Look Back: the "Pathfinder",1861 | Buy historic photos & newspaper pages

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Look Back: the "Pathfinder",1861

Date: 7/23/2011 Album ID: 1289524

Photos by Missouri History Museum and the Library of Congress

by Tim O'Neil --- Gen. John C. Fremont made his reputation exploring the West, earning the nickname "Pathfinder." The new commander of the Department of the West rode into town July 25, 1861, flanked by his retinue of plumed exiles from European revolutions. He and his wife, Jessie, established headquarters in a mansion at Eighth Street and Chouteau Avenue, but spent most of their time in well-guarded seclusion. Fremont and his 150-man body guard charged through the city like royalty, and after only three months, his command was marked by indecision, aloofness and grand statements that finally exasperated President Abraham Lincoln.

Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont, commander of the Union's Department of the West in St. Louis from July 25 to Nov. 3, 1861. Fremont appeared to be the obvious choice when President Abraham Lincoln appointed him. Famous as the Pathfinder for his explorations of the far West, Fremont was married to a daughter of Missouri's lion, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and had been the Republican Party's first presidential candidate in 1856. But he also had a vast ego and a penchant for keeping his own counsel. Fremont's wife, Jessie, was intelligent, witty, and she had learned the ways of national politics at her father's side in Washington. The Fremonts moved into a mansion on Chouteau Avenue that was protected by a 150-soldier body guard camped nearby. His staff of junior officers made it hard for anybody to see the Pathfinder, which went down poorly with Unionists in the sharply divided city. On Aug. 30, he issued a proclamation that all rebels caught in armed insurrection will be shot and their slaves hereby declared freemen. Lincoln, who was desperately trying to keep the slaveholding border states in the Union, blew his top. Jessie Fremont took a train to Washington to set the President straight, but the meeting went poorly. Gen. Fremont resigned from the Army. Remaining popular among dedicated abolitionists, Fremont was the presidential candidate of the Radical Party in 1864, although he withdrew shortly before election day. After the war, he was governor of the Arizona territory. He died in 1890 in New York. (Missouri History Museum)

Jessie Benton Fremont, married to Gen. John C. Fremont. Jessie grew up in the world of her father, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri's first great political leader. She was accustomed to visiting the White House and talking with the nation's power brokers. She was 16 when she met Fremont, a young officer and explorer who shared her father's desire to expand the nation into the West. Her parents disapproved of their courtship, but John Fremont and Jessie Benton eloped in 1841. The senator later got over his anger. Jessie Fremont had great ambitions for her husband and was his closest confidant. She wrote her husband's journals of his explorations. After her husband issued his Aug. 30, 1861, proclamation that so angered President Abraham Lincoln, she traveled to Washington to explain the Fremont case. Arriving there, she sent her card to the White House. Lincoln's response was, Now, at once. A. Lincoln. He showed his anger and was not swayed. Jessie Benton Fremont died in Los Angeles in 1902. (Missouri History Museum)

A banner for John C. Fremont's candidacy for president in 1856. He was the first candidate of the new Republican Party, and the campaign stressed his legacy as the Pathfinder, an explorer of the West. Fremont lost the election to Democrat James Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian who was considered a compromise candidate on the increasingly irreconcilable issue of slavery. In a foreshadow to the 1860 election and resulting political convulsions, Fremont won New York, all the New England states, and the northern states in the Midwest. (Library of Congress)

The mansion on the southwest corner of Eighth Street and Chouteau Avenue that was the Fremont home and headquarters during his command in St. Louis. It was built during the late 1850s by Joshua Brant, a construction contractor who was married to one of Jessie Fremont's cousins. Brant died shortly after the home was finished. The government paid his estate $500 per month to rent it for the Fremonts. The mansion was demolished in 1904. (Missouri History Museum)

The camp of Gen. Fremont's 150-soldier body guard. Fremont surrounded himself with a large staff that included exiles from the European revolutions. They rode through the city like royalty, which added to the reasons why so many of Lincoln's local supporters soured upon Fremont. (Missouri History Museum)

Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, father of Jessie Fremont and Missouri's lion in the U.S. Senate for three decades. He admired John Fremont's explorations of the West and invited the young officer to dinner, but disapproved of the budding romance between his daughter and Fremont. The young couple eloped in 1841. One year later, the senator signaled his acceptance by accompanying the couple to a White House reception. Benton died in 1858 and is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery. (Library of Congress)

Hamilton R. Gamble, a lawyer in St. Louis and conservative Unionist who led a key committee during the Missouri State Convention that had rejected secession during a two-week gathering in March in St. Louis. Then-Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson had hoped the convention would move Missouri into the Confederacy. After Union troops chased Jackson from the governor's mansion in June, Jackson officially joined the rebellion. As Fremont arrived in St. Louis to take command, the convention was meeting again, this time in Jefferson City, to replace Jackson and form a provisional government. It chose Gamble as governor. Gamble was close friends with Edward Bates, another conservative Unionist lawyer from St. Louis who had become President Abraham Lincoln's attorney general. Fremont soon clashed with Gamble over the new governor's desire to create a state militia. Fremont wanted all blue uniforms under his own command. That fight created yet another problem for Fremont in Lincoln's eyes. (Missouri History Museum)

Army Maj. Charles Zagonyi, commander of Gen. Fremont's 150-soldier body guard. Zagonyi was a refugee from the short-lived independence of his native Hungary from the Habsburg empire in 1848-49. He was one of several former European revolutionaries on Fremont's staff. Here is how Louis Gerteis, professor of history at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, described Fremont's bodyguard in his book, Civil War in St. Louis: The Body Guard wore plumed hats and a distinctive dark blue uniform. Mounted on matching chestnut horses and bearing German-manufactured sidearms, the 150-man Body Guard accompanied Fremont's movements through the city with a formality worthy of a European prince. (Library of Congress)

A drawing of the funeral ceremony in Springfield, Mo., of soldiers in Fremont's Body Guard who died in a cavalry charge led by Maj. Zagonyi on Oct. 25, 1861. The charge won the day at a cost of 16 Body Guard soldiers and 23 members of the secessionist Missouri State Militia. Zagonyi withdrew from Springfield shortly thereafter, fearing a larger Confederate force nearby. But the dashing victory was hailed in the Northern press. (This drawing ran in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, a national publication). Union armies had suffered defeats near Manassas, Va., on July 21, and at Wilson's Creek, just southwest of Springfield, on Aug. 10, and Zagonyi's success was a welcome salve. It also was the only military engagement under the command of Gen. Fremont, who was with his army outside of Springfield. On Nov. 3, 1861, an officer dispatched by the White House gave Fremont the presidential order relieving him of command. (Missouri History Museum)

A campaign poster in 1864 of the short-lived candidacy of John C. Fremont for president on behalf of a splinter party, known as the Radical Party, led by abolitionists who were disappointed in President Abraham Lincoln. Fremont's running mate was Gen. John Cochrane, a former congressman from New York. Fremont and Cochrane withdrew from the race in September 1864, fearing their candidacies would ensure the election of Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, a former general who had been relieved of command twice by Lincoln for not pursuing the Confederate army with enough vigor. McClellan did not consider himself the peace candidate, but his party's leaders did. Gen. William T. Sherman's capture of Atlanta on Sept. 2, 1864, helped assure Lincoln's re-election. (Library of Congress)

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