Thank you for being with us organizing todays event in my Live Audience here in San Francisco you can always visit us at www. Commonwealth club. Org and with the upcoming schedule. With cohost of morning edition of npr with jesse and john fremont thank you for coming. [applause] thank you everyone im delighted you could come this afternoon one of the most beautiful cities in the world San Francisco and to talk about jesse and john fremont to had some issue with the creation of california as we know it is so much to do with the creation of San Francisco as we know it. And then on the july a delayed flight from los angeles and then to be picked up by a car and driven by a car the thing about live radio but with San Francisco traffic but really you will not make your exact time. [laughter] but 8 00 a. M. Pacific time and still on the road creeping up the freeway seven or 9 miles an hour but looking out the right side San Francisco bay is out there and the Southern Suburbs with the hills in front of me and missing my deadline which is horrifying for journalists to do. This is the world the fremont made. [laughter] for better or worse. It is the most wonderful city and delighted to be researching the book and San Francisco its a story of two people at the story of a marriage and their ambitions at a time when the United States was deeply divide divided. The imperfect union refers to when they had outlawed slavery and others embraced it and with this very unusual couple to achieve all that they could in that very divisive time to play a vital time jar John Charles Fremont was and explore and a man who in the 18 forties and fifties started in saint Louis Missouri with any consequence of the United States and with u. S. Army officer hired civilians to go along to match the oregon trail ultimately ended up in california and was intrigued and then returned a couple of years later to the mexican controlled territory with a party of 60 gunmen and began the process to take over california from mexico to make it part of the United States. As the explorer he did not discover much that was new was traveling across the land that was traversed for centuries explored by for trappers but he codified it and made it accessible and more important coming back to where he was based and with those accounts of his adventures his job was not to use explore the west but promote the west and entice settlers to move to the west because that was part of the process to take over that territory to ensure that it would become part of the United States. In the process in the 18 forties and fifties and write the accounts of these adventures official u. S. Army reports and write them like a novel to describe the landscape of the Rocky Mountains for that vast area that encompasses most of nevada and utah and several other states and a sought to describe california very provocatively and to become a mired individual and the apparent achievements that over in 1850 there was a magazine named John C Fremont the three most important world historical figures since jesus christ. [laughter] kind of an american centric lis list. The first of the three figures was Christopher Columbus and to establish european contacts would be a better way to phrase it but the second was George Washington the founder of the country and the third was John C Fremont who got him on the list with the reputation conqueror of california with el dorado to the United States. He had real talent and courage and fortitude and real accomplishments that as i write the most important would be the person who made it possible to take full advantage of the times his wife and to make few choices to chart their own course. And then to provide that previously unknown husband to the highest levels of the government it is no coincidence the began to soar after they eloped 28 and 17. I thought as many others did that Jesse Benton Fremont was the better man of the two and how to write the famous reports with the writing partner and occasional ghostwriter. And then became the political advisor and attracted talented young men to the circle and lashed out at enemies. To carry on conversations with senators twice her age to offer her opinion to president s even when they did not agree with her and was gradually recognized but the timing was as perfect as her husbands and was pushing the boundaries just as women were beginning to demand a larger place a national life. In the 18 forties and fifties and then to campaign against slavery. The Republican Party was founded and it capture their energy in 1856 the republicans for the first time nominated a president ial candidate seeking someone heroic and then to bind the Party Together to nominate John Charles Fremont the first nominee ever to run for president on the Republican Party ticket. When john was nominated for president , jesse became part of the campaign it had songs of praise for jesse. Steve this is three very modern story. It is a story about rugged wilderness challenges but also a story about fame and what you make of the word or work that you do in about reputation and it was a time in the news media were expanding expanding when democracy was working and when great issues were being debated in the free months for themselves at the center of it all. In the first thing that had to happen for them though, was the actual exploration of mapmaking of the west. John seen fremont had a reputation in both reputation utterly fearless adventurer who surmounted one difficulty after another and although he was also in reality, rather erratic leadr and he would hire groups of civilians, maybe a couple of dozen and sometimes more. This was in st. Louis and they would head out into the wilderness. In 1942, the