Thanks, everyone. Good day. Im delighted to be here in San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Particularly to talk about jesse and John Freemont who had so much to do with the creation of california as we know it and so much to do with the creation of San Francisco as we know it. I got in to San Francisco about 2 30 a. M. On a delayed flight from los angeles, got a couple of hours of sleep at an Airport Hotel and then woke up again because i was to be picked up by a car and driven up the highway into San Francisco to do alive radio thing on to do a live radio thing on kqed. The thing about live radio is it begins at an exact time. The thing about going through San Francisco traffic is that youre really not going to make your exact time. And so i was supposed to be 8 00 a. M. Pacific time that i would be there for this National Radio hit, and at 8 00 a. M. , im still on the road, in the back of this car, creeping up the freeway at, i dont know, 7, 9 milesanhour, whatever it was, but i am looking out the right side of the car and San Francisco bay is out there, and the city of San Francisco, the Southern Suburbs is spreading out in the hills in front of me, and im missing my deadline, which is a horrifying thing for a journalist to do, but im just thinking to myself yeah this is the world the freemonts made. For better, sometimes for worse. But it is one of the most wonderful cities. I seize any opportunity to get here. I was delighted to be researching this book in part because i knew it would give me an excuse to do some research in and around San Francisco. It is the story of two people. Its the story of a marriage and their ambitions and adventures at a time when the United States was deeply divided and seemed to be in danger of coming apart. Imperfect union refers to the union of american states at a time when some had outlawed slavery and others embraced it. It also refers to the marriage of a very unusual couple who strove to accomplish and achieve thaul they could in that very divisive time achieve all they could in a very divisive time. John fremont was an explorer, a man who in the 1840s and 50s, in a series of expeditions started in st. Louis missouri which was then the western most city of any consequence in the United States and went out as a u. S. Army officer, hired skilled civilians to go along with him and mapped the oregon trail, mapped other routes, went out west again and again, ultimately ended up by chance in california, was intrigued as people are when they come to california and then returned a couple of years later, a year later to this mexican controlled territory with a party of 60 gunmen and began the process of taking over california from mexico and making it part of the United States. As an explorer, he did not actually discover that much that was new. He was traveling across a land that had been traversed by native nations for centuries, that had been explored by spaniards, that had been explored by fir trappers. He didnt find all that was actually new, but he made it accessible, making good maps and he was coming back to east where he was based, washington, d. C. , and writing accounts of his adventures. His job was not really to explore the west, but to promote the west, to entice american settlers to move to the west because that was part of the process of taking over that territory and ensuring that it would become part of the United States. In the process of promoting the American West in the 1840s and 50s, he also promoted himself. He would write these accounts of his adventures that were just official u. S. Army reports, but he would write them like a novel, and he would describe the landscape of the Rocky Mountains and of the oregon trail and of the great basin which he named the vast area ringed in by mountains that encompasses most of nevada and utah and parts of several other states. He would also describe california very beautifully, and he became such an extraordinarily famous and admired individual through his writings and his apparent achievements, that in 1850, there was a magazine that named john c. Fremont as one of the three most important world historical figures since jesus christ. It was kind of an american centric list. The first of the three figures was christopher columbus, who discovered america as they would have said then, established european contact with america, would be a better way to phrase it, i guess. The second was george washington, the founder of this country, and then the third was john c. Fremont, whose greatest achievement who got him on the list was his role, his reputation as the conquerer of california, adding eldorado as the magazine described it to the union, to the United States. He had real talent, real courage, real fortitude, and real accomplishments. But as i write here, the most important factor in fremonts fame may have been the person who made it possible for him to take full advantage of both his talent and the times, Jesse Benton Fremont, his wife. Born when women were allowed to make few choices for themselves, jesse found a way to chart her own course. The daughter of a senator who was deeply involved in the west, she provided her previously unknown husband with entree to the highest levels of the government and media. It was no coincidence that his career began to soar a few months after they eloped, when he was 28 and she was 17. I thought as many others did, said one of their critics, that Jesse Benton Fremont was the better man of the two. She helped to write his famous reports and some of his letters, serving as secretary, editor, writing partner and occasional ghost writer. She amplified his talent for selfpromotion, working with news editors to publicize his journeys. She became his political advisor. She attracted talented young men to his circle, promoted friends and lashed out at enemies. She carried on conversations with senators twice her age, offered her opinions to president s even when they didnt agree with her and was gradually recognized as a Political Force in her own right. Her timing was as perfect as her husbands. She was pushing the boundaries of women assigned roles just as women were beginning to demand a larger place in national life. In the 1840s and 50s, women were holding conventions to call for Voting Rights and also campaigning against slavery. The Republican Party was founded in the 1850s to fight the expansion of slavery and it captured some of their energy. In 1856, the republicans for the first time nominated a president ial candidate, and in seeking someone heroic and famous and also with a short political record, too bind their party together, they nominated John Charles Fremont. He was the first nominee ever to run for president on the