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 shimmer 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 shimmer 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 brushing 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 Washington, 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 Washington, 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 Washing-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 friendship 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 rushing 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 shipped 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 shifting the country"s centers of population and balance of power. Since the last count, in 1850, the North"s population had increased an astonishing 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 shifted 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 shifting the country"s centers of population and balance of power. Since the last count, in 1850, the North"s population had increased an astonishing 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 shifted 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 ships 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."
"But why not an aristocracy of emanc.i.p.ators?" she retorted. "It isn"t a pretty sight in a free country for a child to see and hear chain gangs clanking through the streets."
The legislature voted to keep California free. A few months later, the debate was carried to Washington, when Congress considered statehood for the fast-growing territory. Jefferson Davis argued in the Senate that slavery was part of California"s natural destiny: "It was to work the gold mines on this continent that the Spaniards first brought Africans to the country. The European races now engaged in working the mines of California sink under the burning heat and sudden changes of climate, to which the African race are altogether better adapted." In the end, though, Washington ratified the verdict already reached in Sacramento.23 In 1856, the Fremonts carried their antislavery ideals into the national arena. When the new Republican Party sought its first presidential nominee, it was John C. Fremont who-with considerable prodding from his wife-agreed to run, under the slogan "Free Speech, Free Soil, Free Men, Fremont." Unlike any previous candidate"s wife in American history, Jessie figured prominently in the campaign (more than her soft-spoken husband, some critics would snipe). Republican marchers waved banners reading fremont and jessie, and women, shockingly, joined these political demonstrations, wearing violets-Mrs. Fremont"s favorite flower-pinned to their bosoms. When the colonel addressed his supporters, they often insisted that his wife step forward to wave and smile as well. Despite his loss to Buchanan, many staunch Republicans still thought him a better man than Lincoln, a more steadfast foe of the slave power.24 But here in California, slavery"s supporters-though thwarted since Congress had declared it a free state-had never conceded defeat.
In early 1861, as Jessie Fremont looked out from her veranda over San Francis...o...b..y, her dream of the West, of a free American empire stretching from ocean to ocean, seemed to be in peril. Texas had already been lost to the Confederacy despite the valiant efforts of Governor Sam Houston, her father"s old friend, who had been evicted from office after refusing to betray his country. The immense territory of New Mexico, then also encompa.s.sing what is now Arizona and part of Nevada, was leaning the same way. Much closer to Black Point, in the city just east of the sand dunes, men were plotting to detach California from the Union, too. Some reports had it that the island fort just opposite the Fremonts" cottage-the walled citadel of Alcatraz-might fall at any moment into enemy hands. Rumblings of disloyalty, and of secret plots, were being felt throughout the state.
Though California may officially have been free territory, its political leadership was still dominated by Southern sympathizers-voters called them the Chivalry faction, or the Chivs. No Northern state had more draconian laws restricting the lives and rights of its black inhabitants.25 Moreover, it seemed to many citizens, even those with little fondness for the South, that only the most tenuous threads bound their state to the Union. California lay as far from the old Eastern states as could be; the quickest route from one American coast to the other was via a perilous sea voyage of four thousand nautical miles aboard a cramped steamer, with an overland trek across the Isthmus of Panama midway. (And this was affordable only for relatively well-heeled travelers; ordinary emigrants had to try their luck on the overland trails.) Many of the Gold Rush settlers were rootless adventurers who felt no particular loyalty to any piece of land except those on which they"d staked their mining claims up in the hills. Thousands upon thousands of foreigners had been drawn to the region, too: Europeans, East Asians, and Latin Americans, many of whom had simply come to scoop up Yankee dollars before heading home, and whose allegiances were still with Prussia, or China, or Chile. Two other significant