goldfields

Sorry I dropped the ball here at the Bidwell blog. I’m ready to get back to blogging, although I’m not making any big promises. But I should be showing up occasionally with some tidbits about John Bidwell and his world.

An announcement! Next Sunday, January 27th, is the date for the annual meeting of the Bidwell Mansion Society at the Visitor’s Center at Bidwell Mansion SHP. You don’t have to be a member to attend, although we welcome new members.

There will be a reception for members at 5:30 p.m. followed by a meeting at 6:00. New board members will be introduced, departing ones will be extolled, and the revised by-laws will be presented for a vote of approval. Then on to the speaker–

The guest speaker is Valerie Sherer Mathes, professor of history at City College of San Francisco. A specialist in American women’s history and Native American history, she is the author of Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy, coauthor (with Richard Lowitt) of The Standing Bear Controversy: Prelude to Indian Reform, and editor of The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson.

Her newest book is Divinely Guided: The California Work of the Women’s National Indian Association, published in 2012 by Texas Tech University Press.  The WNIA was a favorite cause of Annie Bidwell, and the book contains chapters on Annie’s work with the Mechoopda Indians and the WNIA’s famous Indian boarding school in Greenville, Plumas County.

See you there!

After his experience at the disastrous 1860 Democratic National Convention—the one that split the party in two—John Bidwell came home to California and attended the state convention that would nominate a candidate for governor. He wanted the job. In 1867, writing to Annie about his life and political career, he said:

I was so sustained by the people of California that I could have been elected to almost any office, as I believe — In 1861 I could by a little exertion have been nominated for governor — came very near it without making any exertion.

So why did he not exert himself?

Bidwell lived in the day when, ideally, the political  job sought the man, rather than the man seeking the job.  He expected the party to seek him out as the best candidate, and support him. He didn’t consider it proper that he should put himself forward. Bt not exerting himself, he eventually (after fourteen ballots) lost the nomination to John C. Conness.

Note that this is the version that he told Annie. Annie, with her high ideals, wanted him to be the man that others would seek, rather than the politician who went looking for a public office to fill. So he is telling Annie what he thinks she wants to hear.

He also doesn’t mention that he wouldn’t have won the governorship anyway. This was after the Democratic Party tore itself in two. He was at the Union Democrat convention–the convention of Democrats loyal to the Union. What the pro-South Democrats were doing I’m not sure, but they didn’t support Conness or the Republican candidate. With the Democratic vote divided, Republican Leland Standford, became governor of California. And the next time around, Bidwell would be a Republican too.

In 1891, John Bidwell dictated a memoir in which, among many other things, he recalled his career in politics. Here is what he had to say about his role at the 1860 National Democratic Convention:

When I was sent as a delegate to the Charleston convention in ’60 . . . and saw that the south meant disunion, I could not agree with them. I differed with all the other delegates from California and Oregon, Senator Gwin was one of them, and Senator M.S. Latham was another, and while he was from Ohio, he was under the influence of the southern democracy. . . . I returned to Washington, and the convention made no nomination.

Afterward one wing held its convention and nominated Breckenridge, and the other wing nominated Douglas. Of course, I was with Douglas. After I got back to Washington, on my way home to California, Stephen A. Douglas, before he was nominated for president, sent for me. He wanted to see the man that had dared to differ with Gwin and the rest of them from California. They called me the black sheep and everything else, but that did not hurt me.

When I got home to California, Gwin and Frank Washington called upon me. The latter was the finest political writer on the coast. He was the leader of the southern democracy here. They stayed with me and talked almost until midnight, to try and induce me to vote for Breckenridge. I treated them very politely, took them in my carriage to the county seat, and bid them goodbye. I never could be persuaded to yield to the disunion element that was growing up at the time.

John Bidwell would have told anyone who asked him that all he ever wanted to be was a farmer, and a farmer he was, albeit on a grand scale. But he had political ambitions too. Not like William C. Gwin, who came to California specifically to become a U.S. senator and succeeded in his ambition, but in the sense that he wanted to help California progress and he wanted to rise to the top. He was intelligent, energetic, and fair-minded–he would have made a great governor.  Unfortunately he never made it to the pinnacle of state government.

