stephen richard eng: tennessee wild west: destinies clash at the city hotel

8/4/2019 Stephen Richard Eng: Tennessee Wild West: Destinies Clash at the City Hotel

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TWW Destinies Clash at the City Hotel:

John Charles Fremont 1

"To one familiar with the West there is no frontier community of the late eighteenth or

early nineteenth century more intimately associated with eminent leaders than the littlevillage which became the beautiful city of Nashville. The name itself suggests a roll of

prominent pioneers."

Cardinal Goodwin, John Charles Fremont (1930)

"Blessed are they who wreak vengeance, for they shall be offended no more, and they

shall have honor and glory all the days of their life and eternal fame in ages to come."

George Fenwick Jones, parody of Matthew 5:11, in his Honor in

German Literature (1959)

What more colorful Western figure than John Charles Fremont? Climber of Fremont's

peak, in Wyoming, mapper of so many trails west, trekker of the Sierra Nevada in mid-winter,

and one of the openers of Oregon, he ranged over much of the United states beyond the

Mississippi. With the connivance of Tennessee president James K. Polk, and former

Tennessean Thomas Hart Benton, Fremont raised the U.S. flag in California, momentarily

became its military governor--then found himself arrested, court-martialed and convicted of

mutiny in the aftermath.

It was worth it, however, since he went on to run for president.

Fremont's checkered career stretched from the 1830s to the days of Wyatt Earp when he

was the mediocre governor of Arizona. In Tombstone the Earps strode down Fremont street on

their way to the gunfight near the O.K. Corral in 1881. The famous if flawed explorer had left

his name allover the west.

Yet Fremont goes unmentioned in Tennessee history. The story of how his life

intersected violently with that of Andrew Jackson, Thomas Hart Benton, and members of other

"first families" of Nashville, has been overlooked by Jackson's biographers, and was suppressed

By Fremont's wife, in her voluminous writings about her husband's career.

With good reason. John Charles Fremont had been an infant when his impoverished,

furtive parents had brought him to Nashville in 1813. They were a pair of disgraced adulterers,

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TWW Destinies Clash at the City Hotel: 2

John Charles Fremont at Nashville-05-30-92

shacked up and on the lam, already tarred with public, obloquy. Fremont's mother had been

smeared in the press by her outraged--and discarded--husband.

She was the beautiful Anne Pryor, who had married the aged Major John Pryor, to escape

the poverty that threatened her after her father's death. They lived in Richmond, and it was here

that she met the dashing French aristocrat migr, Jean Charles Fremon. (His son John Charles

Fremont would add the t.") The British had imprisoned him in the West Indies, probably for

political reasons. He either escaped or was released, arriving in Norfolk with no money but

flaunting enough charm and good manners to survive. A swordsman and fencing master, he

became a teacher in a Richmond academy till he was fired for living flagrantly with an

unmarried woman. Somehow Fremon was rehired.

Next he shifted his attentions to a married woman, Anne Pryor, whose husband promptly

promised to kill her. Supposedly she retorted, "You may spare yourself the crime. I shall leave

tomorrow morning...forever." Obligingly her fencing-instructor lover offered to kill

her husband, if this would help out.

'Twasn't necessary. They merely ran off together, and the cuckolded Pryor ranted to the

press\about how "the vile and insidious machinations of an execrable monster of baseness and

depravity" had lured his wife into "criminal intercourse." Since the infidelitous Anne had

"abandoned my bed and board for the protection of her seducer," Major Pryor warned the

Richmond community that he wasn't liable for , his wife's debts.

Far from running up hotel bills in her husband's name, Anne and her French lover were

hiding out with the Indians. Fremon was apparently imbued with the fashionable Rousseauean

fascination with America's "noble savage," the redman.

