Lt. Col. James Fremantle

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Lt. Col. James Fremantle, a British Army officer and notable witness to the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War, was born to a distinguished military family on November 11, 1835. He was commissioned into the British Army in 1852 after graduating from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and received his first promotion a year later, continuing with the trend until he held the rank of captain of his regiment and lieutenant colonel in 1860 at the age of twenty-five. He left England on March 2, 1863, to tour the American South, dutifully recording his observations in his diary, from which came Three Months in the Southern States, a book on his experiences in the Confederate States of America. This was later revised by historian Walter Lord and published as The Fremantle Diary in 1952. Fremantle ended his career in January 1984 as the Governor of Malta, returning to Great Britain in 1899 and being appointed a Knight of Grace of the Order of St. John in March 1900. He died of asthma complications on September 25, 1901, in Cowes Castle, Isle of Wight, England, at the age of sixty-five.