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Volunteer Forty-Niners
Tennesseans and the California Gold Rush
Other than the Civil War, no single event of the nineteenth century affected so many Americans as did the California Gold Rush of 1849. Responding with the same enthusiasm shown by the Mexican War volunteers, Tennessee gold seekers rushed to be among the first from the South to reach the California mines.
In Volunteer Forty-Niners, Walter T. Durham provides the first comprehensive examination of the role Tennessee and Tennesseans played in creating a new state and a new society on the West Coast. Drawing from such archival sources and personal narratives in letters and diaries, public records, and newspaper reports, Durham has woven a wealth of information into his recounting of their adventures. He follows many of the emigrants into the mines and details the activities of others in commerce and government. In the process, he shows that Tennesseans made an enormous contribution to the beginnings of government in California. Among the many offices they held were governor, assemblyman, sheriff, state senator, secretary of state, state treasurer, controller, U.S. senator, U.S. marshal, U.S. surveyor general and Indian commissioner.
In Volunteer Forty-Niners, Walter T. Durham provides the first comprehensive examination of the role Tennessee and Tennesseans played in creating a new state and a new society on the West Coast. Drawing from such archival sources and personal narratives in letters and diaries, public records, and newspaper reports, Durham has woven a wealth of information into his recounting of their adventures. He follows many of the emigrants into the mines and details the activities of others in commerce and government. In the process, he shows that Tennesseans made an enormous contribution to the beginnings of government in California. Among the many offices they held were governor, assemblyman, sheriff, state senator, secretary of state, state treasurer, controller, U.S. senator, U.S. marshal, U.S. surveyor general and Indian commissioner.
Walter T. Durham, whose family has resided in Middle Tennessee since the early nineteenth century, is the author of numerous books and articles on Tennessee history.
Durham's stirring tale is its own reward. Probably the most valuable dimension of it is not about gold at all, but about the Tennesseans who went and stayed to make their mark in California.
--John Egerton, The Tennessean ~John Egerton, The Tennessean
“Volunteer Forty-Niners is an admirable example of how a familiar story—the Gold Rush and life in California during 1848-1853—can be enriched and enlarged by imaginative and energetic research in newly discovered resources.” –J.S. Holliday, author of The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience~J.S. Holliday
“Durham’s book gives us not only a richly detailed and fascinating view of the many interesting Tennessee characters caught up in the California fever, it also helps us understand better the sectional crisis that was tearing America apart at the same time it brought northerners and southerners together in the West.” –Don H. Doyle, author of New Men, New Cities, New South and co-editor of The South as an American Problem~Don H. Doyle