Transcripts For CSPAN3 Four Influential Civil War Military W

Opening day of the new congress. Watch the official swearing in of the new and reelected members of the house and senate. Members he election of the sena all day live coverage of todays coverage of capital hill begins with 7 00 a. M. Eastern onzv csp or you can listen to it on the cspan radio app. Up next on americanko histor tv, a conversation with candace shy hooper about her book lincolns generals lives, four women who influenced they y 1 war for better and for worse. The women profiled in the book are Jessie Fremont, nelly mcclellan, andc julia grant. President lincolns cottage in washington, d. C. Hosted this hour long cevent. Joining us tonight is president lincolns cottage board member shy cooper and cspan to discussym candys new book, lincolns general lives, four women who influence the course of the civil war, for better and for worst. Candacezv shy cooper served as press secretary and legislative assistant Charlie Wilson before becoming Vice President of in National Energy company. She then joined a major new York Law Firm as legislative temple. With her husband, ms. c cooper, later founded the longing from cooper, cooper and owen. She holds a journalism degree from university of illinois. Law degree from georgetown and master of arts degree in history from George Washington university. Her writing has been published she has lectured at the United States Naval Academy and at conferences, Southern Historical association andc the film in t history association. In addition to serving on the soundingboard of directors at president lincolns cottage, she serve on the Advisory Board and historical homes in detroit michigan. U cspans ceo. She integrates without on camera interviewer sitting down with president andu first ladies, members of congress, Supreme Court justices, historians and political journalists. First lay fir[t ladies. President ial historians. This was the ninth book susan had led working with public affairs,c Supreme Court and abraham lincoln. Each book is special collection of cspan interviews and retain perspective of other feature suspects. Hundreds and hundreds of volumes on lincolns in the civil war and his relationship with the militaryc leadership and linco file. Candys new book, lincolns general slide, gives voice to the other half of soetd andc provides valuable addition by looking at how the wives of john looking at how the wives of john c. Fremont theya in the union of effort. Providing a look at their complete lives, including mapping their movementsd8 durin the civil war, candy had Jessie Fremont and mcclellan butting heads with lincoln, while Ellen Sherman encouraged their paion to lincoln. Its a fascinating detail of how noncombative neither elected or important played a keyc role. Please join me Candace Cooper and susan flames. Ko [ applause ] good evening everyone. Nice to see you. Ill tell you a personal note. Candy and ip knew each other since washington 30 years ago and we havent seen each other since, so when the cottage book called and asked if ic would d this tonight, first of all, she sent us to a number of events here and so happy to support the cottage and then a chance to se candy in then to see candy in this capacity and spend time with all of you, i couldnt possibly say no. Because, now you know, a little bit of a personal thing. I want to make sure this is a very personal event tonight. We really emphasize the conversation part of. This im going to be talking with candy for about 25 minutes or so and then we really want to hear your questions. These are four very interesting women. And i will be able to only skim the surface and we want to hear what you hear about them. Lets get at it, candy. I know from the many biographer thats ive had a chance to meet over the years, but when you take on a project like this, you and your family live with these people. For the time that youre doing the research and writing. So having lived with these four women, which one did you most enjoy living with and which one did you want to divorce . As you said, we lived with them. My husband and i lived with them, my husband says he lived with five women for eight years. And is pretty clear that Jesse Fremont seemed to be the one that was most irritating personality. I think the one i enjoyed the most though was julia graham. They she was a much more complex biographer than i think they give credit for. If you read the memoirs, she was the first lady to write memoirs. They were set aside for many years. But if you read her memoirs closely, she gets back at every one of the people who didnt think that her list was going to be successful in life. She jabs at them. She is funny as can be. She makes the funniest comments. And she is just really a delightful person but with a sense of dignity, too. I had stumbled on a number of these stories. Most notably, of course, Jesse Fremont who had a disastrous meeting with lincoln. One of the most famous meetings in the white house during the civil war and famously bad. And then i learned that sherman had gone to washington to try to get help for her husband when he was declared insane by all the newspapers. And her meeting went very well. And at that time, even as i was still in as i had gone back to graduate school, i was still working as a lobbyist. I said these are two different lobbying styles. So let me look and see what they did. And i know there were other women, wives of military officers. But what really brought this book together was when i tried to find then a general another general whose career path matched free momentmontfre started out as a Major General in may of 1861. By the end of 1862, lincoln relieved him of command. So im looking for another general and, boom, there is George Mcclellan, almost exactly the same career trajectory. I said what other general had the same career path as William Sherman . He could hardly get back into the