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Carolyn Wells - "The Gold Bag"

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Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete

U >> Ulysses S. Grant >> Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete






CHAPTER XIV.

RETURN OF THE ARMY--MARRIAGE--ORDERED TO THE PACIFIC COAST--CROSSING THE
ISTHMUS--ARRIVAL AT SAN FRANCISCO.

My experience in the Mexican war was of great advantage to me
afterwards. Besides the many practical lessons it taught, the war
brought nearly all the officers of the regular army together so as to
make them personally acquainted. It also brought them in contact with
volunteers, many of whom served in the war of the rebellion afterwards.
Then, in my particular case, I had been at West Point at about the right
time to meet most of the graduates who were of a suitable age at the
breaking out of the rebellion to be trusted with large commands.
Graduating in 1843, I was at the military academy from one to four years
with all cadets who graduated between 1840 and 1846--seven classes.
These classes embraced more than fifty officers who afterwards became
generals on one side or the other in the rebellion, many of them holding
high commands. All the older officers, who became conspicuous in the
rebellion, I had also served with and known in Mexico: Lee, J. E.
Johnston, A. S. Johnston, Holmes, Hebert and a number of others on the
Confederate side; McCall, Mansfield, Phil. Kearney and others on the
National side. The acquaintance thus formed was of immense service to
me in the war of the rebellion--I mean what I learned of the characters
of those to whom I was afterwards opposed. I do not pretend to say that
all movements, or even many of them, were made with special reference to
the characteristics of the commander against whom they were directed.
But my appreciation of my enemies was certainly affected by this
knowledge. The natural disposition of most people is to clothe a
commander of a large army whom they do not know, with almost superhuman
abilities. A large part of the National army, for instance, and most of
the press of the country, clothed General Lee with just such qualities,
but I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was
just as well that I felt this.

The treaty of peace was at last ratified, and the evacuation of Mexico
by United States troops was ordered. Early in June the troops in the
City of Mexico began to move out. Many of them, including the brigade
to which I belonged, were assembled at Jalapa, above the vomito, to
await the arrival of transports at Vera Cruz: but with all this
precaution my regiment and others were in camp on the sand beach in a
July sun, for about a week before embarking, while the fever raged with
great virulence in Vera Cruz, not two miles away. I can call to mind
only one person, an officer, who died of the disease. My regiment was
sent to Pascagoula, Mississippi, to spend the summer. As soon as it was
settled in camp I obtained a leave of absence for four months and
proceeded to St. Louis. On the 22d of August, 1848, I was married to
Miss Julia Dent, the lady of whom I have before spoken. We visited my
parents and relations in Ohio, and, at the end of my leave, proceeded to
my post at Sackett's Harbor, New York. In April following I was ordered
to Detroit, Michigan, where two years were spent with but few important
incidents.

The present constitution of the State of Michigan was ratified during
this time. By the terms of one of its provisions, all citizens of the
United States residing within the State at the time of the ratification
became citizens of Michigan also. During my stay in Detroit there was an
election for city officers. Mr. Zachariah Chandler was the candidate of
the Whigs for the office of Mayor, and was elected, although the city
was then reckoned democratic. All the officers stationed there at the
time who offered their votes were permitted to cast them. I did not
offer mine, however, as I did not wish to consider myself a citizen of
Michigan. This was Mr. Chandler's first entry into politics, a career
he followed ever after with great success, and in which he died enjoying
the friendship, esteem and love of his countrymen.

In the spring of 1851 the garrison at Detroit was transferred to
Sackett's Harbor, and in the following spring the entire 4th infantry
was ordered to the Pacific Coast. It was decided that Mrs. Grant should
visit my parents at first for a few months, and then remain with her own
family at their St. Louis home until an opportunity offered of sending
for her. In the month of April the regiment was assembled at Governor's
Island, New York Harbor, and on the 5th of July eight companies sailed
for Aspinwall. We numbered a little over seven hundred persons,
including the families of officers and soldiers. Passage was secured
for us on the old steamer Ohio, commanded at the time by Captain
Schenck, of the navy. It had not been determined, until a day or two
before starting, that the 4th infantry should go by the Ohio;
consequently, a complement of passengers had already been secured. The
addition of over seven hundred to this list crowded the steamer most
uncomfortably, especially for the tropics in July.

