Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western SIV. In today's Bonus Author Interview,
Speaker 1: I sit down with historian John Bicknell, and I talk
Speaker 1: about his most recent book, The Pathfinder and the President,
Speaker 1: John C. Fremont, Abraham Lincoln and the Battle for Emancipation.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of you listening out there are
Speaker 1: American Civil War fans, because there are still plenty of
Speaker 1: those out there.
Speaker 2: I'm one of them. But John C.
Speaker 1: Fremont was one of those figures that I just didn't
Speaker 1: know very much about going into this interview, and so
Speaker 1: I was really excited to pick this book up and
Speaker 1: give it a read and learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about these two fascinating individuals, one Lincoln that I and
Speaker 1: probably you know a lot about, and one Fremont that
Speaker 1: I and probably you don't know.
Speaker 2: As much about.
Speaker 1: And I found it fascinating because the way that they
Speaker 1: interacted with one another and the way that Fremont pushes
Speaker 1: forward Lincoln's agenda, particularly on emancipation from military standpoints, is
Speaker 1: a really interesting read and something that I think puts
Speaker 1: a little bit of a spin on the term that
Speaker 1: we bandy about a lot for Lincoln, which is the
Speaker 1: great emancipator. If he's the great emancipator, then John C. Freeman,
Speaker 1: it is probably the great emancipator pusher. All right, So
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this, the book is available right now,
Speaker 1: you can pick it up. I've got a link in
Speaker 1: the show notes if you're interested. And so without further ado,
Speaker 1: after these quick messages, we'll hear the.
Speaker 2: Interview and welcome back.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned previously, I am sitting down today with
Speaker 1: historian John Bicknell. We're talking about his most recent book,
Speaker 1: The Pathfinder and the President, John C. Fremont, Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: and the Battle for Emancipation. Like many of you, I'm
Speaker 1: a lot more familiar with Abraham Lincoln than I am
Speaker 1: with John C. Fremont, and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that I found reading this book so fascinating. And I
Speaker 1: kind of want to start here by I've got a
Speaker 1: section of the book in the very very beginning in
Speaker 1: the introduction here, just kind of reading for a moment,
Speaker 1: just quoting your book, it says, quote, history is rarely
Speaker 1: kind to losers, and the Civil War was especially unkind
Speaker 1: to John C. Fremont. From eighteen sixty one to eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, Fremont lost two military commands, the only major
Speaker 1: battle in which he fought a presidential campaign, a good
Speaker 1: chunk of his fortune, his home, and much of the
Speaker 1: renown he had accumulated over the previous twenty years that
Speaker 1: made him one of the most famous men.
Speaker 2: In the world. End quote.
Speaker 1: So this is a really really interesting book. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to start because you do talk about their personalities,
Speaker 1: and I want to start by asking you a little
Speaker 1: bit about the personalities of John Fremont and Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: and how their personalities play such a key role in
Speaker 1: the events that you explore in the book in general,
Speaker 1: and then I want to come back to this question
Speaker 1: of historical losers in a moment.
Speaker 3: Okay, sure, thanks for having me on. First, Lincoln and
Speaker 3: Fremont came from similar backgrounds. They were both born in
Speaker 3: the South, of course, Lincoln and Kentucky, Fremont in some
Speaker 3: of Georgia. Fremont also went to college in Charleston. They
Speaker 3: both came from sort of straightened circumstances. As young men,
Speaker 3: they were not very well off, and they both moved
Speaker 3: to the West to become well known, become famous. So
Speaker 3: they shared some circumstances in life. They were both married
Speaker 3: to very assertive, politically minded women, and their wives were
Speaker 3: both in a way well certainly, certainly Fremont's wife was
Speaker 3: more politically astute than he was, but they they diverged
Speaker 3: in their personalities. Lincoln became a lawyer, had a very
Speaker 3: lawyerly mind, very methodical, devoted to the Constitution and the
Speaker 3: rule of law. Fremont wasn't like that. Fremont joined the
Speaker 3: Army topographical engine years he became a western explorer. That's
Speaker 3: where he gained his fame, but it's also where he
Speaker 3: learned to conquer the elements through his own resources and
Speaker 3: sort of ignore the chain of command and become his
Speaker 3: own master. He was not wedded to the law the
Speaker 3: way Lincoln was. He sort of made it up as
Speaker 3: he went along. He defied orders, he was court martialed,
Speaker 3: and his personality was much more attuned to I want
Speaker 3: to get this done, and I'll figure out a way
Speaker 3: to do it, and the law be damned.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot in Freemont, and I
Speaker 1: might come back to this later on that we questioned
Speaker 1: like who would fit better into today's political society, And
Speaker 1: I think in some ways if Fremont might actually might
Speaker 1: actually be the better fit than the lawyerly and somewhat
Speaker 1: rules based Abraham Lincoln. And you know that the two men,
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about in a moment, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a chance that we could have had John Fremont as
Speaker 1: President of the United States. This is not completely talking
Speaker 1: out of turn, but you write in the introduction, and
Speaker 1: I want to come back to this issue of losers
Speaker 1: here for a second. And I'm putting that phrasen Air quotes,
Speaker 1: by the way, but you're writ in the introduction that
Speaker 1: quote Fremont did accomplish things during the war that have
Speaker 1: been forgotten or dismissed, in large part because he ultimately
Speaker 1: failed as a commander a soldier and end quote. And
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess I have two questions that come
Speaker 1: off of who doesn't and we can debate the fairness
Speaker 1: of that. Then, also, specifically to this particular book, should
Speaker 1: Fremont be remembered and taught more than he is today?