The aggrieved Pryor petitioned for a divorce; it was denied, though a wishful-thinking

"family tradition" asserts that they got one. Anne and Jean were probably in Savannah,.. Georgia

(or maybe South Carolina) when their out-of-wedlock baby. John Charles, was born), on or

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About ,January 21, 1813. A "Frenchman's bastard" he would be called when he ran for

President.

The fleeing, cheating Fremon couple arrived in Nashville in the summer of 1813.

It was still a small town of muddy streets and unfinished buildings, "an outpost of civilization,

wrote nineteenth century author L. U. Reavis, "a city of refuge and hospitality, furnishing a

secure asylum for the weary traveler." The population was two thousand. On the town square

stood the market the post office, the courthouse, the Nashville Inn.. .as well as Clayton Talbot' s

inn which came to be called the City Hotel.

The City Hotel lay on the east side of the square~-it. was still standing in 1860 when

Jackson's biographer James Parton described it as being:

one of those curious, overgrown caravansaries of the olden time, nowhere to be seennow except in the ancient streets of London and the old towns of the southern

States; a huge tavern, with vast piazzas, and interior galleries running round three

sides of a quadrangle, story above story, and quaint little rooms with large fire-places and high mantels opening out upon them; with long dark passages, and

stairs at unexpected places; and carved wainscoting.

(A caravansary was a hotel with a large courtyard, where caravans of wagons could park and

unload.)

The Fremons moved into the City Hotel.

Then on August 3, 1813 the Nashville Whig announced the opening of a "FENCING

ACADEMY" in the upper room of the court house, directed by J. C. Fremon. Classes would be

given in "the Broad Sword exercise...so useful in the present crises," alluding to the war with

Great Britain, as well as French lessons upon request.

But when Andrew Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton confronted each other at the City

Hotel a month later, they displayed no Gallic grace nor poise whatever. Monsieur Fremons

fencing lessons would have been wasted on them utterly. In the South, when the common man

had a dispute, eyes were gouged out and noses and ears were bitten off. When the members of

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the professional or governing classes quarreled--like Jackson and Bentonthey customarily

tried to kill each other with pistols.

When Jackson arrived in Tennessee twenty-five years before,

according to biographer Gerald W. Johnson:

Tennessee was. the Wild West of 1788, exhibiting all the fascination of, say, Wyoming in

l888...As in the West of the James brothers and Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill

Hickcock, in the Tennessee of 1788 homicide was regarded as murder only incase the victim had no chance to defend his life. If a man were killed in a fair

fight, it was not regarded as good form for the officials to be too inquisitive; while

the code duello was the recognized method for the settlement of gentlemen's

disputes.

Jackson became a Tennessee attorney and judge--and his political1ambitions and vehement

opinions made him the target of abuse and sometimes bullets. Scarcely a mama's boy, still he

followed his mother's apron string's advice in affairs

o "honor": She counseled him to never sue for slander but to "settle them cases yourself."

Jackson fought duels, or stood ready to fight duels .with at least eight men. In a chapter

titled "How Mr. Jackson Became a Western Bad Man and Was Greatly Respected," biographer

Johnson says "Wild Bill Hickcock in his palmiest days was given no wider berth by the

pacifically inclined than was Andrew Jackson in Tennessee." Jackson was famous for his

"uncontrollable temper, which Johnson believes he switched on or off at will, depending on

whether or not he needed to terrorize somebody.

Until lately, Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton had been fast friends. Back in 1801, when

he was only nineteen years old, Benton had stood in a crowd and watched Judge Jackson

officiating from the bench. Then he went on to develop his own successful law practice in

Nashville and neighboring Franklin, becoming a state representative (1809-11), as well as a close

ally of Jackson. Once he even wrote a speech for Jackson. Both men craved military glory, and

served in the militia together.

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And like Jackson, Benton had his own short temper which at times escaped his control.

When he was only seventeen, in 1799, he had been kicked out of the University of North

Carolina for stealing money from his roommates ("borrowing," he said). Earlier he had pulled a

pistol on a student who had called him a liar, explaining later that he had only meant to wound

the boy on the shoulder. Benton's disgrace had its salutary effect: it turned him honest, and in

later years he would be regarded as the most incorruptible of U.S. senators.

