1. The Fremont 1842, 1843-’44 Report dated March 1845, was printed for the 28th Congress, second session as Senate Executive Document 174, Serial 461, and House Document 166, Serial 467. The Fremont 1842 Report, dated March 1843, was titled, A Report on an Exploration of the Country Lying Between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains on the Line of Kansas and Great Platte Rivers, and was printed for the 27th Congress, third session as Senate Document 243, Serial 416. Nine hundred copies were printed for the use of the Senate and 100 copies were printed for the use of the Topographical Engineers. In Fremont’s words, taken from his Notice to the Reader, prefacing his 1842, 1843-’44 Report: “The Senate of the United States, and the House of Representatives, having each ordered ten thousand copies of the two exploring expeditions conducted by me, to be printed together, I have deemed it regular and natural to place the report of 1842 first in the order of publication, although heretofore printed, it being first in the order of time, and first in the progress of actual exploration. The two reports naturally go together, the second being a continuation of the first, and the two constituting part of the whole … ” In 1845, the Senate of the United States, and the House of Representatives ordered 10,000 copies of the 1842, 1843-’44 Report and map printed together, billed by E. Weber & Co., Baltimore, at a cost of $9,851.30, and distributed free to the people of the United States. See, Donald D. Jackson and Mary Lee Spence, ed. The Explorations of John Charles Fremont (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1970), Map Portfolio, 14. Fremont’s Geographical Memoir Upon Upper California dated January 2, 1849, shows Congress resolved that an extra 20,000 copies of the 1842, 1843-’44 Report be printed and distributed. See, John Charles Fremont, Geographical Memoir Upon Upper California, in Illustration of His Map of Oregon and California, 30th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 5 [ser.544], 1.
2. In 1842, Fremont was selected to explore the region of the South Pass in the Rocky Mountains. His second expedition covered 14 months. He made a third expedition covering the years 1845 to 1847, before resigning from the army on his return. His fourth expedition was in 1848, and his fifth, and last, in 1853. Fremont’s resignation from the Corps of Topographical Engineers after his third expedition was a factor contributing to his decision not to submit a report. His fourth and fifth expeditions were disasters in that very little geographical and scientific knowledge was gained. Extreme weather conditions brought death to 10 members of the fourth expedition, and out of the 1,550 miles traveled on the fifth expedition, only 550 miles were uncharted by previous travelers. A record of the final three expeditions is found only in his journals and memoirs, although the expeditions were partially funded by Congress. See, Mary Lee Spence, The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont: Travels from 1848 to 1854 (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984), vol. 3, xxi–lxxiv. See also, Fred Nathaniel Fletcher, Early Nevada: The Period of Exploration, 1776–1848 (Reno, NV: A. Carlisle & Co.) See also, Charles H. Carey, ed., The Journals of Theodore Talbot, 1843 and 1849–52: with the Fremont Expedition of 1843 and with the First Military Company in Oregon Territory, 1849–1852 (Portland, OR: Metropolitan Press, 1931). See also, Blanche Chloe Grant, When Old Trails were New: The Story of Taos (New York: The Press of the Pioneers, Inc., 1934). See also, Thomas Hart Benton, Thrilling Sketch of the Life of Col. J.C. Fremont (United States Army) with an Account of His Expedition to Oregon and California, Across the Rocky Mountains, and Discovery of the Great Gold Mines (London: J. Field, 1850). See also, Edward Eberstadt, A Transcript of the Fort Sutter Papers Together with the Historical Commentaries Accompanying Them Brought Together in One Volume for Purposes of Reference. These papers are the original manuscript records, orders, and correspondence assembled by Lieut. Edward M. Kern at Sutter’s Fort (Published by Edward Eberstadt, 1921).
3. Herman J. Viola and Ralph E. Ehrenberg, The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), vii.
4. William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), 103.
5. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 75. John O’Sullivan, founder of the Democratic Review, coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in 1845 to “signify the mission of the United States to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” See, Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), xi. Thus, it became a catchword for the idea of a providentially sanctioned right to continental expansionism. See, Stephanson, xii. At that time, the great interior plain of North America was for the most part undeveloped and unoccupied.