populations, the Mormons and the Mexicans, had every reason to hate the United States, a nation that had quite recently defeated them on the battlefield. Moreover, it seemed to many citizens, even those with little fondness for the South, that only the most tenuous threads bound their state to the Union. California lay as far from the old Eastern states as could be; the quickest route from one American coast to the other was via a perilous sea voyage of four thousand nautical miles aboard a cramped steamer, with an overland trek across the Isthmus of Panama midway. (And this was affordable only for relatively well-heeled travelers; ordinary emigrants had to try their luck on the overland trails.) Many of the Gold Rush settlers were rootless adventurers who felt no particular loyalty to any piece of land except those on which they"d staked their mining claims up in the hills. Thousands upon thousands of foreigners had been drawn to the region, too: Europeans, East Asians, and Latin Americans, many of whom had simply come to scoop up Yankee dollars before heading home, and whose allegiances were still with Prussia, or China, or Chile. Two other significant populations, the Mormons and the Mexicans, had every reason to hate the United States, a nation that had quite recently defeated them on the battlefield.26 As Jessie Fremont herself recognized, California felt like a place wholly new. Why, then-a great many Californians reasoned-should it not be its own nation? Let the old states fight their old battles; this distant sh.o.r.e would turn its face away, toward its own destiny. The dream of a Pacific Republic had flickered for decades; now-with the word pacific pacific taking on a newly ironic double meaning-the moment seemed more opportune than ever. taking on a newly ironic double meaning-the moment seemed more opportune than ever.27 In fact, most of the state"s political leaders had already endorsed the idea of lowering the Stars and Stripes and running up the Bear Flag in the event that the United States split apart. Back in early 1860, then-governor John B. Weller predicted to the legislature that Californians "will not go with the North or the South, but here on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific found a mighty republic, which may in the end prove the greatest of all." All of the state"s senators and representatives had voiced similar ideas in Congress at one time or another, though they often retreated coyly when it seemed politically convenient. In the wake of Lincoln"s election, Congressman John Burch declared that if war came, Californians should "raise aloft the flag of the "Bear," surrounded with the "hydra" pointed cactus of the Western wilds, and call upon the enlightened nations of the earth to acknowledge our independence ... [as] the youthful but vigorous Caesarian Caesarian Republic of the Pacific." Republic of the Pacific."28 Burch hailed from slaveholding Missouri, but Governor Weller was a native Ohioan. In fact, not all Californians who desired independence sympathized with the South. Some-with eyes accustomed to picking out flecks of ore amid the gravel-saw opportunities glittering in the wreckage of the old republic. The San Francisco Herald, San Francisco Herald, the city"s Democratic newspaper, conjured alluring visions of a vast new trans.p.a.cific trading empire. Detachment from the Eastern states, it suggested, would inspire Californians to reach out westward, toward China, j.a.pan, Australia, and the South Sea islands. A neutral California"s merchant ships would-unlike those of the Union and Confederacy-be immune to blockades and privateers, and thus capture the older states" overseas trade. Countless refugees from the war-torn East would move westward, bringing with them not only a new era of prosperity, but perhaps also the once-cherished ideals that had been trampled upon and broken in the United States. As the American republic had been for Europe, so the California republic would be for America. "Let California," the editor enthused, "become the home of the oppressed, the temple of liberty; the resting place of those who seek the blessings of peace rather than the questionable glories of war." the city"s Democratic newspaper, conjured alluring visions of a vast new trans.p.a.cific trading empire. Detachment from the Eastern states, it suggested, would inspire Californians to reach out westward, toward China, j.a.pan, Australia, and the South Sea islands. A neutral California"s merchant ships would-unlike those of the Union and Confederacy-be immune to blockades and privateers, and thus capture the older states" overseas trade. Countless refugees from the war-torn East would move westward, bringing with them not only a new era of prosperity, but perhaps also the once-cherished ideals that had been trampled upon and broken in the United States. As the American republic had been for Europe, so the California republic would be for America. "Let California," the editor enthused, "become the home of the oppressed, the temple of liberty; the resting place of those who seek the blessings of peace rather than the questionable glories of war."29 Other Californians, less grandiose of temperament, simply didn"t want to be bothered with