Rush to Gold_ The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854 ( PDFDrive ).pdf

THE LAMAR SERIES IN WESTERN HISTORY
The Lamar Series in Western History includes scholarly books of general public
interest that enhance the understanding of human affairs in the American West
and contribute to a wider understanding of the West’s signiﬁcance in the political,
social, and cultural life of America. Comprising works of the highest quality, the
series aims to increase the range and vitality of Western American history, focusing
on frontier places and people, Indian and ethnic communities, the urban West
and the environment, and the art and illustrated history of the American West.
Editorial Board
HOWARD R. LAMAR, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Past President of
Yale University
WILLIAM J. CRONON, University of Wisconsin–Madison
PHILIP J. DELORIA, University of Michigan
JOHN MACK FARAGHER, Yale University
JAY GITLIN, Yale University
GEORGE A. MILES, Beinecke Library, Yale University
MARTHA A. SANDWEISS, Princeton University
VIRGINIA J. SCHARFF, University of New Mexico
ROBERT M. UTLEY, Former Chief Historian, National Park Service
Recent Titles
Nature’s Noblemen: Transatlantic Masculinities and the Nineteenth-Century
American West, by Monica Rico
Geronimo, by Robert M. Utley
Forthcoming Titles
Welcome to Wonderland: Promoting Tourism in the Rocky Mountain West,
1920–1960, by Peter Blodgett
Land of the Blended Heart: The American Revolution on the Frontier, by Carolyn
Gilman
The Shapes of Power: Frontiers, Borderlands, Middle Grounds, and Empires of
North America from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century, by Pekka
Hämäläinen
Singing the King’s Song: Constructing and Contesting the Shawnee Nation,
by Sami Lakomaki
American Genocide: The California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873, by Benjamin
Madley
The Cherokee Diaspora: A History of Indigenous Identity, 1830s–1930s, by
Gregory Smithers
Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781–1894, by
David Samuel Torres-Rouff

RUSH TO GOLD
The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854
Malcolm J. Rohrbough
New Haven & London

Copyright © 2013 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the
publishers.
All images courtesy of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or
promotional use. For information, please e-mail sales.press@yale.edu (U.S. ofﬁce) or
sales@yaleup.co.uk (U.K. ofﬁce).
Set in Electra and Trajan types by IDS Infotech, Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rohrbough, Malcolm J.
Rush to gold : The French and the California gold rush, 1848–1854 /
Malcolm J. Rohrbough.
pages cm. — (The Lamar series in western history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-18140-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. California—Gold discoveries.
2. French—California—History—19th century. I. Title.
F865.R66 2013
979.4'04—dc23
2012050401
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Sarah
For all the reasons . . .

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Author’s Notes xii
Introduction 1
Part One France
one France in 1848: Another World Turned Upside Down 7
two News of California Gold Discoveries Spreads across France 21
three The French Respond to the California Gold Discoveries:
Adventure, New Beginnings, and Trade 37
four The Rise of the French California Companies 55
five The Rush to Gold: Obstacles, Preparations, and Departures 73
Part Two California
six Voyages and Arrivals 91
seven In the Mines: Living and Working in a
Masculine Community 110
Part Three France
eight The Flowering of the New California Companies 129
nine The Lottery of the Golden Ingots 143
ten French Stories and French Images of California 162

Part Four California
eleven The French Trade, Mine, and Reﬂect 177
twelve The French Argonauts Encounter the Americans 193
thirteen The Last French Argonauts 217
Part Five France
fourteen The French Argonauts Return to France: The Close of the
California Adventure 237
fifteen The Long Echoes of the French “Rush to Gold”
in California 253
sixteen The Balance Sheet 269
Notes 289
Bibliography 325
Index 335
Illustrations follow page 174
Contents
viii

ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have pursued this project over several years on two continents. The
scholarly and personal debts that I have incurred have the same extended
reach.
Let me begin by expressing deep appreciation to three institutions for
financial support: the University of Iowa, the National Endowment for the
Humanities through the Huntington Library, and the Camargo Foundation.
The initial support came in the form of the University of Iowa’s Global
Scholar Award, which provided financial assistance over two years. This award
made possible my first sustained research in France.
The Department of History also made available research assistance, and
I wish to acknowledge the work of Caroline Campbell, Rebecca Church,
Russell Johnson, and Richard Mtisi.
Colleagues in the department have assisted me in many ways. In this
connection, let me mention James Giblin, Colin Gordon, Jennifer Sessions,
and Alan Spitzer.
The University of Iowa Libraries have offered an array of resources. I
especially wish to thank John Schacht, colleague and friend, for his many
helpful suggestions.
Next, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship provided
through the Huntington Library sustained this project and helped it to grow.
I am greatly indebted to Robert R. Ritchie, director of research, for his
continuing advice and support.
Colleagues and friends at the Huntington who have helped with continuing
advice and counsel over many years include Shelly Bennett, Bill Deverell,
Barbara Donagan, David Igler, Michael Johnson, Alex Kendall, Susi Levin,
Karen Lystra, Robert Smith, and Samuel Truett.

Acknowledgments
x
The Manuscript Collections at the Huntington have been an invaluable
resource. Special thanks are due Peter Blodgett, Sara Hodson, and David
Zeidberg.
Finally, the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, provided me a residen-
tial fellowship, and I used its wonderful facilities and hospitality to write much
of a first draft.
I wish to thank Michael Pretina and Christian Luciani for their friendship
and assistance, as well as several fellows at the foundation for lively criticism:
Peter Baker, Rachel Fuchs, Cheryl Krueger, Martin Levin, and Rosalynn
Voaden. My appreciation extends to Monsieur Brun’s inimitable café, which
dispensed hospitality to the foundation’s fellows.
As befits a study with its focus on France, the sources are largely French. The
richest depository is the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. This study has
benefited by the opening of the new Bibliothèque, with its comfortable working
conditions, helpful staff, and extensive newspaper holdings. These included
more than a score of French works on the French participation in the gold rush.
Many of these were by contemporaries; others were by historians anchored in
the twentieth century. Among the former were a number of works of drama and
fiction, giving an added flavor to the “rush to gold.” All were available in the
Bibliothèque. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of its librarians as guides
to its fine collections.
French scholars have greatly assisted me. In the early stages of this project,
Pierre Lagayette (Paris IV) invited me to participate in a conference, and his
edited collection of the papers contains my first publication to emerge on this
study. Claudine Chalmers (French by training, American by residence) shared
with me her detailed study of the French in San Francisco during the gold
rush period.
My greatest debt is to Annick Foucrier (Sorbonne), whose scholarly publica-
tions on the interactions between France and California in the nineteenth
century set the scholarly standard in this field. I owe much to her work and to
our conversations.
Four scholars (and friends) read an earlier version of this study: Stephen
Aron (UCLA), Peter Blodgett (Huntington Library), Philip T. Hoffman
(California Institute of Technology), and Walter Nugent (University of Notre
Dame). Their incisive comments have been of great assistance.
To Helen Chenut I owe special thanks for helping me to find accounts in the
possession of French families whose relatives participated in the California gold
rush. I owe a special debt to two families who provided me with unpublished
materials: Monsieur Jérôme Ansart du Fiesnet (Besançon) and Monsieur and

xi
Acknowledgments
Madame Michel Lamontellerie (Tourtoirac). Their manuscript materials have
greatly enriched this study.
Closer to home, I am grateful for the vital assistance of Mianne Hanley. She
has played a crucial role in transatlantic communications.
I also wish to express my appreciation to three Paris friends: Shirley Jaffee
and Holly Hutchins-Puéchavy and Michel Puéchavy. They are wonderful
guides to the “City of Light” and its endless mysteries and surprises.
I also wish to acknowledge the helpful staff and rich resources at the
Houghton Library in Harvard University. Both assisted this project.
Tatjana Lorkovic of the Sterling Library in Yale University provided impor-
tant advice and counsel. At Yale University Press, Christopher Rogers, Christina
Tucker, and Ann-Marie Imbornoni have answered innumerable inquiries
promptly and with good humor. Bojana Ristich’s careful copyediting has helped
to give shape and precision to the manuscript. I also wish to acknowledge two
anonymous readers for Yale University Press, whose comments were also most
helpful.
Finally, my greatest debt is to Sarah Hanley. She introduced me to Paris and
to its libraries, cafés, museums, gardens, restaurants, and galleries, and she also
shared her many Paris friends with me. Without her infectious enthusiasm, this
project would never have been begun.

xii
AUTHOR’S NOTES
CURRENCY, TRAVEL COST, AND INCOME
1 piastre = $1
$1 = 5.5 francs
1 ounce of gold = $16
Average daily wage of an unskilled French worker: 2.5 francs
Average daily wage of a skilled French worker: 4.5 francs
Estimated annual income for a working French family: 1,000 francs
Average cost of passage, Le Havre to San Francisco: 1,000 francs
Average individual daily return in the California goldﬁelds in 1849: 100 francs
Average individual daily return in the California goldﬁelds in 1852: 30 francs1
TRANSLATIONS
All translations from the French are the author’s unless otherwise noted.

1
INTRODUCTION
On a Monday morning, January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall opened the
mill race of John Sutter’s mill on the American River. When the water had
cleared, Marshall saw flakes of mineral in the bed. He immediately identified
these particles as gold, and later primitive tests confirmed his judgment. By this
act, Marshall unleashed a series of events that would influence the history of
California, the American nation, and peoples around the world, from Western
Europe to China.
In spite of Sutter’s determination to keep the gold discoveries secret, the
news spread rapidly in ever-widening circles. In the summer and autumn of
1848, the first wave of gold seekers came from Oregon, the Hawaiian Islands,
Peru, Chile, and Mexican Sonora. In 1849, prospective “Argonauts” (a term
that would come to have universal use in describing gold seekers) from most
of the nations and principalities of Europe joined the rush to California
and with them, prospective miners from Australia, and in the next year, from
several provinces in China. Within two years of Marshall’s discoveries, news
of California gold circled the world, leaving in its wake cycles of doubt,
acceptance, and finally gold mania.
In the twelve months from the middle of 1848 to the middle of 1849, gold
fever took hold. It spread unevenly in terms of time and the nature of the
impact. In some places, government officials and newspaper editors attempted
to dampen interest and immigration for personal and national reasons. In
several countries, the immediate response was commercial and only gradually
came to include numbers of individuals. Almost everywhere, the California
gold discoveries were viewed through the prism of local interests. Thus, for
example, economic hard times made emigration to California more desirable.
Another significant dimension was the aftershocks of the political revolutions of

2 Introduction
1848. The failure of many of these uprisings drove liberal dissidents into exile.
In these respects, 1848 was one of the most remarkable years of the first half of
the nineteenth century.
The series of events that we refer to as the California gold rush captured the
attention of peoples and governments around the world and produced a series
of surprises for participants and historians alike. For the participants, the
surprises included the dramatic California landscape, economic opportunities
in both the mining camps and the emerging urban centers, and the hardships
of labor in the mines measured against the chance of unimagined wealth. For
the miners in the camps, this new setting included living and working in a
masculine world that would require exercises in domestic self-help such as
cooking, washing, and sewing.
Among the surprises for the historians was the large number of foreign
groups. Their presence, at least in the early years, was submerged by the noise
and universal presence of the Americans, and they are often overlooked or
regarded as victims of American xenophobia. The French were among these
foreign groups, and they were neither shadowy nor victims. In the “rush to
gold”—the universal French expression in use at the time was “la ruée vers
l’or”—they arrived in large numbers—some thirty thousand at the height of
their presence—from a variety of places and through many different travel
arrangements. These arrangements reflected a range of social and economic
conditions as well as the participants’ diverse origins.
This is a book about the intrusion of California and America into French life
with the powerful pull of wealth in the form of gold discoveries. They were an
attraction that would involve large numbers of French people over three years.
They took place at a time of accelerating changes in France that involved the
countryside and the cities, the shape of the government and the political prin-
ciples that defined it, and the future direction of a nation whose people were
still, in many ways, regional rather than national in identity.
As the title and the five sections of this book suggest, this is a study of the
French and the California gold rush set in both France and California. On
balance, the emphasis of the study falls in France. It begins with the arrival of
the news of the gold discoveries and the response to the news. The response was
a mixture of commercial excitement and personal decisions by individuals. The
California gold discoveries represented the first French contact with California
on a large scale. This study then traces the preparations for emigration to
California, the departures from France, the voyages, and the arrivals. Eventually
some eighty-three California “companies” were organized as platforms for

3
Introduction
emigration and investment. The French emigrants who made the long voyage
landed in San Francisco and marched to the distant goldfields. In both loca-
tions, they found themselves confronted by Americans. The relationship
between the two groups was complex, a mixture of admiration and assistance
on one side and intense competition and friction on the other. Whatever the
conditions and circumstances of the encounters, the French held their ground.
The first reports in the French newspapers from the California goldfields
spoke in awed tones of the great wealth found by ordinary citizens in this world
of wide-open opportunity. Gradually, a second cycle of descriptions appeared,
this one based on letters from the early French arrivals. These accounts, more
immediate for they reflected the experiences of French people, noted the
immensity of the landscape in California, the astonishing economic opportuni-
ties in many occupations and in many places, and the reality of making one’s
way in a strange place surrounded by strange people and a strange language.
These reports gave a specific dimension to the heretofore golden outlines
available in the press. The emerging news was both exciting and troubling: it
indicated a mixture of great opportunity at several levels surrounded by an
emerging society that seems to be without structure, law, or restraints of any
kind, except for individual weapons.
Spurred by such reports, back in France, another cycle of interest and
emigration began to take shape. This was bounded, on one side, by a new surge
of California companies organized for investment and emigration and, on the
other, by the Lottery of the Golden Ingots. This was a great national lottery
whose profits would be used to send five thousand French people to California
at the expense of the government. Eventually, this official emigration moved
some 3,300 French citizens to California.
In California a growing sentiment crystallized against foreign miners, espe-
cially those who did not speak English. A series of confrontations between the
French and the Americans grew out of these rising tensions. That these clashes
were, for the most part, resolved peacefully was a reflection on the prompt inter-
cession of outside officials, mixed with the shared knowledge that violence in
any form was bad for the mining business, which repaid a continuous applica-
tion of labor. In the greater measurement of economic benefits, a peaceful
settlement and return to work were preferable to a bloody alternative in a land
with no government entity to provide hospitals for the wounded or pensions for
the disabled.
Within California, the emphasis of this book falls on miners and mining.
It focuses, therefore, on the goldfields and the gold camps. Of course, there
was another dimension of the French presence—namely, in the towns and the

4 Introduction
city of San Francisco. Here the French acted within the context of a growing
urban presence. Yet as the cry “the rush to gold” suggests, the focus of French
commentators, authors, and artists was on the goldﬁelds, where the real drama
of the search for riches was played out. The two words “California” and “gold”
remained the passwords for this short but intense interlude in mid-nineteenth-
century France.
Throughout, individually and collectively, through the letters and writings of
those who came to California, the French attempted to understand and come
to terms with the Americans. The future of California was obviously American.
But how much of the rest of the Paciﬁc was also squarely in the sights of the
Americans, and who was to counter their imperial designs? As the much
maligned but still captivating Lottery of the Golden Ingots was laid to rest
through the long-anticipated drawing and the departure of seventeen lottery
ships, so the last vestiges of this great French presence in California drew to a
close in late 1852. By then, the loud roar of the rush to gold had been reduced
to a quiet murmur.

7
1
FRANCE IN 1848
Another World Turned Upside Down
THE HARD YEARS
The year 1848 was a momentous twelve months in the life of the French
nation, bounded on the one side by the revolution that established the republic
and on the other by the election by universal male suffrage of Louis Napoléon
Bonaparte as its new president. This year and the events within it would define
the outlines of the nation for the next twenty years.
The context for these dramatic changes lay in the recent history of the
French nation and its responses to major changes in this world. In 1815, France
emerged from a quarter-century of revolution and war as the same rural and
decentralized nation it had been. Beyond the central feature of Paris and its
influence, most French people lived in the countryside or small villages,
where they worked the land. The lack of any kind of national transportation
system—to be remedied only with the appearance of a railroad network in the
1850s—kept people isolated socially, politically, and economically. Economic
exchanges were local, except in rare cases where a major town or city provided
an accessible market. The most important influences were the church, the tax
collector, and one or more large landowners. Education was minimal; illiteracy,
widespread. Regional languages and cultures were a strong influence. Contact
with a wider world was minimal, and where it came into play, almost entirely
negative. Visitors or officials from a distance were almost always the bearers of
bad news.
Embedded into life on these small farms and villages was an aura of perma-
nent class distinctions of the highest order. At the top rested a few hundred
families, some with titles but all with large landholdings; at the bottom, a large

France
8
and seemingly permanent peasant class, doomed to hard work in the fields at
all seasons for marginal returns, in a world like that of their parents and grand-
parents. Further disadvantaging the larger group were local restrictions about
hunting, gathering, the use of vacant lands, and continuing tax liabilities.
Adding to the influence and command of the few were education and literacy,
the capacity to read and understand written documents for business and
pleasure and to respond accordingly.1
In 1789, this structure and these privileges had come under attack. Several
cycles of revolutionary governments had attempted to modify and then abolish
these privileges. As popular movements moved forward to change French
society, they were accompanied by an equally fervent and driven opposition,
who saw the very foundations of the nation under assault. Some of this opposi-
tion was internal; other parts were represented by the thousands who went into
exile. One of the noteworthy changes in the lives of the peasantry was the rise
of a nationalist fervor that would lead to their widespread recruitment into
an army that would fight battles across Europe, eventually into Russia, for
twenty years.
At the conclusion of the Napoleonic experiment, France was welcomed
back into the club of civilized nations, its armies disbanded, its great military
victories and losses consigned to history books and memorials, and its govern-
ment and economy reconstituted in what seemed familiar forms. In 1815, the
Congress of Vienna defined the new shape of Europe, to the extent that it
was new. Monarchies, including that of France, were restored (as well as
they could be), and the long deliberations that closed France’s first great
revolutionary period seemed to restore the status quo ante bellum everywhere,
but especially in France, which had been defeated. A single noteworthy
addition to the French forms of government was the National Assembly, perhaps
the most important surviving institution of government from the revolution.
The Assembly was elected by limited suffrage and represented the interests of a
narrow group of French citizens, but for the first time, it provided a degree of
popular expression.
The heady principles of the revolution—even its excesses—were kept alive
by groups unhappy with the new French nation, which in their eyes was not
new but old. Opposition of various kinds lived on in intellectual salons in Paris;
in the working-class neighborhoods of Paris, Lille, Lyon, and Rouen; and in
some parts of the countryside. This uneasiness emerged in the uprisings of July
1830, when, after fifteen years on the throne, Charles X attempted to increase
his authority at the expense of the National Assembly. Turmoil rapidly engulfed
Paris, the king abdicated, and two weeks later Louis-Philippe took the oath as

