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Jessie Benton was seventeen when she met the handsome Lieutenant
Fremont. She was the brilliant and beautiful daughter of the
great Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Fremont was
a military explorer who won her heart despite her father's
rage and went on to open the American West. In time Benton
became his staunchest supporter in the Congress. In 1844 Fremont
set out to map the Oregon Trail, hitherto an unmarked route
that only a skilled mountain man could follow, and opened
it as the main road of the west-bound immigrant wagon trains
that would become a central metaphor for the West. During
the Mexican War his small exploring detachment seized California
and brought it into the Union.
Such brilliant successes made powerful enemies. Fremont,
always with Jessie's ardent support, was court-martialed,
left the army in a fury, embarked on a winter crossing of
the Rockies that failed amid charges of cannibalism. Yet while
he suffered in the snow the ranch he'd acquired in California
proved to be in the heart of the gold rush and made him immensely
wealthy. He became California's first senator and was the
new Republican Party's first presidential candidate, paving
the way for Lincoln. Less successful as a Union general in
the Civil War, after the war he lost his fortune in railroad
ventures. Fremont led a long, gallant and always romantic
and dashing life. As one of the most dramatic, articulate
and effective women of the 19th Century, Jessie suffered through
all the triumphs and all the perils and pains that made their
lives such a compelling story. She was a profoundly modern
woman.
This is the novel that set me on the trail of my ambitious
series of novels, The American Story, bringing alive the fixing
and growth of democracy and the opening of the West. The Fremonts
were central in both dramas and as a loving couple they sweep
themselves into your heart.
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