WONDER OF THE WEST: The Adventurous Life of John C. Frémont

By Stephen G. Yanoff

In this fascinating, epic biography, award-winning historian Stephen G. Yanoff vividly narrates the adventurous life-journey of John Charles Frémont, the most celebrated American explorer and mapper of his time.
This is history on a grand scale -- a book about discovery and exploration, but also about human character, virtue, ambition, love, and sacrifice.
Above all, WONDER OF THE WEST is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most courageous and important Americans of the 19th century -- an illegitimate child who rose to become “The Conqueror of California,” Civil War general, two-time Republican presidential candidate, pathfinder of the West, and husband to the extraordinary Jessie Benton Frémont.




“WONDER OF THE WEST is a lucid and compelling biography... John C. Frémont's life is one every American should know well, and it has not been told better than by Mr. Yanoff.”
- Renegade Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798823024433

Stephen G. Yanoff

STEPHEN G. YANOFF is a former insurance company executive from Long Island, New York. He worked in Manhattan for over twenty years and became an acknowledged expert in the field of high risk insurance. His mystery novels and non-fiction history books have won numerous gold medals and over forty national and international book awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.

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© 2024 Stephen G. Yanoff. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/09/2024

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2444-0 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2445-7 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2443-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024906443

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

PART I: DESTINY, 1813-1842

Chapter 1 The Devil Be Damned

Chapter 2 Southern Roots

Chapter 3 Life in Charleston

Chapter 4 Leaving Home

Chapter 5 Trail of Tears

Chapter 6 Two Years of Awe

Chapter 7 Old Bullion Benton

Chapter 8 Changing of the Guard

Chapter 9 Miss Jessie

PART II: THE FIRST EXPEDITION, SPRING 1842

Chapter 10 The First Expedition

Chapter 11 Kit Carson

Chapter 12 South Pass

Chapter 13 The Home Fires

PART III: THE SECOND EXPEDITION, SPRING 1843

Chapter 14 The Second Expedition

Chapter 15 Great Salt Lake

Chapter 16 Oregon Country

Chapter 17 Winter Crossing

Chapter 18 Heading Home

Chapter 19 Family Reunion

PART IV: THE THIRD EXPEDITION, SUMMER 1845

Chapter 20 The Third Expedition

Chapter 21 The Turning Point

Chapter 22 Darkening Skies

Chapter 23 Bear Flag Revolt

Chapter 24 Public Opinion

Chapter 25 Kearny’s March

Chapter 26 Frémont vs. Kearny

Chapter 27 Fall from Grace

Chapter 28 Court-Martial

Chapter 29 Judgment Day

Chapter 30 After the Fall

PART V: THE FOURTH EXPEDITION, 1848-49

Chapter 31 The Fourth Expedition

Chapter 32 All That Glitters

Chapter 33 Best-Laid Plans

Chapter 34 Months of Magic

Chapter 35 Twists and Turns

PART VI: THE FIFTH AND FINAL EXPEDITION, 1853

Chapter 36 Survival of the Fittest

Chapter 37 Free Soil, Free Men, Frémont

Chapter 38 Prelude to War

Chapter 39 Back in Uniform

Chapter 40 The Valley of Death

Chapter 41 Eventide

Also By Stephen G. Yanoff

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A RUN FOR THE MONEY

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DEAD ENDING

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Nonfiction:

THE SECOND MOURNING

TURBULENT TIMES

GONE BEFORE GLORY

For more information, please visit:

www.stephengyanoff.com

To Luke Everett Barlin

Frémont has touched my imagination. What a wild life, and

what a fresh kind of existence! But ah, the discomfort!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

CHRONOLOGY

Part One

DESTINY, 1813-1842

Chapter One

THE DEVIL BE DAMNED

The most difficult problems in John Charles Frémont’s life always started off simple, and it was truly astonishing how much trouble he got himself into with such little effort. Most of the trouble in the world was caused by people wanting to be important, but in Frémont’s case, it was caused by a burning desire to explore the unknown regions of the American West.

