Chapter 21

Although Bennett had arrived at San Francisco in February with some of the dust, the editors of the town--for two papers were published in the place at the time--did not hear of the discovery till some weeks later. The first published notice of the gold appeared in the _Californian_ (published in San Francisco) on March 15th, as follows: "In the newly made raceway of the sawmill recently erected by Captain Sutter, on the American Fork, gold has been found in considerable quantities. One person brought thirty dollars' worth to New Helvetia, gathered there in a short time. California, no doubt, is rich in mineral wealth; great chances here for scientific capitalists. Gold has been found in almost every part of the country."

Three days later the _California Star_, the rival paper, gave the following account of the discovery: "We were informed a few days since that a very valuable silver-mine was situated in the vicinity of this place, and, again, that its locality was known. Mines of quicksilver are being found all over the country. Gold has been discovered in the northern Sacramento districts, about forty miles above Sutter's Fort. Rich mines of copper are said to exist north of these bays."

Although these articles were written two months after the discovery, it is evident that the editors had heard only vague rumors, and attached little importance to them. The _Star_ of March 25th says: "So great is the quantity of gold taken from the new mine recently found at New Helvetia that it has become an article of traffic in that vicinity."

None of the gold had been seen in San Francisco; but at Sutter's Fort men had begun to buy and sell with it.

The next number of the _Star_, bearing date April 1, 1848, contained an article several columns long, written by Doctor V.J. Fourgeaud, on the resources of California. He devoted about a column to the minerals, and in the course of his remarks said: "It would be utterly impossible at present to make a correct estimate of the mineral wealth of California. Popular attention has been but lately directed to it. But the discoveries that have already been made will warrant us in the assertion that California is one of the richest mineral countries in the world. Gold, silver, quicksilver, iron, copper, lead, sulphur, saltpetre, and other mines of great value have already been found. We saw a few days ago a beautiful specimen of gold from the mine newly discovered on the American Fork. From all accounts the mine is immensely rich, and already we learn the gold from it collected at random and without any trouble has become an article of trade at the upper settlements. This precious metal abounds in this country. We have heard of several other newly discovered mines of gold, but as these reports are not yet authenticated we shall pass over them. However, it is well known that there is a placer of gold a few miles from Los Angeles, and another on the San Joaquin."

It was not until more than three months after Marshall's discovery that the San Francisco papers stated that gold-mining had become a regular and profitable business in the new placers. The _Californian_ of April 26th said: "From a gentleman just from the gold region we learn that many new discoveries of gold have very recently been made, and it is fully ascertained that a large extent of country abounds with that precious mineral. Seven men, with picks and spades, gathered one thousand six hundred dollars worth in fifteen days. Many persons are settling on the lands with the view of holding preëmptions, but as yet every person takes the right to gather all he can without any regard to claims. The largest piece yet found is worth six dollars."

The news spread, men came from all the settled parts of the territory, and as they came they went to work mining, and gradually they moved farther and farther from Coloma, and before the rainy reason had commenced (in December) miners were washing rich auriferous dirt all along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, from the Feather to the Tuolumne River, a distance of one hundred fifty miles; and also over a space of about fifteen miles square, near the place now known as the town of Shasta, in the Coast Mountains, at the head of the Sacramento Valley. The whole country had been turned topsy-turvy; towns had been deserted, or left only to the women and children; fields had been left unreaped; herds of cattle went without anyone to care for them. But gold-mining, which had become the great interest of the country, was not neglected. The people learned rapidly and worked hard.

In the latter part of 1848 adventurers began to arrive from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and Mexico. The winter found the miners with very little preparation, but most of them were accustomed to a rough manner of life in the Western wilds, and they considered their large profits an abundant compensation for their privations and hardships. The weather was so mild in December and January that they could work almost as well as in the summer, and the rain gave them facilities for washing such as they could not have in the dry season.

In September, 1848, the first rumors of the gold discovery began to reach New York; in October they attracted attention; in November people looked with interest for new reports; in December the news gained general credence and a great excitement arose. Preparations were made for a migration to California by somebody in nearly every town in the United States. The great body of the emigrants went either across the plains with ox or mule teams or round Cape Horn in sailing-vessels. A few took passage in the steamer by way of Panama.

Not fewer than one hundred thousand men, representing in their nativity every State in the Union, went to California that year. Of these, twenty thousand crossed the continent by way of the South Pass; and nearly all of them started from the Missouri River between Independence and St. Joseph, in the month of May. They formed an army; in daytime their trains filled up the roads for miles, and at night their camp-fires glittered in every direction about the places blessed with grass and water. The excitement continued from 1850 to 1853; emigrants continued to come by land and sea, from Europe and America, and in the last named year from China also. In 1854 the migration fell off, and since that time until the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad California received the chief accessions to her white population by the Panama steamers.

