The Age Of Gold: The California Gold Rush And The New American Dream (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
The ‘California Gold Rush’ is known as one of the most iconic time periods in American history not only because of the economic boom that it brought west but because of the idealistic American values that came with it. ‘Manifest Destiny’ is an idea that has caressed the minds of some of the greatest people in history. These people have been in different circumstances and no two experiences are exactly alike. Even though the term was coined in the United States it is still an ideal that has been passed from Western Civilization over to the United States, where the terminology was finally perfected in 1845 by John L. O’Sullivan. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, only 40 miles from Sutter’s Fort, a gold fever was to follow that would change America and the west forever. “…Starting on that day, a powerful engine—the engine of fate, or perhaps merely of human nature—began winding them (distinct individuals) all in.” In the book The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and The New American Dream, H. W. Brands examines this iconic period of American history and the implications that it wrought on American society and the west. He utilizes the stories of individuals who travelled west as well as the economics and industry of the time to show the far-reaching implications of the gold rush. But he does not stop there, he also covers aspects such as national issues; ratification of California to statehood, slavery (dealing with the coming Civil War) and gender issues, ethnic and immigration laws. Brands believes that this event was a “seminal” moment in American history, “one of those rare moments that divide human existence into before and after.” His book attempts to show the immense impact the California gold rush had on American industry, society, expansion, Native Americans, and the world. tH.W. Brands is an Oregon born boy who stayed out west and went to College in California. He then went on to earn his graduate degrees in mathematics and history from Oregon and Texas. He then went on to teach at Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M University before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, there he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History. Known as an author of American history and politics with many books to his name, including: Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The First American, and TR. Several of his books have been bestsellers and two were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Brands’ resume leads this writer to believe he has the credentials to be a great writer and Age of Gold shows just that. Brands spends almost forty percent of the book allowing the Argonauts time to get west. A few of those descriptions are intriguing, especially in regards to John C. Fremont, one of the most exciting figures of the American west during the gold rush. Brands’ knack for story telling in regards to the Argonauts is absolutely stunning. He gives lucid details about each individual and their struggles to cross the great expanse of the United States. Not only does he give accounts of the travelers moving across the country by land but he gives great care to also cover the ship-goers who travelled through either the Isthmus of Panama or around Cape Horn. To this end he also covers the shipping business and the economic and technological effect the gold rush had on it. The problem with this aspect is that since Brands spends so much time on the Argonauts it really could be considered a biography instead of an overview of the gold rush. Analyzing the gold rush though does take historians far from the actual gold fields so Brands’ premise, to show the impact of the gold rush on America, must not stop at the borders of the gold fields, but must include the people as well. He does this incredibly well and is able to tie the individuals to some aspect of the gold rush that he wants to examine. For example, when Brands describes the overland journey of Hugh Heiskell he is able to explain how not everyone reached their destination. “Heiskell, after conquering the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Humboldt River, the Carson Desert, and the Sierra Nevada, died at the very entrance to the goldfields.” Brands goes into detail about the different aspects of the journey that contributed to his death as well as others that died too. “Doubtless the fatigue and unbalanced diet of the overland journey had lowered his resistance to disease; certainly the unsanitary conditions at Weaverville, the first gold camp many of the immigrants encountered…were the source of the infection that claimed him…Cholera being the most likely culprit.” Other aspects that Brands covers is the records of the dead, the only account of Heiskell’s death is from his cousin Tyler, who did not even see him during the illness. This provides somewhat of an unreliable source but it is all that we as historians have to mark his death. Brands does an excellent job of explaining the problem with numbers during this time because the records kept are few and far between. Letters barely even reached their destinations without some sort of hassle.tThe extensive detail given to the techniques for mining extractions, such as: placer mining, panning cradling, sluices, plumes, river mining, and hydraulic mining is also a big part of Brands’ book. All of which, especially hydraulic mining, were technological advances of the time and are incredibly important to the rise of the Gilded Age in the United States. But he misses some of the most important aspects of the time such as: land ownership issues (which he barely examines), violent crimes, prostitution, and the ever important oppression of the Chinese and other minorities. All of these he mentions briefly but does not come to any conclusion about their effect on social changes of the time. Brands’ goal being to examine the far-reaching effects of the gold rush, these are aspects that probably should have been covered to a greater extent. Especially in regards to the Chinese, they had a dramatic effect on the later “open door” policy that the United States attempted to implement. It also affected how the Chinese immigrants were continually treated in the west. Their treatment would get steadily worse and would ultimately affect how the Chinese view Americans as well as the United States government on the whole. These were the only aspects of historical content that seemed to be lacking in this intensive study of the American west and the California gold rush.tBrands does delve into the territorial acquisitions of the United States and the suffering of the Mexicans that followed the Manifest Destiny war against Mexico. The Americans believed that they held rights to this new acquisition of land and as land speculators and lawyers headed out west to establish this right, the Mexicans were thrown and swindled from their land. Brands’ look into the consequences of the gold rush is absolutely the most stunning aspect of the work. The gold rush changed the ethnicity of the west and brought new immigrants from all across the world. Dispersing the Native American population, inevitably beginning the “Indian Wars,” and dwindling their numbers to nearly a fifth of what they were in 1849. The Americans saw this movement west as not only a chance to acquire the “new” American dream, the get-rich-quick-schemes, but to continually abhor the other ethnicities arriving and make their lives miserable whenever possible. Brands’ analysis of the effects of the gold rush on the Civil War, especially how the gold rush precipitated the clash of the slave states and the non-slave states, brings out the political aspect of this work and shows how diverse a writer he is. The same can be said of his talk about how the gold rush also accelerated the Industrial Revolution in the United States, compelling a push for a transcontinental railway.tIn regards to reviews written about Age of Gold, there are very few but the ones this writer found involve praise and adoration. “Brands has produced a work that stands far above the tide of mostly forgettable titles that accompanied the 150th anniversary of the Gold Rush three years ago.” Allen Weakland says, “In an almost cinematic style, Brands uses a secondary cast of characters to unreel this story that has had ramifications throughout the rest of U.S. history—as he demonstrates, it changed the demographic face of California forever. An important work of history.” Publishers Weekly posted a review that stated “With solid research and a sprightly narrative, Brands's portrait of the gold rush is an enlightening analysis of a transformative period for California and America.” Each of these reviews presented above give a different aspect that they found to be the most compelling argument or thesis that Brands has excelled at, but overall they found the book easy to read, full of life, exciting, and generally a good source for historical study.tBut what makes Brands’ analysis so compelling is that he explains the gold rush as a catalyst for the American value system being changed from a traditional agrarian spirit or ideology in favor of the get-rich-quick schemes, which would forever change American society from a Protestant work-ethic to a more “lazy and arrogant” approach that would according to Brands, destroy the true north American character, "El Dorado, not some Puritan city on a hill, was the proper abode of the American people." The book itself covers massive amounts of content and does a very good job of covering that content. Brands has missed a few things but overall does an excellent job of explaining the gold rush through the purview of popular history.
