Jessie

by Judy Alter

  My King George's mark, that red blotch at the corner of my mouth, had appeared instantly upon word of John's dismissal. In truth, it had been lingering around the corner of my mouth for two months, but it never came to full fruition until he arrived back in St. Louis. And then I wore it, like a stigmata, for two long months. That and gray hair.

  For two weeks after John returned to St. Louis, we worked feverishly, for John wanted to collect every bit of documentation he could before we left the headquarters. "I shall have to defend myself some day," he said, "if I am ever to have another command. And I need ammunition. You must help me sort through this mountain of paperwork, Jessie."

  And sort I did. But I also had another chore. Where once I had turned angry citizens of the city away, now I welcomed them into John's presence, interrupting him so regularly throughout the day that he claimed to feel lonely if left in his office without interruption longer than half an hour.

  They came singly and in groups to tell him how important he was to them, how much they admired his stand on slavery, how his proclamation was the only thing that made sense of this war for which they were losing their sons and their homes. Many of them were German citizens, a group particularly appalled by slavery, but others were simply northern sympathizers who found themselves, uncomfortably, in southern Missouri... and in a land of southern sympathies.

  "Mrs. Frémont, I do not wish to bother the general. My name is Schmidt, Franz Schmidt, and I have here...." The caller gestured at a long, thin parcel, wrapped in butcher paper.

  "For the general?" I asked.

  "Ja, for the general. From the people of St. Louis."

  "He will see you immediately," I said, striding toward John's door.

  The parcel proved to be a sword, a gleaming silver sword that had been made by a local silversmith and enclosed in a fine leather case embossed by a St. Louis saddlemaker.

  After it was presented, John weighed the sword in one hand and then the other, commenting on its fine balance and weight, then examining in detail the careful workmanship on the case. At last he spoke to Herr Schmidt, who had been silently standing and watching him.

  "It is the finest sword and case a man could hope to own, sir. I am uncertain how to thank you."

  "We want no thanks," Schmidt said in his accented English. "You have done a great deal for us, for northerners, for those against the slavery. But if you could...." He let his sentence dangle away.

  "Could what, man?" John demanded. "If it's in my power, I'll do it."

  "Before you leave, on Sunday, if you could appear on your balcony, the people—my people—would like to bid you farewell."

  "Agreed," John said, reaching to shake his hand.

  And so we stood, John and I, once again on the balcony of the Brant mansion, this time on a Sunday afternoon. Before us was a cheering throng. Two weeks earlier the Garibaldians would have kept these people at a distance, but now they were close—and they were John's friends. I hoped that the eastern papers—especially the Washington papers—would take note.

  "The sword," they cried, "the sword!"

  And John raised the sword high in the air, shouting his thanks over their tumultuous cries. He never did make a speech that afternoon—the crowd was too exuberant—and after thirty minutes or more we retired, their cries echoing behind us.

  "They like me, Jessie," he said.

  "Of course they do, John. You have been a great inspiration for them. You've given them faith that they are right."

  "I wish... I didn't have to leave them." Suddenly he was the little boy again.

  I took his arm. "You'll have another command, and you'll do much more good for the northern cause. And, John, these people will know, and they'll be proud you carry their sword with you in that cause."

  "I will carry it," he said, clasping the sword as he spoke.

  That night he fell asleep in my arms like a child who needed to be cradled and cuddled and reassured.

  He never mentioned my gray hair, and two weeks after he returned from Camp Lily, we left for New York.

  * * *

  "The public is behind us," I wrote to Starr King, "but the powers that be—the President, the Cabinet—are all against us. I asked John if we should not just return to Black Point, but he is not ready to give up. He will seek another command, and with the public outcry that we are hearing, I do not think Mr. Lincoln can deny him."

  In New York, John was a celebrity, and this time it was not just the everyday citizen who praised him. Men of influence spoke on his behalf before public audiences. When Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist orator, praised John's boldness and condemned what he called Lincoln's "pious caution," audiences went wild.

  Still, when Henry Ward Beecher begged us to attend his Sunday service in Brooklyn—"There is something I want you to hear"—I had to drag John there. To an overflowing congregation Beecher called John a hero and, turning to him, said, "Your name will live and be remembered by a nation of Freemen!" We could leave the church only by passing through a corridor of men and women anxious to grasp John's hand, touch his coat, sing out their praise and thanks.

  I heard a rumor that Lincoln was baffled by John's continuing popularity. Had he asked me directly, I could have explained it: John had made the war meaningful for northerners. He had courageously said what everyone whispered: it was a war to free the slaves. That was why northern women sent their sons and husbands to war, and that was why those men were willing to fight and die. John became a symbol for all of them.

  In spite of public support John remained almost lethargic, sunk into a depression that frustrated and frightened me. The quieter he got, the angrier I became—not at him, but at the world, the system, whatever, that had not allowed his full talents to shine. While John sulked in his study—there is no other way to describe it—I settled the family into our new house with a flurry of activity, spurred on by the energy that anger often gives a person.

  "I know!" I said to him one night late, as we sat over a glass of sherry before the fire. "I will write a book about Zagonyi's guard."

