Eternity Street

by John Mack Faragher

  That evening he attended a ball at former governor Alvarado’s Monterey townhouse, honoring the American officers of the warship Cyane. The leading Californio officials suspected the young lieutenant was a spy, but they did not dare detain him for fear of rousing the enmity of the U.S. Navy. Alvarado plied him with drink, but despite Gillespie’s strong taste for spirits he managed to keep his head, and shortly before midnight he left the ball and departed for the village of Yerba Buena on San Francisco Bay, where he hoped to arrange transport for his pursuit of Frémont. The following day the sloop USS Portsmouth arrived at Monterey from Mazatlán with the news that President Polk had ordered an army of several thousand American soldiers into the disputed border region between Texas and Mexico. Captain John B. Montgomery predicted that within days Commodore Sloat would arrive to take possession of California. Larkin dispatched a messenger who found Gillespie at Yerba Buena and conveyed the new information. That following morning Gillespie left in search of Frémont.

  That same day, April 25, 1846, some two thousand miles away on the north bank of the Río Grande, Mexican troops attacked a U.S. Army patrol, killing sixteen American soldiers and wounding five more. The news of the deadly skirmish, which reached Polk on May 9, provided him with the justification he had long sought. As he put it in his war message to Congress, “Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil.” Polk had deliberately ordered his troops into harm’s way, conniving to have them fired upon. But for the moment skepticism over the outbreak of the conflict was trumped by the patriotic necessity of supporting the troops. Congress declared war on May 13.

  By then Gillespie had located Frémont in southern Oregon, some three hundred miles north of Sutter’s Fort. He conveyed the president’s verbal instructions and Frémont resolved to act. Commandante Castro had “humiliated and humbled” him, as he wrote in a letter home, and returning to California in arms offered an opportunity to “justify my own character.” What made the difference was Gillespie’s assurance that Frémont would be acting with Polk’s blessing. “A grand opportunity now presented itself,” Frémont later wrote, to “make the Pacific Ocean the western boundary of the United States.” He interpreted the president’s instructions as discretionary. “My proper course,” he wrote, was to “take advantage of any contingency which I could turn in favor of the United States.” He would do what he could to raise an insurrection among the American settlers, hastening the prospects for American annexation.

  While Gillespie hurried back to Yerba Buena to procure funds and stores from American naval vessels anchored in San Francisco Bay, Frémont returned south to agitate among the American settlers. He circulated a notice among them, falsely claiming that several hundred mounted Californios under Commandante Castro’s command were “on their way to the Sacramento Valley, destroying the crops, burning the houses and driving off the cattle.” It was a complete fabrication, but effective propaganda. “Captain Frémont invites every freeman in the valley to come to his camp immediately,” the notice concluded. Dozens of American settlers responded, many fearing for their lives and property, some simply spoiling for a fight. They must not wait to be attacked, Frémont counseled them, but should seize the initiative, striking at the nearest center of Californio authority and taking hostages. He would provide clandestine support. On June 14 a motley band of several dozen Americans invaded the settlement of Sonoma, imprisoned several prominent Californios, including Mariano Vallejo and Victor Prudon, who was working as Vallejo’s aide. The Americans declared California an independent republic and raised a flag featuring the crude image of a grizzly bear and a lone star. They were playing the Texas game, urged on by Frémont.

  Over subsequent days there were several violent confrontations. Californios riding with José Ramón Carrillo, Vallejo’s brother-in-law, tortured and killed two American rebels. Americans commanded by Frémont dispatched three Californios in cold blood. Controversy over the responsibility for those deaths would haunt both men during their subsequent careers. Such things happen in the course of war. But responsibility for the armed conflict rested solely on Frémont’s shoulders. “He brought war into a peaceful department,” wrote historian Josiah Royce. “His operations began an estrangement, insured a memory of bloodshed, excited a furious bitterness of feeling between the two peoples that were henceforth to dwell in California.” It was all unnecessary, since many prominent Californios favored union with the United States. But thanks to Frémont, all that goodwill went up in smoke. The Bear Flag insurrection came as a shock to Thomas Larkin. The uprising, he wrote to Secretary of State Buchanan, “completely frustrated all hopes I had of the friendship of the natives to my countrymen.”

