Part 4 (1/2)

Gateways to the West.

But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours,And the sh.o.r.es of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small...

-WALT W WHITMAN, ”Song of the Banner at Day-Break” (186061)

Lower Carson River, Nevada Territory, May 1861.

THEY MUST HAVE GLIMPSED one another sometime during that week, at some unrecorded point along the Central Overland Trail. Perhaps it was here, at a bend in the sluggish stream. Perhaps the mule drivers paused in their labor and watched the thing coming toward them: a s.h.i.+mmer against the dull, flat sky that resolved itself, quickly, into a horseman. A one another sometime during that week, at some unrecorded point along the Central Overland Trail. Perhaps it was here, at a bend in the sluggish stream. Perhaps the mule drivers paused in their labor and watched the thing coming toward them: a s.h.i.+mmer against the dull, flat sky that resolved itself, quickly, into a horseman. A horseman, horseman, truly; for what approached them seemed no ordinary rider and mount but a compound creature, a man-beast out of some bygone millennium. It rushed on in a clatter of hooves, nimbly dodging among stray boulders, headlong and heedless. In the instant it took to pa.s.s them, they could see the hunched man-shoulders and the rippling horse-shoulders, the two faces straining forward, nostrils flared, ghost-white with alkali dust from the flats farther east. And then the apparition was gone. truly; for what approached them seemed no ordinary rider and mount but a compound creature, a man-beast out of some bygone millennium. It rushed on in a clatter of hooves, nimbly dodging among stray boulders, headlong and heedless. In the instant it took to pa.s.s them, they could see the hunched man-shoulders and the rippling horse-shoulders, the two faces straining forward, nostrils flared, ghost-white with alkali dust from the flats farther east. And then the apparition was gone.1 The rider, for his own part, barely saw the sunburnt men, the straining mules, or their strange burden: pale, stripped carca.s.ses of aspen and pine, hauled from some distant wooded place into this treeless desert. Mules, men, and tree trunks were obstructions, no more. For him there was only the trail ahead and the animal that strained and swerved between his clenching thighs, thighs that gripped a flat pouch of mail against the saddle as his mind gripped only one thought: westward. westward.

That is how they may have met, two eras brus.h.i.+ng past, never touching: the Pony Express and the Western Union Telegraph Company.

Never touching, at least, until a few miles farther on, at Fort Churchill. Here the rider slackened his pace, reining in as he pa.s.sed the sentry and cantered through the main gate. This was a fresh-built fort, its adobe bricks barely dry. The army had constructed it the summer before, after an ugly clash between the white men and the Paiutes: a lonely outcrop of federal power in a lawless land. For the past few months, Fort Churchill had enjoyed another distinction: it was the Pacific Coast telegraph's easternmost terminus, though it would not remain so for much longer.2 Now, at least, it was where the horseman handed his flat leather pouch to the operator, who quickly extracted its most precious contents and began tapping the key with his expert finger. In San Francisco, the next day's headlines would begin with words familiar to every reader: BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH. BY PONY EXPRESS. LATEST EASTERN INTELLIGENCE. BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH. BY PONY EXPRESS. LATEST EASTERN INTELLIGENCE. And then a terse summary of that leather pouch's most important contents: Thirty-one thousand troops are now in Was.h.i.+ngton, ultimate destinations still unknown. All work on public buildings at the capital is suspended. In Baltimore, prorebel militia have seized six thousand muskets from the state armory. In St. Louis, an inquest convenes to examine the bodies of those killed in recent clashes. And then a terse summary of that leather pouch's most important contents: Thirty-one thousand troops are now in Was.h.i.+ngton, ultimate destinations still unknown. All work on public buildings at the capital is suspended. In Baltimore, prorebel militia have seized six thousand muskets from the state armory. In St. Louis, an inquest convenes to examine the bodies of those killed in recent clashes.3 Without ceremony, the telegraphist handed back the pouch, the rider threw it across the saddle of a fresh mount, swung himself on top and was off again still westward, his precious cargo clutched again between his thighs: terse business letters from New York and Baltimore, minutely penned political dispatches from Was.h.i.+ng-ton, reports on the latest Eastern prices of California bonds and California bullion. There was little room for anecdote or sentiment in a Pony Express pouch; each half ounce of mail cost its sender a five-dollar gold piece plus surcharges, and each rider could carry only ten pounds. Recipients slit open envelopes with a surgeon's care and extracted leaves as thin as tissue paper, still smelling of sweat and dust and leather.4 Back up the trail at the river bend, the men and mules, too, had resumed their labor. Like the pa.s.sing horseman, they had little time to spare. They carried with them, eastward, the promise of a future without ponies, without pouches, without onionskin paper. Only electrical impulses: weightless, instantaneous, smelling of nothing.

