopes were gone. To the end of his life, Fremont believed that 
 if his wishes had been followed in the selection of Simon 
 Cameron as running mate, and an organization developed in 
 Pennsylvania sufficient to prevent Democratic corruption of 
 the voters, he would have carried the state in both October 
 and November, and the resulting prestige of the Republicans 
 would have swept Indiana or Illinois into line. This is doubt- 
 ful, for even had Fremont won the state election, Buchanan's 
 chances for carrying Pennsylvania in November would have 
 remained good; the Whig supporters of Fillmore, who in 
 Philadelphia outnumbered the Republicans three to one, would 
 have voted almost en masse against Fremont. But it is interest- 
 ing to note that Cameron believed that if he and Thurlow 
 Weed had been able to organize the state fully in July, victory 
 would have been certain. 
 
 The complete returns were just what the shrewder politicians 
 expected. Of the thirty-one states, Buchanan carried nineteen, 
 Fremont eleven, and Fillmore one; Buchanan had 174 electoral 
 votes, Fremont 114, and Fillmore 8. No fewer than 1,341,264 
 votes were polled by Fremont, about a half-million fewer than 
 those received by Buchanan, and a half-million more than those 
 cast for Fillmore. New York was safely in the Fremont column, 
 for his vote outside of the Democratic metropolis was pro- 
 digious; so were Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The 
 principal disappointments, aside from Pennsylvania, were Illi- 
 nois and Indiana. A broad view of the election showed that 
 the Republicans had been beaten by the Whig votes cast for 
 Buchanan and Fillmore. Fillmore alone received the support 
 of almost 900,000 Whigs and Native Americans, a third of 
 them in the North; they were cast against a sectional party 
 and to avert the threat of civil war, and not against Fremont. 
 
 17 C. R. Williams, Life of Rutherford B. Hayes, I, pp. 105, 107. 
 
456 FREMONT 
 
 Fremont took his defeat philosophically, and Mrs. Fremont 
 accepted it with a surprising restraint of emotion. They had 
 spent election night at headquarters, and then returned at 
 dawn with old Francis P. Blair to their home for breakfast. 
 When they spoke of the Missouri result Jessie remarked 
 brightly: "Colonel Benton, I perceive, has the best of the fam- 
 ily argument." Fremont smiled, but Blair's voice choked and 
 tears rolled down his cheeks as he declared: "Tom Benton's 
 stubborn stand cost us many a vote outside Missouri." At this 
 Lilly, who had set her heart on the White House as a delight- 
 ful place of residence, broke into loud weeping. Jessie forthwith 
 sent her for a long walk, and as she rebuked the little girl 
 Blair blew his nose and said contritely: "That will do for me 
 too, Jessie Anne. Come, Colonel, let's go to headquarters." 18 
 
 As they looked about after election day, the Republicans 
 had much with which to console themselves. The Whig party 
 was dead; it was now evident that Millard Fillmore's cam- 
 paign represented its expiring throes, and that it would never 
 again figure in a presidential campaign. Such northern Demo- 
 crats as President Pierce, Lewis Cass, and John A. Dix, de- 
 tested by many f ree-soilers because of their complaisance toward 
 slavery, had been stingingly rebuked by their states; so had 
 such New England Whigs as Choate and Caleb Cushing. In 
 the brief space of six months the Republican party had suc- 
 ceeded in crystallizing public sentiment throughout the North 
 and establishing itself in that section as the dominant party. 
 The Tribune rejoiced that the future success of the Republicans 
 seemed certain, the Herald proposed that Fremont should be 
 at once renominated for the campaign of i860, and, in the 
 Evening Post, Bryant proclaimed that the tide was becoming 
 irresistible: 
 
 In those States of the Union which have now given such large ma- 
 jorities for Fremont, pubic opinion, which till lately has been shuf- 
 fling and undecided in regard to the slavery question, is now clear, 
 
 18 I. T. Martin, Recollections of Elizabeth Benton Frimont, pp. 79, 80. 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 457 
 
 fixed, and resolute. If we look back to 1848, when we conducted a 
 Presidential election on this very ground of opposition to the spread 
 of slavery, we shall see that we have made immense strides towards 
 the ascendancy which, if there be any grounds to hope for the per- 
 petuity of free institutions, is yet to be ours. We were then com- 
 paratively weak, we are now strong ; we then counted our thousands, 
 we now count our millions; we could then point to our respectable 
 
 minorities in a few States, we now point to State after State The 
 
 cause is not going back — it is going rapidly forward; the Free Soil 
 party of 1848 is the nucleus of the Republican party of 1856; but 
 with what accessions of numbers, of moral power, of influence, not 
 merely in public assemblies, but at the domestic fireside! 
 
 For Fremont himself the outlook was of less roseate char- 
 acter. True, he had borne himself through a heated and abusive 
 campaign with notable dignity and poise, and had emerged 
 from it with no lessening of public esteem. The Republican 
 party would have pursued a more courageous course had it 
 nominated some veteran of the free-soil struggle, some man of 
 greater public experience. But parties have to think of ex- 
 pediency; and the Republicans owed Fremont a good deal, for 
 his gallant record and attractive personality had served them 
 well in their first national campaign. Neither Chase nor 
 McLean would have obtained more votes, and Seward would 
 probably have polled fewer. At the same time, his political 
 career was now plainly ended. He had neither the gifts nor 
 training that a politician needs; he had failed to make any 
 public utterances that impressed the country with his intel- 
 lectual powers or force of character. He must turn back to 
 private life — to the vexatious business affairs he had dropped 
 the previous fall. 
 
 Historians of the period, almost without exception, have 
 declared it fortunate that Fremont was not elected and that 
 the United States did not have to face the possible ordeal of 
 civil war under a head so inexperienced, so rash and impetu- 
 ous, so brilliantly erratic. Assuming that secession would have 
 followed a Republican victory, they are unquestionably right. 
 
458 FREMONT 
 
 At no stage of his career did Fremont exhibit the qualities in- 
 dispensable to the head of a nation racked by civil strife; he 
 held in reserve none of these powers which Lincoln, coming to 
 Washington in 1861 and seeming to many easterners totally 
 incapable of meeting the crisis, possessed. Had there been no 
 secession, Fremont might have made a far better President 
 than Buchanan. He would have shown none of the feeble 
 pliancy of that Executive, and while doing his best to con- 
 ciliate the South, would have capitulated to it in no essential 
 point. Fremont always believed that, had he been elected, the 
 influence of his and Mrs. Fremont's large family connections 
 in the South, and of Benton's name, would have done much to 
 prevent for all time a resort to arms. During the campaign he 
 had given attention to a plan, one which later commended itself 
 to Lincoln, for the gradual abolition of slavery with Federal 
 compensation, and had spent some time with Jeremiah S. 
 Black, the able Pennsylvanian who became Attorney- General 
 and Secretary of State under Buchanan, in discussing its de- 
 tails. 19 But the danger of secession was too real to be trifled 
 with. It was well for the country that Fremont was not placed 
 in the White House. 
 
 19 Fremont, MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
XXVffl 
 New Mariposa Troubles 
 
 WITHIN eighteen months after Fremont's defeat for 
 the presidency, the last heroic chapter in the career 
 of Thomas Hart Benton — never more Roman than 
 in the shadow of death — was written. In his departure the 
 Fremonts lost a greater pillar of strength than they realized. 
 
 In the spring of 1857 Fremont went to California to look 
 after his properties, while Jessie took the children, two of 
 whom had been seriously ill, to Paris for change and rest. 
 Her sister Susan had married Baron Gauldree Boileau, for- 
 merly in the French legation in Washington; and as an accom- 
 plished pianiste, whom Rossini liked to have at his Sunday 
 musicales, she had made herself a place in Paris society. She 
 and the Comte de la Garde saw to it that Jessie was again 
 widely entertained. A quaint little house was found at St. 
 Germain-en-Laye, and the children were enjoying the forest, 
 the donkey-ride, and the peasants when news came by a friend 
 that Benton was seriously ill. He had written Jessie that he was 
 troubled by a slight fistula, when actually he was painfully 
 dying from cancer. She at once caught a steamer home, while 
 at the same time Fremont returned from the West. During 
 the winter of 1857-58 they occupied a furnished house in 
 Washington near the venerable Senator, now thin, pallid, and 
 in constant pain. He was laboring with iron determination upon 
 his final literary task, the compilation of his Digest of Con- 
 gressional Debates; and he resolutely kept up a show of good 
 spirits even when he could gain sleep only by the use of opiates. 
 
 Though even yet they hardly realized how ill he was, the 
 Fremonts would have liked to stay with him. But Mariposa 
 
 459 
 
4 6o FREMONT 
 
 dfftculties called the explorer back to the Coast, and in Feb- 
 ruary Jessie left with him on the Panama route. Benton made 
 a last grim effort of will to maintain a cheerful mien as they 
 said good-by; and on the day they sailed took to his bed, 
 never again to leave it. 
 
 Jessie records that during part of the outward voyage a dull, 
 haunting depression gripped her, and that early in April she 
 broke down completely, unable to eat or sleep and submerged 
 in gloom. The attack departed as quickly as it had come, and 
 at the Mariposas she wholly recovered her spirits. Here she 
 was extremely busy fitting up her new home. She and Fremont 
 bought household furnishings in San Francisco, took them by 
 river steamboat to Sacramento and thence by wagon across the 
 Sierra foothills into Bear Valley, and deposited them in the 
 wooden cottage they were to occupy on a hillside above the 
 little mining village. The bare, comfortless little house would 
 have depressed a less resourceful woman, but Jessie soon made 
 it cheerful. Enlisting a lanky Pennsylvanian named Biddle 
 Boggs, she built a fireplace in the living-room, added a lean-to 
 kitchen at the rear, covered the canvas partitions with bright 
 wallpaper, and threw rugs and skins on the floor. Giving the cot- 
 tage a gleaming coat of whitewash, she christened it the "White 
 House," to Fremont's delight and the mystification of Boggs, 
 who grumbled: "Anybody can see it's white!" But while she 
 was lending the place its final touches, one day Fremont's 
 lawyer and his wife rode out to the estate. Jessie relates 
 what followed: 
 
 He left her sitting on her horse outside the gate, and I went to 
 her to say some polite word. She surprised me by saying that she 
 was glad to see me in colors, and cheerful again. 
 
 "Why not?" I answered. "I am very well now." 
 
 "O, so soon after your father's death — " Her husband sprang 
 over the fence and seizing her bridle tore off with her heedless of 
 bushes and every obstacle. 
 
 Mr. Fremont was by me at once. "Is my father dead?" I asked. 
 
NEW MARIPOSA TROUBLES 461 
 
 For answer he gathered me in his arms, and as I asked "When?" I 
 
 saw his tears 
 
 April the tenth the soul was freed. 
 
 When he was gone, Missouri, which had discharged him 
 from Congress, realized that it had lost by far its greatest 
 leader. Twenty-five thousand people viewed the body as it lay 
 in state in St. Louis; on the day of the funeral the entire popu- 
 lation of the region seemed to gather in the city; the cortege 
 was two miles in length, and as it passed every head was bare. 
 The border states and the Union, their darkest hour just ahead, 
 lost much. But the Fremonts lost more; Benton's calm sa- 
 gacity, his weight of judgment, had been invaluable, and the 
 impetuous explorer and his enthusiastic wife were henceforth 
 without them. Had Benton survived till 1861, Fremont's war- 
 time task in Missouri would have been far easier. 
 
 The Fremonts made themselves at home on the Mariposa 
 estate for what was to prove an exciting summer. Their cot- 
 tage, three miles from the quartz mines and half a mile from 
 the hamlet Bear Valley, had delightful surroundings; it stood 
 in an oak-studded glade of the foothills with pleasant walks 
 and views. The agent who had occupied it before them had left 
 a good collection of English and French books. Their house- 
 hold numbered seven, for in addition to the parents, Lilly, and 
 the two boys, it included an attractive English lad, Charles 
 Douglas Fox, who wanted practical mining experience, and 
 Fremont's niece Nina, a graceful, vivacious girl of nineteen. 
 As frequent guests they had Fremont's business associate John 
 Howard of Brooklyn, who had been an active and generous 
 supporter in the campaign of 1856; his son; and a mining 
 engineer named Dr. Festus Adelbery. All these made up a 
 lively group. 
 
 Indeed, for a brief period every prospect was hopeful — 
 especially to Jessie, who knew nothing of business accounts 
 and of squatter turbulence. Money seemed pouring in, for the 
 ore-mills whose stamps filled the valley with a continuous 
 
462 FREMONT 
 
 clamor furnished a weekly revenue of $2,600 in the spring 
 of 1858, and the output steadily increased; it was not so evi- 
 dent that money was also pouring out. The young people made 
 free use of the stable, including the Colonel's own spirited 
 mount. During the day the family read, wrote, and chatted 
 indoors; but when the sun sank behind the western hills they 
 would climb the slopes or gallop down the valleys. For the 
 hottest weather a camp had been established atop a neighboring 
 mountain, where the high air was always crisp, and whence 
 they could look northeast over the wonderful panorama of the 
 Yosemite Valley, the far-off silver falls, and the heights sur- 
 rounding them. The Irish cook provided good food, and after 
 dinner at night the whole group sang to the accompaniment of 
 violin and guitar. Usually Fremont was at the estate, rising 
 almost before dawn to ride off to the mines; sometimes, in 
 company with his attorney and the elder Howard, he went to 
 San Francisco or Monterey on business. As summer came on 
 Jessie was told nothing of the excitement and danger gathering 
 about them. In consequence, she was not alarmed when one 
 morning she heard a heavy knock on the window of the bed- 
 doom she and Fremont used, and a voice announced: 
 
 "Colonel, the Hornitas League has jumped the Black Drift!" 
 
 "What does that mean?" she asked. 
 
 "Only mining work," Fremont answered. "You had best go 
 to sleep again." 
 
 And in the refreshing coolness of the dawn she did sink back 
 to sleep. 
 
 The Supreme Court, in a historic opinion written by Chief 
 Justice Taney, and of great importance as a precedent on 
 Mexican land grants, had duly confirmed Fremont's title to 
 the Mariposa estates during 1855. 1 This decision followed a 
 brilliant legal duel between Attorney-General Caleb Cushing 
 for the government, and John J. Crittenden and Montgomery 
 Blair for Fremont. Mr. Crittenden, we are told, 
 
 1 Howard, Supreme Court Reports, XVII, p. 564^.; Charles Warren, His- 
 tory of the Supreme Court (two-vol. ed.), II, p. 350. 
 
NEW MARIPOSA TROUBLES 463 
 
 brought into the argument not only legal acumen and research, but 
 all the impassioned eloquence that has distinguished his most power- 
 ful efforts, whether in the Senate or before judicial forums, and was 
 listened to with marked attention by a crowded audience of the 
 beauty and intellect at present congregated in the city. We presume 
 from all we have heard that the eloquent Kentuckian equaled, if 
 he did not surpass, any previous effort, forensic or senatorial." 2 
 
 But this victory had proved only the beginning of fresh 
 difficulties. 
 
 On the basis of his Federal patent, the Colonel had re- 
 quested the state authorities to measure off seventy square 
 miles along both banks of the Merced River in a long, irregu- 
 lar strip. They quite properly refused, holding that in the in- 
 terests of the public the grant must be compact; whereupon 
 Fremont, who under the vague terms of the grant had a wide 
 latitude of choice, caused his estate to be so defined as to in- 
 clude valuable mining claims theretofore in the possession of 
 others. The length of this property was seventeen miles, and 
 its width varied greatly. His action was perfectly legal — doubt- 
 less also perfectly equitable — but in the eyes of a good many 
 miners it seemed unjust, and aroused their angry resentment. 
 It would have been impossible for him to "locate" his estate in 
 any fashion whatever without awakening the jealousy and ill- 
 will of men who had swarmed over that region for gold. The 
 whole tract — on which Fremont ultimately found twenty-nine 
 different gold-bearing veins — had been overrun by prospectors 
 who had cut up its fields, chopped down its timber, and used 
 its grass at will, leaving him the privilege of paying the taxes, 
 which shortly reached sixteen thousand dollars a year. A suit 
 at law was now brought against him by the Merced Mining 
 Company, which operated one of the mines included in his new 
 limits, and armed violence was threatened against him and his 
 
 2 Washington National Intelligencer, February 26, 1855. Fremont's grant 
 had originally been confirmed in December, 1852, by the Commissioners ap- 
 pointed to settle the private land claims in the State of California. The 
 Attorney-General in September, 1853, filed an appeal; the District Court 
 decided against Fremont; but now the Supreme Court sustained him. 
 
464 FREMONT 
 
 property by irresponsible men, some of them under the Com- 
 pany's influence. 
 
 The news that the Hornitas League had seized the Black 
 Drift meant that a body of aggrieved miners and hired thugs, 
 variously estimated at from seventy-five to one hundred and 
 twenty in number, had taken possession of one of Fremont's 
 richest shafts. A recent decision by Chief Justice Terry of the 
 State Supreme Court had interpreted the California law as giv- 
 ing all persons the right to enter and hold any " unoccupied" 
 claim or mine. The Merced Company had bribed the night 
 watchman of the Black Drift mine to leave his shaft open to 
 them, and had at once entered and fortified it. Fortunately 
 for Fremont, one of two neighboring shafts which the League 
 wished to capture was occupied by six men still working there, 
 so that the invaders could lay siege to them only at the en- 
 trance. All three mines opened high on the mountain side 
 upon a small leveled plateau just large enough to enable the 
 ox teams to take wagon-loads of ore from the shafts and turn 
 them easily; it was reached only by a single narrow road cut 
 into the face of the mountain. The rocky slope fell almost per- 
 pendicularly below this road sixteen hundred feet to a ravine 
 opening to the Merced River. This plateau and slope were now 
 the scene of a stubborn contest of armed forces. The six be- 
 sieged miners entrenched themselves behind rocks, machinery, 
 and powder kegs; the Hornitas League lay on its arms about 
 them and devised plans to capture the whole property; while 
 farther down the road Fremont's hastily rallied force of some 
 twenty men tried to cut off the League from reinforcements. 
 A single shot, fired by chance, might be the signal for a bloody 
 affray. 3 
 
 It is unnecessary to relate in detail the steps by which the 
 attack was foiled. How the seventeen-year-old English boy, 
 Douglas Fox, saddled Lilly Fremont's horse Ayah; how, know- 
 ing that all the roads and trails were guarded, he led it up a 
 hidden mountain path and over the summit; how he dashed 
 
 3 John R. Howard, Remembrance of Things Past, Ch. 9. 
 
NEW MARIPOSA TROUBLES 465 
 
 along the banks of the Merced into the town of Coultersville; 
 how messengers were thence hurried off to Stockton, eighty 
 miles distant; and how the Governor at once ordered five 
 hundred militia to the Mariposas, promising to follow himself 
 if necessary. The troops came in good season, for not a shot 
 had been fired by the forces glowering at each other about the 
 mines. Jessie's relief was enormous. She had been threatened 
 with personal injury if the Leaguers captured her, and her 
 servants had been instructed to shoot her rather than let her 
 fall into their hands. One of the Hornitas leaders immediately 
 deserted to Fremont's side, saying: "When I go gunning next 
 time I'll make sure first if we are after wild duck or tame 
 duck"; and thereafter such troubles as Fremont had with the 
 Mariposa property were confined to the courts and counting 
 rooms. 
 
 The Colonel now rapidly pushed forward the physical de- 
 velopment of the estate. His works were of the most ambitious 
 character. A storage dam was built on the Merced and gave 
 them water power in place of the steam power which had been 
 denuding the mountain sides; apparently this was the first 
 power dam constructed in California. New and better ore- 
 crushing apparatus — "the Benton Mills" — was installed on the 
 river. With the aid of hundreds of Chinese workmen, a railroad 
 more than three miles in length — the first railroad in the state 
 — was built, winding along the steep slopes with connecting 
 links of trestlework. Smelting works were erected in the vil- 
 lage. Honest shopkeepers were brought in; a Viennese baker 
 and an Italian restaurant keeper were installed to prepare food 
 for the men who had no wives; and to maintain order, Fremont 
 required that his employees must neither drink nor carry 
 weapons. The village was as peaceful as a New England mill 
 town. 
 
 It need not be said that Fremont was now, through his 
 wealth and renown, one of the first citizens of California. The 
 country was full of colonels; but when men spoke of "the 
 Colonel," as Richard Henry Dana said, they meant Fremont. 
 
466 FREMONT 
 
 When Horace Greeley visited the Pacific slope early in 1859 
 he spent some days with the Fremonts at Mariposa, and wrote 
 a glowing letter to the Tribune upon the prosperity of the 
 settlement and the orderliness and productiveness of the estate. 
 Fremont told him that his aggregate liabilities from taxes, liti- 
 gation, and the costs of development had mounted, when he 
 returned to California in 1857, to at least $500,000. He had 
 set to work resolved to extricate his great property. "In the 
 spirit of that determination," wrote Greeley, "he has since lived 
 and labored, rising with the lark and striving to obtain a com- 
 plete knowledge and mastery of the entire business, taking 
 more and more labor and responsibility upon his own shoulders 
 as he felt able to bear them, until he is now manager, chief 
 engineer, cashier, accountant, and at the head of every other 
 department but law, for which he finds it necessary still to 
 rely upon professional aid." The editor thought that his mines 
 were at length becoming profitable. The steam mill near his 
 home ran eight stamps a day and night to crush the ore, while 
 his water mill on the Merced operated twelve stamps. The 
 two, Greeley declared, "are producing gold at the rate of at 
 least $250,000 per annum at an absolute cost, I am confident, 
 of not more than $150,000." Always sanguine, Fremont was 
 talking of a hundred stamps in constant operation before the 
 close of i860; and with that number, expected to clear at least 
 $10,000 a week, which would soon relieve him of his burden 
 of indebtedness. 4 
 
 The editor was surprised by the luxury in which Jessie 
 seemed to live, and inquiring how she managed to provide 
 herself with beautifully ruffled muslin gowns and French cook- 
 ing, ejaculated: "Well, you have executive faculty — my poor 
 wife has none." He did not know that Jessie, with only three 
 days' warning of Greeley's arrival, had cut up two well-worn 
 cashmere dresses to make a new one, had turned some white 
 jaconet undershirts into new frocks for Lilly and Nina, and 
 
 4 Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco, 
 p. zitff. 
 
NEW MARIPOSA TROUBLES 467 
 
 had cut down a linen dress-shirt of Fremont's for Charley. 
 R. H. Dana, Jr., visiting them at about the same time, was 
 charmed equally by the beauty of the spot and the attractive- 
 ness and comfort with which the house had been fitted up. He 
 had been in California or off its coast, collecting the experiences 
 described in Two Years Be j ore the Mast, in 1835-36, and he 
 and the explorer drew many contrasts between the past and 
 the present. Dana told the Colonel he was "especially glad to 
 have met you coming out of your mine on a mountain, and 
 not in a parlor." 
 
 To escape the hot summer and withering dry air, in the 
 spring of 1859 Jessie returned to San Francisco to find a de- 
 lightful surprise which Fremont had made ready for her — a 
 new home. She was entranced when she saw it: a little pro- 
 montory, jutting into the channel entrance of San Francisco 
 harbor directly opposite Alcatraz Island, and bearing the name 
 "Black Point" from its thick covering of mountain laurel. 
 Standing on this hundred-foot bluff, a sweeping glance em- 
 braced to the west the Golden Gate and the blue Pacific be- 
 tween its portals; far away over miles of water to the east 
 the Contra Costa Mountains; and, beyond Alcatraz, more high 
 hills. It had historic associations, for near by Fremont had 
 rowed across the Bay and spiked the old brass Spanish guns. 
 He was able to buy the twelve acres and house from the banker 
 Mark Brumagin for $42,000. Once ensconced in the cottage 
 here, isolated and yet within the city limits, Jessie found that 
 all desire to return East left her. "At last," she wrote, "after 
 many wanderings, many separations, and many strange ex- 
 periences, we saw a home of congenial beauty and repose — a 
 home which time would make a fortune to our children as 
 holders of this little property; its thirteen acres were more 
 dear to me than the many miles and mines of the Mariposa." 
 Unfortunately, the title to the property was clouded, and dur- 
 ing the Civil War the Government was to order the seizure of 
 the whole peninsula for military purposes. 
 
 Black Point soon became the center of a small but congenial 
 
468 FREMONT 
 
 group of friends. One was Thomas Starr King, the slight, elo- 
 quent Unitarian minister and patriot who a little later did so 
 much to save California to the Union; he arrived from Boston 
 in the spring of i860, and was promptly writing east of din- 
 ners at Black Point with such other guests as Colonel Edward 
 D. Baker, the new senator from Oregon. Another was Bret 
 Harte, whose genius Jessie perceived in his newspaper writings 
 before she knew his name. She insisted that the shy, proud, 
 unhappy young journalist should visit her, and for more than a 
 year he dined with the Fremonts every Sunday, bringing his 
 manuscripts and listening to their praise and criticism. Mrs. 
 Fremont encouraged him to send the Atlantic Monthly the 
 sketch called The Legend of Monte del Diablo, and did him 
 a still larger service when, through General Fitzhugh Beale, 
 now head of the Coast Survey, she obtained him a government 
 appointment. "I shall no longer disquiet myself," he wrote, 
 "about changes in residence or anything else, for I believe that 
 if I were cast upon a desert island, a savage would come to 
 me next morning and hand me a three-cornered note to say 
 that I had been appointed governor at Mrs. Fremont's request, 
 at $2,400 a year." He always spoke of Jessie as his "fairy 
 godmother." 5 
 
 This free outdoor life in California, this management of one 
 of the great American mines, would have suited Fremont's 
 restless, adventurous, sanguine temperament precisely if only 
 the estate had been more profitable. But even as gold-produc- 
 tion increased, Mariposa ran into deeper difficulties. He was 
 learning the truth of the Spanish proverb that "it takes a mine 
 to work a mine." At a later date he computed the value of the 
 whole output from 1850 to 1862 at about $3,000,000. But his 
 
 5 C. H. Wendte, Thomas Starr King, p. qofi. ; Henry C. Merwin, Life of Bret 
 Harte, pp. 34, 35. "Mrs. Fremont," writes Merwin, "was an extremely clever, 
 kind-hearted woman, who assisted Bret Harte greatly by her advice and 
 criticism, still more by her sympathy and encouragement. Bret Harte was 
 always inclined to underrate his own powers, and to be despondent as to his 
 literary future." Harte named Lilly Fremont's pony "Chiquita," after the 
 mare in his poem of that name. Many letters which he wrote the Fremonts 
 were later lost in a fire in New York. 
 
NEW MARIPOSA TROUBLES 469 
 
 ambitious works had cost large sums, and California interest 
 rates were cruelly high — 2 per cent a month or more, com- 
 pounded monthly. Fremont's letters of 1858-60 indicate con- 
 stant embarrassment. One written on June 6, 1858, from Bear 
 Valley, reads : "Last week the sheriff attached all moneys, etc., 
 which might be in my hands and belonging to or due from me 
 to Mr. Hammett. Will you be kind enough to refer to the books 
 so as to ascertain what is the condition of his account and trans- 
 mit accordingly a statement to the sheriff at Mariposas by to- 
 day's mail and oblige yours truly, J. C. Fremont." A series 
 of letters in the spring of i860 exhibit heavy pecuniary pres- 
 sure. Dated at Black Point, they are addressed to the Bear 
 Valley manager, Hopper : 6 
 
 (June 2): As no boat leaves tomorrow I write to acknowledge 
 yours of the 31st, and to say that I continue yet unwell. I hope by 
 next mail to be able to write at length. Let Mr. Williams know that 
 I will write to him next week. In regard to the men whose wages we 
 wished to reduce at the mines, and Mr. Davenport's action in re- 
 gard to them, I think that it will be well as much as possible to let 
 it stand until I get back. I would very much regret any difficulty just 
 now, and intend to rely upon your prudence and good judgment to 
 see that none does take place 
 
 (June 5) : I am still quite unwell, with the usual feeling of mental 
 indolence belonging to the condition, and came in only to get your 
 letter. Dr. Raymond called on me at Black Point this morning with 
 a letter from Mr. Charter, giving a statement of your conversation 
 with him. Manage affairs along so as to keep everything quiet until 
 I get back — meanwhile I will talk over the whole matter with Dr. 
 Raymond. I have seen very little of him since I came here and he 
 knows nothing whatever of my affairs. In regard to the mines, have 
 a friendly conversation with Ketton and Davenport about the pay 
 of the men and let it rest until I come back. I think you will find 
 them disposed to do all that they can for our interest 
 
 (June 13): I have finally succeeded in making arrangements for 
 putting the estate, or rather its operations, upon a cash basis, but 
 the large amount of money which would have been required under 
 
 6 Copies furnished me from various private sources. 
 
470 FREMONT 
 
 the operation of the new attachment law has obliged me to make 
 these arrangements in a manner entirely different from what I had 
 proposed when I left Bear Valley. But the great object, which is the 
 uninterrupted carrying on of the works and the security and con- 
 tinuous improvement of the estate, will be quite as fully accom- 
 plished in this way. Mr. Park will be in Bear Valley on Saturday 
 night or Thursday morning, and you should be there to meet him. 
 He will give you all necessary information 
 
 But despite the hopeful tone of this last letter, his mining 
 operations continued to bring him heavy financial perplexities. 
 
 For the Republican nomination in i860 Fremont was, of 
 course, not seriously considered. An unsuccessful candidate for 
 the Presidency is almost never named again; and Fremont had 
 done nothing to improve his political standing, while other 
 aspirants had come steadily forward. When Gideon Welles 
 made inquiries of friends as to the complete dropping of Fre- 
 mont, he heard various gossipy explanations which — recorded 
 in the Welles papers — are of no value save as they indicate that 
 John Bigelow had become extremely dubious of Fremont's sta- 
 bility, while the Blair family had grown actively critical. Old 
 Francis P. Blair spoke of the explorer with positive dislike. 
 The ground had been laid for the subsequent breach between 
 the two men. Yet some talk of Fremont persisted till the very 
 eve of the convention. The explorer thought it worth while to 
 authorize a California friend to withdraw his name if pre- 
 sented, saying he would not stand against any man acceptable 
 on general grounds, and as zealous as himself for building a 
 Pacific railroad from the Middle West. Edward Bates of 
 Missouri helped spread the news of this position among dele- 
 gates to the convention. 
 
 Following Lincoln's election, Fremont late in i860 received a 
 visit from Senator Baker, who had been campaigning in the 
 East and who brought him a strong intimation that he would 
 be offered either a Cabinet position or one of the principal dip- 
 lomatic posts. We know from other sources that Seward had 
 suggested that he be made Secretary of War, while Lincoln had 
 
NEW MARIPOSA TROUBLES 471 
 
 thought of him for Minister to France. At the moment his 
 eternal "Mariposa business" had developed a new crisis. Need- 
 ing funds for development and for discharging his debts, he 
 had resolved to go to Europe, form a company, and sell enough 
 shares for his purposes. He asked Baker to tell Lincoln that 
 his hands were tied for the moment, while he would prefer, if 
 civil war began, to take command of an army in the field. As 
 state after state seceded, he and Starr King agreed that hostili- 
 ties were inevitable. During the fall of i860 careful data were 
 assembled on the resources of Mariposa, and a series of costly 
 photographs (now in the Bancroft Library) were taken of all 
 the works. With this material, Fremont and his lawyer Fred- 
 erick K. Billings sailed in January, 1861, for Europe. Jessie, 
 who had suffered a bad carriage accident, was left behind, with 
 instructions to join him in New York if he was given a military 
 command; and affairs at Mariposa were placed in rough shape 
 for a protracted absence. Little did either think that they would 
 never again set foot on their famous estate as its owners. 
 
 Staying for a few days in New York in the middle of Febru- 
 ary, Fremont had a brief and cordial interview at the Astor 
 House with Lincoln, who was on his way to Washington. He 
 found the President-elect still outwardly strong in his hope that 
 peace would be preserved, but all his own convictions were 
 that fighting was inevitable. He wrote Jessie: "With the in- 
 flammatory press and inflammatory conversations on every 
 hand, I am convinced that actual war is not far off." Sailing 
 at once for France, he soon found that the threat of civil war 
 made it impossible to raise money for Mariposa on any accept- 
 able terms. He was still in Europe when news of the firing 
 upon Fort Sumter reached him; and, having already written 
 to Washington to offer his services, he was there notified that 
 his abilities and experience had been recognized by appoint- 
 ment as one of the ranking Union generals. He at once sent 
 word to Jessie to join him in the East. Doubtless he was proud 
 and elated that he was to have a new opportunity to serve 
 his country; certainly his wife was so, for she expressed her 
 
472 FREMONT 
 
 feelings with characteristic frankness in a letter to the estate- 
 manager, Hopper: 
 
 Mr. Fremont has written to us to join him at once at New York, 
 where he was to be about the 30th of May. We shall leave in the 
 next steamer, the 21st. I wish it could have been on that of to-day, 
 but we got our orders too late for that. 
 
 Mr. Fremont's last letters were to noon of May 10th, London. 
 Mr. Billings was to remain, but Mr. Fremont was called to his old 
 first love and duty, and I have not been so happy in years for him 
 as now — 
 
 What if the storm clouds blow? 
 What if the green leaves fall? 
 Better the crashing tempest's throe 
 
 Than the army of worries 
 
 That gnawed below. 
 
 An army of cares has been boring into our lives these few years 
 past, and I thank heaven for this noble chance in a great cause, 
 which has come to Mr. Fremont now. He promised me other and 
 fuller letters before his leaving Europe, which was fixed for the 21st 
 May. We leave certainly on the 21st, so that you will only have time 
 to let me know this has reached you. I take your picture of Bear 
 Valley cottage with us, and it will always remind me of the many 
 times you helped to smooth worries away from Mr. Fremont. I am 
 so glad I am going into an atmosphere where dollars and cents are 
 not the first object. The noble and beautiful side of the nation is 
 now apparent, and it will be a comfort to feel its influence. 
 
Civil War in the West 
 
 JULY of 1 86 1 found Fremont commander of the Depart- 
 ment of the West — the great military area comprising 
 Illinois and all the states and territories between the 
 Mississippi and the Rockies — with his headquarters in St. 
 Louis. 
 
 A St. Louis how changed! Once the most hospitable and 
 cordial of towns to all who bore the name Fremont or Benton, 
 now it was a shuttered, sullen, and hostile city. The hot July 
 sun beat down upon a river that stretched empty from shore 
 to shore — the steamboats laid up at their wharves with fires 
 out and crews gone. The streets were half deserted, with knots 
 of unemployed men glowering resentfully at the soldiers who 
 patrolled the corners, with curtains drawn in the shop windows, 
 and with the wheels of the few vehicles echoing loudly against 
 empty warehouses. Of the 160,000 people, a majority seemed 
 definitely alined against the Union. Hardly an American flag 
 was flying; but in its stead the secession banner hung over 
 the buildings in which recruiting for the Confederate armies 
 was being publicly carried on, while in the best residential 
 sections the Stars and Bars were lavishly displayed. Army 
 officers, intimidated and few in number, dared not venture 
 far from the arsenal, the barracks, and the center of the city. 
 At night bands of ruffians, armed or unarmed, marched through 
 the streets hurrahing for Jeff Davis and the rebel cause. This 
 was the disaffected town, the metropolis of a half -disaffected 
 state, in which Fremont arrived from New York on the morn- 
 ing of July 25, 1861. 1 
 
 1 Jessie Beijton Fremont, Souvenirs of My Time, p. i66#. 
 
 473 
 
474 FREMONT 
 
 The previous two months had been full of labor and anxiety. 
 Overtaken in Europe by the news of war, and knowing how 
 destitute of arms the government was, he had instantly 
 dropped his private affairs and begun examining field-guns, 
 rifles, and ammunition in both France and England. It was a 
 characteristically impetuous enterprise, for he had no authority 
 from the government, no certainty of a cent of money, and no 
 knowledge even of how serious the war might be. But it was 
 patriotic and timely. By the end of May, Confederate agents 
 were on the ground, but no Federal emissary; and Fremont 
 stepped into the breach. We find him writing from the Athe- 
 naeum Club in London on May 24th to Francis P. Blair. 2 
 
 I had fully intended to sail for New York in the Asia to-morrow 
 but under all the information that I can obtain I judge that a sup- 
 ply of efficient arms would be valuable to our cause just now and I 
 have decided to remain a short time longer with the object of bring- 
 ing them with me. I have succeeded in producing the control of funds 
 sufficient to purchase three or four batteries of guns fully equipped 
 for the field and perhaps 10,000 rifles. The guns will be of the most 
 approved construction, and will be accompanied with carriages, shot, 
 shell, etc. The difficulty was first, to obtain the means, and now that 
 the means are obtained the difficulty is in having the guns cast, am- 
 munition got ready, etc., within the few weeks that I can bring my- 
 self to remain over here. I shall have an answer from foundries and 
 factories before night and if I get them in time will advise you. I 
 trust that you have already offered my services to the President. If 
 not, pray do so, and in either case explain to him the cause of my 
 delay. I think that this delay is justifiable if it enables me to come 
 prepared with an equipment of all arms and of the most efficient 
 kind, sufficient to put a force of ten thousand men directly in the 
 face of the enemy. Pray don't let these few weeks operate preju- 
 dicially to me. My great desire is to serve the country in the most 
 direct and effective way that possibly I can. From all that I can see 
 I judge that there will be need for our best services. The agents for 
 the Seceders are very active here. The last steamer brought them an 
 accession of credit, and they completed yesterday the purchase of 
 
 2 Letter in my possession. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 475 
 
 two screw steamers (one for £75,000) and are contracting for more. 
 These steamers are to sail from Liverpool and are to endeavor to 
 enter the port of Charleston. They are to be under English colors, 
 are not to carry any contraband of war, and will probably be under- 
 written here. The former owners were yesterday endeavoring to ob- 
 tain underwriters. I will try to let you know the names, captains, 
 underwriters, when to sail, etc., etc. Meanwhile I will let Sanford 
 (Belgium) who is here know of this, and also Mr. Adams, if I see 
 him to-day. Mr. Sanford is an admirable representative, and Mr. 
 Adams in this respect more than justifies his good old name. 
 
 Our minister to France hesitated to support him, but in Eng- 
 land Charles Francis Adams had the courage to do so. In the 
 end, Fremont contracted for $75,000 worth of cannon and 
 shells in England, and for 10,000 rifles in France, to be shipped 
 at his personal charge if necessary; and Adams boldly drew 
 on the government to pay for them. 3 Then Fremont, notified 
 that he had been appointed one of the first four major-generals 
 authorized by Congress, had caught a fast ship, arrived in 
 Boston on June 27th, and at once reported to the President in 
 Washington. 
 
 He found the government eager for his services. He and 
 Postmaster-General Montgomery Blair held several confer- 
 ences with Lincoln upon the command to which he should be 
 assigned; and he tells us that although the military authorities 
 suggested eastern positions, he insisted upon the West. This 
 suited the views of Montgomery Blair. For the command in 
 Missouri, the Blair family would have preferred their favorite, 
 Nathaniel Lyon, but the conservative Unionists of that state, 
 led by Attorney-General Edward Bates, would not hear of 
 him. Fremont made an admirable compromise. Early in July 
 the Western Department was created, with the understanding 
 that it should include not only the loyal prairie region, but the 
 wavering state of Kentucky as soon as Fremont had raised and 
 organized a sufficient force to descend the Mississippi. He 
 
 3 J. B. McMaster, United States During Lincoln's Administration, p. 190; 
 Fremont, MS. Memoirs. 
 
476 FREMONT 
 
 immediately took up the task of creating an army — finding out 
 what troops were available, how he could concentrate and drill 
 them, and how he could get them armed and supplied. 
 
 Not one labor but a myriad; in these hot July days he had 
 suddenly a million things to do. Fremont has been harshly 
 criticized by Nicolay and Hay, chiefly upon the basis of state- 
 ments which Montgomery Blair made after he became the 
 General's enemy, for his delay in reaching St. Louis. But this 
 criticism is unjustified. He stayed in the East just three weeks, 
 and would have left sooner — in fact, would have left on July 
 1 6th or 17th — had he not been told that General Winfield 
 Scott had further instructions for him. He remained principally 
 because his Department was destitute of munitions of all kinds, 
 and he could best procure them from New York and Washing- 
 ton. The troops being enlisted in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and 
 other states were wretchedly supplied with blankets, shoes, 
 tents, uniforms, and firearms. Governor Richard Yates of 
 Illinois, who was in Washington, declared that their condi- 
 tion was a public scandal. After obtaining the personal inter- 
 vention of President Lincoln, Fremont received an order for 
 only 17,000 stands of arms from the government arsenals, the 
 number later being reduced to 5,000. In desperation, he exam- 
 ined various supplies of arms in the hands of private owners, 
 and was on the point of having 25,000 carbines sent to the 
 West; but finding that they were not rifled, left the transaction 
 uncompleted. The main object of the Administration at the 
 moment was to equip the armies in Virginia, and it was difficult 
 to interest the War Department in Missouri. 
 
 In these three weeks, Fremont was also assembling his aides 
 and sketching the outlines of a plan of campaign. As chief of 
 staff he appointed General Alexander S. Asboth, a Hungarian 
 who had served with distinction under Kossuth in the great 
 revolt of 1848-49 and who had come to the United States with 
 his chief in 185 1. Asboth was destined to do good service 
 throughout the Civil War, to be brevetted a major-general, and 
 to die minister to the Argentine. As chief topographical engi- 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 477 
 
 neer Fremont appointed another Hungarian, Colonel John 
 Fiala. From Cincinnati he summoned a lawyer of distinction, 
 R. R. Corwine, to be judge-advocate of the Department. A 
 multitude of other details had to be attended to. As for the plan 
 of campaign, Fremont later told the Committee on the Conduct 
 of the War that the government had given him none whatever. 
 General discussions with Scott and others resulted in an under- 
 standing that the great object in view was the descent of the 
 Mississippi, and that when his army was ready for this he was 
 to let the President know. He himself devised a scheme whose 
 main features were the clearance of all rebels from Missouri, 
 and a movement down the Mississippi upon Memphis; and he 
 tells us that he consulted Lincoln upon it: 4 
 
 The President had gone carefully over with me the subject of my 
 intended campaign, and this with the single desire to find out what 
 was best to do and how to do it. This he did in the unpretentious 
 and kindly manner which invited suggestion, and which with him 
 was characteristic. When I took leave of him, he accompanied me 
 down the stairs, coming out to the steps of the portico at the White 
 House; I asked him then, if there was anything further in the way 
 of instruction that he wished to say to me. "No," he replied, "I have 
 given you carte blanche; you must use your own judgment and do 
 the best you can. I doubt if the States will ever come back." 
 
 It was nine o'clock of the hot morning of July 2 5 when Fre- 
 mont was ferried across to St. Louis, and, without pausing for 
 rest, he called a staff meeting at noon. 5 He immediately began 
 the most strenuous activity of his life. He rose at five in the 
 morning and labored almost without intermission till twelve at 
 night. The problems before him were staggering. The curtain 
 had risen on the drama called "the hundred days in Missouri" 
 — the drama which tested Fremont's strength and weakness 
 as never before, and which fixed in the popular mind a cruelly 
 unjust impression of his character and capacities. 
 
 4 MS. Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
 5 New York Tribune, August 9, 1861. 
 
478 FREMONT 
 
 He had arrived at a critical moment, with disaster looming 
 just ahead and prompt action imperative. Missouri, with a 
 population of slightly more than a million, was attached to the 
 South by blood, tradition, a common history, and similar insti- 
 tutions. When the Confederacy was formed, a militant minority 
 took the view, at first partly concealed, that the state must 
 join her southern sisters. This group included the governor, 
 Claiborne F. Jackson, the lieutenant-governor, both United 
 States Senators, and a majority of the legislature, and it had 
 powerful newspaper support. 6 Another group, for a time larger 
 and stronger, believed that secession might ultimately be neces- 
 sary, but that it should not be attempted until every hope of 
 a peaceable adjustment of the difficulties between the North 
 and the South had been destroyed. This group included ex- 
 Governor Robert M. Stewart, Alexander W. Doniphan, Sterling 
 Price, and some influential editors. The trend of events slowly 
 forced an alliance between many of its members and the un- 
 compromising secessionists, but the tact of the Union leaders 
 saved a large part of this faction for the Federal cause. Beneath 
 the American banner rallied, not merely many of the Lincoln 
 Republicans of Missouri, who had cast only one-ninth of the 
 ballots at the last election, but many of the followers of Doug* 
 las, Breckinridge, and Bell, who were too much attached to 
 the Union to countenance its disruption. 
 
 The struggle thus far in Missouri had been, in its main out- 
 lines, a contest between the astute secessionist governor, Clai- 
 borne Jackson, and the courageous Frank P. Blair, Jr., who 
 was the brains and backbone of the Union element. Blair con- 
 verted the Republican Wide-Awakes into Union Clubs. Deci- 
 sive measures by him and Captain (later General) Nathaniel 
 Lyon, a Connecticut veteran of the Mexican War, saved the 
 St. Louis arsenal from the rebels when they were about to 
 seize it. An equally decisive movement enabled Lyon to strike 
 the rebel militia — for Governor Jackson, issuing a proclamation 
 of war, had called fifty thousand militia into service for the 
 
 6 Thomas Snead, The Fight for Missouri in 1851, p. 53^. 
 
4 8o FREMONT 
 
 Confederacy — at Booneville, a town on the Missouri River, and 
 after a sharp engagement to put them to flight. The state cap- 
 ital at Jefferson City was meanwhile wrested from the Con- 
 federates. All this had occurred by June 17th, before Fremont 
 had even landed in Boston. 
 
 The Unionists in the state had the advantage of superior 
 numbers, for a heavy majority of the population were loyal; 
 but after the initial steps by Blair and Lyon, the Confederates 
 had the advantage of superior boldness, energy, and quickness. 
 A genuine danger existed that the quickly rallying rebels would 
 sweep all lower Missouri, take possession of Cairo and 
 southernmost Illinois, where secessionist sentiment was strong, 
 carry Kentucky into the Confederacy, and make even southern 
 Indiana, where later the Knights of the Golden Circle flour- 
 ished, doubtful territory. If they succeeded in this, the war 
 might be virtually lost for the North. Rebel camps were 
 formed throughout a great part of Missouri, commissions were 
 issued in a skeleton rebel army, and adventurous young men 
 of pro-slavery sympathies flocked to the Confederate standard, 
 delighted at the prospect of army life. Governor Jackson and 
 General Sterling Price united their forces, collected from these 
 camps, in a formidable little army of about thirty thousand in 
 the southwestern corner of the state. At Carthage they soon 
 came into collision with the Federal forces under Franz Sigel, 
 and in a comparatively bloodless battle, defeated him and drove 
 him back upon Springfield. In southeastern Missouri the Con- 
 federates under Pillow were gathering another force of about 
 twenty thousand, while Hardee with five thousand was said to be 
 marching on Ironton. 
 
 When Fremont took command, sharp fighting was about to 
 commence. Jackson and Price, flushed with their little victory, 
 elated by the news of Bull Run, and pleased by reinforcements 
 from Arkansas and a constant accession of volunteers, were 
 moving northward. They would soon have full control of a rich 
 lead-bearing region. To face them and the other armies, Fre- 
 mont (according to Colonel Chester Harding's later evidence 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 481 
 
 before the Committee on the Conduct of the War) had only 
 15,943 men, scattered at nine points in Missouri, ill-equipped, 
 ill-trained, and ill-organized. As he had Jessie write to Mont- 
 gomery Blair, he found the enemy already occupying in force 
 positions which he had intended holding against them; found 
 himself without money, arms, or moral support; found that 
 even St. Louis needed more men to keep its unruly elements 
 quiet. Jessie herself soon sent Francis P. Blair's daughter a 
 spirited picture of the situation: 7 
 
 You say all we need is "Generals." That is simply and literally 
 the whole provision made for the Dept. An arsenal without arms or 
 ammunition — troops on paper, and a thoroughly prepared and united 
 enemy. Thick and unremitting as mosquitoes. The telegraph in the 
 enemy's hands and the worse for us as not being avowed enemies. 
 In Ohio and all the way we met Western troops on their way to the 
 Potomac — the western waters left to defend themselves as best they 
 
 might The President is a Western man and not grown in red 
 
 tape. If he knew the true defenseless condition of the West it would 
 not remain so. I have begged Mr. Fremont to let me go on and tell 
 him how things are here. But he says I'm tired with the sea voyage 
 — that I shan't expose my health any more and that he can't do with- 
 out me. 
 
 It's making bricks without straw out here and mere human power 
 can't draw order out of chaos by force of will only. 
 
 The Union flag was upheld at Springfield in southwestern 
 Missouri by Lyon, who had reached there July 13th with a 
 combined force of Missouri and Kansas troops numbering be- 
 tween 7,000 and 8,000 men. But in spite of this strength, 
 Lyon's position was highly perilous. He had no adequate line 
 of communications at his rear. From St. Louis, three railways 
 then radiated — one toward the west, terminating at Sedalia, 
 
 7 W. E. Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics, II, p. 59. 
 Fremont in his own article on the situation later wrote that of 23,000 men 
 of all arms, only some 15,000 were available, the remainder being three months' 
 men. Most of his disposable force was being used by General John Pope in 
 North Missouri to check rebellion there. R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., 
 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, I, p. 278^. 
 
482 FREMONT 
 
 about three-fourths of the way across the state; one toward the 
 southwest, ending at Rolla, scarcely halfway across the state; 
 and the third toward the south, ending at Ironton, also hardly 
 halfway across. Between Lyon's army and the nearest rail- 
 head at Rolla, stretched 120 miles of broken country, with bad 
 roads which any hard rain would make almost impassable. 
 Provisions and supplies had failed to arrive as he had expected. 
 Moreover, about half of his army consisted of the ninety-day 
 men raised under President Lincoln's first proclamation, and 
 their terms expired the middle of July. Many of these three- 
 months volunteers would immediately reenlist for a longer 
 term, and many would remain for the battle which seemed to 
 be impending; but there was nevertheless much confusion, and 
 the army was materially shrinking. 8 
 
 If imminent danger threatened Lyon at Springfield, almost 
 equally grave danger threatened the Federal forces at Cairo, 
 the vital point at the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi 
 which must be used as a base for any advance into Kentucky. 
 Major-General Leonidas Polk, commanding the Confederates 
 at Memphis, made preparations early in July to lead his Ten- 
 nessee contingent into Missouri for a campaign with a double 
 objective. One column, under McCulloch, was to proceed 
 against Lyon at Springfield; while the other was to march up 
 the Mississippi under Generals Pillow and Hardee to cut off 
 Lyon's retreat toward the East, was to take St. Louis if pos- 
 sible, and on its return was to enter Illinois and capture Cairo. 
 This was too ambitious a program to be carried out. Never- 
 theless, about the time that Fremont arrived in St. Louis, Polk 
 moved 6,000 troops up to New Madrid, where he reported that 
 his force, with the German unionists of Missouri in front of 
 them, were "full of enthusiasm and eager for the 'Dutch 
 hunt.' " 9 It was rumored in Missouri and Illinois that a further 
 advance by Polk's troops was imminent. The frightened Union 
 
 8 See Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IV, Ch. 11, p. 23. 
 
 9 Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 61 7#.; Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, 
 IV, p. 405. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 483 
 
 commander at Cairo, General Prentiss, sent a series of urgent 
 messages to Fremont, imploring him to send help to save this 
 great strategic key to the Mississippi Valley. He wrote 
 July 23rd: "Have but eight regiments here. Six of them are 
 three-months men. Their time expires this week — are reorgan- 
 izing now. I have neither tents nor wagons, and must hold 
 Cairo and Bird's Point." 
 
 On the heels of this he informed Fremont that the rebels 
 were about to capture Bird's Point, just across the Mississippi 
 from Cairo, and that he had only two six-pounders ready to 
 move. On July 29, 1861, he added another panicky appeal 
 for aid: 
 
 On yesterday, three thousand rebels west of Bird's Point forty 
 miles; three hundred at Madrid and three regiments from Union 
 City ordered there; also troops from Randolph and Corinth. The 
 number of organized rebels within fifty miles of me will exceed 
 twelve thousand — that is, including Randolph troops ordered and 
 not including several companies opposite in Kentucky. 
 
 On August 1 st came another telegram imploring immediate 
 help. Prentiss stated that the previous day General Pillow had 
 been at New Madrid with 11,000 well-armed and well-drilled 
 troops, two regiments of splendidly equipped cavalry, and 100 
 pieces of artillery; that 9,000 more men were moving to re- 
 inforce him; and that he had promised to place 20,000 troops 
 in that vital corner of Missouri at once. On September 4th, 
 Polk's troops did occupy the strategic post of Columbus, Ken- 
 tucky. 
 
 Fremont thus had to answer the demands of two widely 
 separated commanders, each menaced by strong Confederate 
 armies; he had to take steps to pacify Missouri, where a 
 ghastly guerrilla struggle was beginning to break out; he had 
 to organize the raw volunteers who were trickling into St. 
 Louis, and to make frantic efforts to find them food, uniforms, 
 and arms; and he had to keep the city, with its large popula- 
 
484 FREMONT 
 
 tion of rebel sympathizers, under strict control. All this had 
 to be done by a man who had never commanded forces of 
 more than a few hundred, who had for years been engrossed in 
 civilian pursuits, and who was new to the city, the post, and 
 the problems about him. It had to be done with the most in- 
 adequate resources, under a War Department indifferent to 
 the West. The situation would have taxed the capacity of abler 
 men than Fremont. 
 
 His first decision was on the whole correct: to send word 
 to Lyon at Springfield that he had best fall back on his base 
 at Rolla, and to hurry reinforcements forward to Cairo. There 
 was no particular reason for holding Springfield. It was not 
 an important strategic point. There was, however, every 
 reason for safeguarding Cairo, which was vital for the com- 
 mand of the Ohio and Mississippi. If Pillow really had the 
 army credited to him, and if he could cross the Mississippi 
 above Cairo and cut off Prentiss's force, the result might be 
 a horrible disaster. Within a week after his arrival, Fremont, 
 though burdened with other business, had chartered a fleet of 
 eight steamboats, loaded them with soldiers and with artillery 
 and stores which he had ordered from the East, and set off 
 down the river. 10 He had labored like a slave to make this 
 expedition of nearly 4,000 men ready. The night before it set 
 out he retired at midnight, and was at his desk again at 4:30 
 a.m., where he remained till just before the departure of the 
 flotilla at three o'clock in the afternoon. 11 
 
 The trip, however, gave him not only the first rest he had 
 enjoyed since he took up his command, but also the gratifica- 
 tion of a wildly enthusiastic reception by the nervous little 
 army under Prentiss. On five o'clock of an effulgent day, the 
 sun turning the Mississippi into a broad path of gold, his 
 flagship the City of Alton approached Cairo, and fired its 
 eight-pounders as a signal. At once the guns on shore replied. 
 For half an hour there was a perfect roar of artillery, the 
 
 10 St. Louis Republican, quoted in New York Tribune, August 9, 1861. 
 
 11 New York Herald, August 12, 1861, 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 485 
 
 echoes rolling away into the woods of Missouri and Kentucky. 
 The banks of the two rivers were peppered with excited groups 
 of soldiers. As the City of Alton, bedecked with evergreens and 
 flags, churned in to the Cairo water-front, the wharves be- 
 came black with uniformed men yelling "Fremont! Fremont!"; 
 and when Prentiss led the General down the gang-plank and up 
 to his headquarters at the St. Charles Hotel, the uproar was 
 deafening. He had come in the nick of time. Prentiss's army 
 was small, and much of it fast disintegrating; while in that 
 swampy position, fever and dysentery were taking a heavy 
 toll of it. Fremont had many of the sick transferred from the 
 low ground to the breezy decks of his steamboats, and from 
 that date made use of floating hospitals wherever he could. 
 
 Meanwhile, what of General Lyon? That commander was 
 now in a mood which almost approached despair. He saw only 
 retreat or ruin ahead of him. He must go back, he wrote 
 Colonel Chester Harding at St. Louis, unless he received large 
 reinforcements and supplies. "Our troops are badly clothed, 
 poorly fed, and imperfectly supplied with tents. None of them 
 have as yet been paid." 12 A little later he charged the Admin- 
 istration and General Scott with an inexcusable neglect of the 
 West, and declared that they were allowing that section to 
 become "the victim of imbecility or malice." Fremont had 
 written to Montgomery Blair for "money and arms without 
 delay and by the quickest conveyance," and Blair had replied 
 from Washington on July 26th that "I find it impossible now 
 to get any attention to Missouri or western matters from the 
 authorities here. You will have to do the best you can and take 
 all needful responsibility to defend and protect the people 
 over whom you are specially set." 13 When Fremont opened 
 his headquarters, three messengers were awaiting him from 
 Lyon, all insisting that danger was imminent and that help 
 must be sent him at once. 
 
 As it proved, there was a good fortnight in which help might 
 
 12 Despatch of July 15, 1861, before Fremont's arrival. 
 
 13 Congressional Globe, March 7, 1862; 37th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 1126. 
 
486 FREMONT 
 
 have been despatched, and even a moderate force might have 
 saved Lyon from defeat. But circumstances made it impossible 
 for Fremont to furnish the required aid. It has been asserted 
 that while he was taking 3,800 men to Cairo, he could also have 
 sent several thousand by rail and wagon-road to Springfield, 
 and so have saved the day. But, as a matter of fact, the troops 
 were simply not available. Colonel Chester Harding later tes- 
 tified that while large numbers of volunteers were arriving in 
 St. Louis in the first days of August, nearly all were unarmed, 
 they were totally untrained and did not even know how to use 
 a musket, and they were wholly without transport animals or 
 wagons; and that regiment after regiment lay for days in the 
 city without equipment, for the arsenals were empty. Having 
 so few men, Fremont thought it unwise to divide his reinforce- 
 ments. Above all, it can be urged in his defense that he ex- 
 pected Lyon to retreat, and issued orders with that definite 
 end in view. As a matter of fact, he did on August 4th send 
 two regiments marching toward Lyon's assistance, one from 
 Booneville and the other from Leavenworth, Kansas — the only 
 regiments available. He expected Lyon to retire to meet them. 
 One of the messengers who reached him from Springfield, en- 
 treating him for "soldiers, soldiers, soldiers," told him that 
 Lyon would fight at that town whether he got more troops or 
 not; to which Fremont replied, "If he fights, it will be upon 
 his own responsibility." 14 
 
 By the beginning of August, the Confederate army under 
 McCulloch numbered almost 13,000 men. It began its march 
 toward Springfield, about fifty miles distant, on July 31st, and 
 its approach filled Lyon with apprehension. He exaggerated its 
 numbers, believing that almost 30,000 men opposed him, and 
 even when he learned its true size, he realized that his plight 
 was desperate. His own forces had by now shrunk to about 
 5,000 effective troops. If he remained stationary, he would be 
 surrounded and captured; if he retreated from Springfield, he 
 
 14 Snead, Fight for Missouri, p. 253; Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, 
 P. 57#. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 487 
 
 would leave the southwestern section of Missouri, with its 
 farm resources, lead-mines, and thousands of volunteers, to 
 the enemy. He would have to traverse a rough country, and 
 cross many difficult streams and ravines. To do this with some 
 5,400 disheartened men, his passage encumbered by four hun- 
 dred army wagons, along roads blocked by crowds of refugees, 
 would at best be a slow and painful operation. To do it with 
 a powerful army hanging on his heels and a force of cavalry 
 harrying his flanks might be dangerous. 
 
