8
JANUARY 2021
SECTION TWO
Larchmont Chronicle
Jessie, John Frémont: ‘She was the Better Man of the Two’
Few presidents who serve four years or less find an “enduring place in the popular imagination,” wrote Steve Inskeep recently in “The New York Times.” I think it is safe to say that far fewer failed presidential candidates find any place in history at all. Unless Steve Inskeep writes about the candidate, that is. In “Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Frémont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War,” Inskeep, National Public Radio co-host, historian and writer of great narrative skill, tells the story of the Frémonts and their time in such a way that has moved the needle of my historical interests toward the layered complexity of 19thcentury America. It is no small matter that Jessie Benton Frémont’s name is first in the title of this joint biography of the mid-19th century’s original power couple. But more on Jessie in a minute. John C. Frémont — whose name has been given to at least 14 U.S. cities and towns, four counties, numerous geographical features, schools and school districts, bridges, streets, hospitals, and, of
Just Sold
Home Ground by
Paula Panich
course, the John C. Fremont Branch Library on Melrose — was the first presidential candidate of the newly formed Republican Party in 1856. Frémont was a national hero, known as the Pathfinder. He made four great expeditions into the unmapped regions of the Western U.S., including, famously, California, and as a result, settlers came rushing across the continent. These expeditions, “in terms of exertion, isolation, danger, and death, were much like going to war,” writes Inskeep. Jessie Benton Frémont, though, was the making of him. The country learned of every detail of his (sometimes foolhardy) bravery because Jessie was an organized and focused writer — they wrote books, long newspaper articles, all under John’s name. Some thought John was “as great as Jesus Christ.” Jessie was a brilliant promoter and used the mass media with
cunning and skill. (“She was the better man of the two,” wrote a contemporary.) Jessie Benton was the beloved daughter of Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who served Missouri as one of its first two senators after statehood. He had been a lawyer and a newspaper editor (“Newspapers are the school of public instruction,” he wrote), and he had an outsize influence on the country in his 30-year tenure as Senator, anticipating, by close to two centuries, the role that trade with Asia would have on the U.S. Jessie was tutored in politics by her father as a son would have been, and she greased the wheels of national politics for John, whose expeditions fit perfectly with his father-in-law’s belief in Mani-
Prominent local writer, Catherine Coffin Phillips, penned a biography of Jessie Benton Frémont in 1935. It is still in print (just not the fine press John Henry Nash version pictured).
fest Destiny. Theirs was a heady mix of a marriage; Jessie and John were flawed and complicated people who lived in a turbulent time. Inskeep’s book tells the story of the Frémonts and what swirled around them — slavery, abolitionism, racism, immigration, vested interests, self-dealing, religious bigotry, financial gain and disaster, gold and more gold, war, phys- NEW BOOK brings Mrs. Frémont to the fore. ical violence in the Senate, cities on fire, cam- is a 165-year-old news flash: paign lies, a birther movement “The Latest News. Received — and the telegraph. by Magnetic Telegraph. PhilaI’ve read much of this book delphia, Oct. 16 – 2 ½ P.M. twice. Since we may well be at “The returns are so utterly home awaiting the vaccine for confused and unreliable that it a bit longer, it is a worthwhile is impossible to decide how the book that reflects on our own election has resulted. The city time. is full of forged returns from In 1856, prior to the na- different counties [which] are tional election, Pennsylvania being extensively circulated held its state elections. Below for gambling purposes.’”
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