Imperfect Union

by Steve Inskeep

  War News from Mexico, by the Frémonts’ contemporary Richard Caton Woodville.

  Chapter Ten

  DO NOT SUPPOSE I LIGHTLY INTERFERE IN A MATTER BELONGING TO MEN

  Jessie, 1846–1847

  Washington and Westport

  Jessie knew nothing of John’s acts in California until months after they had occurred. At the Benton house she depended on newspapers and officials who called on her father—and they knew only what they gleaned from months-old dispatches and rumors from the Pacific. When she wrote her heartfelt letter to her husband on June 18, 1846, she had no idea that California settlers loosely associated with John had taken Sonoma four days earlier. Nor did she know a few weeks later when Commodore Sloat sent Marines and sailors ashore. But she did have a vital piece of information that John lacked: during all his weeks of uncertainty, when he was waiting for news that war had begun and agonizing over how far he could go on his own, the war was already under way.

  President Polk had provoked war that spring by sending a small army into South Texas. Blue-uniformed soldiers built an earthen-walled fort beside the Rio Grande, at the farthest southern extent of territory that had ever been dubiously claimed by Texas, asserting that it was now the southern border of the United States. American soldiers on patrol near the fort came under fire from Mexican forces who viewed them as invaders. Polk said the United States was under attack and asked Congress for a declaration of war, which Congress granted on May 13, 1846. This made it easier, once the news of the Bear Flag Rebellion reached Washington, to view John’s adventures not as unauthorized crimes but as prescient acts of war, justified by events of which he knew nothing. The Washington Daily Union of September 2 reported “information, on which we place implicit reliance,” that American forces had captured strategic points in California. The conquest began when “a detachment from Col. Frémont’s force took possession of a frontier post called Sonoma.” John’s efforts to keep his distance from the takeover were already being lost in transmission; whoever was the source of this information gave John credit.

  News arrived of fresh advances, each event reaching Jessie several months after the fact. Commodore Robert F. Stockton arrived in California, the same Stockton whose warship Princeton had steamed to its disastrous demonstration in 1844, and who tried to raise a private army in Texas to attack Mexico before the war. Sent to command the Pacific squadron by the expansionist navy secretary George Bancroft (“Westward the star of empire takes its way”), Stockton arrived with his ambition and self-confidence undiminished. Taking over from the cautious Commodore Sloat, he armed additional sailors and sent them ashore to reinforce his Marines. At Stockton’s direction, John mustered his men into the service of the United States, where they would be known as the California Battalion. Many Bear Flag settlers became volunteer soldiers, as did Kit Carson and the other men of the expedition. John allowed Jacob Dodson to enroll as a private; they either did not know or did not care that black men were prohibited by law from US military service.

  Stockton sent John’s troops down the coast aboard a navy ship to the excellent harbor at San Diego, which they seized without opposition. By December, word reached Washington that Frémont and Stockton had the American flag “flying at every commanding position, and California was in the undisputed military possession of the United States.” President Polk’s annual message to Congress credited “our squadron in the Pacific, with the co-operation of a gallant officer of the army.” Stockton was setting up a government with Jessie’s husband at its head—or, as a newspaper said, “Fremont is Governor, pro tem, of California.” The war had hardly begun, and its greatest prize was already in hand—John’s hands.