 Yet Lyon's duty was clear — it was to go back. A council of 
 his officers three days before the battle showed that most of 
 them believed a retreat proper and even imperative. The second 
 in command was General John T. Schofield, who always de- 
 clared that the fruitless sacrifice at Wilson's Creek was un- 
 necessary and wholly unjustifiable. As he wrote long after- 
 ward, "our retreat to Rolla was open and perfectly safe, even 
 if begun as late as the night of the ninth. A few days or a 
 few weeks at most would have made us amply strong to de- 
 feat the enemy and drive him out of Missouri, without serious 
 loss to ourselves." Schofield urged this opinion upon Lyon with 
 vehemence. As for Fremont's orders, on August 6th he sent 
 a letter to Lyon which reached the latter on the ninth; and 
 although this letter has unfortunately been lost, we have two 
 statements, corroborating one another, as to its contents. Both 
 Schofield and Fremont tell us that it instructed Lyon that if 
 he were not powerful enough to maintain his position at Spring- 
 field, he should fall back toward Rolla until he was met by re- 
 inforcements. 15 But Lyon was headstrong, he exaggerated the 
 disaster to the loyal citizens of the region if he abandoned 
 them to Confederate wrath, and he moved out to attack 
 McCulloch's force of more than twice his numbers. 
 
 It was desperate, it was foolhardy, but it was sublime, and 
 the news of that hopeless attack and its tragic result sent a 
 thrill throughout the North. In the faint summer dawn of 
 August 10th, Franz Sigel fell suddenly with 1,200 men upon the 
 
 15 MS. Memoirs; John T. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army, p. 40. 
 
488 FREMONT 
 
 enemy's right flank, while simultaneously Lyon with 3,700 
 troops went into action against their left center. Sigel after 
 some initial success was repulsed, but Lyon drove the enemy 
 out of their camp, and then as the morning advanced threw 
 back attack after attack by the Confederates, desperately try- 
 ing to regain their positions. Within its limits, it was one of the 
 fiercest encounters of the Civil War. The two main lines of 
 battle, Federal and Confederate, were less than a thousand 
 yards in length. Yet along this line almost every available com- 
 pany was brought into action. The Confederates would appear 
 out of the billowing smoke in ranks three or four deep, one 
 file lying down to fire, another kneeling, and one or two 
 standing, and they sometimes pushed to within thirty or forty 
 yards of the Union rifles and cannon before they were repulsed. 
 Both Price and Lyon exhibited the greatest personal gallantry, 
 Lyon receiving three wounds without going to the rear. At 
 last a final heavy assault was made by the Confederates, and 
 Lyon, leaping upon a horse and waving his hat in air, called 
 to some fragments of reserves to close ranks and plunge into 
 the melee. A part of the Second Kansas surged forward beside 
 him, and as they met the Confederate line a ball pierced Lyon's 
 breast. He fell from his horse and died almost instantly. A few 
 minutes later, at half-past eleven in the morning, the chief 
 surviving officers held a hasty council and gave the order to 
 retreat. 16 
 
 As graphic accounts of this battle of Wilson's Creek ap- 
 peared in the northern press, and as Lyon's body with much 
 pomp and public sorrow was taken from city to city to be 
 buried at his New England home, the first loud criticism of 
 Fremont arose. It was easy to say that he should have rein- 
 forced Lyon, and many said it. It was not so easy to say that 
 Lyon should have retreated; nobody outside Missouri knew 
 that Fremont had ordered him to do so unless he were certain 
 of his safety, for Fremont never published his letter. Nobody 
 knew how Cairo had been imploring Fremont for men, how in- 
 
 16 Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 62#. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 489 
 
 sistent President Lincoln had been that Cairo be safeguarded 
 at all costs, and how limited were his forces in semi-hostile 
 St. Louis. The consequence was that Fremont was attacked 
 then and later for a catastrophe which it had been almost be- 
 yond his power to prevent. Later the Committee on the Con- 
 duct of the War reported that this first demand from Lyon 
 had been pressed upon him so hastily, before he could measure 
 his resources, "that even if he failed to do all that one under 
 the circumstances might have done, still your committee can 
 discover no cause of censure against him." 
 
 Once the criticism of Fremont was fairly loosed, it found 
 much upon which to feed. No man on earth could have taken 
 charge of the chaotic Department of the West, no general 
 could have tried to bring well-prepared armies out of that con- 
 fusion of unpreparedness, without committing blunders and 
 making enemies. Fremont's blunders were peculiarly unhappy, 
 and his enemies were soon a host. 
 
 His industry was unceasing, and within a few weeks he had 
 to his credit an important list of achievements, to which his 
 defenders were later able to point with warm praise. He policed 
 the city, stopped the Confederate recruiting which had been 
 openly conducted at the Berthold Mansion, and made life and 
 property secure. He ordered General John Pope, another Mexi- 
 can War veteran, to northern Missouri with instructions to 
 organize local committees of safety and halt the guerrilla war- 
 fare being waged there by Confederate sympathizers. Since 
 approximately ten thousand of the men under his command 
 were three-months volunteers, and it was urgently necessary to 
 keep them under arms while the raw recruits were being drilled, 
 he personally guaranteed their pay if they would stay a fourth 
 month. The morale of the officers showed immediate improve- 
 ment following his arrival; tippling ceased, and the booksellers 
 reported an unusual demand for Hardee's Tactics and Scott's 
 Tactics. 17 He ordered a reorganization of the Reserve Corps in 
 St. Louis, to be enlisted for the war, and to comprise infantry, 
 
 17 New York Herald, August 12, 1861. 
 
4Q0 FREMONT 
 
 cavalry, and artillery units. In the first few days after assum- 
 ing command he took possession of the Iron Mountain and the 
 Pacific railroads, stationed small forces to protect them, gar- 
 risoned Ironton with a force under Colonel B. Gratz Brown, 
 and took equal precautions for the safety of Cape Girardeau 
 — these points being important for the defense of St. Louis. 
 
 Arms and money were still desperately needed; many of the 
 soldiers had long been unpaid, and some volunteers as they 
 arrived had to be set drilling with sticks, while even the trained 
 men were armed with almost anything — some with smooth- 
 bores, some with rifled muskets, and some with nothing but 
 sabers. As July closed, he appealed to the War Department 
 agent in New York. The Adams Express Company, he wired, 
 would bring by passenger train any arms directed to him; 
 "send everything you have"; the arsenal was empty and "we 
 must have arms — any arms, no matter what." At the same 
 time he wrote directly to Lincoln, stating that he had found 
 "nearly every county in an insurrectionary condition"; the 
 enemy advancing in force from different points on the southern 
 frontier; and besides the troops menacing Prentiss, 5,000 Ten- 
 nesseans and Arkansas marching upon Ironton : 18 
 
 I am sorely pressed for want of arms. I have arranged with 
 Adams Express Company to bring me everything with speed, and 
 will buy arms to-day in New York. Our troops have not been paid, 
 and some regiments are in a state of mutiny, and the men whose 
 term of service is expired generally refuse to enlist. I lost a fine regi- 
 ment last night from inability to pay them a portion of the money 
 due. This regiment had been intended to move on a critical post last 
 night. The treasurer of the United States had here $300,000 entirely 
 unappropriated. I applied to him yesterday for $100,000 for my 
 paymaster-general, Andrews, but was refused. We have not an hour 
 for delay. There are three courses open to us. One, to let the enemy 
 possess himself of some of the strongest points in the state and 
 threaten St. Louis, which is insurrectionary. Second, to force a loan 
 
 18 Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 416. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 491 
 
 from secession banks here. Third, to use the money belonging to the 
 government, which is in the treasury here. Of course I will neither 
 lose the state nor permit the enemy a foot of advantage. I have in- 
 fused energy and activity into the department, and there is a thor- 
 ough good spirit in officers and men. This morning I will order the 
 treasurer to deliver the money in his possession to Gen. Andrews, 
 and will send a force to the treasury to take the money, and will 
 direct such payments as the exigency requires. I will hazard every- 
 thing for the defense of the department you have confided to me, 
 and I trust to you for support. 
 
 Believing there was a shortage of both horses and arms in the 
 United States, Fremont proposed to the Washington authorities 
 that his former attorney F. P. Billings be allowed to buy the 
 former in Canada, and that agents be hurried to France for the 
 latter. The deficiency of arms was a terrible reality. But there 
 were plenty of horses as near as Quincy, Illinois, at prices $30 
 a head lower than Fremont proposed to pay in Canada. The 
 War Department forbade the Canadian purchases in a tele- 
 gram which, because it was sent to a subordinate, aroused the 
 General's anger. 
 
 Fremont's plan was to take the field with his army as soon 
 as possible; and he reasoned that in order to hold St. Louis 
 as his base he would either have to garrison it with a consid- 
 erable force, or fortify it. As events turned out, St. Louis 
 was soon perfectly safe. At the moment, however, his reason- 
 ing did not appear fallacious. He began digging a crescent- 
 shaped line of intrenchments about the city, employing not the 
 new recruits, who needed drilling and were in large part unfit 
 for such heavy work in the August heat, but the laboring popu- 
 lation of St. Louis. The city was full of turbulent men, their 
 families in want, who presented a constant danger of riots; 
 and government wages were an important factor in pacifying 
 the community. In the same way, he planned to fortify Cape 
 Girardeau, Ironton, Rolla, and Jefferson City, and thus enable 
 small garrisons to hold the state tranquil. 19 Enlisting a confi- 
 
 19 MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
492 FREMONT 
 
 dential agent or spy named Captain Charles D'Arnaud, the 
 General sent him within the Confederate lines to prepare a 
 correct map of the highways, bridges, and forts in Kentucky 
 and western Tennessee, and to ascertain the probable move- 
 ments of the enemy. D'Arnaud shortly returned with much of 
 the desired information, and with useful maps showing the posi- 
 tion of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, then being constructed. 
 
 To expedite the transportation of troops, Fremont promptly 
 took two steps of great importance. The railroads entering St. 
 Louis had different terminals, some of them far from the 
 river. The General had a union station built and fortified on 
 the river bank, so that, upon a day's notice, 20,000 troops 
 could be moved through the city from a point on one railway 
 to a point on another. Troops arriving from Illinois could be 
 ferried directly to the station with all their supplies, without 
 need of wagons to haul them through the streets. It was a 
 common-sense step. At the same time, Fremont began to or- 
 ganize a river service. He asked Governor O. P. Morton of 
 Indiana, though ineffectually, for some regiments of men ex- 
 perienced in steamboating; and upon his own authority sent 
 for a veteran river captain in St. Louis, Thomas Maxwell, and 
 authorized him to organize a "marine corps" of pilots, en- 
 gineers, mates, firemen, and sailors, three companies in all. 20 
 On the very day he crossed the Mississippi to take command, 
 Fremont directed his chief of staff to find out what river boats 
 were available for refitting as gunboats. Asboth and Fiala, as it 
 happened, were familiar with the armed craft used by the 
 Austrians upon the lower Danube. On August 24th Fremont 
 ordered the construction of thirty-eight mortar-boats, and later 
 of eight steam-tugs to move them, and the adaptation of two 
 strongly built vessels as gunboats. The sides of all these craft 
 were lined with iron. Work was pushed on them by torch-light all 
 night long. Captain James B. Eads was frequently at headquar- 
 ters, and the drawing of the plans was placed under his control. 
 
 20 Sen. Exec. Doc. 412, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., p. iQ5if. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 493 
 
 Unfortunately, while Fremont was carrying through these 
 constructive labors, he was making a series of errors, small in 
 detail but large in the aggregate, which were destined to cost 
 him dear. Reports reached the East that he was vain, ca- 
 pricious, and arrogant. It was complained that he had taken 
 for headquarters an elegant private mansion at a rental of 
 $6,000 a year; that the Hungarian and Garibaldian officers 
 whom he had brought out as his personal staff wore gaudy 
 uniforms and used fantastic titles; that he clattered through 
 the streets with an ostentatious bodyguard; that he was so 
 hedged about with sentinels that it was impossible to see him 
 on business; that he issued commissions and gave out contracts 
 in a shockingly irregular way; and that he and his assistants 
 were preposterously extravagant. He was accused of surround- 
 ing himself with a knot of flatterers, and of ignoring able but 
 plain-spoken men. 21 
 
 In these charges there was a limited element of truth. Fre- 
 mont's use of the splendid residence of Colonel J. B. Brant 
 on Chouteau Avenue was entirely proper, for it enabled him to 
 house under one roof the whole administrative activities of his 
 Department. In a large second-floor room were desks for him- 
 self, his secretaries John R. Howard and William Dorsheimer, 
 and Asboth and other staff officers. Large tables were placed 
 in the room and covered with maps, diagrams, calculations of 
 distances, and similar material prepared with care by Asboth. 
 Downstairs were subordinate officers. The basement held a 
 veritable arsenal, from which arms and ammunition were dealt 
 out for emergency service. But Fremont guarded the ap- 
 proaches by so many sentries that men complained it was like 
 capturing the Gorgon's head to fight their way in. General 
 G. B. Farrar, who brought an important message from Spring- 
 field, declared that it took him three days to gain an audience 
 with Fremont; that there were guards at the street corners, 
 guards at the gate, guards at the outer door, guards at the 
 
 21 Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IV, p. 412. 
 
494 FREMONT 
 
 office, and a whole regiment of troops in the adjacent bar- 
 racks. 22 
 
 The personnel and titles of Fremont's staff were certain to 
 grate upon rough and practical westerners. He had brought 
 with him not merely the Hungarians named, and Major Charles 
 Zagonyi, who organized a spirited cavalry battalion, but such 
 Italians as Captain Antonio Cattanco, Captain Ajace Saccippi, 
 and Lieutenant Dominica Occidone. Another officer was said 
 to be a natural son of Lord Byron. Fremont actually seemed 
 to prefer foreigners to Americans. On August 5th he wrote 
 Francis Lieber: "Are there any experienced artillerists, officers 
 or men, one or both, Germans, Prussian, or French, in New 
 York, who can be gotten immediately and sent to me here 
 without any loss of time? I am distressed for want of men to 
 man my guns and the enemy is at our door." He had twenty- 
 eight staff members, altogether too many. Some bore sonorous 
 and absurd foreign names — "adletus to the chief of staff," 
 "commander of the bodyguard," "musical director," and "mili- 
 tary registrator and expeditor." Among the fifteen aides-de- 
 camp were several politicians, who received no pay but served 
 in order to exert their influence upon affairs. They included 
 Owen Lovejoy, a portly, kindly, rhetorically eloquent gentle- 
 man, who sat in Congress for the Princeton district of Illinois, 
 and who, embittered by the death of his brother Elijah many 
 years before at the hands of an an ti- Abolitionist mob, was 
 warmly opposed to slavery; John A. Gurley, well known as 
 an Abolitionist leader and a Representative from Ohio; and 
 Representative John P. C. Shanks of Indiana, also of radical 
 anti-slavery views. This trio was close to Fremont, as were 
 young Howard and Dorsheimer, his immediate secretaries. 
 Dorsheimer, a lawyer with a Harvard education, had ability, 
 and later rose to be lieutenant-governor of New York, but his 
 aristocratic elegance (he had a valet) amused many observers. 
 
 22 Gustav Koerner, Memoirs, II, p. 170^. The fact that Brant was a relative 
 of Mrs. Fremont made the $5, 000 rental seem suspicious to some; actually it 
 was moderate. 
 
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THE F. P. BLAIR FAMILY IN POLITICS 
 
 F. P. BLAIR, JR. F. P. BLAIR, SR. MONTGOMERY BLAIR 
 
 (From W. E. Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics, 
 by courtesy of The Macmillan Company) 
 
BUST OF FREMONT FROM THE ORIGINAL BY AUSTIN JAMES 
 (Courtesy of Catherine Coffin Phillips) 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 495 
 
 Gustav Koerner, a brilliant young German-American, served 
 on the staff as the representative of Governor Yates of Illinois. 2 ' 
 
 Unfortunate in some members of his personal staff, Fremont 
 was unfortunate also in several officers of the regular army 
 whom he found already stationed in St. Louis. The most im- 
 portant, bustling, and unpopular was Major Justus McKinstry, 
 the quartermaster-general, who had become provost-marshal 
 of St. Louis when the city was placed under martial law. He 
 owed his command there to Blair himself. Before Fremont 
 arrived the quartermaster-general in Washington had given 
 McKinstry broad powers in making purchases, instructing him 
 that while economy was important, promptness and efficiency 
 were more so. A tall, dashing fellow, with dark complexion, 
 resolute features, and "an eye like Mars to threaten and com- 
 mand," he looked, especially when galloping about the streets, 
 the beau ideal of a soldier. But he had always been disliked 
 in the army, and as censor of the activities of the St. Louisians 
 he was hated by the people. His refusal to let any one enter or 
 leave the city without passes, his rule that nobody should be 
 on the streets after 9 p.m., and his restrictions on the press, 
 aroused bitter complaint. He turned against Blair; and one 
 of Fremont's worst blunders was to permit him to suppress the 
 St. Louis Republican, a Unionist newspaper published by 
 Blair's friends and close to Blair's heart. Blair came to consider 
 this appointee of his own the most tyrannical and corrupt of the 
 General's subordinates. 
 
 Fremont cannot be exonerated from blame for the chaos, 
 friction, and extravagance which arose; a commander with 
 more practical vigor would have cut through many of the 
 difficulties directly. He would have mastered affairs, instead of 
 
 23 Ida M. Tarbell, Abraham Lincoln, II, Ch. 24. As page in the Fremont 
 headquarters there served a lad named Francis Grierson, who had been born 
 in England and reared in Illinois, and who was destined to become a noted 
 mystic and essayist. His impressions, recorded in a chapter of The Valley of 
 Shadows: Recollections of the Lincoln Country, have slender historical value 
 but great literary charm. He was impressed, as a boy would be, by the pomp 
 and parade surrounding the headquarters and the strangeness of the foreign 
 officers. 
 
496 FREMONT 
 
 letting them master him. The General lacked high executive 
 ability; still more, he lacked judgment of men. To be sure, 
 much of the irregularity in letting contracts, the general con- 
 fusion, and the tactless exclusion of important visitors, arose 
 from the fact that he was crushed under a mountain of labor. 
 He had to conduct an enormous correspondence with governors 
 of the states and territories in his Department, with Wash- 
 ington officials, with his scattered commands, and with private 
 citizens. It was more than Dorsheimer, Howard, and the de- 
 voted Jessie could manage. His troops were strewn all over the 
 West — part in Missouri, part in Kansas, part in Chicago, part 
 in southern Illinois, and soon part in Paducah, Kentucky. Once 
 he kept his telegraphers busy thirty-six hours without intermis- 
 sion. With the lesson of Bull Run before him, he had resolved 
 not to move forward till he had organized his force and collected 
 adequate supplies; and Washington, intent on the eastern 
 armies, hindered rather than aided him. But these excuses cover 
 only part of his failure. Gustav Koerner correctly wrote Lyman 
 Trumbull on November 12, 1861: 24 
 
 There was a great amount of labor performed day and night but 
 there appeared to be no proper system or method. Some of his most 
 intimate friends were undoubtedly cheating and circumventing him, 
 I thought. He is no judge of men at all, it seems to me, and he can 
 readily be imposed upon by plausible knavery. I think he is honest 
 and honorable himself, but too impulsive and too impressionable. 
 
 Necessarily, he had to depute much business to subordinates, 
 who sometimes managed it badly. Breezy western citizens, 
 who thought that everybody, whether President, Senator, or 
 General, should stop and give them a half hour's chat, were 
 turned back by sentries with a curt " What's your business?" 
 or, if they gained entry, found Fremont preoccupied and hur- 
 ried. They went out denouncing him as aristocratic and cold, 
 when he was only protecting his time. Fremont's green staff 
 helped him to make mistakes, for neither Howard nor Dor- 
 
 24 Trumbull Papers, Library of Congress. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 497 
 
 sheimer knew the difference between a rascally contract hun- 
 ter and a distinguished citizen of St. Louis, and sometimes ad- 
 mitted the former while debarring the latter. Their inexperience 
 conspired with Fremont's own impatience of red tape to pro- 
 duce many irregularities. His unauthorized issuance of com- 
 missions became the despair of the War Department, while 
 orders and requisitions were frequently signed without scrutiny. 
 General Schofield tells us that he went repeatedly to Fremont 
 for authority to have certain rifled guns in the St. Louis arsenal 
 issued to his new artillery regiment; that he always received 
 the authority, but before he got to the armory it was invariably 
 countermanded by telegraph; and that finally he suggested to 
 Fremont that he be sent East to procure fieldpieces and equip- 
 ment. Fremont at once acquiesced, bade Schofield sit down 
 and write the necessary order, and "signed it without reading." 
 A well-known and able Missouri Congressman, John Phelps, 
 came down the steps of the Brant House in high dudgeon, com- 
 plaining that he could see nobody and get no business attended 
 to. In many ways the Department of the West by mid-August, 
 1 86 1, seemed in dire confusion. 
 
 Yet some were favorably impressed. John Hay, Lincoln's sec- 
 retary, went to St. Louis late in August and for several days saw 
 much of Fremont and Jessie. He thought the latter talked too 
 much and too loudly. But Fremont "was quiet, earnest, indus- 
 trious, imperious." Returning East, Hay wrote articles in two 
 New York papers defending the General. 
 
 The increasing storm of criticism, made louder by prejudice 
 and ignorance, and swelled by the clamor of selfish "patriots" — 
 many of them Frank P. Blair's friends — who had been refused 
 contracts for horses, beef, mules, or wagons, and who were 
 highly disgruntled, dismayed Fremont. He winced under the 
 attacks. A great deal of outright mendacity entered into them. 
 An impartial Missouri observer, B. Rush Plumeley, later wrote 
 Secretary Chase that he had taken the charges one by one and 
 sifted them without regard to Fremont or Blair. "My dear 
 friends, they are . . . lies." A friend of Blair, he added, had 
 
498 FREMONT 
 
 been the largest buyer of horses, and had supplied such miser- 
 able steeds that Fremont was compelled to issue an order that 
 no more Missouri stock should be bought. The records of the 
 War Department bear this out. They contain a number of 
 Blair's brief notes to McKinstry. "Dear Major: If you buy 
 any more horses, I wish you to give Jim Neal a fair chance. 
 He is a personal friend of mine and a sound Union man." 
 Again, "Dear Major: I shall be obliged to you if you can give 
 Mr. Alec Peterson a contract for buying horses. He is a good 
 friend of mine . . ." And to still another officer, "General Meigs: 
 If you want horses in Missouri, I most cordially recommend 
 Mr. Farrar to purchase them for you." It was Farrar who sup- 
 plied the most defective animals. Fremont was fiercely criti- 
 cized for a purchase of Hall's carbines to arm his half-defense- 
 less troops, and since this purchase involved no less a person 
 than young J. Pierpont Morgan, the accusations have been 
 repeated and embroidered in numerous books. But a careful 
 investigation has shown that the much-denounced transaction 
 was really prudent and commendable. 25 
 
 While the storm of attacks increased, the military situation 
 in these first weeks after Lyon's defeat and the retreat of his 
 shattered army to Rolla seemed full of the gravest peril. Union 
 leaders believed that there were now 60,000 or 70,000 armed 
 rebels in the state, of whom perhaps 40,000 were Missourians. 
 Troops had suddenly appeared in great force from Arkansas, 
 Tennessee, and other states, and with the benefit of compre- 
 hensive military plans matured by Leonidas Polk and others, 
 had overrun half the state. Living on the country, they were 
 seizing horses, grain, meat, clothing, and other supplies from 
 Union citizens. Meanwhile, in central and northern Missouri 
 the rebel guerrillas, recruited from the countrysides, were en- 
 
 25 Koerner, Memoirs, II, p. 168; on Frank Blair's desire for contracts, W. E. 
 Smith offers a fair treatment in The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics, 
 II, p. 67. McKinstry published a pamphlet defense of himself which contains 
 a mass of material on contracts and corruption, and which is more severe upon 
 Frank Blair than Fremont; Vindication of Quartermaster-General McKinstry. 
 For this whole subject of wartime corruption see Appendix II. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 499 
 
 gaging in appalling outrages. They were burning bridges, 
 wrecking railway trains, cutting telegraphs, raiding farms, and 
 falling in sudden force upon exposed Union units, only to scat- 
 ter again in a hundred directions. Their warfare was driving 
 the loyal population by thousands to take refuge, penniless, in 
 Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. There seemed danger that parts of 
 the state would become a stark wilderness. 26 And nobody knew 
 where Pillow and McCulloch would strike next. 
 
 Under these circumstances Fremont, believing some decisive 
 stroke to be necessary, resolved suddenly upon a proclamation 
 of military emancipation. In this step he was unquestionably 
 urged forward by his immediate associates. Two parties had 
 arisen among the loyal citizens of Missouri, the radical Union 
 men or "charcoals," and the conservatives, or "claybanks." 
 The former, who included most of the Germans, believed in 
 aggressive, uncompromising action, while the latter advocated 
 patience, conciliation, and caution. The latter were led by 
 Frank Blair and provisional Governor Hamilton R. Gamble; 
 it was the former who surrounded Fremont, and who, with 
 the radical Lovejoy, Gurley, and Shanks among their spokes- 
 men, had obtained a marked ascendancy over him. They held 
 a decided conviction that the slaves of rebels ought to be for- 
 feit. Secession, they reasoned, had destroyed all constitutional 
 protections and safeguards which formerly shielded southern 
 citizens; it was now perfectly legal to confiscate the property 
 of men in arms, and slaves were of course property. Every 
 report of outrage and destruction in peaceful Union counties, 
 of depredations by bushwhackers and guerrilla gangs, was an 
 argument for stern measures. Men were being killed and their 
 homes wiped out. Should the Federal Government hesitate 
 to free the slaves of miscreants responsible for such acts? To 
 this view Mrs. Fremont was completely won over, and she 
 added her arguments to those of Lovejoy and Gurley. 
 
 How long Fremont debated the question with himself and 
 
 26 Compare Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 417. 
 
500 FREMONT 
 
 others, we do not know; but his wife tells us that at the end 
 he moved with his accustomed impetuosity: 27 
 
 The State outside of the fortified points was becoming more and 
 more unsettled. The farmers would, when notified, join the camps 
 of the rebel commanders in great numbers, suddenly augmenting 
 their forces, and then, if the projected raid or attack was deferred, 
 would return again to their homes, reducing the force correspond- 
 ingly. 
 
 In this manner, however, it was impossible to foresee which point 
 would be threatened next, and failing sufficient troops to control 
 the State through force of arms, it became necessary to devise some 
 means to prevent this guerrilla warfare. The credit of the govern- 
 ment was about used up, and it had so lost prestige through the 
 non-payment of its debts to the soldiers, and those who furnished 
 the supplies, that it was regarded with contempt by the Secession- 
 ists, and many Unionists came to doubt its power to compel. For 
 many days and nights the situation had been a most anxious one 
 for Gen. Fremont; with unfilled requisitions in Washington, com- 
 manders of troops demanding reinforcements where there were none 
 
 to give, troops clamoring for pay when there was no money He 
 
 determined to force the rebel sympathizers, who did not join the 
 rebel armies as soldiers, to remain at home, and to make them feel 
 that there was a penalty for rebellion, and for aiding those who 
 were in rebellion. 
 
 On the morning of the 30th of August, shortly after daybreak, 
 Mrs. Fremont found Gen. Fremont at his desk. He had sent for 
 Mr. Edward Davis, of Philadelphia, who arrived as she came. It 
 was sufficiently light to see plainly, and the General said, "I want 
 you two, but no others." Then in the dawn of the new day, he read 
 the Emancipation Order, that first gave freedom to the slaves of 
 rebels, and which he had thought out and written, in the hours 
 taken from his brief resting time. 
 
 The proclamation with which Fremont thus astonished the 
 nation declared that he found it necessary to thrust aside the 
 provisional governor and assume the administrative powers of 
 the disordered state; that all Missouri would thenceforth be 
 
 27 MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN THE WEST 501 
 
 under martial law; that the lines of the Union Army should for 
 the present extend from Leavenworth by way of Jefferson 
 City, Rolla, and Ironton to Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi; 
 that all persons found with arms in their hands north of these 
 lines should be tried by court-martial, and if guilty, should be 
 shot; and that "the property, real and personal, of all persons 
 in the state of Missouri directly proven to have taken an active 
 part with their enemies in the field is declared to be confiscated 
 to the public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby 
 declared freemen." His intention was to penalize the disloyal 
 slave-owners of northern and central Missouri who were or- 
 ganizing or supporting the guerrilla warfare of those regions. 
 But his action had a far wider significance. The conflict had 
 thus far been a war to preserve the Union, and no members 
 of the Administration and no general had suggested any other 
 object; Fremont's proclamation, if its principles were sustained 
 and applied to other fields, would convert it into a war to lib- 
 erate the slaves. 
 
 Already many radical-minded Northerners, including, of 
 course, the Abolitionists, had demanded just this. Gerrit Smith, 
 in an open letter of July 12 th to Fremont's staff assistant, Owen 
 Love joy, had said that the government did right to call for 
 millions in money and hundreds of thousands of soldiers if 
 they were really needed to put down the rebellion. "But why 
 take a costly and weary way to put it down," he asked, "when 
 a cheap and short one is at hand? Why choose crushing bur- 
 dens of debt and immense human slaughter when both can be 
 avoided? The liberation of slaves has obviously become one 
 of the necessities and therefore one of the rights of the coun- 
 try. Let the President, in his capacity as commander of the 
 army, proclaim such liberation and the war would end in thirty 
 days." Moncure D. Conway was putting through the press a 
 book, received enthusiastically by the newspapers and by 
 radicals like Sumner, entitled The Great Method of Peace, 
 which declared emancipation the master-key of victory. An- 
 nounce it, he wrote, and "every Southerner would have to hurry 
 
5 02 FREMONT 
 
 home to be his own home-guard and his own home-provisioner." 
 Even those who held no such illusions thought, as the Tribune 
 said, that it was "time to be in earnest; that handling traitors 
 with kid gloves is not the way to subdue them." 28 
 
 Fremont's proclamation of August 30th, therefore, coming 
 at a moment of growing antagonism between radical and con- 
 servative Northerners, and his action immediately afterward 
 in setting up a commission to take evidence and in issuing deeds 
 of manumission to slaves, fell upon the country like a thunder- 
 bolt. 
 
 28 New York Tribune, July 28, 1861 (for Gerrit Smith's letter) ; September 
 1, 1861. 
 
Fremont vs. Blair and Lincoln 
 
 BEYOND question Fremont issued his proclamation 
 simply as a war measure in Missouri, and with little if 
 any thought of its effect outside that state. He has been 
 accused by Nicolay and Hay of drafting it as an appeal to 
 the support of the northern radicals, and as a last desperate 
 attempt to regain the popularity which he had lost through 
 Lyon's defeat. No foundation exists for this view, which is un- 
 just in attributing to the impetuous General a measure of 
 shrewd, scheming calculation which he never possessed. He 
 planned the proclamation merely as a weapon against the guer- 
 rillas who were laying northern Missouri waste; he designed 
 it, as he said, "to place in the hands of the military authorities 
 the power to give instantaneous effect to existing laws, and to 
 supply such deficiencies as the conditions of war demand." It 
 was characteristic of him that he did not wait to consult the 
 Administration on so momentous a step; had he paused to 
 think of its effect outside turbulent Missouri, he would have 
 done so. But he did not know how fiercely the radicals and Lin- 
 coln were already at odds over emancipation. 
 
 He was warned, as he read it to his wife and friend in that 
 gray August dawn, that Washington would be hostile. "Gen- 
 eral," said Edward Davis, "Mr. Seward will never allow this. 
 He intends to wear down the South by steady pressure, not by 
 blows, and then make himself the arbitrator." "It is for the 
 North to say what it will or will not allow," replied Fremont, 
 "and whether it will arbitrate, or whether it will fight. The time 
 has come for decisive action; this is a war measure, and as such 
 I make it. I have been given full power to crush rebellion in 
 
 503 
 
504 FREMONT 
 
 this department, and I will bring the penalties of rebellion 
 home to every man found striving against the Union." * 
 
 The reception met by the proclamation has been described 
 by many historians, and it is sufficient to say that it aroused 
 the enthusiasm of radical anti-slavery elements in the North 
 as nothing had done since the firing on Fort Sumter. New 
 England was jubilant. From all parts of the Middle West came 
 reports that men were saying, "Now the Administration is in 
 earnest," or "That looks like work!" In Lincoln's own state 
 of Illinois the outburst of applause was such as to give the 
 President genuine pain. The German-Americans rose en masse 
 to this new and higher object which Fremont seemed to have 
 given the war; recruiting increased by a sudden leap. The 
 press of the North was almost a unit in commendation. In 
 Chicago, the Tribune; in Washington the National Intelligen- 
 cer; in Boston, the Post; and in New York, Raymond's Times, 
 Horace Greeley's Tribune, and Bryant's Evening Post all 
 praised the proclamation in high terms. Even James Gordon 
 Bennett's Herald, lately on the side of the South, and the 
 Chicago Times, which was at one time briefly suppressed as a 
 copperhead organ, joined the chorus of approbation. 2 George 
 Julian, an Indiana member of Congress, later wrote that "it 
 stirred and united the people of the loyal States during the ten 
 days of life allotted it by the Government far more than any 
 other event of the war." Perhaps the most extraordinary fact 
 was that Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War, who was at 
 his home ill, thought it an admirable stroke, and telegraphing 
 his congratulations to Fremont, returned to his desk ready to 
 give it hearty endorsement. He was surprised to find that Lin- 
 coln was hostile. 3 Sumner was enthusiastic. From that moment, 
 Fremont became more than a general — to millions, especially 
 in New England and among the German and Yankee elements 
 
 1 MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
 2 The Chase MSS, Library of Congress, contains a mass of approbatory 
 letters; see Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, III, 33#. for press comment. 
 8 Cameron advocated arming Negro soldiers; Diary of Edward Bates, p. 203. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 505 
 
 of the West, he became a symbol. His name represented the 
 crusade for the extinction of slavery. 
 
 How Lincoln, with his usual calm sagacity, took a broader 
 and wiser view; how with the necessity of conciliating the hesi- 
 tant Kentuckians in mind, he patiently and kindly asked Fre- 
 mont to modify his proclamation — this, too, is an old story. 
 His letter of September 2nd to the General is worth quoting in 
 full: 4 
 
 My dear Sir: Two points in your proclamation of August 30th 
 give me some anxiety: 
 
 First: Should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, 
 the Confederates would very certainly shoot our best men in their 
 hands in retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely. It is, there- 
 fore, my order that you allow no man to be shot under the procla- 
 mation without first having my approbation or consent. 
 
 Second. I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph, 
 in relation to the confiscation of property and the liberating slaves 
 of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends and 
 turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for 
 Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own 
 motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform to the first and 
 fourth sections of the act of Congress entitled, 'An act of Congress 
 entitled, "An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary 
 purposes," approved August 6, 1861, and a copy of which act I 
 herewith send you. 
 
 This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not of censure. 
 I send it by special messenger, in order that it may certainly and 
 speedily reach you. 
 
 This request for a modification Fremont foolishly refused. 
 His eyes were bent wholly upon Missouri, without thought of 
 the other border states, and he tells us in his unpublished 
 Memoirs that the effect there was striking. "The Union people 
 rejoiced openly. The class of sympathizers with the South be- 
 came quiet and careful, finding that they must respect the laws 
 
 4 Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IV, Ch. 24, give it and the circumstances. 
 
506 FREMONT 
 
 of the land they lived in. To the rebels everywhere it was a 
 blow. It affected not only their principles but their property." 
 He wrote to Lincoln a stubborn explanation : 5 
 
 Trusting to have your confidence, I have been leaving it to events 
 themselves to show you whether or not I was shaping affairs here 
 according to your ideas. The shortest communication between Wash- 
 ington and St. Louis generally involves two days, and the employ- 
 ment of two days in time of war goes largely toward success or 
 disaster. I therefore went along according to my own judgment, 
 leaving the result of my movements to justify me with you. And 
 so in regard to my proclamation of the 30th. Between the rebel 
 armies, the Provisional Government, and home traitors, I felt the 
 position bad and saw danger. In the night I decided upon the 
 proclamation and the form of it. I wrote it the next morning and 
 printed it the same day. I did it without consultation or advice 
 with any one, acting solely with my best judgment to serve the 
 country and yourself, and perfectly willing to receive the amount 
 of censure which should be thought due if I had made a false move- 
 ment. This is as much a movement in the war as a battle, and in 
 going into these I shall have to act according to my judgment of 
 the ground before me, as I did on this occasion. If, upon reflection, 
 your better judgment still decides that I am wrong in the article 
 respecting the liberation of slaves, I have to ask that you will openly 
 direct me to make the correction. The implied censure will be re- 
 ceived as a soldier always should the reprimand of his chief. If I 
 were to retract of my own accord, it would imply that I myself 
 thought it wrong, and that I had acted without the reflection 
 which the gravity of the point demanded. But I did not. I acted 
 with full deliberation, and upon the certain conviction that it was a 
 measure right and necessary, and I think so still. In regard to the 
 other point of the proclamation to which you refer, I desire to 
 say that I do not think the enemy can either misconstrue or urge 
 anything against it, or undertake to make unusual retaliation. The 
 shooting of men who will rise in arms against an army in the mili- 
 tary occupation of a country is merely a necessary measure of 
 defence, and entirely according to the usages of civilized warfare. 
 The article does not at all refer to prisoners of war, and certainly 
 
 8 Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 477. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 507 
 
 our enemies have no ground for requiring that we should waive in 
 their benefit any of the ordinary advantages which the usages of 
 war allow to us. 
 
 Already Fremont had been asked by the Confederate com- 
 mander to explain his article upon the shooting of prisoners. 
 On receipt of Fremont's despatch, Lincoln in a courteous letter 
 made a public order: 
 
 Your answer, just received, expresses the preference on your part 
 that I should make an open order for the modification, which I very 
 cheerfully do. It is therefore ordered that the said clause of said 
 proclamation be so modified, held, and construed as to conform to, 
 and not to transcend, the provisions on the same subject contained 
 in the act of Congress entitled, "An act to confiscate property used 
 for insurrectionary purposes," approved August 6, 1861, and that 
 said act be published at length, with this order. 
 
 The news was received by many in the North with gnashing 
 of teeth. Judge George Hoadly of Cincinnati wrote that the 
 prevalent sentiment in his city could be described only by the 
 word "fury." 6 "How many times," asked James Russell 
 Lowell, "are we to save Kentucky and lose our self-respect?" 
 
 This rebuke by the President in the sight of the nation was 
 but the first of a series of disasters which befell Fremont. The 
 next and the most catastrophic was an open estrangement 
 between him and the powerful Blair family. The Blairs, as 
 Lincoln later told some friends in a confidential chat, were a 
 proud clan, with the spirit of a close corporation, and with a 
 tendency to go in a headlong rush for any object. Related to 
 the Bentons through the Preston family of Virginia, they and 
 the Fremonts had long been close friends. The two sons, 
 Montgomery and Frank, had gone to Missouri to have the 
 benefit of Senator Benton's influence in practising law; while 
 Jessie had spent much time with the "old gentleman," Francis 
 P. Blair, on his attractive estate at Silver Spring, just across 
 
 6 Chase MSS, Library of Congress. 
 
508 FREMONT 
 
 the Maryland line, whither he had retired with his slaves, dogs, 
 and books. To this place, with its groves and grottoes, she had 
 brought her second baby daughter in 1853 to die. Lincoln later 
 testified that he had appointed Fremont as western commander 
 at the earnest solicitation of the Blairs, and that he was their 
 "pet and protege." There seemed every reason for complete 
 harmony. Yet a swift and angry breach ensued — a breach which 
 disrupted the Unionists of Missouri, and shook the whole 
 Northwest. 7 
 
 The reasons for this duel between Fremont and the Blairs, 
 with political results that tormented the Lincoln Administration 
 till the last year of the War, were complex. Temperamentally, 
 the men were certain to clash. Frank Blair, who had taken the 
 helm in Missouri, had gained thereby a national reputation. 
 He was shrewd, direct, practical, and aggressive, and the 
 erratic, impetuous, visionary traits of Fremont grated upon 
 him. Both were hot-tempered and tenacious. Frank Blair ex- 
 pected to continue to be the directing force in Missouri affairs, 
 while Fremont had no intention of letting anybody dominate 
 them but himself. Already the Blair clan had shown what it 
 would do with any commander who crossed its path in that 
 state. A few months earlier, it had taken General William S. 
 Harney in hand because he seemed slow and conservative, and 
 had broken him with cruel despatch. Frank had pulled all the 
 wires he could in Missouri; his brother the Postmaster-General, 
 "the Pisistratus of his race," had exerted pressure at the capi- 
 tal; and Harney had been ignominiously removed. Now Frank 
 desired to have his wishes treated as something like commands, 
 and was chagrined when Fremont, with Jessie at his back, fol- 
 lowed his own course. Missouri had shown promise of becoming 
 a political enclave of the Blairs; it dismayed them to see 
 Fremont taking steps which rallied the Germans at his back 
 and looked like the erection of a possible machine of his own. 
 Finally, Frank had many Missouri friends who, having helped 
 
 7 For a vigorous sketch of Frank Blair, see G. W. Nichols, Story of the 
 Great March, p. gjff. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 509 
 
 him "save" the state, thought they were entitled to the con- 
 tracts which were being lavishly distributed; while Fremont 
 had contract-hungry friends of his own — men whom Blair 
 called "California vultures." 8 
 
 For a time after Fremont's arrival, matters had gone with 
 fair smoothness. Montgomery Blair supported him loyally in 
 Washington. He encouraged the General in his expenditures, 
 and criticized the Secretary of the Treasury for his parsimonious 
 ways — "Chase," he wrote, "has more horror of seeing Treasury 
 notes below par than of seeing soldiers killed." He talked with 
 Lincoln about Fremont's needs, and criticized Lincoln, too — 
 "he is of the Whig school, and that brings him naturally not 
 only to incline to the feeble policy of the Whigs, but to give his 
 confidence to such advisers." 9 Frank Blair was much at Fre- 
 mont's headquarters, and asked and received not a few favors. 
 Quite naturally, he requested consideration in contracts for his 
 friends among the important merchants and manufacturers of 
 St. Louis; and this consideration was cheerfully granted. But 
 the time came when Fremont denied some of Blair's requests. 
 In particular, he and McKinstry declined to grant two friends 
 of Blair a contract to supply clothing and other equipment for 
 forty thousand men — Fremont not believing he needed so 
 much. 10 Frank believed in this and other contracts; he did not 
 believe in others which Fremont was letting — some of them 
 shown later to be full of fraud — to men whom he characterized 
 as "obscene birds of prey." There was fault on both sides. 
 When Frank wrote east, his father showed that he also had 
 some grasping ideas. The old gentleman sent Fremont a de- 
 cidedly irritated letter, in which he suggested "a copartnership 
 in the West," and said that he and his sons would do everything 
 in their power to aid the commander, if on his part he would 
 
 8 W. E. Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics, II, p. 67 ff., 
 reaches my own conclusion that the principal basis of the Fremont-Blair 
 quarrel lay in rival ambition for power and prestige. Missouri was not big 
 enough for both men. 
 
 9 Report, Committee on Conduct of the War, Part III, p. 11 5$. 
 
 10 Report, Committee on Conduct of the War, Part III, p. 178^.; p. 202JF. 
 
510 FREMONT 
 
 be obliging to them. Frank, he added, wanted a new military 
 post. 11 
 
 I shall expect you to exert your utmost influence to carry my 
 points, and now to begin, I want to have Frank made a militia 
 major-general for the State of Missouri. This, I presume, Gov. 
 Gamble can do, and as Major-General Frost nipped his military 
 honors in the bud, by turning traitor and absconding with Jackson, 
 it would seem but a completion of what was gained in substituting 
 Gamble for the abdicating governor, to make Frank, as the military 
 man of the State, take the position deserted by Gen. Frost. Frank 
 might have accepted a generalship, offered him by Lincoln, but he 
 felt that he might be useful in Congress and hence declined a com- 
 mission from that quarter which would have vacated his seat in 
 the House. He has no commission now and acts only as colonel by 
 the election of the regiment and courtesy of the army. 
 
 Fremont felt unable to grant this unblushing demand and 
 said so. He tried to soften the refusal by writing the Blairs that 
 Frank's regiment would amount to a brigade, but the rebuff 
 stung them. Actually, he hoped that Frank Blair would accept 
 a command in the East and so cease to complicate the Missouri 
 situation. But the elder Blair continued to insist, by letters and 
 telegrams, that Fremont yield to and cooperate with his son. 
 He believed that Frank was on the high road to the Presidency, 
 and was determined that nothing should check his son's prom- 
 ising career. Montgomery also thought that Frank was, as 
 Gideon Welles records, "the greatest man in the country." All 
 the ambitions and the wishes of the family were concentrated 
 upon the young man. As Lincoln shrewdly put it, " Frank is 
 their hope and pride." 12 
 
 In so far as they were motivated by political ambitions and 
 
 11 Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
 12 But Fremont did write Provisional-Governor Hamilton R. Gamble on 
 August i8th requesting that as a special favor he "immediately commission 
 with the rank of Brigadier-General the Honorable Frank P. Blair, now colonel 
 of the ist Missouri Volunteers." Gamble lacked power to do so. Gamble 
 Papers; courtesy of Miss Marguerite Potter. For Welles on Frank Blair, 
 see his Diary, III, p. 408. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 511 
 
 a desire for personal favors, the Blairs appear to poor advan- 
 tage in their attack on Fremont; but there was a better side. 
 Frank Blair came honestly to believe that Fremont lacked the 
 high military talents his position required. He thought that 
 St. Louis was overwhelmingly loyal, and objected to the meas- 
 ures which Fremont and McKinstry took to police it under 
 martial law. Later, he declared that Fremont's acts were "the 
 offspring of timidity, seeking to prevent imaginary dangers by 
 inspiring the terrors with which he himself was haunted." There 
 was room for a sincere divergence of opinion upon this policing, 
 and it is not easy to say which man was right. Most merchants 
 were sympathetic with secession, and even after Fremont's 
 work was done, the secessionist candidates for officers of the 
 Chamber of Commerce and the Mercantile Library Association, 
 two powerful organizations, were elected by heavy majorities. 13 
 Fremont's force of effective troops was much smaller than it 
 appeared to be, and he knew that he might have to denude the 
 city of men to answer some urgent call from the East or the 
 West. On the whole, his precautions appear to have been 
 justified. 
 
 Again, Blair condemned the fortification of St. Louis as 
 another evidence of the same wasteful timidity, and as a step 
 both useless and in its execution needlessly extravagant. These 
 defensive works included ten forts, and the labor on them was 
 prosecuted until the middle of October, when the War Depart- 
 ment ordered them dropped. It is impossible to say that they 
 were useless. There seemed genuine need in July and August, 
 1 86 1, for protective measures of this character, and the pre- 
 caution was probably wise. Washington was heavily fortified; 
 General Ormsby Mitchel took great care in the summer of 
 1 86 1 to fortify Cincinnati. But Blair was right as to the extrav- 
 
 13 Congressional Globe, March 7, 1862. Fremont thought the Board of Police 
 Commissioners for St. Louis, which had been appointed by ex-Governor Jackson, 
 disloyal. He wrote Provisional- Governor Gamble on August 18th urging that 
 they be dismissed, and suggesting men to take their place. Action should be 
 taken without delay, he declared. But Gamble found himself without power to 
 remove them except on formal complaint (Gamble Papers). 
 
512 FREMONT 
 
 agance. Fremont, who should have assigned the work to army 
 engineers, gave it instead to a Californian named Beard, who 
 did it incompetently and made extortionate profits. A leading 
 army engineer later testified that if the War Department had 
 not interfered, the government would have lost $240,000 on 
 forts useless for defense. 
 
 The defeat and death of Lyon, a close friend, was a severe 
 shock to Frank Blair, and in itself raised a doubt in his mind 
 of Fremont's capacity. Lincoln tells us that at first he had 
 spoken of Fremont with high admiration and warm hopes for 
 the future. "But at last," said Lincoln, "the tone of Frank's 
 letter changed. It was a change from confidence to doubt and 
 uncertainty. They were pervaded with a tone of sincere sorrow 
 and of fear that Fremont would fail." General John M. Scho- 
 field states that the change in Frank's attitude was manifest 
 just after Lyon's defeat. Late in August, Schofield and Blair 
 called together upon Fremont at the Brant mansion: 14 
 
 The general received me cordially, but, to my great surprise, no 
 questions were asked, nor any mention made, of the bloody field 
 
 from which I had just come, where Lyon had been killed I was 
 
 led at once to a large table on which maps were spread out, from 
 which the general proceeded to explain at length the plans of the 
 great campaign for which he was then preparing. Col. Blair had, I be- 
 lieve, already been initiated, but I listened attentively for a long 
 time, certainly more than an hour, to the elucidation of the project. 
 In general outline the plan proposed a march of the main army of 
 the West through southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas 
 to the valley of the Arkansas River, and thence down that river to 
 
 the Mississippi As soon as the explanation was ended, Col. Blair 
 
 and I took our leave, making our exit through the same basement 
 door through which we had entered. We walked down the street 
 for some time in silence. Then Blair turned to me and said: "Well, 
 what do you think of him?" I replied, in words rather too strong 
 to repeat in print, to the effect that my opinion as to his wisdom 
 was the same as it always had been. Blair said: "I have been sus- 
 pecting that for some time." 
 
 14 J. M. Schofield, Forty-six Years in the Army, p. 48$. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 513 
 
 It was a family maxim that: "When the Blairs go in for a 
 fight, they go in for a funeral." 15 So it was this time. The quar- 
 rel was heated enough when Fremont issued his emancipation 
 proclamation. That made it worse, for the Blair family took the 
 President's view that it was necessary to conciliate the people 
 of the border states, and to refrain from direct attacks upon 
 slavery. Frank Blair when aroused had all the dour fury of his 
 Scotch Covenanter blood. His letters shortly stirred up a hor- 
 net's nest in Washington. On the other side, Mrs. Fremont 
 came to her husband's aid with all the invincible tenacity and 
 vigor she had inherited from her father. It was a duel to the 
 death. When the smoke of battle cleared away, Fremont was 
 a ruined man, and the political future of the Blairs was almost 
 hopelessly compromised. 
 
 The public gained its first clear intimation of this quarrel 
 early in September, when Lincoln despatched Postmaster- 
 Blair and his brother-in-law, Quartermaster-General Meigs, to 
 St. Louis to make a thorough inquiry and a report, and also to 
 give Fremont friendly advice and admonition. They bore a 
 letter from Lincoln to General David Hunter in Chicago. "Gen- 
 eral Fremont," wrote the President, "needs assistance which 
 it is difficult to give him. He is losing the confidence of men 
 near him, whose support any man in his position must have to 
 be successful. His cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself, 
 and allows nobody to see him; and by which he does not know 
 what is going on in the very matter he is dealing with. He needs 
 to have by his side a man of large experience. Will you not, 
 for me, take that place?" 16 Montgomery Blair and Meigs 
 arrived at St. Louis on September 12 th. Their friends gave it 
 out that their purpose was to look after the overland mails, but 
 this deceived nobody. Popular gossip at once decided, said the 
 St. Louis correspondent of the New York Herald, that the gov- 
 
 15 Compare E. C. Kirkland, The Peacemakers of 1864, p. 145 ; A. G. Riddle, 
 Life of Benjamin Wade, p. 287. It must be remembered, in interpreting Mont- 
 gomery Blair's attitude toward such enemies of Fremont as General John Pope, 
 that he himself had received a West Point training. 
 
 16 Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IV, p. 413. 
 
514 FREMONT 
 
 ernment was discontented "with the way General Fremont has 
 expended money and made proclamations, while at the same 
 time he does nothing in the way of getting the state into Fed- 
 eral possession." Fremont himself saw the handwriting on the 
 wall, for he later wrote: 17 
 
 Early in September, I began to feel the withdrawal of the con- 
 fidence and support of the Administration. The visits of high officials 
 charged with inquiry into the affairs of my department, and the 
 simultaneous and sustained attacks of leading journals accumulated 
 obstructions and disturbed my movements. In fact, my command 
 virtually endured little over one month. But the measures which 
 I had initiated had already taken enduring shape. 
 
 It was inevitable that Montgomery Blair, after talking with 
 the embittered Frank and with others who were thoroughly 
 prejudiced against Fremont, should come back with an unfavor- 
 able report. Deciding to his own satisfaction that the public 
 welfare required Fremont's removal, on his return he recom- 
 mended steps to this end. 18 Writing to Sumner, he declared 
 that his brother was thoroughly aroused. Frank, he asserted, 
 "cannot tolerate trifling in a great cause, and when he dis- 
 covered that Fremont was a mere trifler, he was not to be rec- 
 onciled to seeing the State overrun by pro-slavery myrmidons, 
 by an empty proclamation threatening to deprive them of their 
 negroes." Nothing could have been more unfair than to call 
 Fremont "a mere trifler," and yet this was the impression the 
 Blairs were vigorously attempting to diffuse both east and west. 
 
 At the same time the provisional governor of Missouri, Ham- 
 ilton R. Gamble, who had been appointed by a state convention, 
 was seeing Fremont on behalf of the President, and meeting 
 none too cordial a reception. Lincoln had heard that Fremont 
 as a radical Unionist and Gamble as a very conservative Union- 
 ist were not getting on well, and he sent Gamble a letter to 
 show to the General. Their meeting took place at headquarters 
 
 17 Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library; New York Herald, September 18, 1S61. 
 
 18 See Report, Committee en the Conduct of the War, Part III, p. 170. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 515 
 
 on the fourteenth. According to Gamble's account, Fremont was 
 very odd in manner, sitting silent and apparently distracted 
 much of the time. But he made it clear that he did not believe 
 that Gamble had cooperated properly with him, complaining 
 that the governor had not made militia appointments which 
 he desired, and had not dismissed various officers upon request. 
 Gamble pointed out that he was bound by constitutional limi- 
 tations. Next day Fremont sent the governor a note requesting 
 another interview. Thereupon Gamble stayed in the city for 
 two days before returning to the capital at Jefferson City; but 
 on the first day Fremont failed to make an appointment, and 
 on the second he failed to keep one that he himself had made ! 
 Gamble, according to his own story, waited half an hour in an 
 anteroom, and then not being admitted, went away in disgust. 
 Of all this he sent Lincoln a circumstantial though indirect 
 report, which left it plain that he thought little of Fremont's 
 capacity. 19 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Fremont, angry and overwrought, had em- 
 barked upon a course which made matters ten times worse for 
 her husband. Aware of the fast-growing distrust in Washington, 
 she resolved to strike at once and strike hard. She would go to 
 Washington with a confidential letter from Fremont to Lincoln 
 explaining the Western situation. She would seek a special 
 interview with the President, defend her husband roundly, and 
 denounce his accusers as they deserved. This was much the 
 same hot-headed course which Benton had followed with Polk 
 when a court-martial threatened Fremont. Doubtless the Gen- 
 eral knew that it would be better to keep the fiery Jessie at 
 home, but she would suffer no restraint. On September 8th she 
 set out, taking her English maid. After sitting for two nights 
 and two days in the hot, overcrowded trains, at the close of the 
 10th she reached Washington, and drove to Willard's Hotel to 
 meet some friends from New York. 
 
 19 Gamble Papers ; these were kindly searched for me by Miss Marguerite 
 Potter. Gamble asked for arms for his state troops; Fremont promised them s 
 but Gamble nevertheless wrote immediately afterward that he had no expec- 
 tation of getting them, 
 
5i6 FREMONT 
 
 Of her ensuing interview with Lincoln we have two accounts 
 by the two participants. The President, in an informal conver- 
 sation with some associates more than two years later, recorded 
 by one of his secretaries, remarked: 
 
 She sought an audience with me at midnight, and tasked me so 
 violently with so many things, that I had to exercise all the awkward 
 tact I have to avoid quarreling with her. She surprised me by asking 
 why their enemy, Montgomery Blair, had been sent to Missouri. 
 She more than once intimated that if General Fremont should decide 
 to try conclusions with me, he could set up for himself. 20 
 
 It is difficult to believe this last. Mrs. Fremont's story differs 
 from Lincoln's in essential particulars. Her narrative is prob- 
 ably more accurate than Lincoln's casual conversation, some 
 two years after the event, casually jotted down later by John 
 Hay, for the interview must have been burned deep into her 
 retentive memory. She writes: 21 
 
 I went for Gen. Fremont to Washington to give his letter into 
 President Lincoln's hands — both of us doubted its reaching him in 
 the usual way. 
 
 I got in at the end of the day, tired, for I had travelled night 
 and day from St. Louis in an ordinary car, and at once sent my 
 card (from Willard's Hotel) with a written request to know when I 
 might deliver the letter to the President. 
 
 The messenger brought back a card on which was written, "Now, 
 at once, A. Lincoln." 
 
 It was nearly 9 p.m., the date September 10 [1861]. 
 
 As I had not been able to undress or lie down since leaving St. 
 Louis I had intended taking a bath and going to bed at once. But 
 I walked over immediately, just as I had been for two days and 
 nights, in my dusty black mourning dress. 
 
 Judge Edward Coles of New York city was with me. 
 
 We were asked into the usual receiving room, the red room, next 
 the large dining room. After some little waiting the President came 
 in from that dining room by the farther door, leaving the door partly 
 
 20 Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IV, p. 415. 
 
 21 No date; Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 517 
 
 open. As he crossed the room that door was still more widely set 
 open. 
 
 I introduced Judge Coles, who then stepped into the deep door- 
 way leading to the blue room — we were just by it — and there he 
 remained walking to and fro, keeping in sight and hearing, just 
 within the range of the doorway. For he was struck at once, as I 
 was, by the President's manner, which was hard — and the first tones 
 of his voice were repelling. Nor did he offer me a seat. He talked 
 standing, and both voice and manner made the impression that I 
 was to be got rid of briefly. 
 
 I often told over this interview to friends. It was clear to Judge 
 Coles as to myself that the President's mind was made up against 
 General Fremont — and decidedly against me. It would be too long 
 to give you fuller detail. Briefly, in answer to his "Well?" I ex- 
 plained that the general wished so much to have his attention to 
 the letter sent, that I had brought it to make sure it would reach 
 him. He answered, not to that, but to the subject his own mind was 
 upon, that "It was a war for a great national idea, the Union, and 
 that General Fremont should not have dragged the Negro into it — 
 that he never would if he had consulted with Frank Blair. I sent 
 Frank there to advise him." The words italicized are exactly those 
 of the President. 
 
 He first mentioned the Blairs, in this astonishing connection. 
 
