In Nebraska the procedure for admission limped, but was finally effective. There had been little settlement in the ten years since the creation of the territory, and this was confined to a string of villages along the Missouri, below the Platte. Omaha was but a name. Fort Kearney (the settlers refused to spell correctly the name of the soldier, Kearny) was beyond the region of settlement. The convention chosen under the enabling act of 1864 never met, for at the same election the people had been asked whether they desired to form a State, and like Colorado they voted no. In the legislature of 1866, however, a constitution framed by a group of Omaha lawyers was brought in as a bill, passed and submitted to referendum by the people. It passed by a scant majority of one hundred, in a total vote of under eight thousand; and was accepted by Congress as sufficient. Johnson vetoed the bill for the admission of Nebraska the day after he vetoed Colorado for the second time, but the measure was just enough better than the Colorado bill to receive the votes needful for passage over the veto. Nebraska became a State March 1, 1867.

The exploration of the mineral empire and the creation of the mountain territories were natural consequences of the extension of the frontier of the miners beyond that of the farmers. The farming frontier was still content to remain at the Bend of the Missouri while the miners were organizing the thousand miles beyond. The admission of the plains States was politics rather than frontier development. But the new processes started after the panic of 1857 could have only one outcome in the end - the disappearance of all the open frontier and the creation of a final group of States.

Albert Watkins, "History of Fort Kearny," in Nebraska State Historical Society Collections, vol. xvi; J. Sterling Morton and Albert Watkins, Illustrated History of Nebraska (1905-1913).

CHAPTER XLIX

THE OVERLAND ROUTE

THE gossip of the miners as they gathered around the camp-fires or sought shelter in their flimsy shacks, is not usually to be rated as sound historical source, nor did it often become the starting point for great movements either in politics or business. But one of their persistent rumors, told in his cups by many a prospector, connected their vital need with the Government of which they saw so little. The legend begins with a wakeful miner, on a moonlight night, in camp anywhere south of the California Trail. The hero rolls over in his blanket, looks across the desert, and there in the distance sees what causes him to rub his sleepy eyes and look again. It is usually a huge white camel, less often black, and sometimes followed by a herd of lesser camels who clearly recognize him as their lord. The story is generally told by one who has no confidence of being believed, and who is entirely unaware that on June 18, 1856, a train of camels did march into San Antonio.

1

Edward Fitzgerald Beale 1 was in command of this camel corps, the first and last in American experience, and had himself urged the action which had resulted in an appropriation by Congress, an expedition to the Levant to procure them, a voyage home to Indianola, Texas, under Lieutenant David D. Porter, and the launching of the experiment of acclimating the ship of the Arabian desert upon the arid wastes of the American Southwest. For the next two years the camel corps was tried out under all the conditions of travel over the desert. "They are the most docile, patient, and easily managed creatures in the world and infinitely more easily worked than mules," their enthusiastic commander wrote the Secretary of War. He rode them, used them as pack animals, and as draft animals; he ascertained the advantage of their padded feet over the fragile hoofs of mules and horses; he noticed their ability to go without a drink, and reported that on one crossing of the Southwest he never once went out of his way to give them water. A writer from Los Angeles in 1858 wrote that "Gen. Beale and about fourteen camels stalked into town last Friday

'Stephen Bonsal, Edward Fitzgerald Beale. A Pioneer in the Path of Empire, 1822-1903 (1912), has rescued this story from its grave among the Government documents.

week and gave our streets quite an Oriental aspect." The experiment convinced Beale that the camel was the solution of the traffic problems on the trails, but it convinced few else, and in the end the herd was scattered. It is quite probable that the romance of the startled miners may have had some foundation in wandering strays from the camel corps. It is certain that the attempt to solve the problem was real, and that this was only one among many efforts to lessen the isolation of the scattered camps and to draw together the dispersed colonies of Americans throughout the West.

A few months before Porter was sent to the Levant to get his camels, Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War who sent him, was engaged in serious study of the preliminary reports of the detachments of engineers who had been sent upon the plains under legislation of 1853. Five lines of survey had been run to the Pacific, in the search for "the most practicable and economical Route for a Railroad," and most of the surveyors had ended by becoming violent partisans of the particular routes that they explored. "The time for a great national railroad has not yet come," wrote William Tecumseh Sherman, who was acquainted with the work. But Davis reported to Congress, February 27, 1855, that “A comparison of the results. . . conclusively shows that the route of the 32d parallel is . . . 'the most practical and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean.' This is the shortest route... its estimated cost [is] less by a third than that of any other of the lines... it could be executed in a vastly shorter period."

