Why?

Well, you know, I was an English major in college, but I got into history by moving to Nantucket.

Moby Dick was my favorite novel.

And through the lens of Moby Dick, of course, Nantucket was the port of the Pequot in that famous novel.

I became fascinated with Nantucket's history.

And so my interest in Nantucket history was really a version of local history.

And Nantucket is just a very unusual place.

Did you have any preconceived notions, though, about what you might find when you started about the gold rush? Yeah,

The Australian community at the northern edge of San Francisco was so dangerous, the police wouldn't enter after dark.

Yeah, it was known as Sydney Town.

And a lot of it was probably exaggerated by the Americans.

But yeah, it was kind of wild.

By this time, San Francisco was on its way to becoming a city of 50,000 people.

I mean, and like any city, there are tough neighborhoods, you know, New York, the point, five points, you know, this was, and Sydney town was that part.

And, you know, and what's the other phenomenon is Californians were so busy making money that they refused to go to do anything about the fires that would break out almost on a monthly basis in the city.

And there were always thoughts on who's going to bring the rail and where.

Talk to us about the rush, California Gold, the Civil War and the making of the modern world and what this book covers and encompasses.

Yeah.

Well, I think we all have sort of a stock response to the California gold rush.

We think of it as a Western phenomenon where people went out West with their picks and pans and discovered gold and that kind of thing.

What I began to realize is the gold aspect of it is fascinating, but it's only a part of the story.

The discovery of gold came at a time when new technologies like the The telegraph and the trains and steamships were transforming the world, increasing the pace of life.

And when gold was discovered, just at a time when the country had basically doubled in size after the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, it just sent this... mad scramble across our continent from people around the world to California.

And I think we're seeing kind of the next wave of that get-rich-quick mindset.

What was happening in San Francisco that they were constantly burning down and you say practically overnight rebuilding?

Yeah.

I mean, San Francisco.

Talk about a crucible.

I mean, it was people from all over jammed in there.

Everyone was saying things like this was the typical refrain.

Time is money.

Do you see this direct link? Is it just kind of this is in the DNA now of American history and maybe even that part of the country that this plays out this way?

Talk about it in the context of what we are witnessing today, what we have witnessed in California, particularly in places like Silicon Valley, where the technology, not dissimilar from the gold rush, is moving at such a rapid pace that, that institutions can't keep up with it.

Yeah, I mean, I was struck by, you know, from the beginning working on this book that how the tentacles of the story reach in so many directions and, you know, and particularly when it comes to where we are today with Silicon Valley.

I mean, uh, one of the, um, what happened once the war broke out, uh, was the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, and I think a- many Americans don't realize that the building of that engineering marvel, um, was, uh, a- adopted by the North during the Civil War as a war measure to k- make sure California stayed in the Union because its gold was so essential to the Union effort against the Confederacy.

And so the building of this continental railroad happens at lightning speed.

Uh, there's two companies, um, one the Central Pacific, uh, in the West battling an eastern company, and then they're just building it as quickly as possible and, um, what are known as the, commonly known as the Big Four.

Um, uh, uh, former shopkeepers from Sacramento, including Leland Stanford, would become, uh, the 19th century equivalent of billionaires, uh, in just a few years through the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Stanford would, would, uh, purchase a farm, uh, that he would name Palo Alto.

And as you see this so prominently in California, does it change your view in any way of, of the rest of the country, of, of the East Coast, of other places you've written about when, when you see it compared to all of this in California?

What vision do they have and how are they trying to bring it out in California from their parts of the country?

Yeah.

Immediately, politicians just see California in the same opportunistic way as the miners do.

In the example of William Gwynn, he is from Mississippi, owns a large plantation there, is quite wealthy, had served in Congress before.

And as soon as he hears about the discovery of gold, he realizes, well, California is going to become an instant state.

And that means there is going to be an opportunity to become a U.S. senator if I go out there.

So he immediately gets on a steamship down to the Isthmus of Panama, crosses the Isthmus, makes his way up to San Francisco, and arrives in the early summer of 1849.

This is a brief uprising, but very interesting chapter in California's history as well.

What did the gold fields look like at this point in time in the early, uh, 1840s, '50s?

Well, nothing like they [laughs] look now.

You know, when you're in San Francisco, it's a city.

Um, you know, you've got the Transamerica Building and all of that.

