“…and know that it was in California we learned the art of making long journeys with safety, to endure privations with cheerfulness, and to thrive under the most adverse circumstances, and these have enabled us to make strides in war which may seem gigantic to the uninitiated. …” 
 

      In the decade and a half before the Civil War many young men came to California while serving as officers in the U.S. Army. A number of them would later achieve distinction during the Civil War, including U.S. Grant, A.S. Johnston, William T. Sherman, Henry  Halleck, John Bell Hood, John C. Fremont and Joseph Hooker. As Sherman’s letter shows, the time these men spent while stationed in the California of the Mexican War and Gold Rush eras helped form the experiences upon which they would later draw to make strategic and tactical decisions during the Civil War.

      Of all the U.S. Army officers stationed in California before the Civil War, William T. Sherman seems to have gained the most from the time he spent in the state. Whereas Sherman’s close friend U.S. Grant was driven to drink (a habit that plagued his later career) by the monotony of garrisoning California’s frontier forts, William T. Sherman’s experiences during the state’s volatile early years helped develop his character. Most notable of the traits that he shows in California are a contempt for politics and politicians and a leaning towards simple, aggressive leadership. 

      After arriving in Monterey in January of 1847, Lt. Sherman served as a staff officer to the military governor of California and traveled a good deal of the state. He missed his chance at fortune when he refused to join other officers, such as Henry Halleck, in buying up land in Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

“…I felt actually insulted that he should think me such a fool as to pay money for property in such a horrid place as Yerba Buena…” 

       After many adventures, which included a side business selling goods to miners during the Gold Rush of 1849, Sherman returned to the East Coast in 1850.  In 1853 some of Sherman’s California friends convinced him to resign his army commission and come back to San Francisco to try his hand at banking. In 1856 a group of citizens, concerned at the corruption of San Francisco’s politicians, formed a Committee of Vigilance that proceeded to hang or expel from the state anyone they suspected of wrongdoing. The municipal authorities were helpless as the city came under mob rule and armed bodies of men began assembling in the streets.

      The Governor of California called on Sherman to raise the militia and use it to restore order. Sherman drew up plans for a waterborne assault on the fortified warehouse the Committee used as a headquarters, but he never executed his plans as he could not get the arsenal in Benecia to issue the muskets he needed to arm the militia. Eventually the Vigilantes disbanded peacefully and by 1858 Sherman had returned to the East, his trust in politicians and businessmen badly shaken (click here for more about Sherman and the 1856 Committee of Vigilance). 

      Thanks to the Gold Rush, California was rapidly populated and organized in a remarkably short period of time. California’s petition to be admitted to the Union as a free state threatened to undermine the delicate balance between slave and free states in the U.S. Congress and sparked a series of debates which finally resulted in the Compromise of 1850 that made California a state free of slavery, but at the cost of a strictly enforced national Fugitive Slave Act that made it possible for free African-Americans to be arrested at any time under suspicion that they might be escaped slaves. This act infuriated Northern abolitionists, who began giving more support to the ‘Underground Railroad’ which helped escaped slaves flee from plantations. Like the rest of the nation, California had to confront the moral and legal issues raised by the Compromise. In San Francisco an African-American woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant operated the “western terminus of the Underground Railroad” and in 1858 an escaped slave named Archy Lee successfully defended his freedom in a California court from the Fugitive Slave Act. 

      California’s statehood deepened the rift between slave-owners and abolitionists while also making the South feel disenfranchised and dominated by the North. 

      Edward D. Baker was a brilliant lawyer and politician as well as a close friend of Abraham Lincoln (who named one of his sons after Baker) in 1840’s Illinois. Having come to California in the 1850’s, Baker tirelessly campaigned for the Republican Party on the West Coast, finally being elected a Senator for Oregon in 1860. On a speaking tour in California before the 1860 election, Baker is credited with “saving” the vote in California for Lincoln and the Republican party. In 1861, while serving in the Senate at Washington, D.C. during the early days of the Civil War, Baker spearheaded an effort to raise a regiment of Volunteers for the Union in Pennsylvania from men who had lived earlier in California and Oregon. 

