•Boofec bp 2Tofita|) Hopce.
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.
A Critique on the Bases of Conduct and of Faith.
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With Map. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25.
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C - X
American Commontocaltfjg
FROM THE CONQUEST IN 1846 TO THE SECOND VIGILANCE
COMMITTEE IN SAN FRANCISCO
A STUDY OF AMERICAN CHARACTER
BY
JOSIAH ROYCE
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHV IN HARVARD COLLEGE
Von Sonn' und Welten weiss ich Nichts zu sagen.
Ich sehe nur, wie sich die Menschen plagen.
Mephistopheles, in the Prologue to Faust.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
1886
Copyright, 1886,
BY JOSIAII KOYCE.
All rights reserved.
The Eiversirfe Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. lloughton & Co.
To
MY MOTHER,
A CALIFORNIA PIONEER OF 1849.
9k
PREFACE.
MORE elaborate and learned volumes than the present
one have recently been devoted in large part to the his
tory of Spanish and Mexican California before 1846.
This book is concerned, in the main, only with American
California, and with that only during the early and ex
citing formative years, from 1846 to 1856. This his
tory of the beginnings of a great American common
wealth has seemed to the author sufficient and worthy
to occupy the whole of such a volume as the present one,
in view both of the interest of the events and of their
value as illustrating American life and character.
The purpose has been throughout to write from the
sources. For the history of the conquest in 1846 offi
cial and private documents of original value have been
used in so far as was possible, while, as the reader will
at once see, the interregnum, the early mining life, and
the history of San Francisco affairs have in general
been described directly from such early newspapers as I
have been able to read, the later testimony of pioneers
and the views of subsequent historical writers being used
here mainly to check, to complete, or to explain what
the early newspapers tell us. As to the method of study
employed, the social condition has been throughout of
more interest to me than the individual men, and the
viii PREFACE.
men themselves of more interest than their fortunes,
while the purpose to study the national character has
never been lost sight of in the midst of even the most
minute examination of certain obscure events. Nor has
a certain unity in the whole narrative been absent from
inv mind as I have written. Through all the complex
facts that are here set down in their somewhat confused
order, I have felt running the one thread of the process
whereby a new and great community first came to a true
consciousness of itself. The story begins with the seem
ingly accidental doings of detached but in the sequel
vastly influential individuals, and ends just where the
individual ceases to have any very great historical signif
icance for California life, and where the community
begins to be what it ought to be, viz.. all important as
against individual doings and interests.
As to the originality of the various parts of this book,
the later chapters are written with relatively the most
complete independence of fellow-workers. In the first
and second chapters, and in part in the third chapter, I
have, on the other hand, to make my most important
acknowledgments for help received. To Mr. Hubert
Howe Bancroft I owe the very great privilege of a free
use of his immense collection of original documents on
the early history, especially of the conquest, — a privilege
of which I took advantage during the whole of the sum
mer vacation of 1884. And from both Mr. Bancroft
and his able collaborators I received, during all this time,
frequent and most friendly oral advice about the use of
the collection itself. As Mr. Bancroft's library contains
the material for his own great work, now in process of
publication, on the history of the Pacific States of North
America, I feel especially indebted to the generosity
PREFACE. ix
which so freely placed this original material at my dis
posal in advance of the publication of the results otained
hy Mr. Bancroft and his collaborators themselves.
Where I have referred to these original documents, I
have used in my notes the abbreviation B. MS. as a gen
eral name for all of them. My own freedom of judg
ment I have, of course, sought to retain throughout, al
though I am much indebted, for the formation of many
of my opinions and arguments, to the suggestions gained
through conversation and correspondence with Mr. Ban
croft and his collaborators concerning some such dis
puted points as the Gillespie mission of 1845—46, the
English designs on California, and other matters of
conquest history. But the results that I have here writ
ten down are, as they stand, always my own final
judgment upon all the evidence that I could obtain.
Where they are mistaken, I therefore am alone to blame,
and not Mr. Bancroft's documents. Much of the evi
dence presented has been, moreover, in every case the
result of my own independent research, carried on in
Eastern libraries ; and in so far I have been absolutely
my own guide. Of the able and exhaustive volumes
that have already appeared in Mr. Bancroft's series on
the history of California, I have freely used in my pre
liminary sketch the portions that deal with colonial Cali
fornia down to 1840. Beyond this I have had no access
to Mr. Bancroft's book, and anticipate, of course, cor
rection of some of my facts and opinions when that most
elaborate investigation shall appear. I feel it greatly to
my disadvantage, in fact, to publish my own volume in
advance of so well-equipped and important a research as
the work of Mr. Bancroft and his collaborators is sure
to prove. I regret to have been unable to make any
X PREFACE.
use whatever of the just issued History of California by
Mr. Theodore H. Hittell, which appeared too late to
help me.
Among general libraries, I owe most to the library of
Harvard College. The librarian, Mr. Winsor, has in
particular constantly and very patiently aided me with
suggestions and criticisms, and the library authorities
have kindly provided, during the course of the work, for
the purchase of much material without which the book,
especially in the later chapters, would have been almost
impossible. The American Antiquarian Society at
Worcester, the Massachusetts State Library in Boston,
the Boston Athenaeum Library, the Mercantile Library
of San Francisco, and the Library of the California
Pioneers have all generously answered my various re
quests for permission to use material in their possession,
and to most of them I also owe much for free oppor
tunities to search in their collections after material not
previously known or catalogued.
I have further to acknowledge the courtesy of the
present Secretary of State, in giving me the use of im
portant official documents in the Department archives
at Washington ; and also the kindness of the present
Secretaries of War and of the Navy, as shown by their
prompt and explicit answers to my questions concerning
historical documents in their possession. Mr. R. S.
Watson of Milton, Mass.. and Mr. E. S. Osgood of Cam
bridge, have very kindly helped me with their valu
able reminiscences of vigilance committee times. Mr.
T. G. Carey of Cambridge has put at my disposal im
portant MS. material of his own. Pres. D. C. Oilman
of Baltimore, Mr. Arthur Rogers of San Francisco, and
Mr. William Carey Jones of Berkeley, Cal., have also
PREFACE. XI
supplied me with advice and with valuable printed mat
ter. My obligations to the patience and courtesy of
General and Mrs. Fremont for the free use of their time
in discussing matters connected with the conquest in
1846 will, I hope, appear amidst all the very plain criti
cism of General Fremont's views and conduct to which
I have found myself driven by indubitable historical
evidence. To Mr. Charles Shinn, finally, I am indebted
for the gift of advance sheets of his book on " Mining
Camps," whereby I was much furthered in my work on
that subject.
A word in conclusion as to the limitations of this book.
For the sake of preserving as far as possible the unity of
the story, I have had to omit almost all reference to
such matters as, belonging to the history of California
before 1856, still became of importance only in view of
the events of later years. Such matters are the begin
nings of literary activity in the San Francisco com
munity in 1854, the first movements towards establish
ing university education in the State, or, again, the first
phases of the long and exciting Chinese agitation. Even
in speaking of the partisan political life, I have had to
pass over, with a mere mention, events and persons that
in a history of the next ten years would become so im
portant as to make them seem, by reflected light, much
more significant even before 1856 than I have had room
to cause them to appear. I trust that these defects will
be pardoned by a generous reader, who may also find
my doubtless too numerous mistakes of detail not alto
gether inexcusable in a book that deals with so complex,
exciting, and ill-recorded a period as this, and that is
written, after all, by a student whose professional busi
ness is one not commonly regarded as duly conversant
xii PREFACE.
with this actual world of picks, pans, cradles, and vigi
lance committees. What I could do in a labor of love
I have done, both to attain accuracy of detail and to
make clear the meaning of a truly wonderful historical
process.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., March 9, 1886.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION : THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS . 1
I. The Land 3
II. Outlines of Older California History .... 8
III. The Californian People 30
IV. The Americans in California before the Conquest . . 34
CHAPTER II.
THE AMERICAN AS CONQUEROR: THE SECRET MISSION AND
THE BEAR FLAG 48
I. The Confidential Agent, and the Beginnings of War . 50
II. The Bear-Flag Heroes ....... 60
III. Sloat, the Administration, and the Mystery of the Secret
Mission 84
IV. The Mystery as formerly expounded by Captain Frd-
mont's Friends 87
V. Californian Hostility as a Cause for War ... 93
VI. The Mystery as now expounded by General Fremont . Ill
VII. The Mystery deepens 123
VIII. Only one Dispatch contains the Secret Mission . . . 129
IX. The Mystery as expounded by the one Dispatch . . 133
X. Supplementary Evidence and Summary .... 141
CHAPTER III.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED, THE INTERREGNUM, AND THE
BIRTH OF THE STATE 151
I. The Conquerors and their Consciences .... 152
II. Sloat, the Larkin Intrigue, and the English Legend . 157
III. The Wolf and the Lamb 174
xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
IV. The Revolt and the Re-conquest 184
V. The Conquerors as Kulers and as Subjects; Quarrels,
Discontent, and Aspirations 198
VI. The Beginnings of the American San Francisco . . 213
VII. Gold, New-Comers, and Illusions 220
VIII. The Ways to the New Land 234
IX. The Struggle for a Constitution . .... 240
X. The Constitutional Convention and its Outcome . . 259
CHAPTER IV.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER : SELF-GOVERNMENT, GOOD-HU
MOR AND VIOLENCE IN THE MINES .... 271
I. The Philosophy of California History during the Golden
Days 272
II. The Evolution of Disorder 278
III. Pan and Cradle as Social Agents : Mining Society in the
Summer of 1848 282
IV. Mining Society in 1849 and 1850, and the Beginning of
Sluice-Mining 301
V. The Spirit of the Miners' Justice of 1851 and 1852; the
Miners on theii own Law ...... 313
VI. Miners' Justice in Action. — Characteristic Scenes and
Incidents 325
VII. A Typical History of a Mining Camp in 1851-52 . . 344
VIII. The Warfare against the Foreigners .... 35tJ
IX. The Downieville Lynching of July 5, 1851 . • • 368
X. The Attainment of Order 374
CHAPTER V.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO 377
I. The New City and the Great Fires .... 378
II. The Moral Insanities of the Gulden Days .... 391
III. Conservatism, Churches, and Families .... 398
IV. Popular Justice in February, 1851 407
V. The First Vigilance Committee 417
VI. Social Corruption and Commercial Disaster . . . 422
VII. The New Awakening of Conscience .... 432
VIII. The Cri«is of May, 1850 437
IX. Popular Vengeance and the New Movement . . . 448
X. Perils and Triumphs of the Great Committee . . . 453
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV
CHAPTER VI.
PAGE
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS 466
I. Early Land Troubles 467
II. The Native Population and the Later Struggle for their
Laud 480
III. Early Political Conflicts 491
IV. Conclusion .499
CALIFORNIA.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION : THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS.
THIS book is meant to help the reader towards an un
derstanding of two things : namely, the modern Ameri
can State of California, and our national character as
displayed in that land.
For both purposes the period of California history
between 1846 and 1856, between the beginnings of our
national occupation of the territory and the close of the
Second Vigilance Committee of San Francisco, is espe
cially instructive. This is the period of excitement, of
trial, and of rapid transformation. Everything that has
since happened in California, or that ever will happen <,
there, so long as men dwell in the land, must be deeply
affected by the forces of local life and society that then
took their origin. And, for the understanding of our
American national character in some of its most signif
icant qualities, this life of surprises and of searching
moral ordeals has a still too little appreciated value.
The American community in early California fairly
represented, as we shall see, the average national culture
and character. But no other part of our land was ever
so rapidly peopled as was California in the first golden
2 CALIFORNIA.
days. Nowhere else were we Americans more affected
than here, in our lives and conduct, by the feeling that
we stood in the position of conquerors in a new land.
Nowhere else, again, were we ever before so long forced
by circumstances to live at the mercy of a very wayward
chance, and to give to even our most legitimate business
a dangerously speculative character. Nowhere else were
we driven so hastily to improvise a government for a
large body of strangers ; and nowhere else did fortune
so nearly deprive us for a little time of our natural de
votion to the duties of citizenship. We Americans
therefore showed, in early California, new failings and
new strength. We exhibited a novel degree of careless
ness and overhastiness, an extravagant trust in luck, a
previously unknown blindness to our social duties, and
an indifference to the rights of foreigners, whereof we
cannot be proud. But we also showed our best national
traits, — traits that went far to atone for our faults. As
a body, our pioneer community in California was per
sistently cheerful, energetic, courageous, and teachable.
In a few years it had repented of its graver faults, it
had endured with charming good humor their severest
penalties, and it was ready to begin with fresh devotion
the work whose true importance it had now at length
learned — the work of building a well-organized, perma
nent, and progressive State on the Pacific Coast. In
this work it has been engaged ever since, with fortunes
that always, amid the most remarkable changes, have
preserved a curious likeness to the fortunes of the early
days, and that, in numerous and recent instances, have
led to a more or less noteworthy and complete repetition
of certain early trials, blunders, sins, penalties, virtues,
and triumphs.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 3
This introductory chapter will aim to supply the chief
facts necessary for an understanding of the ten years of
busy life whose social aspects we are hereafter to ex
amine. In the later chapters we shall endeavor to dwell
with especial detail upon such facts, external, social, or
individual, as illustrate and explain the history of Amer
ican civilization in the State of California.
I. THE LAND.
The general topographical outlines of California are
shown at once by the map. If one excludes the earliest
settled and now very richly productive coast region
south of Santa Barbara, the barren interior regions of
San Bernardino County, and of the adjoining terri
tory to the southward, the other barren strip of land in
Mono and Inyo counties, east of the Sierras and south
of Mono Lake, and, finally, the great mountainous coast
and interior lands of the extreme north, one has still
left the main body of the State : namely, the central
Coast Range, the great valley of the two rivers (the
Sacramento and San Joaquin), and the main chain of
the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This chief and central
portion of the State shows to the Pacific Ocean a gener
ally bold and rugged coast-line, with successive ranges
of hills, nearly parallel to the coast, rising in some places
to the height of three or four thousand feet. North of
the latitude of Monterey, this coast is often daily ob
scured in summer by cold and persistent fogs, which,
climbing the Coast Range, or projecting in long gray
tongues through the gaps of the range, finally disappear,
as one goes inward, in the dry and cloudless summer air
of the great interior valley. In this level and fertile val
ley the two rivers — the one rising far to the north, near
4 CALIFORNIA.
Mount Shasta, the other in the Sierras of Fresno County
— flow through their opposing courses, and, meeting at
last, discharge their waters hy the two intermediate bays
into the main body of the great San Francisco Bay, and
so, through the Golden Gate, into the ocean. The two
rivers, as they flow, receive from numerous tributaries
the waters of the Sierra Nevada range, which bounds
the great valley on the east. The mountains of this
range rise very gradually, at first in gently sloping and
irregularly disposed lines of foot-hills, to the rugged
and snowy highest ridges, which vary in elevation from
nine or ten thousand to twelve or even fourteen thou
sand feet above sea level. Through the foot-hills the
westward-flowing rivers have worn vast deep canons,
whose scenery has a character peculiar to this range.
East of the summit, there is a rapid descent, through
steep and glacier-worn, but now often nearly dry and
always very wild gorges, to the broken plateaus of the
desert region. Not a drop of the water that flows down
this eastern slope of the great chain reaches the sea, all
being lost in '' sinks," or in salt lakes. The largest of the
eastward-flowing rivers are but great mountain torrents.
The great central valley and mountain region of
California, thus roughly outlined, is a country full of
tell-tale landscapes, that show at a glance to the trav
eler the general topographical structure of the whole
land. In the gently mountainous regions of even the
more rugged of our Eastern States, one may wander for
many days, and see many picturesque or imposing land
scapes, without getting any clear notion of the complex
water system of the country through which he journeys.
In most such hilly regions, if- he climbs to some prom
ising summit, hoping to command therefrom a general
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 5
view of the land about him, he often sees in the end
nothing but a collection of gracefully curving hills sim
ilar to the one that he has chosen. Winding valleys
divide these hills with their endlessly complex and often-
broken lines. He gets no sense of the ground plan of
the region. It seems a mass of hills, and that is all.
Painfully, with the aid of his map, he identifies this or
that landmark, and so at last comprehends his sur
roundings, which, after all, he never really sees. But,
in the typical central Californian landscape, as viewed
from any commanding summit, the noble frankness of
nature shows one at a glance the vast plan of the
country. From hills only eighteen hundred or two
thousand feet high, on the Contra Costa side of San
Francisco Bay, you may on any clear day see, to the
westward, the blue line of the ocean, the narrow Golden
Gate, the bay itself at your feet, the rugged hills of
Marin County beyond, and the smoky outlines of San
Francisco south of the Gate ; you may follow with the
eye, to the southward, the far-reaching lower arm of the
great bay, and may easily find the distant range of
the Santa Cruz Mountains ; while, to the eastward and
northward, you may look over the vast plains of the
interior valley, and dwell upon the great blue masses of
the Sierra Nevada rising far beyond them, and culmi
nating in the snowy summits that all summer long
would gleam across to you through the hot valley haze.
From the Sierras themselves you might see the reverse
of the picture. In the upper foot-hills, where I spent
my childhood, we used to live in what seemed a very-
open country, with not many rugged hills near us, with
the frowning higher mountains far to the eastward,
and with a pleasant succession of grassy meadows and
G CALIFORNIA.
of gentle wooded slopes close about us. But, just be-
yond the western hori/.on that the darkly wooded hills
bounded, there loomed up from a great distance two
or three sharp-pointed summits that were always of
a deep blue color. Those we knew to belong to the
Coast Range ; and the far-off ocean was, we fancied,
rolling just at the western base of these peaks. If now
we walked a mile or two to some higher hill-top, the
whole immense river valley itself seemed, at the end of
our walk, to flash of a sudden into existence before our
eyes, with all its wealth of shining and winding streams,
with the " Three Buttes," near Marysville, springing
up like young giants from the midst of the plain, and
with the beautiful, long, and endlessly varied blue line
of the Coast Range bounding the noble scene on the
west. Of course, what we could actually see of the
great valley was but a very little part if compared to
the whole ; but the system upon which this interior re
gion of the State was planned, we as children could not
fail to comprehend both very early and very easily.
The Coast Range is broken down at one point to give
an entrance from the ocean through the Golden Gate
into the Bay of San Francisco, upon the west shore of
which, as we have just seen, lies San Francisco itself.
North of the Gate the Coast Range forms a bolder and
more rugged coast-line than is the case towards the
south. Almost directly east of San Francisco rises be
yond the Contra Costa hills the blue summit of Monte
Diablo, the most noteworthy landmark of the Coast
Range for all the central portion of the State. From
the summit of this peak, at an elevation of some 3.800
feet, one can best of all view the portion of the State
with which the early American life had most to do.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 1
The climate of California is too generally known now
to need special description here. In the dry season,
from June to September or October, there is a local
climate close along the coast itself, from about the lati
tude of Santa Cruz northward, which, by reason of
daily northwest winds and fogs, is as invigorating to all
healthy people as it is disagreeable. One leaves San
Francisco in summer, if at all, not to enjoy a cool hol
iday away from the city's oppressive heat, but to get
into a warmer air. All the southern half of the State
and all the interior valleys enjoy, during the dry sea
son, clear and hot days, with cool and very restful
nights. The rainy season is everywhere somewhat te
dious, by reason of its two or three, or perchance more,
very long and heavy southwest rain-storms ; but, in the
intervals of these long rains, if, as commonly chances,
no noticeable " cold wave " weather follows them (and
so no example of the occasional bitter northers), then
indeed one has the true chance to enjoy nature. Then
one sees, perhaps in January or February, the clearest
of skies, and feels the most perfect of airs. The new
grass springs on every hill, the song-birds are count
less, and, by April and May, the vast fields of wild-
flowers are in full bloom. But April and May are the
spendthrift months of wealthy nature. A few golden
weeks of absolute freedom from winds and rains, of
warmth and of sunshine, give place at last to the long
sleep of the dry season, rainless also, and, in the in
terior, as windless and as dreamy as the climate of
Lotus Land.
The first effect of the Californian climate is to im
prove the general health of nearly all new-comers, un
less, indeed, being afflicted with pulmonary troubles,
8 CALIFORNIA.
they should find the windy northern and central const
climate in the dry season too severe for them. Then,
however, the interior valleys, or the southern coast, are
still open to them, and are very healthful. But one
secondary effect of the climate is indeed not so favor
able for any one, in that the comparative evenness of
the successive seasons prompts active people to work too
steadily, to skip their holidays, and, l>y reason of their
very enjoyment of life, to wear out their constitutions
with overwork. Here is a fact of considerable impor
tance for the understanding of California civilization. In
early days, moreover, by reason of the utter carelessness
of the mining population, fevers and dysentery were very
prevalent in the Sacramento Valley and in the foot-hills
of the Sierra. But people who so ate, drank, and lived
as many of the miners chose to do, hardly deserve com
miseration for their well-earned diseases, even as the cli
mate deserves but little blame therefor. On the whole,
save in these careless early years, the country has been
remarkably free from epidemics. Of the great present
material resources of the land there is no need to speak
here. We deal with the men.
II. OUTLIXKS OF OLDKK CALIFORNIA HISTORY.
The settlements of Spanish missionaries within the
present limits of the State of California date from the
first foundation of San Diego in 1769. The missions
that were later founded north of San Diego were, with
the original establishment itself, for a time known merely
by some collective name, such as the Northern Missions.1
But later the name California, already long since up-
plied to the country of the peninsular missions to the
1 II. II. Bancroft, flu-tor!/ of California, vol. i. p. 67.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 9
southward, was extended to the new land, with various
prefixes or qualifying phrases ; and out of these the de
finitive name Alta California at last came, being ap
plied to our present country during the whole period of
the Mexican Republican ownership. As to the origin of
the name California, no serious question remains that
this name, as first applied, between 1535 and 1539, to
a portion of Lower California, was derived from an old
printed romance, the one which Mr. Edward Everett
Hale rediscovered in 1862, and from which he drew
this now accepted conclusion. For, in this romance, the
name California was already before 1520 applied to a
fabulous island, described as near the Indies and also
" very near the Terrestrial Paradise." Colonists whom
Cortes brought to the newly discovered peninsula in
1535, and who returned the next year, may have been
the first to apply the name to this supposed island, on
which they had been for a time resident.1
The coast of Upper California was first visited during
the voyage of the explorer Juan Cabrillo in 1542-43.
Several landings were then made on the coast and on
the islands, in the Santa Barbara region. Cabrillo
himself died during the expedition (on January 3, 1543),
and the voyage was continued by his successor, Ferralo,
who sailed as far north as 42°. The whole undertaking
resulted in some examination of the coast-line as far as
Cape Mendocino, and in a glimpse of the native popu
lation that lived along the southern shores of the pres
ent State.2
In 1579 Drake's famous visit took place. During the
1 II. H. Bancroft, vol. i. p. 66 ; E. E. Hale, Amer. Antiquarian
Soc. Proceedings for 1862 ; Atlantic Afonthly, vol. xiii. p. 265.
2 Bancroft, vol. i. pp. 69-81.
10 CALIFORNIA.
latter half of June and nearly the whole of July, he
remained in what " The World P^ncompassed " calls a
" convenient and fit harbour " (about 38° 30'), where
the ship was grounded for repairs, and where the expe
dition had considerable intercourse with the natives.
One of the accounts complains, in extravagant fashion,
of the chilly air and of the fogs of the region, and, in
general, we get information from the accounts about
the '' white banks and cliffs, which lie toward the sea,"
and hear about what we now know as the Farallones,
the rocky islets that lie just outside what we call the
Golden Gate. While the other details of the stories, as
given, are obviously in large part imaginary, there can
be no doubt that Drake did land near this point on the
coast, and did find a passable harbor, where he stayed
some time. It is, however, almost perfectly sure that he
did not enter or observe the Golden Gate, and that he
got no sort of idea of the existence of the great Bay ;
while for the rest, it is and must remain quite uncertain
what anchorage he discovered, although the chances are
in favor of what is now called Drake's Bay, under Point
Reyes. This result of the examination of the evidence
about Drake's voyage is now fairly well accepted, al
though some people will always try to insist that Drake
discovered our Bay of San Francisco.1
The name San Francisco was probably applied to a
port on this coast for the first time by Cermerion, who
in a voyage from the Philippines in 1595 ran ashore,
while exploring the coast near Point Reyes. It is now,
however, perfectly sure that neither he nor any other
Spanish navigator before 1769 applied this name to our
1 On this voluminous controversy I pretend to no sort of independent
opinion. See Bancroft, vol. i. pp. 81-94, for both result and references.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 11
present bay, which remained utterly unknown to Euro
peans during all this period. The name Port of San
Francisco was given by Vizcaino, and by later naviga
tors and geographers, to the bay under Point Reyes,
characterized by the whitish cliffs and by the rocky
islets in the ocean in front of it. The coincidence of
the name San Francisco with the name of Sir Francis
Drake is remarkable, but doubtless means nothing.
Christian names are, after all, limited in number ; and
those who applied this name to the new port were
Spaniards and Catholics, while Drake was a freebooter
and an Englishman.1
In 1602-3, Sebastian Vizcaino conducted a Spanish
exploring expedition along the California coast. He vis
ited San Diego and Monterey bays, saw during his
various visits on shore a good deal of the natives, and in
January, 1603, anchored in the old Port of San Fran
cisco, under Point Reyes. From this voyage a little
more knowledge of the character of the coast was gained ;
and thenceforth geographical researches in the region
of California ceased for over a century and a half.2
With only this meagre result we reach the era of the
•first settlement of Upper California. The missions of
the peninsula of Lower California passed, in 1767, by
the expulsion of the Jesuits, into the hands of the Fran
ciscans ; and the Spanish government, whose attention
was attracted in this direction by the changed conditions,
ordered the immediate prosecution of a long-cherished
plan to provide the Manila ships, on their return voy-
1 See Bancroft, loc. cit., p. 97.
2 Bancroft, loc. cit., p. 97. Vizcaino's voyage attracted much more
general attention than the earlier explorations of Cabrillo had re
ceived.
12 CALIFORNIA.
age, with good ports of supply and repairs, and to oc
cupy the northwest land as a safeguard against Rus
sian or other aggressions. For the accomplishment of
this end the occupation of the still hut vaguely known
harbors of San Diego and Monterey was planned. The
zeal of the Franciscans for the conversion of the gen
tiles of the north seconded the official purposes, and
in 1768 the Visitador General of New Spain, Jose- de
Galvez, took personal charge at La Paz of the prepara
tion of an expedition intended to hegin the new settle
ments in the north. The official purpose here, as in older
mission undertakings, was an union of physical and spir
itual conquest, soldiers under a military governor coop
erating to this end with missionaries and mission es-
tahlishments. The natives were to be overcome by
arms in so far as they might resist the conquerors, were
to be attracted to the missions by peaceable measures in
so far as might prove possible, were to be instructed
in the faith, and were to be kept for the present
under the paternal rule of the clergy, until such time
as they might be ready for a free life as Christian
subjects. Meanwhile, Spanish colonists were to be
brought to the new land as circumstances might deter
mine, and, to these, allotments of land were in some
fashion to be made. No grants of land in a legal sense
were made or promised to the mission establishments,
whose position was to be merely that of spiritual insti
tutions, intrusted temporarily with the education of
neophytes, and with the care of the property that should
be given or hereafter produced for this purpose. On
the other hand, if the government tended to regard the
missions as purely subsidiary to its purposes, the outgoing
missionaries to this strange land were so much the more
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 13
certain to be quite uncorruptecl by worldly ambitions,
by a hope of acquiring wealth, or by any intention to
found a powerful ecclesiastical government in the new
colony. They went to save souls, and their motive was
as single as it was worthy of reverence. In the sequel
the more successful missions in Upper California be
came, for a time, very wealthy ; but this was only by
virtue of the gifts of nature and of the devoted labors
of the padres.
In January of 1769, the first of four expeditions, all
intended for San Diego harbor, set sail. Of the four
expeditions, two were to go by land, and two by sea ;
the last land expedition including Governor Portola,,
and the famous head of the missionaries, Father Juni-
pero Serra. The water expeditions suffered seriously
from scurvy. About eighty Spanish friars and soldiers
were at last united at San Diego, the first ship arriving
April 11, 1769, and the first mission being founded,
after the arrival of all four parties, on the 16th of
July. An expedition which set out forthwith overland
under Portola, to explore the northern coast, and to find
the harbor of Monterey, actually passed the real port,
without recognizing it, in the beginning of October.
They marched still northward along the coast, until, on
October 31st, they came in sight of the Farallones, and
of Point Reyes, which they saw from a place near the
present Point San Pedro, on the southern part of the
ocean coast of the San Francisco peninsula. Still, of
course, ignorant of the existence of our present Bay,
they were not ignorant of the existence and current de
scription of the old port of San Francisco, with its cliffs
and its little islands ; and they at once recognized the
place. A detachment was sent forward to reach this
14 CALIFORNIA.
port at Point Reyes, and during the absence of this de
tachment, some of the soldiers of the main party, while
hunting, climbed the hills and first saw the great Bay
itself. The detachment soon returned, having been
unable to pass the Golden Gate. After some days of
further wandering on the peninsula, the expedition re
turned towards Monterey.1
Thus began the career of Spanish discovery and set
tlement in California. The early years show a generally
rapid progress, only one great disaster occurring, — the
destruction of >San Diego Mission in 1775, by assailing
Indians. But this loss was quickly repaired. In 1770
the Mission of San Carlos was founded at Monterey.
In 1772, a land expedition, under Fages and Crespi.
first explored the eastern shore of our San Francisco
Bav, in an effort to reach by land the old Port of San
Francisco. This expedition discovered the San Joaquin
River, and, unable to cross it, returned without attaining
the object of the exploration. After 1775 the old name
began to be generally applied to the new Bay, and so,
thenceforth, the name Port of San Francisco, means
what we now mean thereby. In 1775 Lieutenant
Ayala entered the new harbor by water. In the follow
ing year the Mission at San Francisco was founded, and
in October its church was dedicated.
Not only missions, however, but pueblos, inhabited
by Spanish colonists, lay in the official plan of the new
undertakings. The first of these to be established was
San Jose, founded in November, 1777. The next was
Los Angeles, founded in September, 1781. The pueblos
1 For the account in full of this discovery of our San Francisco
Bay, collated from the sources, whereof the principal is Father
Crespf s diary of this expedition, see chap. vi. of Bancroft's vol. i.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 15
were intended, among other things, to supply the new
missions with the needed grain ; but for a good while
they were not very prosperous.
The missions, on the other hand, had an organization
and a devout earnestness of superintendence that secured
their swift progress. They multiplied quickly in num
ber, nine existing already in 1787 within the limits of
California. In 1780, the sixteen missionary priests then
present in the land were the spiritual rulers of some
three thousand native converts. By the end of the cen
tury there were eighteen missions, with forty padres,
and with a neophyte population of 13,500. Crops of
from 30,000 to 75,000 bushels per year were by this
time produced in the territory ; and there were 70,000
horses and cattle, while the mission buildings and other
properties were together valued at about a million
pesos}- Such, then, was the material progress of the
missionary work. The personal enthusiasm of Father
Jnnipero, who from 1769 until his death in 1784 was
at the head of mission affairs, has earned for him since
a great popular reputation for ability and saintliness,
a reputation made permanent by the biography that
came from the pen of his friend Palou. And about
Serra's high worth as a man and a Christian there is
indeed no controversy among those who know his
career. As to the value of these mission methods them
selves opinions will no doubt always differ, although the
matter seems to me a fairly plain one. The 4 charges
of systematic cruelty brought against the fathers were,
to be sure, founded on a very superficial knowledge of
1 See the brief summary in Bancroft's North Mexican States,
vol. i. p. 749, as well as the fuller statements in vol. i. of the
California.
16 CALIFORNIA.
their work. But these charges are not the real ones
• to be made against their efficiency. They had a poor
understanding of sanitary precautions, and it was partly
because of this that the death-rate at their missions was
always very high. Their method of training, moreover
(and this is the main consideration), did not really civ
ilize their conveils, but only made these hopelessly de
pendent upon them. The final outcome of their work,
therefore, as we must conclude, was, for the cause of
true spiritual progress in California, simply nothing ; for,
with their power, nearly every trace of their labors
vanished from the world. But no one can question
their motives ; nor may one doubt that their intentions
were not only formally pious, but truly humane. For
the more fatal diseases that so-called civilization intro-*
duced among these Indians only the soldiers and col
onists of the presidios and pueblos were to blame ; and
the fathers, well knowing the evil results of a mixed
population, did their best to prevent these consequences,
but in vain, since the neighborhood of a presidio was
frequently necessary for the safety of a mission, and
the introduction of white colonists was an important
part of the intentions of the home government. But,
after all, upon this whole toil of the missions, considered
in itself, one looks back with respectful regret, as upon
one of the most devout and praiseworthy of mortal
efforts, and, in view of its avowed intentions, one of the
most complete and fruitless of human failures. The
missions have meant, for modern American California,
little more than a memory, which now indeed is light
ened up by poetical legends of many sorts. But the
chief significance of the missions is simply that they first
began the colonization of California.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 17
Although commercial intercourse with foreigners was
forbidden in the land, still, towards the close of the old
century and the opening of the new, one finds some for
eign attention attracted to California. The first foreign
visitor had heen the Frenchman, La Perouse, in 1786.
In 1792 Vancouver had visited the coast. In 1796 the
first American ship, the Otter, of Boston, had appeared
at Monterey, and had obtained wood and water for
her voyage. Both La Perouse and Vancouver had de
scribed the land and the missions, the latter with some
animadversions on the defenseless state of the country,
and with expressions of surprise that so very small a
force of soldiers could keep in awe so many thousands
of natives. In 1806 the first Russian ship came to the
port of San Francisco, from Sitka, under the direction
of Rezanof, an official of high position, who had gone
to Sitka as inspector of the establishments there. His
purpose at the moment was to purchase supplies for the
now nearly starving colony at Sitka. Although such
transactions with foreigners were forbidden to the Cal-
ifornians, still, after long and vain negotiations with
Governor Arrillaga, and with the commandant of the
presidio, Argiiello, Rezanof at last gained his commer
cial purpose by dint of making successful love to the
beautiful daughter of Argiiello, the Dona Concepcion
of the well-known and higlily romantic tale that has
since grown up out of this incident. Rezanof was
actually betrothed, in the end, to the fair young daugh
ter ; and when he set out, with his purchases made, it
was under the solemn promise to return and marry his
new beloved as soon as possible. He died, however,
while on the way across Siberia, during his return to
St. Petersburg. The story, told in several versions,
2
18 CALIFORNIA.
and immortalized in Mr. Bret Harte's best poem, has
won many tears. Rezanof himself describes the affair,
in his reports, as a purely business-like stroke of diplo
macy, whereby lie gained the decisive official help of
the Argiiello family. Whether he was sincere in his
love or not. Dona Concepcion undoubtedly was in hers.
She died, as nun, at Benicia, in 1857. l
This iirst Russian visit was followed, in 1812, by the
founding of a Russian colony under the auspices of the
Fur Company at " Ross," as the new-comers named
their own settlement, which was on the coast, about
eighteen miles above Bodega Bay, and a little north of
the mouth of Russian River. Here the company built
a fort, negotiated and traded with the natives, secured
from the latter what the Russians later affected to
consider a title to the land, and remained in the place
for some thirty years, until 18-1-1. The colony was
especially useful as a trading and supply station for
the Fur Company. Its inhabitants numbered, as time
went on, from 150 to 400, of mixed Russian, Aleutian,
and, later, California Indian blood ; the force was al
ways under the control of military officers, and was
kept in strict discipline. Notwithstanding the numer
ous official obstacles in their way, the Russians managed
to get a good deal of grain and provisions, by trade,
from the Spaniards, and, later, raised some grain them
selves. These supplies were sent to various Russian
northern stations. But in the end the settlement
proved a failure for its purposes, and was abandoned.
A colony, in the strict sense, this establishment never
became, and such plans of territorial acquisition as origi-
1 The complete account from the sources is in Bancroft, vol. ii.
pp. 6-i, syq.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 19
nalty had to do with its foundation were never devel
oped to any noteworthy result.1 The establishment
excited, from the first, just indignation and considerable
apprehension on the part o£ the Spanish authorities, and,
later, of the Mexican authorities ; but there was never
an open collision.
With the political events of the Spanish rule, and
with the life of the missions during their remaining
years of prosperity in the early part of our century, we
have no further need to deal. The situation of the
whole country was of course much altered when the in
dependence of Mexico was proclaimed in California, at
the beginning of 1822. There was, indeed, no active
resistance thought of. In March arrived the news of
the success of Iturbide's imperial regency. On the 9th
of April a junta met at Monterey, composed of the last
Spanish governor, Sola, and of the principal officers
present in the territory. This body passed resolutions
of acquiescence in the new government, and took the
prescribed oath.2 A commissioner, sent from Mexico
to see that the new order of things was properly intro
duced into California, brought into existence the first
provincial diputacion or legislature, in November of that
year. This body was called upon by the commissioner
to elect a governor, and in November chose Don Luis
Argiiello as the first of the series of Mexican govern
ors.
The history of California under Mexican rule falls
into two unequal periods : the one of comparative quiet,
extending to 1831, the second being characterized by
1 See in particular, on the life and industries of this settlement,
Bancroft, vol. ii. pp. 623, sqj.
2 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 451.
20 CALIFORNIA.
the rapid growth of a local California!! patriotism and
by political feuds. Throughout both these periods the
little province had to a great extent the management of
its own affairs, and its subjection to Mexico proved at
most times and in most respects a very imperfect sub
jection. Foreign trade was now permitted, under rather
harassing restrictions, of which the most significant was
an enormously high tariff. The population grew some
what slowly. Mr. Bancroft's list of inhabitants, at the
close of the first volume of his "California," includes
some 1,700 names of male settlers, soldiers, etc., of
Spanish blood, who are actually on record as having
lived in the province at some time between 1769 and
1800. The recorded and estimated aggregate white
population was, in the year 1790, 990; in the year
1800, 1,800 ; and in the 'year 1810, 2,1.W Under the
Mexican rule, the white population had increased by
1830 to 4,250 ; and by 1840 to 5,780. Between this
period and the conquest, as I suppose, the white popula
tion may have been further increased by some 1,500 or
2,000 souls. It was popularly estimated at the moment
as somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 in 1846.
As for the general course of events during the Mexi
can period, one has first to note the very early change
from the imperial to the republican form of government
in Mexico, — a change which the friars in California
regarded with great displeasure and foreboding,2 ami
which they opposed by word of mouth to an extent to
which they had not opposed the change from Spanish
sovereignty that was introduced by the imperial re
gency. Their leaders refused, in 1825, to take the pre-
1 Bancroft, vol ii. p. 158.
2 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 517 ; vol. iii. pp. 16, sqq.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 21
scribed oath to the republic, and caused thereby some
trouble to the civil authorities ; but the only effect was
slightly to increase the difficulties of local government,
and, in the sequel, to widen the breach between the old
clerical order of things and the new order that must
inevitably spring up under Mexican dominion. From
1826 to 1830 the province quietly and gradually grew
" toward the Mexican ideal of republicanism and the
secularization of the missions," to quote Mr. Bancroft's
words.1 The governor first sent, in the Mexican repub
lican interest, to take charge of California was Echean-
dia, who came in October, 1825 ; but the home gov
ernment undertook little further, in those years, for the
good of California, unless sending a few convicts to the
land, in February, 1830, be considered such an under
taking. In 1829 a revolt of some unpaid soldiers at
Monterey, assisted by some native Californians, under
took to put the country into native Californian hands,
while professing, for form's sake, firm allegiance to the
central Mexican government, and alleging, as justifica
tion of the rising, abuse of authority on the part of
Echeandia, whose headquarters were in the south. The
leader of the revolt was a convict rancher -o, Solis by
name ; but the movement gained no foothold in the
south, and, after a bloodless pretense at a conflict near
Santa Barbara, the rebels under Solis fled back again
northwards to Monterey, only to find that town al
ready turned against them. The movement now, of
course, entirely collapsed, and Echeandia remained for
the time in undisputed power. His work as governor
was partly devoted to the beginnings of the Mexican
1 Vol. iii. p. 31. On Governor Echeaudfa's career in California, see
chaps, ii.-vi. of the same volume.
22 CALIFORNIA.
plan for the secularization of the missions of California.
The original intention of Spain had been, as we know,
to use the missions as stepping-stones, over vhich to
pass to the true civilization of the new land. The en
tire failure of the missions effectively to civilize their
neophytes or to prepare them for citizenship could not
prevent, in republican Mexico, the effort to bring to an
end the experiment that had failed so completely. In
1826 Kcheandia issued a decree for the partial emanci
pation of the neophytes of San Diego, Santa Barbara,
and Monterey, — a decree whereby he freed them to
some extent from the authority of the friars ; and in
1830 he brought before the California legislative body a
secularization plan, providing for the gradual transfor
mation of the missions into pueblos, and for giving each
neophyte a share of property. The plan was approved
by the legislature, and then forwarded to the supreme
government for confirmation before it should be put into
operation.
But in 1830 Echeandia was succeeded by Manuel
Victoria, who had for some time been military com
mandant in Lower California, and who was appointed
in March, and arrived in December to assume the gov
ernorship of Alta California. There was some willful
delay in the transfer of the office, and Victoria received
the command in January, 1831, just after his predeces
sor had rather hastily and vainly attempted to put into
immediate effect his own plan of secularization before
retiring. Victoria was welcomed by the friars as an
opponent of secularization ; but his rule, conducted after
the fashion of a soldier, was with the non-clerical Cali-
fornians unpopular, and was brief. He did not con
vene the legislature, he seemed throughout arbitrary,
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 23
and in criminal matters he sometimes transgressed his
legal authority. Thus dissatisfaction grew general, both
in the north and in the south, and quickly culminated
in a successful revolt. Victoria was wounded in a
fight with the insurgents near Los Angeles, — a fight in
which but two men in all were killed ; and, deserted by
his followers, the fallen governor consented to accept
a chance to return to Mexico from California, in De
cember, 1831. l
An interregnum followed, during 1832, with many
domestic quarrels over the governorship in the early
part of that year ; but these were brought to an end by
the expectation of a new governor from Mexico. This
new governor proved to be Jose Figueroa, an able man
and a good official, whose services in California, coupled
as they were with an engaging personal behavior, gained
for him in the end the admiration of all the Californi-
ans. His administration was interrupted by the vexa
tious and abortive Mexican colonization scheme that the
Hijar and Padres party were commissioned to carry
out, in 1834, under official sanction. Part of the lead
er's (Hijar's) commission having been countermanded
by fresh orders from Mexico, which came to hand after
the arrival of the colony in California, a quarrel sprang
up between the governor and Hijar as to matters
both of policy and of authority, — a quarrel which led to
some rather serious difficulties. The whole colonization
scheme finally came to an end in 1835, although it had
by that time been the means of adding some two hun
dred to the population of California. As for seculariza
tion, that approached slowly and surely under Figueroa's
administration, although he himself was too moderate to
1 On Victoria's career, see Bancroft, vol. iii. ch. vii.
24 CALIFORNIA.
aim for the moment at more than a gradual emancipa
tion of the neophytes. But the same influences that had
led to the colonization scheme had acted in Mexico to
cause immediate secularization to be ordered, in a de
cree of the Mexican Congress of August 17, 1833 ; and
Hijar, with his colony, in 1834, prepared to take part
in the execution of this decree. The failure of Hijar's
plans did not prevent the secularization decree from hav
ing a certain effect. The padres began, at certain mis
sions, to slaughter the mission cattle, and to sell their
produce as rapidly as possible. They also neglected
their unsalable properties very considerably, and, in the
mean while, the number of neophytes present at the mis
sions began to show a rapid decrease. Figueroa died
in September, 1835.1
With Figueroa's death begins a time of extremely
complex political intrigue and conflict in California.
The jealousy that Californians now more and more felt
against all Mexican interference was henceforth joined
with a rapidly growing jealousy between the northern
and southern parts of the territory of California itself,
to the disturbance of all political relations. Figueroa, at
his death, left the governorship to Jose Castro, and the
military commandancy to the ranking officer of the ter
ritory, Guteirrez. The former gave over his civil office
to Gutierrez in January, 1836 ; and the latter ruled for
four quiet months, until the coming of Mariano Chico,
who had been appointed by the central government to
succeed Figueroa. Chico was the best hated, and, as to
personal reputation, the most unfortunate of all the Mex
ican governors in California, although his rule was very
1 See, for the events of his career, Bancroft, vol. ii. chap?, ix.-
xii. pp. 240, sqq.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 25
brief. He had to encounter the growing jealousy afore
said, and his personal bearing was such as to inflame
rather than to conciliate it, insomuch that the Californi-
ans joined thenceforth in circulating exaggerated stories
against him,1 denouncing him as " tyrant, rascal, and
fool." Furious personal quarrels, threatened rebellion,
and lack of support from the central government forced
him to retire in July of the same year ; and Gutierrez
was once more left at the head of affairs. But the
jealousy of everything Mexican was still growing. The
mass of the Californians, although of the republican
party, had found that Mexican republicanism brought
no good to the land ; while the padres, looking back re
gretfully to the old Spanish days, used their influence
also to bring Mexican authority into discredit. The
better California!! families felt themselves superior in
blood to the most of the Mexicans ; and the foreigners
present in the land, numerous enough at this time to be
influential, were equally opposed to Mexico.2 The re
sult of all this was the Alvarado revolution, in Novem
ber, 1836. With a force that included some American
hunters and some foreign sailors, the revolutionists got
possession of Monterey, and sent Gutierrez to Mexico;
all of which was accomplished, after the Californian
fashion of civil warfare, without the shedding of blood,
and by the mere show of force. The country was de
clared a sovereign state, which was thenceforth to have,
if possible, only a federal union with Mexico ; the legis
lature elected Alvarado governor ad interim, and the
new administration began with seemingly good pros-
1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 427.
2 This summary of the situation is founded on Bancroft's, in vol.
iii. p. 449.
26 CALIFORNIA.
pccts. But the south, the Los Angeles and San Diego
country, was still to be conciliated, before California
could be united in the new movement.1 Though the
Mexican flag still waved at Monterey, the reports car
ried to the south attributed to the revolutionists extrav
agant designs, such as the defiance of Mexico, the de
livery of the province into American hands, and the
subversion of the Catholic faith.2 A patriotic reaction
was therefore threatened from Los Angeles, and Alva-
rado had to go south with a force, to meet in person the
influences arrayed against him. He was successful in
winning general support at Santa Barbara, and he en
tered Los Angeles itself, without serious resistance, in
January, 1837. Further complications ensued ; but in
May the political success of Alvarado's cause in the
south seemed already complete, and, in a proclamation,
the new governor declared the country free and united,
although he never gave up the union with Mexico.
But such complete practical freedom as he had thus far
planned was indeed to be given up ; for in June, 1837,
Andres Castillero arrived as Mexican commissioner to
California. He at first joined the opponents of Alva-
rado at San Diego, and, with an armed force of southern
ers, under the leadership of partisan opponents of Alva-
rado, once more threatened to restore Mexican suprem
acy, and to overthrow the northern leader. Castillero
had been commissioned in Mexico to bring to California
the constitutional laws of December, 1836, which repre
sented the new order in Mexico, and to receive the oaths
of allegiance to this new order from Californian officials.
Alvarado, before any collision of forces could take place,
1 For the revolution, see Bancroft, loc. cit., pp. 452-476.
2 Bancroft, loc. cit., p. 480.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 27
now resolved to dispose of the southern opposition by
removing its chief ostensible cause ; that is, by coming to
terms with Castillero, by giving up his idea of mere fed
eration, and by thus consenting to submit himself to con
stitutional Mexican authority. He hoped, not wrongly,
as the sequel proved, that he could in this way get confir
mation of himself as Mexican governor, and at the same
time, so to speak, " dish " his southern enemies. This
" triumph in defeat " x Alvarado gained by coming into
friendly relations with Castillero, and by persuading
him to go back to Mexico in Alvarado's own interest, so
as to get what Castillero had not yet, authority to re
ceive Alvarado's submission, and further authority to
make the latter, who still stood in the position of rebel,
the constitutional governor of California. The southern
opposition was thus for the time overcome.
In October, 1837, the news of the appointment of a
new governor, Carlos Carrillo, reached the land. The
appointment had been made before Alvarado's submis
sion was heard of. The opponents of Alvarado were
now once more delighted ; Carrillo was himself a well-
known Californian, and commanded sympathy in the
south. But, as turned out, he was politically incapable,
and Alvarado forthwith determined to resist him, and
did so successfully. In the subsequent warfare one
little " battle " took place at San Buenaventura, which
resulted in the death of one man and in the flight of
the forces that represented Carrillo's party. In April,
1838, Carrillo himself capitulated at Las Flores, some
fifty or sixty miles north of San Diego ; and Alvarado
was again left, after this once more nearly bloodless con
flict, in actual command of the country.
1 Bancroft, loc. cit., p. 527.
28 CALIFORNIA.
The successful rebel and able political leader was now
erelong confirmed by the central government as consti
tutional governor of what was henceforth to be called
the " Department of California," and thus the northern
party triumphed over the south and over the Mexicans
also. The rest of the rule of Alvarado was indeed not
perfectly peaceful. In 1840 he quarreled somewhat
bitterly with General Vallejo, his relative, his com-
mandante general, and his former partisan. In the
same year a much more serious and important event
took place, namely, the expulsion to Mexico of above
forty foreigners, a company largely made up of Amer
icans and Englishmen, sailors, hunters, and vagabonds.
Among them was one Isaac Graham, who had taken
part with Alvarado liimself in the revolution of 1836,
and whom the expulsion, as it was represented to our
public, converted into a great hero. He was, however,
a rascal, and, as the documents show, even such were
nearly all his fellows in exile. But the American and
English governments were led to look upon the affair
as an outrage, and eighteen of the expelled returned in
freedom next year. The charge made against the exiles
was that of plotting against the government, and this
charge was not entirely unfounded ; but, as it was not
legally proved, the expulsion was not in form justifiable,
although far too much has since been made of the so-
called outrage, for which Mexico had later to pay.1
In 1842 Mexico made one more effort to give Cali
fornia a Mexican governor, in the person of General
Micheltorena. His well-meaning rule was embittered
by the unfortunate character of the Mexican recruits
1 Bancroft's account, as far as yet published, is in his "Pioneer
Register," vol. iii. p. 763 of the California.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 29
that he brought with him when he came, since some of
them were convicts, and all were disliked. In the end
the Calif or nians, of nearly all parties, joined in a revolt
against Micheltorena, at the end of 1844. In January,
1845, the united insurgents, having retreated to the
south, were followed nearly to Los Angeles by the little
regular army of Micheltorena, which had been joined by
a force from the Sacramento Valley, consisting of Amer
ican riflemen and of Indian servants of Captain Sutter.
On the insurgent side, also, there were some Americans,
residents in the south, who had a horror of the bad re
pute of Micheltorena's soldiers, and who were determined
to see all these " convicts " expelled from California.
The Americans, however, from the two sides, met in
a parley before the battle, and resolved to remain neu
tral. The " battle " itself was as bloodless as most Cali-
fornian encounters. Tremendous cannonading is some
times said, in the accounts, to have taken place. Two or
three horses and mules were hurt ; but the armies on both
sides kept well out of range. The result was the capitu
lation of Micheltorena, the success of a new revolutionary
government, and, towards the close of the year, a new
mission of pacification from Mexico, and a new recog
nition of the existing order of things as the legal one.
The governor of the Department was now Pio Pico,
who was of the south, and was the senior legislator of
the diputacion, while the commandante general was Jose
Castro, who had formerly been prominent as a partisan
of Alvarado, and who lived at Monterey. The old
quarrel of north and south quickly reappeared between
these two, and the rest of the political history of Cali
fornia, until the time of our conquest, is one of intrigue
and petty quarrel, which might have led to another
30 CALIFORNIA.
bloodless civil war in 1846, had we not intervened with
our own fashion of fighting. Civilized warfare was, in
fact, introduced into California through the undertak
ings of our own gallant Captain Fremont. For in civ
ilized warfare, as is well known, somebody always gets
badly hurt.
III. THE CALIFOKXIAXS AS A PEOPLE.
After this hasty glance at the past history of our
province, we must describe in brief the character of the
people, the condition of the country at the moment of
our conquest, and the doings of our own countrymen in
the land in the times before the conquest.
California, as we see, was in 1846 an outlying and
neglected Mexican province. Its missions, once pros
perous, had had their estates in large part secularized
during the later years, had fallen into decay, and were
now helpless, and sometimes in ruins. The mission In
dians had in large part disappeared. The church was
no longer a power. The white population was made up
principally of Spanish and Mexican colonists, whose
chief industry was raising cattle for the hides and
tallow, and whose private lives were free, careless, and
on the whole, as this world goes, moderately charm
ing and innocent. So at least those who really knew
them always tell us. These people were gay and jovial,
full of good fellowship and hospitality. Nearly all
the better families of the community were superior to
the average of Mexicans, having generally a purer
Castilian blood, since in many cases the colonists had
come almost directly from Spain. Crime was confined
in general to the lower sorts of people in the towns.
The rancheros lived much as comparatively well-to-do
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 31
countrymen of happy and unprogressive type always
live when in a mild climate. They rode a great deal,
dressed in gay colors, visited one another frequently,
had very pleasant social gatherings, enjoyed many sports
together, drank at times, gambled a little, lived to a
good old age, and had very large families. In the
towns, the life was a trifle more complex, and there was
a sharper distinction of social classes. But the hearti
est hospitality, especially to strangers, was here, as in
the country, almost universal. The rancheros paid their
debts to the Yankee traders in the towns on the coast
a little slowly ; but they were still on the whole a very
honest folk, and generally paid in the end, in the cur
rency of the country, i. e., in hides, which the traders
received at the uniform value of two dollars apiece, and
sent to the United States by the Boston-bound ships.
These ships, on their outward voyages, brought many-
colored calicoes, together with boots, shoes, and nearly
all the manufactured goods consumed in the country ;
and the natives paid enormous prices for these things, of
course without ever dreaming of home manufactures.
The political feuds of the later years must not be
interpreted as meaning that the Californians were re
vengeful and cruel, or that the whole thoughts of the
people were devoted to quarrels and bitterness. On the
contrary, the bloodless playfulness of these civil wars
themselves, with their furious proclamations, their mock
battles, — noisy but harmless, — and their peaceful end
ings, sufficiently characterizes the geniality, the simple-
mindedness, the childish love of display, and the really
humane tender-heartedness of this proud, gay, unpro
gressive, not very courageous, but surely comparatively
guiltless people. Their private vices were of a youthful
82 CALIFORNFA.
and sensuous but not of a deeply corrupt type. Their
domestic life itself was generally pure and devoted.
Their wives and daughters were in almost all cases above
reproach, and were models of their own sort of woman
hood. Sailor-boys, such as the young Dana's associates,
might indulge in characteristic gossip about the supposed
frailties of all California!! women, — gossip such as was
repeated in some passages of the " Two Years Before
the Mast," — but those who knew the Californians well,
and lived among them, have no such flippant remarks
to make. Domestic fidelity is a very frequent virtue
among at least the women of peoples that are at once
Catholic and pastoral ; and these Californian women
were too remote from the world, and too decently
trained, to hear of the vices of city life. The men, in
deed, — and especially the younger men, — in such life
as lay outside of domestic relations, lacked moral fibre ;
and some of the ablest of them early fell a prey to
drunkenness or to worse vices. But their vices indicated,
as we have said, rather a foolish youth than the developed
brutality that our own Anglo-Saxon frontiersmen of the
worst sort are accustomed to show. However worthy
our American merchants and immigrant families often
were in those days, our trappers and other like home
less wanderers in California in the years before 184(5
were commonly a very far worse set than the Californi
ans ; a fact which these vagabonds themselves were not
slow to realize, and one which inspired them individu
ally with the most violent hatred and disgust towards all
the rightful dwellers in the land.
The Californians had, of course, little opportunity for
cultivation, and they had generally few intellectual am
bitions. But, like the southern peoples of European
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 33
blood generally, they had a great deal of natural quick
ness of wit, and in their written work often expressed
themselves with ease and force. Their women were
fascinating conversers, even when not at all educated.
Their more noteworthy men, such as Alvarado, Vallejo,
and others, were often persons of very marked intelli
gence and even of considerable reading. The curiously
unequal aesthetic sense of the people always puzzled the
American observer. They spoke and gestured with
what seemed to our dull eyes wonderful grace. They
appeared to be born musicians, and, quite without train
ing, they sang finely and played their guitars skillfully
and spiritedly. They dressed with true southern taste.
All their movements on foot or on horseback were easy
and picturesque ; and their keen perception of beauty
was in some ways marvelous. But, on the other hand,
their houses were often very dirty and were seldom in
the least attractive ; and if one attributes this to their
simplicity and to their total lack of power to buy better
things for their houses, one has stiU to mention that
curiously disgusting practice of many rancheros, who
were accustomed to slaughter animals and to strip and
clean the carcasses almost, as it were, in their door-
yards, and so to make the ground not far from their
houses look like Golgotha. Hospitality to a stranger
sometimes included slaughtering before his eyes the bul
lock that he was to eat, and preparing the carcass on the
spot. And early travelers are never weary of complain
ing of the fleas found in nearly all the houses.
That the Californian was uninventive, and was con
tent in his way with atrociously awkward mechanical
devices, follows, of course, very easily from his national
character and habits. His wagons had four sections of
3
34 CALIFORNIA.
a log for wheels. He had hardly any good firearms,
and could not use what he had to advantage against
any American frontiersman, being himself no marks
man. He took care of his cattle and horses well enough
for his very simple purposes, but cared little for further
agricultural progress, and seldom even thought of using
milch-cows. He was patriotic in his devotion to what
he often called his country, namely, California itself.
He was a fairly good citizen, submissive to his alcaldes,
or local judges, and he was reasonably loyal to the po
litical faction that he had for the time espoused. But,
in politics as in morals and in material wealth, he was
unprogressive. When his time of trial should arrive he
would show no great power of endurance. The coming
temptations and excitements, the injustice and the un-
kindness of a conquering and often wickedly progressive
race, would often find him morally weak, and would
rapidly degrade him, too often losing for him his man
hood and his soul altogether, to his own bitter shame,
and often to the still greater shame of his stronger
brother, the carelessly brutal American settler or miner.
IV. THE AMERICANS IN CALIFORNIA BEFORE THE
CONQUEST.
Somewhat early in the century there appeared on the
California coast American trading-vessels and whalers.
By the voyage of the trading-vessel Sachem, in 1822,
the trade between Boston and California was opened,
and a cargo of tallow and hides was obtained at Mon
terey.1 Hereafter the American trade rapidly in
creased, and in the end became the chief trade in exist
ence on the coast during the Mexican period. From
1 Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 475.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 35
the East, meanwhile, trappers and hunters began to come
overland to California as early as 1826, which was the
year of a trapping party led by Jedediah S. Smith.1
From both of these sources of communication California
received in the sequel additions to her population. The
first Americans who were led to take up their residence
in the land were, for the most part, men of character
and ability, who were concerned in the Boston trading
enterprises. Some of those who thus came, even before
1830, have since been, in their own callings, prominent
in California affairs down nearly to the present moment.
When the new-comers had business in the land, and
were well-disposed persons, they were, during the early
Mexican period, very welcome among the hospitable
Californians. Many applied for naturalization as Mexi
can citizens, and obtained it. A considerable number,
in the sequel, married into Californian families ; some
acquired land grants and became very prosperous.
Mexican law, meanwhile, was always in form very strict
about requiring passports of foreigners, and about sub
jecting them to a good deal of official watching. Such
restrictions proved, however, of little practical incon
venience to men of good behavior and of responsible
position in California.
Before 1835, about thirty of the hunters who had en
tered California in the various overland parties are said
to have taken up a more or less permanent abode in the
land.2 The popular feeling towards foreigners was in
1835 still tolerant, and in many cases very cordial,
and little fear of foreign aggression existed. In all,
perhaps three hundred, according to Mr. Bancroft's
1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 152.
2 Ibid. p. 393.
86 CALIFORNIA.
estimate, would express the number of the foreign male
population in 1835.1 It was in this year that the young
Dana's visit fell. In 1836 the American hunters near
Monterey, together with some other foreigners, took
part, as we have seen, in the Alvarado revolution. By
1840, as we have also seen, some of these very men
had rendered themselves so obnoxious as to bring about
the expulsion of the less welcome foreigners in that year,
— an expulsion which did not affect Americans of any
position in the land, and which was probably not very
seriously disapproved by the American merchants them
selves, or by the American land-owners. Yet, with the
time of this occurrence, the era of greater or less
trouble with foreigners may be said to have begun.
But no general hatred or oppression of foreigners, such
as has often been attributed to the Californians of this
period, ever existed before 1846. The troubles, such
as they were, were caused, during these last few years,
almost altogether by the lawless, or at best suspicious,
acts of a few foreign vagabonds. Such persons, escaped
sailors, wandering hunters, adventurous rascals of va
rious sorts, were from time to time a source of trouble
and anxiety to Californian alcaldes and governors.
Such Americans as these were of course the loudest in
their protests, when they were arrested or expelled, and
such freely threatened that American citizens would
take the first opportunity that offered to free this land
from what these law-breakers naturally regarded as
Mexican oppression. No wonder that all Californians
came to dislike such people as these, and that some
prominent men of the country extended this personal
1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 402. This includes "sons of pioneers by
native wives."
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 37
dislike to our whole nation. But, before the era of the
conquest itself, we cannot say that the Californians as
a people were enemies of the American nation, or that
we by rights need have feared any very violent opposi
tion from them to our own national schemes of com
merce and of possession in the Pacific regions. In
1842, just as Micheltorena was on his way from Mexico
to California, about to enter on his duties as governor,
our naval commander in the Pacific, Commodore
Thomas Ap Catesby Jones, hearing at Callao an un
founded report that our national difficulties with Mexico
about Texas had already culminated in war, formed
a hasty resolution to seize upon the ports of California,
in advance of further orders from his government. Ac
cordingly he sailed to Monterey, entered the harbor,
and seized the port, without meeting any resistance to
his raising of the flag. The act produced no small
momentary consternation in Monterey, but nobody there
seems to have planned any serious measures of further
defense. Hearing, however, that the report upon which
he had acted was unfounded, Jones took down the flag
the next day, apologized, and retired, stopping, on his
voyage, at San Pedro, and visiting at Los Angeles the
new Governor Micheltorena himself. Jones's apologies
were accepted with a good-will by the Californians, and,
while the central Mexican government took every pos
sible diplomatic advantage of the outrage, in the corre
spondence which ensued with our government, the Cal-
ifornian people themselves, in their benighted state of
semi-independence, showed a very imperfect sense of
how much they had been injured by this insult offered
to Mexico. The American merchants on the coast felt
their intercourse with the Californians no less cordial
38 CALIFORNIA.
than before, and the incident passed by without further
evil consequences.1
Most prominent, in the later years, among the Amer
ican merchants on the coast, was Thomas O. Larkin, a
native of Massachusetts, a shrewd and able trader, who
had come to California already in 1832, and who in the
end acquired a considerable fortune as owner of a
wholesale and retail stove in Monterey. It was he who,
in 1844, was made by our government the first, and. as
it proved, the last, American consul. It was also he
who, during the years between 1840 and 1846, most
wisely and cautiously brought to bear his not inconsider
able personal influence to increase the good-will of the
native Californians towards the American government
and people, and who, by occasional letters to newspapers
at home, labored to make his countrymen understand
the importance of California. As we shall hereafter see,
Larkin is the only American official who can receive
nearly unmixed praise in connection with the measures
that led to our acquisition of California. His actual
1 For the correspondence between the Mexican and American gov
ernments about this affair see House Ex. Doc., 27th Congr., 3d Sess.,
vol. v. Doc. 166. For the views of the Californians, see Mr. Alfred
Robinson's Life in California (New York, 1846), pp. 210, sqq. ;
also Consul Larkin's letters to the State Department as later cited.
Mr. Robinson's whole book is one of the best of the early American
accounts of the people and of American life in the land. The author
is, in 1885, still living in San Francisco, certainly the oldest surviving
American pioneer, and a man of very fine ability and judgment.
Much of the foregoing view of the Californian life and of the inter
course with Americans I have derived from unpublished statements
now in Mr. Bancroft's library. Of these one of the most interesting
descriptions of the people is that by Mr. W. II. Davis, a MS. en
titled Glimpses of the Past. Mr. Bancroft's invaluable treasures,
the Larkin Papers, throw a great deal of indirect light on the same
topic.
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 39
effectiveness was indeed greatly hindered by the un
warranted doings of other people ; but he occupies the
happy position of having done his official duty in the
matter so far as he knew his duty.
Larkin, though a clever servant in this one position,
was no educated man. In his dispatches to the State
Department he often writes rather uncouthly ; but he al
ways writes sensibly. In his business relations he was
enterprising, fully possessed of his provincial shrewd
ness, and sometimes overbearing ; but his hospitality is
always highly praised by the Americans of the time
before the conquest, while his influential position as
merchant at Monterey, together with his later official
rank, made his house for some years before 1846 the
social headquarters of the Americans in California.
After the gold discovery he became for a while quite
wealthy, and lived for some years in the East. He is
said to have expressed chagrin (not, to be sure, with
out good cause), in view of the lack of appreciation that
prominent people always showed for his past services in
helping to win California. This imperfectly educated
California trader no doubt appeared, in his later years,
to poor advantage in New York and Washington, where
he had no influential friends to sound his praises in
political circles ; but history will give him the credit of
having been his country's most efficient instrument in
California at the period of the conquest.
His correspondence, both with his mercantile friends
in California and with the State Department at Wash
ington, has been preserved among his family papers, and
is now in Mr. H. H. Bancroft's hands. It is the best
source extant concerning the moods, the hopes, the
fears, the murmurings, the petty personal quarrels, the
40 CALIFORNIA.
private gossip, and the whole social life of the American
traders in California before the conquest ; and, as we
shall see, it is the only source, save the Washington
archives, whence can be derived a knowledge of the
true official story of the conquest itself.
Between 1839 and 1846 there grewr np in the Sacra
mento Valley a settlement of Americans, composed partly
of most worthy and conservative men, and partly of
such wanderers as we before have mentioned. Of all
the early American undertakings in the land, this was
naturally the one that aroused most seriously and j nstly
the suspicions of the Californians. Most of theso new
comers reached California overland. Many of them
were persons but little known to the natives, while some
of them were, unfortunately, too well known. Only a
few of them appeared very frequently, or were well
and favorably regarded, on the coast. The others were
understood, after 1844, to be occasionally plotting a
rising against the authorities of the Department ; and
some of them were certainly men of bad character.
Therefore, although the settlement, whose nucleus was
Captain J. A. Butter's Fort, near the junction of the
American and Sacramento rivers, was an officially rec
ognized thing, and although Sutter himself was a regu
lar officer of the government, and had received in 1841
a land grant of the maximum legal amount (eleven
square leagues) from Governor Alvarado, still the Cal
ifornians suspected Slitter's settlers more than they did
any other large company of Americans, and feared very
often the consequences that might ensue if many more
immigrants same over the Sierras. It was never so
much any official American aggression as the coming of
bad Americans that the Californians of those days seri-
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 41
ously and justly dreaded. There was indeed never any
thought of actually expelling these new-comers, because
every one saw the impossibility, after 1843, of any such
attempt. And if the new settlers should prove peace
able men, the Californians were never disposed to mal
treat them. But the settlers themselves were frequently
the most willing to give a boastful and bad account of
the great things that they would yet do in the land.
John A. Sutter himself was of Swiss family, and of
German birth. He long (to say the least of it) per
mitted the story to be circulated that he had been in the
service of Charles X. in France ; but in later years he
admitted the falsity of the report. After living some
years in our country, and becoming a citizen, he came
to California in 1839, by the way of the overland route
to Oregon, and by a sea passage from Oregon via the
Sandwich Islands. He at once founded, with official
permission, his settlement in the Sacramento Valley,
and two years later got his grant of land. In 1841
he was joined by some of the American immigrants
who came overland that year, and the subsequent
years saw a rapid increase of his prosperity and of
the numbers of those who either assisted him, or took
up land under his grant, or used his fort as their ren
dezvous. He employed many Indians, raised large
crops of grain, aimed to make his little colony the pro
ducer of nearly all its own supplies, showed much hos
pitality to new-comers, and, in 1845, undertook to assist
Governor Micheltorena in the latter's troubles. In con
sequence of this last blunder he was on poor terms with
the successful revolutionary authorities during the brief
remainder of the Mexican period. In character Sutter
was an affable and hospitable visionary, of hazy ideas,
42 CALIFORNIA.
with a great liking for popularity, and with a mania for
undertaking too much. An heroic figure he was not,
although his romantic position as pioneer in the great
valley made him seem so to many travelers and his
torians. When the gold-seekers later came, the am
bitious Sutter utterly lost his head, and threw away all
his truly wonderful opportunities. He, however, also
suffered many things from the injustice of the new-com
ers. He died a few years since in poverty, complaining
bitterly of American ingratitude. He should undoubt
edly have been better treated by most of our country
men, but, if he was often wronged, he was also often in
the wrong, and his fate was the ordinary one of the per
sistent and unteachable dreamer. He remained to the
end a figure more picturesque than manly in our Cal
ifornia life.
The settlers at and near Sutler's Fort included some
families and a number of very able young men. In
January, 1844, the fort was visited by the first exploring
expedition that the young officer of engineers, then Lieu
tenant Fremont, conducted to the land. The expedition
had crossed the Sierras in midwinter ; and now, greatly
exhausted and nearly starved, the men were overjoyed
to meet with the delights of Sutter's hospitality. This
expedition it was that the young leader so finely de
scribed in his great Report, a work that soon became
almost universally known, and that will always remain
a monument of literary skill in its kind. "While the
exploring expedition had really visited little country
that was not already more or less known to settlers
or to trappers, this description first let the public hear
of the places that had been seen. I fancy that this
Report will be, in future generations, General Fre-
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 43
mont's only title, and a very good one, to lasting and
genuine fame.
Just at the very moment of the conquest, the greatest
of the overland immigrations, so far, was taking place,
that to California and Oregon in 1846. Although this
company reached the land after the conquest, their
journey should be treated of before the conquest, because,
when they set out, they knew nothing of the change.
The importance of their movement, which brought to
California directly several hundred new settlers, and by
way of Oregon many more, cannot well be overestimated.
The men of 1846 afterwards joined the other Ameri
cans, during the interregnum, in building up for them
selves the strong conservative sentiment that proved so
useful in the constitutional convention of 1849. The
new-comers arrived in time, also, to join in suppressing
the revolt of the winter of 1846-47 ; and their jour
ney overland was marked by numerous interesting in
cidents, of which we have good accounts. Two of the
best books ever written on emigrant life were produced
by men of this company ; 1 and the latest of all the im
migrants of this year formed the famous and unhappy
Donner party, whose sufferings will always remain prom
inent among the tales of human sorrow. Their story
belongs to the winter of 1846-47 ; but, as we have said,
all these events are in effect prior to the conquest, of
Avhich the people concerned knew nothing until they
reached California.
The Donner party, to speak very briefly of this affair,
consisted of some eighty men, women, and children.
On the way they were belated by the difficulties of
1 J. Q. Thornton's Oregon and California (New York, 1849, 2 vols.)
and Edwin Bryant's What I Saw in California (New York, 1848).
44 CALIFORNIA.
the new route that they had taken, by the south side
of Salt Lake. On the Humboldt River provisions ran
low, their forebodings increased, and their gloom was
deepened by an affray, in which one of the best men
"in the train struck down and killed a young companion,
during a quarrel caused by the delay of a wagon. The
homicide was tried, and condemned to exile from the
train, in which his own family was traveling. He act
ually made his way to California on foot, in advance of
the train, and later helped to relieve his family and his
comrades.
This affray was a characteristic result of the nervous
strain incident to the old-fashioned sort of emigrant
life, among people who are not well accustomed to such
life ; but it was only a prophecy of the demoralization
that was to follow. Crossing the Humboldt Desert,
the party reached the Truckee Canon, where they were
met by a couple of Sutter's Indians, who had been sent,
with mule-loads of beef, to meet and temporarily to
supply them. After this, when they had gone up a little
beyond the present town of Truckee, they came in view
of the summit range, already covered with snow. The
sight destroyed for a time all their good sense. In
wild and irregular efforts to cross the steep range in this
snow, they lost two or three days, and at last, when they
had begun to make up their minds to the horrible
thought of wintering in the mountains, upon such pro
vision as they had and upon such as they could yet
make by slaughtering their animals, they lost still some
hours in brooding over their fate. At this crisis a
great storm arose, and in one fatal night their cattle
were buried in the snows beyond hope of recovery, and
they were left to live as they might in the poor huts that
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 45
must now be their only refuge. Sutter's two Indians
remained with them, as helpless as themselves.
The subsequent tale of starvation, of the " Forlorn
Hope," and of its great effort to reach the settlements
in the Sacramento Valley, — an effort in which seven out
of the twenty-two in the " Forlorn Hope " succeeded, —
of the successive relief expeditions from the valley, of the
great loss of life in the whole Donner party, of the re
sort to human flesh, and of the final rescue in the late
winter and in the spring of 1847, all this is too long for
us to tell here.1 The story is a very instructive one,
however, as an illustration of just the strength and the
weakness that men and women of our century and race
show under such trials ; and it well deserves the elabo
rate treatment that it has in later times received.
In closing our account of California as the conquest
found it, we have yet two things to mention that proved
in the sequel to be of vast importance to all concerned.
One is the system of land grants that, in the later years,
had more and more developed itself. Most of the
ranches in California in 1846 were held under grants
made by the various governors of California, — grants
legally subject to a confirmation from the general gov
ernment, although this confirmation was not usually
considered of sufficient importance to be actually ob
tained. The governors made their grants under coloni
zation laws, and were therefore limited somewhat as
1 The best authority is McGlashan's History of the Donner Party,
San Francisco, 1880. Thornton's account in his Oregon and Califor
nia is also good. Sutter's two Indians were killed and eaten by the
starving members of the "Forlorn Hope"; and the hospitable Sut-
ter, in his latest statements, complained bitterly of this ungrateful
act, whereby, as he says, he lost not only his beef but his two good
Indians.
46 CALIFORNIA.
to the number of square leagues that could be granted
to one person, and as to the places and conditions of
the grants. No exact survey was ever made of the
tracts granted, which usually were defined, each as so
and so many square leagues, to be taken within given
outside boundaries, the boundaries themselves being gen
erally natural ones, or else parallels of latitude. Another
fashion of land grants existed, however, within the limits
of legally recognized pueblos, or towns. P^ach of these
had, namely, in theory, a tract of four square leagues,
within which its authorities might grant lots of land to
actual settlers. This tract was of course actually ill de
fined, and the nature of the town's title to the land was,
to our American minds, somewhat obscure. Upon indi
vidual land titles, whether derived from ranch grants
or pueblo rights, there frequently were imposed, by the
terms of the grant, special conditions, whose nature also
often seemed obscure, since in many cases they were
left unobserved, although the grant might still receive,
in all later years, every practical official recognition.
On the whole, then, this system of Mexican grants, sim
ple, vague, and useful enough for the purposes of a pas
toral people widely scattered over a vast territory, was
sure to cause doubt, vexation, and sorrow whenever a
new and numerous population should appear, and when
ever the land should grow valuable.
The other important fact to be mentioned is that, be
tween 1836 and 1846, on the shores of San Francisco
Bay, at a considerable distance from the old mission in
one direction and from the presidio of San Francisco in
another, there had grown up the beginnings of the mod
ern city in the village of Yerba Buena, named from the
cove in front of it. This little village was from the
THE TERRITORY AND THE STRANGERS. 47
first a trading-place, whose dwellers were mostly Amer
icans, Englishmen, and other foreigners. The Hudson
Bay Company maintained an establishment here for
some years, but withdrew it in 1845. The most promi
nent men there, at the beginning of 1846, were a few
American merchants. Grants of lots of land had been
made at Yerba Buena, and this portion of the already
legally existent pueblo of San Francisco (whose bounda
ries, had they been then defined, would have extended
far to the south on the peninsula) occupied in many
minds the place of the promising nucleus of a future
great city.
With this preliminary sketch of the country, of its
inhabitants, and of its strangers, in the days before our
conquest, we must pass to the proper subject of our dis
course, to the coming, to the deeds, and to the fortunes,
of our people in California between 1846 and 1856.
CHAPTER II.
THE AMERICAN AS CONQUEROR : THE SECRET MISSSIOX
AND THE BEAR FLAG.
Ix the strict sense, we Americans have seldom been
conquerors ; and early California shows us our na
tion in this somewhat rare character. A few men did
the work for us ; hut their acts were in some cases di
rectly representative of the national qualities, and in
others of far-reaching influence on the life and character
of our people in California in the subsequent days. For
both reasons these acts concern us deeply here, and are
very instructive for our purposes.
Moreover, the story of the conquest belongs, for yet
other reasons, even more to national than to local an
nals. Our plans for getting the coveted land, and the
actual execution of these plans, are a part of the drama
of the Mexican War, and our national honor is deeply
concerned in the interpretation that shall be given to the
facts. As for the treatment of these facts here, a bare
summary would be, in the present day, more vexatious
than a detailed study ; for a bare summary would either
leave all the mysteries unsolved, or else seem to fill all
the gaps with mere dogmas. The whole story of the
conquest is turbid with popular legends. We cannot
follow the narrative in a simple way, and tell incident
after incident. The condition of our knowledge of the
subject forbids such a purely narrative procedure save
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 49
in fragments. What can be given might indeed be sug
gestively entitled " Commentaries on the Conquest," in
a very literal sense of the word commentary. We have
to employ numerous sources of information, and to use
our best historical intelligence. Yet we beseech the
reader not to despair of finding in this chapter the inter
est that properly belongs to a dramatic series of events.
These very problems of the conquest, the mysteries that
have hung over parts of the story, are, as we have just
hinted, themselves dramatic, and the investigation seems
to me to present many elements of exciting interest,
even apart from the original fascination of the incidents.
The subsequent history of the American people in
California turns, we have suggested, in large measure
upon the occurrences of the conquest. The prejudices,
the enmities, and the mistakes of that unhappy time
bore rich fruit in the sequel, determining to a great ex
tent the future relations of the new-comers and the na
tives ; and these relations in their turn determined, in no
small degree, both the happiness and the moral welfare
of the new-comers themselves. We must understand
the conquest if we are to understand what followed.
The attitude that chance, the choice of one or two rep
resentative men, and our national character made us
assume towards the Californians at the moment of our
appearance among them as conquerors, we have ever
since kept, with disaster to them, and not without
disgrace and degradation to ourselves. The story is
no happy one ; but this book is written, not to extol
our transient national glories, but to serve the true patri
ot's interest in a clear self-knowledge, and in the for
mation of sensible ideals of national greatness.
From the point of view of the study "of historical fact
4
50 CALIFORNIA.
as such, this history of the conquest is one of the stran
gest examples of the vitality of the truth. Never were
the real motives and methods of a somewhat complex
undertaking more carefully, or, by the help of luck,
more successfully, hidden from the public than the
methods and motives of certain of our national agents in
California at the time of the conquest have for a gener
ation been hidden. And never has accident more un
mercifully turned at last upon its own creations.
I. THE CONFIDENTIAL AGEXT, AND THE BEGINNING OF
WAR.
As the reader knows from the foregoing, our hearts
were set upon California as one prize that made the
Mexican War most worth fighting. The Bay of San
Francisco, the future commerce of the Pacific, the fair
and sunny land beyond the Sierras, the full and even
boundary westward, the possible new field for the ex
tension of slavery, — such motives were powerful with
some or all of our leaders. The hasty seizure of Mon
terey in 1842, although wholly disavowed by our gov
ernment, was a betrayal of our national feeling, to say
the least, if not of our national plans, which no apology
could withdraw from plain history. Meanwhile, with
more or less good foundation, we had strong fears of
both England and France as dangerous rivals in the
acquisition of this western land. In short, to use the
phrase so often repeated by opponents of the Mexican
War, California formed a great part of the " Naboth's
vineyard " that we coveted, and that for years we had
expected some day to get by the fairest convenient
means.
Nor was our desire for California in itself an evil.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 51
However difficult the righteous satisfaction of the desire
might prove, this desire was inevitable. Our national
duty doubtless forbade our cheerful surrender of the
Pacific coast to any European power. And by sloth,
neglect, and misgovernment, Mexico had done all she
could do to make her California vineyard bring forth
wild grapes, and to forfeit her proprietary rights in its
soil. Not " Naboth " in this case was the one whom we
were most in danger of wronging, although indeed we
did wrong him fearfully. He, poor fellow, was dis
tracted in his own house, tilled not his own fields, and
often was stained with blood. It was the true proprietor
of California that, when we coveted the land, we were
most apt to injure ; it was the disorganized but not
wholly unpromising young nation of a few thousand
cheerful, hospitable, and proud souls on the Pacific coast
that we were especially bound to respect. With their
good-will if possible, and at all events with the strictest
possible regard for their rights, we were bound in honor
to proceed in our plans and undertakings on the Pacific
coast. The Mexican War, if deliberately schemed, and
forced into life through our aggressive policy, would be
indeed a crime ; but it would be adding another great
crime if we wronged these nearly independent Califor-
nians, while assailing their unkind but helpless mother.
The slow and steady growth of the American settle
ments in California was not the result of any definite
plot on the part of our government. Yet, as the corre
spondence of the State Department with Consul Larkin
shows, the government was curious concerning this very
matter ; and the American colonization was looked upon
as a fortunate occurrence for us, and as a process that,
if let alone by the course of events and particularly by
52 CALIFORNIA.
European aggressors, might of itself suffice, here as in
Texas, to secure to us the country. Yet nobody in
tended to leave the decision of the matter to so slow a
process as this. Natural colonization would need to be
assisted.
During 1845, and after the accession of the Polk ad
ministration, our government was busily preparing for
the expected Mexican War ; and of course California
had a large place in the cabinet policy. Buchanan
was then secretary of state, Marcy of war, and Mr.
George Bancroft of the navy. To Buchanan natu
rally fell much of the work of dealing directly with Jsa-
both ; while Mr. Bancroft prepared repeated instruc
tions to our naval squadron in the Pacific, and strength
ened it gradually for its work. Just how California
entered into these administration plans, this there was
good reason at the time for keeping profoundly secret.
It is helpful, however, to remind ourselves that there
were, on the surface of things, three definable and not
unnatural ways of undertaking the task. Possibly no
one was chosen ; possibly one was decidedly preferred ;
possibly they were in some way combined. But, stated
in a merely formal way. and for our own purposes
sharply distinguished, they were : (1) to wait until
war had been forced upon Mexico and actually begun,
and thereupon to seize the Department of California as
an act of war ; (2) to undertake, with semi-official
support of some sort, the colonization of the country by
an unnaturally rapid immigration of Americans into
it ; and (3) to take advantage of the strained relations
already existing between California and the mother
country, and, by means of intrigue, to get the land
through the act of its own native inhabitants.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 53
The question as to the use made of these possible
plans is, however, at once complicated for us by the fact
that the conquest, as it actually occurred in 1846, seems
to express on the face of events a plan that at least in
part differs from all the foregoing, and that for boldness,
both physical and moral, would surpass them altogether.
This plan is the one usually supposed to have found ex
pression in the singular operations of the gallant young
Captain Fremont with his surveying party, in the spring
of 1846. I must beg the reader to approach this very
curious historical problem with a mind quite free from
all presuppositions, since, as we shall soon see, the his
torians of California have always been not only much
perplexed about the matter, but also in some respects
misled. The whole truth about Captain Fremont's op
erations in California in 1846 has never so far been
told. But, at all events, whatever the truth, the appear
ances, as they have been interpreted, have certainly
been made to indicate a fourth plan, whose independ
ence of all moral considerations on the part of the
government said to have ordered it, and whose auda
cious vigor, would put it on a level with that Russian
Central Asian policy, whereof the Penjdeh incident has
recently reminded the world. The execution of this
supposed plan gave Captain Fremont a national reputa
tion, nearly made him, ten years later, president, and
still remains his most popular title to distinction.
To speak of this supposed fourth plan is to plunge at
once into the incidents of the conquest itself, and forces
us to begin with its romantic first scene, the "Bear
Flag Affair." We shall indeed have to return later to
the point of departure, and from the California affairs
of 1846 we shall need to go back to the Washington
54 CALIFORNIA.
councils of 1845 ; but this defect in our narrative is not
ours, but belongs of necessity to the comprehension of a
problematic and, in the past, partly legendary story.
The young Captain Fremont, of the topographical
engineers, had, as we all know, and as the foregoing
chapter has more particularly shown, acquired before
1845 a great public reputation by what most people
called a kind of discovery of California, inasmuch as
he had described his own journey thither, and in a most
excellent narrative had brought the fair land before the
eyes of numberless readers. "When he set out in 1845
on a new expedition, he was certain to be followed with
no little interest. This time it was at least his ostensible
object to explore the most direct routes to the Pacific
coast, and to do topographical work in California. He
was accompanied by some sixty men, surveyors, guides,
and assistants. The party were well armed, and had
about two hundred horses. During the winter they
came in two divisions through the Sierras, and when
the two divisions had found each other once more, after
considerable difficulty, the captain, almost alone, went,
with a passport from Sutter, to Monterey, and asked
permission from Castro "to winter "with his party "in
the valley of the San Joaquin, for refreshment and re
pose." So he tells us himself,1 and adds that leave was
granted, "and also leave to continue my explorations
south to the region of the Rio Colorado." In the last
days of February, as he then says, he began his march
south, "crossing into the valley of the Salinas." The
purpose of going south from the San Joaquin Valley to
the Rio Colorado by way of the Salinas Valley, as if
1 In his defense before the Kearny-Fri'-inont court-martial, Sen.
Ex. Doc. 33, 1st Session, 30th Congress, p. 372.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 55
one should set out to survey the region from the Mo
hawk Valley to the Potomac by crossing over into the
Connecticut River Valley, was neither at the time, nor
in the immediately following investigations, made per
fectly plain hy the friends of Captain Fremont, although
he has since given a more definite explanation. At all
events, we have his assurance before the Kearny court-
martial that " the object of the expedition was wholly
of a scientific character, without the least view to mil
itary operations, and with the determination to avoid
them as being, not only unauthorized by the govern
ment, but detrimental or fatal to the pursuit in which I
was engaged." Under these circumstances a difficulty
which now occurred with General Jose Castro was
especially unfortunate, both for the pursuit in which
Captain Fremont was so far engaged and for other in
terests. In the midst of his march through the Salinas
Valley, and as a result of petty occurrences for which
his rude men were by no means blameless, Captain Fre
mont received a notification from Castro to depart, ac
companied with threats of violence in case he should not
obey. The consequence is well known. The young
captain " took a position on the Sierra," on the Gavilan
peak, overlooking the Salinas Valley, " intrenched it,
raised the flag of the United States, and awaited the
approach of the assailants." But Castro's anxiety to
assail such a position, guarded by American riflemen,
was more apparent than real. And, on the other hand,
the gallant captain of the topographical party desired
only to bid a temporary defiance, and was not anxious
to begin an aggressive war. After a few days he re
tired, aiming for the San Joaquin Valley, and retreating
with leisurely stages northward. This was in March,
56 CALIFORNIA.
1846. He passed through the Sacramento Valley to
wards Oregon, and had already reached the Oregon
border, on the banks of Klamath Lake, when he was
overtaken by a new-comer from Washington, Lieutenant
Archibald Gillespie, who had nearly caught up with the
main party, when Captain Fivmont, advised of Gilles-
pie's approach, turned back with a few men and met
him.
The meeting was a romantic one, but its romance
sounds very hackneyed now, since the tale has been re
peated in so many books of Western adventure. It is
enough to remind the reader that the night following
the meeting was enlivened by an attack made by lurk
ing Indians, who killed three of Captain Fremont's
men before the wholly unguarded little company were
fairly awake, and who were then promptly repulsed.
But, before this incautious sleep had taken possession of
the camp, Gillespie had delivered to the young captain
a packet of family letters from Senator Benton. a letter
of introduction from the secretary of state at Washing
ton, and some verbal information of an official nature.
Gillespie had left Washington with secret personal in
structions from the president, and with a secret dis
patch, early in November. 1845. This meeting on the
shores of Klamath Lake took place on the evening of
the 9th of May, 184G. Gillespie, after reaching Mon
terey and seeing Consul Larkin there, had promptly
sought out Captain Fremont, whom the government had
quite certainly intended him to meet.
The nature of the information delivered to Captain
Fremont has remained heretofore, for the public, a
mystery ; and writers have vied with each other in
guesses, although they have usually inferred that, at all
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 57
events, what Gillespie delivered somehow officially
authorized Captain Fremont's subsequent course.
The common argument upon this topic insists espe
cially upon the peculiar facts about Gillespie's mission, —
facts made public in some well-known later testimony
that will concern us farther on. The lieutenant had
come in haste across Mexico, had brought with him
nothing written relating to his mission save his letters
of introduction and the private packet from Senator
Benton, whose contents, as we shall see, are said to have
been otherwise secured against intrusion. But the
really important, directly official part of his mission,
namely, his secret dispatch, had been committed to
memory by the lieutenant, and then destroyed, before
he landed in Mexico. In California he repeated its
contents to Captain Fremont. The obvious inference,
as people very plausibly say, is, in view of the subsequent
events, that Captain Fremont was instructed to use his
force to attempt what was possible, with the least need
ful compromising of his government, in the way of stir
ring up the American settlers and any other available
persons against the authorities of the Department, so as
to get for us the territory in advance of the declaration
of war. If possible, says this commonly received story,
he was to avoid too great prominence as an officer of
the United States, but he was by all means to get the
territory. And so here would be the fourth plan above
mentioned. If that actually was our plan, which indeed
yet remains to be tested, then we were not to trouble
ourselves to get first, in the eyes of the world, a show of
belligerent authority ; nor were we, by multiplying the
numbers of our countrymen settled in the land, to ac
quire gradually a color of right to interfere on their be-
58 CALIFORNIA.
half ; nor yet were we, by peaceful intrigue with the
native government of the already rebellious Depart
ment, to win its leaders over to our side. These meth
ods would all have been morally dubious. The fourth
method, if it was truly our method, would certainly call
for no doubts as to its true nature in the light of the
moral law. According to that method, we should have
used the presence of this gallant young officer, with his
armed force, to seize for ourselves without warning upon
an unprotected Department, and so in time of peace to
gain for our country the prize of war. Precedents
enough can indeed be found in history for such under
takings, but this plan would be, at least in our brief
annals, not a frequently adopted device, nor one pre
cisely pleasing to the consciences of the more sensitive
of our countrymen. Such, then, is one traditional un
derstanding of the matter, and of course this under
standing throws all the responsibility on the government.
The reader must not, however, hastily conclude that
Gillespie's mission is to be so readily understood ; for
possibly, in the absence of further light, we may fail to
do justice both to the cabinet and to Captain Fremont,
— who, for the rest, is usually considered as merely the
instrument, — unless we suspend our decision a little.
But at all events, what immediately followed seems on
its face to support the theory that this supposed fourth
plan was the real object of Gillespie's mission. For, so
soon as the instructions had been delivered, Captain
Fremont returned to the Sacramento Valley ; and not
long afterwards, certain settlers who visited his camp
near the " Buttes " began to hear, and to repeat, both
to him and to one another, wild and alarming rumors
of what Castro and the Californians were intending to
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 59
do to our countrymen. Castro, they declared, had pro
claimed it as his purpose to drive all Americans out of
the country, to lay waste their farms, to raise the Indians
against them, to destroy them altogether. The captain
of the surveying party still declined to accede to the
appeals of these frequenters of his camp for immediate
armed interference in their behalf, but he gave them to
understand that, if they were assailed, he would help
them. One story, and in fact the most authoritative
one, also knows that in secret he spoke more plainly,
and that his orders alone brought about the first hostile
act of Americans against the government of the Depart
ment. Of this we shall hear more soon ; but in any
case, whether his words or the courage of the settlers
produced the first outbreak, certain it is that early in
June hostilities began. A band of horses, the property
of the Californian government, was just then, as it
chanced, in charge of a party of men containing among
its chief members Lieutenant Arce. This party were
bringing the horses from Sonoma to the south, by a cir
cuitous route, namely, by way of Sutter's Fort, fording
the Sacramento River near that point. A band of Amer
ican settlers, some twelve in number, led by one Mer-
ritt, a frontiersman of no great reputation for all virtues,
came upon this party after it had forded the Sacramento
and had passed southward some miles. The Americans
seized upon the body of horses, but released the men,
who, quite unprepared for such an attack, had made no
resistance. The latter were now charged to take the
news to Castro at their pleasure. The marauding
Americans sent the horses to Captain Fremont's camp,
and then quickly reinforced, as the news flew, by settlers,
who now, at any rate, felt certain that hostilities with
60 CALIFORNIA.
Castro must come, rapidly proceeded to Sonoma, took
possession of the unguarded and sleeping town on the
morning of June 14th, and thereafter sent as prisoners
to Slitter's Fort, under an escort, four leading men of
the place. General Vallejo, his brother Salvador, Mr.
Leese, and M. Prtulon.
The main body of the Americans, remaining at So
noma, were quickly strengthened by numerous additions
of a very miscellaneous character. Some of the settlers
who thus came were peaceable men. of high respecta
bility, who felt that now the thing was once begun every
American man must join it in self-defense. Others,
again, of good character, were seriously alarmed by the
aforesaid rumors, which they had heard near Captain
Fremont's camp. Others who came were just such
rogues and vagabonds as might be expected under the
circumstances.1 At Sonoma they awaited in arms Cas
tro's coming, not to mention the generally desired ap
pearance of their expected ally, Captain Fremont ; they
chose officers, helped themselves in the town to what
ever supplies they needed for their new military life,
and also did what most of all has been remembered
concerning their brief life together at Sonoma, namely,
they raised their new flag, a standard of somewhat uncer
tain origin as regards the cotton cloth whereof it was
made ; and on it they painted with berry-juice some
thing that they called a Bear.
II. THE BEAR-FLAG HEROES.
So far we have followed the results of the acts of the
young Captain Fremont, regarding the whole as his un-
1 My impressions on these matters are founded in part on MS.
statements, and in part on documents hereafter to be quoted.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 61
dertaking. But in the little interval that elapsed before
he appeared in person at Sonoma, these Bear Flag men,
more or less conscious of their independent responsibil
ities, lived through a very curious episode of California
history, — one that seemed to some of them afterwards
ineffably glorious, and that in fact was unspeakably
ridiculous, as well as a little tragical, and for the coun
try disastrous. Until Captain Fremont considered him
self warranted in coming to the help of this Spartan
band to save them from their not often clearly visible,
but, in their glowing fancy, multitudinous hosts of ene
mies, the Bear Flag men had things all in their own
way ; and the gallant captain was directly responsible,
at the moment, neither for their glory nor for their
misbehavior. They had, as a rule, the wildest notions
of what they were there to do. The first party, left
behind when the prisoners were taken to Sutter's Fort,
increased rapidly, as we have said ; but of course these
additions were stragglers, and every man brought his
private conceptions. Captain Fremont had come with
the United States army to liberate the country ; the
wicked Spaniards were assailing the inoffensive Amer
icans at Sonoma, who needed the help of their brave
comrades ; the Americans had determined to be free
from Spanish misrule, and had raised aloft the standard
of freedom and equal rights ; in a shorter form, the fun
had begun, — such were notions that filled some men's
heads. Others, as we have suggested, well knew that
they were there engaged as marauders in making quite
an unprovoked assault on the Californians. One, Mr.
Wm. Baldridge, in his statement made for Mr. Ban
croft's library, says, as he looks back on those days :
" My own sentiments >vere that making war upon the
62 CALIFORNIA.
Californians was an act of great injustice ; but, as the
deed had been done, I preferred taking the risk of be
ing killed in battle to that of being sent to Mexico in
irons." But Mr. Balclridge himself remained in doubt
for some time after the beginning of the difficulties as
to whether war would really result. The whole affair,
to his mind, was '* brought on so gradually " that, even
after the motley company had spent a number of days
together, few could have given any connected account
of what had really brought them there. The few that
could give any connected account, however, are the ones
who endow the whole affair with its true humor.
Among the party who " surprised the fortress " of So
noma, or who, in plain speech, waked up the sleeping
and defenseless villagers on the morning of June 14, was
the noble-hearted Dr. Semple, a man at that time not
quite forty years of age, a Kentuckian, about seven feet
high in the body, and in soul, of course, incomparably
loftier. He was not exactly a typical frontiersman, al
though he liked to appear as such ; 1 nor yet a typical
statesman, although he was conscious of some approach
in spirit to that dignity. Nor was he a typical orator,
nor even a typical product of the world's higher civil
ization, although at times he seemed to himself to be all
of these things. He was, however, a man of some nat
ural ability, and of an especially American talent for
public affairs, but he was subject to the chief character
istic follies of his time and nation. He could preside
well at a public meeting, and he later made an excellent
1 " He is in a buckskin dress," says his later partner, Walter Col-
ton (Three Years in California, New York, 1852, p. 32), writing but
a few months after this time, "a foxskin cap; is true with his rifle,
ready with his pen, and quick at the tyj^p-case."