  Jessie could only welcome this news, though she believed the war was wrong. It was everything her father had warned against for years. It was especially bitter that the fighting began over control of the Rio Grande Valley, the land that Senator Benton described in his 1844 speech as a legitimate part of Mexico, free soil that should never become part of a slave state (“where a slave’s face was never seen!”). Now it was part of a slave state, and the very ground where the army marched to trigger war. But when Congress considered the declaration of war, Benton and many other senators did not vote their doubts. Polk framed the declaration not as aggression but as recognition that “a state of war exists,” and Benton accepted this fait accompli rather than fail to support the troops. Jessie felt more free to scorn the enterprise. “As you may perceive,” she said in a letter to one of her husband’s colleagues in early 1847, “I have no sympathy for the war, nor has Mr. Frémont. Fighting is not his aim.” Jessie said her husband had thrown himself into the conquest “as if revenging a private insult,” his treatment by California’s General Castro. No evidence suggested that John actually opposed the war—but Jessie was not alone in her distaste for it. Antislavery activists were unsparing in their criticism. The escaped slave turned activist Frederick Douglass attended a meeting of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, whose members approved a resolution accusing the president of “a wanton deliberate lie” in claiming that Mexico had invaded the United States; the war’s true object was “the extension of slavery.” Not for Douglass was Senator Benton’s self-imposed restraint.

  On New Year’s Day 1847, Jessie took part in Washington’s annual ritual, standing in line with hundreds of others to shake the hand of the president. She would not miss the occasion, regardless of her view of Polk’s war. A person attending spotted her in the crowd and wrote a description: “Look there in the centre! Who is that young and lovely creature with such intelligence and lovely and agreeable manners, now chatting French with this diplomat, then Spanish with that, anon Italian with another. What a wife she would make for an Ambassador! [But] That lady is married and a mother. She has more discernment than her father, far seeing as he is, and was disobedient enough to think for herself, and to unite her destiny to a young lieutenant, who in the tide of time may, for aught I know, become President of a republic on the Western side of this continent.” This description was published in a New York newspaper and reprinted by others. Jessie was sharpening her public image. More than an image, she had a narrative. The writer grasped the tale of her elopement and drew from it that Jessie was a woman who decided for herself and was even smarter than her visionary father. While a woman might ordinarily have been seen as a charming appendage of her famous father and husband, they seemed like the ones attached to her.

  She understood that her fame could translate to influence, and as the new year began, she used it. The ranks of the army were swelling, which created opportunities for advancement for her husband and his friends. Determined to be helpful, the twenty-three-year-old assumed a role as John’s political representative in Washington. On February 16, 1847, she wrote a letter to President Polk. “My Dear Sir,” she began,

  There is a very brave young man named Charles Taplin, of education & respectable family, who was with Mr. Frémont through his second expedition & only returned from the present one when there was nothing left to be done.

  Taplin was one of the men who had departed California in mid-1846, carrying a letter to Senator Benton in Washington. Now he aspired to join the army and go to Mexico, and Jessie sought an officer’s commission for him.

  A 2nd Lieutenancy would not only gratify him, but Mr. Frémont and myself extremely.

  She was undertaking the delicate task of seeking Polk’s political patronage. To the victors of an election went the spoils, as a supporter of Andrew Jackson once said; dispensing jobs was one of the president’s powers, and it would be smart to confer favors on a friend of Senator Benton’s, or a friend of Benton’s daughter. But Polk felt oppressed by job seekers. He complained to his diary about men who flocked to the presidential mansion—“a herd of loafers who thus annoyed me,” he once wrote. Another day’s entry read, “There were many visitors this morning on the patriotic errand of seeking office for themselves.” On st
ill another day of giving time to “lazy-looking loafers,” Polk complained, “I cannot insult or be rude to my fellow citizens who call, however undeserving or worthless I may believe them to be.” Jessie apparently understood that the president would not appreciate her taking part in this distasteful work of men, and she offered a playful, even coy justification:

  [A Florida senator told me that] patronage is only used for bribery but with me you can be purely disinterested as my good wishes are all I have to give in return & they are already yours. Unlike other applicants I shall not entertain much hope of succeeding & disappointments of many kinds are familiar to me. Still I hope to succeed. Very truly & respectfully yours,

  Jessie Benton Frémont

  Taplin received his lieutenant’s commission.