  John looked startled. "Why would you do that?"

  I swirled the sweet liquid in my glass for a moment, thinking about how to phrase my answer. Finally I said, "It's the best way to tell the story. The guard was criticized as much as you were—and they were part of the criticism against you. I can tell your story through theirs."

  "Jessie, that's an outlandish idea! You can't write a book!"

  Stung to the core, I was silent a minute, quieting the instant responses that rose within me, the urge to fling at him the fact that I'd written all his expedition reports and many of my father's speeches and reports. Of course I could write a book!

  "Do you mean," I asked cautiously, "that it's not fitting for me to write a book?"

  He looked sideways at me, then quickly said, "No, no. That's not it at all. I just thought....Don't you have enough to do with the children and the house and...?" His voice trailed off, because he knew the answer to that question and was sorry he had ever raised it.

  I wrote as though the avenging furies sat at my shoulder, at a pace I myself would never have thought possible. The truth is that once I began to tell the story, the words poured out so that my hand was hard put to keep up with my brain.

  "I write only the truth," I told Starr King in a letter, "but I am telling it in a gentle manner so that none can take offense." In recounting the story of the guards' superb victory at Springfield, I wove in the details of John's planned rout of the rebels and how it was thwarted by governmental order, of why the Garibaldians were the key to John's success and not, as charged, an ostentatious show of power.

  Ever aware of that old charge of "General Jessie," I begged readers, in an afterword, not to think me unwomanly for having written. It was, I told them, a strange time in our national history, a time that sometimes made women step beyond their normal bounds, and I did so ever conscious of my duties as a woman and a wife. Indeed, it was for that reason I wrote
. As I reread that passage, I thought with some satisfaction that no wife who valued her husband could read it with a dry eye nor condemn me for having written.

  The editors at Ticknor and Fields, a major New York publishing house, were very interested in the manuscript, pressing me for delivery of the completed version. But then they grew a pair of cold feet, which I ascribed to political fear. When at last they offered a contract—in December of 1861—I then withheld the manuscript, to their everlasting confusion.

  But I knew why. John had said to me, in his careful and measured tones, "Jessie, I want another command. I want it badly... and your book..."

  "Might turn the administration forever against you?"

  He shook his head sadly. "I know why you wrote it, and... I could never ask you to bury it."

  I rushed to put my arms around him. "I wrote it for you, John, to tell the world your story. And if publishing it would hurt you, then I won't publish it."

  Even then I did not see him as selfish nor myself as martyred. I had done what a woman should—put my husband's interests first.

  When the Congress, distressed by the North's lack of success in the war, established a Committee on the Conduct of the War, John was given notice that he would be asked to testify. All those records he had so carefully collected before St. Louis were now invaluable, for they would provide the basis of his testimony and, if needed, the proof.

  We moved the household to Washington to prepare, and I became—without his asking or my suggesting—John's legal counsel, his sounding board, once again his amanuensis. We worked for long days and nights, and as I sat at his side, I was drawn back to the days of the court-martial, thinking how many who had been with us were now gone—some through death, like Father, and others through alienation, like Liza's husband, William Carey Jones, or all the Blairs—and the McDowells, whose southern loyalties separated them from us. The poet was right who wrote about the cruelty of war on those who do not fight.

  "Jessie! President and Mrs. Lincoln are giving a gala at the White House, two weeks from now, February fifth."

  Without turning from my papers to look at him, I remarked dryly, "Well, we won't be invited."

  "Ah," he said, coming toward me to wave a paper under my nose, "but we have been. Here is the invitation!"

  I read it carefully, even examined the envelope to make sure it was addressed to Major General and Mrs. John Frémont. I could not imagine that the President would want us present... but neither could I imagine that he would throw a festive party in the midst of war.

  "Why is he doing that, John?"

  He shrugged. "Who can read his ways? Perhaps he wants to consolidate his forces. We won't go, of course."

  "Of course not," I agreed, my mind lingering on the balls I'd attended at the White House and the hopes I'd had of being hostess at some myself. But John was right this time: we would not be present. Besides, I would have had to attend wearing mourning, and if I went to a ball—even with my gray hair—I wanted to go as light and laughing.

  On February 3 a messenger brought us a thick white envelope. Scrawled in the upper left-hand corner was the signature "A. Lincoln." And after the address, underlined, the words "By hand," signifying the importance of the document. I deferred to John to read it.

  "He asks particularly that we attend the gala, in spite of our earlier regrets," John said wonderingly. "Says it would be a special favor to him....Jessie, if I want a command, I think we should be there."

  Feeling like a ship that was blown first this way and then that, I agreed, and two days later found myself, dressed in my best black, being greeted by the President and his wife. Mr. Lincoln greeted me civilly, giving no hint of our last meeting, and Mrs. Lincoln, overdressed and obviously nervous, fluttered over me, making silly remarks about my famous husband. I was grateful when we were forced to move on so that others could greet them. I whispered to John that the President looked more forlorn and sad than he had when I'd had my late-night meeting with him.

  "You would too if you were losing a war," John said grimly, taking my arm and steering me toward Dorothea Dix, whom he'd spotted across the great expanse of the Red Room.

