Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/371

Rh Navy Departments, and were calculated, as distinguished officers afterwards declared officially, to "embarrass the mind, and to excite the doubts of officers of greater experience" than the Colonel.

Although Frémont's services were lost for a while on the shores of the Pacific, he was not forgotten either there, or at home. What he had done for his country in that remote region by exploring its solitudes with his hardy band; what he added to geographical and general science; what regions he almost revealed to American pioneers; what services he rendered in securing a happy issue to the war in California—have all been recollected with gratitude and rewarded with the virgin honors of the new born State. But, at that time, this brilliant officer who combined the science of Humboldt with the energy and more than the generosity of Cortéz, was doomed to suffer more than the temporary deprivation of power. After the war was in reality over, after Commodore Stockton had departed and General Kearney had assumed the governorship which was subsequently given to Colonel Mason—Frémont was refused permission to continue his scientific pursuits in California or to join his regiment on the active fields of Mexico. When General Kearney turned his face homewards, towards the close of the spring of 1847, Frémont was ordered to follow in his train across the mountains, and was finally arrested at Fort Leavenworth, on the borders of civilization. During the next winter he was tried by a Court Martial on charges of mutiny, disobedience, and conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline, and being found guilty was sentenced to be dismissed the service. A majority of the court, however, considering all the circumstances of the case, recommended him to the lenient judgment of the President, who not being satisfied that the facts proved the military crime of mutiny—though he sustained the court's opinion otherwise—and recognizing Frémont's previous meritorious and valuable services, released him from arrest, restored his sword and ordered him to report for duty. But Frémont, feeling unconscious, as he declared, of having done any thing to merit the finding of the court, declined the offered restoration to the service, as he could not, "by accepting the clemency of the President, admit the justice of the decision against him."