Around 1800 his mother, a widow, moved her family by wagon train to Tennessee.,They

settled about nine miles west of Franklin (25 miles south of Nashville) on a 3,000 acre farm, on

the Old Hillsboro Road in Williamson County. Young Tom ran the farm, and he later recalled

those years with relish.

Wilderness!...'The--widow Benton's settlement' was the outside settlement betweencivilization and the powerful southern tribes which spread to the Gulf of

Mexico...The Indians swarmed about it.

The Bentons built their home out of wood and stone, making it a kind of fortress~-a blockhouse-

-with a cellar to hide in, should the Cherokee mount an attack. For mutual defense they invited

other families to live in "Benton Town" as they called it, complete with a church and school.

The Bentons would eventually lay claim to 40,000 acres. And Thomas Benton, from his

seat in the U.S. Senate, would one day help his countrymen claim a huge hunk of the continent.

But now in the summer of 1813 he and his political crony Jackson had turned upon each other

with murderous wrath. Recently they had been down in Natchez with the militia when that

pompous old rogue, General James Wilkinson, tried to commandeer Jackson's equipment--and

maybe his men--for U.S. Army service. When asked his opinion, Benton conceded that

Wilkinson probably possessed the authority. An enraged Jackson marched his men homeward,

even hocking his house The Hermitage to raise expense money--while weakening his health

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permanently on the trail, yet never slackening the pace. His awed troops began calling him "Old

Hickory."

Benton loyally headed for Washington, D.C., to try to recoup Jackson's expense money.

In Washington he heard demoralizing news. His own brother Jesse Benton had faced William

Carroll (a future Tennesseegovernor) in a pistol duel...and his friend Jackson had served as

Carroll's second! Jesse had fired and missed--then to satisfy "honor" (and save his life) he had

crouched low and offered up his buttocks as a target. This was in craven violation of the dueling

code, but Carroll cooperated, taking aim and hitting the bull's eye. Jesse Benton could not sit

down for some time, to the delight of Nashville's loungers and rumor-spreaders.

Now the pen may be mightier than the sword, but the careless use of the former can lead

quickly to the unsheathing of the latter~-or in this case, to the drawing of pistols. Jackson wrote

a nasty, terse letter to Benton, accusing him of threatening him around town; Benton's thousand-

word, lawyerly reply warned Jackson that "the terror of your pistols is not to seal my lips"; and

Jackson's 1700-word rejoinder averred that "it is the character of the man of honor, an

Particularly of the soldier, not to quarrel & brawl and back bite like the fish-woman..." Benton

began publicly abusing Jackson, who reasonably promised to everyone that he was going to

horsewhip Benton.

The Benton brothers checked into the city Hotel on September 4, 1813. Each wore two

pistols. Over at the Hermitage, Jackson heard from the gossips that the Benton boys were in

town. So he and the "oak tall" Colonel John Coffee (namesake of future Texas Ranger John

Coffee Hays) headed for town, putting themselves up at the Nashville Inn across the square

where the police station stands today. One is reminded of the Earp brothers stalking the

Clantons and the McLowreys in the streets of Tombstone.

*Wilkinson had once forced one of Jackson's friends to cut his hair according to military

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regulations, and even had him arrested (probably to conceal his own plotting with Spain).

Next morning Jackson and Coffee went to the post office, and spotted the Bentons on the

porch of the City Hotel. Jackson approached Thomas Benton, raising his horsewhip and saying

something like, "Defend yourself, you damned rascal." Jackson and Benton may~-or may not~-

have yanked their pistols at this time.

