Sea to Shining Sea

by Michael Phillips

  “You sound like a politician, Pa!” laughed Becky.

  “Of course he’s a politician!” said Almeda. “That’s what being mayor is all about.”

  “I mean he sounds like a speechmaker.”

  “Like Corrie!” said Tad.

  “I’m no speechmaker, Tad,” I said.

  “What about it, Drummond?” said Almeda. “Did that speech you made in Marysville last week go to your head? You are starting to sound a little highfalutin for the likes of simple country folk like us.”

  “Now you cut that out, Almeda!” joked Pa. “You all know well and good I ain’t about to start sounding like no doggone politician from Sacramento or Washington. I was only trying to answer Becky’s question.”

  “Is states’ rights why there’s slavery some places and it’s against the law in others?” asked Tad.

  “Right you are, son. That’s it exactly. It’s up to the states to decide for themselves.”

  “What about right and wrong?” I asked. “It seems as if on an issue like slavery there ought to be more to it than everybody deciding what they want to do. That’s why I decided to support Mr. Lincoln, because of right and wrong.”

  “But who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? You’ve listened to Katie and Edie, Corrie. They don’t see anything wrong in slavery, because they were both brought up in the South. That’s why the government in Washington has always stayed out of such disputes. They don’t want to get into the business of deciding right and wrong, so they let the states decide whatever they want to do.”

  “Then, why don’t they let California split into two states?” asked Tad.

  Pa looked at him a minute, then shook his head with a puzzled expression.

  “The truth of the matter, son, is that I’m blamed if I know,” he answered finally. “Maybe they just ain’t got around to approving it.”

  “If you’re elected to the Assembly, Drummond,” said Almeda, “what stand are you going to take?”

  “On what?” asked Pa.

  “On the split of California. Are you going to continue to push for it next year if President Buchanan doesn’t act on the measure before the election?”

  Again Pa grew thoughtful. “If I do get elected to the Assembly, which I still doubt, then I’ll have to figure out what I’m gonna do about a lot of things. Right now I can’t say. I can’t see much reason to be against dividing it up, but I got no objections to keeping it the way it is, either.”

  “If they won’t let California do what it wants to do,” said Becky, “then why do they let the states do whatever they want to do about slavery? It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Politics isn’t always fair, girl, any more than the government always does what’s right, like Corrie was saying. States’ rights isn’t a doctrine of governing that always makes things turn out fair. It just happens to be how this here country got put together in the first place. Besides, Buchanan’s a Democrat and a southerner. Letting the states do whatever they want—that’s just how the southerners want to keep it, so they can keep having their slaves and growing their cotton. No Democrat’s gonna change that.”

  “A Republican might,” I suggested.

  “Yeah, you’re right, daughter, a Republican just might. That’s why the Democrats and southerners are so all-fired worried about this election. They figure if Lincoln’s elected, it just might be the end of states’ rights altogether.”

  “Why can’t it all just keep going how it is?” asked Tad. “Some states could have slaves if they wanted, others don’t have to.”

  “Yes, Pa,” added Becky, “why can’t there keep being states’ rights no matter who gets elected?”

  “That’s what the southerners want,” put in Almeda. “But Abraham Lincoln has made no secret of his revulsion toward slavery.”

  Pa turned to me. “Corrie,” he said, “where’s that paper that had your article about the election in it? Seems I recollect reading a speech of Lincoln’s there.”

  “I’ll get it, Pa,” I said, jumping up.

  “You see, Becky,” Pa went on, “Mr. Lincoln figures we just can’t keep going forever with half of the states one way, the other half the other way. He says it’s tearing the country apart, making people hate each other, making it so the government can’t do anything but argue and dispute and can’t get on with the business of helping make the country what it ought to be. He says that we got to be what our name says—united. One way or the other—either all for slavery or all against it. We can’t keep being split up like we have been. And now that there’s more northern states than southern, the southerners figure that if he’s elected, he’s gonna try to take the whole country the direction he wants to go.”

  “Against states’ rights?”

  “They don’t figure Mr. Lincoln cares so much for states’ rights as much as he wants to do what he thinks is right.”

  Just then I returned with the paper.

  “Here,” said Pa, reaching out and taking it from me, “just listen to this. I’ll read you part of the speech and you can see for yourselves what Mr. Lincoln says about it.”

  He rustled through the Alta till he found the speech on the second page and began to read.

  In my opinion, the agitation over the issue of slavery will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I DO expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.

  “I didn’t understand that, Pa,” said Tad.

  “He’s just saying that it’s got to be all one way or all the other. Slavery’s either got to be legal everywhere throughout the whole country, or else it’s got to be thrown out completely, including in the South.”

  “What about the states that are talking of seceding, Drummond?” asked Almeda seriously. “Do you think it could actually happen?”

