“Look over that way,” said Cal, pointing northeast. “There’s the mouth of the Sacramento River emptying into the bay. And Sacramento eighty miles away,” he added, swinging his arm a little to the right.
As I watched Cal describing the view, I saw a subtle change come over him when he began talking about Sacramento. The capital city, it seemed, possessed a greater significance for him than all the rest.
“What is it about Sacramento that’s so special to you?” I asked.
“Opportunity, Corrie,” he said after a long silence. “Just like I told you before . . . opportunity.”
I thought back to Pa’s talk on our way to Carson City; he had said that sometimes we have to take the chances that come our way before it is too late. But I had the feeling he and Cal meant two completely different things. Pa seemed to be saying that we ought to be mindful of the opportunities God puts in our path. Cal seemed to be saying something else, although I wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.
“Look around you, Corrie,” Cal went on, turning in his saddle. “Look out there—what do you see?” He pointed due west.
“The ocean,” I answered.
“What else do you see?”
“The sky,” I said, half in question.
“What else?”
“I don’t know, Cal . . . the clouds?”
“No, Corrie! Down there is the end of the land, the coast of California . . . the end of the country, the last piece of the United States, the edge of the whole continent!”
His face was lit up as if he had revealed the whole riddle of the universe. He kept looking at me as if expecting light to break in upon my mind at any second.
“Don’t you see what that means?” he asked finally.
“Uh . . . I guess I don’t,” I said.
“It means the end of one kind of opportunity and the beginning of a whole new era in our country’s history—a whole era of new opportunities!”
Again he stopped and scanned all around, at everything we could see. Slowly we began walking our horses along the plateau of the ridge.
“You see, Corrie,” Cal began, “for the last century, the whole thrust of opportunity in this country was just to get here—to reach the Pacific. This was the frontier. It had to be explored, then tamed. Lewis and Clark, Jedediah Smith, even your own John Fremont back in his exploring days—they were men whose passion was just getting here, to this very place, to the Pacific coast. Then all those who came after them—trappers and traders and homesteaders and cattle ranchers, and families by wagon trains—they were coming here just to be here—to come west, to live, to settle, to make lives for themselves. Do you see what I mean? Getting west was the opportunity in itself! Then came the gold rush, and men and women poured in by the hundreds of thousands. Now California and Oregon are states, and one day Nevada and Washington will be, too. We’ve reached the end, the end of the frontier, Corrie. The country’s come as far west as it can go. California’s been tamed and settled. And here we stand, right at the very end, gazing down to where California meets the Pacific.”
We rode on slowly; then he stopped and suddenly jumped down off his mount, gazing down toward the ocean below us.
“Do you know where the next era of opportunity lies, Corrie?” he asked.
“Where, Cal?” I said.
He hesitated just momentarily, then wheeled around, stretched his arms widely out into the air as he faced eastward, and cried, “Out there! Back where we’ve come from—toward the east and everywhere between this spot right here and the same spot overlooking the Atlantic coast somewhere in New York or Maryland or Georgia! It’s what we do with this land now that we’ve conquered it and explored it. We’ve spent two hundred years just getting to this spot, Corrie. Many people shed their blood so that you and I could stand here and look out upon that expanse of blue. In the next century, fortunes are going to be made and empires are going to be built by those who lay hold of the opportunities afforded them.
“Men like Leland Stanford came west. That was their first opportunity. He came from Wisconsin with his four brothers and set up business in Sacramento. Getting here was his first opportunity, which he took hold of, and it made him a rich man. But he didn’t stop there. Then he turned his eyes back over the country he had crossed, and he began to take hold of new political opportunities—the opportunity of power. He ran for governor of this state. Even though he lost, Leland Stanford is still looking for new frontiers to conquer. He came to the Pacific, but now he is seeking to return to the East by rail—a new opportunity. I have no doubt that he and his friends will one day build a railroad back to the East where they all came from, and grow even more wealthy and powerful in the process.
“Oh, Corrie, don’t you see what I’m getting at? It’s in the statehouses like Sacramento where these opportunities of the future originate—where the laws are made. It’s there where the powerful people gather, where the money flows from. Politics, money, and influence—they are the opportunities of the next century! Those with vision to see such things will go far.”
He turned around, his eyes glowing as he looked up at me. I sat still on the mare, listening to every word he said.
“From the Pacific to the Atlantic,” I said, halfway to myself, reflecting on what he’d said a minute ago.
“Sea to sea . . . shore to shore! That’s it exactly!”
“There’s only one thing I don’t understand, Cal,” I said. “Why then do you want to have anything to do with someone like me? I’m hardly the kind of person you’re talking about.”