Speaker 1: I suspect to know the answer to the second question,
Speaker 1: but I'm interested you to your answer to both.
Speaker 3: Okay, and all into the second one first, because it's
Speaker 3: easier for me. Of course, I think he should be
Speaker 3: remembered and top more. I've written two books about him.
Speaker 3: But I think the way history works is there's elevening
Speaker 3: a flattening. If you think about just everything going on
Speaker 3: in the world today, just look at the newspaper, watch
Speaker 3: the news. There are one hundred things going on, and
Speaker 3: they all seem important to a group of people, to somebody,
Speaker 3: and we pay attention into varying levels depending on our
Speaker 3: interests and what it means to us. But one hundred
Speaker 3: years from now, one hundred and fifty years from now,
Speaker 3: ninety eight of those things will have disappeared, and what
Speaker 3: will remain are the two things that affect lives into
Speaker 3: the future. Right, So the same thing is true now
Speaker 3: of things that happened one hundred and sixty years ago.
Speaker 3: As I went back and researched this book, what I
Speaker 3: found was in newspapers, in people's diaries, in their letters,
Speaker 3: in the coverage of the news. In eighteen sixty, sixty one,
Speaker 3: and sixty two. Fremont was much more prevalent than you
Speaker 3: would think if you only read books about that era today.
Speaker 3: And I think the reason is he was replaced by
Speaker 3: other people. Fremont, as I said, was one of the
Speaker 3: most famous people in the world in eighteen it was
Speaker 3: world famous. In eighteen sixty he had become the most
Speaker 3: famous Western explorer, not because he discovered the most new things,
Speaker 3: but because he and his wife wrote about those explorations
Speaker 3: very eloquently. During westward exploration or expansion, Americans used his
Speaker 3: books as guides to the West that they were entering,
Speaker 3: and he became quite famous. He was elected a Senator
Speaker 3: from California, not because he was a great politician, but
Speaker 3: because he was famous and beloved. So by the time
Speaker 3: of the Civil War, Fremont was much more famous than Lincoln.
Speaker 3: Even still in eighteen sixty and really into eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 3: more people knew who Fremont was than knew well who
Speaker 3: Lincoln was. And events, of course elevated Lincoln and depressed
Speaker 3: Fremont's stock. And because Grant won the battles and Lincoln
Speaker 3: won the war and Sherman won the West, Stremont sort
Speaker 3: of faded away. He then lost all his money after
Speaker 3: the war and faded into oblivion. People rode up, you know,
Speaker 3: new heroes rose up to replace him. And so the
Speaker 3: things that he did during the war that really did matter,
Speaker 3: the appointment of Grant a key moment in the war,
Speaker 3: Fremont gave him his first command. The building of the
Speaker 3: riverboats in Missouri that Grant later used to conquer Vicksburg
Speaker 3: was really attributable to Fremont. He made other reforms in
Speaker 3: healthcare and that sort of thing as commander of the
Speaker 3: West that made a huge difference in terms of saving
Speaker 3: lives at the time, but they just sort of disappeared
Speaker 3: into oblivion in the larger picture.
Speaker 1: Well, I agree with you with what you say about
Speaker 1: sort of the flattening of history, and I think that's
Speaker 1: true a lot of times, particularly if you pick up
Speaker 1: a textbook, you know, you take up your normal United
Speaker 1: States history textbook, you probably get a paragraph I'm going
Speaker 1: to say on John C. Fremont, maybe a page if
Speaker 1: it's if it's more in depth than that, but it
Speaker 1: ignores all the things that the people did at the
Speaker 1: time at the time is really and that that phrase
Speaker 1: at the time matters, because that's what tends to get forgotten.
Speaker 1: We focus on that when we look at history sometimes
Speaker 1: that that tip of the iceberg that we can see,
Speaker 1: but we don't think about everything that's underneath the surface,
Speaker 1: that's actually holding the iceberg up right, And I think
Speaker 1: that's you make it a stud comment where it's think
Speaker 1: of all the things in the news today. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're sitting here, it's April twenty twenty five. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. In the news people couldn't stop talking
Speaker 1: about there was this use of this signal chat by
Speaker 1: people in the current administration to plan an attack. No
Speaker 1: one talks about it anymore. Other things have happened, you know.