 It was a parti pis, and as we walked back Judge Coles, who 
 heard everything, said to me, "This ends Fremont's part in the war. 
 Seward and Montgomery Blair will see to that, and Lincoln does 
 not seem to see the injustice, the wrong of receiving secret reports 
 against him made by a man authorized to do so, and as everyone 
 knows, with his mind often clouded by drink and always governed 
 by personal motives.' , 
 
 The President said he would send me his answer the next day. 
 
 The next day passed and nothing came from him. But Mr. Blair, 
 Sr., came and told me many things. I had known him always and 
 liked him, though Mr. Fremont did not. He was very angry with 
 me for not letting Montgomery "manage things." He talked angrily 
 and freely, as was natural to one who had grown up to defer to 
 him, and in his excitement uncovered the intentions of the Ad- 
 ministration regarding the protection of slavery. 
 
 That caused me to write note number two to the President. The 
 
5 i8 FREMONT 
 
 originals of these must have been in possession oi the secretaries. 
 I have the copies which I kept for Gen. Fremont. I confined my 
 request to asking for the promised letter, and for copies of the 
 charges against Mr. Fremont. 
 
 In the President's answer he says "not hearing from me," he had 
 sent the answer by mail and declined to give letters without con- 
 sent of owners. Yet he acted on them injuriously to the reputation 
 of Gen. Fremont. 
 
 I did not risk a direct telegram to Gen. Fremont, but through 
 my English maid I sent a cipher telegram in her name to an oper- 
 ator at headquarters, a man we could trust, and in that way the 
 general was warned against being trapped into any steps aimed 
 at by a show of "friendship" from Postmaster- General Blair. I 
 returned immediately to St. Louis and found him working to 
 "modify" and reshape the General's course — but he had been lis- 
 tened to only, and my arrival ended all attempts at concealing their 
 real conduct. I did not speak to him then, or ever again. 
 
 In a later document, the unpublished part of the biographical 
 Memoir of the explorer written by his wife and son, Mrs. Fre- 
 mont adds some significant details to this brief narrative. She 
 states that when she handed the President the General's letter, 
 "he smiled with an expression that was not agreeable," and 
 stood under the chandelier to read it. Meanwhile, trembling 
 with fatigue, she sat down uninvited. When he had finished, 
 the President told her that he had already written the General, 
 and that he knew what the Administration wished done. To 
 this she replied that Fremont thought it would be well if Mr. 
 Lincoln explained personally his ideas and desires, for "the 
 General feels he is at the great disadvantage of being perhaps 
 opposed by people in whom you have every confidence." Lin- 
 coln was a little startled. "What do you mean? Persons of 
 different views?" he inquired. Thereupon Mrs. Fremont began 
 to talk about the difficulty of conquering by arms alone, and 
 the necessity of appealing to the sentiment of England and 
 other nations by a blow against slavery; expressing ideas that 
 had certainly not been in Fremont's head when he issued his 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 519 
 
 proclamation as an effort to intimidate the farmer-guerrillas of 
 northern Missouri. Apparently nettled, the President remarked, 
 "You are quite a female politician." He at once went on to 
 speak vehemently of Fremont's mistake in converting a war for 
 the Union into a war against slavery. 
 
 Mrs. Fremont also writes that when Francis P. Blair came 
 to see her early the next day, he grew heated. "Well," he said, 
 "who would have expected you to do such a thing as this, to 
 come here and find fault with the President? Look what you 
 have done for Fremont; you have made the President his 
 enemy!" The old editor, saying that Montgomery would talk 
 with Fremont "and bring him to his senses," gave her to under- 
 stand that five days earlier Lincoln had received from Frank 
 Blair a letter containing various charges against Fremont; and 
 that it was because of this letter that the Postmaster-General 
 had been sent to St. Louis to make an examination. As she has 
 related, she asked Lincoln in "note number two" for a copy 
 of these charges. The President's reply was brief: 
 
 It is not exactly correct, as you say you were told by the elder 
 Mr. Blair, to say that I sent Postmaster-General Blair to St. Louis 
 to examine into that department and report. Postmaster-General 
 Blair did go, with my approbation, to see and converse with Gen. 
 Fremont as a friend. I do not feel authorized to furnish you with 
 copies of letters in my possession, without the consent of the writers. 
 No impression has been made on my mind against the honor or 
 integrity of General Fremont, and I now enter my protest against 
 being understood as acting in any hostility towards him. 
 
 Taken together, Mrs. Fremont's display of temper in Wash- 
 ington and Montgomery Blair's highly prejudiced report con- 
 cerning affairs in St. Louis unquestionably deepened the Presi- 
 dent's feeling that Fremont had been an unfortunate choice for 
 the Western Department. Jessie, having done irreparable harm, 
 turned back to St. Louis. Lincoln still showed patience with 
 the General. But Mrs. Fremont had no patience with any one. 
 Her burning resentment against the Blairs, her belief that they 
 
520 FREMONT 
 
 had devised a conspiracy against her husband, made her any- 
 thing but a calm and prudent assistant at headquarters. She 
 was no sooner back at the Brant Mansion than she inspired 
 another of Fremont's indiscreet steps. 
 
 This was nothing less than the arrest of Frank Blair, Sep- 
 tember 1 8th, on a charge of insubordination. Fremont tele- 
 graphed Cameron that "information of such positive character 
 has come to my knowledge, implicating Col. F. P. Blair, Jr., 
 i st Missouri Volunteers, in insidious and dishonorable efforts 
 to bring my authority into contempt with the government, and 
 to undermine my influence as an officer, that I have ordered 
 him in arrest, and shall submit charges to you for his trial. " 22 
 
 The hatred between the two men was now so intense that 
 neither would listen to reason regarding the other. Blair sin- 
 cerely believed that Fremont was a confused, incompetent 
 trifler whose continued control would soon lose the whole state 
 to the Confederates. Fremont sincerely believed that Blair was 
 an ambitious scoundrel, frequently drunk, and always eager 
 to advance his own fortunes by any means whatever. He and 
 Mrs. Fremont make much in their manuscript Memoirs of the 
 clothing contract and similar matters ; they believed Blair will- 
 ing to wreck the Union cause to satisfy his private plans and 
 grudges. Mrs. Fremont, as Montgomery wrote a friend, was 
 mainly responsible for the arrest — it was "General Jessie's 
 doing." The Postmaster-General sent Fremont a sensible tele- 
 gram, asking his brother's release, and concluding: "This is no 
 time for strife except with the enemies of the country." 23 But 
 for a time Blair refused to be released, demanding a trial at 
 which his charges could be sifted. Meanwhile, St. Louis was in 
 a furor of excitement over the affair, and the Unionist party 
 suffered. 
 
 For both Fremont and the Federal cause, the episode could 
 hardly have occurred at a more unhappy time; for once again 
 a heavy military blow was about to fall. 
 
 22 MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
 23 W. E. Smith, The Blair Family, II, p. 77. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 521 
 
 The military situation in the West had developed rapidly in 
 early September, and had now reached a point where in one 
 quarter it offered the brightest hopes, while in another it 
 threatened a second heavy disaster. The hopeful quarter was 
 the Mississippi River area near and below Cairo and Paducah. 
 Two or three days before Mrs. Fremont set off for Washington, 
 a new brigadier-general named Ulysses S. Grant marched into 
 Paducah, at the mouth of the Tennessee River a short distance 
 below Cairo, and took possession of this portal to a great water- 
 way. He had acted in the nick of time, without orders from 
 Fremont, for Leonidas Polk was about to seize the town. Fre- 
 mont deserves credit, however, for having on August 28th placed 
 Grant in command of southeastern Missouri and southern Il- 
 linois with headquarters at Cairo; the region where the great 
 campaign to open up the Mississippi was certain to develop. He 
 gave Grant written instructions to take possession of points 
 threatened by the Confederates on the Missouri and Kentucky 
 shores. In his manuscript Memoirs the explorer states that he 
 chose Grant for this position, when men near him would have 
 sent General John Pope, because he had discerned his unusual 
 qualities: 
 
 I believed him to be a man of great activity and of promptness 
 in obeying orders without question or hesitation. For that reason 
 I gave General Grant this important command at this critical period. 
 I did not then consider him a great general, for the qualities which 
 led him to success had not had the opportunity for their develop- 
 ment. I selected him for qualities I could not find combined in any 
 other man, for General Grant was of unassuming character, not 
 given to self-elation, of dogged persistence and of iron will. 24 
 
 Grant had the able John A. Rawlins with him. 
 
 A great part of Fremont's troops were now disposed in this 
 quarter, and he looked forward to a rapid advance down the 
 river. The letter he sent to Lincoln by Mrs. Fremont was pri- 
 
 24 MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
522 FREMONT 
 
 marily an outline of this plan, and shows a genuine compre- 
 hension of the strategic situation: 25 
 
 I . . . ask your attention to the position of affairs in Kentucky. As 
 the rebel troops driven out from Missouri had invaded Kentucky 
 in considerable force, and by occupying Union City, Hickman, and 
 Columbus were preparing to seize Paducah and attack Cairo, I 
 judged it impossible, without losing important advantages, to defer 
 any longer a forward movement. For this purpose I have drawn 
 from the Missouri side a part of the force which had been stationed 
 at Bird's Point, Cairo, and Cape Girardeau, to Fort Holt and 
 Paducah, of which places we have taken possession. As the rebel 
 forces outnumber ours, and the counties of Kentucky, between the 
 Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers, as well as those along the latter 
 and the Cumberland, are strongly secessionist, it becomes impera- 
 tively necessary to have the cooperation of the loyal Union forces 
 under Generals Anderson and Nelson, as well as of those already 
 encamped opposite Louisville, under General Rousseau. 
 
 I have reinforced, yesterday, Paducah with two regiments, and 
 will continue to strengthen the position with men and artillery. As 
 soon as Gen. Smith, who commands there, is reinforced sufficiently 
 to enable him to spread his forces, he will have to take and hold 
 Mayfield and Lovelaceville, controlling in this way the mouths of 
 both the Tennessee and the Cumberland Rivers. 
 
 Meanwhile, General Grant would take possession of the entire 
 Cairo and Fulton Railroad, Piketown, New Madrid, and the shore 
 of the Mississippi opposite Hickman and Columbus. The foregoing 
 disposition having been affected, a combined attack will be made 
 upon Columbus, and if successful in that, upon Hickman, while 
 Rousseau and Nelson will move in concert by railroad to Nashville, 
 Tenn., occupying the State capital, and, with an adequate force, 
 New Providence. 
 
 The conclusion of this movement would be a combined advance 
 toward Memphis, on the Mississippi, as well as the Memphis & Ohio 
 Railroad, and I trust the result would be a glorious one to the 
 country. 
 
 25 Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 478. 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 523 
 
 In its main outlines this was a sensible plan, which did credit 
 to Fremont. But while the prospects in this quarter looked 
 bright, in northwest Missouri another defeat was imminent. 
 Here Colonel James A. Mulligan, with the Chicago Irish 
 Brigade and some Illinois and Missouri troops, had just taken 
 up a position at Lexington, some 160 miles up the Missouri 
 River. Reaching it on September 9th, he had hastily thrown 
 up entrenchments. A Confederate army under Sterling Price 
 immediately advanced upon him from southwestern Missouri, 
 where the battle of Wilson's Creek had brought a large influx 
 of Confederate volunteers. Mulligan appealed for reinforce- 
 ments, and labored frenziedly in gathering munitions and 
 forage. After preliminary skirmishing, on September 18th 
 Price began his attack in force. His army far outnumbered the 
 Federals, and the result was never in doubt. Though the Irish 
 soldiers made a gallant defense, their water supply was finally 
 cut off, and on September 21st they were compelled to sur- 
 render. It was an even more stinging reverse than the defeat 
 of Lyon. With a loss of only twenty-five men killed, Price 
 exultantly reported the capture of 3,500 men (including home 
 guards), 7 guns, large quantities of munitions, and $100,000 
 worth of commissary stores. When men realized that a small 
 army had been lost in the center of a supposedly Union State, 
 a tremendous cry of indignation went up. For a week the fate 
 of Lexington had been in the balance, and the press had 
 reported every scene in the drama to an anxious nation. 
 
 The Missouri River, though low at that season, was open. 
 It seemed feasible to send Federal troops up it by steamboat. 
 Union detachments were stationed at various points in north- 
 ern Missouri, some within short marching distance. Why, men 
 demanded, did not Fremont hurry reinforcements to Lexington 
 in time? Frank Blair's organ, the Evening News, carried an 
 angry editorial on September 23rd. Mulligan, it declared, had 
 been confident "that with forty thousand friendly Federal 
 troops within a few days' march of him," he would be rescued. 
 "But the heroic officer calculated too largely on the cooperation 
 
524 FREMONT 
 
 of the authorities at St. Louis." They, with their 40,000 men, 
 their vast stores of munitions, their command of all the rail- 
 roads and steamboats, had let a ragged, ill-armed, unpaid Con- 
 federate army march all the way from Springfield and bag an 
 important town, an army, and invaluable supplies. 
 
 Certainly Fremont should never have sent Mulligan to his 
 exposed position in Lexington without guarding against move- 
 ments which might cut him off. Nevertheless, he was in part 
 the victim of circumstances. His Department, far from having 
 40,000 men available, was desperately poor in properly trained 
 troops. Schuyler Colfax, arriving in St. Louis on September 
 14th, when the whole city was excited by news that Price was 
 advancing upon Lexington, hurried to Fremont and asked if 
 he could not send rescuing troops. The General replied: "Mr. 
 Colfax, I will tell you confidentially how many men we have 
 in St. Louis, though I would not have it published on the streets 
 for my life. The opinion in the city is that we have 20,000 men 
 here, and this gives us strength. If it were known here what 
 was the actual number, our enemies would be promptly in- 
 formed. " He rang for the muster-rolls. They showed that the 
 city had but 6,800 men, home guards and all; and of this force 
 there were only two full regiments, the remainder being frag- 
 mentary, undisciplined detachments of 200 to 600 men. Said 
 Colfax: "This is not really enough for the proper defense of 
 St. Louis; but even so, couldn't you spare some for the emer- 
 gency?" He tells us that tears stood in Fremont's eyes as the 
 General handed him two telegrams. 
 
 One from Secretary Cameron, dated September 14th, stated 
 that the President had determined to call upon him for "five 
 thousand well-armed infantry, to be sent here without a mo- 
 ment's delay." The other was from Winfield Scott of the same 
 date. "Detach five thousand infantry from your department, 
 to come here without delay," it ordered, "and report the num- 
 ber of troops that will be left with you. The President dictates." 
 Colfax asked Fremont if he could not expostulate with the gov- 
 ernment. "No," said he, "that would be insubordination, with 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 525 
 
 which I have already been unjustly charged. The capital must 
 be again in danger, and must be saved, even if Missouri fall 
 and I sacrifice myself." 26 
 
 Fremont hurriedly telegraphed Governors Morton of Indiana 
 and Dennison of Ohio for aid, but both replied that they were 
 under orders to send all available troops to the East. He sent 
 orders on September 13 th and 14th to Generals Pope at Pal- 
 myra, Sturgis at Mexico, and Jefferson C. Davis at Jefferson 
 City, to march troops at once to the relief of Lexington; this 
 a full week before the capitulation. 27 Pope promised that by 
 the 1 8th he would have two full regiments of infantry, a detach- 
 ment of cavalry, and 4 pieces of artillery in the threatened 
 town, and that by the 19th he would have 4,000 soldiers there. 
 Yet none of them arrived. Jefferson C. Davis set out, but let 
 his troops fire into each other in the darkness, and failed to 
 reach his objective. Sturgis came within a few miles of the 
 river opposite Lexington, and then hearing of Price's heavy 
 forces (which rumor exaggerated to 35,000 men), and learning 
 that he had seized the ferries, timidly retired, though if he had 
 hurried on he might have saved the day. In a word, three 
 commanders showed insufficient energy, and Fremont was left 
 to shoulder the blame for their failures. 
 
 It was now a perfect storm of abuse that he faced, and only 
 the fervent belief of great masses of northern haters of slavery 
 in his ability and earnestness enabled him to continue his work. 
 After the Evening News published its bitter editorial on the 
 fall of Lexington, he suppressed it for a day and arrested Blair's 
 friend Charles G. Ramsay, its proprietor — an indiscreet step, 
 for which friendly Eastern newspapers properly criticized him. 
 A malignant letter appeared in the National Intelligencer, 
 asking why with his 60,000 splendidly equipped soldiers, "the 
 very elite of the West," he did not drive the half-naked, ill- 
 armed rebels out of the state. 28 So he now had 60,000 men! 
 
 26 Colfax tells this in Congressional Globe, March 7, 1862, p. 1128. 
 2T Fremont Order Book, Bancroft Library. 
 28 See New York Herald, September 21, 1861. 
 
526 FREMONT 
 
 This letter was reprinted all over the North. Signed "A Mis- 
 sourian," it bore sufficient resemblance to the Evening News 
 editorial to indicate that Frank Blair inspired or wrote it. 
 Despatches from Washington declared that the President and 
 his Cabinet were "amazed" that Fremont had failed to relieve 
 Mulligan. 29 Meanwhile, exaggerated stories of the extravagance 
 in his Department passed from tongue to tongue. His enemies 
 sneered at one of his orders for 500 tons of ice, and talked of 
 the sherry cobblers which his officers expected to enjoy; the 
 fact being that the ice was supplied on a requisition from the 
 surgical staff for use in Western hospitals. He was accused 
 of surrounding himself with a set of sharpers from California, 
 and winking at their thievery. Worst of all, Frank Blair and 
 others gave currency to the report that he was thinking of 
 erecting a western military republic, similar to that which Sam 
 Houston had set up in Texas. It was a ridiculous charge, but 
 it found believers even in Washington. Lincoln's secretary 
 Nicolay left a sealed envelope in his manuscripts endorsed "A 
 private paper, Conversation with the President, October 2, 
 1 861." The first sentence ran: "Fremont ready to rebel." It 
 is safe to say that Fremont never entertained a disloyal thought 
 in his life. 30 
 
 On September 2 6th Frank Blair, who had now been released 
 from arrest, filed formal charges against Fremont, which 
 through Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas were laid before 
 Lincoln. They included neglect of duty, disobedience of orders, 
 conduct unbecoming an officer, extravagance and waste, and 
 despotic and tyrannical conduct. Among the specific charges 
 were Fremont's alleged failure to repair to St. Louis promptly; 
 his neglect to reinforce Lyon and Mulligan; his suffering 
 Brigadier-General Hurlburt, "a common drunkard," to con- 
 tinue in command; his refusal to see people who sought him 
 
 29 New York Herald, Tribune, September 23, 24, 1861. 
 
 30 Helen N. Nicolay, Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln. See Ida M. Tarbell, 
 Lincoln, II, Ch. 24, for Dr. Emil Preetorius's angry statement on this charge. A 
 shrewd St. Louis observer, he pronounces Fremont "a patriot and a most un- 
 selfish man." 
 
FREMONT VS. BLAIR AND LINCOLN 527 
 
 on urgent public business; his violation of Presidential orders 
 in the emancipation proclamation; and his persistence in keep- 
 ing disreputable.persons in his employ. It was a blanket indict- 
 ment. Every one who knew the situation in Missouri was aware 
 that it grossly misrepresented Fremont's conduct there; every 
 one who knew Frank Blair was aware that all his statements 
 demanded a liberal discounting. His fits of temper were always 
 leading him into extravagant utterances and rash acts. The 
 Blair papers reveal that on October 7th Frank Blair was writ- 
 ing his brother Montgomery in the following terms: 31 
 
 I think God has made up his mind to ruin this nation, and that 
 the only way to save it is to kick that pack of old women who 
 compose the Cabinet into the sea. I never since I was born imagined 
 that such a lot of poltroons and apes could be gathered together 
 from the four quarters of the globe as Old Abe has succeeded in 
 bringing together in his Cabinet, and I believe that the first duty 
 of every patriot is to stop fighting Jeff Davis and turn in on our 
 own Government and make something out of it with which to carry 
 on the war against the traitors. Jeff Davis and his whole crew 
 have not done us half the harm that has been inflicted upon the 
 country by the cowardice, ignorance, and stupidity of Lincoln's 
 Administration. 
 
 At a later date the nation learned more about Frank Blair's 
 infirmities of temper; in 1868 his wild utterances cost the 
 Democratic ticket of Seymour and Blair all its slender chances 
 of victory. But at this time his name was still potent and his 
 charges impressed the country. The New York Times under 
 Henry J. Raymond took them up and called for Fremont's dis- 
 missal. The harried commander in St. Louis could now see how 
 much his failure to conciliate the powerful Blair clan was cost- 
 ing him. Whether Fremont was right or Frank Blair was right 
 on specific matters of fact was a minor question. The major 
 consideration was that their quarrel was dividing the Unionists 
 of Missouri into two glowering factions, and was going far 
 
 31 Smith, The Blair Family, II, pp. 83, 84. 
 
528 FREMONT 
 
 toward paralyzing all their activities in the war. Such a division 
 could not long be tolerated. And no matter how much of the 
 right was on Fremont's side, Lincoln could not forget that 
 Montgomery Blair was in his Cabinet; he, who thought con- 
 stantly of the wavering border, could never forget that the 
 Blairs were the most powerful personal force in the Border 
 States. He was still keenly resentful of the radical demand that 
 he make the extinction of slavery a direct object of the war, 
 and he knew Fremont was a radical hero. 
 
The End of the "Hundred Days" 
 
 THE first summer of the War was passing into autumn; 
 McClellan was still drilling his Army of the Potomac, 
 still sneering at the Administration in letters to his 
 wife, still exaggerating the forces of the enemy; Secretary 
 Cameron was rapidly losing the confidence of intelligent ob- 
 servers; and northerners looked back upon a series of defeats — 
 Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, Wilson's Creek, Lexington — with 
 scarcely a victory to counterbalance them. The uneasy nation 
 was beginning to demand that the Administration give it com- 
 manders who would move forward and win victories. To this 
 demand, McClellan was deaf; while Fremont, with a weaker 
 and much more poorly equipped force, was necessarily keenly 
 aware of it. Working night and day under a sword of Damocles, 
 he knew that within a few weeks the thread which sustained it 
 would probably break. He had but one hope. Before those 
 weeks expired, he must win a victory which would restore his 
 prestige and cause the Administration to stay its hand. 
 
 Fremont had realized this fact at once when Lexington fell. 
 Reporting the disaster to Winfield Scot, he added, in an effort 
 to forestall criticism: "I am taking the field myself, and hope 
 to destroy the enemy, either before or after the junction of the 
 forces under McCulloch. Please notify the President immedi- 
 ately." Scott replied that the President was glad to see him 
 hastening to the scene of action; "his words are, 'he expects you 
 to repair the disaster at Lexington without loss of time.' " 
 
 Sterling Price, with his booty and prisoners, was retreating 
 from Lexington to join McCulloch's army in southwestern Mis- 
 souri. Fremont at once reorganized his available troops in five 
 
 529 
 
530 FREMONT 
 
 divisions, and ordered the commanders, Pope, McKinstry, 
 Hunter, Sigel, and Asboth, to concentrate at Springfield, still 
 held by the enemy. It was easy to give the order, but for the 
 commanders to obey was a different matter; for the divisions 
 were without adequate transportation, rations, uniforms, or 
 munitions for a campaign. Congresman Gurley was frenziedly 
 writing Lincoln on October ist that the lack of supplies was 
 scandalous, and that if Fremont were not given men, money, 
 and arms, even St. Louis might fall. 
 
 Although Lincoln had now virtually made up his mind to re- 
 move Fremont, with his usual patience he determined first to 
 send Secretary Cameron, who had inclined to Fremont's side, 
 to make a personal inquiry. 1 He gave Cameron authority to 
 displace the General at once if he thought it expedient, but 
 asked for careful action. The Secretary stopped in St. Louis, 
 where he talked with the Blair-Gamble group, and received a 
 vivid impression of the schism in the Union ranks. Near the 
 middle of October he reached Fremont's new field headquarters 
 at Tipton, Missouri. He found the camp in confusion, with the 
 troops badly in need of arms, ammunition, and clothing. Evi- 
 dently Cameron had made up his mind in St. Louis to remove 
 Fremont, but he now — seeing the general's energy — changed it: 
 
 I had an interview with General Fremont [he wrote Lincoln on 
 October 14th], and in conversation with him showed him an order 
 for his removal. He is very much mortified, pained, and, I thought, 
 humiliated. He made an earnest appeal to me, saying that he had 
 come to Missouri, at the request of the government, to assume a 
 very responsible command, and that when he reached this state he 
 found himself without troops and without any preparations for 
 an army; that he had exerted himself, as he believed, with great 
 
 1 Attorney-General Edward Bates wrote his brother-in-law, Governor 
 Gamble, on September 27th: "I thought (I wrote so to several of my friends at 
 St. Louis) that Fremont would certainly be relieved, but this day I find that 
 that result is not probable, therefore I am in deep trouble on account of our 
 
 poor betrayed and sacrificed state General Fremont is not to be removed — 
 
 at least until he has had a full opportunity to retrieve his fortunes, or to ruin 
 our state utterly and endanger our cause." 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 531 
 
 energy, and now had around him a fine army, with everything to 
 make success certain; that he was now in pursuit of his enemy, 
 whom he believed were now within his reach; and that to recall 
 him at this moment would not only destroy him, but render his 
 whole expedition useless. In reply to this appeal, I told him that I 
 would withhold the order until my return to Washington, giving 
 him the interim to prove the reality of his hopes as to reaching and 
 capturing the enemy, giving him to understand that, should he 
 fail, he must give place to some other officer. He assured me that, 
 should he fail, he would resign at once. 2 
 
 Both Pope and Hunter gave Cameron a highly unfavorable 
 opinion of Fremont's military capacity and acts, and both re- 
 garded the apparent plan of campaign with mystified astonish- 
 ment. Nevertheless, Fremont was actively taking the field 
 while McClellan, with every advantage of supplies and official 
 support, was still drilling his army in Virginia. Cameron did 
 well to refrain from dismissing a commander really eager to 
 fight. 
 
 But from the moment he left St. Louis Fremont felt that he 
 was between two enemies, the Confederates in front, his per- 
 sonal assailants in the rear. Frank Blair was continuing his 
 attacks with increasing bitterness. Released from arrest at 
 Montomery's request on September 24th, he had been stung 
 to rage by rebukes from Fremont, who accused him of using 
 his family position to lay deliberately false statements before 
 the President. In submitting his formal charges against Fre- 
 mont, Blair published a letter to Adjutant-General Lorenzo 
 Thomas which answered this accusation in withering terms. 3 
 For this and his continued efforts to undermine the General, 
 Fremont had him rearrested; and though this episode was soon 
 terminated, it left him (as his biographer says) a raging lion. 
 With Blair against him, with provisional-Governor Gamble 
 against him, with several of his own generals against him, 
 Fremont was in an agonizing position. Just before leaving St. 
 
 2 Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IV, p. 430. 
 
 3 Published in New York Herald, October 9, 186 1. 
 
532 FREMONT 
 
 Louis for the field he poured out his bitter emotions in a letter 
 to a New York friend: 4 
 
 I . . . send you this hurried note in the midst of the last arrange- 
 ments before leaving. 
 
 We have to contend with an enemy having no posts to garrison 
 and no lines of transportation to defend or guard, whose whole 
 force can be turned at will to any one point, while we have from 
 Leavenworth and from Fort Scott to Paducah to keep protected. 
 
 I wish to say to you that, though the position is difficult, I am 
 competent to it, and also to meet the enemy in the field. I am not 
 able at the same time to attend to the enemy at home. It is a shame 
 to the country that an officer going to the field, his life in his hands, 
 solely actuated by the desire to serve his country and win for him- 
 self its good opinions, with no other objects, should be destroyed 
 by a system of concentrated attacks utterly without foundation. 
 Charges are spoken of when there are none to be made. What is the 
 object of the repetition of these falsehoods, except to familiarize the 
 public mind to the idea that something is wrong? Already our 
 credit, which was good, is shaken in consequence of the newspaper 
 intimations of my being removed. Money is demanded by those 
 furnishing supplies. To defend myself would require the time that 
 is necessary to and belongs to my duty against the enemy. If per- 
 mitted by the country, this state of things will not fail to bring on 
 disorder. ... My private character comes in only incidentally. I de- 
 fend it because, naturally, his reputation is dear to any man; but 
 only incidentally. This is the foundation of many of my acts, and 
 will be if I stay here. Everything that hurts, impedes, or embarrasses 
 the work entrusted to me I strike at without hesitation. I take the 
 consequences. The worst that can happen to me is relief from great 
 labor. 
 
 The advance toward southwestern Missouri in pursuit of 
 Price's retreating army lurched forward as rapidly as unfavor- 
 able circumstances would allow. When Fremont and his staff 
 
 4 Published in St. Louis Democrat, September 28, 1861. This journal, like the 
 Republic, was as friendly to Fremont as the Evening News was hostile. But 
 Frank Blair believed that Fremont had obtained their friendship by a mixture 
 of threats and material inducements. 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 533 
 
 reached Jefferson City on September 27, 1861, they found a 
 multitude of difficulties awaiting them at Camp Lilly, as the 
 place had been named in honor of his daughter. A thousand 
 wagons sent him from the East had proved to be made of rotten 
 wood, and were breaking down everywhere on the roads and 
 in the streets. 5 By October 7th, all the troops which Fremont 
 had been able to collect were on the road for Tipton, one hun- 
 dred sixty miles from St. Louis, where they again paused. 
 Rations were scanty, and sometimes the men were on half their 
 proper allowance of food. Large herds of cattle had to be col- 
 lected by foraging parties and tons of corn brought in to be 
 ground at Fremont's portable mills. The dearth of horses and 
 vehicles continued, and the march, as one young aide said, was 
 a continual "wait for the wagon." 
 
 Yet the obstacles were slowly overcome, and Fremont's hopes 
 rose higher and higher. Writing to Jessie in St. Louis, he de- 
 clared that his men would emulate the fine marches of the 
 California Battalion. "The army is in the best of spirits, and 
 before we get through I will show you a little California prac- 
 tise, that is, if we are not interrupted." Dreams of a spectacular 
 achievement floated before his eyes. He would scatter Price's 
 army and push rapidly on south. "My plan is New Orleans 
 straight," he wrote, "Foote to join on the river below. I think 
 
 it can be done gloriously, especially if secrecy can be kept 
 
 It would precipitate the war forward and end it soon and vic- 
 toriously." 6 
 
 Mid-October found his steadily growing army under way for 
 Warsaw on the Osage River, where the fleeing Price had burned 
 the bridge behind him. Here a trained engineer, using men 
 from the ranks, succeeded in stretching a pontoon bridge, eight 
 hundred feet long, across the stream within thirty-six hours. 
 Some of the lumber came from the demolition of old houses, 
 but most of it was cut green in the neighboring woods. It was 
 no sooner finished than the army was streaming forward again 
 
 5 John R. Howard, Remembrance of Things Past, Ch. 19. 
 
 6 Jessie Benton Fremont, The Story of the Guard, pp. 72^., 85. 
 
534 FREMONT 
 
 upon Springfield, the key to that section of the state and the 
 city near which Lyon had met defeat two months earlier. The 
 General had communicated his dream of a march down the 
 Mississippi to his men, and the watchword went about: "New 
 Orleans and home again by summer!" 7 
 
 Fremont paid little heed to obstacles in this march, and 
 where horses and wagons were lacking, sent off into the country 
 about for them. He had established supply depots with about 
 a million rations at Tipton and two million at Jefferson City; 
 but he was enough of a frontiersman to know how to subsist in 
 large part on the country and to meet problems as they arose. 
 Food taken from loyal citizens was paid for in government 
 orders; that taken from secessionists was simply confiscated. 8 
 Most of his division commanders showed the same spirit and 
 cooperated zealously in the advance. The glaring exception was 
 John Pope, whose unexpected failure to reinforce Mulligan at 
 Lexington, after promising to do so, still rankled in Fremont's 
 mind. "Pope," said Frank Blair later, out of intimate knowl- 
 edge, 9 "is a braggart and a liar, with some courage, perhaps, 
 but not much capacity." Rising in time to high command, he 
 made an utter botch of his brief campaign against Lee. He had 
 done well in stamping out the guerrilla warfare in northern 
 Missouri, but he now showed nothing less than a spirit of in- 
 subordination. 
 
 When Fremont ordered him to join in the forward movement, 
 Pope wrote Hunter that he was stupefied by the way in which 
 the General ignored actual conditions. "There is not transporta- 
 tion enough," he declared, "to move this army one hundred 
 yards." He complained that the troops had not been properly 
 organized into brigades and divisions, and that he had no 
 supply trains or cavalry. These statements were partly in- 
 accurate, and showed a disposition to magnify every possible 
 difficulty. The ragged, ill-armed, ill-supplied Confederates, 
 
 7 Ibid., pp. 45, 46. 
 
 8 MS Memoirs, Bancroft Library. 
 
 9 Welles, Diary, I, pp. 104, 119. 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 535 
 
 living on the country, found no difficulty in moving where they 
 liked. Pope had caught the spirit of contempt for Fremont in 
 certain St. Louis and Washington circles, and knew that power- 
 ful men would only too gladly support his recalcitrance. To 
 Hunter, he wrote a few days later in a tone of sheer impudent 
 scorn of his commander: 10 
 
 I received your note yesterday morning and I am really sorry I 
 could not come down to see you before I left Syracuse. I am anxious 
 to know the result of the Secretary's visit and its object. Upon 
 his action on the subject, in my judgment, rests the safety of this 
 command from great suffering. If we attempt to go south of the 
 Osage without supplies for at least a month, and without much 
 better preparation for everything that exists now, I do not believe 
 that one half of these troops will ever return alive. The winter is 
 coming on us. The men of this division are without overcoats, their 
 clothes in rags, and only one blanket apiece; no provision trains or 
 depots organized, and, so far as I can see, no object in view. 
 
 I shall, however, move from here and occupy the point desig- 
 nated, with five regiments, being all I can get anything like trans- 
 portation for. I can, perhaps, carry eight or ten days' rations for 
 the five regiments by making very short marches 
 
 Each division commander is left to himself. I don't know where 
 to look for provisions short of St. Louis, or where for quartermaster 
 or any other stores, short of the same place, neither do I know to 
 whom I can apply for anything this side of St. Louis. I have written 
 and telegraphed for 300,000 rations, as I intend to establish at 
 Otterville a depot of provisions and of such stores as I can get for 
 my own command. Altogether, this is the most remarkable campaign 
 I ever saw, heard of, or read of. 
 
 Fremont was led by his scouts to believe that at a point a 
 little beyond Springfield the Confederates would face about 
 and give battle. We now know that this was actually their 
 intention. Price wrote his superiors: xl 
 
 10 Copy in Fremont MSS, dated October 18, 1861 ; Compare Official Records, 
 Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 527. 
 
 II Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, pp. 731, 732. 
 
536 FREMONT 
 
 I am now falling back on Pineville, where General McCulloch and 
 myself have concluded to make a stand. Should the Federal forces 
 advance from Springfield for the purpose of attacking us, we will 
 act on the defensive, depending on the rugged nature of the country 
 to compensate for any inequality in numbers. Our position will be 
 so chosen that we will be able to make our artillery effective 
 
 McCulloch also wrote that he had agreed with Price to fight 
 a battle in Missouri, although the combined Confederate armies 
 amounted only to about seventeen thousand men, and he feared 
 the outcome. Pineville is a county seat in the extreme south- 
 western corner of Missouri. But Pope, Hunter, and the Wash- 
 ington authorities, lacking Fremont's special information, felt 
 almost certain that the Confederates would not pause until they 
 were safe in the wilds of Arkansas, and that Fremont was con- 
 ducting a wildgoose chase. To Pope, it seemed a criminal enter- 
 prise, and he wrote Hunter: 12 
 
 When our forces have succeeded in reaching Neosho, or Arkansas 
 itself, what is to be accomplished, or rather what does any sane 
 man suppose will be the result? The prospect before us is appalling, 
 and we seem to be led by madmen. Of course, Gen. Fremont and 
 the men around him, whose official existence depends upon his not 
 being superseded, are desperate. But should they be permitted to 
 drag to destruction, or at least to great and unnecessary suffering, 
 the 30,000 men of this army, for no other purpose than to save, if 
 possible, their own official lives? 
 
 While Major Zagonyi and his so-called Fremont Bodyguard 
 of picked cavalrymen, 150 strong, were delivering a victorious 
 and memorable charge against the Confederate garrison at 
 Springfield, 13 and while Fremont's army was pushing beyond 
 that town, the sands of the President's patience were running 
 out. He feared the loss of invaluable troops in the hills of 
 
 12 Copy in Fremont MSS; Pope to Hunter, October 26, 1861. 
 
 13 For accounts of this spirited affair see Moore, Rebellion Record, III, pp. 
 2 3S- 2 39- Zagonyi had three companies, while the garrison numbered 2,000 men. 
 Zagonyi wrote that he had never seen such bravery as his cavalry showed: 
 "Their war cry, 'Fremont and the Union,' broke forth like thunder." 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 537 
 
 Arkansas. Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas had gone to St. 
 Louis with Cameron and made an inspection of his own; and 
 upon his return he published a report caustically arraigning 
 Fremont for incompetence, extravagance, and irregularity. 14 
 Thomas had moved exclusively in the Blair circle in Missouri 
 and formed his conclusions there. He declared, naturally enough, 
 that in the opinion of many observers Fremont "is more fond 
 of the pomp than of the realities of the war — that his mind is 
 incapable of fixed attention or strong concentration — that by 
 his mismanagement of affairs since his arrival in Missouri, the 
 State has almost been lost — and that if he is continued in 
 command the worst results may be anticipated." This conclu- 
 sion he supported by a series of hearsay allegations. Obviously, 
 none but a prejudiced witness would talk about the state being 
 lost when order was wholly restored and the last important 
 Confederate force was scurrying for Arkansas. It was widely 
 known that Thomas disliked Fremont, that he had opposed 
 Fremont's appointment, and that from the beginning he had 
 spoken abusively of Fremont. 15 It was also obvious that his 
 allegations, when analyzed, contained little specific evidence. 
 He reported that there had been irregularities in the pay de- 
 partment, and that the chief paymaster complained of im- 
 proper orders; that the quartermaster in St. Louis instanced 
 confused and irregular requisitions; and that many people were 
 suspicious of the contracts Fremont had let. While all this was 
 true, irregularities and fraudulent contracts marked every 
 stage of the initial war effort East and West, from Cameron's 
 office down; the country could better condone them than ex- 
 cessive caution and inactivity. Of such evidence as a court of 
 law would admit Thomas offered little. Nevertheless, as a gen- 
 eral impression his report was damaging. 
 
 And, unfortunately for Fremont, Thomas by no means stood 
 alone. General Hunter had categorically told Cameron that he 
 
 14 Official Records, Series I, Vol. Ill, p. 54off.; New York Tribune, October 
 30, 1861. 
 
 15 Jessie Benton Fremont, Story of the Guard, pp. 86, 87. 
 
538 FREMONT 
 
 did not think Fremont fit for the command. Lincoln had hoped 
 that Fremont would make Hunter his adviser and guide; but 
 the two had not got on — Hunter underrated Fremont, and Fre- 
 mont, thinking that Hunter wished to harass him, detached him 
 for a comparatively unimportant field command. Brigadier- 
 General S. R. Curtis of St. Louis expressed the same conclusion. 
 "In my judgment," he wrote the President, "General Fremont 
 lacks the intelligence, the experience, and the sagacity neces- 
 sary to his command." 16 
 
 At the same time Elihu B. Washburne, who visited St. Louis 
 at the head of a Congressional subcommittee upon government 
 contracts, wrote members of the Administration that "such 
 robbery, fraud, extravagance, peculation as have developed in 
 Fremont's department can hardly be conceived of." He spoke of 
 a "horde of pirates" ruining the credit of the government. 17 
 His phraseology was exaggerated; he had accepted without in- 
 dependent investigation the stories of the Blair circle and of 
 some disappointed contractors; moreover, he was an economical 
 Yankee (later known in Congress as a Treasury Watchdog) 
 who had not yet grasped the fact that it is impossible to wage 
 war without a lavish expenditure. All Fremont's contracts for 
 fortification, supplies, foodstuffs, arms, steamboats, and so on, 
 totaled only about twelve million dollars. At the moment, how- 
 ever, Washburne's voice carried great weight. Moreover, even 
 men cordially disposed toward Fremont joined the chorus of 
 criticism. Gustav Koerner wrote his wife that the confusion 
 was preposterous and that he might resign at any time. The 
 evidence for the essential features of the indictment against 
 the General seemed overwhelming. 
 
 It was a bizarre situation. It was bizarre in that the com- 
 mander of the West, while thus denounced as incompetent by 
 
 16 Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IV, Ch. 24. A friend of Governor Gamble's in 
 Washington, Charles Gibson, also preferred charges against Fremont to the 
 President; Gibson to Gamble, September 27, 1861 (Gamble Papers). 
 
 17 See his letter to Chase, October 31, 1861 (Chase MSS). Gideon Welles 
 states that Washburne had the reputation of being the meanest man in the 
 House; Diary, I, p. 234. 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 539 
 
 a vigorous group in Missouri and by the Administration's best 
 observers, was regarded with admiring devotion by his army, 
 applauded by most Unionists of the state, and looked upon 
 as a hero by nearly all the radicals of the North. It was bizarre 
 in that Fremont, exalted one hour by his expectation of crush- 
 ing Price's army and turning triumphantly against the Con- 
 federates on the Mississippi, was depressed the next by Pope's 
 and Hunter's insubordination and the fear of a sudden re- 
 moval. His letters to Jessie show a feverish alternation of hope 
 and despair. Just as he had the West well in hand, he felt that 
 he was being stabbed in the back. "I assure you I am getting 
 pretty well tired of being badgered in this way," he wrote, with 
 an express threat of resignation. 18 To drop his load would be a 
 relief, he added; but he could not think calmly of the scoun- 
 drels who were throwing away brave lives and imperiling the 
 war to gratify their base ambitions. 
 
 To Lincoln it appeared that a change was imperative. Yet 
 even at the last he acted with characteristic forbearance. 
 Attorney-General Bates's diary shows that as late as October 
 22nd the Cabinet hesitated, with Seward, Chase, and Cameron 
 all for delay, and the President in "painful and mortifying 
 doubt." On October 24th, Lincoln wrote an order relieving 
 Fremont from his command, which was to be given to General 
 Hunter; and he despatched it by a personal friend to General 
 Curtis in St. Louis: 
 
 Dear Sir [he wrote Curtis], On receipt of this, with the accom- 
 panying enclosures, you will take safe, certain, and suitable measures 
 to have the enclosure addressed to Major-General Fremont delivered 
 to him with all reasonable dispatch, subject to these conditions 
 only, that if, when General Fremont shall be reached by the mes- 
 senger — yourself or anyone sent by you — he shall then have, in 
 personal command, fought and won a battle, or shall then be in 
 the immediate presence of the enemy in expectation of a battle, it 
 is not to be delivered, but held for further orders. After, and not 
 
 18 Jessie Benton Fremont, The Story of the Guard, p. 174$. 
 
540 FREMONT 
 
 till after, the delivery to General Fremont, let the inclosure ad- 
 dressed to General Hunter be delivered to him. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the final scene of the "hundred 
 days" was played out. Fremont's army on November 2nd was 
 encamped just beyond Springfield, with all dispositions made 
 for an immediate advance and battle; for on information fur- 
 nished him by Generals Sigel and Asboth, division commanders, 
 he learned that the advance guard of the enemy was on Wilson's 
 Creek, nine miles distant. The spirit of the troops was high. With 
 nearly all of them the commander was enormously popular, and 
 they were convinced that a victory was at hand. He was sere- 
 naded and cheered at every opportunity. The official messenger 
 with the order of dismissal entered the camp by stratagem, and 
 after much difficulty in gaining an audience was taken at night- 
 fall before Fremont. 
 
 The general [he tells us], was sitting at the end of quite a long 
 table facing the door by which I entered. I never can forget the 
 appearance of the man as he sat there, with his piercing eye and his 
 hair parted in the middle. I ripped from my coat lining the docu- 
 ment, which had been sewed in there, and handed the same to him, 
 which he nervously took and opened. He glanced at the superscrip- 
 tion, and then at the signature at the bottom, not looking at the 
 contents. A frown came over his brow, and he slammed the papers 
 down on the table and said, "Sir, how did you get admission into 
 my lines?" 19 
 
 Fremont had lost his command — lost it under circumstances 
 of the most humiliating character. Many of his officers were 
 dismissed with him, without pay, on the ground that their com- 
 missions had been irregularly issued. But the sting of the blow 
 was largely taken away by the outburst of feeling which it pro- 
 duced in his army and all over the North. 
 
 The intelligence, spreading like a prairie fire through the 
 camps at Springfield, aroused indescribable indignation and 
 
 19 Tarbell, Lincoln, II, Ch. 24. Fremont writes: "The order had been hurried 
 forward by General Hunter, who superseded me." Battles and Leaders, I, p. 287. 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 541 
 
 excitement. 20 Officers by the dozen declared they would resign 
 at once. Many companies threw down their arms, saying they 
 would fight under nobody but Fremont. Impromptu mass-meet- 
 ings were held in every tented street. The General had to spend 
 much of the evening expostulating with officers and men and 
 urging them to stick by their posts. The German soldiers talked 
 loudly of resisting General Hunter when he came to assume 
 command, and Fremont felt impelled to issue strict orders that 
 there should be no insubordination and no demonstration when 
 he left. Finally the troops quieted down, but their spirit was 
 gone. "It would be impossible to exaggerate the gloom which 
 pervaded our camps," wrote the New York Herald's corre- 
 spondent of the scene the next morning, "and nothing but 
 General Fremont's urgent endeavors prevented it from ripen- 
 ing into general mutiny." Hunter was delayed in arriving to 
 assume the command. Every one believed still that the enemy 
 was close in front, and that but for this change of command a 
 decisive success might have been achieved. Finally, toward 
 evening of November 3rd, Fremont promised the officers who 
 thronged his quarters that if Hunter did not arrive, he would 
 lead the army to the attack next morning. 
 
 There ensued one of the strangest scenes of the war. "I never 
 saw anything at all approaching the excitement this announce- 
 ment created," wrote an observer. 21 Officers ran from the head- 
 quarters shouting the news. Men threw their hats in air. Wave 
 after wave of cheering arose, spreading from camp to camp 
 and growing more remote as distant regiments heard the news. 
 Band after band began to play, and soon twelve of them were 
 massed in front of the General's tent, serenading him simul- 
 taneously. The universal depression changed to exultant joy, 
 and everybody prepared to start for the battle-field at daylight. 
 A battle might soon have taken place, for McCulloch really did 
 await the attack. He later reported to the Confederate gov- 
 
 20 New York Herald, Springfield correspondence, November 3, 4, 1861. 
 S1 Ibid., November 8, 1861. 
 
542 FREMONT 
 
 ernment that he intended to turn and fight, the ground to be 
 selected by Price and himself. 
 
 But unfortunately for the soldiers' hopes, at ten that night 
 Hunter arrived. Fremont handed over the command, and pre- 
 pared to leave the next day. The generals spent two hours in 
 conference, and Fremont outlined his plan of battle. But Hunter 
 had received strict orders from Lincoln that he was not to 
 continue a risky pursuit of the elusive Confederates. "You are 
 not likely to overtake Price," wrote Lincoln, "and are in danger 
 of making too long a line from your own base of supplies and 
 reinforcements." The President clearly implied his condemna- 
 tion of what he supposed to be Fremont's general strategy: 
 "While, as stated in the beginning of the letter, a large discre- 
 tion must be and is left with yourself, I feel sure that an indefi- 
 nite pursuit of Price, or an attempt by this long and circuitous 
 route to reach Memphis, will be exhaustive beyond endurance, 
 and will end in the loss of the whole force engaged in it." 
 
 In St. Louis, the news of Fremont's arrival produced the 
 same shock of excitement and anger, followed by the same 
 general gloom. Citizens put their flags at half mast or draped 
 them with black. Soldiers dashed their arms to the cobblestones 
 in the streets, declaring that they were through with the war. 
 The local authorities were fearful, as on an earlier occasion 
 when a false rumor of Fremont's dismissal had been published, 
 that a mob would lynch Frank Blair and his associates, and the 
 angriest threats were heard against Blair's life. When Fremont 
 arrived in the city on November 8th he was met by a tumultu- 
 ous assemblage, which welcomed him with bands of music, 
 and cheering vociferously, surrounded his headquarters. A com- 
 mittee of German-Americans read a complimentary address, 
 and handed him a set of resolutions, declaring that "we recog- 
 nize in John C. Fremont the embodiment of our patriotic feel- 
 ing and political faith," that "he has performed his arduous 
 and responsible tasks with all possible energy and honesty," 
 and that they believed that "a wise Providence may have 
 reserved him for a still wider sphere of action in future 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 543 
 
 times." 22 Jessie, who had denounced the treatment of her hus- 
 band, left to organize and lead his army without money or the 
 moral aid of the government, as "treason," was with him to 
 lend her comfort and voice a resentment which he never pub- 
 licly expressed. 
 
 Unquestionably, Lincoln did wisely in removing Fremont. 
 The antagonisms he had aroused would alone have made his 
 continuance in command impossible. Nevertheless, a great body 
 of observers in Missouri believed then and always that he had 
 acted, not merely with high patriotism, but with sagacity and 
 efficiency. Many members of his command defended both his 
 integrity and devotion. One of his soldiers, George E. Waring, 
 Jr., later eminent as a civic leader in New York, records in his 
 autobiography: "He was the life and the soul of his army, and 
 it was cruelly wronged in his removal." The views of his adher- 
 ents are well expressed in a letter which W. G. Eliot, later 
 president of Washington University, a close and shrewd ob- 
 server of Missouri events, had written Secretary Chase late in 
 October: 23 
 
 I can easily understand that to unfriendly eyes Gen. Fremont 
 may have laid himself open to censure in many particulars. There 
 has been at times a degree of military demonstration, a seeming 
 tendency to extravagant parade, a boldness in taking responsibility 
 even at the risk of exceeding his authority, that has surprised and 
 alarmed the semi-loyal. Even some hearty Unionists have doubted 
 his wisdom and desired a greater degree of conciliation and caution. 
 But we must consider the extreme difficulty of his position. Many 
 things which would be wrong in time of peace, are right and wise 
 in time of war, and promptness of action is sometimes better than 
 
 22 Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 494. 
 
 23 Fremont MSS. Eliot (of the same family as the president of Harvard) 
 was a bold opponent of slavery, an active assistant of Lyon and Blair in the 
 opening days of the war, and one of the leaders in the Western Sanitary Com- 
 mission — the appointment of which by Fremont was an important and valuable 
 act. It has been said of him {Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Biography, II, 325) that 
 "he was engaged in all sorts of public and philanthropic enterprises, and has 
 probably done more for the advancement of St. Louis and all the Southwest 
 than any other man that has ever lived in that section." His judgment demands 
 respect. 
 
544 FREMONT 
 
 caution and refusal to take responsibility. It should be remembered 
 that Fremont assumed command at a time of the greatest difficulty, 
 just after the Manassas disaster, when the Union cause was at the 
 lowest ebb. He found St. Louis terribly demoralized. The Secession- 
 ists were in ecstasies, and had little doubt of speedy success. One 
 of them openly said to me that "there was a bullet moulded for 
 every Yankee Abolitionist in St. Louis." Many of our wealthiest 
 men openly declared themselves for the South. At one of the most 
 conspicuous corners of the city, Fifth and Pine Streets, in the well- 
 known Berthold mansion, the Confederate headquarters were estab- 
 lished, with the Confederate flag conspicuously flying, and recruits 
 were openly enlisted for the Confederate cause. The city authorities 
 did not dare to interfere. There was not a United States flag to be 
 seen anywhere, and Union men spoke with bated breath. The city 
 was not secure from insurrection or the State from secession. 
 
 Now without going into details, at the end of two or three weeks 
 after Fremont's arrival, everything was changed. The Union flag 
 went up and the Confederate flag came down. The secession head- 
 quarters were closed, and troops of Union soldiers from Iowa and 
 Illinois and Missouri poured into the city attracted by the prestige 
 of Fremont's name. The bold demonstration of strength created 
 strength. The prompt declaration of martial law throughout the 
 State, by many denounced as an extreme measure, held in check 
 the disloyal tendencies, and in a short time gave a totally new 
 aspect to affairs. By erection of earthworks around the city, em- 
 ployment at high wages was given to two or three thousand dis- 
 contented laborers, all of whom were required to take the oath of 
 allegiance, thus controlling effectually the most unruly part of the 
 population. 
 
 The general result is that the city is now safe from attack or in- 
 surrection. The defences around it are equal to an army of 20,000 
 men for resisting an attacking force, and for the control of the city 
 itself. I do not know that they were strictly necessary from a mili- 
 tary point of view, but the moral effect has been great, and if any 
 unexpected reverses should occur, they will be of great use. So 
 long as the city is held, the pacification of the State is only a 
 question of time. St. Louis may be now regarded as a thoroughly 
 loyal city. The thought of secession is getting to be absurd. Such 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 545 
 
 is now the public sentiment of the better classes and the final 
 settlement seems sure. 
 
 I do not claim that the whole credit of this great change belongs 
 to Fremont, but he has been the responsible leader, and as the 
 blame of every disaster is laid upon him, he should have a meas- 
 urable share of the praise for what is good. A commander-in-chief 
 is properly judged by the general effect of his administration, rather 
 than by the special incidents of progress. He is sorely blamed for 
 not sending reinforcements to General Lyon, but I doubt if he could 
 have done so consistently with his more imperative duties in the 
 occupation of Cairo and Bird's Point, which were sharply threat- 
 ened by the Confederate forces. The official documents will show. 
 
 I have almost no personal acquaintance with Gen. Fremont, and 
 have nothing to lose or gain through him, except as a loyal citizen 
 of Missouri. I am pleading not for him, but for the cause he repre- 
 sents. He is now at the head of an enthusiastic army, almost in the 
 presence of the enemy. It would not only be unjust and unfair but 
 unwise, to supersede him until a battle is fought. 
 
 But outside Missouri a great number of Fremont's adherents 
 cared little about defending the details of his military adminis- 
 tration. He had become a symbol. To a multitude in the North 
 and the West his name stood for the radical demand that the 
 abolition of slavery be made an object of the war. If the modi- 
 fication of his proclamation had caused a storm, his removal 
 now aroused a perfect hurricane of wrath. The very threat of 
 it had checked recruiting in Ohio and other states. Many felt 
 implicit confidence in him, and no attack by Frank Blair or 
 Lorenzo Thomas could shake it. In Cincinnati a great county 
 mass meeting had cheered his proclamation "with the wildest 
 outburst of continued applause that was ever witnessed" there, 
 "screaming, yelling, stamping, whooping, throwing hats, and 
 embracing each other." 24 In New England men had agreed with 
 Garrison's Liberator, which greeted it with a "Laus Deo/' as 
 "the beginning of the end." Ben Wade had written Fremont in 
 the middle of October that "all your enemies have yet been able 
 
 24 Chase MSS, September 15th, to October 1st, contain many letters defend- 
 ing Fremont and picturing the popular anger over his treatment. 
 
546 FREMONT 
 
 to do has not in the least shaken the unbounded confidence 
 which the people have ever had in you, and we all hope you 
 will persevere in the course you have thus far pursued. No 
 greater misfortune could befall the country than that you 
 should retire at this period." 25 Now that the blow had fallen 
 thousands were embittered and angry. Whittier wrote: 
 
 Thy error, Fremont, simply was to act 
 A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact, 
 And, taking counsel but of common sense, 
 To strike at cause as well as consequence. 
 
 O, never yet since Roland wound his horn 
 At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown 
 Far-heard, wide-echoing, startling as thine own, 
 Heard from the van of Freedom's hope forlorn! 
 
 Secretary Chase's confidential agent in St. Louis had in- 
 formed him at the first ill-founded report of Fremont's removal 
 that "if the President had emptied the arsenals of the govern- 
 ment into the camps of the rebels, he could not have so effec- 
 tively strengthened them." His agent in Pittsburgh wrote him 
 that some capitalists there were so enraged that they would not 
 put a cent into government securities: 
 
 Is it known to the Administration [demanded the editor of the 
 Cincinnati Gazette in a letter to Chase] , that the West is threatened 
 with a revolution? Could you have been among the people yester- 
 day, and witnessed the excitement; could you have seen sober citi- 
 zens pulling from their walls and trampling under foot the portrait 
 of the President; and could you hear today the expressions of all 
 classes of men, of all political parties, you would, I think, feel as 
 I feel, and as every sincere friend of the government must feel, 
 alarmed. 
 
 Professor C. E. Stowe of Andover, Massachusetts, wrote in 
 the same terms: "I wish you could hear the voices of surprise, 
 indignation, disgust and contempt which now everywhere find 
 
 8" Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 547 
 
 utterance at the removal of Fremont. The feeling is frightfully 
 earnest." Few believed that the reports of Meigs, Cameron, 
 and Thomas were fair. "The thing," declared Simeon Nash of 
 Gallipolis, Ohio, "has been done in a way to destroy public 
 confidence in its honesty." Another correspondent wrote Chase 
 that he had just returned from a tour as far west as Iowa, and 
 that "I never have seen such excitement, such deep indignant 
 feeling everywhere I have travelled." 26 
 
 "Where are you," demanded Thaddeus Stevens of his fellow- 
 radicals in Congress, "that you let the hounds run down your 
 friend Fremont?" Stevens was a formidable political figure, and 
 he did not stand alone. A mass meeting at Cooper Institute on 
 November 27, 1861, listened to an oration by Charles Sumner 
 warmly laudatory of Fremont, and — with Schuyler Colfax, 
 David Dudley Field, Charles King, William M. Evarts, and 
 other distinguished men on the platform — adopted resolutions 
 indorsing his doctrine upon the emancipation of the slaves of 
 rebels. Henry Ward Beecher asked the General to come to 
 Plymouth Church one Sunday morning, and in his sermon 
 harshly condemned Daniel Webster as a statesman who had 
 timidly compromised with slavery. "He died, and is dead," said 
 Beecher. "But," turning to Fremont, "your name will live and 
 be remembered by a nation of freemen." 
 
 If from the voice of his contemporaries Fremont could derive 
 much comfort, he could feel a little later that he had been pub- 
 licly vindicated. The Committee on the Conduct of the War, 
 after an elaborate investigation, reported in the spring of 1863 
 that he was not to blame for the failure to reinforce Lyon or 
 Mulligan; that he had acted with energy and promptness; that 
 various of his measures, such as the building of gunboats, had 
 been of the highest value; and that his administration of the 
 Western Department "was eminently characterized by earnest- 
 ness, ability, and the most unquestionable loyalty." Its mem- 
 bers, Ben Wade, Zachariah Chandler, John Covode, and George 
 W. Julian, were politically sympathetic toward Fremont, yet 
 
 26 Chase MSS, especially November 4, 5, 6, 1861. 
 
548 FREMONT 
 
 their verdict carried weight. In Congress, his record was enthu- 
 siastically defended by Schuyler Colfax, Roscoe Conkling, and 
 others, though Colfax regarded himself as a family friend of 
 the B lairs. 
 