army. He sort of didnt want. To even when he did, he couldnt get a command. He said he was going to look at the others wives. When i looked at mcclellans wife, maryellen, marsy or nelly and then i looked at grants wife, julia grant, and they seemed to have some very similar characteristics. There were coincidences of the two wives that really rose to greatness in four years. Well, so the thesis, of course, is that the great men are supported by the wives. But we have to talk about Victorian Women in society. Because influence in Victorian Women seem like opposing concepts. Because at that period of time, women were basically domestic. They were to stay in the domestic sphere. So how did the four women wield influence . One of the ways also as part of that thesis is the relationships or the opinions that these women had about lincoln. She was this quiet person and the husband was in the public sphere. But women who wanted to certainly had many ways of making their opinions known and in getting their husbands to begin to think their way. In some cases, it might be like julia grant, things as simple as when mary lincoln invited them to the theater on april 14th, 1865. Julia refused to go. Now her husband had pretty much already told lincoln that they would go. Julia said no. She had what she called a freak. This is where i think the book becomes the most interesting. You see the women who encouraged their husbands every thought and even their every poor judgement as opposed to the women who question their husband onz things that they were doing. They said to move the jews out of the military camps because they were selling cotton and she said that was odious and he never should have done. That you can see, too, that women have have a means of reinforcing either the best in their husbands or the worst. And thats what this study is. As a little aside, i asked aaron, the museum director, which room was the lincoln bedroom. Were sitting in it. You talk about influence being wielded. I can just see the conversation thats may have happened in this room 150 years ago. So interesting. Whether we mention lincoln, of course, lincoln is the son lincoln was so heavily involved in choosing officers in command. Its a world we have not seen maybe the last president that intervened in the choosing of senior commanders, the hiring and firing. And in most of those cases, he knew something about the general. And he either knew them from their reputations in the earlier war, the mexican war, where they did make the reputations. Or he knew them through their relationships and their families or their family ties or their politics as in general mcclellan and frank blare who were members of congress. Whom he appointed. pointed political generals and then he raised meritorious generals. So this was washington was a very small world then. And when generals or captains or majors or even first lieutenants felt that they should be promoted and they werent getting the athengs they wanted, sometimes they sent their very pretty wives in to see lincoln. And he enjoyed that very much. He actually wrote about at least two of the wives how his pretty wife says i should make him major. Or about another wife that she wants her husband to be a Brigadier General and i may just have to do it or that saucy woman will torment me forever. It was a very personal relationship with the generals. Mary lincoln kept her eye on how he corresponded with some of these women. Ill jump ahead. You tell storty that is one of the real devisive things between julia grant and mary lincoln. She may have been paying too much attention tolt preside the. Yes, mary lincoln, the dress maker, many of you know of her, but she once observed if a woman wanted to get into great disfavor with mary lincoln should pay president lincoln a compliment. And julia did that on one occasion at city point late in the war. Mary was unhappy about. That and it sort of set the tone for their whole experience together at city point in those last days of the war. So before i leave, my sun and planet metaphor, you used a metaphor from the solar system from the generals and i liblgke and i want to share. The two general thats had the difficult careers were meteors and the two sherman and grant with the successful were stars. What did they mean to you . What i tried to say is fremont and mcclellan burst on the scene in the war as meteors. They climb high in the public sight. They created huge light and chaos and then they pretty much disappears from sight in just a very short time. Where sherman and grant were more like stars that you know, in twilight you dont see them as much but when things get darker and darker, they get brighter and brighter and they essentially have to lead the path home. So were going to spend a little more time with these four women. Im mentioning jesse free monlt because she daughter of a famous legislature. She was the father of Thomas Hart Benton, first senators from missouri. He was a man that is so respected for his integrity, particularly his antislavery stance which first cost him his seat in the senate and then cost him a seat in the house. That both Theodore Roosevelt wrote a biography of Thomas Hart Benton and john kennedy included him in his profiles in courage. He was a giant of a man who came from a slave holding family. And then went in completely the opposite direction. He was sure his first child was going to be a boy and he was going to name the boy after his father jesse. Well, things happened. And she was named jesse and just spelled a little bit differently. And he educated her like a man. He had one of the best libraries in washington. It rivalled the library of congress at that time at their home in st. Louis. He certainly had the best library west of the west in the west. And he, as i said, he raised her with an education as a man and taught her politics and by the time she was a teenager, she spoke french and spanish and she