The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (3 page)

All through March and April, the
Star
made light of Marshall’s discovery. It was no big deal, nothing to get excited about. Meanwhile, the
Star
’s owner expanded his holdings in the gold fields. As a deputy of Brigham Young, he went there to collect tithes. But instead of sending the money to Salt Lake City, he used it to open a store at Mormon Island and Coloma and to build a hotel in Sacramento. He also stocked his Sacramento store with everything a gold seeker might need and gained a monopoly on steamboat landings at Sacramento. Then, on May 12, Brannan returned to San Francisco with a bottle of gold dust. Holding it high at the corner of Portsmouth Square, he shouted: “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” By month’s end, almost the entire male population of San Francisco had left town for the gold fields.

The U.S. military, especially, was hard hit. In San Francisco, sailors abandoned their ships, soldiers deserted by the hundreds. In Monterey, three seamen ran away from the
Warren,
thus forfeiting four years’ pay, and “a whole platoon of soldiers” fled the fort and “left only their colors behind.” The situation became so bad that the fort’s commanding general and the ship’s captain “had to take to the kitchen” and cook their own breakfast. Imagine, wrote one lieutenant, “a general of the United States Army” and “the commander of a man-of-war…in a smoking kitchen, grinding coffee, toasting a herring, and peeling an onion”!
⁷

A deserter from the fort at Monterey. Reprinted from Walter Colton,
Three Years in California
(New York, 1852), 71.

Joining the deserters were scores of former soldiers who had recently been discharged. Out of the disbanded Mormon Battalion came several hundred. In California to acquire horses and cattle before heading to the Great Salt Lake, they now stayed to mine gold. Several hundred more gold seekers came out of the New York Volunteers, a regiment of some seven hundred men who had been recruited in New York by Colonel Jonathan Drake Stevenson, a well-heeled Democratic politician, to fight in the war against Mexico. They had been mustered into the army in August 1846, and after training for six weeks, they had been sent around Cape Horn to occupy California. Most had finished their military obligation and were now awaiting a ship home. On hearing the news of “gold on the American River,” the vast majority instead headed for the Sierras.
⁸

A month after the news broke, the American consul in San Francisco, Thomas Larkin, reported the situation to the American secretary of state. Not only had a “large portion” of the sailors and soldiers stationed in San Francisco and Sonoma deserted, but the navy had put out to sea to keep more men from joining them. In addition, three-quarters of the city’s houses were now deserted, “every blacksmith, carpenter and lawyer” was now leaving, the “brick-yards, saw-mills and ranches” had no one left to run them, both of the city’s newspapers had stopped publishing, the city had “not a justice of the peace left.”
⁹

The mammon half of Brannan’s nature thus triumphed. His businesses profited, and he became a millionaire. He acquired large holdings in both Sacramento and San Francisco. He gave up the Mormon church, never joined Brigham Young in Utah, never forwarded the tithes he received from gold-mining Mormons. Not all was rosy, however. His wife who had accompanied him to California discovered that he was a bigamist, that without her knowledge the Mormon church had given him permission to take her as a second wife, and that he was still legally married to another woman, whom he had callously abandoned along with their child. The divorce suit cost him much of his fortune. So did a lawsuit that he later filed against the railroad entrepreneurs who eventually came to dominate California. Drink finally ruined him.

The news that Brannan parlayed into a fortune traveled mainly by sea. It thus reached ports in the Pacific Ocean months before it reached New York or Boston. New York and Boston were fourteen thousand nautical miles from San Francisco, while Acapulco and Honolulu were just two thousand, Callao four thousand, Valparaiso six thousand, Sydney and Canton seven thousand.

Sea routes to San Francisco

Among the ships docked in San Francisco in May 1848 was a brig owned by José Ramón Sánchez of Valparaiso, Chile. While loading the ship with hides and tallow, California’s principal exports, the supercargo heard about gold on the American River and purchased some gold dust at $12 per ounce. On June 14 the brig set sail for Chile and arrived in Valparaiso on August 19. Within days the rush was on. Two dozen hopefuls bought passage on the
Virjinia,
which was just about to head north, and Chilean merchants began outfitting other ships.
¹⁰

Among those who lined up for passage was forty-one-year-old Vicente Pérez Rosales, a restless intellectual who already had had a colorful career as a gold miner in the Chilean Alps and a cattle rustler in Argentina. Along with his three brothers, a brother-in-law, and two servants, Rosales got passage on a French bark bound for San Francisco. The ship was jammed. All told, there were ninety male passengers, two females (including a prostitute named Rosario), four cows, eight pigs, and three dogs, along with a crew of nineteen men. The ship left Valparaiso in December 1848. Fifty-two days later, after much boredom and a few near disasters, Rosales and his shipmates reached the mouth of the Golden Gate, which, he wrote, “inspired awe but at the same time smiled, seeming to open wide to receive us.”
¹¹

Meanwhile, far across the Pacific,
The Sydney Herald
broke the news of gold on the American River in December 1848. Among those who took notice was thirty-three-year-old Edward Hargraves, “a corpulent bull-calf of a man” who had worked as a sailor, publican, and shopkeeper. After settling his affairs at home, Hargraves formed a small group of gold seekers and bought passage on the
Elizabeth Archer,
an English bark out of Liverpool. On board were at least one hundred passengers. Leaving Sydney on July 17, 1849, the ship reached San Francisco eighty-one days later. As it entered the harbor, Hargraves’s hopes skyrocketed. Everywhere he looked he saw abandoned ships, “a complete forest of masts—a sight well calculated to inspire us with hope, and remove the feelings of doubt.” The next day the
Elizabeth Archer
joined them, as the whole crew, excepting one officer and three apprentice boys, jumped ship.
¹²

