Thank you very much for coming. [applause] thanks, everyone and good day. Delighted you can comthe way ths afternoon. Im delighted to be here in San Francisco and specifically to taktalk to jessie and john fremt who had so much to do with california as we know it and is so much to do with the creation of San Francisco as we know it. I got into San Francisco about 210230 this morning on a delayed for flight from los angeles, a couple hours of sleep and then woke up again because i was to be picked up by a car to do a te radio thing on the radio. The thing is that begins at the very exact time. The thing about going for San Francisco traffic at is you are not going to make your exact time. I was supposed to be 8 a. M. Specific time i would be there and im still on the road of keeping up the freeway and i dont know, 7 miles an hour, 9 miles, whatever it wa was plan looking out the side of the car and San Francisco bay is out there and the Southern Suburbs of and i am missing my deadline which is a horrifying thing for the journalist to do but im thinking to myself this is the world fremons fremont made. After for better and sometimes for worse but its one of the most wonderful cities and i would seize any opportunity to be here. I was delighted to be researching the book because i knew that it would give me the excuse to do research and around San Francisco. Its the story of two people. Its the story of a marriage and their ambitions and adventures in the time when the United States was deeply divided and seemed to be in danger of coming apart. Imperfect union refers to the union ounion of american statese time when some have outlawed slavery and others embraced it and also refers to this marriage of this very unusual couple who strove to accomplish and achieve all that thover the code and noy divisive time. John Charles Fremont was an explorer. Who in the 1840s and 50s and expeditions started in st. Louis missouri which was the westernmost city of any consequence to the United States and went out of the u. S. Army officer, hired skilled civilians to go on and about the oregon trail, went out west again and again and then returned a couple of years later to the territory of a party at 60 gunmen and of d began the process of taking over california from mexico and making it part of the United States. As an explorer he didnt discover that much that was new. He was traveling across the land that had been traversed by the native nations for centuries and by spaniards that had been explored by fur trappers. She didnt find all that much that was actually new, but he codified and made it accessible to. He was coming back east to washington and writin the writig account of his adventures. His job wasnt to explore the wt to promote the west and entice american settlers to move to the best because that was part of the process of taking over the territory and ensuring that it would become a part of the United States. In the process of promoting a big the 1840s and 50s, he also promoted themselves. He would write these accounts of his adventures that were just virtual army reports that he would write them like ride himd describe the landscape and the great basin that he named those that encompass most of nevada and utah and parts of several other states. Hhe would also describe california very beautifully and very evocatively. And he became such an extraordinarily famous and admired individual through his writings and the apparent achievements that in 1850 there was a magazine that named him one of the three most important world historical figures since jesus christ. [laughter] it was kind of an american centric list. First of the three figures was Christopher Columbus discovered america as they would have said then established was a better way to phrase it i guess. Second was George Washington the founder of the country into the desert was john c. Fremont whose greatest achievement and got him on the list was his role, his reputation as the conqueror of california ending older brother with the magazine described to the union, to the United States. He had real talent and courage and fortitude and accomplishments. But as i write here the most important factor may have been the person who made it possible for him to take full advantage of talent and time. The board when women were allowed to make choices for themselves he found a way to chart the course. The daughter of a senator that was deeply involved in the west she provided her previously unknown husband with entree to the highest levels of the government and the media. It is no coincidence that the career began to sort a few months after they eloped when he was 28 and she was 17. I thought as many others did that one of their critics jesse was the better man of the two. The she hoped to write his report into some of his letters serving as the writing partner and occasional ghost writer. She amplified as with a talentr selfpromotion working with news editors to publicize the journeys. An attractive men to the circles and lashed out at enemies. She carry on conversations with senators twice her age, offered her opinion to present even when they did not agree with her and was gradually recognized as a Political Force in her own right. Her timing was as perfect as her husband. She was pushing the boundaries of the womens assigned roles just as women were beginning to demand a better place in national life. In the 1840s and 50s, women were Holding Convention conventk over the Voting Rights and also campaigning against slavery. The party was founded to and captured some of their energy. In 1856, the republicans for the first time a nominated a president ial candidate and was seeking someone heroic and famous and also the short political record to bind the Party Together they nominated john Charles Fremont, the first nominee to