      Although officially titled the 71st Pennsylvania Infantry and made up almost entirely of men who had never been to the Pacific Coast, this unit was still referred to as ‘The California Regiment.’ A marker bearing this name stands at The Angle on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg where the 71st helped repel Pickett’s Charge. The California Regiment served in the East until early 1864. Edward Baker, who was the original Colonel of the regiment, was killed in battle in 1861.

      California raised upwards of 15,000 volunteer troops during the Civil War. For the most part the men of the California Volunteer regiments spent their time manning frontier forts throughout the West, relieving thousands of Regular Army troops who were able to go east to the scene of the main war.

      Realizing that by joining the California Volunteers they would probably never see action, a group of men contacted the state of Massachusetts offering to recruit a company of 100 men for that state if the men’s enlistment bonuses, or “bounties,” could be put toward paying for their passage to the East Coast. John Andrew, the Governor of Massachusetts, agreed and authorized the creation of Company A of the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, which was recruited in San Francisco in the fall of 1862. The company then proceeded by ship to Panama where they traversed the isthmus and then boarded another ship, which took them to Boston. Due to the success encountered in raising the ‘California 100,’ as Company A became known, it was decided in early 1863 to raise four more companies in San Francisco to serve with the 2nd Massachusetts, which became Companies E, F, L and M. These four additional companies were known in the 2nd Mass. Cavalry as the ‘California Battalion.’ 

     The California 100 and Battalion had an eventful career, which included events such as following J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry shortly before the battle of Gettysburg, skirmishing with the rebel guerilla Mosby all over the Shenandoah Valley and serving with Union General Philip Sheridan during his battles in 1864 with Confederate General Jubal Early. Finally, the Californians, along with the rest of Sheridan’s command, cut off Lee’s retreat during the Appomattox Campaign in 1865. 

      In 1861 a group of civilians organized the U.S. Sanitary Commission to help the army care for sick and wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Supplying hospitals with medicine, clothing, food and other items, as well as transporting the goods in their own wagons, the Sanitary Commission also hired its own nurses, cooks, and inspectors to look after the troops in the field. In the East the organization was run by prominent politicians and businessmen, but it is a little known fact that about a quarter of the five million dollars the U.S. Sanitary Commission raised during the war came from California. 

      Thanks to speakers such as the influential Reverend Thomas Starr King, Californians showed their interest in the war by raising large amounts of money to aid the Commission and helped to lessen the suffering of the war’s wounded in the East. One of the most colorful boosters of the Sanitary Commission was a Nevada shopkeeper named Gridley who toured with a sack of ‘sanitary flour’ that he symbolically auctioned off all over Nevada Territory, California and the East Coast in order to raise funds for the Commission (click here for more about Gridley). 

      A pair of California women who sympathized with the Confederacy also raised money for their cause. Mary Rhodes of Stockton and Mary Robinson of San Francisco collected funds in 1864 to help Confederate prisoners of war. 

“...the possession of the gold supply of the Pacific coast, a source of strength considered by Mr. Lincoln to be essential to the successful prosecution of the war.” 

       Before the Civil War the only official currency used in the United States was the gold dollar. With the start of the Civil War in 1861 the Northern government decided to conserve gold by issuing ‘greenbacks,’ paper notes that were not backed by gold at all.

      These bills kept the North’s economy going but were unpopular at home and could not be used to pay off foreign debts. The demand for gold skyrocketed— to the point in 1864 where a gold dollar was worth almost three paper dollars. Fortunately some gold was still being found in California and more was being discovered at strikes in Nevada and elsewhere in the West. 

      Even though Californians never accepted the paper money and continued to use gold and silver, vast quantities of precious metals were shipped out of San Francisco in bulk: 185 million dollars worth between 1861 and 1864. In addition to this California sent taxes directly to the Federal government to support the war which helped not only to repay debts but also to restore the nation to the gold standard again following the war. 

