The Celebrity Power Couple Who Mapped the West and Helped Cause the Civil War

John and Jessie Frémont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, became America’s first great political couple.

John C. Frémont, one of the United States’ leading explorers of the nineteenth century, was relatively unknown in 1842 when he commanded the first of his expeditions to the uncharted West. But in only a few years, he was one of the most acclaimed people of the age – known as a wilderness explorer, bestselling writer, gallant army officer, and latter-day conquistador, who in 1846 began the United States’s takeover of California from Mexico. He was not even 40 years old when Americans began naming mountains and towns after him. He had perfect timing, exploring the West just as it captured the nation’s attention. But the most important factor in his fame may have been the person who made it all possible: his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont.

I’m talking with Steve Inskeep, NPR host and author of the new book Imperfect Union. He writes how Jessie, the daughter of a United States senator who was deeply involved in the West, provided her husband with entrée to the highest levels of government and media, and his career reached new heights only a few months after their elopement. During a time when women were allowed to make few choices for themselves, Jessie – who herself aspired to roles in exploration and politics – threw her skill and passion into promoting her husband. She worked to carefully edit and publicize his accounts of his travels, attracted talented young men to his circle, and lashed out at his enemies. She became her husband’s political adviser, as well as a power player in her own right. In 1856, the famous couple strategized as John became the first-ever presidential nominee of the newly established Republican Party.

Taking advantage of expanding news media, aided by an increasingly literate public, the two linked their names to the three great national movements of the time—westward settlement, women’s rights, and opposition to slavery. Together, John and Jessie Frémont took part in events that defined the country and gave rise to a new, more global America. Theirs is a surprisingly modern tale of ambition and fame; they lived in a time of social and technological disruption and divisive politics that foreshadowed our own.

Machine-Generated Transcript

Below is an AI-generated transcript complete with timecodes. This transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast episode.

Scott Rank 0:12
History isn’t just a bunch of names and dates and facts. It’s the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explained how and why we got here. Welcome to the history unplugged Podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange, and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is. I’m your host, Scott rank.

There have been a lot of political power couples in American history building Hillary Clinton, FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, John Abigail Adams. But if you were dimension one in the 1850s, it would be john and Jesse Fremont. JOHN Fremont was the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856. And he and his wife in the 18th Hundreds were major figures in the westward expansion of the United States, and arguably became America’s first celebrity political couple in the 1850s. With the growth of mass media, Telegraph’s and railroads, being a celebrity is something that’s possible in a way it wasn’t quite possibly earlier. JOHN Freemont was one of America’s leading explorers in the 19th century. In the 1840s, he commanded expeditions to the Uncharted West. A few years later, he was one of the most famous people in America for his wilderness exploration, his best selling memoirs, his work as an army officer, and trying to fashion himself as a Conquistador. At a time in 1846, when the United States began the takeover of California for Mexico

City, sort of a symbol of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, but it was his wife, Jesse Fremont, who made his rise possible, and many thought between the two of them she was the real talent. Just he was the daughter of a US senator who aspired to roles in politics and exploration, but because a lot of those opportunities Our clothes off to her promoted her husband. She edited and publicized his accounts and in his travels, attracted young advisors to a circle and attacked his enemies. She became John’s political advisor. And by 1856, the couple strategies for john become the president. In this episode, I’m speaking with Steve Inskeep author of the book, imperfect union. I’ve just seen John Fremont map, the West invented celebrity and helped cause the Civil War. So even though you might not have heard the names of John and Jesse Fremont, they were critical players in the years leading directly up to the Civil War, went up against Abraham Lincoln, and played a huge role in this major transitional period of American history.

So hope you enjoy this discussion with Steve Inskeep. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve Inskeep 2:43
Oh, glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Whenever

Scott Rank 2:46
I talk with a guest about somebody that I haven’t heard of, but for their era, or one of the major celebrities, a question I always wonder is, why were they forgotten? What’s your best sense of why john Fremont was for

