Gold!

by Fred Rosen

  The article went on to say that “the danger in California is from want of food for the residents, and still more for the stream of immigrants. Would not some of our merchants find it a profitable speculation to send cargoes of biscuit, flour, &c., ’round to the Pacific Coast.”

  It was a good point. If people were going to leave home and hearth for the gold fields, what other place other than Sutter’s Fort existed then in the wilderness to supply their wants? The Herald made sure to mention that the U.S. steam packet California would sail from New York on October 2 for California laden with a rich cache of supplies to provide for the needs and wants of aspiring gold seekers.

  For the rest of the month, the New York Herald had continuous coverage of the California gold fields through Paisano’s dispatches. The presidential campaign and the troubles in Europe still dominated the front pages, but you could count on Paisano to be in the paper someplace toward the front. Not surprisingly, the coverage was helping to sell advertising.

  Outfitters’ advertisements were coming in. So were notices by groups preparing for the trip to El Dorado. No one was rushing yet, for it would still take an official edict to make the easterner finally believe en masse and act on that belief. The same thought was going through the head of the editor of the Times of London.

  He had been scanning the overseas dispatches from the United States and come across a short story regarding gold discoveries in California. Not only did the Times of London editor chooses to bury it on page four, he also doubted its validity, concluding with this paragraph:

  The placer sand is said to be so rich, that if exported to England or the United States, it would be very valuable. Consequent upon this excitement, the price of provisions has increased enormously. We need hardly observe that it is necessary to view these statements with great caution.

  The British government knew that if the gold discovery proved to be real, Britain could benefit quickly. If the discovery were confirmed, California could act as a relief valve, siphoning off the overpopulation of Britain’s cities. In November, the Times of London printed a notice that the gold fields had been denounced as a delusion. The accuser said he had prospected in California for years, to no avail.

  By late in the month, Britain had momentarily lost interest in gold. A cholera epidemic had broken out throughout the British Isles. More than nineteen hundred were already dead, with many thousands more infected, and the disease showed no sign of letting up.

  In the nineteenth century, cholera was a deadly disease. First given prominence by the medical community during an outbreak in India in 1817, ironically it was forward-thinking technology in the form of transportation improvements, especially the steam engine, that brought cholera to Britain’s shores. It then spread from town to town by horse and cart. Cholera swept through London in 1832, causing the death of seven thousand people in a most horrible way.

  Cholera causes extreme stomach upset, nausea, and dizziness, which lead to violent vomiting and diarrhea. Stools turn into a gray liquid that includes fragments of intestinal membrane. Muscular cramps and an insatiable thirst follow. Then, finally, the pulse drops and the final lethargy begins. Dehydrated, near death, the victim’s face shows the classic cholera look of puckered blue lips in a cadaverous face.

  What no one knew, because epidemiology was in its infancy, was that cholera was caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The bacterium released deadly toxins into the intestine, increasing secretions of water and chloride ions (salts) into the body. That resulted in the diarrhea, severe dehydration, and death of the victim. Luckily, only 25 percent exposed to the bacterium develop the disease, which was why in the same household, one parent or child might be sick and the others not.

  Most importantly, what was not known was that the filthy sanitary conditions that existed in England during the nineteenth century, and many parts of America as well, contributed to the growth of the cholera bacterium and therefore the disease. Bathing, defecating, urinating, and drinking from the same stream or water source without regard to health consequences was common nineteenth-century practice. Cholera spread rapidly, especially in smaller settlements, where dung, filth, and refuse quickly commingled on streets and in ditches.

  While a cholera epidemic was nothing to be ignored, Americans had a tough time understanding how something happening abroad could affect them at home. They pushed that health crisis out of their minds and went to the polls. This time they elected a new president, General Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party, by a narrower margin than previously anticipated. Nevertheless, in the wake of the election, there was a feeling in the country that business was about to boom. As for the Democratic presidential nominee Lewis Cass, he stayed Lewis Cass.