  •

  CHAPTER 6 •

  A TERRITORY OF THE

  UNITED STATES

  AFTER THE CONFRONTATION with Frémont, Commandante José Castro concluded that an American invasion of California was inevitable. He attempted to persuade Governor Pío Pico to leave Los Angeles and come north with men and matériel to reinforce the defenses around Monterey, but Don Pío refused in the belief that Castro was attempting to isolate him from his base of support. He had reason to be concerned. Castro had made numerous military appointments, including José Antonio Carrillo to succeed Andrés Pico as commander of the Los Angeles district. Although Don José was Don Pío’s brother-in-law, he had become one of the governor’s fiercest political opponents. Carrillo was driven by pure ambition, which he pursued with considerable skill. A master political strategist with something of the common touch, he built a following among ordinary Angelenos, and in November 1845 he attempted to overthrow Pico’s government, but failed. The shocked governor exiled his kinsman to Mexico, just as Governor Victoria had done years before, but Don José found his way to Monterey, where he joined forces with Castro. After this betrayal, Don Pío’s distrust of the norteños became an obsession. Even after receiving a warning from Mexico City that war with the United States was only a matter of time, he continued to fix his attentions on Castro. “What can I do?” he replied when asked about his plans for the defense of the department. “I have not a dollar or a soldier. Castro at Monterey has got up a party against me and is trying to displace me.”

  Both men bore responsibility for the lack of unity, but Castro, if only by virtue of his location, proved considerably more attentive to the impending crisis. “War is preferable to peace,” he declared to American consul Thomas Larkin, for then “affairs will at once be brought to a close and each one know his doom.” In early June, only days before the Bear Flag insurrection, he appealed to Don Pío a final time. “I have notified you over and over again of the risk which the country runs, and of the necessity of taking steps for its defense,” he wrote. Unless the governor responded immediately with arms and men, “I shall be absolutely compelled to declare the department in a state of siege and martial law in full force.” The threat got Pico’s attention. Within days of receiving Castro’s letter, he had raised a force of several dozen men, including a company of eight or ten American rifleros, and on June 16, with brother Don Andrés by his side, Pico marched his little army out of Los Angeles, toward Monterey. His intention, however, was not to join in the defense of the homeland but to confront and defeat Castro, his rival for power. “I was convinced that Castro and I could not exist at the same time in the department,” Pico later explained, “and that one or the other had to go.”

  Arriving at Santa Barbara on June 23, Pico was met by a messenger from Castro with news of the Bear Flag insurrection. At first he thought Castro was trying to trick him, but confirming reports soon arrived, and in haste Pico issued a proclamation addressed to the people of California. “A gang of North American adventurers, with the blackest treason that the spirit of evil could invent,” he announced, “have invaded the town of Sonoma, raising their flag, and carrying off as prisoners four Mexican citizens.” There could be no doubt that the insurgents were agents
of the United States, which had first “stolen the Department of Texas and now wishes to do the same with California.” He fired off an angry dispatch to Larkin, condemning the consul’s “extraordinary indifference” in the face of this treachery, and warning that he would be held responsible for the actions of Frémont and his men.

  Pico’s letter reached Larkin shortly after the July 2 arrival at Monterey of Commodore John D. Sloat in the frigate USS Savannah. Sloat had learned of the fighting along the Río Grande on May 31, but being a cautious man, did not set sail for California until June 7, after learning that American naval forces had established a blockade of the Gulf port of Vera Cruz. Larkin had no power to constrain Frémont or the Bears, as Pico demanded, but he did succeed in persuading Sloat to delay coming ashore for several days while he made an attempt to get Alvarado and Castro, who had fled to the interior, to voluntarily place the department under American authority. Larkin understood that the events at Sonoma made it exceedingly difficult for them to cooperate “and still keep untarnished the national honor,” but he feared that if they continued in resistance “the Bears may destroy them.” Larkin’s effort at persuasion, however, proved futile.

