The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (21 page)

Crabb and Hammond’s motives in embracing this proposal were suspect. No one believed that they were truly concerned about the plight of southern Californians. Many, however, thought they wanted to split the state in two and establish slavery in the southern half. Wrote Antonio Maria de la Guerra, the assemblyman from Santa Barbara: “There is a suspicion here that all these questions are only a pretext to put in time awaiting division.” Noted one pioneer in his diary: “The proposition now before the legislature, to submit the question of a constitutional convention to the people, has for its secret purpose the introduction of slavery.” Echoed the San Francisco
Pacific:
“It is now too well known to need repeating that the principal objection in view by those who advocate the proposed convention is that our Constitution may be so amended as to permit slavery.” Reported the
Alta California:
“It is evidently the design of a clique in the Legislature to divide the state at all hazards.” In the same editorial: “Those who don’t want the dark cloud of slavery spread over the sunny hills and valleys of California have little to look for from the present Legislature of California.”
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The
Alta
spoke too soon. With Speaker Hammond’s backing, Crabb successfully maneuvered the proposal through the assembly. In the senate, however, was David Broderick. Determined to kill the bill, Broderick made full use of his parliamentary expertise. He first rounded up enough votes to postpone the measure indefinitely. He then filed a motion to reconsider the bill and got enough votes to defeat his own motion. Under the rules, the second vote barred further consideration of the bill for the rest of that legislative session.

The next year Crabb wrote a “Whig Secret Circular” that called for a state convention to frame a new constitution and to divide the state. He also ran for the state senate and got elected. With him in the upper house, the Chivs and their Whig allies tried again. This time Broderick wasn’t in the senate, and they succeeded in getting the measure through both houses. Nonetheless, they still had to deal with Broderick. In their bill, they had not provided for voter ratification of whatever the constitutional convention decided. Why the omission? asked Broderick. Did they plan to sneak the new constitution by the electorate? Broderick demanded that this “oversight” be rectified, and at the state Democratic convention he got an overwhelming majority to agree with him. That effectively killed the bill.
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The next year the voters turned Crabb out of office.

Upon losing political office, Crabb shifted his attention to Mexico. He had recently married Filomená Ainsa, the daughter of a rich Spanish merchant, Manuel Ainsa. Her family had migrated to California from Sonora thirty years earlier, right after Mexico had gained independence from Spain. They had left behind considerable wealth in Sonora. With the help of their new son-in-law, they hoped to get some of it back and take over Sonora in the process. Did such a takeover also provide a chance to establish a slave state in northern Mexico? Crabb thought it did and jumped at the opportunity.
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In 1856, Crabb and his in-laws decided that the time was ripe. One of Sonora’s frequent revolutions had led to the ouster of the faction headed by Ignacio Pesquera. The ousted leader now wanted help. They went to see him. Pesquera, in turn, begged Crabb to rally Americans to the cause and told Crabb that his men desired to be annexed to the United States. Crabb then formed the Arizona Colonization Company, a motley collection that included one sitting California state senator, eight former state legislators, and several former soldiers.
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Crabb also received help from Senator Gwin. The Chiv senator called upon General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who was in charge of troops in San Francisco, to provide “safe conduct” for Crabb so that he could successfully make an “independent move on Sonora.” Noted the general: “A pretty thing indeed, that I should be dragooned into giving such a protection to a leading man of a hostile force against Sonora!—and at the solicitation of a senator of the United States!”
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By the time Crabb and his men invaded Sonora, the situation had changed for the worse. First, some of his followers got drunk and boasted that Sonora would soon be theirs. Their boasts traveled faster than they did and alienated all who might have welcomed them. To smooth things over, Crabb had to explain how he had been invited into Sonora by “some of the most influential citizens.” He also warned, “If blood is to flow, with all its horrors, on your head be it, and not on mine.” Second, and more important, the Pesquera group had made peace with their rivals and were eager to make up for their traitorous past. Pesquera now called on his supporters to kill the invaders.
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Ignorant of all this, Crabb led his men into Sonora in March 1857. On the morning of April 1, they ran into trouble. Ambushed just outside Caborca, they fought their way into town and in the process lost twenty-one men, wounded or dead. They sought refuge in some adobe houses. They then decided that a nearby church offered more protection and tried to blow the doors open with a keg of gunpowder. They botched the attack. Several more men were killed, and Crabb was wounded. They then holed up in a row of houses. On April 6, Mexican authorities set fire to the roofs with flaming arrows. Crabb’s men then attempted to blow the roof off one of the houses with a keg of gunpowder, only to choke themselves and further expose themselves to the enemy.

Many of Crabb’s men wanted to fight their way out, but Crabb thought this would be foolhardy. He asked instead for terms of surrender. Shortly after midnight, upon getting a promise of medical attention and a fair trial, Crabb and his men put down their weapons and walked single file to the church, where they were hog-tied. The next morning, at dawn, fifty-nine men were executed by firing squad, in groups of five to ten. The last to be executed was Crabb. Tied with his face to the pole and hands above his head, he had some one hundred rounds fired into him. His head was then chopped off and put on display in a large jar of mescal.
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Only one invader, fourteen-year-old Charles Edward Evans, survived the assault.