Speaker 1: And but at the time it seemed like the most
Speaker 1: important thing. And it's been two weeks, you know, think
Speaker 1: about if it's been years and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And but you brought up an infant point one that
Speaker 1: I wanted to press on a little bit, which is
Speaker 1: John C. Fremont and his role in the exploration of
Speaker 1: the West. And as you were talking, I thought, gosh,
Speaker 1: I really should ask about this. So I wondered if
Speaker 1: you could maybe talk for a moment, broadly for listeners
Speaker 1: who don't know what we're talking about, who never heard
Speaker 1: of John C. Fremont, about what was his general role
Speaker 1: in the exploration of a vaswath of the country that
Speaker 1: at the time people knew very very little about.
Speaker 3: Honestly, Fremont was an officer in the Army Corps of
Speaker 3: Topographical Engineers, which was given the task of exploring the
Speaker 3: mountain west. Essentially. Freemont's great advantage in this was that
Speaker 3: he was married to the daughter of the chairman of
Speaker 3: the Senate Military Affairs Committee, Thomas hart Benton, Senator from Missouri,
Speaker 3: great proponent of westward expansion, John with his daughter John
Speaker 3: Jesse Benton. Thomas hart Benton wasn't very happy about this
Speaker 3: at the beginning, but came to appreciate some of Fremonts
Speaker 3: some of Fremont's attributes, and Fremont was given command of
Speaker 3: exploring expeditions in eighteen forty two, eighteen forty three, and
Speaker 3: another one in eighteen forty five. The most famous one
Speaker 3: was in eighteen forty three and forty four. He was
Speaker 3: tasked with going up the Oregon Trail all the way
Speaker 3: to Oregon, which he did, and then without orders, he
Speaker 3: turned south, marched his crew down the face of the
Speaker 3: Sierra Nevada in wintertime, and then crossed the mountains in
Speaker 3: February of eighteen forty four, extremely hazardous undertaking that almost
Speaker 3: got some of them killed, although they all managed to
Speaker 3: make it, and he crossed into California which of course
Speaker 3: that time was part of Mexico. Again, this was all
Speaker 3: against He had no orders to do this at all,
Speaker 3: and eventually returned to the United States and bent and
Speaker 3: smooth things over. The next year, he went back to California.
Speaker 3: This was on This was in the very early stages
Speaker 3: of the run up to the Mexican War, and he
Speaker 3: was in California at the time the war started. He
Speaker 3: stirred up some trouble. He ate it and abetted some
Speaker 3: local trouble, got in a lot of trouble with the
Speaker 3: commanding General, Stephen Watts Carney, and was eventually court martialed
Speaker 3: and dismissed from the service. The President was willing to
Speaker 3: give him a pardon or at least a commutation of
Speaker 3: his sentence, and Fremont refused it, saying that would essentially
Speaker 3: be an admission of guilt. He didn't believe he had
Speaker 3: done anything wrong, and so he left the army. After that,
Speaker 3: he conducted two more exploring had two more explorations into
Speaker 3: the West for mostly railroad purposes. These were private endeavors
Speaker 3: not funded by the government, that Benton helped facilitate, one
Speaker 3: of which ended in disaster in Colorado. They got cotton,
Speaker 3: a snowstorm, there was some cannibalism. Again Freemont escaped. So
Speaker 3: he was this sort of seminal figure of Western exploration.
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, he wasn't exploring areas that other
Speaker 3: people had never gone to, but he was a path popularizer,
Speaker 3: and he became sort of the image of Western exploration
Speaker 3: in the popular mind, much as he became the image
Speaker 3: of military emancipation in the Civil War.
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting, and I think that it's
Speaker 1: interesting how he becomes the image of it. And I
Speaker 1: think that everybody we have to remember, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about in the eighteen forties, a period where
Speaker 1: much of the West it is still being explored and
Speaker 1: certainly relatively sparsely populated. So it's not what we could
Speaker 1: imagine nowadays, when we have a tendency to think about
Speaker 1: these things. But one of the characters are individuals in
Speaker 1: the story that I want to come back to is
Speaker 1: Jesse Benton Fremont, which is John Fremont's wife, And I
Speaker 1: think because she comes across as so important in the
Speaker 1: story to him, and I wanted to ask you why
Speaker 1: you felt it was so necessary. I think it'll become
Speaker 1: pretty clear to readers why and listeners why pretty in
Speaker 1: a moment here, but why it was so important to
Speaker 1: include hers prominently in the story and why to do
Speaker 1: it when you know we're still in an era when
Speaker 1: by and large women aren't considered essential parts of history.
