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Malcolm J. Rohrbough

DAYS of GOLD The California Gold Rush and the American Nation

CHAPER 17: THE PERMANENT LURE OF SUCCESS; THE ENDURING SHAME OF FAILURE

¶1 The adventure in California, so simple and straightforward when described to the family in the parlor, turned out to be involved and elaborate. The issue of when to return and under what circumstances stretched out indefinitely. The large number of 49ers who talked confidently of going to California and returning within a year soon had to admit that they would be gone at least two years and very likely more. They couldn't say for certain when they would return. Then, too, there was the question of how to return with little or nothing. How was the 49er to justify his prolonged absence when he returned with no more than he departed with? As we have seen, before the 49ers had departed, those they were leaving behind had wished to have an exact date for their prospective return . From that point until the question was settled, it called forth almost every human emotion that could be conveyed by letter or personal message. To pose and respond to these endless queries about a date became a standard part of the correspondence formula of the Gold Rush. It was a subject eventually addressed by even the most evasive of the Argonauts who maintained contact with home.

PROMISES RECONSIDERED

¶2 In the debate over whether or not to go to California the issue of returning was central. Because the trip to California imposed emotional and financial hardships on families, a decision to go to the gold mines had to be made in conjunction with a declaration to return home at a specific date. The two were inseparable in the minds of those who wrestled with the question. The answer co the question of when and under what circumstance to return helped to define the wide range of arrangements, accommodations, and plans that accompanied the decision to go and the prelude to departure. In the end, the impression persists that future 49ers who wished to "see the elephant" and pick up the promised nuggets whatever was asked of them. ¶3 With the arrival of the Argonauts1 in California, the issue of the time and

1 Argonauts: those who searched for gold

circumstances of returning to their families and communities took on a dual perspective: the view of the individual, family, and community back home versus the view of the 49ers from the mining camps. For spouses, family, friends, and the community, the salient issues were responsibility, commitment, the ring of burdens, and all the ongoing duties associated with families, as we have seen. ¶4 From their side, some 49ers honored the commitment to return after a specified period, or, alternatively, sought dispensation2 to stay longer, but a substantial number treated earlier negotiations and agreements as superseded by the reality of California and the gold fields. When to return was something that only they could judge, they declared, because they were the only party sufficiently well informed of the many variables involved to make the decision. John Craven wrote to his wife, "You can rest assured that I will not remain in this country one moment longer than I can from a duty to you and our little ones," but "the time is now approaching when there will be a chance to make something in

the mines and I consider it my duty to make this trial."1 Soon after arrival, what I have begun some months earlier as a collective agreement became an issue over which the 49ers had almost complete control. They might, where they chose, evade the issue, make plans to return on a specific date and then change their minds, or simply refuse to discuss the question. ¶5 Ephriam Delano conveyed this new perspective in a letter to his wife Jane. "You wanted me to say when I was coming home," he wrote. "That I cannot say for when a person goes to California it is hard to say or tell when he gets away." He went on to confirm his loyalty to her and the children and his desire to return "as much as any other one," but he concluded that he "Cannot come this summer. I think I shall come back in the fall if nothing happens it is now very pleasant here."2 Whether the two closing sentiments of determination to return in the fall and the pleasant conditions were linked was not clear, but this Argonaut seemed to find an infinite range of things that changed his plans. So did numerous others. John Fitch used the appeal to responsibility for those back home that ran through so many of the letters from the gold fields to explain that the chance nature of the hunt for gold was itself a compelling incentive to remain in California. "Sorry that I did not go home late fall as you seem to feel so bad about my staying, and the prospects of accomplishing much I find so poor," he told his wife. Yet it was precisely his poor year and disappointing prospects that led him to stay. In retrospect, he should have gone home, but at the time, his sense of mission demanded that he pursue every opportunity. "If I had gone home then without looking in other 2 dispensation: permission

