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Jersey Gold
The Newark Overland Company's Trek to California, 1849
By Margaret Casterline Bowen, Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5714-6
CHAPTER 1
Headliners of 1848
Dr. John Stevens Darcy, an ardent Democrat, went to the polls on November 7, 1848, to cast his vote for the party's presidential nominee, Lewis Cass. Several weeks later he would watch the opposing Whigs parade through the streets of Newark, publicly celebrating the election of Gen. Zachary Taylor.
Col. John R. Crockett could not have been in a better mood. As president of "The Grand Celebration in Honor of the Election of Taylor and Fillmore," he had the honor of leading the torchlight procession through the city center. The title of grand marshal suited him well. A man of deep pride in his country, he had served as Newark's chief fire engineer before opening a leather and cloth mercantile business. During the two weeks after Taylor was elected the twelfth president of the United States, Crockett and his organizing committee planned an elaborate patriotic program for the citizens of Newark, intending to stir memories of the nation's independence. Crockett and most of the organizers were sons and grandsons of Revolutionary War military men and owned their patriotism from firsthand accounts of their ancestors.
Snow had already fallen in Newark, which prompted the committee to plan for inclement conditions. But the weather proved more than satisfactory for the late November celebration — it would remain almost balmy until darkness descended. The event afforded a long-awaited release of frustration for the men of Newark who for years had rallied for Whig Party causes but rarely had reason for festivity. The election of war veteran Gen. Zachary Taylor fifteen days earlier had generated outpourings of political triumph across the Union. Years of Jacksonian democracy were finally being put to rest.
Taylor had become a national hero after leading US forces to victory in the recent Mexican-American War, securing the vast expanse of Texas for the United States. But his leadership background was strictly military and his experience in politics slim, having only casually associated with the Whig Party when standard-bearers had encouraged him to run for office. Taylor's narrow win over Lewis Cass stunned the Democratic Party, especially following the term of popular James K. Polk. As promised during his presidency, Polk had declined to run for a second term, leaving the Democrats divided. Cass, their nominee from Michigan, was a firm believer in states' rights, as evidenced in his 1847 letter espousing that "Congress has no right to say that there shall be slavery in New York or that there shall be no slavery in Georgia, nor is there any other human power but the people of those States, respectively, which can change the relations existing therein." But many Democrats felt this view indirectly supported the Southern position and prompted former Democratic president Martin Van Buren to run on the ticket of the breakaway Free Soil Party, whose political stand mandated the prohibition of slavery in all new US territories, making them truly free soil. Van Buren's third-party candidacy pulled just enough votes from Cass to allow a victory for Taylor, who was both a Southerner and, ironically, a slaveholder.
The celebratory events of November 22, 1848, were set in motion at 5:00 P.M. with 163 guns fired from the hill just above the courthouse, symbolizing the number of electoral votes Taylor received. The residual smoke settled like fog in the street below, gradually thinning to haze. Some thirty minutes later, Washington Hall, Newark's Whig headquarters and the designated gathering point for parade participants, opened to the public. Shortly after 6:00 P.M., signal rockets were launched from the Military Common announcing the imminent start of the pageantry. Grand Marshal Crockett and six military aides, all on horseback, began the march up Broad Street. There was no holding back Crockett's swaggering excitement.
Behind the military contingent, citizens followed closely, some also on horseback, others in the comfort of carriages. The horns of the Newark Brass Band sent patriotic songs down side streets and separated the parade leaders from the assemblages of Rough and Ready Clubs proudly displaying their insignias and banners, a few bringing their own musical accompaniment. Bloomfield, Belleville, and Jersey City were among those represented. Blazing tar barrels mounted on wheels followed a number of the delegations, while others shot off hissing, crackling Roman candles that showered sparks dangerously close to wide-eyed spectators.
Up Broad Street, around the town square, across Washington, and back down Broad Street, the parade filled Newark with an exuberance seldom experienced in the chill of a late autumn evening. Citizens on foot filed in, all coming to a brief stop at the Military Common, where a display of fireworks sent Chinese Grandiflora and Flying Salamanders above the barren trees, briefly interrupting the darkness with bursts of brilliance and causing young ones to cover their ears. The night was fiery, festive, and on patriotic overload.
Before returning to Washington Hall, the procession wound around the neighborhood streets, where residents had been requested to light their houses to greet Crockett and his entourage. Some windows glowed in red, blue, and green where colored transparencies had been placed over panes. Not all homes were decorated, possibly indicating opposition to the Whigs. One such residence might have been that of Democrat John S. Darcy, who, despite opposing Taylor, shared a similar patriotic heritage with the parade organizers.