Undaunted by the catastrophes of his fourth expedition in 1848, Frémont was determined to embark on his fifth and final expedition in the fall of 1853. On this occasion he would be searching for a viable route for a transcontinental railroad, and his path would take him through the Cochetopa Pass in present-day Colorado. The remote pass led to unexplored terrain, much of it filled with unimaginable danger the likes of which few white men had ever encountered. To make matters worse, the expedition would take place during the winter months in order to document the amount of snow and the feasibility of winter rail passage.

There was an excellent chance that the expedition party would face brutal weather, rugged mountains, dangerous rivers, and hostile Indians.

All in all, just the type of adventure that Frémont enjoyed.

Intent on restoring his honor and reputation after the debacle of 1848, Frémont arrived in St. Louis in September, still dreaming of Manifest Destiny, one of his lifelong obsessions. At the time, St. Louis served as the emporium of the fur trade and the gateway to the West. Situated in the very heart of the Mississippi Valley, the city was virtually surrounded by inexhaustible quantities of valuable minerals, including gold, iron, lead, zinc, copper, tin, silver, coal, limestone, and granite. As Chicago would soon become the gateway to the East by means of the Great Lakes, so St. Louis was the gateway to the South and West by means of the Mississippi River, the Missouri River, and the Ohio River.

When Frémont arrived in St. Louis in the fall of 1853, the city still maintained traces of its French and Spanish origin, described as follows by a prominent visitor named Charles Dickens:

In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque, being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows, approachable by stairs, or rather ladders, from the street. There are queer little barber shops and drinking houses, too, in this quarter; and abundance of crazy old tenements, with blinking casements, such as may be seen in Flanders.

As word spread of the impending expedition, Frémont was inundated by volunteers eager to venture into the wilderness. Among the first to sign on were Solomon Nunes Carvalho and F.W. von Egloffstein. Carvalho was a thirty-eight-year-old photographer and devout Sephardic Jew whose expertise with daguerreotype equipment would prove invaluable. Egloffstein was a twenty-nine-year-old Prussian immigrant, and he was hired to serve as the expedition’s topographer. Both men were greenhorns but would prove to be fast learners.

Frémont rounded out the roster with twenty-two handpicked men, including ten Delaware Indians and two Mexicans. The Delawares, as Carvalho described them, were exceedingly loyal and physically impressive.

A more noble set of Indians I never saw, the most of them six feet high, all mounted and armed, under command of Captain Wolff, a Big Indian, as he called himself. Most of them spoke English, and all understood it... They became very much attached to Col. Frémont, and every one them would have ventured his life for him.

United States Army Captain Randolph Marcy, the author of a noted frontier guidebook, went even further in his praise of the Delawares:

It is highly important that parties making expeditions through an unexplored country should secure the services of the best guides and hunters, and I know of none who are superior to the Delawares and Shawnee Indians. They have been with me upon several different occasions, and I have invariably found them intelligent, brave, reliable, and in every respect well qualified to fill their positions. They are endowed with those keen and wonderful powers in woodcraft which can only be acquired by instinct, practice, and necessity, and which are possessed by no other people that I have heard of, unless it be the khebirs or guides who escort the caravans across the great desert of Sahara.

Despite careful planning –– and excellent personnel –– the expedition encountered its first obstacle shortly after leaving Westport, a small village about 200 miles west of St. Louis. (By 1853, Westport had replaced Independence, Missouri, as the main outfitting and starting point for traders, trappers, and emigrants heading west.) On September 22, while at the Shawnee Mission, Frémont became violently ill, struck with an inflammation in the upper part of his left leg. Within hours, the pain spread to his chest, throat, and head. Not knowing whether he would live or die, and with no doctor in camp, the ailing explorer was forced to return to St. Louis for medical care.