  In Washington, the lame duck president James K. Polk was watching all the speculation about gold and could not believe his good fortune. He was a no-nonsense Tennessee lawyer, and his war with Mexico had just paid off in a way one could only dream about. Reading Thomas Larkin’s letters to Secretary Buchanan, Polk realized that in light of all the dispatches he was receiving from California, especially the ones from his confidential agent, it was time to officially confirm the discovery. His State of the Union address on December 5, 1848, was the perfect time to make the public announcement verifying the gold discovery.

  Everyone had been waiting for it. No matter the political party, everyone trusted Polk’s word implicitly because he was the president, and the president didn’t lie. Hearing enough of the rumors of California gold, the nation waited to see what he would say about California in his address. And no one waited on his the edge of his seat more than Polk’s political enemy Daniel Webster.

  “It is known that mines of the precious metals existed to a considerable extent in California at the time of her acquisition. Recent discoveries render it probable that these mines are more extensive and valuable than anticipated,” the president told the Congress and Supreme Court assembled in the House chamber to hear his address. “The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service, who have visited the mineral district, and derived the facts which they detail from personal observation.”

  The most trusted man in the Union, the president of the United States, had finally proclaimed the discovery of gold in California real! People were getting rich. Daniel Webster suddenly shut his famous mouth. It looked like Polk’s treaty was a bargain. In St. Louis, an invisible gate that stood at the boundaries of civilization opened.

  No matter there were no highways, instead rutted trails west. People would now line up at that gate, they wouldn’t wait for their mark. Instead, over the line in a flash, hightailing it for the gold fields as fast as their legs, their horses’ legs, their kids’ legs, their dogs’ legs, any legs could carry them.

  Thus on December 5, 1848, when President Polk confirmed Marshall’s find, the American character changed. At the moment when Polk’s lips uttered the magic word “gold!,” Americans began their phantom pursuit of wealth.

  From its beginnings at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock in the seventeenth century, the American character had not matured all that much by the middle of the nineteenth century. America was still primarily an agrarian society with a belief that good work leads to a good life, which then leads to a good afterlife. But Polk’s announcement let loose something primordial that had been lurking in the American character since John Adams had been a boy.

  What had Marshall wrought?

  Farmers in stony New England fields that yielded little, shoemakers in Ohio, preachers in Missouri, it made no difference who you were; what was certain was that whatever economic class you were born into was the one you were condemned to inhabit for the rest of your life. Only the truly lucky ones got financial success. But Marshall’s discovery offered the opportunity of a lifetime, of a generation, of an age, to redeem the quintessentially American character: the ab
ility to reinvent yourself regardless of your past. Marshall’s gold offered hope not just for the present, but also for the future, for if enough gold could be found in California, your children and your children’s children would benefit, too.

  Legitimate, confirmed accounts began to appear in Eastern newspapers of individuals who struck it rich by the banks of the American River. It became clear: Americans could, literally, through a few weeks in California’s gold fields, go from poverty to riches. Advertisements in newspapers and magazines continued to display the wares of enterprising merchants looking to make a buck off the backs of the miners. They offered everything from camp hampers to Spanish lessons, even portable houses made of galvanized iron.

  Guides sought out readily obtainable appointments to take settlers and miners west to the new El Dorado. Suddenly there was a boom in the transportation business, with the steamer coming into popular vogue over the more traditional sailing ship as a quick and efficient method of carrying passengers.

  Steamer lines sprung up to take miners to California who wanted to get rich quick. Smart easterners, men such as John Armour and John Studebaker, determined to get rich not by mining but by plying their fortunes through trade with the miners. Armour was a butcher and Studebaker a carriage-maker.

  People began organizing into travel groups that promoted safety. In New Orleans, a group met at the St. Charles Hotel to organize an expedition to California. In Boston, hundreds put up $500 apiece for a ship and cargo, and were counting on selling their goods to pay for passage around Cape Horn. Philadelphia was sending tremendous amounts of flour, while the price of Baltimore clothing, bound for the Pacific Coast, skyrocketed.

