I just sent this e-mail to Congressman Peter DeFazio.
“I suspect the renaming of buildings of universities poses a threat, in that Russian Trolls will work this divisive issue in our coming election. There is evidence these re-namers are in touch with each other, and exchange tactics. I believe they are producing swig voters – to the right! Did Putin launch this movement? I have renamed Benton Hall, jessie Benton Hall in order to keep the controversy from doing more damage to my family history. My famous sister married a Benton.”
Joseph Orosco admits he and his demonstrators were part of a Nationwide Revolution to remove White Names from campus buildings, and replace these names with People of Color. I am going to write my Congressman and suggest Putin is behind this. and is causing swing voters to vote for Trump and neo-Confederates – who danced with glee when this racist revolution began! Think Swing Voters! Ed Ray, and Orosco, are making a swing voter out of me! This is not a tactic Hattie Redmond would approve of, because of the negative results! Money from white alumni have made many Universities – great! Let us make a record of the contributions of other races.
I suggest a National Panel of White People be formed to remove the names of white people they judge not worthy. These names will be replaced with worthy names! I hereby suggest Benton Hall be named after Jessie Benton, and thus, it is just fine to keep calling Benton Hall, Benton Hall. Consider my proposal to honor Harry Lane.
White People do not have to make atonement for past sins. We white people can judge where we need to change, and do so! I suggest we make a National Website that honors our contributions, and exhibits our choice of names. Forced atonement has never worked.
Above is a photograph of JESSIE BENTON HALL located on the campus of OSU! You go girl! Thanks for making a powerful stand against slavery!
What I suggest is the secret burying of a device that rings your cellphone when you near a White Re-named Building. When you answer, you get a brief history of the honorable, guilt free white person it is named after!
Down with Black Subversive Blackmail! End Race-shaming!
John Presco
Steve Clark, OSU’s vice president for university relations and marketing and chair of the Architectural Naming Committee, said there are no plans for similar initiatives on the horizon, but the university hopes to continue to engage the OSU community with exhibits devoted to the updated namesakes in each of the renamed buildings.
“Next, we will begin a process to display within each building lobby the history of these three buildings and their namesakes,” Clark said in an email. “By doing so we will inform the OSU community of the past, including past times that were challenging and not reflective of the university’s values today.”
According to Joseph Orosco, a professor of philosophy and co-chair of the Building and Place Names Renaming Committee, reflection on building namesakes began about two years ago, shortly after similar questions arose in communities across the country. When some members of the OSU community began expressing concerns about the history associated with the names of certain campus buildings, the OSU administration decided these concerns warranted further action.
I just sent this e-mail to DeFazio.
An investigation needs to take place to see if a White Man was ever onsidered to replace another White Man, in the renaming of buildings located on our Colleges. If not, this constitutes abject Racism, and Iconoclasm!
Senator Thomas Hart Benton was not a king, but a politician that was elected to serve five terms in the State of Missouri that sent thousands of Scot-Irish Immigrants to the Oregon Territory to secure it from rule by the King of England. If the democratic voters of Missouri did not like what Benton was selling, then they would have voted him out of office. Therefore, as a elected official, Benton is above being punished by a college President who rules like a Lord of the British Empire, his paying subjects! Non-white Citizens of Oregon are in the minority. But, it is the cunning psychology of the Guilt Meisters like Joseph Orosco, who seize power from the people of Oregon – without a ballot! To what end? How many people of color want the Guilt Meister to speak for them, and set the course of their lives? Is Ed Ray preparing to run for office?
Alexander Webb is in my family tree. He was the Regent of the City College of New York. He won the Congressional Medal Honor for his Gallantry at the battle of Gettysburg. Webb helped put an end to the Treason of Robert E. Lee, who is also in my family tree. I suggest Alexander’s name and image replace all tributes to Lee. This suggestion, coming from a White Man who is kin to these men, is more acceptable, because there is no hidden racist agenda. CCNY was a progressive school. Joseph Webb helped found Yale. Alexander is related to William Shakespeare.
Alexander risked his life knowing he was fighting to set free Black slaves. His amazing courage proves there was no hidden and selfish motive for white men to fight for the liberty of all black human beings. This is a lie that some people of color have invented in order to demean, and divorce white people from their outstanding historic achievements. In the 2016 election, Putin and his Soldiers manning computers, adopted the divisive tactics that people like Joseph Orosco employed to divide our society, rather than unite. That the President of OSU, Ed Ray, took part in this Iconoclasm – with the help of his panel of OSU Historians, is a outrage that weakened our Nation. This resulted in the election of a Racist President, who sided with racists, and nominated a neo-Confederate to be the Attorney General.
On this day June 1, 2019, I found the Alexander Webb Collegiate History Society that will consist of a panel of white men and women, who will do extensive research, and ferret out racists and white supremist! The AWCHS will vote on new names for buildings.
