In the California State election of 1851, Frémont stood with the Anti-Slavery party, opposed to the extension of slavery in free territories. He was defeated, and went to Europe with his family in 1852, where he was fêted by royalty generally. Mrs. Frémont, in her "Souvenirs of My Time," has given charming glimpses of this part of their life. Hearing that Congress had made appropriation for further surveys of great Western routes, Frémont hastened home in 1853, to explore by a fifth expedition, what he believed to be the most central and practicable route. This was his second private venture. He would follow the path he had lost when the guide led him astray on his fourth expedition. He would cross the Rockies at Cochetopa Pass, and that in winter. He made the passage, but it was at the cost of frightful suffering; fifty days on frozen horse-flesh, days without even that; forty-eight hours without a morsel of food; the entire party barefooted in the snow; Frémont, in the hour of extreme peril on the storm-swept mountain-side, making his men take oath that, come what might, nothing should tempt them to cannibalism. Benton tells us how Frémont went straight to the spot where the guide had gone astray in 1848, and found safe and easy passes all the way to California, upon the straight line of 38° and 39°. Great railroads of to-day follow the line it took those starving and half-frozen men fifty days to pass in that winter of 1854. For three months nothing was heard from the party. Frémont's arrival in San Francisco was an ovation. "Europe lies between Asia and America," we read in his report; "build the road, and America lies between Europe and Asia.... The iron track to San Francisco will be the thoroughfare of the world." The issues at stake in the presidential campaign of 1856 make that campaign the most important of any in the history of our country. "The question now to be decided," said Seward, "is whether a slave-holding class shall govern America or not." The nomination of John Charles Frémont as the candidate of the Republican party was hailed with enthusiasm at the North. The Civil War was impending. The lines between the defenders of slavery and its opponents were sharply defined. Frémont was the first nominee of the Republican party. The romance and adventure of his career, his upright life, the hero-worship of the Pacific coast, the antagonism of the South, gave the canvass a vitalizing force that his defeat by James Buchanan did not lessen, but simply changed into a new phase of strength. Frémont's popular vote was 1,341,000 against 1,838,000 for Buchanan and 874,000 for Fillmore (Know-Nothing). Frémont received 114 electoral votes, and Buchanan 174.