Republican Party ticket, an antislavery candidate. And when john was nominated for president , jesse became part of the campaign in ways that no woman ever had. Her husbands Campaign Literature featured songs of praise for jesse. It nearly seemed like they were running for president. Women attended Campaign Rallies even though they couldnt vote. Thousands of republicans flocked to the Fremont House for a glimpse of john at the balcony and refused to leave until they saw jesse too. Madame fremont, they cried, jesse, jesse, give us jesse. A newspaper said she could have been elected queen. She achieved celebrity much like her husbands with fame out of proportion to her accomplishments, unless we count her husbands fame among those accomplishments. This is to me a very modern story because it is a story about rugged wilderness challenges, but also a story about fame, about what you make of the work that you do, about reputation. It was a time when the news media were expanding, when democracy was flourishing, when great issues were being debated, and the premonth fremonts put themselves at the center of it all. The first thing that had to happen was the exploration, the map making of the west. John c. Fremont had a reputation, built a reputation as an utterly fearless adventurer who surmounted one difficulty after another. Although he was also in reality a rather erratic leader. He would hire groups of civilians, maybe a couple dozen, sometimes more, in st. Louis and head out into the wilderness. In 1842, in the First Expedition that he commanded, he went up the oregon trail as far as what is now wyoming, went to the Continental Divide there which was supposed to be his end point, and at that point, his mission was effectively done, and he was supposed to go back home by some other route doing some more map making along the way. But reaching the Continental Divide for him turned out to be kind of anticlimactic, it was a little boring. He was in a pass where it was hard to even figure out where the Continental Divide was, and he decided the thing he ought to do was climb the tallest mountain he could see. He took some of his men and went up the highest mountain he could see, and they decided partway up to abandon the mules they had been taking because the ground was getting rough and the peak seemed like it was just right there, and so they left behind with the mules, their food, most of their other supplies and even their coats. It was summer, but they are getting at some altitude. It didnt take long to understand that they had misread the ground ahead of them. What looked like a direct ascent concealed more valleys that they needed to navigate. They were reaching altitudes where snow covered the ground, even in august, and one of the men nearly slid off a snowy slope and over a precipice to his death. He saved himself only by dropping flat on the surface to gain traction. Exhausted in the thin air, the party stopped for the night, just below the tree line, around 10,000 feet above sea level. They tried to hunt a Mountain Goat for dinner. And failed. They tried to sleep without their blankets on a slab of granite. Lieutenant fremont began to experience severe headaches and to vomit. His leadership grew erratic the next day. He let his party lose cohesion as they clamored uphill across broken ground. They were taking divergence into the rocks and snow which meant they couldnt help one another. The map maker on the expedition, a german immigrant was walking alone at the top of a snowy slope when he lost his footing and began sliding. There was no way to stop. He continued some 200 feet before he crashed into rocks at the bottom and was lucky to somersault over the first rock in a way that broke no bones. After ward, he was found by a black man who was a member of the expedition, who brought word that lieutenant fremont was vomiting again as were others. There was a message that he should try to reach the summit. A barometer was used to measure the altitude of the mountain. He refused to go on, went back to camp. He assumed that this meant that the effort to reach the summit was done. In camp, some men managed to go down and bring up a little bit of food, so they had their first meal in nearly two days. Then they had a night sleep. And he woke up in the morning expecting everyone would descend the mountain but discovered otherwise. John reminded him that they had brought along a bottle of brandy. Well, mr. Proyce i hope we shall have a glass on top of the mountain, which was his way of saying he intended to keep climbing. Fremont took extraordinary risks well beyond what seemed necessary for the mission at hand and gained certain rewards. They did reach the top of the mountain, planted an American Flag and john in a brilliant bit of Public Relations looking around at the mountains around him, decided without any evidence whatsoever that he had just climbed the highest peak in all of north america. [laughter] later exploration revealed that it was not among the top 100 peaks in the Rocky Mountains, but it took a long time to realize that. This was 1842. 14 years later, when he ran for president , there were still images being published of him surmounting the highest point in the Rocky Mountains. It was part of his campaign biography, part of his fame, part of why he was nominated for president. In spreading word of his accomplishments, jessie was crucial. His editor, the first person who would hear his story when he came back, a person who would sometimes take dictation of the stories that he had to tell, a person who would receive his letters, that he would occasionally manage to send by various means from out west, she would receive them in washington and take them to newspaper editors and have them published, to publicize his various achievements. He seemed to know that this was going to be the case, and some of his letters read like press releases. Her letters read like love letters. His letters read like press releases. Imperfect union. But they took advantage of the fact that there was a quickening national conversation, and the phone that just rang is actually symbolic and very good for this moment. Dont feel embarrassed about that at all because this is a period when weekly newspapers, which had been around in america for a long time, were becoming daily newspapers. There had always been a few of them, but there were more and more daily newspapers, and the information in the papers was being accelerated more and more because of the invention of the telegraph. In 1844, samuel f. B. Morris succeeded in stringing copper wires from washington, d. C. In the United States capital in fact, all the way up to baltimore, where the Democratic National convention was being held, and he had