The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (31 page)

By Christmas Day 1856, Gwin knew better. In just six weeks, it had become clear to him that he had celebrated too soon. The claim that Broderick had been stripped of his power by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee through the deportation of his political aides was obviously just wishful thinking. In reality, Broderick was now stronger than ever. He clearly had over thirty legislators in his pocket. No one could get elected to the U.S. Senate without his backing. Two seats were now available, and the only man Broderick was certain to support was himself. All the other potential candidates—Latham, Weller, and Gwin—could stop him only if they worked together. And that was unlikely to happen. Thus they had to scramble for the second seat.
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Gwin was a realist. “I care not who my colleague is if I am elected,” he wrote. “I do not think Broderick can be defeated, and if elected who so important to our section of the party to be his colleague as myself?…A half a loaf is better than no bread.”
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The legislature convened in the first week of January 1857. Sacramento was cold, wet, and gray. The nearby Sierras were buried in snow. Nonetheless, exciting days lay ahead.

At stake were two U.S. Senate seats. One had remained empty since 1855, when Gwin failed to be reelected and the Know-Nothings came one vote shy of turning the seat over to Henry Foote. That seat entailed a four-year term in the Senate, two years having already gone by. The other post was that of John B. Weller, whose term expired in March 1857. Whoever got that seat would be in office for a full six years.

In the normal course of events, the short term would have been filled first. But in the Democratic caucus, a Broderick man moved to reverse the order. The Gwin men fought the motion, offered substitute motions, called for adjournment. So, too, did Weller’s representatives. But with the help of Latham’s supporters, the motion passed. The caucus then selected Broderick as the party’s nominee for the long term. He received forty-two votes, his various opponents thirty-four. The nomination, according to party ritual, was then made unanimous. The caucus then turned to selecting a candidate for the short term. One vote was taken with no winner. Then, after a second vote and still no winner, the caucus adjourned.

Who among the also-rans had Broderick’s ear? Many thought it was Milton S. Latham. For it was his men who provided the votes on the agenda question that enabled Broderick to get the six-year term. Rumor also had it that Latham had agreed to give Broderick his share of federal patronage in return for Broderick’s support. But the pundits soon found that they were mistaken. Latham, in fact, had refused to grant Broderick such power.
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The pundits had also underestimated William Gwin. On Sunday night, around midnight, January 11, Gwin and a “friend” left Gwin’s apartment in the Orleans Hotel by the rear stairway, snuck across J Street into an alley, and then ascended two or three stairs to the door of the Magnolia Hotel, rapped lightly on the door, and were admitted by Colonel A. J. Butler. They then ascended the stairs to room 6, tapped on the door, and were admitted by Broderick. The “friend” then left the room.

There, in room 6, Gwin and Broderick came to an understanding. In exchange for Gwin giving Broderick control of all federal patronage in California, Broderick would support Gwin for the second Senate seat. Gwin agreed and signed a letter to that effect. Dated January 11 and addressed to Broderick, the letter began with a long lament by Gwin on how his control of federal patronage had brought upon him much unhappiness, much criticism, and many “untold evils.” He then promised that “while in the senate I will not recommend a single individual to appointment to office in this state. Provided I am elected you shall have the exclusive control of this patronage, so far as I am concerned; and in its distribution I shall only ask that it may be used with magnanimity and not for the advantage of those who have been our mutual enemies and unwearied in their efforts to destroy us.”

In addition, Gwin had to write a public letter acknowledging his indebtedness to Broderick. Dated January 13, and addressed to “the People of California,” the letter began with Gwin’s giving another long account of the troubles he had endured during his senatorial career and especially the “malice” he had suffered as an “indirect dispenser of federal patronage.” He also faulted some of his “friends” for deserting him in his time of need. Then, some three hundred words later, he got to the heart of the matter. He made it clear that he owed his election to the Senate to the “timely assistance” provided by “Mr. Broderick and his friends.” And he praised Broderick for his magnanimity, for putting aside “all grounds of dissension and hostility” and taking a step that was “necessary to allay the strifes and discords which had distracted the party and the State.”
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Hence Gwin got a second term in the U.S. Senate. The public letter to “the People of California” appeared in the press the very day Gwin and his wife, Mary, threw a huge victory celebration in San Francisco. Her entertainments had become legendary, noted for their elegance and extraordinary cuisine.

