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Authors: Peter Fitzsimons
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action, there was Carboni. In the course of battle he received no fewer than three wounds, including a particularly bad one to his left leg. He escaped with his life – just – and though there was no diminution in his passion for the cause, still he decided it would be wiser to leave Italy for a time.
———
Now, if America was spared such uprisings it was because their own revolt against iniquitous rule had already occurred some three-quarters of a century earlier with the American War of Independence, and their own republic had taken a strong hold.
And yet there, too, something far more intoxicating than revolution was in the air.
In California in late January 1848, a building foreman named John Marshall was just completing construction on a sawmill by the American River for his boss John Sutter, at a place called Sutter’s Mill, near Coloma, when something amazing happened. Having allowed the natural flow of the river to widen and deepen the tailrace overnight, the next morning he noticed a shiny metal in the channel bed. It was . . . sort of . . . golden.
Taking it to Sutter, the two had it tested and the news was confirmed: it was gold.
Marshall was elated, Sutter . . . deflated.
The joy that men have felt through the ages at finding buried treasure is all the more elevated when the treasure is a gift from Mother Nature herself. However, Sutter felt the equally familiar fear of one already wealthy who realises his whole world risks being upended at the hands of others, others less worthy, who are seeking an entirely different type of wealth.
For all that, because Sutter had huge plans in this area – not just for a lumber mill but for building an entire agricultural empire – he managed to convince Marshall to keep quiet about the discovery . . . for the moment.
Yet gold – gold ! – and secrecy simply do not go together. Since forever, there has been something about that lustrous, shiny metal that makes men whisper excitedly to confidants, who inevitably whisper the news to others, and others still, until those whispers in the wind amount to a breeze, a blow and then a gale, until a full-blown storm is underway.
It was not long after the news reached San Francisco, a small outpost of just 1000 people, that newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies. ‘A tall man, darkly handsome, whose hair fell in soft brown waves to his shoulders from under a broad-brimmed beaver hat, he was soon to be seen strutting down the main street clutching in his right hand a vial of gold. ‘Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!’ announced Brannan.
He was a newspaper publisher – why not put it on the front page? The answer was simple: after the journalists and production staff found out what the following day’s article was, they had all simply left for the goldfields and there was no-one left to put the paper out and . . .
And what is that sound?
What sound?
That . . . rushing sound!
It was the sound of vast swathes of humanity moving, by every means of locomotion imaginable, up every path, track and road they could find – coming from all directions – towards the spot on the American River where gold had been found. The 1849 gold rush had begun within days of Brannan broadcasting the news, and Sutter was soon proven quite right in his fears. For not only were his own workers among those who abandoned their posts on his lumber mills to pursue gold, but the once quiet spot was soon inundated with hundreds and then thousands of would-be miners – many of them veterans of the just finished war against Mexico – who stole his cattle, ‘harvested’ his crops and took over his land. He was soon ruined, not that anybody particularly noticed or cared. They were too busy going after gold, and finding it!
News of the find reached Europe in mid-October 1848, where it caused a fevering of the brow of many men who immediately left for California, and
———
Now, if America was spared such uprisings it was because their own revolt against iniquitous rule had already occurred some three-quarters of a century earlier with the American War of Independence, and their own republic had taken a strong hold.
And yet there, too, something far more intoxicating than revolution was in the air.
In California in late January 1848, a building foreman named John Marshall was just completing construction on a sawmill by the American River for his boss John Sutter, at a place called Sutter’s Mill, near Coloma, when something amazing happened. Having allowed the natural flow of the river to widen and deepen the tailrace overnight, the next morning he noticed a shiny metal in the channel bed. It was . . . sort of . . . golden.
Taking it to Sutter, the two had it tested and the news was confirmed: it was gold.
Marshall was elated, Sutter . . . deflated.
The joy that men have felt through the ages at finding buried treasure is all the more elevated when the treasure is a gift from Mother Nature herself. However, Sutter felt the equally familiar fear of one already wealthy who realises his whole world risks being upended at the hands of others, others less worthy, who are seeking an entirely different type of wealth.
For all that, because Sutter had huge plans in this area – not just for a lumber mill but for building an entire agricultural empire – he managed to convince Marshall to keep quiet about the discovery . . . for the moment.
Yet gold – gold ! – and secrecy simply do not go together. Since forever, there has been something about that lustrous, shiny metal that makes men whisper excitedly to confidants, who inevitably whisper the news to others, and others still, until those whispers in the wind amount to a breeze, a blow and then a gale, until a full-blown storm is underway.
It was not long after the news reached San Francisco, a small outpost of just 1000 people, that newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies. ‘A tall man, darkly handsome, whose hair fell in soft brown waves to his shoulders from under a broad-brimmed beaver hat, he was soon to be seen strutting down the main street clutching in his right hand a vial of gold. ‘Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!’ announced Brannan.
He was a newspaper publisher – why not put it on the front page? The answer was simple: after the journalists and production staff found out what the following day’s article was, they had all simply left for the goldfields and there was no-one left to put the paper out and . . .
And what is that sound?
What sound?
That . . . rushing sound!
It was the sound of vast swathes of humanity moving, by every means of locomotion imaginable, up every path, track and road they could find – coming from all directions – towards the spot on the American River where gold had been found. The 1849 gold rush had begun within days of Brannan broadcasting the news, and Sutter was soon proven quite right in his fears. For not only were his own workers among those who abandoned their posts on his lumber mills to pursue gold, but the once quiet spot was soon inundated with hundreds and then thousands of would-be miners – many of them veterans of the just finished war against Mexico – who stole his cattle, ‘harvested’ his crops and took over his land. He was soon ruined, not that anybody particularly noticed or cared. They were too busy going after gold, and finding it!
News of the find reached Europe in mid-October 1848, where it caused a fevering of the brow of many men who immediately left for California, and
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