the East Coast politicians and their incessant wrangling. "We don"t care a straw whether you dissolve the Union or not," a settler from Maine named Frank Buck wrote to his sister back home. "We just wish that the Republicans and Democrats in the Capital would get into a fight and kill each other all off like the Kilkenny cats. Perhaps that would settle the hash."30 Buck lived up in Weaverville, a gold-mining settlement in the mountains of far-Northern California. Hundreds of miles away, among the cattle ranches and roughneck towns in the southern part of the state, people had somewhat less dismissive feelings about the unpleasantness back East. "Our emigration comes from the South; our population are of the South, and sympathize with her," wrote the editor of the Los Angeles Star. Los Angeles Star. "Why, then, should we turn our backs on our friends, and join her enemies?" Militia companies of dubious allegiance sprang up among the pueblos; rusty sabers and muskets disappeared mysteriously from the state a.r.s.enals to resurface a few weeks later in private hands, gleaming beyond all recognition. In San Bernardino-a village of a thousand or so Mormons and Southerners-people openly cursed the Stars and Stripes. "Why, then, should we turn our backs on our friends, and join her enemies?" Militia companies of dubious allegiance sprang up among the pueblos; rusty sabers and muskets disappeared mysteriously from the state a.r.s.enals to resurface a few weeks later in private hands, gleaming beyond all recognition. In San Bernardino-a village of a thousand or so Mormons and Southerners-people openly cursed the Stars and Stripes.31 And throughout the state that winter and spring, certain ambitious men began to plot a masterstroke that would sever California from the Union with a single blow.
One of these men was a handsome young Kentuckian with a name out of comic opera: Asbury Harpending. He had come west through a series of picaresque adventures, running away from school at the age of fifteen to join William Walker"s ill-fated filibustering expedition in Nicaragua. Failing to get as far as New Orleans before the federal authorities thwarted his plans, Harpending set out for California with nothing but a revolver and a five-dollar gold piece. Like so many enterprising youths, he went on to make a fortune in mining. But he never entirely gave up his dreams of derring-do. The approach of civil war seemed to bring with it an opportunity for another filibustering expedition of sorts-this one against his own country.32 One evening, Harpending was summoned to a meeting at the home of a wealthy San Franciscan. The house was in an isolated spot, he later recalled, and its owner "lived alone, with only Asiatic attendants, who understood little English and cared less for what was going on." One of these "soft-footed" servants ushered Harpending into a large room where about thirty young gentlemen-most of them wealthy, all of them Southern-awaited. That night, they swore a secret oath. Each man would a.s.semble a small fighting force, an easy enough task, as Harpending later recalled, since "California at that period abounded with reckless human material-ex-veterans of the Mexican War, ex-filibusters, exIndian fighters, all eager to engage in any undertaking that promised adventure and profit." The freebooter units would then converge on Alcatraz, seizing the island, the a.r.s.enal at Benicia with its 30,000 stand of arms, and other key points. With that accomplished, they would proclaim a Pacific Republic and organize "an army of Southern sympathizers, sufficient in number to beat down any armed resistance." One particular fact made the plotters especially confident of success: the highest-ranking officer of the U.S. Army at San Francisco-in fact, the commander of the entire Department of the Pacific-was General Albert Sidney Johnston, a known Southern sympathizer and veteran of the Texas Revolution.33 Harpending wrote his version of the story as an old man, more than half a century later, and some of its details-those soft-footed Asiatics, for instance-seem rather more cinematic than perfectly true. Still, there is no question that in 1861, California was rife with secret pro-Southern groups, organizations with names like the Knights of the Columbian Star and the Knights of the Golden Circle. (The latter referred to the filibusters" long-held dream of ruling a slaveholding empire encircling the Gulf of Mexico, and including the American South and Southwest, the Caribbean, and much of Latin America.) Police detectives" reports revealed elaborate codes, rituals, signs, and countersigns-enough to leave loyal Californians badly spooked. Thus, a few hundred Knights multiplied, at least in the popular imagination, into a hundred thousand.34 Nothing seemed safe that spring, not even the rock-solid fortress at the center of San Francis...o...b..y. "We felt as though we were upon a volcano of social disruption," one Unionist later remembered, "and...that the guns of Alcatraz might signal us at any moment to throw up our hands."35 But even as the would-be founders of the Pacific Republic conspired among themselves, a counterplot of sorts was being hatched-this one in Mrs. Fremont"s front garden.