a telegrapher at the baltimore end send word of each development at the convention back to morris himself in washington, and morris was deciphering his own code that bears his name and reading aloud to a crowd of eventually hundreds of people at the capital the latest news developments. It was like he was the first news anchor. There are remarkable accounts of people marvelling at this idea of instant communication. The annihilation of space, as more than one person called it. Who could imagine the possibilities once people could learn about any event anywhere instantly . Professor morses telegraph, a correspondent for the New York Herald said has originated in the mind a new species of consciousness, never before was anyone conscious, and knew with certainty what events were at that moment passing in a distant city, 40 or 100 or 500 miles off. In reading that paragraph, we realize that were witnessing there in 1844 the dawn of the era that were living in today, that were swamped by today, that were struggling with today, and it is instructive to see how people struggled with it at the very beginning. Because there was this development that seemed as surely as any number of Silicon Valley firms today, to hold out the possibility of bringing the world closer together, of improving our understanding of each other. While it did that in many ways, there are also many ways in which it drove the world apart. This became apparent by the president ial campaign of 1856, the campaign in which John Charles Fremont was nominated by the republicans as an antislavery candidate in the first election where there was a major party that was meaningfully opposed to the spread of human slavery. Always before then, it had been necessary for any National Party to appeal for southern votes to have any chance of winning, so they tried very hard to remain silent about slavery or to be actively pro slavery. This party was different. Northerners had realized that there was a demographic change going on in america, that the northern population had grown much more rapidly than in the south, that that created an opportunity to elect a president with northern votes alone s, which made it a very dangerous because the south viewed that as an effort to cut them out of power, to profoundly threaten the institution around which they had structured their economy and their society, and they said many southerners said that if republicans were ever to win an election, they would leave the union. They would secede from the union. There was a battle going on over the western states, over whether slavery should be allowed to spread in the western states. There was violence in kansas, which was proposed to be a New Territory that antislavery and pro Slavery Forces were fighting over. And the dispute over kansas triggered Political Violence in washington itself. Republican senator Charles Sumner of massachusetts delivered a lengthy talk in may of 1856 on what he called the crime of kansas, and in an especially withering passage, he mocked a South Carolina senator named Andrew Butler for his incoherent phrases and the loose expectoration of his speech while opposing kansas as a free state. There was sumner said no possible deviation from truth, which he did not make. Can you imagine the idea of a politician [laughter] deviating from the truth . Senator butler was not present for this tirade, but butlers nephew learned of the speech afterward and considered it an insult to his family. The nephew Preston Brooks was a member of the house of representatives. He walked across the capital to the senate chamber, found sumner writing at his desk and beat him again and again with a heavy cane until he was unconscious. Brooks kept thrashing him even after the cane broke into pieces over sumners head. Now that the conflict had reached one of the principle media centers, the country learned of every detail. The telegraph and daily newspapers allowed people across vast distances to read about the caning almost simultaneously and read daily updates as further facts became known. Nothing like this would have been possible a decade earlier. Of course the news was filtered through northern and southern editors, which meant that northerners and southerners were simultaneously reading different versions of the same event. A witness quoted in a chicago newspaper said that sumner was ambushed, hemmed in at his desk and beaten mercilessly until he had by a great effort torn his desk from its fastenings and then he pitched forward and sensible on the floor. A correspondent for South Carolinas charleston courier all but rolled his eyes. The telegraph has already spread a thousand and one stories about this transaction, he wrote. Many of them incorrect. Sumner was beaten. It was true, but not so badly. Hes not seriously hurt. His whole speech was of character very irritating to southern men. People in the South Reading this description of the caning celebrated the caning and voted prizes for the congressman who had administered the beating. And then Something Else happened. As quickly as the telegraph had spread the news of the caning everywhere, it spread the southern reaction across the north. Readers of the New York Herald unfolded their papers to discover extended excerpts of the Southern Press praising chivalrous congressman brooks for beating the senator of massachusetts, and this was a new phenomenon in itself. Masses of americans learned not only of a disturbing event more rapidly than ever before, but also that other americans celebrated the very event that horrified them. It changed the political calculus in 1856. It became a way that americans were driven apart, rather than together. By the sudden speed and force of this information, americans learned something about each other, and they did not like what they learned about one another. They struggled with it then. We struggle with that phenomenon now. It is one of the great challenges of our time. The campaign of 1856 is to me profoundly revealing and speaks again and again to today because of the media environment and because of the issues. The questions americans faced in 1856 included who gets to be american, who gets to be equal. There was the debate over slavery, but not only slavery, there was a profound debate at the same time over immigration, a movement against immigrants had arisen in the country. The people who were at the heart of this movement referred to themselves as native americans by which they meant native born white people, not indians. They were aware that the immigrants could sway elections and endorsed various proposals to prevent immigrants from voting. They would often organize rallies, provocative rallies moving into immigrant neighborhoods in place like new