Congress had opened the way the previous summer, by enacting the Pacific Telegraph Act. This was guided discreetly to pa.s.sage by a certain private gentleman from the East, Mr. Hiram Sibley of New York, who proved quite expert at ducking and running amid the legislative fusillades of sectional conflict, emerging safely downfield with the only major legislation of that entire miserable year.5 He had strong incentives to succeed. The final version of the act offered a federal subsidy of up to $40,000, along with other valuable considerations, to any company completing a transcontinental line within two years. Competing bids were invited; rival consortia formed. When the deadline for bids arrived in September, however, it appeared that all except one had been unexpectedly withdrawn at the last minute. That lone bid-asking the maximum subsidy, of course-happened to be in the name of Mr. Hiram Sibley of New York. He had strong incentives to succeed. The final version of the act offered a federal subsidy of up to $40,000, along with other valuable considerations, to any company completing a transcontinental line within two years. Competing bids were invited; rival consortia formed. When the deadline for bids arrived in September, however, it appeared that all except one had been unexpectedly withdrawn at the last minute. That lone bid-asking the maximum subsidy, of course-happened to be in the name of Mr. Hiram Sibley of New York.6 Why all the compet.i.tion withdrew was a mystery perhaps known only to Mr. Sibley and his business partners. These were not men who felt particularly constrained by the rules of gentlemanly fair play. Indeed, they were exactly the type of hard-fisted Yankees that Southerners were always complaining about. Several years earlier, for instance, they had set their eye on the New Orleans & Ohio line, the most profitable in the South. One of Mr. Sibley's a.s.sociates had shown up in Louisville, the northern terminus, and word quickly spread among the N.O.&O.'s owners that this Yankee interloper was scouting out the terrain, pricing poles, wiring coded messages to New York-in other words, clearly laying the groundwork for a rival line. In a cold panic, the Southerners signed a contract with Sibley for a relative pittance, effectively ceding him control of their company. It emerged later that the coded messages to New York had been mere gibberish; the whole ”rival line” a ruse. And thus the N.O.&O. network had, like so many others, tumbled into the omnivorous maw of the Western Union.7 Still, whatever else you might say about Hiram Sibley and his ilk, they certainly knew how to get things done. Within weeks of receiving the Pacific telegraph contract, he had agents fanning out across the West. Lincoln had been elected; the South had seceded; Sibley barely noticed, except insofar as these developments might aid or impede his business plans. Via stagecoach and mule, his envoys set out to secure the friends.h.i.+p of useful men along the planned route: Brigham Young, Chief Sho-kup of the Shoshones, the governor of California. (These agents offered the Mormons lucrative contracts for supplying poles, along with a generous personal loan to Brother Brigham; they offered the Shoshones gifts of food and clothing. What they offered the governor of California, if anything, is unclear.)8 The new line would follow an established route, the Central Overland Trail. It was the exact route, in fact, of the Pony Express, across the desert wastes and mountain pa.s.ses of Utah and Nevada and over the Sierra Nevada into California. Not many years earlier, this country had been considered impa.s.sable wilderness. In the winter of 1844, the great Pathfinder himself, John C. Fremont, was hailed as the first white man to cross the Sierra when he and his band of explorers turned up, famished and half naked, on the western side. Two years later, the Donner party met its gruesome fate trying to follow in his tracks, and for a decade after, few others dared to try. But at the very end of the 1850s, private entrepreneurs and military engineers laid out and graded a new trail. By 1861, it had become a busy highway, the quickest and shortest overland route to California. Where frontiersmen had died in a trackless desert, fast stagecoaches now rumbled to and fro, carrying pa.s.sengers, mail, and even a few tourists. Emigrant wagons pa.s.sed by the thousands, their occupants pleasantly surprised to find the route lined with trading posts, grog shops, army hospitals, post offices, even hotels. Bridges and ferry crossings spanned the newly tamed rivers.9 That was how things were in the West as the Civil War began. Everywhere, it seemed, the Hiram Sibleys and their money were rus.h.i.+ng in, along with throngs of lesser entrepreneurs-all those sutlers, tavern keepers, stagecoach owners, and ferrymen. Together, these ruthless and ambitious seekers were changing the continent, connecting city to city and town to town, drawing lines across the blankness of the country.

