About the Author

Leonard L. Richards, Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, grew up in California, and earned his AB, MA, and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley and Davis. He has also taught at San Francisco State College and the University of Hawaii. His "Gentlemen of Property and Standing"- Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Award in 1970. The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and The Slave Power- The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860 took the second-place Lincoln Prize in 2001. He is also the author, with William Graebner, of The American Record (1981, 1987, 1995, 2000, 2005) and of Shay's Rebellion- The American Revolution's Final Battle (2002). He and his wife live in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Reviews

“Richards, a leading historian of 19th century America superbly illuminates gold rush California as a land in contention between national pro– and anti–slavery lobbies in the decade leading up to the Civil War.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Richards offers a broad panorama that moves seamlessly from the gold fields to the halls of congress. This is an excellent work of popular history that will add to the appreciation of a critical epoch in our national development.”
—Booklist

“Brings to life a population of scheming officeholders, xenophobic Californians and frantic slaveholders, all of whom resorted to the ultimate frontier solution: violence.’
—Kirkus Reviews

“An engrossing chronicle of the political intrigues that engulfed California in the 1850s, when pro-Southern legislators there angled to turn the state’s newfound wealth to the benefit of the slave economy.”
—The Atlantic

“The important back-story of the Gold Rush, according to gifted historian Leonard Richards, is political and racial. Mr. Richards contends in this insightful new book, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War that for every fortune seeker who viewed California as a place to get rich discovering gold, another believed it a place to get rich exporting, utilizing, or trafficking in human slaves. . . . [A] gripping book.”
—The New York Sun

“Richards meticulously catalogs details of 19th-century American legislation that nonspecilaists won’t have thought about since high school: the Missouri Compromise, the Gadsden Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act. But when he places the actors center stage to reveal the motives behind the politics, the narrative approaches the Shakespearean.”
—Tennessean

“With a mastery that brings even his bit players to life, Leonard Richards tells a gripping story about politics, business, violence, and the scoundrels who almost destroyed the United States. If you think you already know this story, you're in for some nice surprises. And if you don’t, there’s no better guide.”
—Robin L. Einhorn, author of American Taxation, American Slavery

“Leonard Richards has once again produced a wonderful, entertaining, and informative account of antebellum politics. Most important, he shows the myriad forces–greed, ambition, idealism, racism, patronage, migration, expansionism–that melded together to distance southerners from northerners. Any one reading this work will come away with a deep understanding of how the antagonism between free and slave labor systems constituted the volatile fuel that made the explosion of secession and civil war possible.”
—James L. Huston, author of Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War

“A truly rollicking book, full of colorful characters, duels, hard-rock miners, ‘Chivs,’ and back-stabbing politics. But its readability belies the centrality of these seemingly minor characters to the drama of the nation’s sectional crisis. The Golden State can no longer be ignored by those wishing to tell the story of how the nation came to civil war.”
—Jonathan H. Earle, author of Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854

Richards, a leading historian of 19th-century America (The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams), superbly illuminates gold rush California as a land in contention between national pro- and anti-slavery lobbies in the decade leading up to the Civil War. For Southerners the labor-intensive gold riches to be found in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains seemed custom-made for exploitation by slave labor working for the aggrandizement of whites. Southern men of means also saw California-up until its entrance to the Union as a free state in 1850-as a potentially large new market for slaves. Northern industrialists, on the other hand, sought California as a market for manufactured goods and as a gateway for shipping those goods to the Orient. Richards hones in most productively on the internal and external politics related to the pre-1850 California territory, revealing the intense maneuvering and impassioned rhetoric as the statehood debate proceeded. And he demonstrates how close California came to being cut in two, once Southern senators realized admittance of the territory in its entirety as a slave state was a nonstarter and proposed to "settle" for the fertile valleys to the south, there to start a new slave-holding culture in the West. B&w illus., maps. (Feb. 19) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

"Richards, a leading historian of 19th century America superbly illuminates gold rush California as a land in contention between national pro- and anti-slavery lobbies in the decade leading up to the Civil War."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Richards offers a broad panorama that moves seamlessly from the gold fields to the halls of congress. This is an excellent work of popular history that will add to the appreciation of a critical epoch in our national development."
-Booklist

"Brings to life a population of scheming officeholders, xenophobic Californians and frantic slaveholders, all of whom resorted to the ultimate frontier solution: violence.'
-Kirkus Reviews

"An engrossing chronicle of the political intrigues that engulfed California in the 1850s, when pro-Southern legislators there angled to turn the state's newfound wealth to the benefit of the slave economy."
-The Atlantic

"The important back-story of the Gold Rush, according to gifted historian Leonard Richards, is political and racial. Mr. Richards contends in this insightful new book, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War that for every fortune seeker who viewed California as a place to get rich discovering gold, another believed it a place to get rich exporting, utilizing, or trafficking in human slaves. . . . [A] gripping book."
-The New York Sun

"Richards meticulously catalogs details of 19th-century American legislation that nonspecilaists won't have thought about since high school: the Missouri Compromise, the Gadsden Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act. But when he places the actors center stage to reveal the motives behind the politics, the narrative approaches the Shakespearean."
-Tennessean

"With a mastery that brings even his bit players to life, Leonard Richards tells a gripping story about politics, business, violence, and the scoundrels who almost destroyed the United States. If you think you already know this story, you're in for some nice surprises. And if you don't, there's no better guide."
-Robin L. Einhorn, author of American Taxation, American Slavery

"Leonard Richards has once again produced a wonderful, entertaining, and informative account of antebellum politics. Most important, he shows the myriad forces-greed, ambition, idealism, racism, patronage, migration, expansionism-that melded together to distance southerners from northerners. Any one reading this work will come away with a deep understanding of how the antagonism between free and slave labor systems constituted the volatile fuel that made the explosion of secession and civil war possible."
-James L. Huston, author of Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War

"A truly rollicking book, full of colorful characters, duels, hard-rock miners, 'Chivs,' and back-stabbing politics. But its readability belies the centrality of these seemingly minor characters to the drama of the nation's sectional crisis. The Golden State can no longer be ignored by those wishing to tell the story of how the nation came to civil war."
-Jonathan H. Earle, author of Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854