First Expedition that he commanded he went off of the oregon trail as far as what is now wyoming and went to the Continental Divide there which was supposed to be an standpoint. And the point his mission was he was supposed to go back home by some of the road and doing smart mapmaking along the way. But reaching the Continental Divide for him turned out to be kind of anti climatic and into little boring. He was in the past where it was hard to figure out what the Continental Divide was and he decided that maybe what you really do is climb the tallest mountain that he could see. He took some of this man and he went up the highest mountain that he could see and they decided partly up to abandoned the mules that they had been taking because the ground was getting rough in the big same think it was just right there. So the left behind with the mules there, food, most of their other supplies, and even there. It was summer but theyre getting into some altitude pretty do not take long to understand that they had misread the campground ahead of them in what looked like a been a direct ascent concealed more valleys that they needed navigate and they were reaching altitudes snow covered the ground even in august and when the men nearly slid off a snowy slope that over a precipice to his death and he saved himself only by dropping flat on the surface to gain traction. Exhausted and the thin air, the parties at stop for the night just below the tree line. That was around 10000 feet above sea level they try to hunt a Mountain Goat for dinner printed in the field. They tried to sleep without the blankets on a slab of granite. Lt. Fremont began to experience severe headaches and vomit through the his leadership grew erratic next anyones party lose cohesion as they clambered up bill across Broken Ground lease putting the ones and twos and taking different routes through the rocks and snow which meant they could not easily helpful in another. The mapmaker on the expedition, charles price, the germans democrats, was walking alone at the top of this snowy slope when he lost his footing. And again sliding. There is no way to stop. He continued some 200 feet big 40 crash and rocks at the bottom and was lucky to somersault over the first truck and when the broke bones. After he was found by johnny a guest, blackman who is a member of the expedition, the brought word that the lt. Fremont was vomiting again as were others, the double under fremonts outward message to try to reach the summit. Jenny said run barometer which i could use to measure the altitude of the mountains. Not being idiot, he refused. He refused to go on and went back to camp and he assumed, that this meant that the effort to reach the summit was done. In camps, he mentioned that anna bring up a little benefit so they so they had the first meal in nearly two days and they had a night sleep and price book in the morning expecting that everyone would descend mountain. They discovered otherwise. John reminded him that they had brought along a bottle of brandy. Well mr. Price, i hope we shall after all into glass on top of the mountain. That was a sick in the hundredweight for him to say he kept are intended to keep climbing and fremont took extraordinary risks. Well beyond what seemed necessary for mission at hand. And gain certain rewards and individually they did reach the top of the mountain and they planted an american flag, and john and it been a brilliant Public Relations looking around the mountains around him and decided without any evidence at all that he just climbed to the i speak in all of north america. [laughter]. Later expiration buildings not among the top 100 peaks. In the Rocky Mountains but it didnt in long time to realize that. This was 1842. Fourteen years later when he ran for president , there were still images being published of him cementing the highest point in the Rocky Mountains. It was part of his campaign. As part of his fame and why he was nominated for president. In spreading the word of his accomplishments, jesse was crucial. His editor, the first person who would care historically came back, personally would sometimes take vacation of the stories that he had pilfered a person who would receive his letters they would would occasionally manage dissent by various means from out west, and she would receive them in washington and take them to newspaper editors and have them published to publicize his various months. He seemed to know that this was going to be the case and some of his letters read like press releases. Her letters read like love letters in his read like press releasreleases. But they took advantage of the fact that there was a quickening National Conversation in the phone had just rain which was actually symbolic for this moment so dont feel embarrassed about that at all. This is the period when weekly newspapers which had been around in america for a long time are becoming daily newspapers. And always been a few of them but there were more and more daily newspapers and the information the papers are being accelerated more and more because of the mention of telegraphs in 1844, samuel morris, succeeded in string copper wire from washington dc, from the capital in fact all of the way up to baltimore. With the Democratic National convention is being held in a telegraph or at the baltimore and similar published developments back to morris himself in washington and morse was deciphering his own code that there is his name and reading aloud to a crowd hundreds of people at the couple, the latest news development. It was like it was the first news anchor. There are remarkable accounts of people marveling at this idea of instant communication. The annihilation of space, is more