Sea to Shining Sea

by Michael Phillips

  We traveled around the northern part of the state, either by stage or in a special carriage arranged for us, or close to Sacramento by train, and spoke at lots of places. Besides being an orator who could hold people spellbound, Mr. King was a great organizer too, and he set up church meetings and town-hall gatherings and outdoor assemblies and political and patriotic festive events. Before the year was half over, San Francisco, they told me, had become the highest contributing city in the whole country to the Sanitary Fund.

  We were all proud of the two hundred thousand dollars we had raised, and determined to do even better through the rest of the next year. Most of the gold was taken by ship around by Panama steamer. The stagecoach lines would have been too risky, since the Butterfield route went right through the Confederacy and was controlled by the South. Even as it was, there was always danger of the money falling into the hands of Confederate privateers.

  Miss Baxter in Sacramento and Miss Bean in San Francisco each set aside a room just for me called “Corrie’s room” because I stayed with them so often. Both became even better friends than before.

  Cal was involved in the fund-raising too, so I saw him every time I came to the cities. We’d have dinner together most evenings when there wasn’t a function to attend. More than once I turned to Miss Baxter and Miss Bean as a substitute for Almeda in trying to figure out how I felt about Cal. Neither of them had been married, but they understood about being a woman, and that was all I needed. I had never been married either, but I was finding out that I was more of a woman than I sometimes would have wished for!

  Sometimes Cal would act strange, and it would worry me. I’d immediately think I had done something wrong. But if he didn’t like me, why would he keep inviting me out to dinner or for a ride or walk in the evening? Often he grew quiet and distant, and his moods confused me. I would have expected him to be happy, living permanently in Sacramento, working alongside the governor, having to do with important things.

  Whenever I’d ask him what was on his mind, he’d laugh and try to shrug it off lightly. But I could tell it went deeper than he was letting on. Finally I came to the conclusion that it was the war itself. The war had everybody on edge; the future was uncertain, and no matter how much money we raised, the Union might lose. Nobody liked to think it or say it out loud, but after Bull Run, we couldn’t help having a gnawing worry that the South might win! What if Jefferson and Stephens became president and vice-president of the whole country? What if we all became part of the Confederacy one day? What if slavery became as common in New York and Minnesota and California and Oregon as it had been in Alabama and Mississippi?

  The very thought was too horrible to dwell on!

  But facts were facts. The South had won the only major battle of 1861. And as the fighting of 1862 opened, even the mighty Union navy, which had been attempting to blockade the South, suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the new southern ironclad warship Merrimac. She sank two ships her first time out, and the North’s own ironclad ship, the Monitor, was powerless to inflict any damage upon her.

  Cal had spoken about opportunity, but now that his opportunity had come and he was assistant to a governor who might run for president someday, all of a sudden it all seemed about to be destroyed. If the South won, everything would be lost for him. The Republicans—and Mr. Stanford along with them—and everything we had fought for and believed in would be destroyed. If the Union fell, so would Cal’s hopes. There would be no opportunities left for someone like him who had so vigorously defended the Union. People like us who had worked for the Union might even be considered criminals!

  As I thought about it, it became less of a mystery to me why he was downcast. I wanted him to get to have everything he’d dreamed of and hoped for. I was concerned about the outcome of the war, too, but I personally didn’t have as much at stake.

  I was excited when news began to reach us about Federal victories in the West along the Mississippi. It was especially exciting to hear that General Grant was leading the Union forces! I wished I could see him again.

  Even after the horrible battle at Shiloh down in Tennessee in April, where neither side had been victorious, the march of Union troops toward New Orleans and Grant’s control of the Mississippi River seemed to give reason for optimism. I was sure Cal’s spirits would pick up.

  “No, Corrie,” he said, “the Mississippi’s a thousand miles from the nerve center of it all. The war will be determined between Washington and Richmond, decided by who controls the two capitals. Only one president is going to emerge on top, Corrie. And right now, whatever your General Grant may be doing in the Mississippi Valley, Jackson and Robert E. Lee are threatening Washington. I tell you, Corrie, I don’t expect Lincoln to last out the year!”

  His voice sounded different as he spoke. Was he afraid? There was a quivering nervousness in his tone, and a light in his eye.

  Through the spring of that year, as the war intensified and news continued to reach us of more battles, more bloodshed, more young lives lost, Cal grew more and more agitated. More was on his mind than just raising money for the Union, but he wouldn’t say what. He didn’t invite me to dinner as often either.

  He seemed to be busy with other things, and often left right after our fund-raising meetings, and I wouldn’t see him again for days. I didn’t mind too much, but I was worried about him.

  Chapter 53

  A Moment Between Past and Future

  Late in May of that year, Mr. King asked me if I would be willing to travel to a few small communities and conduct some fund-raising meetings by myself.

  He wanted me to go up into the foothill regions, the gold communities that I was familiar with, but not just near Miracle Springs—also down toward Placerville. I told him I’d be willing just so long as he told me what to do and arranged everything.