THOUSANDS OF MILES from San Francis...o...b..y, at the West"s opposite gateway-St. Louis, Missouri-two civilians sat disconsolately at the sidelines of the war. from San Francis...o...b..y, at the West"s opposite gateway-St. Louis, Missouri-two civilians sat disconsolately at the sidelines of the war.
One had recently taken a desk job running St. Louis"s horse-drawn trolley line. He spent most of his days pushing papers, trying his hardest to concentrate on the minutiae of fare revenues and fodder costs, in an office permeated with pungent aromas from the company"s adjacent stables. The other man was a visitor to town, a down-at-the-heels shop clerk from Illinois, who had come in search of an officer"s commission. He camped out at his in-laws" house, trudging around the city each day, fruitlessly trying to attract the attention of the local military authorities.36 The trolley-car executive was named William Tec.u.mseh Sherman. The luckless clerk was Ulysses S. Grant.
Of all the places where these two men could have found themselves, St. Louis was perhaps the one where war loomed largest. The leading city in one of the nation"s most populous slaveholding states, St. Louis was a military prize like no other. Not only the largest settlement beyond the Appalachians, it was also the country"s second-largest port, commanding the Mississippi as well as the Missouri River, the great waterway to the Rockies, then navigable as far upstream as what is now the state of Montana. It was also the eastern gateway of the overland trails to California, Oregon, and the Southwest. Last but far from least, the city was home to the Jefferson Barracks, the largest military installation in the entire United States, and to the St. Louis a.r.s.enal, the biggest cache of federal arms in the South.37 Whoever held St. Louis truly held the key to the whole American West. And, in contrast to what was brewing in California, the struggle for the West in Missouri was in the open, it was armed, and it was about to explode into full-blown violence.
But it was not yet Grant"s or Sherman"s Civil War in the spring of 1861. During this opening act, the two future t.i.tans were fated to watch from offstage. It was not yet time for the clashes of great armies, for columns of conscripts trudging across the ruined landscape of the South. Instead, the struggle for Missouri was a civil war in the truest and rawest sense, resembling those fought in our own time in such places as Beirut and Baghdad: gun battles in the streets, long-simmering ethnic hatreds boiling over, and wailing mothers cradling slain children in their arms. It was also quite literally a revolution-but with the Union side, not the Confederates, as the rebels.
The Union revolutionaries, who would soon fight the battle for Missouri, were drilling clandestinely by night in beer halls, factories, and gymnasiums, barricading the windows and spreading sawdust on the floor to m.u.f.fle the sound of their stomping boots. Young brewery workers and trolley drivers, middle-aged tavern keepers and wholesale merchants, were learning to bear and aim guns, to wheel squads left and right in the proper American fashion. Most of the younger men handled the weapons awkwardly, but quite a few of the older ones swung them with the ease of having been soldiers once before, in another country, long ago. Sometimes, when their movements. .h.i.t a perfect synchrony, when their m.u.f.fled tread beat a single cadence, they threw caution aside and sang out. Just a few of the older men would begin, more and more men joining in until dozens swelled the chorus, half singing, half shouting verses they had carried with them from across the sea: Die wilde Jagd, und die Deutsche Jagd,Auf Henkersblut und Tyrannen!Drum, die ihr uns liebt, nicht geweint und geklagt;Das Land ist ja frei, und der Morgen tagt,Wenn wir"s auch nur sterbend gewannen! * *
There were two distinct Missouris in 1861: an old and a new.