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 63
president of the Constitutional Convention in 1849.
He was enterprising, kindly, and honest. As editor of
the '• Californian," in 1846-48, he did good public ser
vice. But these excellences are as characteristic of
our nation and of frontier training as are his weak
nesses. In our truly American fashion he trusted in
liberty, speech-making, God, and the press ; he was
boastful, garrulous, oratorical, evidently putting all due
trust in the public discussions of great questions by
wrangling fellow-citizens. When American interests
were concerned as against foreigners, he was as blind as
the divine justice, only with a slightly different result.
Those who knew him in early days never forgot his vast
height, his ready flow of speech, his righteous, glowing,
and empty idealism, his genial assumption of statesman
ship, his often highly serviceable cleverness, his sturdy
honor and uprightness, his ambition, and, after all, his
ineffectiveness in accomplishing the objects of his am
bition.
Now Dr. Semple became, as fortune would have it,
the Thucydides of the Bear Flag war. If one objects,
to this assertion, that in fact there was no real Bear
Flag war, only some pillage and skirmishing, we should,
indeed, have to admit the objection, but should, in re
ply, leave it to the reader to modify accordingly his
conception of the Thucydides. But the history, the
" Treasure Forever," appeared, at all events, for the
first in Semple's " Californian." l It was used by Ed
win Bryant in his well-known book, and it has later
passed in part into the county histories and other great
1 I know it in its republished form in the Californian for May 29,
1847 (San Francisco Pioneers' Library file). See, for Bryant's sum
mary and quotation of it, his. What I saw in California, p. 286, sqq.
64 CALIFORNIA.
authorities on California annals. Dr. Semple himself
returned with the convoy of the prisoners to Sutler's
Fort, but his inner consciousness was quite adequate to
the lofty story of the Sonoma doings, whenever his hon
est eyes happened to give him no information.
J)r. Semple, in his account, felt "justified in saying
that the world has not hitherto manifested so high a de
gree of civilization." For the Bear Flag party was at
first "without officers or the .slightest degree of organ
ization, and with no publicly declared object," and yet
it did no wrong. This, of course, is the kind of disor
ganized and unconscious filibustering that is always asso
ciated with the highest civilization, and one is prepared
to follow the good-hearted doctor in his further asser
tion that the watchword of all the party was " equal
rights and equal laws." One of the number, indeed, as
we learn from Dr. Semple himself, interpreted this
watchword very naturally, I fancy, but a little hastily,
by proposing to make a fair and equal division of the
spoils found at Sonoma ; " but a unanimous indignant
frown made him shrink from the presence of honest
men, and from that time forward no man dared to hint
anything like violating the sanctity of a private house
or private property." Dr. Semple is, in this assertion,
doubtless right ; as, after he himself left for Suiter's
Fort, hints were quite superfluous. The intentions and
the methods used were, of course, perfectly honest ; as
some have stated the case, one " borrowed supplies on
the faith and credit of the Bear FIng government," a
" degree of civilization " that, to be sure, was not quite
unprecedented. But then, as we see, divinely author
ized as their business was, the Bear Fk-g men could not
expect to be fed by the ravens, nor to gather pots of
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 65
manna on the already dry and yellow summer hills
about Sonoma. The motives which prompted them
were, as Dr. Semple says of Merritt's individual mo
tives,1 " too high, too holy," to permit them " for a mo
ment to suffer private feelings to bias " them " in public
duties." " Their children, in generations yet to come,
will look back with pleasure upon the commencement of
a revolution carried on by their fathers upon principles
high and holy as the laws of eternal justice." But, this
being so, it was morally required that fathers, for the
sake of posterity, should take good care of their own
health. And the " credit " of the Bear Flag govern
ment was both necessary and (in view of the absence of
weapons and pugnacity among the good people of the
Sonoma district) sufficient to supply what was needed
for this purpose.
Dr. Semple never recovered from his admiration for
the heroic civilization of the Bear Flag republic. In
later times he liked to re-tell the story to the innocent
new-comers of the gold period ; and he sincerely hoped
to reach at least the governorship of California by vir
tue of the halo of glory in which he saw, both the great
" revolution " at Sonoma, and himself as once an hum
ble servant of the Bear Flag state. In fact, only a year
later, when he was Fourth of July orator at San Fran
cisco, the great events of this brief period inspired him
to say, with becoming long-armed gestures, and to print,
later, in the " Californian," just as I here quote them,
certain burning words that must not be forgotten : "If
we conquer country, we have no prince to claim it, or
to dictate laws for its rule ; no tyrant hand is laid
upon them, but the glorious American eagle spreads her
i See, in Bryant, p. 290.
5
66 CALIFORNIA.
balmy wings over even a conquered people, and affords
them protection and freedom. . . . Tyrants trembled
on their thrones, and wrong and oppression is hiding
their deformed heads." ]
But small states are noted for their large proportion of
great men, and when Dr. Seniple went back to Sutler's
Fort there was left behind at Sonoma a second statesman,
of equal native genius, but of less sunny temperament,
to adorn the Bear Flag republic. This was William Ide.
Providence evidently meant this man to typify for us,
even more than Dr. Seniple could do, our national tal
ent and mission for civilizing the benighted Spanish-
American peoples of this continent. His career, indeed,
was short, and was happily marked by no violent atro
cities of his own choosing ; and, in so far, he is not
typical. But he had the same characteristic and deli
cate appreciation of human rights and duties which
promised so much success to us, at that time, in our
efforts to do good to our neighbors. He had all our
common national conscience ; he was at heart both
kindly and upright, like the great doctor ; and, like the
doctor again, he was an idealist of the ardent and ab
stract type. He differed from Dr. Semple chiefly in a
curious intensity of inner life that forbade him, save on
rare occasions, to speak his whole mind. His fellow-
men generally misunderstood him, and he resolutely
bore with their misunderstandings, and expressed his
willingness to forgive them. But he forsook none of
1 Cnlifornwn for July 10, 1847. In the rival Yerba Buena paper,
the Star, a correspondent failed not to notice the humorous side of
this scene: Dr. Semple as orator, his great form half bent over his
manuscript, his back turned on the ladies of the audience, and his
eloquence unchecked by grammatical considerations. Star for July
17, Bancroft Library file.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 67
his fixed notions, and the plainest trait about him was
his obstinacy. People called him a Mormon ; but that
story was false. He was at the time of this affair not
very young, having been born about 179G.
His life has been sketched, and his own account of
his connection with the Bear Flag affair printed, by his
family, not very long since, in a privately circulated
book, of which I first consulted a copy at Mr. Bancroft's
library.1 He was a native of Rutland, Massachusetts,
had spent his youth in Vermont, and, later, had lived
in the West, as farmer, school-teacher, and carpenter.
He had met with some adversities of fortune, which had
turned him, in religion, from a transient love of Univer-
salism back to Orthodoxy ; he had been active some
times as peacemaker in Western land disputes, but he
had had no practical experience in political business.
To California he went with the emigration of 1845. In
the mountains he did what gained him, later, some tra
ditional fame among the emigrants, — dragging his
wagons, one by one, up and over a place on the Truckee
route that less obstinate men had supposed wholly inac
cessible for wheeled vehicles. In 1846, after a tedious
winter, he and his family went on to a farm compara
tively high up in the Sacramento Valley, and that very
spring the reports began to be circulated among these
northern settlers that Castro was coming to drive all
1 I have since bought a copy of this still uncommon book, which
surely deserves a wide circulation. It has three separate titles, all
long, the principal one beginning : A Biographical Sketch of the Life
of IVilliam B. Ide, with a minute and interesting account of, etc.
(the whole forming an "old-fashioned title-page, such as presents a
tabular view of the volume's contents"). The copyright is dated
1880, and the book is said to be "published for the subscribers,"
place not mentioned. Ide's personal narrative begins with chap. ix.
p. 100, and ends with chap. xvi. on p. 206.
68 CALIFORNIA.
Americans out of the land. Ide hastily set out, " stirred
to the quick," as one family account has it,1 and joined
the first party that went to Sonoma.
Yet, hefore setting out for Sonoma, Ide had heen
among those settlers who went to Captain Fremont's
camp, on hearing the alarming rumors, in order to get
his help. The answers of the captain had seemed to Ide's
sturdy and untutored soul vague and not strictly moral.
The captain seemed, he declares, to want the settlers to
do some aggressive, warlike deed, and, in particular,
to steal certain horses, and thus to provoke Castro to
hostility. Thus, also, Avhen the Mexican War should
begin, the settlers would, according to Ide's understand
ing of the plan, have had some part in hastening the
conquest. This whole plot, desiring the settlers to an
ticipate hostilities under United States instigation, but
without any open and immediate violation of neutrality
from Captain Fremont's own party until the thing
should be under way, seemed to Ide's honest wit unin
telligible, especially if, as he sincerely thought, Castro
had really made this terrible threatening proclamation,
and was soon coming in force. As he understood the
thing, it was simple self-defense. If the settlers, then,
could not be helped by Captain Fremont as an officer of
the United States, the captain might at least remain
quiet, and let the settlers so do their duty as independ
ently to earn their political freedom. With the tak
ing of the horses Ide had no part. He heard distinctly
that Captain Fremont meant to go East at once, after
getting supplies ; and when, later, he heard that the
horses were taken, and that a party was now setting out
for Sonoma, he joined it, no doubt with the full inten-
i Op. dt. p. 62.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 69
tion, in case a proper opportunity should offer, of doing
his share to make it, not a part of some dark plot to get
the land for the United States government, but a move
ment for " national independence." He hated Captain
Fremont's scheme of what Ide somewhat cleverly calls
" neutral conquest." This, by the way, is the only
clever phrase of Ide's known to me.
But, as even Ide felt, the first blow having been
struck, men must, if possible, work together, and sus
pend their quarrels. Cheerfully he would follow any
recognized leader, in so far as that was necessary to se
cure American rights. Therefore, on the way down to
Sonoma, it was generally deemed best not to broach the
subject of independence. Nobody, Ide tells us, knew
exactly what they were to do, save that it was to be
something that would yet further anger Castro, that it
was not to involve " unnecessary violence," and that it
included the seizure of prominent men at Sonoma. In
the early morning of the 14th General Vallejo's resi
dence was surprised and surrounded : by the assailants.
After some parley, Merritt and Semple entered, with
one Knight as interpreter. Vallejo greeted them cor
dially, invited them to explain the objects of the party
and to draw up articles of capitulation, which he in his
defenseless position as quiet resident on his own estate
1 Baldridge, in his statement, B. MS., says of this scene : " When
the general became fully aware of their presence, he went out and
asked what they wanted, to which no one answered, for the good rea
son, I believe, that none of them knew what reply to give. He then
asked them if they had taken the place, to which he was answered in
the affirmative. He then returned to his room, but soon reappeared
with his sword girded on, which he offered to surrender to them; but
as none of the party manifested any disposition to receive it, he re
turned to his room again and replaced the sword." All this well fits
in with Ide's narrative at ibis point. See Ide, p. 124, op. cit.
70 CALIFORNIA.
would gladly sign.1 Meanwhile he produced something
to drink, Ide tells us, and the high commissioners tar
ried long. The company outside, whose '" high and
holy " aspirations were not yet, like Semple's within the
house, fortified for the day by anything comforting, be
came impatient, and chose one Grigsby as captain, who
entered, and was likewise long lost to view. At last
Ide's moment came, and he, the incorruptible, ventured
within the enchanted dwelling, elected by acclamation
to inspect the negotiations. He found all the high con
tracting parties moderately drunk, and still poring over
the written articles of capitulation that Vallejo, as he
implies, must have arranged very much to suit himself.
Ide indignantly seized them, and rushed forth to read
them to the company outside. This aroused Grigsby
and the others with Vallejo, who knew, after all, well
enough, no doubt, what Captain Fremont had privately
instructed them to do with General Vallejo, and who,
shortly afterwards, although not without a pretense of
hesitation, announced their intention to go back to Slit
ter's Fort with the chief prisoners.2 At this point, how
ever, questions began to arise among the party : " By
what authority are we, after all, here ? and has Captain
Fremont, or anybody else, authorized in writing the ar-
1 These details, otherwise known, are rather implied than expressed
in Ide's narrative.
2 Vallejo's articles of capitulation, by which, as I understand the
matter, he seems to have intended to secure to himself personal lib
erty, on condition of his promise to engage in no hostilities against
the party, were thus promptly rejected by the somewhat confused
brains of the commissioners themselves as soon as they reflected ; and
thus some good drinks were wasted. Here again one sees a "degree
of civilization " not quite unprecedented. Vallejo, in the sequel, bit
terly complained of this, which he chose to consider broken faith.
I gather these facts from B. MS. evidence.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 71
rest of these men ? " Merritt and Grigsby would give
no satisfactory answer. Semple, we may suppose, was
probably absorbed in the glorious contemplations natural
to a man in his position, not to say condition. Ide
gives us a fine picture of the confusion that soon began
to prevail among the heroes as they considered this
topic, and found, after all, no clear answer.1 " One
swore he would not stay ; another swore we would all
have our throats cut ; another called for fresh horses ;
and all were on the move, — every man for himself."
The moment was Ide's, and he seized it, and henceforth ho
gained that consciousness of historical significance which
inspires all his honest, sober, and infinitely absurd tale.
He came boldly forward, speaking plainly. He would
lay his bones here before he would run like a coward.
What were they there for ? Was it not for some truly
worthy object, namely, after all, independence ? Nay,
said he : " we are robbers, or we must be conquerors."
This remark of Ide's narrowly escaped being clever ; but
it was not. It was only the outburst of his honest anxiety
to be and do something noble and wondrous. "The
speaker, in despair, turned his back upon his receding
companions." The crisis was soon past. They rallied,
and, as he says, elected him captain on the spot. The
convoy of the prisoners returned to Sutter's Fort, and
he remained with his gallant men on the conquered ter
ritory.
As for what followed, we must take the reader a little
into confidence, before going with Ide's tale yet another
step, by quoting again from Mr. Baldridge, who remem
bers the thing thus, in his B. MS. : " Ide was a strong,
active, energetic man, and, in our judgment, was pos-
l Op. cit.,p. 127.
72 CALIFORNIA.
sessed of many visionary if not Utopian ideas. . . .
Consequently, within a short time he was the most un
popular man among us. . . . Finally he was seized
with a fit of writing, which continued almost incessantly
for several days, all the time keeping his own counsel."
Mr. Baldridge does not remember that Ide was consid
ered by his fellows as in any sense captain, until after
this writing fit had borne fruit, when Ide called a meet
ing, read his famous proclamation, announced his plan,
and was then indeed elected by acclamation, but oidy
because everybody chose to regard the whole thing, for
the moment, as a good joke, and because nobody fore
saw the consequence that would follow, in the distribu
tion of this play-captain's document broadcast through
the land, as the programme of the Bear Flag repub
lic.
Ide's memory, however, is different, being especially
colored by his notions of what captaincy and a govern
ment were. As a born statesman, he had his views
about the true ideal state. Equal rights would of
course prevail in it. And to this end, in the first place,
there should be in the ideal state now about to be born
no taxation of the " virtuous, industrious, self-governing
free men," and all compulsory taxation should therefore
be inflicted upon criminals, who were not on that ac
count, however, to be considered as receiving any license
for crime. Furthermore, public servants should be
paid only just enough to keep them free from the effects
of the love of money ; how much this salary would
amount to Ide never precisely computed. And, as a still
more important requisite of good government, there
should be no compulsory military or other service to
maintain the cause of liberty : " for that [namely, com-
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 73
pulsion] would prove that its people were unworthy of its
blessings, or that those blessings were no longer worth
enjoying." l A government whose subjects were thus
free to do just as they liked, save when they were
guilty of actual crime, and whose criminals, meanwhile,
had therefore to fear only an authority that possessed
no possible means of compelling any virtuous subject to
join in a legal suppression of crime, in short, a govern
ment by general good humor, was of course best repre
sented by this Bear Flag republic itself, with its slowly
increasing population of from twenty - five to fifty or
sixty faithful and straggling subjects, no one of whom,
save Ide, was really quite aware of the very existence
of his country. And its government was indeed well
represented by Ide himself, whom nobody exactly knew
to be governor. As he tells us : " By the unanimous
vote of the garrison, all the powers of the four depart
ments [of government] were conferred, for the time
being, upon him who was first put in command of the
fort ; yet Democracy was the ruling principle that set
tled every measure, Vox Populi our rule." 2 Of this
statement we may say that the unanimous vote of the
garrison undoubtedly did confer not only on Ide, but on
every man alike, the powers of the four departments,
namely, as concerned his own person ; and there was
only a general agreement to drill in company, under
certain chosen officers, of whom one was Lieutenant
Ford, soon to be further mentioned. So far Ide was
right. These " self-consecrated victims to the god of
Equal Rights " dwelt thus in peace together, and further
more, according to Ide, considered what they might do
to distinguish themselves in any external way from a
l Op. ci«.,p. 145. 2 Page 134.
74 CALIFORNIA.
band of marauders. The raising of the Bear Flag was
one device. Ide himself proposed also the issuing of a
proclamation, but the populace of the republic, expect
ing Captain Fremont soon to interfere, were unwilling
to authorize this ; and hence Ide's democratic earnest
ness and candor in shutting himself up and writing
(very secretly, as he supposed, and during the small
hours of several successive nights) that particular
Vox Populi which he afterwards undertook to circu
late through California. Writing this proclamation in
thirty or forty copies, nearly though not quite identical
in wording, helped to wear out Ide's constitution, and,
as his family declare, hastened in later years his death.
Ide also wrote to the American naval commanders on
the coast, not for assistance, but, as he in substance de
clares, to warn them to let the new republic alone in its
inalienable rights. Nor was this all. The great plan
of Ide's free government must be got into the minds of
the benighted native Californians of the Sonoma dis
trict. And one of Ide's earliest acts was directed to
this end. For reasons of prudence, and others, easily
comprehensible, the Bear Flag party had seen fit, forth
with, to arrest a good many of the native citizens there
abouts, and to crowd them into what Ide calls the " cal
aboose." How consistent this was with the " high and
holy " aims of the " revolution " Ide was fully able to
show. The inhabitants having been thus collected '• be
tween four strong walls," since " they were more than
twice our number," Ide entered with an interpreter, and,
as he says, using the third person himself, " he went on
to explain [to them] the cause of our coming together ;
our determination to offer equal justice to all good citi
zens ; that we had not called them there [that is, to the
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 75
< calaboose '] to rob them of their liberty, nor to de
prive them of any portion of their property, nor to dis
turb their social relations with one another, nor yet to
desecrate their religion. He went on to explain to
them the common rights of all men, and showed them
that these rights had been shamefully denied them by
those heretofore in authority . . . that we had been
driven to take up arms in defense of life and the com
mon rights of man." " He went on further to say
that although he had for the moment deprived them of
that liberty which is the right and the privilege of all
good and just men, it was only that they might become
acquainted with his unalterable purpose." In short, he
declared that he intended to give them fair warning ; to
let them sign a treaty of peace if they would ; nay even,
if they insisted steadfastly upon being enemies, to let
them go again and prepare themselves for the battle,
which he referred to with " all the fierce, determined
energy of manner that such an emergency was calculated
to inspire." But first he must teach them, by this stay
in the calaboose and by this lecture, what the inaliena
ble rights of man are, and what he and his friends pro
posed to do. " We are few," he said, " but we are firm
and true." 1
The address, Ide confesses, " was not the twentieth
part interpreted ; " " yet the importance of success in
the measure, to persons circumstanced as we were, gave
expression that would have been understood by every
nationality and tongue under heaven ; and the Spaniard,
even, embraced the commander as he pronounced the
name of WASHINGTON. There was a glow of feeling
beaming from his [that is, from the ' Spaniard's '] eye
i Op. a«.,p. 134.
76 CALIFORNIA.
that defied all hypocracy [sic], as he said, ' Suffer my
companions to remain until we complete a treaty of
peace and friendship, and then go and come as friends,
only that we he not required to take arms against our
brethren.' "
The scene, in its way, is a monumental work of poor
Ide's unconscious art. The pathos of this Yankee car
penter's prematurely aged vanity, as it expresses itself,
years later, in these ardent and proud reminiscences ;
the ohvious honesty and kind-heartedness of his pur
poses ; the picture of a fool's glory that he so well paints ;
the impotent nonsense that, as he speaks, his winged
words convey in vain to the puzzled interpreter, and
that these sleepy, impassive, hewildered countrymen of
Sonoma, with their great soft hlack eyes fixed upon
him, helplessly feel to mean some fearful threat of the
heretic rohbers from the Sacramento Valley, — all this
scene is so perfect in itself, and, after all, so terrihly rep
resentative, that one cannot easily forget it. One can
but speak for himself, and, for my part, if ever I hear in
future of our great national mission on this continent as
civilizers of the Spanish- American peoples, if ever I find
that this mission has come once more, as it surely some
day will come, to the surface of our vainglorious na
tional consciousness, I shall be able to think of nothing
but poor Ide, the self-appointed Yankee captain of a
chance crowd of marauders, standing benevolently in the
" calaboose," before the forty or fifty innocent and im
prisoned citizens of Sonoma, and feeling in his devout
kindliness that he does God service, while he bellows
to them an unintelligible harangue, " not a twentieth
part interpreted," about man's inalienable rights to lib
erty and equality, and wlu'le he concludes with a refer-
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 11
ence to Washington, believing himself, meanwhile, to be
the Father of the Bear Flag Republic.
The proclamation was erelong, without any distinct
disavowal on the part of the Bear Flag men, sent abroad
by messengers in the land south of San Francisco Bay.
It has been printed frequently since, and is usually
thought to be the real official expression of the move
ment. The movement, however, could have had no
one expression, since it had no one purpose, but com
prised whatever chanced to result from the original in
stigation of Captain Fremont, and from the individual
minds of the settlers concerned. The proclamation as
serted that Castro had ordered the Americans out of the
country, and had threatened their lives and property,
and the lives of their families. It attributed to the past
government vast wickedness and mischief, and it prom
ised great blessings from the new government. It sug
gested Ide's peculiar political ideas, and it made the
usual devout appeal to Heayen, which, if marauders and
insurgents in their official expressions are to be believed,
favors nothing so well at any time as a general scrim
mage, and the side that begins the same.1
Ide was, on the whole, a character that can well be
compared to no creation in literature that I happen to
know about, save to the Bellman, in the Hunting of the
Snark. Of the Bear Flag party, whose " high and
holy " aims somewhat resemble the aims of the Snark
hunters, Ide was captain, very much in the sense in
1 See for one copy of the proclamation op. cit., p. 138. It is easy
to find some one of the copies of Ide's proclamation printed in books
on California history. See Bryant's What I Saw in California, p.
290 ; The Annals of San Francisco, p. 92. None of the standard
authorities shows any proper sense of the real significance and insig
nificance of this paper.
78 CALIFORNIA.
which the Bellman was captain of his resolute band. As
the whole of the Bellman's notion for crossing the ocean
consisted in ringing his hell, so Icle, toiling in the small
hours over his proclamations, had similarly simple no
tions about sailing the ship of state. As the Bellman on
occasion referred to maxims " tremendous but trite," so
Ide's proclamation contains several such references.
Ide was in fate more like the Baker, in that his Snark
was undoubtedly a Boojum, and in that he accordingly,
in due time, softly, if not quite silently, vanished away.
But as to character, he was a perfect expression, only
in Yankee form, of the Bellman ; and I consider Ide's
own account of himself an indirect and unconscious trib
ute to the poetical genius of " Lewis Carroll," who has
so perfectly and undesigningly immortalized just his
type of wisdom.1
While Ide governed, Lieutenant Ford made war.
The little military incidents of these days, important not
in themselves, but in their consequences, are easily to be
summarized. The California!! government actually had
no force north of the Bay of San Francisco at the be
ginning of the affair. But what could be collected
farther south was promptly sent, under the command
of Joaquin de la Torre, whose approach became known
at Sonoma June 23d. Lieutenant Ford, the military
1 I have space only to refer to vat other monumental passages of
Ide's narrative: his noble efforts to get the poor alcalde of Sonoma to
understand the aforesaid philosophical theory of the projected Bear
Flag Constitution (p. 147), : ml his diliiculties with those of his own
garrison who "earnestly co
liberty, and but very little
One of the most engaging tl
more the innocent admiratio
itended that a Spaniard had no right to
•ight to the enjoyment of life " (p. 148).
ings in the volume before us is further-
i with which the editors of Ide's narrative,
in their entire ignorance of the facts, regard the wildest of his honest
absurdities.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 79
leader of the Bears, marched out with a little force to
meet him ; and an encounter took place about twelve
miles from San Rafael. The Californians lost two men
killed, and some wounded, at the very first fire^ and,
dreading the rifles of the Bear party, retired without
further struggle. They were of course in no wise well
armed. Thus was shed the first blood in " battle " be
tween Americans and Californians. The Bear men
received here no hurt. After this skirmish the maraud
ing settlers at Sonoma were in comparative safety, as
no force could for some time be brought against them.
But Captain Fremont, who had received news of their
danger, reached Sonoma with his whole force on June
25th. Although his instigation had begun the insur
rection, he was not to win any special military renown
in this first part of the conquest ; for the Californian
force, which he now actively pursued, cleverly eluded
him by a ruse, and escaped across the bay. De la
Torre, namely, sent a false message, purporting to be
from Castro, and announcing an imminent attack upon
Sonoma. This, sent in the hands of an Indian, fell, as
was intended, into Captain Fremont's possession, and
led him back from his pursuit to protect the threatened
town. De la Torre had time to cross to Yerba Buena
before the mistake was discovered. A detachment of
Captain Fremont's men later crossed the bay to Yerba
Buena, took prisoner the captain of the port, spiked
some guns at the presidio, and returned.
These irregular hostilities must, we have said, be
judged by their effects, and, as we now yet further add,
by the effects which chance later warded off, but which
for the moment seemed imminent. The whole country
towards the south, as far as the tale penetrated, was
80 CALIFORNIA.
alarmed and exasperated at the news, which, was, of
course, naturally exaggerated in the telling. It was not
that the physical mischief done had actually been enor
mous, but that the injustice of the attack seemed to
the native population so obvious, and the designs indi
cated by it so appallingly dangerous to their happiness
and their rights. The mystery of the affair made it
worse. Ide's proclamation was circulated in manuscript
form south of the bay, and that pretended to announce
a new independent republic. But Captain Fremont's
name was quickly associated by rumor and fact with the
business, which was therefore believed to be the out
come of American official intrigue. An irregular guer
rilla warfare appeared certain. If the Americans were
treacherous enough to seize Sonoma without warning, to
deliver over its inhabitants to confinement and their
property to marauders, what were they not capable of
doing further ? The worst that unfriendly suspicion
could have feared of the new-comers now seemed re
alized. The longing, among those of the California!!
politicians who desired English protection, for an imme
diate English interference on their behalf, waxed very
strong at the news ; and there can be little doubt that,
if fortune had delayed the outbreak of the Mexican
War. or the coining of the news of it, but a little longer,
and had thus delayed the interference of the American
fleet, the English commander of the Juno, on the Cal
ifornia coast, or possibly Admiral Seymour himself, of
the Collingwood, who arrived during July, and who. for
all we know, might have arrived almost or quite as soon
in any case, would have been the object of overtures
from prominent men for an acceptance on the part of
his government of a protectorate of California, which
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 81
might then have declared its independence of Mexico.
Whether these overtures would have been supported
or not by the body of the distracted Californians, and
whether any English commander would have been jus
tified at that time by his government in accepting such
proposals, or whether our navy would have passively
permitted the thing, are matters that belong not yet to
our tale. We mention them now only to suggest that,
in case there was, as a well-known tradition will have it,
an imminent English plot to get possession of Califor
nia, the irregular revolution instigated by Captain Fre
mont was the best possible means that could have been
chosen to frighten and to plague the Californians into
the arms of England at once. Somewhat suspicious
seems, therefore, this well-known tradition, when it re
peats from volume to volume and from decade to dec
ade the thoughtless assurance that the Bear Flag affair
saved California from the rapacity of England. But of
the tradition and the truth about this matter we shall
hereafter speak further.
Meanwhile, as we must add, to explain in part the
undying hatreds that grew out of this unhappy Bear
outbreak, these hostilities did not pass by without some
of the natural attendants of such affairs. Early in the
days at Sonoma, two of the Bear Flag men, Cowie and
Fowler, were taken prisoners by an irregular party of
Californians, and then murdered. Stories, whose foun
dation, as it appears, cannot be tested with certainty,
because the records of trustworthy eye-witnesses are
lacking, are to be found, as most readers know, in the
later American accounts, attributing to these irregular
Californians not only the murder, but also the previous
torture, of these two men. I fancy that we must regard
6
82 CALIFORNIA.
the affair, at all events, as a sort of lynching, and must
judge it by remembering how our Western farmei's
would have treated any marauding Mexicans who had
been caught after they had assailed defenseless Ameri
can towns and robbed peaceful inhabitants. Our West
ern lynchers often torture as well as kill. But this act,
surely in no sense justifiable, however natural the furi
ous exasperation of the assailed Californians may have
made it at the moment, was far outdone by men among
the Americans, who, during Captain Fremont's pursuit
of Torre to San Rafael, murdered, in cold blood, near
that place, three defenseless non-combatants, men of
known respectability, and of no connection with the
hostilities. These were the Haro brothers and Berey-
essa. The act was causeless, and can receive no shadow
of justification, and it was not done by any irregular
party. As to the responsibility I have nothing to add.
Very happily this scene of the Bear Flag war was
closed before further bloodshed could follow, by the
coming of news of hostilities on the Rio Grande, and
by the consequent raising of the American flag by Com
modore Sloat at Monterey. The latter had left Mazat-
lan on the first receipt of this news, had come in his
flag-ship to join his vessels that were already on the
coast, and, in obedience to his previously received of
ficial instructions, had prepared to seize upon Monterey
and San Francisco harbors. He had indeed hesitated
some days at Monterey without action, but on July 7th
the deed was done. Sloat thereupon sent orders to the
Portsmouth at San Francisco to seize that port, and dis
patched a courier to convey intelligence of his acts to
Captain Fremont, who, having nobody to fight on the
north shore of the bay, had returned for the time with
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 83
his main force to Slitter's Fort. As soon as the courier
reached the captain, the latter set out for Monterey
with his force. And thus the operations of the Bear
Flag affair became merged in those of the conquest
proper.
Yet, ere bidding farewell to the conquerors of the
fortress of Sonoma, we must call attention to one doc
ument which especially illustrates their " high and holy "
aims. It was written, indeed, just after the regular
conquest had been proclaimed, and is the more charac
teristic for that. It was written by the redoubtable
Grigsby, who had been left in command at Sonoma
under the new order of things, and was addressed to
Captain Montgomery, in San Francisco Bay.1
CCAETEL, SONOMA, July 16, 1846.
To CAPTAIN MONTGOMERY, U. S. Ship Portsmouth.
Dear Sir, — Yesterday I received Lieutenant Bartlett's
letter. . . . The Spaniards appear well satisfied with the
change. The most of them have come forward and signed
articles of peace. Should they take up arms against us, or
assist the enemy in any way, they forfeit their lives, prop
erty, etc. All things are going on very well here at pres
ent. . . . There are some foreigners [i. e., Americans or Eng
lishmen] on this side that have never taken any part with
us. I wish to know the proper plan to pursue with them :
whether their property shall be used for the use of the garri
son or not (they are men of property). We wish your advice
in all respects, as we are a company of men not accustomed
to such business. . . . There are some poor men here that
are getting very short of clothing. I wish to know in what
way it might be procured for them. . . .
Your obedient servant,
JOHN GRIGSBY, Captain.
•
1 Sen. Ex. Doc. 1, 2d Sess. 29th Congr., p. 665.
84 CALIFORNIA.
III. SLOAT, THE ADMINISTRATION, AND THE MYSTERY
OF THE SECRET MISSION.
Such is the outer history of the " Bear Flag Revolu
tion." But we must enter into more details before v;e
can hope to find the true interpretation of the move
ment.
So much, however, is to be noted, ere we proceed, as
to the relation of the movement to Sloat's action.
Events seemed to bring the Bear Flag affair into close
connection with the official conquest proper. But we
should blunder sadly if we supposed that Sloat had
been in any case instructed to cooperate with Captain
Fremont or with the settlers, or that the Bear Flag
affair was in any sense an official signal for the inter
ference of our squadron. Of Sloat's instructions we
shall speak in due time, but they very certainly were not
framed with any apparent reference to Captain Fre
mont's conduct or to Gillespie's mission. Sloat was to
wait until he should hear from the Atlantic of actual war
between the United States and Mexico. Then he was
to sei/e upon the Californian ports. He had no warn
ing that his work was to be lightened by previous armed
operations on land, and he was in fact sadly perplexed
by the news that he heard from the north when he
reached Monterey on the 2d of July. Whatever Un
official secret of CV plain Fremont's action was, Sloat
was not in it. To judge the Bear Flag affair, we must
then consider it in and for itself, and not in connection
with its accidental good fortune as an undertaking that
received a timely support from the navy. The first suc
cess that it desired and rightfully might hope to get was
only a success as an independent and apparently un-
TUE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 85
official revolution in California. This success once
reached, California might pass over into our hands
whenever the war came ; but until the war had been
formally begun, Captain Fremont had no reason to ex
pect the support of his distant government. The navy
simply knew nothing about his plans, and had no sort of
authority to help him ; and the wide deserts separated
him from all possible military support. The boldness of
such an undertaking, with Captain Fremont's sixty men,
and with only the doubtful aid of the settlers, must
surely strike the reader forthwith ; the mysterious care
lessness of our government in utterly failing to provide
for Captain Fremont any effective armed cooperation
from our squadron must add to our perplexity in case
this fourth plan actually was the real plan ; and what
we are hereafter to learn of the official instructions to
the squadron itself, as they were later printed in congres
sional documents, will only make our problem harder.
But it is at least necessary to remember that the show
of official support which Commodore Sloat's seizure of
Monterey would seem to have given to Captain Fre
mont was in fact but an accidental outcome of other
events, and was not in the least contemplated by our
government in its official instructions to the navy. Nor
yet may one fancy even that these seemingly independ
ent undertakings, namely, Captain Fremont's and Com
modore Sloat's, were so well timed by the government
that, although the official instructions of the squadron
made no mention of the expected operations on land,
the actual cooperation of Sloat with the Bear Flag move
ment was silently predetermined at Washington. That
hypothesis, natural as it may so far seem, is absolutely
excluded by evidence that we shall in due time present.
86 CALIFORNIA.
There had been no provision for such cooperation, and,
if accident had delayed the outbreak of the Mexican
AVar a little longer, or if the news had failed to reach
Sloat when it did, the Bear Flag ati'air would have de
veloped itself into all the natural results of irregular
warfare, without any support or amelioration through
the interference of the navy. The settlers, in numerous
individual cases, if not as a body, would have dealt with
the Californians after the fashions and customs of irreg
ular combatants, and the Californians would have done
what they could to thwart the rather inadequate force in
the field against them. One may feel, indeed, fairly
confident that, with their poor arms and their lack of
discipline, the Californians could not easily have de
stroyed the resolute little Bear Flag army ; but one
can also feel quite sure that the Bear Flag, in view of
the small force supporting it and of the bitter passions
that it at once aroused, could not possibly have given to
the distracted land peace and good order. The fact
must be understood, therefore, that if the cabinet au
thorized Captain Fremont's operations, it took no sort
of pains to prevent this province from falling into the
hopeless anarchy of irregular wrarfare, until such time as
the course of events on the remote Atlantic coast should
have led to the beginning of legitimate war. and the
news hereof should have been able to reach Sloat's
squadron. Surely the reader will agree that the prob
lem as to how any government could thus risk its own
most obvious interests becomes not a little puzzling. If
we were to get California, we surely needed to get it as
little as possible marred by anarchy, by destruction of
property, or by the just anger of its inhabitants. Yet
Captain Fremont's movement, strong enough to begin
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 87
an irregular warfare, but certainly not nearly strong
enough to govern and pacify this immense territory,
would seem, if the fourth plan is the real one, to have
been authorized or ordered in Washington, and to have
been left without any immediate provision for adequate
support ! Surely something is wrong here.
IV. THE MYSTERY AS FORMERLY EXPOUNDED BY
CAPTAIN FREMONT'S FRIENDS.
But possibly, in insisting so exactly as we have done
upon the consequences and significance of this supposed
fourth plan for the acquisition of California, we may
appear to be overlooking a somewhat different hypothe
sis as to this Bear Flag affair, an hypothesis whose very
existence, as we shall later see, enables us better to un
derstand the real conduct of Captain Fremont, although
in itself the hypothesis is utterly unfounded. The
friends of Captain Fremont, namely, did not, either then
or later, admit our fourth plan as the sole cause of his
action. They often used forms of speech that, on the
one hand, seemed to put more personal responsibility
for what happened upon the young captain's own
shoulders, but, on the other hand, made his conduct less
the result of Gillespie's mission than of the circumstances
of the place and of the moment. He had to do what
he did, they have sometimes said, not so much because
his secret instructions counseled just such acts, as be
cause Castro, by warlike movements and threats, forced
him to take the field to save the American settlers from
imminent pillage and massacre. We must speak of this
explanation a little, because it has been so often ad
vanced, is so audaciously inaccurate, and is, in conse
quence, so instructive.
88 CALIFORNIA.
In its first form, the story that the Bear Flag oper
ations were forced upon Captain Fremont by the ag
gressions of Castro reached the public through Senator
Benton himself, whose statement was founded upon let
ters received at home from the senator's gallant son-in-
law. The letters themselves were published in the
" Washington Union," in the autumn of 1846, but have
somehow come to be almost totally forgotten by the
public. They are very valuable for us ; yet, as they
disappeared in the busy life of the moment, and gave
place to what Senator Benton had found in them, \ve
must not reveal their contents just yet, but must repeat
at this point the curious account, tainted with geograph
ical absurdity, which the venerable senator sent out to
the woi-ld as an official statement of Captain Fremont's
acts and motives.1
" At the middle of May," says the senator, " Captain
Fremont, in pursuance of his design to reach Oregon,
had arrived at the great Tlamath [Klamath] Lake, in
the edge of the Oregon Territory, when he found his
further progress completely barred by the double ob
stacle of hostile Indians, which Castro had excited
against him, and the lofty mountains, covered with deep
and falling snow. These Avere the difficulties and dan
gers in front. Behind, and on the north bank of the
San Francisco Bay, at the military post of Sonoma, was
General Castro assembling troops, with the avowed ob
ject of attacking both Fremont's party and all the
American settlers. Thus, his passage barred in front
by impassable snows and mountains ; . . . menaced by
1 I quote in the following Senator Benfon's letter as given in
Ctitt?. Conquest of New Mexicoand California (Philadelphia, 1847),
p. 152.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE SEAR FLAG. 89
a general at the head of tenfold forces of all arms ;
the American settlers in California marked out for de
struction on a false accusation of meditating a revolt
under his instigation ; his men and horses suffering
from fatigue, cold, and famine ; and after the most
anxious deliberation upon all the dangers of his position
and upon all the responsibilities of his conduct, Captain
Fremont determined to turn upon his pursuers and fight
them instantly, without regard to numbers, and seek
safety for his party and the American settlers by over
turning the Mexican government in California."
It is indeed entertaining enough to conceive of Castro
at Sonoma " menacing" Captain Fremont on the banks
of Klamath Lake, and " pursuing " him at a distance
of some three hundred miles in an air line, or more
than four hundred by the trails, especially when one
remembers that the country between was for most of the
way an uninhabited wilderness, for one third of the way
a mass of mountains, and almost wholly unknown to
Castro, who had no burning desire, one may be sure, to
have any close intercourse, not to speak of intrigues,
with the Klamath Lake Indians. For the rest, Castro
was himself in fact, not at Sonoma, but alternately at
Monterey and at San^i Clara, or in their vicinity, all
through this time, and Sonoma itself was wholly inno
cent of any armed force. But, however that may be,
nobody will now suppose that the gallant young captain
himself could have felt driven to bay on the Klamath
shore by the mythical army of ten times his force at
Sonoma. The venerable statesman's documents and his
eloquent imagination were, in their combination, for this
once, a trifle unhistorical.
But in Senator Benton's " Thirty Years' View,"
90 CALIFORNIA.
chapter clxiv., the story is once more told. At the
approach of Gillespie, Captain Fremont, now no more
driven to bay on the Klamath shores by the overwhelm
ing odds at Sonoma, appears in a somewhat different
light from the one cast upon him by Senator Benton's
previous account. The situation, although still requir
ing Senator Benton's noblest eloquence, is less tragic.
Although surrounded by hostile Indians, Captain Fre
mont is depicted as happy, and as comparatively peace
ful in his work until the romantic coming of the brave
Gillespie. He reads the heavens with his telescope,
gauges the temperature of the air with his thermometer,
sketches with his pencil "the grandeur of mountains,"
paints " the beauty of flowers," and with his pen writes
down " whatever is new or strange or useful in the
works of nature." In short, he pursues science, shuns
war, and, if we may add to Senator Benton's eloquence
a more modern phrase, he shows that his capacity for
innocent enjoyment is just as great as any other man's.
But Gillespie came. The letters and messages, with
their contents, are described much as in the testimony
before the Claims Committee. But Senator Benton
adds significantly that " it was not to be supposed that
Lieutenant Gillespie had been sent so far, and through
so many dangers, merely to deliver a common letter of
introduction on the shores of Tlamath Lake," and points
out that what was communicated bore the '• stamp of
authority."
While the obvious design of this is once more to give
to the Gillespie mission a large share in determining
what followed, Senator Benton still lays stress upon the
violent measures of Castro, as furnishing at least the
immediate occasion for Captain Fremont's action. " Pie
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 91
[Captain Fremont] arrived," says the senator, " in the
valley of the Sacramento in the month of May, 1846,
and found the country alarmingly and critically situated.
Three great operations fatal to American interests were
then going on and without remedy if not arrested at
once. These were: (1.) The massacre of the Americans,
and the destruction of their settlements, in the valley of
the Sacramento. (2.) The subjection of California to
British protection. (3.) The transfer of the public do
main to British subjects. And all this with a view to
anticipate the events of a Mexican war and to shelter
California from the arms of the United States. The
American settlers sent a deputation to the camp of Mr.
Fremont in the valley of the Sacramento, laid all these
dangers before him, and implored him to place himself
at their head and save them from destruction. General
Castro was then in march upon them. The Indians
were incited to attack their families and burn their
wheat-fields, and were only waiting for the dry season
to apply the torch. Juntas were in session to transfer
the country to Great Britain ; the public domain was
passing away in large grants to British subjects ; a Brit
ish fleet was expected on the coast ; the British vice-
consul, Forbes, and the emissary priest, Macuamara,
ruling and conducting everything, and all their plans
so far .advanced as to render the least delay fatal."
Under these circumstances, which are all thus repre
sented as then known to him, Captain Fremont, much as
he regretted his necessity, had no alternative. " He de
termined to put himself at the head of the people and
save the country."
Of this account one must first say, in passing, that
mere dates show the impossibility of any knowledge con-
92 CALIFORNIA.
cerning the so-called " Macnamara scheme " on the part
of Captain Fremont at the moment of his action, and
that, whatever these supposed " English scliemes " were
(whereof we shall say much later), they could have had
no share in authorizing or in hastening the aggression of
June. 1846. So that all this portion of Senator Benton's
account is quite without historical significance for our
present problem, which is simply why Captain Fremont
moved when he did.1 We must therefore here dismiss
these English schemes for the present, and speak of
them hereafter, as supplying a supposed justification,
after the fact, for Captain Fremont's energy.
But the intended massacre of the Americans, and the
purposed burning of their wheat-fields. — what of all that
as motive and justification for the hostilities ? The
only way to solve this problem is to find out in how far
any genuine knowledge or fear of immediate hostilities
from Castro was present to well-informed American set
tlers. Motive this hostility was for Captain Fremont in
so far as he believed it to be an immediate source of
danger. If he had it not in mind as a pressing peril,
then there is no doubt that the messages brought by
Gillespie were alone able to furnish valid motive for his
operations, and then, one would surely suppose, the
fourth plan will have established itself as the actual
one. Yet we must not anticipate. At all events, the
1 AYith these (wo accounts of Senator Benton's one should compare
Captain Fremont's own explanations, the one before the Congressional
Claims Committee, when he applied for the payment of the expenses
of the California!! battalion (see Sen. Hep. 75, 1st Scss. 30th Con^r.,
pp. 12 and 13), and the other before the Kcarny court-martial (Sen.
Doc. 33, 30th Coiifrr., 1st Sess., vol. v. pp. 373, 374). The two expla
nations are both of them cautious, but tend to convey the impression
that both the secret instructions and Castro's hostility cooperated to
produce the action.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 93
curious tendency just noticed, sometimes to magnify and
sometimes to leave in ambiguous indefiniteness the im
portance of Castro's hostility, suggests that the friends
of the hero of our tale may well have felt somewhat op
pressed by the delicacy and the secrecy of the official
information that according to the fourth plan would be
the real motive of his conduct ; so that they may hence
forth have felt it their duty to the government to shield
the latter by cautious and doubtful language. Should
this in the end appear to be their motive, doubtless the
reader will appreciate their discretion and their delicate
patriotism, and will judge them generously.
V. CALIFORNIA^ HOSTILITY AS A CAUSE FOR WAR.
Meanwhile, however, the bare matter of fact whereto
this reported hostility as a motive for Captain Fremont's
conduct must be reduced may be investigated under
two heads. First we may ask whether Castro actually
did gather any armed force to assail the American set
tlers. And secondly we may ask whether the great
body of peaceable American settlers believed at the mo
ment in the imminence of his attack so as to be aroused
or terrified. To inquire into these matters is not to
cast a shadow on the just-mentioned discretion and pa
triotism that may have forced General Fremont's friends
ever since to put too strong an accent upon the reported
hostility of Castro. By our questions as to Castro's
conduct we shall only put that discretion and that patri
otism in a stronger light, in case, indeed, the fourth
plan actually proves in the end to be the government
plan, as heretofore we have seemed to find very proba
ble. Only in case the fourth plan were not the gov
ernment plan should we feel these questions delicate.
94 CALIFORNIA.
Well, as to the first of our two questions, the answer
is very simply a flat negative. Whatever Captain Fre
mont's informers may have told him at the time, there
certainly was no truth in the stories about Castro and
his anti- American warlike demonstrations. Since Cap
tain Fremont's own departure for Oregon in March,
Castro had made no preparations to drive any Amer
icans from the Department. He had issued no procla
mation ordering the settlers to be expelled or threaten
ing them with expulsion. He was not marching
against them with an army ; he had no force at So
noma, none anywhere on the north shore of San Fran
cisco Bay. He had no present intention of .sending a
force thither, or of prosecuting in that region any hos
tile purpose. He feared, indeed, a coming American
invasion at some time in the future ; but he knew that
he could now do little or nothing to avert it, and mean
while he was busy in his quarrels with Governor Pio
Pico and the south. He made some warlike prepara
tions ; but they were chiefly against Pio Pico, partly
with remote reference to possible invasions. He
plotted ; but the American settlers of the Sacramento
Valley were not in danger from his plots, nor were they
the ones plotted against. His controversy with Pio
Pico, had he been let alone by the Americans, might
indeed have resulted in an open combat ; but then all
he would have asked of the Americans for the moment
would have been neutrality and indifference. Captain
Fremont's operations were therefore in fact purely ag
gressive, and would have been explicable as a defensive
movement solely on the ground that Captain Fremont
had been misinformed about Castro. But, as we shall
also later see, he was not so misinformed by any respect
able and trustworthy person.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 95
All this is a question of fact, and can easily be decided
by any one who is now well informed about the situation
of that moment. Mr. John S. Hittell has spoken quite
sensibly and plainly on the matter, so far as he goes into
it at all, in his " History of San Francisco," pp. 102,
103, where he merely says that the " unmeaning threats of
a few ignorant native Calif ornians irritated and perhaps
alarmed the Americans north of San Francisco Bay ; "
and adds, with regard to Castro's supposed proclama
tion, that "the governor of California had issued no
such proclamation, nor was such a matter " as the forci
ble expulsion of the American settlers " thought of."
Mr. Hittell has long been in a position to judge this
matter intelligently, although he gives in his book no
proofs. But the documentary evidence in full concern
ing the situation is in Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft's
hands. I have no concern in this book with the details
of the native politics of the moment, and the reader, if
so disposed, must look for many such tales, as I do my
self with a good deal of interest and curiosity, to that
forthcoming volume of Mr. Bancroft's history which will
deal with this period, and to Mr. Theodore Hittell's an
ticipated discussion of the same period in his forthcoming
History of California ; yet enough can be shown for our
purpose by a few considerations. Mr. Thomas Larkin,
the consul, was busy just then in giving the government
at Washington every attainable fact about the state of
the country. He was well acquainted with Jose Castro,
with the whole town of Monterey, and with all the prom
inent Californians. He was, strange to say, engaged
himself at the moment of the outbreak in intrigues to
secure — but of that hereafter. Enough, he knew about
the Californians, by daily intercourse, just what the cap-
96 CALIFORNIA.
tain of the surveying party at the Buttes could not know.
In his voluminous correspondence with the State De
partment there is a great deal bearing on the situation
just at this juncture. By Mr. Bancroft's courtesy, I
was able, when in California, to examine this correspond
ence in the Bancroft libraiy volumes of the archives of
Larkin's consulate, volumes whose nature the previous
chapter has described. I have since received, by the
courtesy of Secretary Bayard, official copies of some
of these letters, as the originals are preserved in the
State Department, and I have these copies before me as
I write. The facts thus shown by Consul Larkin's per
sonal and daily knowledge are utterly inconsistent with
the supposed hostile preparations of Castro. It is quite
impossible that when all the birds in the Sacramento
Valley were twittering the news of the approach of
Castro from bough to bough, and when his proclamation
was already in the hands of the settlers, these sources
of information should, although authentic, have pos
sessed and delivered news that was sealed to a man who
was on the spot at the time, in daily personal intercourse
with the very Californians most concerned themselves,
and who was on the alert to get information.
Other documentary evidence in Mr. Bancroft's hands
shows plainly enough what Castro did mean to do. He
meant to thwart and defeat Governor Pio Pico in re
gard to matters at issue between them. The possibili
ties of a future American invasion were indeed known,
both to him and to Pico, as well as to all the other
prominent Californians, and fear was felt. Preparations
were freely discussed and begun, to be ready in time for
such an invasion if it ever should come. But these
preparations not only had no immediate reference to the
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 97
Sacramento Valley settlers, but also were not in an ad
vanced state. One lacked, for instance, powder. One
lacked, above all, money. And one spent one's time
meanwhile in petty domestic quarrels, such as brought
one but little nearer to a real state of readiness. At
such a time, for a busy politician, with plenty of ene
mies at home, as it were in his own household, with very
limited military resources accessible to him, with fears
for the future, with doubts and native intrigues dark
ening the air all about him, — for such a man, who had
so recently declined to attack Captain Fremont's party,
now deliberately to undertake to go out into the Sac
ramento Valley and borrow yet more trouble at the
mouths of the settlers' rifles would have been the most
absurd and impossible of ideas. Only ignorance of the
real situation could have attributed to Castro any such
design. It is perfectly certain that he had no such de
sign.
There was then no danger to the settlers from Castro.
But did the settlers perchance believe, in their own
minds, however mistakenly, that there was danger ?
And were their fears the basis of Captain Fremont's
determination ?
Mr. Wm. N. Loker, one of the settlers at Suiter's
Fort, and later an officer in the California Battalion,
testified before the Claims Committee (see p. 40 of their
Report) that he actually posted in public sight himself,
and at Suiter's Fort, a translation of the " banda "
whereby the authorities ordered all American settlers
out of the country on pain of a forcible expulsion.1
1 Ide preserved a copy, as he fells us, of an unsigned American
proclamation that was handed to himself on June 8, '• between the
hours of 10 and 11 A. M.," as he very exactly adds. (See the Ide
7
98 CALIFORNIA.
Now, as we have seen, no such " banda " was ever
officially promulgated at all, and what Loker posted
must have been, if anything, a forgery. The question
before us is, Were such forgeries, or other false state
ments, whatever their source, actually believed among
the better informed American settlers ? And did the
belief of the settlers influence the captain to act ?
These questions seem to me to admit of a demonstrably
negative answer. I shall here lay no stress on the
curiously unsatisfactory nature of the parol evidence on
this topic that was presented to tue congressional com
mittee at Washington. It is indeed true that those
Americans who were in a position to know best about
the actual state of the Californian public were not the
men to whom the Claims Committee appealed for infor
mation as to the current American belief about the sit
uation of the moment of the outbreak ; but then, to be
sure, not everybody could be got in Washington as a
witness at just the desired time. One must remark, how
ever, in passing, that much of the parol evidence of
settlers that was produced at Washington is historically
quite worthless, expressing the vague and not disinter
ested views of men who either were in no position to
understand the facts, or were themselves decidedly in-
Family Narrative, p. 113.) It read : " Notice is hereby given that a
large body of armed Spaniards on horseback, amounting to 250 men,
have been seen on their way to the Sacramento Valley, destroying the
crops, burning the houses, and driving off tiie cattle. Captain Fre
mont invites every freeman in the valley to come to his camp at the
Buttes immediately ; and he hopes to stay the enemy, and put a stop
to his" — ("Here," says Ide, also on p. 113, "the sheet was folded
and worn in two, and no more is found.") The genuineness of this
memorandum seems certain. Of course this proclamation itself, who
ever wrote it, was utterly false in its statements about the "armed
band."
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 99
disposed to let other people understand the facts. But
such testimony we need not even criticise. Ours ar
ranges itself under several heads.
In the first place, then, well-informed and trustworthy
settlers, men of property and position at that time, of
honorable career and notable reputation since, have
given in more recent times testimony to the point. Es
pecially satisfactory is the elaborate refutation of the
traditional view about Castro's hostility which I have
before me, as I write, from the pen of Mr. John Bid-
well, of Chico, CaL, a man whose position then as a
trusted assistant of Sutter at the fort, and whose resi
dence in the country for some years before that date,
give us good ground for thinking him well informed ;
while his high public reputation in California ever since
those times also assures us that we have in him an up
right, cautious, and able observer. For Mr. Bancroft's
library, Mr. Bidwell prepared a lengthy statement,
which I have used in the former chapter, and which
also treats of this time. But in addition to this, by the
kindness of the editor of the " Overland Monthly," Miss
M. W. Shinn, I have obtained a copy of a MS. now in
her possession, a part of certain records on early Cali
fornia history that Rev. Mr. Willey has lent to her for
her own use. This MS. answers questions of Mr. "Wil-
ley's, put to General Bidwell, about the Bear Flag
affair, and is full and definite. It was not at first in
tended for print, but for the Rev. Mr. Willey's use. I
use it, by permission, here.
For a long time, says Mr. Bidwell, in fact almost ever
since he reached the country, settlers in the valley were
accustomed to tell and hear all sorts of wild stories
about the Californian government and its plans, about
100 CALIFORNIA.
coming war, or about some attempted expulsion of
Americans, or about a fight for independence. These
rumors would gather, from time to time, a number of
people at Slitter's Fort, who would talk it all over, and
again disperse quietly, to be aroused once more in six
months or a year. Especially the floating population
of the territory, landless men of no fixed dwelling-
place, trappers, deserters from ships, often precious ras
cals, would enjoy and spread this warlike talk. They
especially hated all Californians, who well returned the
hatred. " But these rumors," says Mr. Bidwell, ''had
this effect, Americans had learned to be always on guard.
They — I mean the more considerate class — had
learned to weigh signs of danger, and put, to a consid
erable extent, a true value on them. Those who had
property, and had settled in the territory, were gener
ally in favor of peace ; while those who had little or no
interest here were, as a rule, always ready and anxious
for war." By 1846 these Americans of all classes were
already too numerous to have any serious fear of being
driven out, and the Californian leaders were known to
them as men of too much shrewdness to attempt such a
movement.
Mr. Bidwell, in discussing the feeling at the moment
of the outbreak, then goes on to say that, after Captain
Fremont's departure for Oregon, in March, '' all was
quiet again." " There were no hostile demonstrations,
or even threats, to my knowledge. We in the Sacra
mento Valley felt entirely secure. Others dispersed
throughout the country nearer the coast were wholly
exposed in case of danger, and would have fled to Sac
ramento on the least notice. But there was not a whis
per of trouble. Americans would surely have given the
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 101
alarm at Sacramento long before Arce reached there
with the horses, had Castro intimated, by word or act,
a purpose to expel them." " Is it not strange," Mr.
Bid well adds, in another connection, " that if Castro
was about to make war against American immigrants
or settlers, and these so excited about it as to ask Fre
mont's aid, I should have known nothing about it, and
been looking for a saw-mill site, with only one man, and
he proposing to find his way alone to Sonoma ? " Mr.
Bidwell was at the moment absent from Sutter's Fort
for two or three days, with Dr. Semple, searching for
a site for that saw-mill which, when afterwards built,
was the occasion of the gold-discovery. " The valley,"
when he set out, just before the seizure of Arce's horses,
" was peace and quiet. No settler, the truth of history
compels me to say it, had any apprehension of danger.
I was making ready to start to Los Angeles on business."
We must indeed remember that Mr. Bidwell is not
an authority for those settlers who were just then near
the camp at the Buttes, or directly under Captain Fre
mont's or Lieutenant Gillespie's influence, men such as
later testified before the Claims Committee. That these
may have had sincere fears in many cases and at this
time is certain. But Mr. Bidwell is good authority for
the state of feeling at Sutter's Fort. " There was,"
then, " no excitement, no danger, till Fremont began
the war by sending the party which attacked Arce,
captured his horses, and let him and his escort go with
a defiant message to Castro. If Americans really were
in danger, is it possible to conceive a more unwise
thing than the beginning of war at such a time and
under such circumstances, without giving them notice ? "
" Therefore," concludes Mr. Bidwell, " I say that Fre-
102 CALIFORNIA.
mont, and he alone, is to be credited with the first act
of war. Truth compels me to say, the war was not be
gun in California in defense of American settlers. It
may be there was a drawn sword hanging over their
heads, but if so they did not know it, and Fremont
must have the credit of seeing it for them. Fremont
began the war : to him belongs all the credit ; upon him
rests all the responsibility."
One must carefully limit, as we have tried to do, the
extent to which Mr. Bidwell is a satisfactory authority.
He could not know, of course, as much about Castro's
designs and movements as was known at the camp in the
north, because he, like the American consul at Monterey,
was nearer to Castro, and consequently farther from
the only genuine sources of traditional knowledge about
Castro than were Captain Fremont's excited informants
northward at the Buttes, or on Bear River. But Mr.
Bidwell, in his ignorance, may certainly be supposed to
represent the state of mind of those average, respectable
American settlers, who had fixed interests in the coun
try, and no extraordinary sources of information about
the imminent dangers that threatened. As for the evi
dence in the claims-pamphlet about tbe reports at Butter's
Fort, Mr. Bidwell's testimony shows how much that is
worth.
I have seen, in Mr. Bancroft's collection of state
ments, others, of good authority and much value, that
give the same impression of the situation.
In the second place, however, as proving that not
good information of danger, but private purposes of his
own, led Captain Fremont to act as he did, we have the
important and demonstrable fact that Captain Fremont
took no trouble to verify the stories of Castro's hostility
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 103
before acting, but, on the contrary, behaved precisely
like a man who felt authorized to act on his own initia
tive! For there was one person who could have told
him the truth ; and that was Larkin, with whom, for
the rest, Gillespie was bound by his own instructions, as
we shall later see, to keep up a good understanding.
Yet to Larkin no appeal was made for any information
whatever on the matter. And if Larkin seemed too far
away, and if, in his credulous acceptance of false stories,
Captain Fremont feared to wait long enough to get an
answer from Monterey, he could equally well have got
information from Yerba Buena that would have made
a peaceable leader very loath to act hastily. He did, in
fact, send Lieutenant Gillespie, for supplies, to San
Francisco Bay, dispatching him only a week before
hostilities began. And before Gillespie returned, hos
tilities had been begun. These facts forbid us to think
Captain Fremont desirous of a warrant for his acts in
any knowledge of Castro's hostility, and show us that
he was certainly in no sense anxious to know the exact
truth about the state of the country.
Of Gillespie's real relation to Larkin at that moment
we need now only say that it was an important one,
such as should have insured mutual confidence and cer
tainly very good faith and plain speech from Gillespie
to Larkin. On the other hand, moreover, if Captain
Fremont was anywhere to learn the real state of the
country, or the real dangers in which he stood, it surely
was from Larkin that he might expect authentic infor
mation. Now. however, a dispatch from Larkin to the
State Department, dated June 1, proves that Captain
Fremont first wrote to Larkin from the Sacramento
Valley, giving not the least sign of any sense of his own
104 CALIFORNIA.
danger, nor the least hint of the supposed danger to the
settlers, but, on the contrary, saying, in a perfectly un-
warlike fashion, that he meant to go East at once. Af
ter thus writing, and before he could have time to get
an answer from Larkin, he began his hostilities. This
is not the conduct of one who has heard reports of the
hostility of a government with which he is properly at
peace, and who prudently wants to find out the truth
and then act accordingly. It is. however, the conduct
of a man who feels authorized to act quite independ
ently, and who chooses to give no sign of his purposes
to even the most properly interested persons. On June
1, then, to specify, Larkin's letter to the State Depart
ment says that Larkin has just received an express from
Gillespie and Captain Fremont, who have returned to
the Sacramento Valley from Oregon. "Captain Fremont
now starts for the States. By the courier," he goes
on, " I received a letter for Hon. Thomas H. Benton,
which I inclose in this. ' ] The letter thus inclosed
gave Mr. Benton, as we shall see, the same informa
tion about the captain's intentions to go East. If, then,
Captain Fremont's intention to go East was sincere,
his chancre of intention that led to the attack before
o
he got or could get any reply from Larkin was based
on a very hasty and ill-conducted examination into the
mythical warlike preparations of Castro. If, however,
as is possible, this intention to go East was not sincere,
but was put into the letter to Mr. Benton and into the
letter to Larkin for the sake of deceiving any Califor-
nian into whose hands the letters might perchance fall,
still the same considerations remain as to the insignifi
cance of that supposed hostility of Castro as motive for
1 This seems to be the letter of May 24.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 105
the captain's acts. For whether the attack upon the
Californians was already determined upon or not, the
same thing is shown by this Larkin letter ; namely, that
Captain Fremont took no trouble to learn from Larkin,
as he might in any case safely and prudently have done,
whether an assault upon himself and the settlers was
imminent, and from his side gave to Larkin no hint of
his own supposed danger. On the contrary, he acted
precisely like a man with a secret that either could not
be trusted on paper at all, or, if it could be so trusted,
still could not be even remotely hinted to the person
who had the best right to know.
But our next piece of evidence is absolutely conclu
sive. Lieutenant Gillespie, as he testified before the
Claims Committee (p. 26 of their Report), left Captain
Fremont's camp on the 28th of May, after the return
to the Sacramento Valley from the north, and only
about one week before the seizure of Arce's horses, " to
proceed to San Francisco to obtain supplies [of food]
for the men." On the 30th, at Captain Sutler's, he
learned, as he says, of Castro's expected attack on the
settlers and on Captain Fremont. The attack, however,
was not so imminent but that he could go down in a
teunch to San Francisco without fear, expecting to get
and bring back supplies in no very secret way. He
" did not reach San Francisco until the 7th." Here he
got supplies from Captain Montgomery of the Ports
mouth, and returned to Sutter's Fort on the 12th. On
his return he heard of the seizure of Arce's horses. Of
course, before he set out on this expedition, Gillespie
must have known, or at least must have suspected, that
the supplies which he sought were meant not only for
pressing necessities, but also for an intended war. This
106 CALIFORNIA.
war now is to be, according to the self-defense theory,
something forced upon Captain Fremont by threatened
hostilities. The knowledge of such impending hostili
ties Gillespie shall have brought down to Yerba Buena.
But here, as it chanced, he talked quite freely with an
American, who at once wrote a letter, dated June 10,
from Yerba Buena ; and this was later printed in a
paper in the Sandwich Islands.1 The letter begins :
" There are strange things in this world, happening
every day, but none to me more so than that I should
find myself in California, and writing a letter to be
taken to you by the first overland express, and cer
tainly the longest ever attempted in America. A friend
has kindly volunteered to put this into the hands of the
gallant Captain Fremont, who is now encamped in the
Sacramento, and about to proceed directly to the United
States." This " friend " is evidently Gillespie himself ;
for the letter-writer goes on to tell how he has just
heard, from the lips of the very gentleman who brought
an express to Captain Fremont from the States, of the
meeting on the shores of Klamath Lake ; of the night
of danger that followed ; of the Indian attack ; of the
hair-breadth escape ; and of the return to the Sacra
mento Valley. And now the Fremont party are pre
paring to return to the States ! Plainly, Gillespie well
kept his secret about the coming conflict from his fellow-
countryman. This is quite intelligible if the plotting
was going on from tlie American side, but unintelligible
if the pressing danger to the American settlers was now
1 I have the letter before me in the copy made from the Friend
into the Sandwich Island News, of Honolulu, December 2, 184G, a
copy which I had the good fortune to find by a mere accident, and, in
dependently, in a Harvard College Library tile. I do not know for
what American newspaper the letter was first written.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 107
a matter of public knowledge or yet of public report. In
that case the correspondent surely could not have been
persuaded to send a letter overland to the United States
by the hands of Captain Fremont on this mentioned
information that the latter was at once to leave the
land, and peacefully. As to the state of the country,
meanwhile, the correspondent, in his innocence about
coming events, gives us, through this wholly accidental
letter, a beautifully unconscious refutation of all stories
about the fears of the Americans that were well informed.
For this letter-writer is no friend of the Californians ;
on the contrary, he speaks ill of them, and hopes that
" a day of reckoning " may some time come for certain
supposed old-time injuries. But yet his whole account
of these people attributes to them a present condition,
not of dangerous and hostile readiness, but of laz.y im
potence and inefficiency. The facts that he relates are
many of them quite inconsistent with any prevalent fear
of imminent war against any Americans. He says, for
instance, that Castro is supposed to be quarreling with
Pio Pico, " but his [Castro's] conduct meets with such
universal contempt from all classes that he cannot raise
over forty men now, where a few months ago he was
supreme." This is indeed a formidable army, " of all
arms," such as Senator Benton tells us of! The letter-
writer does indeed know that it is " even reported " that
Castro is inciting Indians to burn up American wheat-
fields ; but so little does he lay stress on this mere ru
mor that, immediately after repeating it, he adds that
all Suiter's American laborers have left the fort before
the harvest time, " and gone to work for themselves,
taking his cattle to pay the amounts due them" Thus
people always behave, let the reader remember, in a
time of dread of imminent " pillage and massacre " !
108 CALIFORNIA.
And so this intelligent observer, some days after the
seizure of Arce's horses, but still before the news had
come of this first cloud of war, had not the least notion
of impending hostilities, and, after a very free talk with
Gillcspie, only knew that Captain Frc'mont was about to
go East, and that there was some rumor about Castro's
wish that the Indians would burn up American wheat.
This writer did not know that Castro had threatened
any armed attack on Americans ; he did not lay the
least stress on the rumor about the wheat ; and what he
says shows that there was no general " excitement " of a
hostile character, such as certain of the Claims Commit
tee witnesses pretend to know about, at Yerba Buena or
anywhere else near the bay. Howr, if there were, could
Gillespie be spinning yarns on shore so quietly to his
countryman, although the bold lieutenant was, in fact,
already well known at Yerba Buena to be a messenger
to Fremont and a disguised American officer ? For the
rest, the same correspondent, in a later letter, after hos
tilities had begun, attributes the whole trouble to the set
tlers themselves, and considers it their aggression. All
this, then, shows both the absurdity of the current stories
in the north, the carelessness of Captain Fremont about
the actual state of the Californian public mind, and the
determination of the captain to do his own share of
plotting.
Captain Fremont's own letter of July 25. 1846.1 to
Senator Benton, the letter on which the venerable sen
ator's first account was founded, does indeed assert the
hostility of Castro as a ground for action, but it gives
no reason to doubt the validity of the foregoing reason
ing. In the first place, it may have been written, as we
J See National Intelligencer for November 12, 1846.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 109
shall see, in a sort of private family cipher. If taken,
however, literally, it implies that Gillespie, who set out
on May 28, from the camp in the north, to go to Yerba
Buena for supplies, already knew of Castro's hostility
and of the captain's purpose, and that officers in the
United States navy, to whom Gillespie told the news, ap
proved openly of the captain's intended course. It also
implies that the account of their approval brought back
by Gillespie was one motive of Captain Fremont's final
action itself, although, to be sure, this action, as it also
shows, took place before Gillespie's return. It implies
this inconsistency and several other doubtful matters,
which may be due to the haste in which the letter was
written. Imperfect as it thus is for historical uses, this
letter nevertheless shows plainly enough, if it shows
anything, that between May 24 and June 6, and without
waiting for sound advices from even Yerba Buena, Cap
tain Fremont resolved of his own will to instigate an at
tack on the utterly defenseless Californians north of
San Francisco Bay, giving as his warrant an entirely
unfounded report (or pretext) that they were already
in arms against himself. Taken in connection with the
foregoing contemporaneous evidence, this fact must be
viewed as forever disposing of the notion that Captain
Fremont could have learned, after careful inquiry from
any competent persons, that good evidence existed of
immediate danger from Castro. For the letter itself
shows that he took no time to make such inquiry. On
the contrary, we now see clearly that the reports about
Castro, such as the forged proclamation that Loker
posted or the paper that Ide saw, issued from some
source very near to Captain Fremont's own person, and
that if he himself was deceived about the matter, he
110 CALIFORNIA.
took no trouble to avoid such deception, and acted
wholly without good evidence of danger. In view of
the above-mentioned evidences that somebody was de
cidedly interested in spreading false written reports of
Castro's intentions, there can be very little doubt re
maining as to the actual relation of Captain Fremont
and Lieutenant Gillespie themselves to the reports that
are so often said to have justified their aggression.
Rather must it be hoped that the orders from Washing
ton justified the use of these reports.
Let the reader still not for one moment misinterpret
our present result. If the fourth plan was the govern
ment plan, and was so included in instructions brought
by Gillespie that Captain Fremont, as a confidential
officer of the government, could not escape from the
duty of performing his official trust by carrying out this
plan, then let the necessary means used be charged one
and all to the moral responsibility of the government at
Washington. The morality of such devices is, in such
cases, obviously an affair for the government, not for
the confidential agent, to judge. If the Gillespie in
structions were so worded as to require this interpreta
tion under the circumstances, then all the deception and
all the aggression used by Captain Fremont must be
pardoned or even praised, in so far as it all was an
official act authorized and demanded by his govern
ment. And furthermore one must pardon, in that case,
the aforesaid patriotic delicacy also that led the young
officer's friends in later times to shield the government,
by repeating to the American public statements that
were originally of use in arousing the trappers and
sturdy vagabonds of the Sacramento Valley. Even if
such evidences were used before Congress to secure ap-
TEE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. Ill
propriations for the expenses of the conquest, one may
still suppose the administration responsible for the some
what singular means employed for this end. In case the
fourth plan was the government plan, it is indeed im
possible to hide from ourselves its wantonly aggressive
and cruel character ; but it is still easy to justify and to
extol the energy of the spirited agent. So that now all
still turns for us upon this question : Was the fourth
plan really the government plan, and did Captain Fre
mont's instructions, received from Gillespie, warrant
and require him to carry it out ?
VI. THE MYSTERY AS NOW EXPOUNDED BY GENERAL
FREMONT.
Students of a scene in history must not be moved
by personal interests ; but I confess that from a priori
considerations I was prepared, when I first came to the
study of this subject, to form a very high opinion of the
work of the gallant Captain Fremont in the acquisition
of California ; and later, when facts upon which we are
soon to dwell had already very seriously affected my en
thusiasm, I still turned, with strong hopes of discovering
new facts that would vindicate him, to General Fremont
himself for personal explanations. I have not promised
General Fremont to agree with him in any of my results,
nor have I assured him of anything but the fairest pos
sible statement of his side also in its place in this book,
along with whatever other facts, opposing or favorable,
I might learn in connection with the matter. So far, the
facts here brought forward certainly have seemed to
make Captain Fremont's responsibility at the moment of
his action a very serious one, in case he was not fully
supported by his instructions. He brought war into a
112 CALIFORNIA.
peaceful Department; his operations began an estrange
ment, insured a memory of bloodshed, excited a furious
bitterness of feeling between the two peoples that were
henceforth to dwell in California, such as all h'.s own
subsequent personal generosity and kindness could never
again make good. From the Bear Flag affair we can
date the beginning of the degradation, the ruin, and the
oppression of the Californian people by our own. In
all subsequent time the two peoples, as peoples, have
misunderstood and hated each other, with disastrous
effects for both, and especially for the weaker. No
doubt, as we shall later see, some great evils were, under
the circumstances, inevitable. Yet much of this hatred
might have been saved, had we come peaceably and open-
heartedlv. We came, as it seemed to them, by stealth,
and we used unprovoked violence. The memory of this
led in part to the revolt in the south, and to the blood
shed of that conflict ; and so all the rest followed. Un
doubted is the personal good-will and generous appre
ciation that General Fremont has since shown to many
native Californians, and the devotion that he later ex
hibited to some of their interests. With all that we
have here nothing to do. His act as aggressor in the
Bear Flag war began the bitterness. And in that, we
say, he assumed a very serious responsibility. Now,
however, \ve are to see how, from his own point of view,
he to-day regards this long-past story, and what he now
feels at liberty to say for his personal justification.
An interview which I had with General Fremont in
December, 1884, forms the basis of the present state
ment of his side of the matter. I took copious notes
at the time, submitted them later to General and Mrs.
Fremont for correction, and have promised them an
TEE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 113
opportunity to see the proofs of this present version.
The reader may then feel tolerably sure that, however I
shall later have to criticise General Fremont's past acts
or present views, the general's final and definitive ac
count of those matters at issue, concerning which I ex
pressed my doubts and questions to him personally, is,
at this point, stated to his own satisfaction in so far as
it has been possible for me so to state his views.
In answer to my general questions, at our interview,
about his purposes in the expedition of 1845-46, Gen
eral Fremont replied that his main object was to find
the shortest route for a future railroad to the Pacific,
and especially to the neighborhood of San Francisco
Bay. Yet he was not without other thoughts at the
time of his departure from the East. For Senator
Benton, who had long devoted much attention to proj
ects of further extension of our territory in the West
and Southwest, and who, of course, had been deeply
interested in the previous expedition to California, had
often talked with the young captain, before the be
ginning of this new expedition, concerning the value
that the territory would have to the United States when
ever it should come, as Senator Benton was firmly de
termined to have it come, into our possession. War
with Mexico was already probable. And so, said Gen
eral Fremont, " at the time I set out, I felt that op
portunity was apt to make probability a certainty, and
I was determined to be prompt to act upon this feeling,
and to take advantage of any opportunity to serve the
country in this way."
Mrs. Fremont, at this point during the interview,
kindly added some explanations concerning what she
knew of the intentions of the government during Cap-
114 CALIFORNIA.
tain Fremont's absence on this expedition. After the
expedition was on its way, she frequently made part in
consultations between her father and Secretary Buch
anan concerning California. Buchanan, as she feels
sure, was very much, if not altogether, under her fa
ther's influence, and agreed with Senator Benton as
to all important points in the whole affair. What the
character of their discussions was the subsequent in
structions to Captain Fremont showed, and also the sub
sequent events. Yet, if I desired a summary of the
conversations concerning California, as she remem
bered them, she would express their substance in the
single sentence : " Since England intends to take Cal
ifornia, we must see that she does not." Meanwhile, of
course, the certainty of a coming war with Mexico was
laid at the basis of all the discussions.
General Fremont, resuming his own statement, added
that he himself knew, of course, very accurately, during
his absence, the great extent of the influence which Mr.
Benton's long experience and position as chairman of
the military committee of the Senate, as well as his per
sonal powers and his political eminence, gave him with
the administration. General Fremont remembers, also,
how the coining of the Mexican War, in view of Mr.
Benton's views and influence, was already considered by
all the family as a certainty. And naturally all these
facts influenced his own subsequent conduct.
After he reached California, the unfortunate difficulty
with Castro took place. This, General Fremont assured
me, was in no wise occasioned by his own fault, nor was
it any part of his intention. For as yet no further in
formation had reached him that could warrant him in
getting into any voluntary difficulty with Castro. He
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 115
remembers no incident that could have caused trouble
from his side, or by the act of any of his party. Castro,
as he now remembers the matter, had promised him the
privilege of accomplishing one of the immediate objects
of his surveying expedition, by "' being allowed to travel
through the country, and to become acquainted with the
passes to the coast." The privilege of u resting the
party and getting supplies " was merely an addition to
this main request. The main request was clearly un
derstood on both sides. The permission of Castro was
indeed not put in writing, but the matter was clear
enough. And the subsequent order of Castro was also
clearly a breaking of the latter's promise, a complete
change of policy, unprovoked and unexpected. That
Captain Fremont should resist this order as much as he
did was, the general assured me, merely an expression of
his indisposition to submit to an affront. He was will
ing to give Castro an opportunity to attack, although he
himself had still no authority to attack Castro. The re
tirement after three days was leisurely, and surveys were
made all along the way until Klamath Lake was reached,
the Indians showing no hostility until the fatal night of
Gillespie's coming, when they attacked the camp and
killed three men.
Gillespie's coming and his messages formed, o£
course, the main subject of my conversation with Gen
eral Fremont ; and the discussion upon this matter was
quite full. Gillespie, according to the general's state
ment, brought a dispatch to him from Buchanan in ver
bal form, having destroyed the original before he passed
through Mexico, to prevent its possible capture. He also
brought, as has always been said, letters from Senator
Benton and Mrs. Fremont to Captain Fremont. These,
116 CALIFORNIA.
indeed, were private letters, but they related in part
to the same subject as Gillespie's dispatch. Senator
Benton gave, in fact, to Captain Fremont, by his own
letter, a more explicit expression of the wishes of the
government than was given in the dispatch. But this
could safely be done in the letter, because " the private
letters were in a manner in family cipher, so full were
they of prearranged reference to talks and agreements
known only at home." l That this information as to
the wishes of the government was, under the circum
stances, as authoritative as the official dispatch itself, is
clear to General Fremont from the previously stated
facts concerning Senator Benton's relations to the ad
ministration.
Between the private letters and the dispatch, General
Fremont made in his statement only this distinction :
that the letters were " much stronger and fuller than the
dispatch, — stronger and fuller to the one point of tak
ing and holding possession °f California in the event of
any occurrence that ivould justify it, leaving it to my
discretion to decide upon such an occurrence." The
substance, however, of letters and dispatch together
was, that it tvas the desire of the president that Cap
tain Fremont should not let the English get possession
of California, but should use o.ny means in his power,
or any occasion that offered, to 2)revent such a thing,
looking always to the imminent probability of a war
with Mexico. And so what was afterwards done was
in strict conformity to these instnictions, in view of the
circumstances of the case.
General Fremont expressed his certainty that the dis-
1 The words quoted here are Mrs. Fremont's, added by her, for the
sake of fuller explanation, to my MS. notes of the interview.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 117
patch brought by Gillespie was addressed to him di
rectly. And here a discussion took place at our inter
view which the reader will later find noteworthy. I
brought up Mr. J. S. Hittell's assertion as made in his
" History of San Francisco," to the effect that the Bear
Flag affair was a blunder whereby a certain important
and authorized plan of Consul Larkin's to gain posses
sion of California by peaceful means was violently
thwarted. In view of this and of what I called an ap
parently well-founded opinion about Gillespie's dispatch,
I asked whether it was not true that the message from
the government as brought by Gillespie was really di
rected to Consul Larkin, or was at least ordered to be
repeated to him. Concerning this point General Fre
mont's recollection was very decided and his opinion quite
clear. He was sure that the Gillespie dispatch as he knew
it was directed to him personally ; and he was firmly of
the opinion that Gillespie could not have had any impor
tant secret instruction directed to Larkin or to anybody
else in California save Captain Fremont himself. Nor did
it seem at all probable to him that the government would
have intrusted to Larkin any part of the business. Mr.
Hittell's interpretation he considered as utterly un
founded in fact. Mrs. Fremont, who later, in 1849, had
frequent opportunities for conversation with Larkin con
cerning past events, and who felt sure that under the cir
cumstances he would have had no objection to telling
her all about the matter, never heard — so she at this
point kindly assured me — any hint from him of any such
secret mission. She thought that " there could hardly
be a more improbable idea " than the one suggested by
Mr. Hittell, namely, the idea that Larkin could have
been instructed to get California by peaceful intrigue
118 CALIFORNIA.
with its inhabitants. The plan could not have been
carried out ; Mr. Buchanan would never have dreamed
of intrusting such a plan to a man of the imperfect edu
cation and small experience of Consul Larkin ; the idea
of such a plan was inconsistent with the wishes of the
government as made known to Captain Fremont and
discussed in her presence in Washington.
General Fremont also held this same view of the
matter. He said, indeed, that Larkin might have been
given some special instructions about conciliating the
Californians, but insisted that no part of the real pur
pose of the government in California could have been
intrusted to him or to any other agent in California
save Gillespie as messenger and Captain Fremont him
self as principal agent. California could not have been
gained by peaceable means in the way supposed ; and
the actual purpose of the government as known at the
time to Captain Fremont included the use of such
means as were actually employed in view of the circum
stances. The whole affair had indeed to be carried on,
in part, out of the range of official business ; and much
was left to Captain Fremont's responsibility, so that he
was obliged to act on his personal knowledge of what
the government wanted, — a knowledge not wholly com
municated by official channels. However, so much is cer
tain to him : that Larkin could not have had any im
portant trust in the matter without the knowledge of the
captain, while in fact the latter had no such knowledge.1
I dwelt perhaps unnecessarily, in the interview, on
the question of the exact coloring of the official instruc
tions and the exact sense of his position which General
1 The same view was insisted upon, later, in letters to me written
for the general.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 119
Fremont remembers himself to have had at the mo
ment of action. No doubt, I was repeatedly assured,
could exist as to the purpose of the government to take
California if there should be the least chance, " and by
force if necessary." The government wanted and in
tended to push the war with Mexico, and instructed ac
cordingly. As to his own feeling at the moment of ac
tion, General Fremont said, in nearly the following
words : " It is not to be supposed that an officer of
the government would act as I did unless he had the
sense that his authority for his act was sufficient under
the circumstances. I felt that the certainty of war
would place me in a position to have the government
behind me in all that I might do ; but that if no war
took place I would so assume the responsibility as to
leave the government free to disavow me if it was
needed. I was in a position where I might render
great service to the government by taking upon myself
a possible personal risk which the government knew I
was taking." 1 There is at all events no chance, in
sisted General Fremont, that any one acquainted with
his official instructions could fairly and truthfully accuse
him of disobeying their letter, notwithstanding the rela
tive freedom with which under the circumstances, it was
his duty to act. When I referred to the summary of
the situation casually given by Mr. Barrows in his
" Oregon," 2 according to which the young captain did
good service by properly disregarding " red tape," Gen-
1 The analogy of General Komaroff's recent position and action in
Afghanistan, as the European public have interpreted the matter,
will at once occur to any reader's mind. As this interview took place
in December, 1884, tha particular analogy of course, could not have
been thought of in our conversation on this occasion.
2 See that work in the present series, p. 273.
120 CALIFORNIA.
eral Fremont accepted the description as very fair and
satisfactory.
General Fremont now continued as to subsequent
events. When Gillespie overtook the party at the
head of the Sacramento Valley, Captain Fremont al
ready fully intended to return from Oregon after he
should have spent some time in making surveys. When
he should return he expected to remain in the territory
and to ''watch events." Already he hoped in this way
to have part in the acquisition of California. The diffi
culty with Castro had diverted him for the moment
from his original plans, but had not affected his ultimate
purposes. From the time of the return to the Sacra
mento Valley until the first act of hostility, Captain
Fremont waited in the valley watching events ; the
coming of Arce's horses seemed to him to bring the
right moment for action, and so he chose it. General
Fremont finds it now, of course, hard to say just in how
far there was a clear understanding between him and
the settlers before this first hostile act. Such men as
he needed lie instructed in what it was needful for them
to know. He took no care to prevent the misunderstand
ings that must arise when such a movement has to be
made by an officer with confidential instructions. Mer-
ritt, who was a " good man," 1 had the instructions about
taking Arce's horses and about the subsequent seizure
of Sonoma and of the four notable prisoners. All that
was therefore done by Captain Fremont's order. As
for the Bear Flag men at Sonoma, before the party of
Captain Fremont joined them, the general said that he
1 I fully suppose and believe that General Fremont must be here
understood to use "good " as a relative term, — relative, namely, to
the business of taking horses bv violence.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 121
neither knew nor cared what they did in the way of
" government " at Sonoma, save indeed that their arbi
trary seizures of property and similar acts seemed to
him to be bad, and were blamed by him when he came
down to Sonoma. General Fremont, in answer to one
further question, said that he saw no proclamation of
Castro's ordering American settlers out of the country,
or threatening them ; nor does he know whether there
was one. I ought here to add that although at this
first interview General Fremont gave me to understand
that he had taken ample time to go over his recollections
and records of that period ; although he himself, in fact,
chose the time of the interview and was previously ad
vised by letter of what I aimed to know ; although, more
over, he himself on this occasion referred me more than
once to the Claims Committee Report, heretofore fre
quently quoted ; and although I definitely set before
him at the time as a difficulty Mr. Bidwell's assertion
that the settlers had nothing to fear, still he made in
the whole interview no mention of the traditional dan
ger to the settlers or of aggression from Castro as in any
wise an important reason for his operations, but on the
contrary distinctly gave me to understand that his duty
as a confidential servant of the country itself fully war
ranted his action. Mr. Bidwell, he assured me, was as a
settler of course unaware of the purposes of the govern
ment, and was therefore an incompetent critic of a con
fidential agent's conduct. The whole interview tended
to this one result, that the instructions were the decisive
element in determining the conduct of the captain, while
the stories about Castro soon seemed to me so completely
out of sight for General Fremont that I made, after the
introduction of Mr. Bidwell's view and the asking of
122 CALIFORNIA.
the question about Castro's proclamation, no further at-
tempt to press the matter, confident that General Fre
mont now felt at liberty, in view of the long-past public
interests involved, to leave out of account those motives
that his duty to his country seems to have once forced
him to make so prominent. I considered the interview
as in fact decisive upon this matter, and for some time
had no reason to change my view of General Fremont's
present opinion. Of course I may herein have entirely
misunderstood the general.
In justice to General Fremont, though with serious
regrets for the cause of historical simplicity and definite-
ness of result, I am forced, however, to add that, in a
subsequent interview, in which he kindly undertook to
help me about a few further difficulties, General Fre
mont returned once more, in answer to questions then
put, to the expression of his opinion that he was at that
time trustworthily informed of Castro's imminent hos
tility. Possibly to the natural inconsistencies of the
human memory, which General Fremont himself freely
declared to be, after forty years, a troublesome obstacle
to historical thoroughness and accuracy, may be attrib
uted the whole of this last difficulty of mine. At all
events, as we have seen, there is good reason for doubt
ing any memory that may now assure General Fremont
of well-sifted and trustworthy information then possessed
by him about any imminent danger to his command or
to the settlers from Castro. He could have had no such
trustworthy information, since there was none to have.
If he was actually deceived by a conspiracy of settlers,
or by some odd accident of circumstances, very definite
documentary evidence would now be needed to substan
tiate the fact. And the whole tendency of my principal
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 123
interview is to show that the chief and clearer memory
of General Fremont has reference to his instructions,
and not to Castro. Whether even this clearer memory
is accurate, we have now to see. I think that the dan
ger from Castro ought at all events forever to disappear
from the determining motives of the affair. The opera
tion was once for all a pure aggression, and there will
never again be a chance of making it appear otherwise.
Such then is General Fremont's present account.
VII. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS.
A government is responsible only for instructions
that it actually gives. However near or dear the ven
erable Senator Benton was to the government, he was
not in the government, and his private advices to Cap
tain Fremont in a " family cipher " cannot be viewed
as committing our administration to any policy which
it did not actually authorize that distinguished statesman
to convey to his son-in-law. It would need no disavowal
to save the government from the responsibility of such
acts ; they would be ipso facto a family plot, unless the
cabinet, or at all events the president, previously knew
of them and approved them. All this is axiomatic.
In view hereof I fully appreciate the importance for
General Fremont of the discovery of sufficient proof
that Senator Benton's " family cipher " letter contained
nothing in opposition to the wording of the official gov
ernment dispatch brought by Gillespie. The fourth
plan was, if General Fremont is right, in the dispatch
itself, although it was more fully stated in the letter.
The letter from Senator Benton has never seen the
light ; but if we had it and the dispatch both before us,
with the " cipher " interpreted, there are but four pos-
124 CALIFORNIA.
sibilities as to their relations: (1.) If they disagreed,
then Senator Benton's letter could have no authority,
but would express only a family plot to thwart the gov
ernment ; and this would be true, however loving and
confidential the daily intercourse between the venerable
statesman and the cabinet may have been. (2.) But
the two might perfectly agree, or the letter might be
less explicit than the dispatch ; and then the letter from
Senator Benton would not help us at all in our judgment.
(3.) Since the letter, however, is said to have been more
explicit than the dispatch, this more in the letter might
be unauthorized exhortation ; and would then again be
worthless. (4.) Or this more might be authorized, and
then the best way to prove the fact would be to show
the perfect agreement of letter and dispatch in contents
and in spirit, so far as the dispatch icent. In all ways,
therefore, we see how vastly important it is to know what
the dispatch said ; and how comparatively unimportant
it is, before we know what the dispatch said, to speculate
about the private opinions of even Senator Benton con
cerning the conquest of California. The best way to
show that his views were decisive with the cabinet is
to find out the actual expression of the cabinet's views ;
since a government is distinguishable by the fact that
even its most halting and vacillating and foolish views
are for its agents always authoritative, whilst a person
not in the government is distinguished by the fact that
his wisest and seemingly most influential and most far-
seeing and most friendly advice is worth not the waste
paper needed to write it, to a faithful agent of the gov
ernment, unless this agent knows from the government
that this advice receives its own sanction.
Can we, however, find out what the dispatch said ?
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 125
Let us try both indirect and direct means. We have
General Fremont's memory of the dispatch and of the
letter, and of their agreement. But now, if the dispatch
contained what was essentially the fourth plan, how
could a sane government have sent it, while, both about
the same time and later, sending instructions to Sloat
that not only did not contemplate any support from his
fleet to Captain Fremont's operations,1 but gave him
definite orders that in so many words said things utterly
inconsistent with the notion of what we have called the
fourth plan ? This latter inconsistency appears as fol
lows : 2 —
As far as they have been published the earlier in
structions issued required Sloat, not, unless absolutely
driven thereto, to attack the government of California
as such, but only in case he should hear of a declara
tion of war to seize upon the ports, especially the port
of San Francisco, but if possible without a struggle
with the government. Sloat was meanwhile both first
and last carefully instructed " to preserve, if possible,
the most friendly relations with the inhabitants," and to
" encourage them to adopt a course of neutrality." In
an instruction that did not reach him before he acted,
but that expresses intentions which he must well have
known by other means when he acted, he is assured
1 This point, heretofore dwelt upon, Colonel Fre'mont was himself at
no small pains to prove before the Claims Committee, where he and
Gillespie testified to Sloat's perplexity and confusion of mind concern
ing the unexpected and incomprehensible conduct of the young cap
tain in the north. Colonel Fremont at that time desired to show the
energy and momentous consequences of his acts.
2 A convenient place to find Sloat's instructions together is in Ex.
Doc. 19, 2d Sess. 29th Congr. (Assembly), or again in Cutts, History
of the Conquest of New Mexico and California (Philadelphia, 1847),
in chap, vii., and in the appendix.
126 CALIFORNIA.
that " a connection between California and the present
government of Mexico is supposed scarcely to exist."
He is instructed, " as opportunity offers," to "conciliate
the people in California towards the government of the
United States," and to " endeavor to render their rela
tions with the United States as intimate and friendly as
possible." He is to " hold possession of San Francisco,
even while " he encourages " the people to neutrality,
self-government, and friendship." Or again, in another
likewise late-coming instruction, he is ordered to " en
deavor to establish the supremacy of the American Hag
without any strife with the people of California;" and,
" if California separates herself from our enemy, the
central Mexican government, and establishes a govern
ment of its own under the auspices of the American
flag," Sloat is to " take such measures as will best pro
mote the attachment of the people of California to the
United States." He is to bear in mind " that this
country desires to find in California a friend, and not an
enemy ; to be connected with it by near ties ; to hold
possession of it, at least during the war ; and to hold
that possession, if possible, with the consent of the in
habitants." There is no reason for supposing these
later instructions directed to Sloat to have been in any
wise at variance with his earlier orders, not all of which
have been published. It is plain, then, that Sloat had
a very curious and delicate commission intrusted to his
care. He was to get possession of the port of San Fran
cisco whenever war should have begun ; yet, even then,
he was not, unless absolutely forced thereto, to Id'y icar
ayainst the inhabitants of California. He was, on the
contrary, to treat them as friends, who had unfortu
nately become involved in the Mexican difficulty by
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 127
reason of their merely nominal connection with the
central government. He was to invite them to con
tinue their self-government, while he was to urge them
to separate peacefully from Mexico, and to come over
to the side of the United States. He was to cultivate
their good-will, and as far as possible to confine him
self to a naval occupation of their ports. If the reader
sees herein anything of a nature to perplex and par
alyze Sloat's mind whenever he should learn the contrast
between his instructions and the policy that on his ar
rival he found under active process of development by
Captain Fremont and Lieutenant Gillespie, as a conse
quence of the latter's secret mission, we must frankly
admit that we cannot explain the variance by any hy
pothesis consistent with wisdom in plotting and fidelity
in execution. We must indeed add that yet later in
structions to Sloat, namely, those prepared July 12,
1846, after instructions had already been issued to Gen
eral S. TV. Kearny for an overland expedition to Cali
fornia, more explicitly contemplate an occupation of the
whjle Department by Sloat's force. For by the time
these instructions were issued the Mexican War was
well under way, and the government was unwilling1 to
risk any futher delays. In these instructions, then,
Sloat is expected, under the rights that belong to his
country as belligerent, to take entire possession of Up
per California, so that, at the conclusion of peace, there
may be no doubts as to such actual possession. And
now indeed he is required, as he was not before, to es
tablish a civil government of his own in the territory.
But still he is assured that " in selecting persons to hold
office, due respect should be had to the wishes of the
people of California," as well as to the actual possessors
128 CALIFORNIA.
of authority in that province." And finally, August 13,
1846, he is instructed to give the people " as much lib
erty of self-government as is consistent with the general
occupation of the country by the United States."
But perhaps, as some one will object, when the gov
ernment said that " a connection between California and
Mexico is supposed scarcely to exist," they referred to
their secret expectation that Captain Fremont would,
ere Sloat acted, have severed the " connection." When
they talked of " neutrality," they meant the kind of
"neutrality" that Captain Fremont would by this time
have enforced by the aid of rebels and rifles. When
they talked of " self-government," they meant self-gov
ernment as administered by Captain Fremont's survey
ing party. And when they talked of " the wishes of
the people " and of " friendship." they were simply em
ploying a little irony. The text of Commodore Sloat's
dispatches, if given in full as Mr. Bancroft wrote
them, would completely refute this view. The opposi
tion of the Sloat instructions and of the fourth plan
must be perfectly evident to any one who will read the
instructions, and the matter would be inexplicable, and
would give rise to problems that we might forever and
very blindly discuss, were there not now a very differ
ent and shorter road out of our perplexities about what
the government wanted. But let this opposition have
at least its obvious weight.
We have dwelt S3 long on all the indirect means of
getting at the government's plan, for the sake of reduc
ing certain doubts and of cutting off certain questions
that would otherwise come before us when we at length
O
mention the one direct, long-hidden, now finally accessi
ble, authoritative expression of the government's plan
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 129
itself. I refer to the instructions that Gillespie brought
from Secretary Buchanan, and in all noteworthy prob
ability to the only official instructions of which Captain
Fremont could have had any knowledge at the moment
of acting. Whether by Gillespie's own deliberate and
unheard-of treachery they were falsified to the captain,
whether because of the '' family cipher " letter he con
cluded to neglect them, whether he determined of his
own will to take the risk of the moment and disobey
them, whether he never even listened to find out their
plain meaning, or, if he did, by what very natural mis
fortune of memory he forty years later came to miscon-
'ceive them in his statement to me,1 and by what won
drous good fortune he has so long occupied a position
such that no government official could venture to confront
him with the facts, — all these questions I prejudge not
and discuss not now. The historical fact about the
instructions is the important thing. I have given Gen
eral Fremont's view, and I must also give the facts.
