The Role John Charles Fremont Enjoyed in the Political Campaigns of 1856, 1860, 1864

Abstract

John Charles Fremont was born on January 21, 1813, in Savannah, Georgia. There have been doubts expressed as to the legitimacy of his birth. Fremont's mother had been Anne Beverley Whiting, the youngest daughter among the twelve children of Colonel Thomas Whiting, a large landowner of Gloucester County, and at one time a leading member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia. |At an early age she had wedded a man named Pryor, who was twenty years her senior. Young, gay and full of life, was it not inevitable that the future mother of the man who was to become internationally famous as the "Pathfinder" should, when neglected by her husband, fall desperately in love with the dashing John Fremont?