The reason people of color will not be admitted to this society, is the contention one reads over and over again that White People are in denial, and own a innate racism, that does not allow them to police, and correct – past mistakes, transgressions, and trespasses. This resistance is welcomed by racist propagandists in order to draw more people to their cause and anarchist revolution. Surely every sane and honest person of color, will wish this society well.
John Presco
President: Alexander Webb Collegiate History Society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_S._Webb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_College_of_New_York
The University of Minnesota’s governing board is poised to vote Friday against changing the names of four campus buildings after months of contentious debate about race and history.
U regents plan to act on a resolution keeping the names of Coffman Memorial Union and three Twin Cities halls, defying recommendations by President Eric Kaler and a faculty task force that charged the former administrator namesakes with backing campus segregation in the 1930s and ’40s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Redmond
In July 2018, the president of Oregon State University, Ed Ray, announced that three campus buildings would be renamed due to their namesakes’ racism. One of these buildings, formerly known as the Benton Annex, became the Hattie Redmond Women and Gender Center.[14] The building was previously named for Thomas Hart Benton, a white supremacist.[14][1] The choice to rename it after Redmond was made to recognize her efforts as an Oregonian suffragist.[15]
|
Jessie Benton Frémont
|
|
|---|---|
Photo taken in 1876
|
|
| Born |
Jessie Ann Benton
May 31, 1824 |
| Died | December 27, 1902(1902-12-27) (aged 78)
Los Angeles, California
|
| Spouse(s) | John C. Frémont |
| Signature | |
 |
|
Jessie Ann Benton Frémont (May 31, 1824 – December 27, 1902) was an American writer and political activist.
Frémont’s initial notability came from her family: she was the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton and the wife of military officer, explorer and politician, John C. Frémont. She wrote many stories that were printed in popular magazines of the time as well as several books of historical value. Her writings, which helped support her family during times of financial difficulty, were memoirs of her husband’s, and her own, time in the American West—back when the West was an exotic frontier.
A great supporter of her husband, who was one of the first two Senators of the new U.S. state of California and a Governor of the Territory of Arizona, she was outspoken on political issues and a determined opponent of slavery, which was excluded from the formation of California. By maintaining a high level of political involvement during a period that was extremely unfavorable for women, Jessie Benton Frémont proved herself to be years ahead of her time.
Contents
Early life[edit]
She was born near Lexington, Virginia, the second child of Thomas Hart Benton (1782–1858) and Elizabeth McDowell (1794–1854). She was born in the home of her mother’s father, James McDowell. Her father, Senator Benton,[1] had been wanting a son, but went ahead and named her in honor of his father, Jesse Benton.
Jessie was raised in Washington, D.C., more in the manner of a 19th century son than daughter, with her father, who was renowned as the “Great Expansionist,” seeing to her early education and introducing her to the leading politicians of the day, an unusual thing for the period.[2] Jessie was very close to her father and stuck by his side. He shared with her the many books and maps in the valise that always accompanied him on their trips to and from Missouri and Virginia. She began, too, to share his dream of a nation stretching from ocean to ocean. In this manner, she became well educated in the ways of social structure and the disciplines of politics, history, literature and languages. After attaining some fluency in French and Spanish, Jessie helped in the translation of government documents.
In 1840 at age 15, while studying and living at Georgetown Seminary, she met Lieutenant John C. Frémont who was in Washington preparing a report on explorations (with Joseph Nocollet as commander) he had made between the Missouri River and the northern frontier of the United States. They became engaged, but her parents objected to a marriage at that time because of her age. Probably through the influence of Col. Benton, Frémont then received an order from the war department to make an examination of the Des Moines River on the western frontier. Shortly after their return they were married on October 19, 1841.[3]
American West[edit]
For a while after their marriage, Jessie and her husband lived on Army posts, until Frémont was assigned the task of exploring the West and scouting land for future U.S. territorial expansion. It was this assignment that began the couple’s rise to fame.
John C. Frémont
A reconciliation occurred between Jessie and her father when he promoted Frémont’s famous explorations of the West.[1] Senator Benton had been persuaded by his ailing wife to accept the marriage, and the couple moved into the Benton home. Frémont left his pregnant wife behind in the spring of 1842 to lead his first expedition to mark the trails West. He returned, however, days before the birth of their eldest child, Elizabeth Benton “Lily” Frémont, who was born November 15, 1842, in Washington D.C. He then headed off again and Jessie and the baby remained behind.
