This Day in Western History (Death of John C. Fremont, ‘Pathfinder’ Who Lost His Way)

July 13, 1890—Across the continent from the territory he explored and earned him lifelong celebrity, John C. Fremont died at age 77 of appendicitis, without the glory he craved or even the wealth that compensated for a while.

Five expeditions west of the Missouri River, all recounted in vivid prose, earned Fremont the nickname “The Pathfinder of the West.”  For a nation experiencing phenomenal expansion of its territories and a citizenry seeking opportunity, this young army officer:

* proposed the best routes through California and Oregon; 

*described the attraction of the Great Salt Lake so vividly that it convinced Brigham Young to lead his new, controversial sect, the Mormons, out there; 

*christened the narrow strait between the Pacific and San Francisco Bay "the Golden Gate";

* fired the imaginations of readers of all ages with tales of his adventures with sidekick-scout Kit Carson; and 

*suggested the best preparations for journeying through vast stretches west of the Mississippi.

The adjective often attached to Fremont was “Byronic.” That suggestion of romanticism sprang from the well-known origins of his relationship with his wife, the much-loved child of Thomas Hart Benton, the influential U.S. Senator from Missouri.

The pretty 16-year-old eloped in 1841 with Fremont, then a dashing 28-year-old surveyor with the United States Topographical Corps (later, the Army Corps of Engineers). Eventually, she was so effective in bringing her initially furious father to her husband’s cause that Senator Benton was instrumental in gaining support for a couple of Benton’s early expeditions.

Jessie Benton Fremont was not only absolutely devoted to her husband, but also vivacious and intelligent. She pushed her husband’s cause relentlessly, not only with politicians who crossed his path, but also through reports, magazine articles and books published under his name that she actually ghostwrote. They pioneered modern marital partnerships of celebrity and power, with Jessie taking an unprecedented role in his subsequent political career. A century and a half before Billary, John and Jessie could have been known as Jossie.

But other associations with the word “Byronic”—melancholy, moodiness, restlessness, alienation—explain Fremont’s ultimate disappointment. Seldom has an American grasped for so much and ended up with so little.

It must have been galling for Fremont to realize that two other figures, Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln, had achieved successes that eluded him: military victory at the head of vast armies and/or the Presidency.

Nobody ever talked about the Party of Fremont, even though it was the Pathfinder rather than Lincoln who had been the first Republican candidate for President, in 1856. Too inclined to go his own way, he could never comfortably accept the essential notion of chain of command that enabled Grant to win his string of victories in the Civil War.

What led to Fremont’s solitary, sorry end?

*Illegitimacy. The circumstances surrounding Fremont’s birth out of wedlock in 1813 in Charleston, SC, foreshadowed in certain ways his own early adulthood. His mother, married to a man twice her age, ran off with her French tutor and had a child by him. Likewise, Fremont chafed against the norms of courting in wooing Jessie Benton. But the odor of scandal clinging to his mother’s affair fueled his own ambition.

*Impetuosity. In June 1846, Fremont helped spearhead the “Bear Flag” rebellion that sundered California from Mexico, paving the way for its eventual absorption into the United States. Once again, he was pushing against the bounds of convention, transforming “from a military adventurer, a freebooter, a filibusterer, into a hero,” wrote historian Bernard de Voto in The Year of Decision 1846.

But his refusal to accept General Stephen Kearney’s authority to organize a new territorial government precipitated Fremont’s arrest and conviction on charges of mutiny, disobedience and improper conduct. President James Knox Polk’s commutation of the sentence and a public perception that he had been unfairly targeted increased his popularity, leading to his election as one of the new state’s first two U.S. Senators. But that only confirmed his wayward inclinations.