The letter ruined the occasion. More than one Chiv stalwart realized that Broderick had triumphed, that the Chivs undoubtedly had lost their monopoly of federal patronage, and that Gwin probably “had sold out his friends for the sake of being elected.”
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Fortunately for Mary Gwin, the press did not get a copy of the letter in which her husband signed away all federal patronage. It was hidden from the public, kept under lock and key.
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It came to be known as the “Scarlet Letter,” and everyone who held it came to a bad end. The first was William T. Ferguson, who had arranged the midnight interview in room 6 of the Magnolia Hotel. To him was entrusted the Scarlet Letter. Months later, in the summer of 1858, “a trivial political dispute” in a San Francisco barroom led to Ferguson’s being challenged to a duel by George Pen Johnston, “a Democrat of the southern school” and a skilled duelist. The two dueled with rifles on Angel Island, and Johnston emerged the victor.

The night after Ferguson’s death, his office desk was found broken open and rifled. To get the letter? Broderick’s men believed so. Ferguson, however, had turned the letter over to General James Estell, an assemblyman from Marin County, for safekeeping. In 1858, Estell was also killed in a duel. But he, too, no longer had the letter. He had given it to David Broderick.
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8

TRAVELING TOGETHER, THE NEWLY ELECTED SENATORS LEFT
San Francisco in late January 1857, crossed Panama in near-record time, and steamed into New York harbor the evening of February 13. On hand to greet Broderick were several hundred men, women, and children. He also received a hundred-gun salute. The fanfare for Broderick, the former stonecutter from Greenwich Village, continued long into the night and for the next several days.

Leaving Broderick to bask in the homage, Gwin made his way to Washington. Since his term as senator theoretically had begun in 1855, he had no need to wait until March to be sworn in. He took the oath of office immediately and cast the deciding vote in favor of an appropriation to lay a transatlantic cable. The vote was of little interest to his California constituents, but Gwin saw it as a good sign. He was back in Washington, in the Senate, doing what he always felt he had been cut out to do.

Gwin also used the occasion to gain leverage over Broderick. He had several advantages. Not only was the nation’s capital a Southern city; it was largely run by Southerners, by men like himself. This had often been true in the past, and it was to be especially true in the incoming Buchanan administration.

James Buchanan, in fact, was the consummate doughface—a Northern man with Southern principles.
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A sixty-five-year-old veteran of many political wars, he had represented Pennsylvania in both the House and the Senate. Yet even though he was a Pennsylvania Democrat, his closest associates in Washington had generally been Southerners or men with deep Southern connections. He roomed for many years with Senator William King of Alabama, a fellow bachelor. His chief advisers included Governor Henry Wise of Virginia, Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, and Robert Tyler of Virginia. Even his most trusted Northern advisers had Southern ties: Representative J. Glancy Jones of Pennsylvania had been a Southern preacher and lawyer; and Senator Jesse Bright of Indiana owned land and slaves in Kentucky.

Ideologically, Buchanan also had much in common with the Southern wing of his party. He was, in most instances, a strict constructionist of the Constitution. He detested abolitionists and “black Republicans.” He opposed slavery only in the abstract. He assumed that most slave masters were humanitarians at heart and dismissed all those who argued differently. He thought most slaves were well treated and downplayed the slave pens and slave auctions in the nation’s capital that told a different story. And, for all practical purposes, he saw no great wrong in slavery’s continued existence.

