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The young explorer.
A portrait by G. P. A. Healy (1813-1894) is in
the collection of the Union
League Club of Chicago. It shows Frémont
in front of a portion of the view of the Wind
River Range drawn by Charles Preuss and
published in the 1843 Report. On the left, Island
Lake shows at his right elbow, and Fremont Peak
over the right shoulder.
Charles Preuss expedition drawing
as backdrop.
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The 3rd Expedition and conquest of
California, 1845-47
An engraving by Charles Burt, probably from a
daguerreotype, published in Walter Colton's Three
Years in California, New York, 1850.
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First Republican Party candidate for the
Presidency.
An engraving from a photograph by Root--the
frontispiece from a Memoir of the Life and Public
Services of John Charles Frémont by John
Bigelow 1856. One of three major biographys
published that year. Below, a campaign
token--"Free Soil, Free Speech,
Frémont!"
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The las Mariposas mining years.
There seems to be some verity in this portrait
(detail) by Charles Loring Elliott in 1857, which
is in the Brooklyn Museum. Still young and fit at
age 44.
"The colonel [Frémont]
is a man of small stature, of slender but wiry
formation, and with a countenance of firmness
and decision." Rev Walter
Colton, Alcalde, Monterey
"Frémont rode ahead, a spare,
active-looking man, with such an eye!"
Lieutenant Frederick Walpole,
HMS Collingwood, Monterey
"I have seen in no other man the qualities of
lightness, activity, strength and physical
endurance in such equilibrium. His face is
rather thin and embrowned by exposure; his nose
bold aquiline and his eyes deep-set and keen as
a hawk's." Bayard Taylor.
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Civil War. Major General Frémont,
by S. N. Carvalho 1864.
Frémont's Emancipation
Proclamation, St. Louis, Saturday, Aug. 31,
1861."The property, real and personal, of all
persons in the State of Missouri who shall take
up arms against the United States, and who shall
be directly proven to have taken an active part
with their enemies in the field, is declared to
be confiscated to the public use; and their
slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared
free."
Thy error, Frémont, was to
act
The brave man's part, without the statesman's
tact,
And taking council but of common sense,
To strike at cause as well as consequence.
John Greenleaf
Whittier
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Retired. About 1888.
Where still some grand peaks mark the
way,
Touched by light of parting day,
And memories sun.
Backward amid the twylight glow,
Some lingering spots still brightly show,
On roads hard
won.
Major General John Charles
Frémont
A national treasure surfaces: the
Carvalho portrait.
See the current leader in JCF
Look-alike Contest.
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