California in the American Civil War

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 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.[2][3][4]

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.[5][6]

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 in the Southern right to secede but regretted that it was occurring. A group of Southern sympathizers in the state made plans to secede with Oregon to form a "Pacific Republic". The success of their plans rested on the cooperation of General Johnston. Johnston met with some of these Southern men, but before they could propose anything to him he told them that he had heard rumors of an attempt to seize the San Francisco forts and arsenal at Benicia, that he had prepared for that and would defend the facilities under his command with all his resources and to the last drop of his blood. He told them to tell this to their Southern friends.[7]

Meanwhile, Union men feared Johnston would aid such a plot and communicated their fears to Washington asking for his replacement. Brig. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner was soon sent west via Panama to replace Johnston in May 1861. Johnston resigned his commission on May 31, and after Sumner arrived turned over his command and moved with his family to Los Angeles. He would soon travel with other Southerners across New Mexico Territory to Texas and become commander of the Confederacy's western armies. He died at the Battle of Shiloh.

As the secession crisis developed in early 1861, several Volunteer Companies of the California Militia[8][9] had disbanded because of divided loyalties and new pro-Union 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,[10] in 1862. Union commanders relied on the San Bernardino Mounted Rifles and their Captain Clarence E. Bennett[11] 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 successfully formed 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. Its leader was one of his Undersheriffs Alonzo Ridley and included several of his deputies.[12]

A. J. King, another Undersheriff of Los Angeles County (and former member of the earlier "Monte Rangers"),[13] 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. 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.[14]

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.

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, and Bear Flags, the banner of the Bear Flag Revolt, had been flown for several months by secessionists in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.[15] 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 to Camp Fitzgerald in Los Angeles in May and June 1861.

Suspected by local Union authorities, General Johnston evaded arrest and with Lewis Armistead joined the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles as a private. Leaving Warner's Ranch on May 27, they journeyed 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 shortly after they reached the Confederate Arizona Territorial capital of Mesilla (in what was then part of the United States' New Mexico Territory and is now New Mexico). Like other pro-Confederates leaving California for the Confederacy, the Rifles joined up principally with Texas regiments. However 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. Armistead died leading Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.

The only capture of a Confederate flag in California during the Civil War took place on July 4, 1861, in Sacramento. During Independence Day celebrations, secessionist Major George P. Gilliss, an engineer and Mexican War veteran, 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 Gilliss' actions, accosted him and "captured" the flag.[16] The flag itself is based on the First National flag of the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars. However, the canton contains seventeen stars rather than the Confederate's seven.[17] Because the flag was captured by Jack Biderman, it is often also referred to as the "Biderman Flag".

California (along with Oregon and Kansas) was not included in the initial callup of 75,000 militia due to its vast distance from the rest of the country. It was only later, as he was recalling Federal troops to the east, on July 24, 1861, the Secretary of War called on 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 volunteer units recruited and organized in the counties of the northern part of the state, especially around San Francisco Bay region and the mining camps in counties in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains; few recruits came from the counties of 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.[18]

Thereafter, with the Democrats split over the war, the first Republican governor of California, Leland Stanford, was elected on September 4, 1861.[19]

Following the elections on September 7, there was a gunfight resulting from a robbery of travelers to Bear Valley and Holcomb 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 by Union men 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.[20]

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, horses 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[21] 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.[22]

New Camp Carleton was established on March 22, 1862, near El Monte; its garrison was to keep an eye on that hotbed of secessionist sympathies. On April 10, 1862, as the United States Marshal for Southern California, Henry D. Barrows, wrote to the commander of Union Army Department of the Pacific in San Francisco, complaining of anti-Union sentiment in Southern California. The letter says such sentiment "permeates society here among both the high and the low", and reports:

A. J. King, under-sheriff of this county, who has been a bitter secessionist, who said to me that he owed no allegiance to the United States Government; that Jeff Davis's was the only constitutional government we had, and that he remained here because he could do more harm to the enemies of that Government by staying here than going there; brought down on the Senator (a steam ship) Tuesday last a large lithograph gilt-framed portrait of Beauregard, the rebel general, which he flaunted before a large crowd at the hotel when he arrived. I induced Colonel Carleton to have him arrested as one of the many dangerous secessionists living in our midst, and to-day he was taken to Camp Drum. He was accompanied by General Volney E. Howard as counsel, and I have but little hope that he will be retained in custody.[23]

During and after the 1862 Confederate New Mexico Campaign, no rising against Union control occurred in the state. However, in the following years some attempts were made by the Confederate navy to seize gold and silver for the Confederacy.