9
France in 1848
the new King of the French. The Revolution of 1830, as it came to be called by
historians, was quick and largely bloodless, especially when contrasted with
1789 and subsequent events of the 1790s.
The accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe, the “Bourgeois King,” carried
with it, for many, the optimism of a new government with new policies. As it
turned out, the new king pursued no basic reforms of the kind republicans
had sought. Instead, in his first months on the throne, the king’s ministers
mounted attacks on freedom of the press, on the right of association, and on the
independence of the National Assembly. These were all fundamental issues for
republicans. Of course, the king had inherited several long-standing problems
for which he was not directly responsible. These included failures of the harvest,
a rise in the cost of living, and food shortages. By the close of his first two
years, a strong and determined republican resistance had appeared, and this
opposition movement had spread to the working classes. The insurrection in
June 1832 was the physical manifestation of this opposition and a strong strain of
disillusionment with the new government. That the rebellion was quickly
suppressed did not make its brief history less violent and bloody. The troops of
the regular army, the National Guard, and the Municipal Guard remained
loyal. By the time the last barricades had been taken in the Paris neighborhood
of Saint-Antoine, forces loyal to the government had suffered three hundred
casualties, including one hundred dead. The numbers of the dead and wounded
of the insurgents were not exactly known, but they probably reached four
hundred. There were also fifteen hundred prisoners, and their trials kept the
issue alive in working-class neighborhoods and in the press. The insurgency
had failed, but as in so many cases, the blood and trials would lay the basis of a
continuing protest movement.
Later uprisings also failed to generate widespread participation, but taken
together these continuing outbreaks suggested a nation with many disaffected
groups. The king seemed perplexed. He appeared in public on a regular basis,
exhibiting considerable personal bravery. Louis-Philippe tried to dilute these
turbulent moments with compromises of various kinds. Although he believed
in a strong monarchy and censorship, he believed that his personal rule and the
devotion of French people to him (represented by the cries of “Vive le Roi!”
when he appeared) would diffuse revolutionary sentiments or at least direct
them elsewhere. He hoped to govern as a benevolent monarch, supported and
even loved by his subjects.
As the decade of the 1840s moved forward, various strands came together
in a surprising and unexpected way to produce a successful popular uprising.
The first of these was the ongoing demand—now under way for more than a

France
10
decade—to broaden the suffrage. Another was a series of economic crises that
culminated in widespread harvest failures in 1845 and 1846. The long-suffering
peasantry of the villages and countryside found itself hard pressed with the
failure of the rural economies. In Paris (with a population of almost one million)
and other cities, an industrial depression had filled the streets with the unem-
ployed. The migration of the desperate landless from the countryside increased
these numbers. For the first time in a generation, a great mass of French workers
in countryside and city found a degree of common cause with the middle-class
republicans who had preached so long from their salons and clubs to little or no
audience but themselves.2
THE REVOLUTION
Hard times in the countryside generated in France, as elsewhere in Europe,
emigration to the towns and cities. Employment was scarce to nonexistent in
all these urban places. For the new arrivals, the harsh, closed economy of
urban life gave rise to a cry of “the right to work” (le droit du travail). That
Frenchmen and Frenchwomen should have the right to gainful employment,
however difficult the task and meager the wage, seemed embedded in the
principles of the revolution. The presence of large numbers of unemployed
worried local officials. The customary institutions of charity and benevolence
were quickly overwhelmed.
For the largest part of the French population, the most important issue was
not the franchise or individual expression or even “the right to work.” Rather, it
was the price of bread. The cost of bread and its availability became the bench-
marks that led to domestic disturbances. The variables were the harvests and the
activities of speculators and merchants. These economic factors made no differ-
ence to families in the countryside, small villages, cities, or even Paris. In all these
places, individuals and families had to eat, and bread was the staple of every
meal. When it was not available, available only in short supply, or priced beyond
the means of the ordinary people, widespread protests often appeared. Between
1846 and 1847, the price of wheat doubled. Accordingly, in parallel fashion,
discontent appeared among wide segments of the population.
The explosion of these discontents into revolutionary fervor happened
rapidly and almost by accident. Banquets became a key mechanism in the
expression of popular discontent, a device created to evade the censorship asso-
ciated with public meetings and the press. Reformers scheduled a continuing
series of dinner meetings to express their views. They used the banquets to
campaign for enlarging the suffrage and to promote the right to work.

11
France in 1848
The first such banquet was held in Paris in July 1847, and the banquet
movement expanded across the nation and became increasingly radical as
the demands for relief in the face of economic depression blended with the
long-standing demands for suffrage reform. The scuffles between street
marchers and the authorities in Paris over the issue of banning a banquet led to
a confrontation on the evening of Wednesday, February 23, 1848. With neither
the protest crowds nor the soldiers under effective control, the front ranks of the
two groups converged and jostled. A shot rang out, and immediately the soldiers
fired a volley. The final casualty count, as well as the circumstances of the tragic
encounter (who fired first at whom and for what provocation?), was disputed,
but some sixty Parisians died. Marchers paraded their bloody bodies through
the streets. The demonstrations grew. Barricades of paving stones went up, and
leaders urged the crowds to armed resistance. After all, they argued, peaceful
marches had led only to a bloody massacre.
The next day, all of Paris was in turmoil. The troops, on the streets for forty-
eight hours, were withdrawn to the barracks. To the military, the withdrawal was
a maneuver to consolidate forces and to issue new orders. To the crowds and
their leaders, the withdrawal was a retreat, clear evidence that the government
and the military had been intimidated by the power of the assembled citizenry.
The government of Louis-Philippe had ceded the streets to the crowds of angry
demonstrators. Shortly after noon, the king abdicated in favor of his grandson.
It was too late. With the king’s departure—he would go into exile in Great
Britain—the crowds surged forward to occupy the important public buildings.
The monarchy had fallen. Popular leaders immediately formed a provisional
government, which met and proclaimed a republic.3
THE REPUBLIC
This spontaneous popular uprising, later called the Revolution of 1848, had
succeeded in toppling the monarchy. Almost literally overnight, France became
a republic. The fall of the monarchy was so sudden that even the most ardent
republicans were caught unprepared. The provisional government, overjoyed
at the success of its uprising and newfound authority, now moved to embed
the principles of the new republican form of government into the fabric of
the nation.
The government that emerged might be characterized as politically radical
but socially conservative. Most of the ministries were in the hands of men who
had previously served in the National Assembly, albeit in opposition. Many of
these men shared a fear of the armed mob in the streets as an instrument of

France
12
change that could not be controlled by thoughtful, responsible leaders.
The first measures enacted reflected concern for legality and moderation.
Nonetheless, popular pressure forced the adoption of some measures that
represented dramatic departures. As the government or the experiment of
government moved forward, it had the support of liberal and reformist elements
for its potential for a better life; it also had the acquiescence of conservative
elements that feared the alternatives.
The government immediately created a Ministry of Works and enacted by
decree the reforms so long desired by French republicans and so necessary in
the face of continuing economic crisis. These included the guarantee of the
right to work for citizens, the ten-hour workday (eleven in the provinces), and
the creation of national workshops to provide work-relief. The leaders of the
new French republic also embarked on a series of fiscal reforms. The main
concern was to equalize or at least make sense of the many taxes and duties that
fell with special weight upon the poorer elements in the population. The
government also wanted to conduct its business in a legal and orderly way. In
order to raise financial resources to pay for the new proposals, the government
immediately (March 1848) enacted a land tax of 45 centimes to finance the
workshops. For people in the countryside, the tax was an outrageous burden.
It was the more resented because it was levied by the leaders of the new repub-
lican government, which was supposed to safeguard the interests of working
people in the cities and small landholders in the countryside. The tax was
widely caricatured as an example of the ineptness of the new republican govern-
ment and the failure of the National Assembly to respond to the fundamental
needs of the citizens of the republic.
The political reforms were no less dramatic: the death penalty abolished in
political trials, freedom of the press and liberty of association guaranteed, and,
most significant for republican reformers, the adoption of universal suffrage (in
practice, universal male suffrage). Overnight, the number of electors expanded
from 250,000 to more than 9,000,000. The new National Assembly completed its
revolutionary changes by passing a law that mandated national celebrations each
year on February 24, the anniversary of the proclamation of the republic. This day
became, by law, a day of national celebration, reflection, or mourning, depending
on individual attitudes toward the new form of government. Yet the obligatory
ceremonies highlighted the deep and growing internal divisions within the
country. As the new government attempted to carry out these remarkable changes,
it found itself besieged on one side by divisions within the republican ranks and
on the other by growing organized opposition to the idea of France as a republic
and fear of the disorder associated with the upheavals of the past several months.