 The consensus of historical opinion has been less kind. James 
 Ford Rhodes, John Fiske, and Nicolay and Hay have all agreed 
 that Fremont's record shows that he was poorly fitted for the 
 command which he took. In this judgment they are unques- 
 tionably right. He was deficient in ability to organize the com- 
 plex and multifarious activities of his Department, his estimate 
 of men was highly faulty, he showed a signal lack of tact, and 
 his characteristic impulsiveness led him into a cardinal and 
 fatal error — the emancipation proclamation, which he should 
 never have issued without consulting the President. A man with 
 genuine military genius would have managed to save Mulligan, 
 and possibly Lyon as well; Fremont showed no spark of that 
 rare quality. A leader with more address and adaptability would 
 never have estranged Blair and his supporters so completely 
 and quickly as Fremont did. He admitted to the Committee on 
 the Conduct of the War that he had done much war business 
 "a little loosely"; that a great deal in the Department "was 
 not consistent with strict military propriety, a great deal." He 
 never learned to coordinate his forces properly, and in his mili- 
 tary plans, as in all else, he remained something of a dreamer — 
 prone, as General Curtis said, to "dash at a shadow." 
 
 But this is not all the story, and most historians have done 
 less than justice to Fremont. His earnestness, zeal, and patriot- 
 ism were above question. He labored with almost superhuman 
 energy, and gave his best talents to the cause. The difficulties 
 of his position, tossed as he suddenly was into a Department 
 without organization, money, arms, or stores, without anything 
 but raw recruits, asked not merely to raise and use armies but 
 to equip them, left to shift largely for himself by an Adminis- 
 tration intent upon the eastern front, and compelled to deal 
 with sedition at home as well as organized enemies in the field, 
 can hardly be exaggerated. They would have tried the capaci- 
 
THE END OF THE "HUNDRED DAYS" 549 
 
 ties of the ablest men. Grant himself might have failed. With 
 all his shortcomings, Fremont in three months did bring an 
 army into being, did virtually clear Missouri of the enemy, did 
 order gunboats, tugs, and motor-boats, and take other practical 
 measures important for the future, and did help to place in 
 Kentucky a force and a commander, the then unknown Grant, 
 who were destined to win the first real victories of the War. 27 
 
 27 For a generous estimate of Fremont's constructive services in Missouri, see 
 William Wood, Captains of the Civil War (Yale Chronicles of America), p. ng. 
 See also T. Harry Williams, "Fremont and the Politicians," Journal of the 
 American Military History Foundation, II, No. 4. Ben Wade wrote Charles A. 
 Dana, a few days after Fremont concluded his testimony before the Committee 
 on the Conduct of the War, a remarkable letter, in which he bitterly asserted 
 that the general was the innocent victim of a wicked plot, and that "no public 
 man since Admiral Byng . . . has suffered so unjustly as General Fremont." 
 Dana Papers, Library of Congress, February 3, 1862. 
 
The Mountain Department 
 
 WHEN Fremont left the army at Springfield and with 
 the Zagonyi Guard and his personal staff as escort 
 set out for the railhead at Rolla, his associates were 
 struck by his gaiety; as he cantered along, he laughed and 
 chatted like a schoolboy set free for a holiday. These high 
 spirits remained with him in St. Louis. He busied himself for 
 a fortnight collecting documentary evidence upon the transac- 
 tions of the Western Department, to be used in his defense. 
 He continued to suffer various humiliations. Not merely was 
 the Zagonyi Guard mustered out without pay, quarters, or 
 rations, on the ground that at Springfield they had expressed 
 disloyal sentiments, but all his contracts had been suspended, 
 and officers were now sent from Washington to determine 
 whether the bills he had incurred should be paid. Yet his aides 
 tell us that the Brant mansion resounded with vivacity and 
 humor. The General, wrote one in his diary, was "absolutely 
 on the rampage with fun and fire. Our table is about the 
 jolliest, most sociable, most enjoyable spot of its kind that I 
 have experienced." * 
 
 Underneath this buoyancy, however, lay a smoldering sense 
 of injustice; and from this moment Fremont was a confirmed 
 opponent of the Administration. He shared the belief of many 
 Republicans that its military, political, and diplomatic policies 
 were inept and inefficient. His papers show that, feeling he had 
 been grossly wronged, he was convinced that part of the Admin- 
 istration — especially the Blair element — had acted under the 
 influence of selfish and malignant motives. Why had it failed 
 
 1 John R. Howard, MS Diary, November 16, 1861. 
 
 55o 
 
THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT 551 
 
 to supply him with funds and munitions? Why, at the moment 
 when Mulligan was reported in danger and every man was 
 needed at Paducah, had it stripped his command of 5,000 well- 
 armed troops, not revoking the order till the harm was done? 
 Why had Secretary Cameron and General Thomas left him in 
 command when they thought he was stuck fast in the mud at 
 Tipton, but removed him when he had extricated himself and 
 was about to defeat Price or drive him from the state? 
 
 Jessie's wrath exceeded his own. Her indignation was so in- 
 tense that for a time it led her to believe that Fremont was the 
 victim of a traitorous conspiracy on the part of the Blairs. 
 Throughout the hundred days, her anxieties and labors had 
 matched those of her husband. In a curious scrap of auto- 
 biography, she tells us that when Fremont was in pursuit of 
 Price a well-known St. Louis merchant, Thornton Grimsley, 
 had come and told her that confidential information of the 
 Union movements was being treacherously smuggled to Price's 
 headquarters, and that the enemy was thus aware that neither 
 Hunter's nor Pope's divisions would join Fremont's army. Mrs. 
 Fremont, in a frenzy of anxiety, hurried a trusted Negro off 
 with the news to her husband. She was oppressed all day by 
 fears of some frightful disaster. That night at dinner her 
 cousin, Mrs. Brant, remarked: "We have had such a rain to- 
 day that I can't understand why your hair is all dusty." No- 
 body thought more of the subject; but the next morning her 
 English maid began combing the hair, and stopped suddenly 
 with tears in her eyes. "It had been a chestnut brown," writes 
 Mrs. Fremont, "but now every hair was marked with an alter- 
 nating white patch about an inch apart, giving an odd look of 
 mottled gray to the whole." 2 At this time she was only thirty- 
 six. 
 
 If this indicates the emotional stress under which she had 
 labored, another autobiographical fragment indicates how 
 sternly she nursed her wrath. Returning to New York, the 
 Fremonts stayed for a time at the Astor House, where they 
 
 2 Jessie Benton Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
552 FREMONT 
 
 received much attention from radical Senators and Congress- 
 men ; they then took apartments on Fourth Avenue, and shortly 
 went to Washington, so that Fremont might aid the investiga- 
 tion into the Western Department. Early in 1862 they were 
 invited to the famous party of February 5th at the White 
 House, the last really brilliant social occasion till the war 
 ended. Many members of Washington society refused; a friend 
 told Jessie that Mrs. Lincoln had shown her eighty declina- 
 tions, among them one by Senator Wade, who wrote upon the 
 card: "Are the President and Mrs. Lincoln aware that there 
 is a civil war? If they are not, Mr. and Mrs. Wade are, and 
 for that reason decline to participate in feasting and dancing. " 
 But the President sent a messenger to say that he especially 
 desired Fremont to be present, and they joined the five hundred 
 guests. The morning before the ball Dorothea Dix told Jessie 
 that she had just left the White House, where Lincoln was 
 deeply perturbed by the illness of his son Willie: 3 
 
 The President spoke of the ball, and wanted to stop it, but it 
 came off. The only alteration made was that there was no dancing. 
 It was announced officially that on account of the illness in the 
 house there would be no dancing; but the Marine Band at the foot 
 of the steps filled the house with music while the boy lay dying 
 above. A sadder face than that of the President I have rarely seen. 
 He was receiving at the large door of the East Room, speaking 
 to the people as they came, but feeling so deeply that he spoke of 
 what he felt and thought, instead of welcoming the guests. To Gen. 
 Fremont he at once said that his son was very ill and that he feared 
 for the result. On seeing his sad face and grieved appearance, the 
 feeling with which we had gone gave way to pity, and after ex- 
 pressing our hopes for the lad's recovery we passed on to make 
 our respects to the President's wife. The ball was becoming a ghastly 
 failure 
 
 The political feeling of the country was represented there that 
 night by strangers, members of Congress, and persons brought down 
 
 3 Ibid. Willie, who had taken a cold which turned into fever, died February 
 20th. The doctor had said before the party that there was as yet no reason for 
 alarm, and Jessie's account is characteristically overdrawn. 
 
THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT 553 
 
 to Washington by the business of the war. Uniforms and ladies' 
 evening dress gave their brightness, but almost angry feeling for and 
 against emancipation, and for a quick sharp conduct of the war, 
 found its expression there that night. The President was so sad, so 
 bowed down by the thought of the coming loss of his son, that it 
 seemed to depress the company, and they shifted around until the 
 larger portion had congregated on the other side of the East Room, 
 where Gen. Fremont was standing. The whole talk was on the neces- 
 sary peremptory pursuit of the war to make the South realize that 
 it could not maintain slavery under the protection of the North. 
 
 So many criticized the conduct of the war and . . . there was so 
 much feeling of sorrow that Gen. Fremont's policy of emancipation 
 was not to be carried out, that it became embarrassing, and we left. 
 I had hardly got my wraps on before we were recalled by Mr. 
 Sumner, who came with a message from the President saying that 
 he wanted us to return, that he specially wanted Gen. Fremont. 
 It seemed the President had found that Gen. McClellan and Gen. 
 Fremont had never met 
 
 As we crossed the long East Room, the President came ferward 
 to meet the General; took him by the arm leading him to Gen. 
 McClellan who was at the upper end of the room, and introduced 
 them to each other, then introducing Mrs. McClellan and myself. 
 We bowed, but as each seemed to wait for the other, neither of us 
 spoke a single word. One look showed me she was dressed in the 
 Secession colors. A band of scarlet velvet crossed her white dress 
 from shoulder to waist, and in her hair were three feathers of scarlet 
 and white. If this was intentional, it was unpardonable in the wife 
 of the commander-in-chief of the Union armies, and yet it seemed 
 impossible to have been quite an accident. After a few minutes' talk 
 between the President, Gen. McClellan, and Gen. Fremont, wt; 
 left. 
 
 At this moment the pressure for Fremont's reappointment 
 to a military command was becoming irresistible. Many radi- 
 cals and many even of the moderate German-Americans were 
 implacable in their anger over his treatment. When early in 
 1862 Fremont had appeared before the Committee on the Con- 
 duct of the War, reports had reached the public that it was 
 
554 FREMONT 
 
 "staggered" by the ease with which he disproved every accusa- 
 tion. In March he gave the press the full text of his defense, 
 including numerous documents. The Tribune, publishing it 
 complete in an extra sheet, seized the occasion for a long and 
 belligerent editorial defending his record and declaring that 
 no other commander had been pursued with such unjust ma- 
 levolence. A great part of the press both East and West took his 
 side. There ensued an immediate explosion in Congress. Frank 
 Blair, on March 7th, made a vitriolic speech attacking Fremont's 
 Missouri record, and the Congressional radicals rushed to the 
 fray. The leading address in Fremont's behalf, delivered by 
 Schuyler Colfax, was a masterly presentation of his case. 
 Lincoln saw that it was best to yield to the storm, and give 
 Fremont another opportunity in the field. 
 
 The general was immediately assigned to head the newly 
 created Mountain Department, which comprised western Vir- 
 ginia (where Rosecrans had commanded), eastern Kentucky, 
 and a part of Tennessee. Proceeding with his wife and two chil- 
 dren to Wheeling, Fremont there relieved Rosecrans on March 
 29, 1862. He took his own staff, many of them young Germans, 
 Hungarians, and Frenchmen, whose foreign tongues — as in St. 
 Louis — created a prejudice against him. His first headquarters 
 were at the McLure Hotel in Wheeling, where Jessie placed 
 herself in an anteroom and did her utmost to protect his time. 
 Assuring important callers that he was so busy with his plan 
 of campaign that his moments were gold, she turned them over 
 to staff members and yet made no enemies. The general devoted 
 himself entirely to military affairs, leaving all orders touching 
 civil policy and the relations of Unionists and Confederate sym- 
 pathizers to his Judge-Advocate, Corwine, and to Governor 
 Francis H. Pierpont of West Virginia. 4 He knew that much 
 was expected of him in the field. Though his force was small, 
 amounting to about twenty-five thousand men on paper, and 
 actually to much less, and though it was badly equipped, his 
 Department represented a pet idea of the President's. 
 
 4 C. H. Ambler, Francis H. Pierpont, pp. 144-147. 
 
THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT 555 
 
 Lincoln believed it feasible to march from western Virginia 
 over the mountains into East Tennessee and seize the railroad 
 at Knoxville, rescuing the Unionists of that region. This would 
 have been impossible even for a much larger force. As Jacob D. 
 Cox has written in Battles and Leaders, extensive operations 
 across the Alleghenies from east or west were impracticable, be- 
 cause a wilderness a hundred miles wide, traversed by few and 
 wretched roads, rendered it impossible to supply troops from 
 depots on either side. The country was so wild that it did not 
 afford even forage for mules. Yet Fremont was put in a position 
 where he had to promise to attempt the feat. 
 
 A month after he took command, he departed for the mili- 
 tary frontier; his plan being to march into the Shenandoah 
 Valley, and then (as he had arranged with Lincoln) move to 
 break the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad. Unfortunately, 
 Lincoln's whole disposition of forces in this region was at fault, 
 and in the next few months Stonewall Jackson made a spec- 
 tacular demonstration of the fact at the expense of the three 
 generals opposing him. These were N. P. Banks, who had a 
 small army at Strasburg in the Shenandoah — 9,000 men at the 
 time of Jackson's raid; Fremont, with about 15,000 troops at 
 different points in the Shenandoah; and McDowell, who was at 
 Fredericksburg charged especially with the defense of Wash- 
 ington, but who at the critical moment despatched 20,000 men 
 up the valley to help bag Jackson. These three forces should 
 have been under the command of a single general. Instead, the 
 only central command was that which Lincoln and Stanton 
 themselves, acting on telegraphic advices to Washington, under- 
 took to furnish. 
 
 The story of Jackson's brilliant and spectacular Valley cam- 
 paign against the three generals has often been 'told, and needs 
 no rehearsal in detail. 5 He had some 17,000 effective men, and 
 the armies brought against him outnumbered his troops by 
 at least two to one. Yet by daring rapidity of movement, by the 
 
 5 J. G. Ropes, Story of the Civil War, II, p. ii5#.; James Ford Rhodes, His- 
 tory of the United States, IV, p. i$ff. 
 
556 FREMONT 
 
 ability to appear at unexpected points and to dodge pursuit, 
 Jackson managed to strike blow after blow, to defeat or evade 
 each opposing commander, and, after throwing Washington 
 into a panic, to return to a safe position with rich spoils and 
 thousands of prisoners. Meanwhile, he had prevented Mc- 
 Dowell's 40,000 men from joining the Union army before 
 Richmond. He whipped Schenck at the village called Mc- 
 Dowell, overwhelmed Banks at Winchester and drove him 
 across the Potomac in wild disorder, eluded Fremont, who was 
 checked at Cross Keys by Ewell, crushed two brigades under 
 Tyler at Port Republic, and got safely away; all this between 
 May 19 and June 10, 1862. James Ford Rhodes places the 
 blame for this chiefly on Lincoln. Issuing orders by telegraph, 
 he devised a plan that "was too complicated to succeed," and 
 that Lee himself would never have risked. 
 
 Fremont in this campaign has been accused of showing a 
 lack of energy. If he and McDowell had met at Strasburg on 
 May 30th they could possibly have cut off Jackson's retreat, but 
 Fremont did not get there even by the thirty-first, when he 
 could do no more than strike at Jackson's rear. Moreover, he 
 was ordered by Lincoln at an earlier stage of the campaign 
 to march to Harrisonburg, and instead turned up at Moorfield. 
 For all this, he is censured, at least by implication, by the 
 historian Rhodes. 6 But the censure is hardly deserved. When 
 Lincoln early in June sent Carl Schurz to the scene to make a 
 confidential report, Schurz exonerated the commander upon 
 both heads. "It is a fact which admits of no doubt," he wrote 
 the President, "that when you ordered Gen. Fremont to march 
 from Franklin to Harrisonburg, it was absolutely impossible to 
 carry out the order. The army was in a starving condition, and 
 literally unable to fight Thus it seems to have been neces- 
 sary to move back to Moorfield, in order to meet the supply 
 trains." He added that the troops had proceeded by forced 
 
 6 Rhodes, op. cit., IV, p. i5#. Fremont himself wrote later that Cross Keys 
 "was not indecisive. I was engaged with General Jackson for eight days with 
 constant sharp skirmishing driving his force before me, I with an inferior force, 
 he burning bridges and culverts to delay us." Fremont MSS, Bancroft Library. 
 
558 FREMONT 
 
 marches to Strasburg, leaving most of the baggage and knap- 
 sacks behind. "The march was difficult, and owing to the lack 
 of provisions, very hard on the men. The army failed to arrest 
 Jackson at Strasburg, and although it seems that Jackson's 
 rear guard might have been attacked with more promptness 
 and vigor, yet it is undoubtedly a very fortunate circumstance 
 that Gen. Fremont did not succeed in placing himself across 
 Jackson's line of retreat." Fremont had at most 10,000 men, 
 "in a wretched condition," and Jackson's larger army would 
 almost certainly have defeated the ill-conditioned force. 
 
 As Schurz wrote later, a highly resolute, self-reliant com- 
 mander would have taken the risk of this defeat and strained 
 every nerve to be at Strasburg on time; yet Fremont believed 
 that he had done all that was humanly possible. He declared 
 that nothing could have excelled the devotion with which his 
 tired, ill-clad, ill-fed troops pursued Jackson's rear-guard after 
 the action at Strasburg: 
 
 The road was strewn with arms, blankets, and clothing, thrown 
 away in their [the rebels'] haste, or abandoned by their pickets where 
 they had been surprised, and the woods and roads were lined by 
 their stragglers, unable to keep up with the rapid retreat. For nine 
 days we kept in sight of the enemy — the pursuit interrupted only 
 by the streams where the enemy succeeded in destroying the bridges 
 for which our advance was in continual contest with his rear. 7 
 
 After Cross Keys, Lincoln telegraphed him, "Many thanks to 
 yourself, officers, and men for the gallant battle of last Sun- 
 day"; and he later added, in another message: "You fought 
 Jackson alone and worsted him" — which was not precisely true. 
 
 Schurz had heard much of Fremont, and studied the Gen- 
 eral with curiosity. He found him a man of "elegant build, 
 muscular, and elastic, dark hair and beard slightly streaked 
 with gray, a broad forehead, a keen eye, fine regular features." 
 
 7 For Fremont's letter see New York Tribune, February 12, 1863; compare 
 Col. G. R. F. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, I, 
 Ch. 11. 
 
THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT 559 
 
 He praised his air of refinement, his easy and unaffected man- 
 ners, and his low, gentle tone of voice, which carried a sugges- 
 tion of reticence. "The whole personality," he concluded, "ap- 
 peared rather attractive — and yet, one did not feel quite sure." 
 In his report to Lincoln, Schurz included a sage word of polit- 
 ical warning: 8 
 
 This morning I found General Fremont in a somewhat irritated 
 frame of mind, and I must confess I understand it. The government 
 has plenty of provisions, and our soldiers die of hunger; plenty of 
 shoes, and they go barefooted; plenty of horses, and we are hardly 
 able to move. I would entreat you let it not be said that this army 
 is more neglected than any other. It would appear that it is willfully 
 so, and you know how this will be interpreted. The task this army 
 has before it is an important one, and it ought to have the means 
 to fulfill it. 
 
 But Lincoln had been too thoroughly imbued by the Blairs' 
 prejudices to trust Fremont, and under any circumstances the 
 General's services would have been brief. In the middle of 
 June, Fremont asked the President to increase his force, prom- 
 ising that if it were augmented to 35,000 men, the strength 
 originally promised him, he would capture Staunton, seize the 
 Richmond-Newbern Railroad, and prevent the enemy from 
 using western Virginia as a rich granary. The correspondence 
 which ensued reveals Lincoln's deep-seated distrust for his 
 commander. Fremont had been courteous in reminding the 
 President of his promise of a larger army. "I now ask from 
 the President the fulfillment of this understanding," he wrote, 
 "and ask it only because, under the conditions of war, I should 
 be able to render good and immediate service." But the Presi- 
 dent telegraphed a reply next day which showed not a little 
 asperity: 
 
 Your dispatch of yesterday, reminding me of a supposed under- 
 standing that I would furnish you a corps of 35,000 men, and 
 
 8 Compare Carl Schurz, Reminiscences, II, 343-346. 
 
5 6o FREMONT 
 
 reminding me of the "fulfillment of this understanding," is received 
 I am ready to come to a fair settlement of accounts with you on the 
 fulfillment of understandings. 
 
 Early in March last, when I assigned you to the command of the 
 Mountain Department, I did tell you I would give you all the 
 force I could, and that I hoped to make it reach 35,000. You at 
 the same time told me that within a reasonable time you would 
 seize the railroad at or east of Knoxville, Tenn., if you could. There 
 was then in the department a force supposed to be 25,000, the exact 
 number as well known to you as to me. After looking about two 
 or three days, you called and distinctly told me, that if I would 
 add the Blenker Division to the force already in the department, 
 you would undertake the job. The Blenker Division contained 
 10,000, and at the expense of great dissatisfaction to Gen. Mc- 
 Clellan I took it from his army and gave it to you. My promise was 
 literally fulfilled. I have given you all I could, and I have given 
 you very nearly, if not quite, 35,000. 
 
 Now for yours: On the 23d of May, largely over two months 
 afterward, you were at Franklin, Va., not within three hundred 
 miles of Knoxville, nor within eighty miles of any part of the rail- 
 road east of it, and not moving forward but telegraphing here that you 
 could not move for lack of everything. Now, do not misunderstand me. 
 I do not say you have not done all you could. I presume you met 
 unexpected difficulties; and I beg you to believe that as surely as 
 you have done your best, so have I. I have not the power now to fill 
 up your corps to 35,000. I am only asking of you to stand cau- 
 tiously on the defensive; get your force in order, and give such 
 protection as you can to the valley of the Shenandoah and to 
 Western Virginia. 
 
 Have you received the orders and will you act upon them? 
 
 Lincoln's despatch showed all too clearly that he was un- 
 convinced of Fremont's military capacity and ready to find 
 fault with his acts. As a matter of fact, its criticism was hardly 
 fair. Military critics have agreed that Lincoln's plan for the 
 capture of Knoxville was romantic and highly impracticable. 
 Blenker's division, which was to raise Fremont's army to 
 35,000, was not ordered to him until the beginning of April 
 
scene of jackson's shenandoah campaign 
 
562 FREMONT 
 
 and did not reach his Department until May 5th, then coming 
 in ragged, shoeless, tentless, without sufficient provisions, and 
 tired. Fremont could not argue with the President. He sent a 
 brief and submissive reply, saying simply that the orders had 
 been received, and that he would of course act upon them, as 
 he was already acting. But he read between the lines of the 
 message its full significance, and it played its part in his 
 almost immediate decision to withdraw. 
 
 For this decision the President furnished before the end of 
 June what Fremont regarded as sufficient reason. Lincoln, 
 wisely but belatedly, consolidated the forces of Fremont, 
 Banks, and McDowell into one army, to be called the Army 
 of Virginia, and placed it under the command of John Pope, 
 the troops of the Mountain Department being constituted the 
 First Corps under Fremont's command. Since his removal in 
 Missouri, Fremont detested Pope only less than he detested 
 Frank Blair. They were avowed enemies. He believed that 
 Pope had been disloyal and insubordinate, and had tried to 
 encompass his defeat. He could not bring himself to hold any 
 intercourse with the man. It would perhaps have been wiser- 
 it would certainly have been more patriotic — had he sunk his 
 personal resentment and stuck doggedly to his work until, as 
 was inevitable, Pope demonstrated his utter incapacity. But 
 such a course did not square with his or Jessie's pride, with 
 their sensitive conception of personal honor; and he requested 
 that the President relieve him of his command. Lincoln 
 promptly did so, turning the corps over to Sigel. Before the 
 summer ended, Pope had sustained one of the worst defeats 
 of the war at the second battle of Bull Run. 
 
 All these events naturally increased the antagonism between 
 Fremont and the Administration. Lincoln was more convinced 
 than ever that Fremont was intractable and unsafe. He re- 
 garded the explorer as a troublesome man providentially 
 shelved. Fremont, chafing for action, but unwilling to surrender 
 his dignity, was convinced that he had been the victim of a 
 new indignity, and that he could never expect justice from 
 
THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT 563 
 
 Lincoln or the Blairs. He returned to New York, taking his 
 personal staff with him, in an embittered frame of mind. For 
 a time he kept his peace. He was still one of the high officers 
 of the Army, and he had hopes that some conjunction of cir- 
 cumstances might recall him to the field. His radical friends 
 and the radical press were vociferous in urging his claims; 
 Mrs. Fremont pulled whatever wires she could reach. Among 
 others, she approached Hannibal Hamlin. "What can I do?" 
 the Vice-President wrote her. "The slow and unsatisfactory 
 movements of the Government do not meet my approbation, 
 and that is known, and of course I am not consulted at all, 
 nor do I think there is much disposition in any quarter to 
 regard any counsel I may give much if at all." Still, he tried. 
 Others tried, with equal lack of success. At one time they 
 seemed likely to succeed. In the first weeks of 1863 a highly 
 important command was arranged expressly for Fremont by 
 Stanton. Both the command and his designation to it received 
 the approbation of the President; but the post was finally given 
 to another officer. Fremont continued to draw pay, but used it, 
 as he publicly announced, to relieve wartime distress. Watch- 
 ing Lincoln's policies with increasing disapproval, he looked 
 forward to the time when he might cross swords with his 
 enemies — and that time was soon to come. 
 
The Defeat of the Blairs 
 
 THE year 1864 opened with storm-clouds billowing 
 thickly about the Lincoln Administration, and Fre- 
 mont watching the omens of trouble with keen interest. 
 Discontent was rife in every quarter — in the Cabinet, in Con- 
 gress, in the country at large; and everywhere it was breed- 
 ing political machinations against the President. In these plots, 
 Fremont had no mind to play an active role. He had turned 
 at once to his private business pursuits and was willing to lose 
 himself completely in them. But he fully realized that to hun- 
 dreds of thousands of voters his name still possessed a magical 
 ring. 
 
 A new Congress had convened the previous December, and 
 had promptly shown that it was under the domination of 
 radicals who were thoroughly unfriendly to the Administra- 
 tion. Lincoln's candidate for the speakership had been decisively 
 defeated — defeated by the brilliant Indianian, Fremont's warm 
 defender, Schuyler Colfax. The important committees had been 
 filled by men who opposed Lincoln's conservative policy. In 
 the Senate, Charles Sumner, icy, solemn, and pontifical, felt 
 a personal cordiality for Lincoln, but sternly deplored his offi- 
 cial course. Zachariah Chandler, a rough backwoods type of 
 politician, blunt and ruthless, took the same attitude. He, like 
 Lyman Trumbull, the irrepressible Illinoisan, John P. Hale, a 
 supercritical, nagging New Englander, and that domineering 
 egotist, Benjamin F. Wade, was a member of the Committee 
 on the Conduct of the War. Wade as chairman had made this 
 body a thorn in Lincoln's side. Its final report on April 3, 1864, 
 was a resounding blast in favor of a more vigorous prosecu- 
 
 564 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 565 
 
 tion of the conflict. Then a new joint committee of the same 
 name was organized, and with much the same personnel re- 
 sumed the attack on the President. 
 
 In the House, the foremost place among Lincoln's opponents 
 was taken by the bitter, narrow, patriotic Thaddeus Stevens, 
 now aged and bowed by disease, but unrelenting as ever. Be- 
 side him stood the dashing and comparatively youthful Henry 
 Winter Davis of Maryland, who disputed control over that 
 state with the Blair dynasty. Another who shared their views 
 was George W. Julian of Indiana, who had been disgusted by 
 Lincoln's slowness in proclaiming emancipation. He would 
 never have proclaimed it, Julian believed, if he had not feared 
 that Congress would refuse to vote supplies unless the war 
 were placed upon a definite anti-slavery basis. 1 Lincoln in his 
 December message had proposed to Congress a moderate and 
 tolerant plan for reconstructing the lost states, and the radicals 
 had lost no time in preparing to knife it. Thaddeus Stevens 
 had exploded a little earlier that he was "tired of hearing damned 
 Republican cowards talk about the Constitution," and that the 
 North should give the rebels "reconstruction on such terms 
 as would end treason forever." Now Henry Winter Davis 
 brought forward a bill which was intended to destroy Lincoln's 
 reconstruction scheme and furnish a harsher system in its 
 stead. The hostility of all these men toward Lincoln's re- 
 nomination was open and bitter. Young James A. Garfield, 
 who had fought at Shiloh and had just entered Congress from 
 the Ashtabula district of Ohio, wrote that "we hope we may 
 not be compelled to push Lincoln four years more." 
 
 If Congress seemed alive with discontent and opposition, 
 the Cabinet was even more savagely divided. Stanton, a man 
 compounded of disagreeable qualities, jealousy, arbitrariness, 
 ambition, and ill temper, and yet laborious, enormously ener- 
 getic, a vast organizing force, a thorough patriot, seemed at 
 times to hold Lincoln in utter contempt. He had called him 
 
 1 Julian, Political Recollections, p. 227. 
 
566 FREMONT 
 
 a gorilla and talked of his "painful imbecility." 2 At other 
 times, his loyalty and admiration appeared perfect. Salmon P. 
 Chase was at work day and night laying mines, stringing wires, 
 and planning to make himself President in the stead of the 
 Illinois lawyer whose powers he distrusted and whose aims he 
 thought inadequate. After some initial coyness, his candidacy 
 was perfectly open, and Lincoln had to tolerate it. Wade and 
 Winter Davis gave him their support, while various Congres- 
 sional radicals and prominent citizens formed a committee — ■ 
 the Republican National Executive Committee — under Sen- 
 ator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas to push his candidacy. 
 From this body shortly came a vigorous pronunciamento, de- 
 claring that if the anti-slavery principle was to triumph, if 
 the war was to be vigorously prosecuted and the country made 
 safe, the voters should rally to elect Chase instead of Lin- 
 coln. 3 Chase clubs began to spring up over the North. Mean- 
 while, other members of the Cabinet were hopelessly antago- 
 nistic to each other. 
 
 The principal cause of the Cabinet antagonisms was evi- 
 dent to every observer — the Blairs. The Postmaster-General, 
 Montgomery Blair, had early become a storm center. Like his 
 father and brother, he basked in Lincoln's favor, which the 
 whole family repaid with warm-hearted devotion to the Presi- 
 dent; but other leaders regarded the tall, angular Missourian 
 with dislike. His talk of solving the slavery question by meas- 
 ures of colonization and compensation enraged the radicals. 
 When emancipation was proposed, the emancipation for which 
 Sumner and Greeley, Wade and Beecher were calling, he had 
 stubbornly opposed it to the last. He declared it inexpedient and 
 would have postponed it even when Lincoln decided to issue 
 his proclamation. Upon the reconstruction issue, the radicals 
 thought him equally perverse. The whole Blair family was for 
 treating the South mildly and kindly, and restoring its rights 
 promptly. Montgomery Blair loosed a tremendous broadside 
 
 2 Morgan Dix, John A. Dix, II, p. 19. 
 
 8 Annual Cyclopaedia (1864), p. 783; Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, VIII, p. 319. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 567 
 
 against the men who stood for " amalgamation, equality, and fra- 
 ternity" with the Negro race. 4 To the old Abolitionists and to 
 all who, like Zachariah Chandler and Thaddeus Stevens, thought 
 that the Negroes should be treated as friends and the rebels 
 as enemies, the Blairs had become anathema. 
 
 Commanding the President's support, Montgomery Blair 
 might have seemed in a position to hold his Cabinet portfolio 
 without making enemies in the President's official family. In- 
 stead, he quickly surrounded himself with feuds and antago- 
 nisms, which by 1864 had become dangerous in their intensity. 
 He and Seward felt nothing but dislike for each other. The 
 elder Blair had by some strange process of reasoning associated 
 Seward and Fremont as allies, and regarded them as twin 
 agents of the Abolitionist cause, an opinion which he took no 
 pains to conceal. Montgomery Blair believed that Seward had 
 tried deliberately to provoke the clash between the North and 
 the South, and made reckless and unfounded charges to that 
 effect. 5 As for Attorney-General Edward Bates, the Blairs had 
 systematically undermined and opposed him in Missouri poli- 
 tics, and he well knew it. The peppery Stanton and the in- 
 triguing Montgomery Blair did not get on at all. Montgomery, 
 recalling Stanton's record as a member of Buchanan's Cabinet, 
 doubted his loyalty and zeal in the Union cause, while the two 
 were utterly incompatible in temperament. Stanton was never 
 a man to repress his private hatreds, and he struck out at the 
 Blairs by having some of their Maryland relatives arrested 
 on the charge that they had smuggled supplies of medicine 
 over to the Confederates. 6 When it came to Chase, of course, 
 Blair's enmity was still more open. 
 
 Outside official circles, there seemed — to the superficial ob- 
 server — many evidences of popular chilliness toward Lincoln. 
 The correspondence of Chase and Lyman Trumbull is filled 
 with letters from bitter-enders who resented the President's 
 
 4 Kirkland, The Peacemakers of 1864, p. 185. 
 
 5 T. K. Lothrop, William Henry Seward, p. 123. 
 
 6 Kirkland, op. cit.,i>. 187. 
 
568 FREMONT 
 
 seemingly tepid policy. The northern pulpit was largely un- 
 friendly. The strongest church magazine, Henry Ward Beecher's 
 Independent, declared that: "Great statesmen are few in any 
 country, but few as they are we must make diligent search to 
 find one for the next presidency." Of course, the Democratic 
 newspapers were shrill in abuse; James Gordon Bennett's 
 Herald, which the President himself read for its unrivaled war 
 news, lashed the Administration unmercifully. But part of the 
 Republican press was not much less hostile. Greeley's Tribune 
 declared that Lincoln's nomination would at once awaken "the 
 fear that the disasters, the burdens, the debts, and the hopes 
 deferred will be revived." Utterances of similar purport could 
 be found in William Cullen Bryant's dignified Evening Post. 
 Both Bryant and Greeley believed that the nomination of a 
 Republican candidate for the Presidency should be deferred 
 until the close of the summer of 1864, in order that the people 
 might know whether the overthrow of the Rebellion was in 
 sight, or its speedy termination was out of the question. If the 
 battles of July and August showed that it was impossible to 
 crush the Rebellion at once, then another and better leader 
 than Lincoln could be called to the helm. But some editors 
 were for rejecting Lincoln out of hand. The youthful Whitelaw 
 Reid of the Cincinnati Gazette declared that the President was 
 ready to "surrender the cause of human freedom to the masters 
 of slave plantations." 7 
 
 It was inevitable that much of the opposition to Lincoln 
 should crystallize about the name of Fremont. He was sin- 
 cerely indifferent to any movement of the sort. Giving up all 
 hope of military employment, he had plunged with his usual 
 enthusiasm into a new business field — railroad building. The 
 newspapers had suggested that if he was not to be allowed a 
 command, he might be appointed military governor of North 
 Carolina or one of the other reconquered states. The great 
 task in these states, said the Tribune, was to organize the eman- 
 
 7 New York Tribune, June 6, 1864, and subsequent issues; for Reid see Wil- 
 liam E. Dodd, Century Magazine, Vol. 114, p. 48. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 569 
 
 cipated slaves: "The first condition for the success of such an 
 effort is to win their confidence. We cannot do it by sending 
 them a general whom they do not know. But Fremont's name 
 has been a watchword in every cabin since 1856, and will be 
 heard at once as a war-cry by the slaves waiting to rally under 
 the Union flag." Lincoln, however, refused to heed such sug- 
 gestions. When George Julian called at the White House to 
 urge a post for the explorer, the President replied that he was 
 willing, but that he did not know where to place him. The situa- 
 tion, he said, reminded him of the old man who advised his 
 son to take a wife, to which the son replied, "Whose wife 
 shall I take?" There were important positions in sight, but they 
 could be reached only by removals which he did not care to 
 make. 
 
 A somewhat different answer was given to a deputation 
 which, including Senator Henry Wilson, Wendell Phillips, 
 Moncure D. Conway, and Oakes Ames, came to the President to 
 discuss the governorship of North Carolina. Some one sug- 
 gested Fremont, and Lincoln tolerantly indicated why he 
 thought the proposal bad. "I have great respect for Gen. Fre- 
 mont and his abilities," said the President slowly, "but the 
 fact is that the pioneer in any movement is not generally the 
 best man to carry that movement to a successful issue. It was 
 so in old times, wasn't it?" he continued with a smile. "Moses 
 began the emancipation of the Jews, but didn't take Israel to 
 the Promised Land after all." The truth was that Lincoln could 
 not have appointed Fremont without offending his conservative 
 supporters, and he did not think it necessary to act. 
 
 While Chase was coming brazenly into the open in his pur- 
 suit of the nomination, while Thaddeus Stevens was expressing 
 the sagacious view that Ben Butler would make a much better 
 President than Lincoln, and while Greeley was declaring in the 
 Tribune that Chase, Fremont, Butler, and Grant ought all to 
 be considered, the explorer had immersed himself in railway 
 operations. His enthusiasm for the development of the great 
 trans-Mississippi region was as fresh as ever. The action of 
 
570 FREMONT 
 
 Congress in richly endowing a Pacific railroad stirred his imag- 
 ination. Commanding large funds on the credit of Mariposa, 
 having a name valuable to any enterprise, and personally fa- 
 miliar with western topography, he felt that this offered an 
 ideal field for his energies. In June, 1863, the New York press 
 announced with applause that he had put his hand to the helm. 
 Capitalists had been reluctant, with the war raging, to under- 
 take new lines across the plains. But now Fremont had come 
 forward with Samuel Hallett, widely known, as the Tribune 
 said editorially, "in moneyed circles as a man of large financial 
 experience, combined with an energy and indomitable will to 
 which all obstacles are made to succumb." 8 They intended to 
 build a line through the state of Kansas — what was later 
 known as the Kansas Pacific — connecting on the east with the 
 Missouri River terminals; and for this purpose, took over a 
 paper railway called the Leavenworth, Pawnee, & Western. 
 A new directorate was chosen, and Fremont elected president. 
 In a few weeks he was advertising from his Beaver Street 
 offices for bids to deliver 4,000 tons of iron rails at Leaven- 
 worth or Kansas City. 
 
 But if he would willingly have kept aloof from politics, an 
 increasing number of radicals were insistent that he be drafted 
 for service in 1864. Many German- Americans and Abolitionists 
 preferred him above all other candidates; while, as the weeks 
 passed, supporters began to drift in from other camps. Butler's 
 name aroused more derision than enthusiasm. The Chase can- 
 didacy, blazing brilliantly in the political heavens in February, 
 came down like a rocket-stick in March. Pomeroy's circular 
 in behalf of the Secretary of the Treasury aroused wide com- 
 ment. But on February 22nd, the Republican National Com- 
 mittee, sitting in Washington, virtually came out for the re- 
 nomination of Lincoln, and called the Republican Convention 
 to sit for that purpose at Baltimore in June. More decisively, 
 on March 5th, the Republican caucus of the Ohio Legislature 
 refused to endorse Chase as a "favorite son/' which meant 
 
 8 New York Tribune, June 4, 1863. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 571 
 
 that Ohio was for Lincoln. Chase reluctantly and ungracefully 
 withdrew, though his desire to see Lincoln supplanted was as 
 strong as ever; and many of his adherents turned toward 
 Fremont. 
 
 The first token of the way the wind was veering appeared 
 on March 19th, when radical and old-school Abolitionists of 
 New York came together at Cooper Union in an earnest " Fre- 
 mont meeting," of which Fremont knew nothing in advance. 
 The men in charge were for the most part obscure. Under the 
 blazing gas jets in Room 20 the erudite Friedrich Kapp de- 
 claimed, with a marked accent, upon the need for a change of 
 government. A Mr. Whipple gained the floor, and launched into 
 personal abuse of Lincoln. He had himself seen, he said, the bad 
 effects of liquor and the evil influence of slavery. A platform 
 calling for "vigorous, consistent, concentrated prosecution of 
 the war" was read amid cheers. Then there was a stir at the 
 door, a sudden clapping of hands, and everybody arose as the 
 loose, ill-clad figure of Greeley shuffled in. The editor's re- 
 marks, as reported by his own journal, were confused, but he 
 squeakily made three facts clear. First, that he thought it 
 would have been well to postpone all nominations and cam- 
 paigning until people could see what Grant would do in the 
 summer campaigns; second, that he advocated a single term 
 for Presidents; and third, that while he expected to support 
 the regular nominee of the Republican Convention, he believed 
 that "the people of New York were in favor of putting down 
 the rebellion and its cause, and sustaining Freedom, and he 
 believed that John C. Fremont would carry out such views." 9 
 
 As luck would have it, at this moment Frank Blair exe- 
 cuted a stroke which aroused the radicals to a new pitch of 
 anger. The current seemed to be setting against the President. 
 Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York were apparently 
 hostile to him. All Frank Blair's innate recklessness and pug- 
 nacity came to the surface. As major-general he had no right 
 to hold civil office, but he had made an arrangement by which 
 
 9 New York Tribune, March 20, 1864. 
 
572 FREMONT 
 
 he had surrendered his commission temporarily and Lincoln 
 placed it in a secret drawer, to be restored upon demand. By 
 this adroit if illegal maneuver, Frank was able to return to 
 Congress. In January, he had begun to make war upon Sec- 
 retary Chase by calling for an investigation of certain Treasury 
 regulations. Now, on April 23, he suddenly arose in his place 
 and made the most sensational and ferocious speech which 
 Congress had heard in years. He accused Chase of public 
 and private corruption; he declared that he had squandered 
 public funds, wrung from a hard-pressed people, to advance 
 his candidacy; and he charged that he had used hundreds of 
 Treasury agents to build up his machine. To support this 
 tirade, he read a letter from a New York financier, which spoke 
 of reports afloat that Chase had given his son-in-law, Governor 
 Sprague, a permit to buy cotton at the South by which the latter 
 would probably make two million dollars. 10 
 
 This vicious and ill-considered attack created an uproar 
 among the radical leaders and editors, and increased the re- 
 sentment with which they viewed the Administration. The New 
 York Tribune declared that it had left a more painful impres- 
 sion than any other utterance in the House in years. Chase 
 denounced the speech as an "outrageous calumny." The special 
 car in which he left Washington that day for Baltimore fairly 
 "trembled with his rage." " There seems no question that Lin- 
 coln was much annoyed by Blair's indiscretion. The man had 
 kicked over another beehive, he said; and for a time he hesi- 
 tated to restore Blair to his military command, though he 
 had already given the needed instructions. But the radicals 
 naturally believed that Lincoln had done something to insti- 
 gate Blair's onslaught, and that he had taken satisfaction in 
 it. After this event, Chase and Montgomery Blair glared dag- 
 gers at each other whenever they met in the Cabinet room. 
 
 But Chase was out of the running for the presidency, and 
 it was now evident to everybody that Lincoln would be nom- 
 
 10 Congressional Globe, 38th Cong., 1st Sess., Part II, p. 183 1#. 
 
 11 A. G. Riddle, Recollections of War Times, pp. 267, 268. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 573 
 
 inated at Baltimore at the beginning of June. It was by no 
 means so clear that he would be successful in November. 
 James A. Garfield wrote despondingly: "Lincoln will be nom- 
 inated and a copperhead will be elected. Not a dozen men in 
 Congress think otherwise." Chase grumbled to the governor of 
 Ohio: "The Convention will not be regarded as a Union Con- 
 vention, but simply as a Blair-Lincoln Convention, by a great 
 body of citizens whose support is essential to success." But 
 even to have the President again placed at the head of the 
 Republican party was a bitter dose to many of the extremists, 
 and they turned to the idea of a third ticket. It might be used 
 to obtain the withdrawal of Lincoln from the race; it could 
 certainly be used to increase the chances of his ultimate de- 
 feat. On May 4, 1864, a group of radical Republicans who 
 were known to favor the choice of Fremont sent out an invi- 
 tation to a mass convention in Cleveland, to meet May 31st for 
 the purpose of forestalling the action of the regular Republi- 
 cans. The signers did not constitute an impressive group. Rep- 
 resenting only eleven states, they included no names more dis- 
 tinguished than those of B. Gratz Brown, Friedrich Kapp, 
 Emil Preetorius, and James Redpath. However, their call was 
 shortly reinforced by one emanating from a number of minor 
 state officials in New York, and one sent out by a considerable 
 number of Abolitionists. 12 
 
 Fremont's papers do not indicate that he was excited by the 
 prospect for another nomination for the presidency, or that 
 he had any illusions as to the chances for his election; in- 
 deed, it appears that he was by no means certain of consent- 
 ing. His papers do show that he was urged to take a receptive 
 position by such men as Governors Andrew and Curtin, and 
 David Dudley Field. The coming convention was derided by 
 William Lloyd Garrison. "General Fremont, as yet," he wrote, 
 "has not shown a single state, a single county, a single town 
 or hamlet in his support. Who represents him from Massa- 
 chusetts, on the call for the Cleveland Convention? Two men, 
 
 12 Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865, p. 783$. 
 
574 FREMONT 
 
 both non-voters, I believe, and neither of them has a particle 
 of political influence." 13 But men like Wendell Phillips and 
 Schuyler Colfax, women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were 
 for Fremont, and when the Convention actually met, it had a 
 good press. Even the Democratic journals, for selfish reasons, 
 spoke well of it. 
 
 It opened formally on May 31, 1864, in Cosmopolitan Hall 
 in Cleveland, with ex-Governor William F. Johnston of Penn- 
 sylvania calling the motley body of about four hundred Radi- 
 cals, Germans, and War Democrats to order. Many of the dele- 
 gates had no credentials, though they represented various poli- 
 tical organizations. Sixteen states had sent members. For the 
 most part everything went like clockwork. Fremont was nomi- 
 nated by acclamation, General John Cochrane of New York 
 was named for Vice-President, though many had supposed 
 that the honor would go to B. Gratz Brown, and a platform 
 was adopted which expressed radical ideas from beginning to 
 end. It called for uncompromising prosecution of the war, the 
 constitutional prohibition of slavery, free speech and a free 
 press, and a one-term presidency; for leaving reconstruc- 
 tion exclusively to Congress, and for the confiscation of rebel 
 lands to be divided among active soldiers and sailors. Fre- 
 mont promptly accepted the honor, declaring that "today we 
 have in this country the abuses of a military dictation without 
 its unity of action and vigor of execution"; but he dissented 
 from the plank upon the confiscation of rebel property. 
 
 For the moment, his nomination was regarded in Adminis- 
 tration circles with comparative indifference. Lincoln, upon 
 hearing of the proceedings, opened his Bible at the twenty- 
 second chapter of I Samuel and read aloud: "And everyone 
 that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and every- 
 one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him ; and he 
 became a captain over them: and there were with him about 
 four hundred men." As June began, in fact, everything seemed 
 going well for the President. Sherman was pressing forward 
 
 Ki New York Evening Post, June 3, 1864. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 575 
 
 upon Atlanta; Grant was facing Lee on the Chickahominy, 
 and the nation's trust in Grant was enormous. It had been 
 made emphatically clear that the Republican rank and file 
 wanted Lincoln. As Bryant put it: "In the first place, he is 
 popular with the plain people, who believe him honest, with the 
 rich people, who believe him safe, with the soldiers, who be- 
 lieve him their friend, and with religious people, who believe 
 him to have been specially raised up for this crisis; and in the 
 second place, because many of the thieving and corrupt scoun- 
 drels of the political mews, who know the fact of his popular- 
 ity, have eagerly attached themselves to the car of his suc- 
 cess." 14 Lincoln had the votes, and nobody else had. The Bal- 
 timore Convention witnessed a spontaneous outburst of en- 
 thusiasm for the President. The delegates, trying again and 
 again to burst through parliamentary forms, nominated him 
 amid deafening cheers and cries of "God bless him!" 
 
 But the week of Lincoln's triumph was a week of humilia- 
 tion for the Blairs. They had made enemies on every hand 
 who were now gathering to crush them. The first blow fell 
 upon the head of the much-hated Frank Blair. His diatribe 
 against Chase had prompted Thaddeus Stevens to introduce 
 in the House a resolution asking the President to explain just 
 how Frank had been able to be a major-general and a member 
 of Congress at the same time. The House responded by pass- 
 ing a resolution which declared that Blair had never possessed 
 a legal right to his seat as Representative, and another assert- 
 ing that any officer of the United States Army who had severed 
 his connection with it by written resignation or by service in 
 Congress must have a second appointment, in the manner re- 
 quired by the Constitution, before he could resume his sword. 15 
 This was a stinging rebuke, but worse was to come. For three 
 years denunciation and dislike of the Blairs in Missouri, their 
 special political barony, had been growing. Men there looked 
 back upon Frank Blair's acts in 1861 and decided that he had 
 
 14 New York Evening Post, June 3, 1864. 
 
 15 Congressional Globe, 38th Cong., 1st Sess., Pt. II, p. i8S4#.; Pt. IV, p. 3389^- 
 
576 FREMONT 
 
 been a marplot and a curse. In the spring of 1864, this opposi- 
 tion had come to a head, and the radicals, meeting in State 
 Convention, had sent an implacably anti-Blair delegation to 
 Baltimore. Another gathering sent a set of delegates friendly 
 to Blair. 
 
 Which delegation should be admitted? On June 8th, this 
 question came before the Baltimore Convention, and Preston 
 King of the committee on credentials read a report excluding 
 the Blair ites. The Convention rocked with joy, and all pro- 
 ceedings were suspended while the tide of applause rose and 
 ebbed. Then the report was put to a vote. State after state cast 
 votes for its approval, until Maryland and Delaware were 
 reached, and they voted "aye" too! Once more the Convention 
 broke into thunderous applause, which still echoed around the 
 hall when it was announced that the anti-Blair delegates had 
 been seated by a vote of 440 to 4. 16 In effect, the Republican 
 Party served notice upon Lincoln that it had no use for the 
 "Blair malcontents." This notice was underlined when, at the 
 instance of the Missouri delegates, a resolution was passed de- 
 claring for the reorganization of the Cabinet — which meant 
 that Montgomery Blair should go. 
 
 If in early June the skies had seemed bright for Lincoln, in 
 July and August they grew overcast again. The losses at Cold 
 Harbor and the Wilderness, when the people at last realized 
 them, had a stunning effect. Heavy fighting by Grant in front 
 of Petersburg ended in a checkmate. The hospitals were 
 choked with wounded, and the Army of the Potomac was ex- 
 hausted. The spectacular raid of General Early at the beginning 
 of July brought Washington within an inch of capture — so close 
 that the Navy Department hastily prepared a vessel to carry 
 the President down the Potomac. The Treasury was empty, and 
 greenbacks fell during part of the summer to forty cents on 
 the dollar. Gloom was general throughout the North, and it 
 found an inevitable outlet in dissatisfaction with Lincoln. The 
 elder Blair, in something like a panic, employed the closing 
 
 ]0 New York Tribune; New York Evening Post, Jure 9, 1864. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 577 
 
 days of July in visiting various leaders in New York City — 
 Bryant, Greeley, James Gordon Bennett, and McClellan, now 
 about to be made the Democratic candidate — and pleading 
 with them to support Lincoln, or at least to refrain from op- 
 posing him. He and Montgomery even hoped that they could 
 influence McClellan to decline the Democratic nomination, but 
 in this they utterly failed. On August 5th the Administration 
 sustained a new blow — for that day appeared the bitter mani- 
 festo of Ben Wade and Henry Winter Davis against Lincoln's 
 reconstruction policy. Greeley wrote Lincoln on August 9th 
 that if the election were held next day, the Democrats would 
 sweep New York and Pennsylvania by one hundred thousand 
 majority; while near the middle of that month Thurlow Weed, 
 one of the most sagacious of practical politicians, told the 
 President that his reelection was an impossibility. 17 
 
 This sudden and steady drop of the Republican barometer 
 produced an equally sudden change in the Administration's 
 attitude toward Fremont. It was seen that his candidacy might 
 be disastrous. His followers were intensely in earnest, and a 
 great part of the German press had rallied to his side. He 
 would poll a large vote, and would poll it in states likely to 
 be close. The ticket was considered strong, for Cochrane was 
 a War Democrat of radical views — a former congressman, a 
 brigadier-general till his health failed, and an early advocate 
 of the policy of calling the emancipated slaves to arms. It was 
 recalled by political wiseacres that a third party in 1844, the 
 Abolitionists under Birney, had beaten Clay for the Presidency, 
 and that another third party in 1848, the Free Soilers under 
 Van Buren, had beaten Cass. Some Bostonians of prominence 
 were so alarmed by the outlook that they published a letter 
 proposing that both Fremont and Lincoln withdraw in favor 
 of a compromise candidate, and to this Fremont returned a 
 
 17 New York Sun in late June and early July, 1889, published a series of let- 
 ters in reply to Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, showing that the Fremont move- 
 ment was a very serious matter, and placed the Lincoln ticket in actual jeopardy. 
 By mid- June, twenty-six German-language papers had come out for Fremont, 
 New York Herald, June 15, 1864. 
 
578 FREMONT 
 
 somewhat inconclusive but generally favorable reply. A move- 
 ment was begun to use the Fremont party as a nucleus for 
 the nomination of Grant, with the object of forcing Lincoln 
 out of the field. 
 
 With affairs in this posture, Fremont soon learned that a 
 number of practical politicians were holding consultations with 
 Lincoln upon the best means of strengthening his presidential 
 prospects. The participants included Elihu Washburne, Sen- 
 ator Harlan of Iowa, James M. Edmunds of the Union League, 
 and most active of all, Zachariah Chandler. Much alarmed 
 by the Wade-Davis manifesto, Chandler first bent his efforts 
 to conciliate these redoubtable leaders. He, Cameron, and 
 Wade in the stormy days before the war had made a triple 
 alliance to take up each other's quarrels if insulted by any 
 Southern Senator; and as a result of this early friendship, 
 Chandler could appeal to Wade — like himself a quick-tem- 
 pered, rough-spoken, aggressive man — with some confidence. 
 Their interview at Wade's home near Ashtabula is described 
 by David H. Jerome of Detroit, who was present, as "rather 
 titanic." Wade finally demanded as his ultimatum the with- 
 drawal from the Cabinet of Montgomery Blair, whom he 
 thought at heart a Democrat. Chandler then went directly to 
 the President, and — according to two different authorities, both 
 good — obtained Lincoln's pledge that if the negotiations he 
 had undertaken proved successful, Blair would be retired. Then 
 visiting Henry Winter Davis in Baltimore, Chandler easily 
 persuaded him to promise party loyalty on the same condition 
 made by Wade. His next problem was to obtain the withdrawal 
 of the Fremont-Cochrane ticket. In a letter written long after- 
 ward, he said that he deemed this of vital importance, and 
 procured the consent of Lincoln and the chairmen of both the 
 National and Congressional Committees for his negotiations. 18 
 
 18 On this subject I have drawn my material from the Fremont MSS; Chase 
 MSS; Charles Moore's letter in the Century Magazine, July, 1895, based on 
 conversations with David H. Jerome and others; the diaries of Edward Bates, 
 Gideon Welles, and Orville H. Browning; Donnal V. Smith, Chase and Civil War 
 Politics; W. E. Smith, The Blair Family; and Charles R. Wilson, "New Light 
 on the Lincoln-Blair-Fremont 'Bargain' of 1864," American Historical Review, 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 579 
 
 Going to New York, Chandler established headquarters at 
 the Astor House. Assisted by George Wilkes, a capable war 
 correspondent, he approached Fremont, who divided his time 
 between Nahant and New York, and several interviews fol- 
 lowed in the office of Fremont's attorney and political adviser, 
 David Dudley Field. Field prepared the way by telling the 
 general that while the war had plainly not been conducted 
 with sufficient energy and ability, the assurances of a change 
 in Administration policy were so full that he thought it best 
 for him to do what he could for party unity. Chandler then 
 made his appeal. Lincoln would not withdraw, he said, and 
 yet he would certainly be defeated by McClellan if Fremont re- 
 mained in the field. He was empowered, he went on, to say 
 that if Fremont would step out, he would immediately be given 
 active service in a high command, while those who had perse- 
 cuted him (meaning the Blairs) would be placed where they 
 could do him no further harm. Fremont wrote to friends for 
 advice. Wendell Phillips urged him to stay in the field; Whit- 
 tier paid him a special visit at Nahant to ask him to with- 
 draw. One reply he had from Nathaniel P. Sawyer of Pitts- 
 burgh, dated September 13th, throws light on the negotiations: 19 
 
 Your esteemed favor of the 7th reached me yesterday In re- 
 ply, if you have assurance of Mr. Blair's immediate removal and 
 also Mr. Stanton's and the assurance that Mr. Seward will not be 
 reappointed, my advice is that you withdraw as soon as practicable 
 in favor of Lincoln and Johnson. 
 
 Something tells me that Lincoln will never fill a second term. If 
 I am right, Johnson will be the President, a man who I have loved 
 since Sixty-one. I have no doubt he will do you and your friends 
 justice. There is no man living I would sooner see President. 
 
 It will be time enough after the election to consider the propriety 
 of accepting a position. For the present I would advise you to 
 
 XXIX, p. jiff. The subject is intricate, but the evidence that Fremont was of- 
 fered a bargain and rejected it is to my mind conclusive. 
 
 19 This extraordinary letter, whose author seems to have anticipated Lin- 
 coln's assassination, is in the Andrew Johnson Papers, Library of Congress, 
 Vol 48. 
 
580 FREMONT 
 
 entertain no proposition. I have perfect confidence in Horace Greeley 
 and have no doubt he will be able to carry out any promises he 
 may or has made. 
 
 If you withdraw, Gov. Johnston and myself will support Lincoln 
 and Johnson. . . . 
 
