The Fantastic City

Civil War days in San Francisco were not greatly different, all considered, from the days of other years; the same swift rhythm and bright touch of excitement. Life always had a keen, stark quality which war may quicken in old, quiet places, and the stress and tension did not reach us. There were a few flares of excitement. A few passionate secessionists fell into the tragic mood, and a few friendships were strained. But there was no sharp bitterness of feeling and much of the drama was played lightly.

The only time we really felt the menace of war, I think, was in a brief crisis of uncertainty after news of the firing on Sumter reached us. The news of Sumter's fall came by Pony Express, and was chalked on blackboards in front of newspaper offices while papers were still on the presses. People stood and read it in silence and men discussed it quietly with grave faces. No one was sure of California; there had been much talk of seceding. And no one could know what had transpired in the nine days since our news had left St. Joe. War, of course, but what had happened? Northerners and Southerners alike felt uncertainty and apprehension.

Senator Latham, Thomas Selby, James Otis, and other Northern men held a conference, and a mass meeting of citizens was called. Where Post, Montgomery, and Market Streets conjoin, sand lots and converging streets made a broad, open field for the gathering.

'There may be trouble,' Father told us. 'You had better remain indoors.' Wise counsel, no doubt, but impossible to follow. We had no thought of attending the meeting. Women were not expected. But we drove across Kearney Street to watch the crowds assemble; men, with here and there a woman among them, going down Market and Post Streets, down Commercial and Clay, to turn south on Montgomery; thirty thousand in all, it was said.

From the improvised platform my father watched the crowd's response when orators declaimed on duty to the Union. Apathetic it was, until the young clergyman, Thomas Starr King, spoke. He was eager and impassioned, and his hearers caught the fire of his patriotism. When he ended in a wave of applause, San Francisco, which meant the State, stood for the Federal Government. Flags were unfurled on buildings, and election lithographs of Lincoln were dusted and set in windows. Southerners 'went softly,' Northerners refrained from overbearing patriotism, and a delicate balance of amity was maintained.

Many incidents that might have had tragic significance ended with a touch of comedy, the deportation of Dr. Scott, for example. This beloved pastor of Calvary Church was a secessionist without discretion. On the first Sunday after the news of Sumter, he preached a sermon for the South to a congregation including many Northerners. It was disturbing, possibly dangerous to public peace. Deacons remonstrated. But on the Sunday following, Dr. Scott once more invoked divine blessing on the rebel cause, and a few days later was discovered hung in effigy before his church.

This was naturally very shocking; and since it appeared that Dr. Scott could preach no neutral sermon, his friends decided on drastic measures. On the third Sunday, when the clergyman, still praying for the South, left his pulpit, he was met by several of those high in church affairs and led to a waiting carriage — Mrs. Thomas Selby's barouche. As they drove toward the steamship docks, Dr. Scott learned that he was actually en route to his old home in New Orleans. They placed him on board a Panama steamer, with tickets and provision for the trip, and he departed, protesting, no doubt, but with the good wishes of all concerned. At the close of the war he returned to resume his interrupted pastoral duties at Calvary Church quite as though nothing of any consequence had occurred.

I remember how Lucy Hall waved a rebel flag over the balcony of the Oriental Hotel when Confederate volunteers marched down Market Street on their way to fight for the South. There was no demonstration in the streets. To preserve that delicate balance of amity of which I have spoken, the Governor had forbidden it. But Lucy Hall's fiancé marched with the volunteers. She was a dashing, spirited girl, one of the belles of the Southern set, and when the men passed the Oriental, where she stood on the upper balcony, she leaned far out waving her rebel colors. Not an officer or soldier could salute them and hers was the only flag that waved in defiance of the edict. But she married a Northerner, after all, one of the young engineers who surveyed the Placerville Road.

Some of our friends went to the front. Judge Terry rushed to the scene of hostilities in Texas to fight for the South. General Halleck and Colonel Baker departed to join the Northern army and both gave distinguished service. Colonel Joe Hooker left his fiestas to fight for the Union; and several companies of volunteers. But California's greater contribution was in money, over a million dollars, nearly a million and a half, to the Sanitary Commission for which the entire country subscribed five million dollars.

Many who did not go to the war sent 'bounty men' in their stead. The price paid these hired fighters was anywhere from one to five thousand dollars, and it was an accepted custom to send them until it became deplorably certain that many of them 'jumped their bounty' and never saw service.

We were all going to 'the minstrels' in those days. They were the popular theatrical entertainment of the time with programs changed weekly. Always I thrilled like a child at the circus when the curtain rose to show the line of black faces across the stage and an urbane interlocutor said courteously, 'Gentlemen, be seated.' Songs and patter followed. I can still hear the sonorous tones of one basso-profundo going down to the bed of the ocean when he sang 'Rocked in the Cra-dull of the Deep.' Frillman, I think his name was. Billy Birch was a favorite end man who chanted a parody on a sentimental war song of which the chorus ran:

'Farewell, Mother, you will never
See my name among the slain,
For when I can jump the bounty,
I'll come back to you again.'

Lists of the fallen sometimes held the names of friends or relatives and a few families were in mourning, but the note of gayety in San Francisco was never long silenced. We laughed for days over one fright which, it transpired, was caused by the most delightfully Gilbertian episode.

