¹ Gallagher, Noele, “The Bagging Factory and the Breakfast Factory: Industrial Labor and Sentimentality in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin,”Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 27 (June 2005), 167–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klein, Rachel Naomi, “Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Domestication of Free Labor Ideology,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 18 (June 2001), 135–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grant, David, “Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Triumph of Republican Rhetoric,” New England Quarterly, 71 (Sept. 1998), 429–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Michael D. Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 162–63.

³ The distinction between poems and songs in the campaign literature is not particularly useful. Many “poems” amount to jingles, and many “songs” bear almost no relationship to the given tune and refer to themselves as poems. Therefore the term “poem” will be used for convenience throughout this paper. Also, for convenience, Jessie Fremont will be called “Jessie” (as she was in the poetry) to distinguish her from her husband.

⁴ Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), xi, 10.

⁵ “Give Them Jessie,” Ovid Bee (NY), 20 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 1. Although Democrats tried to avoid attacking such a popular figure, some poems appeared in Democratic newspapers spoofing the Jessie craze, for instance “To Jessie,” Boston Daily Post, 26 July 1856, 2, col. 4; The American Reveille (NY), 11 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 1; “Dear Jessie, Don't You Cry,” McConnelsville Enquirer (OH), 21 Aug. 1856, 1, col. 1; Farmer and Democrat (Millersburg, OH), 11 Sept. 1856, 1, col. 1; Ontario Messenger (NY), 8 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 2; or “‘Jessie’ and John,” Hancock Courier (OH), 9 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 2; The Montrose Democrat (PA), 30 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 1.

⁶ An excellent bibliography of the campaign's songbooks is available in William Miles, Songs, Odes, Glees, and Ballads: A Bibliography of American Presidential Campaign Songsters (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1990), 30–34.

⁷ Pierson, 117–33, 144–50. Pierson's account of the role of representations of Jessie in the campaign is by far the richest and the most detailed. Briefer accounts include William Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 376–77; Pamela Herr, Jessie Benton Fremont (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987), 259–74; and, with emphasis on the poetry, Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1966), 107–09.

⁸ C. B. Stebbine, unnamed poem, Michigan Expositor, 20 Sept. 1856, 2, col. 2.

⁹ The Republican Campaign Songster (New York: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1856), 9–10.

¹⁰ Thomas Benton, a Missouri Democrat who had helped fight the battle against the National Bank in the 1830s, was seen as an old-line Jacksonian Unionist. Although he failed to endorse his son-in-law in the 1856 campaign, his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, as well as to previous concessions to slavery, helped to make him popular in the North. That popularity, however, did not prevent the campaign poetry from representing him primarily as the stern father pushing his daughter into elopement.

¹¹ “Give 'em Jessie.” This article first appeared in the New York Evening Mirror, and then was very widely republished in Republican newspapers throughout the North, as if to inaugurate Jessie's rhetorical role in the campaign. A few examples are the Illinois State Journal, 9 July 1856, 2, col. 2; the Newark Daily Advertiser, 30 June 1856, 2, col. 6; the Hartford Courant, 27 June 1856, 2, col. 5.

¹² Essex Banner (Haverhill, MA), 9 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 4. Mocking this rhetoric was a way for Democrats to attack Republicans without directly insulting Jessie Fremont herself: “this mode of giving the Democrats “Jesse,” is quite unusual, and the rattle-headed fanatics seem to be in a state of collapse under the excitement of their weakness at such fooleries” (“Giving Them ‘Jesse’,” Oswego Daily Palladium (NY), 30 June 1856, 2, col. 2). See also “Black Republican Blackguardism,” The Whip and Spur (Newport, NH), 6 Sept. 1856, 3, col. 2.

¹³ “Fremont Song,” Daily Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia), 13 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 5; “Campaign Song,” Marietta Intelligencer (OH), 28 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 4. For the representations in prose of this stage in Jessie's career see Pierson, 132.

¹⁴ “Jessie Fremont.” This work, first published in the Boston Transcript, was one of those poems picked up by innumerable Republican papers, for instance Yates County Chronicle, 17 July 1856, 1, col. 3.

¹⁵ Pierson, 117–29.

¹⁶ “Fremont Song,” Hartford Courant, 25 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 3.

¹⁷ “The First Song of the Campaign,” Springfield Republican, 5 May 1856, 1, col. 1. This is the one campaign poem cited in this paper that was published before Fremont's nomination.

¹⁸ Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 193.

¹⁹ “Give 'em Jessie,” Miners' Journal and Pottsville General Advertiser (PA), 12 July 1856, 2, col. 2.

