hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

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290 PERIOD OF CIVIL WAR.
of 1861-2 for several months, but finally liberated,
representation being made to General Wright by
Showalter that the incriminating letters and papers
upon which the arrests had been made were known to
him alone, and that there was no organization, as had
been believed, of recruits for the southern confederacy,
but merely an accidental meeting of persons travelling
in the same direction. Showalter, at least, made use
of his liberty to join the confederate army. Pass-
ports were afterward required to be granted by the
commander of the department before travellers could
pass the frontier of California in the direction of
Texas. The conduct of certain army officers in
Arizona, and a rumor that secessionists under Van
Dorn were marching upon California led Sumner in
the early part of September 1861 to publish a general
order: "No federal troops in this department of
the Pacific will ever surrender to rebels;" which
laconic hint was not disregarded by plotters in and
out of the state.
With military encampments on every hand for the
training of the state and volunteer troops, California
developed a readiness in the pursuit of war which
could not have been expected of a community seemingly
devoted to mining, commerce, and agriculture.
That portion of the people heretofore engaged ih
managing the politics of the state found their occupation
gone and their power passed away. They were
unable to elect more than a small minority to the
legislature, and the state and federal offices had slipped
from their grasp. The death of Douglas, in June
1861, left the Douglas democracy without a leader.
The Breckenridge party, which still held together,
and which dared not bring out a decided secession
platform, adopted the principle that California could
not be neutral in the pending conflict, but must either
remain in the union or go out of it, and the party intended
it should remain in; the duty of California,
moreover, was to contend in congress for peace. If