5.2: Californians and the Crisis of the Union

As Californians struggled with issues of land, labor, and ethnicity, national politics moved rapidly toward the ultimate crisis of secession and civil war. Though far removed from Washington, California was never immune from the sectional conflict.

Fighting Slavery in California

Throughout the decade of the 1850s, slaveholders brought enslaved African Americans to live in California—some 300 in 1852, by one estimate. Some mined gold and others worked as domestic servants. The Gold Rush also attracted significant numbers of free African Americans, some of whom hoped to gain enough gold to purchase freedom for their families. By 1860, more than 4000 African Americans lived in California—the largest black population of any western state or territory other than Texas and Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). In California, African Americans encountered southern whites, most of whom brought their pro-slavery attitudes, and some of whom brought their slaves, as well as northern abolitionists, both white and black, who brought their hatred of slavery.

When slaveholders brought their slaves into California and continued to hold them in slavery, they seldom attracted attention from state or local officials, despite the state constitution’s prohibition of slavery. Some officials had pro-slavery attitudes. Others seem to have been willing to tolerate slavery. As a result, enforcing the ban on slavery often fell to individuals outside government. As the state’s free African American community grew and prospered, its members took the lead in identifying slaves, urging them to claim their freedom, and organizing assistance for them. A German immigrant wrote that “the wealthy California Negroes ... exhibit a great deal of energy and intelligence in saving their brothers.” They could usually count on white abolitionists for financial assistance, political pressure, and legal representation in the courts.

One such court case arose in the Mormon settlement of San Bernardino, in southern California. Robert Smith was a Mormon from Mississippi who brought several slaves first to Utah and then, in 1852, to California. Bridget “Biddy” Mason, one of the slaves, made friends with a free black family in Los Angeles. In 1855, as Smith was preparing to move to Texas, free African Americans persuaded the Los Angeles county sheriff to take Mason and the other slaves into protective custody. Mason then sought freedom through the Los Angeles District Court and succeeded, not just for herself, but for 13 others as well.

California’s developing African American community and their white abolitionist allies could claim some notable victories through court cases such as those that freed Biddy Mason and Archy Lee (see pp. 129–131). Other times they failed, either because they could not mobilize in time or because they could not persuade a judge. Black Californians had other struggles as well. Though some white Californians strongly opposed slavery and discrimination against free African Americans, the California legislature during the 1850s passed laws that discriminated against African Americans in ways similar to midwestern and mid-Atlantic states. Black Californians were prohibited from voting, serving on juries, marrying whites, or testifying in state courts. The prohibition
against testifying in court was especially troublesome, as it restricted the ability of African Americans to defend themselves in court in the event of challenges to their property, savings, or even their freedom. In 1852, the state legislature passed the California Fugitive Slave Law, designed to assist slave owners in capturing slaves who fled within California, and the law remained in force until 1855.

To organize against such discrimination, black Californians drew upon eastern precedents to hold several statewide conventions. Meeting in Sacramento in 1855 and 1856 and in San Francisco in 1857, the conventions demonstrated black Californians’ continuing connection with events in the East as well as their determination to secure the repeal of discriminatory legislation in California. One convention led to the establishment of the state’s first black newspaper. All three conventions called upon white Californians to recognize the contributions of African Americans to the state’s economy and its tax rolls and to repeal discriminatory laws. Discouraged by their lack of success, some 400 black Californians (including Archy Lee) moved to British Columbia in 1858.

Sectional Issues and California Politics

The prospect of a new state, with many elective offices, attracted politically ambitious men. William Gwin, for example, was a slaveholder and a Democrat from a prosperous and prominent family. He had served one term in the House of Representatives from Mississippi. Stymied in his hope for a U.S. Senate seat, he headed to California. Like Gwin, David Broderick came to California to pursue a political career when he found his political prospects blocked in New York. Largely self-educated, a Catholic and son of an Irish immigrant stonecutter, Broderick had entered Democratic Party politics in New York City and supported the faction that spoke for workers and opposed big business. Gwin arrived in California in time to win election to the constitutional convention, then won election to the U.S. Senate. Broderick came to California a bit later, jumped into Democratic Party politics, and won election to the state senate. His ambition, too, was to sit in the U.S. Senate. Both Broderick and Gwin were Democrats, but the conflict between them came eventually to mirror the nation’s conflict over slavery.

