John Charles Fremont’s 1846 fiasco
”
There lay the pieces on the great chessboard before me on which
the game for an empire had been played…I was but a pawn, and like
a pawn, I had been pushed forward to the front at the opening of
the game.
”
– John C. Fremont
John Charles Fremont’s 1846 fiasco
“There lay the pieces on the great chessboard before me on which the game for an empire had been played…I was but a pawn, and like a pawn, I had been pushed forward to the front at the opening of the game.”
– John C. Fremont
Called the “Great Pathfinder,” John Charles Fremont was the most widely recognized American explorer of his era. The published journals of his expeditions across the American West, accompanied by detailed map drawings, helped guide others across the continent. But despite his popularity, Fremont was considered overly ambitious. Critics accused him of conducting a quest for personal glory, a claim compounded by his frequent tangles in regional politics. One was the Bear Flag revolt, but the other, closer to home, came first. It happened on a mountaintop just outside San Juan Bautista. After his escapade, some called him a self-appointed conqueror.
At first extended permission by the Mexican government to conduct a topographical expedition in California, Fremont’s entry into the territory was later forbidden by General Castro. Times were tense: the United States was about to go to war with Mexico over Texas. Presuming American victory, President Polk was already planning to acquire California in the process. Although he was not under orders to further this goal, Captain Fremont later claimed, during his 1847 court-martial, that he had a mandate, a sort of “unspoken support” from California’s growing population of American settlers. At any rate, as history books later recorded, it was only a matter of time before the American flag was raised over California.
Fremont was on his third expedition to California in March 1846, when he and his men precipitously captured and held looming Gabilan Peak, the massive mountain overlooking San Juan Bautista. Even though they held the area for only a few days, and despite the fact that the action remained an isolated incident, sentiments in the still-Mexican region were turning. To further complicate the times, some inhabitants wanted an independent republic, not necessarily an American state.
Monterey was still the capital of Alta California in January 1846, when Fremont passed through and stopped to pay a call on U.S. Consul Thomas O. Larkin. The Yankee merchant had been appointed a confidential agent by U.S. Secretary of State, James Buchanan. For some time, Larkin had been exchanging secret communiques with Washington, DC. While he was hoping for a peaceful way to gain California, United States government officials feared the implications of Fremont’s sudden presence.
As a diplomatic and precautionary measure, Larkin introduced Fremont to two prominent officials, the military commandant, Don Jose Castro, and ex-governor Alvarado. Since Fremont was already well known as an explorer, he was able to hide his reasons for entering California. He informed Castro that he was only in the region for geographical, scientific and commercial purposes. He stated that his men, about 60 in number, were not soldiers at all, just ordinary citizens. In truth, he claimed, they were hired to act as guides and hunters. This belied the fact that each man in Fremont’s force was armed with three to six rifles and pistols apiece.
The stage was set, but first a foil was laid. From Monterey, the Fremont party continued north to the Santa Clara Valley. In late February, they headed into the Santa Cruz Mountains, camping in the area now preserved as Henry Cowell Redwoods. On March 1, they turned inland toward the Salinas Valley, and camped near Natividad, at William Hartnell’s Alisal Rancho.
On March 5, 1846, a cavalry officer arrived at the rancho to deliver a set of orders to Fremont. The directive, signed by Castro, ordered the Americans to leave at once or face being thrown out.
The Americans reacted by doing just the opposite. They headed though Don Joaquin Gomez’s rancho, located at the base of the Gabilan mountains, and marched up a wood-road to Gabilan, or Hawk’s Peak. There, the men commanded an expansive view of the nearby Santa Clara and Salinas valleys, encompassing vistas over the vast Central Valley to the snowy tips of the Sierra.
Quickly, the men chopped logs, put up a small fort and erected a makeshift pole to raise the first American flag to fly in California. It wasn’t the Stars and Stripes. They used what they had: an Army Corps of Engineers flag, which depicted not crossed swords, but peace pipes.
Down below, in little San Juan Bautista, Commandant Castro called his men, and the general populace, to arms. As Fremont waited on his mountain perch, Castro’s men bustled and marched about, hoping the men on the mountaintop were noticing.
Anyone who visits the famous peak today will see it isn’t possible to command a view of the town without heading partway back down the slopes. Thus the Americans, the following day, marched down the road to a vantage point. Along the way they saw some Mexican soldiers coming up the hill, but they soon turned and departed.
In Monterey, Castro and Thomas Larkin were in a stew. Waiting atop the mountain for someone to make a move, Fremont realized no Americans were coming to his defense. He was outnumbered by the Mexican forces. Still, he held out. Castro sent him a further written request to depart. Fearing a public outbreak, Thomas Larkin also sent word from Monterey for them to leave.
The stalemate lasted three days when, in a seeming act of providence, a gust of wind blew down the little encampment’s flagpole. Either deciding the Mexicans weren’t coming after all, or perhaps having second thoughts, Fremont ordered his men to strike camp.
Later, to save face, both Fremont and Castro would present their own view of the affair. Even without a real confrontation, Castro proclaimed that his men had won the day. He said the Americans had been lacking in valor. Worse yet, in the gracious culture of the era, he accused them of being poor guests in a foreign land.
As for the Fremont party, on the night of March 9-10, 1846, the men withdrew from Gabilan Peak, at first camping only three miles away. Then they slowly left the area, gradually heading over Pacheco Pass toward Sutter’s Fort. From Monterey, a disgusted Walter Colton, the city’s Yankee alcalde, noted that, “It is a prime feature in their policy to keep in advance of the law and order and to migrate as often as these trench on their irresponsible privileges.”
For all his premature blundering atop Gabilan Peak, John C. Fremont in the end came out a winner. Four years later, in 1850, when California became a state, he was elected U.S. senator. Six years after that, he was nominated as the new Republican party’s first presidential candidate.
Today, we remember Fremont not only for his valuable charting of the vast new American West. Here at home, we have perpetuated the memory of his March 1846 incident atop Gabilan Peak by renaming it, and creating a state park around it, today known as Fremont Peak.
