Many of you honestly know him. Hes cohost of morning edition on npr. Hes also the author of this great book on jessie and john fremont. How many people are here from fremont . We have a couple, okay great. Thank you very much, steve, for coming. [applause] thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks everyone, and good day. Delighted you could come this afternoon. Im delighted to be here in San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and particularly to talk about jessie and john fremont 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 into 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 a live radio thing on kqed. The thing about life radio is it begins at a very exact time. The thing about going through San Francisco traffic is that you are really not going to make your exact time. So i was supposed to be 8 a. M. Pacific time that i would be there for this National Radiohead and at 8 a. M. Im still on the road in the back of this car creeping up the freeway at, i dont know, seven miles an hour, nine miles an hour, whatever it was. Im looking out the rights that of the car and San Franciscobased out there and the city of San Francisco or the Southern Suburbs is spurting out in the hills in front to be and im missing my deadline which is a horrifying thing for journalists to do, but im just thinking to myself, this is the world the fremont made. [laughing] for better, sometimes worse but it is really one of the most wonderful cities and i seize any opportunity to get here was delighted to be researching this book in part because i i knew t would give me an excuse to do some research in and around San Francisco. It is the story of two people, the story of a marriage, and their ambitions and adventures in a time when the United States was deeply divided and seem to be in danger of coming apart. Imperfect union refer to union of the american state at a time when some outlawed slavery and others embraced it. It also refers to this marriage of this very unusual couple who strove to accomplish and achieve all that they could in that very divisive time, and they playea vital role in it. John Charles 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 westernmost city of any consequence in the United States. And went out as a u. S. Army officer, hired skilled civilians to go along with them, and mapped the oregon trail, map of the roots come when at west again and again. As an explorer he did not discover that much was new. He was travelling across a land traversed by native nations for centuries, that had been explored by spaniards, that had been explored by fur trappers. He didnt find all that much that was actually new, but he codified it, he made it accessible. He was making good maps and more important, he was coming back east to washington 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 very evocatively 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 historical figures since jesus christ. It was kind of an americancentric list. The first of the three figures was Christopher Columbus who discovered america as they would have said that, especially 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 conqueror of california, adding el dorado 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 name may have been the person who made it possible for him to take full advantage of his talent and his time. Jessie Benton Fremont, his wife. Born when women werent allowed to make their way themselves, she made her own course. The daughter of a senator deeply in the west, she provided her previously unknown husband to highest levels. Government and media. No coincidence that his career began to soar when they eloped, she was 17. I thought that Jessie 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 publish his journey. She became his political advisor, and she attracted men to his circles and cared for friends and lashed out at enemies. And she had conversations with men twice her age 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 womens roles, and women were holding conventions for Voting Rights and 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 to 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 , jessie became part of the campaign in ways that no woman ever had. Her campaign had this and it was like their campaign. And thousands flocked to the house for a glimpse of john on the balcony and refused to leave until they saw jessie, too. Madam fremont, they cried, jessie, jessie, give us jessie. A newspaper said she could have been elected queen. Jessie Benton Fremont achieved celebrities 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 with fame, 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 fremonts put themselves at the center of it all. Now the first thing that had to happen for them though was the actual exploration, the map making of the west. John c fremont had a reputation, built a reputation as an utterly fearless adventurer who surrounded one difficulty after another. Although he was also in reality a rather erratic leader. Who would hire men and head to the wildness. He went up the oregon trail as far as what is now wyoming, went to the Continental Divide there which as supposed to be his endpoint and at that point his motion was effectively done and he was supposed to go down a route and more map making along the way. But reaching the Continental Divide for him turned out to be a little anticlimatic, it was boring, he was on a path, hard to figure out where the Continental Divide was and he thought the thing he ought to do is climb the tallest mountain that he could see. He took some of his men and went up the highest mountain that he could see and they decided partway up to abandon the mules that 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 theyre getting at some altitude. It didnt take long to stand that they had misread the ground ahead of them. What looked like a direct ascent concealed valleys they had to navigate. And they encountered snow in august, and a man nearly slid over a precipice to his death. He saved himself by dropping to the ground to gain traction and they stopped just below the treeline 10,000 feet above sea level. They tried to hunt a Mountain Goat and failed. They tried to sleep without blankets on a slap of gran night. And lieutenant fremont began to experience headaches and vomit. His leadership grew erratic, they were above Broken Ground and they split into ones and twos through the rocks and snow and couldnt help one another. The map maker charles price, an 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. Afterwards he was