The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (22 page)

Generally known as the Commodore, a title bestowed on him by
The New York Journal of Commerce,
Vanderbilt had earned a reputation for being both a man of his word and a hardheaded businessman. He had little concern for the people around him, including his wife (a first cousin whom he married against his parents’ wishes) and his thirteen children, whom he generally ignored or treated as worthless. In his judgment, only one of his sons, William Henry, amounted to much.
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With the California gold rush in 1849, Vanderbilt immediately took stock of the situation. He knew that Aspinwall initially had an edge. Was there any way to get the better of him? After studying maps of Central America for many hours, Vanderbilt saw an opening. North of Panama, the San Juan River runs along the Nicaragua border with Costa Rica for 119 miles and then empties into Lake Nicaragua. The western shore of the lake, which is one hundred miles long and fifty miles wide, is only twelve miles from the Pacific Ocean. If Vanderbilt could make use of the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua, all but twelve miles of Nicaragua could be crossed by boat, and the route to California could be shortened by at least five hundred nautical miles.

Map of Panama and Nicaragua

To take advantage of this situation, Vanderbilt invested in the American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Company and sought a monopoly from the Nicaraguan government. In late August 1849, he had his agent, Joseph L. White, with the connivance of the American minister to Nicaragua, E. George Squier, strike a deal with Nicaraguan authorities. It gave Vanderbilt and his associates the exclusive right to operate a transit system across Nicaragua. In twelve years, Vanderbilt was to construct a canal (or railroad, if more feasible) to link the final few miles to the Pacific.

The Nicaraguan government was to provide construction materials, convict labor to do the work, customs exemptions, and eight sections of land. In return, Vanderbilt had to pay the government $10,000 up front, $10,000 a year during canal construction, $200,000 in canal stock when the stock was issued, 10 percent of the annual profits until the canal was completed, 20 percent of the profits for the first twenty years thereafter, then 25 percent, and finally ownership of all the assets after eighty-five years.
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To test the route, which many locals said wasn’t navigable, Vanderbilt personally piloted a small steamboat up the San Juan River. He then had the river cleared of obstacles, placed a steamboat on Lake Nicaragua, and built a road from the western shore of the lake to San Juan del Sur—a port he constructed on the Pacific coast. Vanderbilt then organized the Accessory Transit Company and in 1851 secured a modification of his original contract that gave him a monopoly of transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He began with two steamships on the New York run, three on the Pacific, and quickly expanded to four and five.

The completed project cut six hundred miles and two days off the trip to and from California. Between 1851 and 1856, about twenty-four thousand Americans per year took this route. Since Vanderbilt’s costs were less than Aspinwall’s, he immediately put pressure on his business rival, slashing the prevailing fare of $600 to $400. He also offered to carry the mail for free. Eventually he dropped the fare to $150 and still made money.

By 1853, Vanderbilt was worth $11 million. To impress New York society, which had always shunned him because of his poor roots and boorish behavior, he built the
North Star,
a twenty-five-hundred-ton and 170-foot steam yacht, for a fifteen-thousand-mile trip to Europe and the Mediterranean. Since he was to be gone for six months, he decided to temporarily turn over control of his companies to other men. To run the New York branch of the Accessory Transit Company, he chose Charles Morgan, a fellow shipowner and friend who had been born and raised in Connecticut but had a long interest in the Gulf trade and used slave labor on his steamers.
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Morgan then suggested that Vanderbilt hire Cornelius Garrison to be his San Francisco agent. A New Yorker by birth, Garrison had moved to Panama City at the time of the gold rush. There, he had become famous as an extremely aggressive banker and shipper who also owned and operated three-card monte tables. To get him, Vanderbilt had to offer him a salary of $60,000 per year and letters of credit to transport $1 million per month in gold to eastern firms. Garrison then moved to San Francisco and within six months became the city’s mayor. He was known for his slippery ways, and an admirer said that it took “twenty men to watch him.”
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While Vanderbilt was away, Garrison and Morgan tried to take over his company. First they manipulated stock prices in Accessory Transit in such a way that they profited while Vanderbilt lost heavily. Then they tried to get control of the Nicaraguan government and have a new government transfer the Transit concession to themselves. For that task, they turned to William Walker.

The twenty-nine-year-old Walker was an enigma. At first glance no one thought much of him. All agreed that he was short, probably about five feet six, thin, freckled, extremely shy, unpretentious, seldom spoke, and always kept his hands in his pockets. Upon meeting him, one man wrote: “There he sat!—a little, white-haired, white-eyebrowed, boyish-looking man, with cold, icy-gray eyes, a quiet, passionless manner, which renders him exceedingly mysterious and enigmatical, even to his most intimate friends.”
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William Walker. Reprinted from Ben: Perley Poore,
Perley’s Reminiscences,
2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1886), 1:402.

Yet somehow Walker was able to command men and inspire loyalty. Indeed, he had an uncanny ability to get hundreds of men to follow him to their death. Why? Few could explain it.

