The American Promise:
Printed Page 334
The Gold Rush
The discovery of gold in California stimulated imaginations around the world. But getting to gold country was not easy. Americans in the East could sail 18,000 miles around the tip of South America; or sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, slog through the jungle to the Pacific, and wait for a ship to San Francisco; or walk overland across the continent. Nothing got easier when they arrived in California. The West presented emigrants with unprecedented challenges and only occasionally fulfillment.
DOCUMENT 1
James Marshall, Account of His Discovery of Gold, 1891
While building a sawmill on the American River for Swiss rancher John Sutter, James Marshall found gold on January 24, 1848. Marshall gave several accounts of his discovery, but this is probably his first. Marshall never benefited from his discovery and died bitter and penniless.
One morning in January—
When I returned to our cabin for breakfast I showed the two pieces to my men. They were all a good deal excited, and had they not thought that the gold only existed in small quantities they would have abandoned everything and left me to finish my job alone. However, to satisfy them, I told them that as soon as we had the mill finished we would devote a week or two to gold hunting and see what we could make out of it.
. . . [W]e thought it our best policy to keep it as quiet as possible till we should have finished our mill. But there was a great number of disbanded Mormon soldiers in and about the fort, and when they came to hear of it, why it just spread like a wildfire, and soon the whole country was in a bustle. . . .
Source: James W. Marshall, “Marshall’s Own Account of the Gold Discovery,” Century Illustrated Magazine, no. 4 (Feb. 1891): 537–
DOCUMENT 2
Sarah Royce, Memoir of the Journey to California in 1849, 1932
In 1849, Sarah Royce, with her husband and two-
There was no moon yet, but by starlight we had for some time seen, only too plainly, the dead bodies of cattle lying here and there on both sides of the road. As we advanced they increased in numbers, and presently we saw two or three wagons. At first we thought we had overtaken a company but, coming close, no sign of life appeared. . . .
Source: Sarah Royce, A Frontier Lady (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932), 51–
DOCUMENT 3
Daniel B. Woods, Life of a California Miner, 1849
Daniel B. Woods, a Philadelphia schoolteacher, reached the diggings in California in 1849. He soon discovered that mining was very hard work, and he suspected that he would never get rich. He poured his frustration and disillusionment into his diary and after sixteen months quit gold country.
July 9th [1849]. To-
July 10th. We made three dollars each to-
After our days of labor, exhausted and faint, we retire—if this word may be applied to the simple act of lying down in our clothes—
Aug. 23d. After all our preparations and hopes, our toil early and late, toil of the most laborious kind, digging down in the channel of the river till the water was up to our knees, giving ourselves barely time to eat, we have made but $4 each. We sat down on the rocks, and looked at the small ridge of gold in the pan, and at each other. One fell to swearing, another to laughing.
Source: Daniel B. Woods, Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), 57–
Questions for Analysis and Debate
Connect to the Big Idea
How did the realities of Gold Rush California fit with the promises of manifest destiny?