york city, knowing that this would provoke violence, that this would provoke a reaction from irish immigrants, say, and so they would do it again and again until they got the reaction they wanted. In pushing against immigration, some americans were actually pushing against a dangerous and alien religion, catholicism. The pope was described as a sinister plotter who wanted to use immigrants to take control of the United States and change it from what it had always been, a protestant nation. All of this became part of the president ial campaign. John Charles Fremont had been born the illegitimate son of an immigrant, a french immigrant named Charles Fremont with a slightly different spelling, who had fallen in love with a virginia aristocrat, and they ran away together and had children including john, even though her divorce was never granted. He was the son of an immigrant, but in the newspapers in the 1856 campaign, in hostile newspapers in the 1856 campaign, they changed him from the son of an immigrant to an immigrant, who had been born outside the United States and therefore was ineligible for the presidency. There were birthers in 1856, and even worse, they began producing evidence that John Charles Fremont was catholic. That he was a foreigner born somewhere else and adherent to this alien religion. This was part of the campaign against John Charles Fremont, an incredibly bitter and nasty election with a great deal at stake. A fight to restrict slavery in the United States, a fight over who got to be counted as american, a threat to break up the union if the election result came the wrong way, a threat to destroy the system. And there were no Public Opinion polls, so you look through the documents of the time and the historians who have carefully studied this election and you see politicians trying to calculate from different bits of evidence, who would win, who would lose, and they didnt truly know. Although things were beginning to look rather desperate for the republican side against the democrat James Buchanan in late october. On friday night, october 31, republicans planned a mass gathering in new york city for mechanics and workmen. A Republican Club rented the performance hall at the academy of music. Greeleys new york tribune called it one of the largest and most enthusiastic gatherings ever seen there and a large number of ladies graced the meeting by their presence. Ladies, women were involved this president ial campaign because women had been involved in the campaign against slavery, and the new party captured some of their energy even they could not vote. They had seized as we heard a symbol, Jessie Benton fremont, they had made her as famous as him, so they are running for president in a way, and ladies are gracing the meeting by their presence. A group that called itself the Rocky Mountain glee club sang a rallying song for fremont. There should still be a Rocky Mountain glee club. [laughter] and when the cheering crowd looked up at one of the private boxes in the theater, they spied their candidate. This is a time when president ial candidates did not campaign by the way. They didnt go out in public. That was considered undignified. They would avoid making speeches. If they had to make a speech, they would avoid saying anything meaningful. If they were forced to Say Something meaningful, they would write it in a letter to a friend which would be leaked to the newspapers. They stayed out of sight. There is no record of even a single tweet by either president ial candidate in 1856. Not a single record of that. But on this evening, in this theater in new york city, people looked up and spied their candidate, who in a deviation from ordinary practice had chosen to attend the event with his wife. John Charles Fremont, illegitimate son of an immigrant, inventor of his own name, young man on the make, survivor of snowstorms and hunger, famed beyond measure, wounded by his experiences and often lost inside his own head, was granted one evening to take in the applause. Beside john in a theater box set Jessie Benton fremont who had chosen her husband, she eloped with him, born his absences and his children and then exalted him and protected him from that which he could not bear. Jessie wanted nothing more as a girl than to be her fathers assistant who had made her mark on the world when that wish was denied and lost her father when she stood up for what she believed was right because her father, a United States senator would not support their campaign for president. One of the speakers at the academy of music that evening was henry b. Stanton, a man with whiskers and deep set eyes, a writer, reformer and abolitionist. He was married to Elizabeth Stan topton, one Elizabeth Stanton, who had attended a convention undering womens right to vote urging womens right to vote. Stanton talked about whether or not western territories would be ruined by hah by what he called the curse of human slavery. He was certain the republican president ial candidate was protestant but he also said it didnt matter. I would rather be ruled over for the next four years by a liberty loving catholic who is true to the union than by a slavery loving protestant who is false to freedom. And free soil. And humanity. The crowd applauded. When election day arrived stanton said we will touch those chords which will vibrate down the vista of the future and will not cease to reverberate until good or evil the republic shall cease to exist. That weekend, it was sunday, november 2. Jessie wrote a letter to her best friend lizzy lee. She remained so certain that democratic postmasters were reading her mail, like a hack at the dnc or something, that she facetiously wrote on the inside of the letter postmaster, please send as soon as read to mrs. Lee. [laughter] to lizzy she then said i dont dare say anything more than to tell you we may be successful. Telegraphs will do the rest. In 1845, congress had passed a law creating a single president ial election day, sweeping away an old practice where different states voted over a period of weeks. There was going to be one election day, the first tuesday after the first monday of november, which in 1856, would be two days later, november 4. The telegraph wires would bring results from across the country, as quickly as each states ballots could be collected and counted. We know the end of this story because John Charles Fremont did not become president. In fact, he must stand in history as the man who was defeated for election by the worst president , according to many historians, in the history of the United States. James buchanan won the presidency and declared that the union had been saved. He was a pennsylvanian, a northerner but with southern sympathies and