John C. Frémont

John C. Frémont (1813-1890), American explorer, army officer, and politician, noted for his explorations of the Far West.

John Charles Frémont was born on January 31, 1813, in Savannah, Georgia, and educated at the College of Charleston, South Carolina. In 1838 he was commissioned second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army. During the following year Frémont was a member of the expedition of the French explorer Joseph Nicolas Nicollet that surveyed and mapped the region between the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Between 1842 and 1845 Frémont led three expeditions into Oregon Territory. During the first, in 1842, he mapped most of the Oregon Trail and ascended, in present-day Wyoming, the second highest peak in the Wind River Mountains, afterward called Fremont Peak (4185 m/13,730 ft). In 1843 he completed the survey of the Oregon Trail to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific coast. The party, guided by the famous scout Kit Carson, turned south and then east, making a midwinter crossing of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Frémont made his third expedition in 1845, further exploring both the area known as the Great Basin and the Pacific coast.

During the Mexican War (1846-1848), Frémont attained the rank of major and assisted greatly in the annexation of California. He was appointed civil governor of California by the U.S. Navy commodore Robert Field Stockton, but in a conflict of authority between Stockton and the U.S. Army brigadier general Stephen Watts Kearny, Frémont refused to obey Kearny's orders. He was arrested for mutiny and insubordination and was subsequently court-martialed. He resigned his commission after President James Polk remitted his sentence of dismissal from the service. In the winter of 1848 and 1849 Frémont led an expedition to locate passes for a proposed railway line from the upper Río Grande to California. In 1850 he was elected one of the first two senators from California, serving until 1851. In 1856 he was the presidential candidate of the newly formed Republican Party, but was defeated by James Buchanan. During the American Civil War Frémont was appointed a major general in the Union Army and held several important but brief commands; he resigned his commission in 1862 rather than serve under General John Pope. In 1864 Frémont was again a presidential nominee; he withdrew, however, in favor of President Abraham Lincoln. He served as governor of the territory of Arizona from 1878 to 1883. In 1890 he was restored to the rank of major general and retired with full pay. He died in New York City on July 13, 1890.

Frémont wrote Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-1844 (1845) and Memories of My Life (1887).