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F O U R · Many Roads to California

While Bolton negotiated the terms of his work in Mexico, Frederick Jackson Turner was engaged in high-level professional discussions of his own. From 1904 until 1909 Stanford University and the University of California avidly competed for Turner's services. Bolton would be the ultimate beneficiary of Turner's long courtships on the Pacific Coast.

In 1902 Turner had called Max Farrand to Madison to teach a summer seminar in American constitutional history, “to the delight” of the students, Turner noted. “I am finding him a most companionable friend,” he explained to Professor Henry Morse Stephens. Farrand was head of the history department at Stanford, and Stephens had just moved from Cornell to the University of California. “I am very confident that your removal to the coast is full of significance to the development of historical study in the country,” he added.¹ This was the beginning of a delicate, three-sided courtship between Turner, Stanford, and Berkeley.

Turner's friendship with Farrand lasted all of their lives. A few years younger than Turner, Farrand had earned his PhD at Princeton University, where he had studied with Woodrow Wilson, Turner's friend and teacher from his Hopkins days.² Turner and Farrand had much in common intellectually, and they were both avid anglers who spent summer weeks fly-fishing.³ Farrand, of course, saw much more than a fishing buddy in Turner. Adding Turner to the Stanford faculty would immeasurably enhance that young institution's intellectual reputation. He discussed the matter with university president David Starr Jordan, who enthusiastically agreed to recruit Turner.⁴

Selling Stanford to Turner would be tough. The institution had opened in 1891 as a memorial to Leland Stanford Jr., the son of railroad baron and California U.S. senator Leland Stanford. After their son died at age fifteen, Stanford and his wife, Jane, invested millions in the creation of the university, which they conceived as a gift to the people of California as well as a lasting memorial to their son. When her husband suddenly died in 1893, Jane Stanford carried on the work of building the university, but it still lacked a significant library, a shortcoming that hindered faculty research as well as graduate training.⁵

Farrand and Jordan recognized that Stanford needed a better library in order to attract Turner. It so happened that two major private libraries were available in California, the Bancroft and the Sutro. The former was named for Hubert Howe Bancroft, a wealthy San Francisco stationer and bookseller who wrote a multivolume history of California and the West.⁶ He scoured the world for manuscripts and books pertaining to his subject, acquiring copies when the originals could not be had. The Bancroft Library's special strengths were in the Spanish and Mexican periods of California and the Southwest. Bancroft erected a special building for his library in San Francisco and hired a staff of librarians and writers. In 1883 the first of thirty-nine volumes of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft issued from the press. Once The Works were completed, Bancroft was faced with the question of what to do with his vast private library and archive. The city of Sacramento, the University of Chicago, and the Library of Congress all were rumored to have been offered the library for prices ranging from $50,000 to ten times than figure.⁷

Adolph Sutro was a Prussian-born mining engineer who became wealthy through his mining investments and the development of the famous Sutro Tunnel, which drained the silver mines near Virginia City, Nevada. Sutro had refined tastes that he satisfied by amassing a huge private library. He and his agents searched Europe, Mexico, and the United States to add to his collection. Sutro would buy the entire stock of a bookstore, or an entire library, to obtain one treasured item. He prevailed on poor monks to sell centuries-old monastery libraries with their rare incunabula (books printed before 1501). Sutro's library may have amounted to 200,000 books, pamphlets, and newspapers. It was one of the largest privately held libraries in the world, and in some ways one of the richest. Sutro owned more than 4,000 incunabula, perhaps more than any other library anywhere. His interests were different from Bancroft's, as reflected in Sutro's holdings in science, natural history, and European subjects. But there was some overlap, as in the cases of Mexican history and American newspapers. Cornell University historian and librarian George Lincoln burr judged Sutro's holdings in some categories as being unrivaled in America and perhaps even in Europe.⁸

Unlike Bancroft, who wished to sell his collection, Sutro offered his library to the public. In 1895 he promised to give the library, a building to house it, and twenty-six acres in San Francisco to the University of California, which turned him down because accepting would have required the abandonment of the new Berkeley campus. Sutro's heirs continued the search for a suitable public recipient, but no one would have it. So it was that two of the worlds’ great private libraries were spurned by the people of California, who would neither purchase nor receive a great library as a precious gift.

