The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Frémont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation

“John Bicknell . . . frames this story around the competing approaches to emancipation of President Abraham Lincoln and Union General John C. Fremont in a splendidly written new book . . .”

The evolving role of the emancipation of the slaves in the Union politics of the American Civil War is a subject endlessly debated by historians. John Bicknell, a former reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call and the author of previous works of history about the Civil War era, frames this story around the competing approaches to emancipation of President Abraham Lincoln and Union General John C. Fremont in a splendidly written new book The Pathfinder and the President.

Fremont was the Republican Party’s first candidate for president in 1856. He gained national fame for his explorations of the Oregon territory and California for the Army Topographical Engineers in the 1830s and 1840s. Bicknell notes that Fremont’s official report of these explorations was transformed by Fremont’s wife Jessie “into a romantic adventure story [that] became a best seller . . . [and] made Fremont into a national celebrity.”

Jessie Fremont’s father was Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who was a friend and political ally of Frank Blair, who became a political ally of Abraham Lincoln. “The Blair family,” Bicknell writes, “sat at the nexus connecting Lincoln and Fremont.” When Lincoln became president, Fremont, who had served in the Mexican American War but was not a West Pointer, became a “political” general and was assigned to the Western theater of the war.

Fremont lost the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in Missouri through a combination of ineptitude and lack of resources, Bicknell writes, but what created even more tension between Lincoln and Fremont than the military defeat was Fremont’s subsequent order that the property of rebellious citizens of Missouri was subject to confiscation, including their slaves who henceforth “are hereby declared freeman.” Bicknell notes that Fremont “justified emancipation as a military necessity,” but Lincoln was having none of this and countermanded Fremont’s order.

Lincoln in his first inaugural address had attempted to calm the fears of Southerners that he would emancipate their slaves. When that failed to alleviate those fears and state after state voted for secession, Lincoln sought to prevent border states like Kentucky and Maryland, from seceding. Emancipation was not popular in those states, though Bicknell suggests that Lincoln’s concerns about the effect of declaring slaves emancipated was “overblown.” But Lincoln’s generals were losing on the battlefields, and the last thing the Union needed was more states to join the Confederacy.

Lincoln took political heat for failing to support Fremont from abolitionists and so-called “radical Republicans” who wanted slavery to be the central purpose of the war. Lincoln, as he said many times, wanted to preserve the Union and was willing to tolerate slavery (though not its expansion) to save the Union. And the Blairs supported Lincoln, not Fremont, and by doing so incurred the wrath of Jessie Fremont.

Bicknell notes, however, that Fremont was on to something—slavery was the real focus of the war. “Fremont understood something Lincoln either didn’t understand or didn’t want to admit,” he writes, “. . . half measures would have no effect on slaveholders committed to preserving slavery at all costs.” But Bicknell also notes that Lincoln appreciated more than Fremont the reality that freedom for the slaves would not be granted by declarations, but “would be decided on the field of battle.”

Yet Lincoln was ever so slowly moving toward Fremont’s approach, but he wanted a military victory to precede a proclamation of emancipation. He got that—to some extent—at the Battle of Antietam, which set Lincoln on a course to issue the Emancipation Proclamation under his power as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In other words, like Fremont previously declared, confiscation of property, including granting slaves their freedom, was a military necessity.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, however, did not heal the rift between Lincoln and Fremont, who explored the possibility of running against Lincoln in 1864. Nothing came of it, and events on the field of battle ensured Lincoln’s reelection. Lincoln had finally found generals like Ulysses S. Grant who could win battles. And in the end, the Union military victory set the stage for the 13th Amendment and freedom for the slaves.

Bicknell notes that while Fremont’s premature emancipation declaration might have aided the Union war effort sooner, Lincoln’s more cautious approach worked. Both men envisioned freedom for the slaves. Bicknell sums it up best: “Abraham Lincoln eventually turned Fremont’s small light into the bonfire of emancipation.”