 It is evident from this that Chandler was trying to strike a 
 bargain with Fremont. The promise that Blair would be retired 
 was but a minor part of this bargain — that promise had already 
 been made to Wade and Davis, and the retirement would occur 
 no matter what Fremont did; but the promise of an active 
 position was important. Some evidence exists that Fremont had 
 temporarily considered withdrawing in favor of McClellan, a 
 purpose which would heighten the eagerness of Lincoln's 
 friends to buy his friendship. But the general, after due con- 
 sideration, indignantly declined the proffered inducements. 
 For this we have two pieces of evidence. One is a statement he 
 left in his manuscripts. Offered "patronage to my friends and 
 disfavor to my enemies," he writes, "I refused both. My only 
 consideration was the welfare of the Republican party." The 
 other evidence is a telegram which Col. R. B. Marcy sent from 
 St. Louis to McClellan at this very time. He had learned from 
 Fremont's friend Justus McKinstry, he telegraphed, that Chase 
 and Henry Wilson had approached the explorer with the prom- 
 ise of a Cabinet position and of the dismissal of both Blairs "if 
 he would withdraw and advocate" Lincoln. Fremont had re- 
 plied that this was "an insult." 20 
 
 The tone of Fremont's letter of withdrawal, published Sep- 
 tember 22 nd, is further evidence that he had rejected a bargain 
 as dishonorable. Had he made a dicker, he would have treated 
 Lincoln gently. Instead, his language was harsh. "In respect 
 to Mr. Lincoln," he declared, "... I consider that his Admin- 
 istration has been politically, militarily, and financially a fail- 
 ure, and that its necessary continuance is a cause of regret for 
 the country." He withdrew not because he approved of Lin- 
 
 20 McClellan MSS, September 22, 1864; compare William Starr Myers, 
 General George Brinton McClellan, p. 448. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLAIRS 581 
 
 coin's policies, he wrote, but because McClellan had declared 
 in effect for the restoration of the Union with slavery, and the 
 Democrats must therefore at all costs be defeated. While be- 
 tween the two parties no man of liberal convictions could hesi- 
 tate, he believed that Lincoln's reelection was simply the lesser 
 of two evils. 
 
 But if Fremont was above a bargain, Wade and Davis were 
 equal to it. Now that Frank Blair had been humiliated, it was 
 the turn of the Postmaster-General. He had lately increased the 
 number of his bitter enemies. When Early's troops made their 
 raid north of Washington, they burned Montgomery Blair's 
 beautiful home, Falkland, at Silver Spring. A friend expressed 
 sympathy, and Blair burst out with the bitter remark: "Noth- 
 ing better could be expected while politicians and cowards 
 have the conduct of military affairs." Halleck heard of this 
 and wrote a letter about it to Stanton, which Stanton angrily 
 laid before the President. In consequence, Stanton and Blair 
 ceased to speak. But Montgomery was now disliked in every 
 quarter. He had been barred from the Union League; a radical 
 committee including George S. Boutwell and John Covode had 
 lately demanded his dismissal; Henry Wilson wrote Lincoln 
 that his retention would cost tens of thousands of votes. Men 
 spoke of the Blairs as "a nest of Maryland serpents." On 
 September 22nd, Chandler, accompanied by David H. Jerome, 
 later governor of Michigan, had a private interview with Lin- 
 coln. He announced the complete success of his labors; he 
 had gotten Fremont out of the race, though not by the means 
 he had expected. That afternoon the Washington papers con- 
 tained Fremont's card of withdrawal, and next day Lincoln 
 asked for and received the resignation of Montgomery Blair, 
 to take effect at once. 
 
 It was an unexpected stroke. Montgomery, joining his asso- 
 ciates Bates and Welles as they emerged from a Cabinet meet- 
 ing at the White House, took their breath away by coolly re- 
 marking: "I suppose you are both aware that my head is 
 decapitated — that I am no longer a member of the Cabinet." 
 
582 FREMONT 
 
 As Welles gasped, Blair took Lincoln's letter from his pocket 
 and read it aloud. Couched in cordial terms, it reminded him 
 that he had frequently stated that he was willing to leave the 
 Cabinet when the President thought it best, and informed him 
 that the time had arrived. Both Welles and Blair agreed that 
 Fremont was not the moving cause. Welles muttered something 
 about Chase; but, "Oh," said Blair, "there is no doubt Seward 
 was accessory to this, instigated and stimulated by Weed." Such 
 was the fraternal spirit in the Cabinet! None of the three 
 thought of Zach Chandler as the principal agent. 
 
 Jessie tells us that she had thoroughly approved of Fre- 
 mont's refusal of a field-command or Cabinet office as part 
 of the proposed bargain; "with a feeling of joy akin to ecstasy 
 I heard his decision to remain in private life." Though his 
 withdrawal might have been phrased more generously, it 
 effected its purpose. With a united party behind him, Lincoln 
 received a majority of nearly a half million votes at the polls. 
 Long afterward, in 1889, Jessie wrote the poet Whittier to 
 thank him again for helping Fremont to reach the right deci- 
 
 Among the words I remember from you are: "There is a time to 
 do and a time to stand aside." I never forget your saying this to me 
 at our Nahant cottage in 1864 when you had come to say them 
 to Mr. Fremont. Wendell Phillips, who saw the do more clearly than 
 the stand aside, insisted I had dreamed your visit. "Whittier goes 
 nowhere. He never visits. His health does not let him," and laugh- 
 ing arguments against your wise and necessary view of what the 
 time demanded of Mr. Fremont — to renounce self for the good of 
 the greater number. Do you not remember it too ? It was a deciding 
 word, coming from you. 
 
 21 Catherine Coffin Phillips, Jessie Benton Frimont, pp. 271, 272. 
 
A Financial Debacle 
 
 THE virtual ending of Fremont's public career left him 
 free to turn his attention to private affairs, and opened 
 one of the strangest chapters of his career. It is a 
 chapter marked by dramatic incident and tragic climax. When 
 the war began, Fremont was a multimillionaire; a dozen years 
 later, he was so nearly penniless that but for a few loyal friends 
 he and Mrs. Fremont would hardly have known where they 
 could lay their heads or obtain their next meal. 
 
 On the morning of December 13, 1864, a large and curious 
 crowd surged into the Manhattan courtroom in which Judge 
 Mason was presiding over Part Three of the State Supreme 
 Court. The famous trial of ex-Mayor George Opdyke against 
 Thurlow Weed for an alleged libel was about to begin. Every 
 newspaper had sent its reporters to write columns of matter. 
 The ablest lawyers of the city were enlisted, William M. Evarts 
 and Edwards Pierrepont appearing for Weed, and David Dud- 
 ley Field and former Judge Emott for Opdyke. In later years, 
 men looked back upon the trial as heralding the disclosures 
 of graft in national and city affairs which have made the Re- 
 construction period seem so shameful in our history. The prin- 
 cipal charges published by Weed were that Opdyke had de- 
 frauded the city in claims growing from the destruction of a gun 
 factory in the draft riots, had made illicit profits in war con- 
 tracts, and had despoiled Fremont of much of his California 
 property. 1 
 
 1 This trial is fully treated, with verbatim testimony, in a pamphlet published 
 by the American News Company: "New York Supreme Court: The Great Libel 
 Case of George Opdyke vs. Thurlow Weed, 1865." 
 
 583 
 
584 FREMONT 
 
 From the intricate testimony which occupied the next fort- 
 night, it is possible to piece together a story which would have 
 made a fitting theme for one of Balzac's novels of business life. 
 Evarts struck the dominant note of the tale when he said, in 
 summing up: "The one phrase on everybody's lips is 'poor 
 Fremont!' " It is a story of the Mariposa estate, 44,386 acres, 
 from which many millions had been taken in placer gold and 
 3 million dollars in quartz gold, and which was valued on a 
 production basis at 10 million dollars; of Fremont as the owner 
 of this estate, unworldly, a rash enthusiast, quite uninformed 
 upon the sharp practices of a shady era of business; of his 
 trust in Opdyke, a slippery speculator long known as hungry 
 for money and political preferment; of his confidence in David 
 Dudley Field, an astute lawyer later identified with some of 
 the most outrageous operations of Jim Fisk and Jay Gould, 
 and the counsel of Tweed; of his faith in a financier well 
 named Ketchum — Morris Ketchum — and others of similar 
 stripe. He was among friends, said Evarts sarcastically; "and 
 he may thank God that he did not fall among thieves" — at 
 which the courtroom laughed. It is a story of the Mariposa 
 estate involved, while Fremont was commanding in Missouri 
 and West Virginia, in heavy debts for litigation and the expense 
 of development — debts that bore 2 or even 2 T / 2 per cent in- 
 terest a month, in some instances compounding; of the manip- 
 ulation of the estate by Opdyke, Ketchum, Hoey, and others, 
 always to their own benefit; of a fee of $200,000 charged by 
 Field; and of attempts, legal but barefaced, to deprive the 
 owner of his just rights and revenues. 
 
 Fremont himself took the stand, his hair grizzled, his face, 
 according to the reporters, showing a touch of genius and 
 poetry, his eyes still lit by a deep smouldering blaze. 2 He had 
 a natural reluctance to accuse old associates and expose him- 
 self as a victimized man. When, on cross-examination, he was 
 asked whether a harsh advantage had been taken of him by his 
 "friends," he stammered slowly: "I — I — I think not." When 
 
 2 New York Herald; World; Tribune; December 14 and later issues, 1864. 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 585 
 
 Field himself asked if the gentlemen named did not fairly and 
 honorably execute their agreement, the General answered: 
 "You will remember, Mr. Field, there were controversies which 
 were adjusted that grew out of our different interpretations of 
 the agreements." The indignation of the spectators was espe- 
 cially aroused by the testimony regarding one transaction. It 
 was shown that Fremont had been induced to transfer 
 $2,500,000 of his stock in the Mariposa estate to Ketchum by 
 proxies so that Ketchum, acting as his deputy, could control 
 it. But when Fremont wished to recover some of his proxies, 
 he was told that he had signed a document which amounted 
 to a deed of trust, and he had to commence a suit to get his 
 shares back. On the settlement of the suit, his opponents 
 offered to give him 2 million dollars of the stock if he would 
 sell them the remaining $500,000 at 25 cents on the dollar, 
 though it was then rated at 50 cents on the market. "His hand 
 was in the lion's mouth," as Edwards Pierrepont put it, "and 
 he got out the best he could. He made this sacrifice of 
 $125,000." 
 
 Family papers show that Fremont had gone to Europe in 
 1 86 1, with his lawyer, Frederick Billings, in the hope of sell- 
 ing an interest in the estate, or at least procuring a favorable 
 loan to pay its debts; and that he had talked with the Roths- 
 childs and the Paris bankers without avail. They show that 
 the debts at the beginning of 1862 or thereabouts were esti- 
 mated at a total of $1,250,000, but actually came very close 
 to $2,250,000, and that interest charges were about $13,000 
 monthly. Tormented by anxiety, the General was eager to shift 
 the growing burden from his shoulders. At this time he held a 
 five-eighths interest in the estate, Billings one-eighth, A. A. 
 Selover of California one-eighth, and Trenor W. Park, who 
 had advanced a large sum against the debts, the remaining 
 eighth. It became imperative to raise money and stop the drain 
 of interest-payments. Fremont was finally forced into a very 
 bad bargain. As a result of complicated negotiations in New 
 York, in June, 1863, a company was formed with 100,000 
 
586 FREMONT 
 
 shares of stock, of $100 par value each. Of these 12,500 each 
 went to Billings, Selover, and a creditor named Parker; while 
 25,000 were turned over to three men who engaged to pay off 
 the debts, Ketchum, Hoey, and Opdyke. This nominally left 
 37,500 shares to Fremont. But he paid 2,000 (of par value 
 $200,000!) to Field for legal services; and he placed 25,000 
 in the hands of Ketchum, who represented that he needed 
 power to vote them to insure control for the New York group. 
 They were to be held in trust until the bonds for clearing off 
 the debts were repaid, and then returned to Fremont. Mean- 
 while, the explorer kept only 8,500 shares in his own hands. As 
 we have seen, the task of getting Ketchum, Hoey, and Opdyke 
 to disgorge the other 25,000 proved anything but easy. 
 
 Writing long after the event, 3 Mrs. Fremont asserted that 
 if her husband had not carried through this desperate and 
 costly transaction when he did, "those interested in accumu- 
 lating the indebtedness on the property, and so depriving him 
 of the estate, would have succeeded." As it was, she added, 
 in every way feasible by litigation they tried to hamper the 
 actions of the company and, if possible, obtain control of parts 
 of its property. She and her husband believed that the sweep- 
 ing away of the costly dam which he had built across the 
 Merced River was attributable to the treachery of an agent 
 who deliberately neglected to open the sluice-gates in flood 
 time. Legal expenses ran up to a total of $600,000! There is 
 no doubt that he did well to get out of the mess when he 
 could, and with what money he could. He had not the cold, 
 calculating business sagacity which was needed to rescue Mari- 
 posa from the ravenous sharks circling about it. Judge Pierre- 
 pont told the jury (which incidentally refused to convict Thur- 
 low Weed of libeling Opdyke) that "this genius of a man once 
 worth $10,000,000 and more" would testify that it had almost 
 all "been stripped away from him, and he has but little left." 
 
 3 MS. Memoirs, Bancroft Library. Trenor W. Park, who played the part of 
 a rapacious creditor in the affair, was later the principal promoter of the 
 Emma Mine, and induced General Schenck to discredit himself by lending his 
 name to the mine promotion while Minister to England. 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 587 
 
 This was not quite true. When he sold his shares, he was still 
 a rich man. But he had only a fragment of his once-great 
 fortune. 
 
 It would have been well if, recognizing that the ruthless 
 hurly-burly of business in the seventies was no place for him, 
 Fremont had invested his money in safe securities and devoted 
 himself to some professional pursuit. But such a course was 
 alien to his temperament. He was too active, ardent, and imag- 
 inative. Always some great object, wealth or fame or power, 
 floated just before his outstretched hands. The great spaces 
 of the West still called to him for conquest. His dream of 
 leadership in opening the gates upon their vast resources still 
 burned in his brain, and it led him into an inevitable field. As 
 the war closed, construction gangs began racing westward 
 across the plains and eastwards across the Sierras to join the 
 two sections of the first transcontinental railroad, the Central 
 Pacific-Union Pacific. Plans were already on foot for the 
 Northern Pacific, which soon enlisted Jay Cooke. Fremont 
 had devoted two expeditions to exploring for a south-central or 
 southwestern route, and it was natural for him to turn eagerly 
 to various projects for railroads in that quarter. 
 
 With characteristic impetuosity, he hastened to throw not 
 a quarter, not a half, but all his money into these enterprises. 
 His first step was to purchase the franchise and property of 
 the infant Kansas Pacific and begin its construction; then he 
 bought the Missouri Pacific, and induced Congress to rename 
 it the Atlantic & Pacific, extend its line, and give it a large 
 land-grant. But his interest in these lines soon became subor- 
 dinate to another undertaking, and he surrendered his holdings 
 in both of them. This other undertaking was built about the 
 Memphis & El Paso, of which he bought control, shortly be- 
 coming president. He writes in his manuscript Memoirs: 
 
 The Memphis & El Paso had a large segregated grant of lands 
 from Texas, in no wise connected with the [Federal] Government. 
 I procured from the Texas Legislature a large grant of lands, which 
 was all in the interest of the Memphis & El Paso, which was planned 
 
588 FREMONT 
 
 to run from the harbor of Norfolk to San Diego and San Francisco, 
 and its extended name was the Transcontinental, and I had acquired 
 for it franchises in South California, Arizona, and Arkansas. An 
 interest had been bought by me in the Memphis & Little Rock Rail- 
 road, and arrangements were being made with the intervening lines. 
 
 This is correct. The unbuilt Memphis & El Paso, chartered in 
 1856 by Texas, had received from the State promises of about 
 18,200,000 acres in all, a small principality. Fremont believed 
 that with this line as a beginning he could bring into existence 
 a mighty system from Memphis through to San Diego. Before 
 him floated the vision of finally extending his southern trans- 
 continental to the Atlantic at Norfolk — that vision which 
 Collis T. Huntington ultimately realized. 4 
 
 With this object in view, Fremont and other heads of the 
 Memphis & El Paso in 1867-68 offered two bond issues totaling 
 10 million dollars. He acquired franchises in several States and 
 Territories, bought lands for terminals at San Diego, and made 
 tentative arrangements with a projected western line called 
 the San Diego & Fort Yuma Railroad. While it built east 
 from San Diego to the Gila, the Memphis & El Paso would 
 build southwest through Arkansas, Texas, and the Territories 
 to a junction at Yuma. What could be simpler? General Rose- 
 crans and Sedgwick inaugurated work on the San Diego & 
 Fort Yuma in September, 1869, when it was announced that 
 sufficient funds were in hand to build to the Gila. 5 Fremont 
 expected his bond issues to carry his own line forward rapidly, 
 and while fifty miles of Texas track were being graded and the 
 first locomotives ordered, he placed surveyors at work in the 
 mountain passes of New Mexico. 
 
 In planning this southern transcontinental, he asked for no 
 Federal land-grant; he believed that the Texas grant was suffi- 
 cient. He did go to Congress for a right of way through the 
 
 4 Fremont's railroad ventures are somewhat fully and very harshly analyzed 
 in Cardinal Goodwin, John Charles Fremont, Ch. 13. The transcontinental 
 venture, which had a separate existence from the Memphis & El Paso, was 
 called the Memphis, El Paso, & Pacific Railroad. 
 
 5 New York Herald, September 16, 1869. 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 589 
 
 Territories, and the House passed the necessary measure in 
 February, 1869, by a vote of 121 to 41. The bill then went 
 to the Senate, where Oliver P. Morton and Roscoe Conkling 
 pressed it earnestly, but Howard of Michigan was instrumental 
 in strangling it. This misfortune precipitated a wordy battle 
 between Greeley's New York Tribune, which had been prais- 
 ing Fremont's enterprise in the highest terms, and Senator 
 Howard. The Tribune not only declared Howard's motives 
 selfish, but hinted that they might be corrupt. He was chair- 
 man of the committee on the Pacific Railroad. One transconti- 
 nental had been built with a large Federal subsidy; at least 
 two more must be added, with various branches: "There are 
 always crowds in the lobby of either House raving for more 
 subsidies." Indeed, said the Tribune, only President Grant's 
 intervention had prevented a steal at the previous session. Now 
 came Fremont offering to build a transcontinental line without 
 costing the nation a cent — threatening to spoil the subsidy busi- 
 ness; and Howard, holding a position "in which a corrupt man 
 may make a great deal of money," hampered his undertaking 
 by quibbles and sharp manceuvers. When Howard explained 
 that he had threatened a filibuster against the bill because he 
 questioned the continued validity of the Texas land grant, the 
 Tribune pooh-poohed his excuse, remarking that if any such 
 doubts existed they were for the financiers of the road, not for 
 Congress, to consider. 6 
 
 That summer of 1869 witnessed efforts, much more strenu- 
 ous than discreet, to float the bonds of the Memphis & El 
 Paso in France. They were fairly successful; a total of 
 $5,343,000 worth of securities was sold in Europe, almost 
 wholly to French investors. But of this the French agents of 
 the road, after the custom of the time, paid only three-fifths 
 into the company treasury, taking two-fifths for their trouble. 
 The money came in slowly and irregularly, much of it being 
 used in France to buy rolling-stock and rails; obligations at 
 
 6 For the controversy between the Tribune and Howard, see its issues for 
 August 5, 11, and 17, 1869. 
 
590 FREMONT 
 
 home meanwhile rose steadily. Moreover, unexpected physical 
 obstacles were met; a freshet blocked the channels of the Red 
 River and steamboats could not come within fifty miles of the 
 point where construction had begun. The cost of grading the 
 first seventy miles far exceeded the early estimates. Neverthe- 
 less, Fremont's faith in his road remained undiminished. So 
 did that of the Tribune. Senator Howard's Pacific Railroad 
 Committee early in 1870 showed fresh hostility, for on April 
 22 nd a subcommittee reported that it believed the road had 
 forfeited its land-grant by tardiness in construction. The 
 Tribune scolded this report vigorously while praising Fre- 
 mont's undertaking anew. Greeley was always a staunch 
 friend: 7 
 
 The proposition of a railroad on the 3 2d parallel of latitude has 
 been before the public in various shapes for twenty years, and yet 
 the enterprise is still struggling desperately for existence. Then 
 Texas was the only State of the Gulf region, to whose prosperity 
 the completion of the road is of almost vital importance, which 
 gave it the least encouragement. Louisiana was cold because New 
 Orleans was passed by, and Arkansas offended because Memphis 
 was aimed at. But so earnest was Texas in its desire to see the 
 road built that its several legislatures under rebel and loyal rule 
 affirmed and reaffirmed the grant of lands made to the road in 
 1856. California on the Pacific Coast was desirous of making the port 
 of San Diego the western terminus of the line, chartered and aided 
 the partial construction of another line. The Texas route is the 
 Memphis & El Paso line; the California route is usually called the 
 San Diego & Fort Yuma Railroad. Of the former more than fifty 
 miles are graded, and twenty-three miles laid with rails. Of the 
 latter we know only that work is in progress. Without doubt the 
 two lines have more of finished work, larger land grants, and better 
 prospects of being eventually completed than any other Southern 
 Pacific Rrd. These two roads are under the control of Gen. John C. 
 Fremont; and he has asked Congress to consolidate, charter, and 
 aid them under the title of the "Southern Transcontinental Rail- 
 way. 
 
 7 New York Tribune, May 25, 1870. 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 591 
 
 The Senate Committee on the Pacific Railroad has not only re- 
 ported adversely to this consolidation, but has proposed to authorize 
 an entirely new line, to be called the Texas Pacific Railroad, with 
 branches and connections ; and the bill makes large land grants 
 
 Fremont's enterprise, while ambitious, was not more grandi- 
 ose than many others in the Gilded Age, and the methods by 
 which he tried to finance his scheme were merely typical of 
 these flush and optimistic years. In view of the apparent se- 
 curity which 18,200,000 acres (10,240 for each mile built) 
 offered, they were not reckless. 8 Compared with Jay Cooke's 
 methods of booming the Northern Pacific or "banana belt" 
 route they were conservative; compared with the operations of 
 the Credit Mobilier in building the Union Pacific, they were 
 decidedly decent. They differed little from the financial ar- 
 rangements made for dozens of other lines which went bank- 
 rupt in or before 1873. To be sure, the Memphis & El Paso 
 actually laid down only short stretches of track, and only 
 three locomotives were placed on them, but the land grants 
 were, as the press agents wrote, "an empire in themselves." 
 However, high construction costs, the ebbing flow of French 
 money, Senator Howard's doubts as to the land-grant, and 
 other factors all sapped the credit of the company. In mid- 
 summer of 1870 the blow fell. The road failed to meet pay- 
 ments, mortgage-holders applied for a receivership, and the 
 Federal courts appointed John A. C. Gray to take possession 
 of the property. 
 
 To Fremont this meant ruin — ruin utter and irretrievable. 
 His Kansas Pacific enterprise had already shaken his position, 
 for after paying $200,000 for this road and investing large 
 sums in construction, he had lost it all. Now his remaining 
 money was gone. Family tradition describes the blow as para- 
 lyzing in its completeness. 
 
 Throughout these years of railroad-planning, the General's 
 household had lived on a lavish though hardly ostentatious 
 scale; he was a millionaire, and he had dwelt like one. During 
 
 8 Commercial and Financial Chronicle, August 9, 1873. 
 
592 FREMONT 
 
 the war he had bought a commodious brownstone mansion at 
 what is now 21 West 19th Street, between Fifth and Sixth 
 Avenues. This was a fashionable part of town, and his neigh- 
 bors included Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and (for a time) Senator 
 John Sherman. Early in the sixties he had also bought a com- 
 fortable summer home on the Hudson, "the old Webb place," 
 some two miles north of Tarry town — later a part of John D. 
 Rockefeller's estate. Here, amid more than a hundred acres 
 of lawn and woodland, he had a fine house of rough gray stone, 
 commanding a view of the broad Tappan Zee. Both houses 
 afforded every comfort — a good cuisine, presided over by a 
 French chef, well-drilled servants, flowers, music, and hand- 
 some furniture. Fremont, keeping a spirited horse, rode much 
 in Central Park with Colonel Zagonyi and others, while his 
 daughter Lilly drove a pair of Kentucky thoroughbreds. The 
 children had tutors, and Lilly in especial became an excellent 
 linguist. Mrs. Fremont, interested in many charities, gave to 
 them with a generous hand. 
 
 At all times Fremont's personal tastes were simple, and in 
 some ways he maintained a Spartan existence even when his 
 wealth seemed greatest. He ate astonishingly little, never 
 touched spirits, and drank wine — a glass of claret or Matrai 
 — only when he was tired. He did not smoke, saying that he 
 had taken warning from his men on his expeditions, who 
 seemed to suffer as much from the deprivation of tobacco as 
 of food. He dressed plainly. He used to say that he preferred 
 "old garments, old books, old friends." His library was large, 
 filling from floor to ceiling, in these years, all sides of a room 
 twenty by thirty feet; indeed, after Humboldt's death in 1859 
 he had purchased the books of the great geographer. Here were 
 also other volumes in beautiful bindings, including a set of 
 the Audubon which had so fascinated Jessie as a child in the 
 Congressional Library. His own room held a special set of 
 cases covering the art of war from the earliest time to his own 
 day. But books and horses were his chief indulgences. He be- 
 longed to no clubs, costly or otherwise; he cared little for the 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 593 
 
 theater and nothing for elaborate social entertainments; and 
 he liked to go to bed by ten or earlier, rising at the glimmer 
 of dawn. The household was hospitable, for nothing pleased 
 Fremont more than having friends about him. At the estate 
 on the Hudson — which Mrs. Fremont christened by the local 
 Indian name Pocaho — guests were usually present, and in town 
 an extra plate was always laid at dinner for the chance comer. 
 But balls, receptions, and large dinner-parties were avoided. 
 The general liked better a good fencing-match, a long coun- 
 try walk, or a quiet chat with some congenial friend like N. P. 
 Banks, Thurlow Weed, or John Sherman. A young woman, 
 Nellie Haskell, who lived with them for a time at Pocaho has 
 described his routine : 
 
 The general was often away in the West on his railroad business, 
 but when home he usually read quietly or took evening walks with 
 Mrs. Fremont or long rides through the woods and along the post- 
 roads with the boys, Lil, and myself. He loved to listen to what 
 he called home-made music. He went occasionally to the theatre 
 when Mrs. Fremont asked him, which was seldom, because she knew 
 he preferred to play chess or chat with the neighbors, the Phelpses, 
 Schuylers, Aspinwalls, or Beechers, who dropped in often. As to 
 formal dinners, he attended them only when Mrs. Fremont said: 
 "You really must go this time." She attended many such functions 
 when he was West on business, going to Washington for dinners and 
 musicales. She was present at Mrs. Grant's first White House re- 
 ception But when Mr. Fremont was at home, she tried to have 
 
 only the sort of guests in the house agreeable to him. 
 
 In these years he and Mrs. Fremont spent much time and 
 money in travel. In 1869 they visited France, Germany, Aus- 
 tria, and Scandinavia, the General combining pleasure with a 
 certain amount of business; and they left two of the children 
 in Dresden for schooling. As a railway president, he was in 
 Washington, Texas, or California — everywhere that affairs 
 called him. Both he and Jessie were personages, and they 
 moved with dignity. The summer of 1868 they visited St. Louis 
 
594 FREMONT 
 
 to witness the unveiling of a statue of Thomas Hart Benton. 
 In Mrs. Fremont the event awakened the deepest emotion. A 
 holiday crowd of 40,000 filled the park, and thousands of 
 school-children carrying roses were massed about the pedestal. 
 A band played in the hot afternoon sun. As Jessie pulled the 
 cord and the white drapery fell away the children threw their 
 flowers at the base of the statue; an outgoing train to San 
 Francisco halted and saluted with whistle and waving flags; 
 and she gazed through a mist of tears at the bronze image 
 of her father, facing westward, with the words carved be- 
 low: "There Is The East. There Lies the Road to India." 
 To both Fremont and Jessie, movement, action, and the sense 
 of important pursuits were the breath of life; and Jessie in 
 especial delighted to live with a certain largeness and splendor. 
 
 Now the spacious, luxurious days were suddenly gone for- 
 ever. There was no money for travel, for tutors, or for servants. 
 The Nineteenth Street home and the much dearer Pocaho on 
 the Hudson were both swept away. Even prized personal be- 
 longings had to be sold. Bierstadt's painting of the Golden 
 Gate with the sun setting behind it was bought by a friend for 
 $4,000, just what Fremont had paid for it. The library, por- 
 traits, and mementoes of California, Washington, and Paris 
 in large part disappeared. Land which had been held in Cali- 
 fornia in the name of Mrs. Fremont and the children was sold 
 with the rest. For a brief period the two could not even live 
 together, Mrs. Fremont going into the country to take refuge in 
 one friendly household, and Fremont staying at another in the 
 city. It was a chilling plunge from wealth to penury. 
 
 It could not be said that Fremont had fared better than 
 other investors in the Memphis & El Paso, for he was the last 
 man in the world to use his inside knowledge to escape scot- 
 free from the crash which ruined others. Yet about his name 
 there instantly collected the atmosphere of a scandal. The 
 reason for this lay in the means used to sell the Memphis & 
 El Paso bonds in France. Fremont, with his usual poor judg- 
 ment of men, had been unfortunate in his agent. The French 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 595 
 
 consul-general in New York, Fremont's brother-in-law Gaul- 
 dree Boileau, had introduced to him a M. Henri Probst, whom 
 he endorsed as a well-known businessman in Paris. Probst 
 had in fact been connected with the French Government in 
 supplying the troops engaged in the Mexican occupation; Fre- 
 mont liked the man, and at his instance the executive board 
 appointed him agent in France. It was agreed that for the first 
 series of bonds issued 60 per cent of the face value was to be 
 paid to the Company, 34 per cent was to be given to the bank- 
 ing house selling the bonds, and 6 per cent was to go to the 
 agent. 9 Probst, after associating with himself a prominent 
 French railway engineer, Antoine Lissignol, to lend an appear- 
 ance of technical strength to the enterprise, arranged with the 
 great brokerage house of Paradis et Cie. to float the bonds. This 
 house made harsh stipulations, requiring that all possible ma- 
 terials be purchased in France or Belgium; and one reason why 
 the road shortly failed was that contracts for 100 engines and 
 45,000 tons of rails, costing 14,000,000 francs, were let in 
 France. 
 
 Going from New York to Paris late in 1867, Probst had 
 concluded this arrangement with Paradis et Cie. during the 
 latter part of 1868; and either Probst or Paradis et Cie. then 
 indulged in a series of remarkable misrepresentations. A full- 
 page advertisement in La Liberte of May 15, 1869, is typical 
 of the extravagant claims made for the enterprise. This de- 
 scribed the company as the "Transcontinental Memphis Pa- 
 cific," and pictured its line as running from Baltimore, Norfolk, 
 and Charleston, the three Eastern termini, westward through 
 Chattanooga, Memphis, Arkansas, Texas, and the Territories 
 to San Diego. The roads from the Eastern seaports to Mem- 
 phis were spoken of as "that part of the transcontinental rail- 
 road which is finished and in operation," while it was stated 
 that the section from Memphis to Little Rock was in working 
 order and the line from Little Rock to the Red River was being 
 
 9 Commercial and Financial Chronicle, September 4, 1875 ; Fremont, MS 
 Memoirs. 
 
59 6 FREMONT 
 
 "pressed forward actively." Part of the advertisement reads 
 like some dream of Tartarin of Tarascon. "Entering the terri- 
 tory of New Mexico," it declared, "the Transcontiental meets 
 the great commercial route from Guaymas and the interior of 
 Mexico at Santa Fe. It will, for the future, suppress the dan- 
 gerous marches of caravans from Santa Fe to San Francisco, 
 New Orleans, and St. Louis. It then reaches California, after 
 receiving at Arizona City the traffic of the great River Colo- 
 rado." 10 
 
 This was bad enough; but there were still worse misrepre- 
 sentations. In La Liberte and other newspapers the brokers 
 stated that "the company with the approbation of Congress 
 has fused itself with the lines constructed and at present work- 
 ing from Memphis to Chattanooga, Chattanooga to Washing- 
 ton and Baltimore, Chattanooga to Norfolk, and Washington 
 to Norfolk through Richmond." They also declared that the 
 Federal Government had subsidized the Memphis & El Paso 
 as it had the Union Pacific. "Besides the grants of land," ran 
 the advertisements, though there were no congressional grants, 
 "the Federal Government has voted a guarante of interest of 
 six per cent in favor of the ordinary construction bonds." Of 
 course this was preposterous. The American minister, Elihu 
 Washburne, promptly sent copies of the advertisements and the 
 placards which were stuck up over Paris to the secretary of 
 state, suggesting that he investigate and take remedial action. 
 He was the more ready to act because ever since his visit to 
 St. Louis in 1861, and his formulation then of charges which 
 the Committee on the Conduct of the War declared unfounded, 
 he had keenly disliked Fremont. By this time, fifteen million 
 francs' worth of the bonds had been sold. 
 
 Of these falsehoods circulated in Paris, Fremont knew noth- 
 ing till later. "At the time the misstatement was made," he 
 writes, "I was in Washington asking Congress for the right of 
 
 10 A full history of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific, and of the methods used 
 to sell the bonds in France, is given in Senate Misc. Doc. 121, 41st Cong., 2d 
 Sess.; this contains more than a hundred pages of data and testimony. 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 597 
 
 way for this road through the Territories to the Pacific. This 
 fact was widely known — spoken of in the newspapers in edi- 
 torials and otherwise; and a telegram from Paradis et Cie. 
 to any banker in New York would have corrected an error 
 which the face of the bonds should have suggested." The bonds 
 declared explicitly that they were based upon lands granted 
 by the State of Texas, and in no way indicated any connection 
 with the Federal Government. No doubt some of the material 
 for the glowing account of the "Transcontinental" as a system 
 running from Norfolk to California was drawn from the hopes 
 and imaginings of Fremont and his associates, who believed in 
 the line. But even the mildest representations of the French 
 agents were made without his authority or knowledge, on their 
 own responsibility. 11 
 
 Reaching Paris in the summer of 1869, Fremont published a 
 letter in an influential French journal in which he tried to set 
 the public right on the main facts as to the bonds. "It is com- 
 pletely false," he wrote, "that we have ever declared that our 
 mortgage bonds enjoy a Federal guarantee of six per cent 
 interest." On the contrary, he declared, the security for the 
 bonds was the mortgage placed upon the state land-grant. 12 In 
 a supplementary statement published on September 27th he 
 added that the company was pressing Congress for a Federal 
 charter, the result of which would be a new land subsidy from 
 the states which had not disposed of their public domain, and 
 the recognition of the line as a postal and military railroad. His 
 optimism unquestionably operated, like Jay Cooke's optimism 
 about the Northern Pacific just before its collapse, like the 
 optimism of many an enterpreneur, to lead investors into a 
 highly speculative enterprise. He should have been more in- 
 dignant, explicit, and thorough in contradicting the lies cir- 
 
 11 Fremont's full statement in self-defense on the sale of the bonds, in the 
 form of a letter to Senator Howard, is published Senate Misc. Doc. 96, 41st 
 Cong., 2d. Sess. It is complete and explicit, filling nine pages. It contains no 
 date, but was apparently written about March 25, 1870. One feature is Fre- 
 mont's sharp attack on Washburne. 
 
 12 La Phare de la Loire, September 18, 1869. 
 
598 FREMONT 
 
 culated by Probst. He should also have included a warning 
 that some question had recently arisen as to the continued 
 validity of the Texan land-grant. But his sanguine tempera- 
 ment conspired with his desire not to injure the bonds un- 
 necessarily. 
 
 The bankruptcy of the Memphis & El Paso caused an in- 
 dignant outcry in France and a feeling of dismay among right- 
 thinking Americans. For some time the press devoted much 
 space to the affair. Three years later such failures were to be- 
 come commonplace. But the post-war boom still endured, and 
 many Americans were anxious to determine who was blame- 
 worthy for these losses. They agreed with Senator Howard's 
 emphatic statement that "a more stupendous fraud never was 
 committed or attempted upon a friendly people," and that 
 "it is one which, if the work of Americans, should make every 
 American blush." They turned back to the published report 
 of April 22 nd upon the railroad, with its mass of testimony by 
 Fremont, Corwine, and others upon the operations of the com- 
 pany. 
 
 Senator Howard, who compiled this report and who had 
 shown a hostile attitude to Fremont from the beginning, now 
 told the Senate that while he could not hold him "personally 
 responsible" for the misrepresentations, he did not "think Gen. 
 Fremont's skirts are clear in reference to these transactions." 
 Many Representatives and not a few Senators were ready to 
 defend Fremont. In debate half a dozen champions challenged 
 Howard's statement with asperity. 13 Sumner declared that it 
 was highly unjust, for there was no evidence of privity on the 
 part of the explorer. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, James Nye 
 of Nevada, and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania all took the 
 same side. Trumbull demonstrated that Howard's statement 
 represented only his individual judgment, that it was based 
 chiefly on one-sided French and American newspaper reports, 
 and that a majority of the subcommittee had dissented from it. 
 He also made the valid point that the French themselves were 
 
 13 For this debate see Congressional Globe, June 20-23, 1870. 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 599 
 
 largely blameworthy for their losses — that they had no excuse 
 for not learning the truth: 
 
 Sir, he [Howard] brings no fact against Fremont that I have 
 heard. He brings charges against the Memphis & El Paso Railroad; 
 he complains that its bonds were puffed up. I understand that a 
 single party in France was the purchaser of those bonds, and after- 
 wards put them upon the market in Paris, and he had various publi- 
 cations inserted in the papers in order to sell them for as much as 
 he could get. Is General Fremont responsible for that? . . .The bond 
 itself shows what its security is; and the Senator will hardly make 
 the Senate or the country believe that capitalists do not look to see 
 what security the bond is issued on. Capitalists understood this thing 
 quite as well as the Senator from Michigan did. They knew what 
 they were buying. 
 
 Nevertheless, the episode left an unhappy blemish upon 
 Fremont's reputation. It is evident that he had acted with en- 
 tire honesty in the matter, but it is also certain that he had 
 shown a lamentable lack of discretion and care. It was his 
 business, in the conscientious discharge of his duties, to scru- 
 tinize the advertisements of his company's bonds in all markets, 
 to insist upon fair statements, and to caution his agents against 
 exaggeration. His fault was of omission, not commission, but 
 it was nevertheless real. When he learned of the false state- 
 ments he should have been more emphatic in denying them. 
 We cannot believe that a man of his sense of honor consented 
 to an improper act, but he did not sufficiently guard against 
 such acts by others. Once more his precipitancy and lack of 
 circumspection betrayed him. 
 
 Irate Frenchmen came to America and filed affidavits de- 
 manding his arrest; French bondholders commenced suits in 
 New York against him and his associates. The Paris office of 
 the Memphis & El Paso was closed by the authorities, and all 
 books and papers were seized. Criminal proceedings were be- 
 gun against the men supposed to be responsible for selling 
 bonds under false pretenses, including Fremont After a 
 
600 FREMONT 
 
 thorough official examination, lasting more than two years, his 
 name was removed from the list of those accused; but just 
 before the trial commenced it was suddenly restored. Later 
 he was told that this was at the instance of our minister, Elihu 
 Washburne, whom he had attacked in his published defense. 
 He was given inadequate time to appear before the juge ^in- 
 struction — only ten days after the summons was served in 
 New York; he had scanty funds for travel or for hiring coun- 
 sel, and in his absence was condemned for failing to reply. 
 Though his French counsel, M. Allou, was in the courtroom, in 
 accordance with French law the judge refused to hear him. 
 The publicity given to this condemnation left a totally unjust 
 impression. 
 
 Some years later, in closing his work as Federal receiver for 
 the Memphis & El Paso, John A. C. Gray wrote the General 
 on the subject. "I deem it fair to say/' he stated, "that through- 
 out the long and careful scrutiny which I have made into the 
 affairs of the company, I have found no proof that would 
 sustain the charges brought against you regarding the fraudu- 
 lent sale of the company's bonds in France." Gray's testimony 
 is the more important in that he was an attorney of marked 
 distinction. The Marquis de Chambrun, who represented the 
 French bondholders in America, gave the same testimony. He 
 also wrote for Fremont a letter explaining the condemnation 
 in Paris. "The judgment pronounced against you," he said, 
 "was nothing more than a judgment by default resting upon 
 the prima facie case submitted to the tribunal of police cor- 
 rectionale by the judicial officer or officers who had directed 
 the preliminary investigation. Under this state of affairs no 
 defense could be offered in your behalf." He added that these 
 ex parte proceedings were an absolute nullity in the eyes of 
 American law, were in direct conflict with the safeguards of 
 personal liberty in the American constitution, and "are now 
 void in France." 14 
 
 14 The letters of Gray and Chambrun are in the Fremont MSS. Gray went 
 on to say: "The misrepresentations under which the bonds were sold to the 
 
A FINANCIAL DEBACLE 601 
 
 As the wreck of the Memphis & El Paso was cleared up, and 
 the Texas Pacific Railroad took over its debts and assets, 
 Fremont beyond doubt felt that his honor remained unblem- 
 ished ; that his motives and aims had always been of the highest 
 character. Jessie shared this conviction. "It is an inextricable 
 mass," she told a friend, "out of which I can glean only an 
 impression of millions of dollars of railroad bonds floated 
 abroad which brought profit only to the agent, advertisements 
 published abroad that misrepresented the whole railroad pic- 
 ture, of which Mr. Fremont knew nothing He has had no 
 
 part in any dishonest transaction. Certain of that, I am strong 
 for whatever is to come." But he had little left but his self- 
 respect. His career as a financier was as decisively ended as his 
 career as an explorer. The demonstration that he was unfitted 
 for business affairs was so complete that no acceptable employ- 
 ment was open to him. He was past sixty; he had three depend- 
 ent children; he was almost penniless. All the courage that he 
 had shown in facing the snow-choked Sierras and the storm of 
 wartime obloquy in St. Louis was needed again; all of it and 
 more. 
 
 public, were made by parties in Paris to whom the entire issue of bonds had 
 been sold by the Company, and my examinations fail to show any proof that 
 these misrepresentations were made with your authority." 
 
Poverty and Labor 
 
 IN this family crisis, it was Mrs. Fremont who, with charac- 
 teristic vigor, came to the rescue. "I am like a deeply built 
 ship," she used to say; "I drive best under a stormy wind." 
 She had already discovered that she could earn money with 
 her pen. During the Civil War she had set herself, with a frenzy 
 of energy, to write the history of Zagonyi's brave troopers who 
 made the charge at Springfield; and within ten days, according 
 to family tradition, had produced the spirited little book called 
 The Story of the Guard, the profits of which she devoted to 
 the Sanitary Commission. Now, while the family went to live 
 first on Madison Avenue, far uptown at Seventy-second Street, 
 and then scraped together its resources to rent a cottage on 
 what was called "the Esplanade" on the waterfront of Staten 
 Island, she became a breadwinner. 
 
 Spurred on by the illness of her younger son, who was threat- 
 ened with tuberculosis, and who must — the physician said — be 
 sent to a dry high climate, she approached Robert Bonner of 
 the New York Ledger. He offered her $100 each for a series 
 of articles. Doubtless he thought it would be months before 
 they were all completed, but she went home, sat down at her 
 desk, and for days labored almost incessantly, hardly pausing 
 for food or rest. When they were all done, she took them to 
 the Ledger office and demanded payment in a lump sum to 
 meet her son's needs. At once she began contributing to other 
 magazines. In the fifteen years between 1875 and 1890, she 
 produced article after article, story after story. She contributed 
 tales for children to the Wide Awake, popular essays to the 
 Ledger, historical sketches to Harper's and the Century. Some 
 
 602 
 
POVERTY AND LABOR 603 
 
 of this magazine work was made over into books: A Year of 
 American Travel, dealing with California and Panama in the 
 gold-rush days; Far West Sketches, concerned chiefly with 
 Mariposa life; The Will and the Way Stories for juveniles; and 
 most important of all, in 1887, the Souvenirs of My Time, an 
 episodic review, brightly written, of her eventful life from the 
 Bodisco wedding to the last tour of Europe. 
 
 Fremont was one of the incorporators of the Texas Pacific, 
 which took over the wreck of the Memphis & El Paso, and till 
 March, 1878, when the receivership was terminated, he was 
 largely occupied in helping adjust the affairs of his dead rail- 
 road enterprise. For his labors, he received only a slender com- 
 pensation. He hence had reason to be glad when, in 1878, upon 
 the intercession of Zachariah Chandler and other old friends, 
 he received from President Hayes the appointment as terri- 
 torial governor of Arizona. The salary was but $2,000 a year, 
 yet that sum meant much to the General. So, too, did the oppor- 
 tunity to revisit the wild West, and to see his surviving friends, 
 including Alexis Godey, who traveled with him from San 
 Francisco to Los Angeles. 1 There was still a halo of legend 
 about Fremont's head, and his journey along the transconti- 
 nental line was a modest ovation. In Chicago and Omaha, he 
 was offered banquets; in San Francisco the Pioneer Associa- 
 tion of California gave him a reception; in many smaller towns, 
 the stations were crowded with people eager to see him once 
 more; and the friendly demonstrations continued through 
 lower California to the end of the railroad at Yuma. Thence he 
 had a "camping-out journey," as Mrs. Fremont called it, to 
 Prescott, the territorial capital. 
 
 Fremont enjoyed such administrative opportunities as the 
 post offered, and busied himself with recommendations regard- 
 ing mining development, railway building, and irrigation by 
 storage reservoirs. With his characteristic liking for large proj- 
 ects, he raised also the question of using the Colorado River 
 to flood the depressed region above the head of the Gulf of 
 
 1 I. T. Martin, Recollections of Elizabeth Benton Fremont, p. 136. 
 
604 FREMONT 
 
 California known later as the Salton Sink, where a great inland 
 sea could easily be recreated. The climate and vegetation of 
 Arizona, he believed, might be essentially affected for the 
 better. There was a congenial if narrow social life at Prescott, 
 where a number of army officers were stationed. He delighted 
 in the return to an outdoor life, and was capable of being in 
 the saddle for twelve hours at a stretch. He thought nothing of 
 riding eighty miles in two days. But poverty remained a sore 
 burden even in the distant Southwest, where house rent was 
 ninety dollars a month and provisions were atrociously high. 
 It is an eloquent fact that although Mrs. Fremont and her 
 daughter knew that the wonders of the Grand Canyon were 
 at hand, it was a financial impossibility to visit them. After a 
 time the high altitude of Prescott told so heavily on Jessie's 
 health that she returned to a small house on Staten Island, and 
 there continued writing stories and essays. 
 
 In 1883, hopeful of reestablishing himself in the business life 
 of New York, Fremont resigned and joined Jessie on Staten 
 Island. On the day of his arrival Mrs. Fremont wrote a friend: 
 "There is only one piece of news in the world to-day, the Gen- 
 eral is here. He tells me I am beautiful, but I tell him the truth. 
 He looks young, rested, and as handsome as that day in '41 
 when I saw him swinging down the avenue in his new uni- 
 form." 2 One undertaking which floated elusively before him 
 was a plan for enlisting the Barings and other English capi- 
 talists in the development by irrigation of the rich Imperial 
 Valley in California. While in Arizona he had become inter- 
 ested, in association with Judge Edward Silent, in various 
 mining enterprises, notably in the rich copper area now known 
 as the Verde — enterprises which ultimately made Judge Silent 
 rich. He was as eager and hopeful as ever. He believed that 
 fortune always lay just ahead. But of actual monetary returns, 
 there was pitifully little. 
 
 These trying years brought into relief some of the best quali- 
 ties of Fremont and his wife. They did not conceal their strait- 
 
 2 Catherine Coffin Phillips, Jessie Benton Frimont, p. 305. 
 
POVERTY AND LABOR 605 
 
 ened lot. Newspaper reporters who visited their cottage for a 
 "story" exclaimed over their evident poverty. 3 Yet they made 
 the most of their few paintings, their bric-a-brac, their books, 
 and the many trophies of Fremont's work as an explorer and 
 soldier — the presentation swords he had received from the 
 people at Charleston, the Germans of St. Louis, and Captain 
 Cathcart; his foreign medals; the flag he had unfurled from 
 the Wind River Peak, and the campaign banners of '56. Their 
 pride permitted not the slightest recognition, by word or ges- 
 ture, that they had fallen in fortune, or the slightest intimation 
 of regret. In dignity of bearing, Mrs. Fremont was as much 
 the grande dame as ever; her husband was the same grave, re- 
 served, courteous gentleman, a little quieter as the years passed, 
 but with the same piercing eye. Their devotion was, as always, 
 beautiful to see. Observers who were much with them have said 
 that they seemed never to need to discuss a question to reach 
 the same conclusion; they intuitively knew each other's wishes 
 and mental processes. They appeared to have some strange 
 spiritual bond, such as that which Mrs. Fremont suggested 
 when she described for the Psychical Research Society 
 the telepathic message which she believed she had received, 
 after long days of emotional prostration, of Fremont's safety 
 at Par wan in 18 54/ 
 
 Both of them struggled valiantly to make the best of their 
 position. The two sons were educated at the Naval Academy 
 and the Military Academy. Constant but unavailing efforts 
 were made to obtain from the Government some compensation 
 for the house and land seized at Black Point, near San Fran- 
 cisco, in 1863, for the erection of a fort; compensation which 
 should have been made without hesitation, and which would 
 have rescued them from all their difficulties. Mrs. Fremont 
 wrote with unresting pen. In 1886, her husband also turned to 
 literary labors. The Personal Memoirs of General Grant were 
 then being read with intense interest, and the explorer was 
 
 3 Compare Leander Richardson in Boston Herald, August 14, 1884. 
 
 4 Described also in Far West Sketches, pp. 29-41. 
 
606 FREMONT 
 
 seized by the idea that his own reminiscences would be of 
 considerable value. Going to Washington, the Fremonts took a 
 house for a year so that he could have access to official papers 
 and reports, and set to work. A newspaper writer has given us 
 a picture of them at their labors: 5 
 
 The Fremonts live in a commodious house that overlooks the 
 wooded grounds of the British Legation, the trees of Nineteenth 
 Street, and the shrubbery of Dupont Circle. The family at present 
 here consists of the General and Mrs. Fremont and their daughter. 
 The two sons are married. One is in the navy, the other lives in 
 
 Montana. The workroom is on the second floor of the house 
 
 There is a bay window in the east end of the room, on the right 
 of which is placed the General's table, surmounted by a tall set of 
 pigeonholes, where letters, notes, and papers are kept. On the other 
 side of the window is placed Mrs. Fremont's table, a large plain 
 affair, covered with green leather. The General dictates and Mrs. 
 Fremont writes down each word of the story as it falls from his 
 lips. The family group is, however, not yet complete. In the alcove 
 is placed a typewriter, and with it Miss Fremont transforms her 
 mother's manuscript into neat, legible print. Here they all work 
 together ... all day long. The rule of the house is to rise at seven, 
 take a cup of tea and a roll, and begin at eight, and continue until 
 twelve, when breakfast is taken. At one o'clock they resume work 
 and forge ahead until six, when the stop for the day and for dinner 
 is made. In the evening the copy is sent out, and in the morning the 
 proof-sheets are received from the printer. Gen. Fremont is now 
 seventy-four years old, but looks scarce sixty. His hair, short beard, 
 and moustache are white, but his brown eyes are clear and bright 
 as stars, and his complexion has the ruddy, healthy glow of child- 
 hood. 
 
 To find a publisher was not easy, but at last Belford, Clarke 
 & Co. of Chicago and New York entered into a contract. The 
 first of the two volumes, a ponderous 650-page work, appeared 
 in 1887 under the title of Memoirs of My Life: A Retrospect 
 of Fifty Years, with a sketch of the life of Benton written by 
 
 5 New York Evening Post, September 7, 1886, quoting the Washington Star. 
 
POVERTY AND LABOR 607 
 
 Jessie. Based largely upon the reports of the exploring expedi- 
 tions, much of which was reprinted almost verbatim, the first 
 volume came down only to the capitulation of Couenga in 1847. 
 Its full detail proved wearisome to general readers. Some of 
 the numerous plates, from paintings and drawings based upon 
 the daguerreotypes made by Carvalho in the fourth expedition, 
 were admirable, but others were weak. The price of the book, 
 ranging from $5.75 to $12.50 according to binding, was too 
 high for ordinary purchasers. As a result it was a commercial 
 failure, and the second volume was never published. For all his 
 labors on the Memoirs Fremont received almost nothing. He 
 spoke occasionally in public, as when in 1884 he campaigned 
 in Michigan for Blaine, but he never lectured for pay. There 
 were still times when the wolf howled very near the door. 
 
 At last a sudden crisis arose, Fremont's health seemed to 
 break under the strain of writing, and late in 1887 he was seized 
 with so severe an attack of bronchitis that his physician de- 
 clared he must be taken at once to a warmer climate. 6 There 
 was no money. In desperation — doubtless also in humiliation — 
 Mrs. Fremont went to her old friend, the eminent railway 
 builder Collis P. Huntington, who was all concern. "It must be 
 California," he said; "you should have my private car, but it 
 is already lent." That night he came in person to bring tickets, 
 letters to officials of different railways, and a generous sum for 
 expenses. Fremont was reluctant and almost angry, but Mrs. 
 Fremont insisted. So did Huntington, who tactfully remarked: 
 "You forget our road goes over your buried campfires and 
 climbs many a grade you jogged over on a mule; I think we 
 rather owe you this." A day later they were in a Pullman, run- 
 ning out of the stormy December weather into the bright sun- 
 shine of Kentucky: 
 
 It had been a trial to see the General's sad, unsmiling face [wrote 
 Mrs. Fremont afterward], but toward evening he beckoned me across 
 to his section, and holding my hand said, "You were right to come. 
 
 6 I have received much material on this period of family life from the late 
 Major Frank P. Fremont. 
 
608 FREMONT 
 
 I feel better already." Whereupon I cried heartily. Instantly a young 
 conductor was beside me with words of genuine compassion. "O, 
 it is not that," I said, "I am so happy, the General says he feels 
 better." "We all know who you are," the tender-hearted man said, 
 "but we respected General Fremont's wish for silence." 
 
 This was the beginning of the end, though Fremont's long 
 rest in California — they settled in a cottage on Oak Street in 
 Los Angeles — seemed to restore his health. He returned to New 
 York in 1889 to look after what he still proudly called his busi- 
 ness affairs, leaving Mrs. Fremont on the Pacific Coast and 
 writing to her daily. He had high hopes that he would yet 
 induce Congress to make a proper payment for the Black Point 
 property. Moreover, he had been deeply touched and gratified 
 when his friends (prompted, it must be confessed, by Jessie) 
 set on foot a movement to have him restored to the Army as a 
 major-general, and placed on the retired list with pay, and he 
 now gave them every assistance that was proper. He had out- 
 lived most of his enemies — the Blairs, Elihu Washburne, and 
 others — and all the ill feeling of the past. Public sentiment 
 supported the measure, and in April, 1890, Congress, "in view 
 of the services to his country rendered by John C. Fremont, 
 now of New York, as explorer, administrator, and soldier," 
 duly made the appointment. It secured to him, for the first time 
 in more than fifteen years, an adequate income, $6,000 an- 
 nually, and enabled him to look forward to his last days in 
 peace. 7 
 
 His relief and pleasure, his friends in New York have said, 
 were childlike. He proposed to go back as quickly as possible 
 to Los Angeles, and there make his permanent home. Early in 
 July, 1890, he wrote Mrs. Fremont that he would set off the 
 following week and spoke of "living out our years together in 
 a content most absolute." He had become involved with Josiah 
 Royce in a controversy over his role in the conquest of Cali- 
 
 7 Jessie, who believed the government owed them more than $40,000 for the 
 Black Point property, declared with her usual spirit that this allowance was 
 "small payment on account," and "sadly delayed" at that. 
 
POVERTY AND LABOR 609 
 
 f ornia, and wished to complete an article for the Century Maga- 
 zine. But he had less strength than he or his sons, with whom 
 he had spent much time in Washington, supposed. 
 
 The end came as a direct result of a kindly act. On a hot July 
 Sunday, he made a pilgrimage to the grave of a little boy friend 
 in Brooklyn. The English mother had obtained from him a 
 promise that he would lay flowers there in memory of the 
 child's birthday, and he kept the promise. That night occurred 
 a sudden fall in temperature, and his boarding-house bed had 
 insufficient coverings. Fremont had been overheated and 
 fatigued, and was seized with a violent chill. His physician and 
 close friend, Dr. William J. Morton, was called, and immedi- 
 ately upon arriving telegraphed up the Hudson to Ossining for 
 the only son in reach, John C. Fremont, Jr. When the latter 
 arrived, it was evident that peritonitis had set in, and that in 
 a man seventy-seven years old it could only terminate fatally. 
 Within a few hours it was all over. There was little time to 
 warn Jessie. A telegram had gone to her from Charley: "Father 
 is ill." Three hours later came another: "Father is dead." But 
 the suddenness was perhaps best. "The end came painlessly," 
 wrote the son to his sister Elizabeth, in words which recall 
 Kent's exclamation over the dead Lear, "and without knowl- 
 edge to him. It was blessedly quick and easy, and as I looked 
 at him lying there so still and peaceful I questioned whether I 
 was not heartless, for I could find no sorrow or pity for him at 
 all, but a feeling of relief that his life was over. And how thank- 
 ful I am that the last few months were made more peaceful 
 and happier for him." The date was July 13th. He added: "Of 
 what the effect is going to be on mother, I don't dare think. 
 And when I do think, I doubt whether the crudest result would 
 not be the kindest. They lived in each other so that I don't 
 think there is any life for the one left." 
 
 It was a characteristic end for a life full of misfortune — 
 almost alone in a cheerless Manhattan boarding-house, with no 
 friends near, and with Jessie three thousand miles away; his 
 hope of their comfortable days together, all financial anxiety 
 
610 FREMONT 
 
 at last removed, never to be realized. Doubtless he knew, as his 
 life ebbed away, that his wife would be plunged back again 
 into utter poverty. When he was placed in his coffin — he had 
 instructed that it be a plain pine box, and that he be buried in 
 an ordinary black suit, not his uniform — his son took a minia- 
 ture of Jessie as she had been in the days of her youth, and 
 the telegram that was her last message to him, and folded them 
 in one of his crossed hands. It was the end of the romance that 
 had begun in Washington in the bright autumn days of 1840. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Mrs. Fremont was destined to outlive her husband by a 
 dozen years, residing constantly with her daughter in Los An- 
 geles. The death of the General, who had received only two 
 months' pay since his restoration to the army lists, left her in 
 sorely straitened circumstances; but her friends and admirers 
 came at once to her aid. Within a few months, in the latter part 
 of 1890, she was presented with a handsome cottage in the 
 newer part of Los Angeles. At the same time, Congress, spurred 
 on by exaggerated press stories that she was in actual destitu- 
 tion, passed a bill giving her the ordinary pension of $2,000 
 allowed to widows of major-generals. Her future was thus 
 secure. For many years, she was one of the prominent figures 
 of Los Angeles, deferred to on all public occasions. When Presi- 
 dent McKinley and John Hay visited the city in 1901, one of 
 their first acts was to drive to Mrs. Fremont's home to pay her 
 their respects. "My goodness, John," Mrs. Fremont said with 
 a twinkle to the portly Secretary of State, whom she recalled as 
 a slender stripling in the White House in Lincoln's time, "how 
 you have grown!" She was then confined to her chair, and on 
 December 27, 1902, she died. 
 
