is upright life,
the hero-worship of the Pacific coast, the antagonism of the South,
gave the canvass a vitalizing force that his defeat by James
Buchanan did not lessen, but simply changed into a new phase of
strength. Fremont's popular vote was 1,341,000 against 1,838,000 for
Buchanan and 874,000 for Fillmore (Know-Nothing). Fremont received
114 electoral votes, and Buchanan 174.

When the Civil War broke out, in 1861, Fremont was in Europe. He
offered his services to the Government at once, and was appointed
one of the four major-generals of the regular army, and given his
choice of a command at the East or the West. He chose the West. "Who
holds the Mississippi will hold the country by the heart," he said.
His head-quarters were at St. Louis, where secession was rampant.
"You must use your own judgment," wrote President Lincoln, "and do
the best you can. I doubt if the States will ever come back."
Fremont's policy differed from Lincoln's essentially; it lacked that
patient, conciliatory spirit with the South which made it hard for
many at the North to approve of the compromising policy of the Chief
Executive, seeking to hold the neutral States from seceding.
Fremont's hatred of the rebellion led him to deal with it just as he
would have done with a mutiny on a perilous expedition. He
proclaimed martial law. Rebels were to pay some penalty for
rebellion--rebel newspapers were silenced--and what was the notable
feature of Fremont's administration--the slaves of those in arms
against the Government were declared emancipated; his emancipation
proclamation antedating Lincoln's of September 22, 1862, by a little
more than a year. But Fremont's policy was censured rather than
approved by the country at large. Petty intrigues of officers in
close relation with the Cabinet did much to defeat his plans. His
fleet of gunboats was called a useless extravagance--his staff "the
California Gang." His emancipation proclamation was pronounced
premature and unwise by Lincoln, and revoked. Fremont again was the
cause of an intense public partisanship, "Fremont's career at the
West was brief," says "Patton's Concise History of the United
States," "only one hundred days; but, being a man of military
instincts and training, he showed in that time a sagacity which was
not allowed fair practical development. In that brief time he was
the first to suggest and inaugurate the following practices, then
widely decried, but without which the w