Memoirs of My Life and Times

by John C. Frémont

During his remarkable life, John Charles Fremont served as a senator for the newly-formed state of California, led Union troops in the Civil War, and was governor of the territory of Arizona. His race for the presidency in 1856 brought prestige to the fledgling Republican Party, yet despite his popularity, his uncompromising determination to abolish slavery cost him the election. For all of his experiences in politics and the military, it was the earlier decades of Fremont's life that were the most exciting. Shortly after graduating from college, he joined a mapping expedition and surveyed the hills of South Carolina and Tennessee for the government. Eager to continue exploring, Fremont went on five more expeditions to America west of the Appalachians during the years from 1839 to 1846. He traveled up the Missouri river, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and reached the West Coast on several journeys, often with his friend Kit Carson, the legendary mountain man. In Memoirs of My Life, Fremont recounts those years in the wilderness, encountering the fabulous landscapes and native people of America's interior before the westward expansion of the U. S. His journeys across the unmapped prairies, mountains, and deserts offer a wonderful glimpse of North America's natural grandeur in its original state.

696 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

American explorer, soldier, and politician John Charles Frémont explored and mapped much of the American West and Northwest, served a United States senator from California from 1850 to 1851, and ran for president in 1856.

This military officer lost the election to James Buchanan, a Democrat, and ran against Abraham Lincoln before the elections in 1864. Frémont brokered a political deal, in which Lincoln removed Montgomery Blair, postmaster general, from office and afterward abandoned his political campaign in September 1864.

He purchased the Pacific railroad, losing the major part of his fortune on this proven unsuccessful investment.
Rutherford Birchard Hayes, president, appointed him governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1881.

Reviews

[Joseph Andros]

This contained a lot of very interesting information along the way, but I have to say the narrative style of General Fremont leaves something to be desired. It's pretty much a diary, with days upon days of entries, most of them about as exciting as you might expect a daily diary of someone's cross-country hike would be. "Today we saw these rocks and plants. Dinner was dried beef and dog." Occasionally there's peril from nature or indigenous tribes, and eventually we build to the short-lived California Bear Republic revolution - but even these dramatic highlights are reported in an almost listless, matter-of-fact manner.

Yet an odd sort of affection creeps in for the narrator, and one gets the impression that a more condensed or dramatized version would have sacrificed many of the little interesting bits that peep out here and there, to make it a worthwhile account of the territory and the times.

Apparently, he wrote the book inspired by the blockbuster success of General Grant's memoirs. Alas, literary success eluded Fremont. A planned Pt.2 covering his troubled Civil War career and failed U.S. Presidential campaign, was abandoned due to evident lack of necessity.

[Dee Renee Chesnut · Rating 2 out of 5]

"This book belongs on the shelves of historians" was a statement I read from a review about a different biography, and it also suits this book. The memoirs of J.C. Fremont is important for historians,and I don't want to take anything away from the importance of keeping his memoirs in print. However, I am a casual historian at best; and, I wanted to read this for entertainment to learn more about this man who lived in interesting times and places.
This is a 654-page book about his three journeys of Western Exploration from 1842-1847, and I hoped the 654-pages would be about his entire life from 1813-1890.