Steve Inskeep 3:00
JOHN Freeman was partly forgotten. During his lifetime this reputation faded. This was a guy who was amazingly famous 1840s 1850s and well into the Civil War. And then he had a bad civil war, and he quarreled with Abraham Lincoln, which has never been good for anybody’s historical reputation. And so his stars somewhat faded after that. There’s another deeper reason though, john C. Freeman, along with his wife, Jessie, were involved in the westward expansion of the United States. At the beginning of the story that I tried to tell St. Louis was the westernmost city of the United States of any consequence, by the end of the story, and the united states had a Pacific coast in San Francisco was there and other students were growing up. And so the country tremendously changed. That was eventually important, but it’s something that we feel really ambivalent about today because the country was taking land from native peoples and taking land from Mexico and often killing a great number of people massacre and a great number of people. It’s not something that we like to think about a lot. And so the concept, it’s somewhat in Eclipse. Well, I’m very interested in looking at how john and Jesse Fremont built up this celebrity

Scott Rank 4:10
and before getting into the particulars of their story, what is a celebrity in the 1850s? Because from what I understand at the end of the antebellum period, this is before the transcontinental railroad Telegraphs are in their infancy they do exist, railroad networks are slowly growing. How is one a celebrity at this time? And what does that look like?

Steve Inskeep 4:29
I think the free months were making themselves celebrities at the very first moment when you could be that kind of celebrity because the mass media were expanding. Weekly newspapers were becoming daily newspapers, they weren’t getting connected by the Telegraph, there was an ever-quickening national discussion. I wouldn’t suggest that the free months were the first famous people obviously not there were lots of people of great fame and renown throughout the world, but they tended to be people who had Cheap some high position they were kings, or presidents or victorious generals, or brilliant artists, in some cases who were claimed to the courts of Europe and that sort of thing. The free months did not have that kind of formal position or even a long record of achievement. What they had was a talent for complicity. And at the same time that john Charles Fremont is beginning his explorations of the West for him in the early 1840s, which is 1842, is when he commanded his first expedition. At the same time that they were doing this, they were publicizing the expeditions. For a large to a large measure. That was the point of the expeditions. Jon’s mission given to him by Jesse’s father, his father in law, a powerful US Senator wants to encourage American settlement of the West and the Pacific cost particularly of what was called the Oregon country, and the way to do that was by traveling the Oregon Trail, mapping the Oregon Trail so that it was more complete. principle and safer, but also writing brilliant accounts of his adventures which got excerpted in newspapers and reprint this popular books and generated newspaper articles off to the side as well. He was always publicizing his achievements. In some cases, even before he had the achievement. He was in the paper simultaneously publicizing what he was doing, and this did make the west of the Oregon Trail more famous and seems to have encouraged westward migration. It also made Johnson Fremont much more famous.

Scott Rank 6:32
So you think that he and his wife were able to be at the right place at the right time and somehow tap into the Zeitgeist of Western expansionism? Did they promote it? Were they able to catch the waves? How do you sense that?

Steve Inskeep 6:43
Oh, yeah, they were to an extent catching the wave while John was out on his third of five expeditions in 1845. Shortly after, again, the gun to go west. There was a newspaperman named john Allo Sullivan, who first wrote the phrase Manifesto. Destiny. I never knew what manifest was actually I looked it up just being obvious. That’s the obvious destiny, the United States to overspread the continent, as O’Sullivan said, and he was not expressing unanimous American sentiments, people were ambivalent about westward expansion Even then, but it was something that was in the process of happening. And the free months didn’t have brilliant timing. Even as they encourage that instant settlement, they played a role in encouraging settlers to go to Oregon, which strengthens the American claim on Oregon and allowed the United States ultimately to negotiate a settlement with Britain, which also claimed the same territory and make what is now Oregon State in Washington State and Idaho and parts of other states made all of that what is now part of the American union. So they were involved in that, but their timing was also brilliant 1844 year that there was the election of a new President James cay Polk, who was an expansionist, President who wanted the United States to confirm its title to Texas, and also wanted the United States to capture Mexican controlled California and Johnson was right there for that and played a role in California’s conquest as well.

Scott Rank 8:13
I’m really intrigued by Jesse Fremont, who appears to be the heroineof your book. What did she do? Well, first, we should look at her background. But how did she build up the publicity and the mystique around her husband? And it almost sounds like she has a grand plan. But those assumptions are almost always wrong. So how do you make sense of her building up his legend?

