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 generally. Mrs. Fremont, in her
"Souvenirs of My Time," has given charming glimpses of this part of
their life. Hearing that Congress had made appropriation 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 morsel of food; the entire party
barefooted in the snow; Fremont, in the hour of extreme 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 deg. and 39 deg.. 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 opponents were
sharply defined. Fremont was the first nominee of the Republican
party. The romance and adventure of his career, h