 They are buried together at Piermont on the Hudson, near 
 the brink of a bluff looking out over the broad Tappan Zee to 
 the old home, Pocaho, where they spent some of their happiest 
 years together. Over their grave, the state of New York in 1906 
 erected a dignified monument, with bronze flag, sword, and a 
 
POVERTY AND LABOR 611 
 
 medallion head of the explorer against a granite stone, and on 
 it are recorded his many achievements and titles. He would 
 have chosen for himself a shorter, simpler inscription — perhaps 
 the sentence in which Buchanan declared that to him more 
 than any other belonged the credit for the conquest of Cali- 
 fornia. Some of his friends would have chosen the line of 
 Whittier — "Fremont, who struck the first brave blow for lib- 
 erty." But the most fitting epitaph, recalling his happiest 
 achievements, and his most remarkable services to the nation, 
 is furnished by the words of Jessie Benton Fremont — "from 
 the ashes of his campfires have sprung cities." 
 
Character and Fame 
 
 IN this varied and energetic career, so full both of achieve- 
 ment and frustration, there is much which appears psy- 
 chologically puzzling. The fact that to many of Fremont's 
 contemporaries his personality seemed alien and impenetrable 
 helps to explain why his aims and motives were frequently mis- 
 judged, and his acts aroused such violent antagonism. He made 
 ardent friends who loved him (some of them) just this side of 
 idolatry; he made enemies who found no condemnation too 
 harsh. Many who attempted to measure him in a detached way 
 formed, after long study, an impression that he was a genius 
 manque, a distinguished and valuable man who just fell short 
 of being effectively great. Josiah Royce, not the friendliest of 
 observers, wrote that the most transient personal intercourse 
 with this romantic and fascinating figure left a sense of a pecul- 
 iarly hidden and baffling character. "The charming and courtly 
 manner, the deep and thoughtful eyes, the gracious and self- 
 possessed bearing, as of a consciously great man at rest, await- 
 ing his chance to announce his deep purpose and to do his deci- 
 sive deed — all these things perplexed one who had any occasion 
 to observe, as some did, that the deep purpose seemed always 
 to have remained in reserve, and that there had been some 
 reason in his life why the decisive deed had never been done." 
 Other men, like Schurz, felt strongly attracted to him at first 
 sight, and yet retained, in a sense of some subtle deficiency com- 
 bined with great capacities, an unwillingness to give him their 
 complete confidence. 
 
 Yet Fremont's character and mind are essentially simple and 
 clear, and both his talents and limitations are susceptible of as 
 
 612 
 
CHARACTER AND FAME 613 
 
 close analysis as those of most men of reserved temperament. 
 He has sometimes been described as a showy and pretentious 
 personality. Nothing could be further from the truth. All his 
 closest associates testify that the outstanding qualities of his 
 character were sincerity and simplicity. For ostentation — de- 
 spite certain appearances to the contrary when in 1861 he tried 
 to impress his strength upon hostile St. Louisans — he not only 
 had no taste, but a decided distaste. He dressed with the utmost 
 plainness. He avoided public appearances, and would go far 
 to avoid a reception or civic dinner. He disliked public speak- 
 ing, and it required a strong attachment to a man or cause to 
 induce him, as in his brief tour for Blaine, to appear before an 
 audience. He was simple in all his private habits : he liked plain 
 food, gave a plain hospitality, and found his chief amusements 
 in horseback riding and walking. In Mrs. Fremont's tastes 
 there was always a strong element of liking for the dramatic, 
 but of this Fremont himself showed not a trace. 
 
 Fremont's habits and impulses were essentially restless and 
 kinetic. His friends noted that, beneath his quietness and dig- 
 nity, he was always active, always moving, always concerned 
 with action rather than thought. In his leisure at Pocaho he was 
 incessantly busy outdoors. Though he had a large library, espe- 
 cially strong in military works and exploration, he was seldom 
 observed sitting with a book in his hand. His friends remember 
 him eagerly mastering one of the high-wheeled bicycles just 
 coming into vogue, going on long botanical excursions, and 
 overseeing the gardens and stables. He was extremely fond of 
 dogs and horses. The years in which he furiously organized the 
 mining activities at Mariposa, building flumes, stamp-mills, 
 and roads, were as congenial to him as the years of outdoor 
 exploration. Rather strangely, he had little aptitude for me- 
 chanical contrivance; as one of his family expressed it, he was 
 "not a putterer." But he loved activities in the open and had 
 little taste for study; in his later years, when master of his 
 time, he retired early that he might be outdoors with the dawn. 
 Yet there was no nervousness in this; when he was induced to 
 
614 FREMONT 
 
 take his seat in the circle indoors, his restlessness abruptly 
 left him, and his dignified immobility, his perfect quiescence, 
 with never an unnecessary gesture or motion, impressed all who 
 saw him. 
 
 His social needs were fully met by a family life which was 
 singularly attractive in its warmth and devotion, and in which 
 he displayed the knightliest side of his character. It is signifi- 
 cant that he not merely refrained from joining any clubs, but 
 that he took no part in the activities of such bodies as the 
 Grand Army of the Republic, in which he might have been 
 a prominent figure; he was honored by the Royal Geographical 
 Society, but joined no American scientific body. His circle of 
 friends was limited, for his love of home life and his native 
 reserve kept him from making new acquaintances readily. Yet 
 with the men and women whom he knew best his reserve gave 
 way to animation and even fun. His son writes that there was — 
 
 A sharp division between the two sides of his character; the 
 questing side, which was expressed in his explorations, and the 
 human side, which was companionable, cheerful, and with a tendency 
 to gaiety accounted for by his French forbears. He heartily enjoyed 
 a joke or a bright story, so long as it was keen and clean. Though 
 in no sense pharisaical, he instinctively avoided the unclean, both 
 physical and moral; and with all this, he was intensely human and 
 understanding. One trait, or it might be said fault, was an indiffer- 
 ence to what the general public might think, so long as he was sure 
 that his action was right. Appearances are sometimes more important 
 than facts, and I am sure that it was this indifference which has left 
 him to a certain extent a misunderstood figure. Perhaps a sentence 
 I remember may explain what I mean more clearly. One day when 
 I was commenting upon the injustice of the government toward him 
 in a certain case, he checked me by saying: "No! The United States 
 and its government are all right. The fault lies in the fact that the 
 conscience of the people is delegated to the members of Congress, 
 and a delegated conscience never functions. " 
 
 Fremont's primary talent was as an explorer; and just as he 
 was rarely fortunate in the circumstances which threw him as a 
 
CHARACTER AND FAME 615 
 
 youth so quickly and effectively into the field of exploration, 
 so he was unfortunate that later circumstances cut him off from 
 all achievement therein. He was only rarely a "Pathfinder"; 
 for the most part he was a Pathmarker. At times, particularly 
 in his explorations of the Great Basin, he really made a new 
 area known to the world. But in general he traveled over trails 
 which had been found before by trappers, hunters, and traders, 
 and through regions that were at least partially known to 
 frontiersmen. His distinction lay in the scientific equipment he 
 brought to the task of surveying, observing, and describing 
 these trails and regions. For his period he was an excellent 
 topographer, surveyor, and mathematician, and a good amateur 
 geologist and botanist. For zoology, which was less important, 
 he showed slighter aptitude. It would be hard to overemphasize 
 the zeal and conscientiousness which he gave to the work of 
 mapping his routes, collecting specimens, noting geographical 
 and topographical facts, and at night taking his observations 
 of the stars. He had a true scientist's reverence for his calling. 
 Few distinctions pleased him so much as his medal from the 
 Royal Geographical Society, and he spoke warmly of that body 
 as his "alma mater"; while he took pride in naming one of his 
 rivers after Alexander von Humboldt. "I am given by myself," 
 he wrote, "the honor of being the first to place his great name 
 on the map of this continent." 
 
 As an explorer he showed qualities of precision, industry, 
 and resourcefulness that are quite incompatible with the con- 
 ception of a flashy, unstable nature, a man of meretricious 
 parts. His expeditions had no picnic aspect. For every member 
 they were full of toil, hardship, hunger, fatigue, and peril; for 
 Fremont they were full of constant and heavy responsibility. 
 The romance of the western explorer's life, like that of most ad- 
 venturous callings, largely vanishes on close examination; as the 
 British soldier said of trench service, it was damned dirty, 
 damned uncomfortable, and damned dangerous. To rise in the 
 chill gray dawn; to tramp all day, twenty-five or thirty miles, 
 over rough country; to eat half -raw, inadequate food and drink 
 
616 FREMONT 
 
 dirty water; to enforce discipline at every step; to be responsi- 
 ble for every animal, every piece of equipment, every life; to 
 remain awake even to midnight in the harshest weather, after 
 benumbing toil, in order to take astronomical observations; to 
 sit up later still with cramped fingers noting the day's results; 
 to rouse himself to see that watches were duly kept — such was 
 Fremont's lot. It was his lot to frighten cowards out of his ex- 
 pedition before it got into the wilderness; to rise to sudden 
 emergencies — now to replace the broken glass of the barometer 
 without any glass, now to cross a rushing torrent without boats 
 or material to make them; to hearten his men in undertakings 
 that made even Indians quail, as in the winter passage of the 
 Sierras; to be first on his feet in a surprise attack, as when 
 the Klamath Indians struck. No poseur could have lasted ten 
 days on these expeditions. The explorer deserved Kit Carson's 
 heartfelt tribute of 1856: 
 
 I was with Fremont from 1842 to 1847. The hardships through 
 which we passed, I find it impossible to describe, and the credit 
 
 which he deserves I am incapable to do him justice in writing I 
 
 have heard that he is enormously rich. I wish to God that he may 
 be worth ten times as much more. All that he has or may ever 
 receive, he deserves. I can never forget his treatment of me while 
 in his employ and how cheerfully he suffered with his men when 
 undergoing the severest of hardships. 
 
 Two contrasting traits are evident in Fremont the wanderer 
 and explorer. He brought to his labors an enthusiasm which 
 had in it more than a touch of poetry. The grandeur of the 
 West became a passion with him. When he speaks of valley 
 flowers "in brilliant bloom," of some lake "set like a gem in 
 the mountains," of a camp where "the rocks lit up with the 
 glow of our fires made a night-picture of very wild beauty," of 
 Mount Hood rising "like a rose-colored mass of snow," he is 
 recording an emotion that touched his innermost being. After 
 the hardest day's march, he could write of some strange land- 
 scape that "the interest of the scene soon dissipated fatigue." 
 
CHARACTER AND FAME 617 
 
 To many this poetic enthusiasm over the fresh beauties of the 
 West will seem the most attractive element in Fremont's char- 
 acter. The other trait is represented by his skill as an organizer, 
 his iron discipline, and his fierce contempt for cowardice or 
 shirking. The poet gave way to the martinet when it came to 
 mounting guard against Indians, protecting camp equipment, 
 barring liquor, or demanding the intensest exertions in Nevada 
 deserts or Sierra snows. Himself uncomplaining and indomi- 
 table, he could not forgive the quitter. There is an undertone 
 of scathing contempt, in his letter to Mrs. Fremont after the 
 calamitous expedition of 1848-49, describing how one man gave 
 up. "Proue laid down in the trail and froze to death. In a sun- 
 shiny day, and having with him means to make a fire, he threw 
 his blankets down in the trail and laid there till he froze to 
 death." 
 
 To the end of his life Fremont retained his ardent enthusiasm 
 for wild nature in all its aspects. He read nothing with so much 
 interest as accounts of travel in uncharted lands, from the pene- 
 tration of tropical Africa to polar expeditions. He never hunted 
 or fished, and taught his children not to take animal life except 
 under necessity. 
 
 Out-of-doors was life to him [writes his son], indoors, a place 
 sheltered from the elements. Stormy weather appealed to him as 
 well as fair. Trees were to him sacred, and he would not let them 
 be cut down on our property, unless dead or dying; then he would 
 do the cutting himself. Flowers especially appealed to him; being a 
 botanist, he took a double interest in them. Travelling with him 
 through the mountains of Arizona on horseback, when he was gov- 
 ernor, I have noticed he would guide his horse so as to avoid 
 crushing a flower or ant-hill; all life had a significance for him. 
 Once we were climbing in the mountains near Innsbruck, and I came 
 across a snake. Boylike, I started to kill it, but he would not permit 
 it. "No, let it go! It has not harmed you and probably enjoys life," 
 he said, adding: "Besides, any Indian knows that to kill a snake 
 causelessly will bring rain and a wet camp." 
 
618 FREMONT 
 
 The two salient faults in Fremont's composition, as the fore- 
 going chapters amply illustrate, were his impulsiveness or rash- 
 ness, and his weak judgment of men and of critical situations. 
 The two faults were closely allied. A greater endowment of 
 caution or practical sagacity would have saved him from expul- 
 sion at college; it would have withheld him from descending 
 the dangerous Platte canon with his instruments and records 
 in a frail boat; it would have prevented the unnecessary clash 
 with Castro on his first entrance into California. His midwinter 
 crossing of the Sierras was an act of reckless impetuosity, in 
 which he brilliantly succeeded because of favorable weather 
 and the aid of two of the best frontiersmen of the time, Carson 
 and Fitzpatrick. His attempted midwinter crossing of the San 
 Juan and other mountains in 1848-49 was another impetuous 
 act, which this time ended in irretrievable disaster. If Carson 
 had been with him here when the storms smote him with irre- 
 sistible force, he would have urged Fremont to make camp, 
 gather wood, put up shelters for the men and animals, weather 
 the storm, and at its termination go back instead of forward. 
 A different decision on Fremont's part would have saved hu- 
 man lives. But his most unfortunate display of imperfect judg- 
 ment was in St. Louis in 1861. He surrounded himself with 
 poorly selected men; he treated tactlessly men and forces re- 
 quiring careful conciliation; he disregarded the wise and kindly 
 efforts of Lincoln to counsel him. It is but a partial excuse to 
 say that his judgment, with all its defects, was in many respects 
 better than the judgment shown by Cameron, the Blairs, and 
 others in Washington. 
 
 Our statement as to his deficiencies requires a certain elab- 
 oration. Lack of judgment frequently means lack of general 
 ability; but not so with Fremont, who had extreme quickness 
 of mind and some very brilliant abilities. It sometimes means 
 lack of foresight, a tendency to live too narrowly in the pres- 
 ent; but Fremont if anything lived too much in the future. 
 With him it meant a disproportion between his ardent imagina- 
 tion, and his mediocre grasp of practical means to achieve the 
 
CHARACTER AND FAME 619 
 
 goal he so vividly saw — to measure the hard, practical, inter- 
 mediary steps separating him from it. He was a man who 
 dreamed dreams and saw visions. They fired his heart and 
 carried him, always intense and dynamic, into well-intentioned 
 action. They were such dreams as others might have brought to 
 practical fruition. His dream, when commander of the Depart- 
 ment of the West in Missouri in 1861, of marching through 
 Arkansas to Memphis, living on the country as he went — it was 
 such a dream as Sherman realized in his march to the sea. His 
 dream of throwing a railroad from Little Rock or New Orleans 
 to the Pacific — it was the dream that the builders of the Santa 
 Fe and Southern Pacific made reality. But once transported 
 outside his true scientific vocation into the hard world of clash- 
 ing human interests, he lacked the shrewdness, the grasp of 
 human nature, the insight into ways and means, to give his 
 grandiose plans effect. Without the imagination, he would have 
 been a more useful though a far less striking man. If fate had 
 gifted him with strong practical grasp as well as soaring imagi- 
 nation, he might have been one of the dominant figures of his 
 time. He was not a rudderless ship, but a ship whose swelling 
 sails made its rudder seem feeble. 
 
 The result was a career that was never quite tragic, never 
 quite victorious, but often midway between the two as he played 
 out an elaborate drama of frustration. Again and again he 
 was placed in situations where he seemed on the eve of some 
 great triumph, his wife watching with elation by his side. Again 
 and again the promised triumph turned into sorry futility, and 
 the indomitable Jessie steeled herself once more to meet dis- 
 aster with queenly dignity. He might have scored a resounding 
 success in 1853 in finding a practicable winter route for a rail- 
 way through the Sangre de Cristo range — but he lost his men 
 and some starved to death. He might have carried Pennsylvania 
 and the Presidency in 1856 — but the election left him no hap- 
 pier a figure than many another defeated candidate. He might 
 by rapid marches and masterly maneuvering have swept Mis- 
 
620 FREMONT 
 
 souri and Arkansas free of Confederates; but a subordinate 
 was thrown back at Wilson's Creek, and a rash defiance of 
 Lincoln's wishes brought about his removal. He might have 
 made a fortune from the Mariposa grant — but financial harpies 
 snatched it from his hands. He seemed about to become a com- 
 manding figure in the railroad world; but the result of all his 
 effort was heavy financial loss and the discredit of a French 
 indictment. "It was as if a character of pure poetry," writes 
 Royce, "some Jaques or some lesser Round Table Knight, had 
 escaped from romanceland and were wandering about amongst 
 live men on the Earth. Always his promises and gifts would 
 vanish, as by the stroke of an enchanter's wand, when men 
 stooped to pick them." His career remained thus frustrated to 
 the end — to the time when the leader who had come so close to 
 the Presidency was glad to accept a territorial governorship, 
 and when he gained his long-sought retirement pay in the Army 
 only to die before he could collect it. 
 
 In studying this strange career we can readily understand 
 why it excited the harsh censure of many observers. Fremont 
 seemed after 1850 to seek easy success in a world where true 
 success almost always comes hard. His great achievement for 
 the American nation, his geographical work, followed upon ten 
 years of severe practical training under the ablest masters; it 
 was well earned by that and additional years of peril and effort 
 in the field. The Fremont of the first three expeditions every 
 one must admire. But by 1850 the tide of events had moved 
 so rapidly that his geographical vocation was gone; and like 
 Othello, he knew not where to turn. He sought the laurels of 
 the Presidency without the stern practical preparation which 
 men like Lincoln gave themselves during half a lifetime of 
 political labor. He sought the glory of a Civil War general, 
 never having commanded five hundred men, without that pro- 
 tracted and often bitter training which men like Grant and Lee 
 had received in military academy, camp, and field. He sought 
 the rewards of a railroad-builder without passing through that 
 grim business tuition which Cornelius Vanderbilt and Collis P. 
 
CHARACTER AND FAME 621 
 
 Huntington had gained long before they constructed their first 
 short railroad line. Fremont tried too often to reap where other 
 men had sown, and it was not surprising that he met with 
 scathing condemnation from critical onlookers. 
 
 Yet the fault was not all his own. His associates, and the 
 American people as a whole, bear no little responsibility for 
 his failures. The people after 1847 created a legend, and this 
 legendary Fremont bore as remote a relation to the real man 
 as the legendary Grant in 1870 bore to the real President. Nor 
 can we altogether regret the many vicissitudes of this half- 
 frustrated, half-successful career. Although the legend has been 
 dissipated, Fremont, himself a man of imagination, must appeal 
 poignantly to the imagination of successive generations. If he 
 was not always heroic in defeat, he was unfailingly picturesque; 
 and because picturesqueness has an ineffaceable charm, we 
 cannot but deal leniently with the figure who offers it. 
 
 His greatest definite contribution to American life was his 
 geographical work — his careful mapping of old paths, his dis- 
 covery of some new ones, his revelation of the true character 
 of what he was first to call the Great Basin, his share in dis- 
 pelling the myth of a wide desert in the Platte country, and 
 his encouragement to well-planned emigration. The maps on 
 which he and Preuss collaborated and the reports which he 
 wrote with Jessie's assistance were models of their kind. But 
 we must not think of Fremont's services in purely definite and 
 practical terms. His life is memorable partly because it so 
 strikingly illustrates the possibilities of adventurous action in 
 the wide American scene. Where is a career with more of con- 
 trast, of vicissitude, of wide-ranging effort, of varied participa- 
 tion in national life? His name evokes a series of scenes which 
 appeal irresistibly to the imagination: the great untamed West 
 in the era of the buffalo herds and roving Indian, of Kit Carson 
 and Johann Sutter; the clash of Mexicans and Americans over 
 the imperial domain stretching from the Rio Grande to Shasta; 
 the excited rush of Forty-Niners to the gold fields; the ideal- 
 istic crusade for freedom which gave birth to the Republican 
 
622 FREMONT 
 
 Party; the anguished years of civil conflict, with armies grap- 
 pling in Missouri and the Shenandoah Valley; the desperate 
 political intrigues of 1864, and the railway building and finan- 
 cial speculation of the Gilded Era. His name evokes, too, the 
 fragrance of one of the truest love stories in American history. 
 To have lived so daringly and completely, to have written so 
 many pages fascinating in their dash and color, to have touched 
 so many important events, makes him a contributor not only 
 to the history but to the romance of America. 
 
XXXVII 
 Some New Light on Fremont 
 
 Ancestry and Birth 
 
 Two bits of evidence indicate that Charles Fremon was an 
 excellent French teacher. Samuel Mordecai, in "Richmond in 
 Bygone Days: Being Reminiscences of an Oldtime Citizen" 
 (1856), states that early in the century a large brick building 
 on Carey Street was occupied by Haller's Academy, a private 
 school. Haller was a Swiss or German of a little learning and a 
 good deal of address and pretension. But "he also had judg- 
 ment enough to enable him to select good teachers. Among 
 these was Mons. Fremont, the father of Col. Fremont, of Pa- 
 cific and warlike celebrity." The civil engineer R. B. Osborne, 
 in his life of Moncure Robinson, privately printed in 1889 and 
 later republished in the William and Mary College Quarterly 
 for 192 1, writes that Robinson, by studying under Fremon at 
 William and Mary, gained a "remarkably perfect" knowledge 
 of French. 
 
 Fremont's birthplace in Savannah is preserved and still 
 shown to visitors. It is a two-story and basement house, rec- 
 tangular, of solid brick construction, with a door and a full- 
 length French window on the first floor, two windows on the 
 second. 
 
 The Third Expedition and the Bear Flag War 
 
 The New York Herald gave a good deal of attention to the 
 start of Fremont's Third Expedition. It carried a front-page 
 article and map on October 19, 1845, followed by articles on 
 October 26 and November 2 of that year. While these contain 
 no new information, they indicate that Fremont already had a 
 
 623 
 
624 FREMONT 
 
 certain renown. Another article on November n, 1846, dealt 
 with the explorer's travels in Upper California. 
 
 The question of the exact tenor of Archibald Gillespie's 
 message to Fremont remains unresolved. We might assume 
 that it contained nothing that was not in the instructions 
 which Gillespie carried to Sloat and Larkin, bidding them pur- 
 sue a policy conciliatory to the Calif ornians, but for one fact: 
 Why, if that were true, should Gillespie push on posthaste hun- 
 dreds of miles to the north, through dangerous Indian country, 
 to overtake Fremont homeward bound to the Atlantic Coast? 
 Actually, the instructions sent Commodore Sloat were two- 
 headed. One part required him to treat the native Californians 
 with great friendliness. The other part ran: "If you ascertain 
 with certainty that Mexico has declared war against the United 
 States, you will at once possess yourself of the port of Saint 
 [sic] Francisco, and block and occupy such other ports as 
 your force may permit." Sloat had five warships. The text of 
 the letter to Larkin is known only from a copy sent by ship 
 around Cape Horn; Gillespie, before landing in Mexico, com- 
 mitted it to memory and destroyed it. Of Fremont, Gillespie 
 later testified that he had been instructed by Secretary of State 
 Buchanan to "confer" with him, and "make known my instruc- 
 tions." These again were two-headed. One part told Fremont 
 "it was the wish of the Government to conciliate the feelings of 
 the people of California, and encourage a friendship towards 
 the United States." The other part, said Gillespie, called upon 
 him "to watch over the interests of the United States, and 
 counteract the influence of any foreign agents who might be 
 in the country with objects prejudicial to the United States." 
 
 Obviously, when Gillespie began to "confer" with Fremont, 
 he might emphasize the conciliatory side of the instructions — a 
 side not pertinent if Fremont continued to travel east. Or he 
 might emphasize the Government's desire that Fremont watch 
 over American interests and counteract foreign machinations — 
 a side very pertinent if Fremont turned back. And then there 
 were oral messages from Benton and others. 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 625 
 
 A dim ray of light is thrown on the subject by a letter of 
 Benton's in the Buchanan Papers in the Pennsylvania His- 
 torical Society. Senator Lewis Cass on February 17, 1848, 
 wrote Buchanan that the Senate Military Committee were in- 
 vestigating the origins of the military operations in California 
 against the Mexican authorities before the news of war; that 
 they had examined Gillespie; and that if no state reason existed 
 to the contrary, they would like to see a copy of the instruc- 
 tions. Buchanan evidently consulted Benton. The Missouri 
 Senator wrote back February 18, 1848: 
 
 I do not think it necessary, nor desirable, to publish the instruc- 
 tions, nor in fact, any part of them. The depositions of Fremont and 
 Gillespie are brief and general, and only go to the general point of 
 observing and counteracting foreign designs in California and con- 
 ciliating the people towards ourselves. No authority for hostilities is 
 claimed under them; and as they stand, they only showed the natural 
 and proper desire of the government to frustrate the prejudicial de- 
 signs of foreigners in Cal. — which designs were found to be far more 
 dangerous than known of here and requiring a remedy of a much 
 stronger kind than the govt, contemplated; and fortunately, we have 
 the full proof now here to show the danger of the designs which were 
 then on foot, and the necessity for the strong remedy which was 
 applied. 
 
 For the downright Benton, this has an evasive ring. We now 
 know that the British had no "designs" on California. Yet the 
 matter cannot be dismissed with that statement. 
 
 When Secretary Buchanan wrote his message of October 17, 
 1845, to Consul Larkin, and when Gillespie left Washington the 
 next month, relations between Britain and America were 
 gravely strained by the Oregon issue. Polk had declared in 
 his inaugural message that the United States had good title to 
 all Oregon. Withdrawing previous offers of compromise, in 
 December, 1845, ne called for ending the joint occupation. 
 When the following April he gave notice of this termination, 
 the two powers were at an impasse. War between them was 
 
626 FREMONT 
 
 possible, and to many seemed probable. One reason why the 
 Mexicans attacked Taylor's troops was that they expected 
 Anglo-American hostilities. Earlier, in 1844, an influential body 
 of native Californians had asked Alexander Forbes, the British 
 agent in the province, whether they could obtain a British pro- 
 tectorate. The British Foreign Office wrote Forbes (December 
 31, 1844) that Britain would not assent to this, for it would 
 be a breach of faith. But it added: "Great Britain would view 
 with much dissatisfaction the establishment of a protectual 
 power over California by any other foreign state." Sir George 
 Seymour, who commanded the British warships on the Pacific 
 coast, asked the Admiralty in March, 1846, for an increased 
 force. 
 
 Thus Gillespie might well have got the impression in Wash- 
 ington, in Mexico, and in Monterey that a British threat was 
 real and powerful. Not until June 15, 1846, was the memorable 
 treaty settling the Oregon question signed in Washington — 
 some five weeks after Fremont turned back from Klamath 
 Lake. In 1848, when Benton wrote Buchanan, the impression 
 of a British threat still lingered in many quarters. Indeed, 
 Buchanan in a letter to T. Miller as late as January 15, 1866, 
 speaks of the acquisition of California to keep it from Great 
 Britain (Buchanan Papers, Pennsylvania Historical Society). 
 It is certain that the State Department late in 1845 an< 3 early in 
 1846 feared action by the British as soon as they heard (1) 
 that California had declared its independence of Mexico, or 
 ( 2 ) that war between the United States and Mexico had begun ; 
 such action being perhaps a mere recognition of California's 
 independence, in line with the Foreign Office's letter to Forbes. 
 Had Gillespie emphasized the importance of Fremont's being 
 on the scene "to watch over the interests of the United States, 
 and counteract the influence of any foreign agents," this might 
 account for the explorer's turning back. Pressure from Ameri- 
 can settlers would account for his ensuing activities. 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 627 
 
 The Court Martial 
 
 That the events leading up to Fremont's court martial con- 
 tained much that was discreditable alike to Fremont, Kearny, 
 and the Administration (whose orders led to a conflict of au- 
 thority), is plain. But Benton, Jessie, and Fremont never 
 wavered in their conviction that the verdict was a gross injus- 
 tice to the explorer. After it was rendered Secretary Buchanan 
 urged the young officer to resume his command. On March 
 7, 1848, Fremont replied from the Benton residence (Buchanan 
 Papers, Pennsylvania Historical Society) : 
 
 I have to make you many thanks for the kind interest which you 
 have manifested in my behalf, and would take great pleasure in con- 
 forming my conduct to your opinion, if it were possible. But it is 
 not possible. I feel the sentence of the court martial against me to be 
 unjust; and while that feeling remains I can never, by any act or 
 word whatever, even by the remotest implication, admit, or seem to 
 admit, its justice. 
 
 One of the main results of the court martial was to confirm 
 the hostility of West Point graduates to Fremont. They re- 
 sented his rapid rise to fame, his strong political support first 
 from Poinsett and later from Benton, and his position as a 
 brilliant amateur in military affairs. This hostility had been 
 patent in California before and after his arrest by Kearny; 
 it was plainly manifested, according to the press, by officers at 
 his trial. It would cost Fremont dear in the Civil War. Other 
 Civil War generals, like Jacob D. Cox and John A. McClernand, 
 complained bitterly of the jealousy, arrogance, and clannish- 
 ness of West Pointers in dealing with high volunteer officers. 
 From John Pope and others Fremont was destined to suffer 
 much. 
 
 Fremont later (September 4, 1856) wrote T. S. King, editor 
 of the San Francisco Bulletin: "From the day when my con- 
 nection with the army was dissolved, I have considered my 
 life consecrated to the construction of this Pacific [rail] road." 
 
628 FREMONT 
 
 The Fourth Exploring Expedition, 1848-49 
 
 That devoted member of the expedition, Micajah McGehee 
 — according to Stark Young's article, "Cousin Micajah," in 
 the Saturday Evening Post, April 13, 1935 — was "shy and silent, 
 taller than medium, with fine hair of a golden brown, and a fine 
 white skin." When graduated from the University of Virginia 
 he did not go home, for he was in love with the girl his brother 
 courted, and did not wish to complicate affairs. So he joined 
 Fremont to see the West. His father owned the Bowling Green 
 plantations in Mississippi. 
 
 McGehee wrote in his MS Journal that the object of Fre- 
 mont's expedition "was to finish his exploration of California 
 and the Rocky Mountains, particularly of the Great Interior 
 Basin, of which so little had hitherto been known. It was con- 
 sidered a vast, barren desert, inhabited by savage tribes, and 
 rarely entered by trappers. He wished also to discover a direct 
 practicable traveling route, and, if possible, railway route, from 
 the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific on the 38th degree of lati- 
 tude." St. Louis lies between the 38th and 39th degrees. It is 
 evident from various sources that Fremont confided a good deal 
 in McGehee. 
 
 On this disastrous fourth expedition, Benton wrote in the 
 National Intelligencer of November 8, 1853, Fremont was 
 turned out of his right path by his guide. Some of the reasons 
 for believing that Old Bill Williams misled the party are stated 
 in the text. Additional evidence to that effect is furnished by the 
 letter of one of the most intelligent members of the party, 
 Edward M. Kern, dated Taos, New Mexico, February 11, 1849, 
 to A. Robidoux, published in the St. Joseph Gazette and re- 
 printed in the Missouri Statesman of April 27, 1849. It 
 ran: 
 
 My dear Robidoux: 
 
 I arrived at this place last evening from Rio Colorado, from about 
 as hard a trip and as total destruction of an expedition as possible. 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 629 
 
 As rumors will reach you I thought it would be as well to give you 
 some little correct information on the subject, though my time will 
 scarcely allow of anything like detail. 
 
 As far as Bent's we met with no obstacle or loss and everything 
 bade fair to give us a tolerable pleasant trip, considering the season. 
 Our animals were in good condition; and procuring corn at Hard 
 Scrabble for the worst part of the road, we calculated passing the 
 mountains with success. Old Bill was with us as a guide, and that 
 of course gave confidence, supposing none so capable as he to carry 
 us through. Leaving Hard Scrabble, we continued up its creek into 
 the mountains. As we advanced the snow increased. Crossing the first 
 range we fell upon the waters of the Wappanah [Huerfano] , passing 
 through the mountains to the Del Norte by your old wagon road — 
 the snow still increasing. 
 
 We continued a couple of days on the Del Norte, and then turned 
 up what Williams called your pass on to the Compadne [Uncom- 
 pahgre?]. In this he was evidently mistaken, for a worse road I 
 never saw. If you ever got over it with wagons, I should like to have 
 seen the operation. We went on up the canon, our animals failing 
 and the snow deepening every step we took, bidding fair, as it sub- 
 sequently turned out, to defeat our crossing. On the 15th of Decem- 
 ber we attempted to cross what we supposed to be the dividing ridge 
 between the St. Johns [San Juan] and the waters of the Del Norte, 
 but were driven back by the storm. The next day we returned to it 
 again, and were successful enough to get on the other side to a small 
 clump of pines. We unpacked our animals on a bare point and drove 
 them to the hill top in hopes of their finding sufficiency of food for a 
 day, as the snow had drifted from it in places. From this hill they 
 never came again; the storm continuing, and having no shelter, they 
 perished. 
 
 Camp then commenced making portages, in hopes of reaching the 
 river. This you may suppose was a severe undertaking in the cold, 
 and no positive hopes ahead of reaching any place, even should we 
 have been able to get out our effects. By hard labor we worked our 
 way gradually down. On the 26th, King was sent ahead with Old 
 Bill to Abaque to bring us relief, while we were to continue down. 
 On the nth of January, he not arriving, the Colonel became anxious 
 and started with his mess and Godey in hopes of meeting the relief 
 party. Our provisions had given out, and we were living on parfleshes 
 
630 FREMONT 
 
 and tug ropes. Already Proulx had perished from hunger and ex- 
 posure. 
 
 On the 1 6th, all having reached the river, we made our little packs 
 of bedding and with our rifles started for — God only knows where. 
 Here commenced our greatest suffering. The company had for its 
 head Vincut Hatter [Vincent Haler], about as contemptible and 
 cowardly a fellow as ever walked: his own lack of courage quickly 
 diffused itself among the men — so you may suppose how things 
 went on. Probably up to the 27th we had lost nine men. Our mess 
 and another had made our final camp. A dead wolf was all we had 
 to sustain life among nine men. I had closed all my affairs and felt 
 that a day or two more would end my troubles, when, about noon 
 on the 28th, we heard a shout, and Godey entered camp. Here ended 
 our troubles. From him we learned the fate of King's party who had 
 been found by him on the way down on the 16th. Poor King had 
 died from exhaustion somewhere on the 9th; and the rest were in 
 a miserable condition — frozen and partly crazed. They had given 
 up all hopes of returning to us with relief. 
 
 Thus has ended the expedition — commenced, so far as outfit was 
 concerned, under as flattering prospects as ever one started. The loss 
 in dollars has mounted to over 10,000 — in life 10. — My brothers and 
 myself will winter somewhere in this vicinity, and return home early 
 in the spring, when I shall pay you a visit at your pleasant town 
 of San Jose. 
 
 Adios, 
 
 Ned Kern 
 
 This letter apparently convicts Old Bill Williams of com- 
 pletely mistaking the pass up which he turned the expedition. 
 
 The Fifth Exploring Expedition, 1853-54 
 
 Intended to support the demand of St. Louis interests for 
 full consideration of a Pacific railway route lying somewhere 
 near the 38th or 39th parallel, this expedition deliberately 
 tried a winter journey. Fremont had told Benton after return- 
 ing from California in 1850 as Senator that only two sections 
 of this Central Route remained to be explored. One extended 
 from the head of the Rio Grande across the valley of the Upper 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 631 
 
 Colorado; the other from Las Vegas de Santa Clara west to 
 the Sierra passes. He felt confident that a good roadway and 
 good land for settlement existed in both areas. 
 
 Benton in a letter published by the National Intelligencer, 
 October 13, 1853, declared that the recent journey of Harris 
 Heap and Major Edward F. Beale had proved Fremont cor- 
 rect with respect to the first section. As for the second section, 
 Benton believed that a still more recent crossing by an emi- 
 grant party which included the Rev. J. W. Brier had again 
 proved Fremont right. Brier's party, after leaving Salt Lake, 
 made use of a Mormon "way bill of a new and better route to 
 California." This led from a point on the Old Spanish Trail 
 about seventy-five miles southwest of Little Salt Lake, called 
 "The Divide," to Owen's Lake, Walker's Pass through the 
 Sierra, and Tulare Valley. Brier estimated the entire distance 
 from "The Divide" to Walker's Pass as about three hundred 
 and fifty miles, and found the pass itself easy, with no snow in 
 January. 
 
 Benton, continuing to beat the St. Louis drum for the Central 
 Route, sent a new letter to the National Intelligencer of No- 
 vember 8, 1853. A Virginia emigrant had just written him 
 from Fort Massachusetts (a small post established the previous 
 year in the San Luis Valley, at the foot of Blanca Peak, to 
 protect settlers on the upper Rio Grande from the Ute Indians), 
 praising the Beale-Heap route. This emigrant had found the 
 country for seven hundred miles from the Missouri frontier 
 largely rich and beautiful, and the San Luis Valley — which lies 
 in present-day southern Colorado — very attractive. "In short," 
 wrote Benton, "I now feel emboldened to repeat what Fremont 
 has often told me, that in the central part of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains covering the Three Parks, the headwaters of the South 
 Platte, the Arkansas, and the Del Norte, and the headwaters of 
 the East Fork of the Great Colorado of the West, and about 
 halfway between them, there is good country enough to make a 
 mountain State double the size of all the Swiss cantons put 
 together, and presenting everything grand and beautiful to be 
 
632 FREMONT 
 
 found in Switzerland, without the drawbacks of glaciers and 
 avalanches, and consequently without its cold." Benton is writ- 
 ing of what is now south central Colorado, the area roughly- 
 bounded by Aspen, Leadville, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and 
 Telluride, with Fremont County at its heart. 
 
 Fremont meanwhile was toiling westward. He wrote Benton, 
 November 25, 1853, from "Big Timber" on the upper Arkansas, 
 about the site of present-day La Junta, Colorado, that the 
 expedition had made successful progress and had found large 
 beds of coal : 
 
 I am determined to carry the enterprise through to the end, con- 
 tending with the winter and every obstacle, prudently and cautiously, 
 but never giving way. I have presents to conciliate the Indians, and 
 our vigilance will prevent attacks. Our movement now will be a 
 struggle with the winter. We have December and January, the moun- 
 tains and the strength of the winter before us, and shall move slowly, 
 but do good work. The astronomical, barometrical, and topographical 
 work all go on well. After surmounting some difficulties with our 
 daguerre (which it required skill to do), it has been eminently suc- 
 cessful, and we are producing a line of pictures of exquisite beauty 
 which will admirably illustrate the country. We hope to get through 
 in two months, and to make a complete winter exploration of the 
 route. 
 
 The news of Fremont's emergence at Parowan, completely 
 across the Colorado and Utah mountains and near the Nevada 
 boundary, and of his subsequent arrival in San Francisco, 
 reached the East by way of the Isthmus and New Orleans. It 
 included the absurd statement that Fremont, on reaching San 
 Francisco, had been accompanied "with only twenty men, the 
 greater part of them having deserted after leaving the Colo- 
 rado." This elicited from Benton an irate letter to the National 
 Intelligencer, with some sharp animadversions on West Point 
 hostility to the explorer, and on the frequency of desertion in 
 the regular army. He scored the "Telegraphic" or telegram 
 which brought this San Francisco news from New Orleans: 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 633 
 
 I have to remark upon this Telegraphic that, like all the first re- 
 ports given out about Col. Fremont, it is disparaging to him; and, 
 like all such disparaging accounts is false to the extent of the dis- 
 paragement. This is so upon its face. It says he arrived in California 
 with "only" twenty men. Very well: that much is true. He set out 
 with only twenty from Paroan; and, as he went through a wilder- 
 ness, he had no chance to get more. He set out from the United 
 States last fall with "only" twenty-one men, and one of them died 
 after he reached the valley of the Paroan, which leaves "only" 
 twenty. 
 
 Now for the deserters. The Telegraphic says "the greater part of 
 his men deserted after crossing the Colorado" This is false. Fremont 
 was not educated at West Point, and his men — whether Americans, 
 Germans, Irish, French, Indian, mulatto, or black — do not desert 
 him. They die by him, but never "desert." As for this particular story 
 of "desertion," it is as ignorant as false. Fremont and his twenty men 
 were seen by Babbitt after they had crossed the Upper Colorado at 
 Paroan, nearly two hundred miles west of the Colorado; and Fremont 
 wrote letters home (which were published) showing that his entire 
 company (21) had all arrived there — one to fall dead from his 
 saddle. 
 
 The Telegraphic is probably true in this, that Col. Fremont had 
 arrived in California the 16th of April. He left the Mormon settle- 
 ments of the Little Salt Lake and the Santa Clara meadows [Parowan 
 is near Little Salt Lake] about the 20th of February to explore a 
 new route (in that part of its course) for the CENTRAL ROAD, 
 and would be occupied some two months in this new exploration. It 
 is probable, therefore, that he had got through by the 16th of April. 
 We rely upon that much of the Telegraphic to be true; but repulse 
 the "desertion" part of the story as false, and as an aspersion upon 
 Fremont from which the conduct of his men in all time past should 
 exempt him. No man ever deserted from him. His men die with him, 
 as for him; but never desert. He was not educated at West Point. 
 And if any person wishes to know why the United States army has 
 been in a state (nearly) of dissolution for some years past they have 
 only to read a brief letter from Mr. Mason to me, printed in the 
 Thirty Years' View, at page 182, at the beginning of the chapter 
 headed "MILITARY ACADEMY." 
 
634 FREMONT 
 
 Fremont sat down in Parowan on February 9, 1854, to 
 write Jessie and Benton. He reported that the winter had been 
 exceedingly severe; in that valley the severest since it was 
 settled. But when he found only four inches of snow on the 
 Cochetopa Pass in Colorado, even among the pines and in the 
 shade of rock walls, he decided that the expedition had suc- 
 cessfully proved its point. "I congratulate you on this verifica- 
 tion of your judgment, and the good prospect it holds out of 
 final success in carrying this road by the central line." He 
 spoke of the large supplies of coal, iron, and timber near at hand 
 in present-day Colorado. "In making my expedition to this point 
 I save nearly a parallel of latitude, shortening the usual dis- 
 tance from Green River to this point by over a hundred miles." 
 He expected to blaze a new line from Parowan to the Tejon 
 Passes in the Sierra, and into the head of the Joaquin Valley; 
 passes "through which in 1850 I drove from two to three thou- 
 sand head of cattle that I delivered to the Indian Commis- 
 sioners. I shall make what speed I can, going light, and aban- 
 doning the more elaborate survey of my previous time. . . ." 
 
 A good deal of publicity attended Fremont's emergence 
 from this winter journey. C. L. Smith of Parowan wrote the 
 Deseret News of Salt Lake City an account of the arrival. Fre- 
 mont, he added, "was sanguine in his opinion that he had found 
 the best route for the great national railway." On the explorer's 
 arrival in San Francisco the Alta California carried a long news 
 story, reprinted in the National Intelligencer of May 26, 1854. 
 Other newspaper accounts could easily be found. 
 
 Fremont himself published in the National Intelligencer of 
 June 15, 1854, a full statement, of perhaps 3,000 words, on 
 his journey (see also the New York Herald of the same date). 
 He was sure that his explorations contradicted the Southern 
 leaders who insisted that winter snow and storms made a cen- 
 tral railroad impracticable. He wrote of the central chain of 
 the Rockies in what is now southern Colorado, just beyond 
 San Luis Valley: 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 635 
 
 Across these wooded heights — wooded and grass-covered up to 
 and over their rounded summits — to the Coo-che-to-pe pass, the line 
 followed an open easy wagon way, such as is usual to a rolling 
 country. On the high summit lands were forests of coniferous trees, 
 and the snow in the pass was four inches deep. This was on the 14th 
 of December. A day earlier our horses' feet would not have touched 
 snow in the crossing. Up to this point we had enjoyed clear and dry 
 pleasant weather. Our journey had been all along on dry ground; 
 and travelling slowly along waiting for the winter there had been 
 abundant leisure for becoming acquainted with the country. The 
 open character of the country, joined to good information, indicated 
 the existence of other passes about the head of the Sah-watch. This 
 it was desirable to verify, and especially to examine a neighboring 
 and lower pass connecting more directly with the Arkansas valley, 
 known as the Poow-che. * 
 
 But the winter had now set in over all the mountain regions. . . . 
 We were moving in fogs and clouds, through a region wholly unknown 
 to us, and without guides; and were therefore obliged to content 
 ourselves with the examination of a single line, and the ascertainment 
 of the winter condition of the country over which it passed; which 
 was in fact the main object of our expedition. 
 
 Our progress in this mountainous region was necessarily slow, and 
 during ten days which it occupied us to pass through about one hun- 
 dred miles of the mountainous country bordering on the eastern side 
 of the Upper Colorado valley the greatest depth of the snow was, 
 among the pines and aspens on the ridges, about two and a half feet, 
 and in the valleys about six inches. The atmosphere is too cold and 
 dry for much snow, and the valleys, protected by mountains, are 
 comparatively free from it, and warm. We here found villages of 
 Utah Indians in their wintering ground, in little valleys along the 
 foot of the higher mountains, and bordering the more open country of 
 the Colorado valley. Snow was here (December 25) only a few inches 
 deep — the grass generally appearing above it, and there being none 
 under trees and on southern hillsides. 
 
 The horses of the Utahs were living on the range, and, notwith- 
 standing that they were used in hunting, were in excellent condition. 
 One which we had occasion to kill for food had on it about two 
 inches of fat, being in as good order as any buffalo we had killed in 
 
636 FREMONT 
 
 November on the eastern plains. Over this valley country — about 
 one hundred and fifty miles across — the Indians informed us that 
 snow falls only a few inches in depth; such as we saw it at the time. 
 
 In present-day Utah the Fremont river, with the town of 
 Fremont on its headwaters, empties into the Colorado. Fre- 
 mont described the southerly reaches of the Wasatch and con- 
 necting ranges, which again he thought no impediment to easy 
 railroad operation: 
 
 They lie between the Colorado valley and the Great Basin, and 
 at their western base are established the Mormon settlements of 
 Parowan and Cedar City. They are what are called fertile mountains, 
 abundant in water, wood, and grass, and fertile valleys, offering in- 
 ducements to settlement and facilities for making a road. These 
 mountains are a great storehouse of materials — timber, iron, coal — 
 which would be of indispensable use in the construction and mainte- 
 nance of the road, and are solid foundations to build up the future 
 prosperity of the rapidly increasing Utah State. 
 
 Salt is abundant on the eastern border mountains, as the Sierra 
 de Sal, being named from it. In the ranges lying behind the Mormon 
 settlements, among the mountains through which the line passes, 
 are accumulated a great wealth of iron and coal and extensive forests 
 of heavy timber. These forests are the largest I am acquainted with 
 in the Rocky Mountains, being, in some places, twenty miles in depth 
 of continuous forest; the general growth lofty and large, frequently 
 over three feet in diameter, and sometimes reaching five feet, the 
 red spruce and yellow pine predominating. At the actual southern 
 extremity of the Mormon settlements, consisting of the two enclosed 
 towns of Parowan and Cedar City near to which our line passed, a 
 coal mine has been opened for about eighty yards, and iron works 
 already established. Iron here accumulates in extraordinary masses, 
 in some parts accumulated into mountains, which comb out in crests 
 of solid iron thirty feet thick and a hundred yards long. 
 
 In the interest of St. Louis and its central route, Fremont 
 was exaggerating the resources a bit. He closed by praising the 
 advantages of Walker's two passes and the Tejcn Pass in the 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 637 
 
 southern Sierra over those farther north. "The low dry country 
 and the long slope, in contradistinction to the high country and 
 short sudden descent and heavy snows of the passes behind 
 the bay of San Francisco, are among the considerations which 
 suggest themselves in favor of the route by the head of the 
 San Joaquin." 
 
 Railroads from the east today ascend the Arkansas River on 
 Fremont's route past Pueblo and Canon City, one line crossing 
 the Rockies just above the Sangre de Cristo Range near Salida, 
 and thence running down the Gunnison River (mainly between 
 the 38th and 39th parallels) to the Colorado River and the 
 Utah boundary, whence it pushes on west and northwest to 
 Provo and Salt Lake City. No railway crosses southern Utah 
 to any point near Parowan; but a line does run down from 
 Provo and Nephi a little west of Parowan, and on into Nevada. 
 Had it not been for the Civil War, Fremont's route might have 
 received more consideration for a central railroad. The Union 
 Pacific-Central Pacific line built with government aid was not 
 preferable from an engineering standpoint; the main reason 
 for its selection was that it better suited Chicago and the 
 Northwest. 
 
 The Mariposa Estate 
 
 Some additional details on Fremont's close escape from los- 
 ing this estate in 1851-52 are supplied by a letter which Edwin 
 A. Post, a New York attorney, sent the New York Courier and 
 Enquirer early in 1852 (reprinted in National Intelligencer, 
 February 21, 1852). This shows that in July, 185 1, Fremont's 
 agent, Eugene Flandin, made a sale of the Mariposa estate to 
 T. Denny Sargent of Washington, subject to Fremont's ratifi- 
 cation. In October, Fremont sent Benton a power of attorney 
 to give this ratification; and on January 31, 1852, Benton com- 
 pleted the sale. G. Harris Heap then sailed from New York in 
 the Empire City in February to take possession of the estate 
 for Sargent, while Sargent left the same month for London to 
 obtain funds to finance the development of the mines. In can- 
 
638 FREMONT 
 
 celling this sale Fremont was no doubt aided by the Federal 
 suit against his title. 
 
 When early in 1852 one Dr. John B. Trask of California 
 attacked Fremont on the ground that he had allowed exagger- 
 ated representations of the value of the gold veins on his estate, 
 the explorer wrote the assayer, John L. Moffat, a German 
 geologist, S. C. Wass, and a mining expert, Frederick Goodell, 
 all of San Francisco, for written opinions. The answers were 
 highly favorable. "I have twice visited the Mariposa vein," 
 stated Moffat on January 15, 1852, "in March and July last. In 
 both instances, I judge from what I saw and what I learned, 
 that it was producing then, and had averaged for several 
 months, forty dollars per ton, worked with close mortars and 
 shaking tables. With better amalgamators, I am of opinion 
 twice that amount could have been saved from the same ore." 
 Goodell wrote on the same date: "The veins upon your property 
 in the Mariposa and Agua Frio districts are numerous, and 
 rich in gold; and I am confident that large results can be realized 
 by a judicious outlay of capital and the use of heavy and well- 
 constructed machinery." This correspondence, and an editorial 
 in the Alta California defending Fremont, are published in 
 the National Intelligencer of February 24, 1852. 
 
 The great extent and irregular bootlike shape of Fremont's 
 estate, covering some of the richest mineral lands in Mariposa 
 County, resulted in inconvenience to many settlers, some of 
 whom alleged real grievances. Details of the way in which the 
 owner, supported by Governor J. B. Weller, maintained his 
 Mariposa rights against the Merced Mining Company, may be 
 found in the interesting two-column narrative of Bear Valley 
 troubles in the New York Weekly Tribune of August 14, 1858, 
 and in a shorter article in the National Intelligencer of August 
 21, 1858, taken from the Boston Transcript. Someone interested 
 in the reputation of California for law and order sent the 
 Intelligencer of November 3, 1857, a paper on Fremont's re- 
 turn to his estate. After remarking that vigilante troubles had 
 given the State a bad name, the anonymous writer continued: 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 639 
 
 All have heard of the numerous settlers on the Fremont estate 
 (the Mariposas), and of the violent language and conduct of some 
 of the intruders, so conducting themselves as to pass for all — holding 
 public meetings, adopting resolutions, charging the Supreme Court 
 with bribery when they heard that it had confirmed Fremont's grant, 
 burning Chief Justice Taney in effigy, binding themselves to stand 
 together to resist the decision, and menacing Fremont himself if he 
 came upon the place. Well, after three years' absence he returns to 
 California, lands at San Francisco, and without accompaniment of 
 force proceeds directly to the Mariposas, to the heart of the estate, 
 and arrives at the town of Mariposas, 3,000 souls, and which is the 
 seat of justice for the county. There are 16,000 settlers on the estate, 
 and not one molested him! On the contrary, all received him kindly, 
 and with the deference due to a proprietor; many asking for leases, 
 or purchase of parts; and all wishing him to take charge of the 
 property, and make it more productive by conducting streams of 
 water through it. 
 
 Fremont made his return to Mariposa more welcome by 
 bringing some capital and the promise of much more. During 
 his European sojourn and the campaign of 1856 Bear Valley 
 operations had become confused and inefficient. He paid judg- 
 ments against his property reaching nearly $18,000, hired men, 
 imported machinery, and planned the construction of two 
 canals, the Merced and the Fremont. 
 
 The Mariposa difficulties had the effect of stirring up in 
 California much ill-founded criticism and belittlement of the 
 explorer. The Mariposa Gazette of December 3, 1858, in an 
 editorial copied by the Sacramento Union of December 7, de- 
 clared that "he is and has been the subject of more bitter per- 
 sonal enmity and abuse than any man we ever heard of. So 
 far as we know, there is no reason for it, and for the benefit 
 of all concerned, it should stop until it fully appears that he is 
 the autocratical swindler, scoundrel, and rascal that it seems 
 the heart's desire of some men to make out." Feeling over the 
 Mariposa boundaries perhaps helps to explain a letter which 
 Henry A. Wise, naval officer and author of Los Gringos, wrote 
 
640 FREMONT 
 
 his father-in-law, Edward Everett, from Washington, February 
 i, 1 85 1. Describing a Congressional debate on a California 
 land title bill in which Benton had pertinaciously defended 
 the claims of Fremont, he added: "We who knew the latter 
 gentleman on the field of his California exploits, regarded him 
 as a very unscrupulous character. I would at the same time, 
 however, award him the real merit he has hardly won in his 
 scientific explorations, and admiration for the indomitable 
 energy, perseverance, and skill with which he accomplished 
 them." (Everett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.) 
 
 The Blairs and the Fremonts 
 
 After Thomas Hart Benton's death on April 10, 1858, Fran- 
 cis P. Blair, Sr., sent Jessie at Mariposa a paternal letter of 
 affection and sympathy. She replied in May, thanking him and 
 his daughter Elizabeth for their kind messages. She had 
 known her father was dying when she left the East, but he had 
 forbidden her to stay. She was thankful that his period of 
 extreme suffering had been short and that no cloud had dimmed 
 his great mind: 
 
 I had a letter from Father the day I left New York. In it he tells 
 me I ought to go — that it is not right for a family to be divided. It 
 was a hard choice — one that left lasting regret for whichever was 
 set aside but it is done and I am more than justified in being here 
 when I see how much I do to keep Mr. Fremont where his interests 
 require — the children too are so strong and well here and so entirely 
 free from any influence but our own. . . . 
 
 Mr. Fremont has a great deal to do — for the present lawsuits carry 
 him occasionally to San Francisco, but a few weeks more will give 
 order and then he enters regularly on his writing — it is quite impos- 
 sible until he is through these interruptions. With all he finds more 
 time to take care of me than ever in all the time we have been to- 
 gether, and when I remember that my father's last days were un- 
 troubled about me and my children because he could rely on Mr. 
 Fremont's care for us, it gives a new value to my home here and a 
 new reason for making it every way pleasant to Mr. Fremont. 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 641 
 
 She described the scenery near their house, and a mountain 
 excursion on which Fremont had hurried them away from a bear 
 they heard growling in the brush. They had killed rattlesnakes 
 near their door: 
 
 But snakes and sounds of grizzly bears do not follow us indoors 
 where everything looks as secure and peaceful as at Silver Spring. 
 When the cool evenings come now we shall sit around a fire of oak 
 and pine. . . . This range back of us and nearest the Sierra was 
 named years ago for Father and the tallest peak is Mt. Bullion. On 
 its summit a bonfire had been prepared by Mr. Fremont's friends 
 (there are more friendly than unfriendly here) and it was lit the 
 evening of our arrival. It was Friday the 16 April. At the same time 
 he was laid in the ground at St. Louis his mountain was a blazing 
 beacon of welcome to us. You know how fond Father was of the 
 classics and classical comparisons. It seems to me he would have liked 
 to hear me — his favorite scholar — tell him what thought links itself 
 with that day — how as the old Greeks sculptured a jet of flame on 
 the tomb to typify the soul purified and ascending so that great 
 flame rising from the mountain of gold rock is to me an image of his 
 great heart and mind freed from the clay and rising to the great 
 Master. . . . 
 
 We had a last talk together the Sunday of his birthday. When 
 he saw my heart too full he changed the topic for he evidently 
 dreaded excitement or emotion. But he knew he would not see me 
 again and I did not know the end was so soon, but I saw his changed 
 face and evident pain and his voice was like a death knell while he 
 was telling me of his will and his motives in making it. Mr. Fremont 
 will be steady and faithful to his trust as Trustee and so must Mont- 
 gomery and Mr. Lee. . . . 
 
 This letter in the Blair-Lee Papers at Princeton University 
 is accompanied by a note from Montgomery Blair, August 8, 
 1858, to his sister Elizabeth Blair Lee: 
 
 The old gentleman asked me to take the enclosed letter out of his 
 desk this morning and send it to you and tell you he would write 
 you soon. By the by he seems a good deal out with Jessie. She has not 
 
642 FREMONT 
 
 written to him for a long time and now that she does write there is 
 merely a tedious description of her camp — no reference to his heart 
 out pouring, wishing her to make his home her home, consider him 
 her father etc. etc. He does not say much about it but I think he is 
 hurt by her proceedings and rather inclined not to give himself so 
 much concern about her in future. But I have no doubt she will 
 come to presently and greet him affectionately and then his big 
 heart will forget all this. 
 
 Later, Montgomery Blair, as one executor of the Benton 
 estate, received a complaining letter from Baron Gauldree 
 Boileau, one of Benton's sons-in-law; and he concluded that 
 Jessie Fremont, who had expressed keen disappointment over 
 the condition of the estate, was equally discontented. "I do 
 not know how such expectations were created," he wrote his 
 sister Elizabeth of the hopes of the Benton children for a 
 larger inheritance (July 22, 1859; Blair-Lee Papers). Rela- 
 tions between the Blairs and Fremonts were thus under a certain 
 strain even before 1861. 
 
 Fremont's Operations in Missouri, 1861 
 
 To a remarkable extent the accounts of Fremont's Missouri 
 command have followed the narrative of Nicolay and Hay, 
 subsequent authors failing to give the subject fresh research. 
 This has resulted in an endless repetition of certain misinter- 
 pretations and misstatements. The older history by the Comte 
 de Paris is fairer, more accurate, and more penetrating than 
 that of Lincoln's biographers. Fremont's worst errors were 
 political : his proclamation freeing the slaves of Missourians who 
 aided the enemy, and his final agreement with the Confederate 
 leader Price for a joint prohibition of the formation of partisan 
 bands. These political blunders and his quarrel with Frank P. 
 Blair, Jr., fully justified Lincoln in removing him. His military 
 career, however, offers a more complicated, difficult, and credit- 
 able story than most writers have supposed. A careful book de- 
 voted to all its ramifications is much needed. 
 