VIII. ONLY ONE DISPATCH CONTAINS THE SECRET
MISSION.
No doubt can properly exist that Gillespie brought
one official dispatch, and one only, to any agent in
California. He was sharply questioned about the mat
ter by the Claims Committee, and went over the ground
several times. He was then speaking before people
who were quite able to control his statements by confi
dential inquiries at the government offices, and who in
fact did get a confidential copy of the very instructions
1 He did not misstate them before the Claims Committee, but he was
cautiously reticent about them, as we have seen, in this and in all his
earlier official expressions.
9
130 CALIFORNIA.
carried. He was also testifying in Colonel Fremont's
own case and in his favor. If he had had two sets of
instructions, one to Larkin and one to Captain Fre
mont, there was every reason, for the sake of the credit
of the hero of the occasion, why Gillespie should have
stated the fact. But he does not state such a fact in his
recorded testimony before the committee. What he
distinctly says is that he had a dispatch to Larkin, and
repeated it to Captain Fremont, having been instructed
so to do. And for Captain Fremont he had his own
letter of introduction, which imported nothing but the
trustworthiness of the bearer ; and he had the Benton
packet. That is all * save, to be sure, Gillespie's own
personal instructions, which he communicated to Captain
Fremont, and which undoubtedly were, as he says, " to
watch over the interests of the United States in Califor
nia." How he was to u watch " we shall learn. lie
was, however, as we shall see, to cooperate with Larkin.
Gillespie's testimony makes clear, then, that he can
have had but one dispatch, in addition to his own per
sonal instructions. Even if he had had two official
dispatches, one to Larkin and one to Captain Fremont,
not only his silence about the latter as a separate dis-
1 Claims Committee Report, p. 30 : "I was bearer of the duplicate
of a dispatch to the United States consul at Monterey, as well also a
packet for J. C. Fremont, Esq., and a letter of introduction to the lat
ter gentleman from the Honorable James Buchanan. The former I de
stroyed before entering the port of Vera Cruz, having committed it to
memory. The packet and letter of introduction I delivered to Captain
Fremont, upon the 9th of May. 1846. in the mountains of Oregon."
P. 31 : " I delivered my letter of introduction and the packet intrusted
to me to Captain Fremont, and made him acquainted witli the wishes
of the government, which were the same as stated above for my own
guidance." P. 32 : ''I was also directed to show to Colonel Fr£-
inont the duplicate of the dispatch to Mr. Larkin."
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 131
patch would be inexplicable, but the position of Captain
Fremont at the moment of action would be precisely
the same as with only one dispatch. For Gillespie's
words, uttered, be it remembered, in Colonel Fremont's
own cause and behalf, before the committee, in 1848,
while the whole matter was fresh in all their minds, are
as just quoted : " / was directed to shoiv to Colonel
Fremont the duplicate of the dispatch to Larkin." So
that although General Fremont so kindly took the
trouble to demonstrate for me, in our recent interview,
that Larkin could not have had any secret mission from
the government through Gillespie, the plain evidence is
that, unless Gillespie was guilty of wanton and unheard-
of treachery, the Larkin mission must have been at the
time perfectly well explained to the young captain, who
has since so completely forgotten it, and who now so
sincerely deems it impossible.
That the Larkin dispatch was, however, the only offi
cial dispatch brought to California by Gillespie in this
affair is shown, not merely by Gillespie's own testimony,
but by every scrap of older testimony that I have been in
any wise able to discover bearing on this question. Al
though Gillespie testified in Colonel Fremont's own cause
to the delivery at Klamath Lake of the Larkin dispatch,
Colonel Fremont at that time gave, in his own testimony,
no hint of having received two official dispatches, such
as he must have received in case he had his own inde
pendent official dispatch. He merely left out Larkin's
name in his testimony. Furthermore, while the secret
Larkin mission can be traced, as mentioned, more or
less covertly, in numerous public documents, no public
document can be found, I think, that contains any trace
of a record of a mission to Captain Fremont. By the
132 CALIFORNIA.
courtesy of the present secretaries, I have official an
swers from the State, AVar, and Navy Departments
which assure me that in all of them careful search fails
to reveal any record of any instruction to a secret agent
in California at that time, save the Larkin dispatch ;
while this, notwithstanding its very delicate and con
fidential character, remains yet on record.
As an ahsolutely insurmountable evidence, however,
on this point, I have at last to present Captain Fre
mont's own original confession to his father-in-law, in
the before-mentioned letter of May 24, 1846. I should
have presented it earlier, were it not that the captain,
after all, is supposed, as we have seen, to have corre
sponded in those days with the venerable senator in a
'"family cipher." What he said m'ujltt therefore, taken
alone, be viewed as containing some secret meaning.
But the coincidence of the statement now to be quoted
with the whole mass of the historical evidence as just
presented is simply overwhelming. The literal mean
ing of the young captain's words is undoubtedly to be
accepted, and therewith ends forever the theory of a
separate dispatch, not identical with the Larkin dis
patch, and brought by Gillespie to Captain Fremont in
person. " Your letter," says the captain to the senator,
" led me to expect some communication from him [Buch
anan is the antecedent of him], " but I received noth
ing" The italics are as printed in the copy before
me.1
How completely our memories frequently mislead us !
General Fremont not only assured me, but even demon
strated to me. as above shown, that he was, save Gil
lespie, die only secret agent of the government in the
1 See, as before, the National Intelligencer of November 12, 1846.
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 133
territory who was intrusted with this business, Larkin
being an almost impossible person for the purpose. But
the indubitable facts of the record are that no secret
official commission was brought by Gillespie to anybody
but Larkin, and that Captain Fremont himself con
fessed, in writing, in 1846, that he had no secret mission
from the government, while, as Gillespie's testimony
shows, Captain Fremont must have known of Larkin 's
IX. THE MYSTERY AS EXPOUNDED BY THE OXE DIS
PATCH.
One official dispatch, then, and one only, was brought
to any secret agent, and this, the Larkin dispatch, would
still be as inaccessible as ever, and our quandary as
hopeless, were it not for the enterprise and good for
tune of Mr. H. H. Bancroft. In his excellent and now
often herein named treasure, the Larkin papers, are
two copies, both authentic, of the Larkin dispatch as
brought by Gillespie. One is the original, sent around
the Horn by the Congress. It came with Commo
dore Stockton, and arrived after its days of immedi
ate usefulness were numbered. The other copy is the
one written out by Gillespie from memory when he
landed at Monterey. This copy is accurate, save in one
or two wholly unimportant verbal respects. The gal
lant lieutenant, certainly, so far told the truth. These
documents have been pointed out to me at the Bancroft
library, and it was there that my attention was first at
tracted to their significance. Much as I have since
labored to make this investigation my own, much as I
have weighed for myself and arranged and rearranged
all the evidence that I could find with a view to being
134 CALIFORNIA.
as independent as possible, much as I have toiled to
get wholly new evidence. I must still frankly admit, as
I gladly do, that without Mr. Bancroft's documents I
should have been as unable to find my way out of
the labyrinth as have been all past investigators of this
matter. Even the new evidence that I have now found
would in large part have been sealed to me. And in
the end I can prove nothing that gives any other sig
nificance to these documents than the reader is already
quite prepared, after the foregoing, to give them him
self, as soon as he comes to know what they contain.
It is a curious fact in this matter that, the clew once
found, absolutely all the disinterested evidence is seen
to point in the same direction ; while, until the clew is
found, the evidence looks like a mass of confusion. Yet
without all the foregoing, and without some hint of the
interests that have for a generation forbidden the true
state of the case to come to the public knowledge, and
that have at last ended in giving the hero of the tale
such a curiously mistaken personal impression and mem
ory of his own share in the matter, no reader could ap
preciate the solution of the mystery, or understand its
historical significance as a mystery, or enjoy the true
humor of this life-long effort of a disobedient officer to
seem to himself a hero.
Here, then, to sum it all up, is our country's honor
involved in a violation of the laws of nations, under
circumstances of peculiar atrocity : a war brought
among a peaceful, and. in part, cordially friendly peo
ple ; anarchy and irregular hostilities threatened and
begun without any provocation, and with consequences
that were bad enough, as it happened, and that would
have been far worse had not regular warfare just then,
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 135
by a happy accident, announced its robust and soon
irresistible presence. These irregular deeds are the
immediate work of a gallant, energetic, and able young
officer, who thenceforth gets general credit as faith
ful secret agent of his government, and heroic de
fender of his countrymen, as well as savior to us
of the territory of California. His reputation gained
in this affair nearly makes him president in 1856.
The warfare in question is also thenceforth publicly
justified by unfounded reports of California!! hos
tility. All this is authorized, as the story goes, by a
government that thus orders sixty men to distress a vast
and ill-organized land, without providing any support
whereby the work of their rifles can be promptly utilized
to found any new and stable government in place of the
one that they are commanded cruelly to harass, with
out warning to assault, and thus unlawfully to over
throw. The official authority for all this is one dispatch
and the contents of the "family cipher," in case they
were officially authorized. The dispatch was brought,
as the Claims Committee Report shows, to Larkin, and
repeated to Captain Fremont by Gillespie at Klamath
Lake. Is all the foregoing a true interpretation of the
dispatch ? Such is the delicate personal problem.
The solution is that Consul Larkin was, by this dis
patch, instructed peacefully to intrigue for the secession
of the Department from Mexico, by the will of its own
inhabitants, as expressed by their own constituted author
ities. He was to be discreet, cautious, and alert ; and he
was to intrigue to this one end, and with authority also.
He was made secret agent for that purpose, and per
mitted to draw a special salary as such (six dollars per
day). He was to assure the Calif ornian authorities of
136 CALIFORNIA.
the good-will and sympathy of his government, in their
controversies with Mexico ; to induce them, if possible,
to separate voluntarily from that country ; to promise
them, if they did separate, our " kind offices as a sister
republic." He was to warn them against European
agents and intrigues, and to assure them that we would
help them against the encroachments of any such for
eign power, and that we would fight side by side with
them against any European invader. I>y all such means
he was to commit us to friendship, and to a policy of
peace and good-will toAvards the Californian people. lie
was to draw them to us by fair speeches. He was thus,
indeed, to anticipate, as is evident, our coming troubles
with Mexico (which, of course, are kept in the back
ground here) ; but he was to anticipate these troubles, as
we can now see, by saving the coming naval command
ers any vexations when they arrived to seize the ports.
Although, very naturally, no reference is made to these
future events in the dispatch, a single reference in our
own minds to the previously quoted Instructions to Sloat
will show us how these two sets of operations fit, like the
halves of the broken ring in the old ballad-story, into
the unity of one plan. Who lost the one half of the
ring we now know.
The language of this dispatch is characteristic of
Buchanan. It is very cautious, but still, in view of the
nature of the case, very plain. It begins with a refer
ence to the information that Larkin has long been giving
to the department about California. The government
is deeply interested in all this, for the United States
take great interest in California. And the United
States government has reason to fear European aggres
sors there ; for Larkin has warned the State Department
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 137
of the signs of such. To counteract these, Larkin must
appeal, says the dispatch, to the people of the country ;
must let them know where their interest lies, and who
are their true friends. " On all proper occasions you
should not fail prudently to warn the government and
people of California of the danger of such an interfer
ence to their peace and happiness ; to inspire them with
a jealousy of European dominion ; and to arouse in their
bosoms that love of liberty and independence so natural
to the American continent." And, farther on, " If the
people should desire to unite their destiny with ours,
they would be received as brethren, whenever this can
be done without affording Mexico just cause of com
plaint." Ah, soothing Buchanan ! Nobody's loyalty
shall be shocked ! Again, the United States govern
ment " would vigorously interpose to prevent" California
" from becoming a British or French colony. In this
they might surely expect the aid of the Californians
themselves." And yet more, the government is glad to
hear how friendly the Californian authorities have re
cently been : " You may assure them of the cordial
sympathy and friendship of the president, and that their
conduct is appreciated by him as it deserves."
To carry on the " prudent warning " with effect and
authority, Larkin is thereupon made secret agent. He
is to exert his influence very prudently, and is to avoid
arousing suspicions on the part of English or French
agents. He is to collect diligently information about
American interests in the Department. Gillespie, " a
gentleman in whom the president reposes entire confi
dence," has seen these instructions, and will " cooperate
as a confidential agent with you in carrying them into
execution." Among other things that these two are to
138 CALIFORNIA.
treat in their information to the department is men
tioned a description of the " character of the principal
persons " in the California!! government " and of other
distinguished and influential citizens." And a general
requirement is made to collect all possihle information
about all matters that can interest the department
Captain Fremont's name is not once mentioned in the
dispatch.
I almost fear to insult the reader's intelligence by
pointing out at too great length the utter impossibility
of any kind of reconciliation between this and the now
dead and lamented hypothesis of the " fourth plan " of
our list. Shall we say that it is unnecessary to make
careful and expensive inquiries about the personal char
acters of prominent California!! officials, if one sends
by the same messenger an order to chase them all out
of office by means of an improvised armed force ? Do
you have to know at Washington the character of a
'' distinguished and influential citizen," in order to put
a bullet into him in California ? Shall we ask whether
expecting " the aid of the Californians themselves "
against the supposed European agents in the territory
means requiring as many of the California!! chiefs as
are within reach to be taken prisoners and shut up in a
fort by the first set of rovers that will volunteer to do
it ? Shall we wonder whether these were the presi
dent's delicate means of expressing his " cordial sym
pathy," and his " appreciation " of the friendship that
Larkin has described, and that the department fully
believed in, and that even until the very moment of the
outbreak was always experienced in California by all
Americans save some vagabonds and their friends, and
this aggressive armed surveying party itself ? But are
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 139
these questions at all necessary ? Nay, of opposition we
need not speak. That is too plain. But of the perfidy
and the treachery we may speak, of which, of course,
nobody need be called actually guilty, but of which our
government would have been guilty if, by any conceiva
ble wantonness of folly, it had at once given countenance
to the fourth plan and to the plan of the Larkin dis
patch. Such treachery would indeed have disgraced
any petty Oriental prince in a war with a neighbor
worthy of his meanness ; and yet just such would have
been our national treachery had we, say through Senator
Benton, instructed the gallant captain in the plan in
which a false tradition (and his own memory) declare
him to have been instructed, and had we meanwhile
ordered Larkin to use his position as consul, as old res
ident, and as personal friend, to lull to sleep all possible
suspicion in Californian breasts, and to persuade the
people and the officials to lay aside, as it were, their
arms, lest haply they might have wherewithal to resist
the gallant captain whenever his hour should come for
defending his countrymen against the " oppressors " !
And this perfidy, this unheard-of treachery, what under
heaven would it have been worth to us ? To exasperate
beyond endurance a friendly people, to insure all the
possible causes that could combine to make their chief,
men hate us forever and the people fight us as savagely
as they could, — this would have been our aim. Not
even the most cold-blooded of tyrants could have re
joiced in such a prospect ; because, as we were situated,
we wanted California to come to us as prosperous and
as peaceful a land as possible. If we desired to steal
our neighbor's fine horse, why should we first coax him
into confinement, and then scourge him with whips in
140 CALIFORNIA.
his stall, to make him In-oak his bones ? Yet such de
structive and atrocious folly would be precisely the thing
involved in the choice of a situation with Larkin at
Monterey, intriguing under orders, and developing per
fectly obvious designs, assuring officials in private that
we were the true friends, seeking to persuade them to
declare their independence and to come over to us as a
" sister republic ; " while the gallant Captain Fremont,
not driven to bay, nor pursued, nor in danger, should
be quietly, yes, stealthily, getting supplies from the
coast, on a representation to the United States naval
officers that he is going East, and should be '; watching
events " until he saw a chance to attack. Given a little
longer delay of the coming of Sloat and of the regular
war, and what horrors might not such a fashion of be
ginning a war have produced, by arousing popular pas
sions ? And if such things had been suggested to the
cabinet at Washington, where the true impotence of the
California!! military power was of course unknown, what
possible company of fools could have chosen this use
less and dismal perfidy ? Obviously we shall suspect no
man of deliberately planning any such a situation, least of
all the men whose personal interests carelessly brought
it to pass. The cabinet could not have planned it. If
Senator Benton advised Captain Fremont's operations,
he too must surely have done so in ignorance of the
cabinet plan, and cannot have planned the situation as
it resulted. And that Captain Fremont and Lieutenant
Gillespie themselves should venture on producing such
a situation can be explained as possible only on the
ground that the plan of their willfully disobedient oper
ations so occupied their minds that they gave no sort of
rational consideration to Larkin's position and work, or
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 141
to the situation itself. Folly it may have been in Cap
tain Fremont, or only a result produced by the " family
cipher." For the government it would have been the
foulest and silliest of treacheries to ordain these two
things at Washington in one cabinet. No reader can
even dream that it was done.
X. SUPPLEMENTARY EVIDENCE AXD SUMMARY.
So much for the significance of the dispatch. All
the credit of our knowing about it to-day belongs, as I
have said, to Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft. His enter
prise in collecting rescued the original from utter loss to
the world. The exhaustive researches into the Califor
nia documents of the time, undertaken under his direc
tion, made clear to him its significance, which I, however
independently I have tried to study the matter, can in
the end only accept as obvious. His library is the truly
original source here, and my research, although other
wise independent, is at this one most important place
but a following of his already beaten trail. And only
by his permission do I here summarize a document that
I still feel to be his property. But yet, in using the
document I have been able to discover a few new facts
that throw light upon its origin and relations. When I
had seen and considered it at his library, I was indeed
as sure of its authenticity as everybody must be who
examines it. But still I felt that an opponent might
possibly assert it to be, say, a production of Larkin him
self in after time, in a fit of jealousy towards General
Fremont. Or again, some discoverable paper in Wash
ington archives might put it in a modified light, or might
supplement it by something valuable. I determined,
therefore, to apply in person at Washington, and did so
142 CALIFORNIA.
with a general result, through the courtesy of the de
partments, that has already appeared in this chapter.
The Larkin dispatch is on record at the State Depart
ment, but there is no trace of any other secret instruc
tion concerning this business there or elsewhere in
Washington department records. This largely nega
tive result is in itself, however, highly important.
This further fact, however, I must record. While
the secretary of state kindly let me see the Larkin dis
patch as a whole, there was one portion that, as I at
first learned, was still regarded as confidential, that
could not be shown, and that accordingly was covered.
As I had with me a copy taken in San Francisco from
Mr. Bancroft's original, which of course included this
covered passage, I was able to submit this copy to offi
cial inspection, and so to get a courteous permission, in
view of the fact that the document was actually no longer
a secret, to inspect finally the whole of the precious
official manuscript. Since then I have received a regu
larly certified copy of all but the purely business details
at the end. This inspection and copy prove that the
authenticity of Mr. H. H. Bancroft's document is not
only in itself certain, but is a matter of permanent offi
cial record.
I venture to repeat this otherwise unimportant fact,
about the still remaining trace of secrecy at the State
Department, as a collateral evidence that the document
has been considered to retain its genuine and confiden
tial importance ever since its original production. The
covered passage was one especially referring to Larkin's
most significant intrigues. Of course this Larkin in
trigue was itself no very noble project for a great gov
ernment to engage in, and there is obvious reason for
TEE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 143
the delicacy wherewith a veil has been kept over its
face from that day even until now. It is evident also
that without Mr. H. H. Bancroft's previous help my
curiosity at Washington could not properly have been
fully satisfied, notwithstanding the marked good-will of
all persons concerned in answering my application. He
has therefore still the full credit of making the paper
accessible.
I must now add from my Washington investigation
one of the most curious and amusing scraps of minor
documentary evidence that it was ever my good fortune
to hear of. The light that it throws is indeed not very
dazzling, but it is wholly accidental and unexpected ;
and yet what it shows is something of exactly the sort
that we might have expected in case all the foregoing
view is true, but not in case the common tradition of the
past is true. In the ordinary " Letters to Consuls " of
the State Department, in a volume that seemed not to be
of an especially confidential character, I found two busi
ness letters, apparently mere bits of routine, both of them
surely as free themselves from any trace of a secret na
ture as well could be. My eye was attracted by the fa
miliar names. The letters, oddly enough, though copied
(like all other consular letters, as I suppose) into the
regular books, were this time marked " Cancelled" each
for itself, the word being written across the lines of the
letter. That is, very plainly, after being entered, the
originals were not sent but destroyed. Thus a mere ac
cident preserved the record of a little change of mind
at the State Department. And these superseded let
ters, what said they ?
The first is dated October 27, 1845, and runs : —
144 CALIFORNIA.
JOHN BLACK, Esq™., U. S. C. Mexico.
SIR, — Enclosed is a communication for Thomas O. Lar-
kin, Esqre., Consul of the United States at Monterey, Califor
nia, which you are requested to forward to him, via Mazat-
lan, by some early and safe opportunity.
I am sir, etc.,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
The second letter has the same date and was evidently
to be a part of the inclosure of the first. It was to have
a second inclosure inside itself.
THOMAS O. LARKIN, Esq"., U. S. Consul, Monterey.
SIR, — I enclose herewith a package for Captain Fremont,
of whose movements you may be enabled to obtain some in
formation, and request that it may be transmitted to him by
the first safe opportunity which presents itself, or retained
by you for delivery, according as the state of your informa
tion may suggest. I am sir, etc.,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
Absolutely innocent appear these two letters. Yet
properly interpreted they tell an odd story. If anything
is essential to General Fremont's view, as his memory
still frames it for him, if anything is essential to the
traditional conception of the whole affair, it is that the
Benton packet, with its '' enigmatical " letters, was a
part of the administration plan, was an officially designed
supplement to the dispatch, and conveyed to the captain
the wishes of the same government that commissioned
Gillespie to carry it. Now since the department knew
not exactly where Captain Fremont's party would be
when Gillespie should reach California, it would be es
sential to the success of any plan which depended on the
packet, on Giilespie's official dispatch, on Gillespie him
self, and on Captain Fremont, all at once, that their com-
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 145
bination should be insured by the simple device of hav
ing the same messenger carry the dispatch, the packet,
and the letter of introduction to Captain Fremont.
Whatever tends to separate the packet from Gillespie's
mission, tends to make the traditional view that the
" enigmatical " letters were of official significance more
and more incredible.
Now, however, mark this : On October 17 the de
partment had commissioned Gillespie to go to Larkin.
For on that day the Larkin dispatch is dated, both in
the original and in the copy in the Washington archives,
and Gillespie is mentioned in the dispatch. Ten days
after this, Gillespie still not having set out, being de
tained, as it would seem, by the non-departure of the
vessel that was to carry him to Vera Cruz, the depart
ment has a packet in its hands for Captain Fremont,
whose name, we remember, was not mentioned at all in
the Larkin dispatch. This packet must be the Benton
packet. The circumstances and dates make this as cer
tain as can be expected in such a matter. Now, how
does the department regard this packet ? As an impor
tant part of the undertaking wherein Gillespie is already
commissioned to act ? Nay, not so ; for it decides to
forward this precious packet, with all its " enigmas,"
by the uncertain means of the ordinary Mexican mails,
under care of Consuls Black and Larkin. No sign is
there in this that the packet is of official importance.
If it is, why is not Gillespie, the trusted messenger of
the secret mission, the first thought of the secretary
who, ten days ago, chose him for tha work ? Why risk
an essential part of the secret mission by the uncertain
Mexican mails, when the expensive confidential agent,
already intrusted with the fateful business, is on the
10
146 CALIFORNIA.
point of departure ? Larkin is to do whatever he con
veniently can to deliver the packet, " as the state of his
information may suggest." But Gillespie, who has it,
according to tradition, as his main task to seek, to arouse,
and to cooperate with Captain Fremont, — he is to do
nothing at all, so far, with the precious packet. It may
reach California as soon as he, or it may not. It may
be delivered, or it may be kept at Monterey, " as the
state " of Larkin's information may suggest. Six days
later, November 3, Gillespie receives his non-committal
letter of introduction to Captain Fremont, and now, in
deed, has the packet handed to him to deliver. Can there
be a better proof than this that Gillespie's mission had
originally no essential connection whatever with Captain
Fremont, and that his momentous meeting with the lat
ter resulted from an after-thought, possibly, of course,
through Benton's own influence exercised at the office ?
" We have commissioned Larkin," the department, at
any rate, however influenced, must have said, " to in
trigue for us in California. Now we have this private
package for Captain Fremont. Why not let Gillespie,
as a part of his duty, hunt up the captain himself, de
liver the packet, and acquaint him with the intrigue ?
This young officer, who is doubtless on friendly terms
with the Californians, can help to give the affair a show
of power, by being present to support the seceding Cal-
ifornian authorities with his force, to render in fact ' our
kind offices as a sister republic,' in case California de
clares its independence, or to offer aid against any
dreaded British invasion. This is a fortunate comple
tion of the plan." All that is a natural interpretation
of what Buchanan and the government may have
thought. Absolutely worthless, however, seems any
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 147
interpretation that supposes the government to have
first determined to send a secret agent to California on
vastly important business, and to have then deliberately
thought of sending an essential part of his secret mission
not through him, but through the expected enemy's own
uncertain mails. And there is no known evidence that
there was any duplicate of Benton's packet. Plainly
the stars in their courses now war against the traditional
view of this thing. The least significant document that
you accidentally find bearing on the matter indicates
the same as the greatest. The published and the un
published disinterested evidences are positively all of
them on one side.
I have submitted the result of my Washington inves
tigation to General Fremont in a long letter, and in a
similarly lengthy second interview. I tried to point out,
both in the letter and in the interview, as well as I could,
the difficulties that now assailed his view of his official
mission. Without troubling him with the whole mass of
evidence brought together in this chapter, I still tried
to make clear to him that, unless he could put everything
in an entirely novel light, it would be impossible for me
to defend him against any captious critic who should
put all the responsibility of his hostile action in Cal
ifornia upon his own shoulders. I assured him of my
anxiety to do him justice myself, of the fact that his
previous demonstration of the impossibility of Larkin's
mission would now make his case harder to defend
than ever, and of my hearty wish that his courtesy to
me should not finally result in merely increasing the
delicacy of his position. I begged him, therefore, to let
me know of any further evidence, and if possible of any
documentary evidence, that should put tilings in any
148 CALIFORNIA.
new light. In reply, General Fremont was extremely
patient and courteous, but he disclaimed all power to
unravel the mystery, which to him also, as he asserts,
is now mysterious. He knows, he insists, only what he
learned of the wishes of the government through Gil-
lespie and the " family cipher " letter. What else the
government may have done or said, what other instruc
tions it may have given to its other servants, — for that
he is not responsible. He did his duty, as he still
imagines, and no doubt other people did theirs. But
to him it is still entirely a novel thing that Larkin
should have had any important part in all this business.
He never heard of Larkin in so prominent a place.
He feels sure, for the rest, that no peaceful intrigues
could have won the Californians. All his information
was of their imminent and serious hostility ; and he
knows that the English would have got California had
he not acted when he did. The government may have
had some plan including Larkin ; but then this plan
must have been concealed from Mr. Benton, who cer
tainly never knew of it, and never could have advised
such an unwise scheme. General Fremont meanwhile
knows that his instructions, while leaving much to his
discretion, certainly authorized such force as he used
under the actual conditions. This is as near to the
whole truth as he personally is able to guide me. For
other facts I must look elsewhere, and, while regarding
my efforts with the most courteous interest, General
Fremont regrets his inability to give me further help in
the desired direction.
Such is General Fremont's present memory and un
derstanding of the affair, as I have gathered them from
him ; and the reader will certainly join with me in ap-
THE SECRET MISSION AND THE BEAR FLAG. 149
predating his personal good humor and patience in fol
lowing so long as he did my wearisome research. If I
were not just now studying an important historical
problem, whose significance is enormously greater than
the interests of any one man, I should be glad to do
General Fremont the courtesy, such as it would prove,
of my silence. For the rest that would have no real ef
fect, as Mr. H. H. Bancroft has access already to the
most essential document, and had his mind made up
about its significance long before I ever thought of the
matter. And I have meanwhile the perfect consolation
of knowing that the personal reputation of a distinguished
public man such as is General Fremont, who has been
a household name in our nation for a generation, is
quite independent for good as well as for evil of what I
may happen to choose to write here. At all events, I
have no desire to judge any further the personal charac
ter of the well-known and picturesque pioneer hero of
this present tale. What inner motives led him to this
rash and in its consequences most disastrous act, Avhich
once for all did whatever one agency could do to set
over against each other in deadly enmity the Americans
and the Californians, it is not mine to know. The
" family cipher " letter doubtless suggested some of the
motives. But if the deed was a family matter, the fam
ily is always and everywhere sacred, and especially so
when it is engaged in making a plot. What we desire
to know is not the inner motive, but the actual histor
ical responsibility for this first fatal scene of the con
quest of California ; and we have found out very clearly
where that lies, the gallant general's clearest memory
and sincerest impressions to the contrary notwithstand
ing.
150 CALIFORNIA.
One thing only I must say in leaving finally the field
of direct personal criticism, namely, that save for the
cause of historical certainty as such I am heartily sorry
to have troubled General Fremont's courtesy for help
about this matter. For, although what he has told me
makes the matter clearer by cutting off all hope that he
has yet behind some entirely new official revelation to
make, that would plainly put the responsibility for his
action elsewhere than on his own shoulders or on his
father-in-law's, still this remains true : he took trouble
to help me, partly for the sake, I suppose, of putting
himself in a fairer light ; whereas what he has told me
has made his position more delicate than ever, has de
prived his memory of all its possible authority as a wit
ness in the matter, and yet meanwhile has made his act,
as such, easier to judge than it would otherwise be,
since every possible defense seems now cut off. I can
not suppress this fact, although I frankly regret it. I
have tried in every way to do General Fremont justice ;
and I am not the one to blame if the result is unfavora
ble. After all, however, I cannot forget that our coun
try's honor is here involved much more than the per
sonal glory of any one man.
We must turn to other and equally characteristic
scenes of our early life in the land that we were now to
seize upon.
CHAPTER III.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED, THE ICTERREGNTJM,
THE BIRTH OF THE STATE.
THE discerning reader has seen in the foregoing
something more than a study of individuals. These hos
tile undertakings and these intrigues are as characteris
tic as they were fateful. The American as conqueror is
unwilling to appear in public as a pure aggressor ; he
dare not seize a California as Russia has seized so much
land in Asia, or as Napoleon, with full French approval,
seized whatever he wanted. The American wants to
persuade not only the world, but himself, that he is
doing God service in a peaceable spirit, even when he
violently takes what he has determined to get. His
conscience is sensitive, and hostile aggression, practiced
against any but Indians, shocks this conscience, unused
as it is to such scenes. Therefore Semple and Ide, and
the cautious secretary of state, and the gallant captain,
and the venerable senator, all alike, not only as indi
viduals, but also as men appealing for approval to their
fellow-countrymen at large, must present this sinful un
dertaking in private and in public as a sad, but strictly
moral, humane, patriotic, enlightened, and glorious un
dertaking. Other peoples, more used to shedding civ
ilized blood, would have swallowed the interests of the
people of twenty such Californias as that of 1846, with
out a gasp. The agents of such nations would have
152 CALIFORNIA.
played at filibustering without scruple, if they had been
instructed to adopt that plan as the most simple for get
ting the land desired ; or they would have intrigued
readily, fearlessly, and again without scruple, if that plan
had seemed to their superiors best for the purpose. But
our national plans had to be formed so as to offend our
squeamish natures as little as possible. Our national
conscience, however, was not only squeamish, but also,
in those days, not a little hypocritical. It disliked,
moreover, to have the left hand know what the right
hand was doing, when both were doing mischief. And
so, because of its very virtues, it involved itself in dis
astrously complex plots.
I. THE COXQUF.RORS AXD THEIR COXSCIEXCES.
All the actors concerned worked, namely, in the fear
of this strictly virtuous, of this almost sanctimonious
public opinion, — a public opinion that was at the same
time, both in the North and in the South, very sensitive
to flattery, very ambitious to see our territory grow
bigger, and very anxious to contemplate a glorious na
tional destiny. Moreover, all these our agents not only
feared the public, but participated themselves in the
common sentiments. Hence we find the Polk cabinet
elaborately considering, not merely how to prosecute
successfully their intended aggressive war, just as the
leaders of any other rapacious nation would have con
sidered such a matter, but also how to put their war into
harmony with the enlightened American spirit. And,
in the autumn of 184"), their pious plans were appar
ently well formed. To Mexico the Slidell mission
should be sent, with its offer to purchase California.
This would be a liberal offer, and, if it ever became
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 153
public, would set us right as a powerful and generous
nation in the eyes of the world, while it would give us
in the mean time a chance to get California for noth
ing, by the completion of our intrigue in that territory
and by the act of its own people. The beautiful and
business-like compromise thus planned would set at one
our national conscience and our national shrewdness ;
it would be not only magnanimous, but inexpensive. Yet
even this compromise must be carefully expressed by
the honorable secretary of state in such language as
would not offend the sensitive American spirit, in case,
by some accident, the whole scheme should some day come
plainly to light. Larkin must be instructed that we had
"no ambitious aspirations to gratify," and that we only
desired to arouse in the Californian breast " that love
of liberty and independence so natural to the American
continent." It was all very kindly, this desire, and
poor Mexico ought to have been thankful for such a
neighbor, so devoted to the cause of freedom, and so
generous to the weak !
But this combination of the Slidell mission with the
Larkin dispatch, a combination whose genuine character
has not hitherto been properly understood by the his
torians of the Mexican War,1 was not more character-
1 What light the Larkin dispatch throws on the true intent of the
Slidell mission one can best judge by comparing just here Von Hoist's
interpretation of the matter, made in necessary ignorance of the true
nature of the Larkin dispatch, on p. 113 and p. 229 of his Constitu
tional History, vol. iii. (American edition, covering the period from
1846 to 1850). For Slidell's instructions, see 30th Congr., 1st Sess.
House Ex. Doc. 69, vol. viii., pp. 33, sqq. On p. 41 of these instruc
tions is a significant reference to the Larkin intrigue, which, now that
that intrigue is known, shows clearly the connection of the Slidell and
Larkin missions in the minds of the cabinet. Slidell is to counteract
possible foreign schemes for getting California, and, to help him in
154 CALIFORNIA.
istic of our nation than was the combination by which
the pious plan was defeated. One active and not over
cautious young agent, who had good reason to know
the importance of the crisis, and who was not alto
gether unwilling to turn it to account for various pri
vate ends, was in California just then, and received cer
tain advices in a confidential " family cipher ; " and these
advices somehow, whether wholly by his own fault or
also by the fault of his father-in-law, led him to thwart
the carefully prepared plans of the government. In
acting as ho did, he not only became for the moment a
filibuster, pure and simple, but he endangered our whole
scheme by, perhaps unwittingly, doing his best to drive
California directly into the arms of England. Either
because England really was not anxious for California
just then, or because her agents in the Pacific were not
sufficiently on the alert, this result was averted, yet not
in consequence of the gallant captain's undertaking,
but only through Sloat's arrival with the news of those
hostilities on the Rio Grande which superseded all pre
vious plots and pretenses, and which, '' by the act of
Mexico," as our veracious president declared, forced us,
unwilling, conscientious, and humane as we were, into
an unequal contest with a physically puny foe.
Meanwhile, the gallant captain's undertaking, although
a plain violation of his orders, was itself not un-Ameri
can in its forms and methods, at least in so far as they
were reported to the public. He felt himself, after all,
to be a peaceful and scientific gentleman, who shunned
war, and loved the study of nature. He was a type of
this work, he is to have a copy of the Larkin dispatch forwarded him,
and is to correspond freely with Larkin upon the whole subject, tak
ing care to transmit his letters secretly.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 155
our energy and of our mild civilization, in the presence
of crafty and wily Spaniards, who, as he somehow per
suaded either himself or his followers, had incited the
Indians of the unknown Klamath wilderness against
him, had threatened the ripening wheat-fields of his
countrymen, and at last had begun marching against
his own party with an armed force. This armed force,
marching against him, was indeed not at the moment to
be seen in the whole territory by any human eye ; but
its asserted existence nevertheless thenceforth justified
him in the clearer eyes of heaven and his absent fellow-
countrymen. So at least he himself and the venerable
senator would seem in all sincerity to have felt ; and
the public, by the nomination of the young hero to the
presidency in 1856, and by the large vote then polled
in his favor, set their seal of approval also upon the
verdict of his conscience. And both he himself and
the public, as we have seen, ever afterwards considered
his methods of procedure to have been as noble and un-
aggressive as they were fearless and decisive ; while all
concerned thought our national energy and kindliness
finely represented by the acts of this party of armed
surveyors and trappers, who disturbed the peace of a
quiet land, and practiced violence against inoffensive
and helpless rancheros.
But when hostilities had once begun, the men who
were not in the state secrets were as American and as
moral as those who were initiated. To them the whole
thing appeared partly as a glorious revolution, a des
tined joy for the eyes of history-reading posterity, a
high and holy business ; and partly as a missionary
enterprise, destined to teach our beloved and erring
Spanish-American brethren the blessings of true liberty.
156 CALIFORNIA.
The Bear Flag heroes interpreted the affair, in their
way also, to a large and representative American public ;
and these heroes, like their betters, show us what it is to
have a national conscience sensitive enough to call loudly
for elaborate and eloquent comfort in moments of doubt,
and just stupid enough to be readily deluded by mock-
eloquent cant. The result of the whole thing is that
although, in later years, the nation at large has indeed
come to regard the Mexican War with something of the
shame and contempt that the " Biglow Papers " and the
other expressions of enlightened contemporary opinion
heaped upon the unworthy business, still, in writing Cal
ifornia history, few have even yet chosen to treat the acts
of the conquest with the deserved plainness of speech,
while, in those days, the public both in the South and
in the whole of the West, together with a considerable
portion of the public elsewhere, was hoodwinked by
such methods as were used, and so actually supposed our
acquisition of the new territory to be a God-fearing act,
the result of the aggression and of the sinful impotence
of our Spanish neighbors, together with our own justifi
able energy, and our devotion to the cause of freedom.
It is to be hoped that this lesson, showing us as it does
how much of conscience and even of personal sincerity
can coexist with a minimum of effective morality in in
ternational undertakings, will some day be once more
remembered ; so that when our nation is another time
about to serve the devil, it will do so with more frank
ness, and will deceive itself less by half-unconscious cant.
For the rest, our mission in the cause of liberty is to be
accomplished through a steadfast devotion to the culti
vation of our own inner life, and not by going abroad
as missionaries, as conquerors, or as marauders, among
weaker peoples.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 157
II. SLOAT, THE LAKKIN INTRIGUE, AND THE ENGLISH
LEGEND.
But with July 7. 1846, the conquest proper is only
begun. Sloat, who had arrived from Mazatlan on July
1, naturally hesitated at Monterey when he heard of the
confusion produced by the gallant captain in the north.
He could not understand this. He had been led to ex
pect a peaceful California, whose ports he was to seize
as Mexican property, but whose inhabitants he was, if
possible, to conciliate. He heard, as Larkin says,1 " for
several days nothing but distracting reports of foreign
ers and Calif ornians collecting people and preparing to
fight." Sloat seems to have been unwilling to commit
his government to the direct support of what naturally
at the very first sight appeared, as he heard of it, to be
an irregular insurrection. As he had been instructed
to get into peaceful relations with the California!) gov
ernment, and so to detach the country from Mexico with
out a collision, he doubted, apparently, whether his in
structions, so far as received, authorized him to do what
would now almost certainly involve an armed struggle
with an angry people. The relation of Captain Fre
mont to the whole affair was of course to Sloat, as to
Larkin, still an inexplicable mystery. Sloat was of a
very vacillating temperament, and the situation involved
more than he could for the moment meet with confidence
and firmness. But at length he was persuaded, by more
voices, it is said, than one, and certainly by numerous
motives, that he must raise the flag.2 He was under-
1 In Larkin's own letter to Buchanan of July 18, 1840, contained in
copy in the Bancroft-Larkin papers, and known to me also in the offi
cial copy furnished by the State Department.
2 Larkin (loc cit.} expresses the matter thus: "In this ?tate of af-
158 CALIFORNIA.
stood by Captain Fremont and Lieutenant Gillespie, ac
cording to their Claims Committee testimony, to declare,
when he soon after met them, that he had raised the
flag " on the faith of " the doings in the north ; that is,
so soon as he was convinced that Captain Fremont was
really concerned in the matter. He expressed, they tell
us, great disappointment when the captain refused to
name his authority. For, as they want us to understand
him, he had felt sure that Captain Fremont must have
some official sanction for the Bear Flag doings, and
that it would be well to support him. But, while I do
not pretend to be able altogether to unravel Sloat's much-
perplexed mind in those days, the reader will probably
share with me no small hesitation, under the circum
stances, when he is asked to suppose this now traditional
account of Sloat's motives, as interpreted by Captain
Fremont, to be a complete one. For Larkin, who was
much with Sloat at the time of the raising of the flag,
does not so understand the matter, as we see by his let
ter just cited ; and there are obvious reasons for thinking
Larkin, who carefully obeyed his own orders as he re
ceived them, a fairer witness on the points at issue than
the gallant captain, who, having disobeyed his orders,
was now deeply interested in believing that his disobedi
ence had been both helpful and inevitable. To be sure,
the raising of the Bear Flag, while it very seriously per
plexed Sloat, and so hindered his action, did before
July 7 furnish of itself a motive to overcome his hesita
tion. But this motive was not the one that Captain
Fremont understood Sloat to express. The motive ob-
fairs, and the knowledge of the Bear Flag having been hoisted, fear
ing perhaps that some other foreign officer might do it, he hoisted the
United States flag in this town."
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 159
viously was that, by violence or not by violence, immedi
ate action was now needed to save the distracted land
from anarchy, and from seizure by any foreign power
that might choose to regard interference at such a mo
ment as humane. No one, however, can understand
Sloat's hesitation or his final decision who thinks of
him as coming to California with the intent to make
war on the inhabitants. As we have seen, he had no
such intent ; and hence the operations of the gallant
captain in the north cannot have been operations on
whose " faith " he would be ready to act, since they
were utterly opposed to his purposes and to his instruc
tions. He came, on the news of hostility with Mexico,
to '; encourage " its inhabitants '• to adopt a course of
neutrality." Such were his already cited instructions
of June 24, 1845. To exceed these instructions by de
liberately beginning an open struggle with the people,
he did not desire, and hence he hesitated when he found
such a state of affairs as seemed to necessitate a struggle
in case he interfered. When at last he saw that he
must seize the country to escape yet worse troubles, he
tried with almost pathetic earnestness to come to an un
derstanding with Castro and with Pio Pico, in order, as
he quite sincerely said, to " avert the sacrifice of human
life and the horrors of war." He invited both chiefs to
a council at Monterey ; he assured them both that he
came as the " best friend of California ; " and his lan
guage to them was in strict and undoubtedly sincere com
pliance with his instructions. To a hostile governor,
whom one purposes violently to overthrow, one does not
write as Sloat did to Pico, in the tone of one rendering
account, as it were, to a person who is to be conciliated :
" I assure your excellency that not the least impropriety
1GO CALIFORNIA.
has been committed [by the Americans at Monterey],
and that the business and social intercourse of the town
have not been disturbed in the slightest degree." Such
a spirit and such conduct could not have been inspired
by " the faith of " Captain Fremont's doings. As for
Sloat's relation after July 7 to Captain Fremont, the
friends of the latter, not without their usual audacity,
tried to show before the Claims Committee, by a singu
lar misuse of documents, that Sloat was as anxious as he
really was to get Captain Fremont's coiipe ration only be
cause Sloat sought in the captain's supposed private of
ficial authority a guaranty of the propriety of his own
course in raising the flag at Monterey. Now Sloat was
a morally timid man ; but the published documents
show clearly enough that he, whose instructions were to
avoid a collision, was not living in the hope of any reas
surance from the gallant captain who had brought on a
collision, but was hoping so to get control of the latter
as " to stop the sacrifice of human life in the north."
For this reason he was indeed glad to get the coopera
tion of the captain at once, and he used every effort to
that end.1 Thus here, as through all the subsequent
1 The proof here is clear, (11 in that, as just pointed out, Sloat did
not want a fight with the Californians, and so could not have been
seeking for a warrant for his relatively peaceful undertaking in the
violence of the captain; and (2) in that in his letter to Pico, July 12,
1840 (a letter which clearly shows that he still hoped for peaceful
submission from the Californians, and was anxious to get it through
the most friendly advances), Sloat promises to Pico to do his own best
to quiet the troubles in the north. For the rest, all the other relevant
documents collected in Sen. Ex. Docs. 1 and 19, 2d Sess. 29 Congr., if
taken together, plainly show the true reason of Sloat's haste to get
word of Captain Fremont. This reason is as plainly not the one some
what vaingloriously assumed by the latter in his own account of the
matter. Captain Fre'mont was to the commodore first of all a very
disturbing force, which he indeed hoped to convert very soon into a
useful force.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 161
months, Captain Fremont's conduct in the north re
mained effective as a serious hindrance in the way of
the true conquest of California. It delayed the raising
of the flag a full week after Sloat's arrival by making
him uncertain how to apply his instructions to the anom
alous conditions ; and when Sloat had begun to act, the
greatest obstacle to his work lay in the results already
produced by the gallant marauders at Sonoma. I know
not how much Sloat, who was in communication with
Larkin, ever came to know of the true nature of the offi
cial intrigue, which the latter, so far as I know, thence
forth very faithfully kept secret, but both Sloat and
Larkin must have shared to some extent the knowledge
of what at that moment had been lost by the folly of
the Bear Flag movement ; for this knowledge concerned
matters that were in part, at least, no secret to many
well-informed people at Monterey and elsewhere.
For Larkin, the man who, of all Americans con
cerned with California during that crisis, best did his
duty ; the one official whose credit, both private and
public, is unstained by the whole affair ; and who per
sonally, if desert be considered, and not mere popular
ity, is every way by far the foremost among the men
who won for us California, — Larkin had not been idle,
not before Gillespie came, and much less afterwards.
He had obeyed his orders. If he was no trained official
and no cultivated man, he was at least a faithful patriot,
a shrewd man of business, and a cautious servant of his
government ; a man well acquainted with the place, the
people, and the methods of work that must be employed.
As an intriguer, he was distinctly successful, and no
drop of blood need have been shed in the conquest of
California, no flavor of the bitterness of mutual hate
11
162 CALIFORNIA.
need have entered, at least for that moment, into the
lives of the two peoples who were now jointly to occupy
the land, had Larkin been left to complete his task.
And although Sloat's coming would indeed have found
the work still incomplete, it would, without the captain's
utterly mischievous doings, have heen well enough ad
vanced to insure with almost perfect certainty the
peaceful change of flags.
For see what had heen done already. In the short
period of less than two months, hefore the beginning of
the Bear Hag absurdities and after Gillespie's coming,
Larkin had so far developed his intrigue as to have, first
of all. the direct assurance of Castro's own aid in a plan
to declare the country independent of Mexico '' in 1847
or 1848." * " Some." says Larkin, '" may have no faith
in assertions of this kind from these people. The un
dersigned does. From twelve years' experience he be
lieves he knows them." And his knowledge of what
a Californian's promise meant was, after all. the knowl
edge of a shrewd Yankee trader, to whom Californians
for these twelve years had been owing numerous debts,
and making, of course, numerous promises. And so his
opinion is worth more in these matters than even the
opinion of the captain of the transient surveying par
ties of 1844 and 1846. But this was only the begin
ning. The same intrigue had heen cautiously suggested
to leading men all over the country. The very fact that
they themselves, in later times, never publicly confessed
this shows that the intrigue was, as far as it had time
to develop itself, relatively effective. Had they re
jected Larkin's scheme at once, they would have been
i Sec Larkin's letter to Buchanan, July 20, 18-46: B. MS. and State
Department Archives.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 163
free to avow their knowledge cf it, both then and later.
But, after they once had entertained the notion, the dis
grace that was inflicted upon them, when they later
found themselves betrayed, through what Castro himself
called " the despicable policy of the agents of the United
States in this Department," sealed their lips as to the
plot that had at first seemed to them a generous offer
from a " sister republic," but that, after the gallant cap
tain's undertaking, could be remembered by them only
as the foul treachery of an heretical nation of tyrants
and robbers.
The intrigue had, however, reached a yet higher
stage. In his letter of June 1, written before the out
break at Sonoma (and cited, also, in the previous chap
ter), Larkin says : " From a dread of something, they
hardly know what, and to devise some means to reinstate
the deplorable condition of affairs of this country, the
towns, by order of Governor Pico and the assembly, on
the 30th ultimo elected eighteen members, who, with
the seven members of the assembly and five military
officers, are to convene in the town of Santa Barbara
on the 15th instant.1 Four members are chosen for
Monterey. There are many opinions on what ought or
in fact what can be brought forward for this meeting to
act on. Some wish to call on some foreign nation for
protection ; others wish to declare themselves independ
ent."
Larkin then goes on to say that he is actively in-
1 This proposed assembly appears in the Claims Committee Report
as an important and altogether hostile junta, whose purpose was
solely to turn the country over to England, and whose nefarious
schemes shall have been thwarted by the gallant captain. In fact,
this junta never met, and its purposes were certainly not definite in
any direction.
164 CALIFORNIA.
triguing with the delegates to get the junta to prepare
a memorial to the central government, setting forth the
grievances of the Department, and so preparing the way
for a later declaration of independence. His reason for
advancing no further at the moment in his propositions
to the delegates is the resistance that he meets from the
patriotism of some people, to whom the idea of independ
ence seems a doubtful and dangerous one. For an
English intrigue he is on the watch, and of course, as
we see, he has his proper fears of England ; hut he also
has good reasons, at this moment, reasons which he
gives at length, for regarding the English plans as not
now imminently dangerous, in case the country remains
quiet. Forbes, the English consul, is, namely, in his
private capacity, a man having settled interests in the
land and business connections with Americans, and,
as such, he is desirous of a quick and permanent settle
ment of all doubts about the country's future. He is
not anxious, therefore, in this private capacity, for any
but an American occupation of the country. Whatever
his official instructions may be, he is consequently not
apt to be very zealous in the English cause. Thus, in
view of the whole situation, Larkin feels sanguine of
success within a year or two, and with the cordial con
sent of the people of the country.
All such intrigues as Larkin's are, in their very na
ture, matters of no mathematical surety. Tn view of
the whole situation, however, so far as I can appre
ciate it, there seems no serious reason to doubt Larkin's
judgment. There is simply no evidence, as we shall
soon see, that the English desire for California had
ripened at that moment into any plan capable of resist
ing the course of events that was now steadily leading
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 165
California away from Mexico, and into our own posses
sion. Had the Mexican War been postponed a few
months or a year, and had the gallant captain not ap
peared on the ground in the north, California would
have been ready to drop into our basket like a mellow
apple. And, without the gallant captain, even the com
ing of the Mexican War, at the time when it came, would
have been, in all probability, no source of serious trou
ble to our plans. The Larkin intrigue would have been
prematurely closed, indeed, but not with bloodshed.
When I say this, however, I am venturing to treat with
conscious contempt two of the best known and best be
lieved of the popular legends of the conquest. One of
these legends is that the " Macnamara scheme " was
nearly ripe, and that, without the gallant captain's de
cisive interference, this scheme would have lost to us
much, if not the whole, of California. Macnamara was,
in fact, an Irish priest, who had evidently taken very ar
dent part in the then familiar and manifold schemes for
relieving the burden of Ireland's distress by colonization.
The magnitude of such schemes anybody can see by ref
erence to the English Parliamentary Papers of that time,
and Macnamara's scheme is plainly to be judged as one
of the number. His plan was to put several thousand
Irish families into the San Joaquin Valley ; and the
English government, very surely with an ardent desire
to get rid of some thousands of Irish families, and prob
ably also not without a willingness to do its part in a
very safe way towards the introduction of British sub
jects into California, in view of future possibilities there,
helped him so far as to give him transportation in one
of the vessels of the English squadron while he was en
gaged upon his business of trying to get a great land-
166 CALIFORNIA.
grant. In Mexico itself he met with some opposition ;
it was very plainly pointed out to him by at least one
person that while he pretended to be anxious to save
California for Mexico and from heretical American in
fluence, he would in fact only insure the transfer of Cal
ifornia to America if he introduced there numbers of
Irish peasants, who, though Catholic, would surely gravi
tate to the United States rather than to Mexico. This
was, for the rest, so plain in itself, that, if Macnamara
had really been a chosen agent, working with a desire to
secure California for England by a process of coloniza
tion, neither he nor his superiors could have failed to ob
serve the fact so pointed out. To use Irish colonists as a
barrier against American aggression would be a scheme
that no English government would coolly resort to, if
engaged in immediate and earnest efforts to secure Cal
ifornia for England herself. Any British subject in
California might possibly, of course, be the cause of com
plications that would end in the transfer of the country
to England. But it is plain also that neither Macna
mara nor his English patrons could have had such re
mote contingencies in mind as their main object. What
they first and most wanted was to find a place to settle
poor Irish families, in order to help relieve the pressure
of Irish famine. And such a place seemed to be offered
to them in California, in case they could obtain favor
with the central government of Mexico and with that of
the Department itself. With the particular fortunes of
the Macnamara scheme we have little to do. It is suffi
cient for our purpose to note that the plan of getting the
grant sought was incomplete at the moment of the con
quest, and would have been so even had the gallant cap
tain never seen California, a fact that appears only the
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 167
more plainly from his own testimony before the Claims
Committee. For therein he says that the movement of
Governor Pio Pico in the Macnamara matter in the
month of July was probably determined, or hastened,
by his own assault in the north. In other words, had
there been an imminent danger to American interests
from Macnamara, the gallant captain himself would
have been the one who did all that was possible on his
part to increase the danger and to hasten its consumma
tion. There was, however, no such serious danger,1 be
cause the Macnamara grant would have had yet more
ordeals to go through before it could have been effective.
It was a scheme of altogether unprecedented and irreg
ular character in California, and as such could not have
worked quickly.
The other popular legend makes the danger from
England yet more pressing, by declaring : first, that
Sloat was watched (as he undoubtedly was), at Mazat-
lan, by Admiral Seymour, who with the Collingwood is
known to have followed Sloat to Monterey, reaching that
place a few days after the raising of the flag ; second,
that Seymour had orders to put California under Eng
lish protection, so soon as hostilities should begin be
tween the United States and Mexico ; third, that, in
pursuance of these orders, he raced with Sloat to Mon
terey, arriving too late by reason of Sloat's skill in elud
ing him ; and, finally, that, if he had reached Monterey
in time, or if Sloat had hesitated longer, Seymour would
have seized California, and would have established an
English protectorate over the country. This story has
1 Sefior Coronel (a native of respectable position, both at that time
and since, and good authority on these matters), says in his state
ment, B. MS., that the scheme encountered great popular opposition
from Californians in the south.
168 CALIFORNIA.
ahvays been somewhat thoughtlessly repeated by Gen
eral Fremont's friends, although, if it were true, it
would of itself give us yet another and a direct condem
nation of his violent efforts to harass and overthrow
the existing Californian government by a course which,
unless supported by the purest luck, would have only
served to drive California into the arms of the coming
English force, instead of preparing California to resist
the English. But the story is almost certainly a mere
legend. And this I say after a most careful effort to
understand the accessible evidence, and especially the
evidence upon which the legend most relies. The whole
thing is most probably a fine instance of the capacity of
the public to be fooled by whatever has an air of mys
tery and of deep significance. Seymour may have had
such instructions, but if he did we have no good evi
dence of the fact.
The evidence given for the legend is as follows :
First, in general, England is known to have been jeal
ous at that time of our " manifest destiny " on the Pa
cific, and to have been unwilling to see us get California.
And so far there is indeed no doubt about the matter.
English travelers' books, English magazines, and Eng
lish newspapers of that day express this feeling. But,
in just the same sense, England was unwilling to see us
get Oregon ; and yet, just at that very moment, Eng
land was deliberately, if unwillingly, yielding to us more
than she had originally meant to yield in Oregon. Un
willingly, we say, England did this, but did so because
Oregon was not considered to be worth a war. Even
so, however, there can be little doubt that California also
was not then thought by England to be worth a war.
Yet to order the seizure of California, even while the
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 169
Oregon negotiations were pending and while the rela
tions of America and England were strained, would
have been, in view of our known determinations and
ambitions, merely to insure a war. If England, how
ever, was willing to fight for California, why did she
not fiyht, especially when her force then present in the
Pacific was already, as is usually admitted, fairly able
to cope with ours ? But these general considerations
are, by themselves indeed, far too vague. We can only
say from them that either the English government must
have ordered Seymour to get California by violence if
necessary (but then he would have used violence) ; or
else his orders cannot have gone much farther than a
direction to use his discretion in accepting a proposition
from the Calif ornians themselves to take them under
his protection. But, in the latter case, he "raced," if
he did race, with Sloat, not to raise his own flag at once,
but to watch events, and to accept, as he did, the inev
itable results of the American action, in case it should
be decisive, and should not be preceded by a request
from the Californians for his protection. For the rest,
where has any one ever found or produced the evidence
of any sort of agreement between England and Mexico,
looking towards an alliance or towards a protectorate,
in the event of a war between Mexico and ourselves ?
In the second place, however, the legend knows that
Seymour himself confessed to American naval officers,
in friendly conversation, and while his own vessel lay
in Monterey Bay, just after the raising of our flag, that,
had he come first, his flag would have been flying over
the fort in place of ours. The officers to whom Sey
mour said this usually speak to us through third per
sons. Who they were the legend generally says not,
170 CALIFORNIA.
unless it avers, as it sometimes does, that Sloat was one
of them. That Seymour may have said anything one
pleases, in harmless jest, after dinner, or at some other
social meeting, and that American officers, and even
Sloat himself, may have heen very ready to misinter
pret his jest to the credit of their own exploits, is indu
bitable ; but that he actually, and in any earnest speech,
revealed his instructions about so delicate a matter, is
rank nonsense. He, of course, did nothing of the sort.
Even if he did speak in a seemingly earnest tone, we
could not believe him about a matter that his duty as
an officer would have forced him to conceal. His in
structions, whatever they were, have never been re
vealed ; but in Parliament, in a conversation held in
the autumn of 1846, before the news of our conquest
had reached England, Lord Palmerston used language
about our troubles with Mexico that was utterly incon
sistent with the existence of any plan such as would
have seemed likely to embroil England and our own
land in a controversy about California. If, then, there
was such a plan existing, and if Lord Palmerston knew
of instructions to Seymour that might lead to a quarrel
with us concerning California, he felt bound to give no
hint of the matter to Parliament.1 In that case, how
ever, the thing was strictly confidential ; but then Ad
miral Seymour did not blurt it out to the first American
officer whom he met in a social gathering. Or, if he
pretended to do so, then so much the more reason for
doubting the fact that he pretended to confess.
1 The conversation in question is found in Hansard, 3d Scries, vol.
Ixxxviii. p. 978. The substance is that while the Oregon dilliculty
was pending England could not offer mediation between Mexico and
ourselves; while now, since there is no longer fear of contest or fric
tion between England and ourselves, such mediation is feasible.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 171
The legend, in the third place, appeals to the concur
rent impressions and testimony of all the American
navy men on the coast at the time, from Commodore
Sloat down to the common seamen. All alike seem to
have given the one interpretation to Seymour's pres
ence, — an interpretation that of course highly flattered
their own vanity. They all felt that they had beaten
the whole English nation without striking a blow.
They certainly had done this in so far, namely, as they
had taken California against England's openly expressed
desire that we should not take it. But that England
had determined to do more than to look with disfavor
upon our seizure of California, Sloat and the sailors
could only guess, even in case it was true. They were
not in the state secrets of England. Who were they,
that they should know what Admiral Seymour was
about ? Did he know all that they were about ? And
yet their gossip has been the infallible guide for the
legend ever since.
But, in the fourth place, the legend itself more di
rectly and triumphantly asks : What, then, was Seymour
doing, if not racing with Sloat for California ? The
one answer plainly is : The Oregon matter was still, so
far as Seymour and the rest knew, an unsettled matter.
How soon the two nations might find themselves at war,
neither of the commanders could at the moment tell.
It was plainly Seymour's duty to watch Sloat narrowly,
to know where he was and what he did, and to follow
him, moreover, with an adequate force. Might not
Sloat's movements, for all Seymour could know, have
some relation to Oregon also ? And if the Oregon dif
ficulty should lead to war, then, indeed, Seymour would
be bound to prevent by force Sloat's seizure of Califor-
172 CALIFORNIA.
nia as well as any other of Sloat's undertakings. All
this he must have had in mind, and this sufficiently ex
plains his movements.
And so, finally, the legend has to fall back on a sort
of continuity of tradition, and has to assert that every
body has always somehow known, since July, 1846, that
we won California from the very jaws of the lion.
Here is the true humor of the tradition, that, in the
end, it is only an expression of that infallible sense
which guides all our American frontiersmen and sail
ors, and talkers generally, to an intuitive and accurate
knowledge of the details of English foreign policy. If
you want a true sense of what our neighbor across the
water thinks and means and is and does, you must listen
to the average speculative American who has never read
an English journal. He feels in his soul the wicked
plans, the ambitious and oppressive purposes, of that
perfidious old tyrant of the seas so fully and earnestly
that, given such a fact as an English man-of-war with
an admiral on board, following our fleet when it went
to seize California, he can at once read all that England
meant and ordered.
As for me. I know naught of the instructions of Ad
miral Seymour in 1846, save what one very indirect
piece of evidence indicates, in a purely negative way, as
to the plans that they must have expressed. This one
evidence is contained in the remarks of Lord Palmer-
ston just cited. This is the single important objective
fact amongst the wreck of legendary trash about the
English official designs upon California in 1846. And
what this evidence indicates I have already suggested.
I think it quite inconsistent with any purpose on the
part of the English government to risk a struggle with
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 173
us for the sake of the wildernesses of California. It is
not indeed as if Lord Palmerston had announced directly
whether he had or whether his predecessors had had
designs on California. A direct mention of California
he evaded. His remarks are important, however, since
while he does not mention California at all, he does
distinctly mention and promise a course of public action
concerning Mexico and ourselves that would have been
absurd and impossible if he had already determined (or
if his very recent predecessors, who must have instructed
Seymour, had determined, in such a way as now to bind
his conduct) that California should be seized at the risk
of a conflict with us, and in the face of our own open
armed preparations to take the territory upon the out
break of a war with Mexico, this war itself being just
as openly a part of our programme.
This, I say, is all that I know of relevant evidence
bearing upon the instructions of Admiral Seymour.
Whatever they were, it is very improbable, therefore,
that they resembled those mentioned in the legend.
And the evidence that the legend gives in support of its
own claims is merely amusing in its self-confident incon-
clusiveness.
Legends are plenty in this part of our story, and we
have here yet to notice, as bearing on the problems of
the moment of the conquest, a tale that Lieutenant Re
vere * first told, from a source that he does not name,
concerning a mysterious junta held at Monterey, in
May, 1846, wherein certain principal men of California,
including, among others, Governor Pio Pico (who was
not in Monterey or near it at all during this time) and
General Vallejo, shall have discussed the situation,
1 Tour on Duty In California, p. 24.
174 CALIFORNIA.
and shall have advised together whether California
ought to pass over to the United States or to some Eu
ropean power. The speeches of these dignitaries are
given at length by Lieutenant Revere, much in the taste
of the ancient historians ; and the same speeches have
been slavishly repeated by numberless writers ever
since, until General Vallejo has been himself induced,
in recent years, to remember that the story, save as to
Pio Pico and some other minor matters, is substantially
true, even down to the details of General Vallejo's own
speech. There is little reason, however, to doubt that
the story is substantially legendary, for General Vallejo,
among other things, remembers the meeting as one
public enough to be attended by the various foreign
consuls, and, if I am not mistaken, declares it to have
been held at Larkin's own house, and to have been offi
cially reported by the well-known official, Hartnell.
Yet no official or other contemporary MS. record of
such a meeting is known to Mr. Bancroft's library, nor
is such a record, as I learn on questioning at Mr. Ban
croft's library, discoverable in the archives ; and as for
Larkin, he, who could not possibly have been ignorant
of such a junta, knows absolutely nothing about it, as
appears from his letters to the State Department.
III. THE WOLF AND THE LAMB.
Treating Macnamara's scheme, Admiral Seymour's
undertakings, and, in general, the salvation of Califor
nia from the lion's mouth, with the indifference that, in
the present state of the historical evidence, these mut
ters seem to deserve, we return to the objectively veri
fiable facts of the conquest, which we must sketch with
continued regard Tor our special interest in the nar-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 175
rative. We are studying these, like other events, as facts
of importance for the social future of California, and as
characteristic of our nation.
Sloat raised the flag at Monterey without opposition,
and Captain Montgomery, at Yerba Buena, did the
same. Castro was in the interior, and Sloat wrote him,
as has been said, begging him to come to terms without a
contest. Castro attempted no resistance, but retreated
southward, disgusted with the agents of this unintelli
gible power, who, as it seemed to him, had been delib
erately trying to entrap him by a mixture of soft words
and treacherous violence. In his replies to Sloat l he
gave the latter to understand that such a moment, with
the Bear Flag people disturbing the north and hostile
ships lying in the harbor of Monterey, was not the oc
casion for peaceful negotiations,2 and we, who know now
how our nation, through its representatives, had been
treating Castro, cannot blame him for his mood. He
seemed still to be not unmindful of the possibility of
explanations from Sloat that might make negotiation
feasible ; but he had little hope of anything but force
and treachery. On his way southwards he met Pio
Pico, who, full of the domestic quarrels of the times, and
ignorant of the exact situation, had been coming against
him with hostile intent. The two resolved to lay aside
their differences for the present, and to consider what
to do for their common country. The proposed junta
that had been appointed to meet at Santa Barbara June
1 Sen. Ex. Doc., 2d Ses., 29th Congr.; Doc. 1, p. 647; Doc. 19, p.
104.
2 Castro wrote two letters, both dated July 9, from San Juan mis
sion. One refuses to surrender to SI*at until after a consultation with
the authorities in the south. The other demands information about
the marauders in the north.
17G CALIFORNIA.
15, to discuss the situation, and to consider the possible
means of preparing for invasion or for other change,
had been altogether abandoned weeks before, the petty
political quarrels of the Californians being in part re
sponsible for this result.1 And now the duty of the
two chiefs was to consider what should be the means to
meet the entirely new conditions. Could they resist the
American invasion ? Or should they seek to get fair
terms from a power that had just proved, by its appar
ent double-dealing, its determination to crush them al
together ? Their discussion of these matters was broken
by a somewhat characteristic dispute 2 concerning the
proper person to have command of the forces of the
north and the south, these forces being now united at
Los Angeles, whfther the two chiefs had retreated. The
controversy was .at length settled in Castro's favor ; and
an effort was made to organize some resistance to
the Amei'ican authorities, since favorable negotiations
seemed out of the question. But of course this now
distracted land, that had so often played at war, but
that had never fought a real battle, had neither good
weapons, nor trained soldiers, nor powder, nor supplies.
A contest against the United States forces was, how
ever one might pretend to organize one's resources,
simply hopeless, and (.'astro knew it, although he tried
to save after a fashion his personal honor, grossly in
sulted as it had been, by showing a bold front to the
enemy, so far as words could serve him.
Meanwhile the Americans had taken possession of the
1 Coronel, in his statement, T?. MS., refers the abandonment of the
junta to political difficulties; but of course the troubles that had now
followed would have rendered the meeting in any case useless.
2 Coroncl, loc. cit.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 177
main posts in the northern country from Monterey up
wards, without immediate opposition of any sort. But
after Captain Fremont had joined the forces of Commo
dore Sloat at Monterey, an unfavorable change had
come over the spirit of the official American undertak
ings. Sloat, namely, had abandoned his command and
returned to the United States, while Commodore Stock
ton, who had arrived in the Congress, took his place.
Stockton had brought with him the sealed original of
the now useless Larkin dispatch. He was under orders
to deliver this, and then to report to Sloat. On his ar
rival he found himself by Sloat's retirement quickly
intrusted with a serious responsibility, which he used for
his own glory and amusement, with becoming alacrity,
and with some genuine courage and energy.
A brief consultation with Captain Fremont seems to
have had far more weight in his mind than what he
chose to learn from Sloat's instructions. To conciliate
the people of California without or before conquering
them seemed to him, as to the gallant captain, nonsen
sical. He chose, apparently, to assume that the gallant
captain's behavior in the north had been due to official
instructions, although, at that early day, while the gal
lant captain's memory was still fresh concerning the
whole matter, it must have been impossible that the
latter should voluntarily give to the commodore such a
mistaken account as he recently, through an error of
memory, gave to me. But doubtless, if he was silent
on the subject, his silence was not free from a certain
eloquence ; and, at all events, when the new commo
dore's plans were once laid the latter prepared a proc
lamation that, for effrontery, has never been surpassed
12
178 CALIFORNIA.
by the pronouncements of any Mexican.1 This proc
lamation was issued five days after the commodore had,
on July 23, assumed command of the forces of the
United States on the coast, and four days after he had
accepted Captain Fremont's offer of the improvised force
from the north, and had organized the same into the
" California hattalion of mounted riflemen." The proc
lamation expressed the commodore's horror on assuming
command, at hearing of " scenes of rapine, blood, and
murder " in the interior. Who was really responsible
for such scenes, in so far as they were actual, he, of
course, ignored ; and hence found himself " constrained
by every principle of national honor ... to put an end,
at once and by force, to the lawless depredations daily
committed by General Castro's men upon the persons
and property of peaceful and unoffending inhabitants."
This proclamation of the wolf to the lamb was surely
almost as good, in its way, as Ide's oration to the inhab
itants of Sonoma, and the words so far used are fully
borne out by the rest of the document. Stockton re
ferred, rather covertly, to the duty which even he must
have felt devolving upon him, as Sloat's successor, to
treat, if possible, in a peaceful spirit with the authori
ties of the country. But, as he felt, he could not, much
to his regret, live up to these instructions of his prede-
1 Cf. Tuthill's remark, History of California, p. 180: "There was
not wanting a certain Mexican flavor in this" (proclamation). Tut
hill's account of the early part of the conquest appears to me, of course,
in view of the* foregoing considerations, very imperfect and erroneous
as concerns some weighty matters, although in the better known details
it is fairly sound. Yet I cannot but refer the reader to Tuthill's pages
just here, in view of the decidedlv graceful style and the generally
sober and excellent spirit in which he tells the story. See, further,
Stockton's proclamation of July 28, 1846, iu the Annals of San Fran
cisco, p. 104.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 179
cessor. So the proclamation at least suggested. What
it said was : " I cannot therefore confine my operations
to the quiet and undisturbed possession of the defense
less ports of Monterey and Sari Francisco, whilst the
people elsewhere are suffering from lawless violence, hut
will immediately march against these hoastful and abu
sive chiefs, . . . who, unless driven out, will . . . keep
this beautiful country in a constant state of revolution
and bloodshed."
The Californian battalion had now already embarked
for San Diego in the Cyane, that they might be landed
south of Castro, to cut off his retreat, a plan that proved
in the sequel ineffective. Stockton himself sailed in the
Congress for San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, and
there landed a force, formed from the sailors and ma
rines, with six small cannon. Of Stockton's vast cour
age and energy in landing such a crowd of sea-dogs to
undertake a hunt on dry land, and in training them,
after a fashion, for this new sort of chase, directed as
it was against what he himself chose to pretend to
consider a strong and well-fortified force of Californi-
ans, well used to the country, — of all this, Stockton's
admirers, among whom he was undoubtedly the chief,
have taken no small pains to convince us.1 We should
be better convinced of this if Stockton's opportuni
ties to learn from the gallant captain, and from others,
the utter helplessness of this little nation of herdsmen
and colonists, had not been so sufficient, even in the
very few days that passed ere his plans were formed.
1 See Stockton himself, in his mock-modest report to the secre
tary of the navy, in the already cited Doc. 19, p. 106 (or Doc. 1, also
cited, p. G63); and the Annals of San Francisco, pp. 102 and 105.
Cf. the much more sensible but still too good-humored account of
Tuthill, pp. 187, 188.
180 CALIFORNIA.
In fact, save by way of a certain bustle of prepara
tion at Los Angeles, Castro and the rest could do sim
ply nothing in the short time left them. Castro, indeed,
made an effort to open with Stockton, as the latter
approached, the negotiations that he still thought due
to himself in view of S!o:it"s earlier efforts to concil
iate him. But it was hoping against hope to expect
Stockton, who wanted nothing but noise and a warrior's
glory, either to understand his true obligations to Castro
and to the other Californians, or to consider such obli
gations as important. Castro surely, for his own honor's
sake, ought not to have approached Stockton with any
further shows of negotiation. Yet, for the sake, I sup
pose, of getting better terms for his countrymen, Castro
did make such an approach, through messengers, to
Stockton, as the latter was on the march towards Los
Angeles. The messengers were insultingly received,
and a message was sent back demanding unconditional
surrender. Resistance was of course hopeless without
arms or powder, and both Castro and Pico set out for
Mexico.
On the 13th of August, Stockton, who had now been
joined by the California battalion (which had landed
at San Diego, and come northward), entered Los An
geles with his full force, and, unresisted, raised the flag.
Shortly afterwards he issued several proclamations, on
successive days, declaring the country a part of the ter
ritory of the United States, and making arrangements
for a provisional government. Now that he had made
a glorious conquest, with his marines, in face of the
aforesaid overwhelming odds, he felt at liberty to speak
more peaceably, for the moment, to the inhabitants of
the land. They should be allowed, his proclamations
TEE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 181
assured them, to elect alcaldes and municipal officers
throughout the territory. They should be unmolested
in their regular business, and, if they submitted quietly,
they should be considered as citizens of the territory,
and protected accordingly. They should soon be gov
erned by a regular governor, secretary, and legislative
council, to whose provisional appointment he would
promptly see. In the mean time, of course, there would
remain a good deal of martial law about their position.
" All persons who, without special permission, are found
with arms outside their own houses will be considered
as enemies, and will be shipped out of the country."
The California battalion would remain in service for
the present.1
As to what they expressed in so many words, Stock
ton's proclamations of August 15-22, if placed side
by side with Sloat's proclamation of July 7, issued
upon the raising of the flag, would seem at first glance
to differ mainly by containing more details, such as
would naturally be suggested by a more advanced stage
of the conquest. Yet, if one looks more carefully, one
finds a serious difference in spirit, with one important,
but since then seldom sufficiently recognized, difference
in the pledges made. For Sloat, the Californians are
the inhabitants of a nearly independent province, whom
he wishes to conciliate, not only as individuals, but as
a people, having a genuine political unity. California
is to be relieved henceforth from the corrupt and dis
orderly rule of " the central government of Mexico,"
which Sloat, by this expression, takes care to represent
as not identical with the proper government of California
itself, but as rather a relatively foreign and disturbing
1 Docs, as cited : Doc. 1, p. 669, sqq. ; Doc. 19, p. 10", sqq.
182 CALIFORNIA.
force in Californian affairs. As for the Californians
themselves, Sloat has '" full confidence in their honor
and integrity," and accordingly invites " the judges,
alcaldes, and other civil officers'' (a rather dubious form
of language, that undoubtedly, however, if strictly inter
preted, would have included Pio Pico and the depart
mental assembly, in case they had consented to be in
cluded) " to retain their offices, and to execute their
functions as heretofore, that the public tranquillity may
not be disturbed ; at least, until the government of the
territory can be more definitely arranged."
Now an essential part of the pledge thus made by
Sloat, Stockton, after his interview with the gallant
Captain Fremont, and before he could know of the way
in which Pico and the assembly could be induced to
view the matter, in case they should be wisely ap
proached, simplv tore up and flung to the winds.
Personal glory did not lie for him in the direction of
negotiations with the "• other civil officers," nor did he,
like Sloat, come as the " best friend of California," anx
ious to avoid bloodshed. Sloat had written to ask both
Castro and Pico to a council at Monterey, under a sol
emn assurance of a safe-conduct if they should consent
to come. But all this was naught for Stockton. To be
sure, he Avas not very malicious. He did not want to
oppress the Californians, when once he should have con
quered them. He only wanted his fun, as a gallant and
glory-seeking American officer, out of the business of
conquering them. Then indeed he could afford to be
generous. But first he must have the fight. But as
there was nobody in the territory capable of fighting
him with any prospect of success. Stockton, after bully
ing and exasperating the defenseless provincial govern-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 183
ment and people with insulting proclamations and dem
onstrations, had at last to be content for the moment
with such glory as these bloodless exercises could give
him. And so, in the proclamations of August 15-22,
he has at length to treat the Californians with the con
descending airs of a generous conqueror. He proclaims
a blockade of the whole coast against all but American
merchant vessels ; he introduces several provisions of
martial law ; he undertakes to establish very soon a pro
visional governor and legislative assembly, and merely
" permits " the people to elect their local civil officers.
All these provisions are, of course, in perfect accord
with the usages of civilized conquerors, and do not ex
ceed Stockton's temporary authority, so long as one con
siders him commander of a conquering force ; but to
convert tho seizure of California into a military conquest
at all, when as yet the inhabitants had made absolutely
no violent resistance to the regular forces of the United
States, was against the whole spirit of the plans and in
structions of our government. Our official plan was to
take possession of the ports, and to invite the inhabitants
either to join us, or to retain, at any rate, their domestic
freedom of action, while keeping the peace towards us.
//"the inhabitants had violently resisted this plan, then
we should have been obliged to conquer them ; but as
yet they had never resisted us, save by the use of a few
very naturally bold words, uttered in the first shock of
their vexation. They had only resisted the marauders
in the north, who had been in arms against the express
commands of our government, as communicated to Cap
tain Fremont by Lieutenant Gillespie. Therefore our
pretense of needing to conquer the inhabitants was a
mere show, gotten up either to justify the affair in the
184 CALIFORNIA.
north, or to satisfy a vain love of personal glory in the
wanton mind of Commodore Stockton, or, more prob
ably, to do both. And the only outcome of it all was
the exasperation of the natives. All the assurances of
good-will and all the fine promises that, in Stockton's
proclamations of August, give these documents at first
sight an apparently close connection and agreement with
Sloat's pledges of July 7, could not serve to hide by fine
phrases the essential perfidy of our conduct towards the
Californians. The people at large knew, of course, noth
ing of the Larkin intrigue. But they did know, or at
least believed, that we had been long scheming to get
the country, that our agents had made many promises,
that we had then brutally attacked the people in the
north, and that we had thereafter taken violent posses
sion of the country, publishing proclamations in which
assurances of peace and good-will were so mingled with
threats and abuse that nobody could make out more of
their meaning than that they signified the use of force
at present and of probable oppression in future. Hence
forth all respectable and honorable Californians were
apt to suspect, if not to detest, us, unless, indeed, they
should prove very forgiving.
IV. THE REVOLT AXD THE RE-COXQUEST.
And yet even now, by a proper behavior, we might
have slowly won back something of the confidence and
good-will of the people, notwithstanding all that had
happened. Of course, thus far, our ill-treatment of them
had been at worst largely the consequence of a char
acteristic wantonness, ignorance, and personal ambi
tion on the part of our agents, and not the expression
of any deliberate determination to oppress the natives,
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 185
when once we should have taken their land. Much as
we had by this time exasperated them, there was a pos
sibility of repentance. In some directions, moreover,
repentance soon seemed to be taking effect.
And first on the list of those who, after this provis
ional completion of the conquest, began to show a desire
to treat our new subjects as fellow-citizens and friends,
one must mention with great satisfaction the name of
no less a person than the gallant captain himself, the
chief author of the foregoing mischief. We have
throughout been ready to see, in all the serious mistakes
and evils of his conduct, rather the expression of bad
advice from home, or of wanton personal ambition,
than the outcome of any deliberate malice towards the
Californians themselves. Their interest before the con
quest stood in the way of his plans, and in so far he
was guilty of immeasurable injustice to their rights and
to their future prosperity, and was for the time as cruel
as he was unjust. But he was still a kindly and warm
hearted man, whenever his ambitions, or his private in
terests, or those of his family, were not concerned.
And he now had for the moment no need to be cruel to
the fallen foe. On the contrary, he seems at once to
have foreseen an opportunity for future business and
social relations with the people, such as led him now to
desire their friendship, just as he so recently had deter
mined upon their overthrow. He was quick to adapt
himself to their ways, and soon began to win the per
sonal friendship of many of them. Although he could
no longer stay the bitter consequences fo»the whole land
of his folly in the north, consequences which remain
until this day, and will yet long remain, he could al
ready excuse himself in the eyes of some even of the
186 CALIFORNIA.
natives by neglecting to assume his full share of personal
responsibility for the outbreak ; and he could mean
while use his undoubted personal charm to win the
hearts of hospitable Californians.1 What was evil
about the matter our government had especially to an
swer for, in the minds of the people, and so the captain
himself began to evade personal censure ; nor has he
ever since left off. But at all events this new course of
conduct was not only prudent, but so far as the Califor
nians were concerned generous and just ; and the gal
lant captain deserves all due credit for it.
With this new-found wisdom of Captain Fremont's
well agrees also the more habitual conduct of such a
man as the Rev. Walter Colton at Monterey, whose
book, " Three Years in California," 2 gives us such an ex
cellent notion of some aspects of the days of the inter-
1 Coronel, in his B. MS. statement, contrasts the conduct of the gal
lant captain in the: south at this moment very favorably with that of
other American officers, after the conquest was once for the time
over: " Frdmont se entrego a las diversiones del pais, se familiarize
prontamente con los habitantes, adoptando sus trajes y modo de vivir
hasta cierto grado. El se vestia como los rancheros, y andaba a ca-
ballo con ellos; se hicieron tan intimas las reiaciones entre el y los del
pais, quo ya muchos de estos le tutcaban." This personal affability
of conduct and this charm of manner could not at once, Coronel says,
conquer the objections of many of the principal families; but the im
pression produced on the mass of the people was excellent, so far as it
went.
- New York, 1852. The author, a chaplain in the navy, was ap
pointed provisional alcalde of Monterey by Commodore Stockton on
July 28, 1840, was formally elected by the people to the same office
at the election under Stockton's proclamation, September 15, and re
mained in the country until after the gold di-coverv. lie tells us his
story in diary for*, and includes in it too much of his decidedly inno
cent inner life for the purposes of such a work; but of the condition of
the country he has al*o much to tell that is very helpful. September
4, 1840, he held the first jury trial in California. He was throughout
an efficient and popular officer.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 187
regnum. He found the people good-humored, and dis
posed to submit to their fate. He studied them thought
fully ; applied from the first a sensible and tolerant
mind to understanding and to helping them, in his office
as alcalde ; and was in all respects an example of the
more enlightened American influence at its very best, in
a time of transition. The people of Monterey liked
him, and felt generally contented with the new rule as
represented by him.
Some of the new officials, also, were Americans who
had long been in the country, who had not participated
in the sins of the conquest, and who were the men for
the place. But there were exceptions to the excellent
rule thus exemplified. And the exceptions were numer
ous enough to keep the hatreds of the moment well alive
in most parts of the country. In the eyes of men like
Gillespie, in the eyes of numerous navy officers and
men, in the eyes of most of the California battalion, the
Californians were, after what had happened, a boastful
and treacherous people, given to murder and pillage, an.
inferior race, a people to be suspected, to be kept down
with a strong arm, and to be reminded constantly of
their position as the vanquished. Gillespie, however,
was left in charge at Los Angeles. Other navy men
were scattered along the coast. The California battal
ion was under arms, was expectant of its pay, and
meanwhile was not perfectly contented. The result of
Gillespie's intolerance was an outbreak at the south ;
and in this movement the whole country south of the
bay more or less sympathized and took part. In the
outbreak the native people gave their well-nursed exas
peration vent. Helpless as they on the whole were be
fore the well-armed Americans, they still showed of
188 CALIFORNIA.
what stuff they were made by resisting on at least two
occasions, namely, near San Pedro and at San Pascual,
with stubbornness and not without success. They were
by January, 1847, a second time conquered, this time
not without considerable bloodshed, and the bitterness
of the conquest was thus once for all rendered chronic,
and for a large part of the population fatal. For the
new outbreak had. in American eyes, all the character of
a treacherous revolt, while the bloodshed rendered the
hatred of the native population thenceforth undying.
Everywhere the result was bad, and to this second act
of the conquest the subsequent general demoralization
of a mass of the native population, especially in the
south, may be directly traced. The whole disturbance
was a fruitful mother of bandits and vagabonds, who
vexed the California of later days for a score of years.
Gillespie at Los Angeles was, I have said, the immedi
ate cause of the revolt. This distinguished and faithless
bearer of dispatches was not a suitable man to conciliate
the natives. He adopted Commodore Stockton's tone,
and made them all feel the bitterness of martial law,
vexing them with unnecessary regulations ; he neither
knew nor cared to know the customs of the people.1 At
1 The general fooling is no doubt fairly voiced by Coronel, who, us
resident, was directly aware of what went on in Los Angeles at the
time. Coronel, a man of thoroughly trustworthy character, is the
California!! to whom Mrs. Jackson was indebted for some of the ac
counts of (lie scenes of the re-conqnest that she repeated in her well-
known ai'ticles in the Century Mnijnz'me. His statement concerning
Gillespie's doings at this moment runs (B. MS.): "Gillespie . . . em-
pezo a dictar medidas muy opresivas ; per esemplo : publico una orden
para que no anduviesen dos personas juntas en las calles ; para que no
se renuiesen los citidadanos baja nigun pretesto en sus casas ; para que
se cerrasen las tiendas de comestibles ii la puesta del sol." " Gilles
pie," concludes Coronel, "tenia a esta gente tan obstinada que se hizo
una especie de tiranuelo odioso."
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 189
last, a propos of the arbitrary arrest of a citizen, a dis
turbance broke out ; and this led to more arrests. One
man whose arrest was at this time ordered, J. M. Flores,
an officer under the previous government, fled from the
town, and began to form a party of the discontented
fugitives outside. Flores was, unfortunately for his fu
ture reputation in history, a paroled military officer, and
so were a number of those who joined him. The re
volt, as an expression of outraged public opinion, would
indeed have been justifiable enough, had it not been
hopeless ; but the paroled men who took part in it were
numerous enough to give the whole affair a character
of which the contemporary American writers were not
slow to take advantage in what they said of it. Yet the
insurgents were not all officers, much less paroled ones.
The revolt was a popular act. The incidents of the re-
conquest, which thus opens, are complex and exciting,
and form a fruitful subject of controversy. Our pur
poses and our limits forbid us to dwell upon them, and
above all upon the controversy that they led to, — the
famous controversy between General Kearny and Cap
tain (or now more properly Lieutenant-Colonel) Fre
mont. These details, which would be necessary in a
complete history of California, are neither so character
istic of the forces at work, nor so fateful for the future
of California, as those that we have been already treat
ing.1
1 Authorities in print and easily accessible concerning the revolt are,
of compendious narratives, Tuthill's in his History, Bryant's (from
personal observation) in his What I saw in California, Cults' a in his
Conquest of California and New Mexico, and the story as told in the
Annals of San Francisco. The proceedings of the Fremont-Keavny
court-martial contain much original matter. Hall's History oj San
Jose treats of the revolt in that region. Lieutenant Cooke's Conquest
190 CALIFORNIA.
In brief, however, Gillespie's position at Los Angeles
became untenable against the overwhelming numbers of
the revolting party. After a lively siege, some of whose
incidents Coronel recounts, in his statement to Mr.
Bancroft, with much zest, Gillespie capitulated, retiring
to Monterey. The revolting party labored hard to get
powder and other supplies, and Flores issued vigorous
proclamations. At Santa Barbara Lieutenant Talbot
escaped with his men from the besieging force. The
lower country was soon largely overrun bv them.
Stockton promptly heard of these troubles. lie was
at Yerba Buena at the time, and at a banquet that had
been tendered him by the Americans of the place he
made a speech concerning the news, in his most brutal
and boastful tone, showing not the least sense of the
position and feelings of the people, announcing his in
tention to make quick work of the revolt, and express
ing in a violent way his opinion of those engaged in it.
He then set sail for San Pedro in the Congress, having
previously sent the Savannah with Captain Mervine to
the same place. The California battalion embarked for
Santa Barbara, but had to return to get horses, which
they had hoped to get at Santa Barbara. Mervine,
meanwhile, had landed at San Pedro, and had set out
for Los Angeles, hoping to win the glory of defeating
the revolters himself. His marines were met by a party
of mounted Californians, who dragged with them a single
gun on wheels. They had but a few charges of powder,
of New Mexico and California is an incomplete and one-sided but
not valueless account, by one of the officers concerned in the clo>ing
scenes. Colton in his Three Years also gives some details, and so does
Lieutenant Revere, in his Tour on Duty. Authorities concerning par
ticular scenes and controversies are very numerous, and many of them
still inedited.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 191
but these they used so effectively, dragging their gun,
after each discharge, out of Mervine's rifle range, that,
before their little supply was exhausted, several of Mer
vine's men had been killed, and he had become discour
aged and had retreated to his ship. Stockton, arriving
at San Pedro, and suffering from a lack of supplies,
took his force by water to San Diego, where he landed
in November, drove off the enemy, and established a
camp.
Meanwhile the Californians, who had been hoping for
help from Mexico, found themselves threatened, although,
for the moment, not very seriously, from a new quarter.
General Kearny, namely, was approaching from New
Mexico, but with only a small detachment of dragoons.
The general had already completed his little conquest
of New Mexico, and had now come on to California, of
which he had been ordered to take possession, and in
which he was commissioned to found a civil government.
He too had been ordered, like Sloat, to " act in such a
manner as best to conciliate the inhabitants, and render
them friendly to the United States," but his orders were,
of course, unlike Sloat's, subsequent to the date of the
declaration of war.1 He was, however, still expected to
form his civil government, as far as possible, in con
formity with the existing conditions, and with all proper
use of the actual native government and officers found
in the territory.
On the way from New Mexico, Kearny had been met
by an express conveying dispatches from Stockton and
1 See the often herein cited Doc. 19, p. 6. The instructions to
Colonel Stevenson, issued later than Kearny's, when Stevenson was
sent to California around the Horn, with his well-known regiment of
volunteers, were to make the inhabitants " feel that we come as de
liverers " (loc. cit.,p. 12).
192 CALIFORNIA.
from Captain Fremont to the government at Washington,1
and announcing the conquest of the country. In conse
quence of the information that he thus received as to the
condition of California, Kearny had left in New Mexico
a part of his force, and, expecting Cooke with the " Mor
mon hattalion " to follow soon, he had gone on with ahout
one hundred dragoons. On his arrival in the territory,
he found himself in the presence of a not very formid
able but active foe, who had for weeks been straining
every nerve to procure the means for righting. Kear
ny' s own supplies were low. He managed to send a
messenger to Stockton at San Diego, and the result was
that a detachment, under Lieutenant Gillespie, consist
ing of about thirty-five mounted men, came to his aid.
Gillespie joined Kearny near San Pascual. On the
morning of December 6, the united forces, undertaking
to attack the Californians at San Pascual, suffered se
rious loss, and gained nothing. This fight, which was
to all intents and purposes a defeat, although Kearny
himself did not confess the fact in his official reports,
left his force in a very dangerous position, from which
it was rescued by another detachment of Stockton's men.
The forces of Kearny and Stockton were now united,
and, without coming to a sufficiently definite agreement
as to which of the two leaders, under the circumstances,
ought to be considered as at the head of affairs in Cal
ifornia, both the officers in due time set out for Los
Angeles together. On the 8th of January, 1847. they
found the enemy, just beyond the San Gabriel River.
They crossed the river in the face of the enemy's quite
ineffective fire. The home-made powder of the Cali-
1 See his testimony before the court-martial, Sen. Ex. Doc. 33, 1st
Sess. 30th Congr., p. 41.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 193
fornians was in fact nearly useless, and the few charges
of good powder that had proved so useful in meeting
Mervine near San Pedro had exhausted the little stock
that the Californians possessed of that kind. The com
modore, who had somewhat rashly, and in ignorance
of the facts about the resources of the Californians, or
dered the troops to make the charge across the river,
took great credit afterwards for this new triumph over
a practically defenseless foe, whose harmless bullets
dropped helplessly all about the men. The next day,
the 9th, saw the last armed encounter of Californians
and Americans. On the Mesa, north of the river, the
mounted Californians undertook once more to resist
their foe. But, after a few spirited but quite useless
attempted charges, and some slight loss, they broke al
together and fled. Abandoning Los Angeles, the chiefs,
with what force remained to them, retreated northward
to meet Captain, or, as he was now oftener called since
his battalion had been organized, Major Fremont, in
order to surrender to him rather than to Stockton and
Kearny, who had given notice of their intention to spare
no men whose parole had been broken.
Of Major Fremont's conduct since he had returned
northward from Santa Barbara we need not speak in
detail. He had shown becoming energy in getting
horses and supplies for his battalion, and in raising fur
ther volunteers. The country, including the more
peaceable natives, had had to suffer, meanwhile, from
the loss of the horses and the supplies, but, at the mo
ment, some such seizures were simply necessary, and
there was no cash on hand to pay for them ; so that the
faith of the government had to be pledged instead.
The misfortune that all this increased the old feeling of
13
194 C. \LIFORX I A.
disgust for American rule was now, of course, inevita
ble, and the leader of the battalion could no longer pre
vent that. The furthc-r fact that many new-comers by
the large and able immigration of 1846, fresh from
across the plains, were enlisted in the battalion, and
thus from the first moment met the Californians in a
hostile spirit, was also a fact full of evil for the future,
since many of the men of 1846 were destined to play no
small part in the history of California, and were often
to be men of great authority as pioneers. And of
course they thenceforth remembered the Californians as
treacherous rebels, and believed all the absurdities that
they heard concerning the Bear Flag legend. But all
this was now but one more link in the fatal chain of in
justice. Beyond this, however, the northern operations
during the suppression of the revolt were generally hu
mane. The disturbances near Santa Clara and near
Monterey wrere suppressed by detachments of our forces.
The main body of the California battalion, proceeding
southward, under its leader, crossed the Santa Inez
Mountains on Christmas Day, in cold and storm, and
then proceeded in the same direction far enough for
Major Fremont to receive at Cahuenga, on January 11,
in his capacity as military commandant of California,
under Stockton's appointment, the capitulation of the
Californian chiefs, whom, to the great disgust of Stock
ton, the gallant leader of the battalion was bold enough
to pardon altogether, saying nothing of the broken pa
roles. His act was as generous as it was politic, and it
had for him the advantage also of redounding to his
personal glory, since in performing it he somewhat ex
ceeded the authority that even Stockton might be sup
posed to have given him (so long as the latter was
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 195
actually carrying on the war), and yet did so in the ob
vious interests of humanity and good order. Both Stock
ton and Kearny were forced — at least in so far as con
cerned the amnesty — to accept the act once executed ;
the amnesty was thus, once for all, complete, and the
next scene was no longer one of war with Californians,
but of a quarrel between Stockton and Kearny about
the authority to govern the conquered territory. Into
this quarrel, as we know, the young military command
ant of California under Stockton became involved, being
appointed governor by Stockton.
Of personal popularity, the leader of the California
battalion had won back, through his crowning act of
clemency to the parole-breaking leaders of the revolt,
more than he personally had lost by those acts in the
north that the natives now generally attributed to the
secret commands of his government. With not unnat
ural pride he later pointed out before the court-martial
at Washington how he, the " conqueror of California,"
could thenceforth have ridden unguarded and alone
through the whole length of the province without any
trace of personal danger. Apparently he had atoned for
his monumental mischief-making ; but the atonement was
only apparent. Although the native people, who knew
nothing of the mystery, might fail to recognize the chain
of causes that connected all their troubles with his pri
vate responsibility, the irrevocable wrong was now done.
Clemency to individuals could win him great personal
popularity, but it could never in fact unite the two peo
ples in the land whom he had now sundered in fierce
hatred, nor atone for the ruin already wrought and
thenceforth to follow. The very evils that his clemency
moderated were all his own doing.
196 CALIFORNIA.
Of the details of the Stockton-Kearny-Fremont quar
rel we have here nothing to say. In all but technical
right the young governor whom Stockton appointed
appears almost throughout in a far better light than
Kearny. And technical affairs of military law are of
no concern here. It is enough to remind the reader
that Governor Fremont was at length obliged to yield,
and that in June, 1847, he set out for the East, across
the plains, in company with Kearny, and thereafter
was, as we have already seen, court-martialed for his
disobedience of Kearny's orders. He was convicted
on largely technical grounds, and pardoned by the pres
ident. He declined to accept the president's clemency,
and resigned his commission. This court-martial only
added to his popular glory, and discovered to the public
nothing of his real offense of an earlier date. The cab
inet was bound, of course, to keep the Larkin intrigue
secret. They had accepted, meanwhile, in an official
document (the Report of the secretary of war), the
first theory propounded by Senator Benton in his letter
to the president, founded on his earliest private advices
from Captain Fremont. This afore-mentioned theory,
as we know, gave Castro's mythical onslaught as the
justification of the Bear Flag affair. The cabinet had
no means, therefore, of calling the young officer to pub
lic account for his true disobedience ; nor had they,
probably, in view of Senator Benton's position and in
fluence, even the wish to do so. For their purpose it
was now enough that the country was ours. And so
the whole matter was thenceforth, although not forever,
enveloped in official prevarication and in mystery.
