John Bigler | |
|---|---|
 Bigler in 1850 | |
| 9th United States Ambassador to Chile | |
| In office October 5, 1857 – October 4, 1861 | |
| Preceded by | David A. Starkweather |
| Succeeded by | Thomas H. Nelson |
| 3rd Governor of California | |
| In office January 8, 1852 – January 9, 1856 | |
| Lieutenant | Samuel Purdy |
| Preceded by | John McDougal |
| Succeeded by | J. Neely Johnson |
| 2nd Speaker of the California State Assembly | |
| In office February 1850 – May 1851 | |
| Preceded by | Thomas J. White |
| Succeeded by | Richard P. Hammond |
| Member of theCalifornia State Assembly | |
| In office December 17, 1849 – January 5, 1852 | |
| Preceded by | Constituency established |
| Succeeded by | Multi-member district |
| Constituency | Sacramento district(1849–1851) 12th district(1851–1852) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1805-01-08)January 8, 1805 Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | November 29, 1871(1871-11-29) (aged 66) Sacramento, California, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Bigler |
| Children | Virginia |
| Profession | Editor, lawyer, politician |
John Bigler (January 8, 1805 – November 29, 1871) was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat. ADemocrat, he served as the thirdgovernor of California from 1852 to 1856 and was the first California governor to complete an entire term in office, as well as the first to win re-election. His younger brother,William Bigler, was electedgovernor of Pennsylvania during the same period. Bigler was also appointed by PresidentJames Buchanan as theU.S. Minister to Chile from 1857 to 1861.
Bigler was born in early 1805 inCarlisle, Pennsylvania. Beginning work in the printing trade at an early age, Bigler, as well as his younger brother,William, never received a formal education, yet Bigler took it upon himself to educate his younger brother. In 1831, both brothers moved toBellefonte inCentre County to buy the localAndrew Jackson-affiliatedCentre Democrat newspaper, where older John assumed editorial duties. Bigler worked as editor until 1835, when he sold the publication to study law.[1]
When news of theCalifornia gold rush reached theEast Coast in mid-1848, Bigler, now a middle-aged lawyer, decided to leave for theWest Coast to join a law practice. Travelling overland with an ox train, Bigler reachedSacramento in 1849, only to quickly discover that there were no open positions in law. Bigler began to work at a series of odd jobs, including becoming an auctioneer, a wood chopper, and a freight unloader at the town's docks along theSacramento River.[2] Upon hearing of the territory's first general election in the same year, Bigler decided to turn to politics, and entered theCalifornia State Assembly as aDemocrat, one of nine members representing the Sacramento district.
Upon being elected to the first session of theCalifornia State Legislature in 1849, Bigler enjoyed a rapid rise to power in the Assembly. Within a year, Bigler was voted by the heavily Democratic majority in the body as theSpeaker of the Assembly in February 1850. Now one of the most powerful legislators in the state, Bigler enjoyed widespread name recognition. During the Sacramentocholera epidemic of October 1850, Bigler contracted cholera as a direct result of his remaining in the city and assisting doctors and undertakers.[2]
In May 1851, Bigler was nominated by the Democratic Party convention inBenicia as the party's choice for governor in California's first general election after achieving statehood. Bigler's challenger, theWhig Party'sPierson B. Reading, derided Bigler as an unpolished, gruffYankee Northerner, while Reading articulated himself as an educated pioneering gentleman of theSouth.
Bigler ran on an explicitly anti-Chinese platform.[3]: 27 He won the election by little more than a thousand votes over Reading, which remains today as the closest gubernatorial election in California history.[2]
Upon assuming the governorship on January 8, 1852, Bigler established his priorities to protect the state's highly profitable mining interests from leasing or outside monopolies, declaring in his first inaugural address that these mining interests should be "left as free as the air we breathe."[4] Bigler also prioritized the industrialization of California, encouraging industrial investment on behalf of the state government.
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On March 31, 1854, Bigler approved issuance of a bond entitled "Bond of the State of California for War Indebtedness", used to pay expenses for "expeditions against theIndians." It was signed by Bigler, State Comptroller Samuel Bell and State TreasurerSelden A. McMeans. This bond is exhibited in theOakland Museum of California.
