GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT 347 Litigation concerning his title to the Mariposa estate did not prevent Fre- mont from developing its mineral and agricultural resources. He engaged some twenty-eight Spaniards to work its gold mines upon shares. His prospects of boundless wealth were most flattering. The Pathfinder was now a millionaire, and in 1855 his title to Mariposa was established by the Supreme Court. Fol- lowing his appointment in 1849 to rur the boundary line between the United States and Mexico, the political party of the Territory seeking its admission as a free State, elected him to the United States Senate. Many honors were be- stowed upon him at this time the medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, the Founders medal from the King of Prussia, an honorary membership of the Geographical Society of Berlin, etc. In the California State election of 1851, Fremont stood with the Anti-Slavery party, opposed to the extension of slavery in free territories. He was defeated, and went to Europe with his family in 1852, where he was feted by royalty gen- erally. Mrs. Fremont, in her " Souvenirs of My Time," has given charming glimpses of this part of their life. Hearing that Congress had made appropria- tion for further surveys of great Western routes, Fremont hastened home in 1853, to explore by a fifth expedition, what he believed to be the most central and practicable route. This was his second private venture. He would follow the path he had lost when the guide led him astray on his fourth expedition. He would cross the Rockies at Cochetopa Pass, and that in winter. He made the passage, but it was at the cost of frightful suffering ; fifty days on frozen horse-flesh, days without even that ; forty-eight hours without a morse) of food ; the entire party barefooted in the snow ; Fremont, in the hour of ex- treme peril on the storm-swept mountain-side, making his men take oath that, come what might, nothing should tempt them to cannibalism. Benton tells us how Fremont went straight to the spot where the guide had gone astray in 1848, and found safe and easy passes all the way to California, upon the straight line of 38 and 39 . Great railroads of to-day follow the line it took those starving and half-frozen men fifty days to pass in that winter of 1854. For three months nothing was heard from the party. Fremont's arrival in San Francisco was an ovation. "Europe lies between Asia and America," we read in his report; " build the road, and America lies between Europe and Asia. . . , The iron track to San Francisco will be the thoroughfare of the world." The issues at stake in the presidential campaign of 1856 make that campaign the most important of any in the history of our country. " The question now to be decided," said Seward, "is whether a slave-holding class shall govern America or not." The nomination of John Charles Fremont as the candidate of the Republican party was hailed with enthusiasm at the North. The Civil War was impending. The lines between the defenders of slavery and its oppo- nents were sharply defined. Fremont was the first nominee of the Republican party. The romance and adventure of his career, his upright life, the hero-wor- ship of the Pacific coast, the antagonism of the South, gave the canvass a vital- izing force that his defeat by James Buchanan did not lessen, but simply