In 1863, Asbury Harpending, after traveling secretly to Richmond to obtain a letter of marque, joined with other California members of the Knights of the Golden Circle in San Francisco to outfit the schooner J. M. Chapman as a Confederate privateer in San Francisco Bay. Their object was to raid commerce on the Pacific coast carrying gold and silver shipments, to capture and carry it back to support the Confederacy. Their attempt was detected and they were seized on March 15, during the night of their intended departure, by the USS Cyane, revenue officers and San Francisco police.[24][25]

In spring of 1864, the Confederate navy ordered Captain Thomas Egenton Hogg and his command to take passage on board a coastal steamer in Panama City, seize her on the high seas, arm her and attack the Pacific Mail steamers and the whalers in the North Pacific. In Havana, the American consul, Thomas Savage, learned about this conspiracy, and notified Rear Admiral George F. Pearson at Panama City. The Admiral had the passengers boarding the steamers at Panama City watched and when Hogg's command was found aboard the Panama Railroad steamer Salvador, a force from the USS Lancaster arrested them and brought them to San Francisco. Tried by a military commission, they were sentenced to be hanged, but General Irvin McDowell commuted their sentences. To prevent any further attempts to seize Pacific coast shipping, General McDowell ordered each passenger on board American merchant steamers to surrender all weapons when boarding the ship and every passenger and his baggage was searched. All officers were armed for the protection of their ships.[26][27]

Late in the war, local secessionists in California made attempts to seize gold and silver for the Confederacy. In early 1864, Rufus Henry Ingram, formerly with Quantrill's Raiders, arrived in Santa Clara County and with Tom Poole (formerly a member of the crew of the J. M. Chapman), organized local Knights of the Golden Circle and commanded them in what became known as Captain Ingram's Partisan Rangers. In the Bullion Bend Robbery they robbed two stagecoaches near Placerville of their silver and gold, leaving a letter explaining they were not bandits but carrying out a military operation to raise funds for the Confederacy.[28]

Also in early 1864, secessionist Judge George Gordon Belt, a rancher and former alcalde in Stockton, organized a group of partisan rangers including John Mason and "Jim Henry" and sent them out to recruit more men and pillage the property of Union men in the countryside. For the next two years the Mason Henry Gang, as they became known, posed as Confederate partisan rangers but acted as outlaws, committing robberies, thefts and murders in the southern San Joaquin Valley, Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, Santa Clara County, and in counties of Southern California.[29] However, despite all these efforts no captured gold was sent to the Confederacy.

In July 1864, with many Douglas Democrats having deserted their party over the war, the remaining Democrats formed a fusion party behind the former governor John G. Downey, opposed to continuation of the war, emancipation, the arrest of civilians by the military, the suppression of free speech and of the press and racial equality. The result in the September election was a second Republican governor of California, Frederick F. Low.[19]

Lincoln won the 1864 election with almost 59% in California.[30]

• Orton, Brigadier General Richard H. (1890). The Records of California Men in the War of the Rebellion. Adjutant-General of California.
• Official Army Register of Volunteer Force of U.S. Army for Years 1861–1865. (8 parts). Part 7 – Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, California, Kansas, Oregon, Nevada Listing of military units, with officers by rank or position; and individual deaths, promotions, transfers, desertions, missing personnel, discharges; battles; enlisted men who received medals of honor. Alphabetical index in back. United States, War Department. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 1865.
• Personal Name Index to the Records of California Men in the War of the rebellion, 1861 to 1867. Gale Research Co., Detroit, Michigan. 1978.
• The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies, Volume 27, Part 1, CHAPTER LXII. Operations on the Pacific Coast, January 1,1861 — June 30, 1862, United States. War Dept.
• The War of the Rebellion: Volume 35, Part 1, CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST FROM JULY 1, 1862, TO JUNE 30, 1865. By United States. War Dept, Robert Nicholson Scott, Henry Martyn WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1897
• Records of California men in the war of the rebellion 1861 to 1867 By California. Adjutant General's Office, SACRAMENTO: State Office, J. D. Young, Supt. State Printing. 1890.