Speaker 1: But she very much bucks this trend and sort of
Speaker 1: get to the like, how does she do that?
Speaker 3: She was completely essential to Fremont's success. What made him
Speaker 3: famous was the reports of these There were the government publications,
Speaker 3: the reports of the exploration, but she was essentially his editor,
Speaker 3: if not co author, of these reports and would she
Speaker 3: took what could have been very dry descriptions of him
Speaker 3: running around out in the West and turned them into
Speaker 3: these sort of poetical adventure stories that grabbed people's emancipation
Speaker 3: or imagination. Pretty much real contribution in terms of Western
Speaker 3: exploration was to change people's perception of what the West was.
Speaker 3: Stephen Long, who had explored parts of the West in
Speaker 3: eighteen eighteen eighteen twenty, called it the Great American Desert,
Speaker 3: and that was sort of the image people had of
Speaker 3: the West. There was a big, wide, useless expanse that
Speaker 3: wasn't green and beautiful like the east, where we lived
Speaker 3: and Fremont. Fremont and Jesse's descriptions of the West changed
Speaker 3: that perception. People still understood it wasn't green, but while
Speaker 3: Stegner's phrase, they were able to get over the collar
Speaker 3: of green. They made people. They helped people understand the
Speaker 3: West on its own terms and appreciate its greatness for
Speaker 3: what it was instead of what it was. And that's
Speaker 3: what Jesse contributed to these reports. And then because she
Speaker 3: had grown up, what you know, working with her father
Speaker 3: who was a senator, she knew the political world. She
Speaker 3: was much more attuned to that world than Fremont ever was,
Speaker 3: and she was essentially his campaign manager for president in
Speaker 3: eighteen fifty six. She handled correspondence, She dealt with all
Speaker 3: of these men who were trying to tell him what
Speaker 3: to do and how to do it. And you said,
Speaker 3: he could have been elected president. He could have been
Speaker 3: elected president. It was the party was news. They weren't
Speaker 3: very well organized, but it came within you know, three
Speaker 3: states really of winning the election that Lincoln won four
Speaker 3: years later. And when people talked about what Fremont might
Speaker 3: do as president, they didn't say Fremont would do this.
Speaker 3: They said the Fremonts would do this. So even then
Speaker 3: the people who, even the politicians in Washington, understood the
Speaker 3: role that she played. Well, I want to go back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit more about that election, because
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about the election. Well at first,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about eighteen fifty six. You know,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party is incredibly new and Fremont decides to
Speaker 1: run for the Republican nomination in that year. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious as to why he made that choice, Like where
Speaker 1: was he in his life that made him want to
Speaker 1: do that, and you know why was the campaign ultimately
Speaker 1: unsuccessful for him.
Speaker 3: He had been elected to the Senate in eighteen fifty
Speaker 3: As soon as California became a state, he was he
Speaker 3: was this great heroic figure in the state and he
Speaker 3: was one of the first two senators to be elected.
Speaker 3: He unfortunately for him, drew the short straw, so he
Speaker 3: had to run again in two years and wasn't re elected.
Speaker 3: And then they discovered gold on this plot of land
Speaker 3: that he had bought for you know, next to nothing
Speaker 3: in California, and he became incredibly wealthy. So between eighteen
Speaker 3: fifty and eighteen fifty five he was developing this gold
Speaker 3: mining operation in California. And in eighteen fifty four, of course,
Speaker 3: to Kansas Nebraska Act was passed. It destroyed the Whig Party.
Speaker 3: The Republican Party formed an eighteen fifty four and both
Speaker 3: parties really came to Fremont in eighteen fifty five interested
Speaker 3: in him being their candidate for president in eighteen fifty six.
Speaker 3: That's how that's the kind of figure he was at
Speaker 3: that time. Both parties thought almost like an Eisenhower. Both
Speaker 3: parties wanted him to be their candidate, or at least
Speaker 3: some elements of parties, but he couldn't be a Democratic
Speaker 3: candidate because he could not accept the Kansas Nebraska Act.
Speaker 3: He was anti slavery, and so sort of naturally turned
Speaker 3: to the Republican Party. The great advantage he had as
Speaker 3: a candidate was he had the sponsorship of Francis Preston Blair.