But the quarrel of the chiefs had been yet one more
serious evil to California. Some of the important pro-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 197
visions of the Cahuenga capitulation, relating, indeed,
not to the amnesty but to the legal status of the inhab
itants, had been disregarded in later proclamations by
Kearny, and were disregarded by his successor, Colonel
Mason. The California battalion was refused pay by
Kearny, and all the claims for its expenses remained
then and for years afterwards unsatisfied, to the great
displeasure of both American and native inhabitants.1
Nor was the situation immediately improved by the
rapid and rather confusing increase of the American
population during this period. Stevenson's regiment,
together with some other United States forces, arrived
by water. Cooke's " Mormon battalion " came in from
New Mexico during the quarrel of the chiefs. The im
migration of 1846 was all in by the time the Donner
party had been rescued, in the early months of 1847 ;
and in July, 1846, there had appeared unexpectedly at
San Francisco a shipload of Mormons, who had come
from New York, by way of the Sandwich Islands, hoping
to find refuge in this foreign land, which they now found
to be, after all, an American land. The leader of these
Mormons was the spirited, energetic, and coarse-fibred
Samuel Brannan. The diversity of the purposes that
had brought all these different companies of people
hither ; the need of finding for all alike, both soldiers
and civilians (now that the war in California was done),
employment and support ; the uncertainty of the future
in a country that, of course, could not technically be
called ours before the campaigns in Mexico were done, —
all this, together with the incapacity of the new-comers
1 Larkin, in a letter to the State Department, June 30, 1847, in his
somewhat rude speech, but still with effect, sets forth the distracted
condition of the land just after the end of the quarrel of the chiefs.
198 CALIFORNIA.
themselves to understand perfectly their own delicate
political situation, made this whole period of the inter
regnum a time of doubts, of problems, of complaints,
and of weariness, as well, of course, as a time of most
important and historically influential social life.
V. THE CONQUERORS AS RULERS AND AS SUBJECTS;
QUARRELS, DISCONTENT, AND ASPIRATIONS.
For it is at just such moments that the American na
ture shows its best qualities. Amid all the mistakes
and the foolish words that abound in such a time, one is
surprised to note the general and instinctive moderation
of the Americans concerned, considered as a community.
They seem always on the point of trying to solve their
social problems by violent and revolutionary methods ;
and yet they refrain, not from fear, but by virtue of
self-control. The American new-comers in California,
under the new condition of things, natiir-illy took the
lead in everything. The natives, weary of the recent
struggles, and generally hopeless and sullen, were glad
to be let alone, and for the time they had little to say.
It was the American who now complained bitterly of
all the political, commercial, and social evils of this
transition state ; who loudly called for a stable govern
ment ; who sometimes threatened to disregard United
States authority altogether, and go back to Bear Flag
conditions ; and who, in general, gave his soul free vent
in his newly founded newspapers.1 Yet it was the
1 These have been already mentioned : the Ctillfurnitin (first pub
lished in Monterey, and later in San Francisco ), and the California
Stfir. published in San Francisco. The first of these papers was for a
pood while conducted, as we know, by Semple, and was founded hi
1840. The other, the Star, was founded by Brannan, at the begin
ning of 1847, and, although variously edited, remained under his in-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 199
American who, in the midst of his private discontent,
and in fact by virtue of this discontent, prepared the
way for the birth of the sovereign State in 1849.
For the constitution of 1849 was not, as people usu
ally conceive it, the product solely of the suddenly
formed good resolutions of the new-coming gold-seek
ers. Had these men of the interregnum not preceded
the gold-seekers, California would have had no state
constitution in 1849. The constitutional convention
was formed, as we shall see, partly of men that had
lived in the territory through the interregnum, and only
partly of new-comers that had political ambitions. In
settling the problems of the convention, the men of the
interregnum, despite their general ignorance of the pol
itician's arts, were highly influential, and about many
matters their influence was decisive. To see, therefore,
why California was ready for a constitution in 1849, we
must consider the controversies of the interregnum itself.
Otherwise the convention of 1849 seems like a social
miracle, as in fact it has often been treated by his
torians.
Technically, at the beginning of 1847, the Depart
ment of California was still a bit of Mexican territory,
under the military rule of an occupying force of our
own hostile army. The law of nations, as the United
States officers themselves pointed out, gave the con
queror under such circumstances authority to ordain
such temporary laws and executive regulations as he
might choose. But seldom is a conquered country in
fluence through 1847. Both papers were interrupted in their publica
tion by the gold discovery, which, in the summer of 1848, sent every
body to the mines. The Star I have used in the Bancroft Library file;
the Californian in the San Francisco Pioneer Library file.
200 CALIFORNIA.
such a condition as was California in 1847. For the
most active and prominent of the population were now
of the nation of the conquerors. That "Western set
tlers, anil the Mormons who had sought for a refuge
in tho California wilderness, should he disposed to he
treated as Mexicans that had heen conquered hy an
American army is not natural. But if these settlers
were of the conquering, and not of the conquered,
party, and if the country was to he American, they
naturally wished to enjoy the hencfits of the conquest,
and to he governed, after American fashion, hy them
selves. Their wishes were for the time inadmissible
and even dangerous ; hut their desire was, in itself con
sidered, a laudahle one. Technically, therefore, these
settlers were a conquered people, like all the voluntary
residents in any conquered province that is under
military occupation. Actually, however, they thought
themselves free as air, had in many cases themselves
assisted in the conquest as members of Major Fre
mont's temporary battalion, and felt a healthy contempt
for all military men, and for that little brief authority
wherewith military men are too commonly puffed up.
Moreover, the government, as represented hy General
Kearny, had declined to pay at present the claims of
the men of the California battalion. This led these
men, who were now civilians, to feel no exceeding love
for the military government. And, worst of all, they
lived from day to day under what they thought to he a
very inconvenient system, namely, the so-called Mexican
law. This system was indeed in an amusingly dilapi
dated condition at that time in the Department of Cali
fornia. If you take away all of a watch save the coiled
mainspring and the main axle with its bearings, the
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 201
watch goes for a second well enough, but you would not
think it a valuable instrument. Now all that was left
in California of the Mexican system of law was the
local alcalde in each centre of population. His action
might be prompt, for the mainspring of his will was in
deed there ; but how usefully he might act, or how
thoughtfully, depended on the conditions into which this
fragment of legal machinery might momentarily be
brought. If something, say the judge's personal good
sense, held on to the axle, the watch might run down
more deliberately ; and if the hold was just right, the
watch might even in some fashion be said to keep time.
But the uncertainty was disheartening ; the vigor of the
law was often very unpleasant ; and there was no im
mediate prospect of improvement. Very naturally the
popular mind often turned to thoughts of self-govern
ment under a formulated constitution.
The alcalde was the sole judicial officer whose func
tions were perfectly familiar in the daily life of the na
tives of California. The simplicity of provincial litiga
tion, the imperfect organization of society, the jelly-like
unsteadiness of the native government of the Depart
ment, had long united as causes to make the ordinary
native regard a direct appeal to the alcalde in all cases
of need as the principal, if not the only, way in which
a private and non-political citizen could, of his own
choice, have to do with the authorities. When the con
quest came, the office of the alcalde, therefore, alone
survived the downfall of the very uncertain govern
mental institutions of the country. But when the al
calde survived, the Mexican laws could not be said to
survive with him. Nobody in California had been at
much trouble to learn or to apply to daily life any code
202 CALIFORNIA.
of laws whatsoever. The known functions of the al
caldes had long been recognized by mere tradition.
Beyond those known functions the alcaldes had pos
sessed very great practical freedom of individual judg
ment. Their offices were not well supplied with law-
books. The conquerors, in fact, found at first practically
no books at all. The alcaldes appointed or elected
after the conquest followed the devices of their own
hearts. Not only were they commonly judges both of
the law and of the evidence, but their position was often
practically that of legislators. No wonder that their
arbitrary powers aroused in the American mind many
longings for self-government. These new alcaldes were
often themselves Americans, and, both at San Francisco
and at Sonoma, as well as in one or two other places,
they ruled communities that were now almost wholly
American. One could appeal from their decisions to
the military governor,1 but, practically, in respect of
most minor matters, one had to submit to them. Was
it then much to have helped conquer this vast land for
one's beloved free country, if one found one's self forth
with under an authority more arbitrary and unintelli
gible than even the native authority itself would have
been ?
The longings thus aroused were somewhat encouraged
by the promises that Sloat, acting on the original official
theory of our relations to California, had made to the in-
1 During most of 1847 and 1848, this was Colonel Mason, successor
to General Kearny, an able and careful officer, whose personal char
acter is well depicted for us in the Memoirs of General W. T. Sher
man, then, as lieutenant, his adjutant and secretary. See the Memoirs,
vol. i. chap. i. p. 2fl, et passim. Mason's own official records, as pub
lished in the California Documents of 1850, are historically very im
portant.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 203
habitants in his proclamation of July 7, 1846. The in
habitants of California were to enjoy, as we have seen,
" the privilege of choosing their own magistrates and
other officers for the administration of justice among
themselves," and Sloat, for reasons which had now be
come unintelligible to his successors, had invited the
" judges, alcaldes, and other civil officers to retain their
offices, and to execute their functions as heretofore." Al
though the revolt and its suppression had made Sloat's
doings now seem very ancient history, the spirit of his
proclamation was still remembered by the Americans.
He had not intended to come as conqueror, even to the
natives themselves. Yet now the very people for whose
benefit and by whose help the actual conquest had been
made could not get for themselves nearly as much as
he had freely offered to the natives. If the letter of his
proclamation could not be executed, why might not the
spirit of it be regarded ? And yet, as the Americans
felt, the later military governors had taken back nearly
the whole of these promises of Sloat's, both in letter
and in spirit. In several instances they interfered with
the popular will concerning the choice of alcaldes ; x
and they claimed yet more powers than they used.
But this authority of the military government and of
the alcaldes was not only arbitrary, but also, as we have
suggested, somewhat vague, even in the definitions that
were given to the public from official sources. If Sloat's
proclamation only aroused delusive hopes, Stockton, on
his part, before he abandoned his position of authority,
had given to these Americans a perplexing explanation
1 See General W. T. Sherman's Memoirs, vol. 5. p. 30. Also see
the California Documents of 1850 (1st Sess. 31st Conger, Doc. 17), pp.
318, 321, 325, for letters of Colonel Mason bearing on this matter.
204 CALIFORNIA.
of their position when he had told them that the country,
as a province under military occupation in time of war,
must indeed be governed by a military man, but that in
the relations of the inhabitants with one another they
must be governed by the '• former laws and usages " of
the Department. Now that position of Stockton's was
obviously a perfectly sound one in theory, but unfortu
nately, as we have just seen, no American settlers knew
or could just then find out what the former usages and
laws had been. The conquerors were ignorant of Mex
ican law, even if that had ever been practically known
or applied in the territory. Litigants, if they were na
tives or old inhabitants of the country, had a fashion of
swearing to usages that they always interpreted in a
sense wholly inconsistent with the claims of the opposing
party ; and the result produced in the American settler's
mind, when he heard these strange " laws and usages "
talked over, was a certain longing to get back once more
to the law of nature, by which, as we know, the "Western
settler often used to mean the constitution of the United
States. Doubtless he was yet more fixed in his idea
that the constitution of the United States is the law of
nature, when he perceived that in some respects it was
certainly very much opposed to the nature of the native
Californian, whose former usages, whatever they might
have been, seemed to the American settler to be the
usages of a priest-ridden, down-trodden, ignorant, and
altogether unnatural ret of creatures, whom Providence
had created to be replaced by the Americans.
The discontent thus excited in tlie settler's breast
finds expression in the discussions of the situation that
are contained in the "California Star" for 1847 and
1848. I have found the old file very fascinating read-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 205
ing, not because it contains very deep wisdom, but be
cause it illustrates so well the popular feeling.
The " Star " opens the conflict, in no very dignified
way, with its very first number, January 9, 1847. Un
der its first editor, Mr. E. P. Jones, the " Star " even
permitted one of its correspondents, Mr. C. E. Pickett,
later notorious in California, to go so far as to bring the
liberty of the press into danger, by causing some one,
apparently Captain Hull, who was in charge at Yerba
Buena, to threaten that the military government would
interfere to prevent further publication, unless greater
prudence were shown in speaking of the condition of
things. The time was in fact a rather critical one.
In the south at that moment Stockton and Major Fre
mont were busy with the revolt, and no recent news
had been received from them. General Kearny's ar
rival in the Department was still a mere rumor at Yerba
Buena. Alcalde Lieutenant Bartlett was in the hands
of a party of Californians, who had captured him dur
ing his absence from the town. Mr. Hyde was act
ing alcalde. At such a moment as this the editor de
clares that everybody is already tired of being subject
to the whims of an alcalde, and insists that somebody
shall at once find somewhere " the written laws of the
territory," which shall be enforced " without regard to
the statements of A, B, or C, in relation to certain cus
toms which probably never existed." Surely " the writ
ten laws of the country," he thinks, " can easily be ob
tained and published." This is the sanguine speech of
an impatient man. Two years and more later General
Riley found and published what he supposed to be these
written laws, and then the people were nearly ready
to supersede them. On January 23, 1847, the editor,
206 CALIFORNIA.
again taking up his parable, expresses strong objection
to the tendency of alcaldes to make laws and rules hav
ing the force of law. The alcaldes, he maintains, never
had such power in the olden time and ought not to have
it now. " We heard a few days since that the alcalde
of Sonoma had adopted the whole volume of Missouri
statutes as the law for the government of the people in
his jurisdiction. If this is "allowed, we will have as
many legislatures in California as we have alcaldes or
justices of the peace, and the country will be thrown
into more confusion in a short time than ever existed in
any part of the world inhabited by civilized men." But,
the editor goes on, if an alcalde cannot make a code,
then surely he cannot make a single law, nor yet even a
rule having the force of law. His business it is to find
the law of the territory, and to enforce it. Surely this
editorial remonstrance against the omnipotence of the
alcaldes seems very reasonable. Yet it wras almost vain.
But, fair as much of this criticism was, there was an
other side to the situation. The subsequent stages of the
controversy illustrate this other side, since they naturally
lead us to a very important and fateful problem, which
here for the first time looms up before the new-coming
Americans. One thing that already made these new
comers especially restive was the uncertainty of land
ownership. It is tragic to think of the handful of set
tlers in 18-i7 hoping to get pretty soon some definitive
settlement of the terrible land question, which was to cost
so much in blood and treasure for a generation to come ;
but at all events one can see how naturally an Amer
ican settler's mind would turn to popular self-govern
ment as the immediate way out of the perplexities con
cerning land that the conquest had brought with it. It
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 207
is also plain that the existence of a military govern
ment, uncomfortable as such a government then was, was
the only guaranty of the native Californian population
against simple spoliation on the part of the American
settlers. Without treaty of guaranties, without time to
impress on the American mind of the new-comers of
1845 and 1846 the nature of their native customs and
of their claims, the Californian land-owners would have
had a poor chance in a squatter legislative assembly in
California just then. That the danger was no illusion
further facts shall forthwith show.
On February 27, 1847, there is an editorial article
in the " Star " on the civil government : it rejoices that
the government has passed into such good hands as those
of Shubrick and Kearny ; and it hopes that something
will be done for the new settlers, in allowing them to
settle at once on vacant lands, with the understanding
that these shall be secured to them when the territory
is ceded. One notices easily how dangerous it would
have been to landed property in California to let an
American settler decide what then constituted vacant
land.
On March 13, 1847, a correspondent of the " Star,"
signing himself '' Paisano," writes to the editor a very
ably stated and still a very dangerous letter on land
grants, to the effect that the settlers coming in expected
their tracts of land, and are sorry to find such great
and indefinite grants already covering the face of the
country. The indefiniteness that he describes is of the
sort so well known to us since. " Those," he says,
" who have recently emigrated to this country came
here with the well-founded [?] expectation that under
the Mexican laws they would be enabled to secure a
208 CALIFORNIA.
tract of land immediately upon their arrival ; but they
have been disappointed ; and shall I state the cause of
that disappointment ? Are the powers that he prepared
to hear it ? . . . It is simply this : The United States
have acquired possession." This is a sad evil, resulting
from so great a good. The remedy is, according to
Faisano, " that the legislature he organized without de
lay, and that immediately upon their organization they
proceed to the enactment of a law upon the subject.
Let this law provide that every man shall he entitled to
a certain quantity of government land ; and let it further
provide that, in order to acquire a legal right to the
possession of the same, it shall he necessary for the
claimant to have his lands recorded and surveyed. A
law of this kind, I apprehend, would remove at once the
chief cause of discontent among the people. But it will
very likely he urged by those who take a more limited
view of our legislative powers that they when organized,
will have no authority to interfere in any manner with
the disposition of the public lands ; yet it will be ob
served that nothing more is here suggested than to give
to each individual a possessory right to a certain tract
of land, upon certain conditions. But this suggestion
is not made because it is supposed that the legislature
will lack the power to go farther, for. in my opinion, this
legislature, when organized, may enact all laws which
the public exigence may require."
The author of this letter I am able to identify as
L. W. Hastings, a lawyer, later a member of the con
stitutional convention, an active man. and an emigrant
leader, and prominent in emigrant affairs. Hastings is
to be praised for what he earlier and later accomplished
of good. But this particular scheme of his means on
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 209
the face of it spoliation. This man, who " hopes," as
he says about this time, in an advertisement of his law
office, to acquire some day soon a knowledge of the
Mexican land law and its application to Californian
land, now, even while he admits that the face of the
country seems covered with land grants in the very
parts where men want to settle, still coolly proposes to
settle the matter, not by the courts, but by the action of
a legislature that would be under the control of the set
tlers themselves. The very grievance that he states is
so stated as to show too clearly the remedy that he has
in mind : Let the settlers, he says, " apply wherever
they may, and to whomsoever they may, and the result
is invariably the same : they are repulsed with an in
dignant 'This is all mine.' This all-embracing occu
pant, after the very expressive and exclusive declama
tion here alluded to, goes on to describe his unbounded
premises. ' That mountain,' says he, ' on the east is
the southeast corner of my farm, and that timbered
country which you see in the distance is my northwest
corner ; the other corners of my farm are rather in
definitely marked at present, but I shall endeavor to
have the ROPE applied to them also, as soon as the AL
CALDE is at leisure.' " Well, if this indefinite state of
affairs is the grievance, — and it is plainly a grievance, —
what shall be thought of a man whose plan for settling
the difficulty is not first of all a patient judicial exam
ination of the traditions, usages, laws, and grants under
which these claims are made, but the calling of a land-
hungry legislative assembly of the intruders themselves,
to apply the precedents of the unoccupied Oregon wil
derness to the settlement of the ancient problems of
California land law ? As for the facts, Mr. Hastings
14
210 CALIFORNIA.
makes the common settlers' blunder, found also in Ide's
proclamation in the spring of 1846, according to which
the Mexican government had somehow guarantied to
every American settler a tract of land immediately upon
his arrival. This was a very bad blunder, since in fact
every foreign settler upon Mexican territory who brought
with him no passport was at that time, from the mo
ment he crossed the boundary, a violator of Mexican
law, and legally subject to expulsion from the territory.
There had been, indeed, for years no enforcement of this
law in California ; but this act of grace, or of neglect,
had been absurdly interpreted by the American intrud
ers, through some curious inner transformation, as an
official guaranty of land grants to all of them. Finally,
as to practical judgment, Hastings' scheme is of the
wildest possible character, in view of the endless litiga
tion that such arbitrary acts of a self-constituted terri
torial legislature in California must ultimately have
brought about. We have suffered many things of land
in California ; but how much more should we not have
been forced to endure if Mr. Hastings' territorial legis
lature had begun to tear down and to build up in 1847 ?
Thus, then, one may see something of the other side
of this question of government. To the settlers' rights
must ho opposed the need of patience. I have dwelt at
length on this matter of Mr. Hastings' discussion of the
land question, because it shows the state of opinion con
cerning governmental needs and prospects in California
at that time, and helps us to trace the steps that led to
the constitutional convention of 1849. The general dis
satisfaction that existed among the American settlers,
the reasons for this dissatisfaction, the plans that were
proposed as a solution, the considerations pro and con
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 211
concerning these questions of settlers' rights, are all im
portant if one wants to understand the fine political
talent that was soon to shine out so well in the actual
political organization of the State.1
These discontents were as embarrassing to the really
well-meaning military government as. they were valua
ble in organizing the popular sentiment, and in prepar
ing the way for a state government. Mason himself
was doubtless as just under such conditions as he could
be. His influence was strictly conservative. He tried,
for instance, to protect land-owners from squatters, and
accepted any reasonable prima facie evidence of legal
ownership as sufficient for his temporary purposes.2 He
could not grant what the people desired in the way of
self-government, for of course he now had no authority
to do more than to govern the land as a military con
queror. For since the conquest had actually involved
force, the government, on hearing of the facts through
the official reports, had now instructed accordingly,3 and
there was no thought of carrying out anything corre
sponding to the original cabinet plan about California.
The land must wait until a treaty of peace, before Con
gress could do anything for it. Meanwhile it was to be
1 The Cdlifornian is not behind its rival in any of these complaints
about the situation, although its opening numbers had given a prom
ise of a strictly pacific editorial policy. For instance, on June 5, 1847,
it complains bitterly of " military despotism ; " on June 12 it ex
presses freely the general discontent with the United States govern
ment in view of the non-payment of the California battalion claims;
on July 17 complaints are renewed of the inefficiency of the military
government; and on October 27 the editor proclaims that alcalde gov
ernment is far worse than direct martial law. Desires for a territorial
legislature are renewed and ably defended January 5, 1848, and again
in the summer of that year.
2 See the Cal. Doc. as cited above, pp. 322, 324, and elsewhere.
8 See Cal. Doc. cited, pp. 244-246.
212 CALIFORNIA.
regarded as Mexican territory in our military posses
sion. Mason's duty was thus clear.
But his position, nevertheless, \vas delicate. The
changing instructions that were received from Washing
ton concerning a war tariff in California did not tend
to make people more content with the government, but
deeply displeased both the merchants and the consum
ers. The force at Mason's command was furthermore
limited, and the state of the country was politically dis
heartening : conquerors and conquered mixed confusedly
together, discontent either loudly expressed or sullenly
half concealed, and numberless social and legal prob
lems demanding immediate solution, — problems about
solemnizing marriages, about giving divorces, about the
treatment of the Indians, about the titles to town lots,
about everything.1 Mason was a good executive, but
he would have been a great statesman also if he had
been adequate to all this work.
Vexatious as all these things were, they were yet very
valuable events for the future commonwealth. For the
people learned something of the real problems that the
new social order would have to meet, and, in thus learn
ing, these American new-comers, so to speak, aged rap
idly in their ideas and plans. By 1849, as we shall see,
they had become strict conservatives themselves, as
against the hordes of the new-comers of the great year.
1 In Cal. Doc. as cited, p. -338, is a letter from Mason to the adjutant
general at Washington, dated September 18, 1847, narrating the dis
charge of thp Mormon battalion and the present difficulties of Mason's
position, with " but two companies of regular troops, both of which
are rapidly being diminished in strength by deaths and desertions."
"All other troops," he says, "must claim and will receive their dis
charge the moment prace with Mexico is declared." As for the prob
lems before Mason, their variety may be judged by reading letters
(luc. cit.), pp. 335, 344, 349, 355.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 213
And their conservatism it was that made a sound consti
tution possible. Had there been no troubles in 1847
and 1848, there would have been much less order pos
sible in the early years of the state government, and in
1849 there would have been no constitution made at all.
VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN SAX FRAN-
CISCO.
Material prosperity slowly but surely grew in the
active little community in the very midst of all this
political confusion. The centre of the growth was al
ready at the village of San Francisco. To the little
cluster of houses that within about ten years had grown
up at Yerba Buena cove was given, early in 1847, by
the consent of all concerned, and by the decree of the
alcalde, the name that was its proper due, the historic
name of San Francisco, which the bay, the mission, the
presidio, and the district had all long since borne.
The immediate occasion of the change of name from
Yerba Buena to San Francisco was the projection and
beginning of a new town called Francesca on the north
ern shore of the bay, a town which its projectors, Sem-
ple and Larkin, intended to make a commercial centre
for this future great country of California. The Yerba
Buena people were clever enough to see the possible im
portance of identifying in name their own town with
the great bay, and the dangerous advantage of the name
Francesca in comparison with their own present local
name. They had the first and best right to the name
San Francisco, and were not slow to adopt it. They
were, in fact, within the boundaries of the then legally
existent pueblo of San Francisco.1 The name of the
projected Francesca was hereupon changed to Benicia.
1 See, on the matter of the name, the Annals of San Francisco, pp.
214 CALIFORNIA.
In March, 1847, General Kearny had authorized by
proclamation the sale of the beach and water-lots on the
east front of San Francisco, and the alcalde, then Ed
win Bryant (the author of " Three Years in California "),
gave notice of the sale on March 16. Kearny had, of
course, no real legal authority in the matter, and the
proclamation was issued, in response to the request of
the people of San Francisco, chiefly in order to give the
sale a show of authority.1 The sale itself seemed to
the people a necessity for the growth of their town, and
the titles thus conveyed, while in later years giving rise
to no small question and difficulty, were finally recog
nized, through both legislative and judicial action.
Further sales of town lots and the new O'Farrell sur
vey of the town streets marked yet more steps in the
progress of the settlement during the summer and au
tumn of 1847. By the census of August, 1847, there
were 459 persons in the village, which still excluded
from its limits the mission settlement. Of these 51
were under five years of age, and 32 more between five
and ten. Of the whole number 138 were girls or
women.2
The drawings of the village and of its surroundings,
which are preserved to us from that early day, have no
small interest to any one who knows the present great
178, 188; J. S. Hittell's History of Sun Francisco, pp. 110, 111. The
legal existence of the pueblo at this time was, as is well known, not
proven to the satisfaction of our courts until long afterwards; but the
application of the name to the bay, presidio, mission, district, was an
old story.
1 See the Annals, as cited, p. 181 ; Hittell's History of San Fran
cisco, p. 113; Cal. Documents of 1850 (as cited), pp. 201, 302, 333.
2 Annals, p. 176. On the further sales of lots and O'Farrell's sur
vey, see Annals, pp. 182, sqq., and Hittell's History of San J-'nincisco,
pp. 114, sqq.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 215
city, and suggest many comparisons, as well as many re
flections on what might have been. One finds wood
cuts from some of these drawings in the "Annals."
The little cluster of houses stood for the most part a
short distance back from the low, curving beach of Yerba
Buena cove, a cove very early filled up by the busiest
portions of the city of the gold period. Telegraph Hill
loomed up close above the village on the north side.
Southward the distance was greater, across the lowlands
to Rincon Hill, and to the point that in that direction
bounded the cove. Going westward from the beach,
one almost immediately began to ascend those steep hills
over which, in the present day, the characteristic cable
street-railroads of San Francisco carry numberless pas
sengers towards the now fine dwelling-house regions of
the " western addition " beyond the hills. These steep
hills, then covered with the low shrubbery of the penin
sula, are now at one point crowned by those tediously
vast "palaces" of certain millionnaires, which a true
San Franciscan points out from the bay to the new
comer on the ferry-boats, as among the most notewor
thy landmarks of the place.
The peninsular region in which this village of 1847
lay was a sad and desolate one, save for the glorious
outlook northward and eastward, to be gained from the
hills above the village, and save also for the ruggedly
graceful outlines of these hills themselves. In the hills
lay, in fact, a great opportunity for the possible future
building of a truly stately city. They together formed
several fine amphitheatres between their curving sides,
they presented noble contours to the traveler approach
ing by the bay, and they left enough level ground at
their bases to make, with the addition of land to be
216 CALIFORNIA.
formed by the inevitable filling in of the cove (and, in
time, of Mission Bay also), ample room for the necessi
ties of the commercial life of the city. But otherwise
the place, through all the dry season of the year, was one
of the most windy, barren, and dismal spots that could
well have been found in a temperate climate. Over
the stately and graceful Twin Peaks, beyond the mis
sion, the gray ocean fog, then as now, slowly crept east
ward, in the chilly summer afternoons, towards the shiv
ering town, while the sharp sand was driven by the brisk
wind, both along the shores and amid the gloomy low
sand hills to the southwest, towards the mission ; and
while one could see from any hill the white-capped waves
gleaming all over the great bay to the north and east.
The almost treeless peninsula, at such times, was a place
to which anchorites might well have resorted to medi
tate in windy solitude upon the woes and sins of an ac
cursed world, amid this monotonous wilderness of low
shrubbery, of drifting sand, and of steep hill-slopes.
Even now, with all the cheerful noise and strife of an
exceptionally active city to distract one's mind from
gloomy topics, a summer afternoon out-of-doors, in San
Francisco, is a bitter penance to every one but the most
devoted of San Franciscans. And. meanwhile, nearly
all the fine opportunities that the hill-contours offered,
to compensate by dignity of aspect for the dreariness of
the summers, have been wasted, and are now gone for
ever, unless indeed the city should some day undergo a
revolutionary change not only of architecture, but also of
plan. It is characteristic of the progressive American
that, in most parts of the East, and throughout the great
West, at least in all those regions where there are either
bluffs or hills to be dealt with, he destroys a landscape
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 217
in just so far as he builds a city. Well-planned cities,
however, would ennoble the landscapes. At San Fran
cisco there was but one great natural beauty in the situa
tion of the city that the builders could ruin. They could
not ruin the wonderful outlook eastward and north
ward from the hills, for that was beyond their reach ;
and they could not ruin either many trees or streams at
the point where they built their city, for there were few
to ruin. But they could in large measure ruin their hill-
contours, and the beautifully curving amphitheatres that
these bounded. This, of course, they did, and so for all
time they have defaced what might have been the foun
dation for a most stately and imposing city. As one
now comes to San Francisco by water, one begins to see
at once what was done with the rugged dignity of the
sombre hills that surrounded the old village of 1847.
These hills have been outraged and insulted with mani
fold cruelties : never-finished grading undertakings have
uselessly torn them in some places ; in others one has
given them over to dirty and degraded little houses ; and
where the houses are either truly excellent, or only pre
tentiously grand, the perfectly straight streets disfigure,
as with long cruel stripes, the sturdy forms of the noble
hills. For these streets pass over the hills in merci
lessly undeviating parallel lines, and by the sides of the
streets, on the breathlessly steep ascents, the wooden
houses seem to be perpetually toppling, while they still
find some mysterious way of holding their desperate
places on the slopes, and of keeping still in their stiff
military array. The village of 1847, from the moment
it began to grow, planned an impious assault upon the
hills by means of these straight streets, and the life of
the town was for years a savage struggle with the land-
218 CALIFORNIA.
scape. Nor has the struggle ever ceased. Even now, if
one walks out a little beyond the mission, one finds very
much such a region as that in which the Yerba Buena
village was first set down : desolate, wind-swept hills,
with fine contours, with a magnificent outlook towards
the bay, and with often beautifully outlined amphithe
atre valleys between adjacent hills. Into this region
the southwestern part of the city is now growing, with
just the same cruel prejudices about straight streets,
with just the same determination to hack and hew, to
bruise and to torture these hill-contours, until the city
shall become in this region also what in its older parts
it now inevitably seems at first sight from the bay : a
planless wreck of a city, instead of what those who
study its map suppose it to be, namely, a very well laid
out and well arranged city. For the geometrical sim
plicity of the plan on paper means brutal confusion of
aspect when applied to these hills. In the " western ad
dition " one finds to-day very many beautiful features ;
but all the rest of the city is, as to general plan, a lost
opportunity.
Such fashions of building cities are characteristic of
our people everywhere. Commercial necessity, it will
be said, built San Francisco, and left no time for seek
ing beauty. But, as the ancient writer said to those
who complained of the tedious preparation required in
studying an art, " we ourselves make our own time
short." If the San Franciscan had never wasted time
or money on wholly useless mutilation of his hills, or on
wholly worthless enterprises in street-grading, his spare
time for improving the general aspect of his city would
have been longer. And the great art of at least letting
alone such portions of the land about or in a town as
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 219
one does not actually need, until such time as one shall
be able to beautify them, is an art unknown to us Amer
icans, who can, slowly indeed, and with many mistakes
and troubles, build at length one work of art, and one
only, namely, a well-constituted State, and who ruth
lessly deface nearly every other object that comes in our
way. For the ugliness of most of our cities we bear a
national responsibility. San Francisco is far better than
many.
The village from which all this was to grow lived, in
1847, a life not only of considerable commercial activity
and of many political anxieties, but also of much private
joviality and good - fellowship. The people had their
social gatherings, their balls, their dinners, and their
suppers, and already tasted the social freedom charac
teristic of California life. The 4th of July, and also
the 7th, were celebrated in 1847, the second of the two
anniversaries commemorating, of course, the raising of
the flag. Nor were the inhabitants altogether careless
about a school for their children. The subject was agi
tated in 1847, and a public school was actually opened
in April, 1848. The general commercial and agricul
tural development of the country was meanwhile the ob
ject of much interest at San Francisco. The energetic
Sam Brannan already knew no limit to his hopes or to
his plans. A number of the " Star," prepared under his
direction in March, 1848, for circulation in the East,
contained an article by Dr. Fourgeaud on the resources
of California, — an article which reads like a prophecy
of what would be said many years later, after the gold
excitement had passed by, and when the agricultural
development of the State had fairly begun.1 The ar-
1 See Hittell's History of San Francisco, p. 97. This number of
220 CALIFORNIA.
tide dwells on the certainty of a great agricultural fu
ture for the territory, and naturally makes agriculture
the mainstay of future prosperity, remarking meanwhile
that the mineral wealth of the territory is believed to be
also great. By the middle of March, 1848, the little
village had a population of above eight hundred, and
contained about two hundred houses.1 And now came
the great news.
VII. GOLD, NEW-COMERS, AND ILLUSIONS.
That gold had been discovered some time before the
importance of the discovery was generally understood,
even in California ; that until April, 1848, little excite
ment was occasioned in towns on the coast ; that then
the excitement about the gold rapidly grew, and soon
almost depopulated the villages ; and that thereafter the
summer of 1848 was full of a new and infinitely won
drous life, amid adventures, good fortune, and hard
ships, — all this every reader of California annals knows
•without long explanation. And every such reader
knows, too, the tale, so simple in its main incident, so
confused, contradictory, and tangled in its details, about
the first discovery of the gold. Howr Sutter's mill, near
the later town of Coloma, was just being prepared in
the wilderness for the work of sawing the wood to be
brought from the mountain forests near by ; how, in
January, 1848, Marshall, as superintendent of the work,
tried to enlarge his tail-race by little successive artificial
freshets of water sent down through the race ; how the
the Star is not infrequently to be met with now in Eastern libraries,
and is in fact the only number of this paper that is at all common in
collections of California material.
1 Annals, p, 200.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 221
water washed out into sight a few gold-particles along
the banks of the race ; and how Marshall found them
and tested them, — all this story is the property of every
pioneer. How, furthermore, Marshall took the news to
the incredulous Sutter, and forced him to believe it ;
how the workmen at the mill came to know, in their
turn, of the gold ; how various efforts were made to
keep the matter secret from all but a few, and how the
efforts failed, — these, indeed, are details about which
the traditions somewhat differ, but these are things of
only antiquarian interest. Marshall himself, who got
such a factitious fame by the event that made him rather
than another the purely accidental discoverer of that
which he had taken no pains to find, and which some
body must inevitably have found very soon, — Mar
shall, poor fellow, won, besides fame, little but sorrow
from the accident, and his recent death has left the nu
merous writers of obituary biographies with absolutely
nothing to say about him, save that he did succeed in
picking up the gold-grains, and that he did prove him
self thenceforth to be an utterly incapable man. For
the visionary Slitter, too, the discovery was to be a ca
lamity, although, again, largely by his own fault. But
at the moment, the discovery, once appreciated, seemed
to all concerned as wonderful and good a thing for their
personal prospects as it actually was for the fortunes
of California, of the United States, and of the world.
These sanguine early discoverers could not yet know
that great gold mines, while they vastly benefit the
world, are, for the communities that possess them, tre
mendously severe moral tests, and, for by far the most
of the individual miners, inevitable ruin.
We are, in fact, now and henceforth to deal with a
222 CALIFORNIA.
California that was to be morally and socially tried as no
other American community ever has been tried, and that
was to show as we Americans have not elsewhere so com
pletely and in so narrow compass shown both the true
nobility and the true weakness of our national character.
All our brutal passions were here to have full sweep, and
all our moral strength, all our courage, our patience, our
docility, and our social skill were to contend with these
our passions. Whoever wants merely an eulogistic story
of the glories of the pioneer life of California must not
look for it in history, and whoever is too tender-souled
to see any moral beauty or significance in events that
involve much foolishness, drunkenness, brutality, and
lust must find his innocent interests satisfied elsewhere.
But whoever knows that the struggle for the best things
of man is a struggle against the basest passions of man,
and that every significant historical process is full of
such struggles, is ready to understand the true interest
of scenes amid which civilization sometimes seemed to
have lapsed into semi-barbarism. It is, of course, im
possible to read this history without occasionally feeling
a natural horror of the crimes that for a while were
so frequent; but one's horror is itself a weakness, and
must give way, for the most part, to a simple realistic
delight in the jovial fortitude wherewith this new com
munity bore the worst consequences of its own sins, and,
after a remarkably short time, learned to forsake the
most serious of them. Early California history is not
for babes, nor for sentimentalists ; but its manly wick
edness is full of the strength that, on occasion, freely
converts itself into an admirable moral heroism.
For the moment, the gold excitement simply deprived
the settlements outside of the gold-mines of all signifi-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 223
cance. In the course of May and June nearly every
body went to the mines, — from San Francisco, from
Monterey, from San Jose, from all the settlements.1
The military officers alone resisted the temptation to
abandon present engagements for the new work of min
ing, and the officers themselves could to some degree
satisfy their natural curiosity in a proper way by visiting
the mines for official purposes. So it was when Colonel
Mason, duly escorted, examined the mining region in
June and July of 1848, and gathered facts for the fa
mous letter of August 17, which, when it became known
in the East, formed, with Larkin's letters to Buchanan
on the same topic, the official and authentic basis for
the great California gold excitement in the East during
the following winter and spring.* The skilled miners
in the territory were very few, but men happened to
begin with the discovery of certain very rich placers.
Men like Marshall and Sutter, or like the well-known
settler Sinclair, or like John M. Murphy of San Jose,
employed, or attempted, with greater or less success,
to employ, Indians to do the work of gold-mining for
them, and altogether the individual strokes of good
fortune in the summer of 1848 were very numerous.
In the mines, meanwhile, were many deserting soldiers
and sailors, and the executive arm of the provisional
government grew daily weaker. The miners were, in-
1 See the Annals, pp. 202, sqq. ; Hall's History of San Jose, pp.
190, sqq.; Tutliill's History of California, *chap. xviii. ; Colton's
Three, Years, chaps, xviii. and xix.; and General Sherman's Memoirs,
vol. i. pp. 40, sqq., for accounts of the immediate effects of the first
gold excitement. Other authorities could easily be given. The news
papers, indeed, soon fail us, for the excitement stopped both of them.
2 See Mason's letter in the Cal. Doc. of 1850, pp. 528. sqq., and the
same in the beginning of Foster's Gold Mines of California (New
York, 1849), and Larkin's letters in Foster, pp. 17, sqq.
224 CALIFORNIA.
deed, already declared on good authority to be trespass
ers, since they were mining on what the expected treaty
would make United States public land j1 and when the
treaty became known it only made the legal aspect of
the matter clearer. But then, for the present, the exec
utive was powerless to prevent this trespassing ; and as
to the future, the miners were destined to remain, by
their own choice and by the tacit permission of our gov
ernment, unmolested trespassers on the public lands un
til the passage of the act of 1866, authorizing the survey
and sale of the mineral lands of California.
The tempting subject of the social condition and of
the adventurous fortunes of the mines, during that first
golden summer, we must here postpone. It would lead
us into questions that our next chapter can best consider
in their due connection with the general history of the
crises of the early mining life. We are still concerned
with the territory at large, and must ask ourselves, first
what social changes the gold discovery brought upon
the country from without, and then how the reaction led
the already well-prepared men of the interregnum to in
sist upon leading the new-comers to submit to a state
constitution. For the State, as we have already de
clared, was the child of the men of the interregnum ;
while the new-comers furnished only, on the one hand, a
few professional lawyers and politicians to help in the
deliberations of tli£ convention, and, on the other hand,
the tacit assent of a crowd of generally careless miners,
most of whom took far too little present interest in any-
l The treaty of peace between the United States and Mexico was
not officially known in California before the issue of Mason's procla
mation of August 7, 1848, announcing the fact. See the Cal. Doc. p.
590.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 225
thing but a quick fortune and an early voyage home.
These new-comers could have done little in the first
year, if the men of the interregnum had not been fully
ready for the work of state-building ; but, at the same
time, the coming of these vast crowds forced the hand
of the executive, and so helped to give the men of the
interregnum the popular government for which they had
so long been striving.
The new-comers, by sheer force of numbers, must,
however, in any case, thenceforth give to the State its
character. It is important for us to understand what
manner of men they were, and in what spirit they came.
They were, in the first place, as all who describe them
are never weary of telling us, a very miscellaneous com
pany, containing people from all parts of the world.
Yet we shall never understand them if we suppose that
the cosmopolitan character of the mass as a whole re
sulted in a truly cosmopolitan social life. The effective
majority in all the chief communities was formed of
Americans, and here, as everywhere else in our land,
the admixture of foreigners did not prevent the commu
nity from having, on the whole, a distinctly American
mode of life. The foreigners as such had, of course,
no political powers, made no laws, affected the choice of
no officers, and had no great tendency to alter the more
serious social habits, the prejudices, or the language of
Americans. The mass of the Americans in California
never grew to understand the foreigners as a class, any
more than we have elsewhere understood foreigners.
A pioneer tradition one indeed finds, expressed in va
rious ways, to the effect that the Americans in the mines
" talked a language half-English, half-Mexican ; " but
this tradition must be understood to mean simply that
15
226 CALIFORNIA.
the majority of these pioneers mispronounced a large
number of Spanish proper names and several of the
commoner Spanish words and phrases, and were very
proud of the accomplishments that they thus showed.
No one who has grown up in California can be under
any illusion as to the small extent to which the American
character, as there exemplified, has been really altered
by foreign intercourse, large as the foreign population
has always remained.
The foreign influence has never been for the American
community at large, in California, more than skin-deep.
One has assumed a very few and unimportant native
Californian ways, one has freely used or abused the few
words and phrases aforesaid, one has grown well accus
tomed to the sight of foreigners and to business relations
with them, and one's natural innocence about foreign
matters has in California given place, even more fre
quently than elsewhere in our country, to a superficial
familiarity with the appearance and the manners of
numerous foreign communities. But all this in no wise
renders the American life in California less distinctly
native in tone. The theatre, the opera, and the out-
of-door amusements of the early American population
were, as far as I can see, the social institutions most
affected by foreign influences ; and the foreign people
have indeed had great effect upon these matters ever
since. But that resulted, and still results, from our own
naturally earnest, bare, and umrsthetic national life.
An amusement is usually something external to us, some
thing that as a nation we cannot invent, and that we
therefore have to accept, with little independent criticism,
from foreign sources. So, in early California, the for
eigners soon furnished not only the good music and
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 227
some of the theatrical performances,1 but also numerous
bull-fights and many gambling-halls. We accepted all
these delights indiscriminately and submissively, and
supported them very generously. In time we outgrew
the bull-fights and abolished the public gambling-halls ;
but we have always in California remained indebted to
the foreign population for much amusement of the other
and higher sorts, of which, indeed, they have given us a
great many really excellent experiences. An amusement,
good or bad, remains, however, to the last an external
addition to the average American's life, and you cannot
call a community of Americans foreign in disposition
merely because its amusements have a foreign look.
The causes that began to work in early California, and
that have »«t rendered the modern American California
as distinct and original a community as it is, must be
sought elsewhere than in the influences furnished from
foreign sources.
More important, then, both for the life of the early
community and for the growth of the State ever since,
has been the fact that the Americans present repre
sented all parts of the Union. The native American
Calif ornian grows up to-day with some Northern or
Southern sympathies, since his parents have taught him
to have them, but usually without strong Northern or
Southern animosities. If he pretends to have such, a
short change of dwelling-place to a suitable community
is enough to remove them. The old feelings that have
ruled a warring generation east of the Rocky Moun
tains he cannot enter into. Much of the old bitterness
l Although, indeed, the American theatre also was better developed
in San Francisco, in the early years, than was any other form of
American amusements.
228 CALIFORNIA.
amuses him, too, as he hears of it also at home. For
many early settlers, Northern and Southern men of the
old days before the war, have not forgotten in Califor
nia their ancient quarrels, and they yet express their
sectional feelings in many emphatic ways, although
scarcely with the ardor still known in some older parts
of the country. But with the young Californian these
old differences, save when viewed as matters of history,
are little more than mere phrases. He has seen these
Northern and Southern men together all his life, and to
him they are what they are, simply Californians, with
various trainings and tastes and prejudices, and with
numberless political and private quarrels, but very much
alike notwithstanding. He may join in repeating the
bitter phrases himself, but you see at once, by the me
chanical glibness wherewith he uses them, how little they
mean to him.
Very early, however, this relatively peaceful mingling
of Americans from North and South had already deeply
affected the tone of California life. There was never a
thought of border warfare in the early days of Califor
nia. There were no such troubles as those later in Kan
sas. One object of very many at first was to forget the
unhappy sectional quarrels that had prevailed at home.
California fell into the ranks of free States without any
sort of struggle carried on upon her own soil. There
were numerous plots, no doubt, for a future division of
her territory, and for the introduction of slavery into the
southern half ; but these plots related to the future.
For the moment California was non - partisan. This
purely non-partisan stage in politics was indeed brief.
By 1851 the Democratic party was well organized, and
thenceforth, until the war, it ruled the State. In the
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 229
days of its rule, Southern politicians predominated in
the State's affairs, and sectional intolerance was often
enough and bitterly enough expressed. But there was
still this to be noted in California : the hotter the South
ern politicians grew, the greater, on the whole, seemed
to wax their political influence over Northern men. The
Northern men were, however, all the time in a majority,
but they submitted to the dictation of Southern politi
cians. They did this partly because, as Californians,
they had everything to gain by avoiding bitter sectional
conflicts, and partly for the simple reason that the South
ern politicians were, as a class, by far the ablest politi
cians in the field. There was, for instance, nobody in
California before the war who could cope on equal
terms, as a skillful party leader, with Senator Gwin
save one, David Broderick, and he was by family and
training a characteristic Irish-American, not a typical
Anglo-American at all. So, just because they were
abler managers, the Southerners remained nearly al
ways at the head, until the war came. Then, indeed,
the Northern business men of the State were far too pa
triotic, not to say far too clever, to be led into secession
by any politicians, however skillful, and for the entire
war period they kept down all Southern influences with
becomingly stern majorities ; yet only to give a large
place once more to these same influences from almost
the outset of the reconstruction period. Since then
California has been a " doubtful State " in politics.
In short, then, the North, despite all quarrels, grew
from the outset nearer to the South in California than
it has done elsewhere. Americans came to understand
one another as Americans ; and in doing so, the North
ern men proved more plastic than the Southern. The
230 CALIFORNIA.
type of the Northern man who has assumed Southern
fashions, and not always the best Southern fashions at
that, has often been observed in California life. The
Northern man frequently felt commonplace, simple-
minded, undignified, beside his brother from the border
or from the plantation. There was an air of sometimes
half-barbarous but always, in some mysterious fashion,
dignified freedom about this picturesque wanderer from
the Southern border, who was doubtless often able to
seem of much more social significance abroad than he
could have dared assume at home. The Northern man
admired this wanderer's fluency in eloquent harangue,
his vigor in invective, his ostentatious courage, his abso
lute confidence about all matters of morals, of politics,
and of propriety, and his inscrutable union in his public
discourse of sweet reasonableness with ferocious intol
erance. The Northern man was fluent, too, but with a
less sustained eloquence, with more of a certain formal
mildness and good-humor in his public behavior. He
had great confidence in all good public speakers ; he had
a strong disposition to compromise public differences ; he
indeed could not be fooled about a matter of business by
any Southerner ; but both the sweet reasonableness and
the ferocious intolerance overcame him in debate. He
often followed the Southerner, and was frequently, in
time, partly assimilated by the Southern civilization.
It is because of this intimate union of Northern and
Southern men that we think early California so good
a place for showing the American character, as distin
guished from any local character. Yet how this Amer
ican character was at first shown we can understand
only in case we remember the wandering and fortune-
hunting spirit in which all these men alike came.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 231
Families there indeed were among the early immi
grants. One who, like the present writer, is a son of
pioneers of 1849, is not disposed to forget the fact that
there were such families. Yet the women are univer
sally known to have been at best very few. The men,
therefore, had generally left their responsibilities else
where. We shall have so many occasions to remind
the reader of this familiar fact henceforth that we need
only touch upon it here. Yet the resulting irrespon
sible and adventurous mood of the community can best
be understood by a few references to contemporary
sources.
For nearly all these men expected, of course, to go
back soon to their homes, vastly wealthy. The gold
fever of 1848-49 in the £)ast, after the news reached
the Atlantic, has often been described. All energetic
and progressive men were apt to be affected by it. The
life promised was wholly new, adventurous, golden, —
a fine contrast to the commonplace work of the older
American communities, a perfect satisfaction to our
wandering race instincts. But of course this natural ex
citement was not left to itself. There were people in
terested in increasing it by deliberate lies. The false
dreams of hopeful youth were thus supplemented by
forged documents, which seemed to prove the truth of
golden wonders that were in fact mere inventions. I
have before me, as I write, such a lying document,
printed in New York, and dated 1848 ; a pamphlet,
namely, purporting to be written by one H. I. Simpson,
of Stevenson's Regiment,1 and called " Three Weeks in
1 According to Mr. H. H. Bancroft's Pioneer Lists, there is no such
name on the rolls of Stevenson's Regiment. The pamphlet was
printed by Joyce & Co. of 40 Ann Street, New York, and the copy
known to me is in Harvard College Library.
232 CALIFORNIA.
the Gold Mines." I have traced to a source in an au
thentic letter, published first in the " Californian " at
San Francisco, July 15, 1848, and reprinted in Foster's
" Gold Regions of California," 1 a part of the material
used by the writer of the pamphlet, who has misunder
stood his sources in such wise as to make amusing geo
graphical and other blunders.2 Yet his literary skill is
admirable, and his lying is so circumstantial, and his
stolen authentic information is often, meanwhile, so elab
orate and accurate, that one reads him with a feeling
of profound respect.
Our interest in such pamphlets is the kind of mood to
which they appealed, and which they inflamed. " Simp
son " describes a life of leisurely gold-gleaning. His
creator knows how not to seem too extravagant, even
while lying. In the course of the " three weeks," one
goes in quite impossible stages from Sutter's Fort to the
foot of the " Shastl " peak (evidently Mount Shasta),
and returns. One walks so far, not because the gold is
scarce (on the contrary, one finds it lining stream-bot
toms all about), but solely because one wants to get a
notion of the size of the gold region. Ten days of these
" three weeks " are, however, spent by two men, with
almost no implements, in picking up $50,000 of gold.
1 Page 27 of the book, as heretofore cited.
2 The writer of the authentic letter above cited, who had gone to
the mines in May, or e:;rly in June, correctly described the country
passed over as then "covered with the richest verdure, intertwined
with flowers of every hue." The lying pamphlet copies this expres
sion with slight verbal variations, but incautiously makes " Simp
son " apply it, in the forged letter, to the road from San Francisco to
San Jose in the latter part of Auyust ! '• Simpson " also makes (p. 6
of the pamphlet) this road to San Jose pass through the "delta"
formed by the Sacramento aud San Joaquin rivers, and he finds San
Jose1 itself lying in thii "delta " !
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 233
During the rest of the time the yield is much more mod
erate, just because one is wandering, or is talking over
theories about the great central gold vein, whence all
this gold no doubt " streamed " or was " thrown out,"
in the old " volcanic " days.1 Of course one has to work
for one's gold. One does not exactly pick the lumps
" off the ground," as the song " Susannah " stated the
case. " Simpson's " creator is too clever to say that.
The great point is that one's labor is certain to be easily
and vastly and steadily rewarded, and that one's first
simple guesses about where the gold is to be found
prove perfectly correct. One's wandering merely veri
fies all predictions. One's companions are also the
best of fellows. The life is perfectly happy. Why
should not all one's friends come, too, and make their
fortunes among these inexhaustible treasure-houses ? All
this tale is presented not vaguely, nor with merely stupid
exaggerations. The extravagance is veiled with a skill
fully false show of manly reserve and moderation. One
admits that there are some varieties of fortune. One
adds meanwhile to the actually absurd and mendacious
tale multitudinous little facts, — descriptions of land
scape, of people, of geographical matters, with names
and dates also freely given ; and the names and the
local facts are often real, and are then easily verifiable
through the current authentic descriptions of California,
1 An interesting chapter could be made up of the theories, framed
on the basis of the popular geology then current, which were discussed
by miners in those days, in their efforts to understand the sources and
disposition of the gold, theories in which "volcanoes" had a very
large part. The Rev. Dr. Benton amused himself with a number of
them in his very entertaining California Pilyrim (Sacramento. 1853),
pp. 231, sqq. Others one finds in various communications to the early
newspapers. Men spent much time and money in disproving them
before becoming satisfied.
284 CALIFORNIA.
from which they are in fact derived. So that, in fine,
the pamphlet is very persuasive and plausible, and is a
type of the sort of thing that in those days led thou
sands of trusting and incapable young men to a miserable;
death in the wilderness, or in the degraded and demor
alized drinking and gambling camps of the wilder days.
Men, whether capable or incapable, who read such
things, were not in the mood for sober state-building,
and would have to learn much ere they could attain that
mood in the land whither they went. From that land
many of them would indeed return, more or less de
feated, poor and broken-spirited ; many would die early
deaths ; the survivors would for the most part stay in
the new land as hard toilers and poor men ; a few only
would reap great fortunes, and of these few only a part
would ever again see the old home. The average net
income per man throughout the whole mining commu
nity, even in the best days, was, in view of the high ex
penses of living, seldom more than equal to treble the
wages of an unskilled day laborer at home, and was
usually much less than that. The miners themselves
were the least likely of all men in California to become
weakhy. The high wages naturally meant, for the
miners, seldom the inducement to save for their fam
ilies at home, but almost always the temptation to
extravagance. Meanwhile, the unsteady life affected
the whole community in lamentable ways. For such
realities, then, the golden dreams were preparing the
dreamers.
VIII. THE WAYS TO THE NEW LAND.
The new-comers reached California either by water
or bv the emigrant trail across the continent. In the
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 235
former case they generally came either by Panama
(often, later, by Nicaragua), and so by the new steamers
that just before the gold discovery had begun to do
mail service in the Pacific, or else around Cape Horn,
and in that case by whatever good or wretched sailing
vessel could be chartered for the purpose. Steamers
and sailing vessels came for some time as overcrowded
with passengers as the passengers' brains were over
crowded with illusions.1 Especially amusing is the state
of things at the moment when the first gold-hunters
from the Atlantic coast had reached Panama, and were
there waiting for the first steamer, the California, which
was to carry them to the golden land. The California
had left for the Pacific Ocean before the gold was heard
of, in order to go around the Horn, and to begin the
new mail service. She reached the South American
ports just at the moment of the beginning of the gold
excitement as felt there, and she made San Francisco
February 28, 1849, after first stopping at Panama and
then at Monterey. At Panama she had to take up all
who could be crowded aboard. Yet, ere she reached
Panama, the people there had already had time to live
through much excitement and perplexity. The steamer
Oregon, a little later, found yet larger crowds of these
unhappy ones. The climate was fatal to some and un
healthy to many more, and every one was enraged to
find such imperfect means of transportation ready on
the Pacific side. Of the new life in California every
body present had also the wildest notions, and fretted at
1 For the Cape Horn vovajre and the illusions, well described, sec.
Dr. Stillman's line record, from contemporary letters, in his Seeking
the Golden Fleece (San Francisco, 1877). Some few of the new
comers crossed Central Mexico, more used the Isthmus of Tehaun-
tepec; but these were routes of minor importance.
236 CALIFORNIA.
each hour of delay.1 But, meanwhile, the American
spirit hunted for suitable expression. After the Cali
fornia had passed, a newspaper, the " Panama Star,"
was begun on the spot by the impatient watchers for fur
ther steamers. This paper was well filled with bitter
complaints about the expenses of this weary life on the
way, about the poor accommodations attainable at Pan
ama, and about the deceit practiced by the steamship
companies that had brought the people here.2 In the
same " Star," meanwhile, Protestant church exercises
are also announced, and accounts are given of a recent
celebration of Washington's birthday with a becoming
dinner, with speeches and with toasts. What the wan
derers ate at this dinner does not appear ; but as they
say in the " Star " that nearly all the preserved meats
brought from New York have been spoiled, and as they
seem in general a very hungry crew, one is disposed
to imagine that on Washington's birthday they dined
off bananas, and drank such brandy as Panama af
forded.
Their American citizenship, at all events, these sor
rowing wanderers could not forget. When the Cali
fornia came, those who were already on the spot were
shocked to find that she brought with her not less than
seventy-five Peruvians as steerage passengers. For
the Peruvians also had caught the gold fever. Now
even a Peruvian, as is unhappily obvious, so far pre
sumes upon the fact that God made him as to take up
1 Rev. Mr. Willey, in his excellent statement. B. MS., lias vividly
described the situation at Panama at this moment, and I am much in
debted to his account.
2 The Panama Star of February 24. 1849, is the number that I
have used, and that is now preserved in the Pioneer Library at San
Francisco.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 237
room, a truth that one thousand American citizens, wait
ing for a chance to get on board a steamer that was
made to hold at most, perhaps, one fourth as many men,
deeply and with obvious justice resented. The reasons
for their resentment were further enforced by the truly
righteous reflection that these base South Americans
were actually trying to go and steal gold in California,
— gold which plainly belonged solely to Americans.
What could be done ? General Persifer F. Smith, as it
chanced, was waiting at Panama also, and was to go
with his little escort on the California, to take command
of our forces on the Pacific coast. He was heaven's
messenger at this time to his perplexed countrymen.
He could vindicate the eternal justice. To make him a
better messenger of heaven just then, he had, as his
letters to the government show, quite lost his head for
the nonce, and was at the mercy of the prayers of his
furious fellow-citizens. Accordingly he entered into
their feelings entirely. He reflected that all the gold-
miners in California were, and would for some time re
main, trespassers on public lands, and that it was his
solemn duty, as military commander of the Department
of the Pacific, to keep them all off. He also reflected
that he could not keep them all off, as they were many,
and his force would be small. He further reflected
that if he could not keep them all off he might keep
some of them off, for the benefit of the others, thus
at once protecting the public lands, pleasing the favored
trespassers, and keeping out the foreigners. For, as
he concluded, these Peruvians, and men like them,
would be somehow more genuine trespassers on the
public lands than his countrymen would be. For of
course trespassing is a thing of degrees, and is toler-
238 CALIFORNIA.
able if the trespasser is a good fellow. The foreigners,
therefore, he determined to exclude, and so announced
in a proclamation, whose sole immediate intent was
to clear the steerage of the California of those insolent
and space-consumirg Peruvians.1 But the latter re
fused to leave the ship, and Smith's worthless thunder
afterwards died away before he had fairly settled to his
work in California. All miners were alike trespassers,
and all alike needed peace, and protection from the gov
ernment, which could not possibly have excluded them
if it had desired. This the general soon recognized,
and did his best thenceforth to secure good order.
The proclamation, however, called forth an eloquent
letter in the " Panama Star," from an American gold-
seeker, — a letter far too good to be lost. This corre
spondent, chafing in his enforced idleness at Panama,
calls upon his future American fellow-trespassers to pre
pare to help enforce Smith's proclamation against for
eigners whenever California shall be reached. It is
plain to him that the matter is one of simple right.
Not, of course, that he means ill by the foreign miners.
" Jf foreigners come, let them till the soil and make
roads, or do any other work that may suit them, and
1 The proclamation is to be found in the Panima Star as cited.
Rev. Mr. Willey gives the mentioned motive as the real one in his
statement. P. F. Smi'h's letters to the War Department, Cal. Doc. of
1850 (as cited), pp. 70-t, sqq., themselves further show sufficiently both
the clouded stale of his own judgment at the moment and the true
mo ive for his proclamation, whose text is given here also, on p. 716.
On p. 712, Smith announces his intention, March 15, now that lie has
actually reached California, to enforce his proclamation, but on p. 720
he acknowledges that he can do nothing. General Riley's view, a
short time later, in his capacity as governor of California, appears
from p. 781), in a letter of August 30, 1849, where he shows a very
sensible willingness to abandon all such foolish distinctions between
trespassers.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 239
they may become prosperous ; but tbe gold-mines were
preserved by nature for Americans only, who possess
noble hearts, and are willing to share with their fellow-
men more than any other race of men on earth, but still
they do not wish to give all. I ask of them who have
left their homes, their comforts, their wives and chil
dren, and other dear relatives, if they would be willing
to share all the hopes with the millions that might be
shipped from the four quarters of the globe. I will
answer for them and say no. We will share our inter
est in the gold-mines with none but American citizens."
All this unconsciously brutal mixture of greed with
mock-justice would seem to us excellent fooling, if we did
not remember that such ideas took form later in Califor
nia, in the Foreign Miners' Tax Law of 1850, and in the
numberless indecencies, vexatious regulations, and atrocir
ties, that marked our treatment of the foreigners in early
mining days. The next chapter will teach us to give
the words of such men as this correspondent a very
serious meaning.
This voyage by Panama had, during all the early
years, until the isthmus railroad came, its peculiar dan
gers and excitements. The tedious passage up the
Chagres River and across the low mountains, the lazily
clever natives, with their endless thieving and cheating
devices, the frequently long waiting at Panama, the
terrible cholera, the equally terrible Panama fever, the
weariness, the heat, the degenerate life of many of the
watching travelers, and then the sickly passage on the
crowded steamers northward, the fogs on the California
coast, the untrustworthy charts that made everybody
uncertain how near shipwreck one might at any moment
be, and the final joy when the Golden Gate appeared,
240 CALIFORNIA.
and when one sailed through the long, narrow strait
into the magnificent harbor, and anchored in front of
the strange new city of tents, — all these things we may
read in numberless narratives of the early golden days,
and may still hear from the lips of many pioneers.5
The Panama voyage, however, remains in its character
largely a tale of adventure, although not indeed without
some very educating experiences. More important still
for the social education of thousands of new-comers was,
however, the seemingly monotonous life of the long voy
age in crowded vessels around Cape Horn. For quar
rels with incompetent or dishonest sea-captains, and
quarrels among the passengers themselves, were com
mon enough in this vast fleet of hastily chosen and often
improperly manned and governed vessels. One thus
learned tedious lessons of unavoidable tolerance and of
self-government ; but one also grew somewhat indif
ferent to the forms and machinery of government as
practiced on land, and became disposed to think a di
rect appeal to the community the best form of popular
administration. Furthermore, one saw much, in the
various ports, of foreign peoples and customs. One
reached California after long months of sailing, trained
in independence, and with a comparatively wide experi
ence of men. Some of the new-comers around the Horn
have since been among California's most significant citi
zens.
On the plains journeyed, meanwhile, in the summer
of 1849, and in a number of subsequent summers, vast
crowds of weary emigrants, who faced disease, hunger,
1 Bayard Taylor's El Dorado tells of the voyape in the earliest
days. Other pioneer accounts are too numerous to be catalogued
here.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 241
and Indians for the sake of the golden land. Their life
also has been frequently described ; most fully and suc
cessfully, perhaps, in the contemporary record of Delano
(Old Block), himself one of them, and a man of mark
later in the pioneer community.1 As my own parents
were of this great company, I have taken a natural
interest in following their fortunes, and have before me
a manuscript, prepared by my mother for my use,
wherein, as an introduction to her own reminiscences
of early days in San Francisco and elsewhere in Cal
ifornia, she has narrated, from her diary of that time,
the story of the long land journey. Her diary and
recollections are not as full as Delano's, but contain
many incidents very characteristic of the whole life.
The route taken and the general sequence of events in
the early part of the journey do not vary much in her
account from the ordinary things narrated by all the
emigrants of that year. There was the long ascent of
the Rocky Mountains, with the cholera following the
trains for a time, until the mountain air grew too pure
and cool for it. A man died of cholera in my father's
wagon. There were also the usual troubles in the trains
on the way, among such emigrants as had started out in
partnership, using a wagon in common, or providing,
one a wagon, and another the oxen or mules. Such
partnerships were unstable, and to dissolve them in the
wilderness would usually mean danger or serious loss to
one of the partners. In settling these and other dis
putes, much opportunity was given to the men of emi
grant trains for showing their power to preserve the
1 A. Delano, Life on the Plains and at the Digging*, Auburn and
Buffalo, 1854. The journey across the plains is given from the au
thor's diary.
16
242 CALIFORNIA.
pence and to govern themselves. There was also the
delight at length, for my mother as for everybody, of
reaching the first 'waters that flowed towards the Pacific
Ocean. And then there was the arrival at Salt Lake,
the meeting with the still well-disposed Mormons, and
the busy preparation for the final stage of the great
undertaking.
From Salt Lake westward my parents, with their
one child, my eldest sister, then but two years old, trav
eled apart from any train, and with but three men as
companions. Their only guide-book was now a MS.
list of daily journeys and camping-places, prepared by
a Mormon who had gone to California and back in
1848. This guide-book was helpful as far as the Sink
of the Humbohlt, but confused and worthless beyond.
The result was that, after escaping, in a fashion that
seemed to them almost miraculous, an openly threat
ened attack of hostile Indians on the Humboldt River,
— an attack that, in their weakness, they could not for
a moment have resisted, — they came to the Sink, only
to miss the last good camping-place there, and, by rea
son of their vaguely-written guide-book, to find them
selves lost on the Carson desert. They erelong became
convinced that they had missed their way, and that
they must wander back on their own trail towards the
Sink. It was a terrible moment, of course, when they
thus knew that their faces must be turned to the east.
One was confused, almost stupefied, for a while by the
situation. The same fatal horror of desolation and
death that had ass-ailed the Donner party in the Truckee
pass seemed for a while about to destroy these emigrants
also. They knew themselves to be among the last of
the great procession. Many things had concurred to
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 243
delay and to vex them. It was now already October,
and there was not a moment to waste. To turn back
at such a crisis seemed simply desperate. But the little
water carried with them was now nearly exhausted, and
their cattle were in hourly danger of falling down to die.
Dazed and half senseless, the company clustered for a
while about their wagon; but then a gleam of natural
cheerfulness returned. " This will never do," they said,
and set about the work of return. On the way they met
by chance another lonesome little party of emigrants,
who, with very scant supplies, were hurrying westward,
in fear of the mountain snows. These could not help
my father, save by giving him a few new directions for
finding water and grass at the Sink, and for taking
the right way across the desert. As the slow wagon
neared the long-sought camping-place, my mother could
not wait for the tired oxen, but remembers hurrying on
alone in advance over the plain, carrying her child, who
had now begun to beg for water. In her weariness,
her brain was filled with nothing but one familiar Bible
story, which she seemed to be dreaming to the very life
in clear and cruel detail. But the end of all this came,
and the party rested at the little pasture-ground near
the Sink.
These details I mention here, not for their personal
interest, but because they are so characteristic of the
life of thousands in the great summer of 1849. My
mother's story goes on, however, to yet another charac
teristic experience of that autumn. Once supplied at
the Sink, my parents, still as nearly alone as before, set
out once again across the forty-mile desert, and, after
more hardships and anxiety, reached the welcome banks
of the Carson. But the mountains were now ahead, the
244 CALIFORNIA.
snows imminent, and the sand of the Carson Valley, un
der the wagon-wheels, was deep and heavy. On October
12, however, they were opportunely met by two mounted
men detailed from Captain Chandler's detachment of
the military relief party which General Smith had sent
out to meet and bring in the last of the emigration. The
new-comers, riding at full speed, seemed to my mother,
in her despair, like angels sent from heaven down by
the steep, dark mountains that loomed up to the west
ward. They were, at all events, men of good moun
taineering experience and of excellent spirit, and they
brought two extra mules, which were at once put at my
mother's own service. By the peremptory orders of
these relief men, the wagon was forthwith abandoned.
What coukl be packed on the still serviceable animals
was taken, and the rest of the journey was made by the
whole party mounted. They arrived safely in the mines
a little before the heavy snows began.
General Smith's energy and humanity in sending out
the relief, of whose work these two men were but a sin
gle detached instance, is worthy of all praise. Still more
important than the relief on this Carson route was the
detachment sent northward to meet the ill-starred emi
grants who had chosen the Peter Lassen trail, in the
hope to escape the desert west of the Humboldt Sink by
passing north of it. Their numbers were, at this last
moment of the season, far greater, and their suffering
more immediate and desperate. As the reports l show,
Chandler and the others on the Truckee and Carson
routes, relieved, indeed, many cases where the actual
suffering was much greater than even the worst that my
1 Official reports of the relief expedition one finds in Ex. Doc. 52,
31st Congr., 1st Sess., p. 96, sqq.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 245
own parents underwent ; yet this whole relief party
dealt largely with straggling parties at the rear of a
great column, while the Lassen route contained just then
great numbers of people, who suffered fearfully and as
a mass. Delano himself ably describes the situation on
this northern route.1
Socially considered, the effect of the long journey
across the plains was, of course, rather to discipline than
to educate ; yet the independent life of the small trains,
with their frequent need of asserting their skill in self-
government, tended to develop both the best and the
worst elements of the frontier political character ; namely,
its facility in self-government, and its over-hastiness in
using the more summary devices for preserving order.
As for the effect on the individual character, the jour
ney over the plains was, at least as a discipline, very
good for those who were of strong and cheerful enough
disposition to recover from the inevitable despondency
that must at first enter into the life of even the most
saintly novice in camping. Where families were to
gether, this happy recovery happened, of course, more
quickly. One learned, meanwhile, how to face deadly
dangers day by day with patience and coolness, and to
strongly religious minds the psychological effect of this
solitary struggle with the deserts was almost magical.
One seemed alone with God in the waste, and felt but
the thinnest veil separating a divine presence from the
souls that often seemed to have no conceivable human
resource left. This experience often expresses itself in
language at once very homely and very mystical. God's
i Op. cit., p. 234. Delano himself got in early. Both in this year
and later, many emigrants also took a southern route from Salt Lake
to Los Angeles, and yet others came via Santa F6.
246 CALIFORNIA.
presence, it declares, was no longer a matter of faith,
but of direct sight. Who else was there but God in the
desert to be seen ? One was going on a pilgrimage
whose every suggestion was of the familiar sacred sto
ries. One sought a romantic and far-off golden land of
promise, and one was in the wilderness of this world,
often guided only by signs from heaven, — by the stars
and by the sunset. The clear blue was almost perpetu
ally overhead ; the pure mountain winds were about
one ; and again, even in the hot and parched deserts, a
mysterious power provided the few precious springs and
streams of water. Amid the jagged, broken, and bar
ren hills, amid the desolation of the lonely plains, amid
the half-unknown but always horrible dangers of the
way, one met experiences of precisely the sort that else
where we always find producing the most enthusiastic
forms of religious mvsticism. And so the truly pious
among these struggling wanderers gained from the
whole life one element more of religious steadfastness
for the struggle that was yet to come, in early Califor
nia, between every conservative tendency and the forces
of disorder.
IX. THE STRUGGLE FOR A CONSTITUTION.
The constitutional questions that the interregnum
had begun so fiercely to agitate assumed a new form in
the presence of all these incoming strangers. San Fran
cisco was already in the summer of 1849 a great town,
now very largely built of tents, and daily growing.
The end of 1849 was to see more than one hundred
thousand people in the territory. Everything must be
improvised, government included. Mean while, anarchy
seemed to be threatening. By May, 1849, General Riley
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 247
had succeeded Colonel Mason as governor, while Gen
eral Smith commanded the Department of the Pacific ;
but desertions to the mines had rendered the military
power almost wholly ineffective. Very good men were
disheartened at the prospect. And if the immigrants of
1846 had fiercely objected to that fragmentary pseudo-
Mexican legal system of irresponsible alcaldes, what
would the new-comers of the spring, summer, and fall
of 1849 hold of the same system in an even more degen
erate form ? Who should govern these crowds ? Them
selves ? But then the whole theory that the United
States government still held would have to be aban
doned. Or should the United States military governor
remain as before at the head of affairs ? But his au-
thoi'ity was now called in question on new grounds, and
with very great plausibility, since the treaty of peace.
And if he had authority, where were the soldiers to be
found in sufficient force to maintain it ? The social
condition, then, seemed to call urgently for immediate
action.
For now, just as this new social condition was estab
lishing itself, the feeling began to grow very strong that
the political situation of the country was, since the treaty
of peace, a wholly new one. And here begins one of
the strangest periods in California political history.
What was the actual legal status of the territory of Califor
nia after the treaty of peace ? Congress, as we know,
never passed any law for the formation of a California
territorial government, and so the anomalous condition,
whatever it was, continued to exist down to the time of
the admission of the State of California into the Union.
Now two great and conflicting theories of the status of
California were commonlv held at that time. These
248 CALIFORNIA.
two came into open opposition in the beginning of 1849.
The one was the settlers' theory, which with full con
fidence regarded California as in a condition analogous
to that of the territory of Oregon. This theory was
the same in purport as the previous settlers' theory that
had been maintained in the " Star " of 1847, but it was
now urged on much more plausible grounds. The
treaty of peace, it waj said, had deprived the military
governor of his legal powers. He was merely an
usurper. California was a part of United States ter
ritory. In the absence of congressional action, the peo
ple had a right to meet and to legislate at their pleasure.
This right they derived from the nature of man, and
from the Constitution of the United States. The former
has guarantied to man the right to govern himself ac
cording to the principles of justice. The latter, the
Constitution of the United States, as was asserted, guar
antied to the inhabitants of America a republican, and
not a military, government, at least in time of peace.
Had Congress furnished to the people a territorial gov
ernment, the people would be bound to accept the same.
But in the absence of such action, the popular will, put
ting itself under the sole restraint of the Constitution,
must reign supreme. This theory, as we see, was not
without its vagueness. Exactly how the Constitution of
the United States could be interpreted as including this
form of the doctrine of popular sovereignty is not clear
to me, nor was it made clear in the discussions of that
period. The Constitution had never contemplated ex
actly the case of this conquered California. The very
appeal to the law of nature showed a certain lack of
clearness in the settler's mind about the state of the law
in the statute-books. Yet the settler's instinct was a
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 249
sound one, however imperfect his theory. The time was
in fact nearly ripe for an expression of the popular will.
The settlers of 1845 and 1846 had changed their rest
lessness for conservatism in the presence of the new
comers. The treaty of peace had taken the land ques
tion out of the power of local legislatures ; and an addi
tional residence of two years in the country had made
the immigrants of 1846, the land-hungry men of 1847,
comparatively sedate old inhabitants. They felt them
selves in a sense the true Californians. They regarded
the forty-niners with a certain conservative dread. They
had in very many cases come to own land themselves,
by purchase from the claimants under Mexican grants.
They were now in most cases, when compared with the
forty-niners, no longer revolutionary agitators, but sober
American advocates of the older order of things, and
opponents of the spoliation that they had before threat
ened. Therefore the squatter legislature of the Hast
ings plan was already a less imminent danger, although
Americans had by no means sincerely determined as yet
to recognize the just claims of all native Californians.
Meanwhile, if the danger of violent and wholly one-sided
legislation was already less, the danger of violent and
wholly confused popular movements in default of legis
lation grew daily greater. And no way seemed open,
even in the autumn of 1848, much more in the spring
and summer of 1849, save to call upon the American
political instinct to express itself in the form of an or
ganized government.
But the chief opposing view of California's legal status
has to be mentioned. That is the view maintained by
Mason and then by General Riley, the last territorial
governor of California. Riley 's view was of course in
250 CALIFORNIA.
accord with his instructions. It is well-known, and shall
be stated in Riley's own words : —
" The laws of California, not inconsistent with the
laws, constitution, and treaties of the United States, are
still in force, and must continue in force till changed by
competent authority. Whatever may be thought of the
right of the people to temporarily replace the officers of
the existing government by others appointed by a pro
visional territorial legislature, there can be no question
that the existing laws of the country must continue in
force till replaced by others made and enacted by com
petent power. That power, by the treaty of peace, as
well as from the nature of the case, is vested in Con
gress. The situation of California in this respect is very
different from that of Oregon. The latter was without
laws, while the former has a system of laws, which,
though somewhat defective, and requiring many changes
and amendments, must continue in force till repealed by
competent legislative power. The situation of California
is almost identical with that of Louisiana, and the decis
ions of the Supreme Court in recognizing the validity of
the laws which existed in that country previous to its
annexation to the United States, were not inconsistent
with the constitution and laws of the United States, or
repealed by legitimate legislative enactments, furnish us
a clear and safe guide in our present situation. It is
important that citizens should understand this fact, so as
not to endanger their property and involve themselves in
useless and expensive litigation, by giving countenance
to persons claiming authority which is not given them
by law, and by putting faith in laws which can never be
recognized by legitimate courts."
That is, as one sees, according to Riley's view, Stock-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 251
ton's proclamation concerning the " former laws and
usages" remained as valid a statement of the situation
of California after the treaty of peace as it had been be
fore the treaty of peace. In consequence the chief mil
itary officer present is still governor of the territory, only
now he is civil, and not military, governor.1
That Riley's view, although probably legally the cor
rect view, was not indubitable, even from the point of
view of the government itself, appears from two curious
facts. The first is that the government, while it thus
instructed Riley as to his legal position, held and ex
pressed another and an opposing view of the nature of
his powers. The second is that Riley himself, when the
constitutional convention had once finished its work,
simply abandoned his position, by giving up to the au
thorities that the people elected this power and responsi
bility which he had affirmed to be legally his own. For
nothing is clearer than that an officer legally responsi
ble for the government of a territory cannot consistently
abandon his post, unless an equally legal authority is
ready to succeed him.
As to the first point, the alternative theory which the
1 Riley's view is well summed up in Burnett's Reminiscences of an
Old Pioneer (New York, 1880), p. 329. Burnett's account of this
whole controversy is one of the best extant, outside of the official rec
ord as preserved in theCal. Docs, of 1850, and apart from the contem
porary numbers of the Aha California. Burnett himself represented
the settler's view. Riley's own statement of the case, as quoted above,
is to be found in the Cal. Docs, of 1850 (as cited), p. 777. A clear
statement of the settler's view is further to be found in the speech of
C. T. Botts, in the Debates of the Constitutional Convention of Cali
fornia, p. 11. As to the technical merits of the case, ably disputed
as it was, I have no authority of my own to decide, but I am ad
vised by good authority that Riley's position, in so far as he con
sistently held to it, was no doubt legally sounder than the opposing
views.
252 CALIFORNIA.
administration held appears in two documents. One is
the president's message to Congress, in December, 1848,
which declares that " upon the exchange of ratifications
of the treaty of peace with Mexico on the 30th of
May last, the temporary governments which had heen
established over New Mexico and California by our mil
itary and naval commanders, by virtue of the rights of
war, ceased to derive any obligatory force from that
source of authority ; and having been ceded to the
United States, all government and control over them
under the authority of Mexico had ceased to exist. Im
pressed with the necessity of establishing territorial
governments over them, I recommended the subject to
the favorable consideration of Congress in my message
communicating the ratification of peace, on the 6th of
July last, and invoked their action at that session.
Congress adjourned without making any provision for
their government. The inhabitants, by the transfer of
their country, had become entitled to the benefits of our
laws and constitution, and yet were left without any
regularly organized government. Since that time, the
very limited power possessed by the executive has been
exercised to preserve and protect them from the inevi
table consequences of a state of anarchy. The only
government which remained was that established by
the military authority during the war. Regarding this
to be a de facto government, and that by the presumed
consent of the inhabitants it might be continued tempo
rarily, they u-ere advised to conform and submit to it
for the short intervening period before Congress would
again assemble and could legislate on the subject. The
yiews entertained by the executive on this point are
contained in a communication of the secretary of state,
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 253
dated the 7th of October last, which was forwarded
for publication to California and New Mexico, a copy
of which is herewith transmitted." The letter of Buch
anan, secretary of state, to which reference is made in
these last words, expresses tliis view as follows : —
" In the mean time, the condition of the people of
California is anomalous, and will require on their part
the exercise of great prudence and discretion. By the
conclusion of the treaty of peace, the military govern
ment which was established over them under the laws
of war, as recognized by the practice of civilized nations,
has ceased to derive its authority from this source of
power. But is there, for this reason, no government in
California ? Are life, liberty, and property under the
protection of no existing authorities ? This would be a
singular phenomenon in the face of the world, and espe
cially among American citizens, distinguished as they are
above all other people for their law-abiding character.
Fortunately they are not reduced to this sad condition.
The termination of the war left an existing government
— a government de facto — in full operation ; and this
will continue, with the presumed consent of the people,
until Congress shall provide for them a territorial gov
ernment. The great laiv of necessity justifies this con
clusion. The consent of the people is irresistibly in
ferred from the fact that no civilized community could
possibly desire to abrogate an existing government, when
the alternative presented ivoidd be to place themselves in
a state of anarchy, beyond the protection of all laws,
and reduce them to the unhappy necessity of submitting
to the dominion of the strongest."
As to the second point, if Riley's theory, held in ac
cordance with his instructions, was the correct one, then
254 CALIFORNIA.
the people of California not only were unable to form a
popular government without his consent, but had no
right, even with his consent, to begin their own state
government before Congress should have admitted the
State. Governor Riley, as chief executive, could indeed
call a convention, but, from his own point of view, he
could not authorize the actual formation of a sovereign
state, nor properly recognize it in advance of a congres
sional recognition. Yet just this he did, surrendering
Ins powers to the new state government months before
the admission of the State. There was then simply no
consistently held theory concerning the legal status of
California at this critical moment.
Yet the problem involved was, in the spring and sum
mer of 1849, no mere question of theory, but an intensely
practical one, that threatened quickly to become very
serious indeed. Here were the people, with the Oregon
tradition in their minds, anxious for self-government,
and loudly asserting a right of which they could give no
very definite theoretical or legal account. Here was
Riley, with one form of the administration doctrine in
his mouth, hopefully transcribing, translating, and pub
lishing the supposed " laws in force." Here was the
president, ordering through the secretary of war that
Riley should take this plan of explaining the law to the
people of California, and himself meanwhile making
through the secretary of state a wholly different and
inconsistent explanation of General Riley's powers, an
explanation whereby the government of California is
denied to be a discoverable actuality, is treated as a
mere presumption, and is based upon the notion that
California, being between the devil and the deep sea,
must get out by the one road that Providence has kindly
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 255
opened ; namely, the military government. Thus the
settler talks of the law of nature, General Riley of Mex
ican law, Secretary Buchanan of the " presumed con
sent," whatever that may be ; and meanwhile Califor
nia society is looking the devils of anarchy in the face,
and is bravely trying to help itself. It was in those
days that James King of William, as he later wrote in
the " Bulletin," heard people at Butter's Fort talking
over the situation, and speculative wanderers discussing
in leisure moments before the camp-fires whether mur
der could fairly be called a crime any more in Califor
nia, since there was now no law.
We have had in the foregoing to speak of the Amer
ican settler's bigotry in the presence of un-American
institutions, and of his injustice to the conquered popu
lation. When on the contrary one turns to his political
skill, as it showed itself in this crisis, one has, as we are
all aware, nothing but praise. In fact, the instinctive
political skill shown throughout this early history is the
one thing in early California affairs of which we can
certainly feel quite justly proud. Nearly all else in the
early history of California after the country was in
American hands is more or less under a cloud, save, in
deed, so much as fortune chose to make romantic and
charming. We shall see, hereafter, how little the politi
cal skill itself was able to cope with the moral dangers
of the early days, and how only after years of toil, men
learned to supplement their instinctive cleverness in
state-making with the necessary devotion to the more
commonplace duties of citizenship. But viewed simply
as cleverness, this quality, as it now shows itself, is
wholly admirable.
The summer of 1849 was full of abortive lesser at-
256 CALIFORNIA.
tempts at planning the ways and means of self-govern
ment ; most of these attempts seem not to have got
beyond the limits of private conversation. Some people
freely talked about the Bear Flag and a Pacific repub
lic. Others insisted that perfect loyalty to the govern
ment at Washington was consistent with the firmest
determination to resist all unconstitutional military
government here. Riley repeated, in every possible
official way, that his government was not military, but
civil and legal, a necessary continuation in the present
of the old Mexican form of administration. Congress,
meanwhile, was of no service, and adjourned in 1849,
as it had adjourned the year before, without having
done more for this new land than to extend customs
regulations over California, and to establish a few post-
offices and mail-routes. Why Congress thus hesitated
is a matter of well-known national history. The inter
ests of California had to be postponed, while Congress
wrangled over the position of slavery in the new ter
ritories. Had the Southern party more promptly under
taken to compromise matters, it might have been able to
gain more for itself. The long delay ended in the total
and inevitable loss of California to the slave-power.
As we shall hereafter see, all this political confusion
was at the moment consistent with the prevalence of
temporary good order. The summer of 1849 was a
cheerful and a socially peaceful one throughout the
mining and commercial region. The southern part of
the territory, where the native Californians lived, was
indeed already showing signs of the general demorali
zation that we were in time to inflict upon it. Its trade,
such as there had been, languished, its people were un
welcome in the mines, and unhappy at home. They
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 257
had also a natural and well-founded dread as to the
future of their property, and were suspicious of us, as
well as sometimes actively hostile. But elsewhere the
life was busy and hopeful, although carelessness, dissi
pation, and absurdly great expectations were preparing
the way for a possible future anarchy. The state or
ganization was needed none the less in view of this
present temporary social prosperity of the country.
For there were dark days ahead.
As for more organized efforts at self-government :
such were the abortive legislative assembly of San Fran
cisco, and similar attempts in Sonoma and in Sacra
mento.1 Such were also the meetings associated with
these efforts, wherein delegates were elected to meet in
a constitutional convention at San Jose, without any
authority from Governor Riley. But all such attempts
were not only failures in themselves, but were super
seded by Riley 's own proclamation, issued June 3,
1849,2 announcing, in accordance with his instructions,
that as Congress had adjourned without providing " a
new government for this country to replace that which
existed on the annexation of California to the United
States," it had become " our imperative duty to take
some active means to provide for the existing wants of
the country ; " and calling upon the people to elect a
convention to form a state constitution. In the mean-
1 See the Aha for March 1, 1849, for reports from Sacramento and
Sonoma of meetings to organize district governments. For the San
Francisco meetings and undertakings, see the Annals, pp. 208, 218,
220, and pp. 221, sqq. For the general situation and an account of
these movements, see also Burnett (loc. cit.). Tuthill, in chap. xx. of
his History, gives a somewhat detailed account of the matter as dis
cussed in Congress. See also Cal. Docs. pp. 773, sq.
2 Cal. Docs. pp. 776, sqq.
17
258 CALIFORNIA.
while Riley ordered elections under the " former usages "
of judges of superior jurisdiction, and of other neces
sary officers, to hold office until the state government
should he completed and ready for its work. And he
caused to he published what he regarded as the Mexican
laws of the territory still in force.1
With hesitation, and alter much murmuring the peo
ple accepted Kiley's call, waived their theoretical objec
tion that he, as usurper, had no right to make the call,
and elected their delegates to the convention. And
thus the vexed question as to the legal rights of the
people of California was solved by a very illogical and
yet very sensible compromise, which was made accord
ing to no theoretical principle whatsoever. The popu
lar sovereignty sentiment of the Oregon tradition be
came untrue to itself, and its upholders illogically sub
mitted to General Ililey's authority so far as to go into
the convention that he called and authorized, and to
vote under such conditions as he ordained. General
Riley, for his part, very illogically sacrificed the claim
that he was the legal ruler of California, and that he
was subject only to the administration and to congres
sional legislation, by calling a convention of the people,
and by resigning his powers so soon as the people had
1 As to the details of this action, Riley was prided by the advice of
his secretary of state, the able and laborious Captain (in later years
General) H. \V. Ilalleck. Ilalleek's labors in preparing the way for
the convention, anil in the convention itself, have been well recog
nized and set forth by Rev. Mr. Willey, in his intcrestintr article in
the Overland Monthly for July, 1872, entitled " Recollections of Gen
eral IlalWk."
For the laws published by Riley, and for the official summary of the
whole affair, as presented to Congress by the senators and represen
tatives of California when they first went to Washington, see the
volume of the Debates of the Convention, Appendix.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 259
elected their own officers, and long before the admission
of the State by Congress. As for Buchanan's beautiful
little theory about the " presumed consent " of the people
of California as the source of Riley's authority, that theory
was soon utterly forgotten. And so here in California
was repeated that ancient proceeding of compromise in
place of adherence to abstract principle which has been
all along so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon in his polit
ical life. When one sees how the ponderous machinery
of the constitution was soon afterwards in order and
lightly running, notwithstanding all this wearisome pre
liminary wrangling among the master-workmen about
plans and doctrines, one is strongly reminded of a cer
tain grandly simple expression of the spirit of English,
and in fact of all Anglo-Saxon constitutional history, an
expression contained in the most profound and familiar
of nursery tales ; namely, in the one in which there is first
a seemingly hopeless difference of opinion among the
characters about certain great questions of principle, so
that a time of tragic uncertainty follows, until of a sud
den, a compromise being happily suggested, the mouse
begins to gnaw the rope, the rope to hang the butcher,
and so all else to go well. This tale is a figure of the
workings of Anglo-Saxon government.
X. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION AND ITS OUTCOME.
So the convention assembled at Monterey, finding no
quorum September 1, 1849, but beginning its organiza
tion September 3. This first business was rather slowly
accomplished, three days being consumed in purely pre
liminary work, and yet more time being lost subsequently
in subsidiary matters, before very much was accomplished.
The convention had of course great difficulties concern-
260
CALIFORNIA.
ing printing and engrossment. Other physical difficul
ties are hardly worth dwelling on here. The members
of the convention nearly all brought with them their
blankets to Monterey ; like the foxes and the birds,
they had to look for holes and nests, and like the foxes
and birds, they finally found where to bestow themselves.
They speak highly of the hospitality of the little town.
Larkin invited one member to lunch and one to dinner
every day, and it is to be presumed that at least that
member got in each case a good meal. The rest ex
hibited no small patience, on the whole, although occa
sionally the records of the votes show many absentees.
NATIVITY.
RESIDENCE.
OCCUPATION. AGE.
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Pennsylvania &
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New Jersey
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1 New England
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idJ Virginia 3 3
*"> M-u-vland 5 2
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Florida . 1
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Foreign Lands 5 5
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Totals ... !48
35
13
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11 14
15 9 23 12
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 261
Bayard Taylor in his " El Dorado " describes the whole
body with great interest and delight. Their own table
of ages, etc., is the basis upon which I have constructed
the above statistical analysis of the social and political
character of the convention, which I give in a form quite
different from theirs (cf. " Debates," p. 478).
To understand the work of the convention, one must
remember the conflicting forces present, as indicated by
this table, and by the debates. A strong centre (if one
may transfer to the body a foreign phrase) was made
up of the Americans of the interregnum. They had
various personal peculiarities, and occasionally aired
their private views at excessive length ; nor were they
men of any great likeness of training. But they had in
common a lively interest in a permanent and strong
government in California ; they all had a concern in
California, that was prior in origin to the gold discovery,
and that seemed apt to outlast any immediate good for
tunes or reverses that might come to them in conse
quence of this discovery. They were fearful of the
new-coming population, in case it were not soon re
strained by fixed laws. And they were indisposed to
permit the sectional interests of older States to interfere
with the present destiny of California. What one may
call an extreme right was meanwhile composed of the
old Californians, among whom must be included some
of the older foreign residents. These men came to the
convention as strict conservatives, loving the old order
of things, wholly opposed to the formation of any state
government, preferring a territorial organization, and
anxious for a political separation of their own section
from the northern half of the territory. When they
discovered their original plans to be impracticable, they
262 CALIFORNIA.
were for the time at sea, until they found a new and
unexpected, although somewhat covert and certainly
very insincere ally.
This was in the extreme left, as, keeping up the form
already used, we may call the small but very ahly led
section of extreme Southerners. These men, of whom
B. F. Moore of Florida was the one most unpleasantly
noticeable, and among whom Jones of Louisiana (by
birth a Kentuckian) was also noteworthy, were led by
the most interesting politician in the convention, the
since famous, and recently deceased, W. M. Gwin.
Their undoubted object was, not so much to give over
any part of California at once to slavery, since this
hurrying life of the gold-seekers wholly forbade any
present consideration of such a plan, but to prepare the
way for a future overthrow of the now paramount
Northern influence in the territory, and so to make pos
sible an ultimate division of the State, in case the south
ern part should prove to be adapted to slave life.
The very existence of this plan has been frequently
denied ; but one who reads the debates can have little
doubt of it. The interest of the discussions lies largely
in the marvelous skill with which Gwin, although un
able to carry his point, still in minor matters directed
the course of the proceedings, and gradually gathered
about himself such a following that, although he was
baffled in his immediate objects, he at all events made
himself a power in the convention, and assured for him
self a prominent position in the future political life of
the State. No other man in the convention approaches
him in impressiveness and in skill, as shown in these de
bates. A monograph on the convention long enough to
give the time for unraveling the intricate skein of the
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 263
debates would read in large part like a chapter from
the political biography of one who intellectually was the
most admirable of all the unprincipled political in
triguers in the history of California.
Of Gwin himself much has been written, although
not with reference to his work in the convention. Mr.
O'Meara's generally admirable monograph on " Brod-
erick and Gwin " (San Francisco, 1881) has discussed
the later political life of the great schemer during the
period of his struggle with his picturesque, heroic, and
almost equally unprincipled foe, that remarkable repre
sentative of the Irish-American political character, Da
vid Broderick. The civil war proved to be Gwin's polit
ical grave. His public life in the South and in Mexico
was thenceforth a failure, and his recent death has closed
a long period of inactivity. Gwin had before 1849
already been in the House of Representatives at Wash
ington. In California he appeared in 1849, just in time
to take part in the trial of the " Hounds " in San Fran
cisco.1 This event brought him into piiblic notice.
He had come to the territory with the avowed deter
mination to be a senator from the new State. He was
glad, therefore, to find himself a man of mark forthwith,
and took advantage of the fact to get himself at once
elected to the convention. To Monterey he went,
armed with copies of a printed constitution ; namely,
that of the State of Iowa, in which he intended to make
some amendments, but which he plainly regarded as an
instrument that would give him especial authority in the
convention. For this body, as he knew, would be with
out printing-press.2 He also intended, as the survivors
1 Of the " Hounds " we shall hear a little hereafter, in another con
nection.
2 See his own account, Debates, p. 24. Also Mr. E. O. Crosby's
264 CALIFORNIA.
of the convention say, to get himself elected president
of the convention. But the men of the interregnum
chose Semple instead, whose eloquence was thereby a
trifle checked.1 Gwin was undaunted. In the '" Com
mittee on the plan of a constitution," he took a prominent
part, and, in the early debates, was already noteworthy,
always seeming conciliatory, thoughtful, learned, and
reasonable. He above all avoided directly broaching
sectional topics, or matters that could arouse jealousy
between classes of the people. When McCarver, who
represented the Oregon tradition, with its hatred of a free
negro population, proposed in committee of the whole to
supplement the clause forbidding negro slavery in Cal
ifornia (a clause which had already been unanimously
adopted in committee without debate} by another clause
excluding from the state free negroes, Gwin let the men
of the interregnum talk this matter over at their leisure,
but himself said nothing. The clause of McCarver
passed in committee, but only to be overthrown later in
the house, and by a vote that, so far as it was not com
posed of the men of the interregnum, would seem to
have been organized almost altogether outside of the
proceedings of the convention, and that remained to the
end comparatively silent on this matter. Gwin was in
this silent majority.
But the true purposes of the master began to appear
when the great topic of the boundary of the future State
statement, B. MS., a most valuable sketch of the convention by a
surviving member.
1 Dtbates, p. 18. As Semple took the chair, he made a "few re
marks," saying among other things : " The eyes of all Europe are
now directed toward California." With this proud consciousness he
sat down, and no doubt looked every inch a president. He made in
fact a very good one.
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 265
came up. Here was a chance for him both to join to
gether the two extreme wings of the convention, by con
ciliating the Californians, who, so far, had suspected him,
and to prevent the Northern party from acquiring too
great a control on the coast. Wholly fatal to the plans
of Gwin's party it would have been either to attempt to
introduce slavery into the constitution directly, or to
have proposed an immediate division of the southern
territory from the northern half. The new-comers,
even in case they were themselves violent Southerners,
had, in general, no desire to see slavery introduced for
the present into the unsettled gold-mining community.
