1848

THE Deity that overrules all things punishes the sin of covetousness, not necessarily by withholding or depriving of the coveted object, but by planting in the wrongful acquisition a penalty. The men or the people who yield to inordinate desires are permitted to be further corrupted by gaining what they strive for. Texas, New Mexico, California, all that vast sweep of territory which we had wrested from Mexico by fraud or conquest, was ours irrevocably, and perhaps forever. We peopled that glorious area with our own inhabitants; we gave it the blessing of a better civilization; under our influence and protection the wilderness blossomed. Time, in fine, has welded that whole annexation so firmly and indissolubly with the great American Union, that the earlier misrule of Mexico is almost forgotten. In one sense it was better for society that the acquisition was made. The scorching illustrations, drawn in Corwin's famous speech from Napoleon and modern Europe, have found here no parallel; in American history no infatuated warrior has bent the Republic to his personal ambition; our boundaries have not expanded like those of France to shrink back once more to their original limits. Yet divine retribution followed as quickly as that speech predicted, and the delusion of "manifest destiny" brought its appropriate punishment. That the iniquitous war with Mexico drove from public confidence the politicians and the political set by whom it was provoked, our last chapter has shown. Triumphant success to our arms did not turn the torrent of popular odium which the prosecution of such a war excited. That, to be sure, was temporary, and while the

first sense of guilty wrong lasted after the secret motives of the war had been fully revealed. A wider retribution followed, as the scroll of Divine requital slowly unrolled. In less than five years North and South were nearly in civil conflict to settle the social status of these new territories; in five years more the rivalry, still further strengthened, was transferred to other territory and other new projects for slave conquest; another five years saw civil disruption and a civil war such as the world had never witnessed; and before twenty years had elapsed slavery and slave confederacy had melted alike in the fervent heat of a strife which began in this unhallowed attempt to wrest the domains of a weaker republic for the spread and perpetuation of slave institutions in the stronger. Freedom was the final result and the only one consonant with eternal justice, but that goal was not reached without terrible cost and sacrifice to both North and South, for men of each section had erred exceedingly.

But truly this new acquisition was a noble one, could we but have gained honorably that rich and picturesque domain. With Texas, California, Utah, and New Mexico, that broad zone was now complete which girdled the continent from ocean to ocean. This proud and independent republic, within sixty years of that compact existence which began with the Mississippi for a last border, had crossed that broad river and stretched its empire to the remote and undefined peaks of the Rocky Mountain chain, and at length, sweeping beyond that mountain barrier, stretched in its last and fullest expansion to the Pacific. The two great seas of the world now washed the one and the other shore; and a great orator's imagery recalled the artist's last finish to the shield of Achilles, when he poured round the waves of living silver which "beat the buckler's verge and bound the whole."

Of these fair domains torn roughly from the embrace of Mexico, California was the fairest. New Mexico seemed

*Webster's Speech, March 7, 1850.

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CALIFORNIA'S FAIR DOMAIN.

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at that epoch, arid, sterile, and mountainous; its mines were hidden, its soil produced little; its uninteresting population occupied chiefly the dull trading-town of Santa Fé. In Utah's Salt Lake valley the Mormon exodus found its Canaan in the midst of an almost unbroken solitude. But California the "Upper California" of the Mexican Confederacy with its soil and climate of rich variety, its spacious harbors, and that beautiful stretch of scenery which extended from the Sierra range to the seashore, offered beyond comparison the desirable field for our secular enterprise,—almost a waif of jurisdiction when transferred to our flag, little governed, little garrisoned; its inhabitants Indians for the most part, and the real potentate of the region one Captain Sutter, a large landholder of Swiss origin who had once served under Bonaparte,* and whose adobe fort, near the present site of Sacramento, which bore his name, was the tlements of this great valley. we have described already.† nothing romantic about it. Colonel Fremont made the taking a share in the glory of governing; and then came General Kearny in season to claim precedence of 1847-1848 rank, and precipitate a triangular quarrel of no great interest to posterity. The ambition of both Stockton and Fremont took a political direction. Stockton went home, and chosen to represent New Jersey in the United States Senate, he resigned from the navy. Fremont, at Kearny's instance, was court-martialled; he was adjudged guilty of disobedience and pardoned; but guilty or innocent, our young pathfinder attracted the common sympathy, and in his impetuosity seemed to personify all that was truly picturesque about this distant enterprise.t

radiating centre for all setCalifornia's easy conquest There was nothing thrilling, Commodore Stockton and subjugation complete, each