²⁰ “Celebration of the Fourth,” Weekly Transcript (North Adams, MA), 10 July 1856, 2, col. 4.

²¹ “Darkly Frowns the Rocky Height,” Republican Campaign Songster, 70; Buffalo Morning Express, 4 Sept. 1856, 4, col. 1. This poem was renamed “A Fremont Song” and changed slightly in some other newspapers (e.g. Lewisburg Chronicle (PA), 3 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 2).

²² John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Pass of the Sierra,” National Era, 17 July 1856, 2, col. 8.

²³ Frye, 187.

²⁴ “A Song for the Boys,” Cleveland Morning Leader, 3 July 1856, 1, col. 6; Norwalk Reflector (OH), 15 July 1856, 1, col. 2; Circleville Herald (OH), 18 July 1856, 1, col. 2; Sciotob Gazette (OH), 26 Sept. 1856, 1, col. 3; Urbana Union (IL), 18 Sept. 1856, 2, col. 4; Weekly Hawk-Eye and Telegraph (Burlington, IA), 20 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 4.

²⁵ Phoebe Carey, “Our Jessie,” Cincinnati Daily Commercial, 16 Oct. 1856, 4, col. 1.

²⁶ Salem Register, 10 July 1856, 2, col. 2. Pierson (Free Hearts and Free Homes, 135–38, 157–62) has analyzed the continuity between this rhetoric and the representation of rape in anti-slavery literature, but my focus will be on the relationship between this rhetoric and an economy of historical desire in Republican discourse.

²⁷ “The Duty of Free Working Men,” New York Reformer, 28 Aug. 1856, 1, col. 3.

²⁸ “The Slave's Appeal,” Republican Campaign Songster, 87.

²⁹ Newark Mercury, 23 June 1856, 2, col. 1.

³⁰ The Reality and the Humbug: An Address to the People of the First Congressional District of Ohio (Washington: Buell and Blanchard, 1856), 7.

³¹ “Speech of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, on the Slavery Question,” Daily National Intelligencer, 27 Feb. 1850, 1, col. 3.

³² The “fusion” pun, based on the term for alliances or amalgamation between parties, led to a Republican defence of the new party as what Democrats often disparagingly referred to as “fusionists,” implying that Republicans were a ragtag team of the politically ambitious and discontent. Judge Hendly of Cincinnati played on this epithet in his invocation of Jessie: “The Democrats declare that we are a party of Fusionists. I am for Fusion – the fusion of one man with one woman, the fusion of Col. Fremont with Jessie Benton” Mercury (Constantine, MI), 31 July 1856, 2, col. 4.

³³ “Fremont and Buchanan – Some Points of Comparison,” Newark Daily Advertiser, 25 June 1856, 2, col. 3. This view of Buchanan entered into explanations of his tolerance of ruffian violence in Kansas, as in “A Vision”: “He had no wife or children there, and so it mattered not,/If on the Western battle ground were many conflicts fought.” Fremont Journal (OH), 26 Sept. 1856, 4, col. 1.

³⁴ “Our Trophy,” Dixon Telegraph (IL), 2 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 1.

³⁵ “A Dough-lorous Ditty,” Republican Campaign Songster, 35. This poem operates on a series of puns involving “doughface,” “dough,” “Buchanan,” “buck,” and “doe.”

³⁶ “There is the White House Yonder,” Rocky Mountain Song Book (Providence, RI: Du Dah & Co, 1856), 35.

³⁷ “Buck's Song,” Detroit Daily Advertiser, 13 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 1.

³⁸ “Give 'Em Jessie and Fremont,” Republican Campaign Songster, 39.

³⁹ “Campaign Song,” Republican Campaign Songster, 94. When this poem appeared in newspapers and broadsides, “their yoke to lay on” became “to crush us with wrong.” See, for example, “Fremont Song,” Highland News (Hillsborough, OH), 25 Sept. 1856, 1, col. 1.

⁴⁰ Parke Godwin, “Kansas Must Be Free,” in idem, Political Essays (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1856), 323. From this passage the phrase “capacious womb” also comes.

⁴¹ Lydia Maria Child, “The Kansas Emigrants,” New-York Daily Tribune, 23 Oct. 1856, 2, col. 4; 4 Nov. 1856, 3, col. 4, 3, col. 3, 3, col. 4. Carolyn L. Karcher has analyzed Child's story from the perspective of the conflicting demands of different wings of the anti-slavery movement: “From Pacifism to Armed Struggle: L. M. Child's “The Kansas Emigrants” and Antislavery Ideology in the 1850's,” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, 34 (Fall 1988), 141–58. Child's is not the only campaign literature about emigrants to Kansas to link political continuity with a successful home. See Hannah Anderson Ropes's Six Months in Kansas (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1856).