The whole world felt a beneficent influence from the great gold yield of the Sacramento Basin. Labor rose in value, and industry was stimulated from St. Louis to Constantinople. The news, however, was not welcome to all classes. Many of the capitalists feared that gold would soon be so abundant as to be worthless, and European statesmen feared the power to be gained by the arrogant and turbulent democracy of the New World.

The author of a book entitled _Notes on the Gold District_, published in London in 1853, thus speaks of the fears excited in Europe on the first great influx of gold from the Californian mines: "Among the many extraordinary incidents connected with the Californian discoveries was the alarm communicated to many classes and which was not confined to individuals but invaded governments. The first announcement spread alarm; but as the cargoes of gold rose from one hundred thousand dollars to one million dollars, bankers and financiers began seriously to prepare for an expected crisis. In England and the United States the panic was confined to a few; but on the Continent of Europe every government, rich or poor, thought it needful to make provision against the threatened evils. An immediate alteration in prices was looked for; money was to become so abundant that all ordinary commodities were to rise, but more especially the proportion between gold and silver was to be disturbed, some thinking that the latter might become the dearer metal. The Governments of France, Holland, and Russia, in particular, turned their attention to the monetary question, and in 1850 the Government of Holland availed themselves of a law, which had not before been put in operation, to take immediate steps for selling off the gold in the Bank of Amsterdam, at what they supposed to be the highest prices, and to stock themselves with silver.

"Palladium, which is likewise a superior white metal, was held more firmly, and expectations were entertained that it would become available for plating. The stock, however, was small. The silver operation was carried on concurrent with a supply of bullion to Russia for a loan, a demand for silver in Austria, and for shipment to India, and it did really produce an effect on the silver market, which many mistook for the influence of Californian gold. The particular way in which the Netherlands operations were carried on was especially calculated to produce the greatest disturbance of prices. The ten-florin pieces were sent to Paris, coined there into Napoleons, and silver five-franc pieces drawn out in their place.

"At Paris the premium on gold in a few months fell from nearly 2 per cent. to a discount, and at Hamburg a like fall took place. In London, the great silver market, silver rose, between the autumn and the new year, from five shillings per ounce to five shillings one and five-eighths pence per ounce, and Mexican dollars from four shillings ten and one-half pence to four shillings eleven and five-eighths pence per ounce; nor did prices recover until toward the end of the year 1851, when the fall was as sudden as the rise."

In the spring of 1849 Reading crossed the Coast Range with a party of his Indians, and discovered rich diggings in the valley of the Trinity. In the summer of the same year Colonel Frémont discovered the mines on his ranch, in the valley of the Mariposa.

(1849) RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, Jessie White Mario

When "Young Italy," the association of republican agitators led by Giuseppe Mazzini, began its activities (about 1834), hatred of the Austrian government, which ruled in several of the Italian States, was kept alive through this determined organization. Aspirations for liberty and self-government were requickened. The endeavors of the reforming Pope, Pius IX (1846), to harmonize his policy with the aims of this party, in order to promote a confederation of the Italian States under papal supremacy, at first seemed to promise the dawn of a new era. Soon after the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 in France, revolt against the Austrian power began in various parts of Italy. The Austrian troops were driven out of Lombardy; Venice compelled the Austrian forces in her territory to surrender, and became a free republic; in a short time Italy appeared to have delivered herself from the rule of Austria; but almost immediately the foreign power began to regain its ascendency, and this, through the events here related, was fully recovered.

After the flight of Pius IX from Rome (November, 1848), Mazzini and his followers pursued their own course. A constituent assembly was summoned, and on February 5, 1849, it declared the temporal power of the Pope abolished. The Italian soldier who now becomes the chief figure of this movement has enjoyed a popular renown unsurpassed by that of any of his countrymen. Giuseppe Garibaldi, a sailor's son, was born in Nice, July 4, 1807. In youth he went to sea. In 1834 he took part with Mazzini in the Young Italy demonstrations, and for aiding in an attempt to seize Genoa he was condemned to death. Escaping to South America, he won distinction as a guerilla leader and a privateer in the service of the Rio Grande rebels against Brazil. After further military adventures in South America, he returned to Italy, and in 1847 offered his services to Pope Pius IX, but they were not accepted. In 1848 he received indifferent treatment at the hands of Charles Albert of Sardinia, who was besieging the Austrians in Mantua. After the failure of Charles Albert, Garibaldi collected his own followers and acted against the Austrians with such effect as to bring him into prominence in the ranks of Italian patriots. The following account of the siege and defence of Rome, which admiringly presents him to view, is from the author's supplement to Garibaldi's _Autobiography_, and is a valuable contribution to the history of the events in which he was so conspicuous.