Steve Inskeep 8:34
Yeah, I don’t know that she had a grand plan. I think she did have grand ambitions for herself and for her husband. She wasn’t the daughter of United States Senator, she had grown up around powerful people. It seems to me that she grew up in some sense wanting to be a boy or to be more accurate wanting to do things building toys were supposed to cure. She said my father gave me earlier the plates of sunlight had he didn’t have a son. For a long time, and so she was doing the more boyish things like going along hunting with him, or trailing after him when he went to work if the United States Senate, she got to know a lot of other parents and people, senators, and Cabinet secretaries, and even presidents, and she wanted to participate in that life. So even if she’s not a strategy, she had ambition. It was blocked to a large extent because she was a woman. She was not a man and she was not allowed, for example, to run for office, or directly comment on national affairs. But she was able to do that through her husband who was also ambitious and had a certain talent. When they got together. It was words that they would use in order to promote him and ultimately to promote her he would come back from these explorations and write these reports. This Official US Army reports he was an Army Lieutenant at the beginning. Does this essential US Army report of where he has been What have you done? She would be his secretary. She would take dictation she might be an editor, occasionally co-author, maybe even occasionally ghostwriter. She, she’s in there. In any case, she is, if nothing else, the first audience for his descriptions as he’s trying to get them down on the page of what song would often dictate things to her and watch her face said to see how she responded to this or that word, and maybe he changed your word, and they had a way of embellishing maximizing things that he had done. There’s a very simple example in his first expedition in 1842. He climbed a mountain with a bunch of his men. There was no need to climb the mountain except he wanted to climb the mountain, he got to the top. Luckily, none of his men died, could have turned out differently. He planted an American flag and then decided that he must have just climbed the highest mountain in North America. He was wrong. He wasn’t in the top hundred mountains of all of North America. But nobody, nobody knew that at the time, he had brought a barometer up there to measure the air pressure to make a calculation of the altitude, which was changes from the air pressure, and it was 13,700 and some feet. And as mountain climbers know, there are many, many 14,000 foot peaks just in the state of Colorado, for example, so it was nowhere near the top, but he presumed that he was and that sort of achievement became part of his legend. They were later able to add an even greater achievement when he managed to get himself known as the conqueror of California from Mexico. The True Story is deeply confusing and confused. He’s just one of many characters. In it, he was present to call him the conqueror of California seems a little bit off but he was good at packaging things.

Scott Rank 11:51
And I want to look a little bit more of Jesse’s role and then also how she is able to access power. I’m always intrigued by people who are gain power at a time when you assume that they wouldn’t. And a parallel that I see is I’ve done many episodes on the Ottoman Empire. And there were wives and daughters of Sultan’s or mothers of Sultan’s who could basically rule through weak husbands and run the Empire when they weren’t the leader in the name. At this time in the 1850s. with Jesse Fremont, for a woman to have power. What does it look like? Because I think this is the dawn of the Progressive Era in the 19th-century sense and talks of women’s suffrage. But is she unique in how she tries to access power through her husband or are there other avenues

Steve Inskeep 12:35
and some ways she was not unique in that she was in Washington, a member of a powerful family, and as my late colleague, Cokie Roberts is chronicled in some of her books. There were a lot of Washington women who wielded influence behind the scenes. They would especially be influential in personnel matters. If someone was trying to get a commission in the army. A woman might be the person who is Went to the president or went to a senator or appeal for Helton that later someone needs to get home. From the war in order to take care of a family, a woman might be the person to intercede in that sort of thing. They were influential women. But they were doing this very quietly behind the scenes they had, because they were married to people in power are the daughters of people in power. Jesse wielded that kind of influence, friends of John Charles Fremont would get her help, she would intercede for them. Even with the President of the United States, for example, James can call because she knew a good number of presidents. But she did something else. And that was she developed this public persona she became known as an unusually well-educated woman. She became known as an accomplished woman, as they would say in some of the newspaper articles that were read about her, written about her. She was able to converse in the foreign languages with the ambassadors of other nations of Washington and perceptions, what we now call the White House. She sometimes was seen to be sitting in on her father’s and official rules. She was around and understood publicly to be powerful and sometimes written about in the newspapers. And gradually, her words began appearing in the newspapers. She would sometimes write a letter defending her husband and his conduct on various points in his expeditions. And there would be a letter from Jesse Ben Ben three months, that would be reprinted in the newspaper. Eventually, as the years went on, she began writing more and more under her own name writing memoirs, magazine articles, and books that reflected on their earlier lives and often defended her husband’s prior conduct. So she developed a really large public image, even before the climax of this book, the presidential campaign eventually 56 when she’s when she became superfans coming to the election. A point that you note in your book is their similarities with the 1856 elections. In that whole pre-civil wartime period and today, what are some of those similarities? And

