346 WORKMEN AND HEROES one day, letters trom Commodore Stockton, General Kearney, and Colonel Fre- mont, each signing himself " Commander-in-Chief." Frdmont believed he had sufficient reason for choosing to serve under Stockton, which he did. Upon Stockton's return to his squadron and Kearney's assignment to full command, Kearney brought charges against Fremont for mutiny and fraud, defeating his re-appointment as governor of the State besides. Fremont was ordered home, and it was said " that, like Columbus, he returned from the discovery and conquest of a new world, a prisoner and in disgrace." He went back to Washington under arrest. Great honors awaited him, nevertheless, his troubles only adding to his laurels. The citizens of Charleston gave him a sword, the ladies the gold- mounted belt of the same. He demanded immediate trial, which was granted, the court-martial lasting three months, his defence filling three sessions. He was pronounced guilty of mutiny, disobedience of the lawful command of a superior officer, and conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline a conviction based, some said, upon technical grounds. President Polk remitted the penalty dismissal from the army but Fremont resigned at once, the Pres- ident reluctantly accepting his. resignation. Fremont was then thirty-four years old. As the leader of three great explor- ing expeditions he had become not only famous, but a popular hero. He had done much for science. He had made the most accurate map of the region be- tween the one hundred and fourth meridian and the Pacific. He had added a large collection of botanical, geological, and other specimens to the national museums. He was eager to resume explorations of routes to the Pacific, having decided to settle his family in California upon the Mariposa estate, in the Sacramento Valley, which he had bought in 1847, before the discovery of gold, seventy square miles, for $3,000, " the only Mexican grant that covered any part of the gold regions." Fremont's claims against the Government for expenses incurred in the con- quest and defence of California, amounted to some $700,000, which was paid to him. Among those advocating the payment were Senators Benton, and Dix of New York. Twenty thousand copies of Fremont's map of Oregon and Califor- nia were ordered by the Senate. It was by no means in the r6le of a defeated man that he started out upon his fourth expedition, in the fall of 1 848 when the gold fever was at its height a venture of his own and Colonel Benton's ; its object, a route to the Pacific by way of the Rio Grande. Thirty-two men were enlisted, picked men as before. It was a superb and costly outfit, no less than one hundred and twenty mules. Lacking Kit Carson for a guide, they were lost in crossing the Rocky Mountains, every mule and horse and one-third of the men perishing from cold or starvation. At last, as he wrote home, " the mules, huddled together in the deep snow, froze stiff as they stood and fell over like blocks." The freezing men recrossed the summit in retreat, some of them driven to cannibalism. Wading through the snow to the waist, the remnant reached the home of Kit Carson at Taos, N. M., where Fremont reorganized the expedition, reaching the Sacramento in the spring of 1849.