Like a good fisherman, Farrand lured Turner with libraries. He asked Turner for his estimation of the value of the Bancroft and Sutro collections. Like a wary trout, Turner circled the bait. Turner was not familiar with the Sutro holdings but supposed it was a good modern European library. As for the Bancroft, “if the $200,000 or so” that was supposed to be its price was “to be expended chiefly on early Indian and Spanish records,” Turner felt “less confident…if the documentary material for the American period of the history of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast” could be obtained elsewhere. Remarkably, Turner believed that too large a proportion of Spanish records actually devalued the Bancroft collections as a resource for a university library—or at least for his university library. He thought the record of the American period of about a half century outweighed three and one-half centuries of Spanish and Mexican history. The very sort of materials that Bolton was laboriously collecting in Mexico were of no concern to Turner.⁹ Nevertheless, if Bancroft's library had the Anglo-American materials that Turner valued so highly, or if they could be obtained and added to the collection, Turner supported the purchase.

Turner made it clear that if the Bancroft (or the Sutro) did not have the materials that he needed, Stanford should find or build a library that did. Jordan and Farrand agreed. On Christmas Eve 1904 Farrand wrote Turner that “one by one the obstacles are being removed in the most satisfactory way,” though there were still details to be worked out that Farrand would not reveal.¹⁰

What was Farrand unwilling to tell Turner? The new library building at Stanford was about to open, and Jordan was undoubtedly pressing Jane Stanford on the need for books to fill it, a need that coincided with Turner's recruitment. Stanford decided to fund the proposed acquisitions, but before she could act, she had a frightening experience. In January 1905 she sipped some water at her bedside table, but the foul taste made her spit it out. There were no lasting ill effects, but analysis revealed that the water had been tainted with strychnine. Investigators thought the poisoning had been an accident, but Stanford believed that someone had tried to murder her. She decided to go to Honolulu, where she hoped she might be safe. Before sailing on February 15, she took care of the library business.¹¹ “We need books at present more than anything else,” she wrote. The new library had room for one million volumes and she intended to acquire them. Therefore, she requested that the trustees establish an endowment from the sale of her “diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones,” to be known appropriately “as the Jewel Fund.”¹²

The story of the Jewel Fund does not have a happy ending. A few weeks after announcing her plans for the library, Stanford died in Honolulu, the victim of a second strychnine poisoning. Her murderer was never found. Indeed, the police did not investigate the crime. President Jordan, who evidently hoped to spare the Stanford family as well as the university from a scandal, insisted that she had died of heart failure even though an inquest in Hawaii indicated otherwise. Jordan's unfounded version of events was widely believed until recently when researchers examined the autopsy report and other testimony from Hawaii.¹³ Nevertheless, as Jane Stanford had wished, the Jewel Fund was established and became the essential endowment for Stanford's library.¹⁴

In January 1905 Jordan made an offer to Turner of $5,000 per year, a $1,000 raise over his Wisconsin salary. Turner did not jump at the offer, but he did not turn it down. He decided to wait for a year to see what Stanford would do about a library.¹⁵ The California rumor mill turned. A San Jose newspaper erroneously reported that Turner was going to Stanford.¹⁶ In Berkeley Professor Stephens, who was by then the history department head, heard the false report and implored Turner not to go to Stanford until he visited Berkeley. He promised to match any offer that Stanford made. Turner assured Stephens that Jordan had made no offer, but of course the Stanford offer was on the way.¹⁷

Turner's delaying tactics with Stanford gave Stephens time to address Berkeley's library problem. Like Stanford, Berkeley lacked a library that could support serious research in history. Stephens was a European historian, but he recognized the immense value of the Bancroft for the study of history on the Pacific Coast. He convinced President Benjamin Ide Wheeler that acquisition of the Bancroft was crucial to the future of the university. Wheeler then won over the regents, but money stood in the way, for Bancroft wanted a quarter of a million dollars for his library. Bancroft himself helped to overcome financial obstacles by agreeing to “donate” $100,000 toward the purchase while agreeing that the balance could be paid him in three $50,000 installments. On September 15 Stephens and Bancroft reached an agreement that Stephens sealed, in his decorous way, by kissing Mrs. Bancroft's hand.¹⁸