  I greeted her enthusiastically, but her mood was solemn. "I spent the morning here," she said. "The President asked me to take charge of the care of his ten-year-old son, Willie. He has diphtheria."

  I caught my breath in horror. "And?"

  "And there's not much I can do or anyone. I fear the boy will die, and the President knows it."

  "No wonder he looks so sad," I said, feeling myself undergo a change of heart for the man. As a parent I knew too well the panic that descends when one of your children is ill—in fact, Frank at the age of three had suffered from diphtheria, and I had lived by his bedside for two weeks. He, fortunately, had recovered, but the pain... ah, I knew the pain! I watched the President the rest of the evening with great care and concern.

  A public announcement was made that there would be no dancing because of young Willie's illness. But the Marine Band played loudly, and I thought it terrible that it would play while the boy lay dying. The irony of it tore at my heart, and I was in a hurry to be away from that place.

  Perhaps it was little Willie's illness, but something made people ill at ease with the Lincolns, and few lingered to talk after once greeting them. By contrast a great knot of people gathered around John at the opposite end of the room, some anxious to praise his work in Missouri, others curious about his future plans, some just standing and listening.

  Finally, making his way toward me, he said, "This is not good. The President can't help but remark all these people. We must make our excuses and be gone."

  And we did, only to be summoned back by a messenger who said that Mr. Lincoln particularly wanted General Frémont to meet General McClellan.

  "One does not," John said, "deny one's President, especially not when it comes to meeting one's commanding officer."

  So back we went, where we were introduced to General and Mrs. McClellan. I had to stifle a gasp and pretend a coughing fit when I was introduced to Mrs. McClellan, for she wore secessionist colors—a band of scarlet velvet across her chest and scarlet and white feathers in her hair. For the wife of the commander of the Union army to wear such colors astounded me. I could not believe it was accidental. But how would she dare do such a thing deliberately?

  "And sometimes you worry that I will embarrass you," I said to John in the carriage on the way home.

  He only laughed and hugged me. "You never embarrass me, Jessie. I am always proud of you."

  I was about to ask, "Even with gray hair and a thick waist?" but I didn't. I remembered my father saying you never give ammunition to the enemy.

  * * *

  After his appearance before the committee, popular demand gave John another command. His testimony was clear and to the point, all the problems we'd had in Missouri, the plans he'd made, the way they'd been thwarted. Frank Blair rose on the floor of Congress to denounce his testimony as "an apology for a disaster," but the congressmen stood by John.

  In March 1862 he was given command of the Mountain Department, newly created by Lincoln. With headquarters in Wheeling, West Virginia, the department included the mountain country of western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and parts of Tennessee, a 350-mile line of defense against an enemy who was continually reinforced with troops, supplies, and ammunition. There were tunnels and bridges to protect and river transportation routes to keep open. John was credited by the War Department with officers and staff he never once saw, and in some ways it was Missouri all over again. His troops were apparently never intended to fight. They were better disciplined than the Missouri troops and better armed, but they had no food and no clothes.

  Specifically, they had no shoes. "I refuse to ask them to fight barefoot," John stormed. "A government that can provide full supplies to other commands can surely put shoes on the feet of my men and food in their bellies."

  A testy correspondence ensued between m
y husband and the President. John wrote asking for the 35,000 men he had been promised. Lincoln replied that he had given John easily that many at first and that was all he had the power to give. In return he asked why John had not retaken Knoxville as he'd been directed. "I know that you have done the best you can, under the circumstances, but I would suggest you go more on the offensive," the President wrote.

  John's army had been living without shelter for forty rainy spring days. To march to Knoxville, as the President requested, required supplies, transport, and reinforcements. John refused to risk his troops, although he worded his message more carefully than he had when he exclaimed to me that he would not send them to fight barefoot. In spite of their condition John's men nearly cut off the retreat of General Stonewall Jackson, the "rebel Napoleon." But the clever Confederate general escaped. "If the others had supported me, I'd have gotten him," John raged. "The others" were other Union generals in the region.

  When General Carl Schurz, sent by the President to assess conditions in the department, affirmed that it would be impossible to carry out Lincoln's orders with the present troops in their existing condition, Lincoln decided—rightly—that he had too many generals but no organization among them. Accordingly, he put General John Pope in charge of the several commands in the area, which meant Pope—an old enemy from Missouri—was now John's superior.

  "Dear Jessie," John wrote, "I have resigned my command and am coming home to New York. General Pope has been appointed my commander, and I cannot, with a just regard for the safety of my troops and what was rightfully due my honor, suffer myself to pass under his command."

  John was the second-ranking general in the Union army, and Pope was clearly his junior. The President had delivered John another terrible slap, and I was left to sit in New York and wonder if it would be fatal.

  My mind whirled. Was John set up to fail? Was it some clever plan of the President, to make him fail so that his dismissal in Missouri would be justified? I remembered the man so grieved about the death of his son, the man so obviously moved by the wholesale deaths of his soldiers, and I could not believe that. The most I could accuse the President of was a lack of good judgment—but I was firm in that conclusion.