The Prospecting Professor

General Grant, Vicksburg, and Perserverance

It was on this date, May 19, 1863, that General Ulysses S. Grant began his assault on the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Although his troops made a daring run past the Confederate batteries, they failed to overwhelm the city. With Union gunboats on the river and trenches surrounding the city, Grant's soldiers settled down to a six-week siege.

On July 4th, Confederate General John C. Pemberton, and his 30,000 troops surrendered. Vicksburg was a major point in the the Civil War. Grant's victory gained control of the Mississippi River for the Union, and geographically divided the Confederacy.

Ulysses S. Grant is one of the most misunderstood of American presidents. Today, he is often remembered for his purported weakness for drink, and his scandal-ridden presidency. However, in his day, he was considered a national hero and savior of the Union...and was more popular than Abraham Lincoln.

Ulysses Grant's most courageous act came during the last year of his life. In 1884, Grant and his family were destitute as a result of a financial fraud and business failure. That same year, he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. Racing against  the clock and enduring searing pain, Grant wrote his personal memoirs, which he hoped would provide financial security for his family. Grant completed the text just days before his death on July 23, 1885.

With more than 325,000 copies sold, the selling of Grant's memoirs was recognized as one of the most successful book campaigns of the 19th century...that eventually earned the Grant family more than $400,000. It was also a huge literary success...Gertrude Stein thought that Grant's memoirs  were one of the pre-eminent American works of the century.

"Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any fondness for war, and I have never advocated it except as a means of peace."...Ulysses Simpson Grant

The Golden Spike

It was on this day, May 10, 1869 at Promontory, Utah...that the greatest event in the history of transportation on this continent occurred...as the Union Pacific tracks joined those of the Central Pacific Railroad.

The impetus for the completion of the transcontinental railroad was provided by the energy and enterprise of four California entrepreneurs: Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins...or the "Big Four" as they came to be known.

The connection of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific bridged the 2000 miles from the Missouri to the 'Golden State.' and the four to six months time taken by overland pioneers was reduced to six days.

While the "Big Four" provided the vision and the money to the Transcontinental Railroad, it was the Chinese who lent their sweat, toil, and blood. Beginning with the Gold Rush, the Chinese saw California as the opportunity to escape the grinding poverty of their homeland. Paying $40 cash, thousands were packed into ships for the voyage to "Golden Mountain." Lying on their sides beneath the decks, in 18 inches of space, mortality ran as high as 25% on some of the ships.

By 1865, about 50,000 Chinese had arrived at "Golden Mountain." They could not vote, become citizens, own property...and lived in segregated communities. After the Central Pacific began building the Transcontinental Railroad eastward from Sacramento, the demand for Chinese laborers increased still further. Central Pacific hired all of the available Chinese workers in the state, and sent agents to Canton, Hong Kong, and Macao to find more willing immigrants.

For those of you who have ever driven I-80 over Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevadas, you will be familiar with the solid granite outcroppings of this fantastic mountain range. Imagine attempting to claw a railroad over this redoubtable terrain. The Chinese did. After the Cornish Miners who were imported by the Central Pacific gave up, the Chinese used pick, shovel, and black powder to progress at 8 inches per day. The Chinese worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from both ends of the Sierras. The winters were some of the worst on record, with over 40 feet of snow at the higher elevations. The Chinese had to dig tunnels from their huts to the work tunnels. Many didn't see daylight for months.

The World Grows Smaller. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad linked East and West, opened up vast areas to settlement, and provided easy access to new markets. The railroad ensured a production boom, as industry mined the vast resources of the middle and western continent for use in production. The railroad was America's first technology corridor.

Black Sunday

As an American living in a bountiful land, it is easy to take things for granted. However, sometimes, images of past events can jar one's thinking...and expose our lack of  historical context and perspective.

Today is the anniversary of Black Sunday, the day in 1935 when a windstorm hit a part of the Great Plains known as the Dust Bowl. That area of farmland, which included parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, was considered some of the most fertile land in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Farmers flocked to the area and the wide use of mechanical tractors had plowed up millions of acres of land. When a drought hit the area in the 1930s, and all that plowed-up earth turned to dust.

On this day in 1935, the weather was sunny and calm. People were on their way home from church, or out visiting friends for lunch, when they saw huge flocks of birds flying south, away from a dark black cloud on the northern horizon. As the cloud approached, people realized that it wasn't a storm cloud, but a cloud of dirt, blown up by the wind.

Witnesses said it was like a black tidal wave came down from the sky. It became as dark as night as soon as the cloud descended. Static electricity stalled cars and shorted out telephone lines. People standing a few yards away from their homes got lost in the darkness.