Speaker 3: Blair had been a Jacksonian. He was the newspaper editor
Speaker 3: for the Democratic organ under Jackson, but he had drifted
Speaker 3: away from the Democratic Party as it became increasingly pro
Speaker 3: slavery and pro Southern And Blair was this great mover
Speaker 3: and shaker in Washington, and he was a leading organizer
Speaker 3: of the Republican Party, and he was a longtime friend
Speaker 3: of Thomas Hart Benton, so he thought he had really
Speaker 3: hoped Benton would be the first presidential candidate for the
Speaker 3: Republican but Benton wanted nothing to do with this project,
Speaker 3: so he turned to Fremont, and Fremont essentially got a
Speaker 3: free ride to the nomination because the other leading candidates
Speaker 3: mostly William Seward from New York Salm and Chase from Ohio,
Speaker 3: who were both longtime anti slavery activists. Seward was quite reluctant,
Speaker 3: Chase was a little reluctant. He would have taken the
Speaker 3: nomination if they'd given it to him, but they were
Speaker 3: both a little worried that the party wasn't very well organized,
Speaker 3: it was brand new and probably had very little chance
Speaker 3: to win, so they were sort of happy to see
Speaker 3: Fremont be the guinea pig for this operation, and so
Speaker 3: Freemont won the nomination. Lincoln actually was considered as the
Speaker 3: vice presidential candidate in eighteen fifty six. He got the
Speaker 3: second most votes at the Republican convention for vice president.
Speaker 3: Why did he lose the election? I write in my
Speaker 3: book about the campaign in the Lincoln's Pathfinder of the
Speaker 3: previous book that American voters were still more afraid of
Speaker 3: disunion than they hated slavery. In eighteen fifty six, the
Speaker 3: Democrats really ran a good campaign, saying essentially, if you
Speaker 3: elect Fremont, it means the session it probably would have.
Speaker 3: In the intervening four years. Of course, you had the
Speaker 3: dread Scott decision, you had the great controversy over Kansas,
Speaker 3: and then you had John Brown's attack at Harper's Ferry
Speaker 3: sort of changed the circumstances and made the North hate slavery,
Speaker 3: or at least parts of North the hate slavery more
Speaker 3: than they secession, which, of course, and the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: splintered also, which made it possible for Lincoln to be
Speaker 3: elected where Fremont could not be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to pause there for a second and
Speaker 1: come back to this question of Fremont and slavery, because
Speaker 1: I think it's worth talking about for a moment.
Speaker 2: Two things.
Speaker 1: One which is, you know, had Fremont always opposed slavery
Speaker 1: and what was to what extent we can know and
Speaker 1: obviously you can't look into the hearts of individuals from
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago. To what extent do we know
Speaker 1: why he opposed slavery. I mean, different people opposed slavery
Speaker 1: for different reasons and to different extents. And how did
Speaker 1: Fremont And then sort of a second follow up question
Speaker 1: would be, like, how did Fremont's views on slavery differ
Speaker 1: from Lincoln's? You know, because Lincoln's position in the election
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty is very intentional about the opposing the
Speaker 1: expansion of slavery, not necessarily contradicting slavery where it already exists.
Speaker 1: That's that's different, right than saying that we're going to
Speaker 1: abolish slavery. And I wonder if I could ask you
Speaker 1: where did Fremont fall on this spectrum of anti slavery stances?
Speaker 3: Okay, Jesse was always very strongly anti slavery. We don't
Speaker 3: really know much about Freemond. He never wrote or talked
Speaker 3: much about it until eighteen fifty he entered the Senate.
Speaker 3: He cast some anti slavery votes, but was not He
Speaker 3: was not an abolitionist. He did not support, for example,
Speaker 3: abolition in the District of Columbia. He supported the abolition
Speaker 3: of the slave trade, which was part of the Compromise
Speaker 3: of eighteen fifty, but he was sort of mildly anti
Speaker 3: slavery in the way a lot of northern at that point.
Speaker 3: He was a northern person Northern politicians were, but not
Speaker 3: adamantly when and of course was had a wife a
Speaker 3: long history of being anti slavery, but again not an abolitionist.
Speaker 3: The Republican platform of eighteen fifty six reflected that position
Speaker 3: against the expansion of slavery into New territory, but leaving
Speaker 3: slavery alone or it existed, and it continued that that
Speaker 3: was also part of the campaign of eighteen sixty And
Speaker 3: when the war started, Fremont gave a speech in May
Speaker 3: of eighteen sixty one, he was still in Europe, calling
Speaker 3: for the North to rise up and defeat the rebels
Speaker 3: to preserve the union. And he gave a fairly long
Speaker 3: speech and did not mention slavery in May of eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty one. But by August of eighteen sixty one he
Speaker 3: had been in Missouri for a month, and he had
Speaker 3: seen how the war there was progressing, and I think
Speaker 3: he and Lincoln reached the same conclusion. Fremont just got
Speaker 3: there first by the end of August eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 3: What Fremont believed was that it would absolutely necessary to
Speaker 3: get rid of slavery to win this war. That slavery
Speaker 3: was the underpinning of the Confederacy's power, and it had
Speaker 3: to be done away with to win, to win the
Speaker 3: warrant preserve the Union. For him, at that point, there
Speaker 3: was no dichotomy between those two things. You can't say
Speaker 3: I'm for preserving the Union, not for getting rid of slavery.
