The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (37 page)

Advertisement for California troops. Reprinted from
Alta California,
October 1862.

Equally persistent were another group of five hundred men, some from Oregon, most from California. They made their way back east, largely at their own expense, to Pennsylvania and joined the Seventy-first Pennsylvania Volunteers. Known as the California Brigade, they were initially commanded by Colonel Edward D. Baker, who, after presiding over Broderick’s funeral, served briefly as a senator from Oregon and then as Lincoln’s chief West Coast adviser. At Ball’s Bluff in October 1861, the California Brigade suffered heavy casualties. Among the dead was Colonel Baker. The survivors then went on to fight at Antietam in September 1862 and Gettysburg in July 1863. Their final battle was the June 1864 assault at Cold Harbor, where the Union lost seven thousand men in one hour. Having experienced the bloodiest single day of the war, and four of the worst days that followed, well over half the brigade perished, 99 from disease, 160 on the field of battle.
²³

As for the leading Chivs, only a handful saw anything as bloody as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor. Many, however, supported the Southern cause.

Milton Latham, as usual, wavered. Retaining his seat in the U.S. Senate, he endorsed a bill that Californians had long coveted. With the South out of the Union, Free-Soilers in July 1862 finally hammered out the railroad legislation they wanted. Called the Pacific Railroad Act, it provided for federal subsidies for a railroad running from Nebraska to California. Yet while backing the bill, Latham continued to impugn the motives of the North. He also defended slavery and constantly found fault with the Lincoln administration. At the same time, however, he usually supported war measures and the troops on the front line. Branded as disloyal by the Republicans in California, who finally gained control of the state midway through the war, Latham lost his Senate seat in March 1863. Returning to San Francisco, he became a banker and railroad tycoon.

Congressman Burch never went back to Congress. He instead practiced law in San Francisco. Congressman Scott also never returned to Congress. He instead immediately headed South and joined the Confederate army. He became a major in the Fourth Regiment of the Alabama Volunteers and was wounded at Bull Run in July 1861.

With the onset of war, William Gwin and his family also demonstrated their loyalty to the South. Gwin’s teenage son enlisted in the Confederate army, his eldest daughter moved to Richmond and became a Confederate belle, and his wife, Mary, was accused at one point of being a Confederate spy. Gwin himself was briefly arrested and, after being released by Lincoln, retired to his Mississippi plantation. He remained there until the Battle of Vicksburg, when his plantation was burned to the ground. After that, he worked for the Confederacy in France and Mexico and upon his return to the United States was imprisoned.

As for Judge Terry, he was never prosecuted for killing Broderick. Another judge threw the case against him out of court.

Months later, in the 1860 presidential campaign, Terry served as an elector for John C. Breckinridge, the Southern contender, and thus gave Free-Soilers still more ammunition to attack Chivs.

Cartoon displaying disgust with David Terry. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.

Then, when the Civil War broke out, Terry returned to the South, joined the Confederate army, and rose to the rank of brigadier general. After the war, he came back to California and settled again in Stockton. In 1889, exactly thirty years after he killed a U.S. senator, Terry got into another fracas, this time with a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Stephen Field.
²⁴

Justice Field, oddly enough, owed his life to the dead senator. Arriving in California in 1849, Field had established himself as a judge in the town of Marysville, made over $100,000 in just six months on the bench, and then had it all taken away from him by a rival judge who almost had him disbarred. Furious, Field had won a seat in the state legislature and there attempted to have the rival judge removed from office. In the process, he narrowly avoided a duel and being killed in a barroom ambush. To his aid had come Broderick. Already a power in the legislature, Broderick had consented to be Field’s second in the duel, which was never consummated, and then foiled the ambush by throwing his body between Field and the would-be assassin.

Field later broke with Broderick over national politics, and their intimacy ceased. Yet, Field wrote, “I could never forget his generous conduct to me; and for his sad death there was no more sincere mourner in the state.”
²⁵
Nor could Justice Field ever forget the man who was responsible for Broderick’s death. He knew Terry well. He had served under Terry on the California Supreme Court, and Terry had opposed him on virtually every decision. Terry, he noted, “had the virtues and prejudices of men of the extreme South.”
²⁶

Then, many years later, in 1888, Field presided over a circuit court case that involved Terry’s second wife. Thirty years Terry’s junior, and several months pregnant, she had sued the senator of Nevada for alimony. She had won in the state court but now had to cope with Justice Field. Over one of his rulings, she exploded. As she was being forcibly ejected from court, Terry rushed to her aid and drew a knife. Field sentenced her to thirty days in jail, the judge to six months. Both threatened Field.