Scott Rank 15:06
can you tie that into the decision for john to run for president and the decision to enter throw their hat in 1856? election? Oh,

Steve Inskeep 15:15
absolutely. Some of the similarities are that it was a divided nation. That’s kind of a surface similarity. But let’s just stick it there for a moment. We have red states and blue states today wasn’t exactly the same for the 1850s. But there were northern states that gradually abolished slavery, and southern states didn’t bring slavery. And that was a huge and increasingly daunting divide. It was a time of great technological change, which was disruptive. It was a time of expanding and accelerating mass media, which means communication better, would seem like it would bring people together, but actually just quitted the political discourse. It made a destabilizing. It was a time of great demographic change, just like today, where you have certain racial groups that are growing more rapidly. than others, and that, to some people feels destabilizing. In those days, the Nagas population was growing a lot more rapidly than the south, which is something that people in the south found to be a severe political threat because that population, of course, produced also political power. So these things were happening that feels very similar to today. And there were also movements against immigrants, which was part of a larger debate over the American identity who got to be American who counted as American and who didn’t.

Scott Rank 16:35
John was the first candidate for the Republican Party in 1856. Yeah, what did that mean? Was he planting his flag on abolitionism? Or some other reason that he ran on this ticket?

Steve Inskeep 16:46
Not exactly. evolutionism. This is something that is important to underline. Yes, this was a really deeply racist time. There were abolitionists, but they were considered by the mainstream politicians too. extremists. The Republican Party when it was founded did not ultimately call for the abolition of slavery, but an anti-slavery party by the standards at the time. And what they propose to do was to restrict the spread of slavery into the newly opened Western territories of the United States to restrain slavery where it was, it was considered unconstitutional to do anymore, and they did not propose to do anymore. They nevertheless were an anti-slavery party. And they were a new party that proposed to take advantage of the demographic change in the country. And when the presidency with northern votes alone, in order to do that, they wanted a very popular presidential candidate with a very short political record that would be hard to attack. And john Freeman had both of those things. He had fame and popularity, and he also had a very short political record.

Scott Rank 17:54
How did they find themselves in this way in 1856 do they run on john Freeman’s celebrity Was it a? Yes, positions can be okay.

Steve Inskeep 18:03
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, they had a platform, he was restricting choice. It was upholding free speech, because there was a feeling that the South would not allow criticism of slavery at all, for a variety of things that they stood for. But free months image was his major qualification as a presidential candidate here was this guy would present himself to the world as a heroic individual, battling the elements battling Indians, battling Mexicans, and trying things again, again and associating himself with the conquest of California, just in time for the Gold Rush, by the way, which made the fortune of the United States and also made john three months fortune. He had this huge, huge public image, and was very much considered the man of the hour, even though when some Republican politicians began looking at his anti-slavery records. He was opposed to the expansion of slavery. But it was a pretty thin record. He just hadn’t been that politically involved on that issue. It was a somewhat manufactured record. The biggest qualification that he had was his saying,

Scott Rank 19:11
what is the dynamic like with the couple when they’re on the campaign trail, and I’m thinking of other presidential power couples, FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, Dylan, Hillary Clinton. Yeah, Abigail and John Adams all I don’t know as much about their dynamic as well. But how does their couple dynamic play out on the campaign trail?