⁴² Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes, 144–48.

⁴³ “The Mass Meeting at Adrian,” The Hillsdale Statesman (MI), 14 Oct. 1856, 2, col. 4. For Republican articles making similar points see “Who's Afraid of the Ministry of Women,” Dover Enquirer (NH), 28 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 4; “Mass Meeting at Warren,” Galena Daily Advertiser (IL), 22 Sept. 1856, 2, col. 4; “Politics and Woman,” Lewisburg Chronicle (PA), 26 Sept. 1856, 2, col. 2; and “Fremont's Supporters,” Boston Journal, 31 Oct. 1856, 2, col. 1. One Democratic piece combined a mockery of the Republican call for the inclusion of women with a condemnation of Fremont for stealing Jessie from her father (“What's in a Name,” Montrose Democrat (PA), 14 Aug. 1856, 2, cols. 2–3). For more on Democratic complaints against female Republican participation see Pierson, 97–114.

⁴⁴ “Politics among the Ladies,” Essex Banner (Haverhill, MA), 25 Oct. 1856, 2, col. 2.

⁴⁵ On this matter, Republicans participated in the broader rhetoric of reform in the mid-century North, which typically involved appeals to the importance of the role of women. The inaugural issue of the temperance journal the New York Reformer offers several examples (“The Ladies – Their Influence Practical,” New York Reformer, 10 Oct. 1850, 2, cols. 3–4).

⁴⁶ “Bonnie Jessie Benton,” Fredonia Censor (NY), 1 Oct. 1856, 3, col. 1; Erie Gazette (PA), 9 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 4.

⁴⁷ City Advertiser (Charlestown, MA), 1 Nov. 1856, 2, col. 3.

⁴⁸ “Give 'Em Jessie,” Pittsburgh Gazette, 23 July 1856, 1, col. 4; Wooster Republican (OH), 13 Jul. 1856, 3, col. 1.

⁴⁹ Battle Creek Journal (MI), 8 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 5.

⁵⁰ “Fremont,” Freeport Journal (IL), 6 Sept. 1856, 2, col. 3.

⁵¹ C. B. Stebbine, unnamed poem, Michigan Expositor, 20 Sept. 1856, 2, col. 2.

⁵² “Clear the White House,” Salem Gazette, 5 Aug. 1856, 1, col. 3.

⁵³ “Straight out for Fremont,” Beaver County Argus (PA), 20 Aug. 1856, 1, col. 1.

⁵⁴ Unnamed poem, Boston Daily Atlas, 22 Sept. 1856, 1, col. 6.

⁵⁵ “What Miss Columbia Did When She Came of Age,” Republican Campaign Songster, 29–30; Lansing State Republican, 7 Oct. 1856, 1, col. 2. Other poems dispense with this allegorical framework when affirming the same parallel between the people and Jessie. “Ballad: Written upon the 4th of March, 1857,” for instance, devotes five stanzas to Jessie's love for her husband and then uses that love as a model for the nation's commitment to Fremont: “By courage, talent, truth alone/He made our hearts and hopes his own” (Sandusky Commercial Register (OH), 2 Aug. 1856, 3, col. 2).

⁵⁶ “The Flag of Fremont,” Providence Daily Journal, 8 Sept. 1856, 1, col. 7.

⁵⁷ C. C. Dawson, “A New Song to an Old Tune,” Republican Campaign Songster, 61.

⁵⁸ “Address of the Republican Convention of New York to the Electors of the State,” Newark Journal (NY), 25 Sept. 1856, 1, col. 4.

⁵⁹ “The Effects of the Institution,” Utica Morning Herald, 23 June 1853, 2, col. 2.

⁶⁰ “Give 'Em Jessie and Fremont,” Republican Campaign Songster, 38.

⁶¹ Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), Ch. 1.

⁶² “Free and Slave Labor,” North American and United States Gazette (Philadelphia), 29 Aug. 1856, 2, col. 2. As a whole, this editorial gives an explicit statement of the relationship between personal desire and historical progress that is outlined here.

⁶³ Amy Dru Stanley, “Home Life and the Morality of the Market,” in Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway, eds., The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 74–98.

⁶⁴ Mary P. Ryan, The Empire of the Mother: American Writing about Domesticity 1830–1860 (New York: Haworth Press, 1984), 144–45.