The Woman Who Won the West

An absorbing look at a neglected great American couple.

We tend to think of explorers as solitary men, risking their lives far from family and friends. This is the usual image of John C. Frémont, who surveyed the American West from St. Louis to San Francisco. But a new dual biography of Frémont and his wife Jessie shows that his seemingly individual, masculine legacy was actually accomplished by a couple deeply in love, and no less by her than by him.

In Passion and Principle: John and Jessie Frémont, the Couple Whose Power, Politics, and Love Shaped Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomsbury, 480 pages, $32.50), the Western historian Sally Denton retells the life of the Great Pathfinder from a new angle. She fully covers Frémont’s career as an explorer, conqueror, presidential candidate, and Civil War general, but she spends at least as much time on his remarkable partner. She reveals Jessie Frémont to be the behind-the-scenes manager and powerful advocate of her husband’s illustrious, sometimes notorious career, and she compares the two to other historic power couples, Bill and Hillary Clinton first among them.

Had she been born male, Jessie Ann Benton might have become President. The daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, the brilliant, blustering senator from Missouri, she was called by Washington insiders “the square root of Tom Benton.” Her father raised her to speak five languages, mine the Library of Congress, and accompany him on meetings with Presidents. Her flashing brown eyes, shimmering dark hair, violet dresses, and youthful femininity fooled some, but many antebellum politicians insisted that, in the words of one, “if you want the real Washington situation with well-thought-out opinions on it, ask Miss Jessie.”

In 1840, when she was 15, she fell for John Charles Frémont. Frémont, the illegitimate son of a French refugee, was already a famous explorer when he met Thomas Benton in the capital. He and the senator lobbied for Western interests together, Benton wanting to establish a Pacific port to trade with India and Frémont committed to scientifically documenting unsettled regions. Benton, a ferocious political animal, forbade his daughter to see Frémont, unhappy about the explorer’s dubious background and financial prospects.

Nevertheless the two kept meeting, especially at public events like the funeral of President William Henry Harrison. Finally they eloped and married, wedding in a Catholic church when Washington’s Protestant ministers proved too afraid of Benton’s wrath to officiate. When the senator angrily confronted the couple, his daughter, having some of his own fiery spirit, induced him to accept the union. However, he always maintained that “John C. Frémont did not marry my daughter; she married him.”

Denton portrays the marriage as a genuine partnership of equals—a real rarity in the nineteenth century. Though the Frémonts were often separated, when John was exploring, much of their time together was spent in loving teamwork. He, guided by Kit Carson, made several expeditions to chart the passes through the Rockies, Sierra Nevada, and Cascades. When he returned, the couple would write dramatic accounts of his journeys, which became some of the most popular reading of the day and inspired thousands, including Mormon settlers, to travel west.

Denton follows John’s career exploring the West, conquering California, running for President, and fighting in the Civil War. At each step Jessie, trained from birth in politics, aided her husband. When he faced court-martial for his overzealous actions in California, she pleaded his case directly to President Polk. When three parties—the Republicans and a coalition of the Democrats and the Know-Nothings—begged him to run in the 1856 presidential election, she stuck to her abolitionist beliefs and guided him to the antislavery Republicans. She thoroughly managed his failed campaign, with the slogan “Free Soil, Free Men, Free Speech, Frémont,” and even kept newspaper articles about him from him during the race, fearing that he couldn’t handle the mudslinging they contained.

This last anecdote reflects Denton’s one misstep. She struggles to portray an equal partnership, but at times the husband comes across as hapless or reckless. Even as a Civil War general he managed to infuriate President Lincoln. Jessie was the real politician—intervening with Presidents, directing campaigns, writing reports—while John, though a brave explorer, lacked tact. She was, after all, a Benton, bred to rule even if constrained by society’s sexism. Denton seems to secretly prefer Jessie to John, but she maintains a scrupulous balance.

Through it all she tells a fascinating story of love and struggle, following John as he scales high peaks and Jessie as she surmounts the chauvinism of the era. Passion and Principle sheds light on a character only dimly known; few remember Jessie Frémont at all, let alone in her roles in the exploration of the West and the battle against slavery. Who knew that expansion and emancipation, the two great projects of nineteenth-century America, were so helped along by someone Lincoln once called “quite a female politician”?

—Jon Grinspan lives in New York City and writes for Military History magazine.