The regents feared a public outcry because Bancroft was portrayed in the press as a self-promoter who was prying money from the public treasury for a worthless lot of old books and papers, mere “rubbish” as some people thought.¹⁹ To mute criticism, the regents called for an expert appraisal. The choice of appraisers was especially shrewd considering Stephens's cherished desire to recruit Turner. The call went out to Reuben gold Thwaites, Turner's colleague and friend and the superintendent of historical collections for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. His praise was unstinting. Bancroft's library was “astonishingly large and complete, easily first in its own field, and taking high rank among the famous general collections of Americana, such as exist at Harvard University, the Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, the New York State Library, and the Wisconsin Historical Library.” The library would “at once attract to the University a body of graduate students in American and Spanish-American history and allied studies, who are to find here a practically unique collection of material of the highest order of excellence.”²⁰

Thwaites recommended creating at Berkeley a repository of material for all of Spanish America. Nor was Anglo-American history to be forgotten. Bancroft had amassed a huge collection of newspapers, books, documents, reminiscences, business records, and other materials bearing on the Anglo-American phase of California and the West. The opportunities for research were “quite unexampled elsewhere in America.” As to its monetary value, the Bancroft Library was “a bargain” worth far more than the price that Bancroft had put on it.²¹ Thwaites made one additional suggestion: that Frederick J. Teggart, librarian of the fine Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco, be put in charge of moving the library to Berkeley. Teggart had been working in the library for some time and was already a University of California extension lecturer.²² Accordingly he organized the move and eventually became curator of the Bancroft in Berkeley.

Bancroft's splendid rubbish now belonged to the university, but it remained in San Francisco until the University completed the Doe Library, which was still on the drawing board. In the meantime the newest building on campus, California Hall, was made ready to house the collections until Doe Library was on its footings. President Wheeler quickly used the library to good effect by inviting Turner to teach in the summer of 1906. “The presence of the Bancroft Library…might add to the attraction.” Turner accepted.²³

President Jordan continued to work on Turner. In March he obtained an agreement from the Stanford trustees to give Turner an annual two months’ leave of absence to enable his research in other libraries “until such time as our library becomes adequate.”²⁴ In early April Jordan went to Madison and made Stanford's best offer to Turner: $5,000 per year, plus two months’ annual leave for research until a library suitable for Turner's purposes had been gathered at Stanford. On April 17 the Wisconsin regents countered Stanford's offer. They did not advance Turner's salary, but freed him from teaching for one semester per year to carry on his research and writing.²⁵

Had the world continued to turn on its axis as usual, Turner might have waited to hear something from Cal before giving an answer to Wisconsin or Stanford, but the earth quaked. Early in the morning of April 18 the San Andreas Fault gave way, causing catastrophic damage in San Francisco and the surrounding area. Jordan was in bed at his Stanford home. “We were all awakened by tremendous jolts, after which the house was shaken with great violence as a rat might be shaken by a dog, and objects began to fly through the air.”²⁶ Devastation from the quake was terrific. Ceilings collapsed, buildings toppled, roads buckled, and the earth yawned. Fire soon added to the destruction in San Francisco, which burned for three days. Perhaps three thousand people died during the cataclysm.²⁷

Stanford University, whose impressive stone buildings had only recently been completed, was in ruins. On the day of the quake President Jordan found a typewriter and someone who could work it. He sent a heartbreaking letter to Turner. “All of the beautiful buildings are gone, the loss being about $2,800,000.” Who could even imagine such stupendous losses, much less their replacement? He asked Turner to “let our matter rest in abeyance for the present until we can know just where we are.”²⁸ Jordan's letter to Farrand in Ithaca was more specific: the losses included the new library.²⁹ Still, two days later Jordan wrote encouragingly to Turner, “Better come to us in 1907 as you have [previously] suggested.”³⁰ It was too late. As soon as Stanford toppled and San Francisco burned, the game was over. In April it was impossible to know the long-term impact of the earthquake on the California economy. Jordan had told Turner that the damage to San Francisco alone was more than a billion dollars. It was reasonable to assume that the disaster would adversely affect the University of California's future as well as Stanford's. Turner folded his hand, accepted Wisconsin's counteroffer, and informed his Stanford friends. He claimed that he had made up his mind the day before the earthquake, but this was probably a white lie intended to make Farrand and Jordan feel better.³¹

Quite by chance, when the San Andreas Fault gave way, President Wheeler was in Austin for the inauguration of University of Texas president Houston. Bolton had heard about Cal's acquisition of the Bancroft and asked Wheeler about it, probably before news of the earthquake reached Austin. “We mean to exploit it ourselves,” Wheeler said, a response that seemed to indicate that it might be closed to outsiders.³² Whatever restrictions Wheeler might place on the use of the library, Bolton had his eye on it and the man who would control its fate.

