BEFORE SUMTER

Remote from the principal theaters of war as California may have been, the state was not immune from considerations of how it might defend itself once war broke out and of how it might contribute to the war effort. However, to understand fully the military situation in the Golden State during the war – and the contributions of the thousands of volunteer soldiers – we must first take a brief look at the U.S. Army before the conflict as well as at the strategic thinking that governed Washington with respect to California and the West.

One of the true ironies of history is that Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, had perhaps given more sustained thought to military issues in the West, in his prior capacity as secretary of war during the administration of Franklin Pierce, than had any other high-ranking official in the federal government during the antebellum years. A West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican-American War, where he had commanded a regiment, Davis knew firsthand the West's arid conditions and long, lonely stretches as well as the dangers posed by hostile Indians. He also grasped the potential value of the region. Particularly valuable, from his standpoint, would be terrain where it would be possible to grow cotton and hence utilize slave labor. To attract settlers, however, the government needed to be able to protect them and maintain contact with them, and this was a challenge. Davis realized that a transcontinental railroad line would go a long way toward helping meet the challenge. He became a forceful advocate of a southern route for the railroad, a position that placed him at odds with Republicans and some Northern Democrats. As we have seen, the result was stalemate until the war broke out and Southern votes were gone from Congress.