“But you are, Corrie! I knew that right from the first, when I heard about you and then when I laid eyes on you. Not only were you a beautiful young lady, all dressed up at the Montgomery Hotel in San Francisco. You also have done just what I’m talking about. You came west. The first frontier was just getting here and joining back up with your father and uncle. But no sooner had you done that than you turned back around and set your sights on higher goals. You started writing; you took every opportunity that you could, and now your writing is being read all the way back across the country. And the very Pony Express pouches that your brother carries across the mountains and desert have newspapers in them with your articles and speeches written down for folks in the East to read. You know the Fremonts and Mr. Stanford and Mr. Dalton. Don’t you see, Corrie—in your own way, you’re going to be an important person someday too, just like Leland Stanford!”
“That doesn’t sound like me, Cal,” I said.
“But it is, Corrie. You should be proud of it!”
“I never set my sights on having high goals. I never tried to take opportunities so I could get well known. That kind of thing never entered my mind, Cal.”
“It happened all the same. And now look at you—who would deny that you’re better off for all of it. For a woman to have done all you have, at such a young age . . . it’s remarkable, Corrie! I tell you, you ought to be downright proud!”
I suppose it was idiotic of me to keep questioning him. He had been so nice to me, and a short time ago I had thought I was in love with him. Maybe I still was. I had even persuaded myself that his attentions came from feelings he perhaps shared. But I had to know.
“Is that why you want to have something to do with me?” I persisted. “Because I might be an important person someday?”
“No, of course not,” he answered quickly. His voice bore a roughness, a defensiveness I had never heard before, as if such a blunt question had caught him momentarily with his guard down. It wasn’t the kind of thing young women asked when men were showering them with praise.
“That is, not if you find such a motive to be offensive,” he said smoothly, recovering his old composure. “I cannot deny that your accomplishments and reputation add to the charm I find so compelling about you. But even without them, I would still find you attractive above any other of the young ladies I have known. Do you believe me, Corrie?”
“I would like to.”
“T
hen do believe me,” he implored. His voice was so sincere; how could I possibly not believe he was in earnest? “Come, Corrie . . . get down. Walk with me.” He reached up his hand and helped me down off the mare. When my feet were on the ground, however, he did not let go. My heart fluttered to feel his hand around mine, but I was too flustered to make any attempt to pull it away.
“Ah, Corrie,” he said at last, “so much lies within our grasp—young persons like us, with life and opportunities and exciting new times for the country ahead of us!”
We walked on. My mind and heart were spinning in a dozen directions at once. I’d always thought of myself as rational and level-headed, but not now. Not with Cal Burton.
“Be part of it with me, Corrie,” he said after a minute or two. “Let’s find our opportunities together, and take advantage of them! You and I—we can be the Lewis and Clark of the next generation. You’ll be a famous writer someday. And I’ll—well, who knows how far we can go, Corrie, or what we can achieve! We can go back across this continent in the footsteps of Leland Stanford and men like him, and maybe even start to make our own marks in the history books of this country! What do you say, Corrie?”
I know I was being a fool, but I couldn’t help asking one more time, “But . . . why me, Cal?”
“Don’t you know, Corrie? Haven’t you figured it out from all I’ve been telling you? It’s because I care for you, Corrie—I care deeply. That’s why, with us working together, there wouldn’t be anything we couldn’t do, couldn’t achieve, couldn’t get if we set our minds to it!”
Cal’s closeness and the excitement in his tone overwhelmed me. I felt like running! I pulled my hand out of his and took off across the grass as fast as I could go.
“Hey . . . where are you off to?” called Cal behind me. I heard him start to chase after me, but I ran all the faster. I ran until I was tired, then slowed and let him catch up with me.
When he did, he threw his long arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze, then let go as we turned and started walking back to where the horses were nibbling at the brown grass.
We mounted back up and started slowly down the hill.
We rode down to the seashore, stopped and ran along the sandy beach, explored a watery cave, then galloped the horses miles along the sand before climbing back up inland, over the ridge of the peninsula again, and down through the woods and meadows. Even though we didn’t arrive back at the Stanford estate until late in the afternoon, in spite of all the exertion and the long ride, I didn’t seem to be hungry.
Dinner wasn’t exactly “formal,” but I did put on a different dress than the one I’d ridden in all afternoon, and Cal made his appearance in a black coat and ruffled white shirt with bow tie. He was indeed a handsome young man, and seeing him all dressed up reminded me of how taken I had been with him that night in San Francisco back in June.
When I went to bed that night, I lay awake a long time, dreaming of horses and sand and oak trees and the shining sun dancing and reflecting off the shimmering white and blue surface of the ocean. But mostly I dreamed of a tan face with brown hair flying above it in the breeze, and eyes of a blue so deep that even the sky above and the Pacific below seemed pale by comparison.
Chapter 36
How Many States?
When I got back to Miracle Springs several days later, the two speeches I had made already seemed far in the past. But knowing nothing about my trip to Palo Alto, Pa and Almeda were full of questions about the political situation.
“You heard anything more from Mr. Dalton?” I asked him.
“Got a letter just yesterday,” Pa answered. “He asked how the handbills that you had suggested were coming along—”
I had forgotten all about them—we were going to have to get busy in a hurry!