 It seems anomalous that the Confederates in Missouri were 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 643 
 
 able to concentrate their forces more efficiently than the 
 Unionists, and to strike two heavy blows, the defeat of Lyon 
 at Springfield and the capture of Mulligan's little force at 
 Lexington, before Fremont could prepare a counterstroke. The 
 explanation lies partly in the fact that Missouri was an exposed 
 salient of the North, partly in the superior strength of secession- 
 ist sympathizers outside St. Louis, and partly in the length of 
 the Northern lines in that region. From southern Kansas, Ar- 
 kansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, all contiguous, the Confed- 
 erates could pour forces into Missouri. The Missouri River 
 tier of counties across the State was heavily slaveholding and 
 secessionist in sentiment. Fremont had to hold the Missouri 
 River from Kansas City to its mouth, the capital at Jefferson 
 City, the railhead at Rolla, and the Mississippi as far as Cairo. 
 He was essentially on the defensive; the Confederates could 
 mass against any point, while he had to maintain his grip every- 
 where. His most vital positions were Cairo, Jefferson City, and 
 St. Louis; to lose any one of them would be a disaster indeed. 
 All were held. 
 
 Among secondary reasons for the Federal reverses in Mis- 
 souri were shortage of weapons; the persistent preoccupation 
 of Washington with the Virginia theater, and its readiness to 
 deprive the West of troops to strengthen McClellan — who made 
 no use of them in 1861; the inexperience of Fremont and other 
 commanders in handling large bodies of men; the rashness of 
 Lyon; the violent quarrel between Frank P. Blair, Jr., and 
 Fremont; and the practical insubordination of General John 
 Pope and General Samuel D. Sturgis. 
 
 The want of arms was lamentable. Before leaving Washing- 
 ton, Fremont had received an order for 7,000 stand, but it was 
 at once countermanded; he then got a new order for 5,000 to 
 be delivered from the St. Louis arsenal, but on reaching the 
 West discovered it no longer afforded more than 1,300 arms. 
 His total force when he arrived in St. Louis on July 25 was 
 nominally 25,000, but was actually only about 15,000 when 
 the departing three months' men were deducted. Of these 
 
644 FREMONT 
 
 about 7,000 had no weapons at all; indeed, Governor Richard 
 Yates of Illinois had told Fremont in Washington that Illinois 
 troops were largely defenseless (Committee on the Conduct of 
 the War, III, 44, 45). "We must have arms — any arms, no 
 matter what," Fremont telegraphed Major P. V. Hagner, in 
 charge of War Department purchasing, on July 29. No response 
 came. To meet the deficiency and arm incoming volunteers he 
 made emergency purchases, including 25,000 Austrian muskets 
 for the quality of which his Hungarian chief of staff, A. S. 
 Asboth, vouched. Nevertheless, the shortage continued all 
 summer and fall, his troops using "all kinds of arms" when they 
 had any. Three officers who examined the weapons of John A. 
 McClernand's regiments at Cairo shortly reported that his 
 queer melange included Prussian muskets, English Tower 
 muskets, French minie rifles, three patterns of American mus- 
 kets, and English contract muskets made by Lacy & Co. Only 
 a trifle over half his force was armed at all, reported McCler- 
 nand on September 30, "and they with dangerous and insuffi- 
 cient weapons, and without a supply of available ammunition." 
 (McClernand Papers, Illinois State Historical Library.) 
 
 Lyon's rash precipitancy was the cause of his own defeat. 
 Southwestern Missouri being largely Unionist in sentiment, he 
 had pushed down to Springfield, in the Ozark country, to sus- 
 tain the loyal inhabitants. But this was too far. His movement 
 entailed a dangerous stretching of Union lines, a wide scatter- 
 ing of Federal units in his rear, and a risk of being overwhelmed 
 by superior forces. On July 27, Lyon asked Fremont for rein- 
 forcements — "a few regiments." (Committee on the Conduct 
 of the War, III, 96.) That same day (when Fremont had been 
 in St. Louis only forty-eight hours) 10,000 Confederates were 
 concentrating at Warsaw just to the southwest, and he needed 
 an additional regiment. On the 28th, General B. M. Prentiss 
 telegraphed that more than 12,000 organized Confederates 
 were within fifty miles of Cairo, while he had but 6,350 men 
 at Cairo and Bird's Point to meet them. On August 1, a tele- 
 gram from Colonel C. C, Marsh in southeastern Missouri an- 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 645 
 
 nounced that G. J. Pillow had been at New Madrid the previous 
 day with 11,000 well-armed Confederates, including cavalry 
 and artillery, while 9,000 more troops were coming up to assist 
 him. In these circumstances sound strategy required a retreat 
 by Lyon, and the reinforcement of Cairo, capture of which 
 would have imperilled a wide area in Kentucky, Missouri, and 
 southern Illinois (Committee on the Conduct of the War, III, 
 96-99). 
 
 Fremont hastily reinforced both Cairo and Cape Girardeau. 
 Meanwhile, ordering various units to Lyon's aid, he instructed 
 that general, if not strong enough to hold his position, to fall 
 back toward the railhead at Rolla until met by these detach- 
 ments. On August 9, Lyon wrote from Springfield that he was 
 "at present unable to determine whether I shall be able to 
 maintain my ground or be forced to retire." Retreat, though 
 difficult, would have been feasible, and his shrewd adjutant- 
 general John M. Schofield urged it. But stung by being super- 
 seded in the chief command, Lyon probably thought that re- 
 tirement would discredit him (a West Pointer) and strengthen 
 Fremont; he attacked with disastrous results. Colonel John 
 M. Palmer of Illinois, stationed at Rolla, wrote his wife on 
 August 15 that the Union forces were winning until "Gen. Lyon 
 made the terrible mistake of ordering Col. Totten's artillery to 
 open on Sigel's command who had changed positions without 
 his knowledge. They fired upon Sigel and killed many of his 
 men and scattered his prisoners." Like Schofield, Palmer thought 
 Lyon's attack a deplorable blunder in the first place. "The 
 truth is that the battle of Wilson's Creek was a folly which the 
 gallant death of Gen. Lyon does not atone for." (Schofield, 
 Forty-six Years in the Army; Fremont, MS Memoirs; Palmer 
 Papers, Illinois State Historical Library.) 
 
 Early August found a majority of the ninety-day troops first 
 called out by Lincoln, and especially the foreign-born elements, 
 leaving the service. "The new levies," Fremont wrote Mont- 
 gomery Blair, "are literally the rawest ever got together." 
 (August 9, 1861; Committee on the Conduct of the War, III, 
 
646 FREMONT 
 
 119.) Nearly all the recruits sent to St. Louis from various 
 parts of the Northwest were unarmed, and all lacked transport. 
 One regiment after another lay for days in the city without 
 weapons, ammunition, accoutrements, or wagons. As in Wash- 
 ington, soldiers patronized the grog shops heavily and dis- 
 gusted residents by their rowdy behavior. "It is a rehearsal of 
 the state of affairs in Washington before the fight at Manassas," 
 exclaimed Frank Blair (Frank to Montgomery Blair, St. Louis, 
 September 1, 1861; Blair-Lee Papers). Some officers were 
 outrageously unfit. More than half the six Illinois regiments at 
 Cairo, Gustave Koerner reported to Lyman Trumbull, would 
 ultimately re-enlist, but never under their former colonels. 
 Governor Yates's thirteen new regiments, he predicted, "will 
 be officered in the usual way by incompetent men." (July 
 29, 1 86 1, to Lyman Trumbull; Trumbull Papers, Library of 
 Congress.) One Illinois brigadier-general whom Fremont had 
 to use in northern Missouri, Stephen A. Hurlbut, was grossly 
 intemperate; before joining his command, testified the editor, 
 Joseph Medill, he was drunk every day in Chicago (Medill, 
 July 13, 1 86 1, to Trumbull; Trumbull Papers). 
 
 To help drill what he called his "unmanageable mob" of raw 
 recruits, Fremont asked Washington to authorize him to col- 
 lect veteran soldiers throughout the Northwest, and use them 
 as a framework to form an army. Receiving permission, he 
 brought to the field a considerable number of such drillmasters. 
 He also created a special infantry unit, the Benton Cadets, 
 which he expected to make a school for infantry officers; and 
 he intended to make his so-called Fremont Bodyguard (an 
 unfortunate name for what was a very efficient cavalry unit) 
 a school for cavalry officers. He came nearer the idea of officers' 
 training camps than anyone else in this early period of the war. 
 
 His energy also did much to give the troops a partial supply 
 of arms. The statement of Frank P. Blair that it was impossible 
 to get the Administration to give any attention to Western 
 needs (Frank, as head of the House Military Committee, knew 
 the facts) was for a time literally true. Fremont's contracts 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 647 
 
 later came under fire. But it appears that the Austrian arms 
 which he bought were quite serviceable, became excellent when 
 rifled, and cost but $11.50 each when finally ready. His pur- 
 chase of 5,000 breech-loading Hall carbines at $22.50 each, an 
 emergency order which at a later period was given much pub- 
 licity because J. P. Morgan was involved in it, was also de- 
 fensible, the government's own commissioners pronouncing 
 the price entirely fair. Some field artillery was supplied by a 
 Cincinnati firm at the same price for which it had made guns 
 for the State of Indiana. The Fremont Hussars, under Major 
 George E. Waring, bought some 500 horses under special con- 
 tract, while nearly 6,000 more were purchased in the open 
 market. Both East and West, in 1861, intolerable confusion 
 and waste, and much corruption, accompanied the purchase of 
 arms, munitions, and stores; but the waste was chiefly attribu- 
 table to frenzied haste and War Department inefficiency, while 
 corruption never touched Fremont's skirts (37th Cong., 2d 
 Sess, House Exec. Doc. No. 94, and House Report No. 2 ; Gor- 
 don Wasson, The Hall Carbine Affair; Committee on the Con- 
 duct of the War, III; Anon., Vindication of Quartermaster 
 General McKinstry) . 
 
 In the opinion of shrewd observers, one main cause of con- 
 fusion, shortages, and excessive costs in the Western Depart- 
 ment lay in the failure of the national government to provide 
 adequate funds. When the time of the three months' men ex- 
 pired, Fremont kept many of them only by a personal guarantee 
 of their fourth month's pay. He had to buy large quantities of 
 material on credit. Colonel I. C. Woods told the Committee 
 on the Conduct of the War that for every dollar of unnecessary 
 cost arising from collusion among contractors or suppliers, ten 
 dollars were lost for want of ready money. As soon as the 
 Western Department had to use credit, control over prices 
 passed into the hands of banks, brokers, speculators, and 
 moneyed merchants, the intermediary links between the army 
 and its sources. In buying mules, the government lost heavily 
 because it did not furnish money for proper corrals, feed, 
 
648 FREMONT 
 
 shoeing, and attendance in St. Louis; in buying wagons, be- 
 cause it supplied no money for repairs. Treasury policy was 
 responsible. "Chase," Montgomery Blair explained to Fremont 
 on August 24, "has more horror of seeing Treasury notes below 
 par than of seeing soldiers killed, and, therefore, has held back 
 too soon. ... It is better to get ready to beat the enemy by 
 selling stocks at fifty per cent discount than wait to negotiate 
 [stocks] and lose a battle." (Committee on the Conduct of the 
 War, III, 115 ff., 222 ff.; Fremont Papers.) 
 
 John Pope, one of the West Pointers who gave Fremont the 
 most trouble, burst out August 22, 1861, in a letter to V. B. 
 Horton, in the following violent denunciation of the Lincoln 
 Administration (Civil War MSS, New- York Historical So- 
 ciety) : 
 
 They [the Illinois troops] find themselves neglected, abandoned 
 and humiliated by the President they have themselves put into the 
 White House, and they have resolved to endure it no longer. A depu- 
 tation reached Washington yesterday representing the State author- 
 ities and the military which will force upon Mr. Lincoln either an 
 open rupture or a redress of their wrongs. They warned him that 
 neither Banks nor Hunter will be suffered to take command of 
 Illinois troops and that if it is attempted the whole of the Illinois 
 forces will march back into the State and have no more to do with 
 the war. 
 
 We are certainly cursed with rulers in this country and especially 
 at such a time. This Administration will do in a different manner 
 what Jeff Davis is doing directly. I mean that by neglect, corruption 
 and outrage, the States of the West will be driven to group together 
 and act without reference to the authority of the General Govern- 
 ment. You would be surprised to find how prevalent this idea is today 
 and unless some change is made in Washington I fear we shall see 
 before long Illinois, Iowa, and perhaps Indiana carrying on this war 
 in defiance of any authority or control from Washington. 
 
 Fremont's staff came under much captious criticism. Actually 
 it was an able staff. When first appointed he was allowed only 
 three officers, but the Act of August 5, 1861, permitted major- 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 649 
 
 generals to nominate for presidential appointment as many 
 aides as they needed. General Orders No. 15, dated headquarters 
 St. Louis, September 20, 1861, announced a sensible list. Chief 
 of staff was Brigadier-General A. Asboth. General John A. Dix 
 wrote the elder Blair on September 23 that he voted with Jessie 
 on the question of Asboth. "I think him a very able man as an 
 engineer and he is certainly very intelligent on general subjects." 
 (Blair-Lee Papers.) Fremont's military secretary was Colonel 
 John H. Eaton, later noted for his work with the freedmen. 
 Among the others were Brigadier- General Justus McKinstry as 
 assistant quartermaster-general, and Colonel John T. Fiala as 
 chief topographical engineer. George E. Waring thought highly 
 of the staff. "Fremont," he wrote Frederick Law Olmsted on 
 October 31, 1861, "is hampered in every way, but he has good 
 heart of it, and does more than could be expected under the 
 circumstances. Asboth is a good engineer and plans well. For- 
 tunately General Albert, his confidential adviser, is a man of 
 excellent executive ability, and our Division is consequently in 
 excellent condition for a fight." (Olmsted Papers, Library of 
 Congress.) The most dubious element in the staff were several 
 politicians, notably Representative Owen Lovejoy, who were 
 probably forced on Fremont. 
 
 The origins of the quarrel between Fremont and Frank P. 
 Blair, Jr., were complex. Fremont, General Justus McKinstry, 
 Colonel I. C. Woods, and others declared that it began when 
 McKinstry refused to make a $750,000 contract with two of 
 Blair's friends, one Gurney of Chicago and ex-Mayor How of St. 
 Louis, after Blair had strongly pressed the matter (Committee 
 on the Conduct of the War, III, 202). Fremont also empha- 
 sized the elder Blair's arrogant demand that Frank be given 
 an appointment which was outside Fremont's power — "I shall 
 expect you to exert your utmost influence to carry my points, 
 and now, to begin, I want to have Frank made a militia major- 
 general for the State of Missouri." (This Blair letter is in the 
 Fremont Papers at the University of California.) Frank, for 
 his part, declared that he became convinced of Fremont's in- 
 
650 FREMONT 
 
 competence (as Schofield and John H. Eaton also declared). 
 On both sides this oversimplifies the dispute. The two men were 
 temperamentally incompatible. Frank was shrewd, direct, prac- 
 tical, aggressive, and imperious; Fremont was erratic, impetu- 
 ous, and imaginative. Both were proud and hot-tempered. 
 Frank, now recognized nationally as the principal savior of the 
 Union cause in the State, expected to continue to dominate 
 Missouri; Fremont had no intention of letting his own authority 
 be weakened. In dealing with the lukewarm General Harney, 
 Frank had shown how quickly, using his father and brother in 
 Washington, he could break an opponent. Returning to Mis- 
 souri in August from Congress, he expected to have his wishes 
 treated as commands, and was irritated by the independent 
 course of Fremont and Jessie. Motives on both sides were 
 mixed. But essentially both men were ambitious for power and 
 prestige; each became jealously suspicious of the other; and in 
 the confused Missouri situation, with radical and conservative 
 parties already forming, "charcoals" and "claybanks," it was 
 easy for each to misconstrue the other's actions. 
 
 Fremont's proclamation announcing that the property of 
 Missourians actively aiding the Confederacy would be confis- 
 cated, and their slaves, if any, freed, was in part a military 
 measure designed to help stamp out the horrible guerrilla war- 
 fare then raging; in part a declaration that he stood with the 
 radicals or "charcoals." To what extent it was encouraged by 
 Lovejoy, who on July 8 had offered in Congress a resolution for- 
 bidding Union soldiers to halt or return fugitive slaves, we do 
 not know. To what extent it was the product of sheer impetuos- 
 ity — the impetuosity of a harried, overworked general who sat 
 up all night worrying over guerrilla outrages, worrying over 
 demands for troops, arms, and wagons when he had none to 
 give, worrying over the clamor of soldiers for pay when money 
 was lacking, worrying over the problem of keeping rebellious 
 counties in check once he concentrated his army to march 
 against Price — we can only guess. It was a cardinal blunder. 
 Confiscation was a subject for Congress, and emancipation Lin- 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 651 
 
 coin rightly regarded as a question for himself. Perhaps Fre- 
 mont did not realize how his action would reverberate through 
 the country. 
 
 That proclamation at once made a new enemy for Fremont 
 in the Administration. Attorney-General Bates, who hated all 
 the Blairs as a set of "tricky politicians" {Diary, 291), but 
 who stood with the conservatives in Missouri, now turned vio- 
 lently against the general. "I have demanded the recall of 
 General Fremont—possibly with too much emphasis, and too 
 often repeated/' he wrote J. O. Brodhead of Missouri on Sep- 
 tember 28 (Brodhead Papers, Missouri Historical Society). 
 Of course the radicals in Washington vigorously defended the 
 proclamation. William Pitt Fessenden of Maine wrote that it 
 had electrified the country as a statesmanlike stroke. Ben 
 Wade, when Lincoln overruled it, burst out angrily to Zack 
 Chandler that the President was universally condemned and 
 execrated in the North. "I have no doubt that he has done more 
 injury to the cause of the Union, receding from the stand taken 
 by Fremont, than McDowell did by retreating from Bull Run." 
 Lincoln's sagacious friend, Orville H. Browning, himself far 
 from a radical, and later in Andrew Johnson's Cabinet, sent 
 the President on September 30, 186 1, a letter warmly defending 
 the general. He wrote (Browning Papers, Illinois State Histori- 
 cal Library) from his home in Quincy, Illinois: 
 
 My acquaintance with him has been very limited, and I have had 
 no personal feeling in the matter. If he was honestly and faithfully 
 doing his duty, justice to him and regard for the country alike re- 
 quired that he should be sustained. 
 
 There was much complaint and clamor against him, and as I am 
 not quick to take up evil report I went twice to St. Louis to see and 
 learn for myself all that I could. It is very probable he has made 
 some mistakes, but in the main he seemed to be taking his measures 
 wisely and well. Many of the charges against him appeared to me 
 frivolous, and I do not know of anyone who could take his position 
 and do better amid the surrounding difficulties, and was confident 
 his removal at the time and under the circumstances would be dam- 
 
652 FREMONT 
 
 aging both to the administration and the cause. Hence I wrote you, 
 as I thought it my duty to do, certainly not intending any impertinent 
 interference with executive duties, or expecting what I said to have 
 any greater scope than friendly suggestion. 
 
 His proclamation in my opinion embodies a true and important 
 principle which the government cannot afford to abandon, and with 
 your permission, and with all deference to your opinions so clearly 
 stated, I will venture a few suggestions in regard to it. 
 
 It is very important that the law which governs the case should 
 be certainly and clearly understood, but either you have greatly mis- 
 understood it, or I have. According to my understanding of it, it 
 does not deal with the relations between the government and its 
 citizens at all. It does not deal with citizens, but public enemies. It 
 does not touch a legislative function, but only declares a pre-existing 
 law, and denounces consequences which that law has already attached 
 to given acts, and which would follow as well without the proclama- 
 tion as with it. It was neither based on the act of Congress of August 
 6th nor in collision with it, but had reference to a totally different 
 class of cases, provided for long ago by the political law of na- 
 tions. . . . 
 
 It . . . rests upon the well ascertained and universally acknowl- 
 edged principles of international law as its foundation. 
 
 But the power of the Blairs and of Bates, with their free 
 access to Lincoln, far outweighed that of Browning, Wade, and 
 Chandler. When Frank's formal charges against Fremont came, 
 Montgomery Blair took them to the White House and read them 
 to the President. Fremont's family later believed that the three 
 Blairs, plotting the general's fall, enlisted General David 
 Hunter and Adjutant- General Lorenzo Thomas for the purpose. 
 Fremont had seven large boxes, full of wartime letters and 
 documents, which were destroyed in a fire in the Morrell Ware- 
 house in New York in 1877. "If you could have seen the state- 
 ments of prominent men of that era, their conversations with 
 Lincoln and others high in authority," Major Frank Fremont 
 wrote the author in 1927, "you would know that the above com- 
 bination was not to examine, but to determine on the best way 
 to get rid of Fremont without implicating Lincoln." Much more 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 653 
 
 credible is the statement of George E. Waring, writing from 
 Missouri to Frederick Law Olmsted, October 31, 1861, that 
 several regular army officers, notably John Pope and David 
 Hunter, deliberately acted against Fremont through jealousy. 
 Fremont always believed that Brigadier-General John Pope, 
 given orders a week before the fall of Lexington to march to 
 its relief, could have done so but for his desire to injure his 
 commander. Pope's capacity for negligence later proved ex- 
 traordinary. When in 1862 he was removed from command of 
 the Army of the Potomac, McClellan hailed this as "retributive 
 justice." (W. S. Myers, McClellan, 351.) This boastful officer 
 held peculiar political ideas, believing that Illinois should main- 
 tain a State army, and use it to gain a dominant position in the 
 nation. He had written Senator Lyman Trumbull, July 6, 1861 
 (Trumbull Papers): 
 
 Illinois, if properly cared for, occupies today a most peculiar and 
 commanding position in this country. On the one side Missouri has 
 as much as she can do to take care of herself, while Iowa, Minnesota, 
 and Wisconsin have had their troops drawn off for service eastward. 
 On the other hand, Ohio and Indiana have been depleted of their 
 volunteers for service in Western Virginia. Illinois so far stands 
 nearly intact with a powerful force of nearly 20,000 men in the field. 
 
 If this force can be kept together and properly officered and com- 
 manded, upon Illinois will devolve largely the reconquest of the 
 Valley of the Mississippi. Where she moves, with such a force, she 
 will of necessity stand first — and hers will be the voice which con- 
 trols the warlike operations in this valley. 
 
 If we can be kept together we shall constitute two-thirds of any 
 army sent south from this region and our position and influence will 
 dominate in any settlement of affairs west of the Alleghenys. To 
 secure this vital object to our State I have been working from the 
 beginning for some head to our troops, even if it be a wooden one — 
 some commander who shall be a citizen and native of this State, and 
 who shall move to the execution of any great military operation with 
 the concentrated forces of Illinois. 
 
 For this reason also I have objected whenever I could exercise 
 any influence to the separation of any isolated regiments from our 
 
654 FREMONT 
 
 troops. I deem this object vital to our military reputation and effi- 
 ciency, and I appeal to you to interfere against the system which is 
 now demoralizing us — frittering away our strength — subjecting our 
 volunteers to the most obscure and odious service — and absolutely 
 destroying the identity of the State. We want a military commander 
 of our own troops, who shall have full authority in this State. 
 
 Although we have force enough on foot for two Major Generals 
 and at least four Brigadiers, only two Brigadiers have been appointed 
 and neither of them has been assigned to duty. Give us a Major 
 General and one of our own people, to whom the welfare and reputa- 
 tion of our State are dear, and who can enable us to move with the 
 whole military force of Illinois. 
 
 I feel deeply on the subject. . . . 
 
 Pope believed that he should be the major-general of the 
 dominating Illinois army. He was perhaps just as lukewarm in 
 Fremont's service as Fitz-John Porter later proved to be in 
 John Pope's. He at any rate escaped the court-martial that 
 befell Porter; but Fremont felt so strongly that he declined to 
 serve under Pope in the Virginia theater. 
 
 Samuel D. Sturgis was also accused by Fremont of insub- 
 ordination. Ordered to march from Mexico, Mo., to the relief 
 of Lexington, he approached the town, heard rumors of Price's 
 superior force, and hastily retired. Grave as the charge is, we 
 have reason for crediting it. Sturgis, though a Northerner by 
 birth, had strong social sympathy for Southerners. "He has 
 been accustomed, we are assured," said the New York Tribune 
 editorially on June 30, 1862, "to protest that the only gentle- 
 men in the country are those of the South, and that when he 
 died he intended to have his body carried to the South and 
 buried there." When Senator Zack Chandler of Michigan criti- 
 cized McClellan, Sturgis got considerable publicity by calling 
 the radical leader "a liar, scoundrel, and coward." As a West 
 Pointer and a strong Democrat, Sturgis had reasons for wish- 
 ing to see Fremont fail. 
 
 At Second Manassas, Sturgis distinguished himself by a dis- 
 play of malevolence toward his commander, John Pope, whom 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 655 
 
 he hated as McClellan's successor. As that terrible battle closed, 
 Pope and his defeated troops found themselves on Sunday, 
 August 31, moving under a drizzling rain back into the en- 
 trenchments built at Centreville the year before by the Con- 
 federates after Bull Run. The terrible toils and sufferings of 
 the campaign had ended in futility; the death and maiming of 
 hosts of northern soldiers had all been in vain. As darkness 
 fell, Sturgis, with his reserve division, reported to Pope's head- 
 quarters. According to Franz Sigel, the commanding general 
 called out to him in the despairing voice of a man for whom 
 the game is lost: "Too late, Sammy, too late!" And Sturgis 
 harshly replied: "Damn it, didn't I tell you that all that was 
 necessary for you to hang yourself was to give you plenty of 
 rope?" (Jacob Picard, MS Life of Franz Sigel.) 
 
 Sturgis was one of the men with whose conduct at the battle 
 of Fredericksburg General Ambrose E. Burnside was dissatis- 
 fied; and on January 23, 1863, in General Order No. 8, which 
 Lincoln did not approve and which therefore remained ineffec- 
 tive, Burnside included Sturgis among a group of officers 
 relieved from duty because they "can be of no further service 
 to this army." {Battles and Leaders, III, 216.) The evidence 
 shows that when Sturgis served a commander he liked, such as 
 McClellan at Antietam, he fought well ; but under a commander 
 he disliked, he fought badly or not at all. 
 
 The condition of the Union forces in Missouri by October 
 was one of real and rising efficiency. Fremont concentrated a 
 large command at Jefferson City, which he and his staff reached 
 September 27. Though a thousand rotten wagons sent him 
 from the East broke down, by October 7 all his troops were 
 on the march to Tipton. Supply depots were established at 
 Jefferson City (two million rations) and Tipton (one million), 
 but the general expected to subsist largely on the country, pay- 
 ing loyal citizens and confiscating from the disloyal. He in- 
 tended to move with great rapidity to the Arkansas line. 
 
 Sterling Price, with booty and prisoners, had quickly re- 
 treated from Lexington to join Ben McCulloch's forces in 
 
656 FREMONT 
 
 southwestern Missouri. Taken together, they would have but 
 about 17,000 men, and Fremont believed that by bringing them 
 to battle in that area he could crush them. He had written 
 Winfield Scott just after Lexington that he hoped to crush 
 Price either before or after his junction with McCulloch. His 
 five divisions under Pope, Sigel, McKinstry, Hunter, and 
 Asboth were directed to concentrate at Springfield, and all but 
 one of the five commanders gave energetic cooperation. The 
 exception was Pope, whose letters show a spirit approaching 
 insubordination. Even after the main force reached Springfield 
 in southwestern Missouri, the lagging Pope was convinced that 
 the march was preposterous. "The prospect before us is appall- 
 ing, and we seem to be led by madmen," he wrote Hunter on 
 October 26, 1861. The fact was, however, that Fremont's 
 troops were in high spirits, enthusiastically loyal to their gen- 
 eral, eager for battle, and expectant of victory. Many in St. 
 Louis held the same faith. The journalist, John F. Hume, in 
 his reminiscences (The Abolitionist, 1905), declares that if 
 Fremont had been permitted to hold his Western command a 
 little longer, he would have scored a brilliant military success. 
 
 That was also strongly the opinion of the St. Louis educatoi 
 William T. Harris, who defended Fremont's military record at 
 every point. (Kurt F. Leidecker, Yankee Teacher: The Life of 
 William Torrey Harris, 201-204.) 
 
 It is a fact, though one denied or ignored in most histories, 
 that the Confederate forces were ready to give battle. Price 
 wrote Albert Sidney Johnston on November 7 that although 
 Fremont's estimated force of 35,000 to 40,000 men, with 100 
 guns, far outnumbered his army, he and McCulloch had agreed 
 to make a stand at Pineville, trusting to the rugged country to 
 compensate for their inadequate numbers. Price actually could 
 not retreat farther than the Arkansas line, because his troops 
 would not fight outside Missouri. The two generals, McCulloch 
 states in his report on the campaign, dated December 22, 1861, 
 met midway between their forces; "where it was agreed upon 
 by all the Mo. Genls that we should await an attack from the 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 657 
 
 enemy, the ground to be selected by Genl Price and myself." 
 (Price in Official Records, I, III, 732; McCulloch's report in 
 Missouri Historical Review, 1932, p. 354 ff.) 
 
 Both Confederate leaders were disheartened by the bad state 
 of their commands. "Our combined forces cannot cope with 
 them (the Federals) in numbers," declared Price to the gov- 
 ernor of Arkansas. "Men, men are now what we want. . . ." 
 His Missourians, he informed Jefferson Davis, were half-fed, 
 half-clothed, half-armed. McCulloch, speaking contemptuously 
 of the Missouri militia as undisciplined, officered largely by 
 politicians, and ill-equipped, states that the Arkansas men got 
 on badly with them — "but little cordiality of feeling between 
 the two armies." {Official Records, I, III, 731-734.) Nearly 
 5,000 Missourians, their time up, were ready to disband. It is 
 evident that Fremont risked far less than Washington supposed 
 by his advance toward Arkansas. He might have cleared all 
 Missouri of the enemy, and by a battle at Pineville have won 
 the victory that early the next year was won at Pea Ridge near 
 by. But on November 2, Fremont, to the wrath of his troops, 
 was relieved. 
 
 President Lincoln, in his assignment of the command to 
 Hunter, had left future operations to the judgment of that 
 commander, but had stated his opinion that the best plan would 
 be to give up the pursuit, divide the main army into two corps, 
 post one at Sedalia and the other at Rolla, and drill and equip 
 the men. Hunter consulted his subordinates. McKinstry, 
 Asboth, and Sigel were for advancing; Pope was noncommittal 
 (Committee on the Conduct of the War, III, 240). Hunter 
 turned back. Sigel later called this decision "an outrage with- 
 out parallel in history." As soon as the retreat of Hunter and 
 Pope became known, he wrote, the Union people of southwest- 
 ern Missouri were struck with terror and despair. Within a 
 radius of more than fifty miles, abandoning all nonportable 
 property, they flocked into the Union lines at Springfield. Then, 
 as the Federal forces retreated from Springfield, the woebe- 
 gone, impoverished mass of fugitives, including nearly every 
 
658 FREMONT 
 
 family in the city who had sympathized with the national cause, 
 took to the roads with the troops — refugees and beggars, with- 
 out shelter, clothing, or adequate food. 
 
 A friend of Sam Ward's, writing from St. Louis, November 
 25, similarly declared that Hunter's retreat had plunged Mis- 
 souri into a sorry mess. Price and McCulloch were rapidly re- 
 occupying the country they had evacuated; they could threaten 
 Rolla, Jefferson City, and Leavenworth as they had done after 
 Wilson's Creek; they could lay waste the country up to the 
 Union encampments (S. L. M. Barlow Papers, Columbia Uni- 
 versity). Sigel believed that if the Union army which Hunter 
 took from Fremont had thrust hard at the enemy at Cassville 
 and Pineville, it might have won a great victory and completely 
 liberated the State. As it was, the Confederates had their will 
 of southwestern Missouri for months. 
 
 Thus the Missouri chapter of the war in 1861 remained a 
 dreary series of blunders to the end. For the miscalculations, 
 errors, and failures blame has to be widely distributed. The 
 War Department was blameworthy for failing to supply arms, 
 and the Treasury, money, to the West. McClellan was blame- 
 worthy for detaching an important part of Fremont's force, 
 at a critical moment, to meet an entirely imaginary threat in 
 Virginia. Fremont and Frank Blair were censurable for quar- 
 reling so violently and for thinking almost as much of their 
 private feud as of defeating the enemy. Francis P. Blair, Sr., 
 and Montgomery Blair were at fault for throwing themselves 
 so headlong into Frank's duel. John Pope was to blame for a 
 disaffected spirit which approached insubordination. Hunter 
 could be criticized for his eagerness to replace Fremont, and his 
 hurried reversal of Fremont's orders — he knowing well that a 
 victory with Fremont's army would have gone far toward 
 showing that the replacement was a mistake. The patient, gen- 
 erous Lincoln appears better than anyone else in this unhappy 
 scene. He did his best to inform himself upon the tangled situa- 
 tion in that distant area, and acted with sagacity upon the 
 facts as he saw them. 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 659 
 
 Senator Ben Wade of Ohio went too far when he told Charles 
 A. Dana, February 3, 1862: "No public man, since Admiral 
 Byng was sacrificed by a weak and wicked administration to 
 appease the wrath of an indignant people, has suffered so un- 
 justly as General Fremont. His persecution will prove the 
 darkest page in our history." (Dana Papers, Library of Con- 
 gress.) But Greeley had some warrant for writing his wife, 
 October 27, 1861, that Fremont had accomplished something 
 with eight or ten million dollars, whereas McClellan had done 
 nothing with ten times the sum. And Senator James W. Grimes 
 of Iowa, who had not wanted to see Fremont appointed, de- 
 cided, after a minute scrutiny of his record in Missouri, that 
 he was guiltless of the main allegations against him, and the 
 victim of "a regular conspiracy to destroy his influence in the 
 country and with the army." (William Salter, Life of Grimes, 
 152-156.) 
 
 Fremont's Withdrawal from the Presidential Campaign, 1864 
 
 For the history given in Chapter XXXIII, two corroborative 
 pieces of evidence have been unearthed. One is a long-forgotten 
 letter by David H. Jerome, a close associate of Senator Zach- 
 ariah Chandler, in the New York Nation, September 26, 1889; 
 the other a manuscript letter of Montgomery Blair's to John 
 A. C. Gray of New York, December 12, 1864, of which the 
 late Henry G. Gray sent the author a copy. 
 
 Jerome's explicit statement supports the account in this book 
 at every point. It asserts that Ben Wade, when approached by 
 Zach Chandler early in September, 1864, agreed to desist from 
 his opposition to Lincoln and support the President, if only his 
 colleague in assailing Lincoln's Reconstruction plans, Henry 
 Winter Davis of Maryland, should be satisfied. Chandler then 
 approached Congressman Davis, who agreed to rally to the 
 Republican standard on one condition — that his personal enemy 
 and political antagonist, Montgomery Blair, should be dis- 
 missed from the Cabinet. Chandler went to Lincoln. He 
 assented. Thereupon Chandler journeyed to New York, accom- 
 
660 FREMONT 
 
 panied by Jerome, to open negotiations with Fremont and his 
 associates. The two made their headquarters at the Astor 
 House; they were efficiently aided by George Wilkes, editor of 
 The Spirit of the Times] and they prevailed upon the Fremont 
 group to agree to the general's withdrawal, without condition 
 or reward. 
 
 "At one time during the negotiations,' , writes Jerome, "Mr. 
 Bryant of the Evening Post, feeling the necessity of harmony, 
 and fearing that the opposition to Mr. Lincoln in certain 
 quarters might prove disastrous to his reelection, had in type 
 an editorial for his paper advising Mr. Lincoln's withdrawal, 
 and a united Republican support of Gen. Fremont or some other 
 available candidate; but, by the vigorous assurances of Senator 
 Chandler that harmony could better be reached in the support 
 of Mr. Lincoln, the editorial was withheld from publication." 
 
 The night after they had made the arrangement with Fre- 
 mont's friends, Senator Chandler and David H. Jerome went 
 to Washington, arriving in the morning. They at once called at 
 the White House, where they were "anxiously and eagerly re- 
 ceived by the President." When Chandler had announced the 
 result of his negotiations, "Mr. Lincoln at once fulfilled his 
 part by addressing a note to Mr. Blair asking his resignation 
 (which was promptly tendered), thereby closing the dangerous 
 breach, and making certain his reelection." 
 
 It is clear from this explicit letter, which Jerome writes is 
 based on both his personal recollection and the authority of 
 Senator Chandler, that Fremont made no bargain and asked 
 no price. It was Henry Winter Davis, reinforced by Ben Wade, 
 who demanded Montgomery Blair's head. 
 
 This conclusion is reinforced by Montgomery Blair's remark- 
 able letter of 1864 to his friend Gray. Blair, licking his wounds 
 and nursing his wrath, was eager for a bit of revenge upon 
 Secretary Stanton. He wrote: 
 
 Mr. Sumner told me on Friday last that Senator Chandler had 
 told him that I had been removed in consequence of his reporting to 
 
SOME NEW LIGHT ON FREMONT 661 
 
 Lincoln a conversation between himself and Gen'l Fremont, the 
 purport of which was that Fremont agreed to withdraw in the event 
 of my removal. 
 
 I have two reasons for discrediting this so far as it relates to 
 Fremont. The first is your statement to me. Second, W. O. Bartlett, 
 who has always had a kindness to Fremont, met me and told me that 
 Fremont denied having made any such proposition directly or in- 
 directly. My impression is that it was a suggestion of Stanton acted 
 on by Chandler who has been very intimate with Stanton for some 
 time. I wish you could see Fremont and report the matter to him 
 and see what he says about it. If it is false, I would like you to get 
 him to write you a letter denying it as broadly as the facts will admit 
 of his doing. Fremont owes nothing to Stanton and he is aware of 
 that I presume and would not be unwilling to see him bite the dust. 
 Having got his revenge on me through Stanton he may now be willing 
 to have Stanton come to grief also. 
 
 I don't know that I can fix the lie on Stanton, but I shall bring 
 it pretty near when I get it fixed on Chandler. I want you to show 
 Fremont's letter to Old Abe when you come on and tell him the 
 whole story. 
 
 To this discreditable epistle Montgomery Blair appended the 
 form of the letter which he wished Fremont to sign ! Of course 
 he was mistaken in thinking Stanton the prime mover; mis- 
 taken also in thinking that Chandler was not concerned. But 
 his letter brings in two witnesses, John A. C. Gray and W. O. 
 Bartlett, to add their testimony that Fremont never stooped 
 to bargain with Lincoln in this matter. 
 
 Fremont and His Retired Pay 
 
 Our last glimpse of Fremont, in a letter to John A. C. Gray, 
 February 27, 1889, is as a petitioner in Washington for his pay 
 as a retired major-general of the army. "I find good will here," 
 he wrote, "and plenty of it, but I am afraid that we are too 
 near the end of the session. I could not get away from New 
 York until yesterday afternoon. Senator Palmer's carriage met 
 me at the station here and I am staying with them. I went with 
 
662 FREMONT 
 
 him to the Capitol this morning and we saw some members of 
 the Committee on Rules. All are friendly except Reed of Maine, 
 who says he will interpose no obstruction. But the difficulty is 
 in the mass of business which interferes to prevent the Rules 
 Committee from discriminating in favor of any particular bill. 
 I think I shall know positively tomorrow." The morrow brought 
 postponement. It was not for more than a year, within a few 
 months of his death, that he was placed on the retired list 
 with pay. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 Fremont's Children 
 
 Jessie Benton Fremont's Bible lists the births and deaths 
 of her children. The roster is as follows: Elizabeth Benton 
 Fremont, born Washington, November 13, 1842; Benton 
 Fremont, born Washington, July 24, 1848; John Charles 
 Fremont, born in California, April 19, 185 1; Anne Beverley 
 Fremont, born Paris, February 1, 1853; Frank Preston 
 Fremont, born Washington, May 17, 1854. Benton Fremont 
 died on the Missouri River, October 6, 1848 — his being the 
 grave that lay between Jessie and General Kearny; Anne 
 Beverley Fremont died at Silver Spring, Maryland, July 12, 
 1853. Below the list Jessie wrote: "Care and sorrow and child- 
 birth pain." 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 Corruption in St. Louis, 1861 
 
 At the outbreak of the Civil War few men foresaw the wide 
 scope or prolonged duration of the conflict. Lincoln appointed 
 to the Secretaryship of War a politician, Simon Cameron, who 
 was quite incompetent for the proper discharge of his duties. 
 The result was that, amid general confusion, months passed 
 before the government in Washington appreciated the neces- 
 sity for setting up a central purchasing agency for ordnance 
 stores, and months more elapsed before order began to appear 
 in government buying. Immediately after the firing on Fort 
 Sumter volunteer military units sprang up all over the North 
 
 under state and city auspices. Union Defense Committees 
 
 663, 
 
664 FREMONT 
 
 sprang up alongside them. The state and local governments 
 and these Defense Committees began frantically buying arms, 
 clothing, and other equipment. In an ill-stocked market, they 
 drove prices sky-high. 
 
 Not until July was far advanced did the highly competent 
 Chief of Ordnance, James W. Ripley, delegate Major P. V. 
 Hagner to take charge of War Department purchases from 
 private contractors in New York. Hagner was a blunt, sharp- 
 spoken, conscientious military man, impatient with the ineffi- 
 ciency and chicanery about him, and so stubborn in his busi- 
 ness dealings that, as he himself later testified, other buyers 
 often took arms away from him by topping his price. When he 
 reached New York on July 13, 1 861, he found a scene of wild 
 confusion. States, cities, Defense Committees, generals, colo- 
 nels, and speculators were bidding frantically against each 
 other and the Federal Government. The market was plagued 
 with middlemen and profiteers. Men who had no arms were 
 struggling to land government contracts at high figures, hoping 
 afterwards to make a profitable arrangement with some manu- 
 facturer. The confusion spread to Europe; it was said that five 
 northern agents took the same boat to England and were soon 
 bidding against each other there! The same confusion spread 
 to St. Louis. 
 
 In St. Louis the principal purchaser was Justus McKinstry. 
 He had been assigned to that city as quartermaster by Secretary 
 of War Floyd; removed by Secretary Holt; and replaced by 
 Secretary Cameron long before Fremont arrived. Frank and 
 Montgomery Blair were responsible for his reappointment, 
 the latter going personally to Cameron to obtain it. 1 Before 
 Fremont reached St. Louis, McKinstry had practically been 
 given carte blanche in purchases by the authorities in Wash- 
 ington. E. S. Sibley, Acting Quartermaster-General, wrote him 
 early in June: "You are authorized without reference to this 
 office, under his direction [the commanding general's] to 
 procure such means of transportation as he may deem neces- 
 
 1 House Exec. Doc. No. 94, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 15. 
 
APPENDICES 665 
 
 sary, practising a sound economy in making your purchases, 
 and if the exigency is not immediate or pressing, conforming 
 to the law or regulations in relation to the manner of making 
 purchases or contracts for supplies." 
 
 On June 25th the newly appointed Quartermaster-General 
 Meigs wrote again: "The department approves your course, 
 . . . but desires that while economy is right, there be no room 
 left for charging the failure of any military movement upon a 
 want of promptness and efficiency in the quartermaster's de- 
 partment." 2 McKinstry was shortly brought under great pres- 
 sure by Frank P. Blair to award contracts and make purchases 
 from a long list of Blair's friends and political supporters. 3 
 Meanwhile Fremont himself, earnestly trying to find supplies 
 for ill-clothed, ill-mounted, and totally unarmed troops, made 
 purchases on his own responsibility with greater regard to 
 speed than economy. Some were very indiscreet; none was dis- 
 honest. 
 
 The most famous was the Hall carbine purchase, given much 
 publicity because it involved J. P. Morgan, Sr. Fremont knew 
 when he returned home to America of the appalling shortage of 
 arms. He spent much of early July in New York trying to ob- 
 tain guns, and did order 23,000 stand which were never de- 
 livered to him. 4 When he reached St. Louis he found his re- 
 cruits defenseless. On July 29th he telegraphed Hagner: "We 
 must have arms — any arms, no matter what." But Hagner 
 replied that after Bull Run the government had ordered all 
 arms diverted to the Potomac! The 23,000 stand Fremont had 
 bought went there. From that moment Fremont in desperation 
 bought arms wherever he could find them. On August 5th an 
 eastern arms dealer named Simon Stevens telegraphed Fremont 
 that he had "five thousand Hall's rifles, cast-steel carbines, 
 breech-loading, new, at $22, government standard, fifty-eight," 
 and invited an order. 5 Fremont had used Hall's carbine on 
 
 2 See pamphlet, Vindication of Quartermaster-General McKinstry, p. 12. 
 
 3 See appendix to the Vindication. 
 
 4 Battles and Leaders, I, p. 278, 279. 
 
 5 War Department records. 
 
666 FREMONT 
 
 one of his western expeditions and liked it. Stevens's telegram 
 seemed manna from heaven. On August 6th he telegraphed 
 that he would take the 5,000 pieces, and wanted them by ex- 
 press, not by freight. For them he promised to pay the $22 
 demanded. Before the end of August, 2,500 of the carbines 
 had been shipped to Fremont, and the second 2,500 were all in 
 St. Louis by Sunday, September 15th. When Fremont bought 
 them he did not know that they had recently been sold by the 
 incompetent and confused War Department itself to a man 
 named Eastman, who had in turn let Stevens (financed in part 
 by J. P. Morgan, Sr., have them. How could Fremont know 
 it? The government's sale of these pieces, thoroughly good 
 though slightly outmoded, was a piece of the grossest idiocy. 
 
 This transaction was subsequently inquired into by a num- 
 ber of government bodies. A select committee of Congress 
 reported on the subject December 17, 1861. 6 It cleared 
 Fremont, saying that he had acted unwisely but probably 
 "under some misapprehension as to the nature of the purchase 
 of the arms." It estimated that the pieces were really worth 
 $12.50 each. Early in 1862 Stanton created a special Commis- 
 sion on Ordnance Claims and Contracts. In June, 1862, this 
 body held that $65,228 was a fair price for the carbines and 
 should be paid. Later still, in the Court of Claims, it was de- 
 cided that Fremont had acted with full legal right and no im- 
 propriety in buying the arms. 7 Those who declared he had 
 acted illegally were thus confuted. 
 
 Whether he paid too much for the carbines is a matter on 
 which judgments might well differ. Government records showed 
 that while he was paying $22 for newly rifled carbines (pieces 
 that had cost the government $17.50 when new and been 
 rifled subsequently), the Ordnance Bureau in Washington was 
 paying $35 for Sharp's carbines, $32.50 for Smith's, and $35 
 
 6 House Report No. 2, 37th Cong., 2d Sess. 
 
 7 Stevens vs. U.S., Cases Decided in the Court of Claims, December terra, 
 1866, Vol. 2, pp. 05-103. 
 
APPENDICES 667 
 
 for Burnside's. 8 The Bureau bought 10,000 of Smith's pieces at 
 $32.50 on August 27, 1861, and 7,500 of Burnside's at $35 the 
 same day. Yet it did not need arms so badly, and did not have 
 to have them in such a hurry, as Fremont. 
 
 Beyond doubt there was great waste and some corruption 
 in St. Louis, as in Washington and New York, in connection 
 with arms purchases; but none of the corruption was 
 Fremont's, and the waste was largely attributable to the War 
 Department's own inefficiency. 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 The Writings of John Charles Fremont, with Related Material 
 
 A Report on the Exploration of the Country Lying between 
 the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains on the Line of the 
 Kansas and Great Platte Rivers, by J. C. Fremont, of the 
 Corps of Topographical Engineers. 27th Congress, Third Ses- 
 sion, Senate Document 243. Washington, 1843. Pp- 20 7- 
 
 Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Moun- 
 tains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in 
 the Years 1843-44, by Brevet Captain J. C. Fremont. . . . 
 under the Orders of Colonel J. J. Abert, Chief of the Topo- 
 graphical Bureau. 28th Congress, Second Session, House Ex- 
 ecutive Document 166. Washington: Blair & Rives, Printers, 
 1845. Pp. 583, maps. 
 
 The Same. 28th Congress, Second Session, Senate Executive 
 Document 174. Washington: Gales & Seaton, Printers, 
 1845. 
 
 (Both editions of the Report contain scientific materials by 
 John Torrey on botany, and James Hall on geology and organic 
 remains. The Senate edition only contains the astronomical 
 and meteorological observations. Other editions of the Report 
 
668 
 
 are those of H. Polkinhorn, Washington, 1845; D. Appleton, 
 New York, 1845; G. S. Appleton, Philadelphia, 1846; and 
 Hurst & Company, New York, 1885.) 
 
 Charges and Specifications and Findings and Sentence of a 
 General Court Martial in the Case of Lieutenant Colonel John 
 C. Fremont. U.S. War Department General Orders No. 7, 
 February 17, 1848. Washington, 1848. Pp. 28. 
 
 Defence of Lieutenant Colonel J. C. Fremont, Before the 
 Military Court Martial, Washington, January, 1848. Washing- 
 ton (?), 1848. Pp. 78. 
 
 Message of the President of the United States Communicat- 
 ing the Proceedings of the Court Martial in the Trial of Lieu- 
 tenant Colonel Fremont. 30th Congress, First Session, Senate 
 Executive Document 33. Washington (?), 1848. Pp. 447. 
 
 Geographical Memoir upon Upper California, in Illustration 
 of his Map of Oregon and California: Addressed to the Senate 
 of the United States, by John C. Fremont. Washington: Wen- 
 dell & Van Benthuysen, Printers, 1848. Pp. 67, with folding 
 map. 
 
 Oregon and California. The Exploring Expedition to the 
 Rocky Mountains, Oregon, and California, by Brevet Colonel 
 J. C. Fremont, to which is added a Description of the Physical 
 Geography of California, with Recent Notices of the Gold 
 Region from the Latest and Most Authentic Sources. Buffalo: 
 G. H. Derby & Company, 1849, I ^Si. Pp. 456. 
 
 Central Railroad Route to the Pacific. Letter of J. C. Fre- 
 mont to the Editors of the National Intelligencer, Communicat- 
 ing Some General Results of a Recent Winter Expedition 
 Across the Rocky Mountains, for a Survey of a Route to the 
 Pacific. 33rd Congress, Second Session, House Misc. Doc. 8. 
 33rd Congress, First Session, Senate Misc. Doc. 67. Washing- 
 ton, 1854. Pp. 7. 
 
APPENDICES 669 
 
 The Mariposas Estate. Papers by J. D. Whitney, J. Adel- 
 berg, Frederic Claudet, and T. W. Park, Showing the Condi- 
 tion and Resources of the Estate. Preface by J. C. Fremont, 
 Frederick Billings. London: Whittingham & Wilkins, 1861. 
 Pp. 63, with folding map. 
 
 Memoirs of My Life, by John Charles Fremont. Including 
 in the Narrative Five Journeys of Western Exploration during 
 the Years 1842, 1843-44, 1845-46-47, 1848-49, 1853-54. To- 
 gether with a sketch of the life of Senator Benton in connection 
 with western expansion, by Jessie Benton Fremont. A retro- 
 spect of fifty years covering the most eventful periods of mod- 
 ern American history. With maps and colored plates. Volume I. 
 Chicago and New York: Belford, Clarke & Company, 1887. 
 Pp- 655 + xix, with maps, in part folding. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 The first three books written upon Fremont were campaign biog- 
 raphies. John Bigelow's Life of John Charles Fremont (1856) is a 
 hasty compilation of about five hundred rather dull pages, eulogistic 
 throughout. It, however, contains some documents of permanent value, 
 including Commodore Stockton's report on his Pacific Coast opera- 
 tions, Fremont's defense before his court-martial, his letter from Taos 
 in January, 1849, tne Fremont- Wilkes correspondence, and his letter 
 to the National Intelligencer on his expedition of 1854. S. M. Smucker 
 issued The Life of Colonel J. C. Fremont in 1856. Charles Wentworth 
 Upham's Life, Explorations, and Public Services of John Charles Fre- 
 mont (1856), is a brief, clear, undistinguished compilation, also eulo- 
 gistic. Two later volumes have been published. As a scientific and 
 critical account of Fremont's explorations, Frederick S. Dellenbaugh's 
 Frimont and '49 (19 14) is invaluable. The author is well acquainted 
 with most of the country traversed. He identifies localities, furnishes 
 information on topography, climate, and Indians, corrects many of 
 Fremont's minor observations, explains others and presents a wealth 
 of maps and pictures. The book, which virtually closes with 1850, 
 is sympathetic. It contains a valuable bibliography. Cardinal L. 
 Goodwin's John Charles Fremont, An Explanation of his Career 
 (1930) is a brief and studiously hostile estimate. 
 
 Fremont's own Memoirs of My Life (1886) is based directly 
 upon his reports, and chapters four to eleven inclusive add little to 
 them. The first three chapters contain a rapid account of his educa- 
 tion, early adventures, and work with Nicollet. The last four chapters 
 deal, often sketchily yet with evident sincerity, with the events of 
 1845-46 in California up to the Capitulation of Couenga. The gov- 
 ernment published for Fremont in 1845 ms Report of the Exploring 
 Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon 
 and North California in the years 1843-44 (Senate Doc. 174, 28th 
 Congress, 2d Session). It also published in 1848 his Geographical 
 Memoir upon Upper California, in Illustration of his Map of Oregon 
 
 671 
 
672 FREMONT 
 
 and California (Senate Doc. 148, 30th Congress, 1st Session). Nu- 
 merous commercial editions of Fremont's reports for 1842-45 were 
 issued by publishers in the United States, England, Ireland, and 
 Germany. References in the text are to the edition of George H. 
 Derby & Company, The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, Oregon, and California (1849), used because a copy furnished 
 by the Fremont family contained certain corrections in Fremont's 
 hand. This contains also the official report of Colonel Richard B. 
 Mason on the gold regions. 
 
 Catherine Coffin Phillips has written an excellent biography of 
 Jessie Benton Fremont, A Woman Who Made History (1935). All 
 Jessie's own books, while highly readable, must be used with care, 
 for she wrote rapidly and with an eye to dramatic effect. The most 
 valuable are The Story of the Guard (1863), ^ Year of American 
 Travel (1877), Souvenirs of My Time (1887), and Far West 
 Sketches (1890). The Recollections of Elizabeth Benton Fremont 
 (191 2) compiled by E. T. Martin, have material of interest upon 
 the years at Mariposa and at Prescott. A fairly full list of magazine 
 publications by Jessie Benton Fremont is given in Mrs. Phillips's 
 biography, pp. 350-352. 
 
 The Fremont manuscripts used by the author in preparing this 
 volume were supplied him by Major Frank P. Fremont and other 
 heirs, and were later sent by the author (with collateral material) 
 to the Bancroft Library at the University of California. They fall 
 into four groups: (1) a few letters of Thomas Hart Benton to his 
 daughters; (2) a body of letters and autobiographical writings by 
 Jessie Fremont; (3) a number of letters and memoranda by Fremont 
 himself; and (4) the manuscript of perhaps 100,000 words to which 
 I have referred as MS Memoirs. This was written chiefly by Mrs. 
 Fremont, with some assistance from Major Frank P. Fremont upon 
 the military chapters. In part, these memoirs were composed with 
 General Fremont's direct assistance and supervision, and among his 
 papers are a number of loose sheets dealing with moot points in his 
 career. It is greatly to be regretted that these MS Memoirs are not 
 more complete, and that the first volume of the published Memoirs 
 did not meet with a sufficient sale to justify the issuance of the 
 second. 
 
 The author has also made extensive use of manuscript material 
 from other sources. The courtesy of Professors Herbert I. Priestley 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 673 
 
 and Herbert E. Bolton enabled him to obtain much that was valu- 
 able from the Bancroft Library. The more important narratives 
 by American settlers and others thus used are the Narrative of John 
 C. Fremont's Expedition in California in 1845-46, and Subsequent 
 Events in California Down to 1853, by Thomas S. Martin, one of 
 Fremont's men (Cal. MSS. D. 122); the Statement of William F. 
 Swasey (Cal. MSS. D. 200) ; the recollections of John Fowler of 
 Napa County upon The Bear Flag Revolt in California, 1846 (Cal. 
 MSS. D. 83); and California in 1846, as related by William Har- 
 grave, of Napa. The letters and reports of Thomas O. Larkin in 
 the State Department in Washington were used, and Mr. R. L. 
 Underhill of Berkeley kindly allowed the author to see his excellent 
 manuscript life of Larkin. The author also saw the Larkin Papers 
 in the Bancroft Library and obtained some copies. The long-lost 
 papers of Edward Kern, recovered and now kept in the Huntington 
 Library in San Marino, California, have been reprinted as the Fort 
 Sutter Papers in a small edition edited by Seymour Dunbar ; I have 
 consulted the originals at the Huntington Library. In New York 
 I have used the John Bigelow papers and Bigelow's unpublished 
 diary. In the Library of Congress I have used the Welles MSS, 
 the John Sherman MSS, the Washburne MSS, the Chase MSS, and 
 other papers. The Gamble Papers in the Missouri Historical Society 
 have kindly been searched for me by Miss Marguerite Potter. 
 
 Lists of printed books upon Fremont and the many events he 
 touched are easily available. In my original two volumes on Fremont 
 I included an eight-page bibliography. Good bibliographies may also 
 be found in Mrs. Phillips's Jessie Benton Fremont and in Cardinal 
 L. Goodwin's Fremont; while there is an excellent list of titles on 
 the trans-Mississippi in E. W. Gilbert's The Exploration of Western 
 America, 1800-18 $0 (1933). H. R. Wagner's The Plains and the 
 Rockies: A Bibliography of Original Narratives of Travel and Ad- 
 venture, 1800-186 5 (192 1 ), is, of course, invaluable. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abert, J. J., as head of Topographical 
 Corps, 49, 88; orders Fremont to 
 return, 131; and Mrs. Fremont, 
 
 131-133. 
 
 Abert, Lieutenant James William, and 
 third expedition, 207, 208, 2i2tt. 
 
 Abolitionists attack Fremont in 1856, 
 450. 
 
 Adams, C. F., and arms purchases, 475. 
 
 Adams Express Company, 490. 
 
 Adams, J. Q., death of, 341. 
 
 Adams, Reverend Jasper, 12, 16. 
 
 Adelberg, Dr. Festus, 461. 
 
 Albuquerque, Fremont at, 369. 
 
 Alcatraz, Fremont purchases, 314. 
 
 Almonte, J. N., as Mexican minister, 
 189, 200. 
 
 Alvarado, Gov. Juan, and Sutter, 
 162.^.; rule of, 151, i7o#.; and 
 California sectionalism, 218; Fre- 
 mont visits, 224; Fremont buys 
 Mariposa from, 371. 
 
 American Fur Company, traders* work, 
 123; assistance to the Nicollet ex- 
 pedition, 37. 
 
 American River, Fremont reaches, 159; 
 Sutter's ranch on, 163, 164, 215. 
 
 Ames, George Walcott, articles by, 222. 
 
 Ames, Oakes, supports Fremont, 569. 
 
 Andrews, Israel D., 427. 
 
 Andrew, John A., 573. 
 
 Arago, Fremont meets, 457. 
 
