Ho! For the Gold Fields: Northern Overland Wagon Trains of the 1860s (review)

book reviews267 the Civil War by the simple expediency of a neutral political narration and conclusion of his work before South Carolina seceded from the Union. Wellman's book sparkles with interspersed vignettes on well-known and little-known players and events. His opening dramatic description of the Battle of New Orleans is classic. He points up the turbulent congressional scene with a human and humorous description of the duel between Henry Clay and John Randolph. His short treatment of the struggle of John Quincy Adams to overdirow the "gag rule" in the House does the event dramatic justice. What the publisher has advertised as a "colorful" addition to die Mainstream of America Series, edited by Lewis Gannett, emerges as a light survey molded into a brilliant mosaic. Wellman avoids the straitjacket of chronology by fitting togetiier the pieces of his mosaic widi "historical free will," a technique which gives his work a flowing continuity. Academicians , however, will be frustrated by die lack of footnotes to interesting quoted material, and die lack of bibliographical reference to primary materials and highly regarded monographs on topics treated in the book. In last analysis, Wellman has burned his particular western brand on a familiar story. John Sherman Long Southern Methodist University Ho! For the Gold Fields: Northern Overland Wagon Trains of the 1860s. Edited by Helen McCann White. (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1966. Pp. xii, 289. $8.50.) While Civil War was in die Soudieast, and a confederation was falling, diere were growing prospects of a commercial empire in die Northwest where wagon trains were connecting Minnesota and Montana Territory. Writers like W. Turrentine Jackson in Wagon Roads West point to die importance of the gold-field story, but here for die first time it is presented in complete scholarly form. The diousand-mile route just south of Canada was long neglected while historians studied central and southern routes. In the late 1850's gold was discovered in British Columbia, and diere was evidence of lodes soudi of die border. From 1862-1867 eight expeditions , including 1,400 emigrants, went from Minnesota on the three-months journey to gold fields. In 1862 most of the emigrants were from Minnesota, but in later years prospectors from all the northern states and from European countries joined the wagon trains. Some miners were secessionists. In Minnesota, politicians and press urged establishment of a northern route, its survey, and its protection by forts and military escorts. Congressmen won favor of President Lincoln by noting how Montana could replenish die dwindling gold supply of the nation. Federal support of the nordiern route would bind die Northwest to die Union, and discourage Indians and Canadians from aiding the South. Minnesota businessmen envisioned a western market for flour, pork, and beef, and even commerce 268CIVIL WAR HISTORY with the Orient. A railroad would follow wagon trains, and the Northern Pacific did so twenty years after die rush. James Liberty Fisk (1835-1902) was the most energetic and widely known promoter of die overland emigration. He was born in New York, worked on a newspaper in Indiana, and in the spring of 1862 was serving as a private in the Third Minnesota Infantry in Tennessee. In May he was appointed superintendent of emigration on a route between Fort Abercrombie and Walla Walla, Washington. He was a captain in die quartermaster corps. With cooperation of the congressional delegation, he held the position until die death of Lincoln, and in the meantime conducted diree emigrant trains to die gold fields. He was more interested in his role as explorer and promoter of the northern route than in his duties as army officer and superintendent of emigration. Fewer than half the people who went to die gold fields from Minnesota traveled widi him, but his influence caused most of them to take die trail he advocated. The high point in his army career was in 1864 when, with a congressional delegation, he presented gold nuggets to Lincoln. After Lincoln, the Minnesota influence with President and Cabinet declined , and Fisk resigned from the army in 1865. The next year, as an entrepreneur, he conducted a train of about 350 emigrants to the gold fields...