The Age of Gold

by H. W. Brands

  But Frémont would not report for duty. Outraged at being incompletely exonerated, he interpreted Polk’s offer as an insult and resigned his commission. The army had impugned his honor; he would find other outlets for his ambition.

  WILLIAM SHERMAN SHED no tears for Frémont. A graduate of West Point and an officer in the American contingent that occupied California after the fighting with Mexico ended, Sherman joined most of the regular army officers in condemning Frémont for insubordination. Kearny was Frémont’s army superior; that fact alone should have settled the matter. The army was better off without the turbulent lieutenant colonel.

  Besides, Sherman couldn’t stand Frémont personally. As individuals they could hardly have been more different. Where Frémont was flamboyant, Sherman was steady. Where Frémont took chances, Sherman took care. Where Frémont broke rules, Sherman enforced them. Where Frémont’s charisma drew people to him, Sherman’s reserve put people off. Where Frémont was fire, Sherman was ice.

  The ice in Sherman often took those who met him by surprise. His red hair and beard gave a first impression of a hotter temperament. Perhaps because of that, and to correct it, he kept the hair and beard clipped brusquely short. The eyes were the giveaway: blue, not like some warm southern ocean but like a glacier’s heart. Gazing out from beneath a high, broad brow, the eyes assessed the world, and the people in it, with cool deliberation.

  That was how they assessed Frémont, whom Sherman encountered in California. Sherman arrived at Monterey in January 1847 after a long voyage around Cape Horn. The tedium of the voyage was relieved, imperfectly, by a copy of Richard Dana’s book and by the prospect of joining the fight against Mexico. With other West Pointers, Sherman saw the war as a career opportunity, one lately lacking for professional soldiers, and he an ticipated bloodying his lance in battle. On the last leg of the voyage, up the California coast, he and his shipmates heard reports of the hostilities around Los Angeles. “Being unfamiliar with the great distances,” he wrote, “we imagined that we should have to debark and begin fighting at once. Swords were brought out, guns oiled and made ready, and every thing was in a bustle when the old Lexington dropped her anchor.”

  To their disappointment, they learned that the action was four hundred miles away, and over. From all Sherman could see at Monterey, the war might have missed California completely. “Every thing on shore looked bright and beautiful, the hills covered with grass and flowers, the live-oaks so serene and homelike; and the low adobe houses, with red-tiled roofs and whitened walls, contrasted well with the dark pine-trees behind, making a decidedly good impression upon us who had come so far to spy out the land. Nothing could be more peaceful in its looks than Monterey in January 1847.”

  Deprived of a chance for distinction in battle, Sherman commenced the mundane task of quartermastering the occupation. Fortunately he came prepared. His ship carried six months’ provisions for the troops it transported, the equipment for a sawmill and a gristmill, and assorted other supplies for an army headquarters. For such items as he needed to purchase, Sherman had $28,000 in cash. This seemed sufficient for a long stay, as prices were low. Horses ranged from four to sixteen dollars apiece; beef cost two cents a pound.

  The occupation began uneventfully. Sherman spent days hunting in the mountains behind Monterey or watching the Californians exhibit their remarkable skills on horseback. “The young fellows took great delight in showing off their horsemanship,” he wrote, “and would dash along, picking up a half-dollar from the ground, stop their horses in full career and turn about on the space of a bullock’s hide.” The Californians were equally adept with the lasso. “At full speed they could cast their lasso about the horns of a bull, or so throw it as to catch any particular foot.” Sherman and the other American soldiers joined the locals at the weekly baile, where the young ladies displayed grace in dancing that matched the men’s skills on horseback.

  Sherman attempted the indigenous cuisine. One afternoon he and a companion rode into the countryside, reaching an isolated farmhouse at dusk. The owner, a Señor Gomez, was about to sit down to supper and wasn’t pleased at having to share his meal with two of the American occupiers. But he understood he had no choice. “We were officers and caballeros and could not be ignored.” Yet Gomez had his revenge. “I was helped to a dish of rabbit, with what I thought to be an abundant sauce of tomato. Taking a good mouthful, I felt as though I had taken liquid fire; the tomato was chile colorado, or red pepper, of the purest kind. It nearly killed me, and I saw Gomez’s eyes twinkle.”

