The Infamous King Of The Comstock: William Sharon And The Gilded Age In The West

Chapter Six: Hurly-Burly

 Chapter Six HURLY-BURLY A    the Sutro hearings were being held in Washington, D.C., Sharon let it be known that he was a candidate for Nevada’s U.S. Senate seat. He and Ralston had first considered such a move two years earlier.1 On March , , the Territorial Enterprise reported that although the Enterprise’s “unknown candidate” was still in the field, Sharon was to resign from the bank to “[attend] to the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, his large mining interests,and to some little Senatorial matters in which he feels some concern.” By the end of  Sharon moved fulltime to California . He felt justified in running for the Senate as a Nevadan, since he retained his business interests and paid taxes in Nevada. Since Nevada’s statehood in , the Republican Party had dominated its politics. Republicans swept the  state elections. In  the state legislature was composed of fifty Republicans and nine Democrats.2 But in the election of  there was a backlash,because Republicans were seen as the Bank of California party. Sharon was derisively called “the Great King.” Regarding the Republican convention and its slate of candidates ,the Elko Independent editorialized: “The same men who have ruled this State since it was a Territory ruled the convention. Nothing can ever break up the clique but a total defeat at the polls.” The paper then listed the nominees: “For Governor—F. A. Tritle, Grand Scribe of the Bank of California. For Lieutenant Governor—J. S. Singerland, Grand Hotel Keeper of the Bank of California.” Thirteen men were listed, after each their fanciful relationship to the bank, through “State Mineralogist— Henry Witchell, Grand Bugologist of the Bank of California.”3 In the voting on November , , the Democrats gained their first substantial victories in the state. They won Nevada’s lone House seat and the most important state offices: governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, attorney general, and Nevada Supreme Court justice.4 Anti-Sharon sentiment was generally cited as the cause of the Republican collapse. Two years later, Sharon was ready to rectify the poor showing of  by running himself. In mid- two other candidates announced that they would seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate: the incumbent, James W. Nye, and John P. Jones. This was the first of three senatorial races in which Sharon ran, and disturbing amounts of money were thrown around. Although as early as  Governor Henry Blasdel had addressed bribing electors in his message to the state legislature, the three Sharon-contested U.S. Senate races earned the state the designation “the rotten borough.”5 Early in the ’ campaign, it became clear that Senator Nye would not be a factor. Nye, appointed territorial governor by Abraham Lincoln, had also served eight years as senator from Nevada. The years of service were not enough when opposed by Sharon’s unlimited wealth and that of Jones, the Crown Point millionaire. (It proved fortuitous when Nye later showed signs of the onset of senility.)6 In February Sharon authorized the bank to loan Alf Doten ten thousand dollars to purchase the Gold Hill News. Doten supported his candidacy . As it had been two years earlier, much of the rest of the state’s press was antagonistic toward “the King”—especially Nevada’s most influential paper, the Territorial Enterprise. In May  Enterprise editor Joseph Goodman had published a wry column illustrating both his disdain for Sharon and the hard edge of the era’s newspaper humor.The column told of a San Francisco letter writer’s statement that Sharon would soon be assassinated .The writer owned stocks that,he believed,Sharon suppressed. He or someone else would perform the task, claiming to have recently met    -          a man with a gun who was waiting for Sharon. Although Goodman announced that he had prepared a biographical notice of Sharon, “which, were he permitted to read in advance, would reconcile him to his fate,” he protested: “Sharon belongs to Virginia, and our individual right to put an end to him must not be trespassed upon by outsiders.”7 By  Goodman was poised to take up the battle against Sharon.The Enterprise’s “unknown candidate” stepped forward in the person of John P. Jones, immediately dubbed “the Commoner,” to emphasize the difference between him and Sharon. That January, when the market sagged, Jones and his partner, Alvinza Hayward, employed a scheme to bull the market that was used periodically through...