LELAND STANFORD.

 

            A STRONG man, well educated, clear-brained, brave, ambitious, generous, trained to business in the eastern states, caught by the lure of the golden west. In the spring of 1852, when twenty-eight years of age, he started across the continent driving his own team, and reached California in the late summer. A remark that he made to his wife on that journey showed what direction his ideas were taking. She was deploring the hardships and weariness of the long journey when he said: "Never mind, I will build a railroad one of these days for you to go back on." If we are not mistaken, his first venture was to open a miners' store at Alleghany City, to supply the placer miners in that vicinity. He was successful and later moved to Sacramento to engage in the mercantile business. His ability and character soon attracted attention.

            From the first organization of the Republican party in California he was a Republican. It required some nerve to be a Republican in those days in California; for the Democrats were in full control and were very aggressive. As a rule the Democrats from the southern states were at the helm- -for southern men cling together better than northern men, to them the word Republican was the same as abolitionist, and it was with mingled wrath and contempt that they always referred to either. More than once even Col. E. D. Baker, matchless orator that he was, was assailed, when he essayed to speak, with stale eggs and anathemas. Through that Leland Stanford was open in the defense of what he held to be right, and no combine could cow him or daunt his nerve. In those hot years he made a state reputation, though in a party that was hopelessly in the minority.

            The Democratic party, after a while, divided, those from the south clinging to the Buchanan platform, those generally from the north following the lines marked out by Stephen A. Douglas, but this only intensified the bitterness. But after

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the Douglas and Lincoln debates in 1858, there began to come a change in the sentiments of men, and when Senator Broderick was killed in the duel with Judge Terry and the genial, gentle Ferguson was killed in a duel with Perm Johnson, the Republicans in California grew more and more aggressive, thousands of old-time whigs joined their ranks and in 1860 they elected Stanford governor. He was an able executive, and had not the plans of the Democrats miscarried there would have been civil war in California ; and we believe that Stanford would have met the crisis in the same spirit that two or three of the war governors of the east did.

            It was understood that most of the arms in the state were in the fortress of Alcatraz, and General Albert Sidney Johnston was in command. Southern men were secretly drilling and planning, their hope being that Johnston would do what Twiggs had done in Texas.

            We think it was McClatchy, the owner of the Sacramento Bee, who sent the secret, dispatch to Washington informing the government of the imminent danger. General Sumner was sent half disguised to supercede Johnston; the steamer with him on board ran to Alcatraz before going to her wharf. Johnston met Sumner at the landing and at Sumner's demand turned the command over to him. Our idea is that though Albert Sidney Johnston was in full sympathy with the southern cause ; though when relieved of his command of Alcatraz he at once resigned his federal commission, crossed the plains by the southern route and at once entered the service of the confederacy; he never would have given up Alcatraz while filling that trust under the government, for away back in the Mexican war General Worth was asked who most nearly filled his ideas of a perfect soldier, and he replied : "Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston."

            Stanford was governor from 1861 to 1863. In the meantime the building of the old Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads had been inaugurated and Stanford was made president of the former company. Theodore Judah was the engineer who had made the preliminary surveys over the Sierras and declared the building of the road practical. He wanted to

22        AS I REMEMBER THEM.

build it over the present route of the Western Pacific, up the north fork of Feather River, but was overruled; the argument used at the time by the "big four" -Huntington, Hopkins, Crocker and Stanford was that with sufficient help from adjacent counties, from San Francisco and a possible subsidy from the government, it might be possible to push the road as high up as Dutch Flat, where it would connect with the company's wagon road to Truckee, and if the Comstock mines held up for two or three years, between the railroad and the toll road, they could all make little fortunes of $200,000 or $300,000 each. And let no one imagine that their thoughts were narrow, for they were broader than any other set of men east or west.

            The matter was put in the hands of Senator A. A. Sargent of California to see what could be obtained from Congress.

            The war was on ; there was much anxiety about California and Nevada, for they were supplying the gold and silver which was the leaven of the nation's finances, and the two roads -- the Union and Central -- were given their charters and immense subsidies, as much to conciliate and hold the west solid for the Union as were the possible advantages which would come in a material way could the road be finished. The work clone by Senator Sargent in that connection was superb; years after the road was completed Mark Hopkins, in a public speech, declared that it was Sargent who made the building of the road possible; that the company was anxious to reward him, but he

would take nothing.

            Let no one discount the magnitude or majesty of that enterprise. There had been nothing more gigantic undertaken in our country. There have been other roads since ; there have been finer ships to cross the Atlantic than the little caravels of Columbus, but those caravels crossed first. Even when the locomotives touched noses at Promontory, there were tens of thousands of business men who said: "Yes, the road is finished after a fashion, but who is going to make it pay?"

            The company made it pay, but some of its methods were very tough. Some of its charges were outrageous ; in a little while the company became the controlling force in Cali-

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fornia politics. It directed who should be elected senators, who legislators, who judges; it crushed newspapers that opposed its methods and founded others to fight its battles.

            This must often have clashed with Leland Stanford's ideas of justice, but he in those days filled exactly the Lady Macbeth idea -- what he did highly he wanted to do holily, did not want to play false, but yet was willing to wrongly win. The company's treatment of the Sacramento Union was no more honorable and much less brave than that of buccaneers. The railroad ceased to be a common carrier in its hands and from the first was held as a private snap.

            But Stanford performed a thousand generous acts in those days; helped many a struggling enterprise; even in his play he was greatly improving the stock of horses in this coun- try, and he had an ambition to establish the greatest vineyard in the world.

            He was in truth a mighty power in California ; it is a lasting pity that he could not have seen his opportunity and make for himself a name most revered on this coast. As it was, when his railroad company was much anathematized, Governor Stanford was sincerely revered.

            But when his faculties began to break a little a change came over him. He began to crave flattery more and more, and took up the belief that the men of California were most ungrateful and intent upon robbing him, who had, in his own thought, been so unselfishly their benefactor. His conscience was his compass, but he was sometimes careless about having the compass adjusted before sailing.

            In those days he did one act which later must have filled his soul with remorse, and it caused him to break the warm friendship which had so long existed between him and his partner, C. P. Huntington. A. A. Sargent wanted to be elected United States senator. Huntington was eager for his election, but a bee was in Stanford's bonnet. He seemed to think he wanted the place; that it would crown his career of success, and with his power and the help of the sycophants by whom he was surrounded, he defeated the man who had made all his great triumphs possible.

24 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

            He was never at home in the senate; the four years he spent there must have been wearisome years to him -- Dead Sea apples that turned to ashes on his lips.

            The death of his son was a blow from which he never rallied. To him there never was a son like his he never could understand the justice of his taking off. He had compelled everything to go his way for twenty years ; he thought there was nothing he could not do or hire done, but when the boy sickened and grew worse and he could not command the means to ward off death, he realized at last that money was not almighty and that his imperious voice had nothing that could insure him, or his, one moment of time. He founded the great university in his son's name, and it will perpetuate both their names, for the halo that gathers over a great educational institution, as the years and centuries ebb and flow, after a while covers every scar on the character of its founder ; it covers the seams of age after a while, and we can imagine in the distant years a great picture taking form in that institution, a radiant boy with his wand of gold pointing joyously up to the golden height whereon immortal names are inscribed in letters of everlasting light ; and in the background a grave woman and man sitting gazing there, as they were wont to here, upon the enthusiastic boy and smiling softly as though thinking how rugged was the trail up which they climbed until beyond the folding doors of death they found Elysian fields.