In eight days Aspinwall was reached. At that time the streets of the
town were eight or ten inches under water, and foot passengers passed
from place to place on raised foot-walks. July is at the height of the
wet season, on the Isthmus. At intervals the rain would pour down in
streams, followed in not many minutes by a blazing, tropical summer's
sun. These alternate changes, from rain to sunshine, were continuous in
the afternoons. I wondered how any person could live many months in
Aspinwall, and wondered still more why any one tried.

In the summer of 1852 the Panama railroad was completed only to the
point where it now crosses the Chagres River. From there passengers
were carried by boats to Gorgona, at which place they took mules for
Panama, some twenty-five miles further. Those who travelled over the
Isthmus in those days will remember that boats on the Chagres River were
propelled by natives not inconveniently burdened with clothing. These
boats carried thirty to forty passengers each. The crews consisted of
six men to a boat, armed with long poles. There were planks wide enough
for a man to walk on conveniently, running along the sides of each boat
from end to end. The men would start from the bow, place one end of
their poles against the river bottom, brace their shoulders against the
other end, and then walk to the stern as rapidly as they could. In this
way from a mile to a mile and a half an hour could be made, against the
current of the river.

I, as regimental quartermaster, had charge of the public property and
had also to look after the transportation. A contract had been entered
into with the steamship company in New York for the transportation of
the regiment to California, including the Isthmus transit. A certain
amount of baggage was allowed per man, and saddle animals were to be
furnished to commissioned officers and to all disabled persons. The
regiment, with the exception of one company left as guards to the public
property--camp and garrison equipage principally--and the soldiers with
families, took boats, propelled as above described, for Gorgona. From
this place they marched to Panama, and were soon comfortably on the
steamer anchored in the bay, some three or four miles from the town. I,
with one company of troops and all the soldiers with families, all the
tents, mess chests and camp kettles, was sent to Cruces, a town a few
miles higher up the Chagres River than Gorgona. There I found an
impecunious American who had taken the contract to furnish
transportation for the regiment at a stipulated price per hundred pounds
for the freight and so much for each saddle animal. But when we reached
Cruces there was not a mule, either for pack or saddle, in the place.
The contractor promised that the animals should be on hand in the
morning. In the morning he said that they were on the way from some
imaginary place, and would arrive in the course of the day. This went
on until I saw that he could not procure the animals at all at the price
he had promised to furnish them for. The unusual number of passengers
that had come over on the steamer, and the large amount of freight to
pack, had created an unprecedented demand for mules. Some of the
passengers paid as high as forty dollars for the use of a mule to ride
twenty-five miles, when the mule would not have sold for ten dollars in
that market at other times. Meanwhile the cholera had broken out, and
men were dying every hour. To diminish the food for the disease, I
permitted the company detailed with me to proceed to Panama. The
captain and the doctors accompanied the men, and I was left alone with
the sick and the soldiers who had families. The regiment at Panama was
also affected with the disease; but there were better accommodations for
the well on the steamer, and a hospital, for those taken with the
disease, on an old hulk anchored a mile off. There were also hospital
tents on shore on the island of Flamingo, which stands in the bay.

I was about a week at Cruces before transportation began to come in.
About one-third of the people with me died, either at Cruces or on the
way to Panama. There was no agent of the transportation company at
Cruces to consult, or to take the responsibility of procuring
transportation at a price which would secure it. I therefore myself
dismissed the contractor and made a new contract with a native, at more
than double the original price. Thus we finally reached Panama. The
steamer, however, could not proceed until the cholera abated, and the
regiment was detained still longer. Altogether, on the Isthmus and on
the Pacific side, we were delayed six weeks. About one-seventh of those
who left New York harbor with the 4th infantry on the 5th of July, now
lie buried on the Isthmus of Panama or on Flamingo island in Panama Bay.

