The First Report
TARRYING briefly in St. Louis to sell what remained of his equipment, Frémont left by steamboat on the eighteenth, and reported to Colonel Abert in Washington on the twenty-ninth. He had special reason for haste. A few days after he arrived Jessie gave birth to a daughter. Spreading over her bed a ragged, wind-whipped flag, he told her proudly: "This flag was raised over the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains; I have brought it to you."1
He found the Benton household under a cloud which even the advent of the new baby, and Jessie's happiness in his return tanned and rugged, could not dispel. Mrs. Benton shortly after Frémont's departure had suffered a stroke of paralysis. Jessie believed that it had been caused by her mother's insistence upon old-fashioned medical practice, for even when she had nothing worse than a sick-headache, Mrs. Benton would insist, despite the Senator's opposition, upon being bled. Repeated use of the lance had converted this once-vigorous woman, after only twenty years of marriage, into an emaciated wreck, who talked but slowly and imperfectly, and whose mind had obviously been impaired. The Senator, Jessie wrote later, would come in buoyantly every day, impressed by the doctor's command that he remain cheerful, would keep up appearances for a time, and then would steal away to his room to give way to overpowering grief. His incessant care of the invalid, destined to live a dozen years longer, was touching to watch. Family loyalty and affection were one of the strongest elements in his character, and his display of them recalls McKinley's
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