His first try came in 1861. He had been, throughout the 1850’s, a Democrat. He helped organize the Democratic Party in California. The Democrats dominated politics for most of the decade.  In 1860 Bidwell went to the national Democratic Convention in Charleston, South Carolina as one of eight delegates from California.

It was at this point that the Democrats went from being the predominate force in American politics to a party riven by sectionalism. Bidwell was a “Douglas” Democrat, backing Senator Stephen A. Douglas for the nomination. But the other seven California delegates, led by Senator William Gwin, were part of the pro-Southern and pro-slavery faction of the party. Although Douglas had been the front-runner leading up to the convention, the Southern wing of the party blocked his nomination.  Ballot after ballot was taken, no candidate was nominated, and the convention and the party fell to pieces.

Bidwell gave his proxy for Douglas to a friend and went back to California. The warring Democrats held two separate conventions nominating rival candidates, Douglas and Breckinridge, and thus insured the election of the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln.

Back in California Bidwell’s name was put forward for governor at the 1861 convention of Union Democrats. Four other men vied for the nomination and in the end it went to John C. Conness.  Just as the Democrats were divided on the national level, so were they split in the state, and they could not win. Leland Stanford became California’s first Republican governor.

It was Bidwell’s last hurrah as a Democrat. A staunch Union man, he was disgusted with the Democrats who supported secession. He and other Democrats who stood for the Union merged with the Republicans to form what was then called the Union Party, but would eventually simply be the Republican Party.

Yesterday Jim and I visited Governor’s Mansion State Historic Park in Sacramento, another one of the state parks that was slated for closure last year.  Thankfully, that unfortunate chapter in state parks history is behind us, for the time being at least, and we can go on enjoying the marvelous variety of natural and cultural sites that belong to the people of California. 

The Governor’s Mansion is a wonderful example of Victorian Gothic architecture. Our guide called it second-generation Italianate. Bidwell Mansion is good example of first-generation California Italianate architecture (built 10 years before the Governor’s Mansion), and it is interesting to note the similarities and differences. Both are three story buildings with a basement and a tower. Both have the same kind of decorative wooden brackets around the eaves. Both of them have a similar layout: public rooms on the first floor, bedrooms and servants quarters on the second floor, ballroom on the third floor.  (We didn’t get to see the ballroom–it’s under renovation.)

Both were up-to-date buildings in their day, with running water and flush toilets and all the latest in innovative interior design.

Bidwell Mansion is a broader, more expansive building, with a stucco exterior; the Governor’s Mansion is narrower and seems taller, and is all built of wood, with lots more “gingerbread” decoration. My guess is that, back in the day, Bidwell Mansion was cooler in the summertime, and if you had the choice of which one to live in, Bidwell Mansion would be more comfortable overall.

The Governor’s Mansion was built in 1877 by wealthy merchant Albert Gallatin. In 1903 it was sold by its second owners, the Steffens family, to the state to be used as an executive residence. Twelve governors from George Pardee to Ronald Reagan lived here, but the Reagans moved out after only four months. Here’s how an article in the Sacramento Bee described their reaction:

Here is how political journalist Lou Cannon described the story about the house in his 2003 book, “Governor Reagan, his rise to power:”
“Trading Pacific Palisades was bad enough. Living in a relic that was more suitable as a museum (which it is today) was unthinkable. Nancy Reagan rebelled. She realized that the mansion, which had ropes in the bedrooms instead of fire escapes, was a ‘firetrap.’ A rusted screen that wouldn’t budge covered the window of her son’s second-story bedroom. In case of fire, her son was supposed to smash the screen by running at it with a bureau drawer and then climb onto the roof. Nancy Reagan had no difficulty in persuading her husband to move out of the mansion.
“The Reagans, at their own expense, leased a two-story twelve-bedroom Tudor house in  an exclusive section of eastern Sacramento.”

