The Age of Gold Quotes

“As when some carcass, hidden in sequestered nook, draws from every near and distant point myriads of discordant vultures, so drew these little flakes of gold the voracious sons of men. …This little scratch upon the earth to make a backwoods mill-race touched the cerebral nerve that quickened humanity, and sent a thrill throughout the system. It tingled in the ear and at the finger-ends; it buzzed about the brain and tickled in the stomach; it warmed the blood and swelled the heart; new fires were kindled on hearth-stones, new castles builded in the air. If Satan from Diablo’s peak had sounded the knell of time; if a heavenly angel from the Sierra’s height had heralded the millennial day; if the blessed Christ himself had risen from that ditch and proclaimed to all mankind amnesty — their greedy hearts had never half so thrilled. (Hubert Howe Bancroft)”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“As the golden news spread beyond California to the outside world, it triggered the most astonishing mass movement of peoples since the Crusades. From all over the planet they came—from Mexico and Peru and Chile and Argentina, from Oregon and Hawaii and Australia and New Zealand and China, from the American North and the American South, from Britain and France and Germany and Italy and Greece and Russia.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“From all over the planet they came…. They came in companies and alone, with money and without, knowing and naïve. They tore themselves from warm hearths and good homes, promising to return; they fled from cold hearts and bad debts, never to return. They were farmers and merchants and sailors and slaves and abolitionists and soldiers of fortune and ladies of the night. They jumped bail to start their journey, and jumped ship at journey’s end. They were the pillars of their communities, and their communities’ dregs….”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“Where life was a gamble and success a matter of stumbling on the right stretch of streambed, old standards of risk and reward didn't apply. In the goldfields a person was expected to gamble, and to fail, and to gamble again and again, till success finally came - success likely followed by additional failure - ore energy ran out. Where failure was so common, it lost its stigma. No one in California counted the failures, only the rich strikes that rewarded the tenth or hundreth try.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“Loeser’s arrival prompted an announcement by President Polk of the momentous discovery in California, an announcement that is often interpreted as the starting pistol for the Gold Rush.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“I looked on for a moment; a frenzy seized my soul; unbidden my legs performed some entirely new movements of polka steps—I took several. Houses were too small for me to stay in; I was soon in the street in search of necessary outfits. Piles of gold rose up before me at every step; castles of marble, dazzling the eye with their rich appliances; thousands of slaves bowing to my beck and call; myriads of fair virgins contending with each other for my love—were among the fancies of my fevered imagination. The Rothschilds, Girards, and Astors appeared to me but poor people. In short, I had a very violent attack of the gold fever.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“Shortly after the start of the Bear Flag rebellion, Frémont’s soldiers spied a small boat of Californians crossing San Pablo Bay. Frémont sent Kit Carson, the famous scout and Indian fighter who was Frémont’s frequent partner in exploration, and some other men to intercept the boat. According to an eyewitness, Carson asked Frémont, “Captain, shall I take those men prisoner?” According to this same witness, Frémont answered, with a wave of the hand, “I have no room for prisoners.” Carson and the others rode to where the boat had landed and shot three of the Californians dead.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“In any event, it caused him to join the army, that historic institution of elevation for the ambitious but badly born.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“If God had smiled on the United States of America—and almost none doubted that He had—wouldn’t He want America to grow? Wouldn’t He want Americans to spread their blessings into neighboring lands? And wouldn’t He want this all the more, considering that the inhabitants of those neighboring lands were heathen Indians and papist Mexicans? Of course He would—or so concluded the publicists of what came to be called Manifest Destiny, the”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“Clemens’s loss was literature’s gain. Forced to earn his daily bread once more, he turned to mining in the Mother Lode country. He found little gold, but gathered impressions and experiences. He met Bret Harte, and guessed that if Harte could make money from stories about the gold country, so could he. He proved himself right with a tale about a jumping-frog contest in Calaveras County, which won him a wide and enthusiastic national readership.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“Let this constitution go forth from this convention, and from the new state, a model instrument of liberal and enlightened principles.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream