Lincoln and California: The President, the War, and the Golden State

by Brian McGinty

The ties that bound Abraham Lincoln to California, and California to Lincoln, have long been overlooked by historians. Although the great Civil War president has been the subject of thousands of books, his important relationship with the Western state, both before and during the war—the part it played in bringing on the great conflict and the help it gave him in winning it—have been little described and imperfectly understood. In Lincoln and California Brian McGinty explains the relationship between the president and the Golden State, describing important events that took place in California and elsewhere during Lincoln’s lifetime. He includes the histories of Lincoln’s close friends and personal acquaintances who made history as they went to California, lived there, and helped to keep it part of the imperiled Union.

McGinty demonstrates that California was in large part responsible for beginning the Civil War, as the principal purpose of its conquest in the Mexican War was to acquire land into which the Southern states could extend their cotton-growing and slaveholding empire. The decision of California’s first voters to exclude slavery from the state but to enact virulently racist legislation encouraged Southerners’ hope that, if they established a separate republic, it would become an independent slave nation with the power to extend its territory to the Pacific coast of North America and into the Caribbean and Latin America. Lincoln’s opposition to their plans unleashed the Civil War.

As the struggle played out, however, the hopes of the proslavery Confederates were ultimately defeated because California played a vital role in helping Lincoln save the Union. Lincoln and California shines new light on an important state, a pivotal president, and a turning point in American history.
 

264 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2023

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

McGinty is a prolific writer of microhistories, turning stories that could have been articles or chapters in other books into concise but full-fledged books in their own right. Sometimes it works, as in his The Body of John Merryman, other times it feels like a stretch, as in his Lincoln's Greatest Case.

This effort is a bit more of the latter. My first thought upon seeing the title was that the premise itself seemed like a stretch - what connection did Lincoln have to a state that he never even visited? Might as well write a book called “Lincoln and Minnesota” or “Lincoln and Maine” - even though he never visited those states either, you can draw some connections (as president, Lincoln had to deal with the aftermath of the Dakota War in Minnesota, and his vice president was from Maine). But is there enough to fill a whole book?

I figured there must be, to warrant a book about Lincoln and California. Turns out there is, kind of. But I’d say this is likely of more interest to someone who’s primarily interested in California history with a side interest in Lincoln, rather than the other way around.

The book starts out strong, recounting several of Lincoln’s last conversations before his assassination, in which he discussed California and his desire to visit there. He had a particular interest in the state’s gold and silver deposits, which helped to finance the war and, he hoped, would help pay the postwar national debt. And he probably would have liked to have visited the final resting place of his good friend Edward Baker, one of his many friends who first relocated to California during the Gold Rush. Even though Lincoln never got to California, McGinty argues that his “western roots and outlook” piqued his interest in the state.

The most interesting part of the book to me explored the political sentiment in California during the secession crisis and subsequent war. Considering the state would have been cleaved nearly in half had the old Missouri Compromise still been in effect, it’s perhaps no surprise that Northern California was more pro-Union and Southern California more sympathetic to the Confederate cause. And yet many in the far-flung state felt no strong ties to either side, and considered forming their own western breakaway country. Ultimately, California remained in the Union, but efforts continued throughout the war to keep the state loyal.

Other parts of the book, including how Lincoln filled patronage positions and appointed federal judges in California, can really only be of interest to those specifically into this period of California history. There are a lot of reactions from California newspapers to events in the war and the Lincoln presidency that didn't otherwise directly involve them. McGinty also argues that Lincoln essentially established the first national park at Yosemite, while acknowledging that’s not technically true.

Much of the rest of the book, though, feels padded with tenuous, often coincidental, connections between Lincoln and California. There are long profiles of Civil War figures like Grant, Sherman, Halleck and Farragut, all of whom either happened to be from, or had spent time in, California. Sometimes McGinty stretches to make a connection, noting that the audience for Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech included John Frémont, former California Senator, and Horace Greeley, who had visited California a year earlier. He name-drops “respected California-based historian Don Fehrenbacher” and “California-based biographer and historian Ronald C. White,” if for no other reason than they, like McGinty himself, happen to be from California. And sometimes the California connections are downright generic, as when we’re told that “men who were in California, who came from California, or who sought to go there were among the many hundreds who sought appointments from Lincoln. Some received them while many others did not.”

There are at least a couple of unfortunate editing errors that jumped out at me, including a reference to “the Fifth Amendment” that abolished slavery, and the racial injustice protests of “2018,” after which McGinty describes events that took place in 2020. The book ends here, with a look at how Lincoln was remembered, honored and sometimes criticized in California up until the present day.

As with the other McGinty books I’ve read, this one is well-written and tries to make the most of its narrow topic. This one might have been a little too narrow, though. One could write similar books about Lincoln and every other state - and given publishers’ propensity to push anything with Lincoln in the title and on the cover, I wouldn’t be surprised if someday, someone does.

[David Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

McGinty digs into the importance of California, and Californians, to Abraham Lincoln and the war effort. There is a lot more there than people know.

[Ptc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting discussion of the ties between Lincoln and the Golden State.