They got as far as what is now Wyoming when who should appear but old Jim Bridger, the famous mountain man, with his trading post by the Hastings Cutoff, ready to share the gospel news. Bridger pointed them toward the Great Salt Lake valley: good soil, timber, water, just a few Digger Indians. (You could “drive the whole of them off in twenty-four hours,” he said, or better yet “make slaves of them.”)
The pioneer company went off toward the valley for a look-see and had not gone far when they met a Mormon named Brannan, on his way back east from San Francisco, who had early news of the tragedy of the Donner party, starving and turned cannibal in the mountains. Word had it that the unfortunates were from Missouri, which was not so. Still it soon got around among the Mormons that these were the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, a fable that went on “growing until it became a permanent part of Mormon mythology,” says De Voto. Among Mormons it became a parable about what happens to the wicked who persecute God’s chosen people.
On July 21, atop Little Mountain, the pioneer party “looked out on the full extent of the valley where the broad waters of the Great Salt Lake glistened in the sunbeams.” Dumbstruck, they knew they’d arrived at their Zion, which they named Deseret, a Mormon neologism meaning “land of the honeybee”—symbol of economy, obedience, and industriousness. “About two hours after our arrival,” remembered Orson Pratt, one of the founders, “we began to plow the ground.”
This new Canaan that the Saints claimed remained neither Deseret nor Mormon territory for long; within three years it became a part of the United States, which named it Utah Territory instead, after the Ute Indian tribe. But for the next two decades, until the building of the transcontinental railroad, some 70,000 Mormons would make their way there through the wilderness, many pushing handcarts with their meager belongings, over what is now known as the Mormon Trail.
James K. Polk had been furious since August 1846 when David Wilmot, a fellow Democrat, injected his infamous proviso into the president’s Mexican War appropriations bill, which would have banned slavery in any territory the United States acquired from the war. The bill had died for lack of time, but Polk was furious again now, six months later, as New York representative Preston King, another Democrat, had the gall to reintroduce the incendiary measure. The source of the president’s fury was not merely what he considered treacherous behavior by fellow Democrats, although that was certainly a great part of it. Polk was a thoroughly political creature; he always thought politically, and understood everything politically, including his ham and eggs for breakfast, so that all matters great or small took on a political hue, ranging from the golden celestial aspirations that radiated from his Democratic Party to the noxious fulminations of the despised, bottom-dwelling Whigs, whom he continued to refer to as “Federalists.”
Ever since the days of Jackson and the Nullification Crisis, slavery had been the hot potato for U.S. presidents because the notion of disunion that it raised was almost too monstrous to contemplate. Like the ten commanders in chief that had preceded him, Polk considered slavery “settled law,” unshakably ingrained in the Constitution. But in the 1820s the abolitionist movement began to strengthen so that, by Polk’s time, it was blowing a gale, if not yet a hurricane. By the 1840s the movement had gone beyond campaigning against the South’s peculiar institution as a mere social evil, which heretofore had been the bedrock of their opposition; by now they had concluded that slavery was a moral wrong and began to agitate on that basis. The effect was beginning to unsettle the foundation of the country.
In this debate Polk found himself dancing on the edge of a very sharp knife, inasmuch as he did not intend to preside over the dissolution of the United States of America, which was becoming a real possibility. Polk’s opposition to Wilmot’s proviso, and King’s proviso, was not a practical one. In fact he was convinced that slavery would never be feasible—economically or otherwise—in the territories he intended to acquire. What he objected to, and justifiably so, was “the agitation of a question that might sever and endanger the Union itself.” And what was even worse, in Polk’s myopic view, was the politicization of that selfsame question, on the one hand, by his old enemy the South Carolina Democrat and celebrated nullifier in chief John C. Calhoun, who promptly got up a “paper” opposing the very notion of the Wilmot Proviso and was going around buttonholing prominent southerners to sign it, including members of Polk’s cabinet. Polk interpreted this as a blatant attempt by Calhoun to “seize on this agitation of the slavery question” in order to further “his aspirations for the Presidency,” a motive that was “not only unpatriotic and mischievous, but wicked.”
On the other hand Polk perceived that the aim of Wilmot and King was to promote the presidential aspirations of the New York governor Silas Wright, who was assembling a constituency centered on “opposition to slavery.”‖ In both of these activities the president saw a positive danger to the compact adopted in 1787. “The slavery question is assuming a fearful and most important aspect,” Polk told his diary on January 4, the day King introduced his proviso. “[It] will be attended with terrible consequences to the country, and cannot fail to destroy the Democratic Party, if it does not ultimately threaten the Union itself.
“The truth is there is no patriotism in either faction of the party,” Polk went on. “Both hope to mount slavery as a hobby, and hope to secure the election of their favorite upon it. They will both fail, and ought to fail. The people of the United States, I hope, will cast off all such intriguers, and make their own selection of the Presidency.”
Nothing came of the Wilmot Proviso at the time—it was quickly killed in the Senate—but it planted a savage seed in the minds of southerners, which germinated into an immutable conviction that their northern brethren planned to use the Congress of the United States to destroy their economy and way of life—an especially critical plank in the bridge to war.
