Published since 2005. San Francisco is a city that belongs to the people of the world. Hence this blog has a global focus. The name "Sam Spade's San Francisco" refers to an exciting era in the City's history, the time of Dashiell Hammett's fictional gumshoe and San Francisco character, Sam Spade. My name is Tom Dunn and I edit the blog. I'm not as exciting as Sam Spade, but I am definitely a San Francisco character.Contact or on Twitter -- Search blog below.
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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Sherman's Bank and Admission Day
With the Gold Rush in 1849 came a great tsunami. It was a flesh-and-blood tsunami of immigrants flowing into California from every corner of the world. Many tens of thousands of people poured into California, most of them in search of gold, others coming to provide goods, service and supplies. Nearly all of them came through the Golden Gate and first stepped foot on California soil at the docks in San Francisco.
Next Wednesday, September 9th, we celebrate Admission Day, the date in 1850 when California joined the Union as a free, nonslavery state. Although San Jose was chosen as the state's first capitol, it was clear that San Francisco was the commercial center of the new state.Ships coming around Cape Horn and from various points in the Pacific and Asia were almost always bound for San Francisco. Nearly all of them carried merchandise, goods and supplies in addition to passengers.
In 1853 Major General William T. Sherman resigned his military commission and opened a bank on in the heart of the old Barbary Coast. Fortunately for the nation, Sherman's bank failed and he returned to active service with the Army. Sherman went on to lead Union soldiers in the battles of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Cattanooga, the Carolinas Campaign and Sherman's famous March to the Sea. In 1869 Sherman was appointed Commanding General of the U.S. Army when the position's previous holder, Ulysses Grant, was elected President of the United States. Sherman's bank, which still stands at the corner of , is shown in the photo upper right.
From San Francisco the newly arrived merchandise spread throughout the state by boat up the Sacramento River, stagecoach, freight wagon and by railroad.The Big Four (Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins) developed and built the Central Pacific Railroad with the labor provided by thousands of Chinese immigrants. By 1869 the transcontinental railroad had been completed and San Francisco was connected by rail to the East Coast. It was immediately after that the State of California began its steady rise to become, if California were an independent nation, what would be one of the ten largest economies in the world.
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