When the time came to cast ballots for a presidential nominee, it seemed obvious to everyone that John would prevail, though some had misgivings. Seward and Chase regarded him as less committed to the antislavery cause than they were. His political experience was obviously thin. Charles J. Upham’s otherwise carefully massaged biography contained this sentence about John’s Senate career: “His three weeks’ parliamentary service is very interesting, as an example well worthy of imitation.” Three weeks—all the time that passed between the day he was sworn in and the day he departed for California to campaign for reelection.
Some were mystified by John’s popularity. Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams, was a delegate from Massachusetts and saw no evidence that John was a longtime opponent of slavery. Other delegates reassured him, although Adams still felt John’s “reputation has been marvelously made within six months for this emergency.” What overcame the lack of a record was John’s personal narrative of exploration and conquest, which resonated with the larger narrative of the country. The Herald, in giving his qualifications, said the nation was “indebted to Fremont for the acquisition of the California gold fields, the treasures of which have revolutionized the financial and commercial relations of the world.” The Herald did not say how his role in that achievement prepared him to lead a divided nation, but people assumed he was courageous and decisive. Murat Halstead, a Cincinnati journalist at the convention, found “a deep and solemn conviction in a large majority of the delegates” that John was “not only a good man but THE MAN,” which Halstead found “unaccountable.” He credited “a popular instinct, such as sometimes, on great occasions, leaps chasms in logic.” Why, Halstead mused, did colonists divine that George Washington must command their army during the Revolution? It was hard to say, but they did.
So it was with John, nominated on the first ballot and paired with a vice-presidential running mate, former senator William L. Dayton of New Jersey. Cheering Frémont supporters raised a giant American flag bearing the explorer’s name. As the news spread, Horace Greeley took an unusual step: though it was rare for newspapers to print illustrations, his Tribune published a woodcut portrait of the nominee. His image resembled popular depictions of Jesus Christ—young but wise, impassive, bearded, with tumbling locks of hair. He was admired, he was famous, and it seemed he could win. He gave the papers a letter accepting the nomination, pledging “a desperate struggle” for free labor in Kansas, and warning that slave labor would “reduce emigrants to labor on the same terms as slaves.”
Aside from his other qualities, he had the perfect name. The Republican slogan became “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men and Frémont.”
* * *
SHORTLY AFTER THE TELEGRAPH FLASHED the convention results to New York, Republicans organized a torchlight procession to the Frémont house. Several thousand boisterous men marched up Broadway to Ninth Street, then elbowed for space as they shouted for their candidate to emerge on the iron balcony. Several unidentified men came out instead. A piece of the iron railing broke off and crashed down, miraculously harming no one below. Then John C. Frémont stepped out to what remained of the railing and gave a short speech, or tried. “He is cheered so much and so long,” noted a young man in the crowd, “you can only catch little pieces of what he is saying.” The candidate withdrew, but the crowd wanted more. “Mrs. Frémont!” someone cried, then others took up the refrain. “Madam Frémont! Jessie! Jessie! Give us Jessie!”
Nothing quite like this moment had happened before. “For a lady to make her appearance before a political crowd like this is an innovation,” observed the young man. Disapproving, a man beside him tried to hush the calls for Jessie, but his was a lonely voice as many shouted louder. A man appeared on the balcony and tried to explain why Jessie should not come out: “Such occasions as this are apt to disconcert ladies,” he called down, but the crowd refused to leave. At last, to “a universal shout,” Mrs. Frémont appeared on the balcony. “The crowd are crazy with enthusiasm,” noted the young man below. “They sway to and fro. They are bareheaded almost to a man, cheering with hats in hand in the air.” As Jessie acknowledged the men in the torchlight, the Republicans beneath her roared so loudly that it seemed all their previous cheers for John had been “a mere practice to train their voices” for her.