13
France in 1848
Almost immediately, the nation and its newly enlarged voting rolls confronted
the first election. National elections in April 1848 reflected the growing
divide between left and right. No organized political parties existed, and the
candidates selected themselves. Most of the candidates were well-known names
without any very clear sense of platform or principles. The radical reformers of
the revolution petitioned to have the elections postponed, but the elections
went forward on a wave of energy for the new, enlarged electorate. The results
showed a marked absence of national unity. The more conservative candidates
had won an overwhelming majority. The republicans had split into factions,
and the most radical of these emerged from the elections with a representation
reduced in numbers (something on the order of 100 deputies in an assembly of
880) but more radical in its views. Behind these numbers and these platforms
hovered the specter of further street violence, outbreaks that were seen as a
logical expression of public opinion by radical leaders and as a symbol of chaos
and anarchy by the emerging conservative opposition (or the “party of order,” as
it liked to be known).
Amid this struggle over principles, the new government sponsored costly
“national workshops” as part of the commitment to the right to work. The
workshops provided a measure of employment to the crowds of unemployed
who had surged into Paris. By the middle of May, more than one hundred
thousand were at work in these national workshops. In a sense, the workshops
represented the hope of the revolution for a mass of workers, especially those
who had poured into Paris in search of employment. Whatever the object of the
workshops, someone or something must pay to support them, and more than
one hundred thousand men at work with a daily stipend added up to a large
sum. Whatever the demand in the streets of Paris, it was not long before both
taxpayers and local communities (who paid the bills) began to rebel against the
ongoing expense. The drift toward resentment was early and strong, even within
those communities that made a sincere effort to make the workshops answer
individual and community needs. Many opposed them from the start; their
opposition grew and attracted additional supporters as the costs spiraled upward
and out of control.4
Nor was the opposition to the national workshops growing only in the city of
Paris. Local towns across France had joined the national movement to provide
workshops for the local unemployed. Whatever the results in diluting hard
times, the costs had become a significant issue everywhere. The town of Dieppe
opened workshops in March “in order to come to the aid of workers without
employment.” In the following four months, according to a notice issued by the
mayor, the town had spent 50,000 francs on this enterprise, and the future of the

France
14
town had been mortgaged. These extraordinary expenses “had exhausted [the
town’s] last resources.”5
In the face of rising deficits, the National Assembly moved to disband the
workshops. A decree issued on June 21 required all those unmarried nonresi-
dents who worked in the Paris workshops to return home or, if under the age of
twenty-five, to face obligatory military service. The more radical leaders took
their case to the streets. In a sense, this was a choreographed and inevitable
tragedy. The leaders had to turn to the streets because it was their only source
of power. In doing so, they only confirmed the view of the supporters of
“order”—namely, that this faction would lead France to anarchy, chaos, and a
bloody future.
The abolition of the workshops was the cause of the popular insurrection that
immediately followed. That this was an uprising of the poor people of Paris
suggested that what they wanted out of the revolution and the republic was not
social reform or even political reform but changes that would bring them greater
material subsistence for themselves and their families. Barricades went up;
working-class quarters were in turmoil. This time the outcome was very different.
The government, determined to restore order, brought in loyal troops from the
countryside and enlisted a Garde Mobile—a mixture of unemployed young
men and the National Guard—to retake control of the city. The momentous
events begun in January with a relatively peaceful transformation of the form of
government ended in June in four bloody days on the barricades of Paris. In the
so-called June Days, the uprising was violently suppressed. Some ten thousand
French men and women died on the barricades or in assaults on the barricades;
twenty-five thousand were arrested; some eleven thousand were brought before
military courts martial; many were executed and imprisoned; and five thousand
were deported to penal colonies in Algeria. The bloody “June Days” and the
subsequent retributions intensified the deep divisions within French society.
The failed insurrection greatly weakened the reform elements associated
with the revolution of February and in like fashion weakened the republic itself.
In the fall of 1848, there were bitter political feelings throughout France nurtured
by the recent violence and large numbers of unemployed, especially in Paris,
and many groups were unhappy about the past and uncertain about the future.6
The uneasy quiet that fell in the aftermath of these spasms of violence
seemed to highlight the divisions that had emerged over six months of repub-
lican government. The rising opposition was to the direction of the nation,
which was viewed as moving from republican to radical and for which the
principal object lesson was the violent uprising in June. Then, too, there were
the divisions between Paris and the major cities of Lyon and Lille, on the one

15
France in 1848
side, and the vast majority of rural France (la France profonde), on the other.
For the peasants who worked the land, the changes of the republic seemed to
be indifferent or futile. They had an extra tax to pay; they still tilled someone
else’s land. The gulf between their lives and the lives of those in the cities
seemed as great as ever. The only different was the sense of failed expectations.
THE REACTION
Just as the sudden collapse of the monarchy caught republicans by surprise,
so did it confound the conservative opposition. The heady rush of the creation
of the republic and the promulgation of its principles seemed to carry all before
it. Those in opposition slowly organized. But the force of the republican march
confirmed them in their views. The principle of republicanism, reduced to its
fundamental strength, was based on the threat of armed mobs in the streets.
Whatever differences might appear among conservative groups, they were
united in their fear of such popular demonstrations. After all, a parade of armed
men and women on the streets without control was only a short step removed
from a popular uprising. And a popular uprising provoked memories of 1789.
So those in opposition to the republic—or at least the direction the republic
had assumed—began to organize. They had ample resources, beginning with
major newspapers. They had important public figures to give voice to their
views. They also had a range of missteps on the part of the fledgling republican
government as examples of mismanagement. Moreover, among many in the
countryside and small villages, any expression of authority aroused views from
skepticism to downright opposition. The new government inherited severe
problems with the economy. Its failure to solve them immediately gave rise to
disillusionment among its early supporters.
The initial focal points for those in the opposition were the first elections
under universal (male) suffrage. Here they had substantial successes. They had
the support of major newspapers. They had candidates whose names were well
known. This was a new, enlarged electorate without much sophistication in
terms of mobilizing popular votes. The new composition of the National
Assembly reflected the ascent of the opposition.7
A NEW FRENCH VISION OF A JUST WORLD
Running parallel to the founding of the republic and its economic and polit-
ical experiments was a new vision of a just world. This was the model proposed
by Étienne Cabet in his Voyage to Icaria. Cabet’s book described the model

France
16
of a perfectionist and equal society, and his planned community aroused a
response that far outweighed the numbers involved. For his followers, this was
the answer to the misery of a France wracked by harvest failures, unemploy-
ment, the desertion of the countryside for the uncertain future of the city, and
the air of hopelessness that had become a signature of French life for so many.
On the other side, critics of Cabet’s equal society raised the cry of an economic
upheaval against private property, with its twin specters of “socialism” and
(soon) “communism.”
Across the broad range of issues that engaged (and sometimes infuriated)
politicians, commentators, and editors at the opening of 1849, none generated
more heat than Étienne Cabet and his Icarian movement. From the appear-
ance of his Icaria and the subsequent growth of salons and clubs that espoused
his views of a cooperative society characterized by economic justice and polit-
ical participation, Cabet and then his followers became a lightning rod for
impassioned commentary on the French scene. For conservatives, those who
soon displayed uneasiness, skepticism, and even hostility toward the new
republic, Icaria represented a fantasy nightmare that posed an alternative to the
drudgery of French peasant life. For liberal reformers and republicans, now in
a position of strength for the first time in a generation, Icaria represented a
future with a prospect of an unheard of economic justice and a high degree of
democratic participation in shaping the direction of the new colony. In prac-
tical terms, the Icarian movement seemed directed toward a landless peasantry,
trapped in an endless cycle of static labor. That it drew some of its most vocal
supporters from the cities, especially Paris, gave it the air of unreality associated
with communal enterprises focused on land and agriculture that attracted
liberal reformers who were generally strangers to hard physical labor. As the
Icarian movement gained converts and laid plans to establish a visionary colony
in America, so too did the opposition to it.
NEWS OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERIES
It was in this fall interlude of 1848 that news of the discovery of gold in
California reached France through the combination of a French diplomat and
an elected American official. The French diplomat was Jacques Moerenhout,
the consul at Monterey. In October 1848, he wrote an account of the gold
discoveries to the French admiral commanding the Pacific Squadron, who
forwarded the news to the headquarters of the navy at Bordeaux. At about
the same time, several officers in the Pacific Squadron sent letters to their
families in France with the same news. If these reports were to be believed,

17
France in 1848
astonishing discoveries of immense wealth had been made in the quiet, pastoral
former Spanish colony of Alta California, now part of the new continental
American nation.8
The American official who confirmed these improbable stories was President
James K. Polk. When the president delivered his annual address to Congress
on December 5, 1848, he used the occasion to authenticate the discovery of
gold in America’s newest western possession. Paris newspapers published
Polk’s address in mid-December. Their responses acknowledged that his speech
had validated the unlikely rumors that had circulated for a month, but many
French editors continued to discount the stories as the usual American exag-
geration. The Siècle noted that the American political scene was dominated by
the issue of slavery, but the new gold discoveries were heavily covered in
American newspapers: “Another subject occupies the American press [as much
as slavery]: c’est la Californie.” Every American newspaper, the Siècle continued,
had five or six full columns “of descriptions or accounts.” By the second week
in January 1849, even the most cautious French editors had acknowledged
the presence of gold in quantities in California. “The discoveries made by the
Americans . . . of gold mines of great richness, are of an importance that
is impossible to contest,” confirmed the Journal des Débats. A month later,
the Journal reprinted J. Tyrwhitt-Brooks’s account of the goldfields. At the
same time, the Constitutionnel offered its readers “Les Chercheurs d’Or
du Sacramento.”9
Gold fever, California, and Sacramento had entered the
vocabulary of French life.
The discovery of gold in California and the subsequent spread of the news
intersected Étienne Cabet and his utopian experiment in direct ways. That
Cabet intended to pursue his dream in America brought the United States
under increasing scrutiny by some groups. News of Cabet’s disastrous first
experiment in Texas appeared in the French newspapers almost coincidentally
with the news of gold in California. To many French observers, the two were
symbolically linked through the common landscape of the United States. In
this view, Cabet’s experiment was a fantasy based on a complete misunder-
standing of human nature or, more to the point, crafted in such a way as to
deceive honest, hard-working French peasants. The discoveries of gold in
California, in parallel, were also a fantasy, created by the press (or, for those
of a more conspiratorial bent, by the American government itself) to lure
large numbers of bright-eyed immigrants to a remote, sterile, and alien land-
scape. That this landscape had been so recently acquired by the Americans
in an aggressive war of conquest made the news of gold in connection with
its recent acquisition all the more suspicious. After all, James Marshall had

