Book Report: Another woman behind another man

If you were raised in the West, you’ve likely heard stories of intrepid explorer John C. Frémont in your state history class. Elsewhere you may have lived on a Fremont Street, or perhaps you attended to a Fremont School, or even lived in a town called Fremont. In his time, Fremont was a pretty big deal.  But you probably didn’t hear that much of his public persona was manufactured by his wife.

IMPERFECT UNION by NPR’s Steve Inskeep, brings to life a complicated story that at times sounds surprisingly familiar to our current struggles in the US.

John C. Frémont was born Charles John Frémon and was called Charles or CJ for much of his early life. He had a rocky school career—skipping classes to carry on with a young girl–and was at last invited to leave school.

He was, however, fascinated by maps and celestial navigation and educated himself on those subjects. While he was hired by the Army as a mapmaker, he lacked the discipline to follow orders which caused him trouble throughout his long career as an officer. Two such breaches resulted in his being tried for mutiny over a dispute in California and being relieved of duty by President Lincoln during the Civil War.

Nonetheless, he met, fell in love, and eloped with the much too young Jessie Benton, daughter of legendary legislator Thomas Harte Benton. John had certainly hitched his wagon to a star because Jessie possessed not only a formidable intelligence but a knack for self-promotion as well. However, as a woman of the mid-19th century, her only path to success and fulfillment was through her husband. She took that role seriously indeed and promoted John into the public consciousness by writing stories of his exploits that were published in newspapers across the country.

When John was a presidential candidate, Jessie handled all his correspondence and was perhaps more popular–not to mention more politically savvy–than he was. Jessie’s father, a huge promoter of westward expansion as a gateway to markets in the Orient, saw the usefulness of Fremont’s adventurous narrative and wanted to make John C. Frémont the leading character in a news story. He and Jessie –among others, including Frederick Douglass– used the media to promote their agendas.

“They spread their story to an increasingly literate public, and linked their names not to one, but to three great national movements—westward settlement, women’s rights, and opposition to slavery.”

Frémont was also instrumental in bringing California into the US, with a few concessions because of California’s unique history and population, already giving a particular progressive bent to the “left coast.”

“The constitution was made less unfair through the intervention of the California delegates, who on issue after issue offered a different perspective… Mexico had always outlawed slavery, which made it easy for Californian delegates to endorse the antislavery clause… When it became clear the Indians would be denied the vote, the Californians objected: some of the delegates themselves had Indian ancestry… The Californians scored a clear victory in upholding the rights of women…<and> prevailed on the delegates to agree that ‘all property’ that a woman brought into marriage, including real estate, ‘shall be her separate property.’”

Times were as fraught and divisive then as they are now.

“Free states soon seemed powerful enough to elect a president without a single vote from any slave state. This was what John Frémont first attempted as a presidential candidate in 1856, and what Abraham Lincoln tried again in 1860. Southerners, fearing a government that no longer depended on them, prepared to secede from the Union.”

 “Many Americans went to polling stations out of fear, concerned that the wrong election outcome would cause calamity. The telegraph spread news of political violence, which partisan newspapers interpreted in radically divergent ways. None of the advances in technology seemed to be making the country more stable, more equal, or more just.”

There were fights about religion, immigrants, and voter suppression. Sound familiar? Read on.

“In the key electoral state of Pennsylvania that year, the big news was neither Texas nor slavery but a dispute involving immigrants. They were Irish Catholics, who were seen as a threat because of their religion.”

“Pennsylvania mandated the use of the Bible—typically the Protestant, King James Version—for students to practice reading in the public schools. Catholics used a longer version of the Bible and said using the King James Version violated the separation of church and state. Shocked Protestants formed a new nativist party known as the Native Americans or American Republicans, and in May 1844 organized a rally provocatively located in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. Irishmen violently broke up the rally. Nativists then burned two Catholic churches, saying they were upholding the right of free speech…It took four days to end the battle, in which a number of people were killed, and the New York Herald declared that Philadelphia was “the scene of riot and bloodshed—of civil war.”

“Not that immigrants should be banned—but “indiscriminate immigration” would bring the problems of the crowded old world, because newcomers arrived “without a comprehension of American history and of their duties.”

From Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln:

“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’”

The author concludes:

“The debates that perplex us build on our shared and living past; human patterns of thought and action persist, though we change the names of our obsessions. Modern leaders copy the political techniques of our forebears and justify their actions by citing bits of American history, real or imagined. If it is vital for journalists to paint a true picture of the country as it is, then it is equally vital for historians to paint a true picture of the country as it was.”

If you want a more complete understanding of the United States and the roots of our current struggles, I recommend reading this book. You’ll see lots of sources and photos too.