Steve Inskeep 19:28
Yeah, the first thing to know is that they didn’t campaign very much at all. This was a time when you might scheme behind the scenes for years to become president, but he was supposed to pretend you didn’t really want the job. It was considered dignified to campaign for the job. And so when they were nominated, they weren’t even present at the convention, the Republican convention that nominated them, and they did not go out and campaign if you want to candidate it’s so different than today. If you were a candidate, you were supposed to avoid giving speeches. If you were fired. Worst once in a while to give a speech, you would try to avoid saying anything important. If on occasion you were forced to say something important, you’d probably write it down in a letter and let it be leaked to the newspapers. So the world would know you’re very carefully chosen words, but they hadn’t actually been seemingly written for public consumption. It was a very hidden and careful way to campaign. But while this campaign was going on, Jesse, as a woman played a significant role. She was one of the campaign managers, not the campaign manager, but joined a group of men on the correspondence committee that would take care of the incoming mail, and would decide which mail that the candidate would see and would weigh in on various political matters. As the campaign became more and more difficult and more and more controversial, john C. Fremont was involved in this too, but according to his spouse, according to his wife, he was he had difficulty taking all the vitriol of the campaign, and she Would withhold some newspapers from him so it wouldn’t get too upset. And he would greet visiting delegations of people who came to see him and give one of these empty speeches where he avoided saying anything important. And the rest of the time you might be with a friend fencing in the hall of any like city house. While Jesse and some of the other men were doing that, too. They work.

Scott Rank 21:21
Well, he tried to become president at a time where America saw one of its worst presidents followed by one of its best. This is pure speculation, but in an alternate universe where John Fremont won the election, what kind of President you think he would have been? How would he have handled the issues that James Buchanan bungled? And what would Jesse be like as a first lady?

Steve Inskeep 21:40
Well, we can have some informed speculation here and rely a little bit on people who do the free months. Well, the first thing to think about is, this time, some time on one and 256 the Civil War might have come right away after that instead of four years later, more than four years later in 1861. The South resolve suddenly does resolve but at the Republic is the northern part of every one of those agencies they would be. And we know that because when Lincoln one and a 260, they left the union, I’m fired the first shot of the civil war that could very well have happened today at Fremont, on Ben and Ben, instead of a thinking thing, the President at that time of crisis, democracy, the President at that time of crisis. Now the free markets always believe that because they were both a sudden burst, and they had shuttered families, that they might somehow be able to use their family connections to keep the country together, and order Awesome work. But from a distance of more than culturing and a half, it seems like an offering and read, it seems very possible the war would have come several years earlier than it did. And pretty much friends, promoted him to the presidency, and gave it as he had his bad civil war and blew his fortune in the 1870s and made a number of other mistakes. They decided that he really liked judgment and that while they were glad that he was nominated, and helped put together the republican party that ultimately ended slavery at, say the union. They were also glad that he wasn’t elected president because they thought he would have been a terrible president. Before because he had shown such erratic judgment throughout his career. It was less evident in the early years when he was leading small groups of men in the West. Some of his expeditions ended in disaster with several men killed some of his expeditions edited massacres of Indians, but some of them were extraordinary successes, or he was able to paint them as extraordinary successes, and some of his persistence that could become stubbornness. He’s erratic judgment. His failure at good political instincts was not as evident in the earlier years, but they became quite evident to the Civil War. When Fremont as still this national hero was appointed by Lincoln as a general in charge of Missouri and facing a chaotic situation issued an order freeing the slaves of Missouri rebels. It was a step that Lincoln himself was not yet ready to take the Emancipation Proclamation that counts that Lincoln had free any slaves or deliberately freed any slaves. And he wasn’t ready for that step and he asked Fremont to back off and Fremont refused, instead of sending Jesse to Washington to tell Lincoln what was what. And she argued with Abraham Lincoln and lost that argument and ultimately, Jhansi Freeman was fired, Lincoln fired him. Lincoln gave them a different generals job he was defeated in battle and believed again. Still, later, he ran against Abraham Lincoln 1964 for president when Lincoln was seeking re-election, he withdrew before the balloting but there was a series of events in which the video People at the heart of the republican party would want supported Johnson free lot found a reason to question his judgment again and again.

Scott Rank 25:08
You think Jesse would have fared better as First Lady or her legacy would have been tied and drugged down by his legacy?

Steve Inskeep 25:14
Oh, well, if he was a bad president, I’m sure that we would think less of her. But it is fascinating to read the accounts of some of these republicans that I’m referring to people like john Piccolo, the enter the New York Post, once upon a time, who’d been a huge Fremont supporter and a key part of the campaign concluded that john C. Freeman would have been a terrible president, but he was one of many people who continued to have a very high opinion of Jesse. And people would sometimes say it’s lucky that john was never president, but it’s too bad that Jesse was never First Lady. They, they admired her. They understood her to be a very different individual of her time who had ultimately worked within traditional gender requirements. She was alive she was a mother and she stayed at home or has gone off exploring but you figured out a way to also carve her own path and do things that were associated more with men in that much more restrictive time. People admired that and admired her, even when they lost respect for him. But surely if you’d had a terrible presidency, it would have affected everyone. I’ve heard.

