THE SACRAMENTO UNION.

 

            THERE are times when the tangible work of men is made to shine out in a form which is a splendor, though the men lose their individual personality in performing that work, and the work itself takes on a personality of its own.

            Anthony, Morrill and Larkin, I believe, founded the Sacramento Union. Larkin was a trained newspaper man, and we have heard that Anthony and Morrill were in youth compositors, but of this we are not sure. But they awakened a voice in California, that had tones in it which early attracted attention. And that voice kept sounding on and on with ever-increasing volume and power through all the formative years in the life of California, until at last it became an enchantment. I have no knowledge of any other such journal as the Sacramento Union between the years 1854 and 1865.

            I know of no journal that had the same influence upon the public. Most of those years were stormy years in California. The admission of California as a free state, greatly incensed the men of the old slave states who leaned upon John C. Calhoun as their ideal of both high manhood and profound statesmanship. Though the convention that framed the first constitution of California contained a majority of southern men, when the question of slavery or freedom for the state came up, with but one dissenting vote, the state was consecrated to freedom forever.

            When the news of this reached Washington, and the constitution was presented with the appeal for admission into the Union, Mr. Calhoun led the opposition to admission with a kind of fury. It was his last fight. He rose from what may be called his dying bed to wage it, which gave it a pathos that touched many southern hearts.

            The question hung in the balance for several weeks. But at last the new state was admitted, and my belief has always been that it was then that secession was determined upon, that

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preparations for it began then, and the only waiting thereafter was for some event on which a plausible excuse could be formulated, on which to precipitate the crisis. And though the constitution had been ratified by the men of the Golden State, as a rule the "Chivalry' wing of the southern men in that state endorsed the position of the southern leaders in the east, and politics became stormy in California at once.

            Then, too, the old Whig party was disintegrating. The Democratic party at last was rent in twain ; the extreme southern men flocked by themselves, and of the old Whigs a part joined the northern Democrats, while a few formed a nucleus of a California Republican party corresponding with the Republican party that had been launched in the east.

            In the meantime, the Sacramento Union had drawn to it the enthusiastic support and affection of all northern California. It was an independent journal and discussed all questions with perfect candor and without fear. In the early fifties there were many camps in California so high in the Sierras that they were only reached by trails, and in others the roads were blocked for several months each winter by snow. To these only the express companies carried communications often in winter on snow shoes. They charged 25 cents to deliver a newspaper. Often -- and often in many a one of those camps -- when the express arrived, all that was brought was a package of letters and a great roll of Sacramento Unions. The miners called the paper their bible. That hold the paper never lost, up to the closing of the Civil war.

            It was conducted with a judgment and ability which no other journal in the state could command, and then there was a charm about it which drew men irresistibly to it. It was always optimistic about California ; while glorying in the present it was always pointing to the higher destiny which it must attain and all the time it was as broad as the Republic itself, while it met every local question, commercial, social, or political, with the directness of intuition and the full grace of inspiration. During the two or three stormy years preceding the outbreak of the rebellion, it was most masterful in shaping public opinion, and when the war burst upon the country, "one

THE SACRAMENTO UNION. 81

blast upon that bugle horn was worth a thousand men" every morning.

            At that time, a gentleman named Watson was the editor- in-chief. I never saw him, but was told at the time that he possessed an almost supernatural intellect, but was a slave to strong drink. However that may be, there were no such editorials as his published in any paper, east or west. As the war clouds grew darker and darker, those editorials grew more commanding and incisive every morning and at the same time there was a beauty about them that kindled in men's hearts and souls a zealous patriotism not to be measured. I do not know that the paper held California in the Union, but I am sure that had there been such a journal on the other side, it would have carried the state out, or at least made of it a battle ground that would have left it as badly scarred as was Virginia.

            The men who conducted the paper were never known to thousands of its readers, but the journal itself became a distinct personality to them ; they thought of it as something with a mind all masterful, with a voice which to them was sweeter than a woman's.

            When the war was over, it took up the works of peace. It had for years been the advocate of the transcontinental railroad, and with the close of the war it renewed its labors for that enterprise and was a marvelous help to its projectors and builders.

            But when the road made the connection with the Union Pacific at Promontory in 1869, and the policy of its builders became fully understood, the Union called a halt upon them.

            It had given all its support to Leland Stanford when he was a candidate for governor and through his administration ; it had given the great enterprise its masterful support, but when its owners and managers began to use it as merely an instrument for their own aggrandizement, and worse, when they entered politics and dictated who should and who should not hold the offices, the Union turned upon them with a vehemence that they could not endure. The company established a paper modeled exactly after the Union in size, type, paper and make-up, engaged brilliant men to conduct it, and closed their

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cars against the Union. In the meantime, the company had built the inside road to Los Angeles and San Diego and branch roads in every direction. It forbade the paper on the cars, closed every possible avenue against the great journal and finally reduced it below the paying point and forced the owners to sell for a pittance, when it was merged with the railroad paper and became the Record-Union.

            Its death was simply the result of a hired and premeditated assassination and it was killed by the money and power it had so ably aided the railroad owners to accumulate.

            But the cowardly methods by which its death was compassed, can never take from it the splendor of the fame which it created for itself. It was more to California for fifteen years after the admission of the state into the Union than any other single agency; California never realized how much it owed to it, and never can make good that debt. But the graves of the old owners and editors of it should be hallowed ground in the Golden State, and be marked in such a way that Californians to the last generation should be taught to revere it.

            And could all the journalism in any state be modeled after the Sacramento Union as it was from 1856 to 1865, there would be no question of what the ruling power in that state would be. It would be the mouthpiece of the people ; their reliance, they would know that it was not controlled by any commercial considerations; no selfish ambition; that a just cause would always find in it a champion; that all the gold that could be offered could never induce it to further an unjust scheme or dishonest measure ; that while working for a livelihood it was at the same time working for everything of good and against everything of evil, and that the people's weal and the state's progress were ever uppermost in its thought, and so the people's hearts would be enlisted, and it would become to them both a protector and an inspiration.