Presidential Candidates Part 19

Benton sketched the expedition in a few eloquent words, as follows:

"'The Government deserves credit for the zeal with which it has pursued geographical discovery.' Such is the remark which a leading paper made upon the discoveries of Fremont, on his return from his second expedition to the great West; and such is the remark which all writers will make upon all his discoveries who write history from public doc.u.ments and outside views. With all such writers the expeditions of Fremont will be credited to the zeal of the Government for the promotion of science, as if the Government under which he acted had conceived and planned these expeditions, as Mr. Jefferson did that of Lewis and Clark, and then selected this young officer to carry into effect the instructions delivered to him. How far such history would be true in relation to the first expedition, which terminated in the Rocky Mountains, has been seen in the account which has been given of the origin of that undertaking, and which leaves the Government innocent of its conception; and, therefore, not ent.i.tled to the credit of its authors.h.i.+p, but only to the merit of permitting it.

In the second, and greater expedition, from which great political as well as scientific results have flowed, their merit is still less; for, while equally innocent of its conception, they were not equally pa.s.sive to its performance--countermanding the expedition after it had begun--and lavis.h.i.+ng censure upon the adventurous young explorer for his manner of undertaking it. The fact was, that his first expedition barely finished, Mr. Fremont sought and obtained orders for a second one, and was on the frontier of Missouri with his command, when orders arrived at St. Louis to stop him, on the ground that he had made a military equipment which the peaceful nature of his geographical pursuit did not require! as if Indians did not kill and rob scientific men as well as others, if not in a condition to defend themselves. The particular point of complaint was that he had taken a small mountain howitzer, in addition to his rifles; and which, he was informed, was charged to him, although it had been furnished upon a regular requisition on the commandant of the a.r.s.enal at St.

Louis, approved by the commander of the military department (Colonel, afterward General Kearney). Mr. Fremont had left St.

Louis, and was at the frontier, Mrs. Fremont being requested to examine the letters that came after him, and forward those which he ought to receive. She read the countermanding orders and detained them! and Fremont knew nothing of their existence, until after he had returned from one of the most marvellous and eventful expeditions of modern times--one to which the United States are indebted (among other things) for the present owners.h.i.+p of California, instead of seeing it a British possession. The writer of this view, who was then in St. Louis, approved of the course which his daughter had taken (for she had stopped the orders before he knew it); and he wrote a letter to the department condemning the recall, repulsing the reprimand which had been lavished upon Fremont, and demanding a court martial for him when he should return. The Secretary of War was then Mr. James Madison Porter, of Pennsylvania; the chief of the topographical corps the same as now (Colonel Abert), himself an office man, surrounded by West Point officers, to whose pursuit of easy service, Fremont's adventurous expedition was a reproach; and in conformity to whose opinions the secretary seemed to have acted. On Fremont's return, upward of a year afterward, Mr. William Wilkins, of Pennsylvania, was Secretary of War, and received the young explorer with all honor and friends.h.i.+p, and obtained for him the brevet of captain from President Tyler. And such is the inside view of this piece of history--very different from what doc.u.mentary evidence would make it.

"To complete his survey across the continent, on the line of travel between the State of Missouri and the tide-water region of the Columbia, was Fremont's object in this expedition; and it was all that he had obtained orders for doing; but only a small part, and to his mind, an insignificant part, of what he proposed doing.

People had been to the mouth of the Columbia before, and his ambition was not limited to making tracks where others had made them before him. There was a vast region beyond the Rocky Mountains--the whole western slope of our continent--of which but little was known; and of that little, nothing with the accuracy of science. All that vast region, more than seven hundred miles square--equal to a great kingdom in Europe--was an unknown land--a sealed book, which he longed to open, and to read. Leaving the frontier of Missouri in May, 1843, and often diverging from his route for the sake of expanding his field of observation, he had arrived in the tide-water region of Columbia in the month of November; and had then completed the whole service which his orders embraced. He might then have returned upon his tracks, or been brought home by sea, or hunted the most pleasant path for getting back; and if he had been a routine officer, satisfied with fulfilling an order, he would have done so. Not so the young explorer, who held his diploma from nature, and not from the United States Military Academy. He was, at Fort Vancouver, guest of the hospitable Dr. McLaughlin, Governor of the British Hudson Bay Fur Company; and obtained from him all possible information upon his intended line of return--faithfully given, but which proved to be disastrously erroneous in its leading and governing feature. A southeast route, to cross the great unknown region diagonally through its heart (making a line from the Lower Columbia to the Upper Colorado of the Gulf of California), was his line of return; twenty-five men (the same who had come with him from the United States) and a hundred horses, were his equipment; and the commencement of winter the time of starting--all without a guide, relying upon their guns for support; and, in the last resort, upon their horses--such as should give out! for one that could carry a man, or a pack, could not be spared for food.