Scott Rank 26:20
You mentioned the parallels between the antebellum era. And today in first the context of political polarization. We didn’t get into the usage and maybe manipulation of media back then which many argue today is also happening. So what do you think is the maybe the lessons of the most striking aspects of the book of looking at this power couple that you can see with parallels to today?

Steve Inskeep 26:48
Well, that is a national lesson. I think that it’s very destabilizing. When you have a big demographic change in a country that leaves one side the other fearful that they’ll be shut out of power forever. That is something that happened in the 70s period in the run-up to the Civil War. It’s something that’s happening now. I’m not in any way forecasting a civil war. I’m just saying that is part of the reason that didn’t have some of the political angst, and the bitterness and the vitriol that we have today because people believe the stakes are really high and that their side is at risk of losing forever. And it’s got to the point where Republicans and Democrats both have those fears in different ways. So that’s one lesson. The other thing, though, I think, is to understand people that all have their complexity. I find the free months fascinating. I find them fascinating as a couple. I find them fascinating for their strengths as well as their weaknesses. And I think they’re like a lot of people in it, their strengths are their weaknesses. Just to give one example, John’s persistence is what made it possible for him to go over the Rocky Mountains with small groups of men to go on to the Sierra Nevada in the snow to go the length of the Oregon Trail to survive one disastrous situation after another That was his persistence. But of course, persistence can also be stubborn. And very often the very deadly situations that john struggled to survive were brought about by his own stubbornness. And ultimately his declining reputation was brought about finding his own stubbornness. The reasons like that the free months are just as many.

Scott Rank 28:18
Absolutely and there’s a lot more to unpack with their story and they are a big What if in history because they were so pivotal in their time. So the book is imperfect union how Jesse and john Freemont map, the West invented celebrity and help causes Civil War. Steve, thank you for joining us. I’m glad to do it. All right, listeners. Well, that is all that I have for today’s episode. As always, I like to kick things off by thanking the spymasters for history unplugged. I’ll explain what that is in a second. Our spymasters include Baron Fraser, Chrissy David Santi, the McRae’s Jake Harrington, Jennifer French Lee Josh Reddick, Carl from Norway. Michael from New York. Nick Brooks. Rob from Chicago, Ryan Gillen, Tom from Ohio Moondog. He’s from Ohio. Tyler from Colorado and Bill IV. If you’d like to support the show, there are some very easy ways to do so. First, go to the site half price history comm I’ve worked out an arrangement with a lot of the authors who’ve appeared on this show, and you can go there and get their books for 50% off. All you have to do is go to half price history.com enter the promo code unplugged at checkout. Second, please leave a review and subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player of choice whether Apple podcasts or Spotify or whatever. Third, join our Facebook group you can go to Facebook and search for history unplugged there you can talk with other fans of the show about recent episodes what you liked what you didn’t like. Also, I have exclusive content there such as live streams where I do live versions of podcast episodes where you can leave feedback as I’m talking and I will address it on air last and I think this is the best is to join our membership program the Bolton’s Rangers. The Nilsson’s Rangers were George Washington spies during the Revolutionary War, but it’s also the name of the membership program for history unplugged. If you go to patreon.com slash unplugged, you can join the membership program at three levels. If you join at the scout level, you’ll get all 400 episodes of history unplugged, absolutely ad-free, and early access to new episodes. If you join the second level, the intelligence officer level gets all the stuff that scouts get. Along with bonus episodes. There’s currently about 40 of them, including series on Audie Murphy and operation long jump about the Nazi attempt to assassinate FDR, Churchill, and Stalin in 1943. Finally, if you join the spymaster level, you’ll get a shout out to you and or your business. At the end of each episode. You get a three-pack of hardcover history books and you can find out what those are if you go to patreon.com slash unplugged. Finally, you can ask me a question about history on absolutely any topic on earth, and I will research it and devote an entire episode to your question. Probably about 30% of the questions in the archive for the show have been based on these sorts of questions. So there you go. Go to patreon.com slash unplugged to learn more. All right, well, that is all for today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you

next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai