204 JOHN C. FREMONT. 



ing the clemency of the President he would virtually 

 acknowledge the justice of the verdict of the court 

 which had examined his case and had condemned 

 him. Thus, on the 15th of May, 1848, in the thirty- 

 fourth year of his age, Colonel Fremont abandoned 

 the military profession, and was thenceforth free to 

 commence a new career in life, more congenial to 

 his tastes, and more productive of noble, elevating, 

 and remunerative results. He had already attained 

 the first position, and the highest eminence, as an 

 explorer of new and dangerous realms. His mili- 

 tary and political services had merely suspended, 

 and not concluded, his labors in this high sphere of 

 intellectual and physical endeavor. He still wished 

 to demonstrate more completely the feasibility of 

 the grand idea which had inflamed and guided all 

 his previous exertions, the practicability of uniting 

 the Atlantic and Pacific States of this Union by a 

 public highway of secure, direct, and facile travel. 

 This important and difficult achievement he still 

 might accomplish ; his life had yet a worthy and an 

 all-absorbing aim to occupy him ; he abhorred the idea 

 of permitting his great faculties to rust and corrode 

 either in ignoble indolence or in vain regrets. He 

 was encouraged to persevere by the high praises 

 which he had already received from the most dis- 

 tinguished and illustrious representatives of science 