France
18
discovered gold on January 24, 1848; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding
the northern third of Mexico to the United States, was signed ten days later, on
February 2, 1848.
Thus, the widespread and growing mania for gold was clearly a carefully
orchestrated campaign to flood the newly acquired California with immigrants
from all over the world, especially with newcomers from the eastern United
States. As a result, the western anchor of the new continental American empire
would be firmly in place. California was simply another successful chapter in
American imperial designs. The discovery of gold and its universal appeal was
simply another example of manipulation of the newspaper press, bounded on
the one side by an abiding belief in national destiny (as represented by the idea
of “Manifest Destiny”) and on the other by the excessive, exaggerated, irrespon-
sible qualities of the American press, or “American puff,” as it was known to
French observers. That gold had been discovered in California was entirely
possible, or so ran the argument. That gold was available in large quantities was
improbable; that gold was available to everyone was impossible.
THE YEAR 1848 CLOSES: A NEW CONSTITUTION
AND A NEW PRESIDENT
Beyond the discovery of gold in a distant place and a French plan for a just
society, two issues of great importance faced the French citizens of the new
republic. The first of these was the adoption of a new constitution. The debate
began with the proclamation of the republic in February. It continued through
the spring and summer, through the first elections with universal suffrage, and
across the dark and bloody “June Days.” The strength of the insurrection and
the resources necessary to repress it confirmed to many that the republic needed
a strong government. The constitution of the new republic that emerged in
November 1848 was an inevitable compromise. Still, it embodied many of the
basic principles of the revolution, including the weaving of the republic into
the fabric of French life, the expansion of the franchise, the principle of the
right to work, and a declaration of the basic rights of man. As such, the new
constitution proclaimed the spirit and principles of the revolution. Accordingly,
the constitution and the republic were opposed in many quarters, and the
opposition was immediate and unrelenting.
The second issue was the presidential election of December 1848. This
election was mandated by the recently enacted constitution. It reflected
the compromises of this document. In fashioning a framework for a new
government, the authors shared the growing uneasiness associated with the

19
France in 1848
factionalism in the National Assembly and the raucous and uninhibited elec-
tions associated with universal suffrage. The solution was a government headed
by a strong executive, or president, who could control local factionalism.
As it turned out, the framers of the constitution had the popular election
they wanted but not the result they expected. The run-up to the election was
intense, and it captured far more attention because of the provision of universal
suffrage under the new constitution. Three of the many candidates commanded
most of the popular attention. The first was Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, a longtime
leading figure on the left. A man of great personal charm and a substantial
personal fortune (acquired through marriage with his English wife), he had
served on the original committee that established the republic, and he was
minister of interior in the first provisional government. He was regularly
returned to the National Assembly with a large popular vote. The second candi-
date was General Louis-Eugène Cavignac, who, as minister of war, used his
authority to suppress the popular uprisings of June. He was considered a proven
candidate of the party of “order.” The third was Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, the
nephew of Napoléon I. The younger Bonaparte had been active against the
government for a decade or more, even imprisoned upon one occasion. He was
independent in outlook, with views on the issues of the day that were largely
unknown. His resignation from the National Assembly endeared him to those
who thought that body a useless exercise in debate. In the run-up to the elec-
tion, he wrapped himself in a well-financed campaign that emphasized a single
dominant theme: his name.
On December 10, 1848, the Second Republic took a decided and, for most
republicans, unanticipated turn. The final vote count was Louis Napoléon
Bonaparte, 5,434,000 (74 percent); Louis-Eugène Cavignac, 1,448,000 (20 per-
cent); and Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, 370,000 (5 percent). Louis Napoléon
Bonaparte had won a decisive (even overwhelming) victory. There was a certain
irony in his huge majority. The republicans had fought for a generation for the
expansion of the electorate. With the success of the revolution and the founding
of the republic, their wish had come true. French male citizens clearly enjoyed
their newfound suffrage, and they voted in overwhelming numbers for a familiar
name. For those on the side of “order,” December 10 became a day of cele-
bration in which the nation had been redeemed from its downward spiral.10
As the nation exhaled, the political future was in the hands of an unknown
with the best-known name in France and little else certain about him. And into
this breathing space came news that the rumors of gold in California might very
well be true. This rebirth of interest produced an outpouring of enthusiasm like
that in other countries around the world. On January 13, 1849, the first notice

France
20
appeared of a planned French emigration to California. The sailing ship La
Meuse departed for San Francisco on February 15, 1849. After a long but
uneventful voyage of seven months, it anchored in the harbor at San Francisco
on September 14, 1849, and immediately disembarked the ﬁrst ﬁfty French
Forty-Niners.11

21
2
NEWS OF CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERIES
SPREADS ACROSS FRANCE
THE OFFICIAL ACCOUNT
In May 1848, Jacques Moerenhout, the French consul in Monterey, wrote to
the minister of foreign affairs, “The most important new discovery, and [the
one] which just now is causing the most excitement, is that of a gold placer,
which is found on the plain of the Sacramento near New Helvetia. This deposit
or placer, it is said, is more than twenty leagues in length and of a considerable
width. The gold is found in ﬂakes in a sort of loose alluvial soil. This deposit is
as rich as the richest placers of Sonora, in Mexico.” Moerenhout, as a profes-
sional diplomat, was charged with conveying accurate information to his supe-
riors in Paris, and, accordingly, he intended to visit the sites himself so that he
might report ﬁrsthand “with exact details” on this startling new development
that had come to dominate life in Alta California.1
Moerenhout’s tour through the “gold country” took twenty-four days. He
began on July 11 at the eastern edge of the San Joaquin River Valley, crossed the
river, and moved to French Camp (named for French Canadian trappers).2
In
the low, swampy areas, he and his companions suffered from the “absolutely
unbearable” heat at midday and from the clouds of mosquitoes, so thick as to
make the horses almost unmanageable. Pushing on, they passed through the
“Dry Diggings” (mining with little or no water for immediate use) and stopped
at French Camp, where Moerenhout and his companions received “a hearty
welcome, and considering where we were, a good supper.” At this point in the
expedition, Moerenhout’s companions left him for three or four days and joined
the miners to dig and wash. The mining district, between the American and
Consumnes Rivers, had been the site of mining since early June, or for about

France
22
six weeks. The original discoverers, according to Moerenhout, made from two
to three hundred dollars a day with only a crowbar and a knife. When news of
the astonishing returns circulated, in less than a week some 800–1,000 miners
had appeared from the American River.
Most of the miners lived and worked in groups, Moerenhout continued,
already using what would become known as the “cradle.” This simple but effec-
tive machine—four men were necessary to work it efficiently—could wash a
ton of gravel in three to four hours, with a ton yielding between sixteen and
twenty-five ounces, and sometimes as much as thirty ounces. As the water levels
declined, the hours of operating the machine declined in direct proportion,
and the daily earnings fell to three to four ounces.
The pace of work was frantic as “the workmen were swarming there like so
many ants.” At some sites, miners “equipped only with their knives and little
iron bars, do not wash the dirt at all but simply gather the visible grains and
pieces that they find.” The crowds reflected the richness of the diggings, and
“the miners . . . could scarcely move about”; with “the abundance of gold there
was something marvelous.” Already Moerenhout remarked on the exhausting
physical labor associated with digging and washing for gold, and his companions-
turned-miners found the work so exhausting that they stopped at noon. His
friends “were all bathed in sweat,” but they were more than satisfied with the
gold harvest and determined that they would not leave until they each had two
or three thousand dollars. Moerenhout concluded his observations that in these
diggings, the average daily return for each miner was at least three to four
ounces.3
Moerenhout remarked on the different mining patterns among the
Americans, the Californians, and the French. “The Americans come in carts,”
he wrote, “bringing all provisions and everything necessary for a trip or for the
time that they intend to be away, have no expenses except for fresh meat, which,
strictly speaking, they can do without. Some, bringing wives and children with
them, take their meals at regular hours and live almost as they would at home.
The Californians and the Frenchmen, on the other hand, come on horseback,
bring provisions for only a few days and eat poorly, irregularly and at random,
and are obliged to leave after a short time or to buy provisions at exorbitant
prices.” These differences were reflected in the level of wealth. “The American,”
he continued, “better equipped and more persevering, does not return until he
has amassed quite a considerable sum, rarely less than three or four thousand
dollars, whereas the Californian, obliged to return for lack of provisions and less
avid or more careless of the future, comes back after a week or two with seldom
more than eight to twelve hundred dollars.”4

23
News of Discoveries Spreads in France
Moerenhout then went to Coloma, the site of James W. Marshall’s original
discoveries some six months earlier. He observed that miners worked on the
American River at a distance from one another, with not more than 250–300
people on the “whole extent of the river.” The modest numbers testified to the
vast extent of the gold-bearing region and the few miners involved at this early
date. Perhaps they also reflected the smaller returns, which Moerenhout esti-
mated at one to one and one-half ounces rather than twice that number in the
“Dry Diggings.” Moerenhout then turned north toward the Feather River,
where he found many Indians at work, most of these “directed by Americans
who, having farms in the vicinity, can easily obtain Indians.” At this point,
fatigued by a hard journey of ten days, constantly in the saddle or walking across
rocky and often wet landscapes, he decided to retrace his steps and return to
Monterey. He had examined the principal mining sites over eighty miles from
the Consumnes to the Feather Rivers, although he admitted that the gold-
bearing region surely extended farther to the north. He concluded that in the
fewer than three months of active mining, more than $4 million in gold had
been taken from the mining sites by an average of 1,700 miners, although the
composition of the miners continually changed.5
Finally, Moerenhout described the impact of the gold discoveries on “the
condition and character of the people of this country”: Upper California was a
place of abundance and fertility. Thus, he wrote, “there had never been any
poor in the true sense of the word.” Still, he continued, “it was a place where
money was almost unknown. It functioned with a barter economy, including
the trade in hides and tallow with eastern merchants in the United States. Rare
were those individuals who possessed as much as five hundred or a thousand
dollars.” All this had changed in the most dramatic kind of way, for “now the
lowliest, the most unfortunate among them, finds himself in possession of that
much or of a much greater sum, obtained overnight and with such ease that it
seems of little importance to him and he parts with it with indifference and
prodigality.” As for the Americans, they “seem all to come back with the same
disposition, spend extravagantly, throw away gold by the handful and assume
the air of prodigious importance and generosity.” Moerenhout returned to
Monterey to find the town deserted. All the men, Californians and foreigners,
had left for the mines; even soldiers and officers had deserted.6
In the course of his tour, Moerenhout had observed the various mining tech-
niques; acquired samples of gold in various forms; and spoken at length with
miners, merchants, and officials. His subsequent letters were simply an amplifi-
cation of his earlier observations, with specific attention to the growing number
of miners from around the world. “The quantity of gold in the hands of