  A few weeks after she wrote the letter, the president publicly affirmed the Benton family’s status by visiting the Benton house. Jessie’s older sister, Elizabeth, was getting married there. Her fiancé was William Carey Jones, who like Senator Benton was a former newspaper editor and lawyer, and the wedding attracted the ultimate guest. After the ceremony the president escorted the bride to her seat at the dinner table. Although Polk left shortly after dinner, apparently turning back to work—he was slowly working himself to death—his wife, Sarah Childress Polk, stayed to chat far into the evening with Jessie and other members of the bridal party.

  This confirmation of her family’s importance did not prevent Jessie’s spirits from growing dark. In the spring of 1847 she tried to write a cheerful letter to her dearest friend, Elizabeth Blair Lee, but her thoughts turned to sick friends and relations. Commenting on a woman they knew who had suffered through eight days of labor only to see the baby die, Jessie could not muster much sympathy: “I am sorry for her disappointment, but that is not an irreparable loss & you know children are not necessary to happiness.” She confessed, “I have written you a raven’s letter in place of the comfort I mean to administer for your loneliness. . . . I will not write any longer now for I feel decidedly that I am not cheerful.” Later the two friends met face-to-face. Elizabeth—Lizzie Lee to her friends—was a strikingly beautiful Kentuckian six years older than Jessie, and the daughter of the Democratic newspaper editor Francis Preston Blair. She was among the limited number of women Jessie could relate to and even admire. Lizzie was a keen observer of her friend, noting that Jessie looked “thin and sad,” and seemed “tired of her courage & is now really pining for her husband.”

  * * *

  JESSIE WAS IN WASHINGTON ON MAY 8, 1847, when the city held a celebration of the war. It was the anniversary of the Battle of Palo Alto, the first of many victories as US forces pushed into Mexico. A giant banner stretched across Pennsylvania Avenue, proclaiming patriotic pride while seeming to acknowledge ambivalence about the way the war had begun. “Our country,” it read. “May she always be right; but right or wrong, our country.” Fireworks burst over the Washington Navy Yard. The presidential mansion was “brilliantly illuminated” in the evening, according to a newspaper, although “it was thought best not to illuminate the offices of the public departments, because they contain the valuable records of the government, and most of them are not fire-proof.” The Bentons covered three first-floor windows with transparencies—images and words designed to be lit from behind, naming victories in the war—while the upper windows were decorated with two American flags. It might have been Jessie who told a reporter their history so that they would be mentioned in the paper: one flag was carried by John on his first visit to California in 1844, while the other was “the first and only flag that ever waved from the loftiest peak of the Rocky mountains, and taken there by Col. Frémont, August 15, 1842.”

  No displays at the Benton house reflected victories in California. There were no large battles to commemorate—and the news from California was turning sour. Word had filtered back east that something was going wrong with John’s part of the war. Confirmation came days after the celebration, when a visitor arrived at the Benton home, worn from a journey of some twenty-eight hundred miles: Kit Carson had come all the way from California with dispatches for the government and a letter for Senator Benton. Although Senator Benton was away, the women of the Benton household greeted Carson warmly—so warmly that he grew uncomfortable. He explained that he felt unworthy because his late wife was Indian, and he presumed that his white hosts would disapprove of him once they knew of his interracial marriage.

  But he remained welcome, and Jessie became a particular admirer. Carson was already known around Washington as a heroic character from John’s reports, and during his visit a long and glowing profile of Carson appeared in the Daily Union: “modest as he is brave, with the fire of enterprise in his eye—with the bearing of an Indian, walking even with his toes turned in.” He was “one of those bold and enterprising spirits of the west, whom the peculiar influences of the frontier settlements—between the white man and the red man—are so well calculated to produce. Carson, however, is a master spirit.” He was like an endangered species whose characteristics ought to be recorded by “the magic pen” of some great writer “before its traits disappear under the advance of civilization.” It was a curious article, this promotional profile; the anonymous writer claimed never to have met Carson, but quoted him at length. Jessie’s friend Lizzie Lee wrote that she knew the author. “I have my reasons for thinking that ’tis written by Jessie.” If Jessie didn’t write it, she likely was a source for the writer.