The Age of Gold is about the Gold discovery and the aftermath of it but it also is a history of the state of California. California was seeded to the United States after the United States victory in the Mexican American War in 1848. Fortune immediately went to America when James Marshall, who operated a lumber mill, discovered gold dust in his vicinity in Coloma California. Up until 1848 California contained few white people. It was inhabited by mostly Mexican and Native Indian populations. Most Americans do not want to travel to California because at the time it was a dangerous and painful experience to cross the Snowy Mountains in Colorado and the deserts in Utah. They could have encountered hostile Indians, disease, food and water shortages as well.When news of Gold in California hit the east coast and the rest of the world a renewed interest in going to California happened. Foreigners from France, England, South America, Australia, China and many east coast Americans rushed to California attempting to strike it rich finding gold. One such person was John Fremont, he was one who took a team through the heart of the country barely surviving the travel when he finally arrived in California. He wrote of this adventure and became a popular person of the time. So popular in fact that he was California’s first Governor. He was also the first Republican Party nominee in the Republican Party’s history for President in 1854. Most people, including his wife, took a steamship down the Atlantic Ocean to Panama. At Panama, they boarded another ship that took them up the Pacific Ocean to California. This trip was not pleasant as well. Often the ships from the Pacific coast would not show up to pick up the passengers because crews abandoned the ships in California to seek gold. That left scores of people in Panama where malaria and other diseases ran rampart and drove up the cost of the trip. The author follows a few characters throughout the book and introduces a lot of famous people of the 1850s such as Brigham Young, Mark Twain, and William Tecumseh Sherman who had some kind of connection to Gold pursuit or California.HE also explains the audacious attempt of James Gould and Jim Fisk to control the world by attempting to buy up all the available Gold. It appears from reading this book that few people truly produced wealth from Gold mining and many people failed. I am only giving the book 3 stars because I did not follow it as I would have liked to have. It is full of information though, it is good in that way.
What do You think about The Age Of Gold: The California Gold Rush And The New American Dream (2003)?
The Age of Gold is a book about the settling of California and the gold rush. It’s divided up into five parts that each describe a different time, place, and perspective. I enjoyed the first three sections much more than the last two as the first three sections deal directly with California and the gold rush itself, while the last two sections deal more with California’s place within the American Union at the time of the civil war.The most amazing stories found in The Age of Gold are those of the miners who came to California searching for a new life. Some of the immigrants sailed around Cape Horn, others cut thru Panama, and others came overland across the western plains. Today we are connected online and we have access to digital maps like Google Maps, so it’s hard to imagine a time when immigrants to California travelling across the American plains didn’t even have a clear route. They had to guess and estimate which trail and direction would lead them to California. The Age of Gold describes some of the hardships that these travelers to California faced.
—RiskingTime
An excellent telling of discovery of gold and it's impact on California in the 1850's. The book tells the story thru the voices of those involved so the reader gets a personal view of the trials the 'Argonauts' faced on their journey to the gold fields. Brands then broadens the scope to show the impact of the discovery in terms of the social political, and economics of the day. I found the book to be wider in range than I thought it would be providing an understanding of the greater impact of this event on the world. All in all it was a enjoyable and informative read.
—Bob Gillespie
The Age of Gold is a complete and well written account of arguably one of the most pivotal times in America's history. To me, the essence of this book is eloquently summed up in this paragraph... "Where life was a gamble and success a matter of stumbling on the right stretch of stream bed, old standards of risk and reward didn't apply. In the goldfields a person was expected to gamble, and to fail, and to gamble again and again, till success finally came - success likely followed by additional failure, and additional gambling - or energy ran out. Where failure was so common, it lost its stigma. No one in California counted the failures, only the rich strikes that rewarded the tenth or hundredth try. The entrepreneurial spirit had never been absent in American history;every immigrant to America was an entrepreneur of sorts. But in the goldfields the entrepreneurial spirit took flight, freed from the inherited fetters of guilt and blame. And once a-wing in the West - the region to which America had always looked for its future - the spirit soared over all the country."
—Lisa
