Pathfinder: John Charles Fremont and the Course of American Empire (review)

If anyone wishes to read a "politically correct" biography of the mid-nineteenth-century western explorer, John C. Frémont, this is the book for you. The title of the author's preface, "How the West Was Lost," provides the first clue. That the West was ever "lost" might come as a surprise to the people who have not been "brainwashed" by the anti-American revisionist gang. We also learn that the individual Topographical Engineer Corps explorations "militarized" the West (p. xxvii), and that Frémont was never an explorer. Moreover, the Louisiana Purchase, according to the author, cancelled the Northwest Ordinance that admitted new states in the Union on an equal basis with the original thirteen states. It also introduced "brutality" as if the French and Indian War had not even occurred, and as if all constantly warring Indian tribes never engaged in "brutality." As to the U.S. war with Mexico, General Arista's army on a mission to retake Texas never existed, Zachary Taylor's inactive army on the Rio Grande was the prime provocation while the insulting rejection of the U.S. peace mission under John Slidell intended to negotiate extensive monetary claims owed the U.S. must be regarded as a "most well known [sic] bagatelle."

In addition, the book is full of errors, even of geographical directions and references to who discovered what and contradictions as to Frémont's aggressiveness in the conquest of California. In every case that arises Frémont must be suspect when his record of lying up to the Civil War is nil. We could go on, but what is the use—our history has many times been slandered and mutilated by the so-called "revisionists" who take pleasure in reviling the U.S.

However, if one skips the "agitprop," this book is a good read that occasionally fills in neglected parts of the Pathfinder's life or double life.