 Aram, Captain, on Fremont, 416. 
 
 Arce, Lieutenant, under Castro, 266, 
 267. 
 
 Arce, Mme., entertains Jessie, 375; 
 nurses the Fremonts, 390. 
 
 Archilette camp-ground, 178. 
 
 Arizona, Fremont governor of, 603, 
 604. 
 
 Arms, Fremont's purchase of, in Civil 
 War, 474-476, 49°#.; see Appendix 
 II. 
 
 675 
 
 Asboth, Alexander, as Fremont's chief 
 of staff, 476, 477; and river gun- 
 boats, 492; as division commander, 
 530. 
 
 Ashley, W. H., as explorer, 75^.; use 
 of cannon, 130. 
 
 Astor, John Jacob, and western ex- 
 plorations, 76. 
 
 Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, 58 7#. 
 
 Baker, Senator E. D., meets Fremont, 
 468, 470, 471. 
 
 Bancroft, George, and western expan- 
 sion, 202; and third expedition, 203, 
 204; instructions to Fremont, 202, 
 203; to Sloat, 240; letter to Fre- 
 mont, 245, 246; memorandum, 246, 
 247. 
 
 Bancroft, H. H., as critic of Fremont, 
 281. 
 
 Banks, N. P., and Fremont's nomi- 
 nation, 42 sff.; and Native Ameri- 
 cans, 431, 432; campaigns for Fre- 
 mont, 441; commands in Shenan- 
 doah, 555#-; defeated, 556; as Fre- 
 mont's companion, 593. 
 
 Bartleson-Bidwell party of pioneers, 
 217. 
 
 Bates, Edward, attitude toward Fre- 
 mont, 470, 530, 539; hostility to 
 Blairs, 567. 
 
 Beale, Mayor Edward F., befriends 
 Fremont, 368, 369; visits him, 389; 
 and Pacific Railroad, 409. 
 
 Bear Flag, raising of, 271. 
 
 Bear Flag War, history of, 254-286. 
 
 Bear River, Fremont follows, 139. 
 
 Bear Valley, Fremont's home at, 383. 
 
 Beckwith, E. J., his survey, 406. 
 
 Beecher, H. W., in 1856, 452; sup- 
 ports Fremont, 547; opposes Lin- 
 coln, 568. 
 
676 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Belford, Clarke & Co., 606. 
 
 Belmont, August. 453. 
 
 Bennett, J. G., on Washington dull- 
 ness, 333; and Fremont court- 
 martial, 336; supports Fremont, 
 340, 341, 443, 44s; endorses procla- 
 mation, 504; attacks Lincoln, 568; 
 Blair pleads with, 577. 
 
 Bent's Fort, and second expedition, 
 137; return to, 184; third expedition, 
 207, 208; visit to in 1848, 350, 351. 
 
 Benton, Randolph, with Fremont, 90; 
 death, 405. 
 
 Benton, Thomas Hart, duel with Jack- 
 son, 9, 10; Washington position and 
 character, 51-55; friendship with 
 Fremont, 52, 55; opposes him, 57, 
 58, 68; relations with Jessie, 63; 
 consents to marriage, 59; belief in 
 western development, 83, 125; plans 
 second expedition, 127; visits St. 
 Louis, 128, 185; concern over Jes- 
 sie, 185, 186; takes in Fremont, 
 190 ff.; and the third expedition, 
 201 ff.; anger against Kearny, 329$.; 
 relations with Polk, 328 ff.; and the 
 court-martial, 327-342; Mount Bul- 
 lion named for, 383; and Pacific 
 railroad, 406, 4o8jf.; loses Senate 
 seat, 422; opposes Fremont for 
 President, 448, 455, 456; death, 459, 
 460; statue to, 594. 
 
 Bidwell, John, as Sutter's aide, 217. 
 
 Bierstadt, A. H., Fremont own paint- 
 ing by, 594. 
 
 Bigelow, John, on Fremont in 1856, 
 426 ff.; writes campaign life, 443; 
 campaign manager, 450; distrusts 
 Fremont, 472. 
 
 Bigler, John, as governor, 397. 
 
 Billings, Frederick, as Fremont's law- 
 yer, 471; in Civil War, 491; and 
 loss of Mariposa, 583-586. 
 
 Bissonette, Joseph, interpreter for 
 Fremont, 112. 
 
 Black, Jeremiah, Fremont confers 
 with, 458. 
 
 Black Hills (Laramie Mountains), 
 Frdmont describes, 122. 
 
 Black Point, purchase, 467; life at, 
 468Jf. 
 
 Blair, Francis P., Sr., friendship with 
 Benton's, 186; Mrs. Fremont at his 
 estate, 407; and Fremont in 1856, 
 A 2 lff-> takes defeat hard, 456; dis- 
 like of Fremont, 470; family pride, 
 507, 508, demands on Fremont, 509, 
 510; sees Mrs. Fremont, 519. 
 
 Blair, Frank, in St. Louis, 186; and 
 campaign of 1856, 427^.; organizes 
 forces in Missouri, 479, 480; family 
 pride in, 507-510; at Fremont's 
 headquarters, 509, 510; demands on 
 Fremont, 510-512; doubts Fremont's 
 capacity, 512 ; quarrel with Fremont, 
 513^.; arrest and release, 520, 526; 
 files charges against Fremont, 526, 
 527; assails Lincoln's Cabinet, 529; 
 attacks Fremont in Congress, 554; 
 attacks Chase, 571, 572; military 
 command, 572; Congress rebukes, 
 575; Republican convention hostile 
 to, 576. 
 
 Blair, Montgomery, in St. Louis, 186; 
 as Fremont's counsel, 396, 462 ; Fre- 
 mont appeals to, 485 ; on Fremont's 
 delays, 481 ; family feeling, 507, 
 508; criticizes Chase, 509; visits St. 
 Louis, 513, 514; and Mrs. Fremont, 
 515-519; and Cabinet antagonisms, 
 566, 567; enmity of Chase to, 572; 
 Republican convention attacks, 575, 
 576; resignation, 581, 582. 
 
 Blenker, General, reinforces Fremont, 
 560. 
 
 Boileau, Baron Gauldree, marries 
 Susan Benton, 459; as business in- 
 termediator, 593. 
 
 Boise, Fort, Fremont visits, 144. 
 
 Boonville, battle of, 480. 
 
 Botts, John Minor, on disunion, 448. 
 
 Boutwell, George S., attacks Mont- 
 gomery Blair, 581. 
 
 Brackenridge, Thomas E., with fourth 
 expedition, 349#-, 357- 
 
 Brady, his photographic studio, 420. 
 
 Brant, Henry, on Fremont's first ex- 
 pedition, 93. 
 
 Brant, Mrs. Sarah Benton, entertains 
 Fremont, 92; Jessie with, 551. 
 
 Brant Mansion, as Fremont's head- 
 quarters, 493, 494. 
 
INDEX 
 
 677 
 
 Bridger, Jim, as trapper and explorer, 
 96, in, 141. 
 
 British designs on California, 283, 284. 
 
 Brooke, G. M., and Fremont's court- 
 martial, 333#- 
 
 Brooks, Preston, predicts disunion, 448. 
 
 Brown, B. Gratz, in Missouri fighting, 
 490; in politics, 573, 574- 
 
 Browne, J. Ross, in California, 386. 
 
 Bryant, Edwin, Alcalde, of San Fran- 
 cisco, 289; with California Battalion, 
 295; in San Francisco, 380. 
 
 Bryant, W. C, supports Fremont in 
 1856, 427#./ 435, 443; on Republi- 
 can strength, 456, 457; on procla- 
 mation, 504; chilly to Lincoln, 568$. 
 
 Buchanan, James, Fremont's early re- 
 lations with, 196; despatch to Lar- 
 kin, 239; and Fremont's court-mar- 
 tial, 339 ; nominated, 440 ; prospects, 
 441; campaign tactics, 444#-/ suc- 
 cess, 454-456 ; on Fremont's exploits, 
 446. 
 
 Buenaventura, mythical river, 151, 
 
 175, 194. 
 Buttes of the Sacramento, Fremont at, 
 262. 
 
 Cairo, HI., Grant at, 521. 
 
 Calhoun, John C, fear of British de- 
 signs, 201. 
 
 California, situation in 1844, i67#.; 
 Indians of, 219, 220; and Great 
 Britain, 201 jf.; native population of, 
 257#.; and gold rush, 376-380; con- 
 stitution of, 386, 387 ; slavery strug- 
 gle, tflff. 
 
 California Battalion, organized, 278; 
 personnel, 279; behavior, 291; 
 marches of, 292-300. 
 
 Calif ornian established 1846, 292. 
 
 Cameron, Simon, in campaign of 1856, 
 435, 4541 and Fremont's proclama- 
 tion, 504; orders troops east, 524, 
 525; investigates West, 530, 531; 
 defends Fremont's railway opera- 
 tions, 598. 
 
 Camp, Charles L., quoted, 325. 
 
 Campbell, Robert, assists fourth ex- 
 pedition, 348, 349. 
 
 Carson, Kit, Fremont meets, 94 ; train- 
 ing, 95-101 ; joins second expedi- 
 tion, 137, 138; enters California, 
 157-160; attacks Indians, i77#.; 
 threatens chief, 180, 181 ; joins third 
 expedition, 207, 208; finds Walker's 
 party, 225; on clash with Castro, 
 230; meets Kearny, 297; and the 
 San Rafael murders, 275, 276; and 
 the Kearny quarrel, 325^.; sees 
 Polk, 325, 326; returns west, 330; 
 on Bill Williams, 364, 365; succors 
 Fremont, 368, 369. 
 
 Carson Pass, 158. 
 
 Carson River, Fremont reaches, 150, 
 
 153. 
 Carvalho, S. N., and fifth expedition, 
 
 41 iff. 
 
 Cascade Range, Fremont follows, 47, 
 235. 
 
 Cass, Gen. Lewis, political position, 
 198. 
 
 Castro, Jose, as commander, 172, 218; 
 Fremont meets, 224; orders Fre- 
 mont out, 226, 227; clash with, 229- 
 231; welcomes war, 229; his proc- 
 lamation, 232, 251; fighting with, 
 28 4 ff. 
 
 Castro, Mme. Jose, kindness to Jessie, 
 381, 382. 
 
 Castro, Don Manuel, 225. 
 
 Cathcart, Captain A.; with Fremont, 
 349, 363#.; presents sword to Fre- 
 mont, 605. 
 
 Chandler, Zachariah, defends Fremont, 
 547; hatred of Blairs, 567; confers 
 with Lincoln, 578; induces Fremont 
 to withdraw, 579-581; befriends 
 him, 603. 
 
 Charleston, Fremont's boyhood in, 10- 
 17; gives Fremont a sword, 605. 
 
 Charleston College, Fremont in, 13-17. 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., as candidate in 
 1856, 432-434; supports Fremont, 
 44i, 453#-/ his correspondence, 507, 
 545, 546; presidential ambitions, 
 S66ff., 570; their failure, 575; quar- 
 rel with Frank Blair, 572, 573. 
 
 Chavez, Jose Antonio, 226. 
 
 Cherokees, Fremont's contact with, 
 25-27. 
 
67S 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chichester, Lord, writes on Fremont, 
 
 303. 
 
 Chiles, J. B., as Sacramento settler, 
 135, 166, 167, 171. 
 
 Choate, Rufus, opposes Fremont, 450. 
 
 Chouteau and Company, support Nic- 
 ollet, 30. 
 
 Chouteau, Pierre and Cyprian, assist 
 Fremont, 92; 186. 
 
 Clark, William, maps of, 8i«. 
 
 Clay, J. B., opposes Fremont, 450. 
 
 Cleveland convention nominates Fre- 
 mont, 573, 574. 
 
 Clifford, Nathan, and the court-mar- 
 tial, 339. 
 
 Clyman, James, American settler, 231, 
 232. 
 
 Cochetopa Pass, Fremont approaches, 
 354-359 5 Benton mentions, 409. 
 
 Cochrane, John, named for Vice- 
 President, 574, 577. 
 
 Coles, Judge Edward, with Jessie, 
 
 Colfax, Schuyler, supports Fremont, 
 442, 444; visits St. Louis, 524, 525; 
 defends Fremont, 54 yff., 554; be- 
 comes Speaker, 564. 
 
 Collyer, Robert, supports Fremont, 
 
 453- 
 Columbia River, Fremont follows, 144, 
 
 145. 
 
 Committee on Conduct of the War, 
 defends Fremont, 547, 548; final re- 
 port, 564, 565. 
 
 Congdon, Charles, supports Fremont, 
 426. 
 
 Conkling, Roscoe, defends Fremont, 
 548 ; supports his railroad enterprise, 
 
 589. 
 Conway, Moncure D., as Fremont 
 
 supporter, 501, 502, 569. 
 Cooke, P. St. George, in California, 
 
 317, 319; attacks Fremont, 332, 329, 
 
 330. 
 Corwine, R. R., as judge-advocate, 
 
 477, 554- 
 Covode, John, defends Fremont, 547; 
 
 condemns Montgomery Blair, 581. 
 Cowan or Cowie, murder of, 275, 276. 
 Cowne, Kitty, and Fremont's mother, 
 
 6. 
 
 Cox, Jacob D., quoted, 555. 
 Creutzfeldt, F., and fourth expedition, 
 
 349 ff.; death, 412. 
 Crittenden, J. J., and Mariposa law- 
 suit, 462. 
 Cross Keys, battle of, 556-558. 
 Cummins, Major, at Westport Agency, 
 
 350. 
 Curtin, Governor, supports Fremont, 
 
 573. 
 Curtis, George W., supports Fremont, 
 
 45f. 
 Curtis, S. R., and Fremont's removal, 
 
 538, 548. 
 Cushing, Caleb, and Mariposa suit, 
 
 396, 462; opposes Fremont, 450. 
 
 Dana, Charles A., in campaign of 
 
 1856, 428, 440. 
 Dana, R. H., Jr., visits Mariposa, 467. 
 D'Arnaud, Charles, as spy, 492. 
 Davis, Edward, and emancipation, 500, 
 
 503. 
 Davis, Henry Winter, as Congressional 
 
 radical, 565, 566, 578; insists on 
 
 Blair withdrawal, 581. 
 Davis, Jefferson, and Pacific railroad, 
 
 406, 408. 
 Davis, Jefferson C, fails to relieve 
 
 Lexington, 525. 
 Dayton, W. L., as nominee, 431, 432, 
 
 435- 
 Dellenbaugh, F. S., quoted, 153, 212, 
 
 413. 
 Democratic Review praises Fremont, 
 
 345- 
 Dennison, Governor of Ohio, 525. 
 Derby, Major George H., 380. 
 Des Moines, founding of, 61. 
 Des Moines River, Fremont explores, 
 
 59-61, 67, 68. 
 Dickens, Charles, describes western 
 
 travel, 90, 91. 
 Dix, Dorothea, on Lincoln's grief, 552. 
 Dix, John A., on Fremont's explora- 
 tions, 345. 
 Dodge, Augustus C, Delegate from 
 
 Iowa, 55. 
 Dodson, Jacob, with Fremont, 129, 
 
 304, 320. 
 
INDEX 
 
 679 
 
 Donelson, Fort, building of, 492. 
 Doniphan, A. W., as Confederate 
 
 leader, 478. 
 Donner emigrants, fate of, 152. 
 Donner's Pass, 214. 
 Dorsheimer, William, on Fremont's 
 
 staff, 493. 
 Drips, Andrew, as guide, 94. 
 Dunn, John, book on Oregon, 195. 
 
 Eads, James B., and river gunboats, 
 492. 
 
 Early, Jubal A., raid of, 576, 581. 
 
 Eclectic Review, on Fremont's ex- 
 plorations, 345. 
 
 Eels-Walker missionary party, 162. 
 
 Egloffstein, topographer with Fremont, 
 411. 
 
 Eliot, W. G., defends Fremont, 543- 
 
 545. 
 Emancipation, Fremont's proclamation 
 
 of, 500-503; reception of, 503-505; 
 
 Lincoln requires modification of, 
 
 505-5O7; effect, 507, 508. 
 Emerson, R. W., supports Fremont, 
 
 441. 
 Emmet, Robert, and Republican poli- 
 tics, 433, 437- 
 Emory, W. H., attacks Fremont, 329, 
 
 332. 
 Escalante Desert, Fremont crosses, 419. 
 Eugenie, Empress, Fremonts see, 403, 
 
 404. 
 Evarts, W. M., supports Fremont, 441, 
 547; and Opdyke-Weed case, 583- 
 586. 
 
 Faribault, J. B., Minnesota career, 36. 
 
 Farrar, General G. B., complains of 
 Fremont, 493. 
 
 Featherstonhaugh, George H., expedi- 
 tion of, 31. 
 
 Fiala, John, on Fremont's staff, 477; 
 and river gunboats, 492. 
 
 Field, David Dudley, supports Fre- 
 mont, 547; as political adviser, 573, 
 579; and the Mariposa estate, 583- 
 586. 
 
 Field, Kate, 418. 
 
 Filley, 0. D., and fourth expedition, 
 348, 349- 
 
 Fillmore, Millard, candidate in 1856, 
 42 9ff. 
 
 Fitzpatrick, Thomas, as explorer, 96^.; 
 and second expedition, 129, 138; 
 and fourth expedition, 350, 351. 
 
 Floyd, John B., and Fremont's can- 
 didacy, 424^. 
 
 Foote, Commodore, in Missouri, 533. 
 
 Foote, H. S., Fremont clashes with, 
 
 39i. 
 
 Fort Leavenworth, 325. 
 
 Fowler, John, narrative of, 265, 266. 
 
 Fox, Charles Douglas, at Mariposa, 
 461. 
 
 Fremont, Benton, birth and death, 
 342, 349, 35o. 
 
 Fremont, John Charles, parentage of, 
 3-8; boyhood, 10-16; expelled from 
 college, 16; in the navy, 22, 23; top- 
 ographical work in South, 24-28; 
 expeditions with Nicollet, 31-45; life 
 in Washington, 46^.; love affair with 
 Jessie Benton, 56-71; on Des 
 Moines, 60, 61, 67, 68; marriage, 69; 
 life in Washington, 87; first ex- 
 pedition, 89-94, 101-115; first report, 
 117-126; second expedition, 127^.; 
 crosses Sierras, 152^.; home com- 
 ing, i85#.; second report, 190^.; 
 third expedition, 202^.; enters Cali- 
 fornia, 215; visits Monterey, 222; 
 clash with Castro, 226-230; marches 
 northward, 231-236; meeting with 
 Gillespie, 239^.; California cam- 
 paigning, 255, 263^.; quarrel with 
 Kearny, 305^.; court-martial, 327^.; 
 fourth expedition, 344-369; Mari- 
 posa and life in California, 374#.; 
 elected Senator, 388 ; service in Sen- 
 ate, 391, 392; in Europe, 4oi#.; 
 fifth expedition, 4.0% ff.; nominated 
 for President, 42 iff.; campaign of 
 1856, 43 gff.; development of Mari- 
 posa, 461^.; commander in Mis- 
 souri, 473#.,1 commander in West 
 Virginia, 550-563; and the cam- 
 paign of 1864, 564-582; Mariposa 
 lost, 583-586; railway affairs, 587- 
 601; governor of Arizona, 603, 604; 
 
68o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Fremont — (Continued) 
 writes memoirs, 605, 606; last days 
 and death, 6o7#.; character, 612$. 
 
 Fremont, Elizabeth Benton (Lilly), 
 mentioned, 343; and Fremont's de- 
 feat for presidency, 456; life after 
 the war, 606; and Fremont's death, 
 609. 
 
 Fremont, Frank P., birth, 423; edu- 
 cation, 605. 
 
 Fremont, Jessie Benton, Fremont 
 meets, 56; character, 63; their at- 
 tachment, 58; training and abili- 
 ties, 63-67; marriage, 69; reconcilia- 
 tion with father, 70, 71; first child 
 born, 116; assists with report, 117- 
 119; and second expedition, 13 iff.; 
 disobeys Col. Abert, I3i-i34#.; life 
 in St. Louis, 185, 186; Fremont's 
 return, iSyff.; assists with second 
 report, 190^.; reunion with Fremont 
 in 1847, 326; and Polk, 327^.; her 
 anxiety, 330 ; goes West, 343 ; crosses 
 Panama, 374, 375; reaches Cali- 
 fornia, 376; life in California, 377#.; 
 slavery issue in California, 387; in 
 Europe, 40 iff.; and Democratic of- 
 fer to Fremont, 425; in campaign of 
 1856, 442 ; and Fremont's defeat, 
 456; in Paris again, 459; in Cali- 
 fornia, 460^.; and death of father, 
 460, 461; and the Mariposa War, 
 463-466; and Black Point home, 
 467, 468; carriage accident, 471; let- 
 ter by, 472 ; with Fremont in St. 
 Louis, 481^.; and emancipation 
 proclamation, 503,/F.; travels east, 
 515; interview with Lincoln, 516- 
 518; in St. Louis, 520^.; her bitter- 
 ness, 551; and White House recep- 
 tion, 552, 553; and West Virginia, 
 554; relieved by Fremont's 1864 
 withdrawal, 582 ; in California, 608, 
 609; last days and death, 610, 611. 
 
 Fremont, John C, Jr., education of, 
 605; and Fremont's death, 609. 
 
 Fremont, Nina, her education, 444 ; at 
 Mariposa, 461. 
 
 Fremont's Peak, ascent of, 105, 124. 
 
 Freniere, Louison, as scout, 39, 40. 
 
 Fuller, Oliver, with Fremont, 418. 
 
 Gabilan Mountains, Fremont in, 228. 
 
 Gabriel, Benton's servant, 187, 188. 
 
 Gamble, Governor Hamilton R., hos- 
 tility to Fremont, 499, 510, 515; re- 
 fuses Fremont's request, 510; criti- 
 cizes Fremont, 514, 515. 
 
 Garde, Comte de la, Jessie's friendship 
 with, 402^. 
 
 Garfield, James A., opposes Lincoln, 
 
 565. 
 
 Garrison, W. L., derides Republican 
 party, 450; in 1864 attacks Fre- 
 mont's candidacy, 573, 574. 
 
 German-Americans support Fremont, 
 443 ; applaud his proclamation, 504 ; 
 support him in St. Louis, 542; for 
 presidency, 570-577- 
 
 Gerolt, Baron, 200. 
 
 Ghent, W. J., quoted, 212. 
 
 Geyer, Charles, as botanist, 32, 34, 38. 
 
 Gila River, Fremont on, 369, 373. 
 
 Gillespie, A. H., as despatch-bearer, 
 222, 229, 233, 237, 238#.; letters 
 to Navy Department, 258; with 
 California troops, 293. 
 
 Gilpin, William, on second expedition, 
 129, 196. 
 
 Girardin, Louis, his school, 5, 6. 
 
 Godey, Alexis, on second expedition, 
 138; punishes Indians, i77#.; on 
 third expedition, 207, 208, 276, 284; 
 at court-martial, 333; and fourth 
 expedition, 349; on Williams's re- 
 sponsibility, 357-359; bravery of, 
 363 ; brings relief, 366 ; defends Fre- 
 mont, 369; goes to California, 369, 
 370; at Mariposa, 394; on Fremont 
 as leader, 416, 417; Fremont meets 
 in West, 603. 
 
 Gody, F. W., letter to Fremont, 69. 
 
 Golden Gate, named by Fremont, 278. 
 
 Graham, Isaac, arrest of, 170. 
 
 Grand River, 412, 413. 
 
 Grant, U. S., in St. Louis, 186; and 
 Mexican War, 289; takes field com- 
 mand, 521; on the Chickahominy, 
 575; in fighting of 1864, 576; nomi- 
 nation proposed, 578. 
 
 Gray, John A. C, receiver of Texas 
 & Pacific, 591; exonerates Fremont, 
 600. 
 
INDEX 
 
 681 
 
 Great Basin, Fremont explores, 140; 
 his description of, 196; crosses, 210, 
 an; character of, 212, 213; map of, 
 216. 
 
 Great Britain, supposed designs on 
 California, 20i#. 
 
 Great Salt Lake, Fremont explores, 
 140-142; description, 141, 193; re- 
 visits, 209. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, supports Fremont, 
 427, 429, 435, 443#./ on campaign 
 charges, 445, 452; on campaign fi- 
 nances, 453 ; visits Mariposa, 466, 
 467; on proclamation, 504; favors 
 emancipation, 566 ; chilly to Lincoln, 
 568; predicts Lincoln's defeat, 569, 
 577; at Fremont meeting, 571; sup- 
 ports his railroad enterprise, 589- 
 
 S9i. 
 Green River, and second expedition, 
 
 137; and fifth expedition, 413. 
 Greenhow, Mrs. Robert, as spy, 199. 
 Grierson, Francis, as Fremont's page, 
 
 495- 
 Gunnison, John W., his survey, 406. 
 Gurley, John A., on Fremont's staff, 
 
 494, 499- 
 Gwin, William M., as Senator, 388, 
 
 389, 405. 
 
 Hafen, Leroy R., quoted, 212. 
 
 Hale, John P., and Republican party, 
 426; opposes Lincoln, 564. 
 
 Haler, Vincent, with fourth expedi- 
 tion, 349. 
 
 Hall, carbine affair, 498; see Appen- 
 dix n. 
 
 Hall, Fort, Fremont at, 138, 143. 
 
 Halleck, H. W., in California, 386; 
 in Civil War, 581. 
 
 Hallett, Samuel, as Fremont's partner, 
 57o. 
 
 Hamlin, Hannibal, supports Fremont, 
 440; tries to obtain place for him, 
 
 563. 
 Harding, Adjutant-General Chester, at 
 
 St. Louis, 480, 485. 
 Hardscrabble, 353. 
 Hargrave, William, narrative of, 264, 
 
 265, 266. 
 
 Harney, W. H., broken by the Blairs, 
 508. 
 
 Harte, Bret, and Mrs. Fremont, 468. 
 
 Hartnell Ranch, Fremont at, 226. 
 
 Haskell, Nellie, on life at Pocaho es- 
 tate, 593. 
 
 Hassler, Ferdinand R., Fremont lives 
 with, 48-50. 
 
 Hastings, Lansford W., 167, 210. 
 
 Hastings Cut-Off, Fremont uses, 209, 
 210. 
 
 Hawk's Peak, 228. 
 
 Hay, John, favorably impressed by 
 Fremont, 497 ; on Mrs. Fremont and 
 Lincoln, 516; visits Mrs. Fremont, 
 610. 
 
 Hayes, Rutherford B., on campaign of 
 1856, 454; appoints Fremont gov- 
 ernor, 603. 
 
 Heap, Harris, and Pacific railroad, 409. 
 
 Henry, Fort, building of, 492. 
 
 Hensley, Samuel, American settler, 
 258. 
 
 Herrera, government in Mexico, 200; 
 overthrown, 221. 
 
 Hibbard, George, 353, 366. 
 
 Hittell, T. H., as critic of Fr6mont, 
 281. 
 
 Hoadly, Judge George, on Fremont's 
 proclamation, 507. 
 
 Hoar, Rockwood, supports Fremont, 
 440. 
 
 Hoffman, David, and Mariposa, 395. 
 
 Hooker, Joseph, in San Francisco, 385. 
 
 Hornitas League, and Mariposa, 462- 
 464. 
 
 Horsethief Indians, 219, 220. 
 
 Howard, James H., on Fr6mont's rail- 
 way operations, 589-591. 
 
 Howard, John R., with Fremont at 
 Mariposa, 46 iff.; on Fremont's staff, 
 493, 496#.; on Fremont after re- 
 moval, 550. 
 
 Hubbard, assistant to Fremont, 191, 
 192. 
 
 Huerfano Valley, Fremont at, 355, 
 412. 
 
 Humboldt, Baron, and Fremont's ex- 
 plorations, 346. 
 
 Humboldt River, Fremont on value 
 of, 347- 
 
682 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hunter, David, sent to Fremont, 513; 
 division commander, 530; criticizes 
 Fremont, 531; upon Fremont's 
 plans, 536; deems him unfit, 537, 
 538; replaces Fremont, 541, 542. 
 
 Huttman, F., Fremont's debt to, 405. 
 
 Ide, William B., and Fremont, 264; 
 
 character, 270; proclaims Bear Flag 
 
 republic, 271, 272. 
 Irving, Washington, and Captain 
 
 Bonneville, 117. 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, duel with Benton, 
 9, 10; seizure of Pensacola, 285. 
 
 Jackson, C. F., Confederate leader in 
 Missouri, 479, 480. 
 
 Jackson, T. J., Shenandoah campaign, 
 555-558. 
 
 James, Col. Charles, 427, 450. 
 
 Jerome, David H., sees Lincoln, 581. 
 
 Johnson, Cave, and Fremont's court- 
 martial, 339. 
 
 Johnston, W. F., and the Know-No th- 
 ing Party, 431, 432; and Fremont's 
 second nomination, 574. 
 
 Jones, Thomas, seizes Monterey, 168. 
 
 Julian, George, on Fremont's procla- 
 mation, 504; defends Fremont's rec- 
 ord, 547; opposes Administration, 
 565 ; asks appointment for Fremont, 
 569. 
 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill, struggle over, 
 422, 441. 
 
 Kansas-Pacific Railroad, Fremont in- 
 terested in, 570, 587. 
 
 Kansas River, Fremont on, 136. 
 
 Kapp, Friedrich, as Fremont sup- 
 porter, 440, 57i, 573- 
 
 Kaw or Kansas Landing, Fremont at, 
 128, 130, 185, 325. 
 
 Kearny, S. W., in St. Louis, 130, 134; 
 his exploring expedition, 212; or- 
 ganizes army, 289; captures Santa 
 Fe, 297; defeat at San Pasqual, 297, 
 298; in Los Angeles, 299; quarrel 
 with Stockton, 306^.; with Fremont, 
 
 305^.; character of, 304-309; and 
 Shubrick, 314, 315; and Washington 
 instructions, 315, 316; humiliates 
 Fremont, 3i6#.; takes him east, 
 322^.; and the Fremont court-mar- 
 tial, 3 2 7#-; clash with Benton, 
 332#.; death, 342. 
 
 Kelsey, J., conversation with Fre- 
 mont, 265. 
 
 Kern, Dr. B. J., with fourth expedi- 
 tion, 344, 349^ 
 
 Kern, Edward M., joins third expedi- 
 tion, 207; heads separate party, 
 210, 214; lost, 219; left in Cali- 
 fornia, 324; with fourth expedition, 
 344#. 
 
 Kern, Richard H., with fourth expe- 
 dition, 349#.; death, 412. 
 
 Ketchum, Morris, and Mariposa es- 
 tate, 584-586. 
 
 King, Henry, an employee with fourth 
 expedition, 349; death, 366. 
 
 King, T. Butler, 380. 
 
 King, T. Starr, as Fremont's friend, 
 468. 
 
 Klamath Indians, fight with, 250-251. 
 
 Klamath Lake, Fremont explores, 145, 
 147, 236. 
 
 Klamath River, Fremont crosses, 147, 
 148. 
 
 Know-Nothing Party, menace to Fre- 
 mont, 429^.; unites with Republi- 
 cans, 434, 435. 
 
 Koerner, Gustav, on Fremont's staff, 
 494> 4955 on confusion, 496. 
 
 La Garita Mountains, 354-359 
 
 Laguna, The, 225. 
 
 Lajeunesse, Basil, 93; and second ex- 
 pedition, 129, 143; and third expe- 
 dition, 207; death, 250. 
 
 Lancaster, Fort, Fremont describes, 
 192. 
 
 Laramie, Fort, Fremont visits, in, 
 119. 
 
 Larkin, Thomas, on immigration to 
 California, 167, 168; Fremont visits, 
 224; in touch with Fremont, 228, 
 229; on clash with Castro, 231; and 
 quarrel with Kearny, 321; and 
 
INDEX 
 
 683 
 
 Mariposa ranch, 343, 370, 371; 
 praises Fremont, 446. 
 Lassen, Peter, his Sacramento ranch, 
 
 234. 
 Las Vegas (Nevada), Fremont at, 179. 
 Las Vegas de Santa Clara (Utah), 
 
 Fremont reaches, 183. 
 Lawrence, Amos A., opposes Fremont, 
 
 450. 
 Leese, Jacob, as California trader, 224. 
 Leidesdorff, Jacob, as vice-consul, 222; 
 
 letter to Larkin, 242; Jessie uses 
 
 house, 380. 
 Leroux, Antoine, on fourth expedition, 
 
 3S3#. 
 
 Lewis and Clark, expedition of, 31. 
 
 Lexington, siege of, 5 2 3-525- 
 
 Lieber, Francis, as Fremont's friend, 
 426, 494. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, supports McLean, 
 428; campaigns for Fremont, 444; 
 Fremont talks with, 471, 472; offers 
 Fremont a post, 470; sees Fremont, 
 471; appoints Fremont to Western 
 Department, 475; talks with Fre- 
 mont, 477; orders proclamation 
 modified, 505-507; on the Blairs, 
 507, 508; doubts Fremont's ability, 
 513; Mrs. Fremont's interview with, 
 516, 517; Fremont's letter to, 518; 
 loses patience with Fremont, 530; 
 removes Fremont, 539-54°; Eliot's 
 letter to, 543-545; and a White 
 House reception, 552-553; and Fre- 
 mont in West Virginia, 550-563; 
 and Presidential campaign of 1864, 
 568-582 ; Fremont's opinion of, 580, 
 581. 
 
 Lincoln, Willie, death of, 552. 
 
 Linn, Lewis F., Fremont's friendship 
 with, 51; interest in Oregon, 85; 
 Oregon bill, 51, 125; death, 190. 
 
 Linn, Mount, named by Fremont, 235. 
 
 Long, Major S. H., explorations, 31, 
 74, 124. 
 
 Long's Peak, 192. 
 
 Los Angeles, explorations near, 75; 
 capital of California, 218; Ameri- 
 cans take, 292; revolt at, 293; re- 
 captured, 299; Fremont enters, 300; 
 makes his capital, 314; unrest near, 
 
 318$.; Mrs. Fremont's home, 610. 
 
 Lovejoy, Owen, and Republican con- 
 vention, 432; on Fremont's staff, 
 494; and emancipation, 499; Gerrit 
 Smith's letter to, 501. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., and Fremont's procla- 
 mation, 507. 
 
 Lyon, Nathaniel, and the Blairs, 475; 
 saves St. Louis arsenal, 478; mili- 
 tary commander in lower Missouri, 
 481-485; refuses to retreat, 486, 487; 
 defeat, 488, 489; funeral, 488; ef- 
 fect of death, 489. 
 
 Marcy, Col. R. B., and alleged Fre- 
 mont bargain, 580. 
 
 Marcy, W. L., and Fremont's third 
 expedition, 204; orders for Fremont, 
 323; and the court-martial, 339. 
 
 Mariposa estate, Larkin buys, 370, 
 371; gold at, 374#-/ effect on Fre- 
 mont, 393, 394; title difficulties, 
 395#-/ business takes Fremont 
 abroad, 401^.; brings him home, 
 404; title won, 462; "war" at, 462- 
 464; development, 465 ff.; Fremont 
 leaves, 471, 472; final loss of estate 
 after war, 583-587. 
 
 Marsh, Dr. John, 226. 
 
 Mary's River (Ogden or Humboldt 
 River), 216. 
 
 Mason, R. B., Fremont's difficulties 
 with, 321, 322. 
 
 Maxwell, Lucien, as scout, 93, 207; 
 in Taos, 369. 
 
 Maxwell, Thomas, his war service, 
 492. 
 
 McClellan, G. B., and Pacific railway, 
 406; inertia in 1861, 529; at White 
 House reception, 553 ; and Presiden- 
 tial nomination, 577, 579; defeated, 
 582. 
 
 McClellan, Mrs. G. B., at White House 
 reception, 553. 
 
 McGrady, Edward, Fremont's friend- 
 ship with, 303. 
 
 McCulloch, Benjamin, as Confeder- 
 ate general, 482, 486; wins battle 
 of Wilson's Creek, 487-489; later 
 campaign, 529^. 
 
684 
 
 INDEX 
 
 McDowell, Irwin, Jackson defeats, 
 555, 556. 
 
 McDowell, James, with third expedi- 
 tion, 207. 
 
 McGehee, Micajah, with fourth ex- 
 pedition, 349; quoted, 353-356; 
 hardships, 363^. 
 
 McKinstry, Justus, as provost mar- 
 shal, 495#.; Blair attacks, Sogff.; 
 as division commander, 530; and 
 the alleged Fremont bargain, 580; 
 and Civil War corruption, 624-627. 
 
 McLean, John, and Presidential am- 
 bitions, 428^.; Dana objects to, 428; 
 in Philadelphia Republican conven- 
 tion, 433, 434. 
 
 McLoughlin, Dr. John, at Ft. Van- 
 couver, 146. 
 
 Meigs, M. C, investigates Fremont, 
 
 5i3» 5i4. 
 
 Membres Mountains, Fremont reaches, 
 370. 
 
 Memphis and El Paso Railroad, Fre- 
 mont promotes, 587-590; failure of, 
 591; scandal regarding, 595-601. 
 
 Merced River, 463. 
 
 Merritt, Ezekiel, as Bear Flag leader, 
 267, 269. 
 
 Mervine, Capt. William, defeat at Los 
 Angeles, 294. 
 
 Mexico, war threatened, 198, 199; ne- 
 gotiations with, 200^. 
 
 Micheltorena, Manuel, as governor, 
 i7i#.; and Fremont, 217, 218. 
 
 Mitchell, General Armsby, fortifies 
 Washington, 511. 
 
 Mitchell, John W., as Fremont's pa- 
 tron, 12. 
 
 Moapa (Digger) Indians, described, 
 i8i#. 
 
 Mohave Indians, Fremont meets, 176. 
 
 Mohave River, Fremont follows, 176. 
 
 Mojave Desert, Carson crosses, 99. 
 
 Monterey, as metropolis of California, 
 222; described, 288. 
 
 Montgomery, J. B., on Pacific Coast, 
 272. 
 
 Morgan, Edwin D., supports Fre- 
 mont, 427. 
 
 Morgan, J. Pierpont, and arms pur- 
 chases, 498. 
 
 Mormon Battalion arrives in Cali- 
 fornia, 315. 
 
 Mormons, western migration of, 289; 
 Fremont's liking for, 418, 419. 
 
 Morton, Oliver P., Fremont appeal 
 to, 492, 525; supports his railroad 
 enterprise, 589. 
 
 Mountain Meadows, scene of massacre 
 at, 183. 
 
 Muddy River, Fremont at, 180. 
 
 Mulligan, J. A., defeat at Lexington, 
 523-525. 
 
 Murchison, Sir Roderick, 402. 
 
 Murietta, Joaquin, 189. 
 
 Nantucket, Fremonts at, 423^. 
 
 Napoleon III, Fremonts see, 403, 404. 
 
 Native American Party, its conven- 
 tion, 43 iff. 
 
 Neal, Samuel, warns Fremont, 237. 
 
 New Helvetia, Sutter's ranch, 162^. 
 
 Nicollet, J. N., early career, 30, 31; 
 employed by government, 31; ex- 
 peditions of, 34-37; in Washington, 
 47-51; and Benton, 52; letter to 
 Fremont, 62; health fails, 50, 60; 
 scientific services, 52 ; illness, 86. 
 
 Nye, James, defends Fremont, 598. 
 
 Ogden, Peter Skene, 210. 
 
 Ogden River, Fremont renames, 210. 
 
 Oglallah Sioux, Fremont on, 192. 
 
 Opdyke, George, and Mariposa losses, 
 583-586. 
 
 Oregon, Benton's attitude upon, 83, 
 125; Whitman reaches, 82; Congress 
 and Oregon question, 125; settle- 
 ment to 1845, 85; Benton and Linn 
 upon, 125; Dunn's book on, 195; 
 Fremont advertises its resources, 
 igdff.; Democratic platform on, 198; 
 partitioning, 289. 
 
 Oregon Trail, its precise line, 84. 
 
 Owens, Richard, with third expedition, 
 207, 208; fights Indians, 220; finds 
 Walker, 225; Fremont's "secretary 
 of state," 314; at Fremont court- 
 martial, 333; in Taos, 369. 
 
 Owens Lake, Fremont names, 214. 
 
INDEX 
 
 68 S 
 
 Pacific railroad, surveys for, 404, 405 ; 
 Benton's plans for, 4o8#.; Fremont's 
 wartime projects, 569, 570; his post- 
 war undertakings, 587-601. 
 
 Pacific Railroad Convention, 392. 
 
 Palmer, Cook & Co., Fremont borrows 
 from, 396; and Fremont's nomina- 
 tion, 425; injures his candidacy, 447. 
 
 Paredes, government in Mexico, 222; 
 recognized by Castro party, 253. 
 
 Paradis et Cie., bankers for Fremont, 
 
 595#. 
 Park, Trenor W., and Mariposa estate, 
 
 585, 586. 
 Parrott, William S., as Polk's agent, 
 
 200, 201. 
 Parowan, Fremont reaches, 413, 4*7> 
 
 418. 
 Peabody, George, goes bail for Fr6- 
 
 mont, 404. 
 Peralta, Don Sebastian, complaints 
 
 against Fremont, 227. 
 Phelps, John, complains of Fremont, 
 
 497- 
 
 Phelps, W. D., offers to aid Fremont, 
 232. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, supports Fremont, 
 450; calls on Lincoln, 569; with 
 Fremont in 1864, 574, 579- 
 
 Pico, Don Andres, surrenders to Fre- 
 mont, 299. 
 
 Pico, Don Jesus, on ride with Fre- 
 mont, 320. 
 
 Pico, Don Pio, as Mexican official, 
 218; attitude toward Fremont, 225; 
 as governor of California, 253-254; 
 in campaign of 1856, 446. 
 
 Pierpont, Francis H., in West Virginia, 
 
 554- 
 Pike, J. S., and Republican politics, 
 
 432, 433- 
 Pike, Zebulon M., explorations of, 74. 
 Pillow, G. J., Confederate leader, 
 
 48o#. 
 Pilot Peak, 209. 
 Platte River, Fremont descends, 106- 
 
 109; reports upon, 122, 193, 194. 
 Plumeley, B. Rush, defends Fremont, 
 
 497- 
 Pocaho, purchase of, 592 ; life at, 593 ; 
 loss of, 594. 
 
 Poinsett, Joel R., character, 19, 20; a 
 patron of Fremont, 22, 24, 29, 303. 
 
 Polk, J. K., election of, 198; Fremont 
 meets, 197, 198; expansionist plans, 
 125; negotiations with Mexico, 
 200jf.; determined to secure Cali- 
 fornia, 202^. 
 
 Polk, Leonidas, as Confederate general, 
 482#., 498. 
 
 Pomeroy, S. C, supports Chase, 566; 
 his failure, 570. 
 
 Poore, Ben. Perley, 428. 
 
 Pope, John, and Pacific railway, 406; 
 Fremont sends to northern Missouri, 
 489; fails to relieve Lexington, 525; 
 as division commander, 530; criti- 
 cizes Fremont, 53 1 ; Blair upon, 
 534; insubordination, 534, 535; 
 commands Army of Virginia, 562. 
 
 Port Republic, battle of, 556. 
 
 Portsmouth (sloop) in San Francisco 
 bay, 240, 255. 
 
 Portsmouth Square, 377. 
 
 Potts, Rev. Mr., as relative of Jessie's, 
 187, 188. 
 
 Preetorius, Emil, defends Fremont, 
 528; supports him in 1864, 573. 
 
 Prentiss, B. M., commander at Cairo, 
 483; Fremont reinforces, 482, 483. 
 
 Preston, William, and Fremont's can- 
 didacy, 424. 
 
 Preuss, Charles, as Fremont's topog- 
 rapher, 93; assists with maps, 117; 
 and second expedition, 138; Jessie 
 mentions, 302 ; his map of Far West, 
 347; with fourth expedition, 349; 
 death, 411. 
 
 Price, Sterling, as Confederate leader, 
 479, 480; defeats Mulligan, 523-525; 
 retreats, 529; Fremont's campaign 
 against, 530^. 
 
 Princeton, explosion on, 186. 
 
 Probst, Henri, Fremont's French agent, 
 595#. 
 
 Proue, Raphael, with fourth expedi- 
 tion, 349#.; death of, 363. 
 
 Provot, Etienne, with Nicollet, 37. 
 
 Pryor, Major John, and Fremont's 
 mother, 3-8. 
 
 Pryor, Mrs. John, her marriage, 3; 
 union with Fremon(t), 6-8. 
 
686 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pueblo, Fremont at, 184, 351. 
 Pyramid Lake, Fremont names, 150. 
 
 Rainier, Mt, Fremont describes, 194. 
 
 Ramsay, C. G., Fremont arrests, 525. 
 
 Raymond, Henry J., supports Fre- 
 mont, 435 ; on his proclamation, 
 504; asks Fremont's dismissal, 527. 
 
 Raynor, Kenneth, as nominee, 431. 
 
 Reconstruction as war issue, 565-567. 
 
 Red River, Fremont on, 43. 
 
 Redpath, James, 573. 
 
 Reid, Whitelaw, attacks Lincoln, 568. 
 
 Reno, site of, 150. 
 
 Renville, Joseph, career of, 35, 36 ; and 
 Nicollet, 44. 
 
 Republican party, founding of, 421; 
 and Fremont, 425^.; pre-conven- 
 tion maneuvers, 426-530; Philadel- 
 phia Convention, 432^.; campaign 
 of 1856, 439-455 ; increased strength, 
 456, 457- 
 
 Richmond and Fremont's parents, 2-7. 
 
 Riley, General Bennet, 381. 
 
 Robertson, Dr. John, teaches Fremont, 
 12-14. 
 
 Robidoux Pass, Fremont crosses, 354- 
 
 359- 
 
 Robinson, "Governor" Charles, Fre- 
 mont's letter to, 429. 
 
 Rosecrans, General, Fremont relieves, 
 554; and railroad building, 588. 
 
 Royal Geographical Society honors 
 Fremont, 346. 
 
 Royce, Josiah, conversation with Fre- 
 mont, 244; critic of Fremont, 281- 
 283; on Bear Flag leaders, 282; on 
 British peril, 283; controversy, 608. 
 
 Sabin, E. L., comments of, 152, 216. 
 
 Sacramento, site of, 160. 
 
 Sacramento Valley, Carson describes, 
 157; Fremont reaches, 159; Ameri- 
 can settlers in, 166^.; attacks In- 
 dians in, 263. 
 
 St. Helen's, mountain, Fremont de- 
 scribes, 194. 
 
 St. Louis, growth of, i86#.; Fremont 
 outfits in, 206, 207; welcomes him 
 
 back, 326; interest in fourth expedi- 
 tion, 344; in Civil War, 473J?.; W. 
 G. EUot upon, 543-545- 
 St. Louis Evening News, Fremont 
 
 suppresses, 525. 
 St. Louis Republican, Fremont sup- 
 presses, 495. 
 Salmon Trout (Truckee) River, 214. 
 San Diego and Fort Yuma Railroad, 
 
 588#. 
 San Francisco, Fremont visits, 222; 
 Jessie reaches, 376; life in gold rush, 
 377#.; Fremont's home at, 384, 385; 
 fires in, 398-400. 
 San Juan Range, Fremont tries to 
 
 cross, 356#. 
 San Luis Obispo, Fremont stops at, 
 
 295. 
 San Rafael, 275, 276. 
 Sangre de Cristo Range, Fremont 
 
 crosses, 354-359- 
 Santa Clara River, Fremont follows, 
 
 183. 
 Sargent, T. D., and Mariposa, 395. 
 Sausalito, Fremont's camp there, 276. 
 Sawatch Mountains, 354, 355. 
 Sawyer, N. P., letter to Fremont, 579. 
 Schofield, John M., on Wilson's Creek, 
 
 487; on red tape, 497; on Blair's 
 
 distrust of Fremont, 512. 
 Schurz, Carl, campaigns for Fremont, 
 
 442, 443; visits Fremont, 556-558; 
 
 report on, 559. 
 Scott, John, with fourth expedition, 
 
 349#- 
 Scott, Winfield, promotes Fremont, 
 
 197; orders Fremont's release, 317; 
 
 Mexican victories, 330, 331; and 
 
 Fremont in 1861, 477; Fremont re- 
 ports to, 529; orders troops east, 
 
 524. 
 Seaton, Mayor William, on Fremont, 
 
 392. 
 Selover, A. A., and Mariposa estate, 
 
 585, 586. 
 Semple, Dr. Robert, California leader, 
 
 270, 386. 
 Sevier Lake and River, Fremont 
 
 reaches, 183. 
 Seward, W. H., and slavery struggle, 
 
 421; and Republican nomination, 
 
INDEX 
 
 687 
 
 428^.; withdrawn, 434; and Fre- 
 mont's proclamation, 503; dislike of 
 Montgomery Blair, 567; and Blair's 
 dismissal, 582. 
 
 Seymour, Sir George, 283. 
 
 Shasta, Mt., 234. 
 
 Sherman, Isaac, as campaign manager, 
 42 iff., 450. 
 
 Sherman, John, as Fremont's neighbor, 
 592, 593. 
 
 Sherman, W. T., on Fremont-Kearny 
 quarrel, 314; visits Fremont, 324; 
 and Jessie, 381. 
 
 Shubrick, Commodore, supports 
 Kearny, 314-316. 
 
 Sibley, H. H., Fremont meets, 33. 
 
 Sierras, Fremont's crossing, 151. 
 
 Sigel, Franz, supports Fremont, 441; 
 defeat at Carthage, 480; fights at 
 Wilson's Creek, 487, 488 ; as division 
 commander, 530; succeeds Fremont, 
 S62. 
 
 Silent, Judge Edward, as Fremont's 
 partner, 604. 
 
 Sinclair, California ranchman, 171. 
 
 Slidell, Senator John, mission to Mex- 
 ico, 220; failure, 229. 
 
 Sloat, Commodore, Bancroft's orders 
 to, 280; vacillation of, 280, 281, 288. 
 
 Smith, Gerrit, on Fremont's proclama- 
 tion, 501. 
 
 Smith, Jedediah, explorations of, 75, 
 209; uses cannon, 130. 
 
 Smith, Justin H., on Indian danger in 
 California, 282; on English designs, 
 283. 
 
 Smith, General P. F., 381. 
 
 Smithsonian Institution, 347. 
 
 Snake River, Fremont follows, 143, 
 144. 
 
 Sonoma, capture of, 268, 269, 270; 
 Fremont reaches, 274; celebrating 
 July 4, 1846, at, 278. 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger praises 
 Fremont, 345. 
 
 Spanish Trail, Fremont follows, I75#. 
 
 Sprague, Governor, and cotton per- 
 mits, 572. 
 
 Springfield, Mo., Sigel at, 480; Lyon 
 at, 48 iff.; Confederates occupy, 
 488; recaptured, 536. 
 
 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, supports 
 Fremont, 574. 
 
 Stanton, Secretary E. M., relations 
 with the Blairs, 567; hatred of 
 Blair, 581. 
 
 Stearns, Abel J., as California trader, 
 224, 320. 
 
 Stephens, John L., visits Fremont on 
 isthmus, 390. 
 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, in Republican con- 
 vention, 434; supports Fremont, 
 441; denounces dismissal, 547; op- 
 poses Administration, 567; prefers 
 Butler to Lincoln, 569; attacks 
 Frank P. Blair, 575. 
 
 Stevenson, J. D., reaches California, 
 
 3IS. 
 
 Stockton, Commodore, on Pacific 
 coast, 240; in naval command, 255, 
 256; joined by Fremont, 290; eager 
 to invade Mexico, 290; operations 
 against Los Angeles, 292-294; and 
 Couenga, 299; as nominee, 431. 
 
 Stowe, C. E., and Fremont's proclama- 
 tion, 546. 
 
 Strasburg, battle of, 557, 558. 
 
 Sturgis, General, fails to relieve Lex- 
 ington, 525. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, supports Fremont, 
 441; praises Fremont, 547. 
 
 Sutter, Johann August, his ranch, 154, 
 159, 160; career, i6i#.; aids Fre- 
 mont, 166, 173; relations with Mexi- 
 cans, i7i#.; bids farewell to Fre- 
 mont, 174; meets Fremont again on 
 third expedition, 215, 216; joins 
 Micheltorena, 218; assists Fremont, 
 217, 218; quarrel with Fremont, 
 2 7o#.; gold discovered, 374; in Cali- 
 fornia Constitutional Convention, 
 386. 
 
 Sutter's Fort, Fremont reaches in 1845, 
 
 2i5#. 
 Swasey, W. F., his narrative, 265, 276. 
 Sweetwater Valley, Fremont follows, 
 
 138, 139. 
 
 Talbot, Theodore, with second expedi- 
 tion, 129, 136; with third, 207; in 
 separate party, 219. 
 
688 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Taney, Roger, decision in Mariposa 
 
 case, 462. 
 Taos, Kit Carson's home at, 368; 
 
 fourth expedition relieved at, 366- 
 
 369. 
 Taplin, Charles, and fourth expedition, 
 
 349#. 
 Taylor, Bayard, on the gold rush, 378; 
 
 meets Fremont, 384. 
 Taylor, Zachary, on Rio Grande, 229, 
 
 233; campaigns of, 289; appoints 
 
 Fremont, 390. 
 Tejon Pass, 419. 
 
 Terry, Chief Justice, decision of, 464. 
 Thomas, Lorenzo, and charge against 
 
 Fremont, 531; investigation and re- 
 port, 536, 527- 
 Todd, W. L., and the Bear Flag, 271. 
 Torrey, John L., as botanist, 118, 347. 
 Townsend, J. K., describes Oregon 
 
 Trail, 196. 
 Truckee Pass, 214. 
 Truckee River, Fremont on, 150. 
 Truckee Valley, 151, 152. 
 Trumbull, Lyman, supports Fremont, 
 
 437, 441; and Lincoln's policy, 567, 
 
 568; defends Fremont's railroad 
 
 work, 598. 
 Tucson, Fremont reaches, 370. 
 Tulare Lake, Fremont at, 214; 225. 
 Turner, Capt. H. S., aids Kearny, 332, 
 
 333- 
 Tyler, John, and Fremont's first ex- 
 pedition, 88; promotes Fremont, 
 
 197. 
 
 Uinta Mountains, Fremont enters, 184. 
 Uncompahgre Mountains, 354. 
 Uncompahgre River, 413. 
 Upham, Charles W., writes life of 
 
 Fremont, 426, 443. 
 Utah Lake, Fremont examines, 184. 
 
 Vallejo, General M. G., character, 172, 
 231; 268; capture of, 269; in Cali- 
 fornia convention, 386. 
 
 Vancouver, Fort, Fremont at, 145. 
 
 Vincenthaler, L. D., 349$. 
 
 Virgen, Rio, Fremont reaches, 181. 
 
 Wade, Ben, defends Fremont, 547, 
 548; snubs Lincoln, 552; opposes 
 Administration, 564; demands Mont- 
 gomery Blair's withdrawal, 578; in- 
 sists on bargain, 581. 
 
 Wagon-Wheel Pass, 357-359. 
 
 Walker, Joseph, as explorer, 175, 184; 
 Fremont meets, 184; leaves Fre- 
 mont, 184; quoted, 193; and third 
 expedition, 207, 210; temporarily 
 lost, 219; rejoins main party, 225. 
 
 Walker, Robert J., 408. 
 
 Walker Lake, Fremont reaches, 149, 
 213, 214; Fremont names, 214. 
 
 Ward, Sam, in San Francisco, 385. 
 
 Waring, George E., praises Fremont, 
 
 543- 
 
 Wasatch Range, Fremont reaches, 183, 
 184. 
 
 Washburne, Elihu B., attacks Fre- 
 mont's extravagance, 538; and Fre- 
 mont's railway affairs, 596, 600. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, Fremont meets, 197; 
 praises Fremont for his work, 303; 
 death of, 421. 
 
 Webster, Fletcher, opposes Fremont, 
 450. 
 
 Weed, Thurlow, in campaign of 1856, 
 428#.; on result, 454; predicts Lin- 
 coln's defeat, 577; and Cabinet in- 
 trigues, 582; as Fremont's com- 
 panion, 593. 
 
 Weller, J. B., elected to Senate, 396. 
 
 Welles, Gideon, on Fremont, 470; on 
 Frank Blair, 510; and Montgomery 
 Blair's resignation, 581, 582. 
 
 Wellesley, Marchioness of, entertains 
 Fremonts, 401. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, Fremonts meet, 
 402. 
 
 Wheeling, West Va., 555. 
 
 Whipple, A. W., and Pacific railroad, 
 406. 
 
 White, Elijah, as head of emigrant 
 party, 125. 
 
 Whiting, Ann Beverley (Mrs. Pryor), 
 marriage of, 3, 4. 
 
 Whitman, Marcus, in Oregon, 82; his 
 mission, 144. 
 
 Whitney, Asa, and Pacific railroad, 
 408. 
 
INDEX 
 
 689 
 
 Whittier, J. G., supports Fremont, 
 
 443; poem praising Fremont, 546; 
 
 begs him in 1864 to withdraw, 579; 
 
 Jessie's letter to, 582. 
 Wilkes, Charles, Pacific explorations 
 
 of, 127; Fremont's controversy with, 
 
 348. 
 Wilkes, George, assists Zach Chandler, 
 
 579- 
 
 Williams, Old Bill, with fourth expedi- 
 tion, 351; described, 352, 353; re- 
 sponsibility for disaster, 357#.; goes 
 for aid, 363; fails, 364; adventures 
 of, 36S#./ errors of, 367, 368; death, 
 369- 
 
 Williams, Captain W. S., Fremont 
 serves under, 25. 
 
 Wilmot, David, and Republican Con- 
 vention, 433, 434; campaigns for 
 Fremont, 453. 
 
 Wilson, Henry, supports Fremont, 426, 
 427; calls on Lincoln, 569; offers 
 Fremont a bargain, 580. 
 
 Wilson's Creek, battle of, 487-489. 
 
 Wind River Mountains, Fremont ex- 
 plores, 105; beauty of, 106. 
 
 Winthrop, Robert C, opposes Fre- 
 mont, 450. 
 
 Wise, Henry A., campaign attacks on 
 Fremont, 451. 
 
 Wood, William, quoted, 549. 
 
 Wootton, Richard, 359. 
 
 Wyeth, Nathaniel J., his western ex- 
 pedition, 196. 
 
 Yates, Richard, on defenseless West, 
 
 476, 495- 
 Yerba Buena (see also San Francisco) , 
 
 222. 
 Young Brigham, and Fremont's report, 
 
 142. 
 
 Zagonyi, Charles, and his battalion, 
 494; charge at Springfield, 536. 
 
 Zagonyi Guard, mustered out without 
 pay, 550. 
 
 Zindel, Louis, and the Nicollet expedi- 
 tion, 37, 39; and Fremont's second 
 expedition, 129, 138. 
 
 Zollinger, James Peter, cited, 162. 
 
 0) 
 
From Fremont and '49, by F. S. Dcllenbaugh ; reprinted by courtesy of Harper & Bros 
 
FREMONT'S EXPLORATIONS, 1838-1853