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FReEMONT--THE WEST'S GREATEST ADVENTURER--Allan Nevins--Harpers (two vols. $10).

The Man. He might have been U. S. President during the Civil War, or built a fortune as big as the Rockefellers' or outshone Sam Houston, Dewey and Lindbergh as heroes. But ask the man-on-the-street today who John Charles Fremont was, and the answer will probably be: "The name sounds familiar, but I can't quite place him."

Thus almost lost to fame is the most exciting and excitable figure that ever trod the soil of North America. Fremont was, characteristically enough, born unconventionally in 1813. His mother was the wife of gouty Major John Pryor, but his father was a dashing French emigre (Charles Fremon) who ran off with his mother. Reared in the best Charleston, S. C., society, Fremont was a quick Latin and Greek scholar. People thought he might make a teacher or a preacher, until Joel R. Poinsett (manifest destiny man, Secretary of War, giver of the poinsettia to botany) put him in the Army Topographical Corps. He explored in the upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, returned to Washington, D. C., with a reputation, was also pointed out as "the handsomest young man who ever walked the streets." He wooed and quickly won Jessie, 16-year-old daughter of irascible Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. But the Senator objected to their marriage, so Fremont surveyed in Iowa before eloping with Jessie. Vexed though the Senator was, he forgave and made Fremont his willing tool to open up the vast West. The young couple were presented to President Tyler in "the greatest crush in the White House since President Jackson had exhibited Colonel Meacham's gigantic cheese."

In 1842, Fremont went West with famed Kit Carson, observed buffalo, ate dog meat, charted the Continental Divide. Returning to Washington where Jessie lay in childbirth, he spread over her bed a ragged flag, said: "This flag was raised over the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains. I have brought it to you." Then, with Jessie's aid, he wrote a report of his trip which exploded the myth that the "Great American Desert" lay between Missouri and the Rockies. The public read the document avidly; the movement westward was stimulated.

On another expedition Fremont saw the Oregon Trail as busy as a barnyard in mating season, crossed the snow-deep Sierras in midwinter, visited Captain Suiter's fort in the fertile Sacramento valley. Ideas of manifest destiny were firmly planted in Fremont's head. So, on his next trip to California, he began to write history instead of geography. Mexican General Castro ordered him out of California. He went up to Oregon and waited for an excuse to raise the U. S. flag over California. An Indian attack gave it to him. Quickly he assembled U. S. settlers, made Suiter's fort his base, marched the length of California, put an end to Mexican domination, was made provisional governor and com-mander-in-chief of California. He paused only long enough to name San Francisco harbor the Golden Gate. Meanwhile, the U. S. had declared war on Mexico and a General Kearney arrived in California to take charge. Kearney and Fremont quarreled so violently that a lieutenant named William Tecumseh Sherman wondered: "Who the devil is the governor of California?"

The result of the quarrel was that Fremont was court-martialed in Washington and found guilty of mutiny, disobedience of orders, causing undue disturbance. President Polk canceled the punishment, allowed Fremont to remain in the Army. But Fremont resigned, insisting on his complete innocence. Despite its verdict, the court-martial made Fremont the hero of the North and the prophet of expansion.

Then, as a private citizen, Fremont set out for California by the southern route, almost died of starvation while some of his guides nibbled a human body. That was in 1849 when "time was worth fifty dollars a minute," but Fremont did not know it. He arrived in California to find gold-mad whitemen, redmen, yellowmen, blackmen, and himself the owner of the golden Mariposa veins. His wife came by boat and soon their home was filled with "hundred-pound buckskin sacks, worth not far from $25,000 each." California's richest man and most popular idol, Fremont was elected U. S. Senator. He spent little time in Washington and was defeated for a second term. So he took a trip to Europe with Jessie.

After that was 1856--"Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, Free Men, Fremont and Victory." But, able slogan though it was, victory did not follow. The campaign was a bitter one. Fremont was the presidential nominee of the new and crusading Republican (Free Soil) party, supported by the leading newspapers and liberals of the North. Conservative northerners feared to have so impetuous a man in the White House when southern Democrats were shouting: "Tell me, if the hoisting of the Black Republican flag . . . by a Frenchman's bastard, while the arms of civil war are already clashing [in Kansas], is not to be deemed an overt act and declaration of war?" So, placid Fillmore of the Whig party took enough votes away from Fremont to give the election to portly, blundering Buchanan of the Democrats.

Fremont went to California to look after his troublesome Mariposa properties, also made friends with Bret Harte who called Jessie a "fairy godmother." Then Lincoln was elected President and Civil War smouldered. Fremont became Commander of the Department of the West with headquarters in St. Louis. Missouri was a bed of sectional emotions; Fremont was a hot-headed commander; there were a "Hundred Days" of trouble. Lincoln removed him after he had declared martial law and prematurely emancipated the slaves in Missouri. He was given another chance as general in Virginia, but failed and fell out completely with Lincoln. Discontented folk in the North--there were many--urged Fremont to run against Lincoln in 1864. He declined for "the welfare of the Republican party."

After the war, Fremont lived in luxury in Manhattan and Tarrytown, N. Y. (part of his estate was later owned by John D. Rockefeller). Then suddenly he lost all his wealth in a railroad scheme in the West. His wife wrote articles for newspapers and magazines. President Hayes appointed him territorial governor of Arizona in 1878 at a salary of $2,000 a year. In 1890, soon after the Army put him on the retired pay list, he died of a violent chill, in a Manhattan boarding house. Jessie lived until 1902.

The Significance. Such a career holds temptations for psychological biographers and makers of historical fiction. Allan Nevins, to be sure, has been tempted, thrilled by Fremont. Otherwise he would not have written 698 pages about him. But Mr. Nevins is a respecter of history, a scholar. His Fremont, entrancing, exacting, will not be a dust-catcher on top library shelves. It has put more life in the prairies than any book since Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln. It has harnessed the antics of land-grabbing, gold-greedy pioneers and hot-tempered politicians. It has gusto.

The Author was schooled and schooled others in English at the University of Illinois. He is now an editorial writer for the New York World, having also served the New York Evening Post, Sun and The Nation. In 1924 he published The American During and After the Revolution. Mr. Nevins will be 38 this May.