Chapter 36
How Many States?
When I got back to Miracle Springs several days later, the two speeches I had made already seemed far in the past. But knowing nothing about my trip to Palo Alto, Pa and Almeda were full of questions about the political situation.
“You heard anything more from Mr. Dalton?” I asked him.
“Got a letter just yesterday,” Pa answered. “He asked how the handbills that you had suggested were coming along—”
I had forgotten all about them—we were going to have to get busy in a hurry!
“And,” Pa went on, “he said he’d arranged for me to speak at a town meeting over in Marysville next week.”
“What do you think, Corrie?” asked Almeda.
“What’s more important is what you think,” I answered.
“I think it’s wonderful!” she said with a big smile. “I had no idea what I was starting when I got the notion of running for mayor. Now look what it’s caused—Drummond Hollister running for state office!”
In California, the presidential election of 1860 in California had as much to do with the dispute between North and South as it did anywhere else in the country. The battle for supremacy of the nation, and which region was going to hold the reins of power, was the election of 1860. In addition to the slavery issue itself, the election would determine who was going to direct the course of the future of the United States of America.
The South had controlled the government in Washington for thirty years. But all of a sudden, a major change seemed at hand. But the South did not intend to give up without a fight. The battle was to be waged on November 6, 1860.
California was one of the only states, however, where the dispute over control between North and South went on inside the state. California was now the second biggest state next to Texas, almost nine hundred miles from top to bottom, running north and south. The top of California next to Oregon was parallel with New York, and the bottom border ran right through the middle of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. It was only natural, I suppose, that there would be debate within California as to which side its loyalties ought to lie on.
Even during the Mexican period in California before the gold rush, there had been a spirit of sectionalism between the northern and southern halves of the state. Especially once the gold rush came, those in the south didn’t like all the activity of the north. When statehood was being discussed in 1849, many southern Californians did not want to be part of the new state and proposed dividing California in half at San Luis Obispo. They wanted to be able to go on with the slow pace of their old way of life, without being forced to be part of the frantic, growing, alien north where people were pouring in and towns were growing into great metropolitan areas overnight. Those in the south felt it unfair that they should have to pay taxes and support a state government that was located in the north, and that was expensive and heavily weighted toward the needs and concerns of the north. The south was so sparsely settled, it would even have preferred not to be a state at all, just as long as it could be separate from the north.
Statehood came to the whole state, but the desire to split the state into northern and southern halves continued as a volatile issue all the way through the 1850s. A huge movement in Los Angeles and throughout the south in 1851 tried to develop enough support to break away and form a new state. In the next two years, the southern legislators in Sacramento tried to call a constitutional convention that would divide the state. But since the north controlled the state legislature, such attempts were defeated.
Finally, in 1855 a bill was finally introduced into the California Assembly that at first called for a new state named Columbia to be formed. Then later the bill was changed to split California into three states. A new state called Colorado would be made of the area south of San Luis Obispo. A new state called Shasta would be made of the far northern part bordering Oregon. And California would remain as the central region of the three states.
That bill never passed, but the idea for making separate states continued, and even gradually began to be supported by some northerners. Another bill was introduced in Sacramento in 1859, again for two states, and again with the separation at San Luis Obispo, creating a new territory south of that to be called Colorado. This time there was enough support for the idea to pass both the state senate and the state assembly in Sacramento.
But the legislature couldn’t split the state apart all by themselves. There were two other groups of people who had to be part of the decision, too—the federal government and the people who lived in the part of California where they wanted to create a new state.
So the legislature wrote up a bill that would create a new territory to be called Colorado—if two thirds of the people in that region south of San Luis Obispo approved of the plan, and if the Congress in Washington, D.C., also approved. The bill passed in the state assembly 33 to 15, and in the state senate 15 to 12. Then a special election was set up late in 1859 for the people of southern California to vote themselves on whether they wanted their part of the state to be formed into a new territory called Colorado.
They surely did! The people south of San Luis Obispo voted 2,457 to 828 in favor of dividing California in half, and calling their half Colorado.
Therefore, in January of 1860, Governor Milton Latham formally sent the results of the bill and both votes to President James Buchanan, asking for the U.S. Congress to approve the division of California.
No approval had yet been given, however. The rest of the nation was too taken up with other momentous events that year. The election between Lincoln and Douglas and the dispute between the southern states and northern states all made a local squabble within distant California seem a little insignificant to the politicians in Washington. Not only was California far away from the rest of the country, it was made up mostly of Spanish-speaking Mexicans in the south and gold-hungry miners in the north. At least that’s what Pa said folks in the East thought about us.
“What does that have to do with splitting up the state, Pa?” Tad asked when we were all sitting talking about it a couple of weeks later.
“Nothing directly, son,” answered Pa. “It’s only that back in Washington I reckon they figure California’s a mite different than other states, and that maybe they just oughta leave it alone to do what it wants.”
“But if California wants it, all they have to do is approve it,” said Becky.
“Well, there are certain kinds of things where the federal government’s just not anxious to interfere. It’s called states’ rights. This country got its start as a collection of independent states that pretty much did what they pleased. The government in Washington was set up just to ride herd over the whole conglomeration, while the states went on deciding things for themselves. That’s why it’s called the United States of America instead of something else.”
“You sound like a politician, Pa!” laughed Becky.
“Of course he’s a politician!” said Almeda. “That’s what being mayor is all about.”
“I mean he sounds like a speechmaker.”
“Like Corrie!” said Tad.
