Chapter 54
A Disturbing Encounter

Late summer and fall brought more bad news from the East.

The Confederate forces had scored a stunning victory in August, matching only 55,000 men against the Union’s 80,000 in a battle that was called the Second Battle of Bull Run.

In September, General Robert E. Lee invaded the North in force, crossed the Potomac out of Virginia and into Maryland. Not only did Lee want to get the fighting out of Virginia, his home state, so as to protect the badly needed crops for the harvest season, but he also hoped that his army might make Maryland want to secede. With Maryland in the Confederacy, the Union capital of Washington would be right next door.

He did not succeed. But neither did he fail. The standoff, and resulting battle in the valley of the Antietam Creek south of Hagerstown, was the bloodiest engagement of the war. More than 22,000 young men were killed, and neither side gained an advantage.

So much blood was being shed! There was both grief and determination throughout California—determination to help the Federal forces against an increasingly hated foe. It was all so needless! And the South was held accountable for the destruction and the dreadful loss of life.

He tried not to show it, but I know this news deeply disturbed Cal. He expected the government of the North to fall any day, and his future with it.

Not long after these two battles, an appeal came to Mr. King from the Boston headquarters:

The Sanitary Fund is desperately low. Our expenses are fifty thousand dollars per month. The sick and wounded on the battlefields need our help! We can survive for three months, but not a day longer, without large support from the Pacific. Twenty-five thousand dollars a month, paid regularly while the war lasts, from California would insure that we could continue with our efforts. We would make up the other twenty-five thousand here. We have already contributed sanitary stores, of a value of seven million dollars, to all parts of the army. California has been our main support in money, and if she fails, we are lost. We beg of you all, do what you can. The Union requires our most earnest efforts.

Immediately, Mr. King, Mrs. Herndon, Cal, and I—along with a few others—met together to plan a renewed round of meetings to gather together even more funds to help save the Union.

By the end of 1862, Mr. King’s efforts had been so successful that nearly $500,000, mostly in gold, had been raised for the Sanitary Fund, more than half of it from San Francisco alone. I was proud to have been a part of it!

Usually we conducted our meeting and gave speeches. Then afterward Mr. King would pass a collection box, just like at a church service, and let people give what money they could right there on the spot. But most of the money came from pledges, and then Cal and I and some of the others would go around picking them up for the next several days. We took the money to the bank we used for the Sanitary Fund, and later sent it off to Boston by steamer. Businessmen or mining companies sometimes made their contributions in actual gold or silver bars. One time I went to a prominent San Francisco banker’s office, expecting to receive a check for the pledge he’d made to Mr. King. He loaded me down with twelve pounds of gold and fifteen pounds of silver, worth almost six thousand dollars!

When Cal saw me struggling out of the bank to our carriage, he burst out laughing.

“I only got a little piece of paper,” he said. “We went collecting at the wrong places.”

“Next time,” I panted, “I’ll pick up the check, and you go retrieve the bullion!”

In spite of my difficulty, Mr. King was pleased.

Cal, still reading every scrap of war news he could lay his hands on, was acting disturbed and fidgety. Once he got so angry after one of our meetings that he nearly came to blows.

A man I had never seen came up to him out of the crowd and started talking rudely to him.

“Got everything going your way now, eh, Burton?” said the man derisively.

“Get out of here, Jewks!” Cal answered back in an angry tone. “What business do you have here, anyway?”

“Your business is my business now, Burton—if you get my drift.”

“I don’t, and I don’t care to!” said Cal, trying to shove his way past the man.

“Watch yourself, Burton,” he said, laying a hand on Cal’s shoulder.

When Cal grabbed the hand and threw it off, I was afraid they were going to start fighting! I’d never seen such a look in Cal’s eyes before, and it scared me.

“Come on, Corrie,” said Cal, taking my hand and pulling me along after him, “let’s get out of here.”

“Who was that man?” I asked once we were away from the bustle of the crowd and walking toward our carriage.

“Nobody—just a troublemaker.”

“I recognized his name when you spoke to him. What was it—I’ve forgotten now.”

“Forget it, Corrie. He’s nobody, I tell you—forget you ever saw him!”

In the expression on Cal’s face, I glimpsed a flash of the look he’d leveled on the man in the crowd. He’d never looked at me like that before, and I didn’t like it. Neither of us spoke again right away. We still had another meeting to attend that afternoon, but there was a chill between us all day. Later that evening, Cal said he had to go someplace. When I next saw him, everything was back to normal. He took me to dinner and was even more charming and flattering than ever.