Well, imagine, um, uh, before all of that, um, these are, uh, sand hills, you know, that reach up to a mountain- to mountainous proportions on this, on this point.

You know, San Francisco is really geographically quite isolated from everything around it beside one of the biggest natural harbors in the world, San Francisco Bay.

And, you know, going through the Golden Gate, I mean, you know, we, there's now a bridge, but it, it's striking.

We're gonna figure this thing out." [laughs] He gets there, and he's like, "Oh my God, what the hell [laughs] is going on here?" And to see it through his eyes, especially trying to be a Frenchman, it was entertaining and also harrowing at the same time.

Can you tell us about The Essex?

Yeah, yeah.

So I, I, uh, m- in my first work of history, which was Away Off Shore, and, um, and it was, each, each chapter told the story of the island.

It f- uh, it focuses on a character who then, you know, a different character.

And, and one of the episodes that is famous on Nantucket is the Essex disaster, in which a Nantucket whale ship went out into the Pacific Ocean.

It was, you know, smack dab, uh, on the equator, about as far from land as you can get, when, uh, a sperm whale, uh, for reasons that are still unclear, attacked the ship, rammed it, and, uh, uh, sank it.

Eventually, the men, uh, took to the whaleboats and s- and, uh, what would, uh, unfold is a, a three-month-long survival tale.

Uh, who discovered gold in California, and why did people rush out there, and how many people rushed out there?

Can you tell us about The Essex?

Yeah, yeah.

So I, I, uh, m- in my first work of history, which was Away Off Shore, and, um, and it was ...

Each, each chapter told the story of the island.

It f- uh, it focuses on a character who then, you know, a different character.

And, and one of the episodes that is famous on Nantucket is the Essex disaster in which a Nantucket whale ship went out into the Pacific Ocean.

It was, you know, smack dab, uh, on the equator, about as far from land as you can get when, uh, a sperm whale, uh, for reasons that are still unclear, attacked the ship, uh, rammed it and, uh, uh, sank it.

Uh, who discovered gold in California, and why did people rush out there, and how many people rushed out there?

Talk about it in the context of what we are witnessing today, what we have witnessed in California, particularly in places like Silicon Valley, where the technology, not dissimilar from the gold rush, is moving at such a rapid pace that institutions can't keep up with it.

Yeah, I mean, I was struck by, you know, from the beginning working on this book, that how the tentacles of the story reach in so many directions.

And, you know, and particularly when it comes to where we are today with Silicon Valley.

I mean, one of the what happened once the war broke out was the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.

And I think many Americans don't realize that the building of that engineering marvel was was adopted by the North during the Civil War as a war measure to make sure California stayed in the Union because its gold was so essential to the Union effort against the Confederacy.

And so the building of this Continental Railroad happens at lightning speed.

There's two companies, one, the Central Pacific in the West, battling an Eastern company, and then they're just building it as quickly as possible.

Does it change your view in any way of the rest of the country, of the East Coast, of other places you've written about when you see it compared to all of this in California?

And why don't you just take us back, if you don't mind, briefly to the initial find and who was responsible and what role Sutter actually played in

all this.

Yeah.

Well, John Sutter came from Switzerland, a German exile.

extraction from Switzerland.

He had fled creditors in Europe, was fleeing creditors in America when he realized, hey, if I go out to California, it was then under Mexican control, I'll be far enough away from them that no one can bother me, and maybe I can create my own little and that's exactly what he did.

He negotiated with the Mexican government in California and got this grant where he built a fort in what's now Sacramento, on the Sacramento River, near where it combines with the American River.

Talk a little bit about what it was like to be a representative or a senator in the very early days of California and what these guys were doing like Senator Gwynn in playing one side off the other when it came to the slave trade and so forth.

Is Rush the title?

Yeah, it's called The Rush.

California Gold, the subtitle is California Gold, the Civil War and the Making of the Modern World.

And what I began, one of the reasons I initially got interested in the topic was Nantucket, which has been my home now for 40 years.

When gold was discovered in 1848, Nantucket was beginning to lose its...

It was no longer the whaling capital of the world the way it had been.

Petroleum was on the verge of being discovered.

Things are neither all good or all bad.

And I can imagine this didn't go well with Washington.

No, it didn't.

And some of his remarks went public.

The New Englanders were not happy.

And then you see Washington beginning to realize, wait, this is going to be complicated.

Everything's not like Virginia.

