This is Part Twenty One of a series showing how inflation, deflation, barter, tariffs, taxes, war, counterfeiting, history, banking, ‘free’ trade, famine, auctions, competition, religion, and education are combined into one great whole. Postage stamps reveal ready comparison of inflation over decades of time. 1836-1936 United States Postage Texas Centennial Sam Houston Stephen F. Austin The Alamo 3 cent

Part Twenty One. Why study business collapse, war procurement, gold and silver inflation, Texas, California and Nevada?

Judge Ralston, 49er Saved the Alamo, secured the

Capitol for Sacramento, and wrote Nevada’s Constitution

            Judge James Harvey Ralston, Jack Mormon, US Army Captain, Mexican war veteran, Illinois Judge, Illinois State Senator, Illinois House Assemblyman, Illinois Presidential elector, California State Senator who brought the capitol to his Sacramento district, 49er, Nevada Constitutional convention delegate, served as defense attorney for Joseph Smith against Missouri Extradition Warrants, and served as Prosecuting Attorney opposing Smith’s Assassins. Judge Ralston also saved the Alamo, and encouraged Banking and commerce.

Forgotten Statesman of Illinois James Harvey Ralston 1807 – 1864 By Dr. J. F. Snyder Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1908. Continues.

[Judge Ralston] was accused in 1845 of coquetting with the Mormons, by his erstwhile foes, who still voted the Democratic ticket, and held the balance of power in that district. ** **[T]he war with Mexico in 1846 opened up ** Judge Ralston’s patriotism. United States Postage 1795-1849 James K. Polk, 32 cents, 1995.

 

James K Polk 1845-1849 United States Postage 11 cents, 1938

[T]he Polk administration, [appointed Ralston] June 26, 1846, to the position of Assistant Quartermaster General for the Illinois Volunteers, with the rank of Captain, and Ralston was ordered to San Antonio, Texas [arriving] on the 13th of October. ** where he stayed ** until the war closed. **The work Captain Ralston ** was of more value to the army, and the cause it was engaged in** Vast quantities of supplies obtained upon his requisitions from New Orleans and elsewhere, droves of beef cattle, hundreds of horses, mules and oxen, wagons, harness, and other property of our army in Mexico, purchased by his disbursement of many thousands of dollars, were forwarded from his post and distributed to the soldiers beyond the Rio Grande. [No doubt these military purchases inflated prices of many items.] 1956 The Alamo U.S. Postage 9 C  [Ralston] employed for his chief clerk Mr. Edward Everett, a young man of education and very superior business qualifications, a nephew of the distinguished Massachusetts statesman of the same name, and at the time a sergeant in Captain Morgan’s Quincy riflemen in Colonel Hardin’s regiment. ** Quartermaster Ralston took possession of the historic Alamo buildings, then in a ruinous condition, and converted them into a depot for supplies, storehouses, quarters for his men, and offices for himself and clerks. Assuming that he would probably be stationed at that post for some time, he sent for his wife who joined him there early in March 1847. ** She died on the 3rd of July, 1847, at the age of 35 years. A daughter Elizabeth Ralston, Mrs, Marcellus Tilden, a lawyer, lived in Sacramento, California.

Captain Ralston’s clerk, Mr. Everett, was, in politics, as his illustrious uncle, a staunch Whig, passing in later years by easy transition into the ranks of Illinois Republicans. In his highly interesting “Military Experience”-donated by him to the Quincy (Illinois) Historical Society, Everett says of his superior, “Captain James H. Ralston was a Kentuckian who had settled in Illinois, tall in person, and sallow complexion, with that formality of address, and assumed dignity so often seen in the western lawyer. In politics he was a Democrat, and as he termed it, a strict constructionist, though moderate and non-partisan in his views. He was mild and pleasant in his intercourse, and was quite popular with the citizens of the place, and no unkind word ever passed between us-though on occasion, as a delinquent once observed after a reprimand, “he could use a fellow up in very few words.'” ** James K. Polk 1845-1849 USA 22 11th U.S. President

In November, 1848,(9) [Presidential election month] Captain Ralston was relieved of his duties as Assistant Quartermaster at San Antonio ** turning over to the new officer the military stores, and settling up the business of the post. That transfer and settlements completed, Captain Ralston, with Mr. Everett, departed for Port Lavacca; thence took steamer to New Orleans, from there up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to Wheeling, Virginia, and on to Washington. “Here,” says Mr. Everett, “we made our final accounts and explained such points as were objected to by the auditors. The sum of public money expended by Captain Ralston while in Texas was a very large one, besides which the property, mostly means of transportation, passing through our hands, not included in the above, was very considerable. The accounts passed a very rigid examination and everything was finally allowed and Captain Ralston and myself honorably discharged.”  Vintage post card circa 1930s State Capitol and Mormon Battalion Monument, Salt Lake City, Utah.

