Southern California was settled heavily by Southerners and there was a strong secessionist faction in Los Angeles.
California's involvement in the American Civil War included sending gold east, recruiting volunteer combat units to replace Regular forces in territories of the Western United States, maintaining and building numerous camps and fortifications, suppressing secessionist activity and securing the New Mexico Territory against the Confederacy. The State of California did not send its units east, but many citizens traveled east and joined the Union Army there, some of whom became famous. California's Volunteers also conducted many operations against the native peoples within the state and in the other Western territories of the Departments of the Pacific and New Mexico.
Following the Gold Rush California was settled primarily by Midwestern and Southern farmers, miners and businessmen. Democrats dominated the state from its foundation. Southern Democrats sympathetic to secession, although a minority in the state, were a majority in Southern California and Tulare County, and were in large numbers in San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Monterey, and San Francisco counties. California was home for powerful businessmen who played a significant role in Californian politics through their control of mines, shipping, finance, and the Republican Party but were a minority party until the secession crisis.
In the beginning of 1861, as the secession crisis began, the secessionists in San Francisco made an attempt to separate the state and Oregon from the union which failed. Southern California with a majority of discontented Californios and southern secessionists, had already voted for a separate Territorial government, formed militia units but were kept from secession after Fort Sumter by Federal troops drawn from the frontier forts of the District of Oregon, and California, (primarily Fort Tejon and Fort Mojave).
Patriotic fervor swept California after the attack on Fort Sumter providing the manpower for Volunteer Regiments recruited mainly from the pro-Union counties in the north of the State. When the Democratic party split over the war Republican supporters of Lincoln took control of the state in the September elections. Volunteer Regiments were sent to occupy pro-secessionist Southern California and Tulare County leaving them generally powerless during the war itself. However some Southerners traveled east to join the Confederate Army evading Union patrols and hostile Apache. Others remaining in the state, attempted to outfit a privateer to prey on coastal shipping and late in the war two groups of partisan rangers were formed but none were successful.
[edit] From statehood to the Civil War
California State Shield.
When California was admitted as a state under the Compromise of 1850, Californians had already decided it was to be a free state—the constitutional convention of 1849 unanimously abolished slavery. As a result, Southerners in Congress voted against admission in 1850 while Northerners pushed it through, pointing to its population of 93,000 and its vast wealth in gold. Northern California, which was dominated by mining, shipping, and commercial elites of San Francisco, favored becoming a state.
In the 1856 presidential election, California gave its electoral votes to the winner, James Buchanan.
1856 Presidential Candidate Party Home State Popular Vote %
James Buchanan Democrat Pennsylvania 53,342 48.4
Millard Fillmore Whig New York 36,195 32.8
John Fremont Republican California 20,704 18.8
[edit] Southern California's attempts at secession from California
Following California's admission to the Union, Californios (dissatisfied with inequitable taxes and land laws) and pro-slavery Southerners in lightly populated, rural Southern California attempted three times in the 1850s to achieve a separate statehood or territorial status separate from Northern California. The last attempt, the Pico Act of 1859, was passed by the California State Legislature, signed by the State governor John B. Weller, approved overwhelmingly by voters in the proposed Territory of Colorado and sent to Washington, D.C. with a strong advocate in Senator Milton Latham. However the secession crisis following the election of Lincoln in 1860 led to the proposal never coming to a vote.[1][2]
In 1860 California gave a small plurality of 38,733 votes to Abraham Lincoln, whose 32% of the total vote was enough to win all its electoral votes; 68% voted for the other three candidates.[3][4]
1860 Presidential Candidate Party Popular Vote %
Abraham Lincoln Republican 38,733 32.3
Stephen A. Douglas Northern Democrat 37,999 31.7
John C. Breckinridge Southern Democrat 33,969 28.3
John Bell Constitutional Union 9,111 7.6
[edit] Secession Crisis in California
During the secession crisis following Lincoln's election, Federal troops were under the command of Colonel (Brevet Brigadier General) Albert Sidney Johnston, in Benicia, headquarters of the Department of the Pacific. General Johnston strongly believed that the South represented the cause of freedom, and traditional American democracy of popular sovereignty. A group of Southern sympathizers in the state made plans to secede with Oregon to form a "Pacific Republic". Their plans rested on the cooperation of General Johnston. Johnston understood this, and met with the men, but he declined saying he had sworn an oath to defend the Union, and although he believed that Lincoln had violated and destroyed the Constitution holding the Union together,[dubious – discuss] he would not go against his word. Thus the plans for California and Oregon to secede from the United States never came to fruition. Brig. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner was sent west to replace Johnston in March 1861. Johnston soon resigned his commission April 9, and after Sumner arrived April 25, moved to Los Angeles.