These were 13 independent polities at this point.

So initially, I think most people have, you have a sympathy, you go, my goodness, the way they've treated him.

I mean, it was embarrassing, and he had to run his army down New Jersey, escaping with their lives.

He's lost most of his army to desertion, but what Washington had an ability to do is Washington had an ab- he w- and I speak of him, he had a true genius.

He wasn't a genius like, let's say, Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and, and Hamilton.

He was not a, a, a, a jittery, brilliant person, eloquent, and, and a mind that could go anywhere.

He had the ability to dial out the static of life.

And believe me, as Washington retreated across New Jersey to the other side of the Delaware River, there was a lot of static out there, a lot of naysayers.

You know, he had the ability to just say, "Okay, what is the most important thing for me to do now?" And so there in the Delaware, he realized, "We've gotta, we've gotta have some kind of comeback strategy here.

That is foiled, but America is at an absolute low point.

I felt sometime that we were, we were in a time machine to the eighteenth century, but every once in a while, there'd be a, a warp in time, and we'd sud-- it would suddenly be eighteen sixty-five, eighteen sixty-four.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, one of...

When Washington couldn't, uh, find a public tavern, he would stay in, in, uh, sumptuous houses that were there, and every one of them had been burned by Sherman.

And so, um, at one point, I, I wanted to visit this, the, the site of this place.

I couldn't be-- but the, um, someone working at a, a, a, a grocery store nearby show, had pictures of it on her, on her iPad and showed me, you know, the rubble, uh, of, of this, this once splendid plantation, uh, with a row of live oaks leading, uh, to it.

And, uh, you know, the rubble of, of, of what will be the future of Washington's journey, and yet is the past to us, was everywhere.

Who are the Catawbas to George Washington?

He returns in July of seventeen ninety-one, but this was not obvious that he was gonna survive this.

No, this was, this was, uh, the odyssey, [chuckles] if you will, the, the journey to top all journeys for George Washington when it came to this, these groups of, of j- of, of tours of the country.

I mean, this was, you know, almost two thousand miles of travel involved.

It was going...

It took him three months over the worst roads, uh, in the country, and, uh, the accommodations were terrible.

Uh, you know, they were-- had not been great in New England, but, uh, it was a whole different order in the South.

And in fact, there were some places where you just couldn't find a public tavern, forcing Washington to stay in private homes.

Where does it come from, Nat?

To get out of town, to get away from the conflicts, something compelling him to travel to the state that didn't vote for him.

Right.

Well, I think a lot of people today, if, you know, political operatives would tell the president, y- the last place you want to go is a place like Rhode Island, where-- which was the last state to, uh, ratify the Constitution.

You know, the biggest doubters in the country [chuckles] were in Rhode Island.

Uh, and in fact, when Washington had gone on his New England tour, he had made every effort not to venture i, uh, in Rhode Island, and he wanted to make a point there and wanted to apply pressure.

And then eventually, uh, uh, Rhode Island enters the, the, the, the, uh, the country and ratifies the Constitution.

Washington hears of it, and in August, decides, spur of the moment, "I'm gonna go.

What storm, Nat? What storm?

To get out of town, to get away from the conflicts, something compelling him to travel to the state that didn't vote for him.

Right.

Well, I think a lot of people today, if, you know, political operatives would tell the president, "The last place you want to go is a place like Rhode Island," where-- which was the last state to, uh, ratify the Constitution.

You know, the biggest doubters in the country [chuckles] were in Rhode Island.

Uh, and in fact, when Washington had gone on his New England tour, he had made every effort not to venture, uh, in Rhode Island, and he wanted to make a point there and wanted to apply pressure.

And then eventually, uh, uh, Rhode Island enters the, the, the, the, um, the country and ratifies the Constitution.

Washington hears of it, and in August, decides, spur of the moment, "I'm gonna go.

What storm, Nat? What storm?

Why not, Nat?

Well, they weren't revealed as spies.

You know, not even their family members knew, because if this experiment in, uh, a republic should fail and Great Britain should come back, um, uh, uh, in charge of her former colonies, it would not be a good thing to be known as a spy [chuckles] against the British crown.

And so, uh, uh, their, their role as spies was kept an absolute secret.

Only Washington and Benjamin Tallmadge, his spy chief, were probably the only people who knew their identities.

And, um, and, uh, it wouldn't be until the twentieth century that a historian would reveal those identities for the first time.