A native of Nashville, Walker had attended the University of Nashville, and then earned a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Then, after traveling through Europe, he returned to Nashville, practiced medicine for a short while, and then moved to New Orleans, where he became first a lawyer and then the editor and co-owner of the New Orleans
Crescent.
He also fell in love with Ellen Martin, a deaf-mute, and learned sign language to communicate with her. In April 1849, she died of cholera. Her death, all agreed, left a permanent mark on Walker, and some thought it explained everything about him—his daring, his reckless disregard of life, his ability to burn whole towns and execute rivals and deserters with few regrets.
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Shortly after Ellen Martin’s death, Walker took off for California. Arriving in San Francisco in 1850, he became the associate editor of
The San Francisco Daily Herald.
He soon ridiculed the judicial system, particularly Judge Levi Parsons, who had him arrested. Released as a result of public outrage, Walker then fought a duel with one of the judge’s backers. Slightly wounded, he moved to Marysville in 1851, where he again practiced law. In his spare time, he followed the exploits of two French filibusters, Raousset-Boulbon and Charles de Pindray, who had led private armies onto foreign soil. Influenced by their example, Walker decided to establish American colonies in Sonora and Baja California.

Walker, in 1853, first sought permission from Mexican authorities, who turned him down. He and his law associate, Henry P. Watkins, then planned an invasion, with Walker leading the first batch of troops, Watkins bringing reinforcements. Helping them plan the assault were members of the California state legislature and their clerks. They also had the backing of both California senators, William Gwin and John Weller.
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With forty-five men and a brig, Walker landed at La Paz in November 1853 and proclaimed the Republic of Lower California with himself as president. Watkins and the planned reinforcements, however, were detained by the U.S. government and never arrived. Mexican troops then drove Walker and his men out of La Paz, into Sonora, and blocked their path at the border. Charging the Mexican line, Walker and his men broke through and crossed the border, only to be arrested by the U.S. Army and brought to trial in San Francisco for violating U.S. neutrality laws. The trial was futile. The jury acquitted Walker after just eight minutes of deliberation.

Settling again in San Francisco, Walker now turned his attention to Nicaragua. It was easy pickings. The country was plagued by constant civil war, and one of Nicaragua’s warring factions—the Liberals—desperately needed troops. In 1854, they offered Byron Cole, a Walker associate from San Francisco, a large land grant in return for help in ousting their Conservative rivals. After persuading Walker and Cornelius Garrison to support the Liberal cause, Cole signed two contracts with the Liberals in which Walker was to bring in three hundred men, and the men were to be guaranteed five hundred acres after their service, and the Accessory Transit Company was to provide some three hundred company men.

In 1855, Walker marched into Nicaragua, took the enemy capital of Granada by surprise, and had a cabinet minister of the opposing government shot. Soon the opposition, fearful for their lives, came to terms. Walker named himself head of the army but allowed Patricio Rivas to become provisional president, and then ousted him and took over the presidency himself. In 1856 the U.S. government recognized his regime.

Walker’s success attracted followers by the hundreds. So, too, did his offer of 250 acres of Nicaraguan public land for free to any American who immigrated to “his” country. Between 1855 and 1857, according to one observer, some seven thousand men from the Atlantic states arrived via the San Juan River and another thirty-five hundred from California.
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Among the recruits was a young Missourian, James Carson Jamison, who had tried his luck at mining gold in El Dorado County. Once he heard about Walker, his “blood grew hot at the thought of the stirring adventures” that awaited him if he could “attach himself” to Walker’s army. So Jamison joined one of the California companies that was being formed and in the election of officers was chosen a first lieutenant. Upon receiving his commission from Walker in Granada, he could barely believe his ears: “A woman’s voice was scarcely softer than Walker’s, and so imperturbable was he that his praise of a valorous deed or his announcement of a death penalty were equally calm in tone and deliberate in enunciation.”
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Walker’s glory days, however, were short-lived. In December 1855, Cornelius Garrison’s son arrived in Granada. He had a proposal. Garrison and Morgan would furnish Walker with reinforcements and cover the costs of transporting them to Nicaragua. In return, they wanted Walker to annul Vanderbilt’s contract on the grounds that the Commodore had not kept up his payments to the Nicaraguan government. Walker would then issue a new charter giving Garrison and Morgan exclusive transit rights. He would also turn over to them all Accessory Transit Company property in Nicaragua. Walker accepted the deal and in February 1856 had President Rivas sign the necessary paperwork.

It proved to be a colossal mistake. On returning from six months abroad, Vanderbilt sought revenge against all who had wronged him. He had no time for legal action, he said; the law was too slow. He intended instead to destroy his adversaries. With capital at his command, he formed a new shipping company, the Independent Line, with Edward Mills, a California shipping magnate. Then, to drive Morgan and Garrison into bankruptcy, he operated his steamboats below costs. By the end of the year, he had the two “interlopers” in deep financial trouble, hanging on, but barely.

To bring down Walker, Vanderbilt began working closely with Walker’s Central American enemies. They had far more men than Walker, but their armies were rife with corruption and reluctant to fight. Vanderbilt used his money to prod them into forming an alliance to invade Nicaragua and expel Walker. He also sent in men to lead and plan the attack. One was William Webster, an English adventurer with a criminal record, who mapped out a plan for Costa Rican troops to seize the transit route and cut off Walker’s supply lines. Another was a New Yorker, Sylvanus M. Spencer, who ended up commanding the Costa Rican operation.
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