But there might not be a library to exploit. While Bolton and Wheeler spoke, the fire raced through the streets of San Francisco. Two great libraries stood in the path of catastrophe, California's Bancroft and the Sutro. In Berkeley Stephens anxiously wondered if California's newly acquired library would be lost. After three days of fire the Bancroft was unscathed, though the building “was a little racked by the earthquake,” as Stephens said.³³ Although legend has it that Stephens sent students to man bucket brigades to save the Bancroft, Cal was just lucky. Bancroft's building was outside the fire zone. Sutro's library was not so fortunate. More than half of it was lost in the flames, including nearly all of the priceless incunabula.³⁴

Stephens was practically giddy with relief when he informed Turner that the library was safe. He hoped to move it to California Hall on the Berkeley campus as soon as possible.³⁵ Summer school would go ahead as planned, Stephens explained. by the end of May the books were in California Hall, ready for Turner's inspection in the summer. Teggart oversaw the transfer of the collection and also managed to effect his own transfer to Berkeley as curator of the Bancroft and history instructor.³⁶

Despite the earthquake and attendant damage, Stephens and Jordan still hoped to appoint Turner. In early August Turner joined President Jordan in a visit to the renowned botanist Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa, which was near the earthquake's epicenter.³⁷ From Santa Rosa the Turners went to the bohemian grove campground, the famous resort of the bohemian Club, an important gathering of influential Californians.³⁸ Jordan, Wheeler, and Stephens belonged to the club and were probably there. After seeing the Jinx, an annual play put on by the members, the Turners returned briefly to Berkeley and then went to Lake Tahoe for a month.³⁹ The California competition for Turner was not over.

It is impossible to read about Turner's leisurely summer gambols without recalling Bolton, who meanwhile labored without surcease. Turner knew that he was on top of the world and could afford to take long vacations without fear of losing reputation. However, one must conclude that he did not advance his research and writing in the summer of 1906. Turner was a brilliant man who perhaps believed that there was time enough for him to do his work, and that it would be best if he did it under the most pleasant of circumstances. Bolton was driven to work from daylight to dark and into the night if he could find a candle.

Bolton regarded his year in Mexico funded by Carnegie as a unique, careermaking opportunity. He worked accordingly. “I was hunting materials, not pleasure,” he told Fred, “and found both.” In Mexico City Bolton rented a furnished two-story house for about $60 a month, which was more than he had ever paid anywhere. It was in the American quarter and had all the modern conveniences—electric lights and indoor plumbing. He hired a Mexican woman who cooked and cleaned. The large house and servant were necessary: the Boltons now had a fifth daughter, Gertrude. The family especially liked the cool summer weather in Mexico City. “So far,” he reported, “all are delighted.”⁴⁰

The presence of Gertrude and the children must have been a great consolation for Bolton, who was in the libraries and archives six days a week. “I am over my ears in work,” he remarked. He arrived at the Archivo General at 7:30 each morning and worked there until 1:30, when it closed. Every other afternoon he went to the Museo Nacional, which was open until 6:00, or to the Biblioteca Nacional, which closed at 8:00. On the other afternoons he stayed home to arrange his notes. Nights and weekends he worked on the articles for the American Indian handbook and his own book on Texas Indians.⁴¹ “Besides, I have to keep preparing the way for future work in the archives.”⁴² He seemed able to keep up this pace indefinitely.

Hard work was nothing new to Bolton, but he had to learn how to apply his energy in a way consonant with Mexican social and political conditions. The short hours and unhelpful officials in the Archivo General aggravated him. The records custodians thought Bolton was a rude Yankee—worse, a Texan—who made demands on them. It was up to Bolton to adapt to local conditions. At first he did this grudgingly; it would take him many years to develop sincere appreciation for Mexican culture and gratitude for the assistance that many Mexicans had given to him and his students. Decades later Bolton reminisced that “there were numerous occasions on which the Mexicans concluded that the American [Bolton] didn't know good manners.”⁴³ That sort of self-awareness did not exist in the Bolton of the first decade of the twentieth century.

