UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Southern California Chivalry: The Convergence of Southerners and Californios in the Far Southwest, 1846-1866 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Daniel Brendan Lynch 2015 © Copyright by Daniel Brendan Lynch 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Southern California Chivalry: The Convergence of Southerners and Californios in the Far Southwest, 1846-1866 by Daniel Brendan Lynch Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Stephen Aron, Chair From 1846 to 1866, the United States expanded national power in the West while confirming it in the South. In the far corner of the Southwest, two unlikely groups of men worked together to facilitate Southern California’s incorporation into the Union: southerners—migrants from the antebellum South; and Californios—the Spanish- surnamed cattle ranchers of Alta California. Drawing upon census data, legislative documents, militia records and other sources, this dissertation demonstrates that seigneurial notions of social hierarchy and masculine honor stood behind their political alliance in a faction known as “the Chivalry” and their coordination of cavalry companies in vigilante justice. ii While a desired state split may have done much to entrench seigneurialism and local militia organization, the primary result of the alliance was not to mediate but to hasten the region’s incorporation. They brought a rough order to Southern California in the wake of the Mexican-American War that privileged white Americans and Californios over Indians and Spanish-surnamed people of lower social status. They also stimulated a military build-up in the region during the Civil War that strengthened local connections to the capitalist economy of the expanding nation-state. Driven by a desire to protect the embattled sister republics of the United States and Mexico, Californios would generally side with the Union and many joined the California Native Cavalry Battalion. Also known as the California Lancers, this mostly Spanish-surnamed unit played a critical role in Unionizing Southern California. The Chivalry alliance, though not fully destroyed by the Civil War, was greatly weakened by it, and a window of opportunity closed for those benefiting from a hybrid seigneurial society—land-owning rancheros, white southerners and a limited number of free black southerners. By focusing on the sectional dimension of American identity in the West and also on class distinctions within the Spanish- surnamed population, this dissertation outlines a case of culture trumping race in a period of US history typically defined by conflict between North and South on one side of the country and between whites and western peoples of color on the other. iii The dissertation of Daniel Brendan Lynch is approved. David E. Hayes-Bautista Joan Waugh Stephen A. Aron, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv CONTENTS List of Figures vi Vita vii vii Introduction 1 1 Part I Cavalries Converge 20 Chapter 1 Chivalry at San Pasqual 25 Chapter 2 Californio Vigilantism and the Southernization of Southern California 59 Part II Southern California in a State of Flux 93 Chapter 3 Separation Schemes and Unfree Labor 97 Chapter 4 The Civil War and the Interests of “Men of Property” 142 Part III Unionization and the Divergence of Southerners and Californios 165 Chapter 5 The Black Democrat 168 Chapter 6 The California Lancers 192 Conclusion 215 Appendix A Los Angeles County population by place of birth, 1860 224 Appendix B Los Angeles County population compared to eastern states, 1860 225 Bibliography 226 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Los Angeles County population by place of birth, 1860 13 Figure 2 Los Angeles County population compared to eastern US states, 1860 14 Figure 3 Evolution of El Monte masculinity: from “Monte men” to “Monte Boys” 88 vi VITA University of California, Los Angeles 2012 C.Phil., United States History California State University Long Beach 2009 M.A., World History University of California, Berkeley 1999 B.A., History Book Chapter 2015 “On the Border of Empires, Republics and Identities: De la Guerra’s Sword of the War and the California Native Cavalry,” Virginia Scharff, ed., Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 105-121. Articles 2014 “Southern California Chivalry: Southerners, Californios, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance,” Leading Edge, California History, vol. 91 no. 3 (Fall 2014), 60-62. 