Months later, the couple encountered Field in a railroad restaurant in Lathrop, just outside Stockton. Terry marched up to Field and slapped him in the face. Field’s bodyguard, David Neagle, then shot and killed Terry. Nearly one hundred people saw what happened. Most thought the shooting amounted to murder, that it was unnecessary, especially after a search of Terry’s body revealed that he was unarmed. Many also testified that the slaps were light and appeared to be intended as the first steps toward a duel.

Local authorities filed charges, citing Neagle for murder and Field as his accomplice. Field, however, maneuvered to have the case handled by a federal judge. That judge, in turn, took testimony and eventually declared that the federal court had jurisdiction over the matter and the state of California had no right to prosecute Neagle. Then, on the basis of his review of the evidence, he added that Neagle’s killing of Terry was not merely justified, it was commendable. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld his decision.

The story was carried in nearly every daily newspaper in the country. Most emphasized Terry’s life of violence, and many saw in his death “a useful lesson.” Such a man should expect to die as he had lived, they said. The New York
Sun,
along with several other newspapers, gave the story a different twist. After thirty years, proclaimed the
Sun,
David Broderick could now rest in peace. He had finally been avenged.

Notes

PROLOGUE

1. For the story of the duel, see Carroll Douglas Hall,
The Terry-Broderick Duel
(San Francisco, 1939); A. Russell Buchanan,
David S. Terry of California: Dueling Judge
(San Marino, Calif., 1956); David A. Williams,
David C. Broderick: A Political Portrait
(San Marino, Calif., 1969).

2. David S. Terry to Cornelia Terry, June 29, 1852, David Smith Terry Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; Charles R. Boden, “David Terry’s Justification,”
Wasp
55 (1933), 3; Buchanan,
Terry,
93.

3. Donald E. Hargis, “The Issues in the Broderick-Gwin Debates of 1859,”
California Historical Society Quarterly
32 (Dec. 1953), 313–25; Donald E. Hargis, “‘Straight Toward His Heart’: George Wilkes’ Eulogy of David C. Broderick,”
California Historical Society Quarterly
38 (Sept. 1959), 196–217; L. E. Fredman, “Broderick: A Reassessment,”
Pacific Historical Review
30 (Feb. 1961), 39–46; Hall,
Terry-Broderick Duel.

4. Arthur Quinn,
The Rivals: William Gwin, David Broderick, and the Birth of California
(New York, 1994), 41–42; James O’Meara,
Broderick and Gwin
(San Francisco, 1881), 4–5.

5. Hargis, “George Wilkes’ Eulogy of David C. Broderick,” 196–217; Fredman, “Broderick: A Reassessment,” 39–46; Hall,
Terry-Broderick Duel.

6. James J. Ayers,
Gold and Sunshine: Reminiscences of Early California
(Boston, 1922), 170–78.

7. “Oration of Col. E. D. Baker,” in Jeremiah Lynch,
The Life of David C. Broderick
(New York, 1911), 229–38; Oscar T. Shuck,
Masterpieces of E. D. Baker
(San Francisco, 1899).

8. Charles A. Barker, ed.,
Memoirs of Elisha Oscar Crosby
(San Marino, Calif., 1945), 62–63.

CHAPTER 1

1. Erwin G. Gudde, ed.,
Bigler’s Chronicle of the West: The Conquest of California, Discovery of Gold, and Mormon Settlement as Reflected in Henry William Bigler’s Diary
(Berkeley, Calif., 1962), 66ff.; David L. Bigler, ed.,
The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah Smith
(Salt Lake City, 1990), 108.

2. Anne Dismukes Amerson, “Jennie Wimmer Tested Gold in Her Soap Kettle,” www.goldrushgallery.com.

3. The story of Sutter and his mill has been told many times. Among other sources, see Mary Hill,
Gold: The California Story
(Berkeley, Calif., 1999), 24; Kenneth N. Owens, ed.,
John Sutter and a Wider West
(Lincoln, Nebr., 1994), 21; Rodman Wilson Paul,
California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West
(Cambridge, Mass., 1947), 18; Hubert Howe Bancroft,
History of California, 1848–185,
6 vols. (San Francisco, 1888), 6:38–40.

4. The story of Marshall’s discovery has been told many times and in many different ways. See, for example, Henry William Bigler diary, Jan. 24, 1848, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco; Malcolm J. Rohrbough,
Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation
(Berkeley, Calif., 1997), 7; Rodman Wilson Paul,
Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848–1880
(New York, 1963), 13; Hill,
Gold: The California Story,
23–24.

5. JoAnn Levy,
They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush
(Hamden, Conn., 1990), xix–xxi.

6. The story of Brannan’s life, like Sutter’s, has been told many times. For details, see Rodman Wilson Paul,
California Gold Discovery: Sources, Documents, Accounts, and Memoirs
(Georgetown, Calif., 1967), 69–80; Bancroft,
History of California,
6:56; Hill,
Gold: The California Story,
26–27, 33; James Austin Brown Scherer,
The First Forty-niner and the Story of the Golden Tea-Caddy
(New York, 1925);
Sutter County Historical Society
13 ( Jan. 1974), entire issue.