And the men of the interregnum were altogether op
posed to any thought of a division of the inhabited ter
ritory, in whose conquest they had taken part. Any
effort, under these circumstances, to affect the course of
events by direct means would have been fatal to Gwin'a
political aspirations, as well as to the cause that he no
doubt had at heart. One thing, however, remained.
The Northern party might be prevented from carrying
out the very natural plan of limiting the boundaries
of the State to the inhabited portions of the territory
and to the Sierra region. The vast unknown country
beyond, extending to the Rocky Mountains, — this the
men of the interregnum were inclined to cut off once
for all, although in theory it belonged to California. If
they succeeded in this purpose, however, then a compact
State would be formed, having a certain geographical
unity, and perhaps resisting further efforts to divide
it. It would have the whole frontage on the ocean, it
would be a free State, and it would be a strong State,
rendering the unknown territory eastward almost cer
tainly Worthless to the Southern party in the future.
266 CALIFORNIA.
Might not all this be prevented ? Might not one insist
for the moment upon keeping" the territorial boundaries
of California intact? Might not one thus insist on go
ing to Congress with a State covering this whole vast
region (wherein are now Nevada and Utah and a large
part of Arizona) ? Might not one consequently secure
under any circumstances an important advantage to the
Southern party ? For, first, if, as was possible, Con
gress should refuse to admit the whole of this great
State, and should determine to divide it into a northern
and a southern half, the desired result would forthwith
be secured. But one need not rely upon that.1 Far
more important for the interests of the Southern party
would be the certainty that this great State, if it was
once admitted, would, in time, fall to pieces ; and the
equally manifest certainty that, in this falling to pieces,
a division of the State that would cut part of it off from
the ocean would be sure to be deemed unjust. For, in
view of these considerations, such a division of the over
grown State would take place as would give the South
ern party their fair chance to introduce slavery into the
southern half of California, in case such introduction
should ever be found profitable.2
1 And Gwin did not rely upon it, as he actually accepted Halleck's
proviso, which proposed to permit the state legislature to accept from
Congress a limitation of boundary on the east, but declined to em
power the legislature to accept a division into northern and southern
halves. Yet Gwin must have known that to carry to Congress a very
large State might very easily lead to an ultimate division of the same,
before admis.-km, into a northern and southern half. For if Congress
refused to admit the State until such division were made, the people
would be apt, in the end, to submit; and the bigger the territory in
cluded, the more probable would be such a refusal.
2 For remarks of Gwin, showing that he had this plan in mind, see
Debates, p. 169. "If we include boundary enough for several States,
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 267
The native California!! members, however, were evi
dently approachable upon this matter. As people in
terested in the old order of things, they were glad to
vote for the whole of old California as a State, so long
as their own much desired separation of their section
from the rest could not be carried out. So they will
ingly joined in rejecting any new limitation of the old
boundary to the eastward. Moreover, they could easily
be brought to understand their own advantage. This
present lavish offer of the one great State to the Union
meant, as they well knew, a good chance of more future
freedom to themselves, through the division of the State,
and the formation of a little State or Territory for their
own benefit. Gwin and Jones very cleverly appeased
them further by together introducing a taxation article
that was supposed to promise to work in their inter-
it is competent for the people and the State of California to divide it
hereafter." And, p. 196: "I have not the remotest idea that the
Congress of the United States would give us this great extent of
boundary if it was expected that it should remain one State. And
when gentlemen say that they never will give up one inch of the Pa
cific coast, they say what they cannot carry out. So far as I am con
cerned, I should like to see six States fronting on the Pacific in Cali
fornia. I want the additional power in the Congress of the United
States of twelve senators instead of four ; for it is notorious, sir, that
the State of Delaware, smaller than our smallest district, has as much
power in the Senate as the great State of New York. It is not the
passage of a bill through the House of Representatives that makes a
law ; that bill has to go through the Senate, and in that body the
State of Delaware has as much power as the State of New York. And
the past history of our country, sir, develops the fact that we will
have State upon State here, — probably as many as on the Atlantic
side, — and as we accumulate States we accumulate strength; our in
stitutions become more powerful to do good and not to do evil. I have
no doubt the time will come when we will have twenty States this
side of the Rocky Mountains. I want the power, sir, and the popu
lation. When the population comes, they will require that this State
shall be divided."
268 CALIFORNIA.
est. The Californians were thus captured, and readily
voted for Gwin's proposition. How much Gwin really
loved them, the Land Act of 1851, and Gwin's infa
mous supplementary Land Bill of 1852 will sufficiently
show us.
Oddly enough, however, the Gwin plan received some
cooperation in the convention from the least expected
quarter, namely, from Riley's secretary, Halleck, and
from the other administration agents in California,
whose influence in the convention was decided, although
their votes were few. Their purpose, indeed, was not
Gwin's ; and it was a very odd one. Thomas Butler
King, a direct representative of the administration, who
had come to California on a tour of observation, to make
a report on the condition and resources of California, a
report which was later printed, and who, meanwhile,
expressed in private the president's views on topics con
nected with the convention, had said to some of the
members, — to Semple among the rest, — " For God's
sake, leave us no territory to legislate upon in Con
gress ! " That is, as he meant to be understood, " re
lieve us from the need of further discussion about slavery
in the territories by presenting to us a complete Califor
nia, ready for admission, extending to the Rocky Moun
tains, and excluding from its boundaries slavery." The
ostrich-like innocence of this plan of the Whig admin
istration of Taylor — which had sent out poor Butler
King to wander about in a land that he never under
stood, and to express views that never helped anybody
— is plain enough. But votes were votes, and Gwin
rejoiced in an alliance with Halleck, — an alliance that,
once for all, seemed to prove to the Northern public in
California, whose votes, also. Gwin. as senatorial candi-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED. 269
date, might one day need, that Gwin himself had never
intrigued on behalf of slavery. For here was a Whig
administration, in its imbecility, instructing its agents to
do just what Gwin himself had planned.
The plan, then, seemed sure to succeed, and twice it
secured a majority of votes, after long debate, — once in
committee, once in the house. But it failed at last,
through the praiseworthy firmness of the men of the in
terregnum, who, driven to the wall, finally made clear
that they were ready to break up the convention rather
than to submit to what they regarded as a permanently
mischievous act. C. T. Botts, himself a Virginian, but
always, in this convention, disposed to go with the typi
cal men of the interregnum (men such as Hastings,
Semple, Brown, McCarver,1 McDougal, Price, Snyder,
and the rest), was a leader in this firm opposition. The
result was, that a spirit of compromise was once more
developed, and Gwin's plan had to be given up in favor
of the present boundary of California. But the effort,
although it failed, was an important one. It first
showed Gwin's skill. He had brought over to his side
the Californian representatives, who had at the outset
suspected him, and whom he himself so little loved that
he was quite capable, as events showed, of undertaking
to despoil them, in legal fashion, of their lands.
The boundary question sufficiently showed the char
acter of the forces at work in the convention. Never
theless the body was, notwithstanding its inner hostili
ties, a comparatively able and patriotic group of men,
and in questions not directly involving sectional prob-
1 McCarver, an Oregon man, belongs in the list, although he had
been in California but a year. For the scene in convention at the
crisis of the struggle, see Debates, p. 440.
270 CALIFORNIA.
lems it devoted itself with earnestness to its great task.
Cruder political notions appeared but little in its delib
erations, and when they appeared, instinct quietly ig
nored what spoken argument would often have found
it hard to refute in any such way as to convert the ad
vocates of the political errors involved. The results
were thus generally wise. In general character the
constitution adopted followed that of the State of New
York. A noteworthy feature was the prohibition of
any and all charters to authorize banks of issue, a pro
vision ardently insisted upon by nearly all the members.
As is well known, and as has before been said, the
clause prohibiting slavery passed the convention by an
unanimous vote.
The convention over, the constitution was submitted
by its makers to the people, who languidly adopted it
by a very small but nearly unanimous vote, November
13, 1849, and elected the first state officers. Riley at
once gave up his office to the new governor, Burnett,
although the State was not admitted by a wrangling Con
gress until September 9, 1850. Thus began the life of
a constitutional government that was to continue for
thirty years without radical change of its organic law.
The change, when it came, was for the worse.
CHAPTER IV.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER : SELF-GOVERNMENT, GOOD-
HUMOR AND VIOLENCE IN THE MINES.
THE State, then, was triumphantly created out of the
very midst of the troubles of the interregnum, and in
the excitements of the first golden days. But the busy
scenes of early California life give us, as we follow their
events, little time for quiet enjoyment of the results of
even the best social undertakings. The proclamation of
the sovereign state itself is only as the sound of a trum
pet, signaling the beginning of the real social battle.
Anarchy is a thing of degrees, and its lesser degrees
often coexist even with the constitutions that are well-
conceived and popular. The California pioneers had now
to deal with forces, both within themselves and in the
world beyond, that produced an exciting and not blood
less struggle for order, some of whose events, as they
took place in the mines, in the interior cities, in the
course of the state politics, and in San Francisco, we
must try to describe, selecting what will best illustrate
the problems of the time from the great mass of occur
rences, and returning, where it is necessary, to the rela
tion of some events that were antecedent to those last
described. Of the romantic and heroic we shall have
something to tell, as we go on ; but much of our story
will concern matters that only the sternest and least ro
mantic realism can properly represent.
272 CALIFORNIA.
I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CALIFORNIA HISTORY DURIXG
THE GOLDEX DAYS.
«
Two very familiar errors exist concerning the Califor
nia of the years between 1848 and 1856, both miscon
ceptions of the era of the struggle for order. One of
these errors will have it that, on the whole, there was no
struggle ; while the other affirms that, on the whole,
there was no order. In fact there were both, and their
union is incomprehensible, save as an historical progress
from lower to higher social conditions. Both the men
tioned errors find support, not in authoritative pioneer
evidence, but in some of the more irresponsible reminis
cences of forgetful pioneers, reminiscences that express
little save a desire to boast, either of the marvelous
probity, or of the phenomenal wickedness, of their fel
lows in the early days. Many pioneers 1 seem to assume
that, save their own anecdotes, no sound records of the
early days are extant. Yet the fact is that, valuable as
the honest man's memory must be, to retain and convey
the coloring of the minds and moods of individuals and
parties, this individual memory cannot be trusted, in gen
eral, either for the details of any complex transaction,
or for an account of the whole state of any large and
mixed community. And one finds this especially true
when one reads some of these personal reminiscences of
the more forgetful California pioneers. In one mood,
or with one sort of experience, the pioneer can remem
ber little but the ardor, the high aims, the generosity,
the honor, and the good order of the Californian com
munity. A few gamblers, a few foreign convicts, a few
1 E. (; , the writer who calls himself William Grey, in his Pioneer
Times, San Francisco, 1881.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 273
" greasers " there were, who threw shadows into the
glorious picture. But they could not obscure it. On the
other hand, however, another equally boastful memory
revels in scenes of sanguinary freedom? of lawless popu
lar frenzy, of fraud, of drunkenness, of gaming, and of
murder. According to this memory nothing shall have
remained pure : most ministers who happened to be
present gambled, society was ruled by courtesans, no
body looked twice at a freshly murdered man, every
body gayly joined in lynching any supposed thief, and
all alike rejoiced in raptures of vicious liberty. These
are the two extreme views. You can find numbers of
similarly incomplete intermediate views. The kaleido
scopic effect of a series of them can be judged by read
ing the conflicting statements that, with a rather unnec
essary liberality, Mr. Shinn has added to his own much
more sober, rational, and well-founded views, in some of
the less authoritative citations in chapters xi. and xii.
of his " Mining Camps."
But these impressions are, as individual impressions,
once for all doomed to be unhistorical. The experience
of one man could never reveal the social process, of
which his life formed but one least element. This pro
cess, however, was after all a very simple though widely
extended moral process, the struggle of society to im
press the true dignity and majesty of its claims on way
ward and blind individuals, arid the struggle of the indi
vidual man, meanwhile, to escape, like a fool, from his
moral obligations to society. This struggle is an old
one, and old societies do not avoid it ; for every man
without exception is born to the illusion that the moral
world is his oyster. But in older societies each man is
conquered for himself, and is forced in his own time to
13
274 CALIFORNIA.
give up his fool's longings for liberty, and to do a man's
work as he may, while in a new society, especially in one
made up largely of men who have left homes and fami
lies, who have rfed from before the word of the Lord,
and have sought safety from their old vexatious duties in
a golden paradise, this struggle being begun afresh by
all comes to the surface of things. California was full
of Jonahs, whose modest and possibly unprophetic du
ties had lain in their various quiet paths at home. They
had found out how to escape all these duties, at least for
the moment, by fleeing over seas and deserts. Strange
to say, the ships laden with these fugitives sank not,
but bore them safely to the new land. And in the des
erts the wanderers by land found an almost miraculous
safety. The snares of the god were, however, none the
less well laid for that, and these hasty feet were soon to
trip. Whoever sought a fool's liberty here (as which
of us has not at some time sought it somewhere ?) was
soon to find all of a man's due bondage prepared for
him, and doubtless much more. For nowhere and at
no time are social duties in the end more painful or ex
acting than in the tumultuous days of new countries ;
just as it is harder to work for months on a Vigilance
Committee than once in a lifetime to sit on a legal jury
in a quiet town.
What we have here to do is to understand what forces
worked for and against order in this community of irre
sponsible strangers, and how in time, for their lonely
freedom, was substituted the long and wearisome toil
that has caused nearly all the men of that pioneer com
munity to die before their due season, or to live even to
day, when they do live at all, the life of poverty and dis
appointment. Let us name at the outset these forces of
order and of disorder.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 275
The great cause of the growth of order in California
is usually said to be the undoubtedly marvelous political
talent of our race and nation. And yet, important as that
cause was, we must not exaggerate it. The very ease
with which the State on paper could be made lulled to
sleep the political conscience of the ordinary man, and
from the outset gave too much self-confidence to the
community. The truly significant social order, which
requires not only natural political instinct, but also vol
untary and loyal devotion to society, was often rather
retarded than hastened in its coming by the political
facility of the people. What helped still more than
instinct was the courage, the moral elasticity, the teach
ableness, of the people. Their greatest calamities they
learned to laugh at, their greatest blunders they soon
recovered from ; and even while they boasted of their
prowess, and denied their sins, they would quietly go
on to correct their past grievous errors, good-humored
and self-confident as ever. A people such as this are in
the long run favored of heaven, although outwardly
they show little proper humility or contrition. For in
time they learn the hardest lessons, by dint of obstinate
cheerfulness in enduring their bitter experiences, and of
wisdom in tacitly avoiding their past blunders.
Against order, however, worked especially two ten
dencies in early California : one this aforementioned
general sense of irresponsibility, and the other a dis
eased local exaggeration of our common national feel
ing towards foreigners, an exaggeration for which the
circumstances of the moment were partly responsible.
The first tendency pioneers admit, though not in all its
true magnitude ; the second they seldom recognize at all,
charging to the foreigners themselves whatever trouble
was due to our brutal ill-treatment of them.
276 CALIFORNIA.
As for the first tendency, it is the great key to the
problem of the worst troubles of early California. The
new-comers, viewed as a mass, were homeless. They
sought wealth, and not a social order. They were, for
the most part, as Americans, decently trained in the du
ties of a citizen ; and as to courage and energy they were
picked men, capable, when their time should come for
showing true manhood, of sacrificing their vain hopes,
and enduring everything. But their early quest was at
all events an unmoral one ; and when they neglected
their duties as freemen, as citizens, and as brethren
among brethren, their quest became not merely un
moral, but positively sinful. And never did the jour
neying pillar, of cloud by day and of fire by night,
teach to the legendary wanderers in the desert more
unmistakably by signs and wonders the eternal law,
than did the fortunes of these early Californians dis
play to them, through the very accidents of daily life,
the majesty of the same law of order and of loyalty
to society. In the air, as it were, the invisible divine
net of social duties hung, and descending, enmeshed ir
resistibly all these gay and careless fortune-hunters even
while they boasted of their freedom. Every piece of
neglected social work they had to do over again, with
many times the toil. Every slighted duty avenged itself
relentlessly on the community that had despised it.
However, in the early days, there was also that other
agency at work for disorder, whose influence is to blame
for much, although not for all, nor even for most, of the
degrada ion that the new State passed through. This
was a brutal tendency, and yet it was very natural,
and, like all natural brutality, it was often, in any in
dividual man, a childishly innocent tendency. It was a
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 277
hearty American contempt for things and institutions
and people that were stubbornly foreign, and that would
not conform themselves to American customs and wishes.
Representatives of their nation these gold-seeking Cali-
fornian Americans were ; yet it remains true, and is,
under the circumstances, a very natural result, that the
American had nowhere else, save perhaps as conqueror
in Mexico itself, shown so blindly and brutally as he
often showed in early California, his innate intoler
ance for whatever is stubbornly foreign. No Ameri
can of sense can be proud when he reflects upon these
doings of his countrymen, both towards the real for
eigners and towards those who were usually confounded
with such, namely, the native Californians. Least of
all can a native American Californian, like the author,
rejoice to remember how the community from which
he sprang treated both their fc41ow- intruders in the
land, and his own fellows, the born citizens of this dear
soil, themselves. All this tale is one of disgrace to
our people. But it is none the less true, and none the
less profitable to know. For this hatred of foreign
ers, this blind nativism, are we not all alike born to
it ? And what but reflection, and our chance measure
of cultivation, checks it in any of us ?
If we leave out the unprovoked violence frequently
offered to foreigners, we may then say that the well-
known crises and tragedies of violent popular justice
during the struggle for order were frequently neither
directly and in themselves crimes of the community, as
conservative people have often considered them, nor yet
merely expressions of righteous indignation on the part
of an innocent and outraged society; but they were
simply the outward symptoms in each case of the past
278 CALIFORNIA.
popular crimes of disloyalty to the social order ; they
were social penalties, borne by the community itself,
even more than by the rogues, for the treason of care
lessness.
II. THE EVOLUTION OF DISORDER.
Iii the mines, to be sure, naked fortune was a more
prominent agent than in the cities or on the coast.
Plainly the iirst business of a new placer mining com
munity was not to save itself socially, since only fortune
could detain for even a week its roving members, but to
get gold in the most peaceful and rapid way possible.
Yet this general absolution from arduous social duties
could not be considered as continuing indefinitely. The
time must come when, if the nature of the place per
mitted steady work, men must prepare to dwell together
in numbers, and for a long period. Then began the
genuine social problems. Everybody who came without
family, as a fortune-hunter whose social interests were
elsewhere, felt a selfish interest here in shirking serious
obligations ; and among such men everybody hoped, for
his own person, soon to escape from the place. And
yet, if this social laziness remained general, the effect
was simply inevitable. There was then no longer any
divine indulgence for the indolent. The social sins
avenged themselves, the little community rotted till its
rottenness could no longer be endured ; and the struggle
for order began in earnest, and ended either with the
triumph of order, and the securing of permanent peace,
or else only when fortune sent all the inhabitants else
where, much sadder men, but sometimes, alas, greater
fools than ever, to try the same hopeless social experi
ment elsewhere.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 279
The social institutions of early days in California have
recently been studied in Mr. Shinn's ably conceived
book on " Mining Camps." Mr. Shinn has examined
only certain aspects of the social life ; he has in fact
considered the camps mainly in their first and most sat
isfactory aspect, as immediate expressions of the orderly
instincts of American miners. That this view of the
mining life is correct, so far as it goes, I doubt not, and
I am glad to find it so well and carefully stated as Mr.
Shinn has stated it. Any one can verify it at his pleas
ure by a reference to the early newspapers. But, after
all, one who thus studies the matter knows the mining
camp, so to speak, only in its first intention, as it was in
its early months, in the flush of childish hopes, or under
simpler conditions. The impression that Mr. Shinn
leaves upon us gives us, therefore, too gentle a view of
the discipline to which the gods persistently subject all
men. What good sense, clear wit, and a well-meaning
and peaceable spirit, could accomplish in establishing a
simple but very unstable order, any community of
American miners did indeed quickly accomplish, at the
very beginning of the life of the mining camp. When
they met on any spot to mine, they were accustomed, as
Mr. Shinn shows us, in the evidence that he has so en
thusiastically collected, to organize very quickly their
own rude and yet temporarily effective government. An
alcalde or a council, or, in the simplest case, merely the
called meeting of miners, decided disputes ; and the
whole power of the camp was ready to support such de
cisions. Two or three of the simplest crimes, such as
murder and theft, were recognized in the brief code of
laws that the miners' meeting often drew up, and these
crimes, once proved against any man, met with the
280 CALIFORNIA.
swiftest punishment, — petty theft with flogging and
banishment, graver crimes with death ; although every
accused man was given, in all the more orderly camps,
the right of a trial, and usually of a jury trial, in the
presence of the assembled miners. In brief, the new
miiiing camp was a little republic, practically independ
ent for a time of the regular State officers, often very
unwilling to submit to outside interference even with its
criminal justice, and well able to keep its own simple
order temporarily intact. Its general peacefulness well
exhibited the native Anglo-Saxon spirit of compromise,
as well as our most familiar American national trait,
namely, that already mentioned formal public good-hu
mor, which you can observe amongst us in any crowded
theatre lobby or street-car, and which, while indicating
nothing as to the private individual characters of the
men who publicly and formally show it, is still of great
use in checking or averting public disturbances, and is
also of some material harm, in disposing us, as a nation,
to submit to numerous manifest public annoyances, im
positions, and frauds. Most useful this quality is in a
community made up of mutual strangers ; and one finds
it best developed in our far western communities.
These two qualities then, the willingness to compro
mise matters in dispute, and the desire to be in public
on pleasant terms with everybody, worked in new camps
wonders for good order. We read, on good authority,
of gold left in plain sight, unguarded and unmolested,
for days together ; of grave disputes, involving vast
wealth, decided by calm arbitration ; of weeks and
months during which many camps lived almost free
from secret theft, and quite free from open violence.
We find pioneers gloomily lamenting those days, when
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 281
social order was so cheap, so secure, and so profitable.
And all these things give us a high idea of the native
race instinct that could thus express itself impromptu
even for a brief period.
But we must still insist : all this view of the mining
life is one-sided, because this good order, widely spread
as it often undoubtedly was, was still in its nature unsta
ble, since it had not been won as a prize of social de
votion, but only attained by a sudden feat of instinctive
cleverness. The social order is, however, something that
instinct must make in its essential elements, by a sort
of first intention, but that only voluntary devotion can
secure against corruption. Secured, however, against
the worst corruption the mining camp life was not, so
long as it rested in this first stage.
For this is what we see when we turn to the other,
still more familiar, picture. Violence leaves a deeper
impression than peace ; and that may explain very read
ily why some boasting pioneers, and many professional
story-tellers, have combined to describe to us the mining
camp as a place where blood was cheaper than gold,
where nearly all gambled, where most men had shot
somebody, where the most disorderly lynching was the
only justice, and where, in short, disorder was supreme.
Such scenes were of course never as a fact universal,
and nowhere did they endure long. That we must once
for all bear in mind. Yet when we turn away from the
exaggerations and absurdities of the mere story-tellers
and the boasters, and when we look at the contempo
rary records, we find, never indeed so bad a general
state of things throughout the mines as the one just de
scribed, but at all events at certain times a great deal
of serious and violent disorder in many camps. To what
282 CALIFORNIA.
was all this due ? The first answer is suggested by a
chronological consideration. The camps of 1848 began
with orderly and friendly life, but in some cases degen
erated before the season was done. The camps of 1849
are described, by those who best knew them, as on the
whole remarkably orderly. By the middle of 1850 we
meet with a few great disturbances, like those in Sonora.
By the beginning of 1851 complaints are general and
quickly lead up to violence ; one looks back to 1849 as
to the golden age of good order, and one even laments
the coming of the state government, which has brought
the semblance, but not the substance of law. In the
older camps, 1851 thus marks the culmination of the
first phase of the struggle for order, while newer camps
are of course still in their first love. This paroxysm of
social rebirth passes, and a more stable order seems for
a time to succeed, in many parts of the mines ; yet,
according to the age and the population of individual
camps, similar struggles are repeated, all through the
early years. This simple chronological consideration,
which we hardly need confirm by detailed references
just here, since it is well known, and will sufficiently ap
pear in the following, shows that disorder was not the
initial stage of the mining camps, but was a corrupt
stage, through which they were apt to pass. The nature
and the causes of the disorder must appear from what
we can learn of the details in the newspapers and other
records of the time.
III. PAX AXD CRADLE AS SOCIAL AGEXT3 : MIXIXG
SOCIETY IX THE SUMMER OF ]848.
To understand these records, however, one must re
member the general facts about the origin, the growth,
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 283
and the aspects, physical and social, of any mining
camp. A camp, at first an irregular collection of tents
about some spot where gold had been discovered, as
sumed form, in time, by the laying out of streets ; and if
its life continued, for its tents were substituted, first
"cloth houses," and then wooden buildings, among
which, a little later, fire-proof structures would begin to
appear. While some camps grew upon " flats," the sit
uations of the early camps were generally in the deep
ravines, close under the vast frowning cliffs that rise
on each side of the narrow canons of the larger Sierra
rivers.1 Those in the lowest foot-hills were, however,
sometimes surrounded only by gentler slopes, or by
bluffs of moderate height. The bars of the larger riv
ers, the gravel in the tributary ravines, and a few gravel
deposits that were far enough from water to be called
" dry diggings," were at first the chief accessible sources
of the gold.
Moral growth is everywhere impossible without favor
able physical conditions. It has seldom been noticed
by later writers that the social condition of the camps
was, in the successive years and despite all good inten
tions, largely and almost irresistibly determined by the
various successively predominant methods of mining.
To understand this fact we need only to follow some of
the early accounts of these methods, associated as many
of them are with descriptions of the local habits and
customs of the moment. To the most of the new-com-
1 The seventh letter of " Shirley," in Ewer's Pioneer, vol. ii. p. 91,
gives vivid impressions of the scenery and situation of Indian Bar,
on the Feather. The letter was written in October. "At present,"
she says, "the sun does not condescend to shine upon Indian Bar at
all." So it was all through the winter. Xo one who has had a glimpse
of the Sierras will fail to remember such places along the canons.
284 CALIFORNIA.
ers all mining -\vas novel, and they describe the myste
ries of the art with enthusiastic detail. Let us begin in
1848 with AValter Colton.1 " I went among the gold-
diggers," he says, " found half a dozen at the bottom of
the ravine, tearing up the bogs, and up to their knees in
mud. Beneath these bogs lay a bed of clay, sprinkled
in spots with gold. These deposits, and the earth
mixed with them, were shovelled into bowls, taken to a
pool near by, and washed out. The bowl, in working,
is held in both hands, whirled violently back and forth
through half a circle, and pitched this way and that suffi
ciently to throw off the earth and water, while the gold
settles to the bottom. The process is extremely labo
rious, and taxes the entire muscles of the frame. In its
effect it is more like swinging a scythe than any work I
ever attempted." This " pan " work was at first very
general, although miners did not usually work in just
such places as this. It has retained its place in the
prospectoi''s life, and in mining in new placers, ever
since, although the handling of the pan may be made
less laborious than it was to Colton's muscles. A little
more practice, and the use of a current of water, such
as usually could be found at hand, or reached by carry
ing the earth down from " dry diggings," helped to
make the pan-washing itself no very hard toil for strong
arms. The digging, however, no practice could im
prove, or render anything but the most wearisome of
tasks. In washing with the pan, in a running stream,
one began each washing by holding the pan, half full of
dirt, a little under the current of water. Shaking, or
even sometimes stirring the contents, and throwing out
with the hand the larger stones, one gradually raised the
1 Three Years in California, \i. 274.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 285
pan out of the current, as the earth dissolved away and
was carried off in the stream. At last the motion and
the flow of water carried off the whole mass, save a little
black sand mingled with the gold particles. After dry
ing this, one could get rid of the sand by blowing, or,
as was customary in later times, by clearing away iron
particles with a magnet.1
At best, however, pan-mining was, in proportion to
the amount of gravel washed, a slow and tedious pro
cess. Even the richest diggings were thus apt to prove
disappointing, and, socially regarded, the pan, if it had
remained long the predominating instrument of mining
work, would have precluded any rapid or secure prog
ress in the organized life of the camps. In 1848, while
the larger and more accessible camps rapidly began the
use of "machines," newer camps were still constantly
being formed by men who wished to seek their fortunes
through the independent use of their pans. And the
easily learned art of pan-mining was a very demoraliz
ing one, so long as a great proportion of the miners
could still hope to get rich by it. Colton, whose experi
ences lay where " machines " were less used, and pans
the rule, describes to us men mining in numbers near to
gether, sometimes within sound of numberless querulous
" prairie-wolves," 2 who had not yet been thinned out, or
driven to be as shy as the surviving ones now are in Cal
ifornia hills ; but the men he makes as wandering, and
1 For an account of the very simple process of " panning," see Hit-
tell's Resources of California, 6th ed. p. 314. For the use of the
pan in 1848, see further Foster's Gold Regions of California, p. 20
(Larkin's letter). Also see Brooks, Four Months among the Gold-
Finders (London and New York, 1849), pp. 36, 37, 41.
2 Colton, p. 279. The "prairie-wolf" is of course identical with
the "covote."
286 CALIFORNIA.
often as discontented, as the wolves ; independent of their
fellow laborers ; quite capable, of course, of ready and
unexactingly simple camp organizations ; l but not led to
undertake any very serious social duties. Where each
man toiled with his pan, he hardly needed to speak to
his next neighbor, who was mainly an object of curiosity
or of envy, in case he either showed symptoms of hav
ing made some discovery, or proved his greater luck by
the gold he could display. The means of getting sup
plies from the coast, in these less accessible camps, were
subject to all sorts of uncertainties ; and, so long as the
pan was very largely used among implements of mining,
affairs must remain so. For pan-mining left it doubt
ful where one's market would be, almost from day to
day, a thing that no dealer could safely long tolerate.2
Hence the enormous prices, the untrustworthy markets,
and the occasional approaches to starvation in the newer
mines.
1 See also Mr. Shinn's Mining Camps, chaps, ix. and x.
2 The local predominance of the pan over the cradle is shown by Col-
ton when (p. 281) after describing the cradle, he adds: '• Most of the
diggers use a bowl or pan ; its lightness never embarrasses their roving
habits ; and it can be put in motion wherever they may find a stream or
spring. It can be purchased now in the mines for five or six dollars ;
a few months since it cost an ounce." This evidence of course holds
only for the camps seen by Colton. The fall in price may have been
due to the increasing use of the cradles; but it must be remembered
that Indian willow-baskets, or any other possible and easily portable
substitutes for bowls, were then eagerly accepted. The restlessness of
these pan-miners exceeded the well-known uneasiness of the later
mining communities, just because there was lacking for them every
motive to permanency in any camp save actual and continuous great
success, while the rudeness of the pan as an instrument made great
success almost always transient. See instances of sudden migrations
and restlessness, and remarks upon the fact in Colton, pp. 293, 302,
314. "As for mutual aid and sympathy," he says, " Samson's foxes
had as much of it, turned tail to, with firebrands tied between."
This is of course a little Coltonian.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER.
The pan as sole instrument for gold-washing was,
then, sociologically and morally, as well as economically
considered, a great evil for the mining life ; and one can
be glad that its time of more extended use was so short.
Already in 1848 many men, and some whole camps,
were desiring and using " machines," as they are at first
rather vaguely called in the accounts, e. g., as Larkin
calls them ; l and Larkin himself had one of them made
for a native miner, at the latter's order, in Monterey :
" a log dug out, with a riddle and sieve made of willow
boughs on it," costing, he tells us, one hundred and
twenty dollars, " payable in gold dust at fourteen dol
lars an ounce." Mason, according to his report of Au
gust IT,2 had found on July 5 the greater part of the
miners at the Mormon or lower diggings already using
the cradle: ua rude machine," "on rockers, six or
eight feet long, open at the foot, and, at its head, a
coarse grate or sieve ; the bottom is rounded, with small
cleats nailed across. Four men are required to work
this Mi:ichine : one digs the ground in the bank close by
the stream ; another carries it to the cradle, and emp
ties it on the grate ; a third gives a violent rocking mo
tion to the machine ; while a fourth dashes on water
from the stream itself." — u The sieve keeps the coarse
stones from entering the cradle, the current of water
washes off the earthy matter, and the gravel is gradu
ally carried out at the foot of the machine, leaving the
gold mixed with a heavy fine black sand above the first
cleats. The sand and gold mixed together are then
drawn off through auger holes into a pan below, are
1 See his letter above cited, p. 19 of Foster's Gold Regions of Cali
fornia.
2 I quote here again from Foster, p. 10.
288 CALIFORNIA.
dried in the sun, and afterwards separated by blowing
off the sand." Essential to the success of the cradle
was of course its inclined position. In the form de
scribed, it has remained in occasional use without change
of principle ever since, although it is less rudely made ;
but in large, permanent, and steadily productive diggings
it is not useful. Its position soon became a very subor
dinate one, and later it became a rare sight.
For the time, however, the cradle was a step in ad
vance, physically and morally. Gravels that the pan-
miner contemptuously abandoned were well worth work
ing on this plan. Camps that would have been deserted
remained, and were prosperous. The great thing,
however, from the sociological point of view, was that
men now had voluntarily, and in an organized way, to
work together. The miner's partnership, which grew up
in this second stage of mining life, soon became one
of the closest of California relationships, and, as such,
has been widely and not unjustly celebrated in song
and story. This accidentally primitive society had
passed from a state of " nature," in the old sense of the
word (this state of " nature " being indeed here a state
of unstable peace, not of general war), and had be
come a collection of mutually more or less independent,
but inwardly united Bands. Rapidly as the successive
stages of this growth passed by, they still left their
mark on the social order, as we shall soon see.
The summary of the situation in the small community
of the early golden days is, then, that the first estab
lished and more crowded camps quickly passed into the
second stage of mining life, substituting for the pan the
cradle, while numerous dissatisfied gold-seekers were
constantly hunting for new diggings, and founding new
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 289
camps, using meanwhile for the most part the pan.
The resulting total of social condition is hard to de
scribe, for lack of good evidence. Mr. Shinn's account
above cited, although well told, and founded in large
measure on a fair sort of pioneer evidence, is still one
sided, and is too optimistic. I have more confidence in
a direct use, as far as it goes, of the very frank and unas
suming contemporary story of Dr. Brooks, also already
cited. J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, an English physician, just
then from Oregon, visited the gold region in the midst
of the first excitement, in an improvised company from
the coast-region, consisting at first of six white men and
one Indian, and later considerably larger. The party, in
the various stages of its life, contained both Englishmen
and Americans, and included one Californian gentleman
of some position. These partners were nearly all mutu
ally quite new acquaintances ; one was supposed to be a
deserting sailor ; none knew anything at the start about
mining. For some time they had good luck ; in the end
they lost nearly all their gains ; their fortunes were on
the whole characteristic. The account of Dr. Brooks,
as published, contains numerous misprinted dates, since
the volume, which comprises the Doctor's diary of the
expedition, with some remarks, was sent home as a
bundle of MS. for the private use of his friends, and
was thereupon printed without the author's supervision.
Allowing for the plain misprints, the chronology of the
account nevertheless agrees well enough with that of
events otherwise known from the Mason and Larkin
letters ; and Brooks seems to be a perfeecly trustworthy /
observer. r
At the Mormon diggings, Brooks " stirred " his first
" pailful " of earth. He found (loc. cit., p. 36) many
19
290 CALIFORNIA.
of the diggers there washing with " pots," others, as
would seem, even washing directly from their spades,
using these as very rough pans. Many, however, used
cradles, and Brooks and his companions, quickly weary
ing of pan-work, made their own cradles out of rough
boards in a day or two, and worked together. The
hahit of employing companies of Indians to do the
mining for some one white adventurer was common
enough ; but the mass of the miners worked either
singly, or in the small cradle-parties. The miners of
the Mormon diggings were all conscious, even at this
time, of a controlling custpmarj; taw, quickly formed, as
it seemed to them, but at all events derived from no one
discoverable present source. Thus (p. 46) it was gen
erally understood that a lump of gold more than half
an ounce in weight, if picked up from the freshly dug
earth by a member of a party mining in partnership,
" before the earth was thrown into the cradle," be
longed to the finder personally, and not t3 the party.
As for society, that at the Mormon diggings was quickly
under the sway of a few native Californian families, of
respectable and sociable character, who appeared under
the protection of their heads, well-to-do native citizens,
who had chosen to seek gold in good company. The
wives of these men were waited on by Indian servants ;
they gave their usual Californian attention to bright
dress and good-fellowship, and held very delightful
dancing parties in the evenings " on the green, before
some of the tents " (p. 47). The friendly and well-
disposed camp joined largely in these parties, and found
it very naturally " quite a treat after a hard day's work,
to go at nightfall to one of these fandangoes." Brooks
gives us no impression that he ever found these enter-
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 291
tainments at that place and time in any wise of suspi
cious character, although he thinks that the gentlemen
sometimes drank a little more than was proper, so that
the merriment was occasionally " animated and impos
ing" (p. 48). Of the ladies, the wives and daughters
of the Californians, he had nothing but good to say.
With regret Brooks and his fellows bade farewell to
these fair entertainers of society at the Mormon dig
gings, and on the first of July left the now over
crowded place for the North Fork, having first sold
their two cradles at auction for three hundred and sev
enty-five dollars in gold dust at fourteen dollars to the
ounce. At the site of Coloma, they found Marshall
mining with a company of Indians, and they spent a
day or two near this place themselves, working in dry
diggings, and carrying the earth down to the stream to
wash. Thence they went on, to Weber's Creek, passing
on the way Sinclair, at work with his Indians. Reach
ing a new camp here, whose members were scattered
over the stream-bed and up the neighboring ravines,
they made for themselves new cradles by hollowing out
logs, and began to employ Indians to help them (p. 57).
Here they were when Colonel Mason visited the mines.
But these diggings also were quickly overcrowded by
wandering miners, of whom " about half work together
in companies — the other half shift each for himself "
(p. 59). The lonely men were evidently pan-miners.
The Indians also crowded the place in hundreds, worked
for bright clothing and whiskey, and staggered about
drunk. The miners of Brooks's party grew discon
tented. There was doubtless plenty of gold on Bear
River ; a trapper told about the region, and consented
to guide the party thither for " sixty-five dollars and
202 CALIFORNIA.
his food." The Brooks party had much trouble in get
ting provisions enough for their journey, as everything
was " inordinately dear," so that they had to content
themselves with bacon, dried beef, and coffee (p. 61).
They at this time received and accepted offers from
three or four strangers to join their company, which
was thus strengthened against Indians. Hard toil,
under good guidance, but through a very rough country,
brought them over the hills to Bear River Valley, where,
after finding rich gravels, they began once more to make
cradles, and to build a large, roughly fortified shanty,
for protection against the Indians. They made a
stricter division of labor than before, and toiled fruit
fully for some time. The life was at best a hard one,
and Brooks found himself very lonesome, and home
sick. At night, around the camp-fire, the trapper-guide
told great talcs of the deserts beyond the Sierras, and
of the horrible dangers of the unknown expanse of the
Great Salt Lake, on to whose " dark turbid waters," as
he declared, " no living being has yet been found dar
ing enough to venture far," owing to a mysterious whirl
pool there said to exist. The country about them was
rugged, and still little visited ; and was as romantic
and bewildering to them as were the trapper's nightly
yarns. Their diggings, however, proved very rich.
At this point trouble began. First some " horse-
thief " Indians appeared, and succeeded in galloping off
with several of their horses. In a brush with these In
dians one of the Brooks party was killed. Next, as the
time grew near when the season would force them to
forsake the lonely golden valley, sickness appeared in
the camp, provisions ran low, and the mass of gold-dust
now accumulated in their cabin began to seem to them,
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 293
after the Indian fight, a perilous wealth. For Indians
too by this time desired gold to exchange for fire-water.
While the trapper, with one man, accordingly set out
for Butter's Fort, to get provisions, three of the party,
including the Californian gentleman, were deputed to
carry the gold-dust to San Francisco, while the others
were to toil out the season, and divide gains with those
sent away. Success, however, had already engendered
jealousy and suspicion. The party were very near an
open quarrel (p. 78) over the choice of the men to be
intrusted with the gold, and one of the three actually
sent, a friend of Brooks, who had accompanied him
from Oregon, was intended by Brooks and some others
to watch his fellow-messengers.
On the way with the gold, the three messengers were
suddenly attacked by mounted robbers, who lassoed and
badiy injured this third man, and escaped with his horse
and saddle-bags, the latter containing the bulk of the gold
itself. The unjust suspicions of which Brooks frankly
makes confession, by causing this man to be the carrier
of most of the treasure, had resulted in the loss of nearly
the whole outcome of the long toil. The robbers were
native Californians and Indians ; and one of them, who
who was killed in the fight, was, Brooks declares, on the
report given by miners who recognized him, " one of
the disbanded soldiers of the late Californian army, by
name Tomas Maria Carrillo ; a man of the very worst
character, who had connected himself with a small band
of depredators, whose occupation was to lay [sic] in
wait at convenient spots along the roads in the neigh
borhood of the seacoast, and from thence to pounce
upon and plunder any unfortunate merchant or ranchero
that might be passing unprotected that way. The gang
294 CALIFORNIA.
had now evidently abandoned the coast to try their for
tunes in the neighborhood of the mines ; and, judging
from the accounts which one of the miners gave of the
number of robberies that had recently taken place there
abouts, their mission bad been eminently successful "
(p. 82)-1
This characteristic event, the outcome of the scattered
condition of society at the moment, and of the demoral
izing old days of the conquest, led Brooks to learn of
several equally characteristic occurrences of other sorts
in neighboring mines. The companions of the wounded
man were possibly aided in repulsing the robbers by the
approach of a band of mounted miners, who opportunely
appeared just after the assailants had fled. The new
comers, however, declined to take any trouble to help
the wounded man, but, as the messengers related to
Brooks, " coolly turned their horses' heads round, and
left us alone with our dying friend, not deigning further
to notice our appeals." Every man looked out for him
self in those days, as one sees ; and when the two mes
sengers, after at last getting, by their begging a little,
help, managed to bring their friend — not dying, in
deed, but badly hurt — to a near camp, they could only
return alone and disheartened to the old spot on the
Bear River, and tell their strange tale to the rest. The
whole party thereupon spent a night about the camp-fire
in sullen silence, broken only by occasional bitter or sus
picious speeches, until the dawn found them weary,
haggard, and disgusted. What gold was left they quar
reled over during the morning, and having at last
weighed it out in parcels, they separated finally into two
1 Of this Tomas M. Carrillo, Mr. H. H. Bancroft's list of pioneers
knows only this one fact, as told by Brooks.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 295
parties, of which one, with Brooks, set off to the camp
where the wounded man had been left. On the way
they met the trapper, who, with his one companion, had
previously gone to Sutter's Fort for supplies. These
two also had had their adventures, which they now pro
ceeded to tell. The trapper and his comrade found
flour as much as eighty-five dollars a barrel at Sutter's
Fort. On the way back, their pack-horses were stolen,
one night, with their packs of provisions. When they
appealed to the miners of a neighboring camp for help
in finding the thieves, they were only treated with rude
ness and suspicion, and one of the miners drove them
off with his rifle (p. 86). He later proved to be what
his friends called a peaceably-disposed man, whose
brusqueness of manner was the result of the large quan
tity of gold-dust that fortune had given him, and of
the fact that he consequently demanded proper intro
duction of people who came to call on him. To be sure,
his desire to be alone had already led him to feel it his
duty to shoot and kill two men, so that some of his
neighbors called him a " terror " ; but, as appears from
p. 89, others justified him, on the ground that he had
shot only people who needed shooting. Such an asser
tion, under such circumstances, admitted of no proper
verification ; but, at all events, his manners lacked deli
cacy, and the two Brooks party men felt aggrieved at
the imperfect public spirit in this whole camp, near
which their pack-horses had so mysteriously disappeared.
The two had yet other sad things to tell Brooks of the
state of society at this little camp ; for some men there
had their arms in slings, and others said that such inju
ries were common in those diggings after people had
chanced to differ in opinion.
296 CALIFORNIA.
Brooks and his party from Bear River exchanged
their own little tale of disaster with the one thus con
fided to them by the trapper and his comrade, and then
went on to hunt for the wounded friend. Him they
found slowly recovering from his injuries and lying in
a shanty. But the camp where he was staying was
sickly. " Fever was prevalent, and I found," says
Brooks, " that more than two thirds of the people at
this settlement were unable to move out of their tents.
The other third were too selfish to render them any
assistance" (p. 87). It was even hard to find a burial-
place when one was dead ; for these miners " denied
the poor corpses of their former friends a few feet of
earth for a grave, and left the bodies exposed for the
wolf to prey upon." The season, in fact, was nearly
done, and men were now frantic for the gold.
All this was surely an unpleasant state of affairs ;
though 1848 is the season that Mr. Henry Degroot, as
quoted by Mr. Shinn,1 seems to look back upon as con
taining '' all that was staid and primitive in or about
the mines of California." But we have already seen,
in Dr. Brooks's account of the happy fandangoes " on
the green " at the Mormon diggings, how capable he
was of picturing the pleasant side of this seemingly so
irresponsible and accidental life, and how different the
view of a man in another camp at the same time might
have been. One also sees, however, the impossibility
of doubting that, in these pan-mining days, with only
about half of a camp using the rocker, and with no
miners connected in any form of close personal organi-
1 Mininy Cnmpf, p. 122. It is proper to n<M that Mr. Po^root, as
appears by his article; in the Overland Monthly for April, 1874, ar
rived in 1849, and knew of 1848 only by hearsay.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 297
zation, save such as the rocker-parties implied, irrespon
sibility meant almost universal selfishness beyond the
limits of one's" own party, and selfishness, in the long
run, meant disorder ami occasional violence, with a very
bad social outlook ahead, despite the readiness where
with rough camp organizations could always be made
for the momentary repression of more intolerable crime
or for the settlement of greater disputes.
At all events, in these last days of the season of 1848
Brooks found everybody talking of disorder and inse
curity. His friend was, indeed, safe enough, and was
well cared for by a " kind Californian nurse and her
husband," whose " kind treatment of my poor friend
offered a striking contrast to the callous selfishness
around." But, when Brooks himself set out towards
Butter's Fort, he heard reports of trouble all about him.
Nobody left his gold in his tent ; everybody carried it
on his own person ; and the number of missing men
" whose own friends had not thought it worth while to
go in search of them " was considerable. One or two
dead bodies were found floating in the river, " which
circumstance was looked upon as indicative of foul
play ; " as a gold-digger who was drowned by accident
ought, people said, to have enough gold about him to
keep his body under water. The characteristic fact
that nobody was known by Brooks to have taken any
trouble to look closely at these dead bodies, to verify or
disprove, by examining for direct signs of foul play, this
a priori reasoning, is only indirectly indicated by our
author. " Open attempts at robbery," he adds, " were
rare ; it was in the stealthy night-time that thieves
prowled about, and, entering the little tents, occupied
by not more than perhaps a couple of miners, neither of
298 CALIFORNIA.
whom, in all probability, felt inclined to keep a weary
watch," stole what could be found. Going further on
his way, Brooks came to the ill-humored camp near
which the trapper had lost the provisions. Here he saw
a group of miners drinking brandy " at a dollar a dram."
As the greater part of them were " suffering from fe
ver," the doctor himself seriously disapproved of their
course, on professional as well as on economic grounds.
Nevertheless, he found time to learn a few facts in favor
of the much maligned inhabitants. They were selfish
and dissipated, but they meant well in their way.
Weary of such things, he reached Sacramento, and
then went on to Monterey, where he joined in a fruit
less pursuit into the Tulare region of a robber-band,
who were reported to be identical with the assailants of
the gold-bearing messengers. The result of the pursuit
was only more weariness, and a sight of prairie, thicket,
and hill. In sullen silence the pursuers at last rode
back to Monterey, sick at heart. As for those who
still remained together of the original party, there was
nothing to do but to part. The resolution to do so
" was not come to without something like a pang — a
pang Avhich I sincerely felt, and which I believe was
more or less experienced by us all. We had lived for
four months in constant companionship, and a friend
ship, more vivid than can well be imagined in civilized
lands to have been the growth of so short a period, had
sprung up betwixt us. There had been a few petty
bickerings between us, and some unjust suspicions on
my part; but these were all forgotten." The remaining
gold was divided, and " the same night we had a sup
per, at which a melancholy joviality was in the ascend
ant, and the next day shook hands and parted." " On
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 299
waking the next morning," says Brooks, " I found that
I was alone."
In this account there is one thing to be noted ; namely,
that Brooks is uncommonly objective in his fashions of
speech. He has no discoverable aim save to tell a
plain story, and often tells things to his own disadvan
tage. Hence one may have a reasonable confidence in
his accuracy. His own summary is especially note
worthy, as given in his introductory letter to a relative,
written after the diary. Of the country itself he speaks
well : "I assure you it is hardly possible for any ac
counts of the gold-mines to be exaggerated. The El
Dorado has really been discovered " (p. 13). But of
the social condition he has only a gloomy account to
give : " I have worked hard and undergone some hard
ships ; and, thanks to the now almost lawless state of
the country, I have been deprived of the mass of my
savings, and must, when the dry season comes round
again, set to work almost new. . . . My own case is
that of many others. As the number of diggers and
miners augmented, robberies and violence became fre
quent. At first, when we arrived at the Mormon dig
gings, for example, everything was tranquil. Every
man worked for himself, without disturbing his neigh
bor. Now the scene is widely changed indeed." Al
lowing for a little momentary depression, we may still
regard the account given by Brooks, and confirmed
by the details of his story, as a fair one, on the whole,
so far as his own experience could guide him, and his
experience is plainly no insignificant one.
How shall we reconcile this tale of transient peace-
fulness, followed by weary selfishness, bickering, and
violence, with the much brighter picture of 1848, giveu
300 CALIFORNIA.
on the basis of his own pioneer evidence, by Mr. Shinn ?
The method of reconciliation seems to me clear enough.
The quickly organized and, at the first, peaceful camp
of 1848 was an easily cultivated and soon withering
flower, which could not well live to the end of the Cali
fornia dry season. There was no unity of interest to
preserve its simple forms from degeneracy. The camp
consisted of a perfectly transient group of utterly rest
less and disconnected men, who had not the slightest
notion of staying where they were more than a few
weeks. "When a country-side was full of such groups,
disorder, before many months should pass, was simply
inevitable. Skill in improvising organizations could not
avert the result. Moreover, the life in small partner
ships involved, despite the idyllic character of the re
lations of " pards," almost every possible temptation
that could act to make a good-humored man quarrel
some. Rough camp-life, among novices, is almost al
ways as full of bickering as of good-fellowship. Good-
humor in public meetings, or in the camp at large, with
private petty quarrels going on meanwhile — this was
the common condition. The affray in the Donner party
has already, in an earlier chapter, suggested this really
very trite reflection to us, and we need not dwell on it
here. The practiced camper recovers his even temper,
but the novice is long subject to bearishness. The mat
ter is largely physical. The civilized man becomes
soon peevish, with the irregular meals and the monotony
of camp-life, and may show, even to his best friend, an
hitherto unsuspected brutality of mood and behavior.
What public spirit there was in 18-48 showed itself
best, as Mr. Shinn has pointed out, in the regulation of
the miner's temporary land-tenure and in the settlement
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 801
of disputes about mining rights. But the life, on the
whole, was seriously demoralizing to all concerned in it,
and must remain so until more elaborate methods of
mining should be introduced.
IV. MINING SOCIETY IN 1849 AND 1850, AND THE
BEGINNING OF SLUICE-MINING.
The small partnership and cradle system of mining
was also, as we know, the common system of 1849, and
of the early part of 1850. In a noted, but now, at least
in the herein cited first edition, quite rare pamphlet,1
one finds the experience of 1848 and of the early sum
mer of 1849, summed up in a way that is very instruct
ive for our present purpose. On page 34, the new-comer
receives advice as to his needs. First of all he is told
to carry little baggage ; as " it will always impede his free
movement, if he should want to go from place to place.
He should have absolutely nothing more than what he
can carry on a beast, if he be able to have one ; or, if
not, what he can shoulder himself. The less one brings
to the mines, the better prospect of success he may
have." A change of clothing, a pair of blankets, a pick
axe, a spade (a winding-sheet is not mentioned), a crow
bar, a pan, a sheath-knife, a trowel ; such is the outfit
for the single miner. " A washing-machine," however,
" is used when there are two or more working in part
nership." This machine is then described in its simpler
form very much as above, and one recently imported
improvement, the " Burke Rocker," a sort of transition
to the later " Long Tom," is praised. All other de-
1 California as it is, and as it may be, or a Guide to the Gold Rer/ion.
By F. P. Wierzbicki, M. D. First ed. San Francisco : Printed by
Washington Bartlett, 1849, pp. 60. The preface is dated September
30, 1849. The book is the first English volume printed in California.
302 CALIFORNIA.
vices so far known to Wierzbicki are condemned, espec
ially, of course, those numberless and useless washers
that new-comers brought, and so promptly left in the
rubbish heaps of San Francisco. The result as to the
value and limits of mining partnerships is very simply
and practically stated (page oG) : " However, according
to circumstances, these partnerships are formed, it can
only be said that there is no occasion for more than four
persons in a company, and frequently three or two do
better than four. For protection and occasional service
that one may require from another, it is always better
to be in partnership with a suitable person or persons."
On page 45 and page 46, Wierzbicki mentions mean
while in a casual way, and as an understood fact, the
general good order and peace of the mines. But he
shows us also on what changing stuff this good order
depended. The " silent consent of all " generally is
enough to insure a miner his rights to his " claim " ;
lynch law has been sometimes needed and used for mur
derers and robbers ; but improvised judges and juries
have seen the thing carefully done. The miners easily
settle their own disputes about the use of land ; their
justice is prompt and efficacious. The population, how
ever, " is constantly fluctuating ; " and so any perma
nent jurisdictions seem to the writer incapable of estab
lishment at present. One sees the outcome of all this.
The miners rove about in what seems on the whole
peace ; there is no seriously exacting government in
Israel ; every man does what, is right in his own eyes,
subject to a simple and easily improvised popular justice.
Large partnerships and extended social alliances are,
however, entangling and useless. Responsibilities must
be avoided by one who wants success.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 303
The immediate result of this system, as applied in
1849, was, however, on the whole, remarkably free
from serious public mishap. Many causes combined to
postpone this year the evil results. The great numbers
and high character of the new-comers are in part re
sponsible for this. The great numbers led to vast ex
tensions of the field of work, and rendered the risks of
intercommunication among the various camps less no
ticeable than in the previous year. By virtue of sheer
mass, the community meanwhile forced upon itself a de
gree of hastily improvised organization that was in
tended by no one individual, but that was necessary for
the purpose of feeding and otherwise supplying so many
people. The numerous new commercial towns that
sprang up in the valley regions, offered fresh chances
to disappointed miners, and checked both their discon
tent, and their desire to wander off alone. Thus the
whole life was, for the time, far healthier than the life
that Brooks saw.1
Bayard Taylor, who traveled through tho country as
" Tribune " correspondent in 1849,2 and who saw much
of the mines, is an observer sufficiently optimistic to suit
the most enthusiastic. He came at just the moment of
1 A suggestion as to the chronology of the early settlements belongs
here. The American, the Cosumnes, and the Moquelumne Elvers
were the sites of the early mining settlements of 1848, and here the
greatest activity of 1849 also went on. By 1850 the large camps had
extended northward as far as the North Fork of the Feather, and into
Mariposa County on the South. The next year saw much activity as
far north as Shasta. Prospectors were of course always in advance of
the larger camps.
2 Bayard Taylor left San Francisco, to return to the East, just after
the fire of December 24, 1849. See El Dorado (Household edition), p.
316.
304 CALIFORNIA.
his life 1 to appreciate the young community. He was
himself young, ardent, and in love ; he had come to
California to see great things, and he certainly saw
them. There is no question of his general accuracy in
telling what he really saw, and lie has the power that
so few of our unimaginative nation have, to describe
scenes, people, and things, instead of itemized and arbi
trary abstractions of a numerical or technical character.
Still, we must understand his mood ; he saw whatever
illustrated life, hope, vigor, courage, prosperity. It was
not his husiness to see sorrow or misery. He saw, for
instance, but one drunken man in all the mines.2 Oth
ers at the same time had a less cheerful experience in
this respect. Mr. Theodore T. Johnson, for instance,8
who was of a more melancholy turn of mind, '• frequently
saw miners lying in the dust helpless with intoxication.''
and we need no such evidence to convince us of what we
well know a priori. Taylor's optimism, however, is not
without its high value for us ; for he shows us what the
better spirit of 1849 really was, despite all its so fatal
carelessness. " In all the large digging districts," we
learn (p. 101), "there were established regulations,
which were faithfully observed. . . . There was as much
security to life and property as in any part of the Union,
and as small a proportion of crime." This lie knew
partly from hearsay ; although as to hearsay evidence,
he was indeed a little uncritical, since, just after narrat-
1 See his Biography, by Mrs. Taylor and Mr. II. E. Scudcler (Bos
ton, 18851, vol. i. chap. vii.
- Kl J)t»-ai!r>, p. 312. People drink far too much, thinks Taylor,
but somehow they do not trot drunk in California. This was a not un
common boast of early Californians ; but nobody makes it in Califor
nia now.
8 See his Si</!tts in the Goll Region, and Scents by the Way, New
York, 1849, p. 182.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 305
ing on such evidence the attempted expulsion by Ameri
cans of the " ten thousand " Sonoran miners at work in
the southern mines, — an attempted expulsion that he
supposed to have been fairly successful, though it was
not, — he goes on at once to assure us (p. 103), that
" abundance of gold does not always beget a grasping
and avaricious spirit," and even adds that " the pi'inciples
of hospitality were as faithfully observed in the rude tents
of the diggers, as they could be by the thrifty farmers
of the North and West," and, finally, that "the cosmo
politan cast of society in California, resulting from the
commingling of so many races and the primitive mode
of life, gave a character of good-fellowship to all its
members." All this he tells us, not by way of irony
about the recent hospitality and good-fellowship shown
to the ten thousand Sonorans, but because he could
"safely say," as he expresses it, "that I never met with
such unvarying kindness from comparative strangers."
But, allowing for all the youthful optimism, Taylor's
testimony is good evidence for the peace and hospitality
that he directly experienced or heard of from trustworthy
people, and his experience was large and varied. He
found, at the beginning of winter (p. 263) the camps in
the " dry diggings " well organized, each one with " an
alcalde chosen, and regulations established as near as
possible in accordance with the existing laws of the
country." The alcaldes had very great powers, but were
well obeyed. " Nothing in California seemed more mi
raculous to me than this spontaneous evolution of social
order from the worst elements of anarchy. It was a
lesson worth even more than the gold." In his general
summary (in chapter xxx.) of the social condition of
California, Taylor finds gambling and extravagance very
20
306 CALIFORNIA.
prevalent, and, together with the excessive drinking of
those people who never got drunk, he considers these
the great evils of the land. But the simpler virtues
seemed to him cheap and easy in California. Gener
osity, hospitality, democratic; freedom from all social
prejudices, energy, ardor, mirthfulness, industry : all he
found alike prevalent. As he saw the easy work of the
constitutional convention, and took part in the prepa
rations for the subsequent election, public spirit also
seemed to him a common virtue of Californians. The
signs of the too general lack of it came near fo the sur
face of his experience sometimes ; but those he never
saw. On p. 252 he tells us of the scene on the Lower
Bar of the Moquelumne, at the first state election, in
November, 1849. u The election day dawned wet and
cheerlessly." Until noon the miners lay dozing idly in
their tents, unable to work, and very careless about the
dignity of the occasion. At last the voting began in the
largest of the tents, " the inspectors being seated behind
the counter, in close proximity to the glasses and bottles,
the calls for which were quite as frequent as the votes."
This was indeed harmless enough for the moment, and
the ignorance of most of the miners about the men voted
for was natural. But more characteristic wras the spirit
in which men voted. One of the candidates lost twenty-
three votes for having been seen recently electioneering
in the mines in a high-crowned silk hat. Some people
voted only for known candidates. But many chose
otherwise, a representative man of them saying, in justi
fication : " When I left home, I was determined to go it
blind. I went it blind in coining to California, and I 'm
not going to stop now. I voted for the constitution, and
I 've never seen the constitution. I voted for all the
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 307
candidates, and ' I don't know a damned one of them.
I 'm going it blind all through, I am." This fellow was
only too decidedly a type of a large class. And such
was the birthday of the new State in the mountains.
In short, 1849 was a year of successful impromptu
camp-organizations, and of general external peace ; but
it was as full of the elements of future confusion as it
was of the strength and courage that would in time
conquer this confusion. The roving habits of that year
long remained injurious elements in the more exacting
civilization of later years. And even the memory of
the easy social successes of those days often proved de
moralizing to the later communities, by begetting an im
patience of all legal delays and mistakes. If we want,
however, really to understand the forces of early Cali
fornia life, we must study the year 1851, a year which,
despite the traditions of the pioneers, is of far more his
torical interest than 1849. The latter is the year of the
making of the constitution, and that is its great histori
cal merit ; but, for the mass of the population, it is also
the year of vague airy hopes, of noble but untried social
and moral promise, of blindness, of absurd blunders,
and in general of fatal self-confidence and selfishness.
Its one poetical aspect, the fervor of innocent, youthful,
romantic hope and aspiration among its better men, is
something as brief as the " posy of a ring." 1849JJi<
iu ihort. the boyish year of California. 1851, on the
contrary, is the manly year, tKe year of clearer self-con
sciousness, of lost illusions, of bitter struggles, of tried
heroism, of great crimes and blunders indeed, and of
great calamities, but also of the salvation of the new
State. It saw the truly sad and significant days of our
early life, and we should honor it accordingly.
308 CALIFORNIA.
A series of changes in the methods of work, a series
which began already in 1849, which continued through
1850, and which reached a first culmination early in
1851, was destined to render far more stable and respon
sible this roving mining life of 1849. The work done by
the rocker might be made more effective by enlarged
appliances, and especially by increasing the amount of
water used in washing. Thus, after several improved
rockers had been tried with varying success, the Long
Tom (widely used in 1850), and, a little later, that finely
simple invention, the board sluice, separately and to
gether first modified, and then revolutionized, the whole
business of placer-mining.1 Elaborate descriptions be
long not here. In its typical form, however, a sluice is
a very long shallow box. which may extend to many
hundreds of feet, so inclined as to give a stream of water
flowing through it a very good headway in the box,
especially perhaps in the upper end. Along the bottom
,of the sluice, as it originally was made, were fastened
low cleats of wood or " riffles," " at long intervals " (so
1 The first number of the Sacramento Transcript that appeared as a
steamer edition on April 2P>, 1850 (see 2d vol. of the Harvard College
Library Transcript file), contains on a single page an interesting series
of letters from the various mining distriets, which furnish a survey of
the state of work at the moment. The torn is mentioned as in use at
Auburn, but is not otherwise mentioned. During the summer it lie-
came more common. The second steamer Transcript, May 29, 1850,
discusses mining "machinery" at length, mentioning only the vari
ous improvements of (lie rocker, with devices for the use of quicksil
ver. As late as the Daily Transcript of October 19, 1850, I find the
rocker the chief instrument mentioned in reports from the mines al
though the torn is known. Not until Mny 2, 1851, however, do I find
in this paper an account of " sluice-washing" as a new and profitable
process. It then rapidly grew in favor, and the torn became an aux
iliary or wholly subordinate instrument. The northern mines took
up new devices more rapidly than the southern.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 309
runs the description in the " Transcript," loc. cit.\ Later
the riffles were better arranged with special regard for
durability and for convenience in removing them to
" clean up." The gold particles will be caught and will
settle just above the riffles. To the sluice a constant and
swift stream of water must be supplied through an arti
ficial channel, from a reservoir, or from some point where
it is convenient to tap a natural stream. This free sup
ply of running water is the essential element of sluice-
mining. The sluice thus provided by one's side, one
shovels the paying-gravels into it from one's claim, and
so the earth is carried down to the " tailings," an as
sistant removing the larger stones meanwhile. One con
tinues this process steadily for days, or even weeks, and
then upon " cleaning up " one expects to find the gold
particles, mingled with a little black sand, collected
above the riffles.1 As for the " torn," in its earlier
forms, it was simply a kind of very short sluice, pro
vided with a strainer for catching large stones, and
supplied with water by hand.
The introduction of 'the sluice, with its various auxil
iaries, not only secured the productiveness of California
placer mines for many years, but it acted indirectly on
society, as a check to the confusion and disorder that
began to grow among the miners in 1850 and 1851.
Although the early camps were more orderly than those
of 1851, they were so, as we shall see, only because the
demoralizing influences of a roving and hazardous, irre
sponsible life had not yet begun to work their full
1 It is impossible to give any extended list of authorities on this
topic, and needless to. Cf. HittelPs Resources, p. 307 (6th ed.); Ca-
pron, California (Boston, 1854), p. 208 ; Auger, Voyage tn Californie,
p. 107, for views of various periods.
310 CALIFORNIA.
effects. The disorders of 1851 and later years could
be checked, and were checked, because they occurred in
communities that now had vested interests. As so often
happens in social matters, the effects here began to show
themselves when the causes were already in decline ;
and some of the camps of 1851 reaped the whirlwind
that the wanderers of 1849 had sown. But sluice-
mining meant serious responsibilities of many sorts, and
so, in the end, good order. For, in the first place, men
now had to work less independently, and more in large
companies. And water became a thing that could no
longer be taken as it came, but that must be brought in
a steady stream to the right place, often by much labor ;
and thus it acquired a market value, so much per " min
er's inch." To supply it in the dry Sierra valleys be
came a distinct branch of industry. It might be needed
"ITT wash gravels found high up on hill-sides; and, in
order to get it there, men must build great wooden aque
ducts, or "flumes," from far up the mountain streams,
so as to let the water run, of its own impulse, to the
needed place. The flumes often crossed wide valleys ;
they were themselves the outcome of months of labor,
and employed in time many millions of capital. In
various improved shapes they have remained essential
to the mining industry ever since.
Nor was this the only direction in which gravel-min
ing increased its organization, and proved its power to
make a possible basis for the social life of a civilized
community. River-bed mining, undertaken on a small
scale early, and on a large scale but with general dis
aster in 1850, was, in 1851 and later, a great and fruit
ful industry.1 It constituted one of the boldest and
1 The vast river-bed operations of 1850, both in the northern and in
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 311
most dramatic of the miner's great fights with fortune.
He had to organize his little army of laborers, to risk
everything, to toil nearly through the summer for the
hope of a few weeks at most of hard-earned harvest at
the end ; and often, at the very moment when victory
seemed nearest, an early rain swept everything away,
and left absolutely no return. In this type of mining,
whose operations have been very frequently described,
the object was to turn the course of some one of the
greater mountain-streams, by means of a dam and a
canal or flume. The bed would thus be left bare, per
haps for miles, while the flume carried along the whole
body of the stream, whose impulse was meanwhile used
to turn water wheels in the flume, and so to pump from
the stream-bed the surplus water that still interfered
with active operations.1
To get all this ready was a slow and difficult opera
tion. The mountain torrent, winding, cliff-bound and
swift, was no easy prey to catch and tame. One had
first to wait long for its fall before beginning work.
When, after months of toil, the thing was done, nobody
knew what was to be found in the river-gravels until
mining had gone on for some time. Meanwhile nothing
the southern mines, are reviewed in the newspapers of that autumn.
See in particular, for the early undertakings of 18-49, Wierzbicki, p.
41 and p. 46 ; and, for the operations of 1850, the Sacramento Tran
script of September 30 and October 8, 1850. The causes of failure in
1850 were inexperience in doing the mechanical work, a frequent
bad choice of situations, and the early, though light rains of that
autumn. In 1851 the dry weather continued till nearly the end of
the year and success was very general.
1 Borthwick's Three Years in California, contains in a plate, op
posite p. 208, an original sketch of an early river-bed mining scene.
Numerous others may be found in California books. Dredging the
rivers was early dreamed of, but of course never succeeded in produ
cing gold.
312 CALIFORNIA.
is more whimsical than the beginning of the California
rainy season. The first great black clouds, and the first
steady, warm sonthwester, may come already in Sep-
tember, although then the showers are apt to pass by in
a night. November is yet more likely to hear the moan
ing of the first long autumn storm. But there are years
that pass away altogether before the serious work of
winter begins, and so leave to the following January
and February the honors of the first " clouds and flow
ers," and keep even through December still the weari
ness of the '• dust and sky." This uncertainty, which
in later years has so embittered the lives of farmers,
was in the early days significant, although with a differ
ence, for the river-bed miners. The great rains would
at last fall, and, unless good warning had been given
and taken, not only the dams would burst (as for that
matter they must then in any case soon burst), but
the flumes, with all their works, would go plunging
in fragments down the newly -born brown torrents.
And so these last weeks of gold-harvesting and of dan
ger to all the capital invested were weeks of feverish
toil and anxiety. Yet on such food some of the wealth
iest camps for a time subsisted. And the work taxed
all the energies of hundreds of men.
Without giving further space to descriptions of min
ing by sinking shafts (or " coyote-holes," as the miners
of 1850 and 18;">1 called them), and without dwelling
upon the beginnings of quartz mining and of hydraulic
mining, we must return to our main topic. It was nec
essary for us thus to examine a little the physical side
of the mining industry in order to appreciate the growth
of the social life. The passage from lonely pan wash
ing to the vast operations of the flume companies, of
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 313
the river-bed miners, and later of the hydraulic miners
and of the quartz mining companies, did not remove
from mining its dangerous character, either considered
as an investment for capital, or viewed as a basis for a
sound social order. But, at all events, men found in
the advance of the industry to its more complex forms,
in the formation of the necessary great partnerships,
and in the organization of labor, the thing that all men
need, namely, something to give a sense of mutual du
ties, and of common risks. The irresponsible freedom
of the gay youth who had crowded the ships from the
Eastern States must in all this toil be sadly limited.
They had condemned themselves to one of the hardest
and often bitterest of lives. But, at all events, they
were now bound to build a society. Even while they
oi'ganized their private schemes their camp became a
town, and themselves townsmen.
V. THE SPIRIT OF THE MINERS' JUSTICE OF 1851 AND
1852: THE MINERS ON THEIR OWN LAW-
We have seen how the mining camp, from the first
moments of its existence, was easily organized so as to
seem a rudely but for some time effectively governed
little state. The business of government, as we have
also seen, was limited to keeping the public peace from
grosser disturbances, to punishing theft and murder,
and to settling disputes about the use of land for mining
purposes. The miners meanwhile commonly had a feel
ing that purely " private disputes," that is, those that
did not violently and directly assail the public peace in \ /
a general way, were not properly the concern of the
community.1 This was, to be sure, a fatally mistaken
1 Cf. Mr. Shinn's Mining Camps, p. 126.
314 CALIFORNIA.
notion, and could not be consistently carried out. But
the effort to carry it out, by ignoring so far as possible
processes for debt, and by paying little attention to
gamblers' quarrels, and to like displays of violence,
must soon demoralize any growing community.
However, we have to consider the young mining
town as it was, and to ask what was the consciousness
that, after the first months of entirely primitive good
order, isolation, and effective self-government had
passed away, the miners themselves had retained, while
they still continued to apply to criminals this rude and
primitive camp code. Did they suppose themselves to
be still really and justly free from any immediate exter
nal authority ? Were they conscious of their camp as of
a properly independent community, having a right to its
own laws ? Did they retain this consciousness after
submission to the state courts was possible ? Or did
they, on the contrary, feel their improvised code to be
simply lynch law, the assertion of an unauthorized inde
pendence, and so an actual rebellion against the estab
lished and properly sovereign laws of the land, a rebel
lion only excused by the necessity of the moment ?
This question, comparatively insignificant in 1848 and
1849, becomes of much greater interest as soon as the
new State was born.
To this question Mr. Shinn has answered, in his "Min
ing Camps," on the basis of his various authorities, that
the miners' organization was normally not only efficient
for its purposes, but also wholly in earnest in its work
(p. 175), and that the miners' justice, notwithstanding its
occasional lapses, was " in every important particular "
sharply contrasted with lynch law (p. 230). Mr. Shinn
draws at some length the contrast between miners' law
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 315
and lynch law. Lynch law, as we now know it, through
certain too familiar newspaper items from a number of
rural districts in our South and West, is sudden in its
action, creates no true precedents, keeps no records,
shuns the light, conceals the names of its ministers, is
generally carried out in the night by a perfectly tran
sient mob, expresses only popular passion, and is in fine
essentially disorderly. Miners' law was open, in its
methods, liked regularity of procedure, gave the accused
a fair chance to defend himself, was carried out in
broad daylight, and by men publicly chosen ; and when
state and county organizations were sufficiently devel
oped to take its place, it gladly- resigned its sceptre to
the regular officers of the law.
This is the strongest possible statement on the side of
those who maintain the satisfactory character of the
miners' code for the simple social purposes that it un
dertook to attain. I am very anxious to do this view
proper justice. That, for awhile, in new and orderly
camps, the law of the miners' meetings was in spirit as
effective in its way as a regular code, and that those
who supported it hoped in time to bring it into due sub
ordination to the state law, I readily admit. But un
fortunately, camps were many, their primitive mood of
perfect good order was brief, and the typical mining
town of 1851 and later years had passed into a transi
tion stage, where it was nominally in connection with
organized state authorities, and was actually desirous of
managing its own affairs in its own old way. To this
state of affairs, Mr. Shinn's account applies with great
difficulty. After 1849, all camps were nominally under
the state government. New camps were still often for
a little time practically quite isolated, but ere long
316 CALIFORNIA.
state organization would, at least in name, overtake
them. According to Mr. Shinn, the miners' meeting,
or the council, or the alcalde, or whatever governed the
new camp, would be a conscious preparation for this
coming of the regular law. As soon as the organized
legal machinery became in any sense more than a name,
the orderly instinct of the miners would counsel imme
diate submission, and they would voluntarily abandon or
subordinate their organization in its old forms to these
new ones. Until the state organization came, the min
ers, however, would be conscious of their rightful inde
pendence. But, much as this theory of Mr. Shinn's
impressed me on a first reading, the direct evidence
shows that after 1849 the miners, even in newly-organ
ized districts, were apt to regard their camp law, espe
cially the criminal part of it, as a necessary but lawless
device for forcing a general peace. Their contemporary
accounts of it differ from their accounts of their land-
lawrs. These latter they regard as furnishing the only
just and truly legal method of dealing with mining
rights. They resist strenuously any legislative interfer
ence with their local self-government in these matters.
They insist absolutely upon the autonomy of the miners'
district, as regards the land ; and for years, against all
legislative schemes at home, and all congressional prop
ositions at Washington, they actually maintained this
autonomy. But their independence in matters of crim
inal law was brief, and, so far as I know, was seldom,
almost never, defended at the time on any such theoret
ical grounds as Mr. Shinn's ; but was defended solely as
being the last resort of isolated communities, and was
confessedly, in a strict sense, lynch law.
For this reason, after concrete cases of violent popu-
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 317
lar justice in the mines, we find the community, in
speaking of the affair, generally more or less on the de
fensive. To 1849 this statement applies in but very
small measure, since the camps of 1849 were, on the
whole, free from any very notable general disturbances
of which any contemporary record is known to me ;
and were in any case out of relation to higher authority.
But in 1850, and still more in 1851, when the popular
justice of the mines is dealing with really serious compli
cations, one finds this feeling of the need of special jus
tification of each such act, as a lawless but inevitable
deed, very prevalent. Of the sharp line of demarcation
between lynch law and miners' law the miners themselves
are thus seen to be, at the time, largely unconscious.
It would be easy to show all this clearly enough by
means of citations from those contemporary books of
travel l whose authors are not seriously hostile to the
miners' justice. But on travelers' accounts, or on other
books, we need not depend. The newspaper of the time
is the best source of information about the spirit of the
people. The California newspapers of 1850, 1851, and
1852 generally defend miners' justice ; but they show
us two tilings, first that the miners' justice was not
usually sharply distinguished from mob law, even in the
minds of those concerned in it ; and secondly that, in
the concrete instances of the use of miners' justice, we
can discover all possible gradations, from the most
formal, calm, and judicial behavior of a healthy young
camp, driven by momentary necessity to defend itself
against outrage, down to the most abominable exhibitions
of brutal popular passion, or even of private vengeance.
1 See in particular Capron, History of California, Boston, 1854, p.
228 ; Delano, Life on the Plains, etc., chapter xxv. ; Borthwick,
Three Years in California, p. 223, sqq.
318 CALIFORNIA.
Specimen contemporary newspaper comments on the
popular tribunals are not hard to find : and in tone they
very fairly agree. The acts of these popular tribunals,
when not outrageously unjust, are generally defended ;
but almost always 1 without any consciousness that they
stand for a definite stage of normal legal development,
or are the " friends and forerunners " of the regular
law ; and solely on the ground that the extreme need
justifies the outburst, and that miners' justice is a la
mentable necessity. Thus, in the " Sacramento Tran
script" of February 12, 1851, after a description of a
very common sort of miners' trial at Bridgport, a town
on Deer Creek, where a defaulting partner had been
overtaken and brought back by his fellows, tried by an
improvised court, convicted, and sentenced to a severe
whipping, I find these comments : " This is the only sure
means of administering justice, and although we may
regret, and deem lynch law objectionable, yet the pres
ent unsafe sort of prisons we have, and the lenity shown
offenders, are such as to induce us to regard such an ex
ercise of power " (concludes the editor) with compara
tive lenity. Just before this issue, the editor had been
repeatedly complaining of the general insecurity of pris
ons. A considerable study of the files of this paper leads
me to think this expression of opinion a fair representa
tive of the editorial views.2 Nor do I find any defender
of popular justice in the news columns or correspond
ence of this paper saying anything more definite in
defense of miners' lynching than this. On the contrary,
1 I use this qualification because of a single case where the Sacra
mento Transcript, as we shall later see, spi'aks of miners' justice with
out regret, and as utterly opposed to lynch law. But this exception
has a reason. No doubt other cases exist, though seldom.
2 Cf. the editorial of January 14, 1851.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 319
I find such defenders almost always recognizing a con
flict between regular law and miners' law. In prac
tice, as appears from this evidence, the miners de
manded of the regular courts more than that they
should be known to exist. The miners demanded that
these courts should be judged efficient by the very men
who, as citizens, created them under the constitution, be
fore the citizens could be called upon to surrender any
authority to them. And if miners chose to declare a
court inefficient, they felt at any time free to supersede
it by their own impromptu tribunals. And then they
defended these tribunals, not as normal means of pun
ishing crime, but as abnormal necessities.
Thus, in a letter dated Coloma, May 7, and published
in the " Transcript " of May 12, 1851, persons who
sign themselves " The Miners " give an " authentic
statement " of a recent outburst of popular indignation
near that place. An honest citizen, as it seems, had
lost from his wagon some packages of flour and butter,
and the goods were traced, apparently by scattered
flour, " from near the wagon to the cabin of Jones and
partners " and identified by the owner. When these
facts were made known, the "company present" chose
a " jury of twelve men, together with one presiding
officer, who coolly and deliberately proceeded to investi
gate the facts of the case," giving "Jones and his part
ners " a fair chance. The prisoners were found guilty
by the jury, and the " company present, numbering
about 33," concurred by unanimous vote in the verdict.
Then they considered what to do. The district was the
oldest in the mines, since it was in that district that
Marshall had first found gold ; and the courts were
well established. Many of the crowd were disposed
320 CALIFORNIA.
accordingly to hand over the prisoners to the officers at
Coloma. But ere they had set out for the town, other
voices were heard. '• To deliver the prisoners to the
civil authorities would be tantamount to an acquittal
of them, and would do no good, further than to help fill
the pockets of officers and lawyers." So it was said,
and they ''resolved to settle the matter without delay."
The prisoners were hereupon treated very leniently,
being ordered to refund the value of the property stolen,
and to leave the district before the next morning, or else
to be whipped and then banished, in case they sought to
stay. Lenient the offer was, though not strictly in ac
cordance with the Bill of Rights. The prisoners, be
ing given the choice, elected to leave on-whipped, or at
least said so. But, possibly remembering the Bill of
Rights, they concluded upon reflection to go about their
business as usual, and " neglected to leave." Where
upon twenty or twenty-five persons, hearing of this con
tempt of court, hunted up Jones the next day, ''and
were proceeding to a suitable place to inflict the punish
ment, when the sheriff and his subs interfered in behalf
of the law," promised to keep the prisoner safe, and
"induced " the mob to give him up. " He was accord
ingly committed to jail, and tried next day before Jus
tice Brooks. And notwithstanding the plain, pointed,
irresistible, and unquestionable evidence of the guilt of
the prisoner, he was informed by the court that the
charges against him were not sufficient for conviction ;
and no doubt Mr. Jones now thinks that he is at perfect
liberty to steal any and everything he can, provided he
can be tried by the so termed courts of justice.'} Such
is the " authentic statement " of the miners. But their
comments are interesting, because they illustrate just the
THE STRUGGLE, FOR ORDER. 321
sense of a conflict between miners' justice and the regular
law which was so common in those days. " Would it be
less," continue the signers of the letter, " than the de
serts of such officers as these, if they had to receive the
dues of Jones as their own, in every case where they
let the guilty go unpunished ? We have the following
to say in reference to our position in this neighborhood,
as it regards lynch law : we are to a man opposed to
any such law, and we believe there is no part of Califor
nia in which the citizens would be more submissive to
the civil authorities than ourselves, could the laws as
designed by our legislature be executed faithfully. But
when we call on the civil authorities for redress, we are
repulsed. Indeed, sirs, we would not be surprised if the
present administrators of the law in this part of the
country should make the whole community a mob. . . .
So long as this evil exists to the extent that it now does,
we will find our citizens looking to themselves for pro
tection."
But we need not depend on any one newspaper. In
the " San Francisco Herald " for April 4, 1852,1 is a
letter from a " special correspondent," plainly a resident,
at Moquelumne Hill, a prominent camp in the southern
mines. A Vigilance Committee had been formed there
for about two months. Since its formation there had
occurred but one murder. " The strong current of
crime " which had theretofore swept " everything before
it," and which the regular courts had never checked,
had been checked by the committee, and order had be
gun to reign on the Hill. Some weeks had passed
without disturbance, " and it was supposed that the
committee were no longer on the lookout." But alas !
this tale of prosperous peace was a short one.
1 Harvard College Library file.
322 CALIFORNIA.
1 ' A number of robberies have, within the last ten
days, been committed." " Scarcely a night has passed
for some time but something has been stolen, or some
man robbed." At last, after one Perkins had been
robbed of forty-five ounces, a Sonoran, by name Carlos,
was found on a tent floor, apparently drunk. The tent,
as was seen, had just been cut open, Carlos had no busi
ness there, and seemed too drunk to explain his errand.
He staggered off, but was soon discovered to be sober
enough indeed, was arrested by the committee, was
found to have gold specimens in his possession that
Perkins could identify as a part of the lately stolen
gold, and was at last induced to confess himself one of
the recent thieves. So " the committee deliberated what
should be done with him. It was thought that if he was
handed over to the city authorities, he might perhaps
be committed to Jackson jail ; where, if he remained
twenty-four hours, it would be because he liked the ac
commodations, and had no fear of being convicted."
To flog and release him was thought equally useless,
since the committee knew his previous reputation, and
despaired of reforming him. " If hung, there would be
one thief less," and one warning more. So the com
mittee resolved to hang him. Carlos made no objection,
but asked only for a good supper, a priest, and a glass
of brandy. The committee cheerfully complied with
his requests, and, after having received such religious
and other consolation as his poor soili desired, Carlos
slept well all night, walked coolly to his gallows the next
morning, and cheerfully helped about his own execution.
So much for the case.1 The comments are thoroughly
characteristic.
1 The main facts are confirmed by the account iu the San Fran
cisco Alta, for April 5, 1852, steamer edition.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 323
" It is much to be deplored," says the correspondent,
" that necessity should exist for such extreme measures.
This execution will doubtless be condemned by many in
California, and by more in the old States. The sickly
sentimentalist will hold up his hands in horror ; the
officers of the law will be found loud in their indigna
tion at what they will call a ruthless, illegal deed ; the
ermined judge who sits secure in his seat at a salary of
thousands per year will be indignant that the people
should presume to take any measures to protect their
own life and property and punish offenders without
their \_sic] aid and sanction ; but those who live in well-
ordered communities, where they have officers who know
their duty and dare do it, can have no idea of the situa
tion in which we are placed. Whose fault is it ?
"The truth is, it has been absolutely and impera
tively necessary for us to protect ourselves, and, law or
no law, it will be done. We have a Committee of Vig
ilance who are determined that, until a different state
of things exist, they will not disband, but will punish in
the most exemplary manner all and every high-handed
offense against life and property."
Any reader is struck by the force of this plea, and
he fully agrees that, like " Jones and partners " at Co-
loma, Carlos may have been as verily a dog as the
report makes him. But with Jones and Carlos, in these
cases, we have little concern. Our interest is chiefly
with the honest men themselves, and with their unhappy
state. The reader must have observed the curiously ex
ternal point of view that the writers of the two letters
just cited adopt, as they discuss their own society.
" People cannot understand our woes," they patheti
cally insist. " We have lawyers, judges, sheriffs, pris-
324 CALIFORNIA.
ons, but, alas ! no justice, unless we fight for it our
selves, treating our own law-officers as aliens, and be
coming a mob. Oh, the depravity of those courts and
of those lawyers ! " But, as we are tempted to retort :
Whose gold, now hoarded by the pound in insecure
tents, the prey of every vagabond, might have contrib
uted to build a strong jail at Coloma or at Jackson ?
Or, perhaps, was it not of a truth felt unnecessary to
build a strong jail — unnecessary just because one
chose in one's heart, meanwhile, to think ropes a little
cheaper than bricks, and, for the purpose, just as
strong ? Nay, is all the " sickly sentimentalism," or all
the cant, on one side in this matter ? Who whines
perpetually and tediously, all through these early days,
about " necessity," and " the first law of nature," and
the defects of the social order, and all his gloomy so
cial afflictions ; even while, in fact, his whole purpose
is to store his gold dust, to enjoy his private fun, and
then to shake off the viler dust of the country from his
feet as soon as possible ? Who but the poor outraged
miner himself, whom necessity, if not manhood, will
ultimately compel to apply himself to his duty and to
stop his whining ?
Nothing is capable of clearer demonstration from
contemporary documents than the color of the sentiments
of a community, in case one can find the very words of
a representative people. The details of transactions it
is harder to state accurately. In passing from the
motives of the miners' popular justice to its methods
and more characteristic incidents, we shall be much at
the mercy of our witnesses. Yet of this the reader
may be assured. What we have here further to narrate
about miners' justice will rest, as far as possible, like
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 325
the foregoing, on contemporary evidence. For what a
pioneer can say, after many years, about the incidents
of a given affair is worth little or nothing in compari
son with any fairly objective contemporary evidence,
unless, indeed, the pioneer in question was himself di
rectly concerned in the very incidents that he relates.
And for our purposes just here, no vague generalizations
about the early justice will serve such as are so familiar
in the later books and essays, by romancers and pio
neers, on those early days. We must go afresh to the
sources.
vi. MINERS' JUSTICE IN ACTION. — CHARACTERISTIC
SCENES AND INCIDENTS.
All gradations, we have said, can be found in the
popular justice of the mines, from the most orderly
and wisely conducted expression of outraged popular
sentiment which is in any way possible outside of the
forms of law, down to the most brutal and disgraceful
outbursts of mob fury. I wish that the latter class of
incidents had been rarer than one actually finds them.
But the day for either vindicating or condemning by a
labored argument the pioneer life as a whole has long
since passed. The true vindication of those days —
their only possible vindication — is the great and pro
gressive State that grew up upon that soil, and that
thenceforth was destined to do for our land a very real
service. But, after all, neither to vindicate nor to con
demn the whole community is our desire ; we want, for
the sake of our own instruction in political duties, to
study the various individual events and tendencies that
determined social life, and to let our praise or our blame
fall upon them.
326 CALIFORNIA.
The more regular and orderly popular justice of the
mines took place especially in the newer and more iso
lated camps, although circumstances might bring it to
pass almost anywhere in the mines. We find it ex
pressing itself often in very quaint forms, using, gener
ally, considerable severity, but keeping up a show of
good-temper throughout. Where it was thus free from
passion, its verdicts seem, at all events, to have been
generally in accordance with the facts, whatever we
may say of the wisdom of its sentences.
A study of the lynching affairs thus directly from the
sources seems to me to throw a wholly new light upon
the character of which they were the too frequent ex
pression. Many of the popular legends about lynching
that have influenced the more modern and romantic
tales of the early days distort very curiously the true
motives of the miners. A mining camp is presented to
us in such stories as a community that always especially
delighted in its lynching parties, and that went about
them with all the jovial ferocity of young tigers at play.
But when the lynching affair was once begun, then, as
the story-tellers will have it, the popular court was easily
moved by purely sentimental considerations. A timely
offer of drinks, a good joke, or, far better still, an ingen
ious display of ruggedly pathetic eloquence, might suffice
to turn the court aside from its dangerous undertakings.
The whole affair was a kind of great and grim joke,
and sentimentalism could always take the place of the
joking mood, and, if it did so, might save the prisoner.
In the dramatic presentation of such scenes many writers
have amused themselves. Thus the lynching affair,
even if tragic in outcome, is, throughout, enlivened, ac
cording to these accounts, by absurdly conventional
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 327
humor ; and often, when the outcome is to be less terri
ble, the tragedy is averted by conventional eloquence.
To take a very recent instance of such story-telling, I
read, not long since, in the " Overland Monthly," a
pretended sketch of an early lynching scene, in which
the prisoner's life is at length saved by the ingenuity of
his volunteer defender, an old man whose reputation
for veracity stands very high in the camp where this
scene is supposed to take place. This veracious de
fender, namely, who has never before seen the prisoner,
concludes to save the latter's life by making an excep
tion in his favor, and lying about him. The prisoner's
face is pock-marked, and the defender accordingly
makes up, on the spur of the moment, a long story
about how this poor wretch once nursed a very un
friendly man, well known to the defender himself,
through an attack of small-pox, and so caught the in
fection. The defender's tale is made as harrowing as
possible. Its effect is electric. The prisoner stands
accused of a very serious crime and the evidence
against him is strong ; but all is forthwith forgotten.
Judge Lynch offers him tobacco, gives him a drink,
and sets him at liberty, on the ground that so saintly a
man as one who volunteers to be a small-pox nurse
under very harrowing circumstances is at liberty to do
a little occasional mischief in those diggings without
question.
Now, such sentimentalism as this is utterly foreign to
the typical miners' lynching affair, whether orderly or
not. The typical lynching occurred, indeed, in a com
munity of Americans, where everybody was by habit
disposed to joke in public and seem as cheerful as he
could, and to listen to all sorts of eloquence ; but the
328 CALIFORNIA.
affair itself was no expression of this formal joviality,
nor yet of this submissiveness to oratorical leadership.
It proceeded from a mood of utter revulsion against the
accustomed good-humor of the camp. It was regarded
as a matter of stern, merciless, business necessity. It
was unconscious of any jocular character. Disorderly
lynching affairs in some few cases, do, indeed, appear
to have been mere drunken frolics. But nearly all,
even of the disorderly affairs, and that, too, where their
cruelty was most manifest, had in them no element of
the merely jocular. They expressed an often barbarous
fury ; but they pretended to be deeds of necessity, and
a sentimental speech in a prisoner's favor would have
done nothing save, possibly, to endanger the prisoner's
life yet more, or even to endanger that of his advocate.
No one understands the genuine lynching who does not
see in it a stern laying aside of all these characteristic
American traits of good-humor and of oratorical senti-
mentalism themselves, for the sake of satisfying a mo
mentary popular passion, aroused against the forces of
disorder. Just because the miner was accustomed to
be so tolerant and easy-going, these moments of the out
burst of popular fury found him, whether orderly or
not, in all typical cases, merciless, deaf to all pathetic
appeals, unconscious of anything save the immediate
public necessity. What element of comedy remained
in some of these affairs was generally an unconscious
element.
And so, while not all the lynching scenes are equally
tragic, a large class of them is doubtless well typified by
the following very gloomy tragedy, which suggests, if
one wants to reflect upon it, a world of horror behind
the scenes. This is, namely, a trial for murder, occur-
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 329
ring in 1851, at Shasta, then the centre of a newer min
ing region. I use the report communicated from Shasta
to the ''Sacramento Transcript " of April 3, 1851, and
give the details at some length just because the affair is
so characteristic.
At Oak Bottom, about ten miles from Shasta, there
lived, in March of that year, two partners,1 Easterbrook
and Price, who had come from the lower mining region
together, a few months before, leaving on their way a
third partner, disabled by poison oak, at Grass Valley.
The two had left families at home in the East, and were
come to California to win fortunes for them, Easter-
brook, in particular, expecting, like so many others, to
raise the mortgage from his farm. Nobody seems to
have questioned their respectability, or their mutual
friendship. One evening in March, the two went
together to the " residence of Mr. Isaac Roop," as it is
called in the report. This was next door, in fact, to
their own tent, and was a " residence " where one drank
" ardent spirits," as the report in its exact way calls the
drink there found, where one also played cards, and
where one had to pay a bill at the end of the evening.
As the hours went by, Easterbrook, whom nobody seems
to have accused afterwards of being an habitual drunk
ard, grew a little excited and quarrelsome, and after
some minor difficulty with a third person, he found
himself refused more liquor by the cautious Mr. Isaac
Roop. Thereupon Easterbrook called for his bill, and
began to quarrel over the amount of it. Price, mean
while, had gone to their tent near by, and had lain down
1 I give real names only to guaranty the accuracy of my report.
After so many years there is little danger that the persons will be
recognized.
330 CALIFORNIA.
on his blanket, whether drunken himself or no, does
not appear. At all events, hearing Easterbrook's voice,
he called out, as Easterbrook at last proceeded to pay
his score : " Don't be paying out other people's money."
Easterbrook started at the insult, rushed back to the
tent in fury, cursing, and told bis partner to prepare for
death. Price had been only joking, and was not moved
by the threat. " Lay down," he was heard to say
quietly, '' lay down and go to sleep.'" An eye-witness
saw, by whatever dim light there was, that Easterbrook
dragged out a gun from under some baggage. In an
instant one heard a report, and Easterbrook himself was
fleeing from the tent into the night. When the by
standers, who at once pursued, bad caught him in a
little time, he said, apparently with the air of one wak
ing : u Have I shot Price ? " And when they said that
he had, he replied : " Do as you please with me ; it was
an accident, and I was drunk." Price lay gasping ; he
never spoke again, and died in about an hour.
The next day Easterbrook was brought, guarded,
down to Shasta, over the ten miles of new miners' road.
There, just after midday dinner, a meeting of the citi
zens was called. Perfect decorum prevailed ; a ghastly
air of ordinary and business-like propriety pervades the
stiffly written report. There were doubtless lawyers
present. The assembled people first chose a chairman
and secretary, and then a committee of three, to select
a trial jury of twelve men " to try the cause before the
people." They also passed a resolution summoning the
witnesses, and guarantying to the accused a fair and
impartial trial ; and they then appointed an officer " to
carry into effect the verdict of the jury, and summons
to his aid as many persons as might be necessary to re-
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 331
lease or execute the prisoner." The chairman swore in
the jury, and called the witnesses ; and now at length
the story of the homicide was heard. The prisoner was
thereafter asked what he had to say in defense. He
replied briefly, but not without some natural and terrible
pathos. He had been in the mines only since the 29th
of the last July. Never, before this one time, had he
in all his life " had words " with any man. Never had
he " done anything to cause a blush." Standing now
as one on the verge of the grave, he could declare in
God's name that he felt in his mind " guiltless of any
premeditated intention to kill Mr. Price." (" Mr." has
its sadly formal ring as applied to the dead partner at
this moment.) Mr. Price was a " good man." The
prisoner had never had any feeling against him. And
Price had left " a wife, and a daughter who is now mar
ried." But, as for the prisoner himself, " I have a wife
and three children. The eldest is nine years of age.
My circumstances are such, that, should I leave the
world, my wife and children will be penniless. I have
a farm which is incumbered, and without my return
will be sacrificed. It is not for myself, but my wife
and children that I plead. Taking my life would not
bring to life Mr. Price. It would only make one more
widow, and three more orphans, and on their account
only do I plead for mercy, as any of you would, were
you in the same unfortunate condition."
This defense seems to have been noted down by the
secretary of the meeting, for the newspaper report is
very formally worded, and is called official. There
were no other arguments heard on either side, the jury
feeling no need of further advice. Shasta was not a
O
place for tears, nor for pity ; and the jury, after a brief
332 CALIFORNIA.
consultation, brought in a written verdict, signed by each
one, declaring Easterbrook guilty of murder in the first
degree, and sentencing him to " be punished immediately
by hanging by the neck until he is dead." The meeting
had convened at two o'clock. It was now after four.