France
24
Californians and foreign inhabitants is incalculable,” he wrote. “Judging
from this state of affairs it is probable that for a long time yet this country
will be an excellent market for ships coming from Europe.” If the French
were to profit from commerce, he continued, they must move rapidly to inject
themselves into the commercial scene of Upper California. The French were
an experienced commercial people, and they had products in demand in
California (especially wines and brandies), but France was distant from
California. Moerenhout urged the ministry that French commercial interests
move aggressively.7
Moerenhout finished his long report on August 17, 1848, and he conveyed it
to the ministry by way of a Chilean ship departing that day. When the letter
arrived at the Quai d’Orsay about the middle of January 1849, the French
government was in possession of the most complete information available about
the gold region in Upper California. The consul’s observations, based on his
journey of four weeks, accurately described the extent and location of the gold
country as it was then known, the mining techniques and individual returns for
mining in different mining districts, and the condition of the varied landscape,
with special attention to the agricultural opportunities in the interior valleys. As
noted, Moerenhout also analyzed the commercial opportunities available for
French companies. In many respects, his report was superior to that of Colonel
Richard Mason, whose detailed account of his tour of the goldfields chronicled
the experiences of American miners by a high-ranking American official.
Mason’s report to the adjutant general in Washington (with samples of gold)
created a sensation when it reached the eastern United States. Moerenhout had
done his job with great skill and promptness; it now remained to be seen
whether the French would profit from his insightful report.
UNOFFICIAL REPORTS
The village of San Francisco had two newspapers, and its press soon trum-
peted the news of the gold discoveries. The first notice appeared in the
California Star under the date March 15, 1848. Newspapers in other towns from
Honolulu to Valparaiso, Lima, and Sydney gradually became aware of the same
reports, for much of the early information consisted of copies of the San
Francisco papers, carried or mailed to friends and other editors. The spread of
the news also reflected what editors chose to print and their attitudes toward
these improbable accounts of ordinary citizens harvesting gold nuggets from
streambeds and even from the open ground. To these sources of information
must be added the letters and reports from government officials. That these

25
sometimes appeared in print and sometimes not depended on what editors saw
as the interests of a particular town and region.
For the English-speaking world outside California, the leading sources were
the New York Herald and the Times of London. The New York Herald was the
foremost large-circulation American paper, and it reflected what would become
a common cycle in moving from indifference to skepticism to acceptance to
frenzy. Indeed, the Herald would become the journalistic center of gold mania,
and the range of its national reputation would put the gold discoveries at the
head of columns of local newspapers across the eastern half of the continent,
from Boston to St. Louis, from Detroit to New Orleans. The Herald was also an
early and significant voice in identifying the possible commercial bonanzas that
would accompany the mass movement to the goldfields.8
The Times of London initially took a more careful position. Yet it too would
succumb to a significant degree to the reports of wealth in distant California. By
December 1848, the Times had joined the chorus—albeit in muted tones—of
those who accepted the presence of large quantities of gold in California
and searched through a variety of columns for ways to turn these discoveries to
individual and national advantage.9
There was a third important paper in the spread of news about the gold
discoveries to France and Europe. It was a French-language newspaper
published in New York City that served as a conduit of news across the Atlantic—
in both directions. The Courrier des États-Unis strongly supported France,
French national interests, and French culture. The Courrier applauded the
revolution of February 1848 and the establishment of a republic, but at the same
time, the struggles of the new republican government, with its uncertainties
and the looming echoes of the terror of 1792, cast the paper as conservative on
social and economic issues. The paper quoted with approval Alexandre Dumas’s
(father) catalogue of the three sacred touchstones of French life: country,
family, and property. The Courrier hinted that the new government, especially
in the aftermath of the April 1848 elections, would attack “these three roots of
French life.”10
The paper supported the position of “Citizen Louis Napoléon,”
including his resignation from the National Assembly. It constantly praised the
vitality of French life, especially Paris life. Parisians of all classes thronged to the
streets to seek distractions, pleasures, wonders, an emotional outlet at all hours
of the day and night. There, the boulevards served as a stage for public theater,
what the Courrier called “the theater of asphalt.”11
News of the gold discoveries in California appeared in the Courrier on
November 30, 1848, on the eve of the French presidential election. The source
was a letter from Monterey, dated September 15, from a ship captain to a

France
26
commercial house in New York City. He wrote of the discovery of gold mines
on the Sacramento, in response to which the inhabitants of California had
been seized by a kind of collective vertigo. There was, however, a practical
issue: the captain’s crew had deserted, leaving him with nine hundred barrels of
merchandise to unload and not a single laborer in all of Upper California avail-
able at any price. The Courrier’s subsequent reports were sober and measured.
In the middle of December, the Courrier reproduced a letter from the director
of the Philadelphia Mint affirming the purity of the gold samples from
California. The same day, the paper noted that some sixty to seventy ships were
set to depart from East Coast harbors—from Boston to Baltimore—for the
country of gold. The Courrier summarized the situation in terms that echoed
other New York papers: the mines of California dominated the dreams of
everyone; the population of San Francisco had declined precipitously as its
inhabitants deserted the town for the goldfields; all stores now had scales to
weigh gold being used in payment for goods and services. Throughout its
coverage, the Courrier tried to maintain a degree of objective analysis in a world
that seemed to be rapidly losing any semblance of this quality.12
PARIS: MANY VOICES JOIN THE CHORUS
Any important issue in French life was first announced, analyzed, and
judged by the newspapers in Paris. It was understood that Paris newspapers
would give careful consideration to questions of national importance and
pass judgment on them. From this center, the news of gold spread to distant
cities, towns, and the countryside.
In the closing months of 1848 and the opening months of 1849, Paris newspa-
pers presented a broad mosaic not so much of French life as of Parisian life.
There were well-established dailies published for a half century or more; there
were new papers published for six months in response to the creation of the new
republic, for with the success of the revolution in February 1848, press censor-
ship disappeared. Indeed, new newspapers appeared every week, reflecting the
principles of the revolution and the republic. Paris newspapers were, by turns,
serious and playful, aloof and catty, and through the early months of 1849, more
and more intensely political.
Of the long-established Parisian dailies, the most significant were the Siècle,
the Constitutionnel, and the Presse. Each had a circulation of more than twenty-
five thousand, the numbers driven up by a new strategy of reducing the prices
of subscriptions in the interests of raising circulation. Closely behind this group
was the Journal des Débats, followed by Illustration (an illustrated weekly), and

27
several publications devoted to humor and caricature. The most important of
this last group were Charivari, Journal pour Rire, and Silhouette. Paris was also
the publication origin for three journals of business and law, two significant
areas of professional life in Paris and France at mid-century: the Gazette des
Affaires, the Phare Commercial, and the Gazette des Tribunaux.13
The Paris newspapers were initially extremely skeptical of the news of gold
in California. The gold strikes were too rich and too accessible to be believed.
They were also too American. French newspapers long had reservations about
the reliability of the American press, whose items they sometimes reported as
much for amusement as for news. Accordingly, they considered the earliest
reports of widespread availability of gold as the usual “puff” associated with
American journalism. In the eyes of French editors, their American counter-
parts created fantasies to entertain their readers; where such fantasies might
have a basis in fact, they exaggerated them. Thus stories of gold discoveries in
California were initially distrusted by the Parisian press, and, accordingly, it fell
to French editors to examine news from America and to protect the French
reading public from such exaggerations and even downright deceptions.
The first notice of the gold discoveries in a French newspaper appeared in
the Journal des Débats in November 1848. “It seems that mineral deposits of
great value have been discovered; everyone speaks of gold mines, of fabulous
riches awaiting only the hands of the miners to be picked up. Whether true or
false, exaggerated or not, these rumors seem to have powerfully aroused public
imagination.”14
From this time, the news of California and gold began to appear
on a regular basis.
The leading Paris dailies all gave the gold discoveries extensive coverage. The
single event that triggered widespread acceptance of the news, as noted in
chapter 1, was President James K. Polk’s address to Congress on December 5,
1848. French officials and editors paid attention to public pronouncements by
an American president, especially as they reflected foreign affairs. That Polk’s
address coincided in its proximity to the French presidential election guaranteed
that it would receive extensive press coverage. The Siècle carefully analyzed the
address as the news arrived in France some three weeks later. Polk noted that the
discovery of gold, in the aftermath of the conquest of California, had been
confirmed “by the authentic reports of public officials who have visited the
mineral district in order to make personal observations.” In its analysis of note-
worthy events at the end of the year, the Siècle observed that news from California
had begun to dominate American newspapers: “There was not a single American
newspaper that did not devote five or six columns to it, along with numerous
announcements of the expeditions planned for the country of gold.”15

