Genius of Place (37 page)

For Olmsted, infighting with the board had echoes of Central Park's politics and his dealings with Andrew Green. Once again, bureaucrats and bean counters were mucking around, trying to bring down something that he had built. He began floating the idea that he might resign.

George Templeton Strong, a fellow USSC commissioner, crafted an entry in his diary that includes a kind of plus-column and minus-column assessment of Olmsted. “He is an extraordinary fellow,” wrote Strong, “decidedly the most remarkable specimen of human nature with whom I have ever been brought into close relations. Talent and energy most rare; absolute purity and disinterestedness. Prominent defects, a monomania for system and organization . . . and appetite for power.”

In another diary entry, Strong speculated that his colleague's extreme drive was causing the worst traits in his nature to win out: “Olmsted is in an unhappy, sick, sore mental state. Seems trying to pick a quarrel with the Executive Committee. Perhaps his most unsanitary habits of life make him morally morbid. He works like a dog all day and sits up nearly all night, doesn't go home to his family for five days together, works with steady, feverish intensity till four in the morning, sleeps on a sofa in his clothes, and breakfasts on strong coffee and pickles!!!”

Olmsted resented the challenges from his USSC colleagues. But something else was going on, too. By now, Northern victory was pretty much ensured, and Olmsted finally had the chance to contemplate life after wartime. It filled him with panic. Even if Olmsted didn't leave the
USSC, this wartime job would be ending soon enough anyway. He wouldn't be able to return to work at his beloved Central Park, either. Vaux had recently resigned, worn down by political battles of his own. He'd gone ahead and submitted Olmsted's resignation, too, a move to which Olmsted agreed. What could Olmsted do next to make a difference? What would he do to make a living? Minus the USSC job's salary (which had been settled at $2,500 per year) and $1,200 from Central Park, his income would be nil.

During this period, Olmsted got into a rare scrape with his father. Why, if his son was so worried about the future, the elder Olmsted demanded, was he limiting his options, battling his colleagues at the USSC, agreeing to quit Central Park in league with Vaux? Wasn't firming up existing prospects the wise course? Olmsted responded defensively, listing some of his accomplishments and throwing around terms like
principles of management
to remind his father that he was a man of the world. That he'd hurt his son's feelings clearly upset John Olmsted. Both father and son moved quickly to smooth things over. “However wanting in sagacity I may be, I am obstinate only in honest dutifulness,” wrote Olmsted, signing the letter, “Your affectionate Son.”

Still, Olmsted was restless, unsettled by ill-focused ambition. He started looking for new work. He considered landscape architecture. His recent visit to Chicago had convinced him that the city was sorely in need of a pleasure ground. But landscape architecture was also a nascent profession, albeit one that he and Vaux had pioneered. He wasn't sure whether there was enough demand for him to make a living at it.

Journalism seemed a surer bet. Olmsted even came up with a promising idea in collaboration with Edwin Godkin, a friend and fellow journalist. Like Olmsted, Godkin had traveled across the South writing about slavery as a correspondent for the
London Daily News
. Now, the pair hit upon what seemed like a potentially winning journalistic formula: a serious magazine of ideas, similar to the
Atlantic
, covering weighty issues, like federalism—but rather than a monthly, it would be a
weekly
magazine, something of an innovation at this point.

Olmsted and Godkin tossed around various names:
Comment
,
Reviser
,
Scrutiny
, perhaps the
Maintainer
or the
Holdfast
. They even drew up a
business plan,
Prospectus for a Weekly Journal
. The pair was able to raise only $3,000 of the $40,000 they estimated was needed to start the magazine.

Olmsted approached Charles Dana, hoping he might invest in the venture. Dana—a onetime colleague at
Putnam's Magazine
, and longtime second in command to Horace Greeley at the
New York Tribune
—was a field observer for the Union army. His job was to visit generals at their camps and report back to Washington. A particularly delicate assignment involved spending time with Grant to address rampant rumors of the general's alcoholism. Dana concluded that Grant was an extremely capable commander and tactician, heavy drinking notwithstanding. Lincoln called Dana “the eyes of the government at the front.” Olmsted pitched his weekly journal idea to Dana. Dana thought launching a new magazine in the middle of a war was terrible timing. He told Olmsted, “I don't believe it will succeed.”