The old flourished in the central counties of the state, in the rich alluvial lands between the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. Here, in the early decades of the century, had come settlers from the seaboard South: enterprising young Marylanders and Virginians who had forsaken the exhausted acreage of their ancestral plantations, rounded up the able-bodied field hands, and marched them in shackled droves through the c.u.mberland Gap. Others made the journey from Kentucky and Tennessee, moving southwestward with the frontier, as their mothers and fathers had done before. Land could be had for twenty-five cents an acre, and, after the slaves had cleared it, there were abundant yields of cotton, tobacco, and hemp. These earliest settlers had agitated for Missouri"s admission as a slave state, and after the Compromise of 1820 settled the matter, more followed. Although there were few large plantations, the region became known as Little Dixie.38 Planters and small farmers sent their crops to market in nearby St. Louis, a frontier town of wood-frame houses that the early French colonists had built. Planters and small farmers sent their crops to market in nearby St. Louis, a frontier town of wood-frame houses that the early French colonists had built.39 As the Civil War began, Little Dixie still flourished as it had for the past half century. But St. Louis, in that time, had changed beyond all recognition. Here and there, a quaint French colonial house still tottered picturesquely, but most had given way to block after block of redbrick monotony: warehouses, manufacturing plants, and office buildings, stretching for miles along the bluffs above the river. Each year, more than four thousand steamboats shouldered up to the wharves, vessels with names like War Eagle, War Eagle, Champion, Belle of Memphis, Champion, Belle of Memphis, and and Big St. Louis. Big St. Louis. The smoke from their coal-fired furnaces mingled with the thick black clouds belching from factory smokestacks, so that on windless days the sun shone feebly through a dark canopy that hung above the entire city. The smoke from their coal-fired furnaces mingled with the thick black clouds belching from factory smokestacks, so that on windless days the sun shone feebly through a dark canopy that hung above the entire city.40 More and more Northerners were coming to this new Missouri, attracted by the opportunities of booming industry-both wealthy businessmen and poor but hopeful laborers. So alarmed were the "old" Missourians by the influx that one Virginia-born judge suggested, only half in jest, that the state legislature pa.s.s a law barring Yankees from crossing the Mississippi. When asked how the ban could be enforced, he suggested that ferrymen require all their pa.s.sengers to p.r.o.nounce the word cow- cow-anyone replying "keow" would be banished forever to the Illinois side of the river.41 But it was a wave of newcomers from even farther afield that was truly transforming the face of St. Louis. Beginning in the 1840s, German and other central European immigrants poured into the city, attracted at first by a pioneer propagandist named Gottfried Duden, who described the Mississippi Valley as a kind of American Rhineland: just as romantic, but with lusher vegetation and a milder climate, both politically and meteorologically. This may not have been quite accurate, but by the time Duden"s countrymen made the trek and realized as much, the migration had taken on a momentum of its own. By 1861, a visitor to many parts of the city might indeed have thought he was somewhere east of Aachen. "Here we hear the German tongue, or rather the German dialect, dialect, everywhere," one Landsmann en-thused. Certainly you would hear it in places like Tony Niederwiesser"s Tivoli beer garden on Third Street, where Sunday-afternoon regulars quaffed lager while Sauter"s or Vogel"s orchestra played waltzes and sentimental tunes from the old country. You would hear it in Henry Boernstein"s St. Louis Opera House on Market Street, where the house company celebrated Friedrich Schiller"s centennial in 1859 by performing the master"s theatrical works for a solid week. You would hear it in the newspaper offices of the competing dailies everywhere," one Landsmann en-thused. Certainly you would hear it in places like Tony Niederwiesser"s Tivoli beer garden on Third Street, where Sunday-afternoon regulars quaffed lager while Sauter"s or Vogel"s orchestra played waltzes and sentimental tunes from the old country. You would hear it in Henry Boernstein"s St. Louis Opera House on Market Street, where the house company celebrated Friedrich Schiller"s centennial in 1859 by performing the master"s theatrical works for a solid week. You would hear it in the newspaper offices of the competing dailies Anzeiger des Westens Anzeiger des Westens and and Westliche Post, Westliche Post, as well as the weekly as well as the weekly Mississippi Blatter. Mississippi Blatter. You would hear it even in public school cla.s.srooms, where the children of immigrants received instruction in the mother tongue. You would hear it even in public school cla.s.srooms, where the children of immigrants received instruction in the mother tongue.42 St. Louis was still officially slave territory, of course. Indeed, it was here that Dred Scott-"the best known colored person in the world," locals liked to boast-had sued for his freedom; here that his widow and daughters still lived in an alleyway just off Franklin Avenue.