John C. Fr\u00e9mont<\/h3>
John Charles Fr\u00e9mont or Fremont (January 21, 1813\u00a0\u2013 July 13, 1890) was an American explorer, politician, and soldier who, in 1856, became the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, when he led five expeditions into the American West, that era's penny press and admiring historians accorded Fr\u00e9mont the sobriquet The Pathfinder.[1]<\/p>
During the Mexican\u2013American War, Fr\u00e9mont, a major in the U.S. Army, took control of California from the California Republic in 1846. Fr\u00e9mont was convicted in court-martial for mutiny and insubordination over a conflict of who was the rightful military governor of California. After his sentence was commuted and he was reinstated by President Polk, Fr\u00e9mont resigned from the Army. Fr\u00e9mont led a private fourth expedition, which cost ten lives, seeking a rail route over the mountains around the 38th parallel in the winter of 1849. Afterwards, Fr\u00e9mont settled in California at Monterey while buying cheap land in the Sierra foothills. When gold was found on his Mariposa ranch, Fr\u00e9mont became a wealthy man during the California Gold Rush, but he was soon bogged down with lawsuits over land claims, between the dispossession of various land owners during the Mexican\u2013American War and the explosion of Forty-Niners immigrating during the Rush. These cases were settled by the U.S. Supreme Court allowing Fr\u00e9mont to keep his property. Fr\u00e9mont's fifth and final privately funded expedition, between 1853 and 1854, surveyed a route for a transcontinental railroad. Fr\u00e9mont became one of the first two U.S. senators elected from the new state of California in 1850. Fr\u00e9mont was the first presidential candidate of the new Republican Party, carrying most of the North. He lost the 1856 presidential election to Democrat James Buchanan when Know Nothings split the vote. Democrats warned that his election would lead to civil war.[citation needed]<\/p>
During the American Civil War, he was given command of Department of the West by President Abraham Lincoln. Although Fr\u00e9mont had successes during his brief tenure as Commander of the Western Armies, he ran his department autocratically, and made hasty decisions without consulting Washington D.C. or President Lincoln. After Fr\u00e9mont's emancipation edict that freed slaves in his district, he was relieved of his command by President Lincoln for insubordination. In 1861, Fr\u00e9mont was the first commanding Union general who recognized in Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant an \"iron will\" to fight and promoted him commander at the strategic base near Cairo, Illinois. Defeating the Confederates at Springfield, Fr\u00e9mont was the only Union General in the West to have a Union victory for 1861. After a brief service tenure in the Mountain Department in 1862, Fr\u00e9mont resided in New York, retiring from the Army in 1864. The same year Fr\u00e9mont was a presidential candidate for the Radical Democracy Party, but he resigned before the election. After the Civil War, Fr\u00e9mont's wealth declined after investing heavily and purchasing an unsuccessful Pacific Railroad in 1866, and lost much of his wealth during the Panic of 1873. Fr\u00e9mont served as Governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1881 appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Fr\u00e9mont retired from politics and died destitute in New York City in 1890.\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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