Gold! (18 page)

“After wishing to shoot me at Mazatlán, they tried to borrow money from me at Sacramento City! But the reader will see that the same principle, or rather want of principle, was exhibited both in the shooting business and the borrowing affair. They then took a pleasure trip to Smith's Bar.”

It was then August 20; McNeil had landed in San
Francisco on June 1. In almost three months, he had accumulated $1,500, “that is, cleared that sum, after paying all expenses. I firmly believe that, if I had not been bothered and delayed through Texas and Mexico by the Lancaster boys—that is, if the wagons had been sold, and we had muled it in 30 days instead of the two months the trip occupied, I might have doubled the $1,500 between the dates I mentioned.”

To show how social class was in a constant state of flux during this period, McNeil cites this example:

“An English vessel was lying at that port of the muslin houses. Although the sailors had been receiving good wages, all of them run away from the ships to the mines. The captain, who was receiving $50 per month from his employers in England, being an honest man and true to their interests, remained on board. He hired at that port a cook, for his own eating, to whom he gave $250 per month. This is the first time I ever saw a cook get more wages than the captain of a vessel. No other country can exhibit such a singularity as that. In fact, California has turned the world upside down in every department of life.”

California had not been the boom place it was for some, nor did he lose his shirt like most. McNeil saw the reality. It invaded his feelings with an intense and profound sense of loneliness. He missed home, he missed family, he missed his children, and he missed his friends.

“A New York gentleman walked pompously into my tent, and asked me what I would take for the now universally celebrated and appreciated Sycamore Tree Establishment and all its appurtenances, the latter consisting
of as much as an ordinary man could carry on his back, and would be worth in the States about $50.

“I told him $500, considering that the credit of the establishment was worth a small fortune. He offered me $400 in cash. I observed that it was useless to multiply words between gentlemen, and he might count out the $400 in sterling gold, and he could take the whole concern and possession at the same time.

“Now I am ready to start for home.”

As it turned out, McNeil would once again have a traveling companion. A countryman named Walker from Cincinnati, who had traveled with him previously from Mazatlán to Sacramento, showed up at the Sycamore Tree Establishment just as McNeil was selling the place. The last time they had seen each other, Walker “got drunk soon after arriving in Sacramento and went off intoxicated to the mines. When I saw him last he was making a perfect worm fence along his route.

“I did not hear of him afterwards until the moment I was ready to start towards home. I asked how he had progressed after leaving me. He informed me that he had found a rich spot, and had dug out $8,500. He showed me the dust. Both of us then proceeded to San Francisco, where, getting as beastly drunk, as ever, he gambled and soon lost $1,000. Then he had $7,500 left, which I took care of for him. As to fortune, there was a great disparity between us, as I had only $2,000.

“It is now August 20, and Walker and myself are at San Francisco, waiting for a passage to the States. The U.S. Mail steamer
Panama
, is anchored in the bay, three miles
from the town, appointed to sail Sept. 2d. She is commanded by Capt. Baily. Our tickets for the steerage, in that ship, cost us each $150. I could have sold my ticket for $250, as there were about one thousand more than the steamer could take, wishing passage to the States.

“Before catching the steamer, several of the Lancaster boys showed up. I call them
boys
, for
men
would not have acted towards me as they did. They had not, as yet, made one dollar. They tried to persuade me to stay longer in that country, but they could not succeed.

“I told them that I had seen the elephant, which had a longer tail and a bigger snout than the usual elephants. That I was satisfied with the small bucket full of gold I had accumulated, and would not stay to see it running over the sides like milk from a pail, as I was no advocate for wastefulness.

“Perhaps they had not sense enough in their contracted skulls to understand the homely illustration of the Lancaster shoemaker. If so, they may die with their wisdom, as its loss will be not the least loss to the world.”

10.