As the secession crisis developed in early 1861, several Volunteer Companies of the California Militia[5][6] had disbanded because of divided loyalties and new ones were sworn in across the state under the supervision of County sheriffs and judges. Many of these units saw no action but some were to form the companies of the earliest California Volunteer regiments. Others like the Petaluma Guard and Emmet Rifles in Sonoma County suppressed a secessionist disturbance in Healdsburg,[7] in 1862. Union commanders relied on the San Bernardino Mounted Rifles and their Captain Clarence E. Bennett[8] for intelligence and help to hold the pro-southern San Bernardino County for the Union in late 1861 as Federal troops were being withdrawn and replaced by California Volunteers.
Notable as the only pro-Southern militia unit, the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles was organized on March 7, 1861, in Los Angeles County. It included more than a few Californios in its leadership and its ranks, including the County Sheriff Tomas Avila Sanchez, one of his Undersheriffs and several of his deputies. A. J. King another Undersheriff of Los Angeles County (and former member of the earlier "Monte Rangers"[9] and other influential men in El Monte, formed another secessionist militia the Monte Mounted Rifles on March 23, 1861. However, A. J. King soon ran afoul of Federal authorities.[10] According to the Sacramento Union of April 30, 1861 King was brought before Colonel Carleton and was made to take an oath of allegiance to the Union and was then released. On April 26, 1861, the Monte Mounted Rifles had asked Governor Downey for arms. The governor sent the arms, but army officers at San Pedro held them up preventing the activation of the Monte Mounted Rifles.[11]
On March 28, 1861, the newly formed Arizona Territory voted to separate from New Mexico Territory and join the Confederacy. This had increased Union officials' fears of a secessionist design to separate Southern California from the state and join the Confederacy. This fear was based on the demonstrated desire for separation in the vote for the Pico Act, the strength of secessionists in the area and their declared intentions and activities especially in forming militia companies.
[edit] Outbreak of the Civil War
Bear Flag flown by Southern California secessionists
The J. P. Gillis Flag
Digital reproduction of the Gillis Flag
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Southern California secession seemed possible; the populace was largely in favor of it, militias with secessionist sympathies had been formed, Bear Flags, the banner of the Bear Flag Revolt, had been flown for several months by secessionists in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.[12] After word of the Battle of Fort Sumter reached California, there were public demonstrations by secessionists. However secession quickly became impossible when three companies of Federal cavalry were moved from Fort Mojave and Fort Tejon into Los Angeles in May and June 1861. Suspected by local union authorities, General Johnston evaded arrest and joined the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles as a private, leaving Warner's Ranch May 27 in their trek across the southwestern deserts to Texas, crossing the Colorado River into the Confederate Territory of Arizona, on July 4, 1861. The Los Angeles Mounted Rifles disbanded and members joined the Confederate Army when they reached the Arizona Territorial capital of Mesilla (now in New Mexico). Like other pro-Confederates leaving California for the Confederacy, the volunteers joined up principally with Texas regiments. General Johnston joined the fight in the east as a general with the Confederacy and was later killed leading their army at the Battle of Shiloh.