*Arrogance and extravagance. In the early days of the Civil War, supporters of the Union looked to two potential military saviors: George McClellan in the East and John C. Fremont in the West. Both ran afoul of Abraham Lincoln, resulting in their being relieved of command. As head of the Western Department in Missouri, Fremont caused a firestorm by proclaiming the emancipation of slaves owned by rebels. The general not only had not cleared it with superiors beforehand, but publicly refused to rescind the order until he had dispatched Jessie to make his case for him with Lincoln. Her mission was unsuccessful, and soon Fremont was defending himself for alleged extravagant contracts and expenses. Exoneration on these charges led to a new appointment heading up the Mountain District comprising parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia, but no path to glory, as he was roughed up in Stonewall Jackson's "Valley Campaign" and asked to be relieved when placed under an old rival, Gen. John Pope.

*Risk-taking. When gold was discovered in lands he had purchased in the Sierra foothills, Fremont became a millionaire. But after the Civil War, his penchant for land speculation and dubious investments in railroads led to the loss of his fortune in 1873. He took risks in his personal life, too, sparking rumors of affairs that the ever-devoted Jessie dismissed. A general’s pension arrived weeks before his death in 1890.

I never expected that the much-traveled Fremont would be buried comparatively close to where I live: not in the native South that he scorned for its slaveholding ways, not in the California he brought into being, not in the Missouri of his in-laws and days as a Civil War general, but outside New York City, in the suburban Rockland County hamlet Sparkill. (See James Kaplan's interesting "New York Almanac" post from five years ago.) 

It is the quietest of resting places for an apostle of Manifest Destiny spurred by ambition, propelled by propaganda, and fatally engulfed in controversy.

Photo of the Day: ‘Gettysburg Gun,’ Rhode Island State House

Two years ago this fall, on a short visit to Providence, R.I., I came upon one of the neatest little jewels in New England: the Rhode Island State House. I didn’t expect to find such a grand, stylish capitol in the smallest state in the Union—though I would have if I’d known beforehand that it was designed by the prestigious New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White in 1891-94.

But the surprises started coming at me as soon as I entered the building. On my left, in the North Portico of a structure meant for the peaceful debate and management of opposing ideas, was an imposing representation of what could happen when civility and compromise are no longer the order of the day: a brass cannon taken from the turning point of America’s bloodiest, most fratricidal war.

The cannon, known as "The Napoleon" during its lifetime, was last fired 154 years ago today, at the Battle of Gettysburg, and consequently is better remembered today as the "Gettysburg Gun." You can better understand why it was never used again when you notice the large cannonball stuck in its muzzle. 

The cannon went out of service at the worst possible time: early in the afternoon, Rhode Island’s Battery B unit was gearing ready for its midday meal when Robert E. Lee ordered the largest artillery bombardment witnessed in the Western Hemisphere to that time, meant to weaken and confuse Union lines prior to “Pickett’s Charge.”

The fourth gun of Battery B had sustained minor damage from two prior hits when another shell exploded. Two soldiers tending to the gun were killed, and a dent to the muzzle from the explosion necessitated that the gun be moved to the rear.

Early on, Gettysburg assumed such legendary proportions that anything associated with the battle became objects of curiosity, even reverence. So it proved to be with Battery B’s cannon, which remained on exhibit in Washington for around a decade after the battle, when it was finally moved back to Rhode Island. 

To my knowledge, it has left the State House on two occasions since then: in August 1962, when it was taken away for 24 hours to remove two and a half pounds of aging, highly dangerous black gunpowder that had been discovered, and in 1988, when it was brought back to the battlefield for the 125^th anniversary of its last use.

The sight of the “Gettysburg Gun” filled me with wonder when I saw it. Since then, this relic has only accrued a meaning I could never have imagined at the time.

Like the Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg, the turmoil surrounding Rhode Island’s Gettyburg Gun was the product of confusion, error, and a system that unexpectedly underperformed. Its outcome demonstrated that a democratic republic is also a near-run thing, a fragile point to be defended even when matters seem most hopeless, dependent on multiple people of judgment and heroism ready to rush to contain the damage from a breach.

