__________
“This is the finger of God…
One hundred and twenty burials yesterday.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, describing a
cholera epidemic in Cincinnati
__________
Who Might You Want to Tell?
NOTE TO TEACHERS: Discussing the Gold Rush with students was always fun. If nothing else, I found my kids rarely knew why the San Francisco 49ers were named the “49ers,” or why their team colors were red and…gold.
Students often wondered why the first discoverers of gold or silver didn’t keep it secret. I always told them, “Think like yourselves. Who might you want to tell? Would you want to brag, or would you have trouble keeping a secret?”
Most students also seemed unclear about what the term “prospector” meant. I used to make fun of myself (I had one date in high school – when a friend’s sister asked me to a dance. I couldn’t dance, either). I would pick some young man, and put the idea to him: You are going to ask out your dream girl. What are the “prospects” or chances she says yes.
We also talked about “prospects” in the NBA or NFL drafts.
One story I used every year (and I can’t now find the source) involved a rush in the Amazonian jungles of Brazil, touched off in 1985. The first “find” was accidental, when loggers out scouting for sites came upon an uprooted forest giant. In the roots they noticed gold specks – and found several nuggets.
A mad rush to the area followed. In one case, miners uncovered a “nugget” the size of a briefcase. (I always reached behind my desk and thumped down my briefcase for emphasis.)
I will try to turn up the story in my files: I retired from teaching in 2008; but my memory is that the nugget was worth an estimated $1.4 million. I do recall the miners who found it broke it up, because they feared it would end in a museum and they’d be cheated. But (see below), it would have had to weigh almost a thousand pounds to be worth that much.
Gold, of course, is much denser than almost any other element. A gold bar the size of a house brick would weigh about fifty pounds. As of today, as I type this up (11/8/18), gold is selling for $1,228 an ounce.
A pound of gold (there are only 12 Troy ounces per pound) would then be worth $14,736.
Other terms and details I thought students should know: “vigilante,” “lynching,” “stake a claim,” “pan out.” (The term “stake a claim” comes from the habit of miners driving markers at the four corners of their claims to indicate property had been taken.)
The prejudice directed at non-white miners also seemed important to discuss. The Chinese, for example, were not allowed to own land, vote, serve on juries or testify against whites.
One immigrant who “struck it rich,” was Levi Strauss, who left Bavaria in 1848 and arrived in San Francisco in 1853. Strauss was soon selling heavy duty work pants to miners, using rivets at points of strain to make them more durable. In 1873 he patented these pants, today known as jeans.
*
John C. Fremont left Kansas in October 1848, on his fourth expedition to explore the West. This time, his job was to find a safe winter passage through the Rocky Mountains.
January
27: John C. Freemont writes his wife a
lengthy letter, telling her of the terrible trials of his expedition.
My Very Dear Wife,
I write to you from the house of our
good friend [Kit] Carson. This morning a cup of chocolate was brought to me
while yet in bed. To an overworn, overworked, much fatigued, and starving
traveler, these little luxuries of the world offer an interest which in your comfortable
home it is not possible for you to conceive. While in the enjoyment of this
luxury, then, I pleased myself in imagining how gratified you would be in
picturing me here in Kit’s care, whom you’ll fancy constantly occupied and
constantly uneasy and endeavoring to make me comfortable. How little could you
have dreamed of this while he was enjoying the pleasant hospitality of our
father’s house! The furthest thing from your mind was that he would ever repay
it to me here.
But I have now the unpleasant task of
telling you how I came here. I had much rather write you some rambling letters
in unison with the repose in which I feel inclined to indulge, and talk to you
about the future, with which I am already busily occupied…[rather than relate] scenes
where I have endured much suffering…But as clear information is absolutely
necessary to you, and to your father more particularly still, I will give you
the story now, instead of waiting to tell it to you in California…
Former letters have made you
acquainted with our journey so far as Bent’s Fort, and, from report, you will
have read the circumstances of our departure from the upper Pueblo of the
Arkansas. We left that place about the 25th of November, without upwards of a
hundred good mules, and one hundred and thirty bushels of shelled corn,
intended to support our animals across snow of the high mountains, and down to
the lower parts of the Grand River tributaries, where usually the snow forms no
obstacle to winter traveling. At the Pueblo, I had engaged as a guide an old
trapper, well known as “Bill Williams,” and who had spent some twenty-five years
of his life in trapping various parts of the Rocky Mountains. The error of our
journey was committed in engaging this man. He proved never to have in the
least known, or entirely to have forgotten, the whole region of country through
which we were to pass. We occupied more than half a month in making the journey
of a few days, blundering a torturous way through deep snows, which already begun
to choke up the passes, for which we were obliged to waste time in searching.
About the 11th December we found ourselves at the north of the Del Norte Cañon,
where that river issues from the St. John’s Mountain, one of the highest, most
rugged, and impracticable of all the Rocky Mountain ranges, inaccessible to
trappers and hunters even in the summer time. Across the point of this elevated
range our guide conducted us; and, having still great confidence in his
knowledge, we pressed onwards with fatal resolution. Even along the river
bottoms the snow was already belly-deep for the mules, frequently snowing in
the valley, and almost constantly in the mountains. The cold was extraordinary;
at the warmest hours of the day (between one and two) the thermometer (Fahrenheit)
standing, in the shade of only a tree trunk, at zero; the day sunshiny, with a
moderate breeze. We pressed up towards the summit, the snow deepening, and, in
four or five days, reached the naked ridges which lie above the timbered
country, and which formed the dividing grounds between the waters of the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Along these naked ridges it storms nearly all
winter, and the winds sweep across them with remorseless fury. On our first
attempt to cross we encountered a poudrerie, and were driven back, having some ten or
twelve men variously frozen, – face, hands, or feet. The guide came very nigh
being frozen to death here, and dead mules were already lying about the fires.
Meantime is snowed steadily. The next day we made mauls and, beating a road or trench
through the snow, crossed the crest in defiance of the poudrerie, and encamped
immediately below in the edge of the timber. The trail showed as if a defeated
party at passed by: pack-saddles and packs, scattered articles of clothing, and
dead mules strewed along. Hey continuance of stormy weather paralyzed all
movement. We were encamped somewhere about twelve thousand feet above the sea.
Westward, the country was buried in deep snow. It was impossible to advance,
and to turn back was equally impracticable. We were overtaken by sudden an
inevitable ruin. It so happened that the only places where any grass could be
had were the extreme summit of the ridges, where the sweeping winds kept the
rocky ground bare, and the snow could not lie. Below these, animals could not
get about, the snow being deep enough to bury them. Here, therefore, in the
full violence of the storms, we were obliged to keep our animals. They could
not be moved either way. It was instantly apparent that we should lose every
animal.
