John C. Frémont

John Charles Frémont was born January 21, 1813, in Savannah, Georgia, to parents who were not married. His mother, Anne Beverley Whiting, had fled a Richmond marriage to a man forty years her senior for Charles Fremon, the French tutor hired to teach her stepchildren, and the scandal followed her son for life. Frémont lasted two years at the College of Charleston before expulsion for skipping class, then found his real education under the French scientist Joseph Nicollet, whose 1838 mapping survey of the upper Mississippi taught him celestial navigation and the discipline of a government report. In 1841 he eloped with Jessie Benton, daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who at first opposed the match -- an illegitimate lieutenant was not what he wanted for his daughter.

BriefHistory.us covers his five expeditions and the 1856 presidential run that made Frémont a national name in full, along with the Bear Flag Revolt and the Republican Party's first campaign. What follows here is the marriage behind those reports and what became of the man after the maps stopped selling.

Polk's ruling on the 1848 court-martial satisfied no one, least of all Frémont. The president voided the mutiny conviction, let the disobedience and misconduct findings stand, then canceled the sentence outright and ordered Frémont back to duty. Frémont read that as an insult rather than a pardon and resigned instead, pride over an acquittal he had already won. The Bear Flag Revolt two years earlier rested on no orders from Washington; who gave the order to kill three unarmed Californios during it is still disputed, with some accounts naming Kit Carson as the shooter and pointing at Frémont as the officer who sent him. The Mariposa gold that briefly made Frémont rich went the way of his political career: sunk into failed railroad ventures and the 1873 panic, until Jessie's own books became the family's only income.

Congress restored Frémont's major general's commission and pension on April 28, 1890, not quite three months before he died of peritonitis in New York on July 13. Jessie outlived him twelve years, writing the memoirs that shaped how he would be remembered and managing, essentially alone, a reputation the family had spent its own money to build. His name outlasted the controversies attached to it: a city in California, another in Nebraska, and streets, counties and schools across the West still carry it, more durable than either the court-martial or his one term as territorial governor of Arizona. Historians now read the Bear Flag Revolt less as heroism than as a land grab Frémont was never authorized to make.

John C. Frémont's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains book
  Co-written with Jessie Benton Frémont from his field notes 1843
• Geographical Memoir Upon Upper California book
  Government report drawn from the third expedition 1848
• Bear Flag Revolt and California Battalion other
  Captured Sonoma and briefly declared an independent California Republic 1846
• Mariposa estate company
  Seventy-square-mile tract bought for 3,000 dollars; gold made it a fortune, then it helped ruin one 1847
• Frémont Emancipation other
  Unauthorized order freeing enslaved people in Missouri, issued August 30, 1861 and countermanded by Lincoln 1861

• January 21, 1813 aged 0 Born out of wedlock in Savannah, Georgia His mother had fled her much older first husband for Frémont's father, a French tutor.
• 1838 aged ~25 Joins Joseph Nicollet's survey of the upper Mississippi Trained him in scientific mapping and celestial navigation.
• October 1841 aged 28 Elopes with Jessie Benton over her father's initial objections
• June 14, 1846 aged 33 Bear Flag Revolt captures Sonoma and declares the California Republic Acted without direct orders from Washington.
• January 31, 1848 aged 35 Convicted at court-martial, then has the sentence remitted and refuses reinstatement Resigned from the Army rather than accept what he saw as an incomplete vindication.
• 1856 aged ~43 Runs as the first Republican presidential nominee and loses to James Buchanan
• August 30, 1861 aged 48 Issues an unauthorized emancipation order in Missouri Lincoln countermanded it and later relieved Frémont of command.
• April 28, 1890 aged 77 Congress restores his major general's rank and grants him a pension
• July 13, 1890 aged 77 Dies of peritonitis in New York City

• Kit Carson 1809–1868
  Frontiersman and scout who guided John C. Frémont and became a legend of the American West. guided by
• James K. Polk 1795–1849
  Eleventh president whose expansionist policies added the Southwest and Oregon to the United States. court-martial reviewed by
• James Buchanan 1791–1868
  Fifteenth president who failed to halt Southern secession in the months before the Civil War. defeated by
• Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865
  16th President who preserved the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. relieved of command by