Bolton was ethnocentric, but he was able to succeed in Mexico because he would not take no for an answer and because he did business with a smile on his face, his complaining letters notwithstanding. He also understood that letters of introduction from high U.S., Mexican, and church officials were needed to unlock doors. Accordingly, before going to Mexico, he asked Jameson to provide him with letters from a Roman Catholic cardinal, Secretary of State Elihu Root, and other important people.

He also contacted Father Zephyrin Engelhardt, a German-born Franciscan priest who was writing the history of California missions. Engelhardt gave Bolton detailed information about the Church's archival holdings in Mexico and wrote a letter of introduction to the father president of the Franciscan Colegio de Guadalupe in Zacatecas.⁴⁴ A grateful Bolton sent Engelhardt a cache of copied documents from Mexican archives.⁴⁵ This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Engelhardt and other Franciscan historians.

Secretary of State Root's visit to Mexico in October precipitated a telegram and letter to Bolton from Jameson. Root sat on the Carnegie Institution executive committee. “I thought it would be advantageous if Secretary Root could be given a more vivid idea of what sort of work the ‘foreign missionaries’ [such as Bolton] are doing when they have a rich field of virtually virgin soil to work in.” However, Jameson warned, Root was “not a person easily kindled about such objects.”⁴⁶ Bolton did not need to be prompted to meet the secretary of state. by the time Jameson's telegram reached Bolton, he had already finagled an interview with Root, who appeared to be interested in his work. Root “ventured particularly, a hope that I might run across some of the missing [Zebulon Montgomery] Pike papers.”⁴⁷

Root was no doubt thinking about Pike because it was the centennial year of the American lieutenant's arrest in Mexico. Pike had been released, but his papers had been confiscated. Within a month Bolton found the papers except for a few that had been lost. When opportunity knocked, Bolton answered the door, and then pulled it wide open. Perhaps Jameson might consider publishing the recovered documents along with Bolton's introduction in the American Historical Review? The irresistible conjunction of personal ambition, professional accomplishment, public relations, and scholarship was not lost on Jameson, who published the documents with Bolton's introduction and gave Bolton a place on the upcoming AHA conference program.⁴⁸ The news of Bolton's discovery was no doubt met with general acclaim in Austin, except perhaps for one man. Bolton's Pike triumph was carved from the heart of the field that George Pierce garrison had wished to reserve for himself.

We can only imagine Bolton's exhilaration when he unearthed the Pike papers. This feat was the beginning of a long career marked by impressive discoveries of important documents and historical sites that had been unknown or given up for lost. Such finds came to define the sort of history Bolton did. He was as much an explorer-detective as a historian. For Bolton these discoveries were the big emotional payoff for his unstinting labor in airless rooms. Here was a primary difference between Bolton and Turner as scholars. For Turner, satisfaction came with intellectual inquiry and explanation—his history lived in the mind. But Bolton found his rewards in the discovery of the physical thing itself, whether it be artifact, document, or place. Both men were alive to the physical and metaphysical aspects of history, but the difference in emphasis placed them at different spots on the philosophical spectrum. Turner was quick, intuitive, intellectual, willing to write hypothetically, theoretically. He was very much a modern historian and as such was ahead of his time. Bolton, despite his studies with Turner, was at heart a Rankean historian who labored to construct the documentary edifice of history. His work—find the documents, publish the documents, write the history from the documents—was the very definition of scientific history, as that term was commonly understood in the late nineteenth century. There seemed little room for individual interpretation in this scheme. This was a point of view that likely came from his early work with Haskins. Yet Bolton was a romantic who thrilled to the tangible remains of the past that fired his imagination. His approach to history and enthusiasm for discovery would bring him great rewards; in time it would lead him into error.

In December 1907 the AHA met in Madison. The anticipation of returning to his alma mater with the announcement of his great discovery of the Pike papers must have been sweet indeed.⁴⁹ Bolton was a comer in the historical profession. Haskins, who was now on the Harvard faculty, approvingly told his colleagues about Bolton's paper.⁵⁰ Bolton's accomplishments were undeniable, but it is equally true that he had useful connections with the men who operated the levers of power in the historical profession. Bolton returned to Mexico sure of that.

