with headquarters at St Louis, but his lack of judgment and of administrative ability soon became apparent, the affairs of his department fell into disorder, and Frémont seems to have been easily duped by dishonest contractors whom he trusted. On the 30th of August 1861 he issued a proclamation in which he declared the property of Missourians in rebellion confiscated and their slaves emancipated. For this he was applauded by the radical Republicans, but his action was contrary to an act of congress of the 6th of August and to the policy of the Administration. On the 11th of September President Lincoln, who regarded the action as premature and who saw that it might alienate Kentucky and other border states, whose adherence he was trying to secure, annulled these declarations. Impelled by serious charges against Frémont, the president sent Montgomery Blair, the postmaster-general, and Montgomery C. Meigs, the quartermaster-general, to investigate the department; they reported that Frémont’s management was extravagant and inefficient; and in November he was removed. Out of consideration for the “Radicals,” however, Frémont was placed in command of the Mountain Department of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. In the spring and summer of 1862 he co-operated with General N. P. Banks against “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, but showed little ability as a commander, was defeated by General Ewell at Cross Keys, and when his troops were united with those of Generals Banks and McDowell to form the Army of Virginia, of which General John Pope was placed in command, Frémont declined to serve under Pope, whom he outranked, and retired from active service. On the 31st of May 1864 he was nominated for the presidency by a radical faction of the Republican party, opposed to President Lincoln, but his following was so small that on the 21st of September he withdrew from the contest. From 1878 to 1881 he was governor of the territory of Arizona, and in the last year of his life he was appointed by act of congress a major-general and placed on the retired list. He died in New York on the 13th of July 1890.
See J. C. Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1842, and to Oregon and North California, 1843–1844 (Washington, 1845); Frémont’s Memoirs of my Life (New York, 1887); and J. Bigelow, Memoirs of the Life and Public Services of John C. Frémont (New York, 1856).
FREMONT, a city and the county-seat of Dodge county,
Nebraska, U.S.A., about 37 m. N.W. of Omaha, on the N. bank
of the Platte river, which here abounds in picturesque bluffs
and wooded islands. Pop. (1890) 6747; (1900) 7241 (1303
foreign-born); (1910) 8718. It is on the main line of the Union
Pacific railway, on a branch of the Chicago, Burlington &
Quincy system, and on the main western line of the Chicago &
North-Western railway, several branches of which (including the
formerly independent Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley and
the Sioux City & Pacific) converge here. The city has an attractive
situation and is beautifully shaded. It has a public library
and is the seat of the Fremont College, Commercial Institute
and School of Pharmacy (1875), a private institution. There is
considerable local trade with the rich farming country of the
Platte and Elkhorn valleys; and the wholesale grain interests are
especially important. Among the manufactures are flour,
carriages, saddlery, canned vegetables, furniture, incubators
and beer. The city owns and operates its electric-lighting plant
and water-works. Fremont was founded in 1856, and became
the county-seat in 1860. It was chartered as a city (second-class)
in 1871, and became a city of the first class in 1901.
FREMONT, a city and the county-seat of Sandusky county,
Ohio, U.S.A., on the Sandusky river, 30 m. S.E. of Toledo.
Pop. (1890) 7141; (1900) 8439, of whom 1074 were foreign-born;
(1910 census) 9939. Fremont is served by the Lake Shore &
Michigan Southern, the Lake Shore Electric, the Lake Erie
& Western, and the Wheeling & Lake Erie railways. The river
is navigable to this point. Spiegel Grove, the former residence of
Rutherford B. Hayes, is of interest, and the city has a public
library (1873) and parks, in large measure the gifts of his uncle,
Sardis Birchard. Fremont is situated in a good agricultural
region; oil and natural gas abound in the vicinity; and the city
has various manufactures, including boilers, electro-carbons,
cutlery, bricks, agricultural implements, stoves and ranges,
safety razors, carriage irons, sash, doors, blinds, furniture, beet
sugar, canned vegetables, malt extract, garters and suspenders.