Within the California Democratic Party, Gwin led a faction called the Chivalry Democrats, including many from the South or border states. Tall, with a shock of gray hair, Gwin moved easily through the corridors of power. Though a slaveholder, he voted in the constitutional convention to ban slavery from California. In the U.S. Senate, he did not criticize slavery and usually voted with the southern Democrats. As senior senator and close to the administration, Gwin controlled most federal patronage (appointments to federal jobs) in California, and he steered bills through Congress that established important federal agencies in the Bay Area, including the mint and the customhouse. (The customhouse was one of the most important federal agencies in any port city, providing many federal jobs.) Through organization and patronage, Gwin and his Chivalry Democrats dominated the Democratic Party in much of California.

Broderick built a strong Democratic organization in San Francisco using techniques learned in New York City, and he soon dominated the state

This formally posed photograph of David Broderick was probably taken after he had become a member of the United States Senate. How does Broderick's political patterns in the nation?

legislature through his influence over the San Francisco members. As a political leader, he consistently defended the laborers from whom he had sprung and whose votes kept him in office. He opposed the Fugitive Slave Law and defended the rights of free African Americans, becoming an outspoken opponent of slavery.

Just as in California, the sectional conflict over slavery disrupted politics nationwide during the 1850s. When congressional Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, they changed long-standing rules to permit slavery in the new territories. One result was the emergence of a new political party, the Republicans, who opposed any extension of slavery into the territories. The Whig party fragmented over slavery and soon disappeared.

In the mid-1850s, some voters, at least temporarily, chose another new political party, the American Party, which appealed to American nationalism and opposed immigrants in general and Catholics in particular. The American Party grew out of a secret anti-immigrant society; their opponents called them Know-Nothings because, when asked about the organization, they were supposed to say that they knew nothing about it. In southern California, Californios called them Ignorantes. Divisions within the state Democratic Party led some southern, Protestant Democrats to support the Americans in 1855, and they probably got the votes of many former Whigs as well. They elected the governor and many members of the legislature; however, anti-Catholicism did not figure as prominently in the Know-Nothings’ victory in California as it did in eastern states. They soon died out.

The other new political party of the mid-1850s was the Republican Party. Many of the most outspoken Republicans were abolitionists, who sought to eliminate slavery everywhere. In 1856, the new party chose John C. Frémont, California’s first U.S. senator, as its presidential candidate. But Frémont did not do well in California—he placed third, after both the Democrat and the candidate of the Know-Nothings. Gwin and Broderick had patched over their differences to support the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, and to regain a Democratic majority in the state legislature. The Republicans did little better in California elections over the next few years.

Gwin and Broderick forged a temporary alliance again in 1857, when Broderick used his control over the state legislature to win election to the U.S. Senate. Promising to relinquish federal patronage to Broderick, Gwin securedBroderick’s backing for his own reelection to the Senate. Soon after, however, Gwin and Broderick staked out strongly opposed views over admitting Kansas to the Union as a slave state. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces had poured into the new territory of Kansas, and they fought with words and with guns to secure the majority there. When pro-slavery forces met at the town of Lecompton and drafted a slave-state constitution, the Buchanan administration tried to force it through Congress. Gwin led the pro-Lecompton forces in the Senate. Broderick joined Stephen Douglas and a few other northern Democrats who broke with their party and joined the Republicans to defeat the proposal. The bitter dispute between Gwin and Broderick carried over into the California state election of 1859. California Democrats divided into two camps. The Broderick faction, calling themselves Douglas Democrats, cooperated with the new Republican Party, but the Gwin faction won most of the state elections.

Shortly after the election, David Terry, a former Texan and former justice of the state supreme court, and a leading member of the Gwin faction, challenged Broderick to a duel, claiming Broderick had insulted him during the campaign. Though illegal in California, dueling was still practiced. Broderick’s gun discharged prematurely, permitting Terry to take deadly aim. Broderick’s death made him a martyr to the anti-slavery cause, as his supporters widely quoted his supposed dying words: “They have killed me because I was opposed to slavery and a corrupt administration.”

Within a year, the national Democratic Party divided into northern and southern wings, each of which ran its own candidate in the 1860 presidential election. Gwin supported John Breckinridge, candidate of the southern Democrats. California’s voters, however, chose Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, as did most northern states. Lincoln’s election prompted southerners to secede from a union that they now rightly understood to be in the hands of the enemies of slavery. Gwin and a few other Democrats urged that the South be permitted to leave in peace, but Lincoln and his party considered the Union to be indissoluble. The nation plunged into four years of bloody civil war.

California and Civil War

Far removed from the arena of conflict, Californians nonetheless played a significant role in the war.