“Firetrap” was a good excuse, but no doubt Nancy Reagan had other reasons. Antiquated bathroom fixtures, small bedrooms, inadequate space for entertaining, a location right on a busy street—it’s a great place to visit but she didn’t want to live there.

“The days of old, the days of gold, the days of ’49” live on in California. There’s a reason it is called the Golden State, and the San Francisco football team is called the Forty-Niners. Those Gold Rush years left their mark. That was the year that brought men pouring into the state, all of them intent on making a fortune, and making it fast.

Who were these men? (and most of them were men). The majority were immigrants from the United States, coming by ship from the Eastern seaboard, or overland from the interior. But men from nearly every part of the globe hustled to California.

In a letter to a young lady friend, John Bidwell described the people he met in the diggings. “There’s nothing here to please the eye or gladden the heart but Gold. The Yankee, the Mexican, the Spaniard, Portuguese, Chinese, Malays, New Zealanders, Sandwich Islands [Hawaiians], Chillanians [Chileans], Peruvians, besides various tribes of Indians, tame and wild.”

An image from the Bancroft Library depicting miners in all their human variety.

Before the Gold Rush there were maybe 26,000 residents of California, exclusive of the Indian population. Roughly half of these were Mexican-Californians, and the other half Americans and other foreigners (such as Johann Sutter the Swiss-German and Robert Livermore the Englishman.)  By the summer of ’49 the number had doubled, and that was before most Americans could get themselves to the gold fields.  Mexicans, other Central and South Americans, and Hawaiians were closer to hand. By the end of the year over 100,000 people had arrived, each one of them with the gleam of untold wealth in their eyes.

They came to a land devoid of any adequate system of government. A military governor was in charge, but there were no judges, no courts, no trial by jury. California was badly in need of a code of law and a civil government. It wasn’t long before the Argonauts were complaining and petitioning the governor to have the problem dealt with. Congress had done nothing to set up a Territorial government, so Gen. Riley figured he might as well get started on forming a state government. Given its unparalleled growth, California was going to be a state soon enough, so it might as well have a government ready.

The Great Seal of California depicts Minerva, goddess of wisdom, seated, with a grizzly bear by her side.  Why Minerva?  Because Minerva (or Athena) sprung fully formed from the forehead of her father Jupiter (or Zeus). As explained by Caleb Lyons, the secretary of the state constitutional convention, “This is introduced as a type of the political birth of the State of California without having gone through the probation of a Territory.”

California did not follow the usual path to statehood: designation as a Territory by Congress, then admission as a state. Only Congress could confer upon the region a Territorial government, and Congress failed to act. Events just moved too fast in California for Congress to keep up, and the state made the leap from conquered territory to statehood in record time.

When the war with Mexico concluded, California remained under military rule. Government was under a succession of military governors, Commodore Stockton, John C. Fremont, and General Stephen Kearney among them, although they squabbled among themselves as to who was in charge. Fremont refused to recognize Kearney’s authority and was court-martialed, convicted, and later pardoned.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ratified in May 20, 1848, concluded the Mexican War and made California officially part of the United States. By this time gold had been discovered at Sutter’s Mill and soon the rush would be on. As men poured into California, the legal situation stood in confusion. Until a new government was formed, Mexican law was supposed to remain in force, but the Americans were not sure what the Mexican laws were, and it’s not clear if the old Californios knew much more.

Throughout 1848 Col. Richard B. Mason, the successor to Kearney as military authority, awaited word from Congress about a territorial government, but he waited in vain. Congress failed to act. By the time General Bennett Riley assumed command in April 1849, the region was rapidly filling up with gold-seekers, and still there was no civil government. It was time for Californians to take matters into their own hands.

I haven’t been posting much lately; instead I’ve been trying to get a handle on California politics in the 1850’s. I realized, after I started writing about Bidwell in politics, that I didn’t really know much about politics and government in early California, other than what I knew from him. So I’ve been trying to fix that.