  On the morning of July 7, under intense pressure from his own officers, Sloat sent Captain William Mervine ashore with a force of 250 sailors and marines to raise the flag. “We must take the place,” Sloat told Larkin. “I shall be blamed for doing too little or too much—I prefer the latter.” But Sloat’s reputation was already ruined. He would be criticized precisely for doing too little, too late—for waiting too long at Mazatlán, then again at Monterey. Navy Secretary Bancroft would later characterize Sloat’s caution as “shameful.”

  Sloat was also criticized for being too magnanimous in the proclamation in which he announced his intentions. The government of Mexico had attacked the United States and the two nations were at war, he asserted, and just as he had hoisted the American flag at the capital, so he would “carry it throughout California,” which henceforth was to be considered a possession of the United States. He came in arms but hoped Californios would consider him their friend. He guaranteed the safety of all peaceable inhabitants, promising U.S. citizenship for all who chose to remain in California, and for those who wished to leave, the opportunity to remove without hindrance. Sloat wrote to Governor Pico and Commandante Castro in the same spirit, demanding their surrender, but also inviting them to return to Monterey to negotiate articles of capitulation, offering his personal assurance that they would be received “with all the respect due to your distinguished situation.” Their compliance, he wrote, would “prevent the sacrifice of human life and the horrors of war, which I most anxiously desire to avoid.” Sloat’s sentiments, greatly influenced by Larkin, were conciliatory. In the opinion of his critics, they were deficient in martial fortitude.

  Sloat said nothing about the Bears, which he considered an embarrassment, and in his response Castro insisted that the silence on that point presented an insurmountable difficulty. Armed Americans under Frémont’s command had taken control of the department’s northern frontier. “As he cannot believe that they belong to the forces commanded by the Commodore,” Castro wrote, employing the formal third-person voice of diplomacy, “he will be obliged to him if he will be pleased to make an explanation on this subject in order that he may act in conformity with his reply.” There could be no negotiations until Sloat assured the Californios that Frémont and the Bears had been brought under his command and control.

  That same day Larkin received a melancholy note from Alvarado, his good friend for many years. The former governor expressed the hope that the conflict between their two countries might be resolved peacefully. But in the meantime, he wrote, he was duty-bound to follow the lead of Commandante Castro. Overriding even that allegiance was his patriotic duty to la patria, which he expected Larkin to understand. “The history of your country holds in remembrance the efforts of the immortal Washington,” wrote the man who had championed the independence of California. “Although I know myself unworthy to compare with that hero, I would desire you to have the goodness to be the judge and decide what you would do in my case.” By the time Larkin received this letter, Alvarado and Castro had departed for the south to join forces with Governor Pico. The Californios would once again make their stand at Los Angeles.

  AT SONOMA ON JULY 5 Frémont assumed formal command of the Bears and enlisted some two hundred American settlers to join the original members of his expedition in a force he christened the “California Battalion of Mounted Rifles,” their term of service lasting “as long as necessary for the purpose of gaining and maintaining the independence of California.” Frémont was planning a war of conquest, and he led his men back to Sutter’s Fort to ready them for the campaign. A few days later a Navy lieutenant and a small company of marines arrived with the news that Commodore Sloat had taken possession of California for the United States. The lieutenant raised the American flag over Sutter’s Fort and told Frémont that Sloat required his immediate presence.