It was apparent to Republican managers and editors what an asset Jessie was. Buchanan, the unmarried Democrat, had no one comparable. While Republican papers did not question Buchanan’s sexuality—same-sex relationships were so deeply buried that there was hardly the language to discuss them in public—Republicans portrayed the unmarried politico as lonely and dull. An editorial cartoon presented two pictures side by side: one, labeled “Young America,” showed John standing beside his shapely wife with a rifle hanging on the wall; the other, labeled “Old Fogyism,” showed Buchanan eating soup in his bedroom alone. In late June the New York Evening Mirror described the latest Republican gathering:
“GIVE ’EM JESSIE.”–At an impromptu gathering of Fremonters up town, the other evening, an enthusiastic advocate of the Rocky Mountain candidate put it to the crowd whether it would not be better to send a man to the White House who had completed his humanities by marrying an accomplished woman, than to send there such a rusty old bachelor as Buchanan . . . A gentleman present, who remembered the maiden name of Mrs. Fremont (Jessie Benton), shouted “WE’LL GIVE ’EM JESSIE!”
“Give ’em Jesse” was an old-fashioned way to say something like “Give ’em hell.”
The felicitous double entendre only needs to be published to become the watchword of the campaign, and the Mirror takes the liberty of adding, that if the gallantry of the country demanded a Queen at the head of the nation, the lovely lady of the Republican nominee would command the universal suffrages of the people. She is a woman as eminently fitted to adorn the White House as she has proved herself worthy to be a hero’s bride. . . . Beautiful, graceful, intellectual and enthusiastic, she will make more proselytes to the Rocky Mountain platform in fifteen minutes than fifty stump orators can win over in a month.
It was true, the paper added, that John had eloped with Jessie when she was so very young that he could be accused of “taking away an old man’s daughter,” but this was understandable, and “the sympathies of the world always run with runaway lovers.” The article was reprinted in northern New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.
Republicans distributed multiple songbooks, offering new lyrics to popular melodies, which Frémont fans could sing at home or at campaign rallies.
Freemen of the North awake!
Grasp your arms, your all’s at stake!
Vows once more to Freedom make—
On to Victory!
Spirits of our sainted sires!
Kindle Freedom’s hallowed fires!
Fremont’s name our zeal inspires,
Down with Slavery!
The same songbook featured a tune about the candidate’s spouse: “Oh Jessie is a sweet bright lady,” the lyric said. And if the quality of the lyrics fell short of Stephen Foster, they were sung with enthusiasm. Women in some cities formed “Jessie Circles,” who would gather to sing. “Give ’Em Jessie” was to be sung to the refrain of “Yankee Doodle,” using Buchanan’s nickname, Old Buck:
Fire away, my gallant lads
And Freedom’s sons will bless ye,
And if old Buck don’t clear the track
Fremont will “give him Jessie.”
People read that Jessie herself “gave them Jessie.” Newspapers circulated a story of Mrs. Frémont, months before the presidential nomination, falling into an argument with a prominent Boston man she encountered on a train. As the cars rattled between Washington and Baltimore, the Bostonian expressed surprise that a “Southern lady” would support “demagogues” opposed to the South’s “institutions.” Jessie replied that she was surprised
that a Northern man was so deferential to those institutions.
A newspaper dispatch from Buffalo, New York, in July reported “a new feature in political gatherings.” A rally for Frémont and Dayton included “the presence of some 400 ladies, seats having been reserved. The ladies here ‘go in’ for Fremont and ‘our Jessie.’” The women did not have a single vote among them, but their presence linked the party to the women who had powered the antislavery movement. In Indiana, the newspapers said, a young woman identified as Miss Carrie Filkins addressed crowds at Republican events; she “attended all the great mass meetings held in that State,” raised her voice to “thousands assembled on the Tippecanoe battle ground,” and then delivered another speech at a Frémont meeting in Dayton, Ohio. In Fremont, Ohio, organizers of a Frémont singing club declared, “We must enlist music and ladies in our cause.” Women’s participation grew out of the times, reflecting the related energies of the women’s movement and the antislavery movement, but one woman was made the symbol of their cause. It was said many babies born that year were named Jessie.