The only Confederate flag captured in California during the Civil War took place on July 4, 1861, in Sacramento. During Independence Day celebrations, secessionist Major J. P. Gillis celebrated the independence of the United States from Britain as well as the southern states from the Union. He unfurled a Confederate flag of his own design and proceeded to march down the street to both the applause and jeers of onlookers. Jack Biderman and Curtis Clark, enraged by Gillis' actions, accosted him and "captured" the flag.[13] The flag itself is based on the first Confederate flag, the Stars and Bars. However, the canton contains seventeen stars rather than the Confederate's seven. Because the flag was captured by Jack Biderman, it is often also referred to as the "Biderman Flag".
As he was recalling Federal troops to the east, on July 24, 1861, the Secretary of War called on the Governor John G. Downey, to furnish one regiment of infantry and five companies of cavalry to guard the overland mail route from Carson City to Salt Lake City. Three weeks later four more regiments of infantry and a regiment of cavalry were requested. All of these were volunteers units recruited and organized in the northern part of the state, around the San Francisco Bay region and the mining camps, few recruits came from Southern California. These volunteers replaced the regular troops transferred to the east before the end of 1861.
Charged with all the supervision of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Santa Barbara Counties, on August 14, 1861, Major William Scott Ketchum steamed from San Francisco to San Pedro and made a rapid march to encamp near San Bernardino on August 26 and with Companies D and G of the 4th Infantry Regiment later reinforced at the beginning of September by a detachment of ninety First U.S. Dragoons and a howitzer. Except for frequent sniping at his camp, Ketchum's garrison stifled any secessionist uprising from Belleville and a show of force by the Dragoons in the streets of San Bernardino at the end of election day quelled a secessionist political demonstration during the September gubernatorial elections in San Bernardino County.[14][15]
Thereafter, with the Democrats split over the war, the first Republican governor of California was elected, Leland Stanford, a powerful tycoon from the Northeast, on September 4, 1861.[16]
1861 Gubernatorial Candidate Party Popular Vote %
Leland Stanford Republican 56,056 46.4
John R. McConnell Southern Democrat 33,750 28.0
John Conness Northern Democrat 30,944 25.6
Following the elections on September 7, there was a gunfight resulting from a robbery of travelers to Holcomb Valley and Bear Valley on the pack trail in the Upper Santa Ana Canyon where the Santa Ana River runs out of the San Bernardino Mountains. It was suspected that secessionists had been the culprits, doing the robbery as part of a larger plan of robberies in the valleys of Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. However, no such plan materialized.[17]
[edit] Civil War Conflicts within California
[edit] Securing Southern California
As the California Volunteer regiments formed some were sent south with Colonel George Wright, commanding officer of the District of Southern California. He was to replace the Federal troops in Los Angeles, gathered there to prevent a rising by the numerous secessionist sympathizers in Southern California. In October 1861, Wright was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers and placed in command of the Department of the Pacific, replacing Sumner who had recommended Wright as his replacement. Colonel James Henry Carleton of the 1st California Volunteer Infantry Regiment replaced Wright as commander in the south. Detachments were soon sent out by Carleton to San Bernardino and San Diego Counties to secure them for the Union and prevent the movement of men and weapons eastward to the Confederacy.
One of the earliest conflicts related to the Civil War in California occurred on November 29, 1861, at Minter Ranch, in the hills just south and west of the San Jose Valley, where Warner's Ranch and the military post of Camp Wright[18] was located. Dan Showalter's party of secessionists like some others were attempting to avoid the post and make their way across the desert to join the Confederate Army in Texas. They were pursued from Temecula by a Volunteer Cavalry patrol from the Camp, intercepted and captured without shots being fired. Later after being imprisoned at Fort Yuma, Showalter and the others were released after swearing loyalty to the Union, but they made their way to the Confederacy later.[19]
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)