* Mrs. Scott and her children were free, though-as were most black St. Louisans. The number of slaves in the city had dwindled to fewer than two thousand, or less than 1 percent of the population. Local politicians-even some who owned a few slaves themselves-were calling for the state to enact gradual emanc.i.p.ation. It would be good for business, they said; it would lure even more Yankee capital to town. Mrs. Scott and her children were free, though-as were most black St. Louisans. The number of slaves in the city had dwindled to fewer than two thousand, or less than 1 percent of the population. Local politicians-even some who owned a few slaves themselves-were calling for the state to enact gradual emanc.i.p.ation. It would be good for business, they said; it would lure even more Yankee capital to town.43 No wonder that when cotton growers from Little Dixie came into the city they sometimes felt as though they were in an alien country. Yet Missouri as a whole still lay firmly in the political grasp of such men: the Southern planters, the slaveholders, the aristocratic scions of old French colonial families. As a bloc, they and their supporters far outnumbered the German newcomers, and in the early months of 1861, as their sister states seceded one by one around them, these men naturally a.s.sumed that it was they who would decide Missouri"s fate.
In January, the state had sworn in a new governor. Claiborne Fox Jackson was a poker-playing, horse-trading, Little Dixie planter who had once led armed Border Ruffians into neighboring Kansas to keep it from becoming a free state. Better just to let the Indian savages keep Kansas forever, Jackson had once said, since "they are better neighbors than the abolitionists, by a d.a.m.n sight. by a d.a.m.n sight."44 Officially, Jackson was neutral on secession, rea.s.suring everyone that the ultimate decision would be up to the citizens of Missouri. But in his inaugural address, he made his leanings clear enough. "The weight of Kentucky or Missouri, thrown into the scale," could tip the balance nationally from the Union to the Confederacy, the governor said. And should the federal government try to coerce the seceding states, he warned, "Missouri will not be found to shrink from the duty which her position upon the border imposes: her honor, her interests, and her sympathies point alike in one direction, and determine her to to stand by the South. stand by the South." (Judging by the printed sources, Jackson seems to have been a man who spoke frequently in italics.) One of the governor"s first acts in office was to secure legislative approval for a statewide convention to determine where Missouri would pledge her loyalties and her considerable resources. To leave the Union would require a statewide referendum. But neither the Governor nor the legislature seemed to have the slightest doubt about which way the convention-or Missouri"s citizenry-would vote. The delegates certainly seemed like a reliable enough group: some four-fifths of them were slaveholders. They gathered first in Jefferson City, the state"s tiny capital, and then, seeking better hotel accommodations, moved to St. Louis.45 The gentlemen did indeed find the creature comforts of the metropolis far more satisfactory. In every other respect, however, the move to St. Louis was the worst strategic blunder that the hard-core Jacksonites could have ventured. For they arrived in a city that was tense, frightened, and divided-and whose inhabitants were arming themselves not just for secession, not just to preserve the Union, but for an all-out ethnic war.
Almost since their first arrival, the Germans of St. Louis had been a cla.s.s apart politically as well as culturally. Many had left their native land to escape not only poverty but also the reactionary regimes that ruled Germany"s claustrophobic labyrinth of tiny duchies and princ.i.p.alities. Arriving in the United States, they rejoiced in the expansive landscape, in the freedom of expression, and in the spirit of a nation whose watchword, they had been told, was liberty.
And they almost immediately fell afoul of their new American neighbors. In 1836, when a black St. Louis man was accused of murdering a police officer, a group of whites seized the prisoner from the city jail, manacled him to a tree at the corner of Seventh and Locust, and burned him alive before a large crowd of spectators. The next day, the shocked editor of the city"s recently established German-language newspaper, the Anzeiger des Westens, Anzeiger des Westens, denounced the atrocity. "Citizens of St. Louis!" he wrote. "The stain with which your city was defiled last night can never be erased." denounced the atrocity. "Citizens of St. Louis!" he wrote. "The stain with which your city was defiled last night can never be erased."
