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GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT 349 A minority of the Republican party, the radical wing, opposed to the renomi- nation of Lincoln in 1864, nominated Fremont as their candidate. He accepted, but finally withdrew. " Not to aid in the triumph of Lincoln," he said, u but to do my part toward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate." One of the Republican candidates would have to retire to save the party. Here is a subject for debating clubs : Was the interest of the country best served by Fre- mont's withdrawal from the canvass of 1864? After 1864 Fremont took little part in public life. He became absorbed in his great trans-continental railroad scheme of a line from Norfolk to San Diego and San Francisco, in which he ultimately lost his large fortune. French agents, in disposing of his bonds in France, made false representations. He was prose- cuted by the French Government in 1873, and sentenced by default to fine and imprisonment, although no judgment was given on the merits of the case. The sale of his Mariposa grant brought him several millions, which he in- vested in railroads soon after the war, buying the properties that now constitute a large part of the Texas Pacific and other roads belonging to the Atchison and Santa Fe In the great consolidation entailed by the foreign litigation, his confidence was abused, and he met with heavy and irreparable loss. From 1878 to 1881 he was Governor of Arizona. His " Memoirs " appeared in 1886. The closing years of his life were spent in comparative retirement. Not long before his sudden death in New York City July 14, 1890, at the age of seventy-seven years, he had been placed on the retired list of the United States Army with the rank of Major-General. When he passed away the Path- finder of Africa was filling the public ear the wedding of Stanley in Westmin- ster Abbey was the theme of the hour. He was buried in Kensico Cemetery, Piermont-on-the-Hudson, about thirty miles from New York City, near the country home of his prosperous days. His widow, Jessie Benton Fremont, is at this writing (1893), a resident of Los An- geles, Cal. Three children survive their father, an unmarried daughter, Elizabeth McDowell Benton, Lieutenant Frank Preston Fremont, U. S. A ; and Lieuten- ant John Charles Fremont, U. S. N. After his death Mrs. Fremont demanded compensation for, or restitution of the property appropriated by the United States Government for military purposes in San Francisco harbor, in 1863, and for which she has never received a dollar (1893). The settlement of this claim in her favor is anticipated by the bench generally, long as justice to her has been delayed. At present she has a pension from the Government. Some profess to find it hard reading the character of John Charles Fremont, calling it enigmatical and baffling. Not so with those who knew him best. " His unwritten history," writes one of these, " gives the clew to his life." That he was a man of indomitable courage none can deny ; a man of lofty principle and unblemished character. An atmosphere of romance makes him the American Chevalier. He did more than any other man to open the pathways to the Pacific coast The bitter feeling engendered by the California conquest, and his policy in the