My Amazon Review of Steve Inskeep's "Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Fremont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity and Helped Cause the Civil War"

1840’s Power Couple

NPR host Steve Inskeep records the history of one of America’s first power couples. The western explorer John Fremont then 29 married Jesse Benton, then 17, the daughter of the powerful Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Jessie acts as Fremont’s promoter in the press and in the halls of Congress as John explores the west from St. Louis to California and Oregon. His description of the Great Salt Lake basin inspires Brigham Young to uproot his Mormon clan from Illinois to Utah. Why John leaves her so much is a mystery to me. My guess he had ADD and had a wanderlust for the West. Nevertheless Jessie puts up with this and faithfully publicizes his letters. Indeed she takes a hazardous trip to California with her four year old daughter, a trip that involved an overland haul across Panama. She was quite a woman.  

While in California his small band links up with a small detachment of Naval/Marine forces to seize California from Mexico not knowing that the Mexican War had already started. And remember it was the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War and the admission of California that heightens the tensions over slavery. While in California he names the entrance to San Francisco Bay the “Golden Gate.” He also has time to speculate in California real estate and gold mining. His gold mining venture makes him rich for a while.

Inskeep is very good at describing the hardships Fremont’s bands faced while traversing the West especially the snow covered Sierras. One of Fremont guides is Kit Carson, a personage whom Inskeep doesn’t take all that kindly towards as he projects his 21^st century sensibilities on to the brutal environment of the mid-19^th century west. He is also not all that kind to President James Polk, who in my opinion ranks among the great presidents of the United States as he implemented the policy of manifest destiny by making America a continent spanning nation.

In 1850s America the crisis of slavery comes to a boil. Jessie Fremont from her a youth was strongly anti-slavery and pushes John even more in that direction. In 1856 the newly formed Republican Party chose Fremont as its nominee under the banner of “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Fremont.” It is an ugly campaign where the Democrats vilify his illegitimate birth to a presumably Catholic father. It is the anti-Catholicism of the time that weighs heavily on his campaign in his defeat to James Buchanan, a former neighbor of the Benton’s.

After the campaign the Fremont’s gradually disappear from history and their money runs out as they age, a real shame. Inskeep tells a great story and it is well worth the read.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R19N2QY7Y0MKFP/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv