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Show H As I Remember Them 76 Sacramento Union H By C. C. Goodwin THERE are times when the tangible work of men is made to shine out in a form which H is a splendor, though the men lose their H individual personality in performing that work, H and the work itself takes on a personality of its H Anthony, Morrill and Larkin, . I believe, H founded the Sacramonto Union. Larkin was a H trained newspaper man, and we have heard that H Anthony and Morrill were in youth compositors, H but of this we are not sure But they created H a voice in California, that had tones in it which HH early attracted attention. And that voice kept Bl sounding on and on with ever increasing volume H and power through all the formative years in the H life of California, until at last it became an en- H- chantment. I have no knowledge of any other M sufch journal as was the Sacramento Union be- H tween the years 1854 and 18G5. H I know of no journal that had the same infiu- m ence upon the public. Most of those years were H stormy years in California. The admission of H California as a free state, greatly incensed the H men of the old slave states who leaned upon H John C. Calhoun as their ideal of both high B manhood and profound statesmanship. Though H the convention that framed the first constitution H of California contained a majority of southern H men, when the question of slavery or freedom H for the state came up, with but one dissenting H vote, the state was consecrated to freedom for- H "When the news of this reached "Washington, H and the constitution was presented with the appeal H for admission into the Union, Mr. Calhoun led H the opposition to admission with a kind of fury. H The question hung in the balance for several H weeks. But at last the new state was admitted, H and my belief has always been that it was then H that secession was determined upon, that H preparations for it began then, and the only H waiting thereafter was for some event on which m a plausable excuse could be formulated, on M , which to precipitate the crisis. And though the m constitution had been ratified by the men of the H Golden State, as a rule southern men in that M state endorsed the position of the southern lead- B ers in the east, and politics became stormy in H California at once. H Then, too, the old Whig party was dlsinte. H grating. The Democratic party at last was rent H in twain; the southern men Hocked by them- Hj selves, and of the old Whigs a part joined the H northern Democrats, while a few formed a nuc- 1 leus of a California Republican party corres- H ponding with the Republican party that had been H launched in the east. H In the meantime, the Sacramento Union had fl drawn to it the enthusiastic support and affection H of all northern California. It was an indepen- H dent journal and discussed all questions with H perfect candor and without fear. In the early H fifties there were many camps in California so H high in the Sierras that they were only reached H by trails, and in others the roads were blocked H for several months each winter by snow. To H these only the express companies carried com- H munications. They charged 25 cents to deliver Q a newspaper. Often and often in many a one of those camps whenthe express arrived on snow- H shoes in the winter all that was brought was a H package of letters and a great roll of Sacramonto H Unions. The minors called the papur their bible. H That hold the paper never lost, up to the closing H of the Civil War. H It was conducted with a judgment and ability HJ which no other journal in the state could com- H mand, and then there was a charm about it which drew men irresistibly to it. It was always optimistic optim-istic about California; while glorying in the present pres-ent it was always pointing to the higher destiny which it must attain and all the time it was as broad as the Republic itself, while it met every local question, commercial, social, or political, with the directness of intuition and the full grace of inspiration. During the two or three stormy years, preceeding the outbreak of the rebellion, it was most masterful in shaping public opinion, and when the war burst upon the country, "one blast upon that bugle horn was worth a thousand men" every morning. At that time, a gentleman named Watson was the editor-in-chief. I never saw him, but was told at the time that he possessed an almost supernatural intellect, but was a slave to strong drink. However that may be, there were no such editorials as his published in any paper, east or west. As the war clouds grew darker and darker, those editorials grew more commanding and incisive in-cisive every morning and at the same time there was a beauty about them that kindled in men's hearts and souls a zealous patriotism not to be measured. I do not know that the paper held California in the Union, but I am sure that had there been such a journal on the other side, it would have carried the state out, or at least made of it a battle ground that would have left it as badly scarred as was Virginia. The men who conducted the paper were never known to thousands of its readers, but the journal jour-nal itself became a distinct personality to them; they thought of it as something with a mind all masterful, with a voice which to them was sweeter than a woman's. When the war was over, it took up the works of peace. It had for years been the advocate of the trans-continental railroad, and with the close of the war it renewed its labors for that enterprise enter-prise and was a marvelous help to Its projectors and builders. But when the road made the connection with the Unfon Pacific at Promontory in 1869, and the policy of its builders became fully understood, the Union called a halt upon them. It had given all its support to Leland Stanford when he was a candidate for Governor and through his administration; it had given the great enterprise its masterful support, but when its owners and managers began to use it as merely an instrument for their own aggrandizement, aggrandize-ment, and worse, when they entered politics and dictated who should and who should not hold the offices, the Union turned upon them with a vehemence that they could not endure. The company established a paper modeled exactly after af-ter the Union in size, type, paper and make-up, engaged brilliant men to conduct it and closed their cars against the Union. In the meantime, the company had built the inside road to Lo3 Angeles and San Diego and branch roads in every direction, closed every possible avenue against the great paper and finally reduced it below the paying point and forced the owners to sell for a pittance, when it was merged with the railroad paper and became the Record-Union. Record-Union. Its death was simply the result of a hired and premeditated assassination and it was killed by the money and power it had so ably aided the railroad owners to accumulate. But the cowardly methods by which its death was compassed, can never take from it the splen dor of the fame which it created for itself, was more to California for fifteen years after the admission of the state into the Union than any other single agency; California never realized how much it owed to it, and never can make good that debt. But the graves of the old owners and editors of it should be hallowed ground in the Golden State, and. be marked in such a way that Galifornians to the last generation should be taught to revere it. And could all the journalism in any state be modeled mod-eled after the Sacramento Union as it was from 1856 to 1865, there would be no question of what the ruling power in that state would be. It would be the mouthpiece of the people; their reliance, they would know that it was not controlled by any commercial considerations; by no selfish ambition; am-bition; that a just cause would always find in it a champion; that all the gold that could be offered of-fered could never induce it to further an unjust scheme or dishonest measure; that while working for a livelihood it was at the same time working for everything of good and against everything of evil, and that the people's weal ana the state's progress were ever uppermost in its thought, and so the people's hearts would be enlisted, and it would become to them both a protector and an inspiration. |