"All the maps up to that time had shown this region traversed from east to west--from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the bay of San Francisco--by a great river called the _Buena Ventura_: which may be translated, the _Good Chance_. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural ma.n.u.script map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hibernate upon it. As a great river, he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and gra.s.s, where the wild animals would collect and shelter, when the snows and freezing winds drove them from the plains: and with these animals to live on, and gra.s.s for the horses, and wood for fires, he expected to avoid suffering, if not to enjoy comfort, during his solitary sojourn in that remote and profound wilderness.

"He proceeded--soon encountered deep snows, which impeded progress upon the highlands--descended into a low country to the left (afterward known to be the Great Basin, from which no water issues to any sea)--skirted an enormous chain of mountain on the right, luminous with the glittering white snow--saw strange Indians, who mostly fled--found a desert--no Buena Ventura; and death from cold and famine staring him in the face. The failure to find the river, or tidings of it, and the possibility of its existence seeming to be forbid by the structure of the country, and hibernation in the inhospitable desert being impossible, and the question being that of life and death, some new plan of conduct became indispensable.

His celestial observations told him that he was in the lat.i.tude of the bay of San Francisco, and only seventy miles from it. But what miles! up and down that snowy mountain which the Indians told him no men could cross in the winter--which would have snow upon it as deep as the trees, and places where people would slip off, and fall half a mile at a time;--a fate which actually befell a mule, packed with the precious burden of botanical specimens, collected along a travel of two thousand miles. No reward could induce an Indian to become a guide in the perilous adventure of crossing this mountain. All recoiled and fled from the adventure. It was attempted without a guide--in the dead of winter--accomplished in forty days--the men and surviving horses, a woeful procession, crawling along one by one--skeleton men leading skeleton horses--and arriving at Sutter's Settlement in the beautiful valley of the Sacramento; and where a genial warmth, and budding flowers, and trees in foliage, the gra.s.sy ground, and flowing streams, and comfortable food, made a fairy contrast with the famine and freezing they had encountered, and the lofty Sierra Nevada which they had climbed. Here he rested and recruited; and from this point, and by way of Monterey, the first tidings were heard of the party since leaving Fort Vancouver.

"Another long progress to the south, skirting the western base of the Sierra Nevada, made him acquainted with the n.o.ble valley of the San Joaquin, counterpart to that of the Sacramento; when crossing through a gap, and turning to the left, he skirted the Great Basin; and by many deviations from the right line home, levied incessant contributions to science from expanded lands, not described before. In this eventful exploration, all the great features of the western slope of our continent were brought to light--the Great Salt Lake, the Utah Lake, the Little Salt Lake; at all which places, then deserts, the Mormons now are; the Sierra Nevada, then solitary in the snow, now crowded with Americans, digging gold from its flanks; the beautiful valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, then alive with wild horses, elk, deer, and wild fowls, now smiling with American cultivation, the Great Basin itself, and its contents; the Three Parks; the approximation of the great rivers which, rising together in the central region of the Rocky Mountains, go off east and west, toward the rising and the setting sun--all these, and other strange features of a new region, more Asiatic than American, were brought to light and revealed to public view in the results of this exploration.

"Eleven months he was never out of sight of snow; and sometimes, freezing with cold, would look down upon a sunny valley, warm with genial heat; sometimes, panting with the summer's heat, would look up at the eternal snows which crowned the neighboring mountain.

But it was not then that California was secured to the Union--to the greatest power of the new world--to which it of right belonged; but it was the first step toward the acquisition, and the one that led to it. The second expedition led to a third, just in time to s.n.a.t.c.h the golden California from the hands of the British, ready to clutch it. But of this hereafter. Fremont's second expedition was now over. He had left the United States a fugitive from his Government, and returned with a name that went over Europe and America, and with discoveries bearing fruit which the civilized world is now enjoying."

In 1845, the third expedition of Col. Fremont was made--princ.i.p.ally intended to explore the Great Basin and country of Oregon and California.