A few streets over, James Adolphus "Dolph" Pennington might have similarly refrained from lighting his home. Pennington was alderman of Newark's Fifth Ward and stood with Darcy in supporting the Democratic Party. The Penningtons were a founding family of Newark and claimed a rich legacy of service to state and local politics. New Jersey governor William Sanford Pennington had entered office in 1813, the year his grandson Dolph was born. The governor had been a captain in the Continental army, putting the Penningtons into the elite class of both founders and patriots. More recently, another William Pennington, Dolph's uncle, had completed six years as the state's governor, succeeding his father in the office. Powerful and popular, Uncle William was a Whig, making Dolph the odd man out in family politics.
By nine o'clock Colonel Crockett and his aides returned to Broad Street for the final countermarch to Washington Hall, where supporters would revel in speeches and congratulatory exchange for a few more hours. As the parade ended, a crowd of participants spilled into the Whig headquarters, gas- and candle-lit homes along the route went dark one by one, and the streets of Newark returned to normal sleepiness.
A Newark paper dedicated a full page to coverage of the extravaganza, asserting, "The triumph of Whig principles, and the consummation of patriotic effort zealously put forth for the public good, in the election of Taylor and Fillmore, was fitly and heartily celebrated in this never failing old Whig city." There was little mention of any disapproval during the two-and-a-half-hour procession. The article simply characterized the insults and negative shouts from the crowd as voiced by "some worthless fellows of the opposition," and only shared this information in the last paragraph. It is no wonder the overall report was favorable. Like many of the parade organizers, Newark Daily Advertiser proprietor and editor William Burnet Kinney descended from a prominent local family and, likewise, he was a solid member of the Whig Party.
The presidential election dominated the pages of Kinney's newspaper until late summer, when another topic captured readers' attention. Reports proclaiming the discovery of gold, said to be unlimited in the rivers of the recently annexed US territory of Alta California, surfaced in East Coast media. The papers published letters from the territory that described the mass abandonment of shops, ships, crops, and even local newspaper offices across California, as workers thronged to the goldfields. These reports, however, were so unbelievable that they bordered on rogue journalism. Were men actually abandoning their livelihoods for the chance of striking it rich? Was there really gold gleaming from riverbeds, and was it really so easily picked up and claimed by the finder? The author of one such article recognized that his story might be met with skepticism by saying that it contained "facts stronger than fiction." But he affirmed that "a gold fever arises — strikes everyone, and drives everyone from his home. ... The forge stops, the boards remain unplained, houses are closed, dinners uncooked, the sick recover, the plaintiff leaves his case untried, the defendant is gone, the Alcalde is going ... all bound to the American Fork and Feather River branches, of the Sacramento. Rivers whose banks and bottoms are filled with pure gold."
While the news was beginning to reach the stateside papers in September, the actual gold discovery had taken place in January. Even California papers had taken two months to report that gold had been found-far inland near the headwaters of the American River. A paragraph in the Californian on March 15, 1848, understated the event in matter-of-fact words: "Gold Mine Found — In the newly made raceway of the Saw Mill recently erected by Captain Sutter, on the American Fork, gold has been found in considerable quantities. One person brought thirty dollars worth to New Helvetia, gathered there in a short time. California, no doubt, is rich in mineral wealth; great chances here for scientific capitalists. Gold has been found in almost every part of the country."
The report gave no credit to the man who made the discovery and no date was referenced to mark the event. James W. Marshall had developed a business relationship with landowner John A. Sutter in late 1847. He had agreed to take a small crew upstream some thirty miles from Sutter's headquarters at New Helvetia (Sutter's Fort, Sacramento) to locate an appropriate place for a sawmill and then oversee the site preparation and construction of the facility. By Christmas heavy rains, typical of the winter months in central California, had commenced, interrupting the project. The dreary conditions threatened all-out desertion by the laborers, most of them Mormon men who had remained in the territory after volunteering for the military exercise that claimed California from Mexico. They were eager to rejoin their brethren in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, where Brigham Young had led his followers the previous summer. The wretched weather gave the men plenty of reasons to quit Sutter's employ and begin their eastbound pilgrimage.
Marshall was able to retain the workers into January. On the nineteenth day of the month, according to Marshall's initial recollection, he spied a gleaming object in the waters just below the mill. Skeptical that he had found gold, Marshall returned to the fort, where he and Sutter consulted the Encyclopedia Americana and used a variety of geologic tests to evaluate the samples. Marshall and Sutter determined to keep their findings to themselves until the mill was finished, but the workers who were aware of the discovery needed no tests to confirm what they had seen. The news found its way to San Francisco within weeks. "Scientific capitalists," as predicted by the Californian, were soon on their way to central California. No one could have imagined just how many there would be, all captivated by the prospect of instant wealth.