France
28
In late December, French newspapers began the transition from doubt to
acceptance to unbridled enthusiasm. Some joined the chorus early and seem-
ingly without reservation. The Siècle headlined its coverage on the last day of
1848: “It’s California! It’s California! California is Theater!”16
Thus, the editors of
the Siècle captured the sense that California was a stage on which larger-than-
life dramas were unfolding. Like other dramas on the stage, those who would
understand the impact of the gold discoveries must suspend rational analysis
and open themselves to the possibility of something entirely new, something so
dramatically different as to involve almost a new dimension of life’s experiences.
The Constitutionnel offered another explanation. Its initial response to Polk’s
message of the California gold discoveries was to view it in the larger context of
American imperial designs. Through prosperity and growth now extended for
sixty years, the American nation had acquired a degree of vanity in the admin-
istration of its affairs. So President Polk, observed the Constitutionnel, could not
resist the temptation to give European governments a lesson in foreign affairs.
But there was another lesson to be addressed to Europe, the Constitutionnel
concluded—namely, that contrary to popular views, a republic, even a federal
republic like the United States, was perfectly capable of undertaking a war of
conquest in its national interest. The message of the president about California
showed how the Americans had made themselves masters of their new
conquests. At the close of its analysis, the paper quoted from Polk’s account of
the “famous gold mines whose discovery has had such repercussions.”17
The responses of the Journal des Débats, a newspaper with an international
reputation, reflected those of the Paris press. The first mention of California
gold in France appeared in the Journal on November 15, 1848. After a period of
doubt and uncertainty, the newspaper offered these conclusions in early
January: “The discoveries which have come to the Americans, scarcely in
possession of California, on the banks of the Sacramento, of gold mines of great
richness, have an importance that is impossible to contest. It is henceforth
beyond a doubt that in a great number of places in this valley the exploitation
of gold is possible with extraordinary success. . . . The richness of the ore beds
in California seems to surpass all that has been known up to this day.” On
February 14, 1849, an editorial in the Journal summed up the wide-ranging
influence of the gold discoveries on economic and social questions and the new
significance of the Pacific Coast in affairs: “The most remarkable development
of our age, in the field of material progress, is beyond any contradiction the
discovery and exploitation of the goldfields of California.”18
The other large Paris daily newspapers covered the California gold discoveries
with a rising crescendo of interest in January. The Presse noted that in the New

29
Year, three subjects dominated the American press: California, Congress, and
cholera. One newspaper pronounced that “there was no doubt that the age of
gold had returned.” By the end of the month, some prominent Paris newspapers
suggested that the stories were indeed “no exaggeration.” The Pays offered this
summary: “The golden riches of this country are inexhaustible.” Over the course
of the month, “discovery” had become “acceptance,” and “acceptance” was
moving toward “fever.” By the middle of January, the word “fever” was often
used. Illustration captured the impact of the news and its effect on a wide range
of different groups of people with the comment, “The frenzy comes nearer and
nearer.” Finally, “The worker renounces his machine; the laborer his plow, the
merchant his counting house. ho! for california. Forward! Forward!”19
The Paris press found much to marvel at in gold rush California: the disap-
pearance of a servant class; the rise in wages to extraordinary levels for the most
menial kind of work; the transition of California from an economy based on
credit and small notes of indebtedness to a cash economy almost literally over-
night; the desertion from their duty posts of officials at every level, including
soldiers, sailors, and even officers from the army and navy.20
Other papers also noted the spread of the gold fever to Paris—indeed, to the
working-class districts of Paris. One account spoke of the appearance of a visible
representation in Paris: “gold mines. This is the magic title on the posters on
the walls of Paris.”21
Another raised the political implications: “California!
California! This is the cry that is heard from all the parties of European democ-
racies in 1848. . . . Ships leave every port bound for California. Here, in the
Faubourg Montmartre, a great concourse of citizens crowds before a poster of a
ship leaving L’Havre for this modern El Dorado.” But the price of passage—F
1,500—placed it beyond the reach of “the good republicans.”22
The California
gold rush had intruded into French politics.
Amid the rising voices marking the transition of Paris newspapers from the clin-
ical analysis of discovery to that of willing participants in the growing epidemic
of gold fever, one newspaper tried to preserve a sense of order, decorum, and
distance. This exception was the Moniteur Universel, a quasi-official voice
of the French government sent free every day to bureaucrats and officials
of the government at many levels. The masthead of the paper called it the
“Official Newspaper of the French Republic.”23
The reports of the gold discov-
eries in California that made their way into print in the Moniteur may
be said to represent a kind of official voice of the French government’s view
and its evolution over the first four months of 1849. It was in this crucial period
that French officials, commercial houses, and private individuals received

France
30
increasingly detailed accounts of affairs in California. Not surprisingly, these
accounts and their presentation initially differed in detail and in tone, gradually
assuming a degree of consensus by the end of the four months.
The Moniteur’s initial approach was brisk and businesslike. The first notices,
in early January, noted the arrival of a large shipment of gold powder in
Valparaiso. These were followed, within a week, by accounts of English
companies organized to exploit the prospects in the goldfields. These ventures
were “speculation” but reflected a degree of acceptance of the rumors
coming out of Alta California. Later accounts in the Moniteur described the
impact of the gold discoveries on the American military presence, citing
American commodore Thomas Jones’s letter to the effect that the presence
of gold had raised the prospect of massive desertions from American naval
vessels.24
In the last two weeks of February, the Moniteur published two extended
columns that seemed to set the tone for official French reaction to the gold
discoveries. The first of these appeared under the heading “Commercial
Documents” and began with a detailed analysis of the enormous expansion of
the boundaries of the American nation by the annexation of Texas and the
results of the American war against Mexico. This account then went on to
analyze the spreading stories of gold in California: “The metallic riches of
California occupy at this moment all spirits and turn every head.” That the pres-
ence of such mineral riches was not longer open to doubt represented a degree
of official acceptance. The Americans, in pursing the “kind of colonization
which has been so fruitful on the North American continent, have opened lines
of communication and emigration from eastern ports through Valparaiso to the
West Coast.” The result was a new stimulation to commerce in the Pacific by
way of the shores of the American continent, to the Sandwich and Society
Islands, and eventually to China.25
A second letter in the Moniteur, dated January 10, described the organization
of a French company to take advantage of these commercial opportunities.
This account reflected the idea of a direct French national interest in the gold
discoveries. The detailed organization of this venture was intended to assure its
success. It would be made up of an “expert in refining,” two merchants, a
civil engineer with a knowledge of California soils, a mechanic, a carpenter, a
cook, and three trusted associates. Instead of going to the goldfields by way of
San Francisco, the official leaders of this small colony would cross Mexico,
while the materials necessary for the expedition—machines, tents, food—
would be shipped around Cape Horn to San Francisco. The intention was to
establish a permanent official commercial presence whose object was to refine

31
gold, but once on the ground, it would have the capacity to found a commercial
establishment directed toward common interests.26
These plans were amplified a week later in the Moniteur’s second column
with a long and detailed listing of the cargoes headed to the California ports, as
well as information about agriculture and the future commercial prospects of
California. The article warned of the American tariffs that would be vigorously
imposed and urged captains and shippers to have the proper documents in
order. For the moment, those items that would sell the best and with the greatest
certainty of profit would be “the wines from Champagne and Bordeaux and
others, brandy and liqueurs . . . and a wide range of clothing for men (summer
and winter) and women.” These are the needs of “a population . . . incapable of
delivering any labor other than that associated with the extraction of gold.”27
The document then added a cautionary note about the nature of immigra-
tion then under way to California—namely, “that the riches of California will
be principally exploited by the people of the United States.” And these people
exhibit the well-developed “activity and entrepreneurial spirit of the Anglo-
American race.” With these guidelines, the ministry of commerce had analyzed
the outlines of California’s future economic development and the most prom-
ising role for French commercial interests. At the same time, the document
noted the energy and entrepreneurial spirit of the Americans, forces now
directed toward California and the potential of large-scale trade with China.28
Within the next two weeks, the Moniteur had shifted its emphasis from large-
scale commercial opportunity to the details of daily life for individual miners in
digging and washing for gold. The contrast was striking. These meticulous and
detailed descriptions of life in the goldfields were the best in any French news-
paper at the time, and their authenticity was far stronger than the widely read
accounts published in the larger French dailies. The source of the Moniteur’s
accounts was the diary of a visitor to the gold sites, presented in the form of a
series of letters, still listed under the heading “Commercial Documents.”29
After a brief account of the “Dry Diggings,” the author described his travel
down the American River, where gold was found in every site with running
water. In a visit to a small valley, his party found “tents, wagons, horses, cattle
and soon a multitude of men at work. Some dug in the ravines separated by
several hills, others carried or washed the dirt; it was a continuous movement,
comparable to that in a large city.” His tour now brought him into contact with
French miners. It was, “one could say, a French camp,” where “at daybreak,
everything was in motion. Men moved on foot or on horseback, burdened by
pickaxes, spades, and shovels to dig the ground, the others to carry. Almost no
one remains in camp.” In the mining operations, four men would work a

