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Vol. 26:4 ISSN 0160-8460 December 1998
In the Footsteps of the Pathfinder
John Charles Frémont (1813-1890) was arguably the greatest American explorer of the 19th century. The accomplishments of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark certainly captured the spirit of the new nation as it entered that century. Nor can the accomplishments of such explorers as Zebulon Montgomery Pike and John Wesley Powell be denigrated. However, the seven expeditions which Frémont undertook between 1838 and 1854 covered so much Western territory, and in some cases had such an impact on that territory's expansion, that he earned a special place in the annals of North American exploration as the Pathfinder.
Frémont, who acquired a good grounding in mathematics and the natural science in college, displayed an unusual ability to attract patrons throughout his career. He early caught the attention of Joel Roberts Poinsett, the leader of the Jackson wing of the Democratic Party in South Carolina. Poinsett, who had done a bit of exploring in the Caucasus and Persia in his younger days, first arranged a position for Frémont as teacher of mathematics aboard a naval vessel. He later helped the young man secure a commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Topographical Corps. In the mid-1830s, Frémont helped survey the route of a prospective railroad between Charleston and Cincinnati, then undertook a reconnaissance of the Cherokee country in Georgia prior to the tribe's removal to the west.
Ordered to Washington, he then obtained, with Poinsett's help, a place in the expedition of J.N. Nicollet, a scientist who explored the plateau between the upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Nicollet trained Frémont in astronomical, topographical, and geological observation; the two men roomed together after their return from the expedition, and collaborated on a map and a scientific report. Through Nicollet, Frémont also met Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, whose thoughts on western exploration and expansion to the Pacific inspired the younger man to translate thought into action. He also met Benton's daughter Jessie, whom he would marry against her family's wishes after completing his first independent assignment: exploring the Des Moines River and mapping much of Iowa Territory. Despite initial displeasure at the marriage, Benton soon grew reconciled to having Frémont for a son-in-law, and became his patron and adviser.
Frémont's first major expedition, undertaken in 1842, involved an examination of the Oregon Trail through South Pass; the official report of the journey, written with his wife's help, appealed to the growing interest in Oregon settlement and earned Frémont wide public recognition. The expedition that followed added even more luster to the young explorer's fame; after following the Oregon Trail to the Columbia River, Frémont turned south to explore the Great Basin between the Rockies and the Sierras. Upon reaching Nevada, he crossed the Sierras in the dead of winter, visited Captain August Sutter at his fort on the Sacramento River, then followed the Spanish Trail toward Santa Fe, but branched off to cross parts of Nevada and Utah on his way to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River. His return to St. Louis in August 1844 was a sensation. He and Jessie spent the following winter writing the expedition's report, which again demonstrated that the Oregon Trail was not difficult, and added evidence that the Pacific Northwest was fertile and desirable.
With James K. Polk in the White House, westward expansion acquired added impetus. War with Spain over Texas was clearly in the offing. Frémont's next assignment was to make a survey of the central Rockies, the Great Salt Lake region, and part of the Sierra Nevada. His third expedition left St. Louis with the understanding that if he learned that war had broken out when he reached California, he should transform his party into a military force. Such was not the case when Frémont reached Sutter's Fort in December 1845, but later communications from Washington left him convinced that aggressive action was warranted. His display of force in the Sacramento River valley inspired the Bear Flag Revolt in the summer of 1846. Frémont's California Battalion played a prominent role in the fighting, but its chief became embroiled in a dispute between the American army and naval commanders that resulted in his court martial. A panel of regular army officers found him guilty, at which point he resigned from the service.
Portrait of John Charles Frémont by William S. Jewett, oil on panel. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Frémont subsequently led two privately funded expeditions (1848-1849 and 1853-1854) intended to discover railway routes to the Pacific. However, he had acquired a huge tract of land in California, the Mariposa estate in the Sierra foothills, which made him a rich man after gold was discovered in the vicinity. He would serve a short term in the Senate, become the Republican presidential nominee in 1856, hold prominent command in the Union army in the first years of the Civil War, and lead the radical wing of the Republican Party in the political maneuvers leading up to the presidential election of 1864. Militarily, politically, and financially inept, he lost his Mariposa estate in 1864. A postwar career as railroad president, which ended in the railroad's bankruptcy, cost him the last of his fortune and darkened his reputation. He was saved from poverty by Jessie's writings, by an appointment as governor of Arizona Territory (1878-1883), and by a pension as a retired U.S. Army major general. Frémont's later career was a tragic anti-climax when compared with his earlier achievements as an explorer.
When Donald Jackson and Mary Lee Spence began planning The Expeditions of John Charles Frémont (University of Illinois Press, 1970-1984), they quickly came to the conclusion that no sensible historical editor would undertake a complete edition of the great explorer's papers. Although a selective approach to Frémont's correspondence on his later activities was possible, the real meat of such an edition would be any documentation that had a bearing on the expeditions of 1838-1854. Ultimately, the two historians resolved to deal only with the expeditions.
Jackson and Spence (Spence took over as sole editor after 1973) chose to combine unpublished manuscript materials with Frémont's published reports and selections from his Memoirs of My Life (the first and only volume of which carried the explorer only to 1847), which appeared in 1887. The Memoirs were written to stave off poverty, but Frémont and his wife had been collecting papers and other materials upon which to base such a work since the 1840s. The editors occasionally drew upon the journals and letters of other participants in the expeditions, as well as the letters of Jessie Benton Frémont.
In dealing with the botanical aspects of Frémont's expeditions, the editors received expert advice from Professor Joseph Ewan of Tulane University and his research assistant, Nesta Dunn Ewan. The major problem lay in how to resolve differences between Frémont's mid-nineteenth century plant identifications and modern botanical terminology. Annotation was conducted so as to avoid undue intrusion into the narrative, with contemporary and modern plant identifications being resolved in the index.
Jackson and Spence published the first volume of their edition, which covers the period through Frémont's second expedition to the Pacific Northwest, or the chronological period 1838-1845, in 1970. That same year saw the appearance of the edition's map portfolio, containing the five detailed maps produced by Frémont's expeditions for the United States Topographical Service, plus comments by Professor Jackson. The second volume, which covers 1845-1848, the period of Frémont's third major expedition and his involvement in the U.S. acquisition of California, came out in 1973, together with a supplement containing the proceedings of Frémont's 1847-1848 court martial. The third and final volume, which appeared in 1984 with Dr. Spence as sole editor, deals with Frémont's 1848-1849 and 1853-1854 expeditions, as well as his other activities in the period 1848-1854. Each volume acknowledged the Commission's continuing support for the Frémont project.
San Juan Mountains, 1848. From the "Prospectus" for Frémont's Memoirs. Reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