The prisoner was given about an hour to set his affairs
in order, and was hanged between five and six. y — The
'' Transcript " editor regards this as a truly wonderful
case, finds in it a fine spirit of law and order, and calls
it " an exhibition of the power of the American mind
over that which we have heretofore known as mob law."
The reason for tliis exceptional and benevolent mood
on the editor's part is a recent occurrence in Sacramento
itself, the " Roe " lynching, which had for the moment
made popular justice seem to him of vast importance.
Usually, as we have seen, he was less enthusiastic.
I know not whether the story of the " Outcasts of
Poker Flat " was founded, as report has declared, upon
some oral tradition that reached the author years later,
of a real incident of early times. If so, then the real
incident itself may have been the expulsion from this
same town of Shasta, in August, 1851, of all the so-called
" suspicious " characters of the town, " seven men and
two women." ] A " hay yard '' had been burned down,
and report made the act the work of an incendiary.
All suspicious characters were at once ordered out of
town; "they complied," and passed down towards a
brook called " Whiskey Creek." Now as these nine
went by the way, they met, oddly enough, coming down
from Oak Bottom, our friend Mr. Isaac Koop himself,
at whose '' residence " the two partners had passed the
fatal evening some five months before. I know not
1 Alta California of August 20, 1851.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 333
what general disgust with respectable gentlemen who
had " residences " to leave when out for their airings,
or what feeling of recklessness it was, that moved these
nine ; but one of them hereupon shot at Mr. Hoop.
Were this only a book of fiction, they would have killed
him, by way of ending the story well. But this is his
tory, and one is bound to say that, according to the re
port here cited, they missed Mr. Roop altogether, who
went his way, probably with more than his accustomed
quickness, into Shasta, and told what they had done.
Whereupon the miners of that town sent out an armed
party, who very firmly and leniently escorted the nine
southward to the border of the county, with the intent
of sending them thence into banishment ; and of their
fate, and of Mr. Roop's, in subsequent days, I know
nothing. This then must suffice as concerning the jus
tice of the people of Shasta in 1851. — Here, at least,
there was no trace of the sentimental or the jocular.
Our next case is less gloomy than Easterbrook's, and
takes place later, and in a less severely primitive locality.
It is a case of larceny this time. In the " San Fran
cisco Herald " of March 22, 1852, I find a report, ap
parently officially furnished by mail to this and other
papers, of a miners' meeting at Johnson's Bar, where
one " Dr. Bardt," whose title is very considerately
preserved throughout the report, was arraigned for
theft.1
" The meeting having been called to order, Mr. Camp
bell was appointed chairman, and Cyrus Hurd, Jr., sec
retary.
1 The comedy of this scene, be it noticed, lies not in the conscious
behavior of the miners, who were as business-like and merciless as
the judges of Easterbrook, but in our point of view as spectators.
334 CALIFORNIA.
" On motion, it was resolved, that Dr. A. Bardt be
whi]>ped for the said thefts.
" On motion, it was resolved that Dr. Bardt should
receive thirty-nine lashes on the bare back and leave
the mines in three days.
" It was moved and seconded that Dr. Bardt should
be cropped. The motion, on being put, was negatived
unanimously.
" On motion, it was resolved that Dr. Bardt be whipped
by the constable, Mr. Thompson, with a rope.
" On motion, it was resolved that the constable should
proceed immediately to the discharge of his duty.
" On motion it was resolved that the secretary be re
quested to furnish a copy of the proceedings to be pub
lished in the California papers.
" The punishment having been inflicted, it was, on
motion, resolved that the meeting do adjourn sine die."
Since the thefts are spoken of as the " said thefts,"
one is disposed to compare this case to the above cited
Coloma case of "Jones and partners," and to suppose
that " Dr. Bardt " had tried to set a previous verdict at
naught.
Severe, unsentimental, and in the sharpest contrast
to their daily joviality, was the mood of the lynching
miners as we have so far examined it. The cause of
this contrast we have also begun to see. The miners'
justice, however, even where the evidence was clear,
and the trial orderly, was often not merely severe, but
atrociously cruel. In the " Transcript " for January 30,
1851, one finds the record of a trial at Mississippi Bar,
where a thief, " in consideration of his youth," was not
hanged, but was given one hundred and fifty lashes, and
a brand " R " on the left arm, after having his head
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 335
shaved on one side. One is surprised to find how people
who at home, in those philanthropic days, would very
likely have been under the sway of sentimentalists, and
would have shuddered at severe penalties of all sorts,
now behaved when they were away from home. For
the change their own sense of irresponsibility is largely
to blame, the same sense of irresponsibility that led them
to tolerate the causes which led to these social disasters.
The two punishments, flogging and death, as penal
ties for theft, have invited much comment from critics
of early California mining life. It is too obvious to need
much special discussion here, that to flog and banish a
thief from a given camp was to do worse than nothing
for the good order of the mines at large. The thief
went out into the mountains a very poor, desperate, and
revengeful man. He had, meanwhile, all the vague
chances ahead that were offered to him by a possible
entrance as a stranger into some new camp. Hope in
any cheerful sense these chances would hardly give him ;
but, in his despair, they would promise him that, in the
new place, he might possibly avenge, on people who did
not know him, the blows that he had suffered from those
who had found him out. Or again, the sight of the
lonely mountain roads might offer to his despair the
proper suggestion for a new life of crime. In any case,
the camp that banished him had only, as Capron's in
formants put it,1 " let loose a fiend." And the friendly
interchange of their respective fiends among the various
camps was obviously the whole outcome of this prevail
ing system of flogging and banishment.
Those miners who chose to hang the notorious thieves
of their camps were therefore, so far as the direct effec-
1 Capron's History, loc. tit.
336 CALIFORNIA.
tiveness of their work was concerned, wiser, since they
got rid of at least one rogue. A dead thief steals no
more ; and as we have above shown, this book has no
sort of sentimentalism to expend over dead thieves,
although, for other reasons, this plan of lynching thieves
was a bad one. Where the miners' courts were orderly,
careful, sensible in examining evidence, and certain of
the habitual and intolerable roguery of the thief before
them, it was far better, under the circumstances, to hang
than to flog and banish him, and less cruel, also. Never
theless, the real objection to the habitual hanging of the
thieves by the people, as practiced in those days, is none
the less cogent. We have already suggested where this
true objection lay. The thief himself, as an individual,
was indeed often enough a worthless hound, and deserved
all that he got. As against the interests of society at
large, his interests were naught. But it was precisely
the interest of society that was in the long run mo%t in
jured by the habit of hanging the thieves in these rude,
irregular miners' courts. For the popular conscience
was debased by the physical brutality of the business,
and so soon as the lynching habit was once established,
this conscience was put to sleep by a false self-confi
dence, engendered of the ease wherewith justice seemed
in such cases to be vindicated. And society, which, with
all its fancied honesty, was, in its own way, an obvious
accomplice of the thief himself, was prevented for a while
from appreciating the enormity of its offenses. For it
was society that encouraged these rogues, and that, with
every month, made them worse rogues than ever. By
its careless spirit, by its patronage of gambling saloons,
by its jolly toleration of all private quarrels that did
not go so far as once for all to enrage the public, by its
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 337
willful determination to spend no time on self-discipline,
and no money on so costly a thing as a stable public
order, and, above all, by its persistently wicked neglect
to choose good public officers, the mining society made
itself the friend and upholder of tlie very roguery that
it flogged and hanged. Its habitual good-humor insured
the necessity of occasional fury and brutality. And, so
long as it flogged and hanged in this rude popular way,
it could not be convinced of its errors, but ever and anon,
after one of these popular outbursts of vengeance, it
raised its blood-stained hands in holy horror at crime,
lamenting the fate that would doubtless force it still in
future to continue its old business of encouraging this
bloodshed. All this criticism of mine may be merely
moral commonplace ; but I am sure that I should never
fill these pages with such platitudes, were it not for the
outrageous effrontery with which the average mining
community of those days used to defend itself, in the
fashion cited above. The single act was indeed often in
itself defensible. It was the habit of risking such emer
gencies that was intolerable.
So far did this trust in hanging as a cure for theft go,
that in the second legislature, that of 1851, an act was
passed making hanging for grand larceny a penalty to
be thenceforth regularly imposed at the pleasure of the
convicting jury.1 So easy is it for men to sanction their
blunders by the help of a little printers' ink, used for
the publication of a statute.
1 I am somewhat perplexed to find Mr. Shinn, Mining Camps, p.
228. note, referring this law to the first year of the life of the State,
and to the legislature of 1850. The matter is one of plain record,
and is of some importance, because it shows that the law did not first
encourage the lynchers, but that only after the extravagances of pop
ular justice had for some time flourished, it was found possible to load
22
338 CALIFORNIA.
The familiar reply of the pioneers to all these criti
cisms is, that if the miners' justice reformed nobody, it at
least effectually intimidated every rascal. And much
nonsense has been repeated by writers on those early
days concerning the terrible magnitude and swiftness,
the certainty, the simplicity, and the consequent deter
ring effect of lynch law. But one who repeats this non
sense forgets first of all that axiom of criminal justice
according to which the magnitude and the frightfulness
of a penalty are of but the smallest deterring power in
comparison with the certainty of the penalty ; and such
an one also forgets that mob law can never be certain.
While a vigilance committee in the mines was in full
course of vengeance, crime would indeed be terrified.
But at the very instant the committee relaxed its vigi
lance, the carelessly open tents, the gold, the scattered
wanderers prospecting in the hills, or finding their way
along the roads, all suggested to the thief his old
chances. And what had he, after all, to fear ? No
vigilant police, no conscientious public spirit, no strong
jails. Only a momentary and terrible outburst of pop
ular justice was, at the worst, to be dreaded. If he
escaped that, by flight, or by even temporary conceal-
the statute book with an entirely useless and demoralizing penalty,
useless because its uncertainty made it of no deterring power, and
demoralizing because all useless and obsolete penalties are mere
opportunities for whimsical popular vengeance, not expressions of
the dignity of the social order. The best possible comment on this law
is a case where a thief was tried under it at Monterey, as reported in
the San Francisco Herald for June 26, 1852. The jury brought in
a verdict finding the prisoner guilty as charged, sentencing him to
death, but recommending him to the mtrcy of the court. The court
was puzzled; but as the prisoner was a native Californian, the jury
got the benefit of tlie doubt, and the prisoner was formally sentenced
to death.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 389
ment of his crime, there would be no detectives to hunt
him down, no permanently accessible evidence to be
produced against him. No witness would be public-
spirited enough to wait an hour longer than might be
convenient for a chance to testify. In a few weeks the
witnesses who could hurt him might be scattered far
away, and the whole thing forgotten. Under such cir
cumstances, could the bare chance of even one hundred
and fifty lashes with a branding, or even the possibility
of being hanged, deter a rogue from his work? The
analogy of the case of England at the close of the last
century, with the ineffectiveness of the capriciously ex
ecuted death penalty as there ordained for lesser of
fenses, at once suggests itself. Criminals, like savages,
scatter to their hiding-places after any sudden defeat ;
but they are not thereby civilized, and constant vigilance
is needed as much after their defeat as before. And
when the vigilance committees scattered the rogues of a
given camp, the result was very like the one that takes
place when a lonesome wanderer in Californian wilder
nesses scatters the coyotes that have gathered at night
around his camp-fire. The coyote loves to hold parlia
ment, in such a case, just beyond the circles of the fire
light, for the benefit of the poor wretch who, rolled up
in his blankets, is trying to rest from his labors beside
his fire. With unearthly noises the vile beasts drive
away from him sleep, for a prostrate and almost motion
less man, all alone, the coyote regards as a deeply ad
mirable object. And the man occasionally starts up,
perchance, and dashes out into the dark with ineffective
ravings, while the whole pack vanish yelping in the
night. But, alas, when he returns to his fire and lies
down, the gleaming eyes are soon again near, and he
340 CALIFORNIA.
has nothing to do but to curse away the hours until
dawn, helpless against his tormentors as Gulliver hound
in Lilliput. As any one can see hy a chronological study
of the newspapers of 1851 and 1852, just such was the
experience of many camps with their rogues. Of un
hanged rogues a community rids itself only hy ceasing
to nourish them ; while, if you nourish rogues, you can
not hope to hang them all, nor yet to hang the most
of them.1
A chronological study of the newspaper files, I say,
proves this inefficacy of mere lynching, in so far as such
a study can of itself make any social tendency clear.
In the spring of 1851. in fact, and also far into the sum
mer of that year, one finds much lynching going on.
That autumn there seems indeed to he once more gen
eral peace and good order in the mines ; but for this not
1 The reader should compare here again Mr. Shinn's discussion of
our whole topic, and the instances that he cites. He has often failed
to give his sources, and he seems to me one-sided in the choice of
facts; but his is the only effort published before the present one to
discuss systematically the whole subject of popular justice in Cali
fornia, and his view is much more favorable than mine. For further
instances of moderately orderly popular procedure in the mines, I
must content myself here with referring to the San Francisco Alia of
1851 (Harvard College Library file), in the numbers for May 21
(where a horse-thief at Nevada was allowed by the " crowd " to choose,
himself, who should give him the thirty-nine lashes); July 11 (where
a Sonora correspondent describes the caution with which a vigilance
committee proceeded in trying a Mexican horse-thief, who was given
a whole day in which to prepare his case and produce his witnesses,
and who was then convicted and flogged, a collection being afterwards
taken up for his benefit); and October 22 (where the passengers on a
Marysville steamboat tried and convicted in regular miners' form
one of their number who had committed a theft on board, and sen
tenced him to pay a large fine in gold dust to a sick and destitute man
who chanced also to be on board). All these incidents are character
istic.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 341
merely past popular violence must be held responsible,
but many other influences as well. The dry season
continued until late, and vast river-bed operations, great
tunnels, flumes, dams, ditches, were occupying men's at
tention. Labor was organized as never before in the
mines. The vested interests of the various communi
ties were great and increasing ; the yield was large, but
the responsibility serious. At such a moment the com
munity was on its good behavior. Moreover (and this
is a deeply significant fact), the violence of the spring
and summer had reacted on the honest men even more
than on thieves. The need of vindicating lynching, a
need that these people almost always felt, showed that
they were capable of being shocked by their own deeds
of popular vengeance. For, after all, these honest men
had very often been well brought up at home, and were
still new to bloodshed. In their lives the lynching af
fairs were, despite their recent frequency, still terrible
and wholly exceptional events. And so they may be
fairly presumed to have taken, for a while at least, the
ordinary precautions of decent citizens. They did not
so easily tolerate minor disorders, nor by their good-
humor encourage ruffians to live in their camps. Prob
ably they gambled less frequently themselves, drank
less, acted more soberly. To these causes, quite as much
as to the temporary fright of the rascals, must we at
tribute the comparative good order of that autumn. Yet
the rascals were neither dead nor gone from the State,
nor reformed, though many of them had left the mines.
Just after two horse-thieves had been sentenced to death
under the new law at Stockton, the " Stockton Journal "
of about October 25, 1851,1 " again complains," as the
1 Quoted in the San Francisco Alta for October 27.
342 CALIFORNIA.
" Alta " says, " of the increase of crime and rowdyism
at that place." The complaint asserts that disorder
prevails to a lamentable extent in Stockton, that '* every
day is marked with some scene of violence ; and the
night becomes frightful, from the hideous iniquities per
petrated under the shadow of its obscurity." u All
quiet," continues the '• Stockton Journal," '* is banished
from the place, for no citizen feels safe, unless he is
armed for any emergency. Might is the only protec
tion a man can claim in these perilous times." Now
these words are a trifle passionate and rhetorical ; but
they have no doubt a very real foundation. Some of
the banished rogues had gone to Stockton, although that
city had not been unaffected by the general popular
struggle for order in the summer of 1851. These
wretches had found the moment favorable in that city,
and the sentence of death just legally passed on the
two horse-thieves had not awed them into submission.
Yet this was in the comparatively peaceful closing sea
son of the great year of popular justice, which was in
deed a valuable year, yet not, in general, because of its
violence, but because of its organization of labor.
To see the utter transiency of the effects of brute
violence, as a suppressor of crime, we must, however
look onwards to the newspapers of 1852. Surely, if
mere warning by frequent lynchings were enough, the
warning of 1851, with the constant readiness of the
people to follow it up, on occasion, by new lynchings,
ought to have produced a reign of peace in the mines,
lasting longer than through the autumn and winter fol
lowing. But consider the facts. We have already seen
how, in the spring of 1852, things went on at Moque-
lumne Hill. I have before me in a file a number of
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 343
the steamer " Alta " of June 15, 1852. This number
has an astonishing catalogue of crimes, reported from
the mining regions both north and south, together with
lynchings ; and the editor declares that, were he to
give all the particulars to be gathered from his mining
exchanges of one day, he could fill a number of his own
daily edition. And then he adds a significant quota
tion from an interior paper of the southern mines.
" The ' Calaveras Chronicle,' " he says, " complains of
the alarming increase of crime in that section within
the past few weeks. The grand jury have found ten
indictments. 'Summary examples' (*. e., lynching ex
amples), says the ' Chronicle,' ' for capital and minor
offenses have been frequently made ; but the canaille
would scarcely lose sight of the scaffold, the tremor
which a malefactor in the agony of death cast through
their frame would scarcely have ceased, until they
caused the public ear again to be greeted with intelli
gence of more outrages, more robberies, more assassi
nations." As for the state of the mining public in that
part of the country at the moment, it appears, from sev
eral items in that number of the steamer " Alta," that
a " Mexican " at Jackson, having been accused, without
any evidence of which an intelligible account can be
given, of being the murderer of two Frenchmen who had
been slain in their tents near there, was brought before
a drunken justice of the peace, and was by him com
mitted to prison ; and that the " crowd " thereupon,
without giving him a fair chance to be heard further in
his own defense, took him from jail and hanged him,
after a desperate struggle, in the presence of his plead
ing mother and sisters. Now this affair, which is very
confusedly reported, and which, of course, may have
344 CALIFORNIA.
been distorted in the telling, sufficiently indicates, at all
events, that the lynching habit was as demoralizing as it
was useless.1
VII. A TYPICAL HISTORY OF A MIXING CAMP IN
1851-52.
More orderly expressions of popular justice, of the
sort heretofore frequently recorded, were impossible, as
we now see, without results that must be far worse than
mere mistakes. A mining town was not standing still.
It was a growing or else a decaying organism. In al
ternating between universal optimistic good-humor on
the one hand, and grim vengeance upon wrong-doers on
the other, it was, however, either stunting its true
growth, or dooming itself to decay and corruption.
Fortune has preserved to us from the pen of a very in
telligent woman, who writes under an assumed name,
a marvelously skillful and undoubtedly truthful history
of a mining community during a brief period, first of
cheerful prosperity, and then of decay and disorder.
The wife of a physician, and herself a well-educated
New England woman, " Dame Shirley," as she chooses
to call herself, was the right kind of witness to describe
for us the social life of a mining camp from actual ex
perience. This she did in the form of letters written
on the spot to her own sister,2 and collected for publica-
1 I have not wished to burden these pages with a complete list of the
very numerous cases of lynching that 1 have collected from the con
temporary newspaper files. The foregoing cases, as far as they go,
are to my mind typical, and I believe my choice to be a fair one. At
all events such directly verifiable data have far more worth than the
confused memory of the pioneers before referred to.
2 These Shirley Letters, found all through the numbers of Ewer's
Pioneer (published at San Francisco in 1854-55), have already been
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 345
tion some two or three years later. Once for all, allow
ing for the artistic defects inevitable in a disconnected
series of private letters, these " Shirley " letters form
the best account of an early mining camp that is known
to me. For our real insight into the mining life as it
was, they are, of course, infinitely more helpful to us
than the perverse romanticism of a thousand such tales
as Mr. Bret Harte's, tales that, as the world knows,
were not the result of any personal experience of really
primitive conditions.
" Shirley " entered the mines with her husband in
1851, and passed the following winter, and the summer
of 1852, at Rich Bar and Indian Bar successively, both
of them busy camps, near together, on the North Fork
of the Feather River. The climate agreed with her
very well, and on the whole she seems to have endured
the hardships of the life most cheerfully.
Rich Bar 2 was, in September, 1851, when she first
saw it, a town of one street, " thickly planted with about
forty tenements ; " tents, rag and wooden house*, plank
hovels, log cabins. One hotel there was in it, the
" Empire." Rich Bar had had, in its early days, a great
once cited. Of their authenticity we are assured by the editor. The
internal evidence is to the same effect. " Dame Shirley's " interest is
not at all our particular one here; and she is quite unconscious of the
far-reaching moral and social significance of much that she describes.
Many of the incidents introduced are such as imagination could of
itself never suggest, in such an order and connection. There is no
mark of any conscious seeking for dramatic effect. The moods that
the writer expresses indicate no remote purpose, but are the simple
embodiment of the thoughts of a sensitive mind, interested deeply in
the wealth of new experiences. The letters are charmingly unsenti
mental; the style is sometimes a little stiff and provincial, but is on
the whole very readable. The real name of the author, according to
Poole's Index, is Mrs. L. A. C. Clapp.
1 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 221.
346 CALIFORNIA.
reputation for its wealth, insomuch that during its first
summer, it had suddenly made wealthy, then converted
into drunken gamblers, and so utterly ruined, several
hundred miners, all by giving them occasional returns
of some hundreds of dollars to the panful. It had now
entered into a second stage of more modestly prosperous
and more steadily laborious life ; it was a very orderly
place, and was inhabited partly by American, partly by
foreign miners. Some of the latter were South Ameri
cans. '• Shirley " on her arrival found herself one of
five women on the bar ; and was of course very pleas
antly and respectfully treated by those miners whom
she had occasion to know.1
In the " Empire," the only two-story building in
town, built originally as a gamblers' palace, but, by
reason of the temporary industry and sobriety of the
Bar, now converted into a very quiet hotel, " Shirley "
found temporary lodgings. The hotel office was " fitted
up with that eternal crimson calico, which flushes the
whole social life of the ' Golden State ' with its ever
lasting red." 2 In this room there was a bar, and a
shop of miners' clothing and groceries. The u parlor "
1 The popular stories of absurd displays of sentimentality by early
miners who chanced to be reminded of home through the sight of a
woman or of a child never find much corroboration from the state
ments of women who were actually in the mines at the time. Most
women were of course uncommonly well treated by the whole commu
nity, and any man's services would have been instantly and gladly
at their disposal in case of an}' need. They were met with even effu
sive politeness ; but miners were not such fools as the story-tellers like
to make them. " Shirley," soon after her arrival, was greeted in her
husband's office by one of his friends, who insisted on making her
sip champagne on the spot at this friend's own expense, in honor of
his first sight of a woman for two years. But Shirley did not hear
that any one ever danced about a woman's cast-off bonnet or petticoat.
2 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 174.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 347
was behind this room, on the first floor : a room straw-
carpeted, and furnished with a big mirror, a red-seated
" sofa, fourteen feet long," a " round table with a green
cloth, red calico curtains, a cooking-stove, a rocking-
chair, and a woman and a baby, the latter wearing
a scarlet frock to match the sofa and curtains." Up
stairs were several bedrooms, with immense, heavy bed
steads, warped and uneven floors, purple calico linings
on the walls, and red calico curtains. The whole house
was very roughly and awkwardly pieced together by a
careless carpenter, and cost its builders eight thousand
dollars. It was the great pride and ornament of the
camp.
The landlord was a Western farmer, his wife yellow-
complexioned and care-worn. The baby, six months
old, kicked and cried in a champagne-basket cradle.
The woman cooked for all the boarders herself. Of the
four women who besides " Shirley " were in town, an
other kept with her husband the " Miners' Home " and
" tended bar." Within about a week after "' Shirley "
came, a third of the four, whom she had not met, died,
and " Shirley " attended the funeral,1 which took place
from a log cabin. This dwelling was windowless, but
with one large opening in the wall to admit light. The
funeral scene was characteristic of the social condition of
the moment. Everything about the place was " exceed
ingly clean and neat " for the occasion. " On a board,
supported by two butter-tubs, was extended the body of
the dead woman, covered with a sheet ; by its side
stood the coffin of unstained pine, lined with white cam
bric. . . . The husband held in his arms a sickly babe
ten months old, which was moaning piteously for its
1 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 347.
348 CALIFORNIA.
mother. The other child, a handsome, hold-looking
little girl, six years of age, was running gayly around
the room, perfectly unconscious of her bereavement."
Every few moments she would '* run up to her dead
mother, and peep laughingly under the handkerchief."
'• It was evident that her baby-toilet had heen made by
men ; she had on a new calico dress, which, having no
tucks in it, trailed to the floor," giving her a " dwarf-
womanly appearance." After a long and wandering
impromptu prayer by somebody, a prayer which " Shir
ley '" found disagreeable (since she herself was a church-
woman, and missed the burial service), the procession,
containing twenty men and three women, set out for the
hill-side graveyard, " a dark cloth cover, borrowed from
a neighboring monte table," being " flung over the cof
fin," as a pall. It was the best pall Rich Bar could
have furnished for anybody. The coffin-lid was nailed
down, as there were no screws, the sharp hammer blows
on the hollow coffin shocking the solemn little assembly
with their uncanny noise. " Shirley " tried, a few days
later, to amuse the little motherless girl, who was then
about to leave the camp with her father for Marysville,
and offered her a few playthings. The little one chose
with ecstatic delight some tiny scent-bottles, which she
called " baby -decanters."
Among the miners, perfect good-humor prevailed on
the Bar. On the anniversary of Chilian independence,
Yankee miners walked fraternally in procession with
the Chilians, every member of the procession " intensely
drunk," l and yet there seems to have been no quarrel
ing. The people on the Bar used profane language to
an unpleasant extent on the commonest occasions ; but
1 Pioneer, vol. i. p. 274.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 349
they \vere well-meaning about it, and called it only a
" slip of the tongue." " Shirley?" as woman of cultiva
tion and curiosity, took a friendly interest in their less
disagreeable manners and customs, and especially in their
rich, and to her at that moment very novel, slang. She
recorded with amusement how they ended a discussion
upon business questions with : " Talk enough when
horses fight," or '; Talk enough between gentlemen ; "
how they assured themselves of one's sincerity by ques
tioning : " Honest Injun ? " (which she spells, with
Yankee primness, Indian) ; and how they would ask
one of another : " Have you a spare pick-axe about
your clothes ? " or say that they " had got the dead-
wood on " somebody.1 Take them for all in all, they
seemed to her far oftener amusing than coarse or disa
greeable. And many of them she plainly found delight
ful men, men of education no doubt, and of good social
position at home.
Before October had fairly begun, she had moved
with her husband to the neighboring Indian Bar, where
he had many personal friends. The scenery here was
wilder ; but the society was much the same in its busy
and peaceful joviality. Here were some twenty tents
and cabins on the bar itself ; other houses were on the
hill, the whole place evidently growing very fast ; and
other inhabited bars were near. The whole region
was full of activity ; dams, wing-dams, flumes, artificial
ditches, were to be seen all about. " Shirley " now be
gan to live in her own log cabin, which she found al
ready hung with a gaudy chintz. The one hotel of In
dian Bar was near her cabin, too near, in fact ; for there
much drinking, and music, with dancing (by men with
1 Pioneer, vol. ii. p. 24.
850 CALIFORNIA.
men), went on. " Shirley " found and improvised very
amusing furniture for her dwelling ; trunks, claret-
cases, three-legged stools, monte-table covers, and candle-
boxes, furnishing the materials for her ingenuity. In
her little library she had a Bible, a prayer-book, Shake
speare, and Lowell's "Fable for the Critics," with two
or three other books. The negro cook of the hotel, who
for some time did her own cooking as well, played finely
on the violin when he chose, and was very courteous
to " Shirley." She speaks of him often with infinite
amusement. Prominent in the society of the Bar was a
trapper, of the old Fremont party, who told blood-cur
dling tales of Indian fights ; another character was a
learned Quaker, who lectured at length to " Shirley "
on literature, but never liked to listen to her on any sub
ject, and told her as much very frankly. The camp had
just become possessed also of a justice of the peace, a
benevolent looking fat man, with a big head, slightly
bald, and a smooth fat face. He was genial and sweet-
tempered, was commonly supposed to be incompetent,
and had got himself elected by keeping both the coming
election and his candidacy a secret, save from his
friends. Most of the miners, when they came to hear
of him and of the election, thought such an officer a nui
sance in those diggings, as the camp could surely keep
order without his help. But so long as he had nothing
to do, he was permitted to do it, and to be as great a
man for his pains as he liked. Late in October, one
case of supposed theft occurred, the trial taking place at
Rich Bar, before a miners' meeting. The ''Squire"
was allowed to look on from the platform, while the im
provised popular magistrate, sitting by his side, admin-
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 351
istered justice. The thief, as "Shirley" heard, was
lightly flogged, and was then banished.1
Not until December, however, was the general peace
broken further. But then it was indeed broken by a
decidedly barbarous case of hanging for theft. The
" Squire " was powerless to affect the course of events ;
the "people" of Indian Bar, many of them drunken
and full of disorderly desire for a frolic, tried the ac
cused, whose guilt was certain enough, although his pre
vious character had been fair ; and, when he had been
found guilty, the "crowd " hanged him in a very brutal
fashion. He was himself drunken to the last moment.
The more reckless people of the Bar were the ones con
cerned in this affair, and all '• Shirley's " own friends
disapproved of it.2
General demoralization, however, set in with winter.
There was little to do on the Bar ; the most of the men
were young ; the confinement of the winter, on a place
" about as large as a poor widow's potato-patch," was
terrible to them. Christmas evening saw the beginning
of a great revel at the hotel near " Shirley's " log-cabin.8
Days had been spent in preparing for it ; the bar of the
hotel had been retrimmed with red calico ; brandy and
champagne in vast quantities had been brought into
camp ; and, what was most wonderful of all, the floor
of the hotel had been washed. An oyster and cham
pagne supper, with toasts and songs, began the revel.
Shirley heard dancing in the hotel as she fell asleep
that night in her cabin ; and next morning, when she
woke, they were still dancing.4 The whole party now
1 Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 151, 214. 2 Op. cit., vol. ii. p. 351.
3 Op. cit., vol. iii. p 80.
4 These "balls," attended by men only, because there were only
352 CALIFORNIA.
kept themselves drunken for three days, growing con
stantly wilder. They formed a mock vigilance committee
to catch and brim; in the few remaining soher men of
o o
the camp, to try them, and to condemn them to drink
some stated quantity. Some of the wildest revelers
were the most respected men on the river. At last
they all reached the climax : as '' Shirley " heard the
thing described, they lay about in heaps on the floor of
the hotel, howling, barking, and roaring. Altogether
" Shirley " thought the letter describing this affair the
unpleasantest of her series so far. Strange to say, no
fights are recorded at this time. But thenceforth confu
sion seems to be somewhat noticeable in the social af
fairs of that vicinity. In March a man at a camp near
by was stabbed in the back during a drunken frolic,
and without any sort of cause. Yet people took at the
time no notice of the affair.1 In April a Mexican at
Indian Bar asked an American for some money due the
former. The American promptly stabbed his creditor ;
but again nothing was done.2 The Mexicans were in
fact now too numerous for comfort at Indian Bar, since
Rich Bar had just expelled all foreigners, who therefore
now came to this place. The public houses, which now
were noisy with gambling, drinking, and fighting, had
increased from one to seven or eight, and on Sundays
they were " truly horrible." But summer began with
out any further great outbreaks of mob violence. On
the Fourth of July, however, the u gradually increasing
state of bad feeling " recently shown by our country
men to attend them, worn not uncommon in the mines. Borthwick,
in his Thrte Years, has preserved, opposite p. 320, a sketch of one of
them, made on the spot, and worth pages of stupid description. See
also his excellent sketches, from life, of gambling-scenes.
l Op. cit., vol. iii. p. 220. 2 Loc. cit., p. 355.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 353
men towards the foreigners, culminated, for the mo
ment, in a general assault, the result " of whiskey and
patriotism," on the Spaniards near one of the saloons, of
whom two or three were badly hurt.1 " Shirley " con
fesses that, as she learns, the people of Spanish race on
the Bar, many of whom are '' highly educated gentle
men," are disposed to base an ill opinion of our whole
nation on the actions of the rougher men at Indian Bar.
" They think " [very oddly] " that it is the grand char
acteristic of Columbia's children to be prejudiced, opin
ionated, selfish, avaricious, and unjust. It is vain to
tell them that such are not specimens of American gen
tlemen." Our democratic airs as shown in the mines,
" Shirley " thinks, deceive them. They fancy that we
must be what we choose to seem, namely, all alike.
But the men who really so acted as so unfavorably to
impress the foreign gentlemen were, she declares, the
gamblers and rowdies of the camp. " The rest of the
people are afraid of these daring, unprincipled persons,
and when they commit the most glaring in justice against
the Spaniards, it is generally passed unnoticed." " We
have had," says " Shirley," wearily, " innumerable
drunken fights during the summer, with the usual
amount of broken heads, collar bones, stabs, etc." These
fights usually took place on Sunday ; and not otherwise
could "Shirley" always have been sure of remembering
the day of rest. Things were sadly changed from those
bright days of her early stay at the Bar.
The vengeance of the gods, that was thus gathering
over Indian Bar, descended with a sudden stroke on
Sunday, July 11. " Shirley " had been walking with a
party of friends in the beautiful summer woods ; but
i Op. cit., vol. iv. p. 24.
23
354 CALIFORNIA.
when she returned the town was in a fury. A " majes
tic-looking Spaniard " had quarreled with an Irishman
about a Mexican girl ("• Shirley " for the first time, I
think, thus showing a knowledge of the presence at In
dian Bar of those women who seem, in the bright and
orderly days of her first arrival, to have been actually
unknown in the camp). The Mexican, having at last
stabbed and killed the other, fled to the hills ; and the
Americans were rushing about, shouting : " Down with
the Spaniards ! " " Don't let one of the murderous dev
ils remain ! " and other similarly enlightened words.
" Shirley " was conducted by her husband for safety up
on to the hill, and to a house where there lived a family
containing two women. Here from above, gazing di
rectly down on to the Bar, she watched '• a sea of heads,
bristling with rifles, guns, and clubs." In this vast
confusion a gun was accidentally discharged, during a
scuffle, and two men were wounded. This recalled the
people to their senses, and they forthwith elected a vigi
lance committee. They were then pacified for the day.
But the next day the committee tried five or six
Spaniards, " supposed to have been ringleaders in the
drunken mob of Sunday," and sentenced two to be
flogged, and all to be banished, their property u being
confiscated for the use of the wounded persons."
" Shirley " was obliged to hear, from her cabin, the
flogging of the two men, and found it, naturally, very
highly disagreeable. One of the two convicted men, a
" gentlemanly young Spaniard," begged in vain to be
killed rather than whipped, and finally swore the most
awful vengeance on all Americans henceforth. These
sentences of the committee were, after all, very lenient ;
for the mob had demanded the death of the prisoners.
Thus becan the rule of the Committee of Vigilance.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 355
Within the next week there was a murder by a ne
gro, and he was hanged for it at Rich Bar. Fights
went on more wildly than before. Yet another negro
is named, who cut his own throat and created much ex
citement thereby, since at first one of his fellows was
accused of having done the deed. As for the state of
society, " it has never been so bad," " Shirley " writes,
two or three weeks later, " as since the appointment of a
committee of vigilance." It was now almost impossible
to sleep. The rowdies paraded the streets all night, howl
ing, wrorrying their enemies, and making great bonfires,
— all the men of this crowd of roughs being constantly
drunken. " The poor, exhausted miners . . . grumble
and complain, but they — although far outnumbering
the rioters — are too timid to resist. All say, ' It is
shameful ; something ought to be done,' etc., and in the
mean time the rioters triumph. You will wonder that
the committee of vigilance does not interfere. It is said
that some of that very committee are the ringleaders."
A duel took place during this time at a neighboring bar.
" The duelists were surrounded by a large crowd, I have
been told, foremost among which stood the committee
of vigilance ! " 1
— The mining operations that summer were not a
distinguished success at Indian Bar, and in autumn there
was what miners call a " general stampede from those
diggings." The physician and his wife took leave of
the mines not unwillingly. " Shirley's " health, to be
sure, had wonderfully improved. In closing her mining
life she notices that " the few men that have remained
on the Bar have amused themselves by prosecuting one
another right and left." " The ' Squire,' " she adds,
1 For the immediately foregoing, see Pioneer, vol. iv. p. 103, sqq.
356 CALIFORNIA.
"comes out strong on these occasions." His recent
course in these litigations " has been so fair, candid,
and sensible, that he has won golden opinions from all,
and were it not for his insufferable laziness and good
nature, he would have made a good justice of the
peace." 1 This criticism applies so well, also, to all the
honest miners of Indian Bar and vicinity (men who
formed an undoubted majority of the community), that
we need no better summary than these words give us of
the life of that year on the Bar. Those native Ameri
cans of good character would have had little real trouble
in preserving the peace of the camp, had they not chosen,
one and all, to show such detestable " laziness and good
nature."
" Shirley's " well-sketched pictures have passed be
fore us, and the series is complete : easily secured peace,
then carelessly criminal tolerance, then brutally intol
erant degeneracy, and then the final wretched dissolu
tion. There can be no doubt that the story is typical of
the life of many camps. With " Shirley," we rejoice at
last to leave to its triumph the majesty of the benevo
lent law, personified in the fat-faced squire, as it works
to the edification of that handful of impecunious and
litigious fellow-citizens who were forced to stay on the
Bar.
VIII. THE WARFARE AGAINST THE FOREIGNERS.
We have now disposed, we hope forever, of the fa
miliar pioneer theory that makes the " foreign crimi
nals " the one great cause of the troubles of the miners.
The rapid degeneration of the weaker young men of all
sorts in those times has been commonly enough noticed
i Op. cit., vol. iv. p. 347.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 357
in the accounts of the mines. The foreigners, too, had
their share in the effects of this tendency, and the
Spanish-Americans most of all, because they were most
abused, and least capable of resisting the moral effects
of abuse. Many of them were also bad enough to begin
with, and that there were great numbers of foreign rogues
in California is, of course, certain. But for the rapid
degeneration, both of individuals and of communities, the
honest men were chiefly to blame, because they knew
the danger, and neglected for a time, in the mines,
every serious social duty. The honest men were, at the
worst, a fair majority, and were usually an overwhelm
ing majority of the mining communities. Had they not
been so, California would never have emerged from the
struggle as soon as it did. Since they were so, it is
useless for the survivors now to remind us of the un
doubtedly honorable intentions of these good miners of
early days, and to lay all the blame elsewhere. Not
every one that saith Lord ! Lord ! is a good citizen.
But if the foreign criminals were not the great source
of mischief, the honest men certainly did all that they
could to make these foreigners such a source. The fear
ful blindness of the early behavior of the Americans in
California towards foreigners is something almost unin
telligible. The avaricious thirst for gold among the
Americans themselves can alone explain the corruption
of heart that induced this blindness. Some of the ef
fects we have already seen. We must look yet a little
closer at this aspect of the struggle.
The problem of the future relations of foreigners and
Americans in California was, at the moment of the birth
of the State, undoubtedly perplexing. A mixed popu
lation of gold-seekers was obviously a thing to be feared.
358 CALIFORNIA.
Left to themselves, American miners, as it seemed,
might be trusted to keep a fair order. With all sorts
of people thronging the territory, danger might be ap
prehended. This problem, then, as to the future, was
sure to trouble even the clearest heads. But, after all,
clear heads ought quickly to have understood that this
perplexing problem was not for any man, but, in its
main elements, only for fortune to solve ; and that the
work of sensible men must be limited to minimi/ing the
threatening evils by caution, by industrious good citizen
ship, and by a conciliatory behavior. The foreigners
could not, on the whole, be kept from coming. One
could only choose whether one would encourage the
better or the worse class of foreigners to come to the
land, and whether one would seek to make those who
came friendly and peaceable, or rebellious and desperate.
But the California public and the first legislature chose
to pass an act to discourage decent foreigners from vis
iting California, and to convert into rogues all honest
foreigners who might have come. This was, indeed,
not the title of the act. It was the Foreign Miners'
Tax Law of 1850.
Its avowed purpose was as far as possible to exclude
foreigners from these mines, the God-given property of
the American people. Its main provision was a tax of
thirty dollars a month (levied by means of the sale of
monthly licenses) upon each foreigner engaged in min
ing. At the time when it was passed there were al
ready several thousand Sonoran miners in California ;
and, as we have also seen, there had already been diffi
culty with them in the southern mines, a difficulty that,
as, we learn from Bayard Taylor,1 passed off peaceably
1 See also Riley's letter (Cal. Docs, of 1850, p. 788) as corrobora-
tion.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 359
enough at the moment, because the Sonorans would not
fight. Taylor's mistake lay in supposing the Sonorans
to have been seriously discouraged. In the next year
they were more numerous than ever. So the public and
the legislature were forewarned. The common talk
about our national divine right to all tho gold in Cali
fornia was detestable mock-pious cant, and we knew it.
The right and duty that undoubtedly belonged to us
was to build up a prosperous and peaceful community
anywhere on our own soil. But you cannot build up a
prosperous and peaceful community so long as you pass
laws to oppress and torment a large resident class of the
community. The one first duty of a state is to keep its
own peace, and not to disturb the peace. The legisla
tors must have known that to pass the law was to lead
almost inevitably to violent efforts at an evasion of its
monstrous provisions, and was meanwhile to subject the
foreigners to violent assaults from any American ruf
fians who might choose to pretend, in the wild mountain
regions, that they were themselves the state officers.
Violence must lead to violence, and the State would
have done all it could to sanction the disturbances.
Seldom is a political mistake so quickly judged by
events. The next legislature, little wiser about many
things than its predecessor, was still, in this matter,
forced quickly enough to withdraw its predecessor's ab
surdity from the statute-books. The " Alta California "
breathes with a sigh the general relief on hearing that
this is done.1 But ere it could be done, untold mischief,
1 See the weekly Alta, in the Harvard College Library file, for
March 15 and March 22. 1851. As appears from remarks and news
herein contained, the repeal of the tax was, like all political action,
the product of manifold motives. San Francisco felt bitterly, as the
chief port of the State, the loss of commerce that the act directly and
300 CALIFORNIA.
which added fearfully to the sorrows of the struggle for
order, had heen caused by the unlucky act.
No adventurer, no gambler, no thief, no cutthroat,
who had desired to come to California from Mexico, or
elsewhere abroad, could be prevented by a threat of tax
ing him thirty dollars a month for mining. Many a cau
tious, sober, intelligent foreigner might be warned away
by the exorbitant tax, as well as by the hostility which
it indicated. For, when levied not upon the uncom
monly lucky miner, with his two ounces or his pound a
day, but upon the ordinary poor devil, with his ups and
downs, whose " wages " per month were in only a very
few months more than enough to support him at the
prices that prevailed, and in the winter months were
often nothing at all, the thirty-dollar tax was a mon
strous imposition. And when levied on men who had
come already in 1848, and who had often felt, before
the passage of the act, that the Americans hated them
merely for being the more skillful miners, this tax
was a blow that their hot spirits were sure to resent.
Trouble came at once, and quickly culminated in the
difficulties at Sonora, in 1850. From his sources Mr.
Shinn has given, in chapter xviii. of the '' Mining
Camps," an account of this disturbance.1 He regards it
indirectly entailed. Business men, in Stockton and the southern
mines, complained of the loss of customers. Every one, by March,
1851, was weary of the insecurity produced by the bickerings with
the foreigners. And, at a public meeting held (as the Alta reports)
in Stockton, March 0, 1851, and addressed by several speakers, among
others by one "Terry," whom I supposed to be the well-known judge
of later years, the discussion is made to touch on the vital national
question of north and south. The tax law is called a scheme to de
press the enterprise of the southern mines, and so of the southern por
tion of the State, whose sectional sympathies were well known.
1 His chief source, I suppose, is the Miners1 Directory of Tuo-
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 361
as a " case where indignation against foreigners had
much justification." I am prepared to believe that
whenever it is proved, but what I have been able to
gather from the contemporary newspaper files makes me
prefer to express the matter by calling the affair a not
wholly unprovoked, but still disgraceful riot on the part
of Americans. They were undoubtedly harassed by
foreigners of the poorer sort, and a number of murders
were committed by such, but when the Americans turned
upon foreigners as a class, and especially upon Sonorans
and South Americans, and tried to exclude them from
the mines in a body, by means of mob-violence, sup
ported by resolutions passed at miners' meetings, the
undertaking was a brutal outrage, and the good sense
of decent Americans quickly rebounded, for the moment,
from the mood that could be guilty of such behavior.
The result was, however, meanwhile, that many foreign
ers were rendered desperate and were turned into dan
gerous rascals, and that many more were driven vio
lently away from the mines ; but that, nevertheless, the
body of the foreign miners remained in the mines at
their work, ill-humored, suspicious, and ready for the
worst ; so that the last state of " those diggings " was far
worse than the first. There is here no space for a dis
cussion of the sources bearing on this topic ; and these
Sonoran difficulties form one of the many still almost
unstudied topics that abound in California history, and
that invite monographic treatment. I can give only the
result of what I so far can make out. When, early in
the summer of 1850, the collectors came for the foreign
lumne County (Sonora, 1856), which he cites in his Land Laws of
Mining Camps, and ekewhere. This pamphlet I have not been able
to use.
362 CALIFORNIA.
miners' tax, they found the foreigners surly and suspi
cious, and did what was possible to make them more so.
A number of murders were committed by •' Mexicans."
and then the American miners began to meet, and to
pass resolutions, not against murderers, nor in favor of
a firm organization of the regular machinery of law,
but against foreigners. One famous set of resolutions,
quoted in all the authorities on this affair, pronounced
in favor of a committee of three Americans in each
camp, to decide what foreigners were " respectable,"
and to exclude all others by a sort of executive order,
meanwhile depriving those who remained of all arms,
save in cases where special permits should be issued.
One is reminded once more, by this procedure, of poor
Ide and the " blessings of liberty." Other resolutions,
passed in those days, and often later in various camps,
excluded foreigners altogether, sometimes giving the
obvious intentions of Providence as the reason for this
brutality. There followed numerous assaults upon Mex
icans, and several riotous assemblages of Americans.
It is impossible to judge how far the newspaper re
ports of foreign outrages in that region and time, out
rages such as robberies and murders committed upon
Americans, are truthful. Any mysterious outrage was
attributed to " Mexicans ; " any American wretch who
chanced to find it useful could in moments of excite
ment divert suspicion from himself, by mentioning the
Mexicans in general, or any particular Mexicans, as the
authors of his crimes. And, in ''those diggings," there
were, undoubtedly, numerous Mexicans who well de
served hanging. But the story as told by the foreign
population is not known to us. We can see only indi
rectly, through the furious and confused reports of the
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 363
Americans themselves, how much of organized and
coarse brutality these Mexicans suffered from the min
ers' meetings. The outrages committed by foreigners
were after all, however numerous, tlie crimes of indi
viduals. Ours were the crimes of a community, con
sisting largely of honest but cruelly bigoted men, who
encouraged the ruffians of their own nation to ill-treat
the wanderers of another, to the frequent destruction of
peace and good order. We were favored of heaven
with the instinct of organization ; and so here we organ
ized brutality, and, so to speak, asked God's blessing
upon it. The foreigners were often enough degraded
wretches ; such drank, gambled, stole, and sometimes
murdered : they were also, often enough, honest fel
lows, or even men of high character and social posi
tion ; and such we tried in our way to ruin. In all cases
they were, as foreigners, unable to form their own gov
ernment, or to preserve their own order. And so we
kept them in fear, and, as far as possible, in misery.
So ill we indeed did not treat them as some nations
would have done ; we did not massacre them wholesale,
as Turks might have massacred them : that treatment we
reserved for the defenseless Digger Indians, whose vflT ( A^
lages certain among our miners used on occasion to re
gard as targets for rifle-practice, or to destroy wholesale
with fire, outrage, and murder, as if they had been so
many wasps' nests in our gardens at home. Nay, the
foreign miners, being civilized men, generally received
" fair trials," as we said, whenever they were accused.
It was, however, considered safe by an average lynch
ing jury in those days to convict a " greaser " on very
moderate evidence, if none better coufcl be had. One
could see his guilt so plainly written, we know, in his
364 CALIFORNIA.
ugly swarthy face, before the trial began. Therefore
the life of a Spanish-American in the mints iii the early
clays, if frequently profitable, was apt to be a little dis
agreeable. It served him right, of course. He had no
business, as an alien, to come to the land that God had
given us. And if he was a native Californian, a born
" greaser," then so much the worse for him. He was
so much the more our born foe ; we hated his whole
degenerate, thieving, land-owning, lazy, and discontented
race. Some of them were now even bandits ; most of
them by this time were, with our help, more or less
drunkards ; and it was not our fault if they were not all
rascals ! So they deserved no better.
The Sonora troubles of 1850 would be less significant
if they had expressed only a temporary mistake, and
had given place to a proper comprehension of our duty
to foreigners. But although the exorbitant foreign min
er's tax was repealed in 1851, and although, when a tax
was reimposed later, it was of comparatively moderate
amount, still the miners themselves were not converted
from their error until long afterwards, and, in numerous
individual cases, they were never converted at all. The
violent self-assertions that from time to time were made
of the American spirit over against the foreign element,
accomplished absolutely no good aim, and only increased
the bitterness on both sides, while corrupting more and
more our own sense of justice. Instead, therefore, of
justifying themselves as necessary acts of " self-preser
vation," the miners' outbreaks against foreigners only
rendered their own lives and property less secure. Two
years after the Sonora troubles, one finds in the summer
of 1852 the same weary business going on in the south
ern mines, less imposing, no doubt, in its expressions of
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 365
wrath, but none the less disgraceful and demoralizing.1
The later the year, the more certain it is that all molesta
tion of foreigners who had been in the peaceful posses
sion of claims meant simply confiscation of valuable
property that had been acquired by hard toil. For such
claims, in these later times, were often river-bed claims,
or " coyote-holes," or similarly laborious enterprises. So,
in the disturbance in July, 18o2, in Mariposa, referred
to in the foregoing note, the foreign miners, as appears
from the report, had undertaken all the work of turning
the course of a river, and their property was confiscated
as soon as it was perceived to be valuable.2 And the
turpitude of such conduct is especially manifest from the
fact that the foreigners (as Auger, just cited, admits in
case of his own countrymen) were in any case, and even
under the fairest treatment, at a serious disadvantage in
all operations of an extensive sort, by reason of their
comparative deficiency in the character and training
required in order to improvise, amid the confusion of
a new country, greater organizations of labor and cap
ital. The Frenchmen, says Auger (p. 106), in case of
1 See in the steamer Alia (Harvard College Library file) for July
13, 1852, the account of the expulsion of foreign miners, French and
Spanish-American especially, from expensive and valuable claims in
Mariposa. See, also, resolutions of miners at Sonora, passed October
12, in the steamer Alia of November 1, ordering foreigners out of the
mines.
2 E. Auger, in his Voyage en Cftlifornie (Paris, 1857), p. 112, gives
an account from hearsay, whose correctness I am unable to control, of
one of the earlier difficulties between French and American miners in
the southern mines, and remarks in that connection, very accurately,
that, among the miners " La justice favorise generalement les Ame'ri-
cains aux de'pens des etrangers." On page 106, the author recounts
from hearsay another quarrel at this time over a river-bed claim, " sur
le Stanislaus-river," where his countrymen were violently dispos
sessed. This may be the Mariposa case misplaced.
366 CALIFORNIA.
great mining undertakings, " out toujours cede au de-
couragement qui rempla9ait chez eux une ardeur im-
moderee ou aux divisions intestines qui les separaient
brusquement au moment de recueillir les fruits de leur
enterprise." He excepts only the one greater case cited,
where the Americans did the work of dissolution for the
Frenchmen.1 Thus, however, the very instinct and
training of which we in this land have such good rea
son to be proud, aggravates, in the present case, our dis
grace. Because we knew so well how to organize, we
were not the weak nor the injured party, but had these
foreigners at our mercy ; and for the same reason our
outrages upon them were organized outrages, expressions
of our peculiar national combination of a love of order
with a frequently detestable meanness towards stran
gers.
The northern mines, however, are often supposed to
have been not only more orderly, but also more tolerant.
This is probably, on the whole, the case. As there
were fewer foreigners present in the northern mines,
the temptations to abuse them were less frequent. In
some cases, however, proof can be found even in the
southern mines themselves of very great earnestness in
the enforcement of the rights of foreigners. An amus
ing account is given (in a book that contains a series
of well-written and apparently substantially truthful
sketches of California life, by a Canadian) of a demon
stration in a camp on the Stanislaus, as late as 1856, by
the whole force of the camp to protect certain Chinamen
i Borthwick, op. cit., p. 369, cited also by Mr. Shinn, in the Mining
Camps, p. 155, contrasts finely the organizing power of the American
miners with the gregarious habits of the seldom organized French
miners, and makes the fact illustrate national peculiarities.
TEE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 367
in their rights as miners.1 This camp, Shaw tells us,
was inhabited mainly by miners from the northern States
of the Union, and where the influence of such was par
amount it may have been, in general, a somewhat more
tolerant influence. Yet, once for all, our American
intolerance towards the unassimilable foreigner is not
a sectional peculiarity, however often it may appear
somewhat more prominently in one section of our
land than in another. And the northern mines show us
numerous cases of it. " Shirley's " experiences, we
remember, were in the northern mines. It was in the
same mines, and in the same summer of 1852, that
miners' meetings at Bidwell's Bar, at Foster's Bar, at
Rough and Ready, and elsewhere, passed resolutions
excluding foreigners.2 This shows how the same vain
and demoralizing undertakings were still believed in at
the north that had been so disastrous at the south.
And one sees in another form how little reliance can be
placed upon the impression that the baseness of the for
eigners in California was to blame for the chief troubles
1 Pringle Shaw, Rumblings in California (Toronto, James Bain ; date
of publication not given, but apparently not far from 1858), p. 72,
sqq. An American miner sold his claim to Chinamen, who were dis
possessed by three "gaunt long-haired fellows" from Arkansas.
Shaw was himself the recorder of claims in the district, appointed to
his office by the miners' meeting-. The Chinamen complained to him,
he remonstrated with the " jumpers," and was insulted and threat
ened by them. He then called out the force of the camp, about one
hundred men, who marched in military order to the disputed claim,
under arms, and gave solemn warning to the Arkansas trio to leave it
in five minutes. The order was obeyed.
2 Steamer Alta for May 31 and June 15, 1852. In the meeting at
Bidwell's Bar, the miners expressed great indignation at "all mer
chants and shipping agents engaged in transporting " a countless
number of villains from all parts of the world to California." So the
Alta (steamer edition of June 15) expresses their view, partly in their
own words.
368 CALIFORNIA.
of the struggle for order in the mines. But, as a crown
ing illustration of the position of the northern miners
in this matter, the fact remains that in Downieville, far
up in the northern mines, was committed in the sum
mer of 1851 the most outrageous act of lynch law in all
the pioneer annals, the entirely unnecessary hanging of
a woman, whose death, under the circumstances, was
plainly due, not merely to her known guilt, but quite as
much to the fact that she was not an American. And
the deed was not only done but defended by American
miners.
IX. THE DOWNTEVILLE LYNCHING OF JULY 5, 1851-
Very obvious considerations lead civilized men, in
times of social disturbance even more than in times of
peace and good order, to be lenient to the public of
fenses of women. A man who gravely transgresses
against order is necessarily viewed first of all as trans
gressor, and only in the second place do his fellows re
member that considerations of mercy, of charity, or of
his own personal merit, may enter, to qualify the stern
ness of justice towards him. But a woman, however
she transgresses against law and order, is necessarily
regarded first of all as a woman, and only in the second
place does one remember that even in her case justice
must have its place. Therefore all the considerations
that may render lynch law a temporary necessity among
men in an unsettled community have, obviously, abso
lutely no application to the few women who may chance
to be there. If they become intolerable, a quiet ex
pulsion of them must serve, until such a time as the
community, having made up its mind to behave sensibly,
has provided prisons to confine them.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 369
However, the people of Downieville, in July, 1851,
were once led to think differently. The incident has
been frequently mentioned in books and essays about
the early times, and has often been regarded with hor
ror, and often, also, explained and even defended, as a
necessity of the moment. Garbled accounts of it are
found, sometimes, in the later pioneer reminiscences.1
Of the newspapers of the time that I have been able to
use, but one, so far as I know, has an extended account
of the affair coming directly from an eye-witness. This
paper is the " Daily Pacific Star," of San Francisco,
whose version, I believe, has never yet been employed
for historical purposes. I had the good fortune to come
upon this version while consulting a partial file of the
paper in the Mercantile Library in San Francisco, and
upon it I have here largely depended. Other news
paper reports, such as the " Alta " account, or that in
the "Sacramento Transcript," I have seen; but they
are brief and unsatisfactory. On the whole it is plain
that the newspapers, even in those plain-spoken days of
early California, were disposed to hush the matter up as
soon as possible. One of the editors of the " Star "
happened to be in Downieville at the time ; hence this
particular report in the " Star " for July 19, 1851.
On the night of July 4, one Cannan, apparently an
American,2 was walking home with some friends, in a
state of mind and body appropriate to the occasion,
1 See, for example, the otherwise generally inaccurate essay of Mr.
H. Robinson, on "Pioneer Times in California," in the Overland
Monthly for 1872, vol. viii. p. 457. See, also, Borthwick's uncon
sciously unfair version, from hearsay, op. cit., p. 222.
2 If Mr. Robinson, in the essay cited, can be viewed as trustworthy,
he was a man of good position among the miners, and member of an
influential order.
84
370 CALIFORNIA.
when they passed near the house where, as they well
knew, there lived, together with her Spanish paramour,
a young woman of Spanish-American race. She was,
it would seem, a person whose associates were mostly
gamblers ; just how irregular her life was does not
appear, save from this one item about her paramour.
To judge by what is stated, she may therefore have been
of at least pretended fidelity to him. All accounts make
her a woman of considerable beauty, of some intelligence
and vivacity, and of a still quite youthful appearance ;
and she seems to have been a person not at all despised
in the camp. At this moment her house was dark, and
the occupants were sleeping. But Cannan, in passing
by, stumbled and fell, as his companions say, against the
door of her house ; and the light, rude door giving way,
he fell half inside. One of his companions pulled him
back, saying : " Come out ; hush up ; there 's a woman
in that house," or some such words. As Cannan rose,
he had, in a drunken whim, picked up something from
the floor, just inside the house door — a scarf or some
like article ; and his companions with difficulty got it
away from him to throw it back. Then they all found
their probably devious way homewards.
Next morning Cannan, with one of the same compan
ions, passed by the house, and announced to his com
panion his purpose to apologize to the woman for having
made the disturbance of the night before. Cannan
could speak Spanish, which his companion did not un
derstand, so that we have, in this respect, no competent
witness surviving the following scene. At all events,
as Cannan's companion testifies, the companion of the
woman met them at the door as they approached, and
seemed angry with Cannan, and was understood to
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 371
threaten him. A moment later, the woman herself
appeared, and spoke yet more angrily. Cannan con
tinued the conversation in what seemed to his companion
a conciliatory tone ; the woman, however, grew con
stantly more excited at his words, whatever they were,
and erelong drew a knife, rushed quickly upon him.
and stabbed him to death at a stroke. Whether Cannan
really gave any momentary provocation by violent and
insulting language addressed to the woman, this Ameri
can witness is of course unable to testify. Both the
woman herself and her paramour afterwards asserted
that he did, and that it was his abuse, used in the course
of the quarrel, which drove her to the act, in an outburst
of fury.
The deed was quickly known throughout the town,
and the citizens at once organized a popular court, in
the ordinary lynchers' form, with an elected judge and
a jury. The woman and her paramour were brought
before the court, the crowd feeling and showing mean
while very great excitement. Some shouted, " Hang
them ; " others, " Give them a trial." Our eye-witness
heard a number also shout, " Give them a fair trial
and then hang them" a compromise which seems per
fectly to have expressed the Great American Mind, as
represented by these particular townspeople. A gentle
man present, named Thayer, protested indeed openly,
during the excitement, against this popular violence, but
he was ordered by the crowd " to consult his own safety
and desist." The trial began in the presence of the
impatient crowd. The disturbance of the previous night
was recounted ; Cannan's friends insisting that there
was no intention on their part to trouble the woman ;
and that what happened was due to a drunken accident
372 CALIFORNIA.
and a frail door. The murder was described by Can-
nan's companion, and the two accused, being called
upon, both gave, as the woman's sole justification, her
rage at Cannan's midnight disturbance, and at his abuse.
The man had evidently had no part in the murder,
which was the work of the instant.
Then followed, it would seem, a recess in the trial, and
thereafter a little more testimony for the defense. A
physician, Dr. Aiken, was called by the woman, and
gave it as his opinion that she was with child in the
third month. The doctor made, as the editor tells us,
a very unfavorable impression on the people. The only
reason given for this unfavorable impression is " that he
seemed desirous, so it was thought, to save the prisoner."
Never before this in California, and never since, so far
as I know, has Judge Lynch been called upon to deal
with the delicate question now presented to this court.
The Great American Mind suggested, under the circum
stances, a consultation of physicians, and another physi
cian was called, who, with Dr. Aiken, retired into a
house, taking the prisoner. The Great American Mind
itself, meanwhile, grew intensely excited outside the
frail structure in which the consultation was taking
place ; and this mind induced the crowd who represented
it to threaten fiercely, and in no whispers, the offending
Dr. Aiken, and to fill the air with shouts of " Hang
her." The result whereof was that at this very orderly
and decent consultation of scientific experts, while Dr.
Aiken seems not to have been convinced of his error,
the consulting physician kept his own and his fellow's
skin safe by announcing what we may hope to have
been a sincere, and even by chance a well-founded, opin
ion, that differed altogether from Dr. Aiken's. Here-
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 373
upon the jury soon quieted the tumult of the Great
American Mind by declaring their verdict of guilty
against the woman, and by themselves passing sentence
of death upon her, while they acquitted the man. As
it is an old trick of hypocritical flatterers of public opin
ion in this land to attribute all outrages and riots to our
foreign fellow-residents, we do only justice if we remark
that the names of the jurymen at this trial are given,
and are as native to our language as are the names of
Bunyan's jurymen at the trial of Faithful. In this in
stance, then, they are such names as Burr, Reed, Wood
ruff, and the like.
One who fancies that the fair prisoner was over
whelmed with abject terror all this while does not know
her race. That same afternoon she was to suffer, and,
when the time came, she walked out very quietly and
amiably, with hair neatly braided, stepped up to the
improvised gallows, and made a short speech, in which
she bade them all a cheerful farewell, and said that she
had no defense for her crime, save that she had been
made very angry by Carman, and would surely do the
same thing again if she were to be spared, and were
again to be as much insulted by anybody. Then she
adjusted her own noose, and cheerfully passed away.
This account, in so far as it is due to the " Star " editor,
is not the account of an enemy of the Downieville
people, or of an angry spectator. The " Star " says,
editorially, that it cannot very heartily approve of this
hasty lynching of a woman, but that it expects the moral
effect of the act to be on the whole good. Downieville
had been much troubled with bad characters, and a
necessity existed for some action. " We witnessed the
trial, and feel convinced that the actors desired to do
374 CALIFORNIA.
right." They had in fact themselves solicited this pub
lication. One is reminded, as one reads, of the saying
attributed to " Boss " Tweed, in his last moments. "He
had tried," he declared, " to do right, but lie had had
bad luck." The people of Downieville obviously had
bad luck.
X. THE ATTAINMENT OF ORDER.
Yet, after all, the effect of these outbursts of popular
fury was indirectly good, although not in the way that
many pioneers like to dwell upon. The good effect
lay in the very horror begotten by the popular demoral
ization that all this violence tended to produce. While
a part of the community was debased by all these doings,
and was given over to a false and brutal confidence in
mob law, a confidence that many individual men have
never since lost, the better part of every such mining
community learned, from all this disorder, the sad lesson
that their stay in California was to be long, their social
responsibility great, and their duty to devote time and
money to rational work as citizens unavoidable. They
saw the fearful effects of their own irresponsible freedom.
They began to form town governments of a more stable
sort, to condemn rather than to excuse mob violence, to
regard the free and adventurous prospecting life, if pur
sued on a grand scale, as a dangerous and generally
profitless waste of the community's energies, to prefer
thereto steady work in great mining enterprises, and in
every way to insist upon order. The coming of women,
the growth of families, the formation of church organi
zations, the building of school-houses, the establishment
of local interests of all sorts, saved the wiser communi
ties from the horrors of lynch law. The romantic
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 375
degradation of the early mining life, with its transient
glory, its fatal fascination, its inevitable brutality, and
its resulting loathsome corruption, gave place to the
commonplace industries of the later mining days. The
quartz mines and the deep placers were in time devel
oped, vast amounts of capital came to be invested in the
whole mining industry, and in a few years (by 1858,
for instance) many mining towns were almost as con
servative as much older manufacturing towns have been
in other States. For all this result, lynch law in the
mines, after 1850, was responsible only in so far as it
excited in the minds of sensible men a horror of its own
disorderly atrocities. Save in the newest camps, and in
those most remote from regular courts, one can say
almost universally that, in so far as the lynch law had
been orderly, it had been at best the symptom and out
come of a treasonable popular carelessness, while, in so
far as it had been disorderly, it had been brutal and
demoralizing, and in itself an unmixed evil. Almost
everywhere, moreover, as we have seen, it was not an
externally produced necessity, forced from without upon
the community by the violence of invading criminals ;
but it was the symptom of an inner social disease. For
this disease the honest men themselves were the ones
most responsible, since they were best able to understand
their duty. The lesson of the whole matter is as simple
and plain as it is persistently denied by a romantic
pioneer vanity ; and our true pride, as we look back to
those days of sturdy and sinful life, must be, not that
the pioneers could so successfully show by their popular
justice their undoubted instinctive skill in self-govern
ment, — although indeed, despite all their sins, they
showed such a skill also ; but that the moral elasticity of
376 CALIFORNIA.
our people is so great, their social vitality so marvelous,
that a community of Americans could sin as fearfully
as, in the early years, the mining community did sin,
and could yet live to purify itself within so short a time,
not by a revolution, but by a simple progress from
social foolishness to social steadfastness. Even thus a
great river, for an hour defiled by some corrupting
disturbance, purifies itself, merely through its own flow,
over its sandy bed, beneath the wide and sunny heav
ens.
CHAPTER V.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FBANCISCO.
THE conservative social elements are apt to escape our
notice as we study any time of great activity. They are
too commonplace to fall under the easy observation of
eyes that have become accustomed to bright lights and
to strong contrasts of color. Yet we must study them
also, and especially as they showed themselves, side by
side with some of the worst elements of disorder, in the
early life of San Francisco.
For in San Francisco, after all, the great battle was
to be fought and the victory won, for the cause of last
ing progress in California. Elsewhere the struggle was
either in smaller and more nearly separate towns, or else
in the wide but dependent rural districts. But upon
the city by the Golden Gate all the permanent success of
the good cause depended. Here the young State was, so
to speak, nourished. Here the ships and a great part
of the immigrants came. Here was from the first the
centre of the State's mental life, and to a great extent
of its political life. Here good order must be preserved,
if any permanent order was to be possible elsewhere.
And so of course the progress of San Francisco was to
be largely identical with the progress of the whole of the
new State.
In the mines, as we have said, the great and compara
tively permanent business interests of the years after
378 CALIFORNIA.
1851, and the consequent rapid establishment of all the
institutions of town life, rapidly wrought to transform
the more successful camps into thrifty, orderly, and re
spectable American communities. We have said little
of the details of such transformations, because one can
best study the same process, only on a larger scale, in
the case of San Francisco, where from the first there
were large business interests ; where, soonest of all places
in the growing parts of the country, there were to be
found numerous families ; and where the most justly in
fluential men were not wanderers only, but often mer
chants of high character, of conservative aims, and of
extraordinary ability. San Francisco best illustrates
the mechanics of the growth of good order. Naturally,
however, we are here, as before, driven to consider many
dramatic incidents that belong to the painful side of the
struggle for order.
I. THE NEW CITY AND THE GREAT FIRES.
Externally, the San Francisco of 1848 underwent
almost magical changes within the next three years.
They have been so often described by enthusiastic trav
elers and sketch-writers that one need spend no very
long time on them here. At first the new-comers, in
San Francisco as in the mines, would temporarily be
stow themselves in tents. But there are reasons why a
tent in San Francisco, even in the dry summer-time,
in the cold sea-breezes, is not an agreeable dwelling.
Hence the rapid growth of very lightly and rudely built
houses, half wood, half cloth. All of these brought
enormous rents.
Wierzbicki, in the pamphlet once before cited, page
49, writes : " Four months ago " (this is written in Au-
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 379
gust or September, 1849) " the town hardly counted
fifty houses, and now it must have upwards of five hun
dred, and these are daily increasing. . . . From eight
to ten thousand inhabitants may be afloat in the streets
of San Francisco, and hundreds arrive daily ; many live
in shanties, many in tents, and many the best way they
can." Bayard Taylor's account of his first view at
nearly this same time 1 runs : " The view extended
around the curve of the bay, and hundreds of tents and
houses appeared, scattered all over the heights, and
along the shore for more than a mile. A furious wind
was blowing down through a gap in the hills, filling the
streets with clouds of dust. On every side stood build
ings of all kinds, begun or half finished, and the greater
part of them mere canvas sheds, open in front, and
covered with all kinds of signs, in all languages. Great
quantities of goods were piled up in the open air. for
want of a place to store them. The streets were full of
people, hurrying to and fro, and of as diverse and
bizarre a character as the houses." He then mentions
the various nationalities that he could pick out in the
throng. They were not a few, Asiatic and European.
An example of the better sort of house in the new
town was the " Parker House," an ordinary frame
building, which, before winter, was in part rented to
gamblers, who are said to have paid at the rate of sixty
thousand dollars a year for their part of it. Even
higher is the sum that they are declared by Bayard
Taylor and others to have paid. As for the character
of all but the best of the hotels, the early sketches are
never weary of describing to us their enormous prices
and their fearful accommodations, — the dirt, the fleas,
1 El Dorado, p. 55.
880 CALIFORNIA.
and the other numberless miseries of a crowded and
hasty life.1 And even the best of the hotels were poor
indeed, although what they furnished in the way of
food was better than their other accommodations.2 Be
tween the hotel, as the home of the well-to-do wanderer,
and the bed on the sand, under the stars, men found
all sorts of intermediate fashions of living, according as
luck guided them. Labor, during the whole summer of
1849, commanded, of course, the highest prices in San
Francisco, and was hard to get at those ; so that none
of the new-comers needed to starve, while even the
wealthiest man had to do some hard handiwork for him
self.
Before the beginning of the rainy season piers were
creeping out into the bay,8 while the chaparral growth
on the hill-sides above the town was rapidly driven
backward by the houses, while warehouses were build
ing along the shore, and while the daily growing forests
of masts in the bay gave proof of the general abandon
ment of their ships by the impatient crews. These de
serted sailing-vessels rotted, many of them, for years in
the harbor, the price of labor for a good while hardly
permitting any undertaking to man them for a return
voyage, while the clippers erelong rendered the older
vessels finally worthless. Only the steamship company
could during this summer of 1849 undertake to main
tain its regular trips to and from Panama, carrying the
mails and the crowds of new-coming isthmus passengers.
This confused and hurriedly built town, crowded be-
1 Annals, p. 247.
2 Bayard Taylor, loc. tit., p. 60.
8 See Bayard Taylor's second view, loc. cit., p. 109 ; J. S. Hittell's
History of San Francisco, p. 146.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 381
tween the steep hills and the bay, with all its tents and
its rude warehouses and its flimsy gambling palaces set
down at random, the " water coming up to Montgomery
Street," as the old pioneers are never tired of telling
one,1 and the vast fleet of sea-worn vessels lying beyond,
and idly rotting in the bay, — this strange picture will
never be forgotten. But within the town itself the scene,
upon the approach of winter, was yet further confused
by the great rains of 1849-50 ; by the miserable, un
improved streets, full of fathomless mixed sand and clay
mud ; and by the increasing crowds of idlers, whom the
rainy weather brought back to the town from the inte
rior. To a new-comer the San Franciscans at this mo
ment, living in their rag palaces, or renting them at
figures that would have sounded possible in the Ara
bian Nights, and doing all this even while the mining
industry itself was suspended by the rains, and while the
source of all the wealth was thus temporarily cut off,
seemed more like madmen than ever. A correspond
ent of the " New York Evening Post," under date of
November 15, 1849, gives with a half-serious fury and
contempt an amusing account of the landlords of San
Francisco at this moment : 2 —
" The people of San Francisco are mad, stark mad.
... A dozen times or more, during the last few weeks,
I have been taken by the arm by some of the million-
naires — so they call themselves, I call them madmen —
of San Francisco, looking wondrously dirty and out at
1 Montgomery Street, at that time running along the edge of Yerba
Buena cove, towards its northern end, was erelong separated from the
bay by the filling in of the whole cove, and is now a number of blocks
from the water.
2 I find the letter quoted in the National Intelligencer of January
3, 1850.
382 CALIFORNIA.
elbows for men of such magnificent pretensions. They
have dragged me about, through the mud and filth al
most up to my middle, from one pine box to another,
called mansion, hotel, bank, or store, as it may please
the imagination, and have told me, with a sincerity that
would have done credit to the Bedlamite, that these
splendid . . . structures were theirs, and they, the for
tunate proprietors, were worth from two to three hun
dred thousand dollars a year each. . . . There must be
nearly two thousand houses besides the tents, which are
still spread in numbers. . . . And what do you sup
pose to be the rental, the yearly value, of this card-
house city ? Not less, it is said, than twelve millions of
dollars, and this with a population of about twelve thou
sand. New York, with its five hundred thousand inhab
itants, does not give a rental of much more than this, if
as much."
In fact, these rag-palace owners no doubt were mod
erately insane, not so much in their estimate of the
wealth of the new land as in their tacit assumption that
rags would not burn. And accordingly in December,
1849, there came the first great San Francisco fire,
which burned a million dollars' worth of the rags and
of the wealth that had been stored in the houses made
of them. Nobody ventured to mourn very long over
this disaster ; and very soon the burned district stood
rebuilt, in the full glory of wooden bandboxes that
were to be rented once more at the rates that would
have befitted kings' houses. The 4th of May, 1850,
saw, however, the second great fire, which was much
more disastrous than the first to the business interests
of the place, since it affected less the gamblers, and
more the warehouses of the merchants, than the first fire
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FR AN CISCO. 383
had done, and since withal it destroyed three millions
instead of one million of property. A third fire, of
which much the same may be said, took place June 14th.
Rags were thenceforth prohibited l within the fire limits
of the town ; which resolved to be staid and sober there
after, and to use as building material nothing more
combustible than kindling-wood. The hills of San
Mateo County, to the southward, were, accordingly, yet
more rapidly stripped of their fine redwood trees, and
the city nailed together the light boards more busily
than ever, and grew with vast rapidity. September 17,
1850, was indeed marked by another serious fire, but
not one of enormous size. And, indeed, not until May
4, 1851, the anniversary of the second fire, did the citi
zens find fresh and sufficient reason to repent of their
conduct.
Meanwhile, during 1850, both the domestic business of
the State and the commerce by sea came to get a more
rational character. The Eastern merchants grew some
what accustomed to their California trade, and began,
before the end of 1850, to build their famous swift clip
per-ships to supply it ; and, of course, their plans now
included sufficient wages to attract and to hold trustwor
thy crews for voyages to the waters of the golden land.
Thus the San Francisco market soon came to get a bet
ter and more steady supply of what was needed. The
land, which had, so far, to import from distant places
nearly everything, including breadstuffs. potatoes, and
butter, had suffered already terribly from the wild fluc
tuations of prices that had characterized its San Fran
cisco markets, and that, of course, had resulted from
the lack of any definite source or method of supply,
i J. S. Hittell, op. cit., p. 157.
384 CALIFORNIA.
The ships had brought as cargoes everything and any
thing, in the wildest confusion, and amid the utmost
general ignorance of shippers both about what Califor
nia needed and about the storage of goods for such long
voyages. Cargoes of coal, for instance, were sent from
Baltimore in bulk, and without proper means for venti
lating the holds during the long voyage around the
Horn. Many such cargoes consequently took fire and
were lost.1 Preserved articles of food were sent that
on arrival proved to be tainted and worthless. Whole
houses — some of wood, others of corrugated iron —
were shipped in pieces, and were in some cases service
able, but were also often worthless. Elaborate gold-
washing machines came, which might be adequate to
every possible sort of investigation of mud save such an
investigation as would show whether there was any gold
in it, but which never showed that. Of the things ac
tually and seriously needed in California there might at
one moment come twenty times too much, and shortly
thereafter there might be nothing at all of the kind
needed discoverable in the market.2 To all this confu
sion the clipper-ships, making swift and regular, though
of course still far too long, voyages, could not put an
1 See Mrs. Bates's account, in her Four Years on the Pacific Coast,
Boston, 1858, of her voyage to California. She was three times in
succession in coal-carrying vessels, all of which were burned. She
escaped each time quite safely, and reached her goal at last, a little
nervous, of course, about coal as an article of commerce.
2 According to the Post correspondent, above cited, bread had, in
November, 1849, risen from twenty-five to fifty cents a loaf, the price
being for a small loaf, not much larger than a breakfast-roll. All
business at that moment, as he declares, is pure gambling; so that,
whether one is in the gambling places or out of them, one finds the
whole town a vast gambling hell. One often pays, in fact, ten per
cent, a month for money- •
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 385
entire stop ; but they improved the state of things very
much, as merchants could correspond with Eastern ship
pers by steamer, and then be sure of getting their in
voices in some fairly determinate time by means of the
clippers. The clippers erelong rejoiced in large size,
in fine outlines, in poetical names, in wonderful records
for speed, and all through the years before the war they
were the glory of our American commerce. Long
since, as we know, they have vanished from the seas.1
The year 1851 brought its further great material
changes to San Francisco. Foremost in importance
was the fire of May 4, which destroyed, at the very
least estimate, some seven millions of dollars' worth of
property,2 and was thence called " the great fire."
The account given of the causes that conspired to make
it so great is, as one finds the tale in the *' Alta " (loc.
cit.), worthy of note. The chief engineer, with num
bers of firemen, was away, that fatal night between
May 3d and 4th, at Sacramento. There was, just then,
a kind of interregnum between two city councils — the
old one having adjourned, and the new not having been
sworn in ; therefore nobody felt empowered to order
the tearing down of buildings to check the flames.
Some of the engines lacked hose ; all of them lacked
1 The commercial life of San Francisco, from this early period
down to the completion of the Pacific railroad, was characterized by
the institution known as "steamer-day," f. e., the day preceding the
departure of each Panama steamer. On this day collections were
made, correspondence with the East prepared, and an enormous mass
of business done in connection with the importing trade. The special
"steamer editions " of the papers were prepared on these days.
2 See J. S. Hittell, op. cit., p. 168, whose estimate is founded on that
of the Alta of the date of the fire, known to me in the steamer edition
of May 15. The Alta editor was, however, himself disposed to think
this estimate too low.
25
386 CALIFORNIA.
water. The wind was high. Among the spectators
" there was generally a great want of concentrated ef
fort." In short, as one sees, the whole affair was a
perfect expression of the civilization of the moment.
Sixteen entire squares of houses were consumed, with
parts of several others, and several lives were lost.
The municipality of this mushroom place, as one may
remark, was at that moment in deht, for the expenses
of the city government, over one million of dollars ;
and this calamity of the great fire was surely a fitting
work for such a municipal organization to accomplish
over night.1
The great fire was met with the same general and
heroic good-humor that had always been shown before.
There were, of course, men who were utterly crushed
and crazed by it. But the community as a whole was
soon as cheery as ever, and at least a trifle wiser than
before ; not so much in its immediately following con
duct as in its plans for the future. The " Alta " of that
date begs the city authorities not to pass at once any
ordinance restricting or forbidding the building of
frame houses within fire limits, since such a measure at
that moment would drive away too many who are now
hesitating whether to risk another trial of their fortune
in the city. Everybody, says the editor, is now con
vinced of the need of fireproof buildings. Let the
merchants, however, build temporary sheds on their
lots at once, and begin business afresh. Then they
will soon be able to build better structures. And, in
fact, the commercial part of the city was erelong much
better built, and the portion of the city that had suf-
i See the Annals, p. 328, for the city debt, and p. 329 for the fire.
The Annals make the loss from ten to twelve millions of dollars.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 387
fered from the greatest of the fires remained thence
forth comparatively free from such calamities.
But higher up the hill-side, and among the dwellings
of the town, the last of the great fires was still to do its
work. On Sunday, June 22, 1851, the " Alta " news
paper opened the day with a fine editorial on the de
lights and the duty of a truly religious Sabbath rest.
It added, indeed, to this editorial the announcement
in its local columns that this same Sabbath evening
there would be presented at the Jenny Lind theatre
(a famous place of amusement, which had been built on
the site of the old Parker House) " three laughable
farces," namely, " The Widow's Victim " and two oth
ers, together with " dancing by Senorita Abalos." At
half-past ten o'clock that morning an alarm of fire was
sounded at the corner of Pacific and Powell streets,
just as the church bells were tolling. People on their
way to church, as well as the idlers of Sunday morning,
were soon in crowds about the fire. But there was
little to be done to check it. The city had still no
proper or adequate water supply; a few " reservoirs "
there indeed were, lower down, in the now nearly re
built business portion of the city, where the May fire
had raged, but here, among the dwelling-houses, there
was no water, and the little one and two story buildings
burned, says the " Alta," like shavings. The genial
summer sea-breeze of San Francisco, which usually
amuses itself with merely filling one's eyes with sand,
had now something better than sand to drive before it,
and quickly warmed to its savage work. In a little
time it had become a gale. The fire-engines came, but,
since they had little or no water, they could only stand
by as silent exponents of the city's official disapproval
388 CALIFORNIA.
of fires. People tried to check the flames by tearing
down the little houses that stood in the track ; but, as
we know, one can more easily burn an old box than tear
it to pieces, and the nails were the only sound part of
these houses. Hence the fire soon drove off the defend
ers. By the time the oflice of the " Alta " itself was
reached, on Washington Street, the presence at that
point of a good private fire-engine and of plenty of
water in a tank, and even the blowing up with powder
of the adjoining building, did not save the '' Alta "
building, Avith the types and the presses, from total de
struction. About the Plaza the flames raged fiercely.
Three or four men lost their lives in the course of the
day. A very sick man was saved from his burning
lodgings by his friends, and carried on his bed into the
middle of the Plaza for safety ; and there, amid the
burning heat, the cinders, and the bitter smoke, he
died, his body lying in plain sight, among the crowds
and the heaps of goods, during the day. These heaps
of goods themselves several times caught fire as they
lay. The '' old adobe " on the Plaza, of which we shall
hear in another connection, was destroyed. It was the
last remaining relic of the old village of Yerba Buena.
The city hospital was also burned, the ninety patients
then in it being safely removed for the moment to a
vacant lot.
Senorita Abalos did not dance on the stage of the
Jenny Lind theatre that Sunday night, nor did people
laugh at the " Widow's Victim " and the other laugh
able farces. For the Jenny Lind theatre was once more
a heap of hot ashes, and, on the hills above the town,
hundreds or even thousands of homeless wretches shiv
ered, amid the chaparral bushes, over whatever rem-
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 389
nants of their little store of household goods or of treas
ure they had been able to save.
The fire of June 22 was emphatically a poor man's
fire. The great fire of May 4th had burned the busi
ness part of the city, and had destroyed vast wealth.
But this last fire burned chiefly the houses of people
who had little else but their houses to lose. The total
loss was indeed not above three millions of dollars,
some ten squares of these board hovels being totally de
stroyed, with parts of several other squares. But the
immediate suffering was possibly very nearly as great as
that caused by the fire of May 4th. " Thousands of peo
ple," says the " Alta " next day, " are homeless. We are
sick with what we have seen and felt, and need not say
any more." The " Alta " itself was printed that next
morning on borrowed presses and from borrowed types
set up in the office of one of its fellow-newspapers. Its
page had shriveled from seven columns to five, and the
columns were some five inches shorter than on the pre
vious day.
Thenceforth, as we learn from the " Annals," * " many
of the buildings " showed " a wonderful improvement in
strength and grandeur." An improvement in " grand
eur," above that shown in a board hovel, meant, in the
business part of the city, the building of substantial and
generally very modest and useful brick buildings, sup
plied with double iron shutters and with large tanks of
water. These same buildings still in a great number of
cases remain in use. On its old site the Jenny Land
theatre was rebuilt, and during the next year was sold
to the city for an exorbitant price, and converted into
the city hall, which still remains on the Plaza, al-
i Patre 345.
390 CALIFORNIA.
though the new city hall, far out on Market Street, has
in recent years superseded it as the municipal headquar
ters.
Outside of the business part of the city, wooden
houses have, however, always remained the favorites of
the San Franciscan. One prefers them in view of the
character of the climate ; and one trusts, with a now
well-founded confidence, in the energy and ability of
the large and efficient fire department of the city as
one's security against all fires. In the early years, also,
and long before the modern paid fire department was
organized or thought of, the lessons of these great fires
were well taken to heart, from the middle of 1851 on,
and the fire organizations of San Francisco were always
strong and devoted.1
These, then, were the great transformations that the
city underwent by reason of the early fires. In another
and more healthful way, also, the city meanwhile trans
formed the appearance of its most important parts by
rapidly carrying on the work of extending its water-front
towards deep water, through the filling in of the old
Yerba Buena cove. This was done by carrying sand
over temporary tracks, in cars drawn by small engines.
The busy water-front of 1851, with its numerous long
wharves extending far out into the cove, with its hurry
ing crowds in which all nationalities were still repre
sented, and with its steam-cars occasionally rushing reck
lessly by, transporting their loads of sand, presented a
scene far different from that of the confused heaps of
merchandise and the cloth-houses of 1849 ; but it was
still a characteristic early California!! scene. From the
" Happy Valley," which lay to the south, the railway
* See the enthusiastic chapter in the Annals, p. 614, sqq.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 391
track, in July, 1851, ran along Market and Battery
streets, transporting the sand to the rapidly filling water-
lots.1 Towards the end of that month, an accident hav
ing occurred, whereby a man was run over by the cars,
losing his leg, an ordinance was proposed in the board
of aldermen " to restrict the speed of the cars to six
miles an hour." This restriction, however, would not
have been enough of itself to check the evil ; for when,
July 30, a man was killed by the same cars, on Mar
ket Street, the coroner's jury found that the accident
might have been prevented, " if the car in front of
the man conducting it had not been loaded higher than
his head, thus preventing him from seeing the track." 2
One's load, carried in front of one, was usually higher
than one's head, in California in those days, and one
seldom saw the track ahead, whatever might be one's
business. Hence the disasters, individual and social, of
the early days. But, amid all the confusion, the prog
ress towards physical stability, towards sound buildings,
good and safe docks for ships, well-organized fire de
partments, and comparatively clean and decent streets,
was sure. One great physical evil remains to be men
tioned as explaining many social evils. In the early
years the streets, like those of London in the last cen
tury, were, save very near the Plaza, wholly unlighted at
night.8
II. THE MORAL INSANITIES OF THE GOLDEN DAYS.
We pass from physical to social conditions. Society,
in these years, was affected first of all by certain obvi
ous and general mental disturbances of individual lives, —
l Alta of July 19, 1851. 2 Alia of July 31, 1851.
» Alta of July 19, 1851.
392 CALIFORNIA.
disturbances that had a decidedly pathological character.
Most of the citizens were young men, and homeless.
Their daily and most sober business was at best danger
ously near gambling, and their nerves were constantly
tormented by unnatural and yet for the time inevitable
excitements, of a perilously violent sort. They differed,
moreover, from the miners, in that their life was as a
rule comparatively sedentary, and in that they worked
far more with their brains than with their hands.
Hence these nervous excitements told upon them all
the more seriously. Their problems, too, were far more
complex and brain-wearying than those of the miners.
The miner was apt to degenerate for lack of healthful
mental exercise of any sort. As he was often a clever
and educated man, he found his hard manual labor in
tolerable ; and at night he drank or gambled for the
sake of forgetting the inanity of his toil. But the San
Franciscan of property and position was differently be
set. He had all the mental labor that a man could
need, and much more besides, and he had little or no
true relaxation. Able and cultivated business men,
who at home would have passed their evenings with their
families, or in some other pleasant social intercourse, or
perchance in lecture rooms or in theatres, here toiled
every night until ten or eleven o'clock over their ac
counts, and began afresh on each new morning, as soon
as the light shone over the far-off blue summit of Mount
Diablo, the old fierce struggle with the confusions of
their business undertakings. The self -absorption of
this life was often something monstrous, and the con
sequences are no matter of mere theory. The insane
asylum, which the State had very early to equip at
Stockton, gave ample proof of the effects of this terrible
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 393
nervous strain. The great number of patients at this
asylum made a frequent subject of remark among the
early writers about California.1 Indirectly, however,
one sees the same dangers illustrated even in the case of
perfectly healthy and normal men, who stood the men
tal if not the moral strain as well as possible, and liked
it. The life between 1849 and 1852 or 1853 has often
seemed to such men, as they have looked back on it,
like a wild dream. Even in so early a book as the
" Annals," published in 1855, and in part written in
1854, one finds the life of 1849 and 1850 regarded in
this same dream-like and unsubstantial fashion. One col
lected, indeed, for this book, any number of trustworthy
data from the newspapers ; but one often commented
upon them in the most confused and forgetful fashion pos
sible. These things seemed to the author of the " An
nals " to have taken place ages ago. In the old home
the young girl graduate of 1849 might, in 1854, have
been quietly preparing for her early wedding, and for the
very beginning of her life. But in California, as the
" Annals " show us, these young men of 1854 already
talked of the days of 1849 as they might of a romantic
and almost forgotten ancient history.2 And a delirious
history it indeed became, for the authors of the " An
nals," as soon as the writers left their newspaper rec
ords, and began to repeat their memories, or the hearsay
evidence of others. One can remember, as these men
tell us, all sorts of confused emotions, but, as we judge
from their wild and whirling words, one can remember
1 See, for example, the remarks of the well-known pioneer "street-
preacher," "Father" Taylor, in his California Life Illustrated,^.
133. He gives official statistics. The asylum was founded in 1852.
2 Annals, p. 217, p. 605, et passim.
394 CALIFORNIA.
nothing rational. Everybody, for instance, used to gam
ble : so one seems to remember. And gambling in the
big saloons, under the strangely brilliant lamp-light,
amid the wild music, the odd people, the sounding gold,
used to be such a rapturous and fearful thing ! One
cannot express tliis old rapture at all ! Judges and cler
gymen used to elbow their way, so one remembers, to
the tables, and used to play with the rest. The men in
San Francisco who did not thus gamble were too few to
be noticed. If yon condemn this gambling, so the his
torian continues, that is because you do not know the
glorious rapture aforesaid, the rapture of gambling in a
place where gambling is the only perfectly respectable
amusement. But one's memory does indeed reach be
yond this respectable amusement ; and is equal to the
description of decidedly worse things, in which of course
everybody was also engaged ! There were some women
in the city in 1849, but they were not exactly respecta
ble persons, yet they were the sole leaders of society.
They too gave it even in later years a certain grace and
gayety that makes one speak of them, with a curious
sort of reverence, very frequently in the course of the
"Annals."1 Just as one cannot easily remember who
the men were that did not gamble in those days, so one
fails to recall in looking back on the early years the
1 See p. 259, p. 368 (where these persons are spoken of in a curi
ously close connection with the "upper classes"), p. 503 (where San
Franciscans are declared to be of the "conscientious" opinion, that,
"after all, their wild and pleasant life is not so very, very wrong,"
and where the general degeneracy of the women in the city is reaf
firmed), p. 504, p. 507 (''the trains of lovely women "), et passim.
The especial merit of a book previously cited, Grey's Pioneer Times
in California, is that it points out these absurdities in the Annals, al
though, in doing so, the book itself makes various inaccurate state
ments.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 395
•women who were respectable. Doubtless such existed ;
but then they had that curious quality of respectable
women, namely, they were somehow not conspicuous,
especially in the public crowds. Hence, as the authors
of the " Annals " seem, for some probably sufficient
reason, to have been personally unable, in early days,
to secure the honor of their acquaintance, the existence
of these good women fails to become a matter of histori
cal record in the reminiscences with which so much of
the confused volume is filled.
Now, however, side by side with these wild memories
of a society where every man and woman, without any
notable exception, went to the devil on his or her own
chosen primrose path, one has to record, as sober fact,
taken from one's newspapers, such things as a very
goodly array of pioneer churches, supported by active
and not poverty-stricken societies. And " now " (in
1854), " the city is full of [church] societies." 1 In
fact, " such an array of churches and societies are surely
evidences enough of the sincerity, zeal, and success of
the early spirit of moral reform." 2 These societies
have also done a large amount of charitable work ; they
have from the first established benevolent institutions,
their exercises are well attended, and their undertak
ings well supported with money, so that, as one con
cludes (p. 701) : " We have said enough, we hope, to
prove that not all, nor nigh all the citizens of San Fran
cisco, are lost to everything but reckless dissipation.
No city of equal size — few of ten times its age — can
present such a list of men and institutions, who have
accomplished so much real good with so little of cant
and hypocrisy."
l Page 697. 2 Pages 699, 700.
396 CALIFORNIA.
These significant contradictions sufficiently character
ize the spirit in which the annalists wrote their big hook.
San Francisco was to them a mere rubbish-heap of
broken facts, and they had no conception of the sense
of it. But their mood as writers depends, as we have
just asserted, partly upon the pathological conditions
connected with this life. Long-continued and unnatural
excitement had disturbed their judgments. They were
still very active and laborious men, and the immense
collection of facts that they made for their book, from
the early newspapers, will always remain a monument
of industry. But, so far as their own past experiences
were concerned, the excitements of the early years had
made them simply incapable of telling any straight or
coherent story about these years. And, as one may re
mark, the same infirmity has beset a good many San
Francisco pioneers ever since. The cool-headed man,
who did not make a fool of himself with absurd dissi
pations, nor destroy his health with continuous over
strain in making haste to be rich, can indeed give you
helpful information about the early life, and such infor
mation we have frequently used in the pages of this
book. But the boastful and reckless old pioneer who
imagines himself to have seen all the heights and depths
of the early life, who knows more about it, in conse
quence, than human speech can express, — he, when he
begins to tell you of it, is commonly simply incoherent.
He boasts on occasion, and with equal earnestness, of
the piety and of the viciousness, of the gayety and of
the seriousness, of the brutality and of the peacefulness
of the early days. Any chance number of an early
newspaper would tell you more about the pioneer com
munity than he will tell in a month.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 397
The prevalence of over-excitement, then, is perfectly
evident. And the dissipations of the town were, in a
large part of their extravagances and bad consequences,
the obvious result and expression of this purely physical
nervous overstrain. Just how many previously respec
table and sober men went to the devil in the gambling
halls, or with the help of the fast women, can never be
known. They were undoubtedly far too numerous.
The universal demoralization of which the authors of
the " Annals " dream is, however, just as undoubted an
absurdity. No such thing took place. The dissipation
was, of course, always showy ; it burned much midnight
oil ; and, in a city that had no street-lamps, and few
police, it was free to make itself very visible in the
darkness of every night. And when some one supposed
to have been at home a clergyman, or when a locally
well-known lawyer, or a prominent merchant, joined
the young fools about a gaming-table, and also went to
the devil, one may be sure that the most drunken eyes
saw the fact, and that the most delirious memory pre
served it, to the exclusion of many less exciting and
more important social truths. The undoubted reckless
ness of the society as a whole lay, however, not in the
fact that everybody openly gambled, or did worse ; for
not everybody was dissipated ; but the true sin of the
community did consist in its tolerance of the open vices
of those who chose to be vicious. Truly respectable
men, whether clergymen or not, did not elbow their way
to the gaming-tables ; but public opinion, for reasons
that have often ere this appeared in these pages, was not
stern enough towards social offenses, but believed in a
sort of irreligious liberty, that considered every man's
vices, however offensive and aggressive they might be
308 CALIFORNIA.
(short of crime), as a private concern between his own
soul and Satan. Here was the trouble, and in this re
spect only was the whole San Franciscan community
alike responsible both for the early dissipations, and for
their inevitable consequences.
As to the actual extent of this mischief among indi
viduals, the numbers of those engaged in the wilder
dissipations cannot be estimated ; yet it may well be
doubted whether they at any time formed more than a
comparatively small fraction of the American inhabit
ants. AVe are, after all, a persistently serious people in
the matter of social amusements. And in San Fran
cisco we had a great deal of business to do ; and we did
it. It took up nearly all of our time. The nervous
overstrain of this business showed itself in many other
forms besides the tendency to be dissipated, and the fast
men and women were, as even the annalists once or
twice admit, after all but the froth on the turbid cur
rent.
