The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (24 page)

By then, Davis had also taken one other key step in behalf of a southern line. In May 1853, just months after the surveyors went to work, he had urged President Pierce to purchase from Mexico land strategic to the construction of a southern railroad. To negotiate the purchase, he got his friend James Gadsden appointed minister to Mexico.

Gadsden eagerly accepted the assignment. His thinking had changed since the days of the Memphis convention. While he still touted a southern railroad, he no longer focused on building it through Arkansas and north Texas. He now envisioned a more southern route along the Gila River. He had been told many times by army engineers that it was the shortest and most practicable of the southern routes. And for several years he had been actively pushing for the acquisition of more Mexican land to make this route more feasible. He also knew that the desired territory, a strip of land south of the Gila River, was regarded by the Mexican government as hostile Indian country and that the Mexican dictator, General Santa Anna, might be willing to sell it if the price was right. He thus set off for Mexico with a strong desire to acquire the land necessary to fulfill his dream of building a transcontinental railroad that would bind the West to the South.

On July 15, Gadsden received from Secretary of State William L. Marcy a list of official instructions.
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His main task was to secure sufficient land south of the Gila River for the building of a railroad. In addition, he was to try to resolve several other ticklish problems that had plagued the State Department. One concerned a pledge that the federal government had made at the end of the war with Mexico. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States had promised to police the Apaches and other tribes along the New Mexico border and keep them from launching attacks into Mexico. It had proved impossible to do, and the State Department now hoped to find a way to escape financial liability. Also, several well-connected New Orleans entrepreneurs wanted the right to cross the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. They had visions of building a canal or a railroad across Mexico and thus providing transport to California that would be some twelve hundred miles shorter than the Panama route. They also had friends in high places, at least three in the Senate, one or two in the Pierce administration.
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Gadsden barely paid lip service to these secondary matters. To him all that really mattered was getting enough land to build a railroad and having a defensible border. In preparing for his negotiations, he conferred at length with Andrew Belcher Gray, a thirty-two-year-old Virginian who had moved to Texas when he was nineteen and had become one of the region’s top surveyors. In these talks, Gadsden was single-minded. He only wanted to know what land, precisely, would be necessary for a railroad—and what additional land would be necessary for its defense. He also wanted Marcy to send Gray as his agent to the Gila River region to determine to the mile exactly what land was needed.
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The White House, however, had larger goals. On November 14, while Gadsden was negotiating with Santa Anna’s government, Christopher L. Ward, a special messenger, arrived with new instructions. The Pierce administration now wanted Gadsden to buy a much bigger slice of northern Mexico. The president had dreams of acquiring the northern part of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and all of Baja California, and Gadsden was to offer $50 million for it. Then, if that proposal failed, Gadsden was to offer $35 million, $30 million, and $20 million for progressively smaller chunks of northern Mexico. And then, if none of these four offers worked, he was to get sufficient territory for a transcontinental railroad.
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To Gadsden only the last instruction was worth an all-out effort. But he followed the president’s wish list nonetheless and tried to get Mexico to part with Baja California and the northern part of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora. Failing miserably, he blamed the outcome on William Walker’s invasion of Baja California. Had it not been for Walker, contended Gadsden, he would have had more success. Walker had hardened General Santa Anna against further land concessions.
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This defeat, however, never distracted Gadsden from his main goal. In negotiations, according to Mexican sources, he remained single-minded. With most items on the State Department’s agenda, he tended to be lackadaisical. He tried, for example, to get the Mexican government to uphold the Garay and Sloo grants that seemingly would have enabled the well-connected New Orleans entrepreneurs to build a canal or railroad across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. But when the Mexican minister did not do so, Gadsden did not push it. He agreed instead to have the U.S. government compensate the aggrieved Americans.

On land for a railroad, however, Gadsden gave no quarter. He was not just a tough negotiator. According to the Mexican dictator, General Santa Anna, he was downright nasty and belligerent. Said Gadsden: “The projected railroad from New York to California must be built by way of the Mesilla Valley, because there is no other feasible route. The Mexican government will be splendidly indemnified. The valley must belong to the United States by an indemnity, or we will take it.” This infuriated Santa Anna. But he was desperate for money, and the promise of $15 million caused him to turn the other cheek.
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Gadsden concluded negotiations on December 30, 1853. For $15 million, the United States was to get about forty-five thousand square miles in the Mesilla valley, south of the Gila River.

The deal disappointed President Pierce. He expected more land. Nonetheless, he backed the Gadsden Purchase in his first annual message and submitted it to the Senate for ratification on February 10. Even more distraught was Senator Augustus Caesar Dodge of Iowa. He deemed the Gadsden Purchase outrageous. He opposed a southern railroad. He wanted one built from Omaha west. Hoping to block the purchase, and to rally others to his cause, Dodge introduced a bill for the organization of Nebraska.

The Senate considered the treaty in secret session. Hence the record of who said what and when is sparse. But judging from offhand remarks made by senators in other debates and newspaper “leaks,” the treaty initially fell well short of the necessary two-thirds majority. Opposition came from several quarters. Three senators, including William Gwin of California, wanted more land. Three objected to the United States’ agreeing to pay up to $5 million to American entrepreneurs who had once held Mexican franchises, now repudiated by Mexico, for building a railroad or canal across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Several Southern senators opposed expansion. The main opposition, however, came from Northern senators who saw the treaty as a gain for the Slave Power. The debate was thus largely sectional.
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To dampen Northern disapproval and to win a few key Southern votes, the treaty’s backers decided amendments were necessary. They proposed paying less money, $10 million, for less land, roughly twenty-nine thousand square miles. Then, to make sure that they could still build a southern railroad, they had to redraw the boundary. Taking the lead in this effort was Senator James M. Mason of Virginia. For assistance, he relied heavily on his fellow Virginian and Gadsden’s trusted expert, Andrew Belcher Gray. The changes infuriated Gadsden, so much so that he lobbied against the finished product.