      If the shortage of gold imperiled the North’s economy, it ruined the South’s. Lacking any gold reserves when the Civil War began, the Confederacy could only print increasingly worthless issues of paper currency and could not help but default on its debts in Europe. Several times the Confederates tried to capture some of the Union gold being shipped out of California to help their failing economy, but none of these attempts ever achieved success. 

“There is a strong Union feeling with the majority of the people of this State, but the secessionists are much the most active and zealous party, which gives them more influence than they ought to have from their numbers. I have no doubt but there is some deep scheming to draw California into the secession movement; in the first place as the "Republic of the Pacific," expecting afterward to induce her to join the Southern Confederacy. The troops now here will hold their positions and all the Government property, but if there should be a general uprising of the people, they could not, of course, put it down. I think the course of events at the East will control events here. So long as the General Government is sustained and holds the capital the secessionists can not carry this State out of the Union." 

       In 1860 California had a population numbering upwards of 400,000 people with estimates ranging from seven to forty percent of which had immigrated from the South before the war. 

      During the war California’s Southern population endured harsh measures such as arrests for suspected treason and the censorship of newspapers with Southern viewpoints. Zealous government officials feared that a secret organization known as the ‘Knights of the Golden Circle’ was plotting to take over the state, and closely watched Southern gathering places such as the Bella Union Hotel in Los Angeles.

      In early 1861 there were many in California who hoped the state would secede and join the Confederacy, or else break away from the U.S. and form a ‘Republic of the Pacific.’ To a large extent their hopes rested on Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston, a Southern-born U.S. Army officer who was in command of all the military posts on the Pacific Coast. A delegation of three pro-Southern men went to Johnston’s headquarters to find out if he would be willing to hand over the arsenals and forts in California to the secessionists. One of the delegates, a man named Asbury Harpending, recorded Johnston’s response:

“I have heard foolish talk about an attempt to seize the strongholds of the government under my charge. Knowing this I have prepared for emergencies, and will defend the property of the United States with every resource at my command, and with the last drop of blood in my body.” 

       If Johnston had turned over the forts and weapons contained in California’s arsenals to the secessionists, California could have been the scene of bitter fighting such as plagued the Border States during the war. It was fortunate for California that Johnston refused to do this. Those who wished to fight for the Confederacy found themselves obliged to either take ship to the East Coast or cross the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico in order to reach Texas. Albert Sidney Johnston ultimately resigned his commission in the U.S. Army to join that of the Confederacy after riding through the Arizona desert to reach the Confederate held Southwest. In November of 1861 another party of 18 well-armed Confederate sympathizers led by Daniel Showalter had less luck trying to cross out of California when they were captured by Union troops a few miles from the Arizona border. General Johnston was killed while in command of the Confederate army at the battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, in April of 1862. 

     Even though the Confederacy needed every man and every bullet it had for defending its existing borders, in late 1861 a small Confederate army of approximately 3,000 men from Texas gathered in southern New Mexico under the command of Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley with the intention of invading and permanently occupying Union territory. History records this event as “Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign,” but conquering New Mexico was just the first step in a much larger plan. The exact orders Sibley received from Richmond have been lost, but a member of the General’s staff recorded what he was told their mission was: 

“The objective aim and design of the campaign was the conquest of California, and as soon as the Confederate army should occupy the Territory of New Mexico, an army of advance would be organized, and ‘on to San Francisco’ would be the watchword; California had to be conquered, so that there would be an outlet for slavery...” 

      While Sibley’s Brigade fought battles against Northern forces at Valverde and Glorietta Pass in New Mexico, the General sent an advance company of about sixty men to secure Arizona for the Confederacy, the Southern troops coming within 50 miles of the California border.

      Sibley’s advance into New Mexico was brought to a halt by the lack of supplies for his army, which compelled him to retreat back into Texas in the spring of 1862. Sibley’s dreams of conquest were shattered by the arrival of Union reinforcements from Colorado and a column of approximately 1,500 men, mostly Volunteers that had been raised in California, who had marched through the deserts of Arizona.

