Think Obama's Muslim problem is unique? Think again
Tue Jul 29, 2008 at 12:17:47 PM PDT
(cross-posted, with fun editorial cartoons, at CampaignSilo.com):
So thirteen percent of people think Barack Obama is a Muslim. An unprecedented crisis in public ignorance? "Not so," said my dad, because Will Gorenfeld is a Civil War buff, or rather a pre-Civil War buff, who knows everything about the year 1856, and believes nothing is new under the sun. "There were rumors," he said, "that John C. Frémont was secretly a Catholic."
Who's John C. Frémont? Why, only the father of the Republican Party. He was the first GOP candidate to seek the White House, four years before that more successful model, Abe Lincoln. And he spent the election of '56 defending himself against charges he secretly prayed Catholic. Not that there's anything wrong with that, Frémont would say—he said he was for "freedom of religion," wanting to keep the Catholic vote. But he was put on the defensive by a whisper campaign that warned of plans by John and his high-society wife, Jesse, to turn the White House into Vatican West.
The New York Times, with its Republican media bias, ran testimonials defending Frémont. One friend wrote in: "I will bet $5,000 that JOHN C. FREMONT is not, and never was a Roman Catholic ... yours for Freedom, W.J.A. Fuller." But "some people" maintained otherwise. They just knew. Painted as a liberal, anti-slavery, Papist loony who loved Negroes, perverts and immigrants, Frémont lost the race to the Democrats' James Buchanan, who gave Lincoln the Civil War.
What lessons can Obama draw from the fate of "The Great Pathfinder," that not-actually-a-Manchurian-Candidate-Catholic?
* * *
Frémont entered the race with a record in the Army as a kind of 19th century Oliver North. As an explorer out West, he had violated his orders and helped start the Bear Flag Revolt that pried California from the Mexicans, three of whom he ordered his celebrity frontiersman friend, "Kit" Carson, to shoot dead in Marin County, in 1846, for no good reason. "Do your duty," was how Frémont told him to do it.
So much for Frémont's military and Minuteman cred. In 1856, just as today, Americans were experiencing one of our periodic outbreaks of immigrant-loathing. Even ex-president Millard Fillmore got in on the act, re-branding himself as the leader of the third-party American Party, whose slogans included "Americans Must Rule America." Which meant Americans, as opposed to the filthy invaders overrunning our cities and eating away at our value system: the Irish Catholics.
The Democrats tried to make some of that stick to Frémont. Check out this editorial cartoon-—ironically, drawn by a German immigrant, Louis Maurer. His drawing shows some of the people Michael Savage might rail against, the America-hating crowd, lining up for loony-left spoils from the Great Pathfinder.
First in line is a Prohibitionist, then a Feminazi in trousers who demands "the recognition of Woman as the equal of man with a right to Vote and hold Office."
Then there's a slovenly Communist Irishman who approves of Frémont's supposed plan for an "equal division of Property."
And then the sex-positive polyamorist, who has clearly read The Ethical Slut and is excited that Frémont wants to undermine traditional marriage. ("Freemounters," get it? Almost as hilarious as "Nobama" and "McSame.")
And finally, standing next to a cartoon of a social-climbing African-American dandy, is the Catholic prelate—exchanging a visual fist-bump with Frémont over their conspiracy to "place the power of the Pope on a firm footing in this country."
Frémont thinks it's a great idea. "[B]e sure that the Glorious Principles of Popery, Fourierism [radical reform], Free Love, Woman's Rights, the Maine law [alcohol prohibition], & above all the Equality of our Colored Brethren shall be maintained if I get into the Presidential Chair," he says.
So that was the conventional wisdom. To clear things up, the New York Times reprinted accounts from supporters who asked Frémont to swear that he was no Papist. A man named Joshua Finch met the candidate at a social event in Brooklyn, and asked if he might have a moment with him to ask "the stale questions which I suppose had been asked a thousand times, and answered in the same way." Finch wanted to clear up, specifically, "some of the fears that I had heard expressed by our wise and prudent opponents that, after all, he would turn traitor" if elected.
"Are you a Roman Catholic?" Finch asked.
"I am not now, nor never was one," Frémont said.
Recalled Finch: "I had said to him that I asked him such questions not on my own account, as I had been satisfied by other evidence, but on the account of friends at my place of residence, who wanted my word to rely on to satisfy him."
Frémont replied that the reports "circulated by his enemies were false throughout. He also said that whilst he did not object to such questions as to his religion coming from aged people, he felt it unpleasant to be asked them by young men who were not religiously inclined."
Another Republican, George Duffield, Jr., tried to pin Frémont down on whether he'd been baptized by Rome or taken the sacraments. He said no both times. He said yes to being a baptized, confirmed Episcopalian. Patiently, Frémont recalled having a "very vivid recollection" of being baptized Protestant.
That satisfied the visitor. "Hereafter, all the inferential testimony in the world will not have a feather's weight with me...until the records of some Catholic Church are produced to the contrary."
Frémont lost to Buchanan, one of the worst presidents of all time, who often vies with George W. Bush for choice spots in the 40s, whenever historians make those lists. The stakes can be high.
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