Speaker 3: Lincoln had not quite yet gotten to that point. He
Speaker 3: would pretty soon, but Freemont got there first.
Speaker 1: Well, it's really interesting, and I wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: as through a follow up question on that, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, prior to the election. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: skip forward to the election of eighteen sixty election of
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. But prior to then, did these two did
Speaker 1: they know each other?
Speaker 2: Did they have any communication?
Speaker 1: I think we're so used to, you know, the powerful
Speaker 1: people and parties and powerful politicians having a personal knowledge
Speaker 1: of one another to some extent, was Lincoln? Had Lincoln
Speaker 1: met Fremont? Were they aware of one another? Had they corresponded?
Speaker 1: Do we have any sense of what the communications between
Speaker 1: those two, if any, were, going up to that election
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty As.
Speaker 3: Far as I can make out they had never met Lincoln.
Speaker 3: Of course knew of Fremont. He was quite famous, and
Speaker 3: I Lincoln or Fremont would have known about Lincoln. Certainly
Speaker 3: by eighteen fifty six he was a prominent Illinois politician,
Speaker 3: had been a candidate at the convention for vice president,
Speaker 3: and Lincoln did campaign for Fremont in eighteen fifty six.
Speaker 3: He gave a number of speeches in Illinois, he traveled
Speaker 3: to Michigan to give a speech in favor of the campaign.
Speaker 3: But they had not met, and I don't think they
Speaker 3: met until they met in early in the middle of
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty one or early eighteen sixty one, when Fremont
Speaker 3: met Lincoln in New York. Lincoln was traveling to from
Speaker 3: Springfield to Washington, and the two met in February of
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so there's you know, Lincoln wins the election
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty And you're right to point this out.
Speaker 1: This is it's always worth pointing out that, you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is a split ticket situation. You know,
Speaker 1: we have multiple we have more than two major candidates running,
Speaker 1: and so what ends up happening is the electoral college
Speaker 1: vote or the popular vote gets divided. Lincoln doesn't win
Speaker 1: over fifty percent, you know, I think somewhere around forty
Speaker 1: two points something percent of the popular vote, but he
Speaker 1: wins a majority because you know, within a variety, especially
Speaker 1: of the border states, you know, the vote get split
Speaker 1: between a variety of different candidates, and he wins. It's
Speaker 1: not that he comes in with this massive mandate or
Speaker 1: anything the way we talk about it today. But he
Speaker 1: has to put together a cabinet, and there are people
Speaker 1: who definitely want John C. Fremont to have a role
Speaker 1: in that cabinet. You quote on this book, Horace Greeley,
Speaker 1: you know, the influential newspaper man. I'm sure most people
Speaker 1: who are aware of the American Civil War and its
Speaker 1: lead up to of that name who wrote quote. I
Speaker 1: believe that John C. Fremont ought to be Minister to France,
Speaker 1: not so much for his own sake as because the
Speaker 1: Republicans of fifty six will feel that they are slighted
Speaker 1: if he is not recognized by the new administration. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's people pushing for Fremont to have a role
Speaker 1: in this, you know, But ultimately he doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: have gotten a formal role. So what happens here, and
Speaker 1: why doesn't he end up with a stronger position maybe
Speaker 1: than he should have?
Speaker 3: Okay, three months the eighteen fifty six campaign was really
Speaker 3: seen by many as a kind of crusade, and so
Speaker 3: in addition to already having this fame that he'd won,
Speaker 3: Freemont became this symbol of political anti slavery. So he
Speaker 3: engendered an incredible amount of goodwill among anti slavery Northerners
Speaker 3: and even among abolitionists with whom he was not quite
Speaker 3: entirely in league. And so by eighteen sixty he was
Speaker 3: a leading figure in the Republican Party, even though it
Speaker 3: wasn't really active in politics at that point, and so
Speaker 3: people believe that he should have a role to play
Speaker 3: in this new administration. Now, people were constantly overestimating Freemont's
Speaker 3: abilities because of his fame. I mean, we see this
Speaker 3: all the time, right, because of his fame. He had
Speaker 3: a he definitely had a certain crewise, very handsome, had
Speaker 3: a very certain charisma, beautiful young wife, you know, lovely children,
Speaker 3: that sort of thing. But how much ability he had
Speaker 3: to carry out any of these jobs to sort of
Speaker 3: open a question and among the political class in Washington Fremont's.
Speaker 3: Their opinion of Fremont was not very high. He did
Speaker 3: not think or act like a politician. He was not
Speaker 3: a backslapper. He didn't make the sort of usual compromises
Speaker 3: that politicians make. I'll give you one example. He was
Speaker 3: accused of being a Catholic in the eighteen fifty six campaign.