"He approached these settlements in the winter of 1845-6. Aware of the critical state of affairs between the United States and Mexico, and determined to give no cause of offence to the authorities of the province, with commendable prudence he haulted his command on the frontier, one hundred miles from Monterey, and proceeded alone to that city to explain the object of his coming to the commandant general, Castro, and to obtain permission to go to the valley of the San Joaquin, where there was game for his men and gra.s.s for his horses, and no inhabitants to be molested by his presence. The leave was granted; but scarcely had he reached the desired spot for refreshment and repose, before he received information from the American settlements, and by express from our Consul at Monterey, that General Castro was preparing to attack him with a comparatively large force of artillery, cavalry and infantry, upon the pretext that, under the cover of a scientific mission, he was exciting the American settlers to revolt. In view of this danger and to be in a condition to repel an attack, he then took a position on a mountain overlooking Monterey, at a distance of about thirty miles, intrenched it, raised the flag of the United States, and with his own men, sixty-two in number, awaited the approach of the commandant general.

"From the 7th to the 10th of March, Colonel Fremont and his little band maintained this position. General Castro did not approach within attacking distance, and Colonel Fremont, adhering to his plan of avoiding all collisions, and determined neither to compromise his Government nor the American settlers, ready to join him at all hazards, if he had been attacked, abandoned his position, and commenced his march for Oregon, intending by that route to return to the United States. Deeming all danger from the Mexicans to be past, he yielded to the wishes of some of his men who desired to remain in the country, discharged them from his service, and refused to receive others in their stead, so cautious was he to avoid doing anything which would compromit the American settlers or give even a color of offence to the Mexican authorities. He pursued his march slowly and leisurely, as the state of his men and horses required, until the middle of May, and had reached the northern sh.o.r.e of the greater Tlamath Lake, within the limits of the Oregon territory, when he found his further progress in that direction obstructed by impa.s.sable snowy mountains and hostile Indians, who, having been excited against him by General Castro, had killed and wounded four of his men, and left him no repose either in camp or on his march. At the same time, information reached him that General Castro, in addition to his Indian allies, was advancing in person against him with artillery and cavalry, at the head of four or five hundred men; that they were pa.s.sing around the head of the Bay of San Francisco to a rendezvous on the north side of it, and that the American settlers in the valley of the Sacramento were comprehended in the scheme of destruction meditated against his own party.

"Under these circ.u.mstances, he determined to turn upon his Mexican pursuers, and seek safety both for his own party and the American settlers, not merely in the defeat of Castro, but in the total overthrow of the Mexican authority in California, and the establishment of an independent government in that extensive department. It was on the 6th of June, and before the commencement of the war between the United States and Mexico could have there been known, that this resolution was taken; and, by the 5th of July, it was carried into effect by a series of rapid attacks, by a small body of adventurous men, under the conduct of an intrepid leader, quick to perceive and able to direct the proper measures for accomplis.h.i.+ng such a daring enterprise.

"On the 11th of June, a convoy of 200 horses for Castro's camp, with an officer and 14 men, were surprised and captured by 12 of Fremont's party. On the 15th, at daybreak, the military post of Sonoma was also surprised and taken, with nine bra.s.s cannon, 250 stand of muskets, and several officers and some men and munitions of war.

"Leaving a small garrison at Sonoma, Colonel Fremont went to the Sacramento to rouse the American settlers; but scarcely had he arrived there, when an express reached him from the garrison at Sonoma, with information that Castro's whole force was crossing the bay to attack that place. This intelligence was received in the afternoon of the 23d of June, while he was on the American fork of the Sacramento, 80 miles from the little garrison at Sonoma; and, at two o'clock on the morning of the 25th, he arrived at that place with 90 riflemen from the American settlers in that valley. The enemy had not yet appeared. Scouts were sent out to reconnoitre, and a party of 20 fell in with a squadron of 70 dragoons (all of Castro's force which had crossed the bay), attacked and defeated it, killing and wounding five, without harm to themselves; the Mexican commander, De la Torre, barely escaping with the loss of his transport boats and nine pieces of bra.s.s artillery, spiked.

"The country north of the bay of San Francisco, being cleared of the enemy, Colonel Fremont returned to Sonoma on the evening of the 4th of July, and on the morning of the 5th, called the people together, explained to them the condition of things in the province, and recommended an immediate declaration of independence. The declaration was made, and he was selected to take the chief direction of affairs.

"The attack on Castro was the next object. He was at Santa Clara, an intrenched post on the upper or south side of the Bay of San Francisco, with 400 men and two pieces of field artillery. A circuit of more than a hundred miles must be traversed to reach him. On the 6th of July the pursuit was commenced, by a body of 160 mounted riflemen, commanded by Colonel Fremont in person, who, in three days, arrived at the American settlements on the Rio de los Americanos. Here he learnt that Castro had abandoned Santa Clara, and was retreating south toward Ciudad de los Angeles (the city of the Angels), the seat of the Governor General of the Californias, and distant 400 miles. It was instantly resolved on to pursue him to that place. At the moment of departure, the gratifying intelligence was received that war with Mexico had commenced; that Monterey had been taken by our naval force, and the flag of the United States there raised on the 7th of July; and that the fleet would coperate in the pursuit of Castro and his forces. The flag of independence was hauled down, and that of the United States hoisted, amidst the hearty greetings and to the great joy of the American settlers and the forces under the command of Colonel Fremont.