Before he departed, Frémont instructed his men to keep heading west, toward the Saline Fork of the Kansas River. They were told to establish another camp and sit tight, and if all went well, he would rejoin them within two weeks.

The men ate well during their leader’s absence. Almost too well. On one occasion, a hunting party brought in buffalo, antelope, and deer shot by the Indians. A white hunter augmented the sumptuous feast with two wild turkeys, three ducks, one rabbit, and a plump prairie hen. Unfortunately, much of the food was wasted, and very little of it was stored for future consumption.

When a fortnight passed with no sign of Frémont, some of the men grew worried, but their attention was soon diverted to a more pressing concern. On the afternoon of October 30, a dense prairie fire swept toward their camp, blotting out the sun and destroying all traces of their passage. They began to wonder if Frémont would be able to find them –– assuming he was still coming back. The next morning, wrote Chaffin, despair gave way to relief when they spotted four mounted riders coming toward them at full gallop from the east’s smoky horizon. It was Colonel Frémont, followed by an immense man on an immense mule (Dr. Ober); Solomon, one of the Delawares; and Albert Lea, a free black man hired as a cook for the expedition. Frémont was greeted with a spontaneous volley of gunfire, and according to one eyewitness, No father who had been absent from his children, could have been received with more enthusiasm and more real joy.

Colonel Frémont had apparently been sidelined by a severe case of rheumatism, and even though he had fully recovered, he knew that harder challenges lay ahead. After all, they were now 600 miles from civilization, facing a brutal winter, low on rations, and surrounded by an unknown number of hostile Indians. Most of the Central Plains Indians were considered friendly Indians by the U S government, which was somewhat surprising considering the increased traffic of emigrants along the California, Oregon, and Mormon trails. During the past decade, Native Americans had seen a vast reduction of buffalo and other game, and in 1849, fur traders had introduced cholera to the region, causing a significant loss of life.

Among the worst hit were the Cheyennes, who lost more than two thousand men, women, and children –– almost half their population. Even so, the Cheyenne village at Big Timber welcomed the expedition, gave them food, and allowed Solomon Carvalho to photograph their lodges. The photographer was also invited to attend an unusual celebration, which he later described in his book:

During our visit to the Cheyenne camp, a number of warriors returned from a successful battle with the Pawnees and brought in some twelve or fifteen scalps as trophies of their prowess. On the night of their arrival, they had a grand scalpdance; all the men and most of the women were grotesquely attired in wolf, bear, and buffalo skins; some of them with the horns of the buffalo and antlers of the deer for head ornaments. Their faces were painted black and red; each of the chiefs who had taken a scalp held it aloft attached to a long pole.

Carvalho went on to describe an immense fire burning in the middle of the camp and a procession of warriors dancing around the flames, howling and chanting to the steady beating of drums. The celebration must have unnerved some of the white spectators, who rose earlier than usual the following morning, anxious to reach the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

For the first few weeks they climbed steadily upward, but after passing through Cochetopa Pass it was all downhill. Literally downhill. In early January 1854, the expedition was obliged to climb a steep slope covered by three or four feet of freshly fallen snow. The party had climbed roughly two hundred feet when, without warning, the lead mule lost its footing and began to tumble down the slope, pulling fifty-four mules and most of their riders all the way down to the base of the incline. It was a serious, yet a most ludicrous spectacle to witness fifty animals rolling headlong down a snow mountain, Carvalho wrote later. I found myself standing up to my eyes in snow, high up the mountain, witnessing this curiously interesting, although disastrous accident.

Miraculously, only one mule and one horse were killed, but food, blankets, and equipment were buried beneath the snow, and a fierce storm was on the horizon. That night the temperature plummeted to 30 degrees below zero, and in the morning, the camp was covered in waist-deep snow. In their rush to reach lower ground, the tent poles of their sleeping lodge were broken, and from then on, the men were forced to sleep in the open, covered by blankets.

The ludicrous spectacle was about to turn into a life-or-death situation.