found by johnnie genise, a black man a member of the expedition, that lieutenant fremont was vomiting and as were others, and he sent words that he should try to reach the summit. Proyce, not being an idiot refused, went back to camp and he assumed 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 nights sleep, and proyce woke 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 after all empty a glass on top of the mountain, which was the sick and dehydrated lieutenants way of saying that he intended to keep climbing. Fremont took extraordinary ris risks, well beyond what seemed necessary for the mission at hand. And gained certain rewards. They eventually, by the way, did reach the top of that mountain, planted an american flag, and john, in a brilliant bit of Public Relations looking around the mountains 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 is your mounding the highest point in the Rocky Mountains, it was part of his campaign. Biography was 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 he had to tell, a person who would receive his letters he would occasionally manage to send from out west, she would receive them and take them to newspaper editors and have them published to public size his various achievements. He seemed to know this was going to be the case and some of his letters read like press releases. Her letters, read like love letters. His letters reed 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 symbolic and good for this moment, dont feel embarrassed 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 fb morris succeeded in stringing copper wires from washington d. C. From 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 send information back to morris in washington and morris was deciphering his own code that bears his name and reading allowed 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 an event anywhere instantly . Professor morris telegraph, a correspondent for the New York Herald said, has originated in the mind a new species of consciousness. Never was anyone conscious, knew what efforts were passing to a new city, 400, 500 miles off. In reading that paragraph, we realized 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 Silicon Valley firms today that held the possibility of bringing the world closer together, of improving our understanding of each other, and while it did that in many ways, there were also many ways in which it drove the world apart. And 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 and so they tried very hard to remain silent about slavery or to be actively pro slavery. This party was different. Northerners had realized 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 alo alone. Which made it a very dangerous time. 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 said. Many southerners said 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. And the sumner of massachusetts, had a speech he called the crime of kansas and an especially withering badge he mocked sand drew butler for incoherent phrases and the loose expectoration of his speech. No possible deviation from truth that he did not make, there was. Can you imagine the idea of a politician deviating from the truth . Senator butler was not present for that 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 capitol 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 Principal 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 to 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 southners 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 after he had torn his desk from his fastenings and he pitched forward incensable unsensible on the floor. The telegraph has spread 1001 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 for the congressman who 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 paper to found excerpts of the Southern Press praisi praising chivalrous for beating the senator from massachusetts. This was a phenomenon, masses of americans learned of disturbing events rapidly than before, and that other 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. Theyve struggled with it then. We struggle with that phenomenon now. Its 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 slavely, there was a profound debate at the same time over immigration. A movement against immigrants had arisen in the country. The people at the heart of this movement referred to themselves as native americans by which they meant native born white people, not indians. And they were aware that the immigrants could sway elections and endorsed various proposals to prevent immigrants from voting. They would often organize ralli rallies, provocative rallies, in new york city, knowing this provoke violence, provoke a reaction from irish immigrants, say, and theyd 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. Catholocism. 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. And 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. So he was the son of an immigrant, but in the newspapers in the 1856 campaign in hostile newspapers in the 1856 campaign they change him from the son of an immigrant, to an immigrant who had been born outside of 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. And this was the campaign against john fremont, a 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. The 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 looked through the documents of the time and the historians who 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. Horace 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, lady. Women were involved in this president ial campaign because women had been involved in the campaign against slavery and the new party captured some of their energy, even though 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 lady 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. 