Indeed, Sibley's own ambitions went beyond the continent, beyond even the hemisphere. His transcontinental telegraph was only the beginning. Soon, he hoped, he would continue the line up the Pacific coast, through Russian Alaska, and across Bering's Strait, where he would connect with the czar's engineers running their own line east from Moscow. Beyond Moscow: Berlin, Paris, London. Hiram Sibley was going to wire the world.10 And so it was that on May 27, 1861, a train of more than two hundred oxen, twenty-six wagons, and fifty men set out from Sacramento, onto the Central Overland Trail and across the Sierra, laden with coils of high-grade copper wire and crates of gla.s.s insulators s.h.i.+pped from back East. Hundreds of contractors had preceded them-those mule drivers along the Carson, for instance-to scour remote valleys for pole material. The route itself was mostly treeless, but they dragged trunks dozens or even hundreds of miles to it: the mighty Western Union bringing Birnam Wood to Dunsinane.11 A few weeks later, at Fort Churchill, they raised the first pole, to the top of which they had nailed an American flag. Tossing hats into the air, the men hailed this moment with a chorus of huzzas: three cheers for the telegraph and three cheers for the Union.12 ”THERE ARE GRAVE DOUBTS at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.” at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.”13 So wrote Henry Adams in 1861, fretting over whether the sundered Union could-or even should-be restored. But young Adams, though he may have been to Naples and dined with Garibaldi, had never seen Nevada or supped with the likes of Hiram Sibley, let alone with sutlers and stagecoach drivers. (He had rarely been west of Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, actually.) He and many other Easterners knew little, really, of what the Union was-of what it had become. It had grown and changed too quickly. And a large share of that growth and change was happening beyond the Mississippi.

The West was also the chessboard in the Great Game between North and South. For decades, each new expansion of the country had set off a flurry of tactical moves: advances, flanking maneuvers, sometimes grudging withdrawals. Each new line across the map-whether territorial boundary, national road, railway, or telegraph route-threatened to redraw the entire board, or so it often seemed. Sometimes the slave-state interests advanced; sometimes the free-state. More often, as with so much in the antebellum years, each set of moves ended in a carefully negotiated stalemate.

Recently, however, the game had seemed to tilt decisively toward the North. Eighteen sixty was a federal census year, and the results had begun coming in early that autumn-with exquisitely poor timing, as far as Southern paranoia was concerned.14 Preliminary figures confirmed what many suspected: that immigration and westward expansion were s.h.i.+fting the country's centers of population and balance of power. Since the last count, in 1850, the North's population had increased an astonis.h.i.+ng 41 percent, while the South's had grown only 27 percent. States like Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois would each be gaining multiple seats in Congress; Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee would be losing some. Tellingly, the statistical center of national population had s.h.i.+fted for the first time not only west of the original thirteen states but also from slave territory into free: from Virginia to Ohio. (The Preliminary figures confirmed what many suspected: that immigration and westward expansion were s.h.i.+fting the country's centers of population and balance of power. Since the last count, in 1850, the North's population had increased an astonis.h.i.+ng 41 percent, while the South's had grown only 27 percent. States like Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois would each be gaining multiple seats in Congress; Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee would be losing some. Tellingly, the statistical center of national population had s.h.i.+fted for the first time not only west of the original thirteen states but also from slave territory into free: from Virginia to Ohio. (The New York Herald New York Herald did find at least one source of comfort for the South: the paper's statistician declared it ”very certain” that the nation's slave population would reach fifty million by the year 1960.) did find at least one source of comfort for the South: the paper's statistician declared it ”very certain” that the nation's slave population would reach fifty million by the year 1960.)15 Southern leaders did not lack for an expansionist strategy of their own in the years before the war. The more radical among them spoke of spreading American dominion through Latin America and the Caribbean, forming dozens of new slave states. The filibusters, as we have seen, even took matters into their own hands. In fact, there were occasional successes-and splendid ones-as when Southern planters moved into the Mexican state of Texas, eventually to take it over and annex it to the United States. The ensuing war added vast new territory to the southern half of the country, and many a.s.sumed that slavery would be legal there.

Nor did the South lack its own Hiram Sibleys, its own tough and resourceful breed of capitalists. But its Sibleys, by and large, did not invest in building railroads and telegraph lines: instead, they bought slaves and cleared new land for cotton.