Meantime, Polk had an immediate war to fight and the proviso business made him peevish. “I had recommended [to Congress] a vigorous prosecution of the war,” he told his diary. “Instead of acting upon the great measures of the country, they are spending day after day, week after week, in a worse than useless discussion about slavery.” On Thursday, January 28, he wrote, “It is two years ago this day since I left my residence at Columbia, Tennessee, to enter on my duties as President of the United States. Since that time I have performed great labor and incurred vast responsibilities. In truth, I occupy a very high position, I am the hardest working man in the country.” So there.
The trouble was that politics was fogging Polk’s vision about the course of the war, or at least about the commanders he had sent to fight it. Both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott were Whigs—or in Taylor’s case, “probably” a Whig. Furthermore, they were both winning battles, which made them presidential material, and Polk foresaw—or thought he did—that politics was causing them to whipsaw each other. Taylor, for instance, had written letters that found their way to the newspapers, indicating he thought the best policy would be simply to occupy Mexico’s northern provinces until the Mexicans cried uncle. It would be less expensive in terms of both lives and treasure. Scott, on the other hand, was planning to bowl hell-for-leather down Mexico’s main east-west highway with a 20,000-man army and force the war to an early conclusion. This last was something Polk yearned for, because he knew a long and protracted war would sink him, but it galled him that it might at the same time propel a Whig such as Zachary Taylor or Winfield Scott into the presidency of the United States. By the end of February he had this to say about it: “I have good reason to believe that General Taylor’s camp has been converted into a political arena, and that great injustice has been done to officers who happened to be Democrats. General Scott, since he assumed command, has commenced the same tyrannical course.”
Clearly the president needed to catch his breath, an opportunity for which presented itself in the midst of a complicated discussion with his cabinet regarding an emissary he was intend
ing to send to the Mexicans in case they wanted to settle for peace after all the American victories. Let Polk tell the story.
“Tuesday, 13th April, 1847. About two o’clock p.m. it was announced to me that General Tom Thumb, a dwarf, who is being exhibited in this city and who has become quite celebrated by having been exhibited in all the principal courts of Europe, was in the parlor below stairs, and desired to see me.
“I invited the cabinet to take a short recess and to walk down with me, and they did so. We found a number of ladies and gentlemen in the parlor. Tom Thumb is a most remarkable person. After spending twenty or thirty minutes in the parlor I returned with the cabinet to my office.”a
Happenings such as this were not all that uncommon in the White House of those times.
The first news that Polk received about the successful conquest of California came in late April and brought with it a whiff of trouble. “An unfortunate collision has occurred in California,” said the president, “between General Kearny and Commodore Stockton, in regard to precedence in rank. I think General Kearny was right. It appears that Lt. Col. Fremont refused to obey General Kearny, and obeyed Commodore Stockton, and in this he was wrong.”
It was too true and even then Polk must have smelled the trouble that was brewing because he brought it up before his cabinet with a mind toward “having the matter … passed over as lightly as possible.”
But it was not possible. Because of the personalities involved they were playing with political fire. Frémont, as we know, was no ordinary army officer; he remained one of the nation’s most popular heroes. And whatever the trouble might be, he was sure to be backed up by his father-in-law and most ardent supporter the redoubtable Thomas Hart Benton, the so-called Lion of the U.S. Senate. Here is how it started.
On January 13, 1847, two days after Kearny’s and Stockton’s forces retook Los Angeles, Frémont was about twenty miles north of the city with the five hundred men of his California Battalion. He had been on the march for six weeks and was preparing to catch the Mexican rebels in a pincers movement. On that day, however, Californio emissaries rode into Frémont’s camp to ask his terms of surrender.
When Los Angeles fell it became clear to Pico and Flores that further resistance was futile, and they felt that surrendering to Frémont would give them a better deal than surrendering to Stockton, who had refused to treat with Flores and instead offered “to have him shot” for violating his parole. Unaware of this, Frémont, who had Stockton’s promise to appoint him governor of California—but no authority as yet—nevertheless drew up articles of capitulation that, among other things, forgave the Mexicans for all parole violations. The terms were generous and sensible. The rebels would lay down their arms and swear to abide by the laws of the United States but were not required to swear allegiance to it, until hostilities ended and a treaty was signed. In return they would be given protection under all U.S. laws. That, in effect, ended resistance to American rule in California. Flores, as we know, absconded to Sonora, never to return, and Pico retired to his country property. Frémont and his battalion ambled into Los Angeles.
At this point Kearny, acting on orders from President Polk and Secretary of War Marcy, tried to assert his authority over Frémont and his people in order to consolidate the conquest of the province. But for some inexplicable reason Stockton immediately appointed Frémont governor of California, and Frémont in turn rebuffed Kearny’s efforts to take charge of the province. This was despite the fact that the general carried on his person, and produced for both men, the explicit orders from the president and secretary of war appointing him governor as soon as power had been consolidated in the region, which it had. Except not by Kearny, Stockton contended. It was he, he said, who had conquered California, and he who would select its governor. Frémont foolishly assented to this blatant act of insubordination, which was soon to inspire a national uproar.
