Lincoln's pathfinder John C. Frémont and the violent election of 1856

John Bicknell

Book - 2017

"The election of 1856 was the most violent peacetime election in American history. Amid all the violence, the campaign of the new Republican Party, headed by famed explorer John C. Fremont, offered a ray of hope that had never before been seen in the politics of the nation--a major party dedicated to limiting the spread of slavery. For the first time, women and African Americans became actively engaged in a presidential contest, and the candidate's wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, played a central role in both planning and executing strategy while being a public face of the campaign. The 1856 campaign was also run against the backdrop of a country on the move, with settlers continuing to spread westward facing unimagined horrors, a te...rrible natural disaster that took hundreds of lives in the South, and one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, which set the stage for the Civil War. Fremont lost, but his strong showing in the North proved that a sectional party could win a national election, blazing the trail for Abraham Lincoln's victory four years later"--

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Subjects
Genres
Biographies
Published
Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
John Bicknell (author)
Physical Description
xi, 355 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-344) and index.
ISBN
9781613737972
  • Introduction: The Pathfinder
  • Prologue: "We Can't Conceive of a Greater Piece of Mischief"
  • 1. "A New Man"
  • 2. "A Fugitive from Freedom"
  • 3. The First Northern Victory
  • 4. "Not a Mere Aggregation of Whigs, Know-Nothings, and Dissatisfied Democrats"
  • 5. Bleeding Nebraska
  • 6. A Month of Violence
  • 7. "The Union Is in Danger"
  • 8. "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Frémont"
  • 9. "The Severest Deadliest Blow upon Slavery"
  • 10. "The Hardships That We Should Have to Endure"
  • 11. "A Roseate and Propitious Morn Now Breaking"
  • Epilogue: "Does Any Man Dream That It Would Settle the Controversy?"
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A history of the intricate reworking of American political parties in light of the divisive views about the expansion of slavery into the West.The presidential election of 1856, the first to feature a Republican candidate, played out amid an eruption of murderous feelings about the Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed by a deeply riven Congress two years before. Former Congressional Quarterly editor Bicknell (America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation, 2014, etc.) offers a tidy narrative full of vivid political personalities of the timee.g., Illinois Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, who fashioned the controversial bill to appease Southerners; fiery Massachusetts abolitionist Charles Sumner, who ferociously condemned it; and President Franklin Pierce, who allowed himself to be manipulated by Southerners and signed the bill. Indeed, the Kansas-Nebraska Act fatally splintered the Whigs, already weakened by the Compromise of 1850 into pro- and anti-slavery factions; the midterm elections of 1854 would bear this out in pro-soil victories against the Democrats, while Abraham Lincoln, still a Whig in 1855, was beat out for an Illinois Senate seat by an anti-Nebraska man, Lyman Trumbull. So what part does Western explorer and romantic hero John C. Frmont play in all this? Curiously, he is the one ill-defined character in this narrative, portrayed largely by accounts from his contemporariese.g., his influential father-in-law, Thomas Hart Benton, who had always defended him from scrapes before but washed his hands of Frmont with his decision to align with the new Republican Party; and Frmont's extraordinarily accomplished activist wife, Jessie, who organized his campaign, edited his books, and galvanized women to become politically involved. On the whole, Bicknell does a solid job bringing together many complicated threads: Dred Scott, two political nominating conventions, the Mormon wagon trains traversing the country, and the simmering resentment of immigrants that characterized the time. An instructive take on a period in American political history that became "the first time a cause and campaign of a major political party resonated with womenand with free people of color." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.