  “No way to know, Almeda. One thing’s for sure—people can be mighty stubborn and dead set against change, whether they’re right or wrong.”

  “But if some states want to secede, should they have the right to?” I asked. Ever since I had decided to get involved in the election, I’d been thinking about this question because I knew it was on Abraham Lincoln’s mind. I still hadn’t been able to figure out even what I thought about it.

  “That’s the question of 1860, girl,” said Pa. “It ain’t so much just about slavery, but whether states’ rights gives some of the states the right to pull themselves out of the United States of America altogether. If California can’t split in half without the government’s permission, then can some of the southern states go off and do whatever they want to do without permission either? I don’t reckon anybody knows the answer to that question yet. But if Mr. Lincoln gets elected, I don’t much doubt that some of ’em are gonna put it to the test and see what comes of it.”

  Pa surely was sounding like a politician! From a fugitive to a gold miner to a father to a mayor . . . and now he was talking about the future of the whole country as if he was personally involved in what happened.

  And as a candidate for the California State Assembly, I guess he was, at that!

  Chapter 37

  The Election Approaches

  In a way, the question that California politicians had been debating was just a small version of the same issue politicians in the rest of the country were wrestling with.

  Should California, where the interests of the northern and southern sections were much different, be one state or two? And should the whole country be one nation or two? How far did states’ rights
go, anyway?

  Trouble had been brewing between the North and South for a long time. There had been strong outcries against slavery for almost thirty years—going clear back to the preaching of Charles Finney in the 1830s as well as that of many others. The American Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1833. William Lloyd Garrison had begun a radical antislavery newspaper called The Liberator two years before that stirred up sentiments on both sides all over the country. More societies were formed. Books were written. And dozens of preachers denounced slavery from the pulpit.

  But none of that could do anything to put an end to slavery. The Congress in Washington, D.C., made the laws. And since Congress was controlled all that time by the Democratic party, which was mostly made up of men from the South, they continued to uphold the right of each individual state to have slavery if it wanted—which, of course, all the southern states did.

  When the Republican party formed in the early 1850s, the Democrats and southerners weren’t too worried. But it grew so rapidly—with new states and territories all being more inclined toward northern interests, and with antislavery preaching continuing to grow—that by 1856 the Democrats realized they should be worried. Buchanan had been elected over John Fremont only by a hairsbreadth. If two of the northern states had gone for Fremont instead, he would have become president. The governor of Virginia, Edie had told us, had been thinking of secession even back then if Fremont had been elected.

  Now, in 1860, southern leaders were worried!

  In the North, there was strong and growing opposition to the hold of the South. But the southerners had no intention of giving up their power without a fight. There were growing threats throughout the year that a number of the states of the South would simply secede, or pull out of the Union. The South was financially strong, and if it had to, it would simply form its own new nation. But it would not give up slavery, nor give up its right to make its own decisions.

  But the election of 1860 was not as simple as Democrats against Republicans, North against South, slavery against abolition. In fact, there were four candidates for president. Douglas, the Democrat, was not even a southerner at all. He was from Abraham Lincoln’s home state of Illinois, and was the U.S. senator from Illinois. He had defeated Lincoln for that position in 1858 after their famous series of debates.

  Many southerners, in fact, didn’t like Douglas. He wasn’t strongly enough in favor of slavery to suit them. But most Democrats, by 1860, realized that Lincoln was absolutely sure to win if they nominated a proslavery southerner to run against him. So at the Democratic convention earlier in the year, a majority had nominated the northerner Douglas, figuring that a northern candidate was their only hope against Lincoln.

  That only angered the Democrats from the deep South. Win or not, they wanted a candidate who stood for slavery! So they organized a convention of their own and nominated their Democratic candidate, Buchanan’s vice-president, John Breckinridge, from the slave state of Kentucky.

  Now there were two Democrats running against Lincoln!

  Back in the spring, a whole new party had been formed, called the Constitutional Union party. They hoped to find some middle ground between both the Democrats and the Republicans, and stood above all else simply for loyalty to the Union itself. They hoped to attract support from Union-loving conservatives in the South. The ticket for this new party was made up of two U.S. senators, one from the North, one from the South—John Bell of Tennessee for president and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president.

  So those were the four candidates: Lincoln for the Republicans, Douglas for the Democrats, Breckinridge for the southern Democrats, and Bell for the Constitutional Union party.

  It was a hard-fought campaign. Douglas traveled up and down New England calling on people to preserve the Union and speaking against secession—sounding almost like Lincoln himself—trying to get the northern vote while retaining southern Democratic support. Even as pro-southern as he was, Breckinridge tried to convince the voters that he, too, was opposed to secession.

