Gold! by Fred Rosen

California spy in the government’s employ. Besides that, Thomas Larkin was a damn good writer.
    Polk needed his agent to authenticate the rumors of gold and give the president an idea of the extent of the find. The president could then craft his official announcement of the gold discovery to support and encourage expansion of the Union. The government had been on a track of westward expansion; everyone knew that. It wasn’t “manifest destiny,” as it would later be called, that drove that expansion, but rather a distinct aspect of the American character that had yet to come to the fore.
    It wasn’t that Americans, whether naturalized or not, had a rootlessness in their character. For generations they had been satisfied to stay on their farms, till the soil, and pass on whatever they could to the next generation. Reward for this life was in the next. It was as secure a belief as the clasp of the strongest locket and held as dear to the heart.
    The idea of gold would change that, and someplace in his heart, James Polk knew it.
    Once Americans knew there was gold to be taken from California dirt, that anyone could come and do it, thousands would come streaming to the state. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. It was hard to know what effect that would have on the future, but in the present, such a boom would be a boon to the economy.
    Miners would have to buy what they needed somewhere, and they would need transportation to get to California. The idea of a transcontinental railroad had been bandied about by one railroad magnate or another, but supplying transport to men and cargo to California from the East Coast could turn into a profitable situation for the companies that had the vision to expand.
    It all relied on Thomas Larkin’s observations. His vivid prose provided Secretary Buchanan, and later President Polk, with the first authoritative report of Marshall’s discovery and what it would mean to the United States in the future. In the process, Larkin gave an up-to-date account of what it was like to pan for gold at the beginning of the California Gold Rush:
    San Francisco (Upper California), June 1, 1848.
    Sir: I have to report to the State Department one of the most astonishing excitements and state of affairs now existing in this country, that, perhaps, has ever been brought to the notice of the Government.
    On the American fork of the Sacramento and Feather River, another branch of the same, and the adjoining lands, there has been within the present year discovered a placer, a vast tract of land containing gold in small particles. This gold, thus far, has been taken on the bank of the river, from the surface to eighteen inches in depth, and is supposed deeper and to extend over the country.
    On account of the inconvenience of washing, the people have up to this time, only gathered the metal on the banks, which is done simply with a shovel, filling a shallow dish, bowl, basket, or tin pan, with a quantity of black sand, similar to the class used on paper, and washing out the sand by movement of the vessel.
    It is now two or three weeks since the men employed in those washings have appeared in this town with gold, to exchange for merchandise and provisions. Nearly 20,000 dollars of this gold has as yet been so exchanged. Some 200 or 300 men have remained up the river, or are gone to their homes, for the purpose of returning to the Placer,and washing immediately with shovels, picks, and baskets; many of them, for the first few weeks, depending on borrowing from others.
    I have seen the written statement of the work of one man for sixteen days, which averaged 25 dollars per day; others have, with a shovel and pan, or wooden bowl, washed out 10 dollars to even 50 dollars in a day. There are now some men yet washing who have 500 dollars to 1,000 dollars. As they have to stand two feet deep in the river, they work but a few hours in the day, and not every day in the week.
    A few men have been down