All too often, the most visionary schemes for the West ended up stalled endlessly in Congress, victims of sectional infighting. Such was the case with the transcontinental railroad, an idea that had been under discussion for twenty years. Each time it came up for debate, Northerners refused to approve a Southern route and Southerners refused to approve a Northern route. When Congress did finally vote to fund a survey, it reached a compromise by sending out five separate expeditions to find suitable pathways at five different lat.i.tudes. Not surprisingly, the man who supervised this entire process-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis-was able to recommend the southernmost one, fudging a bit of data to support his argument. (Davis had already managed to orchestrate a major U.S. land acquisition from Mexico-the Gadsden Purchase-to serve as a southern corridor.)* Not surprisingly, Northern congressmen balked at this, and by the end of the 1850s, the rail line to the Pacific was still nothing more than a figment of the American imagination. Not surprisingly, Northern congressmen balked at this, and by the end of the 1850s, the rail line to the Pacific was still nothing more than a figment of the American imagination.16 As anxious as Southerners were to extend slavery through the Union's new states and territories, Northerners were anxious to contain it. The Hiram Sibleys may not have cared much about the plight of the poor downtrodden Negroes, but their own financial interests did demand a West that was free, open, modern, untrammeled-a place, in short, where Yankees could do business. They were d.a.m.ned if they were going to let the Southern oligarchs, with their canting talk of chivalry and their pretensions to aristocratic grandeur, stand in their way.

Now, in early 1861, the game had suddenly changed. It would be played in Congress no longer: the Southerners had called forfeit and gone home in a huff. Already, in the first few months of that year, Kansas had been admitted as a free state and Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada as free territories. An Illinois railroad lawyer was in the White House, and everyone expected that the long-blocked pathway to the Pacific would soon be open for business.

As the Civil War began, a new game opened on the chessboard of the West. There were two key places where it might be won or lost: one on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific, the other on the banks of the Mississippi. It would be decided in one of these places with words; in the other, with guns.

FROM HER VERANDA, the Pathfinder's wife watched the sun vanish between the two great western headlands, leaving America behind until next dawn. She loved this place more than any other that she had ever known, either on this continent or in her wide travels abroad. Her quaint Gothic cottage commanded all of Black Point, the finest spot on the whole bay, with dark thickets of scrub oak and laurel covering steep hillsides that sloped down to a sandy beach. She had recently built the porch around three sides of the house, laid out gardens and gravel paths, and planted climbing rosebushes and trellised vines. She took joy even in the tolling of the fog bells on oceanbound vessels, and in the night beacon that flashed on the harbor fort: ”my night light,” she called it. When the wind was off the bay, she claimed, she could hear the flapping of sails on the schooners as they rounded the point, and the swearing of captains pacing their decks. the Pathfinder's wife watched the sun vanish between the two great western headlands, leaving America behind until next dawn. She loved this place more than any other that she had ever known, either on this continent or in her wide travels abroad. Her quaint Gothic cottage commanded all of Black Point, the finest spot on the whole bay, with dark thickets of scrub oak and laurel covering steep hillsides that sloped down to a sandy beach. She had recently built the porch around three sides of the house, laid out gardens and gravel paths, and planted climbing rosebushes and trellised vines. She took joy even in the tolling of the fog bells on oceanbound vessels, and in the night beacon that flashed on the harbor fort: ”my night light,” she called it. When the wind was off the bay, she claimed, she could hear the flapping of sails on the schooners as they rounded the point, and the swearing of captains pacing their decks.17 But Jessie Benton Fremont could also look out at this wide, G.o.d-given landscape and almost believe that she and her family had brought it all into being, had conjured the s.h.i.+ps and the fort and the bay-and a prospering American city whose growth was the marvel of the entire world-as surely as she had planted the clambering roses.

