John C. Frémont
Born January 21, 1813
Savannah, Georgia
Died July 13, 1890
New York, New York
American West explorer
known as the "Pathfinder"
Removed from his command as a Union general
for issuing his own "emancipation proclamation"
in Missouri
Writer Edward D. Harris
John C. Frémont was one of the best-known explorers of the American West in the first half of the nineteenth century. "His scientific and surveying work was crucial in opening America beyond the Mississippi, and his heroic image and legend helped imbue [fill] the West with the romance with which it is still colored," according to Edward D. Harris in John Charles Frémont and the Great Western Reconnaissance. "He remains a symbol of a younger, untamed, and adventurous America."
In 1856, Frémont became the antislavery Republican political party's first presidential candidate. When the Civil War began a few years later, he took command of Union forces in Missouri—one of the four "border states" that allowed slavery but remained part of the United States. Instead of using diplomacy to gain the support of those residents who had wanted to join the Confederacy, Frémont used harsh, controversial measures to maintain order. In fact, Frémont declared that he would take away property and free slaves belonging to anyone who supported the Southern cause.
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