Buchanan also sympathized with Southern expansionists who hungered for Cuba and wanted to add slave territory to the United States. He had been secretary of state when the Polk administration in 1848 tried to buy Cuba from Spain for $100 million. And in 1854, while minister to Great Britain, he had joined the ministers to Spain and France in issuing, under orders from President Pierce, the Ostend Manifesto, urging the United States to immediately buy Cuba from Spain “at any price” up to $120 million, and also proclaiming that if Spain refused to sell and its possession of Cuba “should seriously endanger” the “internal peace” of the slave states, then the United States would be justified in seizing Cuba “upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying his own home.”
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While news of this saber-rattling manifesto had horrified many Northern Democrats, it had hardly hurt Buchanan with zealous Southern expansionists and most Southern Democrats. They were delighted with him and had little trouble supporting his presidential candidacy. Without these Southern backers, moreover, Buchanan would have lost the 1856 presidential election. He won only five free states, losing eleven to the Republican candidate, John C. Frémont. In contrast, in the fifteen slave states, Buchanan won handsomely, losing only Maryland to the Know-Nothing candidate, Millard Fillmore. All in all, the slave states provided the Pennsylvania Democrat with nearly two-thirds of his electoral votes.

Southern Democrats, needless to say, never let Buchanan forget these facts. Nor was he able to forget that the Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate was dominated by Southerners. In forming a Cabinet, he acted accordingly. He chose four Southerners and three Northern men with Southern principles. Omitted entirely was anyone who understood, much less represented, the free-soil wing of the Democratic Party. Gwin was thus certain to receive a friendly welcome in the White House.

Another asset was Gwin’s wife, Mary. The daughter of a well-known Kentucky tavern keeper, she had a knack for entertaining the rich and the powerful. And among those she found it easy to enchant was the Pennsylvania bachelor James Buchanan.

In 1857, when the Gwins returned to Washington, Mary Gwin was forty-one years old. She was also “fashionable, liberal, dashing, generous, and full of Southern partialities.” Christened Mary Elizabeth Hampton Bell, she had at age fifteen married William Logan and moved to Houston, Texas. Three years later she met Gwin when he came to Texas to check out some land for one of his many land speculation schemes. The next year, 1835, Logan died. When Gwin learned of Logan’s death, he returned to Texas to woo Mary. A year later, in Vicksburg, they married. She was twenty-one at the time, Gwin thirty-one. The couple eventually had four children.

Gwin’s wealth enabled Mary to make full use of her social skills. With little effort, she turned their home into a center of hospitality, and thanks to her expertise as a hostess, invitations to the Gwin mansion became highly coveted, first in Vicksburg, then in New Orleans. When Gwin told her of his plans to go to California to become a senator, she encouraged him, apparently looking forward to life in the nation’s capital. And at her urging, Gwin purchased a mansion in Washington, at Nineteenth and I streets, three blocks from the White House. There Mary and William Gwin entertained and dazzled the Washington elite. In March 1858, one observer noted that the Gwins spent about $75,000 per year, roughly three times the president’s salary, on entertainment.
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Of all Mary Gwin’s guests, no one appreciated her hospitality more than James Buchanan.
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The president’s own social life was largely in the hands of his niece Harriet Lane, who had played the same role when he was minister to Great Britain. In a sense, Harriet Lane dictated style, and what she preferred—silk gloves that reached halfway to the elbow, bare shoulders, and plunging necklines—became the rage of Washington. Her uncle, meanwhile, always had a liking for small talk and elegance—as well as anyone who could furnish “in profusion” wild turkeys, prairie hens, partridges, quails, reed birds, chicken and lobster salads, terrapins, oysters, ice creams, various sweets, champagne, sherry, and punch.

In short, elite Washington was a world in which Mary and William Gwin found it easy to operate—and one in which David Broderick, the stonemason’s son, was clearly out of his element.

Broderick arrived in Washington several weeks after the Gwins, in March 1857, and took a room in a boardinghouse. He didn’t like his living quarters. Nor did he like the nation’s capital. It was just too Southern for his taste. He expected, however, to be well received by the White House. After all, he had been an early supporter of Buchanan in the 1856 presidential contest and had been central in the Pennsylvania Democrat’s carrying California by a five-to-two margin. Surely the president would be happy to see him.

