Allan Nevins

Allan Nevins 1890-1971, American historian, b. Camp Point, Ill. After studying at the Univ. of Illinois, he followed a career in journalism until 1927. Teaching at Columbia from 1928, he became a full professor in 1931 and was made De Witt Clinton professor of American history in 1942. He retired in 1958, becoming a senior research associate of the Huntington Library. Nevins, one of the most prolific U.S. historians of the 20th cent., is noted for the exhaustive research and comprehensive treatment that characterize his wide range of historical writings. His masterful political biographies include Grover Cleveland (1932) and Hamilton Fish (1936), both of which won Pulitzer Prizes; Frémont: Pathmarker of the West (1939); and Herbert H. Lehman and His Era (1963). In works on the economic giants of America, among them Abram S. Hewitt (1935) and Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller (rev. ed. 1953), Nevins pointed out the role of the captains of industry in making America a world power. The Ordeal of the Union (1947-60), Nevins's six-volume history of the Civil War era from 1847 through 1863, is a comprehensive narrative of the age, covering social, economic, and political aspects. Among many other notable works are Illinois (1917), a history of the state university; The Evening Post (1922), an early work in the history of journalism; The American States during and after the Revolution, 1775-1789 (1924), a valuable study of change in this period; The Emergence of Modern America, 1865-1878 (1927), a social history; and The Gateway to History (1938, rev. ed. 1962), an introduction to historiography. The many papers edited by Nevins include the diaries of Philip Hone (1927), John Quincy Adams (1928), James K. Polk (1929), and George Templeton Strong (1952), as well as the letters of Grover Cleveland (1933). Nevins also established the Columbia oral history program, the first of its kind in the nation.

Frémont, John Charles (1813–1890), explorer and Republican presidential candidate.Born in Savannah and reared in Charleston, Frémont in 1838 joined a team surveying a planned Charleston‐to‐Cincinnati railroad. Next he assisted the French explorer Jean Nicollet in mapping the upper Mississippi and Missouri River Valleys. In 1841, Frémont organized his own expedition to survey the Des Moines River. That October, in Washington, D.C., he married Jessie Benton, daughter of the powerful Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, like Frémont, a champion of western expansion. Expeditions to Wyoming's Wind River Range and to the Pacific Northwest followed in 1842–1844.

In California during the Mexican War, Frémont became embroiled in a command dispute and was court‐martialed. Leaving the army in 1848, he settled with his wife in California, grew temporarily wealthy during the California Gold Rush, and was elected a senator in 1850. His expeditions in 1848–1849 and 1853–1854 to find a railroad route across the Sierra proved unsuccessful. By then Frémont's fame as an explorer was secure, enhanced by popular accounts of his expeditions which he composed with his wife's skilled assistance.

Nominated for president by the new Republican party in 1856, Frémont lost the election to James Buchanan. When the Civil War broke out, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him one of four ranking generals of the Union Army. In his later years, Frémont lost heavily in railroad and mining speculations, but served as governor of Arizona Territory in 1878–1881. The Pathfinder, as he had come to be called, died in obscurity in New York City, a forgotten hero.
See also Expansionism; Gold Rushes.

Bibliography

Allan Nevins , Frémont, Pathmarker of the West, 1939.
Andrew Rolle , John Charles Frémont: Character as Destiny, 1991.

Andrew Rolle