Meanwhile, frustrated in his effort to establish a slave colony at the “Sources of the Joachin,” James Gadsden turned his attention to a southern transcontinental railroad. Here, too, he faced an uphill struggle. For other entrepreneurs had already taken steps to gain control of the gold trade.

No sooner had gold been discovered in California than the question arose over how to get there. Equally important was how to get the gold back east. The value of gold coming out of the Sierras skyrocketed—from $5.69 million in 1848, to $12.48 million in 1849, to $53.02 million in 1850, to $64.68 million in 1851, to $66.64 million in 1852.
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Overnight, California gold became the nation’s most valuable mineral. What was the best way to move it? The safest way? Going around the Horn was long and treacherous. So, too, was going overland by wagon train, while going through Panama meant going through a foreign country. In the long run, contended Gadsden, the only solution was a transcontinental railroad.

But that solution, to Gadsden’s dismay, was jeopardized by bold and cunning men who moved faster than he did. Among them was William Aspinwall. As soon as the gold rush began, the astute New Yorker realized that he needed more ships. Three wouldn’t do. By 1851 he had expanded his gold fleet to nine ships. Simultaneously, Aspinwall and his partners lobbied Congress and the government of New Granada for a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama. They moved fast and worked out a deal with New Granada on December 21, 1848, months before California became a state.

The contract gave Aspinwall and his partners eight years to build a road, a large grant of land, a right-of-way, and permission to select their own route. After completion, they were to have the exclusive right to operate a railroad, turnpike, or canal for forty-nine years. They could fix their own tolls, provided that the tolls were uniform and treated the citizens of all nations alike. The ports were to be free ports. After twenty years, New Granada had the right to purchase the property, and it was to receive 3 percent of all dividends.

Upon ratification of this deal, Aspinwall and his partners tried to improve upon the U.S. mail contract that they already had. It paid them $500,000 a year to carry the mail to California. In addition, they sought from Congress a twenty-year contract for transporting government officials, troops, munitions, and army and navy supplies. The House Committee on Naval Affairs responded favorably, citing the advantage it would give the United States over Great Britain in the Pacific and the great traffic between the East Coast and California. There was one snag, however. The committee wanted limitations on the rates that the company might charge, and Aspinwall and his partners rejected such restrictions.
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In the Senate, Thomas Hart Benton, chair of the Committee on Military Affairs, tried to find middle ground. Benton and his fellow committee members introduced a bill that authorized the secretary of the navy to make such a contract for twenty years with compensation of $300,000 per annum, the contractors to begin their railroad within one year from June 1, 1849, and complete it within three years. Getting the bill passed, however, proved impossible. Among those in opposition were Jefferson Davis, who argued that such a bill would delay building a railroad on American soil, and Henry Foote, who supported a rival railroad project across the Tehuantepec isthmus.
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William Aspinwall and associates. Reprinted from
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
18 ( January 1859), 147.

Nonetheless, with their $500,000-a-year federal mail contract and the backing of New Granada, Aspinwall and his partners plunged ahead. Work began in May 1850. Two engineers, J. C. Trautwine and George M. Totten, headed the project. They expected to finish the job in two years at $2 million. Both men had tropical experience, but finding and keeping a labor force was beyond them. They tried local labor. They then brought in Irish workers, then Jamaicans and other West Indians, then Chinese and Hindu coolies. One group after another, however, succumbed to fever, malaria, cholera, dysentery, and smallpox. The death rate was staggering. In 1852, of some fifty American engineers, draftsmen, and officials, all but two died. Wags later said that one man died for each of the seventy-four thousand ties that was laid. That was a wild exaggeration, but many thousands died, maybe one for every twelve ties laid. The project thus took five years to complete and cost $8 million.

On January 18, 1855, the last track was laid. A few hours later, the first locomotive made the 47.5-mile trip across the isthmus and rolled into Panama City. It took three hours. Thereafter, one train crossed per day in a six-day workweek. The cost for a one-way ticket was $25 in gold. By Christmas 1859, the railroad had carried 196,000 passengers, $300 million in gold bullion, and 100,000 bags of mail. In its first seven years, it netted about $6 million in profits and regularly paid dividends of 15 percent and once a whopping 44 percent. At one point, it was the highest-priced stock on the New York Exchange at $295 a share.
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William Aspinwall was not the only wily New Yorker who got a jump on James Gadsden. So, too, did Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The fifty-five-year-old Vanderbilt, in 1849, was already a New York legend. Big, bumptious, loud, and coarse, he had dropped out of school when he was eleven or twelve and gone to work full-time for his father, a poor Staten Island farmer, transferring farm produce to Manhattan. When he was sixteen, his parents had lent him $100 to purchase a small sailboat. With it he set up a freight business and ferried passengers, 18 cents one way, 25 cents round-trip, and earned over $1,000 the first year. From sailing he got into steamboats and railroads and was probably worth $1 million by the time he was forty-five.

Cornelius Vanderbilt. Library of Congress.