southern connections, and he declared the union had been saved. Having won election, he then manipulated the courts. He lobbied the Supreme Court for what is now known as the scott decision declaring that africanamericans were not citizens and that the declaration of independence in the part where it said all men are created equal did not actually mean that. An effort to codify slavery for all time. But something happened. I told you about that demographic change in america, that the northern states were more populist than the southern states. That an effort had been made to win the presidency with northern votes alone which fell narrowly short in 1856, but four years later, republicans tried it again with a candidate named Abraham Lincoln, who had campaigned for John Charles Fremont in 1856, by the way. They succeeded. The south then did follow through on its threat to destroy the system. They seceded from the union and fired the first shot in the civil war. But at the end of that war, shortly after the end of that war, lincoln in the last days of his life, pushed through a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery, which was a leap in Human Progress that no one i dont want to say no one that relatively few political leaders were willing even to contemplate at the time of this story in 1856. A leap in Human Progress that built on the story that is told in imperfect union, the story of this imperfect couple struggling imperfectly forward, pursuing their own ambitions, often wrong, often biased, often bigoted themselves, often harmful to others, sometimes helpful to each other, but ultimately thrashing as we all try to do, as we all hope to do, toward the light. Thank you for taking a little time to listen today. I really appreciate it. The book is called imperfect union. I will be happy to take questions about it. I would like to remind our audience [inaudible] the cohost of morning edition of npr speaking about his book on jessie and john fremont. We will take the first question. You know what . Im a guy. I want to hear from a woman. Is there a woman who would like to ask the first question or denunciation or anything . Really no questions at all . Right back there, maam. No discrimination against you, sir. I know you raised your hand. We will get to hear from you soon. My name is joy. Thank you very much for your talk and your book. It was fascinating. Thank you. Im curious how you think californias history then at this period in history kind of shaped the Union Overall versus the role it might be playing today. Sometimes the more progressive state is a very diverse state and if there are threads of kind of its original history that relevant to our politics still today. It was an amazingly diverse state at the very beginning. Up until the gold rush, of course the majority of the population was native, and there were a few thousand mexicans and a few thousand american settlers and there were other kinds of people, immigrants. There were chinese here at the very early date although not at the numbers that would come later. There were a lot of different kinds of people, but it was at the beginning a state with a really reactionary political leadership. California became a state in 1850. One of the first two senators elected was John Charles Fremont, and one of the first things he did if his very brief senate term was propose a bill to regulate the gold rush, which was kind of the Silicon Valley of its time. I mean, this event that was people were making ridiculous amounts of money and also transforming the wider economy, and fremont was a part of this. He had come back to california in 1849, after the mexican war, after the conquest of california. He happened to have acquired land during the war and ran into some mexican migrants who would come north in the gold rush to seek their fortune and he sent them to his land to prospect, and they made him fantastically rich with very little effort on his part, so he had benefitted from the gold rush. He had benefitted from immigrants. He had benefitted from mexicans, and then as a United States senator proposed a goldmining regulation bill saying you must buy a permit to prospect for gold and the permits shall be limited to United States citizens. Im a u. S. Citizen. Im in favor of u. S. Citizens as much as the next person, but a debate on the floor of the u. S. Senate made it explicit that the purpose of this legislation was to shove aside various races and nationalities of people. Fremont himself in wanting to get reelected in picking up the desires of his white constituents said that the mexicans who were being attracted north were just a really bad class of people and he didnt want any more of that. The very kinds of people who had made him ridiculously rich. Nobody seemed to want chinese there at all. And by nobody, i mean the white men who were debating this in the senate. But then other lawmakers stood up and say wait a minute, there are some immigrants who are good. The european ones, and this was not purely a matter of racism. It was also a matter of practicality. There were some states that had been settled by european immigrants, like wisconsin and iowa, brand new states, and these were states where immigrants who were not yet citizens but were residents were allowed to vote. In a surprising turn of events, the senators who depended on the votes of immigrants became pro immigrant, and they decided to amend this bill so that the permits would be for u. S. Citizens and european immigrants of good character. While still agreeing that nobody wanted a eed any mexicans there. There were a lot of things driving this. Relatively limited number of white men who had taken over this area of the country that had a lot of different people there and didnt want to control it. They didnt want africanamericans there at all. They didnt want a handful of indians the right to vote. California approved the constitution as a free state and was profoundly influential in this whole battle between free and slave states but part of the reason that california did that was because there were White Californians who did not want to compete in the gold fields against some guy with a bunch of african slaves. Having banned slavery which sounds so moral and right, the very same Constitutional Convention came very close to banning black people at all from coming to california. It was a profoundly racist time. And yet, it was a profoundly diverse place and time, which is a really vital thing i think to understand about our history. We have a debate now about who was included in history, who participates, whose story is that were telling, and it is a wonderful moment in that were hearing more stories told from the perspective of slaves, told from