"Girls can't do anything," said Jessie's boy cousins when they discovered that the new Benton baby was a girl. But Jessie spent the rest of her life proving that they had been wrong.

Born on her grandparents' plantation in Virginia in 1824, daughter of the United States Senator from Missouri, equally at home in St. Louis and Washington, D.C., during the great period of Western expansion, Jessie Benton had an unusual and interesting childhood.

Senator Benton believed that the West must become a part of the United States and that one day the country would stretch from ocean to ocean. Jessie was always fascinated by this idea and she listened attentively to her father's proposals for immediate and thorough exploration. She dreamed of being a part of the adventure.

What exciting people were concerned with the opening of the West! Jessie often went with her father to the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill and listened to his debates with such orators as Daniel Webster. She met his friends Kit Carson, William Clark and James Audubon. She went with her family to call on President Andrew Jackson.

Always there was a close relationship with her father. The Senator helped Jessie with her lessons and took charge of her education. In turn, Jessie helped him by copying notes and writing down his speeches.

But all of her time wasn't spent indoors. Jessie could climb a tree or ride a horse as well as a boy. In fact some of her aunts were sure that Jessie would never become ladylike, just as they were sure that all of her "book learning" would hurt her brain. Mischievous Jessie did have trouble pleasing her strict English governess. But she learned that getting along with other people is just as important to one's education as learning to think for oneself. And she could surprise them all by donning a party dress and being a charming little girl.

All of these childhood experiences made Jessie the perfect wife for the most famous explorer, John Charles Frémont. She could share in his work and his political career, create interest in his expeditions among her Washington friends and help write his reports so that they would be books everyone would want to read. Always she provided a comfortable home for her husband, even in the rough, two-room adobe house in California. She proved that girls could do some things—and do them very well.

Jean Brown Wagoner has portrayed exceptionally well the many sides of this interesting Girl of Capitol Hill. The close family relationships, so important to Jessie's development, are treated with the particular warmth which Mrs. Wagoner has shown in her other books for the Childhood of Famous Americans series.

From the dust jacket