  Sherman met Frémont not long before the latter went east to face his court-martial. Sherman was curious to size up the famous explorer and so rode out to Frémont’s camp. Frémont sat in his tent—a tepee, in fact— with a fellow veteran of the mountains and desert, a Captain Owens. Sherman spent an hour with Frémont, who served him tea and chatted about nothing important. Sherman had expected more, and left “without being much impressed.” On the contrary, he concluded that personal pride and ambition, rather than the misunderstandings Frémont claimed, had provoked the fight with Kearny. Frémont’s departure, under Kearny’s arrest, was good riddance. “With him departed all cause of confusion and disorder in the country.”

  OR SO SHERMAN HOPED. With the political squabbling over—or transferred east at any rate, to Frémont’s trial—Sherman anticipated a return to the quiet occupation. He settled into his assignment as adjutant to Colonel (and Governor) Richard Mason, expecting paperwork, more hunting and bailes, and perhaps another attempt at those infernal chiles.

  A visit from some strangers in the spring of 1848 altered his plans. “Two men, Americans, came into the office and inquired for the Governor,” Sherman recalled. “I asked their business, and one answered that they had just come down from Captain Sutter on special business, and wanted to see Governor Mason in person. ”Sherman knew of Sutter, although he had never met the man; naturally he wondered what this special business was. I took them in to the colonel, and left them together. After some time the colonel came to his door and called to me. I went in, and my attention was directed to a series of papers unfolded on his table, in which lay about half an ounce of placer-gold. Mason said to me, “What is that?”

  I touched it and examined one or two of the larger pieces, and asked, “Is it gold?”

  Mason asked me if I had ever seen native gold. I answered that, in 1844, I was in Upper Georgia, and there saw some native gold, but it was much finer than this, and that it was in phials, or in transparent quills; but I said that, if this were gold, it could be easily tested, first, by its malleability, and next by acids.

  I took a piece in my teeth, and the metallic lustre was perfect. I then called to the clerk, Baden, to bring an axe and hatchet from the backyard. When these were brought, I took the largest piece and beat it out flat, and beyond doubt it was metal, and a pure metal. Still, we attached little importance to the fact, for gold was known to exist at San Fernando, at the south, and yet was not considered of much value.

  John Sutter apparently thought differently. The two visitors carried a letter from Sutter requesting preemption rights to the quarter-section of land on which the Coloma sawmill and millrace were located. Mason instructed Sherman to prepare an answer to Sutter’s request.

  Sherman explained that with the Mexican War not officially ended, California remained a Mexican province. American forces occupied the territory, but neither Governor Mason nor any other American official could convey land rights. Moreover, even after transfer of sovereignty, assuming such did occur, titles to land would await a public survey of the territory acquired. Captain Sutter would have to be patient.

  Yet Sherman, not wishing to seem entirely unhelpful, remarked that the neighborhood in question contained no settlements and hardly any inhabitants. There needn’t be any hurry about land titles, nor was Sutter’s mill likely to be disturbed by trespassers. Mason read the letter, signed it,

  and handed it to the two messengers from New Helvetia, who
departed north.

  EVENTS SOON EXPLODED Sherman’s complacency. Sutter and James Marshall, by discovering the gold, had prepared the explosive charge, but it was Sam Brannan who put the match to the powder.

  Like Sherman, Brannan arrived in California from New York during the fighting against Mexico. Like Sherman, Brannan hoped to see some of that fighting. Like Sherman, Brannan was disappointed—but not so disappointed as Sherman, for, unlike Sherman, Brannan was no soldier. Instead, he was a churchman, or professed to be. In reality, he was an opportunist, of a characteristically American—specifically, Yankee—stripe. Born in Maine in 1819 (which made him a year older than Sherman and six years younger than Frémont), Brannan bounced around several states as a journalist and speculator before landing in New York as an elder in the Mormon Church. In that capacity he sailed in early 1846 with a ship of Saints, bound for California, where the group intended to scout possibilities for a colony beyond the reach of the persecution that had dogged their sect in the United States. Brannan’s vessel, the Brooklyn, landed first at Honolulu, where a resident American found the Mormons’ naïve hopes of a new life in California touchingly funny: “The Mormon Co. talk as tho’ they had nothing to do but go on to California, take such lands as they please, and No One to say boo!!!!”

