GEORGE C. GORHAM.

 

            HE WENT to California with the Argonauts, a boy of perhaps seventeen or eighteen years of age. He was always small, about five feet eight inches in height, fair and slim. In personal appearance he resembled ex-Senator and ex-Secretary of War Chandler of New Hampshire more than any other man that I ever met. He resembled also the picture of Marshall Ney of France.

            He was brighter than any of those around him ; he could write and talk, and, when the occasion required, he could paralyze those near him by his audacity. A sample of this was shown just after he reached Marysville, where he went immediately on his arrival in California.

            He was poor, and had to find something through which to make a living, so in some way obtained an appointment as notary public. Titles were being changed every day and acknowledgments had to be made. In his business he naturally got to know all the city officers. A primitive circus came to town and the manager applied to the sheriff for a license. The sheriff was Mike Gray. He had been a Texan ranger, lieutenant under and close friend of Jack Hayes, the famous one. He was as brave a man as ever lived. A man on the street shot at him while he was seated in a buggy. He jumped from his buggy on the right side of his horse, caught the horse by the bit, swung around the horse's head to the left side, facing the advancing man, who was trying to revolve his pistol, which a broken cap clogged, and, drawing a derringer pistol from his vest pocket, Gray killed the man. That evening a friend asked Gray what other weapons he had, and he replied : "Not a thing." The friend said, "You should not go about that way. You are an officer, dealing with thugs every day, and you should not go around with nothing but a four-inch derringer on." Gray thought a moment and then said: 'That's a fact; there might be more than one of them next time." The idea

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that a single barrel derringer would not be enough for one man never crossed his mind.

            But he was as genial and jolly as he was cool and self-contained. So when the circus man appealed to him for a license he heard his story, then asked him what kind of a circus he had. The man explained. 'It's a good show, is it?" was Gray's next inquiry. The man replied that it was a good little show for California and worth the money. Then Gray asked him how $2,000 for a license would appeal to him.

            The man answered that he could not think of that unless the sheriff would take his circus in part payment. After bantering the poor fellow long enough, Gray said : 'Why, of course the boys will want to see it. Go ahead, and never mind about the license!"

            The man was grateful, and after thanking the sheriff told him to come with his deputies, to announce to the man at the door who he was and who his subordinates were and they would be shown in.

            Gorham heard of this, went to Gray and offered to attend the circus in Gray's stead. When Gray declined the offer, Gorham insisted that he must see that show and could not afford to put up for a ticket. Gray explained that the offer included only himself and his deputies and if he named a little shrimp like George as a deputy, the circus man would know he was lying and put the whole bunch out.

            Gorham was still for a second, then said : 'You don't mind my following your disreputable procession when you go to the circus, do you?' Gray laughingly replied that he had followed a good many tough citizens in his time, and would not mind if one followed him.

            A few days prior to this, Gorham had become a clerk of Stephen J. Field who later became a judge of the Supreme Court of California and later still was for more than thirty years a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

            The day of the circus came and Gorham was at the sheriff's office at the right time. Arriving at the tent, Gray announced himself sheriff and passed in, then was followed by the office sheriff and two or three deputies, and then came Gor-

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ham. He did not pause in his walk, but as he reached the door-keeper, he, in a hoarse whisper, hissed, 'Estoy Secretaris del Alcalde et notarius publico," in his ear and passed in. Once inside, Gray asked him how he made it. Gorham replied : "He let you fellows in because you were just common officials ; when I mentioned my title to him, he thought the Alcalde was my clerk and was overcome by the honor of my presence." Gray said: "Your Spanish must have hit him hard." With a laugh Gorham replied : 'Hard? It was a knockout."

            Justice Field, in his book, tells how Gorham became his clerk, as follows :

            "One clay while I was Alcalde, a bright-looking lad with red cheeks and apparently about seventeen years of age came into the office and asked if I did not want a clerk. I said I did, and would willingly give $200 a month for a good one ; but that I had written to Sacramento and was expecting one from there. The young man suggested that perhaps the one from Sacramento would not come, or might be delayed, and that he would like to take the place in the meanwhile. I replied : Very well, if he was willing to act until the other arrived, he might. Thereupon he took hold and commenced work.