7. Walter Colton,
Three Years in California
(New York, 1851), 246–48, 251–52, 253.

8. James Lynch,
With Stevenson to California, 1846–1848
(New York, 1882); Francis D. Clark,
Stevenson’s Regiment in California, 1847–1848
(New York, 1896). These two books have also been reprinted together as
The New York Volunteers in California
(Glorieta, N. Mex., 1970).

9. Larkin to James Buchanan, June 28, July 20, 1848, in George P. Hammond, ed.,
The Larkin Papers,
10 vols. (Berkeley, Calif., 1951–68), 7:304, 321; John A. Hawgood,
America’s Western Frontier: The Exploration and Settlement of the Trans-Mississippi West
(New York, 1967), 172.

10. For further details on the Chilean migration, see Jay Monaghan,
Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush
(Berkeley, Calif., 1973); Edwin A. Beiharz and Carlos U. López, eds. and trans.,
We Were 49ers! Chilean Accounts of the California Gold Rush
(Pasadena, Calif., 1976); Carlos U. López,
Chilenos in California: A Study of the 1850, 1852, and 1860 Censuses
(San Francisco, 1973).

11. Vicente Pérez Rosales,
California Adventure,
trans. Edwin S. Morby and Arturo Torres-Rioseco (San Francisco, 1947), 271–79.

12. Edward H. Hargraves,
Australia and Its Gold Fields
(London, 1855), 75. For further details on Australian migration, see Jay Monaghan,
Australians and the Gold Rush: California and Down Under, 1849–1854
(Berkeley, Calif., 1960); Charles Bateson,
Gold Fleet for California: Forty-niners from Australia and New Zealand
(East Lansing, Mich., 1964).

13. T. A. Rickard, “The Gold-Rush of ’49,”
British Columbia Historical Quarterly
14 ( Jan.–April 1950), 48–51; Ralph J. Roske, “The World Impact of the California Gold Rush, 1849–1857,”
Arizona and the West
5 (Autumn 1963), 195–96; H. W. Brands,
The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream
(New York, 2002), 463–66; Hargraves,
Australia and Its Gold Fields,
86–117; Robert Hughes,
The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787–1868
(New York, 1987), 561–65.

14. For the conflicting accounts on Chinese migration, see Stephen Williams,
The Chinese in the California Mines, 1848–1860
(San Francisco, 1930); Frederic Wakeman, Jr.,
Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861
(Berkeley, Calif., 1966); Ping Chiu,
Chinese Labor in California, 1850–1880: An Economic Study
(Madison, Wis., 1967); Yong Chen,
Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1942
(Stanford, Calif., 2000), 11–41.

15. Alexander McLeod,
Pigtails and Gold Dust: A Panorama of Chinese Life in Early California
(Caldwell, Idaho, 1947), 23.

16.
Daily Alta California,
May 15, 1852. These three individuals were clearly not the first Chinese to come to California. For conflicting details regarding earlier migrants, see Thomas W. Chinn, H. M. Lai, and Philip P. Choy,
A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus
(San Francisco, 1969), 8–16; Bancroft,
History of California,
7:336;
San Francisco Chronicle,
July 21, 1878.

17.
Daily Alta California,
May 15, 1852.

18.
San Francisco Chronicle,
Dec. 5, 1869; Herbert Asbury,
The Barbary Coast
(New York, 1933), 172–73; Curt Gentry,
Madams of San Francisco
(New York, 1964), 50–59; McLeod,
Pigtails and Gold Dust,
175–77; Benson Tong,
Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco
(Norman, Okla., 1994), 6–9, 11–12; Judy Yung,
Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco
(Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 33–34. One account has Ah Toy returning to California and living until age ninety-nine.

19. David Roberts,
A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Frémont, and the Claiming of the American West
(New York, 2000); William Goetzmann,
Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863
(New Haven, Conn., 1959), 77–78, 97.

20.
Memoirs of General William Tecumseh Sherman, by Himself
(New York, 1875), 70–77.

21. Henry Blumenthal, “The California Societies in France, 1849–1855,”
Pacific Historical Review
25 (Aug. 1956), 251–60; Abraham P. Nasatir, “Alexandre Dumas fils and the Lottery of the Golden Ingots,”
California Historical Society Quarterly
33 ( June 1954), 125–42; Karl Marx,
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
(New York, 1852; repr., New York, 1963), 84–85.