I determined to recross the mountain more
towards the open country, and haul or pack the baggage (by men) down to the Del
Norte. With great labor the baggage was transported across the crest to the
head springs of a little stream leading to the main river. A few days were
sufficient to destroy our fine band of mules. They generally kept huddled
together, and as they froze, one would be seen to tumble down and the snow
would cover him; sometimes they would break off and rush down towards the
timber, until they were stopped by the deep snow, where they were soon hidden
by the poudrerie. The courage of the men failed fast; in fact, I have never
seen men so soon discouraged by misfortune as we were on this occasion; but, as
you know the party was not constituted like the former ones. But among those
who deserve to be honorably mentioned, and who behaved like what they were, –
men of the old exploring party, – were Godey, King, and Taplin; and first of
all, Godey. In this situation, I determined to send in a party to the Spanish
settlements of New Mexico for provisions and mules, to transport our baggage to
Taos. With economy, and after we should leave the mules provisions, we had not
two weeks’ provisions in the camp. These consisted of a store which I had
reserved for a hard day, macaroni and bacon. From among the volunteers I chose King,
Brackenridge, Creutzfeldt, and the guide Williams: the party under the command
of King. In the case of the least delay at the settlements he was to send me an
express. In the meantime we were to occupy ourselves in removing the baggage
and equipage down to the Del Norte, which we reached with our baggage in a few
days after their departure (which was the day after Christmas). Like many a Christmas
for years back, mine was spent on the summit of a wintry mountain, my heart
filled with gloomy and anxious thoughts, with none of the merry faces and
pleasant luxuries that belong to that happy time. You may be sure we contrasted
much of this with the last at Washington, and speculated much on your doings,
and made many warm wishes for your happiness. Could you have looked into Agrippa’s
glass for a few moments only! You remember the volumes of Blackstone which I
took from your father’s library, when we were overlooking it at our friend Brant’s?
They made my Christmas amusements. I read them to pass the heavy time and
forget what was around me. Certainly you may suppose that my first law lessons
will be well remembered. Day after day passed by and no news from our express
party. Snow continued to fall almost incessantly on the mountain. The spirits
of the camp grew lower. Proue lay down in the trail and froze to death. In a
sunshiny day, and having with him means to make a fire, he threw his blankets
down in the trail and lay there till he froze to death. After sixteen days had elapsed,
I became so uneasy at the delay that I decided to wait no longer. I was aware
that our troops had been engaged in hostilities with the Spanish Utahs and Apaches,
who range in the North River valley, and became fearful that they (King’s party)
had been cut off by these Indians; I could imagine no other accident. Leaving
the camp employed with the baggage and in charge of Mr. Vincenthaler, I started
down the river with a small party, consisting of Godey (with his young nephew),
Mr. Preuss and Saunders. We carried our arms and provision for two or three
days. In the camp the messes had provisions for two or three meals, more or
less, and about five pounds of sugar to each man, failing to meet King, my
intention was to make the Red River settlement, about twenty-five miles north
of Taos, and send back the speediest relief possible. My instructions to the
camp were, that if they did not hear from me within a stated time, they were to
follow down the Del Norte.
On the second day after leaving camp
we came upon a fresh trail of Indians, –
two lodges, with a considerable number of animals. This did not lessen
our uneasiness for our people. As their trail, when we met it, turned and went
down the river, we followed it. On the fifth day we surprised an Indian on the
ice of the river. He proved to be a Utah, son of a Grand River chief we had
formerly known, and behaved to us in a friendly manner. We encamped near them
at night. By a present of a rifle, my two blankets, and other promised rewards
when we should get in, I prevailed upon this Indian to go with us as a guide to
the Red River settlement, and take with him four of his horses, principally to
carry our little baggage. These were wretchedly poor, and could get along only
in a very slow walk. On that day (the sixth) we left the lodges late, and
traveled only some six or seven miles. About sunset we discovered a light off
from the river, and thinking perhaps it might be our express party on its
return, we went to see. This was the twenty-second day since they had left us,
and the sixth since we had left the camp. We found them, – three of them, – they
had been starving. King had starved to death a few days before. His remains
were some six or eight miles above, near the river. By aid of the horses, we
carried these three with us to Red River settlement, which we reached (Jan. 20)
on the tenth evening after leaving our camp in the mountains, having traveled
through snow and on foot one hundred and sixty miles. I look upon the anxiety
which induced me to set out from the camp as an inspiration. Had I remained
there waiting the party which had been sent in, every man of us would probably
have perished.
The morning after reaching the Red
River town, Godey and myself rode on to the Rio Hondo and Taos, in search of
animals and supplies, and on the second evening after that on which we had
reached Red River, Godey had returned to that place with about thirty animals,
provisions, and four Mexicans, with which he set out for the camp on the
following morning. On the road he received eight or ten others, which were
turned over to him by the orders of Major Beale, the commanding officer of this
northern district of New Mexico. I expect that Godey will reach this place with
the party on Wednesday evening, the 31st. From Major Beale I
received the offer of every aid in his power and such actual assistance as he
was able to render. Some horses which he had just recovered from the Utahs were
loaned to me, and he supplied me from the commissary’s department with
provisions which I could have had nowhere else. I find myself in the midst of
friends. With Carson is living Owens, and Maxwell is at his father-in-law’s,
doing a very prosperous business as a merchant and contractor for the troops.
*
February 6: Fremont sends a second letter to his wife Jessie, providing
added details of the disaster that had befallen her husband and his men:
After a long delay, which had me to
the point of resolving to set out again myself, tidings have at last reached me
from my ill-fated party. Mr. Haler came in last night, having, the night
before, reached Red River settlement, with some three or four others. Including
Mr. King and Proue, we have lost eleven of our party. Occurrences, after I left
them, are briefly these, so far as they are within Haler’s knowledge. I say
briefly, my dear Jesse, because now I am unwilling to force myself to dwell
upon particulars. I wish for a time to shut out these things from my mind, to
leave this country, and all thoughts and all things connected with recent
events, which have been so signally disastrous as absolutely to astonish me
with a persistence of misfortune, which no precaution has been adequate on my
part to avert.
You will remember that I had left the
camp with occupation sufficient to employ them for three or four days, after
which they were to follow me down the river. Within that time I had expected
the relief from king, if it was to come at all.