Bigler also enacted a policy to preventChinese "coolie" immigrants from entering California. Bigler claimed that the Chinese refused to and could never assimilate into American society, and he also used the immigrants' willingness to work for little pay as a way to urge Californians to "check this tide of Asiatic immigration."[5] While the previous administration of GovernorJohn McDougall somewhat supported the Chinese presence in the state, Bigler advocated the revival of the 1850 Foreign Miners Tax, originally signed by anti-foreigner GovernorPeter Burnett. Whereas the original 1850 law placed a US$20 per month tax on all miners of foreign origin, the Bigler-supported 1852 version of the law placed a US$3 per month tax exclusively for Chinese laborers.[6] Over the course of his two terms in office, taxes for Chinese immigrants steadily increased, with ever harsher bills passing the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Bigler. One law passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor created a US$50 tax per head (to be paid within three days) for Chinese entering Californian ports. TheCalifornia Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional.[2]
AsSierra Nevada gold mine output slowed to a trickle by the early 1850s, followed by local financial panic caused by thediscovery of gold in Australia, anger towards hard-working and labor-cheap Chinese grew, especially among economically pressured miners, who desperately sought alternative work in California's cities and ports. While Bigler aligned himself with popularanti-immigrant and anti-Chinese sentiment, these constituents would later split from the Democrats and spill over into the anti-immigrantAmerican Know-Nothing Party.
Opposition to the constriction of Chinese immigration was voiced byNorman Asing, a leader in San Francisco's Chinese community, in an open letter published in 1852.[7][8] He argued that "we are not the degraded race you would make us" and that "...when your nation was a wilderness, and the nation from which you sprung barbarous, we exercised most of the arts and virtues of civilized life;" therefore, the Chinese should be free to contribute productively to the US.
Pressure was also mounting on the Democratic Party itself in California in regards to slavery. By the 1853 general election campaign, large majorities of pro-slavery Democrats from Southern California, calling themselves the Chivalry (later branded asLecomptonDemocrats), threatened to divide the state in half should the state not accept slavery. Bigler, along with former State Senator and Lieutenant GovernorDavid C. Broderick from the previous McDougal administration, formed the Free Soil Democratic faction, modeled after the federalFree Soil Party that argued against the spread of slavery. The Democrats effectively split into two camps, with both the Chivalry and Free Soilers nominating their own candidates for the 1853 election.[9] Despite the party split, Bigler was able to overcomeWhig Party challengerWilliam Waldo and became the first California governor to win a second term in office. No other governor of the state would win a second term untilHiram Johnson in 1914.
During Bigler's tenure, the state government struggled to find a permanent location for a capital or a capitol building. State SenatorMariano Vallejo's promises ofVallejo as being an ideal capital city failed to materialize. For one miserable week in early 1852, theCalifornia State Legislature met in the township, quickly discovering the lack of facilities, supplies and furniture.[10] With the suggestion of Bigler and support from city government leaders, the Legislature would temporarily relocate to his adopted city ofSacramento, while Vallejo would remain the permanent capital. However, after flooding problems in Sacramento, and dire weather conditions in Vallejo, the Legislature and Bigler agreed to relocate the capital to nearbyBenicia. Conditions in Benicia also proved poor for state bureaucrats. Sacramento offered its services again as a capital, and on February 25, 1854, Governor Bigler signed a law making Sacramento the capital of California. With the exception of a temporary move to San Francisco in 1862 while Sacramento was again flooded, the capital has stayed there since.
Bigler's popularity peaked around 1854 to 1855. For the 1855 general election, the Democratic Party renominated Bigler in his bid to gain a third term of office. However, his monopoly on anti-immigrant sentiment began to lose ground. Growing economic troubles due to the slow collapse of gold mining in the Sierras and other gold discoveries in Australia, as well as failures to solve growing state financial debt led to popular discontent with infrastructure and fiscal management within his administration. Bigler's administration had attained a general perception of fiscal extravagance among the public.[11] Bigler urged adoption of measures to secure for San Francisco the benefits of the whale trade of the Pacific. The anti-immigrant and NativistAmerican Know-Nothing Party, led by its nominee, former WhigJ. Neely Johnson, defeated Bigler by a moderate margin during the 1855 election. Bigler was the first California governor to be defeated in a general election.