Map of Gadsden Purchase

Even with the changes, it still took weeks of hard work to get the necessary two-thirds vote. Hostile senators not only denounced the treaty. They also lambasted the railroad surveys provided by the Corps of Topographical Engineers that had been used to justify the purchase. Joining the angry senators, once it became time to appropriate money, were members of the House. In both chambers nearly every critic assumed that the surveys were biased. That they were done under Jefferson Davis, said Thomas Hart Benton, “was proof enough for most men” that that was the case.

The most savage criticisms came from Benton. He had lost his seat in the Senate but now sat in the House. Flaying Davis and his handiwork, Benton described the area south of the Gila River as “so utterly desolate…and God-forsaken that Kit Carson says a wolf could not make his living on it.” Was it worth $10 million? No, Robert J. Walker and his “moonshine” railroad could have bought the same scrubby land for $6,500. As for the “expert” advice from the Corps of Engineers, said Benton, “it takes a grand national school like West Point to put national roads outside of a country and leave the interior without one.” Then, waving a map of San Diego, he added: “It is said to belong to the military—to the scientific corps—and to be divided into many shares, and expected to make fortunes of the shareholders or lot holders as soon as Congress sends the Pacific railroad to it.” And the biggest crook of the bunch, thundered Benton, was undoubtedly Davis’s chief engineer, William Emory. Not only was Emory tied to the “paper city.” He was also the brother-in-law of Robert J. Walker, the president of the “moonshine” railroad.
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To official Washington, Benton’s harsh words came as no surprise. Not only did the Missouri congressman want a railroad running from St. Louis west; he also had a well-known grudge to settle against Emory and the Corps of Engineers. Emory was among the West Point officers who had testified against his son-in-law John C. Frémont. And West Pointers in the Corps of Engineers had always resented Frémont’s reputation as the “Pathfinder” and treated him shabbily.

Yet even though Washington insiders realized that Benton had scores to settle, many thought his points were valid. Among them was Zedekiah Kidwell, a forty-year-old Democrat from the hills of western Virginia. A lame-duck congressman, Kidwell later wrote the House minority report on the Pacific railroad surveys. In his eyes, Jefferson Davis blew it. He was so biased in favor of the 32nd parallel route that he not only failed to serve the interests of the nation but also failed the South. He failed to see that the 35th parallel route had the best chance of uniting the various interests, particularly if the eastern terminus was far enough west so that forks could be run to St. Louis, Memphis, and Fort Smith. The 32nd route, in Kidwell’s eyes, had no chance of passing. It was just too far south and too controversial, and it infuriated too many rival interests.
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Was Kidwell right? The supporters of the 32nd line knew that to have even a chance to prove him wrong, they had to get the treaty passed. On April 17, they were still three votes shy of the necessary two-thirds majority. On ratification, they came up short, 27 to 18. But Southern senators wouldn’t let the matter drop. Nor would the Pierce administration. Together, they wooed the wavering—and the corrupt—with sweetheart deals and patronage.
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And by April 25 they had an additional six votes, the three votes they needed and then some. The amended treaty was thus ratified, 33 to 12.

Had it solely been in the hands of Northern senators, it would have gone down to defeat. Twelve Northern senators voted yes; twelve no. But in the end, the twelve Northern yes votes were decisive. All but one were Democrats, members of President Pierce’s party. Only their willingness to vote with a solid bloc of twenty-one Southern senators led to the treaty’s approval.
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Jefferson Davis thus got the land he needed. But getting the land, as Kidwell knew, was just the first step in developing a southern transcontinental railroad. Would Congress go the next step and appropriate money for building a railroad?

As time passed, Davis became bolder and more determined. The only problem with the 32nd parallel route, in his judgment, was the lack of water. Every other complaint was bogus. So he focused on water. How could that problem be solved? The answer, he decided, lay in artesian wells. So, at his direction, the Corp of Engineers began boring artesian wells near the mouth of the Pecos River in Texas. This experiment ended in failure and provided even further data for his critics.

That didn’t stop Davis. His obsession with a southern route, along with the water problem, led to an even more bizarre experiment. As a senator, he had heard about the military advantage of camels. As secretary of war, he came across a book on desert warfare that further touted the military advantage of camels. It “proved” that they traveled twice as fast as horses, ate less, went three days without water, and carried as much as twelve hundred pounds. Would camels solve the transportation problem until a railroad was developed? Davis thought so. The book, however, was in French. So to make his case, Davis stayed up late, night after night, translating the book into English. Then, armed with this “scientific” information, he argued that a camel corps was a military necessity, that it would benefit the U.S. Army anywhere and everywhere, not just in the Southwest.

On March 3, 1855, Congress appropriated $30,000 for a camel corps. Davis then sent Major Henry C. Wayne to the Levant and Egypt to buy shiploads of camels, thirty-three in 1856, thirty-two in 1857. Transported to Indianola, Texas, they were taken inland to Camp Verde, Texas. From there, a few made their way to California, but most disappeared to parts unknown. What happened to the lost camels? No one knows for certain. But they became the subject of one wild story after another as “eyewitnesses” all over the Southwest claimed to have spotted them. What if Davis’s experiment had succeeded? Would it have tied the Far West to the South until a railroad was developed? That was clearly Davis’s intent. And he, at least, never regarded it as a pipe dream.
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