"The combined pursuit was rapidly continued; and on the 12th of August, Commodore Stockton and Colonel Fremont, with a detachment of marines from the squadron and some riflemen, entered the City of the Angels, without resistance or objection; the Governor General, Pico, the Commandant General, Castro, and all the Mexican authorities, having fled and dispersed. Commodore Stockton took possession of the whole country as a conquest of the United States, and appointed Colonel Fremont Governor, under the law of nations; to a.s.sume the functions of that office when he should return to the squadron.

"Thus, in the short s.p.a.ce of sixty days from the first decisive movement, this conquest was achieved by a small body of men, to an extent beyond their own expectation; for the Mexican authorities proclaimed it a conquest, not merely of the northern part, but of the whole province of the Californias.

"The Commandant General, Castro, on the 9th of August, from his camp at the Mesa, and next day 'on the road to Sonora,' announced this result to the people, together with the actual flight and dispersion of the former authorities; and at the same time, he officially communicated the fact of the conquest to the French, English, and Spanish Consuls in California; and to crown the whole, the official paper of the Mexican government, on the 16th of October, in laying these official communications before the public, introduced them with the emphatic declaration, 'The loss of the Californias is consummated.'

"The whole province was yielded up to the United States, and is now in our military occupancy. A small part of the troops sent out to subject this province will const.i.tute, it is presumed, a sufficient force to retain our possession, and the remainder will be disposable for other objects of the war."

We shall not stop to examine the Stockton and the Kearney controversies, the Monroe duel, nor the troubles which beset the gallant explorer and officer. Suffice it to say, that out of all he came with clean hands, and an unspotted reputation. Though a court martial, asked for by himself, sentenced him to be dismissed the service for disobedience of orders, or rather for not selecting the proper officer in California to obey, the President remitted the penalty. Too proud to hold an office in any army of any nation under such circ.u.mstances, Col.

Fremont tendered his resignation as Lieutenant Colonel in the United States army.

It was the old story of the triumph of Red Tapism and dull routine over genius and services of transcendent importance; but, however Col.

Fremont might fare before a board of jealous officers, the people took his cause up, and make him a hero. From all parts of the land, and from countries over the sea, letters of congratulation and admiration of his scientific explorations, poured in upon him.

In October, 1848, Mr. Fremont set out upon his _fourth_ trip over the Rocky Mountains, which proved to be the most dangerous and fearful of all. Though 120 mules were frozen in one night, and some of his comrades were starved, he had succeeded in reaching California. The trip was made entirely at his own expense, but its results were given in the journals at the time for the benefit of the nation.

The year previous to his fourth Overland Expedition, Col. Fremont had, for $3,000, bought the since famous "Mariposa Estate," which will eventually make him a very wealthy man, if he succeeds in establis.h.i.+ng his rights in California.

In 1849, General Taylor appointed Fremont Commissioner to run the boundary line between the United States and Mexico; but while he was deliberating upon an acceptance or declination, the new legislature of California, a.s.sembled at San Jose, elected him United States Senator.

In the Senate his course was distinguished by great industry and indefatigable exertion in favor of his const.i.tuents, and it was much regretted by those who knew the youthful senator, that he chose the short term, so that his term of office expired in March, 1851. In the Const.i.tutional Convention in California, Col. Fremont had taken a very decided part against slavery, and in Congress his course had been so unpartisan that he lost the support of his party, and a relection was out of the question. His subsequent history is known to every man. He was nominated in 1856 by the Republican party as its candidate for the Presidency, and polled a tremendous vote. The enthusiasm in his favor in the East and the Northwest, was intense, and in the opinion of many, nothing but the intervention of a third candidate--Mr.

Fillmore--prevented his election.

Mr. Fremont, _as a politician_, is little known to the country, for he has had little to do with politics, and is uncorrupted. He is, however, known to favor, first of all things, a Pacific railroad, is opposed to lawless filibusterism, and thoroughly in favor of the supremacy of free labor over slave labor. He unhesitatingly indorsed the Philadelphia platform, and can always be relied on to oppose the schemes of the slavery-propagandists.

As _a man_, Col. Fremont is known to the country to be fearless, brave, devoted to fulfilling all his duties, and ready to brave the frowns of millions, if necessary, in redeeming a pledge. Such a man can be _trusted_, whether in or out of office.

THE END.