Cochetopa Pass, as Inskeep noted, was the beginning of a harrowing period for the expedition. As Frémont and his men descended into the wilderness, their food and supplies began to dwindle, and due to the deep snow, wild game vanished. For the first few days, the unrelenting cold served as something of a distraction, but in time hunger took precedence and the men began to slaughter and eat their pack animals.

When an animal gave out so that it could not proceed any further, it was shot by one of the Delawares, who immediately cut its throat and boiled its blood and entrails for soup. A butchered horse or mule produced enough meat for about six meals per man; each man was given his share and told he must make it last until the next horse died.

No part of the animal went to waste, not even the hide, which was roasted over a fire in order to burn off the hair and crispen. Incredibly, the men lived on horse meat for fifty days, occasionally supplementing the menu with a snake or rodent. By the first of February, they were reduced to gnawing on bones and horse hooves, scraping them clean with their teeth while they edged closer to the edge of starvation.

Later that month, by sheer luck, they ran into a band of Indians –– probably Utes –– who were camped along the banks of the Green River. The Utes lived a seminomadic lifestyle and seldom had enough food to spare, but they were willing to part with an old dog. For a price.

In hindsight, the Utes were actually quite generous. Some scholars have suggested that the tribe lacked the sophisticated weaponry required to hunt big game. Their diet consisted mainly of roots, berries, nuts, seeds, and greens, which they augmented with fish, small mammals, insects, grubs, and reptiles. A dog, regardless of its age, would have been a rare treat for the tribe.

In the end, the dog was devoured by twenty or so hungry men, providing just enough energy to face the next daunting task. Shortly after leaving the Ute village, the expedition was obliged to cross the Colorado River, a difficult and dangerous crossing during the winter months. The weather was unbearably cold, and eighteen inches of ice had formed on either side of the river, leaving a narrow channel of water about two hundred yards wide. The water was six feet deep, making it necessary for men, mules, and horses to swim through the freezing water in order to reach the other side of the river. One by one the men spurred their mounts into the swift current, and amazingly, nobody drowned. The Delawares crossed first, then built a large fire in a clearing, where the men dried their clothes while wearing them.

The next few days were torturous, made worse by a lack of food. Facing starvation, the men began to eat their own horses, which meant that they would now be on foot, trudging through deep snow in the dead of winter.

Before long the animals were gone, and with no relief in sight, on the brink of starvation, some began to consider the unthinkable. Nobody said it out loud, but each man knew what the other was thinking. Each man knew what they might have to do in order to survive.

Granted, cannibalism was a repulsive thought, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

They would not be the first starving pilgrims to consume each other.

Seven years earlier, a group of pioneers had migrated to California in a wagon train from Springfield, Illinois. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but hoping to save time, several wagons decided to take a shortcut through Hastings Cutoff, bypassing the Oregon Trail. An unexpected snowfall trapped the wagons in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in November, and rescuers were unable to reach the migrants until the middle of February 1847 –– almost four months after the wagons became trapped.

The migrants had made several attempts to seek help, and by strange coincidence, one of them had reached Sutter’s Fort at present-day Sacramento. There he sought help from a young army officer who had explored the Sierra Nevada mountains back in 1844. The officer’s name was Colonel John Frémont.

Frémont would later mention the urgent request in his journal, noting the dire predicament of the trapped pilgrims: The times were severe, when stout men lost their minds from extremity of suffering –– when horses died –– and when mules and horses, ready to die of starvation, were killed for food.

Eight years had passed since those unlucky pioneers, now known as the Donner Party, had become a fixture in the American psyche. Their ill-fated journey had been sensationalized by the popular press, which had breathlessly reported that of the ninety original members of the party, only forty-eight survived. Those that had survived the ordeal had resorted to cannibalism, and for that, they would be stigmatized forever.