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 that would be leaked to newspapers. They stayed out of sight. Theres no record of even a single tweet by either president ial candidate in 1856. Not a single record of this. But on this evening, in this theater in new york city, people looked up and spied their candidates, who in a deviation from ordinary practice, it 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 sat Jessie Benton fremont who had chosen, her husband, eloped with him. Born his absences and his children and then exalted him and protected him from that he could not bear. Jessie who wanted nothing more as a girl than to be her fathers assistant and made her mark on the world and even though that was denied and lost her father when she stood up for what she thought was right because her father, a United States senator, would not support their campaign for president. And one there was henry stanton. With he was married to katie stanton, one. Womens rights activists who a few years earlier had attended a convention at seneca falls, urging womens right to vote. And the stakes of the election, whether or not western territories would be ruined by what he called the curse of human slavery. Stanton said he was certain the republican president ial candidate was protestant, but he also said it didnt matter. Id 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 well church those chords which will vibrate down the future and not cease to reverberate, good and evil the republic will cease to exit. Sunday, november 2, that weekend, jessie wrote a letter to her best friend, lizzie lee. Jessie was so convinced that democratic post masters were reading her mail, like a hack at the dnc or something. [laughter] that she facetiously wrote inside the letter, postmaster please send as soon as read to mrs. Lee. To lizzie she 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, 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 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. Now, we know the end of the 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, he was a northerner, but with southern sympathies and Southern Connections and declared the union had been saved and having won election, he then manipulated the courts, he lobbied the Supreme Court for what is now known as the dread 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 populous and than the southern states, that an effort had been made to win the presidency with northern votes alone which fell narrowly short in 1856. 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 or 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 hope to do, toward the light. Thank you for taking a little time to listen today. I really appreciate it. The book is called improve union and ill be happy to take questions about it. Remind our audience the cohost of morning edition at npr, speaking about his book on jessie and john fremont. So well take the first question. Somebody you know what . Im a guy. I want to hear from women. Are there women here who want to go first . Is there a woman who would like to ask the first question or denunciation . Really, no questions at all . There, maam, no discrimination, sir, well get to you soon. Will you say your name so we can get to know each other a little bit. My name is joy, your book was fascinated. Thank you. Im curious how you think that californias history then sort of shaped the Union Overall versus the role it might be playing today . Sometimes the more progressive state is a diverse state and threads to the original history that are relevant to Politics 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 then there were a few thousand mexicans and a few thousand american settlers, immigrants, chinese here at a very early date although not in the number that would come later. There were lots 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 in his brief senate term was propose a bill to regulate the gold rush, which was the kind of the Silicon Valley of its time. People were making ridiculous amounts of money and 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 it come north in the gold rush 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 gold mining 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 piquing up the interests of the citizens, said that they were bad classes of people, the very people that had made him ridiculously rich. Nobody seemed to want chinese there at all and by nobody, i mean the white men who debated this in the senate, but other lawmakers said, 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 are 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 proimmigrant. [laughter]. And they decided to amend this bill so the permits would be for u. S. Citizens and european immigrants of good character. While still agreeing that nobody wanted any mexicans there. There were a lot of things driving this. There was a relatively limited number of white men that had taken over this area from a different country and they wanted to control it. They didnt want a handful of indians to vote. California approved constitution of a free state and profoundly influential in this 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 same Constitutional Convention came close to preventing black people at all from coming to california. It was a profoundly racist time. And yet, it was a profoundly diversion place and time, which is a really vital thing i understand to our history. We have a debate who was included in history and whose story are they telling . Its a wonderful moment in that were hearing more stories told from the perspectives of slaves and told from the perspectives of africanamericans, of immigrants. What i want to do in a narrative like this is weave this altogether so that you hear from the white guy and 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 the dark characters encountered and you see the perspectives of things and the push and pull between them in the emerging democracy made the nation that we have today and in simple answer to your question, california was hugely significant in that progress. Ill take another question. Anybody else want to go ahead, sir, even though youre not a woman. Go right here, thats fine. Why dont you say your name. How do you think im rick robertson. How do you think that things would have developed had fremont defeated buchanan for president . One possibility had fremont won in 1856, 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. We know they werent bluffing, 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 when the civil war did come, fremont was a general on the union signed and turned out to be a much more erratic leader than people 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. Hi, may name is julie. Hi, julie. I was wondering, while all of these significant things were going on, was jessie working with groups of women to try to earn the vote . No. Its really interesting that 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 that i think of dolly parton. I dont know if youve seen the amazing podcasts in the last few months, theres a lot of discussion in the podcast, includes interview with her, how dolly parton is a hero to feminist, she National Correspondent only sang, but charted her own course and 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 was not