Following his defeat in the 1855 election, Bigler's career turned to diplomacy. In 1857, at the insistence of his brother,Pennsylvania GovernorWilliam Bigler, PresidentJames Buchanan appointed Bigler asU.S. Minister to Chile.[11] Following the completion of his foreign assignment, Bigler re-entered politics, this time on the federal level. Bigler ran as aSouthern-friendlyIndependent forCongress in the 1863 elections, yet failed to win. In 1866, PresidentAndrew Johnson nominated Bigler as theInternal Revenue Service's Federal Assessor for the Sacramento district, but due to open animosity between Congress and President Johnson at the time, theU.S. Senate never confirmed the nomination, and thus Bigler never took the position.[12]
In 1867, Bigler was appointed railroad commissioner for theCentral Pacific Railroad. In 1868, he founded theState Capitol Reporter and served as its editor until his death in Sacramento on November 29, 1871, at the age of 66. He is interred in theSacramento Historic City Cemetery.[13][14]
At the height of his popularity in 1854, the Democratic majorityState Legislature named modern-dayLake Tahoe "Lake Bigler" in honor of California's third Governor, who was then beginning his second term. For nearly ten years, the name of the lake had been in dispute.John C. Fremont, one of the lake's first White discoverers in 1844, named it "Lake Bonpland" afterAimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland, a French botanist who had accompaniedPrussian explorerAlexander von Humboldt in his exploration ofMexico, Colombia and theAmazon River.[15] Lake Bonpland's usage never became popular, with the lake's name changing from "Mountain Lake" to "Fremont's Lake“ several years after. By 1853, the name "Lake Bigler" began to be applied to maps of the lake after the then-popular California governor. The state legislature officially changed the name the following year."[16]
Lake Bigler's usage never became universal. In just a year, different maps referred to the lake not only as Bigler, but also as "Mountain Lake" to "Maheon Lake." By 1861, at the start of theAmerican Civil War, former Governor Bigler, once a Free Soil Democrat, had become an ardentConfederate sympathizer. Unionists andRepublicans alike derided the former governor's name on the lake on official state maps. Pro-Union papers called for a "change from thisSecesh appellation" and "noCopperhead names on our landmarks for us."[15] Several Unionist members in the Legislature suggested changing the name to the fanciful sounding "Tula Tulia." TheSacramento Union jokingly suggested the name "Largo Bergler" for Bigler's widely perceived financial incompetency in his final term and contemporary Southern sympathies.
The debate took a new direction whenWilliam Henry Knight, mapmaker for the federalU.S. Department of the Interior, and colleague Dr. Henry DeGroot of theSacramento Union joined the political argument in 1862. As Knight completed a new map of the lake, the mapmaker asked DeGroot for a new name of the lake. DeGroot suggested "Tahoe," a local tribal name he believed meant "water in a high place." Knight agreed, and telegraphed to the Land Office in Washington, D.C., to officially change all federal maps to now read "Lake Tahoe." Knight later explained his desire for a name change, writing, "I remarked (to many) that people had expressed dissatisfaction with the name "Bigler", bestowed in honor of a man who had not distinguished himself by any single achievement, and I thought now would be a good time to select an appropriate name and fix it forever on that beautiful sheet of water."[17]
"Lake Tahoe," also like "Lake Bigler," did not gain universal acceptance.Mark Twain, a critic of the new name, called it an "unmusical cognomen." In an 1864 editorial regarding the name in theVirginia CityTerritorial Enterprise, Twain cited Bigler as being "the legitimate name of the Lake, and it will be retained until some name less flat, insipid and spooney than "Tahoe" is invented for it."[18] In Twain's 1869 novelInnocents Abroad, Twain continued to deride the name in his foreign travels. "People say that Tahoe means 'Silver Lake' - 'Limpid Water' - 'Falling Leaf.' Bosh! It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the digger tribe - and of the Paiutes as well."[19] ThePlacervilleMountain Democrat began a notorious rumor that "Tahoe" was actually anIndian renegade who plundered upon White settlers. To counter the federal government, the California State Legislature reaffirmed in 1870 that the lake was indeed called "Lake Bigler."
By the end of the 19th century, usage of "Lake Bigler" had nearly completely fallen out of popular vocabulary in favor of "Tahoe." The California State Legislature officially reversed its previous decision in 1945, officially changing the name to Lake Tahoe.
{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| First | Democratic nominee forGovernor of California 1851,1853,1855 | Succeeded by |
| California Assembly | ||
| Preceded by First Legislature | California State Assemblyman, Sacramento District 1849–1851 (with eight others) | Succeeded by Numbered districts established |
| Preceded by District created | California State Assemblyman, 12th District 1851–1852 (withDaniel J. Lisle,Charles Robinson) | Succeeded by Four members |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Governor of California 1852–1856 | Succeeded by |
| Under Spain (1769–1822) |  | |
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| Under Mexico (1822–1846) | ||
| Under U.S. military (1846–1850) | ||
| U.S. state (since 1850) | ||
| Minister Plenipotentiary |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Chargé d'Affaires | ||
| Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary | ||
| Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary | ||
| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
