Combat· Mexican-American War
Fremont-Gillespie operations and Bear Flag Revolt
The murky opening of the California fighting, before formal word of war had arrived.
In the early summer of 1846, Captain Frémont and Lieutenant Gillespie lent their support to the Bear Flag Revolt, a rising of American settlers in the north who seized the town of Sonoma on 14 June and proclaimed a short-lived "Bear Flag Republic." Frémont and Gillespie maneuvered through the country around San Francisco Bay, occupying San Rafael and the Presidio and skirmishing with Californio forces, while the settlers' irregular movement gradually merged with their command. Out of this grew the California Battalion, formally organized under Commodore Stockton in July, with Gillespie as Frémont's second-in-command. These pre-declaration operations, conducted in a legal twilight before the war was known to have begun, helped tip northern California toward the United States and folded into the larger conquest once the squadron acted openly.
Podcast episodes on Mexican-American War
Record no. 326