  By the end of 1848, not only San Francisco had been emptied of its inhabitants, but also the city pueblos down the coast—San Jose, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. And now the rest of the country, and the world, were coming, too. Upon reading Polk’s statement, the British people were just as excited as the Americans at the prospect of instant wealth. There was nothing to stop them from coming to America immediately to prospect. The borders of the United States were wide open to gold speculators.

  Still, the British press, perhaps jealous of their former colony’s sudden wealth, refused to acknowledge the true depth of the find. The Journal of Commerce stated in an article that the minute quantity of gold discovered in California wouldn’t affect the world price of the ore. In fact, the Journal stated, placer gold usually indicated not much more below the ground.

  They were wrong. There was much more below the ground. But having the machinery to mine it was another matter.

  How could he make a dollar off the argonauts bound for the gold fields? That’s what John Sutter was wondering as the year wore on.

  It had become evident that his dream of a self-sustained community, of becoming a multimillionaire through his fort and other nearby interests, was going down the river. There were men all over the place now, and more coming in every day. The Americans refused to recognize his Spanish land grant. Already there were men prospecting on Sutter’s land, including the area in and around the now-abandoned Coloma sawmill, and there was nothing he could do about it except try to make some money while the demand lasted.

  The entrepreneurial Sutter came up with the idea of taking his headquarters building in the fort and turning the second and third floors into a hotel. He established a small bowling alley on the lower floor for recreational purposes. And he allowed merchants to rent out space in his fort, making it the first shopping “mall” in state history. Sutter, the entrepreneur, Sutter of the Swiss Guard, would carry on.

  7.

  MCNEIL’S TRAVELS

  When gold was discovered on January 24, 1848, by James Marshall, shoemaker Samuel McNeil was in Lancaster Ohio, thousands of miles from Coloma. The distance didn’t make a difference. By the end of the year, everyone in Lancaster knew about the gold discovery. Just like in every small town in every one of the states, in every nook and cranny of the territories, gold fever took hold.

  It really was a fever, or perhaps using another medical metaphor, an epidemic. Men by the thousands decided to leave home and strike for the gold fields to change not only their luck, but their family and family’s family luck as well. To strike it rich meant that unless such fortune was squandered, generations in the future might have its benefit.

  Samuel McNeil heard the siren song of gold. It was long, sweet, as alluring as the turn of a woman’s ankle. One of Lancaster’s citizens, McNeil was an articulate, driven man who wanted to rise above his station. Quickly. The discovery of gold excited his fancy and hopes. McNeil believed that the celebrated Golden Age had arrived at last.

  “I am sure the critics will have mercy on my writing when I inform ‘the public’ that I am a shoemaker, not ashamed of the occupation by which I have earned my bread for twenty years. Therefore, I am not as well skilled in writing as a [James Fennimore] Cooper or a Washington Irving; but, what I have, I freely give unto you. In shoemaker style, I will bestow my awl of literature, feeling that at the last they will find I have done my best to amuse and instruct them, while the critics will not strap me for doing my duty!” McNeil later wrote in his memoirs.

  In 1850, Scott & Bascom, printers in Columbus, Ohio, printed less than one hundred copies of his eponymous title, McNeil’s Travels in 1849 to, through and from the gold regions, in California. Over the years, it became shortened to McNeil’s Travels. It stands as the best contemporary account of an individual joining the Gold Rush, what was later known as a “49er.”

  While Marshall’s discovery had taken place in 1848, primarily local Californians and Mexicans had flocked to the gold fields. It wasn’t until 1849 that the California Gold Rush became a true national and international phenomenon. Those who came in that first, “official” year of the Gold Rush would forever more be labeled affectionately as 49ers. The fact that the gold was actually discovered in 1848 was lost in popular history.

  Samuel McNeil was about to become a “49er.”