They remained where I had left them
seven days, and then started down the river. Manuel – you will remember Manuel,
the Cosumne Indian – gave way to a feeling of despair after they had traveled
about two miles, begged Haler to shoot him, and then turned and made his way
back to camp, intending to die there, as he doubtless soon did. They followed
our trail down the river, – twenty-two men they were in all. About ten miles
below the camp, Wise gave out, threw away his gun and blanket, and a few hundred
yards further fell over into the snow and died. Two Indian boys, young men,
countrymen of Manuel, were behind. They rolled up Wise in his blanket and
buried him in the snow on the riverbank. No more died that day; none the next. Carver
raved during the night, his imagination wholly occupied with images of many
things which he fancied himself eating. In the morning, he wandered off from
the party, and probably soon died. They did not see him again. Sorel on this
day gave out and lay down to die. They built him a fire, and Morin, who was in
a dying condition, and snow-blind remained. These two did not probably last
till the next morning. That evening, I think, Hubbard killed a deer. They
traveled on, getting here and there a grouse, but probably nothing else, the
snow having frightened off the game. Things were desperate, and brought Haler to
the determination of breaking up the party, in order to prevent them from
living upon each other. He told them “that he had done all he could for them,
that they had no other hope remaining than the expected relief, and that their
best plan was to scatter and make the best of their way in small parties down
the river. That, for his part, if he was to be eaten, he would, at all events,
be found traveling when he did die.” they accordingly separated. With Mr. Haler
continued five others and the two Indian boys. Rohrer now became very
despondent; Haler encouraged him by recalling to mind his family, and urged him
to hold out a little longer. On this day he fell behind, but promised to
overtake them at evening. Haler, Scott, Hubbard, and Martin agreed that if any one
of them should give out, the others were not to wait for him to die, but build
a fire for him and push on. At night Kern’s mess encamped a few 100 yards from Haler’s,
with the intention, according to Taplin, to remain where they were until the
relief should come, and in the meantime to live upon those who had died, and upon
the weaker ones as they should die. With the three Kerns were Cathcart,
Andrews, McKie, Stepperfeldt, and Taplin.
Ferguson and Beadle had remained
together behind. In the evening Rohrer came up and remained with Kern’s mess. Mr.
Haler learned afterwards from that mess that Rohrer and Andrews wandered off
the next day and died. They say they saw their bodies. In the morning Haler’s party
continued on. After a few hours Hubbard gave out. They built him a fire,
gathered him some wood, and left him, without, as Hayler says, turning their
heads to look at him, as they went off. About two miles further, Scott – you remember
Scott, who used to shoot birds for you at the frontier – gave out. They did the
same for him As for Hubbard, and continued on. In the afternoon the Indian boys
went ahead, and before nightfall met Godey with the relief. Haler heard and
knew the guns which he fired for him at night, and starting early in the morning,
soon met him. I hear that they all cried together like children. Haler turned
back with Godey, and went with him to where they had left Scott. He was still
alive and was saved. Hubbard was dead, – still warm. from the Kerns’ mess they
learned the deaths of Andrews and Rohrer, and a little above met Ferguson, who
told him that Beadle had died the night before.
Godey continued on with a few New
Mexicans and pack mules to bring down the baggage from the camp. Haler, with
Martin and Bacon, on foot, and bringing Scott on horseback, have first arrived
at the Red River settlement. Provisions, and horses for them to ride, were left
with the others, who preferred to rest on the river until Godey came back. At
the latest, they should all have reached Red River settlement last night, and
ought all to be here this evening. When Godey arrives, I shall know from him
all the circumstances sufficiently in detail to enable me to understand clearly
everything. But it will not be necessary to tell you anything further. It has
been sufficient pain for you to read what I have already written.
When I think of you all, I feel a
warm glow at my heart, which renovates it like a good medicine, and I forget
painful feelings in strong hope for the future. We shall yet, dearest wife,
enjoy quiet and happiness – these are nearly one and the same to me now. I make
frequently pleasant pictures of the happy home we are to have, an oftenest, and
among the pleasantest of all, I see our library with its bright fire in the
rainy stormy days, and the large windows looking out upon the sea in the bright
weather. I have it all planned in my own mind. It is getting late now. La Harpe
says that there are two gods which are very dear to us, – Hope and Sleep. My
homage shall be equally divided between them; both make the time passed lightly
until I see you, and so I go now to pay a willing tribute to the one with my
heart full of the other. Good night.
Bernard DeVoto says of the Fremont
Expedition that the detachment of Bill Williams, an old mountain man, who was
helping guide them, “probably killed and certainly ate one of their companions.
Kit Carson remarked of Bill Williams that in starving times no man should walk
ahead of him on the trail…” (5/331)
*
Finding gold in 1849 was not unlike winning the lottery now. One couple that “struck it rich” deserves special mention. In 2013 a California man and woman walking their dog noticed a can buried near a tree on their property. Inside, they found 1,427 gold coins, dating from 1847-1894. In May 2014 they began auctioning them off, the first going for $15,000.
Total estimated value: $11 million.
 |
Coins found in a back yard. |
*
Off to See the Elephant.
California was 2,000 miles away from the last American settlements in Missouri and those interested in joining the “gold rush” had to figure out some way to get there. National Geographic (September 2000) had a good story about those who decided to follow the California Trail.
It is estimated that 25,000 emigrants used the trail in 1849,
another 44,000 in 1850. An outbreak of cholera slowed the flood in 1851. Then,
in 1852, 50,000 men, women, and children headed for California. The author estimates
that it took an investment of $100-$200 for supplies, and that the trip took
from 16 to 22 weeks. Naturally, advertisers in those days were suspect, as
advertisers now. The Missouri papers stressed the benefits of traveling by
wagon, since Missouri businesses made a great deal of money selling supplies to
travelers. Those who went by sea, they warned, arrived, “stiff and indolent” for
want of exercise. As a result, the seafarer was “fully prepared to be a loafer,
if he was not one before he started.” For those going by wagon, horses, mules,
and oxen were needed, oxen preferred as strongest. The typical wagon box was
eleven feet long, with stays and a cover rising five feet above the bed. An
ordinary wagon could haul a load of 1,600 to 2,000 pounds. Overloading was a
problem and when travelers struck the desert or the High Sierra, they started
throwing out everything they could to lighten their loads: “bacon, beans,
anvils, axes, cookstoves, harnesses, claw-footed tables, and bureaus of carved
oak.” (p. 52)
 |
Painting: "Madonna of the Trail." |
The author of the story in NG writes (page 52):
The rush for California inspired
bombastic fantasies as well as bloated claims. A Missouri inventor built a “wind
wagon” equipped with sails designed to whisk the traveler across the plains at
15 miles an hour. Then one Rufus Porter, founder of Scientific American
magazine, advertised in 1849 that the best way to California would be aboard
his Aerial Transport, a cigar-shaped, steam-powered conveyance slung from a
thousand-foot-long balloon. Porter vowed that the machine would take 50 to 100
passengers from New York to California at speeds exceeding 60 miles an hour.
