John C Fremont, American soldier, explorer and presidential candidate, c1870 (1955). Fremont (1813-1890) undertook several surveying expeditions to the West in the 1830s and 1840s. Entering politics, he was the Republican Party's first presidential candidate and the first candidate from a major party to run on an anti-slavery platform, but lost the 1856 election to James Buchanan. Fremont was a Major-General in the Union Army in the American Civil War, but was dismissed by President Lincoln after he refused to reverse his declaration of martial law in Missouri, which Lincoln feared would drive the state over to the Confederate side. He later commanded an army in West Virginia but resigned after several defeats at the hand of Confederate General 'Stonewall' Jackson. A print from Mathew Brady Historian with a Camera by James D Horan, Bonanza Books, New York, 1955.