ideologically there. I think of Jessie Fremont the same way, she grew up a boys name, her grandfathers name. Got educated like a boy and was back in the traditional gender roles and she was a wife, mother, lost a child in infancy, common then. She stayed at home while her husband ranged out across the world and yet, she also wanted to engage and politically active and something to do in other fathers meetings and the president of the United States and the president after that. She was one of the managers of her husbands president ial campaign. She was in every day in that respect a feminist, but when some years after the election of 1856, Elizabeth Katie stanton came to her and said, you know, youre very rich, jessie, would you mind making a contribution to the womens suffrage movement, jessie initial response was, im not sure i want to do that. I think that women in their present condition manage men better. [laughte [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 nor another question . Go for it, whats is your name. I think so, good morning, mr. Inskeep, welcome to our low town. Im a professor of rhetoric and communications studies. They all say that and ive 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 a little bit in your profile Jessie Benton fremont, that in your presentation of her shes an assertive active person with Many 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 my grizzly bear, for example. And an enjoyment of the great outdoors, and there does seem to be a space between what remains of her presentation of self and the other side of her which you paint. How can that be narrowed even just a little bit . You need to go through Jessie Bennett fremonts many writings and find information outside the text often to understand really what she is saying. The epigraph of this book which im going to flip to to make sure i get an exactly correct is a quote from Jessie Benton fremont who said, it would hardly do to tell the whole truth about everything. [laughte [laughter] one of the ways that she one of the ways that she [inaudible] its tweets length, isnt it. One of the ways she put her husbands image was promoting embarrassings things as well as positive. She wrote the same way. Theres a year of American Travel which describes one of her journeys to california and ends in San Francisco and i commend the description of San Francisco as it was then. She finally gets there and finds it a collection of shacks rapidly growing up the hills, its a complete nightmare city and people finally got there on a ship, theyd gone down through panama and up the other way and they see San Francisco, its so horrifying, they almost dont want to get off the ship. But she writes this book and the beginning of the book is filled with references to her depression, to her despair, to the nightmares she was having. Its really deeply evocative 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 why she is saying with all of these references and descriptions, you understand her frame of mind. She would leave out vital bets of a victorian sense of propriety, perhaps out of a sense that you have to be tough because lots of women lost children in infancy or died themselves in childbirth. You had to steel yourself for that. She left out this vital fact, theres enough in the 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. And in some area this was not true. But the way she got the facts wrong was revealing. Read closely and go to are context. And thats true including with a lot of peoples tweets, by t by the the way. We have time for three or four more questions. Hi. Whats your name. My name is doug and you alluded at the beginning of your a talk to Jessie Bentons famous confrontation in the white house between her and Abraham Lincoln. I dont know if thats covered in the book, but talk about the couples relationship with lincoln. Absolutely. My book focuses on the 1940s and 50s, but theres a n epilogue and some of the most fascinating part of their lives is the civil war. John Charles Fremont was appointed a Union General in 1861 by president lincoln. Facing insurrection and insufficient military forces he took what was 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 starts a part of the union and he wanted to keep them in. He did not want to directly order fremont to change his policy because that would be embarrassi embarrassing, but he made it clear that he wanted fremont himself to withdraw the order. Fremont in many ways being a persistent guy, a good thing, but also a stubborn guy, which is bad and refused lincolns order and went on for weeks and weeks and lincoln repeated what he wanted done and finally, john agreed to send jessie was back to washington to state Abraham Lincoln straight. She gets on a train. She goes back to washington. She checks into a hotel or whatever, and she sends a note over to the white house as you would do, shed like to see the president , is anytime 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 now. So she goes over now and she starts talking to lincoln, who has very little to say. And see explains why the freeing of the slaves is really good and its going to help them keep control of missouri and its going to play really well in europe and lincoln finally said, you are quite a female politician. This is according to a letter by Jessie Benton fremont written not too much afterwards. She felt that lincoln just 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 fremont. Fremont was still very famous, was a big deal in the republic, and he got assignment and lost a battle. He turned out to be a brilliant explorer and selfpromoter, but not a good general. He was sidelined again. In 1864, this is lincolns reelection, john fremont allowed himself to be put up against Abraham Lincoln, and he backed off, but not until 1864. There was a danger had he stayed in the race he might have split the republican vote and cause Abraham Lincoln to lose reelection. I think this is part of the reason that the fremonts are not as wellknown today as they might be. Because nobody has ever gone up against Abraham Lincoln and fared well in history. Think about the people, jefferson davis, not really wellregarded. [laughter] you know, lincolndouglas, kind of remember who that guy douglas was not nearly as much as lincoln and the fremonts were diminished by that experience. And its a fascinating story and really amazing, if you choose to buy the book, there is in it an account of the speech that lincoln game on behalf of Charles Fremont in 1856 and its really a deeply moving speech, which includes the line by lincoln come to