Jackson and Coffee probably backed Thomas Benton into the hotel. Lurking in the bar-

roomnear the hallway which led to a portico over-looking the Cumberland River--was Jesse

Benton, hand on his pistol which was loaded with two balls and a large slug. He fired from

ambush. The slug shattered Jackson's left shoulder; one of the balls entered his left arm; the

other smashed into a room partition. Jackson returned fire, sending a pistol ball through Thomas

Benton's coat-sleeve. Then the huge John Coffee rushed in, firing and missing. By now the

rest of the Jackson gang was arriving. Reinforcements included Hays's massive uncle, Stockley

Hays (nephew of Mrs. Jackson), and Alexander Donelson (probably Jacksons nephew, *).

Coffee and Donelson rushed Jesse Benton with daggers, while Stockley Hays jabbed him with

the blade from his sword-cane--but it broke on a button. Jesse tried to shoot Hays but his pistol

misfired. So with the help of Captain Hammond, Hays pinned Jesse to the floor and tried to cut

his throat. But a bystander interceded.

Meanwhile the Jackson bunch was clubbing Thomas Benton with pistol-butts, and

waving daggers which inflicted five "slight" wounds as Benton kept retreating. He was a very

heavy man, and finally fell backwards down a flight of stairs to the rear of the hotel.

Suddenly it became more important to save Jackson's life, than to continue to attempt

killing the Benton brothers. They hauled Jackson over to the Nashville Inn where his blood

seeped through two mattresses. Every doctor in town rushed to his bedside, and all but one

wanted to amputate. "I'll keep my arm," vowed the patient; and he kept the bullet as well for

almost twenty years.

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*Jackson also had a brother-in-law of the same name.

Out on the square Thomas Hart Benton went swaggering up and down, damning Jackson

as an assassin, and a vanquished one at that. Grandly he snapped Jackson's small-sword in twain

to the glee of onlookers. Never had Nashville's scandal-devourers had such a repast!

Some bullets from the melee had smashed through the wall where baby John Charles and

his parents were staying. His mother supposedly fainted, as the wild shots nearly hit her sleeping

baby. The father Jean Fremon was momentarily away--upon his return, he began berating the

Bentons.

Jackson and Jesse Benton never reconciled. His brother Thomas almost immediately

provided the Franklin newspaper (September 10) with a shot-by-shot, stab-by-stab account of

"the most outrageous affray ever witnessed in a civilized country." It was then reprinted as a

broadside, with the Defoe-esque title, Some Accounts of Some of the Bloody Deeds of Gen.

Jackson. Soon Benton was confiding in a letter that he "had the meanest wretches under heaven

to contend with--liars, affidavit-makers, and shameless cowards. All the puppies of Jackson

are at work on me...I am in the middle of hell, and see no alternative but to kill or be killed; for I

will not crouch to Jackson," alluding to the act of crouching in the midst of a duel (as his brother

had done with Billy Carroll, taking the pistol ball in the buttocks).

Benton said nothing but a duel would save him, since Jackson's friends were plotting to

lure him into a scuffle, kill him, and then perjure themselves that he had started it. Then the

Creek Indian massacre of nearly 300 settlers (including women and children) at Fort Mims in

what is Alabama-today, inflamed everyone. Jackson wrote in the Nashville Whig that a

momentary "indisposition" might keep him out of actionbut he called for volunteers anyway,

in "a spirit of revenge." That same day (September 14) the Clarion issued a call for troops,

particularly Benton's regiment down in Franklin. Off stormed Jackson into the fighting--with

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Sam Houston and David Crockett in the ranks, and another Tennessean, Joel Walker, for whom

Walker pass in the Rockies would be named. And Benton? He had to content himself with

service as a recruiting officer, strutting about in a flashy uniform.

Meanwhile, in the Whig for January 9, 1814 Fremon was advertising classes in

"FRENCH LANGUAGE" in the evenings, at a new location: "Mr. Porter's brick house on Main

Street." Afternoons he was still giving the "BROADSWORD EXERCIZE." He and Anne

stayed in Nashville long enough for a daughter .to be born.