The initial response to the discovery at Sutter's Mill was a local gold rush involving those with proximity to California. Many of them were US soldiers and sailors assigned to the annexed territory. So severe was the desertion rate by April 1848 that Lt. William T. Sherman, second in command of the territory, offered the substantial reward of $30 for anyone who could "arrest and deliver to the commanding officer of any Military Post in California, the person of a deserter from the army of the United States."
News of the gold rush crept across the Pacific on whaling ships sailing from San Francisco destined for Honolulu in the Sandwich Islands. Soon the Pacific kingdom was in crisis over the exodus of its labor force that was rushing to the American River. Trade ships running the coast to Mexico and Peru carried the excitement to Central and South American ports, which would soon experience a similar loss of workers. Mormons finally able to conclude their contractual service with Sutter made their way to Great Salt Lake City in the spring, further spreading the word of California's newfound wealth.
By the first of September 1848 normal business in California was turned upside down, yet New Yorkers, Washingtonians, and Kentuckians, along with most Americans, were oblivious to the frantic digging that was taking place on the far western side of the continent. John S. Darcy and John R. Crockett were busy in Newark with their respective professions and actively supporting their opposing political candidates. Like the majority of the US population, they were clueless about the activity underway in California riverbeds. Their ignorance would end in mid-September.
The arrival of Lt. E. Fitzgerald Beale in Washington, DC, after a trip at record-setting speed from California, began to shift the perception of California's gold from laughable hogwash to probable truth. The initial report by Beale was published in the Washington Union on September 20, and within days was copied by newspapers across the country. Beale not only brought his own observations of the dramatic transformation taking place in California, he also delivered an official letter from US naval agent Thomas O. Larkin, stationed in the territorial capital of Monterey. Both accounts confirmed the vast quantities of gold coming from California rivers. The story was picked up by the Newark Daily Advertiser, and the first genuine inkling of the richness of California's placers was clarified to readers. Darcy, Crockett, Pennington, and a host of their prominent colleagues now realized that the highly implausible reports of a modernday El Dorado might be true.
Private letters written from San Francisco around the same time added further confirmation. "The demand for all sorts of merchandize," one person wrote, "was so great that the cargoes of 16 vessels from our Atlantic cities were sold at once." Newark and many other eastern ports began to see an increase in maritime traffic bound for California. While some vessels were chartered by the government to transport troops, others went "not to hunt gold, but to supply those who do with something more indispensable — the means of life." The Beale report roused curiosity and excited entrepreneurs, but it did not ignite the stateside frenzy for gold.
Over the next two months much of the nation's energy remained directed at choosing a successor to James K. Polk, the man responsible for obtaining from Mexico the newest US territory and all its wealth. Newark's focus was no different. Election coverage and day-to-day events took precedence over news of California gold. On October 23, a hurricane ravaging Savannah captured the headlines. The following day, it was the arrival of the circus in Newark, led "by a huge Elephant and six Camels, glittering in spangled harnesses."
On a more ominous note, bulletins from boards of health around the country released warnings of an impending cholera epidemic. Reports of the disease moving west from Russia to London had been confirmed, and with immigration on the rise, there was widespread concern about the dreaded killer breaking out in American disembarkation ports. Still, especially in William B. Kinney's paper, news about Whig candidate Zachary Taylor consumed the columns.
In November, while John R. Crockett and other Whig leaders throughout the country were conducting postelection celebrations, another assessment was about to arrive from Monterey. Lieutenant Beale's news had turned heads, but the official report by California governor Col. Richard B. Mason in late November dispelled any remaining doubts about gold in his territory. "It is reported with truth and reason ... that Colonel Mason of the army, commanding our forces in California, has sent an official account of the extraordinary gold and quicksilver mines of California," newspapers announced. Previous reports were now undeniably confirmed.
Mason's lengthy discourse described the conditions in California as a new reality. As military governor, he had visited Sutter's Fort in June and with his top aide, Lieutenant Sherman, spent the next month Compiling both scientific data and personal observations. The report, mostly written by Sherman, identified James Marshall as the finder of the first gold nuggets at Sutter's Mill. Details about the mining process, wages, prices of goods, and the relationship with local Indians dominated the writing. Finally Mason insightfully recommended that a mint be established in San Francisco before "many millions of dollars ... pass yearly to other countries to enrich their merchants and capitalists."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jersey Gold by Margaret Casterline Bowen, Gwendolyn Joslin Hiles. Copyright © 2017 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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