Although Jessie had played no significant role in the abolitionist movement, she made contact with it, exchanging letters with the writer Lydia Maria Child. Child was famed for books including The Frugal Housewife, which gave advice on housekeeping and parenting, and her poem “Over the River and Through the Wood,” about a Thanksgiving sleigh ride. She was also a women’s rights advocate who had once edited an antislavery newspaper. Child asked if it was true that Jessie had refused an offer to buy a slave in California. Jessie wrote back that she had, crediting her mother for her beliefs. In her letter to the parenting expert, Jessie emphasized that slavery corrupted “the temper of children,” meaning the white children of slave owners. “I would as soon place my children in the midst of small pox, as rear them under the influences of slavery.”
Articles about both Frémonts began appearing in Frederick Douglass’ Paper in Rochester, New York. It was not automatic that this would be so. Abolitionist leaders such as William Lloyd Garrsion denounced the entire slavery-tainted political process, while others supported third-party candidates instead of the compromised major parties. Douglass was no exception: he was promoting the little-noticed candidacy of Gerrit Smith, a New York abolitionist and reformer. But Douglass acknowledged debate on the issue. On July 4 he said in his paper, “The enquiry has repeatedly reached us—why can you not give to Fremont and Dayton . . . your undivided support?” He acknowledged that Frémont was a better choice than Buchanan, but “we are Abolitionists; Fremont and Dayton are not, and votes are sought for them on that very ground.” (It was true; one pro-Frémont pamphlet proclaimed that not even 1 percent of his supporters were abolitionists, “much less can Frémont himself be suspected by any honest man of abolitionism.”) Although Douglass understood why Republicans must refrain from pushing abolition in order to build a political majority, “a black man in this country” could not abide it: “If white men were enslaved in South Carolina, no pretense of State’s rights would shield it from the [thunder] bolts of the Republican party.” Yet the same issue of Douglass’s paper included articles about John, and two articles about Jessie, including the one about her arguing with a man on a train. Douglass was clearly intrigued by both Frémonts.
Six weeks later, on August 15, Douglass changed his stance. The name of the abolitionist candidate disappeared from its place atop his paper’s masthead. “We would rather see this just man made President,” he wrote, but an idealistic third-party campaign did not rise to the moment. Douglass’s paper would support Frémont “with whatever influence we possess.” He made no apology for inconsistency: “Right Anti-slavery action is that which deals the severest deadliest blow upon Slavery that can be given at that particular time.” Douglass would not “abandon a single Anti-Slavery Truth or Principle,” but would change his strategy. Weeks earlier, in justifying his support for the abolitionist campaign, he had written that he was thinking long term: “The present . . . is not an isolated speck of time . . . These are the harvest hours of history. The good or evil of the present, the wisdom or folly of present actions, [will] reproduce themselves a thousand fold in the future.” The rise of the Republicans had prompted him to rethink what the long term required of him. The “new and powerful Northern party” of which he had written had arrived, and his endorsement of it was the moral highlight of the 1856 campaign. A leader who knew slavery from experience—and understood the Republicans’ compromises and half measures—determined that the party would shift national life in a better direction.