CRIME WAVE

As he boarded his steamer in San Francisco Harbor for the trip south, Samuel McNeil noticed all the foreigners emptying off the five-hundred-some ships in the harbor. Being a parochial people, Americans like McNeil were afraid and distrustful of foreigners. Among the latter who came to America's shores in the wake of the discovery were the dissolute and dishonest from all countries of the civilized world.

“Situated within reach of the penal colonies of Great Britain, as well as being in proximity with the semi-barbarous hordes of Spanish America, whose whole history is that of revolution and disorder, it was soon flooded by great numbers from those countries, who were accomplished in crime, and who, without feeling any sympathy for our institutions, and contributing
nothing for the support of our government, their only aim seemed to be to obtain gold, by any means, no matter how fraudulent; and owing to the weakness of the constituted authorities, joined to the vicious among our own people, they succeeded in their frauds and crimes to an amazing extent, and rendered the security of life and property a paradox on legislation, hitherto unprecedented in the annals of modern history,” wrote Alonzo Delano in his popular 1857 book
Life on the Plains and among the diggings
.

The book is based largely on letters from Delano published in Ottawa, Illinois, and New Orleans newspapers. The Aurora, New York, native had moved to the Midwest as a teenager. By July 1848 he was a consumptive storekeeper in Ottawa looking to extend his life by going someplace where the air was drier. Delano joined a local California company and migrated west, where he won fame after the Gold Rush as an early California humorist.

Delano's view that Gold Rush crime was perpetrated by “the semi-barbarous hordes” was a popular belief. And yet, like most prejudicial racist tracts, “In the early part of the winter of 1850, however, some of those who left the mines early for fear of starvation, or because they preferred the comforts and pleasures of the town to a winter seclusion in the mines, being unable, perhaps unwilling to obtain employment, gave loose to their vicious propensities; and about that time, too, Sydney convicts began to arrive, when affairs began speedily to assume another aspect and it became necessary to guard property with as much acre as in towns of the older states.”

Gold Rush crime came about because of a variety of factors: sheer force of numbers; the immigration to San Francisco of convicted criminals from Australia and Britain, who came there after their release; and the sheer hunger and deprivations of miners who failed to hit pay dirt. Making things worse was the lack of an effective government and law enforcement program to deal with the burgeoning crime wave.

During the winter of 1849–50, cattle rustling began. The Californios, whose herds the rustlers were stealing, complained, but to no avail, because there really was no one to complain to. Rustling of mules and horses followed with impunity. Naturally, at first the Indians were charged with the thefts. When many of the rustled animals were subsequently recovered and their path from rightful to unlawful owners was traced, it became clear “that the white savages were worse than the red,” Delano wrote.

Then pure greed showed itself at the diggings.

“Even as late as June, 1850, I was one of a jury in the mines, to decide on a case of litigation, where one party sued another before a self-constituted miners' court, in the absence of higher law, for flooding the water on a river claim, and thus preventing its being worked.

“The court was duly opened, the proofs and allegations adduced, and the costs of the trial advanced. Judgment was rendered against the plaintiff, in favor of the oldest occupant of the adverse claims, when the plaintiff submitted without hesitation, and paid $102, costs, with as much cheerfulness as if it had been done by a legally constituted court of the United States.”

Zachary Taylor had taken office as the twelfth president of the United States on March 5, 1849. For the next sixteen months, Taylor and his vice president, Millard Fillmore, enjoyed unprecedented popularity because of Old Rough and Ready's forty-four years of loyal and popular military service.

During those sixteen months, the South threatened to secede from the Union over the issue of slavery in the new territory it acquired. Taylor encouraged both New Mexico and California to apply for admission as free states. A Kentucky native, Taylor angered his Southern followers even more by ignoring the claims of Texas, a slave state, to territory that had become New Mexico instead of Texas as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.

In February 1850 President Taylor held a contentious meeting with Southern leaders threatening secession. “[People] taken in rebellion against the Union, I will hang,” he said, “with less reluctance than I used in hanging deserters and spies in Mexico.”