Early in August 1863, Olmsted received an envelope marked “Private.” It contained a letter from Dana concerning something called the Mariposa Estate, a sprawling gold-mining property near Bear Valley, California. Until recently, the owner of the enterprise had been John Charles Frémont, the famous explorer. But he'd recently sold a majority stake in the mines to a group of eastern financial backers that included George Opdyke, mayor of New York City. They were looking for a manager. Qualified candidates were in short supply during wartime, and finding someone willing to live in the wilds of California only upped the challenge. This was reflected in the enticingly generous salary, $10,000 a year plus stock incentives. Dana had been offered the job but turned it down, recommending Olmsted instead. “You are less rooted than I am,” Dana wrote. “It seems a chance you may like to accept.”

Olmsted immediately set off to New York to meet with Mayor Opdyke and the other backers. The position was his, he was told, if he chose to accept it. As he weighed the Mariposa offer, he generated far more than his usual volume of letters to friends and family. These letters show Olmsted divided, wrestling with various issues: his obligations to the war effort, the turmoil of uprooting his family once again, and
whether by taking the position he'd be selling out. In choosing jobs, Olmsted had always placed the ability to effect social reform above financial considerations; running a gold mine decidedly did not equal social reform. He also felt a vague misapprehension about the eastern moneymen. Yet for every argument Olmsted could summon, a part of him was already leaning westward.

The money was a draw, no question. Olmsted had borrowed $5,500 from his father in buying into
Putnam's
, and the publishing company's collapse had saddled him with an additional obligation of $8,000. He'd retired very little of this debt and still owed $12,000 by his own calculations. Olmsted worried about what would happen if he fell seriously ill, went blind, or broke his other leg. If—God forbid—he died, Mary and the children would be left in “absolute poverty.”

Even more so than the money, Olmsted appears to have been thrilled by the opportunity to try something new. He had built up the USSC, set it on its course, and now all that was left were maintenance and aggravation. Mariposa was a fresh, blank canvas. He was caught up in the romance: California, the West, epic scenery, a gold mine.

Bellows tried to talk Olmsted out of leaving. Despite their recent scuffles, the reverend valued Olmsted as an administrator and viewed the younger man as a good friend, too. Bellows appealed to Olmsted's ambition, deeming him one of just “a half-dozen men in the whole North” with the potential to shape weighty affairs of state in the years ahead. And Bellows appealed to Olmsted's patriotism. “
The country can not spare you at such a juncture
,” wrote the reverend, italicizing generously. “I think
you
must
feel this
in
your bones
.”

Olmsted's mind was made up. On September 1, 1863, he resigned from the Sanitary Commission.

 

The USSC continued on to the end of the Civil War, operating under two more general secretaries that followed Olmsted. Its record of battlefield relief is stunning. Working with 286 local aid societies, the USSC solicited an estimated $15 million (in 1860s dollars) worth of supplies and another $5 million in cash that was used to buy medicine and other items.

Right after Antietam, Olmsted had launched a hospital directory to better connect wounded soldiers with their loved ones. The USSC set up a department for discharged veterans, helping them fill out forms, obtain pensions, and otherwise navigate the bureaucratic maze in Washington. A series of pamphlets, produced by the USSC and circulated to army field surgeons, offered some of the era's best medical guidance. The USSC's Bureau of Vital Statistics, initiated by Olmsted, conducted 1,482 camp inspections. The data gathered has been of immense value to the historians.

The USSC also gets credit for goading the Medical Bureau into action, by pushing for the 1862 reform bill. The same army that began the Civil War with 26 surgeons finished with 11,000! The same army that started the war with a handful of field hospitals ended it with 204, featuring 137,000 beds. When General Meade described the “inestimable blessings and benefits conferred by that noble association upon the sick and suffering soldiers,” he was referring, of course, to the USSC.