When the Union called for volunteers, Californians formed eight regiments of infantry, a regiment of cavalry, a battalion of mountaineers, and a battalion of cavalry commanded by Californios and made up of Californios, Mexicans, and other Latinos. These forces were assigned to defend the mail and transportation routes between California and the North. When the Confederate army sent troops into New Mexico Territory, the California Volunteers were sent to block its advance. The Californians helped to drive the Confederates back into Texas, then spent the remainder of the war in campaigns against the Navajos, Apaches, and other Indian peoples of the Southwest, gaining a reputation as ruthless, even vicious, in their tactics.

Some Californians fought with the Union army in other units. Early in the war, Edward Baker—Archy Lee’s attorney—had raised a regiment in the East that included a number of Californians and was known initially as the 1st California. Several hundred Californians volunteered and made their way east, forming the “California Battalion” of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry. Henry Halleck, a West Point graduate and prominent San Francisco lawyer, led all Union armies from mid-1862 to early 1864, but failed to make much progress against the Confederate forces. William Tecumseh Sherman, another West Point graduate, was more successful. He had passed through California in 1847 while serving in the war with Mexico; he returned as a civilian in 1853 and opened a bank. He was appointed major general of the California militia in 1856, shortly before the vigilantes hanged Cora and Casey. Opposed to the vigilantes but unable to use the militia to restore the lawful authorities, he resigned his commission. Sherman left California in 1858. By the end of the Civil War, his contributions to Union victory put him second only to Ulysses S. Grant.

In all, nearly 16,000 Californians served in the Union army—about one in every five males between the ages of 15 and 30—but most Californians contributed to the Union in other ways than by bearing arms. Thomas Starr King, pastor of the San Francisco Unitarian Church, undertook grueling speaking campaigns around the state to promote the Union cause. Spurred in part by King’s oratory, Californians made their most impressive contribution to the Union in gold, especially as donations for the Sanitary Commission, a voluntary organization formed to care for wounded soldiers. Only two percent of the Union’s population, Californians donated more than a quarter of all funds raised by the Sanitary Commission. California’s contributions, furthermore, were in gold, which had greater purchasing power than the depreciated greenbacks that the Lincoln administration was issuing to help cover the cost of the war. California gold, sent regularly to New York, also played a significant role in helping to stabilize Union finances.

With the Republican victory in the 1860 Republican election, a new group of political leaders emerged in California. Prominent among them was Leland Stanford, a Sacramento merchant who had been the Republicans’ unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1859 and who won the governorship in 1861. In the 1864 presidential election, Lincoln easily carried California.

Though most Californians were loyal to the Union, there were exceptions. David Terry became an officer in the Confederate army, and other Californians also joined the Confederate ranks, some 250 just from Los Angeles County.Though Gwin hoped that the South might be allowed to leave in peace, he did not take up arms against the Union. He left California in 1861, returning only well after the end of the war. A few Confederate sympathizers schemed to separate southern California or to disrupt the shipment of California gold to the Union, but nothing came of such plans. A few Californians briefly nourished hopes that California might secede and join Oregon as a Pacific Republic. A few Confederate sympathizers were arrested when they became too outspoken, but were not jailed for long.

Completion of the telegraph early in the war meant that news of battles was known in California as soon as in New York. Whether they were firm supporters of the Union, critics of the war, or Confederate sympathizers, Californians closely followed the major military engagements of the war, even though they were separated from them by great distances. In the end, the war experience seems to have brought many Californians to feel more connected to the rest of the Union.

Reconstruction and New Understandings of Citizenship

During the war and afterward, events far away in Washington brought important changes in the legal status of African Americans and, ultimately, Asian Americans and others. At the end of the Civil War, the victorious Republicans pushed through three amendments to the U.S. Constitution as a way of making permanent the momentous changes they had created. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) defined federal citizenship and the rights of American citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) specified that the right to vote could not be denied based on race. These constitutional changes had implications not only for the defeated South, but also for California.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments meant, immediately, that African Americans could no longer be denied voting rights in California. Even before the Fourteenth Amendment, California Republicans in the state legislature had passed legislation that removed the limits on court testimony for African Americans. There were also some changes in the laws governing education in the late 1860s, requiring school districts to provide schooling for students of color and permitting, though not requiring, students of color to attend the same schools as white children. In 1872, given the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, the legislature repealed the law that prohibited Asians from testifying in court against whites. The Fourteenth Amendment was potentially farreaching in its provisions and its implications; however, just as was true for the state constitution’s prohibition of slavery, the amendment was given meaning only as individuals appealed to the federal courts for protection of “equal protection of the laws.”