III. CONSERVATISM, CHURCHES, AND FAMILIES.
But now for some of the more conservative forces.
These one finds in three very well-known and common
place forms, namely, in the family, in the school, and in
the church, all of which soon appear in San Francisco
in their ordinary American dress, though just a trifle
altered by the social disturbances of the place and the
time.
The not very trustworthy state census of 1852 showed
a population in the whole State of H64,435. Of these,
to judge from the very rough estimates made, very
nearly four fil'lhs were American citizens, and of those
again the great majority were, of course, by birth Arner-
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 399
leans. About one ninth or one tenth of the whole were
women, and about one tenth children.1 San Francisco,
like all the other towns of the State, was subject to great
fluctuations of population, but may be supposed in the
early years to have contained, on the average, about ono
eighth of the population of the State, which again, be
tween 1852 and 1856, may have increased from fifty to
eighty per cent. The proportion of women and children
in the city was always greater than the proportion in
the State at large, in case the southern portion is left
out of account.
On May 2, 1853, at a Mayday celebration, there was
in San Francisco a procession of school children to cel
ebrate the occasion.2 About one thousand children were
in the train. Each one carried flowers ; and the sight
was a pleasant one for San Franciscans, although it was
by no means the first time that homeless men had been
reminded of the presence of happy homes in their
midst. There had been, as we remember, families and
children even in Yerba Buena, and the gold excitement
had not killed them. A certain pioneer absurdity, for
merly frequently repeated, which tells how, at a time
during the early golden days, there was just One Lady
in San Francisco, and she a new-comer, who was rev
erently, silently, and sentimentally worshiped by the
vast, rude, and drunken throngs about her, must, of
course, be dismissed to oblivion, along with that other
1 Compare Tuthill, p. 357 ; Annals, p. 505 ; and the official summary
of the census, reported by the secretary of state to the governor, in
January, 1853. With this summary of the census of 1852 that pub
lished as an appendix to the United States census returns of the Sev
enth National Census does not quite agree, and the details are plain
ly much confused in the returns.
2 See Annals, p. 447. May 1 came that year on Sunday.
400 CALIFORNIA.
scandalous assertion that in the early days there were
no ladies in San Francisco at all. In fact, there were
several good women at the outset, and many later.
These good women and children needed churches and
schools, while good husbands and fathers joined in the
wish. In September, 1849, when the street-preacher,
the strong-hearted " Father :' Taylor, entered the har
bor on board a crowded vessel from the Atlantic coast,
he heard, indeed, from a man who came out to the sbip
before they landed, strange and boastful stories about
the jolly degeneracy of the place. But he failed, on
landing, to verify in all respects these tales. The in
formant declared the gamblers to be the aristocracy l of
San Francisco. As for religion, there had indeed been
a church, but that had been turned into a jail, he be
lieved ; at all events he knew of only one preacher of re
cent standing in town ; but that one was now a gambler.2
The good Taylor found, however, upon landing, that
what he humorously calls this informant's '* ecclesiastical
history " was. on the whole, false. The old school-house
on the Plaza, once used for religious meetings, was in
deed now a jail ; but there were other places of worship.
Taylor had, indeed, a little trouble in finding Methodists.
He at last found that " Brother White," who lived '• in
the woods " (that is, among the dwarf oaks and the
1 William Taylor's California Life Illustrated (New York, 1858),
p. 16.
2 With such stories the earlv California!!* of a certain sort amused
themselves continually. LittK' dependence can be placed in any such
gossip, whether about San Francisco or about any other place. The
New York Evtnin<i P>st correspondent, above cited, had heard of a
Methodist parson who was now a bar-tciuler. As a fact, the early
California clergymen were on the whole very remarkably faithful, in
telligent, laborious, and devout. One would have suffered sadly with
out them.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 401
shrubbery), on Washington Street near Powell, had a
little cloth and board house where he held Methodist
" class-meetings " and prayer-meetings " on Sundays,
with a " class " of twenty. Taylor himself set to work
busily to prepare a church for his denomination. Reso
lutely he crossed the Bay, toiled in the redwoods behind
San Antonio creek, cut and hewed his own lumber, and
then, carrying it to San Francisco, helped build his own
place of worship. It was ready by October 8, 1849.
But this remarkably energetic fashion of preparing
the way of the Lord, and of laying the axe at the root
of the tree, did not, after all, result in building the first
San Francisco church. That first one was Rev. O. C.
Wheeler's Baptist church, built in the summer of 1849,
before Taylor's arrival. And already in that summer
and autumn there existed several other church organ
izations in San Francisco,1 namely, Rev. T. Dwight
Hunt's pioneer union organization, formed in 1848,
Rev. Albert Williams's " First Presbyterian Church,"
which for some time dwelt in tents, and Rev. Dr. Ver
Mehr's Episcopal organization, which had its beginnings
in this first autumn. The Mission church had to suf
fice for Catholic communicants until 1851, when the
first Catholic church appeared in the town proper.
The early relations of the Protestant pioneer pastors
with one another were of the most cordial character.
And their little groups of communicants were both ear
nest and active. Out of this pastoral fellowship and
this devotion of the laymen sprang the numerous early
church charities that the Annalists mention.2 As for
1 See more details in the records given in the Annals, p. G87, sqq.
2 See also Rev. Albert Williams, Pioneer Pastorate and Times (San
Francisco, 1879) p. 63, sq.
26
402 CALIFORNIA.
the place that these churches occupied in the commu
nity, there can be no doubt that, however the numbers
in the early churches might compare with those in the
gambling saloons, the spirit of the new community was
at least as well represented by the former as by the
latter. For if the saloons represented its diseases, these
stood for its health. " Father " Taylor delights to tell
how the most aggressive of his street-preaching under
takings always received, if not active support, then at
least quietly friendly sufferance from the gamblers that
he was attacking. There was from the first the charac
teristic American feeling prevalent that churches were a
good and sober element in the social order, and that one
wanted them to prosper, whether one took a private and
personal interest in any of them or not. The religious
coldness of a large number who at home would have
seemed to be devout did not make the progress of the
churches in California less sure, nor their value as so
cially conservative forces less generally recognized.
Rev. Albert Williams mentions, in a passage of tb,e
book just cited,1 the delight of being able to address
the vigorous young men of early San Francisco. The
San Franciscans, when they went to church at all, were,
he declares, uncommonly inspiring audiences, because
they were so manly, attentive, and intelligent. In the
manuscript that I have previously cited, as furnished to
me from diary and recollection by my mother, I find,
amid numerous other reflections on the early social con
ditions (reflections that have throughout much influenced
my comments), an account of the first time when she
herself attended church in San Francisco, in the early
months of 1850. The journey across the " plains," and
1 Pa-e Ul.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 403
a few troubled months in the mines and at Sacramento,
had led my father, after the great flood at the latter
place, to come with my mother and her child to the
Bay. The building where she thus first attended church
services she found larger than she had expected, and
well filled, although she saw but six or eight women
present. What especially aroused her interest in the
audience was this splendid group of ardent, young,
thoughtful, and manly faces, all so full of deep and rev
erent attention to the services. The thing was no com
monplace affair to them. It meant home-like and relig
ious associations, aroused thus afresh in their minds in
the midst of a sordid and weary land. She saw in their
countenances an " intensity of earnestness " that made
her involuntarily " thank God for making so grand a
being as man." It seems worth while thus to add to
the possibly biased statement of the pioneer preacher
this impression that was received at her first church-
attendance in San Francisco by my mother, as a mere
listener and a stranger.
This use of my mother's manuscript leads me to pass
from the topic of the churches to record a few of her
impressions of the early social and family life of San
Francisco, as seen from the point of view of a dweller
within doors. She passed a considerable time in 1850
in a little circle of San Francisco families that were held
together mainly by those ties of social and religious
sympathy that might be supposed most effective at such
a moment, and in the midst of such exciting conditions.
Of the outer world she had, of course, to see and to hear
a great deal ; and her account of this is much what one
might expect from what one otherwise knows, save that
she had occasion to hear of some particular instances
404 CALIFORNIA.
of great business undertakings, speculations, and fail
ures, that it might he amusing to recount in these pages
if there were only left space. But one must pass to so
cial life proper.
Every one has heard how, in early San Francisco
life, the family ties seemed sometimes almost as weak
as the families were rare. Divorces were in proportion
far too numerous and easy. Some men seemed to prize
their wives the less because of the very fact that there
were in the country so few wives to prize. Of all this
the early papers make frequent complaint, and the early
travelers frequent mention, although the facts are also
often much exaggerated. The causes, however, of this
too general disrespect for the most significant relations
of life, my mother seemed to see as rather deep-lying.
In the new land, namely, to speak of the matter first
from the side of the women concerned themselves, one's
acquaintances could not always be strictly chosen, nor
one's conduct absolutely determined by arbitrary rules.
One had to adapt one's self to many people, to tolerate,
in some people with whom one was thrown, many oddi
ties, and much independence, so long as the essentials
of good behavior and good purposes remained. The
difficulty, however, for certain well-meaning but foolish
among the younger women, who found themselves in
the miclst of all this new life, was to sacrifice some of
the non-essentials of social intercourse, as they knew
them, without sacrificing anything either of their own
personal dignity, or of their true delicacy of feeling.
Many such women failed to solve the problem. Little
by little they sacrificed this or that petty prejudice,
which dignity would have counseled them to observe ;
and so erelong they were socially more or less distinctly
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 405
and disastrously careless, both as to behavior and as to
companionship. But such mild degeneration is not an
element of strength in the union of a family. Men
often prized their wives less because the wives grew
thus foolishly light-hearted, and were, on the whole, less
to be prized. Nor was there a lack of fault on the
other side. If women fell into these unguarded habits,
such as the custom of letting men who chanced to be
their friends, and chanced to be lucky, give them, with
careless Californian generosity, expensive presents on
every occasion when these friends had made some new
success in business, and if such " Californian " ways,
however innocent in their beginning, led to misunder
standings in the end : still, on the other hand, husbands
who found themselves absorbed in business rivalry with
a community of irresponsible bachelors, and who accord
ingly lamented the hostages that they themselves had
long since given to fortune, often neglected without
reason their families, and so in time lost the affection
that they had ceased to deserve. In short, as my
mother (who, in the course of a few years, had occasion
to hear of or to see a number of these broken California
families) judged the too general trouble, it was one that
might be said to lie in the lonesomeness of the families
of a new land. The family grows best in a garden with
its kind. Where family-life does not involve healthy
friendships with other families, it is apt to be injured
by unhealthy if well-meaning friendships with wander
ers. The lonesome man, far away from home, seeking
in all innocence of heart the kindly and elevating com
panionship of some good woman, the good-humored
young woman, enjoying in all her innocence also the
flattery and the exaggerated respect of a community of
406 CALIFORNIA.
bachelors, the foolish husband, feeling his wife more or
less a burden, in a country where so few of his friends
and of his rivals have such burdens to hamper them ;
such are the too familiar figures of social life in a new
land. From their relationships spring the curious un-
happinesses that at length come to mar the lives of so
many good, easy souls. Add to the picture the figure
of the bachelor-friend aforesaid, venturing not only to
flatter, but, in his rudely courteous or in his more gently
diffident manner, to comfort the neglected wife, with
honest words, and with kindly services ; and one sees
how much in danger, under such circumstances, may be
the true interests of all family-life. If one wants a high
average of domestic peace and of moral health, he must
not look for it too hopefully in the domestic lives of
the most among those who ought to prize one another
highest, namely, wedded companions, in very new coun
tries. These people may indeed be wise, and find all
that you could wish for in the way of true happiness ;
but too many of them will be seen to be blind to the
worth of their privileges, just because these happen, at
that place and time, to be so rare. Such then was my
mother's general observation. But she saw many cases
indeed of people who were sensible enough to know
when they were happy, and to live in the best of do
mestic relations. Such families were, in their place, the
salvation of this restless and suffering social order.
For about them clustered the hopes for the future of
society. In them were reared the better-trained chil
dren. In them careless wanderers saw the constant re
minders of the old home. To increase their numbers,
to quiet their fears, to satisfy their demands, men were
willing to make vast sacrifices. It was indeed largely
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 407
in the hope of seeing erelong many such families flock
ing to the State, that those men who felt their own in
terests in the country to be fairly permanent were will
ing to toil for order in the arduous fashions exemplified
by the great vigilance committees.
IV. POPULAR JUSTICE IN FEBRUARY, 1851.
Not the same judgment, by any means, can be passed
upon the San Francisco vigilance committees of 1851
and 1856 as we have already passed upon the popular
justice of the miners. In some respects, to be sure,
there is an unfortunate likeness. Both in the mines
and in San Francisco carelessness had led to a destruc
tive general license of mischief-makers. In both places
the men of sense were forced at last to attend to their
social duties. But in the mines there was, for a while,
a far too general, a very absurd and wicked trust in
lynch law as the best expression, under the circum
stances, of the popular hatred of crime. San Francisco,
as a community, never went so far as this. In that
city lynch law was, both in 1851 and in 1856, the ex
pression of a pressing desire so to reform the social
order that lynch law should no longer be necessary.
What the success of these efforts was, we have to see
from the facts.
The condition of society that so well expressed itself
in the fire of May 4, 1851, had, nearly three months
earlier, led to the first of the greater outbursts of popu
lar indignation at crime,1 that of February, 1851. On
1 The affair of the "Hounds," in 1849, generally mentioned as the
first important case of popular justice in San Francisco, is a typical
illustration of the short and easy methods of the early golden days,
but it is otherwise comparatively insignificant. A company of young
rascals, having paraded the streets on a number of occasions, under
408 CALIFORNIA.
the 19th of February a merchant named Jansen was
assaulted and robbed in his own shop by two men, who
came in the evening, pretending to be customers. The
crime, though not the first or the worst of its sort,
seemed especially atrocious to the community, which
chanced to be in a sensitive mood. The " Alta," usu
ally, in those days, a very sober and sensible paper, be
came for the moment a trifle over-excited. Nobody,
says the editor, a day or two later, is secure, even in his
own dwelling. And the ruffians, if arrested at all, are
never punished. " How many murders have been com
mitted in this city within a year ! And who has been
hung or punished for the crime ? Nobody. How many
men shot and stabbed, knocked down and bruised ; and
who has been punished for it ? How many thefts and
arsons, robberies, and crimes of a less note ; and where
are the perpetrators ? Gentlemen at large, citizens, free
to reenact their outrages." Under these circumstances,
however, who is to blame ? The '' Alta," with an amus
ing unwisdom, proceeds to make the lawyers who defend
criminals the first persons responsible for the trouble.
Such a lawyer is a '• father to the thief and robber, aye,
to the murderer, even." '' We cannot see how any hon
est man, knowing or having reason to believe another
guilty, can ransack heaven and earth for arguments for
shielding him from punishment." Next to the lawyers,
(he name of the " Hounds '' and under the pretense of being a society
for mutual protection, made at last their long tolerated disorderly
behavior intolerable. They began violent assaults on the Chilians
present in the town, and were promptly suppressed. Their leaders
were tried and convicted by a popular court, wherein two judges (of
whom Gwin, then just arrived, was one) were appointed by the peo
ple, "to assist the alcalde." The prisoners were then sentenced to
long terms of imprisonment, which, of course, were never inflicted
upon them. See Annals, p. 552, sqq.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 409
the courts and the police are most to blame. " The
city would be infinitely better off without them. They
are no terror to evil-doers." And so, finally : " We
deprecate lynch law, but the outraged public," etc., etc.
Under these circumstances, the news that two men
had been arrested as the perpetrators of this assault
aroused the people to righteous indignation and to elo
quence. One of these two men was soon said to be a cer
tain rogue named Stuart, and notorious in the mines. On
the 21st, the two men arrested were confronted with
the wounded Jansen. The supposed Stuart he was said
to have recognized at once as one of his assailants, and
he had only a little doubt about the other prisoner.
Accordingly when, on Saturday, the 22d, the two were
to be brought up before the court in the city hall, for
preliminary examination, the people l collected, grew
more and more excited, read copies of a well-written
and rather foolish hand-bill (which called upon all good
citizens to assemble on Sunday, at two o'clock, on the
Plaza, for the sake of somehow ridding the community
of its robbers and murderers), and so at last, with a
shout, " Now 's the time," rushed towards and into the
recorder's court room, in order to seize the prisoners.2
But a company of militia, the " Washington Guards,"
which had been called out, and was now on parade,
ready to defend the officers of the law, entered the
court-room just after the first of the mob had rushed
in, cleared the room with fixed bayonets, and so saved
the prisoners, who were then imprisoned in the not very
secure basement of the city hall. The guards thus
1 " The people, in the highest sense of the term," declare the
authors of the Annals (p. 315), and " not a mob."
2 Weekly Aha for March 1, 1851.
410 CALIFORNIA.
earned many hoots and hisses, insomuch that the way
ward and stiil wholly disorganized crowd followed them
home to their armory, challenged them to a fight, and
were with difficulty persuaded at last to disperse.
About dusk that evening, a more sensible and dignified
public meeting took place near the city hall, and was
addressed by several speakers, among them Mr. Sam
Brannan, the lion-hearted, a man always in love with
shedding the blood of the wicked. A committee of
prominent citizens, of whom he was one, was appointed
by the public meeting to consider the situation, and also
to assist the police in guarding the accused over night ;
and this committee's proceedings, after the greater
meeting had adjourned, were also reported in the " Alta"
of the next day. Mr. Brannan begged his fellow-mem
bers to take the chance now so kindly given them by
fortune, and to try the prisoners themselves forthwith.
He was tired of the law. He was " much surprised to
hear people talk about grand juries, or recorders or
mayors." He was "opposed to any farce in this busi
ness." Mr. Brannan's less enthusiastic fellows on the
committee overruled him as to these somewhat immoral
proposals ; but they too were not free from excitement.
Even the moderate and cautious Mr. Macondray, a prom
inent merchant, and one of the committee, declared that
no court would dare to discharge these men ; no lawyer
would dare to plead their cause. But he very sensibly
pointed out that a committee appointed by the sovereign
people to guard prisoners could not well turn itself into
a jury, and try them.
Now, however, one serious defect and danger about
all this ardent and sincere popular indignation against
the two prisoners lay in the fact that the supposed
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 411
Stuart was really quite an innocent man, whose name
was Burdue. He had been mistaken for the true as
sailant by poor Jansen, who was lying very seriously
hurt with a concussion of the brain. The resemblance
of the accused to the real criminal Stuart was indeed
remarkable ; but there were people in San Francisco
who could on occasion identify the accused as an inno
cent man, unless indeed the popular indignation at crime
should forbid for the moment all defense of any sup
posed criminals.
Fortunately, however, the general sentiment of the
wiser men of San Francisco favored giving the two ac
cused a fair chance. And therefore, when on the next
day the people assembled once more, a no less stern but
much more sensible spirit prevailed than on the previous
morning. Mr. Wm. T. Coleman, later so noted in con
nection with both the great Vigilance Committees, came
forward with a motion to appoint a committee to agree
upon a plan of action, and this committee, having been
chosen, reported that a judge and jury should be named,
who should try the criminals at two o'clock the same day.
This plan was submitted to the people, and adopted.1
The jury was appointed by popular consent. Great
difficulty was found in getting a popular judge to serve ;
but at last one Mr. J. F. Spence was chosen, and two
1 Not, however, until a wicked attempt had been made, by four
members of the committee of the night before (i. e., of the guard ap
pointed for watching the prisoner), to arouse the mob to immediate
action by means of an incendiary hand-bill, signed by these four. The
hand-bill pretended to "report" how these four knew that there was
no question of the guilt of the prisoners. The paper was apparently
the work of Mr. Sam Brannan, whose name was h'rst signed to it, the
other names being Wm. H. Jones, E. A. King, and J. B. Huie. One
sees thus how near the San Franciscans were led to committing a bru
tal crime, by reason of the noisiness of hot-headed and officious men.
412 CALIFORNIA.
assistant judges were appointed. The chief actors in
the subsequent trial were thus the result of some genu
ine reflection and of a careful choice, and the trial was
therefore saved from becoming what the mob wished it
to be, — a disorderly raock trial.
At two o'clock the popular court was complete mas
ter of the situation, and met in the district court room.
Without any resistance from the officials this time, the
prisoners were considered as subject to the jurisdiction
of the new tribunal, although they were not removed
from their cells. Two lawyers, prominent through many
later years in California as attorneys, consented to de
fend the prisoners, — Judge Shattuck appearing for the
supposed Stuart, Mr. Hall McAllister for the other ;
but counsel for the people was harder to find, regular
attorneys declining, very naturally, to serve. Mr. Cole-
man at length undertook the work. The jury were
known men ; and to Mr. R. S. Watson, their foreman,
now of Milton, Mass.. I am indebted for a very inter
esting oral account of the scene. Mr. Watson himself
did not sympathize in any degree with the extrava
gances of the mob, and, as we shall see, his influence
was ultimately used, with that of others, to save the
prisoners. But the moment was one when the advice
of cautious men was especially needed, and one may be
glad that such were willing to serve.
The trial of the supposed Stuart took precedence, and,
as we shall see. was the only act of the tribunal. The
testimony, as the " Alta " shows, was of two sorts. Some
of the witnesses declared themselves able to identify this
man as one Stuart, somewhat notorious at Sacramento
and in the mines as a most dangerous character, and
several times proven guilty of theft and, they said, of
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 413
worse. The other witnesses knew only that Jansen,
who we remember was suffering ever since the assault
from concussion of the brain, had said that this man
looked so much like his own assailant that there could
be little doubt about the identity. Judge Shattuck ably
insisted upon the fact that, as the defense was the denial
of this man's identity with the notorious Stuart, as well
as with the assailant of Jansen, the cause of justice
would demand some scrutiny of the prisoner's antece
dents and life. Time was needed for this. And Judge
Shattuck " had had no time to consult with the accused,
to ascertain who were his friends and acquaintances, or
to inquire in the case." 1 Under these circumstances,
with a savage crowd in the court-room occasionally in
terrupting, and demanding the death of the prisoner,
Judge Shattuck felt that his defense was somewhat
hampered, and he begged the jury to remember the ter
rible responsibility of their position. He made some
effort to get testimony to clear the prisoner, but the time
allowed him was too short, and, as later appeared, the
prisoner's few acquaintances, who, after all, were not
exactly prominent citizens, were afraid to risk facing
the popular tribunal and the mob, and were not easy
to find that evening. Time wore away in wrangling
about the case ; the mob grew more arid more impa
tient, and the counsel for the defense was frequently
interrupted, and once or twice insulted. As Mr. Wat
son tells me, he himself was one of those on the jury
most anxious to consider carefully the worth of Mr.
Jansen's evidence, and he did not find it satisfying. For
the injured man, lying in a stupor, had only been with
difficulty aroused to view the prisoners. In the room
1 Alia of February 24, in the weekly of March 1, as cited.
414 CALIFORNIA.
had been, besides these prisoners, only poor Jansen's
own friends. What thing more natural than that, un
der such circumstances, the man should reply, " Yes,"
when asked if these strangers were the men who had
hurt him ? When the jury at last retired, this doubt
fulness, and in fact actual worthlessness, of the testimony
in question was strongly insisted upon by the foreman
and two others, and, although nine of the jury were
ready to convict, these three held out firmly, through a
long deliberation, and after many ballotings. Much
tumult, meanwhile, raged outside the court-room, and to
some extent in it. The better class of citizens were
urging the crowd to be patient ; while the crowd were
weary and disgusted to think that, now the beautifully
simple machinery of popular justice was once set up, it
somehow would not run smoothly, but was subject even
to delays. During this time it was, and after ten o'clock
at night, that Mr. E. S. Osgood l learned that two men
were accessible, and living down on "Long Wharf"
(Commercial Street wharf), who could swear to the true
identity of the prisoner, and to his whereabouts on the
night of the assault. Before making an effort to go
down in the thick darkness to the not very safe regions
of Long Wharf, Mr. Osgood came forward in the court
room, announced his purpose, and begged the court to
be willing to wait for the new evidence, and to admit it
when it should come. Some one present, as Mr. Os
good has told me, called out, asking him who he was ;
another thereupon shouted that this new-comer in court
l Now a resident of Cambridge, Mass. I have heard from him his
own account also of the following scene, which, with his name men
tioned, is described more briefly in the Alfa report, as cited. The two
accounts agree so far as they refer to the same occurrences at all.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 415
was well known to certain present as one Osgood, a re
sponsible person ; a third shouted : " No, I know who
he is, one of these scoundrels that are trying to get their
accomplice here off free" — and hereupon some angry
discussion followed. Mr. Osgood gave his name and his
business, but, as the " Alta " says, " the crowd refused
to hear any further testimony." Yet Mr. Osgood set
off in the darkness to find his witnesses, and, after some
gloomy wanderings, he was successful. With some
trouble he persuaded them to come with him to the court
from their lodgings on Long Wharf. But before the
return of the three, the case was for the time ended.
At nearly midnight, namely, the jury had returned to
court, and the foreman had reported that they could
not agree. Mr. Watson remembers well the unpleasant
scene presented to himself and his fellow jurymen, with
the weary and angry crowd all about, who began to call
for the names of the disagreeing jurors, and to shout
" Hang them too." But the scene was not to last long.
The good citizens present were firm, the mob had di
minished by reason of the lateness of the hour, the
leaders insisted that the sovereign people, having re
ferred the case to a jury, must abide by its decision,
and the people were at last induced to disperse. One
device to pacify them seems to have been a resort to
that great medicine wherewith the American rids him
self of his dangerous social passions, just as the Aristo
telian spectator of tragedy purges himself of his " Pity
and Fear." This Katharsis namely is, with the Amer
ican, political agitation. When Mr. Osgood returned
with his witnesses, he found some of the recent heroes
of popular justice loudly shouting : " Hurrah for
Weller." An impromptu political meeting had in fact
CALIFORNIA.
just been taking place, and all the good citizens who
were still out of bed were so interested in this new mat
ter that Mr. Osgood with difficulty learned from them
what had become of the prisoner. At last he heard that
the popular tribunal had adjourned sine die, and that
the prisoners had been left with the authorities for trial.
And thus happily ended an affair in which the citizens
of San Francisco had shown some of their worst as well
as some of their best traits. A volunteer night patrol,
organized by the merchants, thenceforth for a time aided
the police force of the city, which was all this time small,
poorly trained, generally neglected, and ill-paid, getting
its wages in depreciated city scrip.
But the great year of the popular tribunals was as yet
only begun. The newspapers might hope that the city
would escape the curse of popular justice, but the tem
per of the public made such escape impossible. One
thing, however, was secured by the February outbreak :
the public would be sure in time to learn from it the
proper lesson as to the dangers of mere mob law. The
supposed Stuart was some months later shown to be a
rather weak, but, as to legal offenses, an innocent man.
For the moment he escaped from San Francisco, only
to fall a little later once more into trouble, in the inte
rior, by reason of his singular resemblance to the re
doubtable Stuart. From this trouble also he was re
leased through evidence produced by the very San
Franciscans who had been so near hanging him in Feb
ruary. The other prisoner accused of the assault on
Jansen was later convicted, and sentenced to the peni
tentiary, by a regular court. But he also was still later
shown to be innocent, and was finally released. For
the time, however, the mass of the citizens could not
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 417
know how criminal might have proven the hasty meth
ods of the 22d and the 23d of February. When the
committee of June was formed, with such men as the
late foreman of the jury of February 23d in prominent
places upon it, there was, however, a very decided effort
made from the first to avoid every appearance of dis
order. That the committee was needed at all resulted,
as said, from the temper of the public mind, which, with
out some serious lesson in the troublesome work of pop
ular justice, could not have been induced to forsake in
any wise its over-confidence and its carelessness.
V. THE FIRST VIGILANCE COMMITTEE.
We study, in this book, the incidents that exhibit the
popular character and the play of social forces, rather
than those that have only an adventurous interest. The
first Vigilance Committee is rich in dramatic situations,
but, after its first formation, its history shows little
further that is novel in the way of socially important
undertakings. Upon its early moments alone we shall
dwell. Absolutely necessary, in order to distinguish it
from the more disorderly and transient committees of
the mines, would be, of course, a careful and sober organ
ization. This is got, at the outset of its work, in June.
What followed vindicated the good sense of the organi
zation, but throws little new light on the ethics of popu
lar justice.
The fire of IN fay 4th had rendered the public more
sensitive, discontented and suspicious than ever ; but a
genuine popular reform had not yet taken place. Re
forms must have something to date from, and two or
three minor popular excitements, produced by attempts
at arson or by other crimes, were not sufficient for the
27
418 CALIFORNIA.
purpose. On Sunday, June 8, a very able letter ap
peared in the " Alta," proposing the immediate forma
tion of a Committee of Safety, and suggesting a plan for
its operations. The plan as stated was admitted to be
somewhat undigested, but was probably so strongly ex
pressed chiefly for the sake of arousing popular atten
tion. The usual complaints were made as to the social
condition. The committee of safety was to improve mat
ters by boarding in time the vessels that arrived from
Australia, and by refusing to let any doubtful charac
ters land from them ; while, as to the ruffians now in
the city, ward committees of vigilance were arbitrarily
to single them out and to warn them to leave the city
within five days on pain of a " war of extermination,"
to be prosecuted against them. "' Let us set about the
work at once. It may be well to call a public meeting
in the square, to organize and carry out these views.
Without this, or some other similar plan, the evil can
not be remedied ; and if there is not spirit enough
amongst us to do it, why then in God's name let the
city be burned, and our streets flow with the blood of
murdered men." The letter was throughout very well
written. It is remarkable as not referring directly and
openly to any one case before the public, and as not get
ting its inspiration from any one popular excitement or
mob, and also as coming from one of the most cautious
and conscientious of the jury at the recent trial of the
false Stuart.1 Some of the writer's friends guessed at
the authorship of the letter, and at breakfast at his
1 Namely, from the pen of Mr. R. S. Watson, who on seeing the
Alta. of that date in the file that I have used, now feels able to iden
tify with absolute certainty this letter as the one which he remembers
having written at that time to the press.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 419
restaurant, Sunday morning, he was accosted by several
of them and asked about the matter. The " Alta "
itself noticed the letter- approvingly ; and Mr. Watson
had, as he says, " touched a train already laid." Others
were on the point of a similar movement.
A few editorial and inspired articles in the " Alta,"
on Monday and Tuesday, are the only public indica
tions, during those days, that anything of importance
was going on among the citizens interested in the new
movement. The "Alta" of Wednesday, June 11,
brings sufficient evidence, however, both of the move
ment and of its first consequences. The editor re
marks, that morning, that mobs are indeed of no service
in suppressing crime. But " the next affair of the kind
will be of a different character, if we are correctly in
formed in regard to certain organizations of our citizens,
which are now and have for several days been progress
ing. We understand that quite a large party banded
themselves together at the California Engine House on
Monday night, for the purpose of punishing incendiaries
and other criminals." The organization of the commit
tee had indeed been already provisionally perfected.
Mr. Sam Brannan, with his wonted zeal, had offered
them a room, and his offer had been accepted. Two
taps on the engine-house bell were to call the committee
together. The promptness of the work of organization
showed how many besides the anonymous correspondent
of the " Alta " had had the thoughts to which he gave
such vigorous expression. Prominent on the committee,
besides the two already mentioned, were Mr. Wm. T.
Coleman, Mr. Stephen Payran,1 Mr. S. E. Woodworth,
and many others.
1 Although Mr. W. T. Coleman is by popular reputation the most
420 CALIFORNIA.
But, as this same *' Alta " of Wednesday learned
even as it was going to press, the committee had no
sooner organized than it had undertaken work. A
thief, one Jenkins, a common ruffian of a very low type,
had been detected Tuesday evening in the very act of
burglary on Long Wharf, and, attempting to escape in
a boat, was caught and brought back. At ten o'clock
Tuesday night the members of the committee were
called to their first appointed headquarters : (near the
corner of Sansome and Bush streets). For two hours
the committee were engaged in examining the case, and
at midnight Mr. Sam Brannan announced their verdict
to the crowd assembled outside the rooms. The crimi
nal, he said, was to be hanged in an hour or two on the
Plaza. The execution took place at two. An attempt
was made by the police on the Plaza to get Jenkins
away from the committee, but the effort was hopeless,
and the " old adobe," now so near its doom, did almost
its last public service, before the June fire burned it
down, in serving, through one of its projecting beams,
as a gallows to hang Jenkins.2
prominent among the executive leaders of the first committee, Mr. W.
W. Carpenter, writing from Petaluma, under date of March 25, 1874,
to the Oakland Transcript, and professing to give something of the
"secret history" of the committee, makes Mr. Payran its "chair
man," throughout, as well as its greatest hero. The organization of
the committee, with a comparatively few leaders and a large rank and
file, makes such questions about the division of honors very frequent
in the reminiscences of various pioneers. There was, however, as to
personal credit, no true first hero in this very honest and active com
pany of intelligent and able leaders.
1 In the Annals, p. 570, erroneously put at the corner of Pine and
Battery streets, on this occasion.
2 Mr. Watson lias given me a very interesting account of this
whole night, for which I wish that I had more space. The weather,
as appears both from the Alta and from his account, was unusually
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 421
A time of feverish public excitement followed. The
coroner's inquest implicated certain people as connected
with the execution of Jenkins ; but the committee, in a
very dignified publication, declared all their members,
of whom a complete list was given, equally implicated,
and announced their firm intention to work for the pu
rification of the city. This plain statement relieved the
public mind. The committee was no merely secret or
ganization ; and its members were among the best-known
men of the city. It plainly expressed the general senti
ment. The question, why then could not this honest
general sentiment have expressed itself before, in the
selection of good and efficient officers ? — now came too
late. Once for all, only a glimpse of the terrible scenes
of lynch law could make this public serious. And so
the committee was indeed a necessity. Here, in fact, is
one of the heretofore frequently mentioned cases whera
popular justice was not in itself sin, but was the confes
sion of the past sin of the whole community.
The work during June, July, and August was both im
pressive and important. That it frightened the rogues,
sent many of them away, and hanged three more be
sides Jenkins, is, as the reader now sees, the least of its
merits. More important was the manifest sobriety and
justice of the methods. The committee caught, tried,
and hanged the true Stuart, who made at the last a full
but untrustworthy confession. But by doing this piece
of work the committee accomplished an act of justice to
the poor fellow who had been mistaken for Stuart in
February. He, namely, was now in jail in the interior,
clear for a June night in San Francisco, and the moon was very bril
liant. - The popular excitemeAt all nighfwas of the greatest, but of
course the general feeling fully supported the committee.
422 CALIFORNIA.
under sentence of death, all because of another conse
quence of his resemblance to Stuart. And the com
mittee, when the truth had once become known, made
every effort to save him and to set him .free, and suc
ceeded. Not mere vengeance, then, but justice, was the
obvious motive of its acts. In August the committee
came nearly to an open collision with the authorities,
who, at an unguarded moment, rescued from the rooms
of the committee two of its condemned criminals, Whit-
taker and McKenzie. The committee, however, some
days later, by a skillful and effective surprise, recap
tured these two, and hanged them at once, all without
more than the mere show of violence towards the police.
Successfully, then, the risk of an open fight with officers
of the law was overcome. But the lesson of this was a
serious one. Popular justice in San Francisco would, it
was plain, involve fearful risks of an open collision be
tween the officers and the people, and would be a great
waste of social energy. Why not gain in future, through
devotion to the duties of citizenship, what one thus in
the end would have to struggle for in some way, per
chance at the expense of much blood ?
When the committee at last ceased its activity, this
lesson was in everybody's mind. That the lesson was
not more permanently taken to heart by San Francis
cans is indeed unfortunate. Too many of the citizens
still felt themselves wanderers on the face of the earth.
But at all events a good beginning had been made in
righteousness.
VI. SOCIAL CORRUPTION AND COMMERCIAL DISASTER.
The years 1852 and 1853, and especially the latter,
were in San Francisco years of rapid growth and of
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 423
great general prosperity. The year 1854, however,
marks an important era in San Francisco social evolu
tion. It was the year in which began the first great
financial depression of California. Individual fortunes
had suffered in all sorts of ways, but the general sol
vency of the mercantile community had persisted. At
last, however, continuous over-confidence in the rapid
development of the wealth of the country led to the
natural result. The production of the mines began to
fall off, immigration decreased, many people left the
land, the consumption of food diminished, interest and
rents declined in San Francisco, and thirty per cent, of
the warehouses were left empty.1 This second stage of
commercial life is universal in new countries, only the
swiftness and the particular conditions of the calamity
varying from place to place. And one who has grown
up in new communities always listens with amusement
to the enthusiasm of sanguine investors in the enter
prises of some just settled portion of our territory,
when they declare that the first stage of the life of the
newly prosperous region is demonstrably only a faint in
dication of the continuous and unceasing future growth
of its wealth. For, as the lifelong dweller in new coun
tries knows, the enthusiasm of these early investors is as
ruinous to them as it is valuable for the new country.
Their ideas are indeed, in one sense, well founded.
What they hope for is certain to come in time, only for
others, and not in general for them. The evolution of
the new land will not be what they think, a steady
growth in wealth. The first great commercial crisis of
its history will be, in proportion to its wealth, the worst
of all ; and these sanguine investors will be destroyed
i J. S. Hittell's History of San Francisco, p. 217.
424 CALIFORNIA.
like flies in autumn. The second period of its growth,
the winter time of this great depression, when all but
the very strongest of those early investors have become
poor as church mice, is the true time for a cautious, hard
working, and shrewd man to make his appearance in the
land. He will be wiser than his predecessors, and far
less extravagant. He will buy at low prices their half-
abandoned property, and in later years they will bit
terly reproach him, instead of themselves, for the wrong
that gave him a chance to reap what they had sown.
This law of the almost universal failure of the pioneers
of a new country was well exemplified in San Fran
cisco.
The law is a beneficent one ; for the interests of pio
neers are at first much narrower than the true and his
torical interests of the country that they seek to subject
to their private schemes. " Something of the decay of
business in the city," well observes Mr. J. S. Hittell,1
" must be attributed to the growth of agriculture. Many
of the immigrants of 1852 had gone to farming, and
they were joined by thousands of farmers in the next
year, so that there was a large increase in the produc
tion of grain and vegetables, and a correspondent de
cline in the quantity of flour imported, in the number of
ships needed, and in the profit of consignees, warehouse
men, jobbers, and draymen in the city." But all this,
of course, meant the final advantage of the whole coun
try, San Francisco included.
The immediate consequence of the crisis was the rev
elation of much social corruption that had been grow
ing, but that had been previously hidden. People had
boasted of the wild dissipations of 1849 and 1850, for-
1 Hiitory of San Francisco, Iqc. cit.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 425
getting that all these dissipations had seemed so note
worthy just because they were not characteristic of the
real temperament of the people, and were a transient
and inflamed symptom of the unnatural excitements to
which the more weak and foolish of the young men
yielded. But now this wilder dissipation had passed
into the background of popular attention. Nobody any
longer called the gambling-halls respectable.1 The
boastful sinners of the earlier days had become willing
to behave in a more commonplace fashion. But the
sins that men boast of are never their worst. What
San Francisco had not boasted of being able to produce
was sin such as was represented by the distinguished
swindler and former, Henry Meiggs, whose business un
dertakings, begun early in the city's history, culminated
in his crimes and in his flight, in the autumn of 1854.
Californians had been supposed, above all tilings, before
those days of 1854, to discourage and despise under
hand dealings and duplicity of every sort. The Annal
ists boasted in their book of the commercial integrity of
1 Gambling continued to be licensed in San Francisco until 1855,
but long before that time met with steadily increasing condemnation.
The San Francisco Herald of April 7, 1852, shows the view generally
taken of these gambling-halls at that time. They still constitute a
" prominent feature of life in San Francisco," but "public opinion in
the main is opposed to their existence, and they are tolerated for no
other reason, that we know of, than that they are charged heavily for
licenses." They abound, continues the editor, all along Commercial
Street, and on Long Wharf, at the foot of that street. Almost all of
them are owned by foreigners. The business, however, is "not so
extensively followed as it was last year." " Persons of respectability
and standing seldom visit the saloons nowadays for play," although
at one time many such persons used to do so. "The public are be
coming more and more opposed " to the business " every day." By
the end of 1855 the Bulletin condemns the gamblers as among the
worst elements of society.
420 CALIFORNIA.
the city in even its wildest days ; and, indeed, the av
erage integrity of the early merchants was high. But
pioneer recklessness has as its correlate an extravagant
tendency to hero-worship. The good fellow is easily
adored in a new city, — all the more easily because one
has had no means to judge of his weaknesses by means
of a lifelong acquaintance. The same general care
lessness that tends to corrupt the morally weaker mem
bers of pioneer society expresses itself by trusting ex
travagantly any clever man whose manners are pleasing.
The trust gives him more than his share of power, and
the lack of public spirit in the community gives him a
chance to abuse his privileges. And so San Francisco
produced Meiggs, and was responsible for him and his
tribe, as much as for the gambling-halls ; perhaps more
still.
Meiggs was early a general favorite : a man shrewd,
generous, and speculative. He was a lumber-merchant,
who, as such, profited, of course, by the growth as well
as by the occasional partial destruction of the early city.
He became deeply interested in developing the city in
the direction of his own wharf, at North Beach, where
land was cheap, and where land-titles were compara
tively unclouded. In connection with this work he
found a place in the city council ; a body which, in the
early days, best represented the errors of the commu
nity, being wasteful and selfish where it was not dis
honest. Meiggs himself entered it with honest inten
tions, no doubt, and secured the passage of numerous
ordinances for the benefit of his part of the city. But
his undertakings grew on his hands, and his debts in
creased as rapidly. He borrowed all that he could on
his own security, and then began a bold enterprise,
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 427
namely, borrowing on the city's security without au
thority. His method of accomplishing this was as cour
ageous as it was characteristic of the place and time.
The city, as we know, was then and for years after
wards deeply in debt for many vast and usually needless
outlays. For its genuine expenses it required, mean
while, much money, and, in place of that, was pleased to
increase its debt by paying its monthly bills in warrants,
which were worth in the market some fifty or sixty per
cent, of their face value, and which were, in fact, later
mostly repudiated. The warrants were prepared by
filling out blanks supplied to the controller in book
form,1 which were made valid by the signatures of the
mayor and controller. These warrants, according to
the since current story, used, in a large number of cases,
to be signed in advance, in blank, for the convenience
of the officers, who could thus more rapidly fill out the
blanks for each new creditor. Now, Meiggs, as a city
father, as a well-known and responsible citizen, and as a
man largely interested in large city contracts, had fre
quent, easy, and un watched access to the offices and
books of the municipal corporation, — a freedom which,
surely, nobody ought to regard with disapproval, since
Meiggs was such a good fellow. Therefore, when cau
tious investors hesitated to lend more on Meiggs's real
estate, and when they began to reflect that a man so
much involved as he would surely carry down all his in-
dorsers with him in case he fell, the good Meiggs was
now ready with a presumably trustworthy collateral secu
rity, namely, with numerous city warrants, valued at fifty
1 See, on this matter, the account of Meiggs's career, in J. S. Hit-
tell, op. tit., pp. 218, sqq., especially pp. 220 and 221. Hittell's ac
count is an excellent one, and needs only a little to supplement it.
428 CALIFORNIA.
per cent., — warrants that he was understood to have
received from the city in connection with the vast con
tracts in which he was interested. These securities had
a foundation quite independent of Meiggs's solvency,
and the cautious lenders joyously received them as col
lateral.1 For months nohody thought of inquiring at
the controller's office for proof of the value of these
certificates, for they were of well-known appearance,
and were not interest-bearing ; 2 and so, with the fall of
real estate, in 1854, Meiggs became more and more
involved, and his use of city securities became more and
more important to him. His courage was equal even
to forging promissory notes, and detection then erelong
became imminent. Accordingly, Meiggs quietly stocked
a staunch little ship with provisions, took some of his
friends and his brother aboard, and sailed, one day in
October, 1854, out of the Golden Gate, and vanished.
Then, of course, his failure and flight were at once an
nounced. The more cautious creditors took their col
lateral to the city offices for examination, and were
overwhelmed to learn that their city paper was forged
and worthless. The signatures might be genuine, but
the certificates were not.
There were reasons why the public never learned
just how much the energetic Meiggs had stolen. He
never came back, and many people who lost by him felt
henceforth a certain delicacy about explaining their
relations with him. For the moment, however, Meiggs
was regarded as an exemplary rascal, and men won
dered how deep into the business life of Sun Francisco
1 See the humorous article in the Pioneer for January, 1855, vol. ii.
p. 16, sqq., where Meiygs's exploits are duly celebrated.
2 Hittell, loc. at.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 429
this sort of corruption had eaten. If Meiggs, people
added, had only been content with cheating his bank
ers, one could have forgiven him ; but, as report in
sisted, he had cheated his washerwoman. That, men
declared, was too bad, even for California.1 But, as
they felt, he was, after all, only a remarkable instance
of an evil that was far too common. For one thing,
there were no sufficient public safeguards against such
rascality. San Francisco was still without any very
efficient police, and especially without any detective po
lice.2 If violence was no longer so common, the crimes
of skill were directly encouraged by the whole condition
of society. The just cited writer in the " Pioneer "
says of the state of affairs, referring especially to frauds
in commercial matters (vol. ii. p. 327) : " Each day has
its tale of depravity. We appeal ... to the tale that
is told from man to man, each day, in the public streets.
... Is it not manifest to all that the cause of this con
tinued flood of crime is the uncertainty of punishment,
— nay, the almost certainty of escape ? " And, on p.
330, the same writer, after discussing the apathy of
prosecuting attorneys and of other public officials as one
great evil of the times, goes on to enumerate some of
the sorts of greater offenders from whom the commu
nity is suffering : " Such are those who influence the
time, place, and manner of the acts of public officers, so
as to reap a benefit therefrom ; who get contracts with
the State and city by corrupting legislation, . . . mis
use the public securities intrusted to their care, . . .
1 Pioneer, loc. cit., p. 17. J. S. Hittell, loc. cit., erroneously puts
Meiggs's flight in September. See the Pioneer, vol. ii. p. 297.
2 See, in the Pioneer, vol. ii. pp. 321, sqq., an interesting article on
" A Detective Police." Meiggs's crimes and escape are mentioned as
a good example of the easy lot of a clever criminal in San Francisco.
430 CALIFORNIA.
corrupt judges and juries. . . . These great crimes,
which have so long prospered amongst us, leave us no
security. Life, liberty, and property have no safety
when the tribunals are corrupted, and the poor man
hides his little store and flees with it to other lands."
Thus opens the era of commercial ill-feeling and suspi
cion in San Francisco, — an era that lasted until after
the great Vigilance Committee. Its especial exponent
in the newspaper press began to appear in 1855, as the
" San Francisco Bulletin." Not so much violence, as
corruption, was now the enemy.
Of Meiggs it remains to be said here only that the
rest of his career showed, in a fresh way, how com
pletely the life of new countries is sometimes given over
to Satan, to vex the inhabitants thereof with diabolical
miracles. Even the commonest laws of moral evolution
seem, namely, occasionally suspended in such lands, so
far as concerns, not the communities indeed, but certain
individuals. And thus the weaklings are tempted by
the sight of rogues who let the viper of wickedness
sting them, but somehow do not fall down dead, as they
ought. Capricious fortune saves some rogues, not
merely from physical penalties, but apparently from the
most inevitable of their well-earned moral penalties.
Such a diabolical miracle was permitted to be wrought
in the case of Meiggs. In his home of refuge in South
America, this wretch, namely, later became a distin
guished and useful citizen,v-a great investor, a trustwor
thy financier, a man much prized by the government
and people of Peru for his skill, for his amiability, and
for his generosity. He took advantage of his success
to satisfy in some fashion (according to Mr. Hittell, by
buying up at reduced rates his old notes) the claims of
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 431
his San Francisco creditors, who benevolently forgave
him all in after years. The real mischief that he had
wrought he could, of course, never make good ; but it
was granted him to die as an honored man, — surely a
most vile caprice of fortune, however much Meiggs's
own fine energies may have contributed to the result.
That he ever truly repented does in no wise appear.
If he had repented, he would have come back to Cali
fornia and gone to jail, where he belonged.
By 1855 we see the fruits both of the aforesaid natu
ral causes and of all this commercial and social corrup
tion, in the great failures of February, and in the great
business depression of the rest of the year. Page, Ba
con & Co. and Adams & Co., two of the greatest of the
city business houses, the one a banking-house, the other
both a banking and an express company, failed, and
carried with them numerous lesser firms.1 The finan
cial condition of the municipality was meanwhile grow
ing worse and worse. The message of the mayor,
March 12, 1855, 2 showed the liabilities of the city in
curred since May 1, 1851, to sum up as $1,959,000,
the deficit for one year past being some $840,000. The
house of Page, Bacon & Co. resumed payment March
29, only to close its doors anew and finally on May 2.
A long struggle over the assets of Adams & Co. began
with the failure of that house, and this was to last for
years, involving, and in the end destroying, the personal
reputations of a good many people. The city, later in
1 The sequence of the events of the crisis appears in the Pioneer's
"Monthly Summary," vol. iii. p. 238. Contemporary with the crisis
was the excitement in San Francisco about the " Kern River Mines,"
a typical instance of the early California mining excitements. This
one was especially ill-founded and transient.
2 Pioneer, vol. iii. p. 368.
432 CALIFORNIA.
the year, having been authorized by statute to examine
through a commission its floating debt, and to fund the
properly incurred and legally valid portion thereof,
manage to repudiate $1,737,000 of its warrants, recog
nizing as its valid indebtedness only some 8322.000.
This act, either an appalling confession of corruption, or
a most disgraceful repudiation (or more probably both),
stands happily alone of its kind iu San Francisco his
tory.1 All these things, however, were the work of the
people at large, who had tolerated and encouraged sin
so long, and who now selfishly tried to shirk its penalties.
VH. THE XEW AWAKENING OF CONSCIENCE.
The conscience of San Francisco, however, began to
speak through the pages of the new paper, the " B idle-
tin," in the autumn of 1855. A perfectly clear or a
very highly organized conscience it was not yet, but it
was stern, manly, cruel and unsparing towards its own
past lapses, courageous, hopeful, and ardent. The mes
senger who was inspired to speak its words was in no
old-fashioned sense a prophet, although fate was pleased
to make him a martyr. He was a very plain and pro
saic man, who obviously learned from his new task, as
he went on, even more than he taught to others, and
who, for the rest, was not free from selfishness in the
conduct of his mission ; since, as is plain, he not infre
quently felt a good deal of personal spite against the
public sinners that he assailed. His weapons, moreover,
were the dangerous ones of personal journalism. His
methods forced him to be always ready with a fresh
denunciation of somebody, and he was sure, therefore, to
commit much injustice, if he continued long upon his
1 J. S. Hittell, op. tit., p. 227. Pioneer, vol. iv. p. 309.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 433
path. But for the time he quickly gained the support
of the respectable classes, because the cause that he
pleaded was so much above all his own personal weak
nesses and errors, and because the need of plain speech
was so pressing. James King, " of William," as he,
following a practice occasionally found in new commu
nities, called himself, by way of distinction from other
Kings, had been engaged in banking, and had been
ruined by the late panic. The field of San Francisco
newspapers was crowded, but still nobody had made a
business of preaching concrete righteousness in short
and readable paragraphs, with broad-faced type used
for the headings, and with plenty of personal applica
tions scattered all through the editorial columns. To
do this was King's opportunity. He began his enter
prise in October, 1855, without at first any peculiarity
of outer form to mark his journal, save its very small
size. Three successive enlargements rapidly followed,1
with his success, and by the opening of the new year
one finds his style, his form of typography, and his
plans of battle fully developed. King loved to gather
around him a little cloud of correspondents, both friends
and foes, to assign them a column or two at one side,
and then to discourse to them in his manly and vigorous
way in "leaders" and "notes." Plainly the one edi
tor was nearly always speaking, and King's name stood
at the head of the first editorial column, yet he per
sisted in his merely amusing editorial " we." His
correspondents addressed him plainly by name, and
1 The file that I have before me, that of Harvard College Library,
opens with number 20, October 30, 1855, and is nearly continuous un^
til late in 1856. I know of no enlargement of earlier date than Octo
ber 30.
28
434 CALIFORNIA.
wrote approval, entreaty, expostulation or objurgation,
as the spirit might move. King encouraged them very
frequently to say just what they thought. Occasionally
a gambler wrote to defend his profession, or an ortho
dox man, full of interest in this worthy, but plainly un-
rcgenerate editor, wrote to beg King to save his own
poor soul, while the lamp still held out to burn. King
enjoyed all such letters ; and they all alike made his
piper sell. He had a thoughtful and speculative vein
in his mind also, and sometimes touched on deeper
problems.
Meanwhile, it was his life to assail official, business,
and social corruption of every sort, and that not imper
sonally. Duels he declined to enter upon, once for
all ; and the rights of the public to a plain denunciation
of the rascals were his daily insistence. Yet this work,
honestly undertaken, could not rest with personal quar
rels. King had to assail the public apathy and careless
ness that permitted this sort of thing. And that assault
constitutes the permanently valuable element in his
work. Nobody cares now how far King's personal
hatreds were well founded. It was his denunciation of
the whole social condition that was significant.
And serious was indeed the corruption that he talked
of so plainly. In forsaking the wilder old dissipations,
the community had still kept the feeling that respecta
bility was an affair of the heart for each individual.
Public respectability, such for instance as demanded the
banishing of disreputable houses from the principal
dwelling-house streets of the city, was nobody's concern.
But King made it somebody's concern.1 He very
i A correspondent, November 8, lS.r>5. complains of a most notice
able and offensive establishment just about to be opened, "situated in
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 435
plainly and by name assailed the city officials whose
private and illegal connivance was especially and de-
nionstrably to blame for these things, and promised to
publish the names of the proprietors and lessors of every
such house, if the nuisance were not abated. " It 's no
use trying to dodge the ' Bulletin,' gentlemen," he
added. And in fact his paper farther on, in treating
of the same evil, did mention more names in a disagree
able way,1 threatening always worse. The result, at
least in part, of this plain speech, was action by the al
dermen, and a committee report on the condition of the
city, in respect of the evil mentioned, — a report that,
as published in the " Bulletin " of November 28, is one
of the saddest confessions ever made by the governing
board of a municipality. There is no sort of privacy,
the committee say, about the evils complained of. The
best families of the town are daily and unavoidably in
sulted by the immediate neighborhood of impudent evil
in its least bearable forms, all good women, all children,
being alike subjected to this disgrace. The committee
knows of no possible remedy that will not of necessity
include a reorganization of the police force. In fact, as
is plain, while there were numerous pure and happy
homes in San Francisco, there was as yet no really clean,
pure, and large neighborhood in the city, to which re
spectable families could go for their dwelling-places and
be safe. The struggle for a true and humane life was
still a hand-to-hand fight in public with legions of loath
some little devils.
the midst of respectable family residences, and on one of the most
public thoroughfares." In connection with this letter, King makes
the threat noted in the text.
1 See editorial, November 26, 1855.
436 CALIFORNIA.
In another direction King had to fight against an
equally wide-spread and even less curable form of pop
ular infidelity, namely, the general toleration shown
towards gamblers, — a toleration which, after all these
years, was still too prevalent. The gambler is King's
pet villain, and especially towards the last of his work
does the bold editor, constantly improving in his seri
ousness of speech, dwell upon the general social evils
of the recent prevalence of gambling, and upon the
esteem shown by some to the most notorious gam
blers. Public opinion in California has never, says
King, really approved of gambling, but has only per
mitted it, at first for lack of law, then later by virtue of
habit. But at all times, in California as everywhere,
gambling has been a sin, and professional gamblers,
whether licensed or not, have always been criminals.
" A good citizen looks not to the laws of the state to
guide him in ethics. ' As many as have sinned without
the law shall perish without the law.' " In such fine
fashion King seeks to exclude the professional gamblers
once for all from the ranks of respectable and honest
citizens, whether the laws have ever encouraged their
business or not. The State, insists King, is just coming
out of chaos into a normal condition, and the true and
healthy public sentiment which has always existed is
just finding a chance to express itself. Let no one try
to resist it.
The discussion in the course of which occur these
expressions, themselves taken from the ' ; Bulletin " of
April 28, lSr>fi, is especially noteworthy. Gamblers
had undertaken to reply to King's repeated denuncia
tions. Why denounce, they had said, men who only
gambled so long, as the law permitted it, and who now
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 437
obey the law, and do not follow public gambling as a
profession any longer. After all, have not the profes
sional gamblers usually been men of marked ability and
fine minds, who were driven to gambling as a business
by the narrowness of their daily lives, and by a certain
honorable pride ? — The honorable man of business, re
plied King, is the man " who in all his cares for this
life has not neglected to cultivate those higher feelings
of the heart — a reverence to God, and a desire for the
moral improvement of his race." l
It is in this connection that the very correspondent
to whom these words of King are a reply, plainly one of
the more good-humored of the gambling brotherhood,
addresses King (in words that remind one of the well-
known Turkish official's exhortation to Layard), and
begs the able editor to give up this absurd care about
the " public " good. I, he says, am one of " a large
number who have long since ceased to worry their minds
with schemes for the public welfare, — a class, by the
way, much more numerous than you imagine, — who
confidently look forward to the time when you will join
their number, and rest from the thankless and unprofit
able task which you have imposed upon yourself. You
are pursuing a course that will certainly drive you to
despair if persisted in."
VIII. THE CRISIS OF MAY, 1856.
The time of rest for King was indeed not far off. It
was expedient just then that one man should die for the
people, and King's services, although not nearly fault
less, had been so excellent, that the gods seem to have
esteemed him worthy of an unspeakable honor ; and
l Bulletin, April 21, 1856.
438 CALIFORNIA.
they chose him as the man. He was shot down on the
public streets, May 14, 1856, by one James Casey, a re
cently elected supervisor, an editor of a lesser journal,
a politician of the baser sort, and a former convict in
the New York state penitentiary, a man whom King
had denounced and exposed. King died six days
later, of his wound ; but meanwhile the deed had
aroused the greatest exhibition of popular excitement
in the whole history of California. In lamenting and
avenging the fate of this sturdy champion of a manly
public spirit, the entire community experienced a new
outpouring of that spirit, and King's death did far more
than his life could possibly have done to regenerate the
social order. That the immediate expression of the
new life was the greatest of the vigilance committees is,
after all, to my mind, the least important of the great
facts of the situation. Such an expression, in view of
California!! habits and feelings as they were at that
time already formed, was indeed inevitable, but it was
not the really essential social fact, which was that, upon
King's death, there followed for many a really new
life. This crisis was a revelation to them, which they
never forgot.1
Why just the death of King, rather than many far
1 Concerning Casey himself, and the details of his quarrel with
King, all the accounts of the Great Committee,' have repeated the well-
known statements for which the contemporary newspapers are of
course the source. See especially Tuthill, p. 4:52, J. S. Hittell. p. 244.
On the whole career of the committee, Tuthill's account is the fullest
so far published in book form, although the author had no access to
the personal reminiscences that have since been made public from
time to time. My space and purpose, after I have described the open
ing scenes, will limit me in great part to a discussion of the social
bearings rather than of the external events of this best known and
most frequently described scene of our story.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 439
worse evils then patent to any observer in San Fran
cisco, aroused so fearfully the popular attention, is a
question of social psychology that one can more easily
pretend to answer by a reference to well-known facts,
than really put to rest by genuine explanations. A pop
ular hero is always needed, before the people can be
converted from their sins ; and King, as we see, had
some really heroic stuff in him. He seemed for the
moment a martyr pure and simple. Wherefore had he
fallen ? Because he had served the people, and had
spoken fearlessly against evil. Who was now safe?
Surely no honest and plain-spoken man. Who could
now prosper here, in such an unpurified community ?
Only the rogues. And the so much needed families —
would they now crowd to this land of promise ? Cer
tainly not, so long as the blood of this husband and
father, dead in his city's cause, cried to heaven in vain
for vengeance. Would the courts suffice at such a cri
sis ? Nay, one's executive officers of the law were not
trustworthy. Judges indeed might mean well and do
well. But the sheriffs, and the deputies, and the police,
not to mention the prosecuting attorneys, — who had
confidence in them ? What but a revolution could de
liver the community from the body of this death ? Such
thoughts were in many minds, and were embodied in
most of the newspaper comments. The " Herald," whose
editor the " Bulletin " had often sharply denounced, now,
in return, spoke of the shooting of King as an " affray ; "
but it was almost alone in failing to share the popular
feeling. Most people had forgotten King's failings, in
their sense of the public calamity of his death. In this
one fact they saw a condensed expression of the whole
corrupt state of society. In such a state of popular
440 CALIFORNIA.
feeling a mob was imminent. The business men
o T
therefore chose to calm the spirits of more excitable
people, and to enlist their active service in the cause of
good order, by choosing the only alternative. They
avoided mob law, pure and simple, only by organizing
the most remarkable of all the popular tribunals,
whereby was effected that unique historical occurrence,
a Business Man's Revolution. For such was the second
vigilance committee of San Francisco.
On Wednesday afternoon, May 14. had appeared the
denunciation of Casey by King which led to the shoot*
ing. The same afternoon it was that King was shot.
The next day's " Bulletin " appeared with a blank column
in place of the usual editorial, and published in full the
official documents from New York upon which King
had founded his denunciation of Casey as a convict.
The morning press had freely commented on the occur
rence, and the public excitement had been great. Calls
for the vigilance committee were already in print, and
in secret the new organization was already under way.
The " Bulletin " of Friday contained very little news,
but was crowded with furious letters from correspond
ents, with denunciations of the 4> Herald's " course in
opposing the formation of a vigilance committee, and
with other like expressions of excitement and rage.
The announcement was made that the new committee
was progressing finely with its organization ; several
thousand names being now supposed to be enrolled, to
obey the orders of the executive committee, whose meet
ings were of course private.
Both the excitement and the formation of the com
mittee continued during the next few days. Saturday's
" Bulletin" contained an item bearing on an important
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 441
incident of the organization, an incident since much dis
cussed, namely, the visit of Governor Johnson to the
rooms of the Vigilance Committee. Mayor Van Ness,
feeling the dangers of the situation, with Casey confined
in a not very secure jail, with newspapers so violently
calling for vengeance, with a vigilance committee in
process of formation, under the direction of the most
prominent merchants, with King lying at death's door,
had sent for the governor to come down to the aid of
the law. This Know-Nothing governor, however, was
not the ablest of California's statesmen, and the situation
at San Francisco was far beyond his power to understand
or to improve. As is now known,1 Governor Johnson,
on his arrival in the city Friday afternoon, called
privately upon Mr. Coleman, who was already under
stood to be at the head of the executive committee, and,
according to Mr. Coleman himself, seemed to appreciate
the feelings of the San Francisco people, and gave the
impression that he was willing to let them act as they
saw fit, so long as they were careful to act as a body,
and in an orderly way.2 But late in the evening, the
governor, in company with several other persons, visited
the already well-guarded rooms of the committee,3 and
1 Through Mr. Wm. T. Coleman's statements, especially his elabo
rate one in B MS.
2 Mr. Coleman, in this interview, reminded the governor, as an old
California!!, of what had passed under similar circumstances before
in the State, and then said (as Mr. Coleman now words it), " that I
did not want him to feel that we were taking any advantage of his
position ; but I honestly expressed to him my convictions of the neces
sities of the hour, and of what we wanted to do, and would do, as a
body." " We " meant of course the executive committee.
3 The visitors included General Sherman, just before that time ap
pointed by the governor major-general of the state militia. His well-
known account of the interview is found in his Memoirs, vol. i. p.
121, sqq. The committee were now meeting in the Turnverein Hall
on Hush Street.
442 CALIFORNIA.
in a somewhat more official tone sought to make his
hostility to the purposes of the committee evident. He
first sent word in to the committee-rooms that he desired
speech with Mr. Coleman. The members of the execu
tive committee, within doors, urged Mr. Coleman, as he
went out, not to commit them to anything, to leave their
freedom of action quite unimpaired, and to make no use
less promises to the governor.1 Mr. Coleman was of the
same mind. The visitors stood at first in an ante-room,
waiting for their interview, and when Mr. Coleman came
out, all together met in a bar-room to the right of the
entrance. Mr. Coleman seemed to General Sherman
" pale and agitated," a fact which the former seems not
to have remembered, if it was real at all. But, at all
events, the governor, '" just as if he had not asked the
same questions a few hours before, in our former inter
view " (as Mr. Coleman indignantly remarks), began to
ask afresh about the purposes of the committee. Mr.
Coleman responded that the people were determined,
now at last, to see justice done in the city. This organ
ization was no mob, but it meant to see that Casey
should not escape, and that San Francisco should not be
left to her present sort of legal officers to pro-vent that
escape.
Hereupon Johnson made a proposal, whose nature
and reception form the great topic of interest and of
controversy concerning this interview. According to
Johnson's own view, and to General Sherman's recollec
tion of the matter, Johnson proposed that " if Coleman
and associates would use their influence to support the
law, he (the governor) would undertake " that Casey's
1 So much I have orally from Mr. E. S. Osgood of Cambridge
(already cited above), who was present within doors at the moment.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 443
legal trial should be as speedy and effective as possible,
under the law. He even offered " to be personally re
sponsible for Casey's safe-keeping until his trial, or un
til his execution, in case he should be convicted. Mr.
Coleman, according to the same account,1 " admitted
that the proposition of the governor was fair, and all
he or any one should ask," and retired to submit it to
the executive committee. After consultation, says this
same account, Mr. Coleman reappeared, with a number
of other men, representatives of the committee ; " the
whole conversation was gone over again, and the gov
ernor's proposition was positively agreed to, with this
further condition, that the Vigilance Committee should
send into the jail a small force of their own men, to
make certain that Casey should not be carried off or
allowed to escape."
This account, however, which makes Mr. Coleman
and his companions surrender at once to the governor,
and so undertake to leave Casey's trial to the regular
courts at the very moment when all San Francisco was
moved to instant vengeance, is antecedently absurd.
No California committee ever at such a moment aban
doned its work. Had the governor offered or been able
to offer his cooperation in a joint action of the popular
body and of the officers of the law, such a joint action,
for instance, as had been possible in the Hounds' affair
in 1849, the committee might have yielded something
of its own claims. But no such offer was now even
remotely possible. And the governor meanwhile was
not able to speak to the committee with any force be
hind him. His authority was unsupported. The militia
companies of the city were already enrolling themselves
1 See General Sherman's Memoirs, loc. cit., p. 122.
444 CALIFORNIA.
in a body on the committee lists, and the arms in the
city were already in large part in the committee's pos
session. The militia force of the State at large was
powerless ; and public opinion everywhere favored im
mediate justice upon the murderer of King. A com
mittee formed at such a crisis would have felt itself to
be merely trifling with its enrolled thousands of mem
bers had it entertained for a moment such a proposition
from an actually impotent governor, and had it suspended
at the very outset its deliberate purposes.
And, in fact, not only antecedent probability, but
sound testimony, is against General Sherman's memory,
a memory which, for the rest, was hardly meant by the
Creator for purely historical purposes, genial and amus
ing though its productions may be. In this case the
vigilance members directly concerned very plainly con
tradict General Sherman's account. Mr. Coleman heard
the governor's proposition, indeed, just as General Sher
man reports it, but he did not assent to it. He first
declined to make any compromise without consulting his
associates. " I then," he declares (li. MS. as cited)
" went back to the executive room, and reported the
conversation briefly ; and Governor Johnson's proposi
tion met with prompt resistance ; every voice was raised
against any halting, any hesitation, any parley, any con
cession short of prompt action." The committee of
members, sent back with Mr. Coleman to continue the
discussion with the governor, accordingly explained lo
the latter this decision of the executive committee, and
made but one concession, namely, that no action should
be taken by the executive committee to remove Casey
from the jail, until Governor Johnson had received an
hour's written notice of such intended action. Mean-
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 445
while it was agreed that a guard of committee members
should enter and be allowed to remain in the jail for the
time, to see that the prisoners were safe, but not to super
sede or interfere with the lawful officers. In case this
should be permitted, the representatives of the commit
tee promised the governor, as Mr. Coleman says, '• That
we would remain quiet for the present ; and they might
rely upon our making no demonstration . . . until we gave
formal notice of any change we wanted to make. And
furthermore, if we changed our status, if we wished to
withdraw from the contract," it was promised " that we
would withdraw our forces from the jail, aud leave it in
their possession." All this, as Mr. Coleman insists,
"was agreed to on our part in the most perfect good
faith." The governor, he continues, misunderstood this
action, interpreting it as an armistice, and the committee
felt much aggrieved when they found out the fact the
next day.
With this account of Mr. Coleman's the memory of
Mr. Osgood, as expressed to me recently in conversation,
fully agrees. Mr. Osgood was one of the committee
members who accompanied Mr. Coleman on his return
from the executive rooms to the bar-room, where the
governor was waiting. There can therefore be little
doubt as to the understanding of the affair at the moment
from the side of the very cool-headed and able members
of the committee.1 The spectacle of the governor of the
1 As to the carrying out of this agreement in the sequel, there can
also be no doubt that the governor was notified, by the committee, of
their intended action, before they took Casey out of the jail, and that
before this action itself they early endeavored to correct Johnson's
misunderstanding of the result of the interview; see Sherman, loc.
cit., p. 123. " Treachery," then, there was none, onlv distinct re
fusal to submit to the governor's wishes, coupled with a willingness
not to act too hastily.
440 CALIFORNIA.
state here blundering into a worthless agreement with
a body of men whom he could neither awe by any show
of official force, nor thus privately approach with any
sense of his official dignity, was not edifying, and the
affair ruined him politically with both of the chief par
ties concerned in San Francisco ail'airs at that moment.
The committee men despised him thenceforth, but no
more than did the " Law and Order " men. Governor
Johnson, it is plain, had not even the good sense to get
his agreement with the committee, such as it was, into a
written form.
During these busy days, the " Law and Order " men
themselves voiced their opinions in the " Herald." but
they were powerless to resist the general popular senti
ment. They were generally either politicians or lawyers.
What they had to say was itself often sound enough.
Its application to this diseased community was, however,
the real difficulty. A reformation was needed, this
moment of popular excitement was the proper one to
begin it ; and yet no beginning was possible just here
and now that did not take the too familiar and yet so
dangerous form of a popular tribunal. To resist the
committee was only to throw the city the more certainly
into the hands of a furious mob. The popular passion
existed, and was for the time irresistible. The commit
tee's possible service would lie in directing and control
ling this passion, which no " Law and Order " sentiment
could now quell. So serious are the situations that
long-indulged social crimes produce !
On Sunday the first great act of the new organization
was carried out. The committee went to the jail, and
took therefrom Casey himself, conveying him cafely to
their own rooms. Nor did their action stop here.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 447
Another now notorious criminal was confined in the
jail, one Cora by name, who had some months previously
shocked the community by shooting a United States
marshal, General Richardson, for showing public dis
approval of Cora's mistress, herself also a person of no
doubtful notoriety. The committee, in the carrying out
of the popular will of the moment, felt itself justified in
seizing Cora also, whose legal punishment was not very
imminent.
The seizure of these two was made an imposing spec
tacle. The executive committee called out twenty-four
companies, of a nominal force of one hundred each.
All the men had received a brief drill since the organ
ization of the committee. Many were old soldiers them
selves ; all were used to arms ; and a large number of
Frenchmen who had joined the organization were es
pecially noteworthy for their fine appearance as soldiers.
The movements of this body were skillfully directed, all
the detachments into which the force was divided con
verging to the vicinity of the jail on Broadway, without
any mistakes or confusion. About an hour was spent
by the committee at the jail, where the leading mem
bers of the executive committee made their demands of
the officers, and finally gained, through their quiet show
of irresistible force, the peaceable surrender of both the
prisoners, Casey being first given up, and then Cora.
Houses all about were covered with spectators, and the
streets in the rear of the committee's force were
thronged. The vast majority of those present as spec
tators warmly, although very quietly, approved of what
was going on, and this first deed of popular justice, as
executed by the great committee, was the most orderly
448 CALIFORNIA.
and impressive of its sort so far in the history of Cal
ifornia.1
IX. POPULAR VEXGEAXCE AXD THE NEW MOVEMENT.
The moral effect of this scene was very great, hut it
was only the first of a series. May 20, at half-past
one. King died. The news was on public bulletin-boards
at once, and the whole community was in mourning.
The '" Bulletin " appeared that afternoon without any
comments on the death of its editor, time permitting
only a four-lined notice of the fact before the number
was printed. The public excitement was tremendous.
All the church bells were tolled ; the prominent business
houses were closed, their doors being draped in black ;
the flags on the numerous ships in the bay were run up
at half-mast ; vast crowds gathered in the streets near
the committee rooms. No such disorder, however, was
manifest now in the crowd about the committee rooms
as had shown itself in 1851, on one similar occasion,
when an immediate execution was expected. When the
announcement was made that the members of the ex
ecutive committee were trying Casey, and that all should
be done decently and in order, the citizens quietly dis
persed. The regular police of the city had meanwhile
1 I have before me the accounts given by the Bulletin for Monday,
May 10, and the Alt a of the same date (as repealed in the steamer
extra edition of May 21). The Alta account makes the number of
companies present twenty-six. See, further, Tuthill, p. 439; J. S. Hit-
tell, p. 249; Sherman, p. 124. Sherman makes the blunder of remem
bering this Sunday as the day of King's funeral. King was not yet
dead. One lias only to compare the remarkable good order displayed
on this occasion with the tumultuous scenes of the early affairs of
1851, and with their hurrying and excited crowds of spectators, with
their quarrels and their dangerous uncertainty of action, to see how
well the arts of Ivnch law had now been learned.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 449
little to do. The committee did not try to supersede
them as yet in other respects, and gave over into their
hands one or two petty offenders, whom citizens arrested
and brought to the rooms that evening. But the public
mood appalled for the moment all offenders, great and
small. The men popularly accused of being Casey's
" conspirators," in the imagined '' plot " that rumor
made responsible for King's death, were in hiding-
places.
Chief among these supposed "conspirators" was Mr.
Edward McGowan, whose " Narrative of the Author's
Adventures and Perils while persecuted by the San
Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 " (published by
the author at San Francisco in 1857), is a book as en
tertaining as it is characteristic and unprincipled. Mr.
McGowan (who still survives) had for some time been a
personal friend of Casey's, had fully sympathized with
the latter's indignation at King's cruel reference to cer
tain youthful indiscretions of Casey's in New York State,
had known also, on that fatal afternoon, of Casey's in
tention to " fight " King, and had even " embraced " the
convict hero before the combat, bidding him an affec
tionate farewell (see the " Narrative," pp. 14 and 15).
Mr. McGowan had intended to follow Casey to this field
of honor, and see what the " Herald " next day called
the '; affray." King, of course, would be armed, it was
supposed, and " like almost all old Californians," Mr.
McGowan " was accustomed to such sights ; and, natu
rally enough, when I knew that a fight was about to
take place, curiosity prompted me to witness it." Un
der these circumstances, Mr. McGowan was indeed ex
posed to cruel suspicions of sharing in a conspiracy to
kill King. It was within the next few days reported,
450 CALIFORNIA.
falsely, he affirms, that he had lent Casey his own pistol
for the occasion, and Mr. McGowan soon found it neces
sary first to hide, and then, hy the help of his many
friends, to fly. He was, in the sequel, pursued hy mem-
hers of the committee, far into the southern country,
hut finally escaped, and later returned to the city. I
take Mr. McGowan's naive statement of his connection
with King's death in perfectly good faith, since it is un
necessary to judge his character more severely than his
own confession forces one to do. Good citizens do not
hehave in just this way, hut Mr. McGowan was only in
this sense a " conspirator."
A " plot," then, " to assassinate " King had prohahly
existed only in the sense that a numher of those who,
like Casey, had grievances against the plain-spoken ed
itor had frequently talked over their feelings and their
wrongs, and had hecome more and more resolved to call
him to account in their own way. This way, however,
was not one that could he much furthered hy a " con
spiracy to assassinate," hecause their moral code im
plied, as a matter of so-called " honor," something like
a single combat in every such case. Any aggrieved per
son, namely, might shoot King on sight, since King once
for all refused to fight regular duels, but "honor"
would imply that every such assassin should take some
apparent chance of being shot in return, and so should
go alone to accost King. How much chance should be
given to King to defend himself would, of course, de
pend, according to the well-known and amusing code of
frontier street-lights, upon the taste of the individual
assassin. Casey's taste preferred, as is also known, an
immediate sequence of shot upon meeting, in such wise
as to give King the least possible chance to return his
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 451
fire. And, of course, all who knew beforehand of
Casey's intent were alike accessories to the murder.
But an effective conspiracy to unite in a murderous as
sault upon King would have been quite repugnant to
all the gentlemanly instincts of these fellows.
While the citizens mourned for King, the executive
committee tried his assassin, as well as Cora. No jury
was used in this case, the executive committee sitting as
court,1 but every opportunity is said to have been
given to both men to offer any defense that they had.
Both were, however, guilty of murder, and so much is
clear. Both, moreover, had committed murder to
avenge " insults," and both the " insults " were of a sort
somewhat unavoidable in a world where spades are,
after all, sooner or later, sure td be called spades by
somebody, and that especially where the spades are
already public property. One thing only the committee
could yet do for its prisoners. It would not hang them
too hastily. It would give them a little time to think,
and would let them see spiritual advisers, if they de
sired, before the execution. This last privilege, I re
gret to say, is amusingly described by a prominent mem
ber of the committee (in a statement that has been
among the several that I have had the good fortune to
read) as an act " giving the prisoners the benefit of
clergy''' It is to be hoped that the " benefit " was ap
preciated, even if it was not precisely the same as the
thing formerly called by that name.
May 22d was set for King's funeral. The executive
committee is said (by Mr. Osgood in his oral statements
to me) to have been moved to appoint that day for the
execution of Casey by reason of their fear that a rescue,
1 See Mr. Coleman's statement, B. MS.
452 CALIFORNIA.
similar to that of Whittaker and MoKenzie in 1851,
would early be attempted. At all events, just as the fu
neral procession was following King to Lone Mountain,
after a service at the Unitarian Church, in which several
clergymen had joined to honor the martyr editor, the
committee took its opportunity, and publicly executed
both Casey and Cora, in front of its rooms, at a moment
when the vast crowds in the neighborhood were slightly
lessened by the departure of so many to witness the
burial. The solemnity and good oi-der of the execution
are well known. Both the prisoners had been warned
of their doom the day before. Both, as Catholics, had
received the sacrament from ministers of their faith, and
Cora was, before his execution, and by the order of his
confessor, married to the mistress on whose behalf he
had slain Richardson. Cora himself met death very
coolly and without complaint. Casey, from the impro
vised platform in front of the rooms, made a brief and
slightly incoherent and agitated dying speech, wherein
he denied that he was a murderer. His now aged and
still living mother, he averred, had taught him to avenge
insults. He had acted upon the teachings of his child
hood, and what he had done was no murder. Let no
one publish to the world and to his mother that it was
murder. Might God forgive him his many sins, and
receive his spirit. And so the wretch died.
With this act, thought many, and General Sherman
among the rest,1 the committee would have done its
work, and would disband. Had it, however, done so,
there would be hardly any place for the committee in
history. The incidents thus far were but the beginning
of the new movement, and their own significance lay
1 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 124.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 453
elsewhere than in the hanging of one or two rogues.
Not the execution of King's murderer, but the prosecu
tion of King's work, was the mission of the people of
San Francisco at the time. And the Vigilance Com
mittee, with all its defects, represented this mission.
The great task was, of course, to purify municipal pol
itics. Directly the committee could do nothing to this
end, save to terrify and to banish a few notorious bal
lot-box staffers. But indirectly much could be done, by
so popular a body, to organize public opinion, and to
prepare it for the coming municipal elections of the au
tumn. The problem, of course, lay in the choice of the
activity to which the committee should devote itself to
gain this end. So powerful a body must be tempted,
of course, to misuse its power, and unless it did so, the
committee would soon be in danger of losing hold on
the now over-excited public. A vigilance committee is
once for all an evil presence in a city ; and its tendency
to spread abroad disease is as sure, even in the best of
cases, as its tendency to cure disease. The great com
mittee was productive of more good than evil only be
cause in the sequel it was not left to its natural tenden
cies, but was constantly guided by cautious and conscien
tious men, whose acts were not always wise, but whose
purposes were honest and rational. Now that they had
begun, they felt it a sin to abandon their task until they
saw more fruit than the death of two scoundrels. But
in order to finish their voyage safely they must steer
clear of numerous and dangerously near rocks.
X. PERILS AND TRIUMPHS OF THE GREAT COMMITTEE.
The " Bulletin " of May 29th I choose at random
among the numbers published during the early weeks of
454 CALIFORNIA.
the committee's life, as illustrating the dangers to which
the committee was now subject from the side of its
friends. The editor (by this time Thomas S. King,
the brother of James) writes on " "What the People ex
pect of the Vigilance Committee." " The people,"
says the editor, "look to them for reform — a radical
reorganization in spirit if not in fact — of our city gov
ernment." The remaining persons suspected of conspir
acy against James King must, he continues, be caught,
tried, and, if found guilty, hanged. Hut the committee
must not stop there. It must purify the ballot-box.
And how ? " If we would have order hereafter, an ex
ample must now be made of the ballot-box staffers. If
there is any one in the custody of the committee on
whom ballot-box stuffing can be clearly proved, his pun
ishment should be exemplary. We are not ignorant of
the weight of the words we utter. Tampering with
elections is, in fact, the most heinous of crimes. It is
worse than treason. . . . "We do not mean ... to make
suggestions to the committee. But it appears to us that
to insure the future purity of elections, an example
should be made. ... It may be that there are other
means, but if not, let the men who have insulted our
community, disgraced our State, and sown the seeds of
which we have been lately reaping the fruits, meet their
due fate, DEATH BY HANGING — the words must be
spoken — not in revenge for the past, but as a warning
to all who might be inclined to emulate their example
in the future. Hang one ballot-box stuffer, and we shall
have no more of them."
This loose talk is echoed by one or two correspond
ents whose letters appear in the same number (one IL
B. G. in particular). So fatally blind is the righteously
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 455
indignant citizen, at such moments, to the fact that the
punishment of a wretch is after all of no more impor
tance than is the wretch himself, save in so far as such
punishment conduces to good order. Good order, how
ever, is destroyed once for all by mere caprice. Inevi
table are such outbursts as the one that led to the hang
ing of Jenkins and of Stuart in 1851, or of Casey in
1856 ; inevitable, namely, when the reaction in favor of
good order involves strong passions and bitter repent
ance at once. But after such a passion has cooled a
little, to deify its instrument, the Vigilance Committee,
or to glorify its law, namely, caprice, — this is not inevi
table, and is criminal. Yet just this was what these un
wise friends of the committee desired, when they wanted
the Vigilance Committee to undertake all God's work of
vengeance in San Francisco, and to make " examples,"
without regard to the law or to the current sense of hu
manity. Ballot-box stuffing could not be cured by
hanging this or that man ; but it could be cured by
effective popular agitation. And the committee could
and did agitate, partly by investigating and exposing
past crimes of ballot-box stuffing, and partly by under
taking to banish, with threats that were only intended
for momentary effect, a few of the guilty men. The
indirect good it did in these ways is certain ; for thus
the public was instructed in the seriousness of the evils.
Yet not only in this matter was the committee tempted
by its friends to go beyond bounds. A great popular
movement, controlling so much power, and organized so
well, suggested to foolish and ambitious persons num
berless political schemes. There were the old grievances
of California against the general government : the afore
time long delayed payment of the Fremont war claims,
456 CALIFORNIA.
the still pending slow and uncertain efforts to settle the
Spanish land titles, the imperfect mail service, the bur
densome tariff. And all these things some men were
now disposed to bring up, and such men would suggest
that, with some more independent flag, even with a Bear
Flag, a vigilance committee might look well. Seces
sion had occasionally been talked of. Why not make
this a movement to gain, by at least a bare threat of se
cession, concessions of some sort from Washington au
thorities ? If such concessions should be refused, why
then let the government take the consequences.
That such nonsense was actually heard in some men's
talk in those days is undoubted. The leaders of the
committee were themselves far from every such influ
ence, but the rank and file were numerous, and the for
eigners among these, the Frenchmen for instance, to
gether with some of the native Californians themselves,
took delight in such ideas, all of which were dangerous
in the highest degree to the good order of the whole
movement. Nor were all the Americans concerned by
any means guiltless in this matter.1
Not only such wild-cat politics (as one may venture
not too disrespectfully to name the opinions of the men
who talked in those days of a Pacific Republic), but also
many less immoral absurdities vexed the committee with
1 The frequent letters of " Caxton," in the Bulletin, had sometimes
taken openly a disunion tone, before the coming on of the crisis. So,
in particular, his letter published April 9, 1850, a monument of the
wordy unwisdom of this since so well-known California political and
literary author. Mr. Coleman, in his B. MS. statement, speaks of the
disunion propositions privatelv made to the committee leaders, and
promptly rejected. Mr. Osgood speaks to the same effect in his oral
account to me. The prevalence of disunion sentiments among certain
classes of the California pioneers in the years before the war would
form an interesting topic for a special research.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 457
calls for attention. In the course of its career, so Mr.
Coleman tells us, the committte was much flattered and
troubled by invitations to act as High Court of Justice
to settle disputes arising in the interior of the State, or
elsewhere : — " Not only criminals from distant parts
of the State, but all kinds of acts occurring at sea were
brought before us, or we were asked to undertake their
trial and punishment, to redress wrongs, personal disa
greements, moral misdemeanors, social irregularities,
. . . cases of fraud in money matters . . . family
strifes . . . divorces." The committee could easily
have spent many months or years upon such matters ;
but such were not within its province.
More serious difficulties beset the committee in the
direct prosecution of its chosen tasks of purification.
First of all, in order to have even the most moderate
efficiency, the committee had to arrest and confine in its
own quarters certain suspected persons, and to investi
gate in secret session the charges of election frauds, or
of other offenses, made against them. This undertak
ing involved many risks, and made for the committee
many new enemies. One of the most notorious of the
earlier prisoners was " Yankee Sullivan," who is said to
have known a great deal about the conduct of recent
elections in certain wards, and who was pressed by the
committee for some days with questions concerning
ballot-box stuffers. The poor wretch was overcome
with terror at his position, fancied that he was to be
hanged, and, on the morning of May 31st, committed
suicide in his room, cutting his arm with a case knife
and bleeding to death. While no suspicion of foul play
rested on the committee itself in connection with this
affair, one could not help seeing that such an occurrence
458 CALIFORNIA.
indicated much sternness on the part of the committee
towards its prisoners, either in questioning or in threat
ening them, or in both. The enemies of the committee
used Sullivan's name thenceforth freely in speaking of
the arbitrary acts of the body.1 And the aforesaid
loose talk of the friends of the committee gave the " Law
and Order " people some just cause for alarm. The
public could not know as yet how conscientious and
cautious the leaders of the executive committee for the
most part were, nor how little they were disposed to
shed the blood of any save murderers. In ignorance
of this fact, however, the " Law and Order " men felt
more and more disposed to lead a reaction against the
committee. On June 2d, in the afternoon, a mass
meeting of the opponents of the committee was called to
meet on the Plaza ; but the friends of the committee
came also, and the affair was both disorderly and in
effective, although no worse missiles than hard words
were interchanged. The speakers at the meeting were
all lawyers. Colonel Baker being prominent among
them. The crowd constantly interrupted the proceed
ings, and called for new speakers, or denounced the
enemies of the committee. It was evident where the
confidence of the public was still placed, and in San
Francisco the " Law and Order " party could accom
plish nothing.
Once more, then, the governor was called upon to in
terfere, and he was quite willing, although by no means
ready. He had appointed General Sherman com-
1 Sullivan's suicide has been attributed, by certain of the committee
members, to something resembling delirium tremens: see J. S. Hit-
tell, p. 252. On the effect of this and other*occurrences of the mo
ment upon the ''Law and Order" party, see Sherman, p. 124 ; cf.
Tuthill, pp. 4-49, 450.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 459
mander of the second division of the state militia, and
he now appealed to General Wool, United States com
mander in the department, for the necessary arms and
ammunition. For, as the committee had at their con
trol nearly all the arms in San Francisco, the State had
no force with which to begin operations against the
rebels. But the United States authorities were not dis
posed to take part in the domestic troubles of Califor
nia without definite instructions from Washington.
With Commodore Farragut, commanding the navy yard
at Mare Island, the committee had in fact already begun
a comparatively friendly correspondence, to assure them
selves that the United States war vessel then lying in
the harbor should not be used, unless by direct orders
from a superior authority, to threaten or to suppress
them. With General Wool they also sought to remain
on good terms. He, however, seems to have been per
sonally opposed to the committee, and in conversation
on May 31st, with Governor Johnson and other state
officials, he used expressions that were interpreted by
the latter as a definite promise to lend arms and ammu
nition for the suppression of the " insurrection." But
upon further consideration, Wool felt that he could do
nothing without orders from Washington, and said so,
in writing, to the great disgust of the " Law and Order "
men, and of the governor himself.1 The governor ac
cordingly dispatched to the president at Washington a
request for help.
1 For facts and opinions about the controversy on Wool's supposed
promise, see Sherman, pp. 125, 126 ; and the correspondence between
Wool and Johnson as published in the Sen. Ex. Doc. 43, 3d Sess. of
43d Congress. For Wool's interpretation of his own rather unguarded
words used in conversation with the governor, see p. 7 of this cor
respondence; for Johnson's interpretation, see ib. p. 24.
460 CALIFORNIA.
Meanwhile, however, Johnson was not idle at home.
On June 3d he issued a proclamation, declaring the
county of San Francisco in a state of insurrection, and
directing " all persons suhject to military duty within
said county to report themselves for duty immediately
to Major-General William T. Sherman," to serve under
the general's orders until disbanded. His proclamation
also ordered the Vigilance Committee to disperse. A
writ of the state supreme court, commanding the com
mittee to give up the body of one of its prisoners, was
at nearly the same time evaded by the executive com
mittee, who concealed for the time their prisoner when
the officer came with his writ. An open collision with
the state authorities seemed now imminent. It was
prevented only by the impotence of the state author
ities. Few men responded to the governor's call, or
appeared to obey Sherman's orders, and after a few
days Sherman himself met the governor once more at
Benicia, and reported his failure to raise a force. At
the same time a " conciliation committee " of certain
San Francisco citizens who were not members of the
committee came to meet the governor at the same place,
seeking to arrange some sort of truce between the hos
tile parties. The governor himself was now much
under the influence of Chief Justice Terry of the state
supreme court, the most active of all the foes of the
committee. This gentleman, later notorious as the
slayer of Broderick, and already prominent as a repre
sentative of the ultra- Southern element in California
political life, was outspoken in favor of open war against
the rebels, whom, according to Sherman, he neatly de
scribed on this occasion as " damned pork -merchants,"
thereby not ineffectively indicating, after all, both the
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 461
true character of this movement as a Business Man's
Revolution, and his own true character as a despiser
of mere business men. The private interview of the
officials after they had seen the " conciliation commit
tee " was not fruitful of practical devices. General
Sherman, despairing of success under the present con
ditions, resigned his commission, and returned to his
daily business in San Francisco. The governor there
after appointed Volney E. Howard major-general in the
place of Sherman, and the efforts to raise a militia
force went on. To the very end, however, they were
ineffective.
The committee, meanwhile, was not idle. It had for
some time begun to prepare itself for a collision with the
state authorities, in case such should be forced upon it.
In front of the rooms on Sacramento Street the mem
bers of the executive committee had caused to be made
a strong barricade of sand-bags (the "' Fort Gunnybags "
of all the traditions since current concerning the affair).
This they had armed with numerous cannon. Their
small arms were kept within doors, their guard was
always strong and vigilant, their new bell, now ready on
top of the building, could summon at any moment their
thousands of subordinate members. The meetings of
this always small but energetic and authoritative ex
ecutive committee were held within the rooms and in
secret. The thousands of the members of the general
committee had, of course, their natural influence upon
the conduct of the executive committee ; but they could
not determine its action, and they were pledged to obey
its orders.
The life of San Francisco during the following weeks
of June and July was a very curious one. Ordinary
462 CALIFORNIA.
business, indeed, went on much as usual, save in so far
as its undertakings were a little delayed by the distrust
of capitalists, or by the engrossing social duties that so
many of its most active representatives now had to per
form. The courts sat and enforced their processes as
usual, save that they might not interfere with the com
mittee itself. The respectable enemies of the committee
went about openly, working and talking against it ; but
they were not able to accomplish anything. Those
rogues who feared the committee had for the most part
disappeared. Order prevailed in the city. But mean
while the grim cannon of Fort Gunnybags, the ceaseless
and secret activity of the executive committee within
doors, the sensitiveness of the public to every hint of
danger, and the occasional events or rumors of a start
ling sort, showed the community how near they all the
time were to terrible events. No wonder that the re
solve constantly grew to prevent in future, by every hon
est means, the coming of another such crisis. If out
ward quiet was nearly always maintained, distrust of the
future, doubt, and anxiety were always present.
Later in June the committee caught what Mr. Cole-
man, in his statement, calls its " white elephant," namely,
Judge Terry himself. The courageous and violent su
preme judge could not bear to see the law set at naught.
He came to San Francisco to do what he could towards
resisting the committee. On June 21st he did actually
interfere with an attempted arrest that some of the
committee '' police " were making, and his interference
led to a personal encounter between him and one of
these police, Hopkins by name. In the scuffle Judge
Terry drew a knife, and stabbed Hopkins. The alarm-
bell was forthwith sounded, the whole general committee
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 463
was called out, and Judge Terry was arrested and taken
to the fortress on Sacramento Street, amid tremendous
popular excitement. Some arms that had still remained
in the possession of " Law and Order " men were on
this occasion seized, a large number of that party were
arrested, and the day closed with the authority of the
committee more undoubted than ever. Hopkins, mean
while, lay seriously, but as the event proved, not fatally,
wounded.1
The arrest of Judge Terry furnished the committee a
new reason for remaining in power some time longer.
But it also put them in a very difficult position. If
Hopkins should die, one could only with great difficulty
avoid hanging Judge Terry, unless, indeed, one was
willing to abdicate, and leave the mob to hang him it
self. But to hang by popular judgment a supreme
judge is an act involving certain obviously embarrassing
responsibilities. And if, as later actually proved to be
the case, Hopkins should not die, then a supreme judge
whom one could not effectively banish, nor yet imprison
long, whom one must not hang, and whom one could not
gracefully release without any punishment, would indeed
be a " white elephant."
In the sequel the committee passed anxious weeks,
discussing the case, waiting for Hopkins to be out of
danger, and reasoning with the undaunted prisoner, who
was quite as certainly a good fighter as he was a bad
supreme judge. It is probable that Judge Terry highly
enjoyed his really very advantageous position. He re
fused to make any terms with the executive committee,
which was finally forced to release him, without any
other punishment than was involved in his disagree-
1 See Bulletin of June 23d.
464 CALIFORNIA.
able detention in Fort Gunnybags for the seven weeks
of waiting for a verdict.1 And thus the greatest danger
of the committee's existence was happily passed.
The other acts of the committee, its only further ex
ecutions, those of Brace and Hetherington, both mur
derers,'2 its curious and hardly warranted interference in
the investigation of the city land questions, its successful
avoidance of all open contests with Federal author
ities, and its final parade and retirement from activity
on August 18th, — these are things of which we need
not speak further in detail. The first real test of the
success of the committee in its one true work, which was
to agitate for a reform in municipal society and politics,
came at the autumn elections, when the people sustained
the whole movement by electing city officers to carry on
in a legal way the reform which had been begun without
the law. And thenceforth, for years, San Francisco
was one of the best governed municipalities in the
United States.
1 "His release,'' says Mr. J. S. Hittell, p. 256, "was regarded by
some persons as giving power to the most formidable enemy of the
reform movement." The first bitter disappointment of the hot-headed
friends of the committee is vented in the Bulletin for August 8, 1856,
as soon as the release is announced. The blindness of these hot
headed friends was often something marvelous.
2 Brace had committed a murder two years before. Hetherington
killed one Dr. Randall in a quarrel, July 24th. Both were publicly
hanged July 29th, after a fair trial before the executive committee.
Only four lives were thus taken by this committee, all of known mur
derers. The only other punishment inflicted was banishment, im
posed upon several notoriously bad characters, and upon a few con
victed ballot-box stuffers. And, as we see, the rest of the effective
activity of the committee consisted onlv in making arrests, in detain
ing prisoners for examination, in investigating the topics that it took
under consideration, and in protecting itself against threatened as
saults.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 465
The reader will hardly ask, after all we have said,
for any lengthy final view of the rights and wrongs of
this greatest of the popular movements in California
history. Under the circumstances, as we have seen, it
was inevitable. What had made it inevitable was a long
continued career of social apathy, of treasonable public
carelessness. What it represented was not so much the
dignity of the sovereign people, as the depth and bitter
ness of popular repentance for the past. What it ac
complished was not the direct destruction of a criminal
class, but the conversion of honest men to a sensible and
devout local patriotism. What it teaches to us now,
both in California and elsewhere, is the sacredness of a
true public spirit, and the great law that the people who
forget the divine order of things have to learn thereof
anew some day, in anxiety and in pain.