22. Cardinal Goodwin,
The Establishment of State Government in California, 1846–1850
(New York, 1914), 56; Bancroft,
History of California,
6:121; R. W. G. Vail, “Bibliographical Notes on Certain Eastern Mining Companies of the California Gold Rush, 1849–1850,”
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
43 (3rd Quarter), 247–78; Octavius T. Howe,
Argonauts of ’49: History and Adventures of the Emigrant Companies from Massachusetts, 1849–50
(Cambridge, Mass., 1923), 174–75, 189, 209; James P. Delgado,
To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the Gold Rush
(Columbia, S.C., 1990), 7, 18–21.

23. Howe,
Argonauts of ’49,
189, 209.

24. Lynch,
With Stevenson to California,
5–18; Howe,
Argonauts of ’49,
173, 189, 191.

25. Howe,
Argonauts of ’49,
64.

26. Brian Roberts,
American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 74–78.

27. Donald Dale Jackson,
Gold Dust
(New York, 1949), 98, 103; “Petrel,” Bancroft Library, Berkeley; Howe,
Argonauts of ’49,
75–76, 204–5; Roberts,
American Alchemy,
102–12.

28. Thomas Jefferson Matteson diary, April 15–19, 1849, Bancroft Library.

29. For more details on Farnham, see JoAnn Levy,
Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California
(Santa Clara, Calif., 2004); and the introductions to two Farnham reprints,
Life in Prairie Land
(1846; repr., Urbana, Ill., 1988) and
California In-Doors and Out
(1856; repr., Nieuwkoop, 1972). Also see Roberts,
American Alchemy,
221–44.

30. Farnham,
California In-Doors and Out,
1–21.

31. Hill,
Gold: The California Story,
43–45; Rohrbough,
Days of Gold,
59–60; Oscar Lewis,
Sea Routes to the Gold Fields: The Migration by Water to California in 1849–1852
(New York, 1971), 170–82; John Haskell Kemble,
The Panama Route, 1848–1869
(Berkeley, Calif., 1943), 167–76.

32. Lewis,
Sea Routes to the Gold Fields,
171; Kemble,
Panama Route,
167; Jeremiah Lynch,
A Senator of the Fifties: David C. Broderick of California
(San Francisco, 1911), 36–38.

33. Lewis,
Sea Routes to the Gold Fields,
190–95; Kemble,
Panama Route,
176–77; J. S. Holliday,
The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience
(New York, 1981), 428–31.

34. Duncan S. Somerville,
The Aspinwall Empire
(Mystic, Conn., 1983); Fessenden Nott Otis,
History of the Panama Railroad…
(New York, 1867).

35. Lewis,
Sea Routes to the Gold Fields,
168; Kemble,
Panama Route,
37.

36. Kemble,
Panama Route,
37–38.

37. David A. Williams,
David C. Broderick: A Political Portrait
(San Marino, Calif., 1969), 28–29; Arthur Quinn,
The Rivals: William Gwin, David Broderick, and the Birth of California
(New York, 1994), 55–56; Edgar H. Adams, “Private Gold Coinage in California,”
American Journal of Numismatics
45 (1911), 174–78, 189; James O’Meara,
Broderick and Gwin
(San Francisco, 1881), 22–23.

38. Williams,
Broderick,
28–29; Quinn,
Rivals,
55–56; Adams, “Private Gold Coinage in California,” 174–78, 189; O’Meara,
Broderick and Gwin,
8–9, 22–23.

39. Augustine F. Costello,
Our Firemen: A History of the New York Fire Department
(New York, 1887), 145–60 and passim; Sean Wilentz,
Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850
(New York, 1984), 259–62; Tyler Anbinder,
Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum
(New York, 2001), 183–85.

40. Robert Ernst, “The One and Only Mike Walsh,”
New-York Historical Society Quarterly
36 ( Jan. 1952), 43–65; Wilentz,
Chants Democratic,
326–35; Anbinder,
Five Points,
156–58; O’Meara,
Broderick and Gwin,
7–8, 10.

41. What sparked the 1842 riot is a matter of dispute. The poet Walt Whitman, an admirer of Walsh, blamed it on Tammany Hall. The merchant Philip Hone, who despised Walsh, blamed it on religious tensions. See Joseph J. Rubin and Charles H. Brown, eds.,
Walt Whitman of the
“
New York Aurora
” (State College, Pa., 1950), 77–80; Allan Nevins, ed.,
The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851
(New York, 1936), 596. For further details, see also Anbinder,
Five Points,
154–58.

42. Alexander Saxton,
The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York, 1990), 206–10; Helene S. Zahler,
Eastern Workingmen and National Land Policy, 1829–862
(New York, 1941), 1–49.

43. Williams,
Broderick,
13; O’Meara,
Broderick and Gwin,
6.

44. O’Meara,
Broderick and Gwin,
18–21. Lynch,
A Senator of the Fifties,
31–34, tells the same story but says the president was John Tyler.