California was never a hotbed of Civil War action, but the Golden State — and the Bay Area in particular — played a major role. The riches of the Gold Rush didn’t just line the pockets of lucky miners; they fueled the Union war effort.
“We enlisted 17,000 Californians, but they mostly fought in the West, marching across the desert into Arizona and New Mexico,” says Concord native Glenna Matthews, a former Cal and Stanford history professor and author of “Golden State in the Civil War.” “Mostly what California did for the Union was send money.”
And, she says, historical sites from that era — forts, armories and even a duel site — dot the region.
Broderick-Terry duel site
DALY CITY, CA – DECEMBER 16: The Broderick and Terry Duel Site marker is photographed on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, in Daly City, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
In a small, quiet Daly City park just south of San Francisco’s Lake Merced, two century-old granite shafts sit 10 paces apart, with the name Broderick carved into one and Terry into the other, commemorating the last great American duel.
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In 1859, U.S. senator David Broderick and California Supreme Court chief justice David Terry — former friends on opposite sides of the slavery argument — fired their pistols in a battle that cost Broderick his life but proved a significant tipping point to push California away from the Confederacy. Terry, who had a history of violence and once stabbed a man to death, denounced Broderick publicly for his anti-slavery stance. Broderick challenged him to a duel.
According to the National Parks Service, Broderick’s gun misfired into the dirt just before the one-two-three count. Terry fired straight into Broderick’s chest. He died three days later, reportedly saying, “They killed me because I am opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt administration.”
Terry resigned as chief justice and joined the Confederacy. But Broderick became a martyr, and his death supplied a jolt of energy to California’s anti-slavery movement.
Details: 1100 Lake Merced Blvd. in Daly City; nps.gov
Thomas Starr King Statue
After Broderick’s death, Abraham Lincoln sent a friend, politician Edward Baker from Illinois, to California to give the funeral address. “Broderick died on the altar of sacrifice for his country,” Baker told the crowd in a moving eulogy.
Soon after, a Boston clergyman and powerful orator named Thomas Starr King was recruited to California. He borrowed from Baker’s speech to help spread the word of Broderick’s death and fuel the anti-slavery movement, telling San Francisco’s Black community, that “places that are the most diverse are the most blessed by god.” The clergyman, Matthews says, was “the first prominent voice for racial justice by a white person.”
When the Civil War began in 1861, Starr King helped California raise $1.2 million, more than any state in the union, for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the American Red Cross, which provided food, clothes and medical care to Union soldiers. Starr King died in 1864 at the age of 39 — “he wore himself out,” Matthews says.
Today, his memory lives on in Golden Gate Park in the form of a statue dedicated in 1892 by Daniel Chester French, the sculptor behind the iconic Lincoln Memorial Statue.
Another famous Starr King statue was placed in the U.S. Statuary Hall Collection in the nation’s capital in 1931, but a Republican-led effort was successful in replacing it with a statue of President Ronald Reagan in 2006. The Starr King statue was moved to Sacramento, where it stands today.
Details: Music Concourse Drive in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; sfrecpark.org
Alcatraz Island
Alcatraz Island as seen from the ferry in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
Those Gold Rush riches were shipped east through the Golden Gate, with their mode of transport soon becoming targets for the Confederate army and privateers such as Asbury Harpending. Harpending’s 1863 plan to intercept a shipment of gold near San Francisco was sniffed out the night before he and his men cast off. Harpending was swiftly found guilty of treason and sent to Alcatraz — then a heavily fortified military installation that was used to imprison Confederate sympathizers, prisoners of war and privateers during the war.
Details: nps.gov/alca
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Fort Mason, San Francisco
A visitor walk alongs a trail at the Great Meadow Park at Fort Mason in San Francisco.(Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group File)
The Gold Rush turned San Francisco into a boom town, with bustling businesses and fine mansions, including five large residences in the area now known as Fort Mason. One of those impressive homes belonged to Senator John Fremont and his wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, who was an influential figure in social circles and, along with Starr King, presided over California’s first literary salons.
“People like Herman Melville would come here,” Matthews says. “So while San Francisco was only 10 years old, suddenly there was this culture producing nationally known writers like Bret Harte, a protege of Starr King.”
The Fremonts home, which was known as Porter’s Lodge, became the center of San Francisco intellectual life until John Fremont was called into military service during the Civil War, and his family moved to the East Coast.
Today, you can still see three of those pre-Civil War homes. The National Parks Service’s self-guided walking tour brochure explains much of its history.
Details: Fort Mason, San Francisco; nps.gov/goga.
Angel Island
An actors portraying a Union Army soldier takes a peek at the battle field before heading into combat against the Confederate Army for control of San Francisco Bay at Camp Reynolds on Angel Island near Tiburon, Calif. on Saturday, June 21, 2019. The National Park Service and the Friends of Civil War Angel Island are hosting the Living History Days event to commemorate the 155th anniversary of the Civil War. (Sherry LaVars/ Special to Marin Independent Journal)
To further protect the Bay from Confederate sympathizers, Camp Reynolds was established on Angel Island in 1863, and cannons were stationed around the island.
While Camp Reynolds was never needed during the Civil War — it later became an infantry camp — several of the original buildings, including the Bake House and a Victorian-era officer’s home — still stand today and are open for occasional guided tours. And fourth and fifth grade classes are invited for overnight field trips during the school year.
Details: Reach Angel Island by ferry from Tiburon and San Francisco; angelisland.org.