“I’m no speechmaker, Tad,” I said.
“What about it, Drummond?” said Almeda. “Did that speech you made in Marysville last week go to your head? You are starting to sound a little highfalutin for the likes of simple country folk like us.”
“Now you cut that out, Almeda!” joked Pa. “You all know well and good I ain’t about to start sounding like no doggone politician from Sacramento or Washington. I was only trying to answer Becky’s question.”
“Is states’ rights why there’s slavery some places and it’s against the law in others?” asked Tad.
“Right you are, son. That’s it exactly. It’s up to the states to decide for themselves.”
“What about right and wrong?” I asked. “It seems as if on an issue like slavery there ought to be more to it than everybody deciding what they want to do. That’s why I decided to support Mr. Lincoln, because of right and wrong.”
“But who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? You’ve listened to Katie and Edie, Corrie. They don’t see anything wrong in slavery, because they were both brought up in the South. That’s why the government in Washington has always stayed out of such disputes. They don’t want to get into the business of deciding right and wrong, so they let the states decide whatever they want to do.”
“Then, why don’t they let California split into two states?” asked Tad.
Pa looked at him a minute, then shook his head with a puzzled expression.
“The truth of the matter, son, is that I’m blamed if I know,” he answered finally. “Maybe they just ain’t got around to approving it.”
“If you’re elected to the Assembly, Drummond,” said Almeda, “what stand are you going to take?”
“On what?” asked Pa.
“On the split of California. Are you going to continue to push for it next year if President Buchanan doesn’t act on the measure before the election?”
Again Pa grew thoughtful. “If I do get elected to the Assembly, which I still doubt, then I’ll have to figure out what I’m gonna do about a lot of things. Right now I can’t say. I can’t see much reason to be against dividing it up, but I got no objections to keeping it the way it is, either.”
“If they won’t let California do what it wants to do,” said Becky, “then why do they let the states do whatever they want to do about slavery? It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Politics isn’t always fair, girl, any more than the government always does what’s right, like Corrie was saying. States’ rights isn’t a doctrine of governing that always makes things turn out fair. It just happens to be how this here country got put together in the first place. Besides, Buchanan’s a Democrat and a southerner. Letting the states do whatever they want—that’s just how the southerners want to keep it, so they can keep having their slaves and growing their cotton. No Democrat’s gonna change that.”
“A Republican might,” I suggested.
“Yeah, you’re right, daughter, a Republican just might. That’s why the Democrats and southerners are so all-fired worried about this election. They figure if Lincoln’s elected, it just might be the end of states’ rights altogether.”
“Why can’t it all just keep going how it is?” asked Tad. “Some states could have slaves if they wanted, others don’t have to.”
“Yes, Pa,” added Becky, “why can’t there keep being states’ rights no matter who gets elected?”
“That’s what the southerners want,” put in Almeda. “But Abraham Lincoln has made no secret of his revulsion toward slavery.”
Pa turned to me. “Corrie,” he said, “where’s that paper that had your article about the election in it? Seems I recollect reading a speech of Lincoln’s there.”
“I’ll get it, Pa,” I said, jumping up.
“You see, Becky,” Pa went on, “Mr. Lincoln figures we just can’t keep going forever with half of the states one way, the other half the other way. He says it’s tearing the country apart, making people hate each other, making it so the government can’t do anything but argue and dispute and can’t get on with the business of helping make the country what it ought to be. He says that we got to be what our name says—united. One way or the other—either all for slavery or all against it. We can’t keep being split up like we have been. And now that there’s more northern states than southern, the southerners figure that if he’s elected, he’s gonna try to take the whole country the direction he wants to go.”
“Against states’ rights?”
“They don’t figure Mr. Lincoln cares so much for states’ rights as much as he wants to do what he thinks is right.”
Just then I returned with the paper.
“Here,” said Pa, reaching out and taking it from me, “just listen to this. I’ll read you part of the speech and you can see for yourselves what Mr. Lincoln says about it.”
He rustled through the Alta till he found the speech on the second page and began to read.
In my opinion, the agitation over the issue of slavery will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I DO expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.
“I didn’t understand that, Pa,” said Tad.
“He’s just saying that it’s got to be all one way or all the other. Slavery’s either got to be legal everywhere throughout the whole country, or else it’s got to be thrown out completely, including in the South.”
“What about the states that are talking of seceding, Drummond?” asked Almeda seriously. “Do you think it could actually happen?”
“No way to know, Almeda. One thing’s for sure—people can be mighty stubborn and dead set against change, whether they’re right or wrong.”
“But if some states want to secede, should they have the right to?” I asked. Ever since I had decided to get involved in the election, I’d been thinking about this question because I knew it was on Abraham Lincoln’s mind. I still hadn’t been able to figure out even what I thought about it.
“That’s the question of 1860, girl,” said Pa. “It ain’t so much just about slavery, but whether states’ rights gives some of the states the right to pull themselves out of the United States of America altogether. If California can’t split in half without the government’s permission, then can some of the southern states go off and do whatever they want to do without permission either? I don’t reckon anybody knows the answer to that question yet. But if Mr. Lincoln gets elected, I don’t much doubt that some of ’em are gonna put it to the test and see what comes of it.”
Pa surely was sounding like a politician! From a fugitive to a gold miner to a father to a mayor . . . and now he was talking about the future of the whole country as if he was personally involved in what happened.
And as a candidate for the California State Assembly, I guess he was, at that!