the rescue of the great principle of equality. Yes, sir, go ahead. My name is david. And one of the things that i found fascinating about your talk and your answering some of the questions the parallels between fremonts time and our own and wondering 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 much great demographic change, which makes people nervous because people see a change in power in that the groups theyre growing more rapidly in this country. Younger people, people of color, immigrants, we could go on and name a bunch of different kinds of people, tend to vote more for one party than the other and thats allowed democrats, some democrats to think confidently that they can win elections without compromising so much with conservatives. And it has caused republicans to feel that they are in their minds 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 still is there for many of his supporters. We now have democrats who are concerned about 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 that 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, but weve had no, youve got the microphone. My name is tom and thank you so much for the presentation and the back line of the story of both of these people. Could you give a little quick timeline of fremont and jessies time in california . His arrival has got several kind of controversial points to it. Yeah. From north to south, during the mexicanamerican war and then they settle, as mentioned here over by yosemite in the mariposa area. And just how they at one point i believe he was cart Court Martialed in his role in california and how he will ultimately be viewed by californians. And you asked for a timeline, 1844 in california arrived by mistake when one of his expeditions needed supplies and turned and went over the sierra nevadas in the snow and met a guy john sutter who was able to provide them with food and horses, so forth. Returned in the 184546 with gunmen and began the future of taking over the state. And evolved into part of the californiamexican war until 1947, but was involved in a conflict between an army general and a Navy Commodore who both said they were charge in california and fremont chose the wrong guy to support and ultimately was Court Martialed. He was granted clemency by the president , james k polk because he was a national hero, but resigned as a point of principle anyway. Returned to california in 1849 in time for the gold rush. And that was the moment in which he encountered the group of mexicans and had his land prospected for gold and made himself very rich. And theres a period where hes just continuously going back and forth and they spent 1849 in california and then by the end. California is chosen for state confusion and hes chosen as one of the senators. Then they get on a ship to go back toward the east. By the end of 1850 hes going back to california again. Hes this bicoastal guy and its not a sixhour flight, people. And he continues going back and forth after the defeat in the election of 1856. Jessie decided to remain in new york and john, who had difficulty staying in one place, decided to return to california and they went back and forth again. And ill mention even one more thing, later in life, he blew their money in railroad investmen investments. They were really broke, one of the ways that they supported themselves was that jessie wrote memoirs of their experiences which is part of the reasons why we have some of the lovely writings of hers that we have. And in 1887, with johns health failing, jessie decided that his health would be better in the climate of los angeles. And they went across the country, lived in los angeles for a little while, but john could not remain in one place, and this man who so often had left his wife to travel to the west, now theyd gone all the way west and he left his wife to travel east, looking for, in washington, a pension for his military service, pursuing some kind of business in new york, and he died in new york city in 1890. Jessie remained in los angeles, was penniless, but was understood to have contributed something really significant to california and to the country. And women in los angeles raised money to buy her a house, where she lived until her death in 1902. I guess weve got time for one or two more questions. One more question. President james polk had just been elected, wanted california, wanted to buy california from mexico, was in the process the provoking an actual war against mexico, but the war hadnt started yet. Nevertheless, fremont was going in that direction and president polk, according to the documentary evidence, his diary new fremont was going there. Its unclear if polk had quietly told him take over if you get a chance. It seems a a little more likely that the plans were a little more vague. Polk thought is going to get california one way or another. Wanted to make sure some european colonial powers didnt captured first. So fremont would be out there to be available and to be useful if he possibly could. And fremont when he got to california didnt act like anybody with any great strategic purpose. He thrashed around the state. He gradually irritated the mexican authorities. He should have let california to go up to oregon which is what he told the mexicans is what is going to do but he gave explanations why he didnt go away. Late in life explanation why he didnt leave kallikrein was he was shopping for beachfront real estate, as one does when one comes to california. [laughing] and he thought, santa cruz would be a great place to live and he could bring his mom out, anyway to look at santa cruz and that was close to the capital of monterey apart the reason he also had a a conflict with mexn authorities which escalated and led to the United States takeover of california. So that dreamed of 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. I really enjoyed this discussion. Thank you. [applause] thank you. And so ends another event in the 117 years of history of the commonwealth club. Thank you very much. You are watching a special edition of booktv now airing during the week while members of congress are in the district due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight, life in america. Enjoy booktv now and over the weekend on cspan2. Amy teitel is with us today courtesy of Gulfstream Aerospace corporation. Amy is a spaceflight historian, author, youtube or, public speaker and popular space personality. Not unlike her subjects is one of the only academically trained young female spaceflight a historians writing f
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