The Letters of Jessie Benton Frémont (review)

342CIVIL WAR HISTORY The Letters ofJessie Benton Fremont. Edited by Pamela Herr and Mary Lee Spence. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Pp. 595. $39-95) Widely known in her prime, Jessie Benton Fremont has not received the attention she deserves from modern historians. Fremont belongs to a long tradition of American women, of whom Abigail Adams is one of the most famous, who were influential confidantes and advisors to their politician husbands . The daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, Jessie Benton married John Charles Fremont in 1841 and was his most trusted advisor throughout his career as a western explorer, presidential candidate, and Civil War general. Along the way, she dramatically departed from the precedents set by previous political wives, achieving widespread notoriety as a public spokesperson for her husband and as a reformer and writer in her own right. A newly published collection of Fremont's correspondence should do much to inspire and facilitate further research into her life and times. Consisting of 271 letters and several miscellaneous documents by Fremont, all scrupulously annotated by the editors, the collection is organized into seven sections, corresponding to phases in her life. The editors begin each section with an informative introductory essay. The first section covers the years 1839 to 1855, during which John Fremont built a national reputation as a western explorer and Jessie served as his secretary and literary advisor, helping him to prepare the popular accounts of his expeditions. Along with the third, fifth, sixth, and seventh sections of the correspondence, which cover years in which the Frémonts lived in California and Arizona, the first section is a valuable resource for scholars of the nineteenth-century West. Jessie Benton Fremont moved to the center of the public stage in 1856, when her husband was nominated the first presidential candidate of the fledgling Republican party. Celebrated for her political pedigree, her beauty and intelligence, her daring decision to elope with John at the age of seventeen in 1841 (the young couple was later reconciled with their families), and her antislavery convictions, Jessie Benton Fremont soon became the heroine of the Republican party and was prominently featured in campaign songs, stories , and paraphernalia. Unfortunately, the editors' treatment of this important phase in Fremont's life is marred by a significant error—their repeated assertion that 1856 was the "first time women participated in a national [presidential] campaign." A host of scholars, including Ronald Formisano and Mary Ryan, have demonstrated that women were first systematically included in partisan rituals during the 1840 "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too" campaign of the Whigs. Having overlooked more than a decade of women's partisanship, the editors miss an opportunity to put the 1856 campaign in its proper context. WhUe it was indeed a turning point—the first time a woman was figuratively part of a presidential ticket—the 1856 "Fremont and Jessie" campaign surely owed more to previous campaigns than the editors let on. BOOK REVIEWS343 Not surprisingly, the most illuminating of Fremont's letters are those covering the Civil War years. While John Fremont served in St. Louis as commander ofthe Union's Department ofthe West, "General Jessie," as she was known to critics, became her husband's "secretary and other self," participating in staff meetings, seeing visitors, and presiding over Fremont's headquarters in his absence. In August of 1861, John Fremont issued his controversial emancipation proclamation, freeing the slaves of Missouri Rebels; for the rest of the war, Jessie Fremont publicly defended her embattled husband, writing a novel and even meeting personally with President Lincoln to justify John Fremont's actions. At the same time, she contributed to wartime relief efforts, most notably the Western Sanitary Commission. Her wartime letters shed light not only on her and her husband's activities, but on the general conduct of the war in the West. When paired with editor Pamela Herr's fine biography ofJessie Benton Fremont , the new volume makes a strong case for the historical significance of a remarkable woman but leaves the reader wanting to learn more—about Fremont 's abolitionism, the 1856 campaign, her thoughts on women's suffrage and on Reconstruction, and her unusual...