Frémont, on February 7, wrote to Shubrick to explain the difficulty of his position. “The conquest of California was undertaken and completed by the joint effort of Commodore Stockton and myself,” he said, “in obedience to what we regarded paramount duties from us to our government.” Once the surrender of the province had been accomplished, a civil government was organized, “designed to maintain the conquest by the exercise of mild and wholesome civil restraints over the people, rather than by the iron rule of military force.” The results of his and Stockton’s labors “were precisely what was contemplated by the instructions of General Kearny,” and the record of the Stockton-Frémont conquest had been communicated to the President by express but no response had yet been received. “General Kearny’s instructions being, therefore, to the letter fully anticipated by others, I did not feel myself at liberty to yield a position so important to the interests of my country until, after a full understanding of all the grounds, it should be the pleasure of my government that I should do so.”
This sensible explanation, which might have illuminated the controversy for Shubrick, seems to have made no impression on the commodore but would resurface a year later in a courtroom in Washington.
* * *
The next arrival in California proved the most significant of all in Kearny’s—and Frémont’s—future.
The warship Erie came through the Golden Gate on February 12 and Kearny traveled north to confer with its highest-ranking army passenger, Colonel Richard Barnes Mason of the First Dragoons, lately Kearny’s second and successor as colonel of the regiment. He was pale and sick from the rough sea voyage from Panama when he stepped ashore at Yerba Buena.
The scion of distinguished Fairfax, Virginia, forebears, Mason had spent thirty of his fifty years in the army and had compiled an excellent record of service. In 1824, he had commanded a keelboat on a Kearny-led expedition to the mouth of the Yellowstone River; in 1832, he took part in the Battle of Bad Axe, which terminated the Black Hawk War, and a year later, at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, he was promoted major of the newly created First Dragoons.
He was a primary Kearny crony and a Kearny-like, no-nonsense professional soldier with a reputation as a duelist.
At Yerba Buena, Mason handed over to his chief orders from General of the Army Winfield Scott dated November 3, 1846, giving Kearny command of all land operations in California and the office as governor of California until such time as a civil government could be appointed. Scott also ordered Kearny to muster Frémont’s California Battalion into the army and instructed that when the general could be confident of the safety and tranquillity of the country, he was to turn over all duties to Colonel Mason and return with a troop escort to St. Louis.
By the time Kearny and Mason returned to Monterey on February 23, the question of authority in California seemed to be settled. In his diary, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke gave a biting view of the matter: “Gen. Kearny is supreme—somewhere up the coast; Col. Frémont supreme at Pueblo de los Angles; Com. Stockton is ‘commander-in-chief’ at San Diego; Com. Shubrick, the same at Monterey; and I, at San Luís Rey; and we are all supremely poor, the government having no money and no credit, and we hold the territory because Mexico is poorest of all.”
And in Washington, President Polk took note in his diary of the “unfortunate collision” in California between General Kearny and Commodore Stockton “in regard to precedence in rank” and said, “I think General Kearny was right. It appears that Lieut. Colonel Frémont refused to obey General Kearny and obeyed Commodore Stockton and in this he was wrong.…”
4
In Los Angeles, unaware of the fateful comings and goings at Monterey and Yerba Buena that February, Frémont was trying to run a government with no money. With Stockton at sea off Baja California, he was reduced to writing desperate letters to Kearny and Shubrick begging for financial aid to keep the primitive military administration running. He needed money to pay the volunteers, to purchase equipment, supplies, horses, saddles, arms, and livestock, and to pay for the appropriated goods and resultant bills incurred during the conquest of California. He proposed that six hundred thousand dollars would settle the accounts—a sum that benumbed Shubrick, who refused to authorize any funds and notified Frémont in a curious non sequitur that until he, Commodore Shubrick, heard from Commodore Stockton, Kearny was the senior commanding army officer in California.