There's even a crucial connection between the USSC and the American Red Cross. After the Civil War, Bellows sought to keep the spirit of the USSC alive. He founded an organization called the American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields. The AARMB's primary purpose was to get the United States to comply with the Geneva Convention. This treaty (signed on August 22, 1864) conferred neutrality on medical workers on the battlefield, along with the injured soldiers in their care. It was signed by countries such as Belgium, France, and Prussia, but not the United States. The AARMB's board featured substantially the same cast as the USSC's board, including George Templeton Strong, Oliver Wolcott Gibbs, and Olmsted. The outfit also had its own flag, a white Greek cross on a red background, reminiscent of the Sanitary Commission flag.

Clara Barton, the legendary Civil War battlefield nurse, who had operated independently of both the Medical Bureau and the USSC, also took up the cause of getting America to ratify the Geneva treaty. Through tireless effort, Barton convinced President Garfield to sign. But he was assassinated before he could make good on the promise. At this point, Barton turned to Bellows, asking him to write a letter supporting her efforts.
Bellows did so only a few weeks before his own death in January 1882. President Chester Arthur signed the Geneva treaty on March 1, 1882. This gave official recognition to an organization Barton had founded the previous year, the American Red Cross.

The Red Cross began life as a battlefield relief outfit with substantially the same mandate as the original USSC. Over time, it would evolve into an organization that also provided aid during peacetime disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. As one historian put it, the USSC played “mid-wife to the Red Cross.”

But all this was years in the future. Right now, Olmsted was headed to California.

V

“There Seems to Be No Limit”

CALIFORNIA, 1863–1865

CHAPTER 19

ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1863, Olmsted departed New York bound for the Mariposa Estate, a sprawling concern in the heart of California gold country. This stretch of land was legendary, described by Horace Greeley, who had visited during a recent cross-country journey, as “perhaps the finest mining property in the world.” It also had a colorful back story, full of intrigue and double-dealing, some of which was known to Olmsted and some of which would soon be revealed.

John Frémont, the famous western explorer, had purchased the Mariposa Estate for $3,000 in 1847, when the land was still under Mexican control. The 44,387 acres were a floating grant, a Mexican real estate anomaly whereby the size of a property was fixed, but the precise location was not. This made it possible to shift a claim, akin to moving a blanket on a beach.

In his youth, Frémont had been an imposing figure. People who met him were often struck that every facet of his being—his hard-angled face, distant gaze, and compact muscular build—seemed designed only for action, never contemplation. Once, as an Indian prepared to fire an arrow at Kit Carson, Frémont rode to his friend's aid, rearing up on a horse and stomping the Indian to death.

When gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada, Frémont simply floated his land grant to cover some of the most coveted territory. Prospectors who had already staked claims on the land were apoplectic. Once California gained statehood in 1850, they finally had a means to pursue their grievances. The ensuing legal wrangle went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Frémont won in 1859.

Mariposa gold made him a very wealthy man. But he fell just as quickly into debt, thanks to his legal fees, the cost of maintaining the mines, and the financial toll of his heady political ambitions. (Frémont was the brand-new Republican Party's very first presidential candidate in 1856. Olmsted voted for him, but Frémont lost the election to Democrat James Buchanan.) “Why, when I came to California I was worth nothing,” he once joked, “and now I owe two millions of dollars.”

In 1863, Frémont managed to erase some of this debt by selling most of his property to the group of investors that included Mayor Opdyke. It was a different time, one when a big-city mayor could launch a business while in office. The investors organized the Mariposa Company, headquartered at 34 Wall Street, and drew up a prospectus, filled with projections from mining consultants. One consultant calculated that the Mariposa Estate would yield one hundred tons of raw ore daily for the next 388 years. Another stated, “There seems to be no limit to the extent to which mining and milling operations can be carried out.” The Mariposa Company quickly sold $10 million worth of stock to a gold-fevered public. Frémont was named a trustee of the new entity, and he retained an equity stake. If the company proved successful, he'd be able to pay off still more of his debts. Frémont dreamed of one day reclaiming full control of his mining business.