Of the many sublime pages traced in the blood of Italian patriots, the sublimest in our eyes is that of the defence of Rome. No writer of genius has yet been inspired to narrate the heroic deeds enacted, the pain, privation, anguish, borne joyfully to save "that city of the Italian soul" from desecration by the foreigner. Mazzini's beloved disciple, Mameli, the soldier-poet, died with the flower of the student youth; the survivors, exiled, dispersed, heartbroken, or intent only on preparing for the next campaign, have left us but fugitive records, partial episodes, or dull military chronicles. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, competent by love and genius to be the historian and who had collected the materials day by day, lived the life of the combatants hour by hour, was wrecked with "Ossoli, Angelo" and her manuscript, in sight of her native shore.

From details that reached him Garibaldi always maintained that there was a priest among the wreckers who secured and destroyed the treasure! Guerrazzi's _Siege of Rome_ is inferior to all his other writings. The entry of the Italian army into Rome by the breach in Porta Pia has cast the grand defence of 1849 into the background of rash attempts and futile failures. In these brief pages we give merely the outline of the drama in which Garibaldi was one of the leading actors. The men who desired a republic did not exist as a party in Rome previous to the flight of the Pope. But there existed a strong national anti-Austrian party, who, as they had worshipped Pio Nono (Pius IX) when he "blessed Italy" and the banners that the Romans bore upward to the "Holy War," now execrated him inasmuch as he had withdrawn his sanction to that war and had blessed the Croats and the Austrians who were butchering the Italians in the north. Convinced of the impossibility of favoring the independence and unity of Italy, and remaining at the same time the supreme head of the Universal Church, Pio Nono fled for protection to the King of Naples; there he declined to accept from the King of Piedmont his repeated offers of protection or mediation, and appealed to Austria alone to restore him pope-king absolute in Rome. Very soon afterward the Archduke of Tuscany revoked the Constituent Assembly which he had granted, and followed the saintly example of the Holy Father, so that Tuscany and Rome were alike left sheep without a shepherd.

In the Roman States an appeal was made to universal suffrage, and the people sent up deputies, known chiefly for their honesty and bravery, to decide on the form of government, to assist Piedmont in her second war against Austria. When the Constituent Assembly met to decide on the form of government, Mamiani warned them that only two rulers were possible in Rome--the Pope or Cola di Rienzi; the Papacy or the Republic.

Garibaldi, who had organized his legion at Rieti, was elected member of the Constituent Assembly, and on February 7th put in his appearance and in language more soldierlike than parliamentary urged the immediate proclamation of the republic. But the debate was carried on with all due respect for the "rights of the minority."

Finally, on February 9th, of the one hundred fifty-four Deputies present, all but five voted for the downfall of the temporal power of the Pope, all but eleven for the proclamation of the republic. These, with the exception of General Garibaldi and General Ferrari, were all Romans. G. Filopanti, who undertook to explain the state of affairs to the Roman people, won shouts of applause by his concluding words, "We are no longer mere Romans, but Italians."

This sentence sums up the sentiments of all: of Garibaldi, who, after recording his vote, returned to his troops at Rieti and drew up an admirable plan for attacking the Austrians bent on subjugating the Roman Provinces and for carrying revolution into the Kingdom of Naples; of Mazzini, who, so far from having imposed on the Romans a republic by the force of his tyrannical will, was--during its proclamation--in Tuscany, striving to induce Guerrazzi and his fellow-triumvirs to unite with Rome and organize a strong army for the renewal of the Lombard War.

True, the Romans, mindful of all they owed to the great apostle of Italian unity and independence, proclaimed him Roman citizen on February 12th, and on the 25th of the same month the Roman people, with nine thousand votes, elected him member of the Constituent Assembly; but it was not until March 5th that he entered Rome, when, in one of his most splendid speeches, rising above parties and politics, he called upon the "Rome of the People" to send up combatants against Austria, the only enemy that then menaced Italy.

Suiting the action to the word, he induced the Assembly to nominate a commission for the thorough organization of the army; and ten thousand men had quitted Rome and were marching up to the frontier to place themselves at the orders of Piedmont, when, alas! their march was arrested by the news of the total defeat at Novara, of the abdication of Charles Albert and the reinauguration of Austrian rule in Lombardy. Genoa, whose generous inhabitants arose in protest against the disastrous but inevitable treaty of peace, was bombarded and reduced to submission by La Marmora; and now, while to Rome and to Venice flocked all the volunteers who preferred death to submission, the new Holy Alliance of Continental Europe took for its watchword: "The restoration of the Pope; the extinction of the two Republics of Venice and of Rome."