run on the ticket. And when john was nominated for president , jesse became part of the campaign in ways no woman had. Her husbands Campaign Literature featured songs of praise. It seemed like they were running for president. The women attend Campaign Rallies even though they couldnt vote. Thousands of republicans flocked for a glimpse and refused to leave until they saw jesse, too. The newspaper said she could have been elected queen. Jessie fremont achieved a celebrity much like her husband would seem out of proportion to the accomplishments. Unless we count her husbands fame among those accomplishments. This to me is a very modern story. Because it is a story about wilderness challenges but also about the same and what you make of the work you do and reputation. Its when the news media were expanding into democracy is flourishing and issues were being debated and they put themselves at the center of it all. The first thing that has to happen is the actual exploration of map making in the west. John fremont had a reputation within utterly fearless adventure poster mounted one difficulty after another office he was also in reality a rather erratic leader he would hire sometimes more in st. Louis and head out into the wilderness. In 1842 and the expedition that he commanded, he went up the oregon trail as far as what is now wyoming and went to the divide which was supposed to be his endpoint and at that point his mission was effectively a gun and he was supposed to go on the other map making along the way. Buthe preaching the Continental Divide for him turned out to be kind of anti, but. It was a little boring. It was the pass when it is hard to figure out when the Continental Divide was and he decided what he ought to do is climb the tallest mountain that he could see. They decided to abandon the mules they had been taken because the ground was getting rough and it seemed like it was right there so they left behind most of the other supplies and even their coats. It was the summer but they are getting some altitude. It didnt take long to understand they misread the ground ahead of them. What looked like a direct ascent can yield more values than they can navigate. Snowcovered ground even in august and one of them nearly slid off of a slope and over a precipice to his death. He saved himself only by dropping flat on the surface today traction. Exhausted, the party stopped for the night just below the tree line around 10,000 feet above sea level. They tried to hunt a mounted good for dinner and failed. They tried to sleep without their blankets on a slab of granite. Lieutenant fremont began to experience severe headaches and vomit. His leadership grew erratic. He was his party lose cohesion as they clambered up hill acrose lacrosse broken ground. They split taking divergent routes through the rocks and snow which meant they could not easily help one another. The mac maker on the expedition, a german immigrant was walking alone at the top of the slope and he lost his footing and began sliding. There was no way to stop. He continued some 200 feet before he crashed into the rocks at the bottom and was lucky to somersault over the first walk in a way that no bones. Afterwards he was found by johnny auguste, a black man who was a member of the expedition who brought the word that within three to five was vomiting again as were others and they sent a message they should try to reach the summit. Jimmys had brought a barometer to measure the altitude of the mountain. Not being an idiot, he refused to go on, went back to camp and assumed this meant the effor the effort to reach the summit was done. In camp they managed to bring up a little bit of food so they had the firstheir first meal in neao days than the the heady nights p and awoke in the morning expecting everyone would descend the mountain but discovered otherwise. John reminded him that they brought along a bottle of brandy. Well, i hope we shall after all empty glass on top of the mountain, which was the lieutenants way of saying he intended to keep climbing. Fremont took extraordinary risks to well beyond what seemed necessary for the mission at hand and gained a certain rewards. Eventually by the way they did reach the top of that mountain, planted an American Flag and john and a brilliant bit of Public Relations in the mountains around and decided without any evidence whatsoever that he just climbed the highest peak in all of north america. [laughter] later exploration revealed it wasnt among the top 100. In the Rocky Mountains but its a long time to realize this. This was 1842. 14 years later when he ran for president there were still images being published a of him surmounting the highest point in the Rocky Mountains. It was part of his campaign, part of why he was nominated for president. In spreading the word of his accomplishments, jesse was crucial. His editor for the first person who would hear the story when he came back and take dictations of the stories he had to tell another person that would receive his letters he would occasionally manage to send by various means, they would take them to newspaper editors and have them published to publicize the achievements. He seemed to know that this was going to be the case and some of them read like press releases. They were in an perfect union. An imperfect union. But they took advantage of the fact there was a National Conversation and it was symbolic and a very good for this moment so dont feel embarrassed by that at all because this is the pure code that the weekly newspapers which have been around in america for a long time were becoming daily newspapers. There have always been a few of them, but there were more and more daily newspapers and the information was accelerated more and more because of the invention of the telegraph. In 1844 from the United