JOHN CHARLES FREMONT
Is a native of South Carolina—was born in 1813—received his education at Charleston College, and first evinced the vigor of his mathematical genius in the efficient aid rendered the accomplished Nicollet in his survey of the basin of the upper Mississippi. The importance of this service was acknowledged by the government in his appointment as a lieutenant in the corps of Topographical Engineers. In 1841 the war department confided to him the interests and objects of an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, in which he discovered and mapped the South Pass. The scientific results of this adventure awakened in the public mind an intense enthusiasm for a more extended exploration. In the following year he left the frontier settlements at the head of a small party, crossed the Rocky Mountains, discovered and surveyed the great valley of the Salt Lake, and extended his researches into Oregon and California. These explorations, which occupied the greater portion of two years, were not confined to topographical questions; they embraced all the departments of natural history, with extended meteorological observations. They fill a volume, in which the trophies of science are blended with the incidents of the wildest adventure.
In 1844, the explorer left the United States again for the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and had descended into California, when the declaration of war suspended his scientific pursuits, and summoned him to the field. He had been honored successively with the rank of captain, major, and colonel. A battalion of riflemen enrolled themselves under his command. Their campaign, in the winter of 1846, impressed its intrepid spirit and heroic action on the fate of the war. Constrained by the orders of a superior, Col. Fremont was again in the United States; where, having declined a return of his commission, which he had adorned with eminent service, he threw himself, with unrepressed spirit, on his own energies, and started again for California. This was his seventh adventure across the continent; and owing to the lateness of the season, was attended with hardships and privations, in which many of his brave mountaineers perished. But his force of purpose triumphed over the elements, and carried him through. The new territory, in the vast accessions of a rushing emigration, had suddenly risen to the dignity of a commonwealth. A United States senator was to be chosen: it was the highest office within the gift of the people, and they conferred it, without distinction of party, on Col. Fremont. The decree of a military tribunal, bound to those rigid rules of discipline which never bend to the force of circumstance, may dispose of the parchment honors of a commission, but the public services and private worth of the individual must remain; the substantial benefits conferred on mankind must remain; the path opened to the golden gates of the west must remain; the flag of the country still fly along its fortified line, and the great tide of emigration roll through its avenue for ages. If Humboldt be the Nestor of scientific travellers, and Audubon the interpreter of nature, Col. Fremont is the Pathfinder of empire.