Eleven years before President Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union, President Taylor threatened to do exactly that. Taylor told the South in no uncertain terms that to enforce the Constitution, he would personally would lead the army against the South.

Taylor then lobbied for the Missouri Compromise of 1850, which prevented the South from seceding, at least for the time being. Then a very strange thing happened. Ground was broken on the Washington Monument on July 4, 1850, at which the president presided. It was a stifling, hot day. For relief, the president consumed a bowl
of frozen cherries and milk. He became ill almost immediately and died three days later of what appeared to be an acute inflammation of his intestinal tract caused by ingestion of the confection in combination with the heat.

With Taylor dead, Millard Fillmore took over. Fillmore did not have Taylor's enormous experience in the world; he never cast a glance toward California. As a result, crime continued unabated in the Union's newest state.

By the spring of 1851, crime was rampant, particularly on the streets of San Francisco. Robberies and murders were daily occurrences. Organized robber bands terrorized the towns and the mountains.

“I was privately informed by a young man of my acquaintance, that he had been offered seven hundred dollars a month to steal horses and mules. Although he was a wild, daring fellow, he had too much principle to engage in nefarious practices,” wrote Delano.

Every morning, San Franciscans awakened to reports of more robberies and more murders as daily newspapers chronicled the crime wave. By June 1850, there were sixty people awaiting trial for a variety of alleged crimes. Ten of them were on indictments for assault with intent to kill. Things were just as bad in the mining camps.

In Marysville in March 1850, a cloth house was cut open with a knife, and a trunk stolen, containing $1,000. Arrested as they were preparing to go down the river, the thieves were taken before the Alcalde, who sentenced them to a public whipping. It was carried out
immediately in the town plaza. Despite that, only a portion of the stolen money was ever recovered.

Down in Placer County, two men went into a tent, and finding a woman alone, her husband off at work, proceeded to bind and gag her, and then robbed the tent of $1,500 dollars. These thieves, too, were arrested. As there were no prisons in the country, they were whipped, and again turned loose. This kind of thing happened regularly.

In December 1850 the crime wave spread south, to Monterrey. While the tax collector was absent from his office for only twenty-five minutes, thieves stole in and robbed it of $14,000 in public monies. Five ex-convicts from Sydney were arrested, and a portion of the money found. Captured in San Juan, two others were charged as accessories.

Of these two, one was also charged with horse stealing; he had stolen a horse that belonged to Judge Ord, who was counsel for them on the first charge. It was dangerous to buy a mule off a stranger, for fear the property had been stolen, and might be claimed by another party.

January 1851 saw no letup. Buoyed by their unheralded success, the thieves got even more brazen.

“The sleeping room of Captain Howard, of the police in San Francisco, was entered and a trunk, containing $2,100 in scrip, and $3,000 in gold was abstracted. So adroit had the thieves become, they actually went into a store about ten o'clock at night, and while men were at work overhead, they blew open a safe, took $700 which it contained, and escaped,” Delano wrote.

“Cases even more bold and daring than any of these might fill these pages. Such became the insecurity of
property, from the hordes of villains prowling about, that men scarcely felt safe under any circumstances, and no man slept in a building without having firearms within reach, well loaded, to protect himself against these ruthless midnight villains.

“In addition to other crimes, was that of arson. San Francisco was four times burned, and every principal city in California suffered severely from fires, when subsequent disclosures proved that some, at least, if not all, were caused by the fiendish incendiary, to gratify a desire for plunder, or from a horrible spirit of revenge.

“Every ship from the penal colonies of Great Britain only swelled the number of English convicts already here; while the vicious from all nations seemed to find a rendezvous in California, and hordes of the most accomplished villains in the world, who had passed through every grade of crime, found a home and congenial spirits in this devoted land.”

These individuals were morally bankrupt. They not only wouldn't work to acquire wealth, they were willing to kill for it. They got away with it, the kind of situation that cannot long endure in any civilized society without there being violent repercussions.