Citizens of St. Louis promptly taught him a lesson. Several hundred of them gathered as an angry mob outside the Anzeiger Anzeiger"s office, and only with difficulty were restrained from committing another lynching. The next morning"s issue of the St. Louis Commercial Bulletin, Commercial Bulletin, a leading English-language newspaper, chastised the editor for insulting in an "unjust manner the whole community." a leading English-language newspaper, chastised the editor for insulting in an "unjust manner the whole community."46 But the newcomers were not to be intimidated so easily. Over the succeeding years, as their ranks swelled, they grew ever bolder and more outspoken. In 1848 and 1849, the steady flow of arrivals became a flood as Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians fled the aftermath of the failed liberal revolutions across Europe. Among those it swept into St. Louis was Franz Sigel, the daring military commander of insurgent forces in the Baden uprising, comrade of Louis Kossuth and Giuseppe Mazzini; in his new homeland, Sigel became a teacher of German and school superintendent. Another political refugee was Isidor Bush, a Prague-born Jew and publisher of revolutionary tracts in Vienna, who settled down in St. Louis as a respected wine merchant, railroad executive, and city councilman-as well as, somewhat more discreetly, a leader of the local abolitionists.*
Most prominent among all the Achtundvierziger- Achtundvierziger-the Forty-Eighters, as they styled themselves-was a colorful Austrian emigre named Heinrich Bornstein. Whether Bornstein was a hero or a scoundrel depended on whom you asked. In Europe he had been a soldier in the imperial army, an actor, a director-and, most notably, an editor. During a sojourn in Paris, he launched a weekly journal called Vorwarts!, Vorwarts!, which published antireligious screeds, poetry by Heine, and some of the first "scientific socialist" writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. When Bornstein helped organize a German Legion to aid the 1848 revolution, things became a bit hot for him with the Parisian authorities, and he prudently decamped. In America he became Henry Boernstein: homeopathic physician, saloonkeeper, brewer, pharmacist, theatrical impresario, hotel owner, novelist-and, naturally, political agitator. After purchasing the ever more influential which published antireligious screeds, poetry by Heine, and some of the first "scientific socialist" writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. When Bornstein helped organize a German Legion to aid the 1848 revolution, things became a bit hot for him with the Parisian authorities, and he prudently decamped. In America he became Henry Boernstein: homeopathic physician, saloonkeeper, brewer, pharmacist, theatrical impresario, hotel owner, novelist-and, naturally, political agitator. After purchasing the ever more influential Anzeiger des Westens Anzeiger des Westens in 1850, he swung the paper even harder to the left. Though he may have cut a somewhat eccentric figure around town, with his flamboyant clothing and a pair of Mitteleuropean side-whiskers that would have put Emperor Franz Josef to shame, Boernstein was a force to be reckoned with in St. Louis, a man both admired and hated. in 1850, he swung the paper even harder to the left. Though he may have cut a somewhat eccentric figure around town, with his flamboyant clothing and a pair of Mitteleuropean side-whiskers that would have put Emperor Franz Josef to shame, Boernstein was a force to be reckoned with in St. Louis, a man both admired and hated.47 For such men, and even for their less radical compatriots, Missouri"s slaveholding cla.s.s represented exactly what they had detested in the old country, exactly what they had come here to escape: a swaggering clique of landed oligarchs, boorish aristocrats obstructing the forces of modernity and progress. By contrast, the Germans prided themselves on being, as an Anzeiger Anzeiger editorial rather smugly put it, "filled with more intensive concepts of freedom, with more expansive notions of humanity, than most peoples of the earth"-more imbued with true democratic spirit, indeed more American, than the Americans themselves. Such presumption did not exactly endear them to longtime St. Louisans. The city"s leading Democratic newspaper excoriated the Forty-Eighters as infidels, anarchists, fanatics, socialists-"all Robespierres, Dantons, and Saint-Justs, red down to their very kidneys." Clearly these Germans were G.o.dless, too: one need only walk downtown on a Sunday afternoon to see them drinking beer, dancing, and flocking