France
32
machine, digging, carrying, washing, up to two tons a day. Yet the gold harvest
came at a price. The work was extremely hard, especially from nine or ten in
the morning to three in the afternoon, for the heat was excessive. “In spite of
these conditions, throughout where I went, from hill to hill, I found a crowd of
people at work. In some places the most renown for their richness, the miners
were so numerous that they could scarcely dig. . . . And when one finds one of
these ‘bonanzas,’ as they are called here, everyone rushes there; there, one day,
an hour suffices sometimes to make a small fortune.”30
The second half of this diarist’s account was a description of the towns that
he visited: San Francisco, Yerba Buena, and Benicia. He observed that for all its
growth and ambitions, San Francisco was almost deserted: “It had lost three-
fourths of its population, the largest part of its houses are empty, all work has
ceased, and, everywhere, one could find neither carpenters, nor joiners, nor
blacksmiths, nor any workers to perform the slightest labor. They had all left for
‘the Placer,’ where they will become too rich and too independent to resume
the work of their professions.”31
The first break in this universal search for gold
was the local festival of Santa Clara, when a flood of miners returned from the
mines to the pueblo of San Jose for eight days of celebration. Some five hundred
miners carried an average of one thousand dollars each. They instantly emptied
the shelves in all the boutiques and stores.
The author concluded with an insightful description of the ways in which
the gold harvest had changed the character of the population. “The extraordi-
nary changes occasioned by this state and the character of the people of this
country by the discovery of gold in the soil are hard to understand. The poor,
that is to say, the people really in need, no longer exist in Upper California.
With the abundance of livestock and the extreme fertility of the soil, food is not
lacking for anyone, but money was almost unknown.” This economy was based
on the exchange of hides and tallow, and it was rare for anyone to have in his
possession from five hundred to one thousand dollars. “Today, to the contrary,
the poorest among them possesses a similar sum or something much larger,
obtained in an instant, and with such an ease that it seems of little importance,
and which he then separates and dispenses with indifference and prodigality.”
This astonishing rearranging of the traditional class structure of Upper California
was one of the most remarkable by-products of the early months of the gold
discoveries.32
A final step in the preliminary accounts of the gold rush in the Moniteur was
one of the most unusual. In response to the “many inexact versions” in circula-
tion about California and its golden rivers and valleys, the minister of commerce
authorized several travelers engaged in commercial speculations or scientific

33
explorations to correspond with the ministry with a view to transmitting to the
minister documents and information that would be judged of an interesting
nature. It was understood, of course, that such an authorization did not confer
any official status.33
Still, it was a revealing request and a reflection of the official
interest of the French government and its search for reliable information.
THE CHORUS OF GOLD ECHOES ACROSS FRANCE
Paris newspapers, significant as they were, represented only one dimension
(albeit a very important one) of a thriving newspaper presence across France.
French journalism came in a variety of forms and variations at mid-century.
These included more than forty papers published in Paris. In addition, there
were multiple dailies in the major cities, a strong journalistic presence in the
ports, with a commercial dimension, and other newspapers of varying size and
interest across France that promoted local and regional interests.
The spread of the news of gold in California across France reflected the
scope of French journalism, with its subdivision of newspapers according to
size, place, and regional interests. The large cities of Lyon (234,000), Marseille
(198,000), Bordeaux (131,000), and Rouen (100,000) each had daily newspapers
organized around political ideology. This focus on politics extended across the
nation. It was diluted (if that was possible) in the port cities, where the emphasis
was often on economic opportunity associated with trade. So Nantes,
Dunkerque, Le Havre, and Cherbourg had common interests and a degree of
competition among themselves. Small cities and towns saw the news of the gold
discoveries as reflected in local interests.
In one respect, there was a degree of unanimity among this diverse group of
French newspapers: they almost universally took their cue on the legitimacy of
the gold discoveries from the Paris papers. When the papers in the capital city
(and the word “capital” had a strength and resonance in France unlike that in
the United States) decreed, the editors in other French towns, ranging from
cities to villages, accepted their judgments. The major Paris dailies were gener-
ally regarded as true and sufficient gatekeepers. So from the middle of January
1849, the California gold discoveries were accepted as a fact on the interna-
tional scene, and the question was what this new economic bonanza would
mean for local people at various levels.
French newspapers buttressed the astonishing details from the great Paris
papers with a selective publication of other sources. For example, in the
first months of 1849, many papers published excerpts from the report of
Governor Colonel Richard Mason.34
Among the other sources cited was the

France
34
correspondence of Thomas Larkin, the American consul in California, and an
early published account by Bayard Taylor, a journalist from the New York
Herald, both of which also appeared in some French newspapers in 1849.35
At
least two French papers published the journal of J. Tyrwhitt-Brooks, an English
medical doctor, who described in detail his visit to the goldfields in mid–1848.36
French newspapers supplemented the state papers, reports, and published
accounts with some of the many letters that were written over the six months
after the first reports of California gold. The first letters were written in the fall
of 1848, and they originated in the places where reports of gold first surfaced and
spread. One of the most widely cited early letters, dated October 26, 1848, was
from Mazatlan and was written by a French ship’s captain to the shipowner in
Bordeaux. His opening words: “This port has an excited response to the news of
the gold in California.” Published in late December, this letter would make its
way from Bordeaux across France.37
A second widely reprinted letter from the early months of the gold discov-
eries was the work of M. Henri Carey, a junior officer on board the Poursuite, a
French naval vessel in the Pacific waters. Carey wrote, “All the world is leaving
for California; it is a real fever. One only encounters these words: ‘When do you
leave?’” Carey went on to describe the goldfields as 175 miles from San
Francisco and some 300 miles in length. He recounted the cycle of desertion
from an English ship: five men deserted; an officer sent ten men to find them;
then he dispatched twenty men and two officers; finally five officers and the
chaplain, who was still on board, were included in the search. All remained in
the goldfields.38
With the first wave of French Argonauts en route to California, letters
appeared from ports of call. The first common origin was Panama. The
continuing surge of prospective gold miners across the narrow causeway
connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific engaged a wide range of prospective
French correspondents. The numbers were the greater because of delays in
finding passage up the West Coast, a situation that generated both leisure and
unhappiness. An outpouring of letters met both needs. The first French
Argonauts crossed Panama in the spring of 1849, and the early reports date from
these travelers. The most widely quoted of the Panama letters was the work of
Emmanuel D’Oliveira, who crossed the isthmus in May 1849. His letter, which
first appeared in mid-July 1849, described in detail the hardships and expense of
crossing the isthmus.39
For those who went to California by way of Cape Horn, the first point of
contact was the stop in Valparaiso, Chile. After the physical stresses of the cape,
the harbor at Valparaiso was a welcome sight, fondly remembered by the

35
arriving Argonauts. While the ships repaired damage and took on supplies,
the passengers wrote letters, in hopes of placing them on ships bound in the
other direction. A number of these made their way into print. As befits an
isolated but welcome way station, the letters described the harbor and city in
detail, often including an account of fellow passengers and the long voyage to
that point. One account from Valparaiso noted “there are here many
Frenchmen, above all Gascons, who exploit strangers and recent arrivals
without pity.”40
Another, dated March 28, 1849, confirmed that “California
continued to absorb the attention of the speculators in Chile.”41
Finally, of course, there were growing numbers of letters from San Francisco.
This was the place in California most directly connected in the minds of most
people with the gold discoveries. It was also the site of the landing of most of the
French Argonauts. Accordingly, much correspondence originated there, from
merchants engaged in the San Francisco trade, from newly arrived gold seekers
(les chercheurs d’or), and from miners returned from a season in the mines.42
These letters were documents in the public sphere. That is, they spoke of
trade, commercial connections, and prices, mixed with a travelogue of the
experiences of exotic (and even, in the case of Panama, dangerous) places on
the way to the goldfields of California. There was another kind of letter that
made its way into print. These were personal accounts, with the individual and
his struggles at the center of the story. These accounts tended to range across
time from sunny to cloudy to dark. The first letters often told of great successes
by individuals. They involved ordinary Frenchmen who had found astonishing
bonanzas in the goldfields. Their stories affirmed the democratic nature of the
exercise, and they simultaneously offered the hope and inspiration that the
same rich diggings would be found and exploited by later arrivals. It was a
circular exercise, but one fraught with great human interest. In April 1849, two
“California stories” recounted the adventures of three ordinary workers. In one
case, Glein, a blacksmith from Hesse-Cassel, harvested thirty-two pounds of
gold, and Michel, fifteen pounds. Another Frenchman, Boc, a cooper from
Le Havre, deserted from a whaler, and in a few days amassed F 15,000. A
letter dated from San Francisco in July 1849 told of the experiences of “a citizen
named Charpentier,” who, working alone for twelve days “in the placers,”
harvested three pounds of “gold dust.” He also found pieces as large as two-
thirds of an ounce, with larger ones the size of eggs. According to this
account, miners averaged $150–200 of gold a day. In two hours, one man
harvested $400 of gold. A man and his son took nineteen pounds and two
ounces. In response to these bonanzas, there were already twenty thousand
miners in the country of gold.43

France
36
Among the many stories and accounts (official and unofficial) that flooded the
newspapers in early 1849, a few themes stood out. The first was the sense of
excitement, movement, and energy wrought by the gold discoveries. Peoples
from diverse places across the western hemisphere and into the Pacific were in
motion toward California. They encountered one another in the transit points
and the ports of call, where they competed for services and accommodations.
Another was the rising consensus among the authors of the accounts that the
gold discoveries were real. And as an addendum, not only were they real, but
they were also open to exploitation by all these diverse peoples headed for the
goldfields. Finally, the gold discoveries had completely recast California society.
The traditional ways of doing things had vanished, replaced by a new world
whose outlines were still taking shape. As part of this domestic upheaval,
California’s working class at all levels had deserted the farms and villages and
streamed to the placers. Officials had soon followed. An economy based on gold
had replaced a system based on barter and notes. In short, a series of societies
had been turned upside down. These dramatic and rapid changes added further
and, for some, conclusive evidence of the emergence of gold mania.

Rush to Gold_ The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854 ( PDFDrive ).pdf

Rush to Gold_ The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854 ( PDFDrive ).pdf

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Rush to Gold_ The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854 ( PDFDrive ).pdf

Similar to Rush to Gold_ The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854 ( PDFDrive ).pdf (18)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Rush to Gold_ The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854 ( PDFDrive ).pdf