Hargraves’s high hopes soon dimmed, however. Heading well east of San Francisco, he hoped to make a fortune prospecting on the Stanislaus River. He learned the craft of prospecting with pans, cradles, and excavation, but he found little gold and nearly froze to death at night. During the day, however, he noticed that the California terrain showed similarities to that of his Australian home. Hadn’t he seen similar rocks and geological formations in New South Wales, within three hundred miles of Sydney? He was certain he had. Unsuccessful in California, he decided to return to Australia and discover gold there. Arriving in Sydney in January 1851, he proceeded to the interior, and on February 12 found gold in Lewis Ponds Creek, a small tributary of the Macquarie River. The impact was instantaneous. In 1852 Australia produced sixty million in gold, and Hargraves became a national hero.
¹³

Simultaneously, while the news of California gold was enticing Edward Hargraves and other readers of
The Sydney Herald,
ship brokers spread the word in southern China, especially throughout the Canton region. Why Canton? That has become a matter of dispute. According to one school of thought, the region had been devastated by civil war, floods, droughts, typhoons, and famine. Families were thus desperate, looking for a way out. According to another interpretation, the area was more market-oriented than most of China and thus had more than its share of risk takers.
¹⁴

Whatever the explanation, ship brokers saw the Cantonese as fair game. Playing on their hopes and fears, one enterprising Hong Kong broker concocted an illustrated pamphlet that promised “big pay, large houses, and food and clothing of the finest description” for all those who went to California. The broker also claimed that California was “a nice country, without mandarins or soldiers,” that the Chinese would be welcomed there with open arms, and that the “Chinese god” was already there.
¹⁵

Accompanying such fabrications were word-of-mouth reports that allegedly came from the Chinese who were already in California. According to S. E. Woodworth, the agent and consul for the Chinese in California, two Chinese men and one woman had reached California before news of gold had reached China. They had arrived on the brig
Eagle,
from Hong Kong, in February 1848.
¹⁶
One man named Chum Ming supposedly heard many stories about gold on the American River and traveled to the gold country to see for himself. He then wrote a friend in Canton who immediately set sail for “Gum Shan,” or “Gold Mountain,” as California was called. This tale, and many like it, made its way around the crowded streets of Canton.

The combination of lies, hope, and desperation caused thousands of young Chinese to mortgage their futures and board boats to “Gum Shan.” It was a dangerous gamble, but many probably had little to lose. Most had to work off the cost of their passage (between $30 and $50), and nearly all were told that it would be easy to accomplish once they reached the land of gold. By February 1849, according to Woodworth, 54 Chinese men and one Chinese woman had successfully crossed the Pacific. By the following January, his tally had climbed to 789 men and two women.
¹⁷

Not much is known about any of the men. But one of the two women became both rich and famous. Her name was Ah Toy. Allegedly, she had to pay off a debt and pay for her passage by serving the Chinese male population as a prostitute. But once she got to San Francisco, she quickly attracted the attention of wealthy white men. As a result of their favors, she purchased her freedom and became the owner of two of the most profitable brothels in San Francisco, at 34 and 56 Pike Street, later Waverly Place and now Walter U. Lum Place, which she stocked with girls she bought and imported from China. For several years, Madam Ah Toy was one of the principal dealers in Chinese prostitutes throughout California. In addition, she operated a chain of saloons in San Francisco, Sacramento, and other boomtowns. Years later, she sold out and returned to China a wealthy woman. Only a precious few did as well in Gold Mountain as she did.
¹⁸

As word of gold on the American River was making its way around the Pacific, the U.S. military dispatched several couriers to carry the message to Washington, D.C.

The first and most famous was Christopher “Kit” Carson. A thirty-nine-year-old Kentuckian who had been raised in Missouri, Carson had already gained fame as a mountain man and scout for John C. Frémont, the nation’s most celebrated explorer. Frémont, in his reports, had made much of Carson, his horsemanship, his marksmanship, his daring, his Indian fighting. Frémont even told how, when he fell into an ice-cold Sierra stream, Carson saved not only his life but also his precious rifle. Thanks to Frémont, Carson became a national folk hero, the epitome of the Wild West, the illiterate, quiet, unassuming, and plainspoken frontiersman with broad shoulders and a barrel chest and clear blue eyes.
¹⁹

In May 1848, Carson’s military superiors gave him several letters about the discovery and a copy of
The California Star
to take to Washington. Saddling up in Los Angeles, he made his way to Santa Fe, his home in Taos, then on to Missouri, where he boarded a steamboat, and then on to Washington. He arrived there on August 2, after three months on the road. Along the way, newspapers made much of his presence but omitted mention of the gold, as did the Washington, D.C.,
Daily Union
, when he arrived in the nation’s capital.

Also dispatched to Washington was the navy lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald “Ned” Beale. Sent on July 27, roughly three months after Carson, Beale went by way of Mexico, bearing some gold and the navy’s report to Secretary of State James Buchanan and Secretary of the Navy John Y. Mason. He arrived in Washington on September 18 and two days later had an audience with President James K. Polk. He told Polk about what Marshall had found. But Polk didn’t believe him.