  Before they left Hawaii, Brannan and the others learned of the war between the United States and Mexico. Commodore Stockton, en route to California, encouraged Brannan to purchase weapons for the adult males on the Brooklyn and to drill the men in their use. Soon the Saints were marching to and fro, with Brannan at the command.

  The Brooklyn entered San Francisco Bay at the end of July and anchored in the cove of Yerba Buena. Behind the beach, on a staff above the Mexican customshouse at the corner of the main plaza, Brannan and the others could see the American flag snapping in the summer breeze. “Damn that flag!” he reportedly said. As an elder of a sect ill-used under the Stars and Stripes, Brannan might have been forgiven for registering frustration at discovering that the foreign refuge for which he and the others had embarked was not foreign after all, and therefore likely not a refuge. On the other hand, he may simply have been disappointed at missing the chance to lead his troops into battle.

  After getting the company settled, Brannan headed east to find Brigham Young and the rest of the Mormons. Having seen the attractions of California, he hoped to persuade Young and the others to join him there. It certainly occurred to him that as the leader of the California wing of the church, he would be well placed to benefit from general recognition of his foresight. Brannan’s Sierra crossing, undertaken in the early spring of 1847, was difficult. “We traveled on foot and drove our animals before us, the snow from twenty to one hundred feet deep,” he recalled, with forgivable exaggeration. “When we arrived [on the eastern slope of the mountains] not one of us could stand on our feet.” Several weeks later, Brannan and his fellow travelers intercepted Young and the other Mormons on the banks of the Green River.

  Brannan described to Young the wonders of California: the gentle climate, the fertile soil, the navigable rivers, the beckoning bay of San Francisco. It was just the spot for the new Zion, he explained. Yet Young resisted Brannan’s arguments. Indeed, as Brannan gradually realized, the very arguments that seemed to Brannan to make California perfect seemed to Young to damn the place. If California was as desirable as Brannan contended—and Young didn’t doubt that it was—it would soon be overrun by gentiles. Better to remain in the wastes of the Great Basin, where the Saints could build their colony in peace. Brannan continued to argue, to the point of insubordination. He thought Young was being willfully obstinate, and said so. Young took his as a further sign of the evil influence of California and the wider world, and chastised Brannan for consorting with mammon. After six weeks of similarly futile arguments, Brannan left the valley of the Great Salt Lake in disgust, bound again for California.

  He arrived at Sutter’s Fort just as James Marshall was heading up the American River to build the sawmill. With inspired timing, Brannan opened a general store at the fort. Consequently he was one of the first to know when Marshall’s news leaked out of Sutter’s study. Brannan briefly pondered what to do with the news. Part of him wanted to keep it quiet, in hopes of carving his own claim to the goldfields before everyone arrived. Another part wanted to publicize the discovery and thereby enlarge the clientele for his budding business.

  Fatefully, Brannan—in the first manifestation of the insight that would be responsible for the most durable fortunes of the Gold Rush era—guessed that as much money might be made from the miners as from the mines, and he opted for publicity. He purchased enough gold dust to fill a jar and traveled to San Francisco, as Yerba Buena was now generally called. He paraded conspicuously about the town, waving his hat and shouting, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!”

  The rumors had preceded him, but this material evidence made the rumors suddenly credible. Others echoed Brannan’s cry. An erstwhile skeptic found himself almost literally carried away.