The minimum fare: $50, wines included. Travel time: three days. Fortunately,
for the distant future of aviation, Porter’s pipe dream never got off the
ground.
A few quotes from travelers:
“No pen can adequately describe our start. Half a dozen circuses combined in one would have been tame in comparison. Not one of our 300 mules .... Had ever had a bit in its mouth or a collar on its neck.” - Bernard J. Reid, 1849
John Clark remembered crossing the Great Plains: “Great God, I thought, what a sight lay before us….hundreds of teams stretching forward like a great Caravan in line on the dark & winding trace leading toward the setting sun.”
“It was an exciting scene, the long train half submerged in the wide expanse of water, the splashing and floundering of the mules, the whoops and yells of the men, and the foam and roar of the dashing waters.” - Isaac J. Wistar, on fording the Platte, 1849
Another traveler remembered a spring at Alcove Rock, near present-day Marysville, Kansas. There, water “gushed from a ledge of rocks…From which falls a beautiful cascade of water.” Altogether, he added, it was “one of the most romantic spots I ever saw.”
In those days, the Plains were still labeled “The Great American Desert” on most maps, supposedly as “bare as the Sahara.”
Some of
the Eastern papers were not anxious to see so many people head west. One writer
warned that it was “palpable suicide” to attempt the trip.
The
author for NG notes that “Horace Greeley – the very same Greeley today
remembered for advising young men “to go West,” had warned against following
the California Trail. “Greeley’s West wasn’t California and Oregon; it was
Illinois. In an editorial in July 1843 Greeley scolded the thousand emigrants
who had just embarked. Their overland venture, he thundered, had an ‘aspect of
insanity’ about it. ‘There is probably not one among them whose outward
circumstances will be improved by this perilous journey.’”
One
night, as his wagon train bedded down, and music could be heard around the
campfires, W. S. McBride set down his thoughts in his journal. “I lay here in
my tent and hear the merry music and the shuffling of strong men’s feet over
the turf. I cannot help but feel a melancholy foreboding….Some of us are no
doubt doomed never to reach California.” It is estimated that over the years,
20,000 did not. Diseases that struck the travelers included scurvy, smallpox,
tick-borne fever, and cholera. In 1850, two thousand travelers died of cholera
before reaching Fort Laramie. Drownings that year, especially crossing the
Platte and Green rivers, cost 37 travelers their lives.
By
1860, probably no more than 400 travelers had been killed by Indians. Even more
Indians had been killed by travelers.
The
historian Merrill J. Mattes explains that the natives simply failed to realize
the danger these pioneers represented. The Indians, he wrote, “had not yet
fully comprehended the fact that the migration was the prelude to their
downfall.”
As in
the era of the Civil War, traveling circuses were a thrilling form of
entertainment. Seeing a real elephant was the highlight, and on the trail,
travelers talked of going to “see the Elephant.” Any mishap might be described
as feeling the whisk of the elephant’s tail.
At
Chimney Rock, Solomon Gorgas sat and watched the wagons roll past. In his diary
he called it a spectacle “which the world since its creation never has
witnessed.”
Israel
S. P. Lord wrote of his first sight of “the giant form of Scott’s Bluff,
towering in marble whiteness toward heaven ….dome and spire, and tower, and
wall, and battlement, and cedar trees scattered over the whole like living
moving men.”
Niles
Searls said Scotts Bluff had a “strong resemblance to an ancient castle.”
Lucy
Rutledge Cook recalled stopping at Independence Rock. She and a few others in
her party “staid there some 2 or 3 hours examining names…I was not certain I
knew any of the persons put down though there were many familiar.”
One
visitor who had stopped at the same spot to chisel his name in the stone, was
Lansford Hastings, in 1842. While so engaged, it is said a band of Sioux
trotted up and took him captive. Thinking better of it, they soon returned him
to his company in exchange for a handout of tobacco. (For the sake of the
Donner Party, it would have been far better if the natives and killed him on
the spot.)
E. M.
Primes remembered the difficulty that arose when crossing the salt flats of
Utah: “The sun shone very hot and the ground being encrusted over with salt, it
made our eyes ache from the reflection. The thermometer stood during the day at
one hundred and forty degrees and not a sprig of anything could be seen on the
desert.”
Edwin
Hillyar also remembered the difficulty of this stretch. “About 5 o’clock we saw
McCloskey coming back with some water, and those who could raised a shout. My
tongue was swollen and clove to the roof of my mouth so I could not speak.”
So many
animals died crossing the “Forty-Mile Desert” in Nevada that the stink greeted
travelers well into the next decade. James A. Pritchard, who went up the trail
in 1849, remembered the Humboldt Sink as “a most disagreeable place” and said
that any stock that drank the water died “instantly.”
Dan Carpenter, crossing the same stretch the following year, wrote, “This is the poorest and most worthless country that man ever saw – no man that never saw has any idea of what kind of a barren, worthless, valueless, d-----d mean God forsaken country there is,...not God forsaken for he never had anything to do with it.”
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A large part of Nevada looks like this. Author's collection, from a bicycle ride across the USA in 2011. |
Margaret A. Frink admitted, “One only hope sustains all these unhappy pilgrims, that they will be able to get into California alive.”
The desert behind them, most travelers chose Carson Pass over the Sierra Nevada. Searls describes the battle up the pass in his diary for September 30:
For eight miles we literally climbed and hauled the wagons by ropes and mules over the jagged rocks which in places were higher than the wagons and perpendicular…. rested a day and then spent another in getting to the first Summit and were caught in a storm of sleet by which forty mules were frozen to death.
Soon after, Searls wrote with relief: “The summit is crossed! We are in California! Far away in the haze the dim outlines of the Sacramento Valley are discernible! We are on the downgrade now and our famished animals may pull us through.” - 1849
Wistar spoke of the same joy at reaching California: “Our journey is done, and we hardly know what to do with ourselves….There will be no more Indian alarms, no more stampedes, no more pulling, carrying and hauling at wagons….the gold is here sure enough, for we have seen it.” - 1849
William Henry Jackson, b. 1843, d. 1942, was a bullwhacker on the trail in the 1860s, and did a number of watercolors of the scenes. Later, he became a famous photographer.