With the improvement of municipal business the
moral and intellectual progress of society did not alto
gether keep pace. If one learned the importance of
public spirit, one did not learn for many years to devote
enough time to the higher human interests. But at all
events the essentials of civilization had been fought for
and gained ; and the San Franciscan was thenceforth
free to serve God as his own conscience dictated.
30
CHAPTER VI.
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS.
IN treating of the period that followed the constitu
tional convention, we have thus far dealt mainly with
the local occurrences of the golden days, and have said
little of the general problems of the State at large.
The struggle for order, in the mines, in San Francisco,
and in all the lesser commercial towns, rapidly devel
oped the character of the new California population,
and so produced everywhere alike that much-enduring,
often rash, always toilsome race of the pioneers, with
their well-known over-confidence in short and easy so
cial methods, with their not less noteworthy shrewdness
in controlling their own social excesses, and with their
remarkable power of organizing quickly for the purpose
either of defending the established authorities, if these
should meet their approval, or of setting the authorities
aside, if these should seem to them dangerously ineffi
cient. But if this character grew rapidly under the va
rious local influences, the future of the State at large
must be affected very greatly by the further conditions
that determined not so much the character as the for
tunes of the population of the whole country. Of these
conditions the first was the state of the land tenure in
all the most promising agricultural regions of the new
State.
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 467
I. EARLY LAND-TROUBLES.
The uncertainty of the land-titles at the time of the
conquest, and during the interregnum, we have already,
in some fashion, studied. How significant all this must
be for the future of the State, is evident at a glance.
The future California must needs be an agricultural
province, whatever the gold excitement might for the
time make the country seem. And that its land-titles
should soon be settled, and in an honest way, was an es
sential of all true progress. How the people came to a
consciousness of this fact, and how this consciousness
entered into certain deeds of the struggle for order,
we can only sketch in this connection. The wild
schemes of the early interregnum had passed away
with time, but the new-comers of the gold-period were
subject to somewhat similar illusions and dangers. If
things had appeared as they did to the comparatively
small group of Americans in the dawn of our life here,
even before the gold discovery, how long should this
complex spider-web of land-titles, wherewith a California
custom or caprice had covered a great part of the terri
tory, outlast the trampling of the busy immigrants?
Who should resist these strange men ? The slowly mov
ing processes of the courts — how could they, in time,
check the rapacity of American settlers, before the mis
chief should once for all be done, and the memory of
these land-titles buried under an almost universal pred
atory disregard of them, which would make the recov
ery of the land by its legal owners too expensive an un
dertaking to be even thought of ? The answer to this
question suggests at once how, amid all the injustice of
our treatment of Californian land-owners, our whole his-
468 CALIFORNIA.
tory lias illustrated the enormous vitality of formally
lawful ownership in land. This delicate web, that our
strength could seemingly so easily have trampled out of
existence at once, became soon an iron net. The more
we struggled with it, the more we became involved in its
meshes. Infinitely more have we suffered in trying to
escape from it, than we should have suffered, had we
never made a struggle. Infinitely more sorrow, not to
speak of blood, has it cost us to try to get rid of our old
obligations to the Californian land-owners, than it would
have cost us to grant them all their original demands,
just and unjust, at once. Doubt, insecurity, retarded
progress, litigation without end, hatred, destruction of
property, bloodshed, — all these have resulted for us from
the fact that we tried as much as we did to defraud
these Californians of the rights that we guarantied to
them at the moment of the conquest. And in the end,
with all our toil, we escaped not from the net, and it
binds our land-seekers still.
At all events, however, the critical character of the
situation of California land-owners at the moment of
the coming of the gold- seekers appears plain. That all
the rights of the Californians should ultimately be re
spected was, indeed, in view of our rapacious Anglo-
Saxon land-hunger, and of our national bigotry in deal
ing with Spanish Americans, impossible. But there
were still two courses that our population might take
with regard to the land. One would be the just-men
tioned simple plan of a universal squatters' conspiracy.
Had we agreed to disregard the land-titles by a sort of
popular fiat, then, ere the courts could be appealed to
and the method of settling the land-titles ordained by
Congress, the disregard of the claims of the natives
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 469
might have gone so far in many places as to render any
general restitution too expensive a luxury to be profitable.
This procedure would have been analogous to that fash
ion of dealing with Indian reservations which our hon
est settlers have frequently resorted to. Atrociously
wicked as such a conspiracy would have been, we our
selves, as has been suggested above, should have been in
the long run the greatest sufferers, because the conspiracy
could not have been successful enough to preserve us
from fearful confusion of titles, from litigation and war
fare without end. Yet this course, as we shall see, was
practically the course proposed by the Sacramento
squatters of 1850, and for a time the balance hesitated
between the choice of this and of the other course. The
other course we actually adopted, and it was indeed the
one peculiarly fitted to express just our national mean
ness and love of good order in one. This was the plan
of legal recognition and equally legal spoliation of the
Calif ornians — a plan for which, indeed, no one man was
responsible, since the cooperation of the community at
large was needed, and obtained, to make the Land Act
of 1851 an instrument for evil and not for good. The
devil's instrument it actually proved to be, by our
friendly cooperation, and we have got our full share of
the devil's wages for our use of it. But bad as this
second course was, it was far better than the first, as in
general the meanness and good order of an Anglo-
Saxon community of money-seekers produce better re
sults than the bolder rapacity and less legal brutality of
certain other conquering and overbearing races.
In the winter of 1849 and in the spring of 1850 our
rapacity first became noticeable under the new condi
tions. As it happened, the city of Sacramento grew
470 CALIFORNIA.
up on land near Sutler's Fort, and, of course, within the
boundaries of Gutter's own grant of land, which he had
received from Governor Alvarado in 1841. In the first
months of the town's life, numerous lots of land were
sold under this title, and those who acquired the new
property profited, of course, very greatly hy the rapid
growth of the place. But by the winter of 1849 there
were enough landless, idle, and disappointed wanderers
present in Sacramento to make the existence of land
ownership thereabouts appear to these persons as an
intolerable burden, placed upon the necks of the poor
by rapacious land-speculators. Such reflections are, of
course, the well-known expressions of human avarice
and disappointment everywhere in the world. Here
they assumed, however, a new and dangerous form.
One asked, ki How comes it that there is any ownership
of land in this golden country at all ? Is this not a free
land ? Is it not our land ? Is not the public domain
free to all American citizens ?" The very simple answer
was. of course, that this land was not public domain, but
Slitter's former land, sold by him, in the free exercise
of his rights, to the founders of Sacramento. And this
answer was, moreover, especially significant in this par
ticular case. For Sutter's ownership of " New Helvetia"
was, by this time, a matter, so to speak, of world-wide
notoriety. The young Captain Fremont's " Report,"
which, in various shapes and editions, had years before
become so popular a book, and which the gold-fever
made more popular than ever, had distinctly described
Sutter as the notorious and indisputable owner of this
tract of land in 1844. If occupancy without any rival
for a term of years could make the matter clear to a
new-comer, Sutter's title to his " establishment " seemed
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 471
beyond shadow. Moreover, the title-papers of the
Alvarado grant were on record. Governor Alvarado's
authority to grant eleven leagues to Sutter was indubita
ble, and none the less clear seemed the wording of the
grant, when it gave certain outer boundaries within
which the tract granted was to be sought, and then de
fined the grant so as to include the " establishment at
New Helvetia." Surely, one would say, no new-comer
could attack Sutter's right, save by means of some purely
agrarian contention. A settler might demand that all
unused land in California should be free to every settler,
and that Mexican land-ownership should be once for all
done away with. But unless a man did this, what could
he say against Sutter's title to New Helvetia ?
The complaining idlers in Sacramento were, however,
quite equal to the task of overthrowing this argument.
What, after all, was a Mexican title worth beside the
rights of an American citizen ? This grant of Sutter's
might indeed be a test case, but then so much the more
must the te'st determine the worthlessness of all Mexican
pretensions. The big Mexican grant was to this new
party of agitators, who already delighted to call them
selves " squatters," an obviously un-American institution,
a creation of a benighted people. What was the good
of the conquest, if it did not make our enlightened
American ideas paramount in the country ? Unless,
then, Congress, by some freak, should restore to these
rapacious speculators, the heirs of a justly conquered
and dispossessed race, their old benighted legal status,
they would have no land. Meanwhile, of course, the
settlers were to be as well off as the others. So their
thoughts ran.
Intelligent men could hold this view only in case they
472 CALIFORNIA.
had already deliberately determined that the new-com
ing population, as such, ought to have the chief legal
rights in the country. This view was, after all, a very
obvious one. Providence, you see, and manifest destiny
were understood in those days to be on our side, and
absolutely opposed to the base Mexican. Providence,
again, is known to be opposed to every form of oppres
sion ; and grabbing eleven leagues of land is a great
oppression. And so the worthlessness of Mexican land-
titles is evident.
Of course the squatters would have disclaimed very
generally so naked a statement as this of their position.
But when we read in one squatter's card l that '• surely
Sutter's grant does not entitle to a monopoly of all the
lands in California, which were purchased by the treas
ure of the whole nation, and by no small amount of the
best blood that ever coursed or ran through American
veins," the same writer's formal assurance that Sutter
ought to have his eleven leagues whenever they can be
found and duly surveyed cannot blind us to the true
spirit of the argument. What has this " best blood " to
do with the Sutter grant ? The connection in the
writer's mind is only too obvious. He means that the
" best blood " won for us a right to harass great land
owners. In another of these expressions of squatter
opinion I have found the assertion that the land specula
tors stand on a supposed old Mexican legal right of such
as themselves to take up the whole territory of California,
in sections of eleven leagues each, by some sort of Mex
ican preemption. If a squatter pei-sists in understanding
the land-owners' position in this way, his contempt for
1 Published during a later stage of the controversy, in the Sacra
mento Transcript for June 21. 1850.
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 473
it is as natural as his willful determination to make
game of all native Californian claims is obvious.
The squatter party, as it appeared in the winter of
1849 in Sacramento, was encouraged to develop its
ideas by reason of the unsettled condition of the country.
It was easy for men to feel that in this land, where no
very definite government yet existed, where even the
new state, before its admission, must seem of doubtfully
legal character, every man might do what seemed right
to himself and every new party might propose any view,
however subversive of good government. A respect for
the old Californian order of things was not yet devel
oped ; a new-comer was often hardly conscious that
there ever had been an old order. And when one heard
about it from the men of the interregnum, one also heard
the cruelly false tale, begotten of the era of our conquest,
about the injustice, the treachery, and the wickedness of
the old government and people. One felt, therefore,
well justified in wishing a new and American order of
things to replace every relic of Mexican wretchedness.
And, just because such conquest as this of California
was a new experience in our short national history, one
was often wholly unmindful of the simple and obvious
principles according to which the conqueror of a country
does not, by virtue of his conquest, either dispossess
private land-owners, or deprive the inhabitants of any
other of their private rights. One was, in fact, so ac
customed to our atrocious fashion of conquering, dispos
sessing, and then exterminating Indian tribes, that one
was too much disposed, a priori, to think of our conquest
of California as exemplifying the same cruel process.
The first scenes of the land agitation at Sacramento
in the winter of 1849-50 have been but imperfectly
474 CALIFORNIA.
described for us. Bayard Taylor mentions them briefly,
and so does a later correspondent of the u New York
Tribune." l A recent article of my own 011 the topic 2
has, since its publication, called out some very interest
ing contemporary letters which a pioneer, now living in
Oakland, CaL, has preserved, and which bring the scenes
of the early agitation well before us. I make one ex
tract from them here. They were published in a late
number of the " San Francisco Bulletin " : —
"I will endeavor," says the writer of the letter, him
self a new-comer in Sacramento, who is addressing an
Eastern friend, " to give you some idea of life in Sacra
mento, by relating some events that occurred this even
ing : It is rather a dark one, and walking along the
levee requires some care to avoid falling over the nu
merous obstructions, but it was a political meeting that I
stumbled into as I passed up R Street. That you may
understand the state of things, I will explain a little ;
the question of land-titles and squatter's rights is just
now greatly agitating the public mind. In several in
stances where men have squatted upon land without the
precincts of the city, others have pretended to own it
and ordered them off, and in one case the city authori
ties, on a man's refusal to vamose, sent a force and
pulled down his shanty.
" Last Saturday evening a meeting of squatters was
l See the number of May 22, 1850.
up to the " squatter riot of 1850 in Sacra-
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 475
held out-doors. I was not present, but hear that much
opposition was expressed to the measures adopted by the
city officers, some of whom were present, and replied in
no very courteous terms. The meeting this evening was
intended as an opposition to the other, and styled ' Law
and Order.' The speaker's stand was on some boxes
piled up against the ' Gem,' a bowling, drinking, and
gambling saloon. A board nailed against it, about even
with the speakers' heads, supported a row of candles,
which burned without a flicker, so still was the air. A
large and democratic crowd were assembled. A com
mittee was appointed to draw up resolutions, which were
read. In the preamble the squatters were spoken of as
having acted lawlessly and in contempt of the authori
ties. The substance of the resolutions was that the city
council should be sustained at all events ; that a com
mittee should be appointed to proceed to Monterey and
obtain a copy of J. A. Sutter's title to the land claimed
by him, attested to by the governor of California.
" This land comprises most of the territory on which
the city is built. They were read with much interrup
tion, and on the question being put, indignantly rejected.
" At this juncture, another speaker arose, and com
menced, but was interrupted with cries of 'Your
name ? ' ' My name is Zabriskie,' he replied. In a
respectful manner he avowed his determination to speak
his sentiments, and beginning with the hand-bills which
had been printed, calling a meeting to sustain " law and
order " in the community, he considered it an insult to
the people to suppose that any were otherwise inclined.
Then, in regard to the preamble, which spoke contempt
uously of 'squatters,' in an eloquent speech he asked
who carried the ' Stars and Stripes,' the institutions
476 CALIFORNIA.
and laws of our land into the far West, and have now
borne them even to the shores of the far-off Pacific?
Then arose from the crowd the reply, ' Squatters.'
" He then moved that this preamble be rejected, and
the motion was carried without a dissenting voice. So
he went on with each resolution, speechifying and mov
ing that some be rejected, some adopted, and some
amended, most of his motions being carried unanimously,
making altogether a different set of resolutions than the
projectors had calculated upon. He went strongly for
sustaining the authorities in carrying out such just laws
as they should enact. On the resolution which so read,
he experienced much opposition, the sovereign people
being extremely jealous that laws should be made, which,
however just in the eyes of their makers, would be other
wise in their view. He contended that a man might
squat where he pleased, and leave for nobody who could
not show a better title than himself ; that when a judi
ciary was appointed over the State was the time to de
cide the validity of titles, until which time, society
would be benefited, the squatter would be benefited, the
land, and consequently, the owner, whoever he was,
would be benefited by its being brought under cultiva
tion."
After the river flood of January, 1850, had passed
over the town of Sacramento, the quarrel was tempora
rily suspended, especially by the prosperous opening of
the spring of 1850, which sent many of the malcontents
early to the mines. But persistent spring floods forced
many of these to return afresh to the now once more
prosperous city. The discontent broke out again, and
the title-papers of Sutter's grant, when once found and
published, were soon made the subject of very bitter
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 477
and unfair quibbles and quasi-legal objections. By the
beginning of summer the squatter movement had be
come formidable in Sacramento and in the adjacent
country. Its followers had organized an association,
had begun a regular system of squatting on all vacant
lots in and near the town, and were already planning
every even remotely feasible sort of resistance to the
real owners who held under the Sutter title. As Con
gress had still done nothing to settle titles in California,
and as the State had not yet been admitted, the squat
ters had the effrontery to pretend in their public utter
ances that there was no legal support actually in exist
ence for the Californian grants. They declared that
even the legislature, which had already once met, had
had no business to pass laws bearing on the subject of
land. Still less, they said, had the so-called city of Sac
ramento, in its corporate capacity, any right to interfere
with squatters. And as for the processes of state
courts, if worst came to worst, these must be defied.
Breathing out such threatenings, the squatters met fre
quently during the summer, in a more or less public
fashion. They excited the attention of many in other
parts of the State, and the alarm of all wiser men that
appreciated their purposes. They were ably led.
Among others, Dr. Charles Robinson, of Fitchburg, Mas
sachusetts, later so prominent as governor of Kansas,
was especially noteworthy as a squatter leader. His
conscientious motives in supporting the squatter doc
trine, his sagacity in conducting the movement, and his
personal courage in forcing it to an issue, are all obvious.
Obvious also is his wicked and dangerous use in this
connection of the then current abstractions about the
absolute rights of Man and the higher will of God, to-
478 CALIFORNIA.
gether with his diabolical activity in resisting the true
will of God, which was of course at that time and place
simply the good order of California. Every moral force,
every force, namely, that worked for the real future
prosperity of the new commonwealth, was ipso facto
against these lawless squatters. The " land-speculators,"
whom they directly attacked, were indeed as greedy for
gold as anybody in California, and were as such no more
worthy of esteem than their even Christians. But these
speculators chanced, in just that case, to represent both
the old Calif ornian order of things, wliich we were bound
in sacred honor to respect, and the majesty of the new
born State as well, to which every citizen owed the most
devout allegiance, so long as he should dwell within its
borders. To these two great obligations the squatters
were traitors, and their movement was unfortunately the
father of much more treason, which showed the same
turpitude, if not the same frankness.
But, for the time, they were unable to do more than
to bring about a riot, and a consequent reaction of pop
ular feeling against themselves ; a reaction which ended
the possibility of any general predatory conspiracy
throughout the State against the old land-titles, and
which therefore introduced the squatter movement to the
second stage of its sinful life, so that it became thence
forth no longer an open public enemy, but a treacherous
corrupter of legislation, and a persistent pettifogger in
the courts of justice. The cause of the riot was this :
In August, 1850, the squatters were deeply disappointed
at an adverse decision in a suit of some importance
brought against one of their number. Angry and defi
ant, they were disposed to take the advice of Dr. Rob
inson, and to appear in force and armed in the streets
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 479
of Sacramento, and to resist by violence and forth
with all court processes served upon any of them. A
stormy Saturday night mass -meeting was devoted to
threats of this sort. Only about forty, however, were
finally bold enough to follow Dr. Robinson to battle on
August 14. The land-owners, encouraged by the vigor
ous orders of the mayor, improvised a posse on the
streets, at the sight of the armed rioters ; and a col
lision took place in the effort to disperse the squatter
party. Shots were exchanged, three men were killed,
one of them a squatter - leader, and one the city as
sessor ; and five persons (including Dr. Robinson) were
wounded. The city was thrown into the wildest excite
ment, popular indignation was aroused to a white heat,
and no squatter was for the time safe within the limits
of the town ; for the large neutral floating population,
no less than the people dependent for their business life
upon the regular land-owners, were now alike deter
mined to put an end to the disturbance. News of the
affair traveled quickly through the State ; militia has
tened to Sacramento from San Francisco, an exagger
ated alarm spread through the country for a few days,
and the agitation of the summer of 1850 was for the
O
time quickly put down.1
The public dread of the squatters, also, of course died
away as quickly, and with it much of the momentary
popular indignation. Nobody had time in California to
1 In the article above referred to, the fatal encounter of the day
after the riot, an encounter in which the sheriff of the county was
killed, together with two or three of the opposing party, is also de
scribed ; and the scenes of the crisis are in general recounted in a de
tailed manner not here possible. Dr. Robinson himself recovered
from his wounds, escaped any effective prosecution, was elected to the
legislature of 1851, and left the State in the following summer.
480 CALIFORNIA.
reflect on the true significance of such movements, and,
although the riot had once for all made open and wide
spread violence an impossible device, there was still a
chance for the squatters, in the second stage of their
movement, to form a so-called Settlers' Party, and to
agitate in a less violent way for state or national legisla
tion in their favor. At Sacramento they remained, by
dint of litigious persistence and of political agitation, a
serious practical vexation for many years, until the
Sutter title was finally confirmed, the grant surveyed,
and a government patent given for the land.
II. THE NATIVE POPULATION, AND THE LATER STRUG
GLE FOR THE LAND.
From direct and general assault by violence the Mex
ican grants as a body were thus erelong safe, however
numerous might be the affrays that from time to time
would take place over one or another of them. But
many were the troubles through which they were yet to
pass, and we in California ourselves with them.
Three roughly defined classes may be named into
which the land claims of the Californians might be dis
tinguished. There were, first, the claims that were ob
viously and notoriously valid. Such were the claims of
individuals or of families that had for many years lived
on their estates, in undisputed ownership, their titles
being also recorded in the archives. Against such
claims no merely technical objections ought to have re
ceived a moment's hearing. The sole problem in such
cases, in itself often difficult enough indeed, was to dis
tinguish by a just survey the boundaries of these claims
from the surrounding public lands. For, in the old
days, it had been customary to grant land in parcels of
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 481
eleven leagues or less, but without any exact definition
of the boundaries. Outside boundaries were named,
within which the tract granted was to be found ; and
questions might often arise concerning the proper posi
tion of the grant within these boundaries. Only in such
cases as Sutter's, where an " establishment," or an exist
ent dwelling, was mentioned in the grant, as already ex
istent, and as included in the tract granted, could the
situation of the grant, at least in part, be forthwith de
termined. In other cases the problems of the survey
might have all degrees of vagueness. Still, concerning
the actual right of the grantee to the amount of land de
scribed in his grant, and, under any survey, to that por
tion of his claim which immediately surrounded and in
cluded both his own dwelling and the lands that he had
long and without question occupied under his grant ;
concerning all this right there could be no shadow of
doubt. Such rights should have been simply and
promptly confirmed.
A second class of cases involved problems of more or
less obscurity. The more recent grants, even when
held in good faith, might be subjact to very proper
question. Conflicting grants might also be found to
exist, and might need careful examination before settle
ment. The nature of certain pretensions might be very
doubtful, and the highest legal authority might have to
study them with great care. Such, for example, were
the cases of the Mission property, where the question
whether the church had properly either any complete
title or any equitable right in the extensive old Mission
estates was one that could not be settled at a glance.1
1 An impression remained in fact long prevalent that the church
was at least in equity the owner of the Mission estates, and certain
~
482 CALIFORNIA.
And such a problem as whether San Francisco was or
was not a pueblo, and so entitled to its four square
leagues of land, demanded the most elaborate and schol
arly study ; and the highest authorities long differed
concerning it. For the examination of such matters
as these a competent tribunal was indeed needed, and
should have been provided without delay.
The third class of claims were the simply fraudulent
ones, and these proved in the end unfortunately too nu
merous. The worst possible way of dealing with {hem
was, of course, to delay examining them. Any time
wasted in wrangling over predatory objections offered
to the undoubtedly genuine and traditionally recognized
rights of the older land- owners was so much time and
inducement given to the rascals to invent either false
new claims or false evidence for these claims. Novel and
suspicious claims, such as that of Lirnantour to a great
part of the city of San Francisco, a claim not heard of
before 1851, should have been, as soon as presented,
among the first subjects of rigid judicial investigation.
And the appointed tribunals should therefore have been
free to devote time to these, instead of being long de
tained over an examination of every possible quasi-legal
objection that could be offered to the well-known and
well-established claims of the older land-owners.
These principles were perfectly obvious, and there
can be no doubt of at least one often mentioned device
by which the true ends of justice could have been fur
thered. The Californian archives were, save for a few
inevitable losses, in our possession. Mr. William Carey
Jones, as United States commissioner, in 1849, for the
writers have been at great pains to keep this erroneous impression be
fore the public mind.
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 483
examination of the land question in California, spent
much time in preparing his lengthy and able report
upon the land claims, as shown by these archives. It
would, therefore, have been the natural and just course
on the part of Congress to confirm, by a simple act, all
those recorded and undisputed land grants whose own
ers had been in actual and quiet possession for a term
of from five to ten years before the conquest. This act
could have been executed by commissioners, as the first
step towards the judicial settlement of the land problem
in California. Then either the same commissioners, or
other tribunals, could have been appointed to consider
the settlement of the doubtful matters, as a second step
towards the final goal.
So obvious was this method that, from 1850 to the
present day, there have not been wanting those who
have praised it as the sole proper device. Such at first
advised it ; and later, they, with many others, lamented
that it had not been chosen. But we were too selfish to
be wise. What we did was far less just, and also far
less clever.
The Land Act of 1851 was the work of Senator
Gwin, the same who had led captive the poor native
Californians in the constitutional convention. Gwin
protested, against Senator Benton and others who, on
the floor of the senate at Washington, very justly and
wisely opposed his scheme, that he desired nothing so
much as to be fair to the Californians. In fact, his bill,
as presented at the session of 1851, was not in appear
ance so black as at heart it was. Commissioners were
to be appointed to examine all California land claims.
These claims were, within a stated period, to be pre
sented before the board by the claimants, the grantee
484 CALIFORNIA.
appearing for those who held under his grant, and a
Californian pueblo appearing for its citizens. Claims
not presented within the stated period were to he n;>
longer regarded, but the lands in question were then to
be considered as having been reincorporated in the public
domain. All claimants must appear before the board
as suitors against the United States, which, as repre
sented by its attorneys, was formally to resist their
claims in every case. The board's decision was, how
ever, not to be regarded as final. On behalf of either
party appeal would lie, from this decision, to the United
States district court, and thence to the United States
supreme court itself. And if the United States attor
neys should see fit, they might thus force the claimant,
even in the clearest possible case, to fight for his own
long universally recognized property in three successive
courts, at an enormous expense. For, as is seen, all
claims were to be treated alike. All, whether actually
disputed by private individuals or not, were to be re
garded as called in question by the United States, which,
of course, would sue to have them restored to the pub
lic domain. In this shape, substantially, the act was
passed.
The true spirit of the act was made plain at the next
session of Congress, when Gwin introduced his infamous
supplementary land bill, which failed to pass. The act
of 1851 had been a device for delaying the just rec
ognition of all land claims in California, and for putting
all honest Californian land-owners in the position of
presumably fraudulent claimants, whose right to their
own was to be considered as doubtful until proved by
positive evidence, in possibly as many as three courts.
The supplementary bill, if it had passed, was meant to
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 485
encourage whoever had no rights in the land to steal
from those who had rights, so long as these rights were
thus unjustly held in abeyance under the act of 1851.
If, said the bill, any one " in good faith " had settled
on land, " believing it to be public land," and if, later,
this land was found to be within the limits of a con
firmed Mexican grant, then the well-meaning squatter
in question should be permitted — to retain his stolen
tract of one hundred and sixty acres, while the Califor-
nian land-owner was to be " compensated " by receiving
a " floating title " to an equivalent number of acres,
which he might choose where he could, from the public
lands in the State. When we remember that the prin
cipal American objection to the Mexican grants was
that they took up so much of the " finest agricultural
lands of the State," the significance of the supplemen
tary bill becomes plain. One ought to add that Sena
tor Gwin never grew ashamed of this abortive attempt
at predatory legislation, and mentions it with a certain
pride in that manuscript statement of his career which
he prepared for the use of Mr. Bancroft's library. Some
of the California newspapers very vigorously condemned
the unhappy bill at the time when it was first pre-<
sented,1 and it was undoubtedly too advanced for the
current public opinion of the State, however much it
might fall short of the original purposes of the squat
ters.
Into the complex and difficult history of the greater
California land cases there is here no space to enter.
The Land Act of 1851 made everything for a while
doubtful. Case after case was appealed to the district
1 See San Francisco Herald of May 29, 1852, for a letter on this
topic, — a letter that the editor fully approves.
486 CALIFORNIA.
and then to the supreme courts ; numerous and very
able lawyers were employed for many years, and the
estates of the Californians were, for tlie.se years, in
jeopardy. The effects may readily be imagined. The
poor Californians, no business men to begin with, were
thus forced into the most wearisome sort of business.
They must, as it were, gamble for their own property,
under the rules of an alien game, which they found
largely unintelligible. Their property was, meanwhile,
rendered hard to sell, and taxation fell upon them more
heavily than upon the wandering and irresponsible
mining population. Their lawyers they could pay only
with the land itself. With squatters they had continu
ally to wrangle. The government had put them before
the country in the position of presumably fraudulent
claimants ; and they must therefore meet with an only
too general suspicion that the best of them were actually
such. Their position was demoralizing and dishearten
ing. The southern part of the State, where the most
and the wealthiest of them lived, was, from Monterey
downward, sadly neglected by early state legislation.
For years it reaped little advantage from the gold dis
covery, and much injury from the presence of the gold-
seekers in the north. Its natural, and, from its own
point of view, justifiable efforts to escape from its un
happy position by means of a division of the State, were
easily defeated by the healthy and yet merciless deter
mination of the bulk of the Americans of the north to
permit no chance for slavery to gain a foothold on the
coast. This determination forbade any successful effort
to free the southern half of the State from the control
of the existing constitution.1 Not long before the out-
1 The division of the State was a subject of agitation in the south,
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 487
break of the civil war, further efforts were making
towards the same end, but this time with a more pro
nounced political purpose. Yet, both first and last, all
these efforts were doomed to fail, and for the poor na
tives, whom the general government thus so shamefully
harassed, there was no deliverance from the neglect and
taxation of the financially ill-managed state government.
It is not to be wondered at that, under these circum
stances, the Californians — who had never been exactly
moral heroes — rapidly tended towards the utter degra
dation in which we had always meanly declared them to
have been placed by nature.
But as for us, who thus sought to despoil by legal means
those whom we were too orderly to rob on any grand
scale by violence, we could not altogether escape from
the demoralization that we tried to inflict. " Woe unto
thee, O land," it might very truly be said, " when thy
land-holders are a dangerous class." But just such a
class were for years, in some counties, our own lesser
among the native Californians and others, during 1851, and often
later. There can be no doubt that the native Californians concerned
in the matter desired in good faith to be relieved from the unequal
and serious burdens of the existing state government, and little doubt,
also, that Southern politicians expected advantages to the cause of
slavery from such a division, and therefore labored for it. See in the
Alta (steamer edition), September 15, 1851, the call from citizens of
San Diego for a convention to consider the division of the State ; and
October 1, 1851, a further call from citizens of Los Angeles County,
together with the report of a state division meeting at Los Angeles,
and an Alta editorial, expressing very calmly the first natural north
ern sentiment on the matter. See, further, Alta (steamer edition) for
October 15, containing further editorial and news, both bearing on the
topic ; and November 1, containing a full report of the convention at
Santa Barbara in favor of division. The movement, as here repre
sented, proved to be seriously disunited, and hence was ineffective.
The Alta, while never growing violent in condemnation, still, of
course, disapproved.
488 CALIFORNIA.
land-holders of American stock, and all because the
claims that they had usurped were of uncertain legal
validity, their undertakings consequently of doubtful
profit, their business, as land-holders, resisting the Mex
ican grants, a sort of gambling, while their views of law,
of duty, and of life, were darkened by a dim conscious
ness of their own injustice, and by a strong consciousness
of their own insecurity. Whilst our state courts, with
a noble severity, thanks to the general learning and good
character of our lawyers, usually undertook rigidly to
guard the vested rights of the California!! land-owners,
during the long years that must elapse before the gen
eral government could be ready to confirm the doubtful
grants, and while these courts were nearly always ready
to eject naked trespassers, to give the unconfirmed but
primCi facie valid Mexican claim the benefit of the
doubt, and to interpret liberally the terms of the often
rudely expressed grants, still it could not always be
profitable or even possible for a Californian land-owner,
or for his legal successors, to resist all squatters. Some
times, as in the notorious and infamous case of the first
foundation of the now so fine and progressive city of
Oakland, a great tract of land would be lost to its own
ers by the deeds of some crowd of deliberate and un
principled trespassers,1 who would not even undertake
to justify themselves by any such theory of predatory
morality as had been preached in the gospel of the Sac
ramento squatters. Oftener, when smaller parcels had
been seized here or there by squatters, the native land-
claimant, or those who held under him, found it possible
and convenient, perhaps after years of bickering and
1 See the Ctnli-nnlnl History of Alameda County, chap, xxix., for
an account of this affair.
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 489
litigation, to compromise with the settler for a small
sum, and so to give him a clear title. But, during all
these intervening years, how unhappy the position of the
squatter himself ! He was raising his crops on land
that he professed to regard as a portion of the public
domain, to be acquired by him through preemption.
In fact, however, he was using a large part of his income
in resisting the various suits brought against him by the
claimant under the old grant. His pretended " quarter-
section " of public land was hardly a salable possession.
A fellow-settler, who might have chosen to buy a title to
some other bit of land from the original claimant, might
be his next neighbor, and might even some day buy the
Mexican title to his own tract. Then would arise bit
terness of the worst sort, not now between American
and Californian, but between the American fellow-set
tlers. Quarrels that would soon lead to threats, and
that might at any moment lead to assaults, and so to
murder, were such a settler's daily bread for year after
year. Until the supreme court at Washington should
reach the case and decide it, nay, until the official sur
vey of the tract, if the grant was confirmed to the Cal
ifornian claimant, should be completed and again ap
proved (perchance once more, after further appeals on
the survey to the supreme court), until all this should be
ended, there was often no relief to the quarrelsome life
of the persistent squatter, unless indeed his neighbor's
shot-gun should some day cut short his litigious misery.
And this was the life of thousands of petty land-holders
in California, during the years when land litigation
was most serious. No wonder that, under such circum
stances, two great evils were brought upon the State,
whose effects we have not yet had quite time to outgrow :
490 CALIFORNIA.
the one a negative evil, the long and lamentable obstruc
tion of the material prosperity of the State, by the dis
couragement of agricultural enterprise ; the other a pos
itive evil, the moral mischief done to the country by the
encouragement offered to thriftless and disorderly squat
ters, and by the exclusion of a great number of the best
sort of farmers' families, who left the State early, or
never came to it at all, because of the uncertainty of
land titles, and because of their fear of the quarrels and
disorders of this long transition period.
If one adds to this picture that of those numerous de
graded Spanish or half-breed outlaws, the creatures of
our own injustice, the sons, sometimes, or the former ser
vants of the great land-owners whom we had robbed, if
one remembers how they infested country roads, harassed
lonely farms, assaulted the mail-coaches, and plundered
the miners, through all these weary years, one sees at
length in full how our injustice avenged itself upon us,
and by what misery we paid for having deliberately set
at naught fundamental conditions of social existence.
From the first moment of the conquest until the end of
these early days we showed how we were come to this
land to get ourselves our own private enjoyments ; but
we also showed how we thereby did get for ourselves
nothing so much as public calamities. To this contin
ual petty disorder there was indeed at last a relief. The
greater claims being decided, the more serious quarrels
ended, the State was at length free, in the years since
1870, to develop far more rapidly her material and
moral resources, to attract a large new population, and
to cultivate the arts of civilization. Yet even to-day one
hears occasionally of the old sort of land-quarrel, with
its brutal and sometimes bloody consequences. And
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 491
meanwhile, if one complains of the unfortunate concen
tration of the land in a comparatively few hands, of tho
lack of small proprietors in certain parts of the State,
and of the evils attendant upon such a state of things,
one has to remember that these evils also are in great
part a result of the policy which, instead of encouraging
the old Californians to sell their grants in small tracts
to new-comers, forced them at length to part with their
lands in vast tracts to their lawyers, or to scheming
speculators, so that these profited by the misfortunes of
the Californians, to the lasting injury of the whole State.
— " You will not fail," Buchanan had said in the secret
dispatch to Larkin, " prudently to warn the government
and people of California," and " to arouse in their
bosoms that love of liberty and independence so natural
to the American continent." " If the people should de
sire to unite their destinies with ours, they would be re
ceived as brethren," Buchanan had added, thus assur
ing the Californians of " the cordial sympathy and
friendship of the president." Such were our sacred
promises to these people in 1845, promises none the less
sacred because they were part of an intrigue. And such
is the wretched tale of how we kept faith with our
victims.
III. EARLY POLITICAL CONFLICTS.
We must now glance, in conclusion, at the causes de
termining the purely partisan political life in California
during the period with which we deal.
The somewhat diminished enthusiasm of the Ameri
cans in California for their own national government,
which had, from the outset, neglected them, was still
equal to the task of taking sides, with some bitterness,
CALIFORNIA.
in the great national political questions. The skill of
Southern politicians present in California, and the irre
sistible course of events in the political world at that
moment, at once gave the Democratic party the upper
hand in the State, and favored, on the whole, the South
ern wing of that party. Very evil seems, from one
point of view, this partisan influence in state politics.
For the early political life of this region, upon whose
destiny the great national questions themselves could
for the moment have little immediate influence, was
thus directed by party men, whose actual objects must
of course be, under such circumstances, little save ofiice
and patronage. In largely academic discussions of na
tional questions that, vastly significant in themselves,
were here, for some years, used chiefly as pretenses,
and in quarrels and bargains concerning the distribution
of offices, time was. therefore, spent that ought to have
been devoted to the inner political growth of the new
State. The " great heroes " of those days generally
quarreled over purely personal ambitions, and grew
great because they were skillful in managing corrupt
political organizations. But all this evil had another
side. When the American lets the corrupt party man
agers rule him, he does so with an immoral but still
often clever submissiveness, because party wrangles not
only are in themselves amusing, but also are an excel
lent preventive of any elaborately dangerous and revolu
tionary legislation. Early California was full of social
problems. It is characteristic of the people that, in
dealing with these problems, their legislators were gen
erally forced to restrict themselves to very conservative
enactments. The politicians might, indeed, squander
public money, or sell offices for votes ; but, in general,
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 493
they might not try, nor even propose, any revolutionary
social schemes. This conservatism used as its instru
ment, very frequently, the corrupt party organizations
themselves.
The later history of the squatter agitation is in point
as illustrating this tendency. The Settlers' party failed
from the outset to accomplish anywhere nearly as much
as it desired in the way of getting various state laws
passed for harassing or for indirectly despoiling, by any
plausible device, the Californian land-owners, during
the pendency of the great land litigation. For this
party had again and again to submit itself to the des
potism of the greater party organizations. The main
object of the Democratic or other leaders was to get
a senatorship, or to control patronage, or to do some
like thing. To this end, one took sides in national pol
itics ; one abused, for instance, all stipposed abolition
ists ; one talked of Jeffersonian principles ; one ap
peared as the champion of the people ; or, above all,
one manipulated party conventions. These activities
led towards one's goal. Not so, however, could one
succeed if one offended everybody else to please the
sqiiatters. Yet, to satisfy the Settlers' party, one would
have had to do this. This party, indeed, formed an in
fluential faction in state politics for years, and toiled to
get various sorts of statutes passed for harassing the
Californian grant-holders. The schemes proposed were
often ingenious, and tried to avoid obvious constitutional
objections. Once, in 1856, these squatters did succeed
in getting passed a very dangerous statute, which was
ultimately declared unconstitutional. But they failed,
in the end, to get a constitutionally valid and legally
effective statute into the state law-books to carry out
494 CALIFORNIA.
any of their direct or indirect designs. Since we as a
body hated the Californian land-claimants so bitterly,
our general although not perfect forbearance in the
matter of our legal enactments concerning them must be
attributed partly to our instinctive good sense, and partly
to the strictness of that aforementioned corrupt party
discipline itself, which, by demanding the submission of
ail individual interests to the ends of the party, kept in
the background people who, like the squatters, were dis
posed to assert their independence and to disorganize
the political parties for their own purposes.
In the first legislature, which was held at San Jose,
much important business was done under great physical
difficulties, and with the disadvantage of the presence
of too many careless and disorderly members in the
body. By the end of 1850 the political parties were
in a fair way to be organized, and the legislature of
1851 was largely spent in a struggle over the election
of the United States senator to replace Colonel Fre
mont, whose " short term " was soon to expire. The
election, after many ballotings, had to be postponed for
a year; and, during 1851, the Democratic party first
clearly showed its supremacy in the State, and elected
Mr. John Bigler to the state governorship. This offi
cial served two terms, — a popular and unprincipled
politician, whose influence was in no wise for good.1 In
1852 the United States senator was elected, Colonel
John B. Weller getting the position. But at this point
began in earnest the struggle between the two heroes of
1 It was during Hitler's administration that the first agitation
against the Chinese iu California took place, although the question at
that time had a very different appearance from the one which it has
since assumed.
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 495
early California politics, — Broderick, who fully in
tended to get the rank of senator when the next vacancy
should occur, and Gwin, who had been one of the first
pair of senators elected, and who now confidently
looked forward to reelection in 1855. The remarkably
dramatic struggle of several subsequent years, between
the Southerner and the Irishman,1 we are not concerned
to follow in this book, the more so as its most im
portant scenes lie outside of our chosen period. The
reader may be referred, if he will, to the able, interest
ing, and not unamusing book of Mr. James O'Meara,2
where the whole story is told with a worshipful admira
tion of the heroic deeds that took place during the war
fare. A characteristic event in the struggle was » the
effort of Broderick to get the legislature, in 1854, to
elect him to the senatorship one year in advance of the
regular time. A bill to authorize such an election was
introduced in Broderick's interest, the idea being that,
as Broderick had a majority in the joint vote of the
two houses of this legislature, no opportunity ought to
be given to his fellow Democrats to destroy this major
ity before the next legislature should meet. The bill
was defeated only after a long struggle, in which brib
ery, liquor, threatened violence, and even actually
attempted violence were not lacking on both sides.
Before the next legislature met, Broderick was in a
very small minority in his own party ; but the crisis
of the Kansas controversies enabled him erelong to come
to the front in politics as an opponent of the ultra-
1 David Broderick, although born in America, was the son of an
Irish stone-cutter, and grew up amid Irish surroundings. He learned
the political art in New York, under Tammany influences.
2 Broderick and Gwin, San Francisco, 1881.
496 CALIFORNIA.
Southern wing of his party, and as a champion of free
dom. He alone could cope with the influence of Gwin,
whom he outdid in the management of primary elec
tions and of conventions, as Gwin, in turn, had the ad
vantage of him in political experience, in social position,
in oratorical skill, and, for some years, in the actual
possession of power. But Broderick was the better
loved by his friends. He was generous and warm
hearted, he hated the Southern aristocracy, he repre
sented the pride of the born freeman and of the labor
er's son ; and although political and other principles
never meant much to him, in comparison with personal
success, and although he, like most of his opponents,
looked upon the State as an oyster, to be opened as one
might, he nevertheless managed, in the sequel, to seem
a sort of leader in the struggle against the extension of
slavery, and so as a representative of the good cause on
the Pacific coast. With his later career, with his elec
tion to the Senate in 1857, with his disgraceful bargains
over the second senatorship on that occasion, with his
brief career at Washington, and with the tragedy that
first fully made him a popular hero in 1859, when he
was killed by Judge Terry in a duel, the limits of our
task forbid us to deal. Broderick's name has ever
since been, for many, a name to conjure with, although
one asks in vain what legislative work of importance he
can be said to have accomplished. Legislative work,
however, is the last thing that one may demand of a
man of Broderick's position and popular reputation.
An episode in this struggle and in the political his
tory of the State was the brief and quite fruitless suc
cess of the Know-Nothing party in 1855. Many had
looked to this party for the salvation of the State from
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 497
corrupt influences. Its actual success, however, resulted
from its alliance at this election with the ultra-Southern
Democrats, whose only desire, at the moment, was to
defeat Broderick. A victory so won meant nothing,
and led to nothing, save the choice of an incompetent
governor, — Neely Johnson, — and a new disappoint
ment for many of the better citizens of California. The
Know-Nothing movement hereupon quickly came to an
end, and the Democrats assumed once more their natu
ral position at the head of affairs, which they kept until
the outbreak of the war. On the whole, the early years
of California state politics furnish a decidedly unsatis
factory picture, so long as one looks at the positive re
sults. Some very good legislation was, indeed, accom
plished for San Francisco interests, but it was marred
by some decidedly bad work relating to the same city.
Some serious mistakes, such as the first Foreign Miners'
tax, were promptly corrected, and some problems of the
new social order were well dealt with ; but as to the
whole, rather on the negative side, rather in the dan
gers avoided than in the positive legislative work done,
must the value of the early political activity be placed.
The conflicting interests present in the young State
urged often to very hasty legislative action, and, despite
political corruption, — yes, often because of such cor
ruption, — such hasty and dangerous action was again
and again avoided.
The lesson of the legislative work of these early years
is one very common in American history. As we find
everywhere in our land, the danger of popular sover
eignty, at least in times of peace, is not so much its
hastiness as its slothfulness, its corrupt love of ease, its
delight in old and now meaningless phrases, and in the
32
498 CALIFORNIA.
men who use these phrases. Such men do not destroy
the existing social order, but while preserving it from
sudden injury, they fatten themselves upon the slow
decay that goes on in its less vigorous parts. The people
do not permit these parasites to do much positive mis
chief ; and the party organizations are, on the whole,
conservative forces. But what the people permit the
party managers to do is to stand in the way of true and
healthy progress, and to cause public needs to grow
dangerously great, before the selfish political squabbles
can be subordinated to the satisfaction of these needs.
In a very new part of the country, however, where the
social order is a tender plant, and is capable of a rapid
and healthy growth of its own, while it is very easily
endangered by any injurious external assaults, this ten
dency of ours to tolerate political corruption rather than
political ofliciousness is certainly far more prudent than
the reverse tendency would be. While we condemn
the immorality of such toleration of corrupt men, let us
then not forget the relatively good effects of this very
tolerance in many new lands, and in California in par
ticular. A people with less political skill than our own
would have suffered far more from earnest but visionary
schemers than we in California suffered from the whole
crew of selfish politicians. While we submitted to these
latter we still actually used their own partisan phrases
and their personal ambitions as the instruments for
impeding the course of dangerous legislation, and so we
saved ourselves, sometimes, not indeed from the just
penalties of our political sins, but from the consequences
of sins that we were happily able to avoid committing.
One word here in anticipation of later events. During
the civil war, California, which really could not have
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 499
been led out of the Union by the most skillful of party
managers, still, having seemed at the outset a trifle in
danger, gained by the consent of the government an
exemption from the direct burden of the war, for which
it probably well repaid by the assistance that its treasure
gave to the government during the long financial diffi-
ficulties. Many of its citizens did indeed take per
sonal part on one side or the other. But they left the
State to do so, and at home all remained tranquil. The
prevailing sentiment of the State was unmistakably
loyal. The close of the war found the new land rapidly
and steadily progressing. The coming of the great
railroad introduced, a few years later, a new life, with
fresh responsibilities and trials, so that thenceforth the
golden California of the early days fades farther and
farther into the background, and a great agricultural
and horticultural country to-day works, in its way, upon
the problems of its social life, while it is still under the
influence of the traditions of that golden past.
IV. CONCLUSION.
The race that has since grown up in California, as
the outcome of these early struggles, is characterized
by very marked qualities of strength and weakness,
some of which, perchance, even a native Californian
like the author, who neither can nor would outgrow his
healthy local traits, may still be able to note and con
fess. A general sense of social irresponsibility is, even
to-day, the average Californian's easiest failing. Like
his father, he is probably a born wanderer, who will feel
as restless in his farm life, or in his own town, as his
father felt in his. He will have little or no sense of
social or of material barriers, he will perchance hunt for
500 CALIFORNIA.
himself a new home somewhere else in the world, or in
the old home will long for some speculative business that
promises easy wealth, or again, on the other hand, he
will undertake some great material labor that attracts
him by its imposing difficulty. His training at home
gives him a curious union of provincial prejudice with
a varied, if not very exact, knowledge of the sorts of
things that there are in the world. For his surround
ings from infancy have been in one sense of a cosmopol
itan character ; while much of his training has been
rigidly or even narrowly American. Pie is apt to lack
a little, moreover, complete devotion to the life within
the household, because, as people so often have pointed
out, the fireside, an essential institution of our English
race, is of such small significance in the climate of Cali
fornia. In short, the Californian has too often come to
love mere fullness of life, and to lack reverence for the
relations of life.
And yet, as we have seen, the whole lesson of his
early history, rightly read, is a lesson in reverence for
the relations of life. It was by despising, or at least by
forgetting them, that the early community entered into
the valley of the shadow of death ; and there was salva
tion for the community, in those days, only by virtue of
its final and hard-learned submission to what it had de
spised and forgotten. This lesson. I confess, has come
home to me personally, as I have studied this early his
tory, with a quite unexpected force. I h d always
thought of the old days as times of fine and rough labors,
amusements and crimes, but not as a very rational his
torical process. I have learned, as I have toiled for
a while over the sources, to see in these days a process
of divinely moral significance. And, as a Californian,
LAND-TITLES AND POLITICS. 501
I am glad to be able to suggest what I have found, plain
and simple as it is, to any fellow-Californian who may
perchance note in himself the faults of which I make
confession. Here in the early history are these faults,
writ large, with their penalties, and the only possible
salvation from them.
After all, however, our lesson is an old and simple
one. It is the State, the Social Order, that is divine.
AVe are all but dust, save as this social order gives us
life. When we think it our instrument, our plaything,
and make our private fortunes the one object, then this
social order rapidly becomes vile to us ; we call it sordid,
degraded, corrupt, unspiritual, and ask how we may
escape from it forever. But if we turn again and serve
the social order, and not merely ourselves, we soon find
that what we are serving is simply our own h'ghest
spiritual destiny in bodily form. It is never truly sor
did or corrupt or unspiritual ; it is only we that are so
when we neglect our duty.
INDEX.
ABAI.OS, Senorita, 387, 388.
Adams & Co., failure of, 431.
Aiken, Dr., witness for the defense
at the Downieville lynching of 1851,
372.
Alcaldes in California after conquest,
200-20G.
" Alta California," newspaper, 333.
Alvarado, Governor, 25, syq. ; revolu
tion by, 25 ; conflicts aad success
of, 20-28 ; quarrel of, with foreign
ers, 28 ; validity of his grant to Slit
ter, 470, 471.
American character, general remarks
on, as shown in California, 1, 2, 34,
47, C3, G6, 76, 151-156, 198, 212, 213,
222, 225-230, 23-1, 238, 239, 255, 259,
271, 273-278, 279, 280, 300, 304, 305,
32-1, 327, 328, 335, 353, 356, 357-363,
371-374, 398, 466, 468, 487-491, 492,
498. For particulars see under
Americans in California; Calif or-
nians, native; Popular justice ; So
ciety, state off Women in Califor
nia ; San Francisco.
Americans in California before ths
conquest, 34^47.
Americans in California in 1846, sup
posed danger of their position, 87,
91, 93-111.
Americans in California, during the in
terregnum, 198-270 ; discontent of,
198-213; land-hunger of, 206-211;
at S.ia Francisco, 213-220 ; as gold-
seeker.s, 220-234 ; routes by which
they reached California, 234-240;
struggles of, for a constitution, 240-
270 ; constitutional theories of, in
1849, 248, 249 ; public amusements
of, 227, 392-398. Further references
under San Francisco, Society, Pop
ular justice, and Women.
" Annals of San Francisco," cited, 77,
178, 179, 189, 213, 214, 219, 220, 223,
257, 330, 336, 389, 390, 393, 394-397,
399, 401, 408, 409, 420; criticised in
particular, 393-397.
Arce, Lieutenant, 59, 105.
Argiiello, commandante at San Fran
cisco, 17 ; chosen governor, 19.
Arguello, Concepcion, 17.
Arkansas miners, dispossessed for
trespass upon Chinese miners, 3G7,
note.
Arriilaga, 17.
Auger, " Voyage en Californie,"
cited, 309, 3G5, 36G.
Ayala, Lieutenant, 14.
Baker, Col. E. D., 458.
Baldridge, Win., statements of, on
Bear Flag affair, 61, 62, G9, 72.
Balls in the mines, 351, 352 and note.
Bancroft, Mr. George, instructions of,
to Sloat, 128.
Bancroft, H. H., cited, 8, 9, sqq, to
page 30 ; also 174, el passim.
Bancroft, H. H., Larkin papers pos
sessed by, 38, 96 ; their value, 39,_e<
vassim ; as discoverer of Larkin dis
patch, 133, 134, 142.
Baptists in San Francisco, 401.
Bardt, Dr., flogged for theft in 1852 at
Johnson's Bar, 333, 334.
Barrows' " Oregon " cited, 119.
Bartlett, Lieutenant, 205.
Bates, Mrs., cited, 384.
Bear Flag affair, 53, 53-83 ; reflections
on, 155, 156; Bidwell on, 100-102;
Califomian hostility as a cause for,
03-111; J. H. Hittellon, 117; Gen
eral Fremont on, 120-123. See al-;o
Fremont, Ide, Californians, Sono
ma, Gillcspie.
Benicia, founded and named, 213.
Benton, Thomas H., Senator, letters
to, by Fremont, in May, 184G, 101,
108, 132 ; stitements by, concerning
Bear Flag affair, 88-92 ; letter for,
in L?.rkin's hand, 104 ; projects oi,
504
INDEX.
113; position of, 114; opposes
G win's Land Bill in 1851, 483.
Bunion, Rev. l)r., hij "California
Pilgrim " cited, 233.
Bereypssa, 82.
Bidwell, Mr. Jolui, statement on Boar
Flag affair, Olt-102, 121.
Bidwell's Bar, opposition to foreign
miners at, 307.
Biitfer, John, Governor, 4'J4.
"Biglow Papers,'' loll.
Borthwick's "Three Years in Califor
nia'' cited, 311, 317, 300.
Botts, C. T., 251, 209.
Boundary question in constitutional
convention, 204-209. See aUo Di
vision of (.'alifornia.
Bract- , executed by Vigilance Com
mittee, 4G4.
Braiman, Samuel, 197. 198, 219; in
the affair of February 22, 1851, 410,
411 ; in the first Vigilance Commit
tee, 419, 420.
Bridgeport, lynching at, 31 S.
Broderick, David, 203, 495, 49G.
Brooks, J. T., liis "Four Mouths in
the Gold Mines " cited, 289, s<iq. ;
his experiences as typical of nailing
life in 1848, 289-301.
Bryant, Edwin, his " What I saw in
California " cited, 43, G3, 77, 1S9.
Buchanan, 118, 13G, Io7 ; views of, on
the political situation in California,
253, 255. See also under Cabinet of
Polk.
" Bulletin," the San Francisco, as so
cial force under King's manage
ment. See under King, James, of
William.
" Burke Rocker," 301.
Burnett, his " Reminiscences of an
Old Pioneer" cited, 251, 257; as
governor of California, 270.
Burr, juror at the Downieville lynch
ing of July 5, 1851, 373.
Cabinet of Polk, its plans for getting
California, 50-54; the 'fourth
plan," id., 57, 84, 87, 02, 93, 115-119,
123, 138, 139 ; the real cabinet plan,
125-147 ; the Larkin dispatch, 130,
137 ; the plan further criticised.
152-150 ; views of, on the situation
in California in 1848, 253, 255.
Cabrillo, early voyage of, 9.
Cahuenga, capitulation at, 193, 194.
•Calaveras, disorder in the mines of
that region in 1852, 343.
California, geographical outlines of,
3-7 ; climate, 7, 8 ; discovery of
Lower California, 9 ; name, 9 ; first
explorations of the coast of Upper
California, 9-11 ; plans for settle
ment, 11, 12; settlement in 17(59,
13 ; Spanish period, 14-11) ; Russian
visits, 17, 18 ; transition to Mexican
rule, 19, 20 ; Mexican period, 2u-GO ;
character of theuathe population,
3li-34 ; character and life of Ameri
cans in California ibefore lS4o, 34-
4ii ; American designs on California,
48, fujfj. ; supposed Knglish designs
on Caliioruia, 104-173 ; beginnings,
problems, and plans of the Ameri
can conquest in June, ISiG, 50-150 ;
completion of conquest, 174, xrjij. ;
revolt and re-conquest, 184-197 ; in
terregnum, 198-270; constitutional
history of California during inter
regnum, 204-210,246-270; gold di. -
covery and its importance, 2-20-223 ;
(••migration to California in 1E4!>,
224-240 ; admission of State, 27i) ;
f.ocial dangers of, during the gold
period, 271, sqq. ; philosophy of the
history of the mining-times, 272-
278; evolution of disorder in Cali
fornia. 27S-2S2 ; mining-life in 1848,
284-301 ; mining-life in 1849-50,301-
307 ; later mining-life, 308-370 ; im
portance of San Francisco in Cali
fornia history, 377 ; outlines of San
Francisco history, 378-105 ; Califor
nia as affected by the land troubles,
407-491 ; early state politics, 491-
499; lessons of early California his
tory, 499-501.
California, the, voyage of, 235. 238.
California, Lower, 9 ; Jesuits expelled
from, 11.
California battalion, discontent of, af
ter conquest, 200.
"California Star," the, CO, 198, 204-
208, 219.
"California!!," the, cited, C3, 198,
211.
Californiann, native, characterization
of, 30-34; relations of, to Ameri
cans before 1840, 30, 37 ; their posi
tion and rights in 1840, 51 ; their
views of the Bear Flag outbreak,
79-82 ; supposed hostility of, as a
cause for the Bear Flag affair, 93-
111 ; Sloat's instructions from the
U. S. government regarding them,
125-128, 157-100 ; Larkin's instruc
tions regarding them, 135-140, 153,
491 : Larkin's intrigue with them,
102-104 ; English relations to, 164-
172; Stockton's bearing towards,
177-179, 1SO-184, 190; treatment of,
by American officials, immediately
before the revolt of 1840-47, 184-
189; revolt of, 189; friendship of,
INDEX.
505
to Captain Fremont, 186, 195 ; feel
ings of, during the interregnum, 198;
dangerous position of, 207 ; uiih'ippy
state of, in 1849, 256 ; in the consti
tutional convention, 261, 2G7 ; in the
mines, 290, 291, 364; land difficul
ties of, in later years, 467, .$<??., 480-
491 ; eiforts of, for a divUiou of the
State, 486, 487 ; disastrous condition
of, 486, 490, 491.
Camp life, effects of, on personal char
acter, as illustrated in Conner party
in 1846, 44 ; further remarks on,
245, 300.
Caiman, murdered by Californian wo
man at Downieville in 1851, 370 ;
lynching of the woman, 371-373.
Capital punishment, as administered
by the miners, discussed, 336-338 ; !
bad state law concerning, 337.
Capron, "History of California," cited, ;
309, 317, 335.
"Carlos," a Sonoran, hanged at Moque-
lumne Hill, 321-323.
Carrillo, Carlos, 27.
Carrillo, Tomas M., 294.
Casey, assassin of James King, of Wil
liam, 438, 449 ; seizure and execu
tion of, by the second Vigilance
Committee of San Francisco, 446,
447, 448, 451, 452.
Castillero, Andres, 26.
Castro, Jos6, 24; as commandante gen
eral, 29 ; difficulty with Captain
Fremont, 54, 55 ; reported hostility
of, 59 ; General Fremont on this
difficulty, 114, 115; Senator Ben-
ton on the same, 88, 91 ; controversy
with Pio Pico, 94, 96, 107 ; Ameri
can opinion of, in June, 1846, 107,
108 ; meeting of, with Pio Pico, 175 ;
in command at Los Angeles, 176 ;
negotiations with Stockton, 180 ;
flight to Mexico, id.
Catholics in San Francisco, 401.
" Caxton " as political writer in 1S5G,
456.
Cermenon, 10.
Chagres River, 239.
Chico, Governor, 24.
Children in California, 399.
Chinese, 367, 494.
Civil War, California in, 499.
Clapp, Mrs. L. A. C. See "Shirley."
Clergymen, in San Francisco, 397,
400, 401-403.
Climate of California, 7, 8 ; effect of,
on health, 8.
Coast Range, 3, 6.
Coleman, Mr. Wm. T., in February,
1851, 411, 412 ; in the first Vigilance
Committee, 419 ; in the second Vig
ilance Committee, 441, sqq. ; his
statements cited, 441, 442, 445, 457,
462 ; his interviews with Governor
Jolmson on the Vigilance Commit
tee plans, 441 -±46.
Coloma, locality of the earliest gold
discovery, 220, 291, 319.
Colton, Rev. Walter, his "Three
Years in California" cited, 62, 186,
223 ; his character, 190.
Congress, U. S., fails to provide gov
ernment for California in 1848 and
1849, 252, 253, 256.
Conquest, American, difficulty of de
scribing, 48, 49 ; importance of, 49 ;
history of plans for and early scenes
of, 52-150 ; Sloat's conquest, 157-
176 ; Stockton's undertakings, 177-
184 ; the revolt and re-conquest, 184-
195.
Constitution of 1849, preparation for,
during the interregnum, 199-213,
246-257 ; formation of, in conven
tion, 257-270 ; adoption of, 270.
Constitutional convention (see also
Constitution of 1849), abortive ef
forts for a convention, 257 ; con
vention called, 257 ; meeting of
convention, 259-270; material dif
ficulties of the members, 260 ; tabu
lar classification of members, 260 ;
political positions of members, 261,
262; Southern politicians in, 263-
266; Wm. Gwin's work in, 262-269;
boundary controversy in, 264-269.
Cooke, Lieutenant, 192 ; his " His
tory of the Conquest" cited, 189,
note.
Cora, assassin of General Richardson,
447 ; his arrest by Vigilance Com
mittee, id. ; his marriage and execu
tion, 452.
Coronel, Signer, statement of, cited,
167, 176, 186, 188.
Cortes, 9.
Cowie, 81.
Coyote, the, 285, 339.
"Coyote-holes," 312.
Cradle-mining, 287, 288, 301.
Crespi, 14.
Crosby, C. E. O., statement on con
stitutional convention cited, 263,
note.
Cutts' "Conquest of New Mexico
and California " cited. 88, 125.
Dana, R. H., remarks on the Cali-
fornians, 32 ; date of his visit to
California, 36.
Davis, W. H., his MS. "Glimpses of
the Past " cited, 38.
Degroot, Mr. Henry, cited, 2%.
506
INDEX.
Delano, A., cited, 230, 245, 317.
Diablo, Mt., 6.
Division of California proposed at va
rious times, 204-209, 48C, 487 and
note.
Donner party, 43-45, 197.
Downieville, disgraceful lynching at,
in 1851, 308-374.
Drake, Sir Francis, voyage of, 9.
Easterbrook, a miner, hanged for the
murder of his partner iii It51, at
Shasta, 329-332.
Echeandia, Governor, 21, 22.
Emigrants of 1840, 43-45.
Englisli schemes in Calif oniia, 91, 92,
154. See Seymour.
Episcopalians in San Francisco, 401.
Pages, Pedro, 14.
Family life in San Francisco in early
days, 403-407, 434, 435.
Farragut, Commodore, 459.
Ferralo, 9.
Figueroa, Josi?, Governor, 28, 24.
Fire-engines in the San Francisco
fires of 1851, 387.
Fires, the great. See under San Fran
cisco.
Flogging as a popular miners' penalty
discussed, 335.
Flores, J. M., 189, 190.
Ford, Lieutenant, 73, 78, 79.
Foreign miners, on the way to Cali
fornia, 230-239 ; treatment of, in
1849, 305, 358 ; treatment of, after
1849, 358-308 ; illustrations of this
treatment, 348, 352, 353-355, 308-
374.
Foreign Miners' Tax Law of 1850,
358 ; repeal of, 359 ; criticism of,
300 ; troubles caused by, at Sonora,
in 1850, 300-302.
Foster's Bar, opposition to foreign
miners at, 307.
Foster's " Gold Regions of Califor
nia " cited, 223, 287.
Fourgeaud, Dr., 219.
Fowler, 81.
Francesca. See Henicin.
Franciscans, appear in Lower Califor
nia, 11 ; settle Upper California, 12 ;
missions of, 12-10 ; work of, criti
cised, 10. See also Missions, and
Secularization .
Fremont, John C., his visit to Califor
nia in 1844, and his Report, 42, 43 ;
the usual interpretation of his acts in
the early part of the conquest men
tioned, 53, 57 ; his appearance in Cal
ifornia in 1840, 54 ; quarrel with Cas
tro, 54, 55 ; retirement towards Or
egon, 55 ; is overtaken by Gillespie,
50 ; information of some sort deliv
ered to him, 50 ; he returns to the
Sacramento Valley, 58 ; rumors of
Castro's hostility circulated, 58, 59 ;
consequent seizure of Arce's horses
by F.'s order, 59 ; beginning of
Bear Flag affair, CO ; F. holds at
first aloof, 01 ; Ide's interview with
F., C8 ; acts of certain Bear Flag
men under F.'a orders, 70 ; F.
reaches Sonoma, 79 ; San Rafael
campaign, id. ; killing of Haro broth
ers, 80 ; F.'s acts out of connection
with Sloat's instructions, 85 ; risks
run through F.'s conduct, 80, 87 ;
F.'s friends and their past explana
tions of his conduct, 87-03 ; F.'s
own former explanation, 93; Cali-
fornian hostility no explanation
for F.'s conduct, 93-111 ; F.'s rela
tions to Gillespie and Larkin, 103-
108 ; F.'s letter to Benton as evi
dence of his motives, 108, 109;
probable use of forged proclama
tions by F. and Gillespie, 109, 110;
F.'s own present explanation of his
conduct, 111-123 ; mysteries deep
ened by this explanation, 123-129 ;
only one dispatch from the govern
ment was known to F., and this the
Larkin dispatch, 129-133 : summary
of F.'s position, 134, 135 ; actual
contents of the Larkin dispatch,
135-138 ; refutation of F.'s justifica
tion of his conduct, 138-141 ; sup
plementary evidence, 141-147 ; re
joinder of F. in final interview, 147,
148 ; reflections hereon, 149, 150 ;
further characterization of F.'s con
duct, 155, 150; F.'s relations to
Sloat, 157-101 ; F.'s conduct as re
lated to the English designs, 108;
F.'s interview with Storkton, and
its consequences, 177, 182 ; F. at
San Diego, 177 ; personal good will
of F. towards Californians after the
conquest, 185, 180 ; F. during the
revolt and re -conquest, 189, 190,
193-195 ; quarrel with Kearny, 190 ;
F. as popular authority for Sutler's
title, 470 ; as U. S. senator from
California, 494.
Frenchmen, in the mines, see For
eign miners ; in the Vigilance Com
mittee of San Francisco, 447, 450.
Funeral in the mines, a, as witnessed
by " Shirley," 347, 348.
Galvez, Jos6 de, 12.
Gambling in San Francisco, 394, 425,
43C, 437.
INDEX.
507
Gillespie, Lieutenant Archibald, meet
ing with Captain Fremont at Kla-
math Lake, 50 ; mystery of his mis
sion, 57, 53, 87, sqq. ; his visit to
Yorba Buena in June, 1846, 103,
105-108; General Fremont on G.'s
mission, 115, sqq. ; G. brings but one
secret dispatch, 130-132 ; circum
stances of his commission, 145 ; con
duct of, after the conquest, 187-
189 ; at San Pascual, 192.
Gold discovery, 220, 221 ; effects of,
ill general, summarized, 221, 222 ;
effects of, immediate, 223 ; excite
ment caused by, described, 231-24C.
Gold-mining, lying reports concerning
early, circulated, 231-234 ; history
and social effects of, 271-376 ; meth
ods of, in 1848, 284-288, 290-292 ;
methods of, in 1849, 300-302 ; meth
ods of , in later years, 308-313; av
erage returns of, 234, 360. See
also Pan -mining, Cradle-mining,
Sluice-mining, River-bed-mining.
GolJen Gate, 6, 10.
Graham, Isaac, 28.
Grey, Wm., pseudonym, cited, 272,
394.
Grigsby, Captain, 70, 71, 83.
Gunny Bags, Fort, 4G1, 462
Gutierrez, Governor, 24.
Gwin, W. M., in the constitutional
convention of 1849, 262, 269; as
author of Land Act of 1851, 483-
485 ; in general politics, 495, 496.
Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 9.
Hall's " History of San Jos»5 " cited,
189, 223.
Hallock, Capt. H. W., services of,
iu 1848, 49, 258, note ; in constitu
tional convention, 268.
Haro, the brothers, 82.
Hastings, L. W., 208-211.
" Herald," the San Francisco, attitude
of, concerning King's assassination,
439.
Hetherington, executed by Vigilance
Committee, 464.
Hijar, colony of, 23, 24.
Hittell, John S., on Bear Flag affair,
cited, 95, 117.
Hittell, J. S., " History of San Fran
cisco," cited, 117, 213, 214, 219, 380,
383, 385, 423, 424, 427, 428, 429, 430,
432, 438, 448, 458, 464.
Hittell, J. S. , "Resources of Cali
fornia," cited, 309.
Hittell, Theodore, 95.
Hopkins, wounded by Judge Terry,
462.
Horn, Cape, emigrants by, 240.
" Hounds," affair of the, 263, 407, note.
Howard, Volney E., as general of
state militia, 461.
Hull, Captain, 205.
Humboldt River, 44.
Hunt, Rev. T. Dwight, 401.
Hurd, Cyrus, Jr., 333.
Hyde, alcalde, 205.
Ide, Wm., character of , 67 ; narrative
of, 68-78 ; referred to, 151 ; false
proclamation received by, 97, 98,
109.
Indians, in mines, 291, 292 ; frequent
massacres of, by early miners, 3C3.
Interregnum, the, history of, 198-
270 ; problems of, 198-213 ; San
Francisco during, 213 - 220 ; gold
discovery during, 220-224 ; new
comers during, 225-246 ; later con
stitutional history of, 246-257 ; end
of, in constitutional convention, 257-
270 ; men of, their character, 198 ;
discontent of, 200-210 ; their con
servatism in 1849, 249 ; their posi
tion in the constitutional conven
tion, 261, 264, 269.
Jackson, Mrs. H. H., cited, 188.
Jackson, town of, lynching affair at,
343.
Jenkins, hanged by the first Vigi
lance Committee of San Francisco,
420, 422.
Jenny Lind Theatre, performance ad
vertised in, 387 ; burning of, 388 ;
rebuilding of, 389 ; sale of, to the
city, 389.
Jesuits, expulsion of, from Lower
California, 11.
Johnson, governor of California, 497 ;
abortive negotiations of, with the
Vigilance Committee of 1856, 441-
446.
Johnson, Theodore T., cited, 304.
Jones, E. P., 205.
Jones, J. M., 262, 267.
Jones, Thomas Ap Catesby, tem
porary seizure of California by, in
1842, 37.
Jones, Wm. Carey, 482, 483.
"Jones and partners," tried for theft
at Coloma, 319-321.
Justice, administration of, in early
days. See Popular justice.
Kearny, Gen. S. W., instructions of,
508
INDEX.
Kern River mines, excitement con
cerning, 431.
King, Jaiucs, "of William," career
of, 432-437 ; character of, 432, 433 ;
founds the " Bulletin," 433; work
of, 434, 435 ; discussion with the
gamblers, 43(i, 437 ; shooting of, 438 ;
popular excitement caused by the
deed, 439; death of, 448; Edward
McGowan on the assassination of,
449, 450.
King, James, "of William," cited,
255.
King, Thomas Butler, 208.
King, Thomas S., as editor of the
" Bulletin " after his brother's death,
454.
Klamath Lake Indians, 89.
" Know -Nothing " party in California,
490, 497.
La Perouse, visit of, 17.
Land Act of 1851, 483. See also Land
titles.
Land grants, early, 45, 40.
Land titles, early difficulties con
cerning, 207, 210 ; during the gold
period, 407, sqq. ; historical impor
tance of land question, 407. 408 ;
dangers besetting the land titles in
1849, 4G8, 409; land troubles at
Sacramento in 1849-50, 409-479;
doubts concerning Sutler's title,
471 ; views of the squatters on
Slitter's land, 472-470 ; squatter
meeting in 1849 at Sacramento, 474,
470 ; the Robinson squatter move
ment in 1850, 477-479 ; later phases
of the land troubles, 480, .trj'j. ;
classes of California!! land claims,
480-482; Land Act of 1851, 483,
484 ; proposed supplementary leg
islation, 484, 485 ; land litigation
under act of 1851 , 485-487 ; disas
trous consequences of land litiga
tion, 487-491 ; political failure of
squatter party, 493, 494.
Larkin, Thomas O., his position in
California before 1840, 38^0 ; his
correspondence cited, id. ; his char
acter and influence. 39 : mentioned,
95 ; relation to Gillespie, 103 ; not
appealed to for information by
Fremont in June, 1840, 103; cited,
223, 200. — Instructions of, 135-
138 ; consequent intrigues of, 101-
105. See also (!!llespieai\(\ Fremont.
" Law and Order " men, during the
second Vigilance Committee of San
Francisco, 440, 458, 459, 402, 403.
Leese. Mr., 00.
Limautour claim, 482.
Loker, Wm. N., 97, 109.
" Long Tom," 301, 308, 309.
Los Angeles, pueblo of, founded in
1781, 14.
Lynch law. See Popular justice.
McAllister, Mr. Hall, 412.
McCarver, member of constitutional
convention, 204, 209.
McGlashan, C. F., his "History of
the Donner Party " cited, 45.
McGowan, Edward, his difficulties
with the Vigilance Committee, 449,
450 ; his "Narrative," id.
McKenzie, hanged by the first Vigi
lance Committee of San Francisco,
422.
M iCnamiri 91 9° 105 ^oo
Macnamara scheme, 105-107.
Macondray, Mr., 410.
Manila ships. 11.
Mariposa, troubles at, with foreign
miners, 305.
Marshall, as gold discoverer, 220, 221,
223 ; engages in mining near Cc-
loma, 291.
Marysville steamer, popular justice
on a, 340.
Mason, Colonel, as governor of Cali
fornia, 202, 211, 212 ; visits the
mines, 223, 291 ; cited on methods
of mining, 287.
Meiggs, Henry, career of, 425-431.
Mendocino, Cape, first seen by Fer-
ralo, 9.
Merritt, Captain, 59, 09, 71, 120.
Mervine, Captain, 190.
Methodists in San Francisco, 400,
401.
Mexican grants. See Land grants,
and Land titles.
Mexican rule in California, 19, sqq. ;
begun in 1822. 19; periods of, 19,
20 ; growth of, before 1830, 20, 21 ;
secularization of missions begun by,
22 ; events of, between 1830 and
1840, 22-30.
Mexican War, relation of, to California
in the cabinet plans, 50-52, 84, 153,
154,150.
Mexican War, end of, 224.
'• Mexicans " in the mines. See Foreign
miners, and Calif ornians, nalire.
Micheltorena, Governor, 28, 29 ; vis
ited at Los Angeles by Jones, 37.
Miners' justice. Sec Popular justice.
Mining camps, orderly formation of,
in early days, 279, 2F3, 304, 305, 307 ;
instability of, 285, 280 ; gradual de
generation of, 281,282,300,336-340,
375 ; reformation of, 374, 370 ; con
trast between northern and south-
INDEX.
509
ern camps, 3C6 ; typical experiences
of a mining camp in 1851-52, 344-
356. See also Society, Gold min
ing, Popular justice, Foreign min
ers, and Americans in California..
Mission property, title to, 481.
Missions (see also Franciscfin-s), sta
tistics of California, in 1780, 15; In
dians at, 16 ; failure of, 1C ; secular
ization of, 22, sqq. ; secularization
proposed, 22 ; carried oil further, 23-
25 ; completed, 30.
"Missions, Northern," as name for
California, 9.
Mississippi Bar, thief cruelly flogged
at, in 1851, 334.
Monterey, bay of, unrecognized by
Portola in 17G9, 14 ; Mission of San
Carlos founded at, 14.
Monterey, town of, seized by Com
modore Jones in 1842, 37.
Montgomery, Captain, 83, 105 ; raises
flag at Yerba Buena, 175.
Montgomery Street, in San Francisco,
381.
Moore, B. F., 202.
Moquelumne Hill, lynching affair at,
321-323 ; reflections on this affair,
323, 324.
Moquelumne, Lower Bar of, scene at,
during the first state election, 30G.
"Mormon diggings," the, in 1S4S,
289-291.
Mormons in California, 197.
Murphy, John II., 223.
Nevada, thief flogged at, 340.
"New Helvetia," Butter's title to,
470, 471.
Nicaragua, 235.
North and South, Americans from,
mingled in California, 227-230.
Oak Bottom, affair of Easterbrook
and Price at, 329-332.
Oakland, squatters at, 488.
O'Meara, his " Broderick and Gwin "
cited, 2G1, 495.
Oregon, English claims upon, in con
nection with California affairs, 1CS-
170.
Osgood, Mr. E. S., cited in connection
with the affair of February, 1851,
and in connection with the second
Vigilance Committee, 414, 415, 442,
445; his personal connection with
these affairs, see id.
Otter, the, of Boston, visit, 17.
Overland emigrants, 240-246.
Padre's, 23.
Page, Bacon & Co., failure of, 431.
' Palmerston, Lord, statement of, in
Parliament, 170, 172, 173.
Palou, his biography of Father Juni-
pero Serra, 15.
Pan-mining, 282-287.
Panama, new-comers by, 235-240 ; first
Americans at, 235-239.
"Panama Star," 236, 238.
Partnerships, mining, their close and
social nature, 288 ; illustration of,
in 18-18, by the case of the Brooks
party, 289, sqq. ; darker aspects of,
300 ; degree of universality of, in
1849, 301, 302; case of a fatal diffi
culty between partners, 329-332.
Payran, Stephen, 419, 420.
Penjdeh incident, mentioned for com
parison, 53, 119.
Peruvians on the way to California,
236-239. See also foreign miners.
Pickett, C. E., 205.
Pio Pico, Governor, 29 ; controversy
with Castro, 94, 96, 107 ; legend con
cerning, 173 ; meeting with Castro,
175 ; flight to Mexico, 180.
Plaza, the, in San Francisco, 388, 389,
392, 420.
Polk, President James K. See Cabi
net of Polk.
Polk cabinet. See Cabinet of Polk.
Popular justice, crises of, general re
marks on, 277, 279-282, 421, 465 ; in
the mines, in the earlier and more
orderly camps, 279, 300. 302, 304,
305, 307 ; in 1851 and the subsequent
years : general remarks on, 313-317 ;
Mr. Shinn's view of the topic, 314,
315 ; strictures on his view, 316 ; il
lustrations of the spirit of miners'
justice in 1851 and 1852, 317-324;
unsentimental character of the min
ers' justice, 327, 328 ; misrepresenta
tions current on this point, 326 ; il
lustrations of popular justice : at
Shasta in 1851, 329-333; at John
son's Bar in 1852, 333, 334 ; cruelty
of the miners on occasion, 334 ; the
morality of the penalties inflicted
by the miners, 335-337 ; inefficncy
of this popular justice, 338-344;
scenes of popular justice, as known
to " Shirley," 351, 354, 355, 356 ;
miners' justice, as applied to for
eigners in 1S50, 361-364 ; the same
topic in later years, 368 ; disgrace
ful lynching of a woman in 1851,
368-374 ; relation of lynch law to
the final attainment of order in the
mines, 375 ; in ft<m Francisco : con-
trist between the condition of San
Francisco and that of the mines as
to popular justice, 407 ; the affair of
510
INDEX.
the Hounds in 1849, 407, note ; the
outbreak of February, 1851, 407-
417 ; its causes, 408 : scenes of Feb
ruary 22d, 401), 410; the popular
trial of February '23d, 411-41(i ; tran
sition to the Jirst vf the great I 'igi-
lattce Commiilffx, 417 ; origin of the
committee, 418— 120; work of the
committee, 420-422 ; tlie crisis of
May, 1800, 437, sqij. ; popular feel
ing upon King's death, 43'J ; origin
of the second great Vigilance Com
mittee, 440—447 ; negotiations with
Governor Johnson, 441-440; seizure
of Casey and Cora by the commit
tee, 447 ; trial and execution of
Casey and Cora, 451, 452 ; general
dangers and duties of the commit
tee, 453 ; its temptations from the
side of its friends, 454, 455 ; its po
litical temptations, 455-457; its
prisoners, 457 ; its enemies and their
efforts, 458-402 ; its arrest and re
lease of Terry, 402, 4C3 ; its execu
tion of Brace and Hetherington, and
its concluding acts, 464.
Portohi, Governor, 13.
Presbyterians in San Francisco. 401.
Price, a miner, killed by his partner,
Fasterbrook, at Oak Bottom in 1851,
329, 330.
Prudon, M., CO.
Pueblos in California, foundation and
intention of, 14, 15.
Pvancheros. Sec California.**, native.
Reed, juror at the Downieville lynch
ing of July 5, 1851, 373.
Revere, LieutPiiant, cited, 173, 190.
Reyes, Point, 10.
Rezaiiof, visit of, to San Francisco,
17.
Richardson, General, U. 8. marshal,
shot by Cora in San Francisco, 447.
Riley, General, 205; cited, 238; ad
ministration of, and views of polit
ical situation, 240-255 ; calls consti
tutional convention, 257 ; surren
ders government, 270.
River-bed-mining, 310-312.
Robinson, Alfred, his "Life in Cali
fornia " cited, 38.
Robinson, Dr. Clnrlen, as squatter
leader in 1850, 477-179.
Robinson, Mr. H., cited, 309.
Ronp, Isaac, at (Vik Bottom and Shas
ta, 329, 332, 333.
Rough and Ready, opposition to for
eign miners at, 307.
Routes to California, 234-240.
Royce, Mrs. 8. K., statement of, cited,
241-246, 403-400.
Russians, first visit of, in California,
17 ; colony of, at Ross, 18.
Sacramento, land troubles at, in 1849-
50, 4(,y-47'J ; attempts at popular
government in, in 1849, 257.
Sacramento Valley, 4.
San Carlos, Mission of, founded in
1770, 14.
San Diego Harbor, visited by Viz
caino, 11.
San Diego. Mission of, settled 1769, 13.
San Francisco, Bay of, not known to
Drake, 10 ; name of, first applied to
bay south of Point Reyes by Cerme-
liou, 10 ; name of, coincidence with
Drake's given name, 11 ; entered by
Ayala, 14 ; the present bay discov
ered, name applied as at present,
14 ; appearance in 1849, 380.
San Francisco, city of. beginnings, 40,
47 ; during the interregnum, 213-
220 ; remarks on its situation and
plan, 214-219 ; in 1849, 246 ; at
tempts at popular government in,
in 1849, 257 ; social importance of,
377 ; external changes of, between
1848 and 1851, 378-391 ; appearance
of, in 1849, 378-382 ; rents in, during
1849, 379, 380-382 ; hotels of, in 1849,
379, 380 ; begins to fill Yerba Buena
Cove, 381, note; early fires of, in
1849 and 1850, 382, 383 ; commerce
of, in 1849-50, 383, 384; fire of May
4, 1851, 385, 380; fire of June 22,
1851, 387-389; rebuilding of the
city, 389, 390 ; use of wooden build
ings in the city, 390 ; scenes in the
city in 1851, 390, 391 ; social life of
the city in the early days, unhealthy
sides of, 391-398 ; exaggerated ac
counts of, inthe " Annals, " summa
rized and criticised. 393-398 ; women
in San Francisco, life of, as falstly
and as truly reported, 394, 395, 398,
399, 403-407, 434, 435 ; churches in
the city, 395, 398, 400-403 ; popula
tion of the city in early years as
compared with that of State, 399 ;
families in the city, life of, 403-407,
434, 435 ; popular justice at. in Feb
ruary, 1851, 407-417 ; first Vigilance
Committee at, 417-422 ; history of
the city between 1851 and 1856,
422-437 ; the crisis of 1850 and the
second Vigilance Committee, 437-
405 ; debt of the city, 380, 431 ;
partial repudiation of the debt, 432 ;
title to its lands, 482.
San Francisco, Mission of, founded
1770. 14.
San Gabriel River, fight at, 192, 193.
INDEX,
511
San Joaquin River, discovered, 14.
San Joaquin Valley, 4.
San Jose, pueblo of, founded in 1777,
14.
San Mateo Co., 383.
San Pascual, tight at, 188, 192.
SAII Pedro, light near, 188, 190.
San Rafael, 82.
Santa Barbara, region of, first visited
by Cabrillo, 9.
Schools in San Francisco, 219, 399.
Scudder, H. E., cited, 304.
Secularization of missions proposed
by Echeandia, 22 ; further progress
of, 23-25 ; completion of, 30.
Seraple, Dr., 101, 151 ; character of,
62 ; his part in and descriptions of
the Bear Flag affair, C3-GG, 09, 70 ;
his part in the constitutional con
vention, 204, 208, 2G9.
Serra, Junipero, 13 ; character of, 15.
Settlers' party, 480 ; later political
failure of, 493.
Seymour, Admiral, conduct and in
structions of, discussed, 1G7-172.
Shasta, popular justice at, in 1851,
329-333.
Shattuck, Judge, 412, 413.
Shaw, Pringle, his " Ramblings in Cal
ifornia" cited, 367.
Sherman, W. T., cited, 202, 203, 441,
443, 452, 459 ; as opponent of Vigi
lance Committee, 441,458, 459-401 ;
at the interview between Governor
Johnson and Vigilance Committee
members, 442-444 ; as general of
state militia, 400.
Shinn, Charles H., cited, 273, 279, 280,
290, 300, 314-310, 337, 340.
Shinn, Miss M. W., 99.
"Shirley," letters of, on the mining-
life, 283, 344-350 ; character of these
letters in general, 344, 345 and note, ;
early experiences of " Shirley " at
Rich Bar, 345-349 ; later experiences
at Indian Bar, 349-350 ; the author's
real name, 345 ; her furniture and
library in the mines, 350.
Sierra Nevada Mountains, 4, 5.
Simpson, H. I., fictitious author of
forged pamphlet, 231-233.
Sinclair, 223.
Sitka, 17.
Slidell, mission of, to Mexico in 1845,
152, 153 and note.
Sloat, Commodore, 82 ; instructions
of, 84, 85, 125-128 ; conduct of, dur
ing the conquest, 157-102, 175-177 ;
proclamation of, contrasted with
Stockton's, 181, 182; effects of his
proclamation as remembered after
conquest, 202.
Sluice-mining, invention of, 308 ; early
description of, 308, 309 ; social im
portance of the invention, 309, 310.
Smith, Jedediah S., 35.
Smith, Gen. Persifer F., at Panama,
237, 238; lelieves the emigrants of
1849, 244.
Society, state of, among the natives
before the conquest, 30-30 ; among
American residents before the con
quest, 38-41 ; among the men of the
interregnum generally, 198-213 ; at
San Francisco in 1848, 219 ; among
the new-comers in general, 225-234 ;
among the new-comers on the way,
234-240 -, forces generally affecting
it during early days, 272-278 ; forces
affecting it in the mines in particu
lar, 278-282 ; pan and cradle min
ing as social influences, 282-288 ; Dr.
J. T. Brooks, as witness on the min
ing society of 1848, 289-301 ; society
at the Mormon diggings in the early
summer of 1848, 290, 291 ; at various
camps, later in 1848, 293-298 ; soci
ety in 1849 in the mines, 303-307 ; as
affected by later forms of mining
industry, 309-313; as shown by
lynch law in the years after 1850 in
the mines, 317-324, 327-334 ; sins of
society in the mines, 330 ; corrupt
state of, as induced by the lynching
habit in the summer of 1852, 342,
343 ; " Shirley's " account of a typi
cal mining society, 344-350 ; mining
society, as affected by foreigners
and by the popular feeling towards
them, 350-374 ; improvement of so
ciety in later mining towns, 374-
370 ; reflections on this improve
ment, 375, 370 ; society in San Fran
cisco in early days, as affected by
over-work and over-excitement, 391-
398 ; conservative social forces in
San Francisco, 398-407 ; social cor
ruption during the business depres
sion of 1854-55, 424-432; reawak
ening of social conscience in San
Francisco, 432-438 ; social condi
tion, as affected by the second Vig
ilance Committee, 453, 462, 465;
general social condition of the State,
as affected by the land litigation,
480-491 ; concluding reflections on
the social history of California, 499-
501. See also Popular justice,
Americans in California, and Cali-
fornians, native.
Sola, Governor, 19.
Solir,, revolt of, 21.
Sonoma, taken possession of by the
Bear Flag men, 60 ; life of the Bear
512
INDEX.
Flag men at, CO-79; attempts at
popular government in, in 1849, '257.
Sonora, city of, difficulties with tlio
foreign miners at, in 1850, 300-304 ;
thief flogged at, 340.
Sonoran miners, attempted expulsion
of, in 1849, 305, 358. See also For
eign miners.
South. See North mid South.
Spanish rule in California, 11-19; end
of, in 1822, 19.
"Squire," the, at Indian Bar in 1851-
52, as known to " Shirley," 350, 355,
35G.
Statistics, brief and very general, of
State and of Sail Francisco, 398,
399.
Stevenson's regiment, 101, 197, 231.
Stillman, Dr., his " Seekingthe Golden
Fleece " cited, 235.
Stockton, Commodore, 133 ; at Mon
terey, 177 ; proclamation of, 178 ;
Tuthill's criticism of the procla
mation, id. ; sails for San Pedro,
179 ; enters Los Angeles, 180 ; sec
ond proclamation of, liSO-183;
speech of, on receiving news of the
revolt, 190 ; campaign of, in the
south against the revolters, 190-
193 ; quarrel of, with Kearny, 195-
197 ; relation of his conduct to sub
sequent politics in California, 203,
204, 250.
Stockton, disorder and justice at, in
1851, 341, 342; meeting at, to op
pose Foreign Miners' Tax, 300, note.
Stuart, the supposed, tried, 409-410 ;
saved by the first Vigilance Com
mittee, 422 ; the real Stuart, hanged
by the first Vigilance Committee,
421.
Sullivan, " Yankee," dies in Vigilance
Committee rooms, 457.
Butter, J. A., his fort and settle
ment, 40 ; his character and posi
tion, 41 : settlers with, 42 ; men
tioned, 223; his title to New Hel
vetia questioned by squatters, 470-
473.
Butter's Fort, state of feeling at, in
184C, 101, 107.
Talbot, Lieutenant, 190.
Taylor, Bayard, his " El Dorado "
cited, 240, 201, 303-305, 358, 359,
379, 380.
Taylor, President, administration of,
its influence in constitutional con
vention of 1849, 208.
Taylor, Willnm ("Father"), cited,
393, 400, 401.
Tehauntepec, 235.
Terry, Judge, as opponent of Vigi
lance Committee, 400 ; affray with
Hopkins, 402 ; confinement and
trial by Vigilance Committee, 403 ;
release, 404 ; kills Broderick, 490.
Tiiayer, Mr., protests unavailmgly
against the Downieville lynching of
July 5, 1851, 371.
Thornton, J. Or., his " Oregon and
California " cited, 43, 45.
Torn', Joaquin de la, 78, 79.
Traders, American, in California be
fore the conquest, 31, 34, 38-40.
Trappers, American, in California, 35,
30, 40.
Treaty of peace proclaimed in Califor
nia, 224.
Truckee Canon, 44.
Tuthill, " History of California," cited,
178, 179, 189, 223, 399, 458.
Vallejo, General, 28, 33 ; imprison
ment of, by Bear Flag men, 00, S/JQ. ;
behavior of, towards Be.ir Flag
men, 09, 70 ; legend concerning his
connection with a meeting at Mon
terey, 173.
Vallejo, Salvador, 00.
Vancouver, visit of, 17.
Van Ness, mayor of San Francisco,
441.
Ver Mehr, Rev. Dr., 401.
Victoria, Manuel, Governor, 22.
Vigilance Committee of San Francisco,
first, 417-422 ; second, 1, 437-405.
For further references, see under
Popular justice.
Vigilance Committees. See under Pop
ular justice, especially under Pop
ular justice in San Francisco.
Vizcaino, early voyage of, 11.
Washington Guards, the, 409.
Watson, Mr. R. S., cited concerning
the affair of February, 1851, and
concerning the first Vigilance Com
mittee, 412, 413, 415, 418, 419, 420 ;
his personal connection with these
matters, see id.
Weber's Creek, 291.
Weller, John I?., 494.
Wheeler, Rev. O. C., 401.
Wliittaker, hanged by the first Vigi
lance Committee of San Francisco,
422.
Wierzbicki, F. P., his "California"
(pamphlet) cited, 301, 302, 311, 378,
379.
Will»y, Rev. Mr., cited, 99, 230, 238,
258.
Williams, Rev. Albert, 401, 402, 403.
Women in California in early days;
native California!! women before
the conquest, their character, 32 ;
women at Yerba Buena in 1847,
214 ; among the new - comers in
1849, 231, 241-240 ; at the Mormon
diggings in 1848, 290, 291 ; in the
mines in the later summer of 1848,
297 ; women among a company ex
pelled from Shasta in 1S51, 333 ;
treatment of women in the mines
generally in early days, 340 ; " Shir
ley's " experiences as to the women
in the mines, 345, 34C, 347, 348,
354 ; a woman hanged at Downie-
ville in 1851, 368-374 ; influence of
women for the final triumph of
good order in the mines, 374 ; wo
men in Son Francisco, 378 ; charac
ter of, according to the "Annals,"
33
INDEX. 513
394, 395, 397, 398 ; true character
of, 3'J9, 400 ; family life of, in early
days, 403-407 ; evils of their posi
tion in San Francisco in 1855, 434,
435.
Woodruff, juror at the Downieville
lynching of July 5, 1851, 373.
Woodworth, S. E., 419.
Wool, General, 459.
" World Encompassed " cited, 10.
Yerba Buena, and Yerba Buena Cove.
See also under San Francisco, city
of-
Yerba Buena, Gillespie at, 106, 108 ;
state of feelings at, in June. 1846.
106.
Zabriskie, 475.
American Comtnontoealtija,
EDITED BY
HORACE E. SCUDDER.
A series of volumes narrating the history of such
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"JOHN ADAMS."
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"SAMUEL ADAMS."
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• — Boston "Journal.
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"NOAH WEI5STER."
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narrative is so spirited and enthralling, its descriptions
are so quaintly graphic, so varied and cheerful in their
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movement, and the activities of the real life of a bv-gone
but most interesting age, that the attention of the reader
is never tempted to wander, and he lays down, the book
with a sigh of regret for its brevity. — Harper's Monthly
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It fills completely its place in the purpose of this se-
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" HENRY D. THOREAU."
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knowledge of interesting people that one seldom meets
with in current literature. Mr. Sanborn has done Tho-
reairs genius an imperishable service. — American Church
Review (New York).
Mr. Sanborn has written a careful book about a curious
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story of whose life he has told with commendable frank
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It is undoubtedly the best life of Thoreau extant.—
Christian Advocate (New York).
"GEORGE RIPLEY."
Mr. Frothingham's memoir is a calm and thoughtful
and tender tribute. It is marked by rare discrimination,
and good taste and simplicity. The biographer keeps
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And the result is one of the best examples of personal
portraiture that we have met with in a long time. — The
Churchman (New York).
He has fulfilled his responsible task with admirable
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is a beautiful tribute to the high-bred scholar and gener
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trayed. — Rev. William H. Ch aiming (London).
"JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."
We have here a model biography. The book is charm
ingly written, with a felicity and vigor of diction that are
notable, and with a humor sparkling, racy, and never
obtrusive. The story of the life will have something of
the fascination of one of the author's own romances. —
New York Tribune.
Prof. Lounsbury's book is an admirable specimen of
literary biography. . . . We can recall no recent addition
to American biography in any department which is supe
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of Cooper's literary career, but there is mingled with this
a sufficient account of the man himself apart from his
books, and of the period in which he lived, to keep
alive the interest from the first word to the last. — New
York Evening Post.
"MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI."
Here at last we have a biography of one of the noblest
and the most intellectual of American women, which does
full justice to its subject. The author has had ample
material for his work, — all the material now available,
perhaps, — and has shown the skill of a master in his
use of it. ... It is a fresh view of the subject, and adds
important information to that already given to the public.
• — REV. DR. F. H. HEDGE, in Boston Advertiser.
He has filled a gap in our literary history with excel
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skill which is preeminently his own. — Christian Union
(New York).
Mr. Higginson writes with both enthusiasm and sym
pathy, and makes a volume of surpassing interest. —
Commercial Advertiser (New York).
"RALPH WALDO EMERSON."
A biography of Emerson by Holmes is a real event in
American literature. . . . He has brought Emerson him-
self so near, and painted him for us with a pencil so
loving and yet so just, that it will remain with many of
us a question which shall be hereafter most dear to us,
the man whom the artist thus reveals, or the artist him
self. — Standard (Chicago).
Dr. Holmes has written one of the most delightful
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clear, his sense of proportion delicate, and his sympa
thies broad and deep. — Philadelphia Press.
"EDGAR ALLAN POE."
Mr. Woodberry has contrived with vast labor to con
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The best life of Poe that has yet been written, and no
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praise, but it is deserved. Mr. Woodberry has spared no
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judgment, and the utmost catholicity of spirit. — Commer
cial Advertiser (New York).
"NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS."
Prof. Beers has done his work sympathetically yet can
didly and fairly and in a philosophic manner, indicating
the status occupied by Willis in the republic of letters,
and sketching graphically his literary environment and
the main springs of his success. It is one of the best
books of an excellent series. — Buffalo Times.
The work is sober, frank, honest, trustworthy, and em
inently readable. — The Beacon (Boston).
A delightful biographical study. — Brooklyn Union,
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