places, I should not have been satisfied or thought l had done my duty to you or to my children." And he concluded, "Had I only consulted my own feelings & inclination s I should have been home long ago, and I thought I was acting for the best, by staying-‐but whether so or not, time must determine." ¶6 That their families had a right to offer an opinion on when they should return, they accepted; that their families could dictate their futures, they increasingly denied. The Argonauts had become new men in California, as we have seen. The observations of the 49ers often took on the quality of a returned crusader, tempered by a religious experience of such overwhelming intensity that it was impossible to explain to mere mortals -‐-‐ especially those clamoring relatives who had remained untouched in familiar surroundings. Mixed in with their newfound sense of their independence -‐-‐ their transformation from second and third sons and husbands and fathers to tough, seasoned veterans of the Gold Rush-‐-‐also was a firm commitment to success. They had come a long distance and worked for months up to their waists in freezing water in the streams of the Sierra, or perhaps they had tried their hand at several enterprises, ending up running a business in one of the new camps, or perhaps they had risked and won and lost fortunes in investments. They did not intend to return without finishing what they had sec out to do. A spell of adversity3, whether a claim played out, a dam carried away by a spring [stream], an exodus4 of customers to newly discovered digging or the collapse of a carefully planned development project, only fueled their individual resolve co make another attempt. They were always conscious of others who had made "a raise" after many failures; many intended to join this select group. ¶7 There also was another component to this sense of independence and self-‐ assertion on the part of some. As we have noted before, America at mid-‐ [19th] century may have been a land of opportunity, but among those faced with the prospect of working hard jobs for long hours and low pay, as well as for those confronting debt and failure amid the prosperity of others, it also generated much dissatisfaction. The impulse not to return that man y 49ers shared was sometimes the product of contempt for what could seem the oppressive and arbitrary5 conditions of life back in the stares. Something of the sort was the reason Alan Varner rejected his parents' appeal to return home in the winter of 1850. Varner recollected h is solemn promise to return within three years of his arrival in California. He intended to abide by it, he said, "But you must recollect that I set our with a good . . . health and a brilliant future if fortunate. If I remained I might be a Hewer of Wood or drawer of water or, what was worse to my feelings, A

3 adversity: bad luck 4 exodus: mass departure 5 arbitrary: without a specific reason

Laborer for the stupid ignorant tow-‐headed Hoosier6 Because He happened through the luck of Father to be lord of the soil we depend upon. If I meet with not misfortune I'll show you a brick worth two of that, And not be miser neither." In California, nobody was going to tell him what to do, not even his parents. Men like Varner clearly had long memories of what they had left behind, and were nor disposed to welcome a return to it.

¶8 Returning home also was made difficult for some by the accumulation of small, subtle adaptations they gradually made to life in the West. The 49ers began confused and homesick in an alien land that was different physically and culturally from what they knew, with a mining society that was chaotic, competitive, and impersonal. Over a period of months, they adjusted. They found friends; they accepted the values of the gold fields. And they came to find the land had its own appeal, mountains and valleys of great beauty and a temperate climate that let them live and work outdoors at almost all seasons of the year.

¶9 As the Argonauts adjusted co California, many of them came to like it. They liked the climate and the physical appeal of the new state. They liked the economic opportunities. Many also found the openness of a new society attractive. They found no native aristocracy in California, for they were little aware of and less affected by the presence of the original families of the Californios who had owned elaborate ranches and had wielded so much local influence, and they felt that new arrivals could work art any occupation without fear of being looked down on and could advance to any level in society to which their talents entitled them. Coming from a world structured by social and economic distinctions, they saw themselves as having been catapulted into a stimulating, creative chaos where opportunities for economic advancement were beyond number and where talent would be the sole arbiter. And even as they wrote of the great stresses of the mines, and the competitive nature of mining, with its larger numbers and its necessity for greater investment in capital-‐intensive enterprise, they continued to hold on to their view of California as an open society.