Frémont borrowed money over his personal signature, including one personal debt of five thousand dollars to purchase Bird Island (later named Alcatraz) to prevent its sale by its owner to a foreign power that could have used it to control the entrance to San Francisco Bay. On February 25, he sent Kit Carson, Lieutenant Edward Beale, Ted Talbot, Stepp the gunsmith, and others as a delegation to Washington with urgent dispatchs to Senator Benton and President Polk on the desperately impecunious and debt-burdened state of affairs in California.
By the time the California party departed overland, Kearny had returned to Monterey, where he and Shubrick began issuing a series of orders and proclamations defining the roles of the two services, placing the army in control ashore and limiting naval duties to customs and port regulations. Other public declarations assured Californians that their religious rights would be held sacrosanct, that they would be protected from enemies, foreign and domestic, that present laws would continue in force, that local magistrates and similar officials would retain their posts after taking oaths of allegiance to the United States, and that any losses realized in the American annexation would be reimbursed.
These preludes to Kearny’s ascendancy ended on March 1 with a notice to the people of California that Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny had assumed the governorship and had selected Monterey as the seat of his government.
Frémont’s fifty days as governor ended with this announcement and with orders from Kearny dated March 1. Lieutenant Colonel Cooke would relieve Archibald Gillespie as military commander in Los Angeles, and Frémont would report to military headquarters in Monterey and bring with him all the California Battalion records and property, this preparatory to mustering out the volunteers and reenlisting those who wished to serve in the regular army. The orders were signed “S. W. Kearny, Brig. Gen., and Governor of California.”
21
Return
1
No Kearny man had any use for John Charles Frémont. Among the dragoon officers, he was regarded as an arrogant parvenu, jumped up by his political connections, an amateur “soldier” who should have been clapped in irons for his mutinous defiance of the general’s orders. Now, with the Kearny star risen at last, it was time for the new governor to take the usurper to task.
The first of the several agents to essay this work was Philip St. George Cooke, the smart, capable, former commander of the Mormon Battalion. In mid-March, he took over as military chief of the “Southern District”—principally Los Angeles—sent his predecessor, Archibald Gillespie, packing, and called upon Frémont.
There is no detailed record of their meeting, only its aftermath, but it was an unpleasant one for both men. Frémont told Cooke that once mustered out, the men of the California Battalion would not enlist in the army, and because of alarming rumors of a possible rising against American authority, he could not turn over any military property—not even the howitzer that had been captured by the Californians at San Pascual. Men, arms, and materiél, he said, might be needed to defend Los Angeles.
Frémont also made known his intention to journey to Monterey to report on the unrest and other critical matters directly to General Kearny.
Cooke’s immediate reaction to these announcements is unknown, but his wrath spilled over in his later report on the confrontation: “I denounce this treason, or this mutiny, which jeopardizes the safety of the country and defies me in my legal command and duties.…”
A hundred years after the Cooke-Frémont encounter, Bernard DeVoto wrote that the rumor of a native revolt in Los Angeles was the product of a Frémont
“whoop up,” mere bluster and oration, one ploy among many in the explorer’s continuing “acts of treason” designed, the historian said, for the purpose of making a record for use later, when “he could play his ace, the support of his father-in-law.” But there is no evidence of such a sinister and cynical design. The rumors were real: reports claiming that Californians were massing and arming in Baja California, their strength increased by the arrival of Mexican army regulars, and were intent on retaking their lost territory. Other reports reached Frémont stating that he would be “deposed by violence” because of the nonpayment of debts that Americans had incurred during their presence in California and because of proclamations issued in Stockton’s absence that were, as Frémont put it, “incompatible with the capitulation of Cowenga.”
This “commotion,” as he called it, genuinely alarmed him. Gillespie’s lamentable experience in Los Angeles proved what an ardent and armed mob of nationalists and a handful of trained officers could do against a small military garrison. The California Battalion was tenfold larger than Gillespie’s pitiful force, but Frémont had no information on the extent of the army rumored to be massing against him. For all he knew, José Castro, José María Flores, Andrés Pico, and all the other Mexican commanders who had decamped to Sonora were putting together a huge army in Baja California and preparing to march on San Diego and points north.
