Encounters
''expostulation'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904161329-30-•
On September 10, Frémont’s headstrong wife, nèe Jessie Benton (daughter of the eminent Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton), called at the White House and administered a tongue-lashing to the president. An admirer likened her to a dangerous, mammoth ironclad warship, “a She-Merrimac, thoroughly sheathed, & carrying fire in the genuine Benton furnaces” and armed with “guns enough to be formidable to a whole Cabinet.” Lincoln later remembered that she “taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarrelling with her. … She more than once intimated that if Gen Fremont should conclude to try conclusions with me he could set up for himself.” Lincoln told one congressman that Mrs. Frémont, after “opening her case with mild expostulation,” departed “in anger flaunting her handkerchief before my face, and saying, ‘Sir, the general will try titles with you. He is a man and I am his wife.’ ” Two years later she would refer to Lincoln’s “sly slimy nature.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original