the perspective of other africanamericans, told from the perspectives of immigrants. What i want to do in a narrative like this is weave all of that together, so that you hear from the white guy, but you also hear from his wife and you hear from an africanamerican like Frederick Douglas who was very influential at the time, and you encounter some of the indians that some of these characters encountered, and you have an opportunity to see the different perspectives of things and understand how different kinds of people, the push and pull between them, in this emerging democracy made the nation that we have today. And in simple answer to your question, california was hugely significant in that progress. I will take another question. Anybody else want to yeah, go ahead, sir, even though youre not a woman. Thats fine. Go right here. Why dont you say your name. Im rick robertson. How do you think things would have developed had fremont defeated buchanan for president . Wow, one possibility had had fremont won in 1856 is the civil war would have come then. The south the southern leaders were saying this will destroy the union. We will secede from the union if the republicans win. And we know that they werent bluffing or we think they werent bluffing because four years later when lincoln won they seceded. Could have happened then. Fremont could have been the president instead of Abraham Lincoln, and i want to note that when the civil war did come, fremont was a general on the union side, turned out to be revealed as a much more erratic leader than people had thought he was, and many of his former supporters concluded that while they had favored his election passionately in 1856, they thanked god that he had not actually won because they thought the result could have been much more terrible had this guy who just was not a political thinker in the way that lincoln was had been president. Go ahead. My name is julie. I was wondering while all these significant things were going on, was jessie working with groups of women to try to earn the vote . No. It is really interesting she was picked up as a symbol. Jessie i dont know that jessie would have ever really embraced the word feminist. I think of her in the way i think of dolly parton. I dont know if you guys have heard the amazing series of podcasts thats out about dolly parton in the last few months, but there is a lot of discussion in the podcast which includes interviews with her about how dolly parton is a hero to feminists because she not only sang, she became her own boss, and she charted her own course and shes incredibly talented songwriter and business person as well as being a singer and performer, but feminist is not a label that dolly parton wanted to embrace. She was doing that in her own life but didnt want to be ideologically there. I think of Jessie Benton fremont the same way. She grew up with this boys name, her grand fathers name, got herself educated like a boy, ultimately was forced back into traditional gender roles and didnt reject them. She was a wife. She was a mother. She took care of kids. She dealt with the grief of losing children in infancy, which was really common then. She did all of those things. She stayed at home while her husband ranged out across the world, and yet she also wanted to be politically engaged and politically active and have something to say in her fathers official Senate Meetings and have something to say to the president of the United States and then the president after that, and she was one of the managers of her husbands president ial campaign. She was in every way in that respect a feminist, but when some years after the election of 1856, Elizabeth Stanton came to her and said youre very rich, jessie, would you mind making a contribution to the Womens Suffrage Movement . Her original response was im not sure i want to do that. I think that women in their present condition manage men better. [laughter] she later changed her mind. But thats another of many things that feels profoundly modern about this story. If you think about the complicated relationship that a great number of people have with the word feminist, you see jessie without that word present in the discussion. You see jessie wrestling with those very same issues well more than a century ago. Time for another question. Go for it. Please say your name. I think so. Good afternoon. Welcome to our little town. Thank you. Disclosure moment. Im Charles James riggs, a retired professor of communications studies. Uhoh. They all say that and i have never figured out why. To the point, my intrigue is with the public expressions of peoples persona that help us understand them in a public way, and i wonder if you could close the gap at least for me just a little bit. In your profile of Jessie Benton fremont, that in your presentation of her, shes an assertive active person with my political and social interests, from feminism to suffrage but what remains in a representation of her primarily published are largely nice pieces of appreciation for wild animals, enjoyment of the grizzly bear, for example, enjoyment of the great outdoors, and there does seem to be a space between what remains of her presentation of self and this other side of her which you paint. How can that be narrowed even just a little bit . You need to go through Jessie Benton fremonts many writings and find information outside the text often to understand what she is really saying. Im going to flip to this so i can get it exactly correct. Its a quote from Jessie Fremont who said it would hardly do to tell the whole truth about everything. [laughter] one of the ways that she one of the ways that she [inaudible]. [laughter] its tweet length, isnt it . She shaped her husbands image by suppressing embarrassing information about him as well as promoting things she viewed to be positive. She sort of wrote the same way. There is a wonderful memoir of hers thats called the year of American Travel which describes one of her journeys to california. It ends here in San Francisco. I commend the description of San Francisco as it was then. She finally gets there and describes it as a collection of shacks thats rapidly growing up the hills. It is a complete nightmare city, like people finally got there on a ship that had gone down and through panama and up the other way and they finally see San Francisco and it is so horrifying they almost dont want to get off the ship. [laughter] but she writes this book, and the beginning of the book is filled with references to her depression, to her despair, to the nightmares that she was having. Its really deep material, except if you just picked up the book, and didnt know much about her, you wouldnt really know what she was saying because she left something out, and that is that just days before the story began, her infant son had died. And days after the infant son died, her husband left on one of his expeditions to the west. She doesnt mention the death. Once you understand that, you understand what shes saying with all of these references and descriptions. You understand her frame of mind. She would leave out vital bits of information out of privacy, out of a kind of victorian sense of propriety, perhaps out of a sense that you needed to be tough because lots of women lost children in infancy or in childbirth or died themselves in childbirth. You had to steal yourself for that. You had to steel yourself for that. She left out this vital fact, but theres enough in those writings, if you find the wider context to understand at times what was going on with her. Also, at the very end of her life, she wrote a fascinating unpublished memoir, which is full of anecdotes, strange anecdotes about her life, not entirely reliable. In fact, in some instances, definitely untrue, but even in the instances where she got the facts wrong, the way she got them wrong is revealing. You just have to read really closely and go for context, which is true of lots of things, including lots of peoples tweets, by the way. [laughter] we have time for three or four more questions. Okay. My name is doug. You alluded at the beginning of your talk to Jessie Bentons conversations with president s and of course theres that famous confrontation at the white house between her and lincoln. I dont know if thats covered in the book. I wondered if you might talk a little bit about her general the couples relationship with lincoln yeah, absolutely. My book focuses on the 1840s and 50s, but theres an epilogue that goes over that, and it is some of the most fascinating parts of their lives is the civil war. John Charles Fremont was appointed a Union General in missouri in 1861, by president lincoln. And facing insurrection and with insufficient military forces, he took what was seen as an extreme measure of freeing the slaves of people who were disloyal. President lincoln was not yet ready to be freeing slaves. There were still slave states that were part of the union he wanted to keep them in. He did not want to directly order fremont to change his policy because that would be embarrassing, but he made it clear to fremont he wanted fremont himself to withdraw the order. Fremont being in many ways a persistent guy, which is a good thing, but also a stubborn guy, which can be bad, same quality, depends on the circumstance, refused lincolns order, and this went on for weeks and weeks. And lincoln repeated what he wanted done. And finally, john agreed to send jessie back to washington to set Abraham Lincoln straight. She gets on a train, goes back to washington, she checks into a hotel or whatever, and she sends a note over to the white house saying she would like to see the president , is any time convenient for you . And a letter comes back from lincoln or a note comes back from lincoln, its got one word, the single word is no. She goes over. No. And she starts talking to lincoln who has very little to say, and she explains why the freeing of the slaves is really good, and it is going to help them keep control of missouri, and it is going to play really well in europe, and lincoln finally says you are quite a female politician. This is according to a letter by Jessie Benton fremont written not too much afterwards. She felt lincoln wasnt listening. Lincoln felt that he understood the strategic situation and what was necessary at the time, and he did not need to lose the state of kentucky which was one of the slave states still in the union. He did not need to lose slave states in a way that might cause him to lose the war and then you dont free any slaves. He had a different point of view. Ultimately, he fired general fremo fremont. Fremont was still very famous, a big deal in the Republican Party, so lincoln gave him a second assignment as a general in another part of the country where he quickly lost a battle. He turned out to be a brilliant explorer and selfpromoter but not a very good general at all. And he was side lined again. In 1864, this is lincolns reelection now, John Charles Fremont allowed himself to be put forward as a candidate against Abraham Lincoln, as a more radical version of lincoln. Ultimately he backed off but not until about september of 1864. There was a danger had he stayed in the race that he might have split the republican vote and caused Abraham Lincoln to lose reelection. I think this is part of the reason the fremonts arent as well known today as they might be because nobody has ever gone up against Abraham Lincoln and fared well in history. I mean think about the people. Jefferson davis not really well regarded today. Lincoln douglas, i mean you kind of vaguely remember, but not nearly as much as lincoln, and the fremonts were also di min i should by that experience. Were also diminished by that experience. It is a fascinating story and it is really amazing. If you choose to buy the book, there is in an account the speech that lincoln gave, on behalf of John Charles Fremont in 1856 and it is a really deeplymoving speech, which includes the line by lincoln come to the rescue of the great principle of equality. Yes sir . My name is david. One of the things i found fascinating about your talk and your answer to some of the questions is a parallel between fremonts time and our own. I wonder if there are any more you want to share with us. Oh my goodness, the demographic change is a big one. Were in a time of great demographic change which makes people nervous because people see a change in power in that, the groups are growing more rapidly in this country. Younger people, people of color, imgrants. Immigrants. We could name bunch of different kinds of people, tend to vote for more one party than the other. That has allowed some democrats to think confidently that they can win elections without compromising so much with conservatives and its caused republicans to feel that they are in their mind unfairly being shut out of power in a way that seems very familiar. And republicans havent always spoken explicitly about this, but President Trump is known for speaking explicitly about things, and in the 2016 campaign, he told supporters this is your last chance to save the country, your last chance for your side to win. He was suggesting that as the country continued to change, that if his side did not do something now, they would be out of power forever. And i think that fear is still there for many of his supporters. We now have democrats who are concerned about being forever shuttle out of power by a president being forever shut out