He determined to ride to Monterey and report to Kearny in person, and on March 22, 1847, he set out with Jacob Dodson, his black manservant and an expert wrangler who minded six extra unsalted horses, and José de Jesús Pico, who had been instrumental in the surrender at Cahuenga Pass. Pico’s role in the ride north is unclear but Frémont may have intended that he would confirm the reports and rumors of a brewing counterrevolt.
Principally due to Senator Benton’s extolling of it in Congress, the 420-mile ride from Los Angeles to Monterey was later described as “epic.” One of Frémont’s most protective biographers called it “theatrical” and “unnecessary.” At the least, the ride was remarkable: after brief rests at Santa Barbara and San Luís Obispo and a near-miss bear attack in their night camp, the three men reached the outskirts of Monterey at dusk on March 25, covering the 420 miles in three days and ten hours.
Frémont left Dodson and Pico to set up camp about a mile outside the town and rode his lathered horse to Kearny’s headquarters at Thomas Larkin’s home. The consul escorted him to the general’s office, but the explorer’s epic ride clearly did not impress the busy new proconsul, who announced that he would meet with Frémont the next morning.
That night, Lieutenant William T. Sherman, now a Kearny aide, paid the explorer a “courtesy call.” He wrote later that, “feeling a natural curiosity to see Frémont … I rode out to his camp and found him in a conical tent with one Capt. [Dick] Owens … I spent an hour or so with F. in his tent, took some tea with him, and left without being impressed with him.” It seems likely that Sherman, at this time as much a Kearny toady as Cooke or Mason, paid the visit to test the explorer’s temperament and to obtain as much information as he could to report to the general in preparation for the next day’s interview.
From the outset, the March 26 meeting was ruinous for Frémont. He was angry. He had worn out three horses getting to Monterey to deliver crucial information, only to be told he must wait the night to see the general. He had been rudely informed that he was relieved as governor and as commander of the California Battalion. His confrontation with Lieutenant Colonel Cooke still rankled. He had been rubbed raw between two senior officers in a command dispute that any ensign and second lieutenant could have settled amicably. He needed to present his case to Kearny in a frank, open dialogue. But when he was ushered into the general’s office, he found that the meeting would not be private. Soon after their disastrous January 17 confrontation in Los Angeles, Kearny had determined that once they returned to Fort Leavenworth, he would place Frémont under arrest on charges of mutiny and disobedience of lawful orders and request that a court-martial be convened. Five months would pass before the explorer learned of this plan and realized why, on the morning of March 26, he was not meeting with Kearny alone.
Seated with the general in his headquarters office was Colonel Richard B. Mason. Frémont did not know the man or his mission but objected to his presence and suggested to the general that it was perhaps to witness some “unguarded remark.” Kearny regarded this as an insult and the meeting, which dragged on over two days, corroborated for him the justice of his plans for the explorer and confirmed for Frémont that the general and his gang of lickspittles were more his enemy than the Californians had ever been.
Kearny did not appear concerned over the rumors and reports of a potential revolt among the Californians in the southern province, nor did he rise to Frémont’s pointed question about whether the new civil government would assume the debts of the conquest. (In Washington subsequently, Kearny could remember neither the question nor his reply, although he said he “should have answered in the negative.”)
Frémont said that he would resign his army commission, but Kearny refused to accept the proposition.
The meeting culminated with Kearny asking Frémont if he intended obeying his order to hand over the California Battalion and its records. The general, with Mason hanging on to every word, cautioned the explorer to take care in responding to the question and gave him a day to think it over.
In the end, Frémont agreed to obey and was ordered to return to Los Angeles to gather the battalion and accompany it back to Monterey, together with its supplies and papers.
