Passion and Principle
John and Jessie Fremont, the Couple Whose Power, Politics, and Love Shaped Nineteenth-Century Americ
-
- $27.99
-
- $27.99
Publisher Description
She was the daughter of powerful Missouri politician Thomas Hart Benton and was a savvy political operator who played confidante and advisor to the inner circle of the highest political powers in the country. He was a key figure in western exploration and California's first senator, and became the first presidential candidate for the Republican Party-and the first candidate to challenge slavery. Both shaped their times and were far ahead of it, but most extraordinarily their story has never fully been told. Thanks in part to a deep-seated family quarrel between Jessie's father and the couple, John and Jessie were eclipsed and opposed by some of the most mythic characters of their era, not least Abraham Lincoln. Award-winning historian Sally Denton restores the reputations of John and Jessie and places them where they belong-at the center of our country's history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Denton (American Massacre) produces an intriguing take on the life and times of John C. Fr mont (1813 1890), explorer of the West, traveling partner of Kit Carson, California senator, unyielding abolitionist and the Republican Party's first presidential candidate (he lost the 1856 election to James Buchanan). This is not a conventional political biography but a portrait of the five-decade-long marriage between Fr mont and Jessie, a daughter of Missouri Democratic senator Thomas Hart Benton, set against the tumultuous background of 19th-century America. It is certainly the first narrative in which Jessie Fr mont is accorded equal weight, and is by far the most sympathetic not just to her, but also to him. John, all too often depicted as a semicompetent and fraudulent megalomaniac, emerges as an immensely talented explorer, overtrusting soul and introverted scientist. Jessie's historical caricature as a hysterical shrew and control freak is sensitively tempered by Denton into a complex amalgam of indomitability and idealism constrained by her times into playing second fiddle. Jessie's accomplishments, writes Denton, "were attained not through John as her surrogate, but with John as her partner." As Denton shows, Bill and Hillary are not the first American power couple. 16 pages of b&w illus.