Frémont became known as the “Pathfinder to the West”, after James Fenimore Cooper‘s novel, the Pathfinder[1] Jessie, intensely interested in the details of his expedition, became his recorder, making notes as he described his experiences. Adding human-interest touches to these printed reports, she wrote and edited best-selling stories of the adventures Frémont had while exploring the West[1] with his scout, Kit Carson. Thus, she involved herself in her most happy life’s work, interpreting her husband and his actions for a public eager for information about the opening of the West. Written during a time when the concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming increasingly popular, these narratives were received with great enthusiasm.[1]
Her husband was instrumental in the conquest of California, successfully taking it from Mexico as a Territory of the United States. He served as the 3rd Military Governor, in 1847. At the time of the court-martial of Frémont, during which he attempted to defend his actions in the Bear Flag Revolt, Jessie gave birth to a son, Benton Frémont, on July 24, 1848, in Washington, D.C. The baby’s death, within the year in St. Louis, she blamed on her husband’s accuser, General Kearny.
In 1849, Jessie and Lily made a harrowing and treacherous journey aboard ship to join Frémont in California. After disembarking and crossing the Isthmus of Panama, they boarded another vessel to San Francisco. With income from their gold mines, the Frémonts established a home and settled into San Francisco society. As a politically informed woman, Jessie was known to get involved in city politics and discuss with the men any issues that were of importance at the time.
Political life[edit]
John C. Frémont served from September 9, 1850, to March 3, 1851, as a Senator from California. Their third child, John C. Frémont, Jr., was born on April 19, 1851, at Las Mariposas, California. While the couple was visiting Paris, France, their fourth child, Anne Beverly Frémont, was born on February 1, 1853. Anne died five months later, on July 11, in Washington, D.C. Their fifth and final child, Francis Preston Frémont, was born on May 17, 1855, in Washington.
In 1856, Frémont’s antislavery position was instrumental in his being chosen as the first-ever Republican candidate for President.[1] Jessie played an extremely active role in the campaign, rallying support for her husband. One particular campaign slogan read, “Frémont and Jessie too.” Her father, however, a lifelong Democrat, refused to endorse her husband’s bid for the presidency. This did not stop the supporters of Frémont from continuing to refer to her as the “first lady in the land,” a title her admirers continued to use throughout her life[4]
Frémont garnered many Northern votes, but ultimately lost the election to James Buchanan, though he did surpass the American Party candidate, Millard Fillmore. Frémont was unable to carry the state of California. If he had taken the state of Pennsylvania he would have won.
In the years following, the couple moved several times, living in California, St. Louis, and New York. She played an active role in the anti-Secession movement in California in 1861[5] and enlisted both Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King and writer Bret Harte to her crusade.[1] When Lincoln appointed Frémont as the Commander of the Department of the West in 1861, they returned to St. Louis.
Jessie Frémont served as her husband’s unofficial aide and closest adviser. The two shared the belief that St. Louis was unprepared for war and needed reinforcements and supplies, and both pressured Washington to send more supplies and troops. She threw herself into the war effort, helping to organize a Soldier’s Relief Society in St. Louis, and becoming very active in the Western Sanitary Commission, which provided medicine and nursing to soldiers injured in the war.
One of the most impressive feats of her political career came shortly after Frémont lost his position during the Civil War for issuing his own edict of emancipation, summarily freeing all of the slaves in Missouri, which antedated Lincoln’s own Emancipation Proclamation. Jessie actually traveled to Washington and pleaded with Lincoln on behalf of her husband, but to no avail.[6]
Later years[edit]
Frémont sitting at home in Los Angeles
The Frémonts would not live in St. Louis again, moving to New York and then California. In the Panic of 1873, John C. Frémont, who had invested heavily in railroad stock, lost everything and declared bankruptcy. Undaunted by their financial situation, Jessie began writing books to help support the family, namely A Year of American Travel: Narrative of Personal Experience (1878), a story about her journey to California in 1849, and Souvenirs of My Time (1887).
From 1878 to 1881, John C. Frémont served as Governor of the Territory of Arizona. Three months after being allowed to resign from the Army with pension, he died in 1890 in a hotel in New York.
After the death of her husband, the Congress, in recognition of his valued services, granted Jessie a widow’s pension of $2,000 a year. In 1891, she moved into a home at the corner of 28th and Hoover Streets in Los Angeles, that was presented to her by a committee of ladies of the city as a token of their great regard.[7][8] She remained in good health until about two and a half years before her death when an accident made her an invalid, but she was able to use a wheelchair and enjoy the outdoors.
Jessie Benton Frémont died at age 78 at her home in Los Angeles.[9][10] A huge box of fragrant and beautiful roses was sent on December 29, 1902, by Mrs. James A. Garfield. The rites of the Episcopal Church were conducted at 10:30 a.m. on December 30, at Christ Church, on the corner of Pico and Flower Streets.[11] She was cremated and her ashes interred in Rosedale Cemetery.
In 1960, actress Lorna Thayer was cast as Jessie Frémont in the episode, “The Gentle Sword” of the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days. In the story line, the Frémonts, in California during the gold rush, become involved in a mining claim dispute; Mrs. Frémont stares down organized claim jumpers.[12]
Rosamond Press 
Leave a comment