  In California, as in the rest of the country, the Democrats had been in control, and there was a large pro-southern sentiment throughout the state. But the split of the Democratic party also split California and its leaders. Governor Downey declared his support for Douglas. Former governors Weller and Latham and Senator Gwin declared their support for Breckinridge. And Mr. Stanford and his business and railroad associates Huntington, Cole, Hopkins, and Charles and Edwin Crocker made up the most well-known of the Republican leadership within the state.

  It was remarkable to me how much pro-southern, pro-slavery support there was in northern California. Except for the possibility that a lot of Californians had come from the South, I couldn’t understand it. I hadn’t understood it back in 1856, and I still didn’t understand it in 1860. If the Democratic party hadn’t been split in its loyalties, I don’t think Mr. Lincoln would have had a ghost of a chance in California.

  Chapter 38

  November 6, 1860

  We made up the handbills for Pa. This time it was important to distribute them not just around Miracle Springs but everywhere possible in the whole section of the state north of Sacramento in the Assembly district Pa hoped to represent. Pa was running as a Republican, and though there were several other candidates—one other Republican and three Democrats all together—we hoped that he might have a chance to win. For the flyer I wrote a story that told all about Pa and who he was, adding quotes from some people in Miracle Springs saying what a good mayor he’d been.

  Then I wrote an article for the handbill, like the speech I’d given in Sacramento about freedom and the future of the country. It probably didn’t have much to do with Pa and whether he’d be a good legislator or not, but I hoped it would help. I didn’t want to say too much, because if people knew that a Hollister was writing telling people to vote for a Hollister, it might not seem altogether unbiased.

  Edie was still with Aunt Katie, and in spite of our differences about slavery itself, she thought it was exciting about Pa’s running for office, even as a Republican. She offered to help, and the rest of us were ready to do anything we could, too. It was a lot of work, but we split up and took handbills to all the towns for thirty or forty miles around Miracle Springs—wherever we could get to on horseback and back in a day, or to the towns Pa or I passed through on our way to Sacramento. We even gave them to Marcus Weber when he had deliveries to make.

  In every town we posted a copy of the handbill up on the town announcement board, or if they didn’t have one, on a post somewhere near the center of town. Then the rest we’d leave at the General Store if they’d let us. Most of the folks knew something about Pa and were happy to pass out the flyers to their customers.

  I didn’t make any more speeches, although Pa did at a couple more towns where Mr. Dalton had made arrangements for him. He was having lots of the smaller northern newspapers print articles about Pa, too, and told us just a week before the election that Drummond Hollister was the most widely known and recognized name of the five candidates.

  I got several letters from Cal in the month preceding the election, although I didn’t see him again. I wrote to him several times, too, and asked him about what I’d overheard between him and Mr. Dalton concerning the anti-Lincoln move in the southern portion of the state. It’s all taken care of, Corrie, he wrote back in his next letter. Forget you heard a word about it. In fact, he expressed surprise that I remembered the incident.

  It was a minor annoyance, he went on to say, which we took care of. I have every confidence our Mr. Lincoln will carry the day in northern California.

  The long-awaited day finally came on Tuesday, November 6. Pa and Uncle Nick went to vote, but of course it was days before the ballots were all collected and counted, and two weeks before we found out what the results were throughout the rest of the country. That Pony Express rider carrying the election news was one of the most eagerly anticipated since the Express had begun. They didn’t hav
e to ride all the way to Sacramento for the news to reach us, because by that time a telegraph had been installed between San Francisco and Churchill, Nevada. The San Francisco papers carried news of the election results on November 19.

  The Democratic strategy of two candidates hadn’t worked. And the Independent had done much better than predicted, carrying three states. Douglas had received the second highest number of votes behind Lincoln, but only carried Missouri and split New Jersey with Lincoln. Breckinridge got only 18 percent of the total vote. But because of his strong support in the proslavery South, he carried eleven southern states.

  The final votes were: Lincoln 1,866,000, Douglas 1,383,000, Breckinridge 848,000, and Bell 593,000.

  Abraham Lincoln received 40 percent of the total, not nearly a majority. But because he carried all the northern states and seventeen states in all, his electoral vote was a huge majority. The final electoral results were: Lincoln 180, Breckinridge 79, Bell 39, and Douglas 12.

  Abraham Lincoln had been elected the next president of the United States!

  Chapter 39

  A Dreadful Way to End a Year

  But would the United States stay united for much longer? Almost immediately after the election it began to look as if the answer was no!

  The South was now clearly and unmistakably the minority. The once-powerful region that had controlled the nation had been defeated. Many mixed sentiments ran through the hearts of loyal southerners—pride, honor, fear of what the North might do. And stubbornness, too. They feared that their traditional and cherished ways of life would now be destroyed, their lands taken, their fortunes and businesses ruined. Their pride had been assaulted. Many southerners felt themselves superior, and that they were more capable of ruling the nation no matter what the election might have said. Now the mammon-worshiping materialists of the North were in power, intent on destroying the southern culture forever, and replacing it with their Yankee ways.