than one person called it. Who could imagine possibilities that a person could learn about any event anywhere instantly. Professor morse is a telegraph in the correspondence to the New York Herald has said it originated in the mind of new species of consciousness. Never behold anyone conscious that humans with certain team, 40 100 or 500 miles off. In reading that paragraph, we realized that we were wind and saying there in 1984 the dawn of the earth that we are living in today. We are swamped by today. We are struggling with today. Instructed to see with how People Struggle with it in the very beginning. As surely as any number of about the possibility of bringing the world together. Improving over understanding of a dealer and while it did that in many ways, also many ways in which it drove the world apart. And this became apparent by the president ial campaign of 1856, the campaign in which John Charles Fremont was nominated by the republicans is an anti slavery candidate. In the first election where there was a major party that was meaningfully opposed of the spread of slavery, always before than it had been necessary pretty National Party to appeal to southern posted of having any chance of winning sleep tried very hard about remain silent or to be actively proslavery. This party was different. Northerners had realize there was a demographic change going on in america. The northern elation at one much more rapidly than in the south not created an opportunity to elected president with northern boats alone. That made it very dangerous time. Because of southview that that is an effort to cut them out of power. Two profoundly threatened institution in which they had instructed their economy and their ace society and they said, many said the nurse said that if republicans were ever to win an election they would lead the union. There was a battle going on over the western states, or whether slavery should be allowed to spread in the western states. There was violence in kansas which was proposed to be a New Territory anti slavery and proslavery forces were fighting. In a dispute over kansas, triggered a Political Violence in washington south. Republican senator of massachusetts delivered a lengthy talk in 1956 in what he called the crime of kansas. An especially withering passage he mocked South Carolina prison coherent phrases and the loose expectoration of the speech. While opposing kansas as a free state. There was some there said, no possible deviation from truth which he did not make. Can you imagine the idea of a politician. [laughter]. Deviating from the truth. Senator butler was not present for this tirade but his nephew learn the speech afterwards and considered it an insult to his family. Nephew Preston Brooks was a member of the house of representatives. He walked into the chamber and found summer writing it at his desk and beam again and again with a have again until he was unconscious. Brooks kept pressing him even if tim kaine broke into pieces over summers head. Now that the conflict had reached one of the medias media centers, we learn of every detail. They read read about the caning almost formula taken is late and had read further facts. Nothing wouldve been bought possible decade earlier. The news was filtered through northern and southern editors which meant the northerner and southerners work reading simultaneously different versions of the same event. Openness quoted in the chicago newspaper said the summer was ambushed, and then at his desk and beaten mercilessly going for his desk from this from happening and then he pinched forward fellow floor. Correspondent in the charleston courier and south all but rolled his eyes. The telegraph is already spread thousand and one stories about this transaction he wrote, many of them incorrect. Summer was beaten, it was true but is not seriously hurt. Very irritating southerners. People in the south celebrated the caning. And voted prizes for the congressman who had administered the beating. And then Something Else happened. As quickly as the telegraph had spread the news of the caning everywhere, its for the southern reaction across the north. Readers of the New York Herald unfolded the papers to discover extended experts are the Southern Press praising chivalrous congressman brooks repeating the senator of massachusetts printed and this was a new phenomenon in itself printed massive american thorn not only of disturbing events more rapidly than ever before but also that in their americans celebrated the very event that horrified them. It changed the political calculus in 1956 and it became a way that americans were driven apart. Rather than together. By the sudden speed and force of this information americans learn something about each other and they did not like it what they learned. About one another. They struggled with that then, we struggle with that phenomenon now. It is one of the great challenges of our time. The campaign of 1856 seems to me, profoundly revealing. And speaks again and again to this day because of the media environment and because of the issues printed the questions that americans eighth 1956, included who gets to be american. Who gets to be equal. If there was debate over slavery but not only slavery, there was a profound debate at the same time over immigration. A movement against democrats had arisen in the country. The people who are at the heart of this movement refer to themselves as native americans. Only cement native born white people. Not indians. They were aware that the immigrants could sway elections and endorsed various proposals to prevent immigrants from voting. They would often organize rallies provocative rallies, move it into immigrants neighborhoods knowin