It was two hours after midnight, one night, when the sound of heavy guns wakened the city. At once every one thought of the Confederate raider Alabama, then being sought in Pacific waters. An attack on the Presidio, we decided, and remained sleepless the rest of the night, although firing ceased after fifteen or twenty minutes. Morning brought the explanation; a peaceful visit of H.M.S. Sutlej, with customary salutes exchanged, customary but untimely. The Sutlej had inadvertently entered port out of hours.

Because of uncertainty as to the Alabama's whereabouts, port orders were that no vessel should enter the Golden Gate between sunset and sunrise, and the Sutlej had sailed from Esquimault before this new regulation was known. That night a lookout stationed on Alcatraz the island fortress at the inner portals of the Golden Gate — had discerned a large ship making her way through the fog into the bay, and immediately reported it. A shot was fired to bring the vessel to. This was ignored and a second shot was sent across her bow. At this the vessel hurriedly raised the United States flag and proceeded to fire a salute of twenty-one guns. She proved to be the friendly Sutlej, with Admiral Kingcome on board.

In return for her salute, the courteous reply of twenty-one guns was in order from Alcatraz. This was given while an alarmed city listened to the supposed bombardment — given all but one gun, as it happened. Only twenty shots were fired, and Captain Connelly of the British ship had kept careful count. He demanded the twenty-first. For some reason it was not forthcoming and the Captain informed the Commandant at Alcatraz that he would remain in port until the final gun of a proper salute was heard. Having so stated, he took his ship to the usual anchorage for British vessels at Sausalito. Next morning, when every one concerned was wide awake, the British ensign was raised with ceremony on Alcatraz and the twenty-first gun of a proper salute was fired. The Sutlej, perfectly satisfied, sailed away an hour later.

Northerners and Southerners in California were alike saddened when General Albert Sidney Johnston fell fighting for the South at Shiloh. He had been commandant of the Department of the Pacific before the war. When he resigned his commission to go to Richmond and enlist in the Confederate Army, he went with the good will of the city, where he had made himself sincerely liked. His loyalty under pressure from secessionists who had formed a plot to seize army posts and munitions in California, in the name of the Confederacy, had won especial admiration. The conspirators sent a committee to call upon the General in his office and request no more than his acquiescence in the plot. His resignation had gone to Washington, but it was a matter of weeks before General McDowell could arrive to relieve him, and meanwhile he was still a commanding officer of the United States Army. Knowing the purpose of the committee, he received it, and spoke first, affirming his allegiance to his uniform until he should be relieved, and a disappointed committee bowed itself out.

After General Johnston departed, Mrs. Johnston and their children went to live with her cousin, Mrs. Tod Robinson, in Powell Street. Mrs. Robinson was a staunch supporter of the rebel cause. She had been Mary Crittenden, of Louisville. Her husband, a lawyer who came West to practice in the new city, had died leaving her with too small an income for her needs, so Mrs. Robinson 'took boarders' in her Powell Street home. It was one of the few ways open to a gentlewoman to earn money. After the war, San Francisco, like the South, blossomed into many boarding-houses run by Southern ladies whose fortunes had gone with the Lost Cause.

Mrs. Robinson was a finely intelligent woman of courage and character who worked indefatigably for the losing cause during the war. She established something like a very limited Red Cross service, raising a fund for the relief of Confederate prisoners in the North. Her son was imprisoned at Rock Island.

One excitement of the war years was furnished by the Chapman Plot hatched by a band of Secessionists who planned to convert the sloop 'Chapman' into a sea raider to prey on Pacific Mail steamers in the name of the Confederacy. One of the conspirators was a nephew of John Bright. Another was a Mexican for whom many boxes of 'farm implements' were loaded on the 'Chapman' addressed to his ranch in Mexico. The 'farm implements' were in reality arms and ammunition. Learning of the plot before the 'Chapman' sailed, the city police boarded her, arrested the conspirators and confiscated the 'farm implements.'

We were all discussing it, and the John Bright nephew when one morning 'The Flag,' a violently patriotic newspaper which flourished briefly, came out with the astounding statement that Mrs. Tod Robinson had been one of the conspirators!

It was a bomb shell in South Park, and in all San Francisco where Mrs. Robinson and her family, dashing Kate Robinson and the Albert Sidney Johnstons, were so well known. Like the McAllisters, Gwins, Friedlanders and other Southern families, they had never forsworn their Northern friendships.

We talked of nothing else while Mrs. Robinson remained in seclusion and made her denials to the proper authorities. One of the conspirators, it developed, had in fact called on her to enlist her help, but to no avail whatever and this had been her only connection with the plot.

In time it all died down but for long afterward there hung a faint halo of martyrdom over Mrs. Robinson's high-held head.

In the last years of the war, there was the excitement of new silver mines in Nevada. A Pony Express rider, idly prospecting in the Washoe country north of Virginia City, had come upon rich lodes, and the rush to the land of the Washoe Indians was on. In San Francisco, interest centered in the new Stock Exchange. Every one speculated in mining shares. A conviction prevailed that gold was gold and silver would remain silver, however the war might end.

Pony Express riders were out of jobs, so to speak, since the telegraph had crossed the Rocky Mountains. Over it flashed the news of Lincoln's assassination and death, and a sense of calamity fell like darkness over the city, as it did over the whole country north of the line. We still had with us the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society of secessionists, and there were many members of the Southern clans whose mourning was perfunctory, but the whole city mourned, nevertheless, and buildings were draped in the cerements of woe. How many yards of black bunting went into the expression of civic sorrow in those days!