Quote of the Day (Michael Shaara, With an Irish Soldier’s View of the Civil War)

“ ‘The truth is, Colonel, that there's no divine spark, bless you. There's many a man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you've seen them hang each other...Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlemen. I don't know who me father was and I don't give a damn. There's only one aristocracy, and that's right here’—he tapped his white skull with a thick finger –‘and YOU, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it. You are damned good at everything I've seen you do, a lovely soldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in clever men. Strange thing. I'm not a clever man meself, but I know it when I run across it. The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers, whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer than you think.’”— Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (1974)

Forty years ago today, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to one of the classic works of historical fiction published in this country, on the turning point in the conflict that redefined America: The Killer Angels, on the Battle of Gettysburg.

The manuscript by Michael Shaara had been rejected by 15 different publishers before finally being accepted by a small house. Even after winning the Pulitzer, it would take nearly another two decades before it gained the mass readership it deserved, after  release of the epic film adapted from it, Gettysburg, in theaters and on TNT (whose head, Ted Turner, was a Civil War buff) and after such historians as James McPherson hailed it for its accuracy.

There are many reasons, historical and literary, to embrace this novel: for its insistence on slavery as the ultimate cause of the Civil War; for its penetration into the minds of commanders; for its realism about the awful price of war; for redeeming the reputation of a brave Confederate general, James Longstreet, unjustly maligned by Southern historians and postwar advocates of the “Lost Cause” for not vigorously pursuing an assault on the Federal lines that he had correctly warned Robert E. Lee would be suicidal; and for spotlighting the colonel addressed in this passage, Joshua Chamberlain of Maine, responsible for holding the critical Little Round Top against a furious Confederate assault.

But I especially like its depiction of the warmth between Chamberlain and the sergeant addressing him here, Buster Kilrain, a stand-in for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants (very much including, as this passage indicates, Irish ones) who fought for the Union. Shaara rendered him so vividly that tourists to Gettysburg  have left disappointed to discover that he was a fictional character. They shouldn't be: Kilrain lives as surely as another person with Ireland in the veins, Scarlett O'Hara. 

Kilrain doesn’t have the soaring ideals that animate Chamberlain, but his motive for fighting is noble enough: the determination to show that he is not only as good as any other man, but can even be better.

Aging, out of shape, Kilrain is walking cannon fodder, and his hand-to-mouth existence in his native land has left him utterly without illusions about human nature. But his experience with the unfair advantages of a landed gentry in Ireland (he comes from the west of that country, County Clare, from where my father and his ancestors hailed) have led him to realize that the other side in this fight will perpetuate a system of encrusted privilege very much like it, and he will fight it in favor of “justice” and an aristocracy based on natural decency in its stead. By the battle’s end, Kilrain will prove that he belongs to the elite group of “good men” that he believes is rare.

Evidently, I’m not the only reader and viewer enthralled by the story of Kilrain within the larger canvass of The Killer Angels. So is musician Steve Earle, according to this post by Chris Mackowski on the blog “Emerging Civil War.” Earle has gone as far, in “Dixieland,” as to sing from the point of view of Kilrain: “I damn all gentlemen/Whose only worth is their father’s name and the sweat of a workin’ man.”

(The image accompanying this post is from the stirring film Gettysburg, faithfully adapted from Shaara’s novel, with Jeff Daniels, on the left, playing Col. Chamberlain and the marvelous character actor Kevin Conway, on the right, embodying unillusioned, decent, heroic Kilrain.)

Photo of the Day: Brothers Divided by War, United in Death

It’s often been said that the Civil War was fought between brother and brother. I had regarded that statement as more metaphor than fact until last fall, when I came across and photographed the two headstones here at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

This landmark is the final resting place for some of New York’s most illustrious citizens, but, with 4,800 veterans of the Civil War identified on its grounds, it is especially rich in the history of that transformative conflict.

The best place to start this post—and the reason why I’m talking about this ground now—is with the date on the headstone of Clifton Kennedy Prentiss: April 2, 1865, when he was mortally wounded at Petersburg, VA. It also happened to be the date that, after a summer and fall of slugging it out with Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant finally succeeded in smashing the Confederate lines, moving unimpeded toward Richmond, and bringing to an end a four-year war that, at its start, nobody dreamed could last so long.

