Cover: The California Gold Rush, 1st Edition by Andrew C. Isenberg

The California Gold Rush

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First  Edition©2018  Andrew C. Isenberg

ISBN:9781319068585

ISBN:9781457671647

About

By 1850 California was no longer just a provence of Mexico, it was part of the United States, producing one-third of the worlds gold. What happened next was a period in history remembered more romantically than it actually was. Presented within its social and enviornmental consequences, California Gold Rush breaks down the controversies and paradoxes that dotted this time period in history. Few prospectors made it rich, violence ran rampant, and mining took a severe toll on the enviornment. See the Gold Rush from all sides in order to better comprehend the impact of this piece of our countrys history.

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Maps

PART ONE

Introduction: Race, Property, and the California Gold Rush

Before the Gold Rush

The Gold Rush

After the Gold Rush

The Gold Rush in Historical Memory

PART TWO

The Documents

1. Discovery

1. Azariah Smith, The Gold Discovery Journal, 1848

2. William T. Sherman, Memoirs, 1875

3. Colonel Richard Mason, Letter to Brigadier General R. Jones, August 17, 1848

4. Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp, The Shirley Letters from the California Mines, 1851-52

5. Joseph Pownall, Letter to Dr. O. C. Pownall, May 1850

6. Joseph B. Chaffee, Letters to his Parents in Binghampton, New York, 1850-1851

2. Cities

7. Elisha Oscar Crosby, Memoirs

8. Daily Alta California, Terrible Riot at Sacramento, August 15, 1850

9. Charles Robinson, The Sacramento Riot, 1892

10. John Frederick Morse, History of Sacramento, 1853

11. Henry A. Parker, Letters to his Mother, 1852-1853

12. Lell Hawley Wooley, California, 1849-1913, 1913

3. The National and Transnational Contexts of the Gold Rush

13. California Constitutional Convention, Debates, 1849

14. San Francisco Bulletin, Stovall v. Archy, February 13, 1858

15. Vicente Pérez Rosales, Times Gone By, 1882

16. Edward Hargraves, Australia and Its Gold Fields, 1855

17. John T. Know, Letter to the Sacramento Daily Union, May 31, 1858

4. Californios

18. Richard Henry Dana, Two Years before the Mast, 1840

19. Edwin Bryant, What I Saw in California, 1848

20. John S. Hittell, Mexican Land-Claims in California, April 1858

21. Cave Johnson Couts, Abel Stearns, and Charles Robinson, Letters, 1852-1857

22. Juan Bandini, Last Will and Testament, 1859

5. Natives

23. Isaac Perkins, Letter to Daniel Perkins, January 30, 1851

24. George Gibbs, J.A. Whaley, C. Woodford, J.W. Holt, Chas. Liscom, R. Wiley, and Edw. Kingwood, To the Governor of California, June 27, 1852

25. Stephen Powers, The Chi-mal’-a-kwe, 1877

26. Bret Harte, Indiscriminate Massacre of Indians: Women and Children Butchered, February 29, 1860

6. Chinese

27. Norman Asing (Sang Yuen), To His Excellency Gov. Bigler, May 5, 1852

28. Humboldt Times, Anti-Coolie Association, January 25, 1862

29. Mark Twain, Roughing It, 1872

30. Chinese Exclusion Act, May 6, 1882

7. Chinese

31. John H. Eagle, To his Wife, Margaret H. Eagle, April 10, 1852

32. John Thompson Kincade, Letters to James Kincade, 1850-1871

33. Sacramento Daily Union, Hydraulic Mining, July 11, 1854

34. William Wells, The Quicksilver Mines of New Almaden, California, June 1863

35. Hamilton Smith, Jr., Circular Letter to Hydraulic Miners, 1876

36. Appendix to the Journals of the Senate and Assembly of the 22nd Session of the Legislature of the State of California, Testimony Taken by the Committee on Mining Debris, as Reported to the Assembly," 22nd Sess. , 1877-1878

37. Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Co., January 7, 1884

8. Reflections

38. Charles Howard Shinn, Mining Camps: A Study in American Frontier Government, 1884

39. Josiah Royce, California, from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco: A Study of American Character, 1886

40. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 1890

APPENDIXES

A Chronology of the California Gold Rush (1572 – 1885)

Questions for Consideration

Selected Bibliography

Index

Andrew C. Isenberg

Andrew C. Isenberg received his B.A. from St.Olaf College and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He teaches the history of the American West, borderlands history, and environmental history as Professor of History at Temple University. He is the author of Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life; Mining California: An Ecological History; and The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920. He has also edited two volumes of collected essays: The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History and The Nature of Cities: Culture Landscape, and Urban Space.

Andrew C. Isenberg is the author of Mining California: An Ecological History (Hill and Wang, 2005) and The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 and the editor of The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape, and Urban Space. He is a historian at Temple University and lives in Penn Valley, PA.