      On several occasions this “California Column” encountered detachments of the company of Confederate troops occupying the region. At Stanwix Station and Picacho Pass in Arizona the farthest west ‘battles’ of the Civil War between Union and Confederate soldiers occurred. 

     Including the California Column, more than 15,000 California  Volunteers were raised during the course of the Civil War to take over for “Regular” U.S. Army troops needed to fight back east. The California Volunteer regiments hoped to be sent East as well, but the only duty they ever saw was to man forts throughout the West and they directed their aggression towards local Native Americans.

      After having been turned away by General Johnston in 1861, the pro-Confederate Asbury Harpending had not given up hope of depriving the North of California’s gold. In early 1863 Harpending was issued a privateer’s commission by the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia. He then purchased the small schooner J.M. Chapman in San Francisco and gathered a crew of 20 men, a pair of 12 pdr. cannon and boxes of rifles labeled as ‘machinery.’ 

      Harpending intended to leave San Francisco under United States colors, sail to Mexico where the schooner would raise the Confederate flag and then attack the ships bringing the gold from California. Unfortunately for him Federal authorities caught on and before the Chapman could leave San Francisco she was boarded by a party of Marines and police on the morning of March 15, 1863, which led to Harpending and his officers being fined and given short prison terms on Alcatraz.

      Partially as a response to this evidence that the Confederacy was trying to seize California’s gold, the U.S. Army constructed a secondary series of fortifications around Golden Gate and a disassembled ironclad monitor, the U.S.S. Camanche, was sent around Cape Horn aboard a larger ship, the Aquila. After the Aquila reached San Francisco she sank at her moorings with the parts to the Camanche still aboard (sabotage by a Confederate sympathizer was suspected but never proved). The Aquila was raised, and the Camanche finally launched in 1865, after the war had ended. 

      In early 1864 a Confederate Army Captain named Rufus Ingram came to California from Missouri. It was his intent to recruit soldiers in California for service in the East. Based in the Santa Clara Valley, Ingram organized a party of fifty men, including Thomas Pool(e) who had been a crewman on the J.M. Chapman. In order to finance the party’s passage to the East Coast, Ingram proposed holding up stagecoaches for the gold and silver they carried. On the night of June 30, 1864, eleven miles east of Placerville, Ingram, Pool and four other ‘soldiers’ robbed a pair of stagecoaches carrying approximately $80,000 worth of bullion, leaving behind a ‘receipt’ that read: 

       Ingram and his men buried the heavy gold and fled southward, hoping to reach a hideout in Fresno County where they could lie-low before recovering the treasure. The gang made it as far as San Jose, with sheriff’s posses hot on their trail.

      By July 15 a pair of gunfights with lawmen had resulted in two of the Confederates being killed and two captured, one of which being Thomas Pool. The sheriff’s deputies suffered one man killed in the shootouts and two wounded. Ingram and one other guerilla escaped. Despite hopes that they be treated as prisoners of war, the captured robbers went to trial, and the luckless Thomas Pool was convicted of shooting the slain lawman and executed by hanging on September 29, 1865. 

      The Confederate warship Shenandoah had been sent out in late  1864 under the command of Lt. James I. Waddell to do as much damage to United States shipping as possible. Cruising off the coast of Alaska in the summer of 1865, Waddell had no idea the war had already ended in April when he came up with a daring new plan to hurt the North’s finances. 

“It was the 5th of July when the Aleutian Islands were lost to view and the craft made for the parallel where west winds would hasten her over to the coast of California, for I had matured plans for entering the harbor of San Francisco and laying that city under contribution.” 

      Waddell planned on running past the guns of Alcatraz and Fort Point at night, and then he would ram and capture the ironclad monitor U.S.S. Camanche. San Francisco would then be subjected to a bombardment by both ships until the citizens were willing to send out enough gold to buy their safety. 

      Fortunately for San Francisco, before he arrived at that port Waddell met a British ship whose captain told him that the war was over, making the Shenandoah the last active Confederate military unit. Afraid of being tried as a pirate, Waddell sailed the now homeless Shenandoah all the way to England, where her flag was finally hauled down at Liverpool on November 6, 1865.