"A good leader, energetic and long-headed," the governor was called; but
no one dreamed that long before he was an old man, he would give for the
cause of education in California the mightiest gift ever bestowed by any
one man for the benefit of humanity.
During the war, California furnished 16,000 men, two regiments of which
were among the best of the Union cavalry. One regiment of infantry was
composed of trappers and mountaineers, from whom were taken many
"sharpshooters" so famous in assisting the advance of the Northern
troops.
In the southern part of the state there was a body of volunteers known
as the California Column, also the California Lancers, who, far off
though they were, found enough to do. They drove the Southern forces out
of Arizona and New Mexico, fought the Apache Indians in several battles,
met and defeated the Texas Rangers, and took various military posts in
Texas.
Great was the excitement in San Francisco when one morning the United
States marshall captured, just as she was leaving the wharf, a schooner
fully fitted out as a privateer. She was filled with armed men, and in
her cabin was a commission signed by Jefferson Davis in the name of the
Confederate States, also a plan for capturing the forts of the harbor,
the Panama mail steamer, then en route north, and a treasure steamer
soon to, sail for Panama.
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