of power by a president who is appointing conservative judges to Lifetime Appointments who has constantly talked about illegals voting as a way it seems to encourage efforts to limit certain peoples voting participation and who has said he has the right to do whatever he wants as president. And democrats look at all that and see someone who is poised to wipe out the system. And i think that is part of the reason that this is such a tense time. People are not merely fearful of losing an election. Theyre fearful of losing forever, which means that we will need as citizens i think to keep our heads and keep our perspective during this Election Year thats now beginning. Are there women who want any more questions . Go ahead, you go, sir. Youve got the microphone. steve and then they settled by yosemite area. And at one point i believe they were courtmartialed for his role in his activities in california and how he navigated that and how he will ultimately be viewed by californians. Steve he first arrived in 1944 in california, arrived by mistake and one of his ex been a vision because he needed supplies and then he turned and went over into the event is in the snow. They met a guy named john sutter who was able to supply them with food and horses and so forth. He then returned in the winter of 1845, in 1846 with a 60 government and begin the process of taking over the future state. He was a part of what evolved into the california part of the mexican war up until about 1847. What was involved in a conflict between an army general and a navy, dark who both said they were in charge in california. And fremont chores the wrong guy to support. Any ultimately was harsh courtmartialed. This is John Freemont. Because he was a national hero, he resigned out of the point of principle anyway. He returned to california in 1849. In time for the gold rush. That was the moment in which he encountered a group of mexicans that had to land, prospecting for gold and made himself very rich. And there is a period where he is continuously going back and forth. In 1849, in california and then by the end of the year, california approved a state constitution and chosen him as one of californians for student senators and on new years day 1850, the gun ownership to go back towards the east. And by the end of 1850, he is going back to california again. Is this bicoastal guide. Its not a six hour flight people. [laughter]. And he continues going back and forth after the deceit and the election of 1856 red jesse decided to remain in new york and john who had difficulties staying in one place decided to return to california. And they went backandforth again. And i will mention even one more thing. Later in life, people of their money in a railroad investment. They were really broke. One of the ways that they supported themselves was jesse wrote. And in 1887, with johns health failing, jesse decided that his health would be better in a climate of los angeles. And they went across the country and lived in los angeles for a little while but john could not remain in one place. And he had so often left his wife to travel to the west, now they have gone all the way west. Now he left his wife to travel east. He was looking for in washington, a pension for his military service and pursuing some kind of business in new york and he died in new york city in 1890. Jessie remained in los angeles. He was penniless but was understood to have contributed something really significant to california and to the country. Women in los angeles raised money to buy him a house prayed and he lived there until 19 oh two i guess we have time for one or two more questions. Is there a woman who wants to ask a question i would like to be genderneutral here. Guest i was just wondering when he came out with his 60 soldiers to take over. Did he just dream that up. Mac. Steve the episode is marked even today. President james had just been elective and wanted california and wanted to buy california from mexico. He was in the process of provoking an actual war against mexico. But the war had not started yet. Nevertheless, John Freemont was going that direction. His own diary we knew he was going there. It is unclear if they had quietly told him, take over if you get a chance. [laughter]. It seems a little more likely that the plans work a little bit more vague. They think they were going to get california one way or another. And the one to make sure that some european colonial power did not capture it for so fremont would just be out there to be available to be useful if he possibly could. And when he got to california he didnt act like anybody was any great strategic purpose he thrashed around the state and gradually went to the mexican authorities. Patient left california to go up to oregon which is what he told the mexicans he would do printed and we dont know why he didnt go away. Late in life, the explanation given for why he did not leave california. He was shopping for beachfront real estate. [laughter]. And his windows when one comes to california. [laughter]. Any though thought santa cruz we a great place to live and he would bring his mom out there. He went to look at santa cruz those close to the capital of monterey this part of the reason he ultimately had a conflict with mexican authorities which escalated and led to the United States takeover of california. So that dreamed up real estate transaction is part of the reason that we are all standing or sitting here in the United States. Instead of mexico. Thank you very much. [applause]. I really enjoyed this discussion. Thank you so much. Thank you. And so ends another event. Thank you very much. Weeknights we are teaching apple tv every weekend on cspan2. Tonight, books on first historian matthew, chronicles Robert Kennedys visit in the winter of 1967 and 1968 and how it fueled his interest to run for president. And then kathy looks back at her grandmother aunt and mother grew up in poverty in kentuckys appellation mountains region. And the decisions to remain on leave. After that, jd vance recalls his childhood in ohio. At the 17th annual book festival in washington dc. Watchful tv, this week and every weekend on cspan2. If you miss any of our live coverage and the governments response to the coronavirus outbreak, watching anytime cspan. Org coronavirus. From daily briefings by the president and the White House Task force, to update from governors and the hardest hit states. It is all there. Use the charts and maps to track the virus global spread printed and confirmed cases in the u. S. And county by county. Our coronavirus webpage is your fast and easy way to watch cspan unfiltered coverage of this pandemic. [background sounds]. 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