But the death of Clifton Prentiss assumed even more tragic interest for me when I saw the name on the stone near him: William Scollay Prentiss. The surname and the year of birth on the headstone indicated that he was a younger brother. But three initials on the stone—CSA, or Confederate States of America—strongly implied a far more complicated relationship between the two.

A female guide at the cemetery, after I pressed her for details, related the following:

Though refusing a commission he could easily have gotten early on, 25-year-old Clifton had joined the Union army as a private among the New York volunteers. After it mustered out, he was able, as a Maryland native, to join  an infantry unit in the state early in 1862.

In a war that offered remarkable opportunities for promotion, few had risen as high as Clifton from so low a start by the end of the war: brevet colonel. His rise owed in no small part to his conspicuous gallantry, evidenced by the six horses shot from under him.

Maryland, a slave border state, had barely stayed in the Union and was rife with secessionist sentiment, so it was no surprise that William chose an opposite course from his brother, joining the Second Maryland regiment of the Confederacy, where he rose to become a lieutenant. He was among the defenders when Grant, sensing victory finally in his hands, ordered an all-out assault on the rebel entrenchments at Petersburg.

Clifton's Maryland regiment was instrumental in breaking the months-long siege at Petersburg, but, as one of the first officers in the charge, his luck ran out when he was shot in the lung. While he was taken to the side, he was told that some subordinates had just received word that his brother had also been wounded, in the knee, and that he desired to see him.

At first, Clifton refused any contact with his brother with a curt, “I want to see no man who fired on my country’s flag.” Another colonel pleaded with him, but, even after William’s cot was laid beside his, Clifton initially just glared at him.

Williams’ smile finally battered down Clifton’s defenses. Before long, the brothers had reached out their hands to each other and were crying. For about a month, they were kept in the same field medical unit, a tent associated with the Fiftieth New York Engineer’s camp, and it appeared that they would both be on the road to recovery. But their condition began to deteriorate after a transfer a month later to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Besides the camp where the brothers struggled for life, there was another New York connection involving the brothers: their male nurse, Walt Whitman. Specimen Days, the poet’s fragmentary, quasi-autobiography, includes a late May 1865 diary entry describing William, “very intelligent and well bred—very affectionate—held on to my hand, and put it by his face, not willing to let me leave.” Even copious amounts of morphine could not really ease the pain of the “young Baltimorean” (Whitman underestimated his age by five years). An amputation of William’s right leg had left him debilitated so that he “can’t sleep hardly at all.”

William died a little less than a month after Whitman’s diary entry and was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery. By summer’s end, Clifton joined him in death.

The Prentiss brothers ended their lives in poignant reconciliation. Not all American families were so fortunate. After the war, the Confederate sisters of the underrated, enormously brave Union general, the Virginian George H. Thomas, turned his portrait to the wall to indicate he was dead to them. The painful divisions extended all the way to the White House, where First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln faced constant embarrassment from the press over her relationship with her Confederate half-sisters.

Quote of the Day (Ken Burns, on the ‘Only Reason to Study War’)

“The only reason to study war is to remind us of its cost.”—Documentarian Ken Burns, from the stage of the Amphitheater of the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY, in discussing the Civil War, August 5, 2014

This Day in Civil War History (Port Gibson Ends, Then Begins Campaigns at Vicksburg)

May 1, 1863—Following four months of battling rain, river and mud, Union forces now stood on the same side of the Mississippi as Confederate soldiers--and at the end of a long, hard day of fighting, they had driven their foes back. Moreover, Union losses, though a rough numerical match for the  the Confederates, were proportionately far smaller. Port Gibson became the first of five battles in General Ulysses S. Grant’s successful drive to take Vicksburg, in what may have been the most imaginative and brilliantly conceived campaign of the Civil War.

Yet, even as he contemplated the pleasing prospect before him, Grant must have rued the instrument of it: General John McClernand, highest-ranking of Grant’s corps commanders. 

In an army that, then as now, was not without glory hounds, McClernand had developed a well-earned reputation for shameless scheming. Grant would have loved to have sacked him, but he couldn’t do so. Yet. For several months now, according to Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative, Grant "could see that this private war against McClernand might well turn out to be as tough, in several ways, as the public one he had been fighting for eighteen months against the rebels.”

