JOHN CHARLES FREMONT
(1813-1890)

Born in Savannah, Georgia, Fremont joined the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1838 following an education at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He led several expeditions exploring the West. During 1846, on his third expedition, with tensions mounting between the United States and Mexico, the young lieutenant became one of the chief actors in California's conquest by U. S. forces. Fremont repeatedly asserted that cartography alone had been his goal, denying that he had gone to the Mexican province under the pretext of heading up a scientific expedition to instead claim California. Some historians, however, maintain Fremont carried secret instructions, either from his father-in-law, powerful U. S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, or from President James K. Polk himself, anticipating the outbreak of war with Mexico.

Fremont was soon in the midst of political turmoil. Ostensibly a mere visitor to California in January, 1846, six months before the arrival of U. S. naval forces, Fremont took his guide, Kit Carson, and a small group across the bay at San Francisco where they spiked the Mexican shore artillery at Fort Point, below the old Spanish presidio. Meanwhile, members of Fremont's party killed several Californios in retaliation for the murder of several of Fremont's men. In March, 1846, he defied Mexican officials outside Monterey, then the capital of the province, by building a log fort. When faced with opposition, Fremont led his party northward as if to continue his topographic expedition. Near Sonoma, he met a band of disgruntled American settlers who were alarmed at rumors of an impending attack on them by the Mexicans. These frontiersmen were part of a population of immigrants mostly from the United States who would become known as the Bear Flaggers. On June 10 the Bear Flaggers captured a band of horses being driven by Californios to the Santa Clara Valley and took them to Fremont's headquarters. They next raided Sonora, then the largest settlement in northern California, and incarcerated its commandant, Gen. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. A day later they hoisted an improvised Bear Flag, creating what was later called the "Bear Flag Republic".

Fremont gave these Bear Flaggers mixed signals of support. In July Fremont organized his topographical engineers into a military unit later called the California Battalion. Prepared to do battle with Mexican forces, he guarded his scarce supplies behind the fort's ten-foot walls and began signing papers as "Military Commander of U. S. Forces in California". On July 7, 1846, Commodore John Drake Sloat, commander of the American Navy's Pacific Squadron, ordered the Stars and Stripes to be raised at Monterey. On July 9 Sloat hoisted the flag at Yerba Buena (San Francisco) and soon the U. S. flag replaced the Bear Flag and Mexican flag throughout the province.

During this time, there was much confusion over command of American forces in California. Commodore Sloat, of the Navy, was in charge of the Pacific Squadron and took his orders from the Secretary of State James Buchanan as did Counsul Thomas Larkin at Monterey. President James K. Polk, however, encouraged only subtle defiance of Mexico by U. S. residents in California. If it was not possible to purchase Alta California, he and Buchanan hoped for a quiet revolt by native Californios. After the U. S. Navy arrived, Fremont was no longer in command and he reported to Commodore Sloat, the senior American military commander in California. When Sloat returned to Washington, D. C. his successor, Robert F. Stockton, cajoled Fremont into reforming his unit as the "Regiment of Mounted Volunteer Riflemen", later shortened to California Battalion. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Fremont had been promoted by the Army to Captain. But the Pathfinder, as Fremont had become known, had already been been promoted from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Colonel by Commodore Stockton.

On 17 July 1846 Fremont moved south and captured the mission-pueblo of San Juan Bautista. Two days later, after subduing San Jose, his battalion re-entered Monterey. On 26 July 1846 Commo. Stockton sent Fremont south to San Diego on the sloop Cyane, hoping to cut off the Mexican retreat. By mid-day on the 29th, Fremont and Stockton raised the U. S. flag at San Diego without firing a shot. Their force entered Los Angeles on 13 August, hoisted the flag, and received pledges of allegiance from its citizens. Confident that the war in California was over, Stockton then sailed on to Santa Barbara and then to Monterey, while Fremont marched his men north toward the Sacramento Valley. However, a revolt in Los Angeles forced Fremont to return. After the Californios surrendered Los Angeles and signed the Capitulation of Cahuenga, Commodore Stockton, like Sloat before him, returned to Washington, D. C. Fremont then began calling himself the military governor of California. Meanwhile, Gen. Stephen W. Kearny arrived to assume command of military operations in the new U. S. territory, deeply resenting Fremont's assumption of command. Kearny established headquarters at Monterey and asked Fremont to report there for duty. When Fremont refused to obey Kearny's orders, the general had him arrested and pressed charges of insubordination and mutiny. Following a court-martial in Washington, D. C. that found him guilty of mutiny, Fremont resigned his Army commission. President Polk later commuted Fremont's conviction.

Fremont became a mining and railroad investor before being appointed in 1849 as one of California's first two U. S. senators. In 1856, the newly formed Republican Party chose him as its first candidate for the office of President of the United States. He was later a controversial major-general during America's Civil War and governor of Arizona. He died in New York City in 1890.

STEPHEN WATTS KEARNY
(1794-1848)

Kearny was an American general who commanded the Army of the West during the Mexican War. Commissioned in 1812, he served on the first and second Yellowstone Expeditions, built Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis, MO) and reestablished Fort Townsend. He became second-in-command of the 1st Dragoons regiment formed in 1833 and its commander in 1836. Kearny traveled the Santa Fe Trail in 1846 to take possession of New Mexico. American President James K. Polk promoted Kearny to Brigadier General and ordered him to California after securing New Mexico. He entered Santa Fe unopposed proclaiming that the United States would protect the local citizens' property and religion. He established a law code for New Mexico and appointed Charles Bent as the first U. S. civilian governor of the territory.