Her father, the legendary Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, had fought for three decades in Congress to advance his vision of a transcontinental American empire, the grand historical culmination that Providence and nature had foreordained. As long ago as 1818, he had written: Europe discharges her inhabitants upon America; America pours her population from east to west.... All obey the same impulse-that of going to the West, which, from the beginning of time, has been the course of the heavenly bodies, of the human race, and of science, civilization, and national power following in their train. Soon the Rocky Mountains will be pa.s.sed, and the ”children of Adam” will have completed their circ.u.mnavigation of the globe. which, from the beginning of time, has been the course of the heavenly bodies, of the human race, and of science, civilization, and national power following in their train. Soon the Rocky Mountains will be pa.s.sed, and the ”children of Adam” will have completed their circ.u.mnavigation of the globe.18 After the American imperium had extended itself to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific, he said, it would reach farther yet, to East Asia, as ”science, liberal principles in government, and the true religion...cast their lights across the intervening sea,” while the newly liberated ma.s.ses of China and j.a.pan poured forth eastward, in turn, to settle the valley of the Columbia River. This empire, Benton said, would advance not by military conquest but by peaceful commerce, bringing in train universal principles of enlightenment. The senator championed his cause with all the tenacity and toughness to be expected of a man who had once gotten into a gunfight with Andrew Jackson, and had slain another opponent in a duel with pistols at three yards.19 Jessie's husband, Colonel John C. Fremont, had-in the eyes of many Americans-made her father's dream a reality. From the upper Mississippi to the southwestern deserts, he had mapped a quarter of the North American continent, gathering a wealth of geographical and scientific knowledge that made Lewis and Clark's contributions look meager in comparison. He had opened highways to the Pacific, and planted the Stars and Stripes on the highest peak in the Rockies.20 He had led United States forces into California and captured the state for the Union. He had reached the wild sh.o.r.e of this bay, looked out at those very headlands that his wife now gazed at from her porch, and given the rocky portal a name: the Golden Gate. He had led United States forces into California and captured the state for the Union. He had reached the wild sh.o.r.e of this bay, looked out at those very headlands that his wife now gazed at from her porch, and given the rocky portal a name: the Golden Gate.

Jessie Fremont took perhaps even greater pride in being the human link between the dream and the land; the senator and the soldier. In many respects, she was more remarkable than either of the two men. Jessie had inherited all of her father's toughness or even more: President Buchanan once called her, admiringly or not, ”the square root of Tom Benton.” She had a cooler head and sharper wits than the old senator, though-and was a more brilliant politician, philosopher, and strategist than her soldier husband. A better writer, too: she had taken the dry data of the colonel's expeditions and crafted them into literary epics of the American West, official government reports that became best sellers and made her husband a national hero.* (Some even went so far as to say that Jessie Fremont had made her husband what he was.) Her own vision of the West-unlike her father's baroque fantasies-was clean, compelling, and modern. ”How can I tell all that the name, California, represents?” she once wrote, reflecting on her time there before the war. ”If our East has a life of yesterday, and the [Midwest] of to-day, then here (Some even went so far as to say that Jessie Fremont had made her husband what he was.) Her own vision of the West-unlike her father's baroque fantasies-was clean, compelling, and modern. ”How can I tell all that the name, California, represents?” she once wrote, reflecting on her time there before the war. ”If our East has a life of yesterday, and the [Midwest] of to-day, then here to-morrow to-morrow had come.... What a dream of daring young energy-of possibility-of certainties-of burdens dropped and visions realized!” had come.... What a dream of daring young energy-of possibility-of certainties-of burdens dropped and visions realized!”21 Burdens dropped and visions realized. Senator Benton and the two Fremonts were all Southerners, from slaveholding families, who had reinvented themselves as Westerners and in the process had become foes of slavery. How could human bondage coexist with the Western dream? The old man, though he owned slaves until the day he died, had made no secret of his distaste for the ”peculiar inst.i.tution,” and ultimately sacrificed his political career to his conscience. Senator Benton and the two Fremonts were all Southerners, from slaveholding families, who had reinvented themselves as Westerners and in the process had become foes of slavery. How could human bondage coexist with the Western dream? The old man, though he owned slaves until the day he died, had made no secret of his distaste for the ”peculiar inst.i.tution,” and ultimately sacrificed his political career to his conscience.22 His daughter went considerably further. In 1849, California's new territorial legislature debated whether to allow slavery; some settlers from the South had brought their slaves with them, while many others had visions of gold mines worked by black and Indian bondmen. Jessie Fremont made her home the command center for the opposition, presiding at the dinner table-in the absence of her husband, usually-plotting strategy with the men. His daughter went considerably further. In 1849, California's new territorial legislature debated whether to allow slavery; some settlers from the South had brought their slaves with them, while many others had visions of gold mines worked by black and Indian bondmen. Jessie Fremont made her home the command center for the opposition, presiding at the dinner table-in the absence of her husband, usually-plotting strategy with the men.

Once she even invited fifteen proslavery lawmakers to her house to debate them single-handedly. Having received a piece of her mind, one of them replied dismissively, ”Fine sentiment, Mrs. Fremont, but the aristocracy will always have slaves.”