            "Three days afterwards the man from Sacramento arrived, but in the meantime I had become so much pleased with the brightness and quickness of the young clerk that I could not part with him. That young clerk was George C. Gorham, the present (1877) secretary of the Senate. His quickness of comprehension was really wonderful. Give him half an idea of what was wanted and he would complete it, as it were, by intuition. I remember on one occasion he wanted to know what was necessary for a marriage settlement. I asked him why. He replied that he had been employed by a French lady to prepare such a settlement, and was to receive twenty-five dollars for the instrument. I gave him some suggestions, but added that he had better let me see the document after he had written it. In a short time afterwards he brought it to me, and I was astonished to find it nearly perfect. There was only one correction to make. And thus ready I always found him. With the most general directions he would execute

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anything committed to his charge, and usually with perfect correctness.

            "When I went upon the bench of the Supreme Court, I appointed him clerk of the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of California, and with the exception of the period during which he acted as Secretary of Governor Low, he remained as such clerk until he was nominated for the office of Governor of the State."

            The truth is, that Gorham knew more politics than Field and Low combined, and it was Gorham that secured the nomination of Field for Supreme Judge of California, and the nomination of Low for Governor. When he himself was nominated for Governor, he should have been elected and would have been except for two things. When the old Central Pacific Railroad Company obtained its government money subsidy, it will be remembered that when the road should leave the valley and enter the foothills, the subsidy was to be doubled. Well, Gorham went to Washington and had the foothills moved down to within twelve miles of Sacramento. So when he was nominated for Governor, it was charged that he was a railroad candidate.

            Then General Bidwell had just ploughed up his vineyard, and in the temperance move that was then sweeping over California, was nominated for Governor. All the votes he obtained were drawn from Gorham, and the Democratic candidate was elected. California made a mistake. Gorham would have made a most brilliant Governor and one of the most far-sighted and honest Governors the State would ever have had.

            The night after he was nominated, the Republican State central committee called upon him and asked him to write an address to Republican voters, and said they wanted it, if possible, within a week. He bade them be seated, turned to his desk and began to write. Meanwhile his little boy was climbing upon and playing horse on the back of his chair. In forty minutes he gathered up the sheets and, handing them to the chairman, said: 'Publish that; it will answer in a campaign as well as a carefully prepared paper."

            It was perfect, and just exactly covered the case.

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            I think it was Stewart and Nye, senators from Nevada, who obtained his appointment as secretary of the Senate of the United States. He held the office for many years eighteen, I believe and was a walking encyclopedia for that body.

            He was always most courteous, but his quiet criticisms of some bumptious senators were delicious to listen to. He was in full accord with the stalwarts of both parties, but he never liked Sumner. He said, one day, of him: "Why, the old fraud, counting on our ignorance, talks bad Latin in his speeches." He was always a stalwart. There were as many Democrats as Republicans in Marysville, California, in 1861. But when Washington's anniversary came, Gorham procured a large mackerel, and, going into the saloon Eldorado, where many Democrats congregated, he went from one to another and, holding up the mackerel, said: 'Take a whiff of that! From this time on, it is to be the American eagle."

            Had anyone else tried the same thing, he would have been killed.

            I saw Gorham at the Willard in Washington just after a Democrat had succeeded him as secretary of the Senate. He said : "I could have been Governor of California and would have been had not one who was under great obligations to me betrayed me. I might have been Senator. It was offered me, but I put it by for a friend who wanted it more than I did. I have helped a good many friends to get office ; I have enabled a good many other friends to get rich ; I have distributed more than $3,000,000 since I became secretary of the Senate, but my accounts have exactly balanced, and I am off to New York today to begin work to support my little family, and listen ! I do not take a regret with me, for I have done the best I could."

            Later, he wrote the life of Secretary Stanton and performed much other literary work. Some months ago, I heard he was dead, and I said then as I say now, "Poor George, the world will never know how high of soul, how clean and true and great he really was."