Though I wrote about the Confederate surrender at Vicksburg in a post nearly five years ago, much remains to be explored about this crucial campaign, and I hope to do so over the next several weeks. On the Confederate side, for instance, the story of civilian suffering in caves during the siege is heartrending. On the Northern side, Grant’s victory on July 4 represented not just a triumph of arms but a win over backstabbers and rogues—not least of all McClernand.

At the outset of hostilities between North and South, McClernand had been a Democratic supporter of Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, not to mention a longtime congressman. Despite the difference in political affiliation, he also had a number of political, legal and personal associations dating back years with President Abraham Lincoln. Not at all hesitant about exploiting these ties, McClernand was one of the most prominent examples of “political generals,” or Northern politicians appointed to lead armies in the field.

Lincoln, needing a broad-based political and ethnic coalition to maintain support for the war, found such appointments useful in, say, military administration, but their leadership in the field was often suspect. McClernand wasn’t the worst of the lot in the latter regard, but his record also wasn’t especially distinguished. More important, his ceaseless intriguing upset morale among Grant’s high command.

It started with jurisdictional issues. In 1862, Grant headed the Department of the Tennessee; McClernand, the Department of the Mississippi. For several months after his near-disaster at Shiloh, Grant had been effectively sidelined by Lincoln’s chief military adviser (and eventual Chief of Staff), General Henry Halleck. McClernand acted under the assumption that Grant was his subordinate.

In January 1863, General William T. Sherman and Admiral David Porter had expressed their dissatisfaction with McClernand and urged Grant to take command within the department himself. They had made it clear, according to Grant’s Personal Memoirs, that “both the army and navy were so distrustful of McClernand’s fitness to command that, while they would do all they could to insure success, this distrust was an element of weakness.”

Grant was in a delicate situation. It wasn’t only that he knew all the people McClernand could call on, but that McClernand was outranked only by Grant in this theater of the war. That meant maximum awkwardness if he asked Sherman to issue orders to McClernand. The only thing to be done was to assume personal command himself.

McClernand did not take it well. “His correspondence with me on the subject was more in the nature of a reprimand than a protest,” Grant recalled. “It was highly insubordinate, but I overlooked it, as I believed, for the good of the service.”

As all this was happening, Grant was also casting about for a means to take Vicksburg. If the North could seize it, they would, in effect, cut the Confederacy in two. Yet taking the citadel, located on a high bluff, was not proving to be easy. The general had decided, during the winter months and early spring, to try a series of probes, assaults, misdirection, and raids out of nowhere, all designed to confuse the Confederates.

At this juncture, rumors began to circulate about Grant’s drinking habits. Lincoln stayed consistently on the general's side, but as he noted ruefully, sometimes he seemed like the only person to do so. The talk grew loud enough that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sent Charles A. Dana, a former editor of The New York Tribune, now the eyes and ears of the administration, down to Grant’s headquarters—ostensibly to inspect the pay service, but in actuality to verify the truth about Grant’s drinking, swearing, and other aspects of his character.

Dana spoke to the general and his staff and observed much. In long, enciphered telegrams extending into late April, he came down on the side of Grant and against McClernand. Thus assured, Stanton gave Grant permission to proceed with his campaign.

By the end of April, after Admiral Porter had managed to run his ships past the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg, Grant had managed to get his troops on the other side of the Mississippi. Over the next several weeks, he managed to put the rebels at more and more of a disadvantage. He noted in May that, in one engagement, McClernand had missed the chance to fall upon and annihilate a Confederate unit.

The end for McClernand came in mid-June. He made the mistake of issuing congratulations about his corps in a way that slighted other troops. Sherman and General James McPherson complained to Grant, who had had no knowledge of it beforehand. Indeed, McClernand's message to the press was "in violation of War Department orders, and of mine," the commander noted in his memoir. He promptly relieved his meddlesome subordinate from his command, depriving him of the chance to participate in the great victory only weeks away. That turned out to be his best chance at glory, as he had to leave military service after coming down with fever in his next assignment.