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Photo by Jackson, c. 1878. |
*
NOTE TO TEACHERS: Here’s a short reading I provided for students.
James Marshall had
been born in New Jersey. He came to California after first trying his hand at
farming in Missouri. There he grew sick with fever carried by mosquitoes and
headed for healthier climates. He never made much money from his discovery.
Eventually, the State of California granted him a small pension.
Marshall
never married and died in 1885.
Henry
Bigler worked at Sutter’s Mill where gold was first discovered. Afterwards he
used to tell friends he was going “duck hunting” and look for gold on his own.
On February 22, 1849, three miles down the American River, he found an
ounce-and-a-half (worth the equivalent of $1,842 today)
“Gold fever” was always hard to resist.
In spring 1849, a prospector
visiting friends in San Francisco told all who would listen that he had taken twenty ounces of
gold out of his claim in eight days of digging. Another fellow who caught the
fever remembered his excitement: “Piles of gold rose up before me at every
step!” He saw himself in a great marble mansion, with slaves to wait upon him
and beautiful young women competing for his love.
The
news of rich gold strikes soon swept San Francisco and the nearly deserted
streets appeared “as if an epidemic had swept the little town.” Doctors forgot
their patients and headed for the gold fields. Patients followed if they were
healthy enough. The town council canceled its next meeting and “headed for the
hills.” Sailors abandoned ships in the harbor. Even captains left their vessels
to rot. U.S. soldiers deserted, too, and officers sent to find them never
returned. (Army records indicate that 716 officers and men out of 1,290 soon
disappeared.) Farmers left crops in the fields and cows roamed free, eating
what they pleased. Ministers, students, unhappy husbands and happy ones, a few
good women, and others not so good, gamblers, and criminals of every variety
left for the mines to dig for gold or carry on their trades.
No
wonder they were crazy with gold fever. A claim on Feather River yielded 273
pounds of gold in seven weeks. A boy named Davenport took 77 ounces from his
claim one day (valued today at $94,556) and 90 the next ($110,520). It was said
a cook in one of the mining camps cut open a chicken and found a half-ounce
nugget the bird had pecked at and swallowed. One prospector dug down and hit a
rich pocket of gold dust and nuggets, enough to fill a towel. He decided he had
probably taken all he could from his claim and “sold out” to a fellow named
Lorenzo Soto. Soto took out 52 pounds of gold from the claim in eight days.
Chino
Tirador took so much gold out of his claim that he could barely carry it. He
then began selling gold for two silver dollars an ounce, a very poor price
indeed. The next day, Tirador discovered that other men had been working his
claim at night. He bought a bottle of whiskey and launched a career as a
professional gambler. According to one California history, “By ten o’clock that
night he was both penniless and drunk.”
Soon
the fever spread across the nation. On September 20, 1848, the Baltimore Sun
and other papers “back East” began reporting on the incredible discoveries.
President James K. Polk soon announced to Congress that rich deposits of gold
had indeed been discovered. Men and women were frantic to reach California and
fought to gain places on ships heading in that direction. Others could hardly
wait until spring in 1849 to set off by wagon. Half the men in Oregon gave up
what they were doing and headed south to the diggings. Prospectors from as far
away as Chile, China and Great Britain joined the rush. Soon trails and oceans
were covered with dreamers headed for Pacific shores.
Thousands
never made it. They died in storms at sea or from disease or attacks by Native
Americans along the trails. And the Native Americans died in turn. One
three-year-old traveler fell out of a wagon and under the wheels and was
crushed. Four 49er’s died on the trail when an oak tree split in a storm and a
great limb fell on their tent.
As
always, luck shined on some and not on others.
In
those days, before television, movies and the internet allowed people to “see”
the world, the circus was a popular form of entertainment. The most amazing
experience of all was to buy a ticket and see an elephant. Now, people headed
for California told friends and relatives they were “going to see the elephant.”
In the
gold fields new towns sprang up overnight. It is estimated that 90% of the
population of these towns was male. Drinking, gambling, and fighting filled the
social calendar. Gamblers often got rich by cheating miners at cards and games
of chance. One prostitute claimed she had earned $50,000, equal to several
million dollars today. Good women were rare; so one groom charged other miners
$5 simply to attend his wedding and see his young bride. Theaters and dance
halls sprang up in all the towns. A play which included an actual female of
good face and figure, or even not so good a face and figure, was sure to sell a
fortune in tickets. A female singer could expect thunderous applause and a
shower of presents after any concert.
Even
the town names tell us something about this strange new land. Some of the best:
Hangtown (where miners hanged three claim-jumpers from a tree), Slapjack
(slang for “pancakes”), Whiskey, Hoodoo, Muletown, Chicken Thief Flat, You Bet,
Jacksass and Pinchemtight.
Prices
for food and equipment were always high and most miners never got rich. Those
who made only enough in the “diggings” to pay expenses called their work “mining for beans.” One husband returned
home from his claim after several weeks. He was happy to have a few ounces of
gold.
While
he was gone his wife had made more money just by doing laundry for men in the
camp.
*
William M. Thayer, in Marvels of the New West, mentions the luck of various miners. In Colorado, a miner down on his luck and in despair, is ready to give up the search for riches.
He woke one morning without food
or money, and canvassing his situation, he resolved to go out and shoot some
sort of game to supply present and pressing necessities. He shot a deer; and
the animal, in his dying agonies, kicked up a parcel of dirt that disclosed the
presence of gold. The poverty-stricken prospector opened his eyes when this
proof of a mine was kicked into his face, made sure of his “claim,” and opened
up one of the most profitable lines ever worked in that locality…
In the days of gold-excitement
in California, three prospectors jointly engaged in mine-hunting with scarcely
any success for months. Good news coming from another locality, they packed up
their tools and started. On the way, they found the dead body of a man whose errand
into that part of the country was like theirs, without doubt.
“Poor fellow!” said one of the
men, “he has passed in his checks!”
“Let us give him a decent
burial,” proposed another of the men; “some wife or mother will be glad, if she
ever knows it.”
“All right,” responded the third
prospector; “it will be a humane deed, to say the least.”
So the three set to work with a will to dig the dead stranger’s grave. Three feet from the surface they found evidence of gold; and the result was that they opened a gold mine there instead of a grave, and buried the stranger in another place. To that date their wits and industry did less for them than their humanity.