One amusing circumstance occurred while we were lying at anchor in
Panama Bay. In the regiment there was a Lieutenant Slaughter who was
very liable to sea-sickness. It almost made him sick to see the wave of
a table-cloth when the servants were spreading it. Soon after his
graduation, Slaughter was ordered to California and took passage by a
sailing vessel going around Cape Horn. The vessel was seven months
making the voyage, and Slaughter was sick every moment of the time,
never more so than while lying at anchor after reaching his place of
destination. On landing in California he found orders which had come by
the Isthmus, notifying him of a mistake in his assignment; he should
have been ordered to the northern lakes. He started back by the Isthmus
route and was sick all the way. But when he arrived at the East he was
again ordered to California, this time definitely, and at this date was
making his third trip. He was as sick as ever, and had been so for more
than a month while lying at anchor in the bay. I remember him well,
seated with his elbows on the table in front of him, his chin between
his hands, and looking the picture of despair. At last he broke out, "I
wish I had taken my father's advice; he wanted me to go into the navy;
if I had done so, I should not have had to go to sea so much." Poor
Slaughter! it was his last sea voyage. He was killed by Indians in
Oregon.

By the last of August the cholera had so abated that it was deemed safe
to start. The disease did not break out again on the way to California,
and we reached San Francisco early in September.



CHAPTER XV.

SAN FRANCISCO--EARLY CALIFORNIA EXPERIENCES--LIFE ON THE PACIFIC COAST
--PROMOTED CAPTAIN--FLUSH TIMES IN CALIFORNIA.

San Francisco at that day was a lively place. Gold, or placer digging
as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied daily between San
Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento. Passengers and gold from the
southern mines came by the Stockton boat; from the northern mines by
Sacramento. In the evening when these boats arrived, Long Wharf--there
was but one wharf in San Francisco in 1852--was alive with people
crowding to meet the miners as they came down to sell their "dust" and
to "have a time." Of these some were runners for hotels, boarding
houses or restaurants; others belonged to a class of impecunious
adventurers, of good manners and good presence, who were ever on the
alert to make the acquaintance of people with some ready means, in the
hope of being asked to take a meal at a restaurant. Many were young men
of good family, good education and gentlemanly instincts. Their parents
had been able to support them during their minority, and to give them
good educations, but not to maintain them afterwards. From 1849 to 1853
there was a rush of people to the Pacific coast, of the class described.
All thought that fortunes were to be picked up, without effort, in the
gold fields on the Pacific. Some realized more than their most sanguine
expectations; but for one such there were hundreds disappointed, many of
whom now fill unknown graves; others died wrecks of their former selves,
and many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and outcasts.
Many of the real scenes in early California life exceed in strangeness
and interest any of the mere products of the brain of the novelist.

Those early days in California brought out character. It was a long way
off then, and the journey was expensive. The fortunate could go by Cape
Horn or by the Isthmus of Panama; but the mass of pioneers crossed the
plains with their ox-teams. This took an entire summer. They were very
lucky when they got through with a yoke of worn-out cattle. All other
means were exhausted in procuring the outfit on the Missouri River. The
immigrant, on arriving, found himself a stranger, in a strange land, far
from friends. Time pressed, for the little means that could be realized
from the sale of what was left of the outfit would not support a man
long at California prices. Many became discouraged. Others would take
off their coats and look for a job, no matter what it might be. These
succeeded as a rule. There were many young men who had studied
professions before they went to California, and who had never done a
day's manual labor in their lives, who took in the situation at once and
went to work to make a start at anything they could get to do. Some
supplied carpenters and masons with material--carrying plank, brick, or
mortar, as the case might be; others drove stages, drays, or baggage
wagons, until they could do better. More became discouraged early and
spent their time looking up people who would "treat," or lounging about
restaurants and gambling houses where free lunches were furnished daily.
They were welcomed at these places because they often brought in miners
who proved good customers.