The total factory product was valued at $2,833,385 in 1905,
an increase of 23.4% over that of 1900. Fremont is on the site
of a favourite abode of the Indians, and a trading post was at
times maintained here; but the place is best known in history as
the site of Fort Stephenson, erected during the War of 1812,
and on the 2nd of August 1813 gallantly and successfully defended
by Major George Croghan (1791–1849), with 160 men, against
about 1000 British and Indians under Brigadier-General Henry
A. Proctor. In 1906 Croghan’s remains were re-interred on the
site of the old fort. Until 1849, when the present name was
adopted in honour of J. C. Frémont, the place was known as
Lower Sandusky; it was incorporated as a village in 1829
and was first chartered as a city in 1867.
FRÉMY, EDMOND (1814–1894), French chemist, was born
at Versailles on the 29th of February 1814. Entering Gay-Lussac’s
laboratory in 1831, he became préparateur at the École
Polytechnique in 1834 and at the Collège de France in 1837.
His next post was that of répétiteur at the École Polytechnique,
where in 1846 he was appointed professor, and in 1850 he succeeded
Gay-Lussac in the chair of chemistry at the Muséum
d’Histoire Naturelle, of which he was director, in succession to
M. E. Chevreul, from 1879 to 1891. He died at Paris on the 3rd
of February 1894. His work included investigations of osmic
acid, of the ferrates, stannates, plumbates, &c., and of ozone,
attempts to obtain free fluorine by the electrolysis of fused
fluorides, and the discovery of anhydrous hydrofluoric acid and
of a series of acides sulphazotés, the precise nature of which long
remained a matter of discussion. He also studied the colouring
matters of leaves and flowers, the composition of bone, cerebral
matter and other animal substances, and the processes of fermentation,
in regard to the nature of which he was an opponent of
Pasteur’s views. Keenly alive to the importance of the technical
applications of chemistry, he devoted special attention as a
teacher to the training of industrial chemists. In this field he
contributed to our knowledge of the manufacture of iron and steel,
sulphuric acid, glass and paper, and in particular worked at the
saponification of fats with sulphuric acid and the utilization of
palmitic acid for candle-making. In the later years of his life
he applied himself to the problem of obtaining alumina in the
crystalline form, and succeeded in making rubies identical with
the natural gem not merely in chemical composition but also in
physical properties.
FRENCH, DANIEL CHESTER (1850–), American sculptor,
was born at Exeter, New Hampshire, on the 20th of April 1850,
the son of Henry Flagg French, a lawyer, who for a time was
assistant-secretary of the United States treasury. After a year
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, French spent a
month in the studio of John Q. A. Ward, then began to work on
commissions, and at the age of twenty-three received from the
town of Concord, Massachusetts, an order for his well-known
statue “The Minute Man,” which was unveiled (April 19, 1875)
on the centenary of the battle of Concord. Previously French
had gone to Florence, Italy, where he spent a year with Thomas
Ball. French’s best-known work is “Death Staying the Hand of
the Sculptor,” a memorial for the tomb of the sculptor Martin
Milmore, in the Forest Hills cemetery, Boston; this received a
medal of honour at Paris, in 1900. Among his other works are:
a monument to John Boyle O’Reilly, Boston; “Gen. Cass,”
National Hall of Statuary, Washington; “Dr Gallaudet and his
First Deaf-Mute Pupil,” Washington; the colossal “Statue
of the Republic,” for the Columbian Exposition at Chicago;
statues of Rufus Choate (Boston), John Harvard (Cambridge,
Mass.), and Thomas Starr King (San Francisco, California), a
memorial to the architect Richard M. Hunt, in Fifth Avenue,
opposite the Lenox library, New York, and a large “Alma
Mater,” near the approach to Columbia University, New York.
In collaboration with Edward C. Potter he modelled the
“Washington,” presented to France by the Daughters of the
American Revolution; the “General Grant” in Fairmount Park,