(This story is told in several variations, including one
where workmen are digging a cellar.)
A final example involved a prospector in Colorado. He had
been unlucky in his search and was depressed and “melancholy,. One day he
seated himself upon a large stone, and preceded aimlessly to strike another
stone at his feet with his pick. He was ready to give up the search forever,
when, to his surprise, his pick revealed clear signs of gold and he found a
rich mine. (442-444)
*
“Much Rushing and Little Gold.”
Ralph K. Andrist in “Gold!” (American Heritage) talks of the majority of miners who lived lives of “much rushing and
little gold.” (Some notes from this story can be found under 1847 and 1848)
Sutter ended up with “his cattle
butchered, his fields trampled and untended, his land taken by squatters, until
he had not a thing left.”
After Polk’s announcement, the rush
was on. The Argonauts, as they were called (after Jason and the golden fleece)
had two water routes; almost all available ships were taken over; the New
England whaling fleet was suddenly transporting passengers. As fast as vessels
reached SF, their crews deserted and headed for the gold fields, leaving the
harbor a forest of masts. Those going by the shorter route, across Panama, died
by the hundreds from malaria, cholera and unsanitary conditions. Hiram Pierce,
a New York blacksmith, left a wife and seven children behind. He wrote home
about “swineish” behavior by the passengers and a ship’s doctor almost always
drunk. One night the doctor became tangled in his hammock and was hanging
upside down until morning. Another time, “the same worthy took a dose of
medicine to a patient & haveing a bone in his hand knowing [gnawing], he
took the medicine & gave the bone to the patient.”
Others crossed by land in the spring.
Spring found one man ready to jump off for the trip West, armed with a rifle
and accompanied only by his bulldog. He was planning to walk to California and
had already walked all the way from Maine. Another planned to push a
wheelbarrow to the fields. Cholera, brought from Europe to New Orleans in 1848,
spread up the river and was carried across the plains by the wagon trains.
In parts of Utah and Nevada the water
and grass were bitter with sulfur, alkalai and salt, even poisonous. One barren
stretch had to be crossed in one jump, usually lasting 24 hours; at Boiling
Springs, halfway, water could be poured into troughs and allowed to cool, and
then proved drinkable, albeit unappetizing. Animals, already worn from the trail,
gave out during this stretch, what one writer calls “the Forty-Mile Desert.” A
traveler wrote, “The forty-five mile stretch is now almost impassable because
of the stench of the dead animals along the road which is literally lined with
them and there is scarcely a single train or wagon but leaves one or more dead
animals, so that it must be getting worse every day.”
One traveler described traveling down
the Humboldt
and crossing the desert for more than
one hundred miles before reaching the Sink…There is no grass of any
consequence, the water is slippery stuff resembling weak lye as much as
anything: from the Sink to Carson River is a distance of forty miles, the last
twelve deep sand.
Estimates put the number of travelers
who came over the trails in 1849 at around 35,000. Another 15,000 came round
the Horn, 6,000 across Panama. Numbers ran just as high for the next three or
four years; but gold fever ran hottest in ’49. (Andrist estimates that tens of
thousands of travelers died by the end of the 1850s)
Andrist describes the hard work
involved:
For mining involved more than
swishing a little gravel and water around in a basin; it was hard,
back-straining work. Placer gold, the only kind really known during the gold
rush, consists of gold dust and occasional nuggets scattered thinly through
sand and gravel (a miner never called it anything but “dirt”). To obtain the
gold, it was necessary to wash a great deal of dirt, taking advantage of the
fact that gold is about eight times as heavy as sand and will settle to the
bottom while the sand is being carried oft by the water. The gold pan,
traditional symbol of the miner, was used only in very rich claims or for
testing samples of dirt to see whether they were worth working further. In
ordinary circumstances, a hopperlike device of wood and perforated sheet iron
called a cradle, or rocker, was employed in a two-man operation: while one
shoveled in the dirt, the other rocked the device and poured water with a
dipper. The dirt was washed through, and the gold was caught in settling
pockets.
After 1849, an invention called
the long tom was used wherever there was a good supply of running water. It was
simply a wooden flume with water running through it; dirt was shoveled in and
sluiced through while the gold caught on a slatted bottom. A long tom was
worked by several men and could handle four or five times as much dirt per man
per day as could a cradle. That meant, of course, that a miner had to shovel
four or five times as much dirt into it as he would into a cradle to keep it
operating at full efficiency. A man usually had to pay for what he got, even in
the gold fields.
The terrain on which the
prospectors worked did little to make things easier for them; it was usually
difficult. The diggings were chiefly along the tributaries of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin rivers, which flowed out of the Sierra Nevada; each river,
fork, branch, and creek was eventually followed by prospectors to its source.
In the lower foothills the land might be only moderately rocky and hilly at
best; near the headwaters rushing streams flowed in the clefts of deep,
precipitous gorges whose bottoms were often cluttered with boulders and fallen
rocks and choked with jackstraw tangles of dead trees. Even under these
conditions, miners persevered at the ever-absorbing task of separating a small
amount of gold from a mountain of gravel, and with amazing energy and ingenuity
constructed hydraulic works to enable them to move the stream here or there or
otherwise exploit it in their search for wealth.
One miner writes home that there are
stories of men taking in as much as $16,000 in one day, but such strikes are “one chance out of a thousand; the
average is from ½ to 2 ounces per day….I shall stay up to the mines all winter,
if I can make an ounce a day.”
In August, a miner wrote home, saying
that agriculture in Northern California was “all at an end” and provisions had
to be brought from lands far away. Prices naturally skyrocketed:
I will just give you a summary; Salt
Pork here [in San Francisco] 75 cents per lb. at the mines $200 per Barrel.
Flour $2.00 per lb. Bread at the mines one to one half dollars per lb. Sugar at
the mines $2.00 per lb. tea $4.00. Revolving pistols woth in N. York $11.00 are
here worth $55-75 dol. each. Onions 25-50 cents each. Potatoes about $30 per
bushel. A ship load of the latter would bring two hundred thousand dollars.
Another miner described his comrades
as “the hairiest set of fellows that ever existed.”
Not only did most miners not “strike
it rich,” the gold fields could be dangerous. A former schoolteacher wrote home
in March 1852, “Seventeen dead bodies were found on one road alone within the
last four months and no clue to the perpetrators of this wholesale slaughter
has as yet been discovered. California is yet sadly wanting in an effective
judicial and constabulary organization.”