“And,” Pa went on, “he said he’d arranged for me to speak at a town meeting over in Marysville next week.”
“What do you think, Corrie?” asked Almeda.
“What’s more important is what you think,” I answered.
“I think it’s wonderful!” she said with a big smile. “I had no idea what I was starting when I got the notion of running for mayor. Now look what it’s caused—Drummond Hollister running for state office!”
In California, the presidential election of 1860 in California had as much to do with the dispute between North and South as it did anywhere else in the country. The battle for supremacy of the nation, and which region was going to hold the reins of power, was the election of 1860. In addition to the slavery issue itself, the election would determine who was going to direct the course of the future of the United States of America.
The South had controlled the government in Washington for thirty years. But all of a sudden, a major change seemed at hand. But the South did not intend to give up without a fight. The battle was to be waged on November 6, 1860.
California was one of the only states, however, where the dispute over control between North and South went on inside the state. California was now the second biggest state next to Texas, almost nine hundred miles from top to bottom, running north and south. The top of California next to Oregon was parallel with New York, and the bottom border ran right through the middle of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. It was only natural, I suppose, that there would be debate within California as to which side its loyalties ought to lie on.
Even during the Mexican period in California before the gold rush, there had been a spirit of sectionalism between the northern and southern halves of the state. Especially once the gold rush came, those in the south didn’t like all the activity of the north. When statehood was being discussed in 1849, many southern Californians did not want to be part of the new state and proposed dividing California in half at San Luis Obispo. They wanted to be able to go on with the slow pace of their old way of life, without being forced to be part of the frantic, growing, alien north where people were pouring in and towns were growing into great metropolitan areas overnight. Those in the south felt it unfair that they should have to pay taxes and support a state government that was located in the north, and that was expensive and heavily weighted toward the needs and concerns of the north. The south was so sparsely settled, it would even have preferred not to be a state at all, just as long as it could be separate from the north.
Statehood came to the whole state, but the desire to split the state into northern and southern halves continued as a volatile issue all the way through the 1850s. A huge movement in Los Angeles and throughout the south in 1851 tried to develop enough support to break away and form a new state. In the next two years, the southern legislators in Sacramento tried to call a constitutional convention that would divide the state. But since the north controlled the state legislature, such attempts were defeated.
Finally, in 1855 a bill was finally introduced into the California Assembly that at first called for a new state named Columbia to be formed. Then later the bill was changed to split California into three states. A new state called Colorado would be made of the area south of San Luis Obispo. A new state called Shasta would be made of the far northern part bordering Oregon. And California would remain as the central region of the three states.
That bill never passed, but the idea for making separate states continued, and even gradually began to be supported by some northerners. Another bill was introduced in Sacramento in 1859, again for two states, and again with the separation at San Luis Obispo, creating a new territory south of that to be called Colorado. This time there was enough support for the idea to pass both the state senate and the state assembly in Sacramento.
But the legislature couldn’t split the state apart all by themselves. There were two other groups of people who had to be part of the decision, too—the federal government and the people who lived in the part of California where they wanted to create a new state.
So the legislature wrote up a bill that would create a new territory to be called Colorado—if two thirds of the people in that region south of S
an Luis Obispo approved of the plan, and if the Congress in Washington, D.C., also approved. The bill passed in the state assembly 33 to 15, and in the state senate 15 to 12. Then a special election was set up late in 1859 for the people of southern California to vote themselves on whether they wanted their part of the state to be formed into a new territory called Colorado.
They surely did! The people south of San Luis Obispo voted 2,457 to 828 in favor of dividing California in half, and calling their half Colorado.
Therefore, in January of 1860, Governor Milton Latham formally sent the results of the bill and both votes to President James Buchanan, asking for the U.S. Congress to approve the division of California.
No approval had yet been given, however. The rest of the nation was too taken up with other momentous events that year. The election between Lincoln and Douglas and the dispute between the southern states and northern states all made a local squabble within distant California seem a little insignificant to the politicians in Washington. Not only was California far away from the rest of the country, it was made up mostly of Spanish-speaking Mexicans in the south and gold-hungry miners in the north. At least that’s what Pa said folks in the East thought about us.
“What does that have to do with splitting up the state, Pa?” Tad asked when we were all sitting talking about it a couple of weeks later.
“Nothing directly, son,” answered Pa. “It’s only that back in Washington I reckon they figure California’s a mite different than other states, and that maybe they just oughta leave it alone to do what it wants.”
“But if California wants it, all they have to do is approve it,” said Becky.
“Well, there are certain kinds of things where the federal government’s just not anxious to interfere. It’s called states’ rights. This country got its start as a collection of independent states that pretty much did what they pleased. The government in Washington was set up just to ride herd over the whole conglomeration, while the states went on deciding things for themselves. That’s why it’s called the United States of America instead of something else.”
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