  I looked on for a moment; a frenzy seized my soul; unbidden my legs performed some entirely new movements of polka steps—I took several. Houses were too small for me to stay in; I was soon in the street in search of necessary outfits. Piles of gold rose up before me at every step; castles of marble, dazzling the eye with their rich appliances; thousands of slaves bowing to my beck and call; myriads of fair virgins contending with each other for my love— were among the fancies of my fevered imagination. The Rothschilds, Girards, and Astors appeared to me but poor people. In short, I had a very violent attack of the gold fever.

  So did hundreds of others. The small population of San Francisco nearly vanished overnight in the direction of Sutter’s mill. The fever spread south to Monterey and Los Angeles; those towns were similarly depopulated. “The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds to the sordid cry of gold! GOLD!! GOLD!!!” observed a local paper, the Alta California, “while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes, and the means of transportation to the spot where one man obtained $128 of the real stuff in one day’s washing, and the average for all concerned is $20 per diem.” With this statement, the paper announced that it was suspending publication; its entire staff was going to the goldfields.

  “I OF COURSE COULD not escape the infection,” said William Sherman, “and at last convinced Colonel Mason that it was our duty to go up and see with our own eyes, that we might report the truth to our Government.” From Monterey, Sherman and Mason traveled overland to San Francisco, then across the bay to Sausalito, then again by land to San Rafael, Sonoma, and Sutter’s Fort. Sherman described the fort and its setting, in a letter to his brother:

  The Sacramento, where we crossed it at Sutter’s Fort, is a broad stream, with a current of two or three miles an hour; the banks are low, so that, when the rainy season sets in, the vast plain on the east side is one sheet of water, but at ordinary seasons the stream is confined within its banks of about three hundred yards wide…. Sutter’s Fort stands about three miles back from the river, and about a mile from the American Fork, which also is a respectable stream. The fort encloses a space of about two hundred yards by eighty; the walls are built of adobe or sun-dried brick. All the houses are of one story, save one, which stands in the middle, which is two stories. This is the magazine, officers’ mess-room, etc. It was in this that in former times Sutter held his state and issued orders amongst the tribes of Indians as peremptory and final as those of an emperor.

  As it happened, the American officers arrived just in time for the first celebration of the Fourth of July in the (so far brief) American history of California. Sherman depicted host Sutter, at this time the most prominent man in California: His personal appearance is striking, about forty or fifty years of age, slightly bald, about five feet six inches in height, open, frank face, and strongly foreign i
n his manner, appearance, and address. He speaks many languages fluently, including that of all Indians, and has more control over the tribes of the Sacramento than any man living…. Sutter presided at the head of the table, Governor Mason on his right and I on his left. About fifty sat down to the table, mostly Americans, some foreigners, and one or two Californians. The usual toasts, songs, speeches, etc., passed off, and a liberal quantity of liquor disposed of, champagne, Madeira, sherry, etc.; upon the whole a dinner that would have done credit in any frontier town.

  From Sutter’s Fort, Sherman and Mason proceeded up the American River. At twenty-five miles they reached Mormon Island, so called from the three hundred Mormons—some from Marshall’s company at Coloma, the rest other veterans of the Mormon Battalion—who were digging for gold in the sand and gravel of the streambed. Here Sherman met Sam Brannan, “on hand as the high-priest, collecting the tithes,” Sherman recorded. Obviously the diggers were finding gold, which was making Brannan rich—which in turn was annoying some of the Mormons. One of them approached Colonel Mason. “Governor, what business has Sam Brannan to collect the tithes here?” he asked. Mason replied, “Brannan has a perfect right to collect the tax, if you Mormons are fools enough to pay it.” By now the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been ratified and California formally annexed to the United States; Mason added, “This is public land, and the gold is the property of the United States. All of you here are trespassers, but, as the Government is benefited by your getting out the gold, I do not intend to interfere.”

  Far from interfering, Mason—via the hand of Sherman—accelerated the search for gold. On their return to Monterey, Mason had Sherman draft a letter to Washington confirming the reports of the gold discovery. “The most moderate estimate I could obtain from men acquainted with the subject was, that upward of four thousand men were working in the gold district, of whom more than half were Indians, and that from $30,000 to $50,000 worth of gold, if not more, was daily obtained,” Sherman wrote.