Speaker 3: He and Jesse Delope had gotten married by a priest,
Speaker 3: and of course his father was French, so they He
Speaker 3: carried this sort of stigma around with him and it
Speaker 3: was costing him votes in some places Pennsylvania, Indiana, and
Speaker 3: the politicians came to Fremont and said, you need to
Speaker 3: issue a statement about this and to reassure people that
Speaker 3: you're not a Catholic. Goes, well, I'm not a Catholic,
Speaker 3: but there's really nothing wrong with being a Catholic. So
Speaker 3: I'm not going to engage in this sort of nonsense.
Speaker 3: And he didn't. He absolutely refused to do it. That's
Speaker 3: sort of and he had other problems as well with politicians.
Speaker 3: But Lincoln saw him as a potential Secretary of War
Speaker 3: as potential Minister to France. Seward opposed his appointment as
Speaker 3: Minister to France. I think in part because Seward didn't
Speaker 3: want the competition. He saw Fremont as a viable political
Speaker 3: figure still and wanted people loyal to Seward who he
Speaker 3: could he had more control over. Lincoln didn't think like that,
Speaker 3: but he did. His operatives had promised Simon Cameron, a
Speaker 3: senator from a very powerful senator from Pennsylvania, a position
Speaker 3: in the cabinet, probably secretary of War or and Cameron
Speaker 3: came to collect he wanted to be a secretary of War.
Speaker 3: That put Lincoln in bind. He didn't really want to
Speaker 3: have promised anybody things, but he knew that these people
Speaker 3: who around him.
Speaker 2: Had done that.
Speaker 3: So he was sort of juggling the candidates, and Fremont
Speaker 3: was in, he was out, he was in, he was out.
Speaker 3: In the end, he was out largely, I think because
Speaker 3: he didn't want to be in. He didn't really want
Speaker 3: to be in the cabinet. He wouldn't have minded, i think,
Speaker 3: being Minister to France. But really what he wanted was
Speaker 3: to be a general and lead armies in combat, and
Speaker 3: so that's eventually the job that he got.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, and I mean, we think of like
Speaker 1: cabinet posts as being very important today, but as he
Speaker 1: sees the war unfolding. That's where he sees his path,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's unreasonable. Frankly, given his background
Speaker 1: then his connecttions to Missouri and to the West, my
Speaker 1: question then is going to be okay, So he doesn't
Speaker 1: get on position on the cabinet. So what happens to
Speaker 1: him in early eighteen sixty one as it becomes abundantly
Speaker 1: clear that conflict is inevitable.
Speaker 3: Freemont is in Europe from February to May of eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty one looking for investors for the Golden mining operation.
Speaker 3: That's what he went for. When the attack on for
Speaker 3: Sumter comes, he essentially throws that away. He can't find
Speaker 3: anybody anyway because people are worried about what's going on
Speaker 3: in America, and he begins buying weapons from the French,
Speaker 3: from the Austrians, from the English to supply American armies,
Speaker 3: which are not very well supplied. But the American arms
Speaker 3: manufacturers are not fully up and running yet. So Freemont's
Speaker 3: going around Europe buying buying guns to ship back America.
Speaker 3: At the same time, back in the United States, Lincoln
Speaker 3: appoints Fremont as a major General of volunteers in the Army.
Speaker 3: So he returns to the United States and is appointed
Speaker 3: commander of the Department of the West, which is headquartered
Speaker 3: in Saint Louis. It covers all the territory to the
Speaker 3: Mississippi River of the Rocky Mountains. It's a huge swath
Speaker 3: of territory. Its territory Fremont knows very well, but it's
Speaker 3: a little bit of a misnomber because really the actions
Speaker 3: of this department are concentrated in Missouri. Now, this is
Speaker 3: a department that has about, after they get some volunteers
Speaker 3: sent there, about thirty thousand soldiers. Freemont's never commanded more
Speaker 3: than a few hundred soldiers in California during before and
Speaker 3: in the Mexican War. I mean literally three or four
Speaker 3: hundred people, and not very well, I might add. He
Speaker 3: has absolutely no executive ability experience at all. He's commanded
Speaker 3: men groups of a few dozen men in the field
Speaker 3: in the wilderness. But these are mountain men who pretty
Speaker 3: much knew what they were doing and did what they
Speaker 3: wanted to do. Anyway, he owns a golden mind, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't actually run it. He has people doing that
Speaker 3: for him. So he's put in charge of this large department.
Speaker 3: He's not a west Pointer. He has no formal military
Speaker 3: training and strategy or tactics, and the west Point officer
Speaker 3: class despises him. He's gotten special treatment his entire life.
Speaker 3: He rejected the chain, he rejects the chain of command.
Speaker 3: He's just he's not very military like person. So he's
Speaker 3: in this awkward position where he's put in over his head.