  The California Battalion entered Monterey eight days later, Frémont in the lead, surrounded by his entourage of Delaware Indians and followed by the men of his expedition, each balancing a rifle across the pommel of his saddle. “They are principally backwoodsmen,” wrote a British naval officer who witnessed the parade, “the class that produced the heroes of Fenimore Cooper’s best works.” Behind them in a disorganized mass came the American settler volunteers. They were “a rough set,” said the officer, adding that their “private, public, and moral character had better not be too closely examined.” While the battalion bivouacked in a clearing at the edge of town, Frémont and Gillespie were ferried out to Sloat’s frigate, expecting the commodore to applaud their actions and muster the California Battalion into the service of the United States.

  But Sloat met them with stern questions. His orders were merely to occupy California’s ports, and from his point of view the insurrection at Sonoma had made that assignment far more complicated than it ought to have been. He assumed, however, that Gillespie had brought secret instructions from Washington that explained Frémont’s conduct, and he insisted on hearing the details. “I know nothing,” Sloat protested, and “I want to know by what authority you are acting.” Frémont, who may have been under orders not to reveal President Polk’s secret instructions, responded defensively. “I acted solely on my own responsibility, without any authority from the government,” he said, in a tone of passive aggression. Astonished by this response, Sloat angrily dismissed both men.

  But Sloat’s tenure as commander in chief was about to end. Months earlier he had written to Secretary Bancroft, complaining of failing health and requesting that he be relieved. Bancroft complied, ordering Captain Robert F. Stockton to set sail for the Pacific as Sloat’s replacement. By happenstance Stockton arrived in Monterey the day following Sloat’s interview with Frémont. After assuming command the new commodore called Frémont to his quarters. In dress blues with gold buttons and epaulets, his face framed by flowing curls and heavy muttonchops, Stockton presented a striking contrast with the plain and dour Sloat. A flamboyant advocate of American expansion through naval power, he was as aggressive as Sloat was cautious. After listening to Frémont’s account, Stockton offered an enthusiastic endorsement and ordered the California Battalion mustered into service under his command. Together Stockton and Frémont developed a plan to carry the American conquest to southern California. Stockton would sail to San Pedro, Frémont to San Diego. With a detachment of sailors and marines, the commodore would march on Los Angeles, confronting the forces of Castro and Pico, while Frémont blocked the passage leading to Sonora. Sloat sailed for home on July 29, and that same day Stockton issued a proclamation of his own, addressed to the people of California.

  The circumstances required nothing more from Stockton than an announcement of his command. Instead, he used the occasion to introduce an entirely new theory of the conquest, one deeply influenced by Frémont. The
military occupation of California by the United States, Stockton asserted, was directed at obtaining redress from the government of Mexico for the crimes committed by Commandante Castro, who had “violated every principle of international law and national hospitality by hunting and pursuing Captain Frémont.” Castro had “deluded and deceived the inhabitants of California,” Stockton declared. “He came into power by rebellion and force, and by force he must be expelled.” Every day brought new reports of “rapine, blood, and murder” committed by Castro’s forces, and Stockton vowed he would bring “these criminals to justice.” In the meantime the inhabitants, including all civil officers, were warned to remain in their homes. Otherwise “they will be treated as enemies and suffer accordingly.”

  It was an extraordinary argument. The United States had invaded and occupied California, Stockton asserted, because of the actions of the Californios themselves. That was a bald-faced lie, directly contradicted by Commodore Sloat’s proclamation of three weeks before, but it provided Stockton with a justification for the conquest in the event that war with Mexico was not forthcoming. California’s leaders, whom Sloat had addressed with respect, were now to be regarded as “criminals,” hunted down and punished under the banner of American justice. Stockton’s proclamation was, in effect, a declaration of martial law. Larkin was nonplussed by the document, unable to explain “where Commodore Stockton obtained the statements it contains.” Commodore Sloat, handed a copy as his vessel weighed anchor, found it shocking. “It does not contain my reasons for taking possession,” he reported to Secretary Bancroft, “or my views or intentions towards that country, [and] consequently it does not meet my approbation.” Frémont and Gillespie, on the other hand, were delighted. As Gillespie put it, with Stockton now in charge, there would be no more of Sloat’s “half way measures.”