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It was perhaps natural for Secretary Davis to believe in the southernmost, or thirty-second parallel, route, for it would connect New Orleans with San Diego, but it was impossible to induce Congress to authorize construction either here or elsewhere. The decade of the surveys passed without action to bridge the gap by a railroad, or to bring the settlements on the Pacific, or along the roads thither, closer to the States than the ordinary means of wagons and horses would accomplish. But pressure for quicker service was mounting higher, and Congress was in a mood to authorize the marking of wagon roads and the quicker carriage of the mails.

One unforeseen consequence of the great distance to Oregon, Utah, and California was unusual isolation. The ordinary frontier communities were only a few miles ahead of their immediate pre

decessors and roads were always in process of construction in their immediate rear. Down the Ohio, and up and down the Mississippi, and their various tributaries, the communities pushed without ever getting bitterly detached. Short cuts, like Zane's Trace, or that to Natchez, could always be relied on to lessen distances, and post routes were established to serve the outposts as rapidly as these had any need for mails. But it was a different matter to follow up the emigrants to Oregon and California. The Mormons established their own stage and express from the Missouri Border, and Congress provided a water route to San Francisco in the spring of 1849. The next ten years were years of experiment in the methods of overland communication, culminating in the overland mail, the pony express, and at last, the chartering of the Pacific railroad. Throughout the decade, no camp was so remote that it abandoned the idea of an improved route. From every quarter of the Union there came in upon Congress the bewildering demand for roads and mails. And since the isolated regions were mostly in the territories upon the public domain, it was Congress rather than any State that must work out the solution.

The first long distance mail routes were conducted like the caravans that used the same trails over which they ran. The carrier, whether for the Great Salt Lake Valley Carrying Company or for the Independence-Santa Fé service of 1849, drove by day and camped by night. He made somewhat better time than the emigrant wagon, for he used a lighter vehicle, with a smaller load, but the conditions that he had to meet were those of every emigrant. A demand for something better arose soon after the admission of California, and thereafter the Senators and Representatives of this State were ever pressing their needs upon Congress. The railroad surveys of 1853 were in part a response to their urge. The Post Office Appropriation Act of 1857 carried authorization for a service of a different type. This was to be an expedited mail, with wagons running day and night and speeded up by relays of fresh stock.2

The Postmaster-General was directed by this act to advertise for bids for a mail to California in not over twenty-five days from

The best-known account is F. A. Root and W. E. Connelley, Overland Stage to California (1901), although Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express (1913), and W. L. Visscher, The Pony Express (1908), are of use. Alexander Majors, Seventy Years on the Frontier (1893), is the memoir of a freighter. Curtis P. Nettels has searched the local sources for his "The Overland Mail in the Fifties," in Missouri Historical Review, vol.

the Mississippi River. The route was to be selected at his discretion, but the contractor was to be allowed to hold his contract for a period of six years, so that the cost of his investment might be spread. The many bidders for the route, in the summer of 1857, included most of the freight carriers of the plains. This business had already reached a high development, and hundreds of wagons were always at work, not for emigrants, but with goods for the army posts, or Indians' annuity goods, or traders' supplies for Santa Fé, or for the mining camps as these appeared. The romance associated with the early caravans on the Santa Fé Trail had nearly gone. In its place the slow-moving cloud of dust and the rumble of the wheels, the cracking of the whips and the profane admonitions of the drivers to their mules indicated a growing and laborious traffic. A writer in 1860 thought there were eighteen thousand freight wagons in constant operation.

The contract for the overland mail was awarded in the autumn of 1857 to John Butterfield, who was given a year to get ready to haul the coaches. In his Annual Report of that year the Postmaster-General explained the award, and the route that had been selected. Aaron V. Brown, the Postmaster-General, was a southern man, and an appointee in the cabinet of a Democratic President, James Buchanan. His preferences may have been like those of Jefferson Davis, for the Kansas war was now on, and the line between the factions was sharply drawn. But there was much to justify his decision that the route should start with two eastern termini at St. Louis and Memphis, making a junction near Fort Smith on the western boundary of Arkansas, crossing Red River near Preston, Texas, thence west across Texas to El Paso, and into California by the Fort Yuma entrance. Nothing could convince the northern critics that this selection was not wholly due to politics. Yet there was reason in a route that would not be snowed up and impassable for several months each winter and that would cross the mountains at as low and practicable elevations as possible.

A special reason for avoiding the central trail in 1857 was the fact that in this year the Mormon Church was at war with the United States, resisting the authority of Federal officers. An army was on the plains, under command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, with orders to bring the rebellious church to terms; but at the moment when the contract was let, it was still uncertain whether they would be his terms, or those of Brigham Young. In September, 1857, an emigrant party from Arkansas to California was