  Railroads were much in the news that year. There had been all kinds of politics and debate; the companies had already been created, and a bill was before Congress in Washington to finance the building of a railroad from coast to coast. All the people of Sacramento, especially Governor Stanford, had been deeply involved in it for quite a while already. But California actually had only one railroad in operation—the Sacramento Valley Railroad, running out toward the foothills in the direction of Placerville.

  I took the train out from Sacramento for the few meetings Mr. King arranged for me, where I spoke and got pledges from people for the Sanitary Fund. I didn’t actually take any of the money back with me; it would be sent to the committee’s headquarters in Sacramento later.

  Traveling by train was exciting! I could hardly imagine being able to get into the passenger car behind a great black locomotive and ride right across the mountains and all the way to the East. But from the way everyone was talking, that day wasn’t so far away. In fact, the route that had been decided on would go close to Miracle Springs. It was called the “Dutch Flat Route” and would run in the valley just on the other side of the hills from Miracle Springs. I wondered if we’d be able to ride up on the ridge and hear it chugging along someday!

  During my few days of fund-raising, after I gave my short speeches about the Union and the war and the need for money, people would come up afterward and want to talk to me. And not just women; men would come up too, asking me questions and just wanting to talk in the most friendly way.

  Most of these people didn’t want to talk about politics or the war, but about personal things. A lot of them had read my article about the flood, or something else I’d written, even years before, and they’d want to talk about that. Then they’d tell me what they were thinking about, or what was on their minds. Everywhere I went, women would come up and invite me to supper with their family. After the first night, I didn’t have to stay in another boardinghouse for the whole trip.

  If it wasn’t too crowded or noisy, some of them even confided things to me, problems they were having, and one or two asked my advice and what they should do. Before long I realized that
my little trip out from Sacramento had more to do with individual people and what was going on inside their hearts and lives and minds than it did with raising money for the Sanitary Fund.

  The most eye-opening realization of all was that the people coming up to talk to me afterward were more interested in me as a person, in Corrie Belle Hollister, than they were in all the things I may have been talking about. They seemed to see in me someone they could understand and who might understand them, someone they could talk to, even confide personal things in.

  I came away with lots of new ideas about how my involvement in politics might have more to do with the people I ran into than it did with the bigger issues that seemed more important at first glance. Suddenly I found myself imagining people’s faces, and thinking about what I could say to them and how I might be able to help them in some way. I found myself thinking more about people than politics.

  I had always tended to think of myself as young and insignificant. Even with all I was doing now, I still wasn’t “important” like the men were. Yet these few days changed the way I looked at myself.

  It wasn’t about importance . . . it was about people. It was about looking into their eyes and seeing a friend, a person who could understand and care. I found myself wondering if perhaps that wasn’t the greatest “opportunity” I could ever have, the greatest “open door” of all.

  I found all these things going through my mind as I stood on the last morning waiting for the train to arrive. I had completed my final fund-raising talk the night before at a church in a small foothills town. The morning train would take me back into Sacramento, and from there I would take the stagecoach back home to Miracle Springs.

  The sun was well up in the sky, and it was a bright warm spring day. As I stood there on the wooden platform, holding my leather case that Almeda ordered for me out of a catalog, I thought of the changes that had come and were coming to our country, and of course the changes that had come to my own life as a result. All my past flitted by in a few moments, and I could not help but wonder about the future—if it would hold as many changes and surprises as had the past. I remembered my talk with Pa about how circumstances sometimes take us down roads we don’t anticipate.

  That had certainly happened to me, even just since Pa and I had talked about it! My decision to get involved in the election two years ago had caused things to happen in my life that wouldn’t have otherwise. Here I was, raising money for the Union! Mr. Kemble and I had talked about making a book out of some of my earlier journals, about our coming to California back in 1852. That was another change on the horizon, another opportunity, as Cal would call it.

  As I stood there, hearing the whistle of the train in the distance as it began to come into the station, I felt as if I were standing between my past and future—looking back, seeing the past, and waiting for a future that nobody can ever see.

  I glanced toward the slowing train as it approached. Even the train itself, and these tracks right in front of me, would before long stretch all the way out of sight to the east, over the Sierras, and beyond. The very tracks themselves seemed to symbolize to me the endless stretching out of life—going in two directions. Just like the tracks, our lives stretch out behind us, reminding us of all the places we’ve been, all the experiences we’ve lived. But it also stretches out in front, and we don’t know where that train track leads! We just have to get on the train and find out.

  I knew where this train was going. It would take me back into Sacramento. But where was my life headed? It had been an exciting ride up till now. But I wondered where the tracks would lead me next.

  Chapter 54

  A Disturbing Encounter

  Late summer and fall brought more bad news from the East.

  The Confederate forces had scored a stunning victory in August, matching only 55,000 men against the Union’s 80,000 in a battle that was called the Second Battle of Bull Run.