In the meantime, the gold discovered by Jim Marshall, [of the Mormon Battalion] in the tail-race of Capt. Sutter’s mill at Coloma, California, Jan. 4, 1848 [the cry of ‘Gold.’] Captain Ralston received his discharge from military service on the 3d of March, 1849 and hastened back to Quincy. He found many changes during his absence of almost three years. His wife dead, his home desolate, his law business gone, many old and cherished friends passed away and replaced by strangers, he concluded to join the mad rush of Argonauts for the New Eldorado, and there commence life anew. Quickly disposing of his property, and making provision for his daughter, he set out on the long and unknown journey. Arriving there at the age of forty-two, in the prime and vigor of manhood, he found himself in a strange world of infinite possibilities, teeming with people of all races and stations, wildly scrambling for sudden wealth. Shunning the gold mines, so attractive to the multitude of immigrants, the Judge located at Sacramento City. Making a specialty of protecting and defending the rights of miners and squatters against those who claimed titles to their properties by virtue of Spanish grants, he gained wide popularity and prospered.

[Gold, and later silver, inflated prices of everything, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and fuel.] Purple California Gold Centennial Sutter’s Mill Coloma Where James W. Marshalls discovery started rush of Argonauts 1848 U.S. Postage 1938 3 cents. -Yellow 1850 1950 California Statehood centennial 3 cents. – Green 1851 1951 Nevada First settlement centennial 3 cents United States Postage

The 49er State Senator from Sacramento, Senator Ralston, ‘brings home the bacon’ by acquiring the California state Capitol for Sacramento.

.

1875 5 c Zachary Taylor blue. [General Zachary Taylor, coming off of the Mexican war as hero of the battles of Palo Alto, Monterrey and Buena Vista, was the Whig Presidential victor in the 1848 election, and became President March 1849, but died July 1949. Taylor, avoided the slavery issue, and urged California to bypass a territory, for statehood. In the meantime, Vice President Fillmore became President. ] Forgotten Statesman of Illinois James Harvey Ralston 1807 – 1864 By Dr. J. F. Snyder Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1908. Continues

California had no authority territorial organization, [but as suggested by President Taylor] yet [California was] seeking ** admission as a state into the union. Delegates who met in convention in Colton’s hall at Monterey, on Sept. 1, 1849, and framed a free State constitution. A legislature was elected which convened at San Jose on December 15th and petitioned Congress for a State government. U.S. (Whig) Senator Clay’s “Compromise” bill, California was admitted as a state and New Mexico and Utah were organized as territories, and was approved by President Fillmore on the 9th of September, 1850.

[Utah Territory in 1850 included Nevada to the California state line, western Colorado, and Southwest Wyoming. New Mexico included Arizona.] 1938 United States Postage 13 cents Millard Fillmore 1850-1853 Presidential Series Issue

By 1852, Judge Ralston was nominated and elected by the Democrats to represent Sacramento county in the State Senate, that county constituting a senatorial district. The state’s capitol had not yet been located, the several towns [Benecia, Monterey Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Vallejo] were making strenuous efforts to secure it, occasioning much jealous and ill-feeling, with some scandal. The 3rd General Assembly in 1852, to which Judge Ralston was elected, convened at Vallejo, for a week and moved to Sacramento. Senator Ralston was chairman of the Standing Committee on Corporations, and a member of the Committees on State Library and Enrolled Bills.

Judge Ralston, now state California State Senator, was nominated for U.S. Senator. The extraordinary amount of rain that fell in upper California during the winter of 1851-52, by raising the Sacramento river over its banks, inundated a large area of its valley. No levee having then been thrown up to protect Sacramento City from the annual overflows of the river, it was for several weeks another Venice, its traffic and business carried on by boats over the streets covered with water from two to six feet deep. ** 1999 California Gold Rush 1849 33 USA The 4th general assembly of California was at Vallejo on the 3d of January, 1853, and the next month moved to Benecia. Those towns, built on low sand flats on Napa Bay, are six miles apart, and twenty-three miles northeast of San Francisco. Each town was in succession made the State capital. General Vallejo’s offering to the state a large quantity of land and $350,000.00 in money as an inducement to locate it in his town, Vallejo; but, it was totally unsuitable and without houses or other requisites in either town for a state capitol. The seat of government was, in 1854 permanently fixed at Sacramento, a more central point, seventy-five miles in direct line east of San Francisco. Upon organization of the legislature, in recognition of Senator Ralston’s ability and party leadership, he was given the post of highest honor and responsibility, that of Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He was also place on the important committees on Finance and Corporations. For fidelity to his duties, for industry, capability, and influence, during that session he was not surpassed by any member of either branch of that assembly.