Austria crossed the Po and occupied Ferrara, marching thence on Bologna; the Neapolitan troops from the south marched upward to the Roman frontier; even Spain sent her contingent to Fiumicino. But only when it was known that the French Republic had voted an expedition, with the specious object of guaranteeing the independence of the supreme Pontiff, did the Romans and their rulers realize that the existence of Rome and her newborn liberties was seriously menaced. Garibaldi wrote from Rieti, in April, an enthusiastic letter worth recording here:

"BROTHER MAZZINI: I feel that I must write you one line with my own hand. May Providence sustain you in your brilliant but arduous career [Mazzini had just been elected, with Armellini and Saffi, Triumvir of Rome], and may you be enabled to carry out all the noble designs in your mind for the welfare of our country. Remember that Rieti is full of your brethren in the faith, and that immutably yours is

"JOSEPH GARIBALDI."

At the same time he sent a plan, proposing to march along the Via Emilia, to collect arms and volunteers, proclaim the levy in mass, and with a division stationed in the Bolognese territory, operate in the duchies, unite Tuscan, Ligurian, and Piedmontese forces, and once more assail the Austrians. But the news of Piedmont defeated, Genoa bombarded and vanquished, convinced him that it would be difficult to re-arouse the disheartened population of Northern Italy. Hence he next proposed to cross the Neapolitan frontier, fling himself upon the royal troops, and seize the Abruzzi. A sensible project this, to take the offensive against the Pope's defenders. But before the Triumvirate could come to a definite decision, it was known that the French troops, by a disgraceful stratagem, had landed and taken possession of Civita Vecchia, General Oudinot entwining the French flag with the Roman tricolor and assuring the Romans that they only came to secure perfect freedom for the people to effect a reconciliation with Pius IX.

But the people had no desire for such reconciliation; the Assembly decreed that Rome should have no garrison but the National Roman Guard: that if the Republic were invaded by force, the invaders by force should be repelled. A commission of barricades established, the people flocked to erect and remained to man them. The National Guard summoned by Mazzini all answered, "Present," and served enthusiastically throughout the siege; all the troops dispersed in the Provinces were summoned to the capital, and Garibaldi and his volunteers marched into the city amid the acclamations of the populace, too thankful to welcome them to demur at the strange appearance they presented.

Now that Garibaldi's military and naval genius is fully recognized, and the extraordinary fascination he exercised over officers and men, the enthusiasm with which he filled whole populations whom others failed to stir, are undisputed, many historians and critics have expressed their astonishment that he was not made at once commander-in-chief of the Roman forces, and have blamed the Triumvirate for having failed to recognize in the hero of Montevideo the good genius of Rome. Such critics must be simply ignorant of the actual condition of Rome and her Government. There existed, in the first place, the regular Roman army, which would have served under none save regular generals; then there was the Lombard battalion under Manara, whose members, after fifteen months of regular campaigning, were thoroughly drilled and disciplined, who insisted on retaining the cross of Savoy on their belts, and, until their prowess made them the idols of the Romans, were nicknamed the "corps of aristocrats."

Little did they imagine, when they kept aloof from the legion, that before three months were over their young hero chief would resign his command of them to assume the delicate post of head of Garibaldi's staff. Carlo Pisacane--educated in the military college of the Nunziatella, who had served as captain in the foreign legion in Algiers, destined later to become the pioneer of Garibaldi and his "Thousand" and to lose his life in the attempt--while recognizing Garibaldi's prowess and talents as a guerilla chief, in his military history of 1849, severely criticises his tactics, and blames his sending up "a handful of boys against masses of the enemy" and censures, unhesitatingly, "his indiscipline at Velletri." One of the Deputies of the Roman Constituent wrote to the Triumvirate begging them to "Send Garibaldi with his motley crew to a terrible spot, called For del Diavolo, between Civita Vecchia and Rome; on no account to allow them to enter the city, as they are quite too disorderly."

Now, they had committed no "disorders" save that of carrying off the mules and horses of the convents; but when we think of the wild, free, peril-scorning life led in the backwoods of America, of how they recognized no law save their commander's orders, how little used he had been to receive command from any, it will be easily understood how this wild, tanned, quaintly dressed band filled the inhabitants of the towns through which they passed with terror and dismay. Garibaldi's violent tirades against priests and priestcraft; the liberation of a gang of miscreants arrested by order of the Roman Government, had not prepossessed men of order and of discipline in his favor; and although personal contact dispelled all unfavorable prepossessions, one sees how impossible it was for Mazzini to place him in the position which he would himself have assigned to him.