Chapter 6
LAST CALL: 1861
News of the Confederacy’s April 12, 1861 shelling of Fort Sumter did not immediately reach Sacramento. When it did so, on April 24, it was clear that Civil War Sacramento was, almost exclusively, a city standing on the Union side. In August, the Union, based on a view of the city from an elevated point, remarked at how “the heart of our community is right on the great question of the Union. There was not one flag less afloat from our flagstaffs on account of the late disaster in Virginia391 but the folds of the national banner in all its beauty floated calmly over the city. We have conclusive evidence of the true and earnest patriotism of our citizens.”392
There was even the establishment of a Union Club that sought, on behalf of the national government, to organize the might of loyal citizens into a group for political and social action. Within a week, the club was able to recruit some one thousand members in Sacramento, and after a month, several chapters had been established throughout Northern California.393 The city even formed a Union Club for local juveniles.
However, as we well know, the Gold Rush drew hordes of adventurers from the American South to Sacramento, where many chose to stay. While Californians of Northern origin numbered seventy-four thousand in 1860, there were twenty-nine thousand who came from the South.394 This factor did just enough to engender fear, sometimes panic, in the Union-partial city. Only days after Sumter, when rumors started circulating about a fifth column of Rebel supporters, nervous members of the media claimed “that the Union Club [was] matched at last.”395 A Secessionist flag was seen flying over Forest Hill, along the Truckee Pass, while there was also talk of Rebel sympathizers wearing thoughtfully placed green ribbons for subtle identification. Pockets of Secessionist support were also reported to have existed in Volcano (located in Amador County), as well as at McConnell’s Station near present-day Elk Grove. And in August, Unionists listened intently for a rumored salute to be fired off by Secessionists, honoring the Rebel army’s July victory at Manassas (First Bull Run).
The salute, however, never came, and although the overall Secessionist presence seemed scattered, disorganized and generally ineffectual, there were moments of sectional confrontation. One of the more heated took place on, of all days, July 4, 1861, when Major J.P. Gillis, a defiant Secessionist and ex-alderman, took on Sacramento’s Unionists.396 Things started with the major’s gamey choice to walk about the city with a non-Union flag. When Unionist J.W. Bideman noticed the curious tricolor, he exclaimed to his colleague Curtis Clark, “I’ll bet ten dollars that that is a secession flag, and if it is I’m bound to take it if it is unfolded.” Sure enough, when Gillis unfolded the flag, it was a Confederate replica of the official first national flag of the Secessionist states. It was then Gillis’s choice to march back and forth in front of the St. George Hotel—that is, until Bideman approached Gillis, grabbed him by the throat and tore the flag from his cane. Just moments later, things deteriorated into a childish game of keep-away as Unionists Frank Rhodes from Pennsylvania and A. Burns of Illinois challenged a small group of Secessionists “to come and take it.” Not one of the Rebels complied.
The Unionists were keen on showcasing their newly won souvenir, which they did first at Rhodes’s own saloon, the Adriatic, located inside the St. George Hotel on Third Street between I and J. The standard, two feet wide and four feet long, was made of silk and featured three stripes—two red and one white—“and on the blue field were ten stars.”397 When it was waved about, one of the stars fell to the ground, causing the revelers to claim that it represented South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union. When the scorned Gillis learned of the flag’s location, he staggered into the Adriatic, pleading for its return. When Rhodes refused, Gillis responded, “Well, sir, I shall be compelled to take it then.” But upon making his way around the bar counter, Gillis was restrained, and apparently realizing the futility of the matter, the Southerner relented.
Gillis may have been done, but later that day, Secessionists were brazen enough to also remove a Union flag from the city’s Masonic Hall. That same day went on to be marred with the occurrence of several fights “at the Orleans and the Union Hotels; pistols were drawn at [Keenan’s] Fashion Saloon…on the secession question and several fights came off at the Champion Saloon,” owned by Irishman E. Lloyd and located at the corner of Second and K.398
While the Fourth of July was a clear lightning rod for sectional anger, the earliest recorded Yankee-Rebel saloon confrontation looks to have taken place in the early days of May at the Bank Exchange. Contact between H. Derrick, a Unionist, and T. Calloway, a Secessionist, deteriorated to the point where one challenged the other to a duel.399 They both agreed to do so early the next morning at seven o’clock. However, when neither man showed, many wondered what impact the previous evening’s excesses may have had. Later that day, they reconnected and decided to again meet for a duel in the coming hours. But when Derrick showed and Calloway did not, much of the tension leading up to the duel was defused. During the evening, both men met and discussed their differences amicably, “and the parties having been friends formerly became friends again.”
If only on a modest scale, the operations of one local brewery were also affected by the war. Soon after the start of hostilities, a Union army installation, the aptly named Camp Union, was established just south of Sacramento City limits near present-day Sutterville Road and William Land Park. Due to inadequate accommodations, the installation was removed from its original location, that being on the Yolo side of the Sacramento River. Once finding a final home, the camp was officially christened in early October 1861 when its commander, Major Coult, smashed a bottle of California red wine against the camp flagstaff.