In 1856 Senator [Judge Ralston] was Democratic candidate for chief justice of the California Supreme Court. The disaffection and disintegration, of the Democratic party in the eastern states, owing to the 1854repeal of the Missouri Compromise, spread to the Pacific. Opposition, included the Whigs, Free-Soilers and Know-Nothings. Still, the Democrats carried the state for Buchanan in 1856 though routed in many of the counties and for most of the state offices. 1938 James Buchanan 1857-1861 United States Postage 15 cents Presidential Series

James Buchanan USA22 1857-1861

Judge Ralston was one of the victims of the Douglas heresies, and went down in defeat. In 1860 and 1864 California gave its electoral vote to Lincoln, and assumed its place in the column of Republican states.

In 1860 Judge Ralston moved to Virginia City, Utah Territory. Virginia City’s population of 15,000, tripled with the Comstock silver and gold mines. Congress created and granted Nevada territory status in March, 1861, taking the west half of the Utah territory.

1934 Zion National Park 8 cent Green stamp

2009 Zion National Park 79 USA

 

[Simultaneously with secession of several southern states. The American Civil War, 1861-1865, was burning hot in the east and south.]

In 1863 Nevada territory called for a constitutional convention. Judge Ralston was elected a delegate to represent Storey County, of which Virginia City is the county seat. The convention was a success and Judge Ralston an important officer, but he didn’t see Nevada’s statehood. 1764 1964 Nevada Statehood U.S. Postage 5 Cents.

[Judge Ralston died in a Nevada snow storm about 8 May 1864.] The Masons took charge of His body, as he was Knight Templar. The legal fraternity also attended the funeral. The procession from the court house at one o’clock was headed by the Austin brass band, followed by the Masons in regalia, members of the bar, firemen, hearse, the family of the deceased, citizens on horseback and in carriages, the cortege marched to the cemetery. This was the most imposing funeral that has yet occurred in Austin. The worth, position and high esteem, the melancholy circumstances attending the death of Judge Ralston, gave a solemn and universal interest to the occasion. ” The dreary, sandy waste in which Judge Ralston froze was then named “Ralston’s Desert” a name it still bears, and is so designated on the government maps.

End of Forgotten Statesman of Illinois James Harvey Ralston 1807 – 1864 By Dr. J. F. Snyder Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1908.

A similar account is in the The Nevada State Historical Society Papers vol. III 1923 1924, pp. 213-222.] NEVADA’S DESERT AND ITS VICTIM, By Jackson H. Ralston, son of Judge James Harvey Ralston.

Continuing from The Handbook of Texas Online.

‘’In November 1848 [Captain Ralston] was relieved of his duties at San Antonio. He traveled to Washington with Everett to close his office account books. After discharge on March 3, 1849, he returned briefly to Quincy and then moved to California. In 1852 he was elected the Democratic representative of Sacramento County to the California Senate. Ralston did not run for reelection in 1854, but in 1856 he was a candidate on the Democratic ticket for chief justice of the state supreme court. By that time, however, the Democrats no longer dominated California politics, and Ralston lost, along with most other Democratic candidates for statewide office. He subsequently moved to Virginia City, Nevada, where he continued his political and legal career. In 1863 he was a representative to the Nevada constitutional convention. The next year he moved to Austin, Lander County, Nevada, where he continued his legal practice. Ralston married Jane Alexander of Adams County, Illinois, on October 11, 1832. They had one child, a daughter. Jane Ralston died on July 3, 1847, at San Antonio, and in October 1853 Ralston married his second wife, Harriet N. Jackson of New York City. They were the parents of a son and a daughter. Ralston disappeared while traveling from Austin to his ranch in Smoky Valley during the first week in May 1864. He apparently became lost in a blinding snowstorm in the desert. His body was found by Shoshone Indians, who cremated it. A search party retrieved the remains and conveyed them back to Austin, where they were laid to rest. The area in Nevada where Ralston died was subsequently named Ralston’s Desert.’’ [Elevation 5,298]

End of The Handbook of Texas Online.

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