But there was no warm welcome, and within a month the two men were at loggerheads. The rupture stemmed partly from Buchanan’s decision to openly support pro-slavery interests. Two days after his inauguration, the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus opening all federal territories to slavery, and the Buchanan administration’s official organ, the Washington
Union,
immediately joined Southerners in singing the praises of the Court.
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Free-soilers, in contrast, not only denounced the decision but blamed it on Buchanan. Had Frémont been elected president, said one New York Republican, the Supreme Court would not have dared to violate “the principles we have received from our forefathers.”
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An exaggeration? Not as much as it might at first seem. The Southern judges, historians later discovered, had wanted all along to issue a pro-slavery decision, but knew that the authority of such a decision would be weak if they had only a one-vote majority and no Northern judge was on their side. They set about to persuade one of the Northern Democrats on the Court, Robert C. Grier of Pennsylvania, to join them. Unbeknownst to his Republican critics, Buchanan helped them in this effort, and his intervention undoubtedly contributed to Grier’s decision to join the Southern majority in declaring the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.
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Buchanan’s decision to cast his lot with pro-slavery doctrine infuriated Broderick. Far more important, however, was the way Buchanan handled California patronage. In March, soon after taking the oath of office, Broderick tried to schedule an appointment with the president. He had difficulty doing so. Frustrated, he turned to John W. Forney, a Philadelphia newsman and powerful figure in Pennsylvania politics. Forney sent a note to the president, reminding him that Broderick was now “the most important man from California” as well as “a man of the people” and Buchanan’s “devoted friend in the last struggle.”
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With Forney’s help, Broderick finally got an opportunity to talk with Buchanan. The president wanted to engage in small talk. Broderick didn’t. Instead, he immediately presented his recommendations for federal appointments. To his chagrin, he was told to submit them in writing. He did.
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That, however, did him little good. For the president had already been bombarded with counterproposals from Chiv leaders who were determined to destroy Broderick’s influence, and each day’s mail brought more Chiv challenges. From California, Milton S. Latham and John B. Weller contacted Buchanan, hoping to undercut Broderick. From Washington, Representatives Philemon Herbert and James Denver did the same thing. What about Gwin? Did he keep his word? No! Despite what several of his biographers claim, he plunged into the fray.
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The key post was collector of the port of San Francisco. It was easily the most powerful federal office in California. For it, Broderick recommended his old ally Governor John Bigler. The recommendation, he felt, should have pleased the president. The former governor, after all, was a Pennsylvanian, a native of the president’s own state. His brother William, moreover, was a powerful figure in the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. Not only had William been governor of the state; he now represented the state in the U.S. Senate. And William left no doubt where he stood. He made it clear to Buchanan, and everyone in Buchanan’s administration, that his brother John wanted this appointment badly.
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Was there any way, then, that the president could ignore Broderick’s recommendation? The Chivs initially expected Broderick to get his way. Nonetheless, they offered an alternative. Their choice was Benjamin Franklin Washington, a native of Virginia who had often presided over Chiv meetings and had been the editor of a Chiv newspaper, the
Times and Transcript
. If the Virginian got the collector’s office, the message would be loud and clear. There would be no mistaking the significance. Everyone would realize that the president was placing the tremendous power of the collector’s office in the hands of Broderick’s enemies as well as in the hands of the pro-Southern wing of the California Democratic Party. And that is exactly what Buchanan did.
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To make matters worse, Buchanan made Bigler minister to Chile. Years before, Bigler had sought the post, and thus he accepted the appointment. But while in Chile, he was to be six thousand nautical miles from California and no longer a force in state politics. Without question, then, Buchanan dealt Broderick a double blow, stripping him of one of his most important political assets while giving the San Francisco Custom House to his political enemies. To add insult to injury, Buchanan told Broderick that it was only “fair” to give Benjamin Franklin Washington the San Francisco office as two of Broderick’s “friends” had received appointments to the custom service in Stockton and San Diego.

Broderick was furious. Did the president take him for a fool? “I will not cross the threshold of the White House while the present incumbent occupies it,” he declared. Gwin in turn celebrated. “Washington’s appointment was the final stab,” he explained to his followers, and Broderick’s “denunciations of the President and Cabinet are gross in the extreme.” The rift, he noted, also gave him the opportunity to spend “yesterday in visiting the Cabinet and the President with whom I had [patronage] talks.”
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The first week of April, after less than a month in the nation’s capital, Broderick hustled back to California. To offset his Washington misadventure, he hoped to gain control of the state Democratic convention and nominate his friends for state office. He desperately needed another supportive governor who could do for him and his men what John Bigler had done a few years before.