My regiment spent a few weeks at Benicia barracks, and then was ordered
to Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, then in Oregon Territory.
During the winter of 1852-3 the territory was divided, all north of the
Columbia River being taken from Oregon to make Washington Territory.

Prices for all kinds of supplies were so high on the Pacific coast from
1849 until at least 1853--that it would have been impossible for
officers of the army to exist upon their pay, if it had not been that
authority was given them to purchase from the commissary such supplies
as he kept, at New Orleans wholesale prices. A cook could not be hired
for the pay of a captain. The cook could do better. At Benicia, in
1852, flour was 25 cents per pound; potatoes were 16 cents; beets,
turnips and cabbage, 6 cents; onions, 37 1/2 cents; meat and other
articles in proportion. In 1853 at Vancouver vegetables were a little
lower. I with three other officers concluded that we would raise a crop
for ourselves, and by selling the surplus realize something handsome. I
bought a pair of horses that had crossed the plains that summer and were
very poor. They recuperated rapidly, however, and proved a good team to
break up the ground with. I performed all the labor of breaking up the
ground while the other officers planted the potatoes. Our crop was
enormous. Luckily for us the Columbia River rose to a great height from
the melting of the snow in the mountains in June, and overflowed and
killed most of our crop. This saved digging it up, for everybody on the
Pacific coast seemed to have come to the conclusion at the same time
that agriculture would be profitable. In 1853 more than three-quarters
of the potatoes raised were permitted to rot in the ground, or had to be
thrown away. The only potatoes we sold were to our own mess.

While I was stationed on the Pacific coast we were free from Indian
wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in the vicinity
of Portland in Oregon, and of Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory.
They had generally acquired some of the vices of civilization, but none
of the virtues, except in individual cases. The Hudson's Bay Company
had held the North-west with their trading posts for many years before
the United States was represented on the Pacific coast. They still
retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort Vancouver, when
I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had brought out the better
qualities of the savages. Farming had been undertaken by the company to
supply the Indians with bread and vegetables; they raised some cattle
and horses; and they had now taught the Indians to do the labor of the
farm and herd. They always compensated them for their labor, and always
gave them goods of uniform quality and at uniform price.

Before the advent of the American, the medium of exchange between the
Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it was silver coin. If
an Indian received in the sale of a horse a fifty dollar gold piece, not
an infrequent occurrence, the first thing he did was to exchange it for
American half dollars. These he could count. He would then commence his
purchases, paying for each article separately, as he got it. He would
not trust any one to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that
day fifty dollar gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were
common on the Pacific coast. They were called slugs.

The Indians, along the lower Columbia as far as the Cascades and on the
lower Willamette, died off very fast during the year I spent in that
section; for besides acquiring the vices of the white people they had
acquired also their diseases. The measles and the small-pox were both
amazingly fatal. In their wild state, before the appearance of the
white man among them, the principal complaints they were subject to were
those produced by long involuntary fasting, violent exercise in pursuit
of game, and over-eating. Instinct more than reason had taught them a
remedy for these ills. It was the steam bath. Something like a
bake-oven was built, large enough to admit a man lying down. Bushes were
stuck in the ground in two rows, about six feet long and some two or
three feet apart; other bushes connected the rows at one end. The tops
of the bushes were drawn together to interlace, and confined in that
position; the whole was then plastered over with wet clay until every
opening was filled. Just inside the open end of the oven the floor was
scooped out so as to make a hole that would hold a bucket or two of
water. These ovens were always built on the banks of a stream, a big
spring, or pool of water. When a patient required a bath, a fire was
built near the oven and a pile of stones put upon it. The cavity at the
front was then filled with water. When the stones were sufficiently
heated, the patient would draw himself into the oven; a blanket would be
thrown over the open end, and hot stones put into the water until the
patient could stand it no longer. He was then withdrawn from his steam
bath and doused into the cold stream near by. This treatment may have
answered with the early ailments of the Indians. With the measles or
small-pox it would kill every time.