¶10 Thus, with the passage of months and the arrival of a new mining season, hesitant and homesick pilgrims7 had been transformed into veterans of the diggings, mining camps, and towns. As they grew in confidence (and also in frustration), their homes and families seemed increasingly distant. They were fading images that faced them on

6 Hoosier: native of Indiana; unsophisticated person 7 pilgrims: seekers

creased sheers of paper, occasional daguerreotypes8 and locks of hair, each of these mementos conveyed through the postal and express mail services at irregular intervals. Sometimes these voices from an earlier life had a querulous quality about them, as they addressed the 49ers as the dependent children they remembered or the young and indecisive men of only scant months and years before, little aware of how they saw themselves changed with self-‐confidence and assurance. As these changes took place, and as their homes took on a distant glow of nostalgia, they also found that their sense of independence, achievement, and self-‐confidence seemed sometimes incompatible with returning to this old way of living. ¶11 It is not that they did not dream of going back. The common denominator of every 49er's vision of success in the gold fields was a triumphant return home. They wanted co achieve something notable. They wished to be known in the family annals as someone who had set forth on a voyage of adventure in distant and dangerous California, triumphed ove r all obstacles, and returned with wealth that far exceeded a herd of livestock, a section of land, or half a dozen town lots. ¶12 A new message in a new code therefore emerged the 49ers’ correspondence: that to come home was the easy way out. The opportunities and demands of California offered challenges that would separate those who could pay the price in time and arduous labor from those who would turn tail and run to the comforts of warm feather beds and savory home-‐cooked meals, they told the wives who slept in those beds and the mothers who cooked those meals. The real Argonauts of '49 were made of stern stuff, they said, and they were up to meeting the challenge. The challenge demanded that they stay in the diggings or in the shop and persevere in the name of their families. The other side of the ledger was an open contempt for those who had given up the chance co do something for their families and returned too soon. One 49er described both this confidence and contempt in these terms:

We know you would cheerfully assist us at home, if we were there. But we now have an opportunity to which if we improve aright will be of great advantage to us. ...But with anything like luck we can’t fail & Lord only knows what sends so many Georgians home, except the reflection of how "comfortably they may live at home on my Father’s hard earnings." I know many who refuse large wages here & go home. If necessary, I will give names.

¶13 The intimation that rile names of such returned 49ers already were publicly tarnished with shame as failures and shirkers suggested that families themselves

8 daguerreotypes: old style of photograph

should embrace the sacrifices of the 49er and his determination to soldier on in the face of continuing hardships. Better a casualty in the battle for a golden future than to be branded a coward for desertion.

COMING TO TERMS WITH FAILURE

¶14 For individual 49crs, the decision co return or not co return touched on another range of questions as great as that of any responsibility at home: the reasons for the expedition to California in the first place. The answer was simultaneously simple and not so simple. That is to say, almost everyone had gone to California to mine for gold. But what constituted a satisfactory resolution of the trip? What was enough gold or a sufficient attempt to find gold? What represented success, an acceptable return from so many years in rite placers? And alternatively y, who was prepared to admit failure in this enterprise and at this stage in life? So a central question for many a 49er involved creating a set of circumstances and reasons that would justify returning home without having met his own minimum expectations or those held by his family and friends. And under these circumstances, how should the 49er prepare to meet the happy but questioning glances that wondered how such minimal returns justified so much collective sacrifice and deprivation over so many years? ¶15 In a way, returning home was the ultimate form of coming to terms with failure. The idea of failure was not easy co assimila.tc in the nation at mid-‐ century, and the more so in an enterprise filled with popular stories of dazzling successes of incredible magnitude. ¶16 Failure was not something that had been much a part of the lexicon of young America because even those who struggled on the land for years ended up with something, if only an eighty-‐acre tract. Those who did nor had failed in private, and they simply left and moved somewhere else and started the cycle over again. Now the failures were of the most public kind, and perhaps many of those who vanished into the golden h ills of California did so because they could not return to their families, friends, and communities empty-‐handed. Even those who intended finally to come home would nor face doing so in adverse circumstances. One Argonaut wrote that he refused to consider coming home because of "mortification" over his failure. Even though he had worked at a variety of occupations in addition to mining, as a carpenter and in a post office, he had made nothing. He was unable co support his wife, anguished about it, and determined nor to return until he could bring something with him. And another 49er expressed the same hesitation to return to his mother with the explanation, "I dislike the idea very much of returning without making any thing...besides I know that a good deal would be said about me as every person in the states think that no person that is

industrious can come out here without making a fortune." To his sister and brother, he simply explained that his plans to return always had been "changed by some unavoidable circumstances."9 ¶17 For their families, coming to terms with failure was an emotional as well as a financial issue. Even those who had failed in the search for riches could reward their spouses and children and parents by going home. Yet this aspect, too, highlighted the complexity of the decision. It meant different things to different people. William Swain, after months in the diggings, returned to h is wife Sabrina and his daughter satisfied that five hundred dollars-‐not much, by most accountings -‐-‐ was all that he would make in the gold fields, with the comment, "I have made up my mind that I have got enough of California and am coming home as fast as l can." The Swain family emerged more unified and cohesive than ever on William Swain's return. Other families found the coming to terms with failure far more difficult. The prospects of great economic advantage were powerful stimulants not easily forgotten or glossed over.