Bidwell himself didn’t write much about the 1850’s. He covered the 1840’s very thoroughly more than once, recounting his adventures on the California trail and his experiences during the Mexican War and the Gold Rush. Exciting stuff. But when it comes to his activities during the 1850’s there isn’t much to go on. He may have kept a journal, but if he did it is lost. His letters may be the best source for this period. Some day I’ll have to dig deeper in the California State Library and see what I can find.

During the 1850’s John Bidwell served as a senator in the first state legislature. He traveled to Washington, D.C., was present when President Fillmore put his signature to the act making California the 31st state of the Union, and brought the documents back to San Francisco. Even when not serving in the legislature, he was active in state politics as a delegate to party conventions.

He worked tirelessly at developing his ranch and promoted agriculture throughout the state. He welcomed travelers at his adobe home on the Shasta Road. As the man who had surveyed numerous land grants up and down the state, he testified in many court cases dealing with land titles. He wrestled with the difficult questions of how to treat and protect the native Californians, a people that most white settlers would be glad to help disappear. All in all, he was a very busy man during this period, but he didn’t leave much of a record.

Somewhere in his writings, and I can’t find the reference, Bidwell says in his early career in California he was an “incorrigible Democrat.” When he left Missouri and came into California in 1841, a young man of 22, he naturally allied himself with the Democratic Party, the party of Andrew Jackson.  The Democrats were the party for the small farmer and the urban working man. Their opposition in the first half of the 19th century were the Whigs.

Later in his life he would become disaffected by the Democrats and change his allegiance, but during the 40’s and 50’s he would have voted Democrat, if he got a chance to vote in the back of beyond that was California.

I think this is the only photo that shows the first state capitol in San Jose. John Bidwell may be in the picture somewhere, but it is impossible to say which one he is.

The Democrats dominated California politics during the 1850’s. In the first state election on November 13, 1849 (although in reality California was not yet a state) John Bidwell was elected to the state senate, representing the Sacramento district. In December he went to San Jose and together with the rest of the new legislature began the process of building a state government.

We had to frame a code of laws, and our constitution was almost a literal copy of the constitution of New York. A few members who had been able to get copies of the statues of N.Y. introduced nearly all the bills, and they were almost literal transcriptions of the N.Y. laws.  . . . I was head of the committee on corporations, also on the committee of county boundaries. I was chosen for this because I had more knowledge of the counties than perhaps any one else there.

I wrote the first charter of the City of San Francisco, for which the newspapers gave me great credit, but I didn’t deserve the credit, because I had copied it almost entirely from the charter of St. Louis. There was nothing very remarkable in getting up the code of laws.

And so began Bidwell’s political career in California. There was one earlier event–in August 1849 he was elected to the state constitutional convention.  But he never got the word of his election until it was too late. He hadn’t campaigned for the position, and in the summertime he was up in the hills, mining for gold. By the time he found out that he had been selected by voters to help write the constitution, it was too late to take part.

Here’s an interesting question: What political party did John Bidwell belong to?

The first answer that probably comes to mind is the Prohibition Party. Most people in Chico know that John Bidwell was the Prohibitionist candidate for U.S. president in 1892. (In case you didn’t know, he lost to Grover Cleveland.)  But the Prohibition Party wasn’t founded until 1869. What was John Bidwell before he was a Prohibitionist?

Democrat?  Republican?  Some obscure special interest third party?  How about all three?

Yes, indeed.  Good old steady John Bidwell was all of those, and might have become governor of California on any one of those political tickets. Who knew he was so fickle?

Not really fickle, but as politics in California and in the United States changed over the course of the 19th century, he changed too.  From “incorrigible” Democrat (as he described himself), to Republican, to Anti-Monopolist, to Prohibitionist (with a nudge from Annie), Bidwell served his state and pursued his ambitions. In subsequent entries during this election year I’ll explore Bidwell’s political career and we’ll see what kind of politician he was.