# John C. Frémont John C. Frémont (1813–1890) was a Georgia-born explorer-turned-politician who became the **first Republican Party presidential nominee** in 1856, lost the general election to Democrat [[James Buchanan]], later served as a Union [[American Civil War]] general, and ended his career as the territorial governor of Arizona. The 1842-1846 expedition reports he authored (with his wife Jessie Benton Frémont's substantial editorial contribution) established him as the "**Pathfinder**" of the American West — the most famous celebrity explorer of the antebellum period. His role in the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846 California and in the subsequent Mexican-American War operations gave him military credentials that the brand-new Republican Party leveraged when it nominated him in 1856. The 1856 election was the Republican Party's first national presidential run (the party had been founded in 1854 in response to the [[Kansas-Nebraska Act]]). Frémont finished second in EV (114 to Buchanan's 174) and second in popular vote (33.1% to 45.3%), with [[Millard Fillmore]] running third on the Know-Nothing/American Party ticket (21.5%). Frémont's campaign slogan — "**Free Soil, Free Men, and Frémont**" — captured the anti-slavery-extension Republican coalition's founding identity. His loss did not damage the party's trajectory; four years later [[Abraham Lincoln]] won the 1860 election on the same coalition Frémont had assembled, plus the 1858-1860 Lincoln-Douglas-debates national reputation that Frémont had lacked. His Civil War tenure as commanding general of the Western Department in Missouri (1861) was brief. His August 1861 unauthorized emancipation proclamation freeing the slaves of Missouri-secessionist masters — issued without consulting Lincoln — was reversed by Lincoln and Frémont was reassigned. He was the 1864 Radical Republican breakaway presidential candidate against Lincoln but withdrew before the election. His later life was financially difficult; the Arizona Territorial governorship was a presidential-favor patronage post. ## Right-wing relevance Frémont's right-wing significance is principally as the founding electoral identity of the **Republican Party** itself. The party that he led in 1856 — anti-slavery-extension, free-soil-and-free-labor, anti-aristocratic, modernizing — is the operational ancestor of the contemporary Republican Party even though the coalition has been substantially reorganized through 1968's [[Southern Strategy]] and 2016's MAGA realignment. The 1856 Frémont coalition is historically the *anti-slavery* identity of the Republican Party — a fact the contemporary right's relationship to history selectively engages. ## Connections - [[James Buchanan]] — Defeated Frémont in 1856. - [[Abraham Lincoln]] — Republican successor; reversed Frémont's 1861 unauthorized emancipation order. - [[Millard Fillmore]] — 1856 Know-Nothing third-place finisher. ## See also - [[1856 Presidential Election]] — Frémont's run as the first Republican nominee. ---