The Pathfinder and the President

In 1856 the fledgling Republican party nominated as its first candidate for president John C. Frémont, the dashing explorer of the American West known as the Pathfinder and a radical opponent of slavery. He lost, but when the Civil War broke out, Lincoln tapped him for high command, setting the two on a collision course over how to deal with slavery during the conflict. The Pathfinder and the President explores their volatile relationship in all its political and military dimensions as well as its effects on the Civil War and the battle for emancipation.

Lincoln had not supported Frémont’s nomination in 1856, favoring a more moderate Republican, but when the war came, the president recognized his importance – his morale-boosting value as a national celebrity and his political value as an ally of Radical Republicans – and gave Frémont command of the Department of the West, with the task of defending the vital border state of Missouri. There Frémont lived extravagantly, commanded like a tyrant, oversaw a fraud scandal, feuded with the state’s political leaders, and struggled with seesawing guerrilla warfare. Desperate to break the stalemate, Frémont in August 1861 proclaimed the emancipation of all rebel slaves. Lincoln reacted swiftly, fearing that such a move would drive Missouri and other border states to secede, and revoked the order, firing the recalcitrant Frémont shortly thereafter, at some political cost amongst Radical Republicans, who launched an investigation while continuing to lobby for Frémont and swift emancipation.

Within four months, the Pathfinder was back, this time to command in the Appalachians, where he proved no match for Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. He never commanded again. Lincoln soon issued the Emancipation Proclamation, his thinking on the subject having been shaped by the Frémont affair. In the 1864 election, Frémont ran on the anti-Lincoln Radical Democracy Party, withdrawing before the election in a compromise that also removed a hated rival from Lincoln’s cabinet, ending his involvement in the Civil War.

Frémont had lost two commands, every battle in which he fought, a presidential campaign, a good portion of his personal fortune, and much of his reputation, yet Lincoln still compared him to Moses and praised him as a pioneer—a pathfinder—for emancipation. Frémont’s is an important—and never dull—story, and in telling it, John Bicknell gives us a better understanding of not only Frémont, but also Lincoln, emancipation, and the Civil War.

Propelled by rich, vivid writing—with a veteran Capitol Hill observer’s understanding of how deals get done and a scholar’s eye for detail—John Bicknell brings back to us, in all its glory and squalor, the 1856 campaign of the Republican Party’s first presidential nominee, explorer John Frémont.

-- Tom Chaffin, author of Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire

Bicknell’s original and engaging narrative weaves sophisticated analyses and personal stories—from statesmen to politicized women to enslaved southerners—into a fascinating account of this tempestuous era. Historical writing of the highest order.

-- Douglas R. Egerton, author of Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War

John Bicknell’s new book is not only the best book on the 1856 U.S. presidential election; it is really the only book on this interesting, important election.

Washington Independent Review of Books

Bicknell covers this crucial period in great detail with a fine writing style that is extremely readable… the author has a gift of being able to place readers in the midst of a fascinating and misunderstood chapter in American history.

Civil War Times

John Bicknell is the author of Lincoln’s Pathfinder: John C. Frémont and the Violent Election of 1856 (Chicago Review Press, 2017) and America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election That Transformed the Nation (Chicago Review Press, 2014). He was a journalist for more than thirty years, working as a reporter and editor for Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call. He lives in central Illinois.

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