States capitol all the way up to baltimore where the convention was being held and he had a telegrapher at the end sending word of each development of the convention back to washington and morris was deciphering his own code that bears his name reading the latest news developments us like he wa up le latest news anchor. There are remarkable accounts of people marveling at this idea of the instant communication. The annihilation of space. Who could imagine the possibilities once people could learn about any evidence anywhere instantly. The correspondent for the New York Herald has originated in the mind of the new species of consciousness never before did they know that passing in the distant city 40, 100, or 5 miles off. In reading that paragraph, we realized we were witnessing the dawn of the era that we are living in today. That we are swamped by today and that they are struggling with today and it is instructive to see how people struggled with it at the very beginning. Because there was this development but seemed as if she were really to hold up the possibility of bringing the world closer together. By improving our understanding of each other and leila did that in many ways, there were also many ways in which it drove the world apart. This became a peer and by the president ial campaign of 1856, the campaign in which john Charles Fremont was nominated by the republicans as an antislavery candidate in the first election where there was a party that was supposed to the spread of human slavery. Always before then add the necessary for any National Party to appeal for the southern votes to have any chance of winning and so they tried to remain silent or to be actively proslavery. This party was different. Northerners have realized that there was a demographic change going on in america. But the northern population had grown more rapidly than the south and that created an opportunity to elect a president with northern votes alone which made it a very dangerous time because the south viewed that as an effort to profoundly threaten the institution around which they structured their economy and society and many said they were able to win that they would leavwouldlead the union leave the union and secede from the union. There was a battle over whether slavery should be allowed to spread in the western states. There was violence in kansas that was supposed to be a New Territory the forces were fighting over. And the dispute over kansas triggered Political Violence in washington itself. Republican senator Charles Sumner of massachusetts delivered a talk in may 1856 in what he called the crime of kansas and in a withering passage he mocked a senator for his incoherent phrases and the expectoration of his speech while opposing the free state. There was no possible deviation from truth which he did not make a. Can you imagine the idea of a politician [laughter] deviating from the truth . He wasnt present for the tirade but he learned of this afterword and considered it an insult to his family. He was a member of the house of representatives and rom roamed o the chamber and found sumner right in at his desk and beat him again and again with a heavy cane until he was unconscious. He kept thrashing him even after it broke to pieces over his head. Now that it reached one of the Principal Media centers, the country learned of every detail. The telegraph and daily newspapers allow people across the vast differences to read about this almost simultaneously and read daily updates as the facts became known. Nothing like this would have been possible the decade earlier. Of course it is northerners and southerners were reading different versions of the same event. It was misquoted in a chicago paper and said some nervous and pushed and beaten until the desk was torn from its fastenings and then he pitched forward on the floor. A correspondent for South Carolina all but rolled his eyes. The telegraph has already spread 100 stories of the transaction, he wrote. Many of them are incorrect. It was very irritating to southern man. People in the South Reading this description celebrated in food prices for the congressman. It spread of southern reaction across the north. For beating a senator of senatof massachusetts and this was a new phenomenon in itself. But also that other americans celebrated the very event that horrified them. It changed th change the politis in 1856. This became the way that americans were driven apart rather than together by the southern speed and force of this information. The. We struggle with that phenomenon now. Its one of the great challenges of our time. The campaign of 1856 is to be profoundly revealing and if the again and again to today because of the environment and the issues. Who gets to be equal. There was a debate over slavery that not only slavery there was a debate over time of immigration. They had arisen in the country. The people at the heart of the movement referred to themselves as native americans by which they meant nativeborn white people, not indians. They were aware the immigrants could sway elections and endorsed various proposals. They would often organize rallies, provocative rallies moving into immigrant neighborhoods in places like new york city knowing they would do it again and again until they got the reaction that they wanted. Some americans were actually pushing against a dangerous and alien religion, catholicism. The pope was described as wanting to use immigrants to take control of the United States and change it from what it had always been come a protestant nation and all of this became a part of the president ial campaign. John Charles Fremont had been born to be the illegitimate son immigrant, a french immigrant named Charles Fremont with a slightly different spelling food fallen in love with a virginia aristocrat. Even