Frémont knew the feeling; it had only been five years since his political career had evaporated after being accused of eating human flesh during an expedition of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. The accusation was false, but it completely overshadowed the objective of the 1848 expedition, which was to find a central railroad route to the Pacific. The expedition had been privately funded by Frémont’s father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, and by most accounts, it was a dismal failure. Two months after their departure, Frémont and his party nearly perished in the rugged wilderness of the La Garta Mountains in Southern Colorado. Twelve men died during the disastrous journey; ten from starvation or hypothermia and two others killed by hostile Indians.

Frémont was greatly distressed by the loss of life, but the cannibalism charge cut him to the quick. Right to the core of his self-esteem. For that reason, he made up his mind that the present expedition would never resort to such an horrendous act. Gathering his men, the beleaguered explorer laid down the law in no uncertain terms, exhorting the party to remain resolute and persevere. He informed them that a detachment of men whom he had sent for succor on a previous expedition had been guilty of eating one of their own number.

Some of the men were visibly shaken by this admission, but nobody said a word.

Frémont went on to express his abhorence of the act and proposed that they should not, under any circumstances whatsoever, kill any of their companions to prey upon them. If we are to die, let us die together like men.

After a short pause, he threatened to shoot the first man that made or hinted at such a proposition.

Later that evening, lying under a blanket of snow, Frémont tried to get some much-needed sleep, but the howling of wolves kept him awake. A large pack had surrounded the camp, making it necessary to double the guard. He wondered if the wolves were starving too. If so, it was going to be a long night. A very long night.

The men were huddled together for safety and warmth, so it’s possible that Frémont heard Solomon Carvalho, a devout Jew, praying for their deliverance. If that was the case, the beleaguered explorer might have taken a moment to recite his own prayer. Perhaps he chose an apt passage from the Book of Psalms:

They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way: They found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty their souls fainted within them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distress.

In the winter of 1854, Frémont’s reputation as a renowned explorer rested upon the accomplishments of his four previous expeditions, but now he was faced with an unmitigated disaster. If the fifth and final expedition ended in failure, his vaunted reputation would be tarnished forevermore –– a fate worse than death to someone so vain.

The odds were not in Frémont’s favor, but if the men could survive one more night they had a reasonable chance of making it down the mountain. It would be a long and difficult descent, and they would have to summon every last ounce of their courage and strength. But it could be done.

But first they had to make it through the night ...

Chapter Two

SOUTHERN ROOTS

During the night, when the temperature fell to twenty degrees below zero and Solomon Carvalho prayed for deliverance, Colonel Frémont might have found some comfort in the words of Psalm 107, but in a sense, the Book of Job was more apropos. In addition to the bone-chilling weather, the beleaguered explorer had to deal with hungry wolves, hostile Indians, lack of food and water, lack of shelter, and a group of starving men who had been pushed to the breaking point.

An unfortunate turn of events had brought the party to the edge of disaster, and as Frémont knew from his last expedition, desperate men were capable of ungodly acts –– the dire consequences of losing hope.

Maybe, to avoid the dark thoughts, The Pathfinder began to ponder his own path through life. Until now, the journey had been quite remarkable, and as one historian noted, Frémont was not only one of the nineteenth century’s most significant explorers, but also an accomplished mapmaker, naturalist, Indian fighter, and promoter of US expassionism. Equally important were his contributions to agriculture, botany, and mining.

Facing starvation, an ignoble end to a brilliant career, Frémont might have found solace in the fact that he had made four transcontinental crossings –– and had seen more of North America than Lewis and Clark.

Even before his birth, Chaffin wrote, upheavals large and small, domestic and public, had conspired to put John Charles Frémont on a restless course. His father, Charles Fremon, helped to set that course...

According to biographer Andrew F. Rolle, Charles Fremon’s original name was Louis-Rene Frémont. Rolle claimed that Frémont was born at Quebec City, Canada, on December 8, 1768. On an uncertain date, Monsieur Frémont reportedly left Canada on a French ship bound for Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), where he was captured by the British navy and imprisoned in the British West Indies. After several years, Frémont escaped to Norfolk, Virginia, where he changed his name to Charles Fremon and claimed to be a former resident of Lyon, France. Here he tutored in French, and as he was also fluent in English, he soon became a prime social favorite of the townspeople (The population of the town being somewhere between six and seven thousand).

