Jessie Benton Fremont in 1856
The sequel to Lead Me Home takes place during the California Gold Rush and the development of California as a state. Some scenes are set in Monterey, California, during the Constitutional Convention of 1849. That convention was full of early California luminaries—delegates included John C. Frémont and Lansford Hasting, both of whom had written guides used by emigrants to the West.
Jessie Benton Frémont, daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton and wife of John C. Frémont, traveled to meet her husband in California, leaving the East Coast in 1848. However, she was delayed in Panama through the winter because of illness. She arrived in San Francisco in June 1849, and then made her way to Monterey.
In A Year of American Travel, a memoir published in 1878, Mrs. Frémont described her experiences during her time in California. She said of the lure of the gold fields:
no man of any degree voluntarily kept away from the mines or San Francisco; it was their great opportunity for sudden money making.
She also wrote about the difficulty of transporting gold in California in 1849:
The buckskin bags containing about a hundred pounds of gold were put for safety under the straw mattress. There were no banks nor places of deposit of any kind. You had to trust some man that you knew or keep guard yourself. We sent this [gold] back to Monterey and it accumulated in trunks in our rooms there.
In writing my book, I have struggled with how to show the transportation of gold from the mines to the cities. I’m not sure I have it right, although based on Mrs. Frémont’s description, it might be that any and all methods were used. Clearly, there was no organized system of storing gold during those early years of the Gold Rush.
Though there were tidbits like those I’ve quoted above, what I most enjoyed about Mrs. Frémont’s book was the female perspective.
Unlike the male writers of the era, Mrs. Frémont describes the challenges of setting up housekeeping in a land where “every eatable thing had been eaten off the face of the country and nothing raised.” The Frémonts lived in rooms in the Governor’s residence in Monterey, and during the Constitutional Convention, Mrs. Frémont held open houses for the men attending the Convention. I loved the combination of domestic difficulties and political issues she discussed, often on the same page.
She describes the difficulty of finding a laundress, and how she finally found a Black slave woman, but couldn’t hire her unless she bought the woman, which she refused to do. She writes:
I go into this laundry incident a little fully because, simple as it seemed, it soon after became of political importance. The Convention had met at Monterey to settle the Constitution of the state, and the question whether slavery should or should not be admitted was, as every one remembers, the exciting feature. With slave labor there would be no delay in opening up the mineral wealth of the country, and to the fabulous profits of the owners. . . . Paid labor must necessarily be scanty in numbers, very expensive, and equally unreliable. There was also the consideration, which is strong when you are made to feel it, that it would put an end to the great discomfort of being without a class to attend to the daily necessities of life. The want of proper food, proper clothing, were the sources of ill-health as well as discomfort, and there seemed no way to get at a class to attend to this where no one would work for wages, for they could be too independent in other ways. . . . These were a troublesome class in the Convention. To these might be added nearly every woman in the country, who lifted up her voice and wept over her discomforts.
And,
Every one knows the important part of a good dinner in diplomacy. . . . The very badly prepared food with which the members of the Convention had to be content during their work made them ready to cry out for cooks at the price of any principle. Here it was my good fortune to be of service, and come in aid to the serious work being done by men opposed to slavery Our rooms in the Castro house were very pretty . . . . My army and navy allies helped me to keep them orderly; and although I had then only the two Indian men, we managed to be very comfortable. We had the grand wood fires; everybody sent me birds and squirrels of their shooting, and these are never so good as when broiled on the coals. . . . We had every good thing in fruits, vegetables, and sweets that France puts up for transportation, and all served on beautiful Chinese and French china and glass.
For Mrs. Frémont, the debate over slavery was personal. Using slave labor would improve her standard of living, but at great expense to her principles:
Our property was chiefly in mines, by this time proved to be of the richest quality. The difiiculties of working them by paid labor or bodies of men working on shares had been experienced and were fully understood. Only a slight portion of the gold taken out could be counted on as ours in this way of working them. . . . With slaves in the mines, as our Southern friends constantly urged upon us, we would have certain and immediate wealth by millions. We had just come through the ordeal of want of income. It had involved separation from each other, from home, exposure to many forms of danger to health and life. This was a subject for serious consideration.
“Our decision was made on the side of free labor. It was not only the question of injustice to the blacks, but of justice to the white men crowding into the country. Here was a field where labor was amply repaid, where man’s energy, his physical as well as mental strength, could bring him a great return. We were in the rebound from our own plan of patient waiting and slow gains to all the immediate happiness and power given by the new order of things. Slave labor would shut off this happiness from those who had only their labor to depend upon. It would have been a very poor return for the good fortune that had come to us if we had taken part in shutting it out from these.
Nevertheless, the gold on the Frémonts’ property enriched them and enabled them to return East to family much sooner than they had anticipated.
We had planned to stay in California about seven years . . . . The “unforeseen” in this case was the discovery of gold. That delightful factor changed our calculations, abolished all our plans, and substituted a power to live where we pleased and do as we pleased, when close upon this came another unforeseen force which made it impossible to put our own will and pleasure first.
“What we had done in Monterey when the State Constitution was being framed there had enrolled us on the antislavery side. . . . Mr. Frémont could have been either Governor or first Senator from the state. As Governor he could have overlooked his private interests to the greatest advantage—in certain ways have been of most use to the state; but, on the other hand, as Senator he could defend the interests of the state in Congress. To me the over ruling consideration was that what I so much wished myself would be rendered obligatory, and that we should have to return to Washington and our old home life be restored.
“It was foreseen that the antislavery clause would be opposed and need a positive defender but no one foresaw the prolonged opposition and bitterness of the contest which did follow. . . .
And so, John Frémont successfully ran to be a U.S. Senator from California, and the Frémonts returned to Washington, where Jessie’s father, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, had worked for many years.
When have you read a unique perspectives on a historical event?