* * *
DOUGLASS’S DECISION CAUSED A STIR in abolition circles—he had to write a letter of explanation to the radical candidate he had abandoned—and set him on a course toward becoming a man of influence within the Republican Party. Yet it was hard to find major Republican papers that amplified his message or even mentioned it. When Douglass made news in mainstream papers that summer, it was in a different way. The papers carried the story of a man who had walked into a bookstore in Mobile, Alabama, and searched the shelves until he found a half-hidden copy of The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. The man bought the story of the slave’s escape for the premium price of $2.50, and brought his discovery to a local Committee of Vigilance, which an Alabama resident described as “twenty-five of our leading men.” The committee seized the store’s records and discovered the two owners of the shop had ordered fifty copies of the banned book. Some had been sold to slaves. The vigilantes instructed the booksellers—both foreigners, one from England and one from Scotland—to leave town within five days or face prosecution for inciting a slave insurrection, which carried a punishment of ten years in prison or hanging. When a New York Herald correspondent revealed this story, numerous papers North and South reprinted it. The Richmond Dispatch commented bitterly that the immigrants had made a fortune selling books, and had returned the “kindness” of their adopted community by “sowing . . . the seeds of a St. Domingo revolution.” Even the Herald sympathized with the banishment of the booksellers, saying that it had been “incendiary” for Douglass to write down the facts of his life, and that his book had a “fiendish aim.” The usual Northern concern for freedom of speech was absent.
Given the way news editors viewed Douglass, it was no surprise that Republicans made no effort to promote his endorsement. But Democrats did. A Pennsylvania newspaper, reporting his action, said, “Let all who follow negro dictation and morals under the leadership of a negro editor mark well his reasons for this course.” The Daily Iowa State Democrat listed former presidents and war heroes who supported the Democrat Buchanan, then contrasted it with the radical voices who favored the Republican ticket: Seward, Greeley, and the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher. “Frederick Douglass supports Fremont,” the paper said. “And all the Abolitionist and Disunion crew supports Fremont.”
That was the essence of the Democrats’ case for Buchanan, which they made both North and South: Republicans were extremists. No matter what they said, they were out to abolish slavery, despite white citizens’ fears about what black people would do with their freedom. Above all, they would destroy the Union; Southerners said so. The Richmond Dispatch declared, “There was never half the reason . . . for shaking off British allegiance than there will be for dissolving the Union, if the Free Soilers elect Frémont and Dayton.” If defeated by the new party, Southerners would secede—and this would not be the fault of Southerners for failing to accept an election result, but of Northerners for threatening the South and blocking it from power. A pamphlet said the Democrats were the last national party and the Union’s last hope.
THE FEARFUL ISSUE
TO BE DECIDED IN NOVEMBER NEXT!
SHALL THE
CONSTITUTION
AND
THE UNION
STAND OR FALL?
FREMONT,
THE SECTIONAL CANDIDATE
OF THE
A
DVOCATES OF DISSOLUTION!
BUCHANAN,
THE CANDIDATE OF THOSE WHO ADVOCATE
ONE COUNTRY! ONE UNION!
ONE CONSTITUTION!
AND
ONE DESTINY!
The pamphlet quoted the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, one of those who vowed “no Union with slaveholders,” and claimed Garrison’s view was the Republican view.
This line of attack was mixed with attacks on John’s character. The campaign was like a national grand jury investigation, in which anyone interested in the outcome had motive to examine every part of his life. Many focused on California. BLACK REPUBLICAN IMPOSTURE EXPOSED! proclaimed one pamphlet, adding, FRAUD UPON THE PEOPLE! Tables inside showed that while supplying his troops during the war, John had incurred debts on the United States totaling $960,614. Mariano G. Vallejo, the Californian whom John had needlessly imprisoned at the start of the conflict, apparently had been rewarded at last for his patience, and sold John $107,875 worth of horses and supplies. By 1856 the government had settled such debts for a fraction of the wartime prices, but the pamphlet laid out the numbers to suggest that John was extravagant or corrupt. In the Senate, a Democratic lawmaker made news by formally requesting an investigation of John’s travel accounts. Voters in California read additional allegations: one newspaper printed the story of a man who claimed to have witnessed John ordering the killings of three messengers on the shore of San Francisco Bay (“I have no room for prisoners”). And there were all the dealings that surrounded Las Mariposas. The accusations were too murky to easily refute, especially since many were plausibly true.
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