  Readable though the article was, it left out the distressing news Kit Carson had brought Jessie, which stretched back to late 1846, when John sent Carson toward Washington with dispatches for the government. Carson and a small group of riders raced eastward from southern California to New Mexico, where they encountered a US Army force, blue-uniformed troops riding in the opposite direction. It was a small army commanded by Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny, who had just captured New Mexico on behalf of the United States. Kearny was under orders to continue onward to conquer and govern California. Carson informed Kearny that California had already been conquered by Frémont and Stockton, news that persuaded Kearny to send most of his troops back east for use elsewhere. But he still proceeded toward California with a hundred men, intending to take charge there as ordered, and he insisted that Carson pass his dispatches to another rider while Carson turned around to guide the soldiers to the Pacific.

  The small force was approaching San Diego when they learned in the most unpleasant way possible that California was not conquered. Californian forces defeated Kearny’s hundred men, forcing them to retreat with heavy casualties. It emerged that Frémont and Stockton, their forces spread too thin, had lost control of Los Angeles in a Mexican uprising. Eventually Stockton’s men came to Kearny’s rescue, while Frémont advanced on Los Angeles and negotiated its surrender, but John now faced an enemy who was more dangerous to him than the Californians: the rivalry of two commanders. Until that moment, Commodore Stockton had assumed command of all land and sea operations as the senior American officer anywhere near, but Kearny’s orders said he should take charge. The navy commodore declined to submit to the army general. In an exchange of frosty letters in January 1847, Kearny told Stockton, “I demand that you cease” giving orders in California, as “I cannot recognize in you any right to perform duties confided to me by the President.” Stockton replied, “I cannot do anything, nor desist from doing anything or alter anything on your demand.” Both men issued contradictory orders to Frémont. The younger man might have ducked the choice; he could have simply followed the orders of Kearny, his superior in the army, or could have asked both commanders to resolve their dispute and relieve him of his impossible position. Instead he embraced the choice. He made a fateful decision to refuse Kearny and obey the orders of Stockton, who had made him the military governor.

  John’s shortcuts in life were catching up with him. As an army officer who routinely went beyond his orders, he’d had scant practice with the
culture of obedience that was at the heart of military life. As an officer who neither attended West Point nor even served much around other soldiers, he failed to grasp the depth of the military’s tribalism. The army and navy served the same country but had separate chains of command, rivaled each other for funding and glory, and viewed each other’s cultures as alien. It was not unusual that Stockton and Kearny jostled over who should control an operation that involved both services; what was unusual was that John defied his own tribe and sided with the other. It was his own tribe that would ultimately judge him. A refusal to follow orders was mutiny.

  John eventually found a second opportunity to send Carson eastward, giving him the letter addressed to Senator Benton, dated February 3, 1847, in which he explained his conduct to his political sponsor—who must now become his political protector. Since Benton was not present upon Carson’s arrival in Washington in May, Jessie opened the letter and read:

  You are aware that I had contracted relations with Commodore Stockton, and I thought it neither right nor politically honorable to withdraw my support. No reason of interest shall ever compel me to act towards any man in such a way that I should afterwards be ashamed to meet him.

  John mixed his high-minded explanation with self-promotion. “I was named Governor,” he wrote, “and immediately proclaimed peace and order restored . . . and, like the waters of some small lake over which a sudden storm had passed, it subsided into perfect tranquility. . . . Throughout the Californian population, there is only one feeling of satisfaction and gratitude to myself.”

  Reading this letter in her father’s absence, Jessie felt she understood what must be done. Carson must deliver the letter to President Polk so that he would know John’s side of the story. Around midday on June 7, 1847, Jessie in her finest dress and Carson in his cleanest clothes rode a carriage to the presidential mansion and waited in a crowd of job seekers. At last they were ushered in to the president, a quiet and courteous man, his eyes and expression inscrutable. Polk afterward made notes in his diary.