After the explorer departed with Dodson and Pico, Kearny dispatched Colonel Mason to Los Angeles with a letter giving him full authority to oversee the battalion’s debarkation at San Pedro and to order Frémont to report to Monterey no more than twelve days after the battalion sailed.
2
Mason arrived in Los Angeles on April 5 and set up his office in the home of Nathaniel M. Pryor, a Kentucky-born silversmith and clockmaker who had lived in the pueblo since 1830. Once established there, the colonel sent for Frémont.
Neither man was apt to be holding an olive branch, but any chance of a reasonably friendly encounter disappeared when Frémont saw that Mason, following the lead of his general, had a witness present. Lieutenant Colonel St. George Cooke may have smiled when the explorer entered the room; he was as eager as any Kearny man to witness the fall of this mutinous subordinate.
Mason repeated Kearny’s orders and asked Frémont to join him the next day at Mission San Gabriel to visit the battalion and ascertain which of the volunteers wished to stay in the service.
The muster followed its commander’s prediction. Mason announced to the gathered men that they were to be disbanded but that all who wished to continue to serve would be sworn into the regular army. When none stepped forward, Mason directed his anger at Frémont, ordered the battalion to be discharged immediately, the naval personnel among them to be sent north on the sloop-of-war Warren. He instructed the explorer to gather his original Topographical Corps party and march it to Monterey, there to report to Governor-General Kearny, and to turn over to the appropriate officer of the First Dragoons all horses, mules, arms, ammunition, and supplies.
Frémont, unhumbled in the stripping of his command, had, or contrived to have, a final encounter with the man he considered a Kearny chauvinist. The issue centered on a sizable horse herd that Frémont had gathered for “service in Mexico.” He informed Mason by letter that he intended leading a regiment into Mexico for service with Zachary Taylor, an option given him in correspondence to Kearny from War Secretary William Marcy.
Mason curtly dismissed this idea as contrary to new orders from the general and sent an orderly to Frémont’s quarters demanding that the horses be surrendered to the government forthwith.
The clash between the contemptuous colonel and the refractory lieutenant colonel switched from a paper duel to the threat of the real field of honor when, on April 14, Frémont was
summoned to Mason’s office. There would be no further dispute or discussion of the horse issue, or of any other issue, Mason said heatedly, and when the explorer objected to the tone of the admonition, Mason exploded, “None of your insolence, or I will put you in irons!” In his version of the event, Frémont took the threat calmly, saying to the choleric Kearny agent, “You cannot make an official matter of a personal one, sir; as a man, do you hold yourself personally responsible for what you have just said?”
Whether Frémont walked out of the meeting or Mason terminated it is not clear, but within an hour of its end, the explorer sent a note to Mason demanding a written apology for his “insult” and making a threat of his own: failure to offer the apology would be translated as an “official challenge.” Then, when Mason, perhaps calculatedly, did not respond, Frémont threw down the last gauntlet, making the challenge official by letter and inviting his opponent to choose his weapon.
His folly in defying Kearny had cost him his career; his recklessness in challenging Mason came close to costing him his life: the colonel of dragoons, who was believed to be familiar with dueling and was certainly familiar with bird-hunting, chose shotguns—double-barreled and buckshot-loaded. Frémont had never fired such an arm in his life and had to send an aide to locate one.
He was saved from certain death by the blind good fortune that often follows the foolhardy: the day after the challenge, the dragoon colonel sent his second to Frémont’s quarters to say that the duel would have to be delayed until after they reached Monterey. A few days later, upon hearing of the pending confrontation, Kearny intervened, writing to his lieutenant colonel: “It becomes my duty to inform you that the good of the Public Service, the necessity of preserving tranquillity in California … require that the meeting above referred to should not take place at this time, and in this country, and you are hereby officially directed by me to proceed no further in this matter. A similar communication has been addressed to Colonel Mason.”1
Pacific Destiny and Bear Flag Rising Page 72