Their family net members would have no idea of the role they took in trying to w- win America its independence.

Is that correct, Nat?

-after W- Washington said, "Fetch me a Bible." What's there, Nat?

Yes, uh, there, there is, you know, the, the twelve tribes of Israel.

Uh, you know, this is, this is, this is America as a biblical imperative.

Uh, and, you know, here is George Washington saying, "Wait a minute, I need a Bible to be sworn in." They find a Bible, and it's turned to this passage.

Um, and, uh, you know, this [chuckles] is America, uh, of biblical proportions.

And, you know, but and yet, Washington is so overcome at the moment of his inauguration.

He's up on the second-floor balcony, with crowds all surrounding the building, with people on the roofs of the buildings across the road.

Go ahead.

What was your thinking about this journey? What were you looking for when you set out with Melissa and Dora to follow the path of N-- of George Washington, first in New England, then Long Island, then to Newport, and then south?

Right.

Well, you know, I have spent the last twenty-five years of my life writing about the history of this country.

I live on Nantucket Island, which is thirty miles off, off the, the South, Southern Massachusetts, and, uh, it's fourteen miles long.

You can't go on much of a road trip on Nantucket.

I was getting itchy after twenty-five years, after te- ten years of working on the American Revolution.

I wanted to, to see this country, uh, after all these years of writing about it, and I, I realized that, you know, that for me, George Washington had become the preeminent figure of the revolution in this country when it comes to the eighteenth century.

Who is Billy Lee, and where is he at this moment, uh, to Washington?

More of this tonight on Travels with George.

[laughs] And then another version of the story is a child sta- stares in wonder at Washington, and Washington looks down at the child and says, "Yes, child, I may be the president, I may be George Washington, but I am only a man." And initially, I was thinking, well, the, these are, these are [laughs] the, the kinds of oral traditions that are just either too good to be true or, or, you know, reflect the time that they were remembered, which was often the nineteenth century, um, uh, told by an old lady or an old woman who had seen George Washington.

But yet these tales get repeated in town after town.

These never appeared in any newspapers at the time.

And I began to think that maybe this is what [laughs] Washington was saying over and over again, trying to remind people, "Look, I am only a man.

I will do my best, but ultimately, I am, like you, a flawed human being doing the best I can."

He saw America as an agrarian paradise and not industrial whatsoever.

Right.

He, he had no...

He felt actually that, uh, factor... manufactories, um, you know, textile mills, all that, were, were anathema.

That, uh, the, the ideal American was a farmer.

And, um, you know, just the opposite of where Washington and Hamilton are coming from, where they're encouraging, uh, these kinds of things in the hopes that the only way to break our dependence on British manufactured goods is to have our own industrial revolution.

And, but not so, um, uh, Jefferson.

And so he deserved that uniform, but it's wonderful to see that as he ages, he becomes, in his own mind, a Washington, a, a, a, a Washington student.

Yeah.

... by Sherman.

And so, um, at one point, I, I wanted to visit this, the, the site of this place.

I couldn't beca- but the, um, someone working at a, uh, uh, a grocery store nearby sho- had, uh, pictures of it on her, on her iPad and showed me, you know, the rubble, uh, of, of this, this once splendid plantation, uh, with a row of live oaks leading, uh, to it.

And, uh, you know, the rubble of, of, of what will be the future of Washington's journey, and yet is the past to us, was everywhere.

On our way to, uh, Savannah, we passed a billboard, this huge billboard, uh, uh, uh, beside a, a ver- a very small road, uh, saying, you know, "Sherman's army," uh, "looters." You know, I'm paraphrasing here.

You know, it's as if it had happened two days ago, um, that the anger is still there.

Who are the Catawbas to George Washington?

He returns in July of 1791, but this was not obvious that he was gonna survive this.

No.

This was, this was, uh, the odyssey (laughs) if you will, the, the, the journey to top all journeys for George Washington when it came to this, these groups of, of ch- of, of tours of the country.

I mean, this was, you know, almost 2,000 miles of travel involved.

It was goi- it took him three months over the worst roads, uh, in the country and, uh, the accommodations were terrible.

Uh, you know, they were, had not been great in New England, but, uh, it was a whole different order in the South.

And in fact, there were some place where you just couldn't find a public tavern, forcing Washington to stay in private homes.

Where does it come from, Nat?