Also setting up in the Sutterville area was the newly founded Sutterville Brewery. The business was under the ownership of Martin Arenz, a thirty-one-year-old Prussian who had operated two saloons prior to going into the brewing business, the Indian Queen Saloon on 56 Third Street and, before that, the Central Saloon on J between Fifth and Sixth. The structure containing the brewery—the Vance Building, named for its original occupant—was constructed in 1853 as a grocery store, but with visions of a bustling Sutterville never materializing, it was soon vacated. That is, until the beginning of the decade, when Arenz purchased the three-story brick building (including a basement) for $1,500.400
With less than a quarter mile separating Arenz’s Sutterville Brewery from Camp Union, the chance of contact between the two neighbors was inevitable. It came during the Christmas season of 1861, when a dozen or so intoxicated soldiers from the camp made their way to the brewery, demanding refreshments.401 When the brewery workers refused, the soldiers “started to break things,” and a large fight quickly ensued. The brewers stood pat, retaliating with brickbats and driving off a bulk of the soldiers. Arenz was brazen enough to fire a pistol at the attackers, although missing. Thankfully, just as the bluecoats attempted to return, a detachment of fellow recruits from Camp Union intervened, ending the fight and saving both sides from a potential disaster.
A view of the Sutterville Brewery in 1906. California State Library.
By the early days of the Civil War, Sacramento City had just passed its tenth birthday. Concurrently, the city’s saloon community had reached a well-earned degree of maturity and was able to claim a heritage so closely tied to the biggest rush for riches the world had ever seen. The viability of the saloon proved slippery, however, begging the question of how many of those established during the time of the city’s incorporation—or even at the start of the Gold Rush—were still around at the end of the decade. Perhaps coming as a surprise, few, if any, could claim as to have done as much. If a quick comparison of directory listings for saloons from 1853 and 1861 reveals nearly 100 percent turnover, we can honestly conclude that for saloon operators, long-term business prospects were frail at best.
Part and parcel to this, we see an industry in a state of constant regeneration. Losing a few members here but adding others there, the saloon community grew like a chameleon that, although not changing size, was often to change its look and identity. If natural hazards to the saloon—fire, flood and even disease—were difficult enough to overcome, the competition in the saloon industry could be unforgivable. By decade’s end, if one hundred saloons were serving some ten thousand Sacramentans, there would have been a ratio of one saloon for every one hundred residents. The economies of scale in this scenario were not favorable to most of those in the business, with the result being frequent turnover. In a more positive light, the hazardous business environment, not to mention Adam Smith’s invisible hand, guaranteed the patronizing community a near-constant dynamism and freshness in their choice of establishments.
As mentioned earlier, the ability to attract patrons via some hook was a clear difference-maker in a saloon’s livelihood, and the hunt for viable entertainment must have been an enormous challenge. If this weren’t enough, there were additional hurdles relative to the costs of alcohol acquisition. Whether a saloon chose to acquire its product through a wholesaler or directly from a brewery or distillery, the costs could be high, although one would believe that the diversity of breweries had a stabilizing effect on the overall price of beer. Even so, if a particular saloon could not draw patrons, the looming factor of overhead could kill a business. This didn’t include the prohibitive cost that came with the licensing of gambling accommodations and the right to sell liquor. The aggregate of these variables wielded a much greater degree of peril over the life of the saloon than that of any temperance group.
A paramount factor in a saloon’s survival relates to the character of the person who ran the place. Keenan, Johnson, Daly and Gibson all operated establishments that lasted. Their dynamism—in the extracurricular realms of politics, firefighting, prospecting, paramilitarism, cooking and franchising—set them apart. Pursuing such varied interests took effort, an effort so easily transferable to the everyday piloting of a saloon’s operations. It is more than believable that dabbling in so many arenas created connections, relationships of business, politics and overall good will that fed the attractiveness of their establishments time and time again. Who they were and what they were willing to do to promote their spots proved distinguishing, yielding them the commercial longevity that every saloon owner so desired.
Regardless of their early economic outlook, by the dawn of the 1860s, saloons and their cultural offerings were firmly entrenched within the Sacramento ethos. Just ahead were four more years of bloody civil war, enough flooding to rechannel where the American River met the Sacramento (not to mention the raising of the central business district) and the establishment of a transcontinental railroad. The advent of rail, first in 1855 and then in 1863, was a clear boon for the saloon. It increased Sacramento’s community of unskilled labor overnight, thus filling any vacuum created by the departure of miners. The region’s agriculture prowess, which came into its own in the 1880s, also guaranteed that thousands of parched field workers and hands would eventually belly up to the bar. Through it all, the institution flourished, and for decades to come, perhaps with not as much verve as it did prior to the Civil War, Sacramento’s saloons would carry forth a legacy and a story worthy of telling so long after bidding adieu to history.
It should be noted that the saloon’s impact on Sacramento’s social identity was remarkable. Where the spirit of equality seems to have failed so miserably in the mining camps, the saloon conducted and primed at least some element of racial and ethnic mixing. It was a hothouse for the distillation of political views, ideas and the compelling issues of the day. In an environment that placed a premium on the male mystique, it was also an arena for gender proving. It was the marketplace for brewery, distillery and winery alike; it was a bellwether for the state’s moral development, and it even tested the mettle of early crime enforcement.
If nothing else, the antebellum saloon was a prime conductor for violence. The factors of both gaming and drink often elicited a patron’s most unpleasant behaviors, and for those already apt to be violent, the saloon’s offerings merely worsened their state. Match this with an already beleaguered police force, and the problem further exacerbates. The stories of horrific violence that we’ve covered are testament to the brutality of antebellum America. Sacramento could even claim to be home to the “Fighting Corner,” essentially the intersection of K and Front Streets. The spot developed a deserving reputation in the mid-1850s as a fully hands-on experience, or as one paper wrote, a hotbed of “rowdyism and pugilistic encounters.” However, as the Gold Rush waned and California’s civic institutions stiffened, saloon violence and related spots of violence like the “Corner” seemed to lose social traction. What’s more, as the nation stretched its industrial legs and Sacramento settled into its place as a railroad and agricultural linchpin, the saloon became less a place of succor and curiosity for adventurer, miner and gambler and more a hub for a new breed of California laborer.