read latin and greek. And she was just totally unfit to be a victorian wife. She was so interested in politics. Her mother who was obviously somebody that she was very close to but was a woman who had been raised on a plantation. She hated slavery. But she also did not feel comfortable either in this sort of rough and tumble st. Louis or in washington politics and she pretty much withdrew from society. So jesse really grew up as her fathers daughter. Did she share her fathers passion for abolition . Yes, she did. She wrote against slavery. She said she would rather have her children brought up in the midst of small pox than the midst of slavery. So how did she and john charles free monlt mamomont makd how did the senator feel about it . John Charles Fremont was one of the great explorers or leaders of expeditions and map makers in our history. But he was he had been born out of wedlock. Did he not go to west point. He got . Very good skills there which he turned into map making and he became part of what was called the Army Topographical service. And went on many expeditions and went across the country on five different expeditions and the first one as he came back, Thomas Hart Benton was always there in st. Louis to grab everyone coming from the west. He had such a strong belief in the potential of the west for the United States. And so he would grab fremont and then when fremont came to washington to write up his reports and actually make his maps from his field notes, benton would meet him and was just enchanted by this dashing young lieutenant. And at one point when jesse was 15 years old, he in school in washington Thomas Hart Benton took john fremont to a concert. It was at his daughters boreding school in washington and jesse fell immediately in love at the state of 15. And stayed in love . And stayed in lochlt it was a passionate one. In fact but as soon as senator benton and his wife realized that this daughter that they have raised and groomed to be the toast of Washington Society was in love with a man of no pedigree and no real future, they shipped them to have another expedition in nebraska or something. But in fact when he did come back and when she was 17, they got married. The bentons were not happy about it. But when he said leave the house. She said where you go, i go. And at that point Thomas Hart Benton said then youre both staying here because he couldnt give up jesse. Because of time, im going to you have get to the crux of thifr story and what it was that put them at odds with president lincoln and doomed his career . The most important thing is the thing we celebrate in this room which is calls the emancipation room. Where lincoln helped her write the preliminary emancipation proclamation that was issued in september of 1862. But in august of 1861 at the very beginning of the war, before anybody was fighting to end slavery, when they were fighting to keep the union together, john charles free monlt issued his own emancipation proclamation n st. Louis for the missouri territory and kentucky which he had under his command. And lincoln had to read about it in the newspapers. He didnt even send him an advance copy. Or tweet or anything. And what started happening was that men in missouri would sign up to fight to save the union and decide they were not going to fight for slavery at that time. It was too early. So at that point, lincoln asked him to revoke his emancipation order and jesse gets on a train to washington. And he goes to the white house, insists on a meeting late at night at 9 00 and goes in and they end up having sort of a verbal fistfight. He insists that fremonts were to be revoked and shes not happy about it for several days afterwards. And in, fact, free monlt distributes the order afterwards. And then fremont is out zbluchlt tell us that over time Jesse Fremonts view of lincoln evolved from naive to irrelevant. Irrelevant so disdain. Where was she in that progression by the time that meeting happened . When that meeting happened, she was still thinking he was irrelevant. That really fremont didnt need to let him know because he told fremont to take care of things in missouri and thats what free monlt was doing. It was after that meeting when he soon afterwards took fremonts command away from him that she moved to disdain. And then that became her pattern. And she never, ever said a nice thing about lincoln again. It takes us off the arc of the lincoln story. These people lived big lives. And the arc of the life after the military is just fascinating to me. They made a fortune and then lost it. And she died penniless. How did all that happen . Well, i was all pretty much of a piece with fremonts poor management skills which were very much on display in his management of the military department of the west in st. Louis which is something that he had been investigated for. She gave a man 3,000 and told him to invest it in an area that is now san francisco. Well the man screwed up and invested it in the Yosemite Valley and at that point, fremont is too busy doing other things to undo that error. But pretty soon they find gold. And they find lots of gold. The problem it is takes a lot of none get a lot of gold out of the ground. Fremont was not good at matching the input and output side of those ee wagss vequations very. But he finally did. So that property after the war sold for 4 million which at that time was real money. And they were fabulously wealthy. And then he invested it in a railroad scheme which went completely bust. And so in the end, he went back to washington to try to get a pension for himself. He was given a pension and on the way back home he died of a heart attack. And so jesse was left with nothing, no pension, no money, no nothing. I will say this briefly. I was fascinated by the fact that that disdain lasted the rest of her life for lincoln. She published memoirs of famous people she met. She omitted lincoln. And people would ask