Daily Life during the California Gold Rush by Thomas Maxwell-Long

Author:Thomas Maxwell-Long
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2014-09-08T23:00:00+00:00

In this 1853 John Prendergast oil painting, the vigilance committee of San Francisco is shown bringing to justice a criminal in San Francisco harbor. (Attributed to John Prendergast, Justice Meted Out to English Jim by the Vigilantes, San Francisco Harbor, ca. 1853. Oil on canvas, 18 × 24 in. Oakland Museum of California, gift of Concours d’Antiques, Art Guild.)

THE GOLD RUSH POLITICAL ARENA

Politics in Gold Rush California mirrored the society, with all of its successes and failures, that made up the territory-turned-state. California’s first 10 governors had all come to California in pursuit of their fortunes during the Gold Rush. Each of the men had made the long journey like all the Argonauts, by foot or by sea. Upon their arrival into California, the men found an expanding society nearly devoid of the structures that defined the East, Midwest, and South. The pace of life itself was different from anything anyone had ever seen before. There was chaos, a sense of urgency, and a quest for riches and domination, and the constantly changing struggles to get rich or simply survive made it difficult for a ruling political class of elites to truly take form. However, nativism and racism ran through all of the political currents as the fast-growing groups, European Americans, expanded their numbers, took over the political arena, and consistently shut out foreigners, African Americans, and, especially, California Indians.

In the first 10 years of statehood, California went through seven governors and all but one, John Neely Johnson, were Democrats with sympathies for the Southern slave states. California’s first two governors, Peter Burnett and John McDougal, laid out racist political platforms that were anti-Indian and anti-black; both men had strongly influenced the state’s first constitution. Following California’s admission into the Union, the Democratic Party, with its core and heavy influence coming from the emigrants who poured into the territory from the Southern slave states, took control of state politics. Its dominance began to falter in 1855 with the emergence of the American Party, whose ranks were filled with members of the Know-Nothing Party, a semisecret political organization with its base platforms resting heavily on racism and nativism. The Democrats who migrated into the Know-Nothing Party tended to view foreign miners, immigrants regardless of trade, and Indians with disdain; they, along with the remnants of the virtually dead Whig Party, filled out the ranks of this third party. While at the birth of the Know-Nothing Party, named as such because if members were questioned about their politics and political colleagues, they were to state that they knew nothing, there seemed to be no real aspect of political life that they could engender change beyond assisting their other rival party, the Republicans. However, the American Party candidate John Neely Johnson was the first non-Democratic elected governor in 1856, and the upstart party did gain elected positions by splitting the Democratic vote. Perhaps most significant, they proved a powerful lobbying bloc that played crucial roles in the passage of racist laws and in

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