As late as 1853, a missionary spoke
of the richness of California, but warned, “You can form no adequate idea of
the depth of sin and moral degradation to which most of the people are sunk or
rather sink themselves…There are a few however, who have not bowed the knee to
Baal.”
Still: There were stories of men
digging out gold flakes from between rocks with nothing but spoons. In the
first days of the rush, Andrist writes, “it was not at all unusual for a man to
dig $1,000 to $1,500 worth of gold between dawn and dusk.” A man near Angel’s
Camp was hunting for rabbits. He jammed his ramrod down into the roots of a
manzanita bush, and turned up a piece of gold-bearing quartz. That day, using
his ramrod alone, he made $700. The next day, with better implements, he made
$2,000. His third day of digging yielded $7,000. Three Germans, taking a
shortcut, struck it rich on the Feather River. They took out $36,000 in four
days, without even having to wash gravel, and what became known as Rich Bar was
soon swarming with miners. Claims were so rich it was agreed they would be
limited to 10 feet square. A company of four men made $50,000 in a single day.
By 1852, however, the rush was nearly ended, most of the great spots having
been discovered.
One miner wrote home in March 1852,
Jane i left you and them boys for no
other reasons than this to come here to procure a littl property by the swet of
my brow so that we could have a place of our own that i mite not be a dog for
other people any longer…i think that this is a far better country to lay up
money than it is at home. if a man will…tend to his business and keep out of
licker shops and gambling houses. that is the way the money goes with many of
them in this country. thare are murders committed about every day on the acount
of licker and gambling but i have not bought a glass of licker since i left
home…i never knew what it was to leave home till i left a wife and children…i
know you feel lonsom when nigh apears but let us think that it is for the best
so to be for and do the best we can for two years or so and i hope Jane that we
shell be reworded for so doing and meet in a famely sircal once more. that is
my prayer.
*
NOTE TO
TEACHERS: The journals of Alfred Doten, who left Plymouth,
Massachusetts and sailed for California in 1849 also look promising.
*
May: Sarah Hale, in Godey’s,
champions public playgrounds for children. “The sickness and mortality among
city children during the hot months are frightful. Many of the diseases are
owing to the want of places where these young beings can have free exercise and
fresh air.” (Finley, 131)
*
“Turning
Water into Gold,” in Smithsonian,
tells the story of Julious Poquillon, who developed
hydraulic mining in the late 1860s. First, he bought up land along the Yuba
River. Engineers built a series of reservoirs, ditches, and flumes to create a
40-mile long stretch of river where snowmelt, propelled by gravity (often
dropping as much as 500 feet per mile) could keep water cannons blasting
gold-bearing hillsides.
A modern expert tells the author, “A
single monitor [cannon] with an eight-inch nozzle like this could direct 16,000
gallons of water a minute. It could tear away 4,000 cubic yards of earth from
the hillside every day.” That dirt was dumped into sluices and the waste was
dumped into the Yuba River.
Smithsonian describes the results: “Tons and
tons of earth, rocks, trees, shrubbery, silt, and a mucky mixture of mud, sand
and gravel known as ‘slickens’” filled the river. The Yuba, the Feather and
Sacramento rivers all turned muddy brown, and the mud extended all the way to
San Francisco Bay. Tens of thousands of men found jobs in hydraulic mining;
North Bloomfield in 1875 was a thriving town. But farmers downstream were
complaining. In spring, when flood waters came, as much as three feet of “slickens”
would cover their rich wheat fields. Fruit orchards were ruined, roads
obliterated. Marysville and Yuba City, at the confluence of the Yuba and
Feather, flooded repeatedly. The bed of the Sacramento River was raised by 16
feet. In 1875 a particularly bad flood left Marysville streets buried in thick,
gooey mud. Even the tracks of the Central Pacific RR were buried. In 1882 a
Marysville property owner Edwards Woodruff, filed a suit: Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company.
Judge Lorenzo Sawyer had come to
California as a gold-seeker himself; but in 1884 he ruled for Woodruff. Smithsonian
explains:
Hydraulic mining was not illegal,
Sawyer wrote, but by dumping its tailings into the river, North Bloomfield not
only violated the rights of those downstream but despoiled the landscape and
watershed that were not its to destroy. The company could practice hydraulic
mining on its own land; but was required to impound the debris. It could no
longer simply dump it into the river.
Hydraulic mining declined rapidly
after that.
*
The following story is from PrairyErth:
The High-Noon Wagon.
This is happening in north-central
Ohio in 1849, and the young white man coming down the road in his four-horse
wagon is about to put his cargo and himself at risk with a dangerous and rash
yet logical boldness, but the young school teacher he is soon to meet – who will
be standing in front of the small farmhouse with the decorative tomato plants (she
knows them to be poisonous) – will say some forty years later when she lives in
Cottonwood falls, Kansas, I think if I could have looked forward and seen
what was in the future, I should have shrunk from it.
It is nearly noon, and the dust
rises from the slow revolution of the wagon wheels as they press into the road
from the burden lying covered by canvas. Sometimes the canvas moves as the load
shifts, and sometimes it speaks softly to curse the road or the entrapped heat,
and after every curse comes a shushing, and the burden goes still and jostles
on another mile mute and motionless. The young driver, as if addressing his
team, calls a word of encouragement, and he sits surprisingly relaxed as if he
wished for an encounter, a confrontation that will draw life right to the edge.
The wagon jolts, the burden grumbles, and the driver calls, Steady! As
if the horses were doing other than plodding in sweating silence. A man can be
hanged for carrying such cargo, freightage most carriers transport only in the
dead of night.
Then: five horsemen, armed, ride
up to block the wagon. They are hunting runaway slaves who have crossed the
Ohio River and are heading north. One of the riders, the largest, says in a
calm that reveals sureness and strength, What’ve you got in that their
wagon? The driver turns to looked at his humped cargo as if to remind
himself, and then he faces directly into the squint of the big horsemen and
says, I got me here a load of runaway niggers. The riders are used to
men quailing before them, and such effrontery is a surprise. One aims a pistol
at the canvas and pretends to shoot it, and the men laugh and ride away, and
the wagon rolls on, and the burden remains dead still. It is not the last time
the driver will speak the truth and be taken for a liar.
The wagon groans up into the
yard of William Lyon, whose farmhouse is a station on the Ohio underground railroad.