During my year on the Columbia River, the small-pox exterminated one
small remnant of a band of Indians entirely, and reduced others
materially. I do not think there was a case of recovery among them,
until the doctor with the Hudson Bay Company took the matter in hand and
established a hospital. Nearly every case he treated recovered. I
never, myself, saw the treatment described in the preceding paragraph,
but have heard it described by persons who have witnessed it. The
decimation among the Indians I knew of personally, and the hospital,
established for their benefit, was a Hudson's Bay building not a stone's
throw from my own quarters.

The death of Colonel Bliss, of the Adjutant General's department, which
occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the captaincy of a company then
stationed at Humboldt Bay, California. The notice reached me in
September of the same year, and I very soon started to join my new
command. There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to
take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red
wood, a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast takes the place
filled by white pine in the East, then abounded on the banks of Humboldt
Bay. There were extensive saw-mills engaged in preparing this lumber
for the San Francisco market, and sailing vessels, used in getting it to
market, furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and
the balance of the world.

I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before I found
a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San
Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated, there had been
but one wharf in front of the city in 1852--Long Wharf. In 1853 the
town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of this wharf
when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles
where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at
anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or
houses. San Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year
before; that is, eating, drinking and gambling houses were conspicuous
for their number and publicity. They were on the first floor, with
doors wide open. At all hours of the day and night in walking the
streets, the eye was regaled, on every block near the water front, by
the sight of players at faro. Often broken places were found in the
street, large enough to let a man down into the water below. I have but
little doubt that many of the people who went to the Pacific coast in
the early days of the gold excitement, and have never been heard from
since, or who were heard from for a time and then ceased to write, found
watery graves beneath the houses or streets built over San Francisco
Bay.

Besides the gambling in cards there was gambling on a larger scale in
city lots. These were sold "On Change," much as stocks are now sold on
Wall Street. Cash, at time of purchase, was always paid by the broker;
but the purchaser had only to put up his margin. He was charged at the
rate of two or three per cent. a month on the difference, besides
commissions. The sand hills, some of them almost inaccessible to
foot-passengers, were surveyed off and mapped into fifty vara lots--a
vara being a Spanish yard. These were sold at first at very low prices,
but were sold and resold for higher prices until they went up to many
thousands of dollars. The brokers did a fine business, and so did many
such purchasers as were sharp enough to quit purchasing before the final
crash came. As the city grew, the sand hills back of the town furnished
material for filling up the bay under the houses and streets, and still
further out. The temporary houses, first built over the water in the
harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part
of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest
class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in
1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had
become staid and orderly.



CHAPTER XVI.

RESIGNATION--PRIVATE LIFE--LIFE AT GALENA--THE COMING CRISIS.

My family, all this while, was at the East. It consisted now of a wife
and two children. I saw no chance of supporting them on the Pacific
coast out of my pay as an army officer. I concluded, therefore, to
resign, and in March applied for a leave of absence until the end of the
July following, tendering my resignation to take effect at the end of
that time. I left the Pacific coast very much attached to it, and with
the full expectation of making it my future home. That expectation and
that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy
bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4. The passage
of that bill, and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a
citizen of the further West.

In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son
whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama. I was
now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our
support. My wife had a farm near St. Louis, to which we went, but I had
no means to stock it. A house had to be built also. I worked very
hard, never losing a day because of bad weather, and accomplished the
object in a moderate way. If nothing else could be done I would load a
cord of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for sale. I managed to
keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague.
I had suffered very severely and for a long time from this disease,
while a boy in Ohio. It lasted now over a year, and, while it did not
keep me in the house, it did interfere greatly with the amount of work I
was able to perform. In the fall of 1858 I sold out my stock, crops and
farming utensils at auction, and gave up farming.

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