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General John Charles Frémont
Accession # 20.666
Artist Charles Loring Elliott
Title General John Charles Frémont
Date 1857
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 36 x 29 1/8 in. (91.4 x 74 cm) frame: 50 1/2 x 43 5/8 x 5 in. (128.3 x 110.8 x 12.7 cm)
Credit Line Carll H. de Silver Fund
Location American Identities: Art Making / Centennial Era

Curatorial Remarks:

A western explorer, maverick soldier, and failed politician, John Frémont championed the antislavery cause as the first presidential candidate of the new Republican party in 1856, only to lose to James Buchanan. Appointed by Abraham Lincoln to head the Union army's Department of the West in 1861, Frémont provoked the president's ire when he single-handedly confiscated the property and emancipated the slaves of pro-South Missourians. He considered a second run fro president in 1864—representing Lincoln's Radical Republican opponents within the party.