to immoral plays in their theaters-flagrantly violating not just the commandments of G.o.d but the city ordinances of St. Louis. editorial rather smugly put it, "filled with more intensive concepts of freedom, with more expansive notions of humanity, than most peoples of the earth"-more imbued with true democratic spirit, indeed more American, than the Americans themselves. Such presumption did not exactly endear them to longtime St. Louisans. The city"s leading Democratic newspaper excoriated the Forty-Eighters as infidels, anarchists, fanatics, socialists-"all Robespierres, Dantons, and Saint-Justs, red down to their very kidneys." Clearly these Germans were G.o.dless, too: one need only walk downtown on a Sunday afternoon to see them drinking beer, dancing, and flocking to immoral plays in their theaters-flagrantly violating not just the commandments of G.o.d but the city ordinances of St. Louis.48 Few if any of the city fathers were prepared, however, to risk enforcing the blue laws. Those beer drinkers and theatergoers had become a powerful voting bloc. Many Missouri Germans cast their first votes for Thomas Hart Benton, when the old maverick-not unmindful of demographic shifts in his home state-steered toward populism. Then they rallied to the new Republican Party. Their special hero in 1856 was John C. Fremont. Here was a leader in the true style of the Forty-Eighters: no dough-faced politician but a dashing idealist, a man of action, a bearded paladin. (That Colonel Fremont happened to be the illegitimate son of a French mural painter only enhanced his Romantic cachet.) It was with somewhat less enthusiasm that they would unite behind Lincoln four years later-split rails held little charm for the acolytes of Goethe and Hegel. But support from intellectuals like Boernstein encouraged them: the editor, who was fast becoming one of Missouri"s top Republican power brokers, hailed his party"s nominee, in proper Achtundvierzigerisch Achtundvierzigerisch terms, as "the man who will see his way through a great struggle yet to come, the struggle with the most dangerous and ruthless enemy of freedom." terms, as "the man who will see his way through a great struggle yet to come, the struggle with the most dangerous and ruthless enemy of freedom."49 A few months later, the Wide Awake craze reached St. Louis. Capes! Torches! Secret meetings! It was just like the good old days back in Dresden and Heidelberg. Before long, Germans by the thousands were joining up, and relishing the opportunity to get back into fighting trim. One of the local movement"s leaders (discreetly writing in the third person) later recalled: From their headquarters...the Wide Awakes Wide Awakes marched in procession to the places of appointed political gatherings, and while the meeting continued, (if at night,) each man, with a lighted lamp placed securely on the end of a heavy stick, stationed himself on the outside of the a.s.sembled crowd, thus depriving ruffianly opponents of their hiding-places in the dark. At the first two meetings which the marched in procession to the places of appointed political gatherings, and while the meeting continued, (if at night,) each man, with a lighted lamp placed securely on the end of a heavy stick, stationed himself on the outside of the a.s.sembled crowd, thus depriving ruffianly opponents of their hiding-places in the dark. At the first two meetings which the Wide Awakes Wide Awakes thus attended, the enemy, not understanding the thus attended, the enemy, not understanding the purposes purposes of the club, began their usual serenade of yells and cheers, but they were speedily initiated into the mysteries of the new order; which initiation consisted in being besmeared with burning camphene, and vigorously beaten with leaded sticks. The least sign of disorderly conduct was the signal for an a.s.sault upon the offender, and if he escaped unmaimed he was lucky indeed. of the club, began their usual serenade of yells and cheers, but they were speedily initiated into the mysteries of the new order; which initiation consisted in being besmeared with burning camphene, and vigorously beaten with leaded sticks. The least sign of disorderly conduct was the signal for an a.s.sault upon the offender, and if he escaped unmaimed he was lucky indeed.50 The national Republican establishment was quick to exploit this touching display of pro-Lincoln sentiment in the heart of a slave state. William Seward hastened to the city and, from the balcony of his hotel room, addressed a crowd of Wide Awakes who had come to serenade him by torchlight. The master politician-forearmed, as usual, with