As for Benton, he hoped the war of 1812 would offer him a chance for battlefield heroics

to advance his political ambitions. It didn't. So in 1815 he moved to St. Louis, having first

glimpsed the West in 1813 when he'd traveled down the Mississippi with the militia. One day

the nation would come to share his personal vision of expansionism.

In St. Louis, however, Benton fought two duels with the same man, killing him the

second time. It so embarrassed him that he burned all his papers relating to it...along with those

concerning the Jackson affray.

Speaking of whom, in 1822 Benton said that if Jackson ever became President, anyone

daring to vote against him would have to "guard his house with BULL-DOGS and BLOOD-

HOUNDS."

Then in 1824 at a White House function for President Monroe, Benton and Jackson met

face to face once more. Benton bowed, took Jackson's outstretched hand, and soon was

supporting his once-again friend. He backed his presidential bid in 1828. Embarrassingly, a

London newspaper reprinted Benton's long-ago broadside published at Franklin which detailed

the City Hotel fight, in an article titled "American Manners." While noting that Benton now

supported Jackson, the paper said that the brawl gave "an extraordinary idea of the savageness of

the South Western States."

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On January 12, 1832 the bullet from Jesse Benton's pistol was finally removed from

Jackson's shoulder. He sent it to Thomas Hart Benton with a cover letter affirming that it

rightfully belonged to the Benton family. Benton responded that by common law, Jackson had

acquired title to the lead slug after "twenty years' peaceable possession."

Reminded that it had only been nineteen years, Benton said he would .waive the extra year in

view of the good care Jackson had taken of it, "keeping it constantly about his person." Benton

joked to his friends: "Yes, I had a fight with Jackson. A fellow was hardly in fashion then who

hadn't." (By 1834 the Tennessee constitution had managed to ban dueling, at least among state

officials!)

On his death bed in 1845, Jackson sent messages of thanks to Sam Houston and Benton,

for supporting his desire to annex Texas...calling Benton "a warm and sincere patriot...I beg you,

when next you see him, to remember me to him."

In the U.S. Senate Benton advocated- the pony express, the telegraph, and the railroad,

over protests usually from New England. Less to his credit was his support of Cherokee

Removal, though understandable considering his years along the Indian-menaced Natchez Trace.

But in Tennessee, Thomas Hart Benton is seldom remembered---even Benton County

Ceased to claim him as its namesake, when he began to oppose slavery.

And Fremont? He returned to Tennessee in 1836-37 as a surveyor in the U.S.

Topographic Corps.

Just like his cavalier father, he fell in love with a pretty girl over the objections of an

older man. He eloped with her when she was but sixteen. Her name? Jessie Benton--the

Virginia-born daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Senator Benton quickly

grasped that he had lost not a daughter, but had gained an ambitious son-in-law in Fremont...and

a surrogate for his westward political crusade.

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When Fremont ran for President, his campaign was enlivened by the rollicking song,

"We'll Give' Em Jessie," with such lines as:

Old Benton had a daughter,Fair Jessie was her name,

The Rocky Mountain Ranger

A-courting her he came.

Jessie Benton Fremont became one of the great romantic Nineteenth Century wives~-like Mary

Shelley, Mrs. Browning, or Elizabeth Custer (defending her husband at Little Big Horn)

exalting Fremont in book after book. Naturally she never reported how her husband as a baby

had survived the City Hotel fight, in the company of his adulterous mother and her lover, as her

own father and uncle tried to kill Jackson & Co. (and vice versa).

As John Myers observed in his picaresque tapestry of interwoven Western lives, The

Deaths of the Bravos, "If a bullet fired at Andrew! Jackson had killed either him or Thomas Hart

Benton, or if it had slain the infant John Charles Fremont, in place of doing no harm except to

the walls of the room in which he was quarter,'" then American Western history might have

taken a much more modest turn.

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stephen richard eng: tennessee wild west: destinies clash at the city hotel

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