Kearny found himself in a highly peculiar situation. He was in fact a general, who outranked Stockton no matter the separation of services, but between Stockton’s navy sailors and Frémont’s five hundred frontiersmen he was utterly outgunned, with only his depleted dragoons to enforce his orders.
So he bided his time, wrote an account of how matters stood, and then sent it to Washington aboard a U.S. Navy ship in the care of Captain Emory, who saw it to the War Department. But that would take months, as Kearny knew, and months more to receive a reply. Meantime, Stockton sailed away, leaving Frémont to contend with things.
Kearny sent Frémont a letter calling on him to produce the authority under which he was assuming the position of governor, but the Pathfinder’s reply was arrogant, flippant, and vague, noting that during the advance on Los Angeles Kearny had maintained “deference” to Stockton and thus had acknowledged the commodore’s superior rank. Frémont compounded the insult by delivering the letter in person to Kearny in his tent.
The general had been in the army a long time, and he was known as a stern taskmaster. But either out of desire to give his subordinate a chance to redeem himself or out of respect for Frémont’s father-in-law, Benton, whom Kearny counted as a friend—or both—Kearny offered Frémont a way out. He counseled the Pathfinder to take the letter back and destroy it and he would forget the whole matter.
Frémont refused the advice, saying that Stockton would back him up.
“I told him,” Kearny later testified, “that Commodore Stockton could not support him in disobeying the orders of his senior officer, and that if he persisted in it, he would unquestionably ruin himself.”
Instead, Frémont began to argue, continuing to insist that Stockton had the authority in California. Then he left. Next morning Kearny marshaled his remaining dragoons and headed south for San Diego while Frémont sat in Los Angeles, issuing edicts, invoices, bills, and letters, all under the signature of “J. C. Fremont, Governor of California.”
In one particularly self-aggrandizing epistle to Benton he claimed that Stockton had named him governor and that Kearny had offered him the same position “in four or six weeks.” He said, “I was proclaimed governor and immediately proclaimed peace and order restored to the country.” He told of children singing his praises in street songs. “Throughout the Californian population,” Frémont wrote, “there is only one feeling of satisfaction and gratitude to myself.”
Meanwhile, down in San Diego Kearny stewed for a month until, on February 13, he received a courier packet from Washington containing copies of dispatches to Stockton from not only the secretary of the navy but the chief of the army himself, Winfield Scott. These documents made it perfectly clear that Kearny was to be in charge of all civil and military activities in California, including governor.
Frémont became aware of these same documents but apparently came to believe that since they were dated November 5, 1846, there surely would be further orders from Washington upholding his governorship. It was an unfortunate gamble.
On March 1 Kearny, who by then had moved his headquarters to Monterey, had an order delivered to Frémont, telling him to come to Monterey personally and bring with him any and all archives and records of the California Battalion. He signed the letter, “S. W. Kearny Brig. Gen. & Governor of California.”
But Frémont ignored the orders and continued doing business in Los Angeles as governor, surrounded by his fierce and faithful California Battalion and generally behaving in a Kurtzian fashion.
Kearny soon followed up by publishing a “circular” in which he advertised himself as the governor of California under official orders from Washington. In response, Frémont issued a circular of his own, denying it.
Kearny then ordered Frémont to muster into the regular service the members of the California Battalion so that they could receive government pay, after which they would be put under the command of Colonel Cooke and then be disbanded.
Frémont refused. The situation was becoming not only ridiculous but confusing and even dangerous, with two persons claiming to be governor, each with his
own little army. But Kearny was gaining the upper hand; among other things, he now had under his command not only Cooke’s five hundred Mormons but another infantry regiment of volunteers from New York, which had recently begun arriving by ship. Those First Dragoon officers who kept diaries or notebooks all wrote, some furiously, that they thought Kearny should have long since clapped Frémont in irons.
Finally, on March 28, in response to another Kearny order, Frémont made a hard 125-mile-a-day ride to Kearny’s headquarters in Monterey, where things immediately went off to a bad start. Upon entering the general’s room Frémont objected to the presence of Colonel Richard B. Mason, of the First Dragoons, who had brought the confirming orders out from Washington by ship. Frémont intimated that Mason might be some kind of spy for Kearny, which infuriated the general, who replied that he could not believe Frémont would “come into my quarters and intentionally insult me.” He explained that Mason was to be his replacement as head of the civil government in California as soon as Kearny felt it proper to go back east, that it was perfectly proper for Mason to be there.
Kearny demanded to know if Frémont was going to obey his orders and disband the California Battalion. In response, Frémont offered to resign his commission but Kearny would not hear of it. Kearny asked again if Frémont was ready to start taking orders, but the explorer could not get his answer together. Kearny suggested that he take some time to think it over, emphasizing that it was going to be an important decision in Frémont’s life. Frémont departed but was back within the hour. Yes, he said, he was ready to disavow the governorship and obey Kearny’s orders.