  In September, General Robert E. Lee invaded the North in force, crossed the Potomac out of Virginia and into Maryland. Not only did Lee want to get the fighting out of Virginia, his home state, so as to protect the badly needed crops for the harvest season, but he also hoped that his army might make Maryland want to secede. With Maryland in the Confederacy, the Union capital of Washington would be right next door.

  He did not succeed. But neither did he fail. The standoff, and resulting battle in the valley of the Antietam Creek south of Hagerstown, was the bloodiest engagement of the war. More than 22,000 young men were killed, and neither side gained an advantage.

  So much blood was being shed! There was both grief and determination throughout California—determination to help the Federal forces against an increasingly hated foe. It was all so needless! And the South was held accountable for the destruction and the dreadful loss of life.

  He tried not to show it, but I know this news deeply disturbed Cal. He expected the government of the North to fall any day, and his future with it.

  Not long after these two battles, an appeal came to Mr. King from the Boston headquarters:

  The Sanitary Fund is desperately low. Our expenses are fifty thousand dollars per month. The sick and wounded on the battlefields need our help! We can survive for three months, but not a day longer, without large support from the Pacific. Twenty-five thousand dollars a month, paid regularly while the war lasts, from California would insure that we could continue with our efforts. We would make up the other twenty-five thousand here. We have already contributed sanitary stores, of a value of seven million dollars, to all parts of the army. California has been our main support in money, and if she fails, we are lost. We beg of you all, do what you can. The Union requires our most earnest efforts.

  Immediately, Mr. King, Mrs. Herndon, Cal, and I—along with a few others—met together to plan a renewed round of meetings to gather together even more funds to help save the Union.

  By the end of 1862, Mr. King’s efforts had been so successful that nearly $500,000, mostly in gold, had been raised for the Sanitary Fund, more than half of it from San Francisco alone. I was proud to have been a part of it!

  Usually we conducted our meeting and gave speeches. Then afterward Mr. King would pass a collection box, just like at a church service, and let people give what money they could right there on the spot. But most of the money came from pledges, and then Cal and I and some of the others would go around picking them up for the next several days. We took the money to the bank we used for the Sanitary Fund, and later sent it off to Boston by steamer. Businessmen or mining companies sometimes made their contributions in actual gold or silver bars. One time I went to a prominent San Francisco banker’s office, expecting to receive a check for the pledge he’d made to Mr. King. He loaded me down with twelve pounds of gold and fifteen pounds of silver, worth almost six thousand dollars!

  When Cal saw me struggling out of the bank to our carriage, he burst out laughing.

  “I only got a little piece of paper,” he said. “We went collecting at the wrong places.”

  “Next time,” I panted, “I’ll pick up the check, and you go retrieve the bullion!”

  In spite of my difficulty, Mr. King was pleased.

  Cal, still reading every scrap of war news he could lay his hands on, was acting disturbed and fidgety. Once he got so angry after one of our meetings that he nearly came to blows.

  A man I had never seen came up to him out of the crowd and started talking rudely to him.

  “Got everything going your way now, eh, Burton?” said the man derisively.

  “Get out of here, Jewks!” Cal answered back in an angry tone. “What business do you have here, anyway?”

  “Your business is my business now, Burton—if you get my drift.”

  “I don’t, and I don’t care to!” said Cal, trying to shove his way past the man.

  “Watch yourself, Burton,” he said, laying a hand on Cal’s shoulder.

  When Cal grabbed the hand and threw it off, I was afraid they were going to s
tart fighting! I’d never seen such a look in Cal’s eyes before, and it scared me.

  “Come on, Corrie,” said Cal, taking my hand and pulling me along after him, “let’s get out of here.”

  “Who was that man?” I asked once we were away from the bustle of the crowd and walking toward our carriage.

  “Nobody—just a troublemaker.”

  “I recognized his name when you spoke to him. What was it—I’ve forgotten now.”

  “Forget it, Corrie. He’s nobody, I tell you—forget you ever saw him!”

  In the expression on Cal’s face, I glimpsed a flash of the look he’d leveled on the man in the crowd. He’d never looked at me like that before, and I didn’t like it. Neither of us spoke again right away. We still had another meeting to attend that afternoon, but there was a chill between us all day. Later that evening, Cal said he had to go someplace. When I next saw him, everything was back to normal. He took me to dinner and was even more charming and flattering than ever.

  Chapter 55

  Deceitful Spy

  The end of 1862 approached.

  I was looking forward to being home for Christmas. It had been a busy and tiring year. Besides every thing else that had happened, Mr. Kemble had gotten in touch with Mr. Macpherson, an editor from Chicago, and he did want to publish some of my earlier journal writing into a book. That, along with the war, Zack’s homecoming, and my involvement with Mr. King and Mr. Stanford and Cal, made me ready for a good long rest. After all, I had to update my journal with a whole year of keeping track of everything that had happened!

  But before that, we still had one major fund-raising gathering to conduct in Sacramento—the biggest of the year, Mr. King said. We hoped to raise as much as sixty thousand dollars for one huge donation to the Sanitary Fund at the end of the year to put us over the half million dollar mark for the twelve-month period.