2014 “From Test Plots to Large Lots: The Gardens of San Marino, California as Natural and Social Laboratories,” UCLA History Journal, vol. 25 no. 1 (2014), 17-29. Grants and Fellowships 2014 UCLA Public History Innovators Grant 2013 Huntington Library-Western History Association Martin Ridge Fellowship, San Marino, CA 2012 Bancroft Library Gunther Barth Fellowship, Berkeley, CA 2011 UCLA Graduate Division Research Mentorship 2011 UCLA Graduate Division Summer Research Mentorship vii INTRODUCTION In 1865, the artist Edward Vischer sketched “A California Magnate in His Home,” a drawing of Andrés Pico at “Ex-Mission San Fernando,” one of Pico’s properties located twenty- three miles northwest of Los Angeles. Pico is shown holding the hand of his “adoptive daughter” in the mission colonnade, or, as Vischer wrote, the “corridor of the farm-building.” The girl, Catalina, was the biological daughter of Joseph Lancaster Brent, a Maryland-born attorney and politician who, shortly after Catalina’s birth, travelled east to fight for the Confederacy and never returned. Brent rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Confederate Army while Catalina remained at San Fernando with Pico—Brent’s former friend, legal client and political ally in “the Chivalry,” the pro-slavery faction of the California Democratic Party.1 The Chivalry dominated southern California politics for much of this period and brought the region to the brink of territorial separation from the state in 1859. The worsening sectional tensions on the eve of the Civil War killed any chance of the separation effort, which, if successful, would have helped entrench southern and Californio influence in the region. As it turned out, southerners and Californios, two groups known for going to war against the United States during the mid-nineteenth century, did more to facilitate than mediate the consolidation of Union power in the far corner of the Southwest. They did so, in part, by going to war together for a shared vision of local order. Southern and Californio men formed cavalry companies to pursue Indians and bandits and, more generally, to terrorize the non-elite, Spanish-speaking population of the region. 1 Edward Visher, “A California Magnate in his Home,” Vignettes of the California Missions, Photographs and Other Material, Claremont Colleges Digital Library, 1876, Accessed October 15, 2015. “Pioneer Family Member is Dead,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1925, p. 6. Paul B. Gray, Forster vs. Pico: The Struggle for the Rancho Santa Margarita (Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1998), 96-97. 1 Historiography of the Civil War Era West and the Promise of the Greater Reconstruction The proper frame for understanding the Chivalry moment in Southern California and its surprising consequences is the “Greater Reconstruction,” historian Elliot West’s periodization of nineteenth-century US national development that takes into account the consequences of westward expansion as well as struggles over slavery and citizenship. The region was a microcosm of western diversity at a time when the expanded nation began grappling with how to incorporate these new ethnic groups. With its large population of migrants from slave states, which included slaves as well as former slaves, Southern California is an interesting place to examine how the sectional crisis, Civil War and Reconstruction played out in the Far West. Given the region’s relatively large Spanish-surnamed population and its location at the far corner of the nation along the border with Mexico, Southern California is also a good place to look at how “borderlands” turned into “bordered lands” during a phase of North American nation- building that involved dramatic changes for both the American and the Mexican Republic.2 In the last two decades, much work has been done asserting the importance of the West to American national development in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, a period commonly defined as the Civil War Era. Moving beyond the few small battles fought in the region between 1861 and 1865, many historians have taken broader chronological approaches that focus on the importance of the region to national development in the years before, during and following the war. Instead of stressing the importance of the West to the Civil War Era, Elliot West uses western expansion to redefine the era itself. By breaking the scholarly fixation on the Civil War 2 Elliot West explained that “by adding the modifier ‘Greater’ to ‘Reconstruction’ [he is] suggesting that we should keep our focus on the usual issues associated with Reconstruction but extend our thinking through both space and time.” West, The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), xx. Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104 (1999): 814-841. In a global context, the incorporation of Southern California into the United States occurred during a dynamic period of nation building that saw the emergence of Germany, Italy and Japan as nation-states. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso: New York, 2006), 86-111. 2 and emancipation, this new approach promises to elevate the importance of western history while transforming the national narrative. The size of the country, the power of the federal government, the reach of American capitalism, and the notion of US citizenship all expanded dramatically in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.