¶18 The decision whether to stay on in California or to go home presented itself seasonally, beginning with the miner's first winter, with its rain and snow at the higher elevations and rapidly rising watercourses that ended the mining season. If a 49er was going to go home, the onset of winter was the best time. Profits, if any, were in the pouch; expenses, always high, could be ended. But it wasn't long, especially at lower elevations, until the California spring set in, with its profusion of wildflowers covering the hillsides and valleys, warm and sunny days, and a return of optimistic prospects for another season in the gold fields. As it did, schemes for making money proliferated, and the tri p homeward might be postponed for another year. ¶19 With the changing character of mining techniques, the timing for returning home also changed. With capital tied up in more and more elaborate projects that involved many others, and with the returns on such enterprises deferred until the end of the season, the 49ers found it more difficult simply to pack up their trunks and leave. Sometimes they wished to remain to collect debts due them. Responding to requests for his return, a 49er from North Carolina noted tha"it is hard to give up a good business after Laboring hard two years to build it up." Morris Sleight's wife wrote from Chicago every year on h is birthday, pleading for him to come home, and Sleight always replied that the business was difficult to leave, and he would need at least a year to wind u p his affairs.

¶20 To the continuing concern on the part of wives, children, and parents that the Argonauts would become destitute and find themselves stranded in California, the 49ers scoffed. It was a natural concern for families when they viewed their kin thrown into a society of strangers where one could not depend on relatives for assistance. The miners hastened to reassure them that even those who had lost everything in the mines could pick up enough work as day laborers in San Francisco or Sacramento or Stockton to pay their passage after a month's labor. They might have added that the returning 49ers, who almost all went home by the new and cheaper seagoing routes, first had to emerge with ticket and pouch intact from the temptations of San Francisco. Almost every returned or returning miner had tales of companions seduced by the bright gaming tables that clouded his judgment and, in the end, cleaned out his stake. ¶21 A number of 49ers who did go home returned to California, as we have seen. We have no way of knowing the size of this group or a distinct pattern to their activities. Some stayed in the East for a few weeks, others for some years. Others once again went alone in a continuing search for wealth over a short time, repeating their intention to return. Some Argonauts found the worlds that they remembered drastically changed; others found farms and villages boring and the euphoria of emotional reunions rapidly replaced by the drudgery of repetitive labor. Perhaps they also resented their continuing treatment as young people to be guided in their decisions by parents and siblings. Whatever the reasons, supported by more rapid and cheaper means of transportation, the waves of those going to California in the decade of the 1850s included substantial numbers of those making second and sometimes third journeys. ¶22 Some Argonauts ultimately returned to the West Coast with their families, clearly intent on making a permanent home in California. Others wanted to do so but discovered that their wives, who had solidified their allegiances to their families and communities during the 49crs' prolonged absences, did not wish to leave. They feared the overland expedition or sea voyage, both raised to a high level of danger by popular account. They shrank from the barbarous nature of California society portrayed in many accounts of the Golden State. They did not wish to leave the networks of friends and neighbors that had supported them for so long. ¶ As the Golden State grew in population and its population thus grew in permanence, economic opportunities proliferated in like proportion. Those who found mining unrewarding and frustrating shifted over to occupations more familiar and in line with their own skills and experiences: working in the

construction businesses, in agriculture in the interior valleys, or as skilled artisans and tradesmen. But as before, there were those who dreamed of golden fortunes to be found in the mines. However much the promise of California expanded to include the more common economic pursuits, until the outbreak of the Civil War9 shifted the nation's attention and resources elsewhere, Argonauts still departed for the West looking for gold.

Malcolm Rohrbough: Days of Gold

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

9 American Civil War: 1861-‐65