Lyon, a Presbyterian, has been called before a session of his church for his
abolitionist work. He knows the wagon driver, Samuel Newitt Wood, twenty-four years
old, a Quaker whose parents are also fervid abolitionists; Wood is not a large
fellow, weighing but 130 pounds, handsome in a boyish way, his hair deeply
brown and thick; he habitually fixes his gaze on people and evaluates them so
intensely that he unnerves them. He looks at Lyon’s petite and pretty daughter:
her hair parted and drawn back, she stands beside the tomato plants with the
lovely fruit she is afraid to eat. Her father uncovers the sweating burden of ten
blacks and hurries them from the wagon, out of the high-noon sun and into
hiding, and he comments on the risk of transporting runaways in daylight, but Wood
believes in frontal challenge and the logic of the unexpected. He is a man
whose conscience is not a shield but a weapon. The daughter, Margaret, a
relative of Stephen Foster, hums as if her mind is far, far away and not
listening to Wood tell of facing down the slavers with a misunderstood truth
that saved him and the blacks. Years later in Chase County, she will tell her
granddaughter, I said to myself, there’s a brave man – and a smart one
period I’ll catch him if I can. 400-401
*
Henry David Thoreau publishes Civil Disobedience. Quotes follow:
“That government is best which governs least.”
“if one were to judge these men [legislators] wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.”
“Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be
men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect
for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right
to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.”
“The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as
machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia,
jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no
free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put
themselves on a level with the wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can
perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.”
“…when a sixth of the population of a
nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole
country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to
military law, I think it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and
revolutionize.”
“There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to
slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them;
who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with
their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do
nothing…”
On injustice as perpetrated by the government – the machine – and the friction inherent in its operation:
“…if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”
Petitioning the government often proves fruitless, the single citizen cannot spend his life battling evil:
“…in this case the State has provided no way: its very
constitution is the evil.”
“I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves
abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person
and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they
constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through
them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting
for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors,
constitutes a majority of one already.”
“I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten
men whom I could name – if ten honest men only – if one HONEST man, in
this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to
withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor,
it would be the abolition of slavery in America.”
Prison, Thoreau wrote, was “the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor.”
“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to the pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
Whatever Thoreau says to his neighbors about resisting the government, his neighbors, “dread the consequence of disobedience to it to their property and families.”
“I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into jail once
on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid
stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and
the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with
the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh
and blood and bones, to be locked up. … I did not for a moment feel confined,
and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of
all my townsmen had paid my tax.”
“Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.”
On his night in jail:
“It was like traveling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town-clock…I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village-inn – a holy new and rare experience to me.”
He would have remained in protest, he explained, “but some one interfered, and paid that tax.”
“I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to
what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors
and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did
not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by
their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinaman and Malays are; that, in
their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property;
that, after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had
treated them, and hoped, by certain outward observance and a few prayers, and
by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to
save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that
many of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in
their village.”
“It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with…”
*
June 29: Harriet Beecher Stowe begins a
letter to her friend Sarah Hale. Living in Cincinnati at the time, she
describes a cholera epidemic.
On Tuesday one hundred and sixteen
deaths…
July 1. This is the finger of God…One
hundred and twenty burials yesterday.
July 10: Yesterday little Charley was
taken ill, not seriously, and at any other time I should not be alarmed.
July 17: Aunt Frankie [a negro
servant] died yesterday morning…and our poor little dog Daisy, who had been
ailing the day before, was suddenly seized with frightful spasms and died in
half an hour.
July 23: At last, my dear, the hand
of the Lord hath touched us. … Little Charley is gone. … I write as though
there were no sorrow like my sorrow, yet there has been in this city, as in the
land of Egypt, scarce a house without its dead. (Finley, 129-130)
*
October
13: The first constitution for the
State of California is ratified. Not sure of the source for this description
(Book 56?)
Meanwhile, California lawmakers set to work crafting a constitution. By unanimous consent, they banned slavery. Then a delegate named M. M. McCarver rose to suggest amending the amendment, adding the words, “Nor shall the introduction of free negroes, under indentures or otherwise, be allowed.” Free Negroes, he warned, were “repugnant” to the people of the state. “They are idle in their habits, difficult to be governed by the laws, thriftless, and uneducated. It is a species of population that this country should be particularly guarded against.” A second delegate supported his contentions, adding that if not kept out of California, free Negroes would pour in. “The whole country would be filled with emancipated slaves – the worst species of population – prepared to do nothing but steal, or live upon our means as paupers.” Eventually, the McCarver proposal was dropped from the state constitution.
But racism continued to run in the very veins of the young nation.
*
Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first
female doctor in the United States, entering a profession much different than
now. Later, she would be joined by her sister, Emily, six years her junior.
(They were from a family of nine children.)
The New York Times Book Review notes:
In 1849, when
Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman doctor in America, the medical
profession was neither well established nor well respected nor well paid. Germ
theory was more than a decade away, and in hospitals for the poor, surgeons in
blood-caked aprons went from handling corpses to delivering babies without
washing their hands. In wealthy homes, physicians coasted on charisma and
connections as much as skill. At all levels of society, doctors had little more
to rely on than “purgatives, laudanum and lancets.”
Elizabeth was supremely confident, but no feminist, in the
modern sense:
She did not believe in suffrage and rejected
the fellowship of the burgeoning women’s movement. She denounced women as
“petty, trifling, priest-ridden, gossiping, stupid, inane,” and desperately in
need of leadership from a superior being like herself. …
For both Elizabeth
and Emily, the path to qualification as doctors was circuitous and frustrating.
The idea of a woman studying anatomy alongside men was shocking, but the truer
fear lurking under the moral outrage was that female doctors would wrest power
from men who were just beginning to enjoy it, as the profession rose slowly in
status. Wouldn’t female patients naturally choose to be attended by a woman, if
they could – especially in the lucrative business of childbirth? As the dean of
one college wrote candidly to Elizabeth, “You cannot expect us to furnish you
with a stick to break our heads with.”
Finally, in the
fall of 1847, Elizabeth’s persistence was rewarded when Geneva Medical College,
in upstate New York, punted the decision on her application to its students,
who voted to admit her. It was only the first of many doors she had to beat
down — to be allowed in the dissecting room, to observe hospital treatments, to
gain hands-on experience.
None of the five
Blackwell sisters married, prizing careers, one another and their independence
too highly, yet their family circle nevertheless expanded. Henry Blackwell,
most notably, married the prominent women’s rights activist Lucy Stone, fully
supporting her decision to keep her own name, strike the word “obey” from her
vows and use their wedding as a platform to denounce the institution of
marriage.