Lumbering, tillage of the soil, and ownership of the spacious harbor of San Francisco, had been the main objects proposed by the annexation of California to the

*Waddy Thompson's Recollections, c. 25.

↑ See vol. iv, p 535.

See in detail 17 II. H. Bancroft's United States, cs. 11-17.

United States. But another advantage, which threw all these into the shade, was revealed at almost the moment of its formal transfer. It was a land of treasure trove. Gold, mineral wealth of inestimable worth lay ready to tempt cupidity, in rock, in crevices, in river beds, the moment these possessions became ours. A century earlier, so runs the story, Jesuits found gold in this region and were expelled in consequence. Minister Thompson's book gave gold and silver a passing mention, while describing the resources of California.* Mines nearer the heart of Mexico, which had been lately pledged for the security of British loans, once yielded a handsome return, but forty years of civil disorder left them unproductive. Indeed, since 1810, products of the precious ore in both hemispheres had fallen off greatly, though the yield in the New World far excelled that of the Old. Hitherto, however, bowels of gold and silver had belonged to the sicklier races; we, like our hardy English progenitors, had boasted rather of our coal and iron, products for common use. The gold region of the United States, as hitherto defined, lay along the mountains which bordered Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia; and science, capital, and skill, while slavery infected that region, had all been wanting to develop or so much as locate these resources. this republic was on the verge of a discovery which would impart a new influence in the civilized world, and give new values and a new impulse to finance and the industrial activities. Had not God guided us? Was not the Union working out some sublime mission of manifest destiny? Here within one hundred and sixty thousand square miles of our Mexican conquest, within that country alone, west of the Sierras, which was drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, was more gold probably than would pay the cost of our late war a hundred times over. Such was the confident report of our military commandant in California, dated six weeks after peace had been officially proclaimed at Washington; and our

* Waddy Thompson's Recollections, c. 25.

But now

1848.

DISCOVERY OF GOLD.

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President, submitting that report to Congress in its ensuing session with his farewell message, found a new justification of the policy he had pursued toward Mexico.*

That splendid and startling discovery was made in fact. before the actual conclusion of a treaty with Mexico, and California's dwellers were wild with excitement at the time when distant representatives of the late belligerents ratified the compact of transfer wholly ignorant of the news. Nor did the earth first open her secret to the peering eyes of the American conquerors who occupied the country, but to Captain Sutter, the Swiss lord of the Sacramento, and an American mechanic from New Jersey in his employ, named Marshall. Some miles above Sutter's fort, on the American fork of the Sacramento, a saw-mill was in course of erection for turning some pine forests near by into lumber. Marshall, with a gang of workmen, comprising native Indians and a few white. Mormons, was engaged upon the work. While widening and deepening the channel, where water was let on to run the mill, yellow particles were brought down by night, mingled with the loose mud and gravel, which Marshall discovered as he sauntered along the

1848.

tail-race the next morning Suspecting the Jan. 24-28. truth, which was confirmed by another night's sluicing, he gathered some of the glittering grains in his pouch, and rode down the stream to Captain Sutter, dismounting at the fort on the afternoon of the 28th. Sutter weighed the ore, applied such tests of science as he could command, ransacked his little library upon the subject, and pronounced the substance gold. From that moment the news of the discovery spread, and men's minds were turned in his little kingdom from saw-mills, flour-mills, herds, flocks, and all that humbler property which hither. to had absorbed his thoughts and theirs, and to quote Sutter's own expressive phrase, for he could not ride.

* Polk's message, Dec. 5, 1848, and documents; Colonel Mason's report, H Ex. Doc. 1, No. 37