Unable to make a decent living, Fremon moved to Richmond, where in the course of time he met and tutored a young lady whose maiden name was Anne Beverly –– a distant relative of George Washington. Anne was typical of the residents of the city, who one historian described as a society of people not exclusively monopolized by money-making pursuits, but of liberal education, liberal habits of thinking and acting; and possessing both leisure and inclination to cultivate those feelings and pursue those objects which exalt our nature rather than increase our fortune.

Unfortunately for Monsieur Fremon, his twenty-nine-year-old student had married an irascible older gentleman named Major John Pryor, who was forty-five years older than his wife and suffered from gout. The difference in age was problematic, but as Bigelow noted, the marriage was doomed from the outset. Aside from the fatal disparity of years, Major Pryor lacked refinement and sensibility, and was in every respect repulsive to the young creature [Anne], who was sacrificed to him through an arranged union.

Anne was only seventeen years old when the arranged match was made on her behalf, but she never blamed her family for the debacle. In a later statement, she blamed her own youthful naivete, and wrote, I was married too young to be sensible of the importance of the state in which I was about to enter, and found when too late that I had acted with too much precipitancy, and could never feel that love for him to whom I was united, without which the marriage state of all others is the most wretched.

After twelve years of wedded misery, Anne was thrilled to be in the company of a younger man, and in due course the student and tutor began a secretive romance. When the major learned of the relationship, he threatened to kill his wife, but uncowed, she reportedly told him, You may spare yourself the crime. I shall leave your house tomorrow morning forever!

Anne and Charles left Richmond the next morning, July 10, 1811, taking most of her personal belongings and two slaves. Major Pryor was furious, and in keeping with his vindictive nature, he filed a divorce petition charging that his wife had totally alienated her affections from me by the vile and invidious machinations of an execrable monster of baseness and depravity, with whom I have recently discovered she has for some time past indulged in criminal intercourse.

Bashford erroneously claimed that through the influence of friends, the Virginia Legislature granted Anne a divorce, and at the age of twenty-nine she was free to marry again, which she did, her choice of a husband being the French tutor. According to Nevins, this claim was based upon a family tradition, which is plainly inaccurate. Only the legislature could grant a divorce, but when Major Pryor filed a petition, it was declined. No reasons appear on the record, but the refusal makes it seem probable that the major also had been guilty of misconduct, or had grossly maltreated his wife. A search of subsequent legislative proceedings fails to reveal any record of favorable action.

Immersed in scandal, Anne and Charles fled the city, stopping in Williamsburg in midsummer to collect more of her belongings before they went on an extended journey through the South. According to family legend, they used Anne’s inheritance, valued at $1,930, to tour the Indian regions –– a lifelong desire they both shared. Mr. Fremon was fond of adventure, Woodworth wrote, and it would seem that his wife shared this fondness, to some extent, with him. Their goal was to visit Indian villages in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. They wanted to learn all there was among the Indians, strange and wonderful, and they wanted, too, to see what kind of a country there was in this wilderness.

Risking life and limb, they made the journey in their own carriage, hauling their own provisions and shelter and making camp in the most rugged terrain imaginable. Anne seems to have enjoyed most of the trip, but she was a little distressed by the rough way the swarthy sons of the forest handled their young children. Unaccustomed to savage life, it had a suspicious look about it. She trembled for the safety of their brains.