  “Counting the cost and measuring the difficulties, I joined a respectable company going to the Promised Land. The company consisted of Boyd Ewing, a son of the Hon. Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Interior; James Myers, a capable and honest constable; Rankin, State Attorney; Jesse B. Hart, a shrewd lawyer; Benjamin Fennifrock, a farmer; Samuel Stambaugh, a merchant; Samuel Stambaugh, a druggist; Edward Strode, a potter, from Perry county; John McLaughlin, from the same county; Denman, nephew of the Hon. Thomas Ewing; William F. Legg, from Columbus, and Leverett, from the same.”

  Boyd intended to look up his foster brother, Cump Sherman, Colonel Mason’s adjutant, when he got out West. For his part, McNeil was aware of Ewing’s lineage and connections, but did not know, nor did anyone else except those close to Governor Mason, that it had been his letter to Sutter, authored by Sherman, that had allowed the gold prospectors to converge on Sutter’s sawmill and vicinity, “Captain” Sutter’s Mexican property rights be damned.

  While political connections were always good, McNeil realized, more importantly there was strength in numbers against the deprivations the miners would face—arid desert, boggy lands, insurmountable mountains, infesting disease, murders and killers and robbers of all sorts, as well as sandstorms, hail the size of rocks, rocks the size of mountains, and torrential rains. If half of what had been printed about the transcontinental trek in current books could be believed, it would be a long and dangerous haul to the gold fields.

  No less of a danger were the hostiles, Indian nations that had refused to sign treaties with the U.S. government, thus ceding their lands for a reservation life. Depending on what route was taken across the continent, the argonauts would have to face the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Comanche, and the Apache, all proud Indian nations that would not give up or allow trespassing on their lands. The answer to invasion would be butchery of any white men who dared invade.

  And yet with all that, the Mormon Battalion had made it. The Mormons had shown how effective a group
working together could travel to the West, especially when the goal on the other side was gold. Religion aside, the Mormons wanted to get rich, too. Suddenly the continent was mobile; it could be traversed by the common person, not just some dime novel mountain man. All you needed was what the Mexicans called cojones.

  Sometimes prospectors would go straight across the continent and all that entailed. Sometimes they would travel from their homes in the interior to a river that could take them south to a port where they could pick up a ship for South America and thereby make their way around and up the Pacific Coast.

  Regardless of which route you took, it took a lot of time to go from Wherever, U.S.A., to California.

  “February 7, 1849, we started by coach, from Lancaster, Ohio, passing through Columbus, to Cincinnati,” McNeil wrote, “remaining a week at the latter place, where we obtained the necessary outfit, consisting of two years’ provisions and the appropriate weapons of defence. The articles were sea biscuit, side pork, packed in kegs; six tents, knives, forks, and plates; each man a good rifle, a pair of revolvers, a bowie knife, two blankets, and crucibles, supposing that we would be obliged to melt the ore, not knowing that nature had already melted it to our hands.

  “On February 15, we started in the steamer South America, commanded by Capt. Logan, for New Orleans, 1600 miles, costing each $10 in the cabin.” The journey required traveling on the Ohio River, into the Mississippi, thence down to New Orleans, where a ship could be engaged for the South American route to the gold fields.

  “I cannot omit saying that we found Capt. Logan a perfect gentleman, fit for a higher station, and his boat one of the best in the western waters. The trip was made in six days.”

  Even McNeil the humble shoemaker was capable of making a judgment based on the popular perception of class. To him, a steamboat pilot was capable of “a higher station.”

  “While passing around the Falls at Louisville, Kentucky, we saw Porter, the Kentucky Giant, who is keeping tavern at the locks. He is more than eight feet in height, and he looked down upon us little mortals with the feelings of a Goliath when he gazed on David of old. If he is not a temperance man he cannot flourish in his establishment, for his huge corporocity [size] would speedily oblivionize whole oceans of porter, ale, and brandy.”