Speaker 3: He has a job, he's been given a job he's
Speaker 3: not qualified to do. Now you could say he's responsible
Speaker 3: for this, but in fact the man who put him
Speaker 3: in charge is responsible for this, and that was a Lincoln.
Speaker 3: Lincoln had a hard time finding the right generals for
Speaker 3: the jobs for a few years in that war. So
Speaker 3: he's in charge of Missouri and he doesn't really have
Speaker 3: a clear idea of how to accomplish the task he's
Speaker 3: been handed, which are to secure Missouri to the Union
Speaker 3: and make it a base for a movement down the
Speaker 3: Mississippi River into the heart of the South. He largely
Speaker 3: fails both of these things, partly because he's incompetent, but
Speaker 3: also partly because the people running the show in Washington
Speaker 3: don't give him any help. They don't he doesn't even
Speaker 3: get the arms that he bought was some with his
Speaker 3: own money in Europe. Most of those are distributed to
Speaker 3: soldiers in the East. They don't send him enough weapons,
Speaker 3: they don't send him enough wagons. They make it very
Speaker 3: difficult for him to procure these things. And so he's
Speaker 3: sort of running this fly by the sea of your
Speaker 3: pants operation out there, which gets him into further trouble
Speaker 3: because he's making up his own rules about how to
Speaker 3: buy things. He's intrusting this to contractors, not all of
Speaker 3: whom are the most honest of them, let's say, And
Speaker 3: so he gets in he's failing militarily, he's getting in
Speaker 3: trouble for bad contracting. But most importantly, he's offended a
Speaker 3: man named Frank Blair, who's the son of the man
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, Francis Preston Blair. Frank Blair Junior is
Speaker 3: a congressman from Saint Louis, sort of Republican of convenience,
Speaker 3: who's an ally of Lincoln, who very quick who had
Speaker 3: been an ally of Freemont Fremont, but very quickly, within
Speaker 3: a month or so, realizes Freemant suned up to the
Speaker 3: job and begins to undermine him.
Speaker 1: So it's the usual confluence of fact that we see
Speaker 1: so often in any sort of historical analysis. Well, we've
Speaker 1: gotten in the time that we've had a chance to
Speaker 1: talk about twenty some pages or so this into this
Speaker 1: book that's a lot longer and better. I always end
Speaker 1: with this question, which is just, you know, obviously there's
Speaker 1: a huge amount that we haven't talked about. But is
Speaker 1: there anything that you really think that the listeners should
Speaker 1: know about the book, any any sort of specific anecdote
Speaker 1: or story or something that you think is just so
Speaker 1: unique that's not covered elsewhere that people who pick up
Speaker 1: this book, And I think they should by the way,
Speaker 1: I think, especially if you're a Civil War buff, I
Speaker 1: think this is something that you should go and get
Speaker 1: right away.
Speaker 2: But is there anything that I, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't think of because I don't know this as
Speaker 1: well as you do.
Speaker 3: And I think that the interesting part of the book,
Speaker 3: and the point of the book really is the relationship
Speaker 3: between Fremont and Lincoln and how it changes and how
Speaker 3: it all as policy. It's again, it's one of those
Speaker 3: things where history sort of has flattened out, so we
Speaker 3: don't look at we see Lincoln as the great emancipator.
Speaker 3: He was the great emancipator, but he was not the
Speaker 3: first emancipator. There were a number of steps that led
Speaker 3: up to the Emancipation Proclamation, and Fremont was a large
Speaker 3: part of many of those steps. I think that's probably
Speaker 3: been lost for the most part. Many people know about
Speaker 3: free emancipation Proclamation in Missouri in August of eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 3: but what they know is that Lincoln overruled it and
Speaker 3: was justified in doing so. It's a much more complicated
Speaker 3: story than that, which I tell a great detail, including
Speaker 3: many friends of Lincoln who tried to persuade him that
Speaker 3: Fremont was right and he was wrong, without success, except
Speaker 3: that within a years than a year, Win can reach
Speaker 3: the same conclusion that Fremont had that emancipation was a
Speaker 3: military necessity, and thus we got the Emancipation Proclamation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that that's that's worth remembering in
Speaker 1: a kind of a great place to end it for today,
Speaker 1: because if you want that story and that back and forth,
Speaker 1: well then you can have to pick up the book.
Speaker 1: And that's my recommendation for everybody always. We always try
Speaker 1: to give them enough in these interviews to want it,
Speaker 1: but not enough so that they don't have to get
Speaker 1: and so there's there's plenty more out there, and it's
Speaker 1: it's an excellent read. It's very clearly, meticulously researched, and
Speaker 1: I think that particularly anybody who's interested in American history
Speaker 1: and the American Civil War is gonna love this book.
Speaker 1: So I can't recommend it enough. And if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this today, it's available, so head out and buy it.
Speaker 1: And I just I want to thank you again for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. It was a great conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much.