When their funds were depleted, Anne and Charles settled in Savannah, Georgia, moving into a modest residence on West Bay Street in what was then the city’s Yamacraw Indian neighborhood. The Yamacraw were a Native American tribe that lived along the high bluffs over the Savannah River from the late 1720s to the mid-1740s. All told, there were about two hundred members of the tribe, which was part of the Creek Confederacy in Georgia. They were led by Chief Tomo-Chi-Chi, an overly trusting warrior who made the mistake of welcoming English explorer James Oglethorpre –– and then compounded the mistake by allowing him to build a settlement for the thirty-five families he had brought across the Atlantic Ocean.

In a letter written in February 1733, Oglethorpe described the site he had chosen for the principal town of his new colony, a town he would later call Savannah:

The river here forms a half moon, along side of which the banks are about forty feet high, and on the top is a flat which they call a bluff. The plain high ground extends into the country about five or six miles; and along the river side, about a mile. Ships that draw twelve feet of water can ride within ten yards of the bank. Upon the river side, in the centre of this plain, I have laid out the town, opposite to which is an island of very rich pasturage which I think should be kept for the cattle of the trustees. The river is pretty wide, the water fresh, and from the quay of the town you see its whole course to the sea, with the island of Tybee which is at its mouth.

The house on West Bay Street was typical of the time, later described by historian Allan Nevins as a two-story-and-basement building of warm red brick. The house, in concert with others on the street, had heavy basement pillars, a door and four front windows on the first floor, and five large windows on the second floor. According to Nevins, it was owned by the Gibbons family, to whom the land had been granted by King George II in 1760.

Anne and Charles lived in their rented quarters for the next two years, earning a modest income while she labored as a boarding house mistress and he taught French at a Savannah academy. On January 21, 1813, the couple welcomed their first child, John Charles, who was still in diapers when the family took off for another adventure, anxious to escape from the summer heat of the Lowcountry.

On September 4, the Fremons found themselves at Talbots Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, a gathering spot for the city’s well-to-do. One morning after breakfast, they witnessed a memorable event that nearly changed the course of American history. Among the other guests at the hotel were Thomas Hart Benton, a fiery young lawyer and legislator of Tennessee, and his brother, Jesse. The brothers were reportedly standing by the bar when Andrew Jackson, the future president of the United States (then forty-six years of age), entered the hotel looking for trouble.

Dellenbaugh wrote that there was ill feeling between Benton and Jackson because the future president had acted as opposing second in a duel in which Jesse Benton was involved. Benton had denounced Jackson in violent terms, Jackson had sworn to horsewhip him, and the denouement [at the hotel] was the result.

There are several versions of what transpired during the ensuing melee, but according to an existing eyewitness statement, Jackson started the fight by demanding that Benton defend himself, then drawing a pistol from under his coat. Three or four pistols fired in quick succession, by the Bentons and Jackson. One ball struck Jackson in the left shoulder, shattering the shoulder bone and causing an enormous loss of blood. (Eyewitnesses later claimed that Jackson had soaked two mattresses with his blood and had almost died.)

As often occurs in such cases, other spectators (and participants) disputed the eyewitness account of James Sitler and blamed the fracas on Benton and his brother. All agreed that Jesse Benton, standing to the side, actually fired the first shots, at Jackson. After Jackson was struck in the shoulder, a second bullet hit his left arm, and a third barely missed him. Thomas Benton was grazed by one of Jackson’s supporters, but he escaped further harm by accidentally falling down a flight of stairs.

The other combatants were slightly injured in a knife fight, and as the innkeeper later told the press, several guests nearly lost their lives. The parents of little John Charles heard the uproar, and it is said that a bullet passed through the room where the infant was sleeping. In the turbulent South of that day, they were doubtless used to such affrays.

By strange coincidence, young Fremon was almost killed by one of the shots fired by his future father-in-law, Thomas Benton. Years later, the intrepid explorer would add an accent and a letter to his name and, as John C. Frémont, wed Senator Benton’s daughter, Jessie Ann Benton.

After surviving a close call in Nashville, the Fremon family returned to their nomadic lifestyle, and within the next four years added two more members: Elizabeth, born at Nashville in 1815, and Frank, born at Norfolk, Virginia, in