Back in Mexico Bolton continued to survey the archives at a sprintlike pace. Even so, he was willing to take on additional work for a Dallas law firm.⁵¹ This small job was the start of a lifetime of litigation support for attorneys in the Southwest.⁵² The legal research took longer than expected because of the lack of finding aids and uncooperative archivists. Bolton often faced such difficulties. Hoping to see the archives in a Catholic cathedral, he presented a letter of introduction from the archbishop of Mexico to the local vicar, who asked Bolton to return the following day at noon. When he returned, a subordinate official met him and asked him to return the next day. And so it went for twelve days. “Finally they capitulated and then I was given the courtesy of the place,” Bolton recalled. “Of course they thought I was ill mannered.” He told many similar stories in later years. In time he “learned to play [his] fish,” as he put it.⁵³

In San Luis Potosi Bolton sought records about the Mexican-American War, or Guerra de Tejas, as his Mexican hosts called it. The old clerk said that Benito Juárez had taken them when he was president of Mexico in the 1860s. Bolton doubted the story, so he stayed in the clerk's office for three hours making small talk. When the clerk complained of a bad cough, Bolton told him about the fine climate for consumptive patients in New Mexico. This information interested the clerk. “I told him all I knew about how to cure consumption.” Pretty soon he took Bolton through a door with the date 1565 carved above and into the archives, “the best I saw in Mexico.” As they perused the shelves, Bolton stopped. “Senor,” Bolton said, “here is a whole bundle labeled La Guerra de Tejas.” The clerk replied, “Of course.”

One by one Bolton overcame the resistance of suspicious and cynical officials. In Monterey he looked for the missionary archives of Zacatecas, which were thought to be lost. The local bishop told him about a great fire that had destroyed the records. “You must have had a very fine archive here,” Bolton mused. “Sí, magnifico,” the bishop replied. “It must have occupied a large place.” “Sí, señor, mucho” “Just out of curiosity I would like to see the room where the documents used to be kept.” The bishop obliged, and there were the “lost” Zacatecas records.

Sometimes Bolton dealt with cooperative people who did not know what they had in their libraries. At Querêtaro Bolton searched the archive of the College of the Holy Cross for missionary records concerning Sonora and Pimería Alta. The friars were helpful, but the library contained only books that Bolton had seen before. Sensing that there might be more than met his eye, Bolton remained at the college admiring the library and browsing its contents. After two days he noticed a trap door in the ceiling. In the attic he found “a great trunk…packed nearly full with missing records,” plus a complete list of the documents that existed in 1772. Two-thirds of the records were there. Bolton spent two weeks putting them back in their original order.

Perseverance usually won the day for Bolton, but he sometimes had raw political power behind him, as in the case of his survey of the Secretaría de Gobernación, which was under the control of the vice president of Mexico, Ramon Corral, an unpopular man with a reputation for ruthlessness.⁵⁴ Bolton described him as “one of those hard fisted soldier like men from Sonora.” “Everybody feared him,” he continued, “and because of that they hated him.” Bolton wanted to look at the Gobernación papers, so he asked to meet Vice President Corral in order to smooth the way. When Bolton made the request to see Corral, one official “pretty nearly turned pale at the mention of the ‘hombre terrible.’” Corral frowned at Bolton but gave him “all the privileges in the world” and a pleasant office off the main patio.⁵⁵ The vice president held no terrors for Bolton, but as the Diaz regime began to collapse, the unpopular Corral would become one of the main targets of critics, reformers, and revolutionaries. The Mexican Revolution was only a few months in the future when Bolton got his room at the Gobernación.

Bolton's personal acquaintance with Mexican politicians, priests, librarians, clerks, archivists, diplomats, and scholars broadened and deepened his knowledge of Mexican culture and people. And they began to accept, like, and even to admire Bolton and his single-minded pursuit of the materials of Mexican history. Friars, who had at first been reluctant to cooperate, gave him bed and board in their monasteries. Those times “were very pleasant indeed,” he reminisced, but they would be interrupted by Mexican political events as well as Bolton's professional peregrinations.⁵⁶

While in Mexico Bolton asked Turner for advice about getting a job at the University of California so that he could have access to the Bancroft Library. Now that Bolton had mastered the materials relating to Spanish colonial Texas, “the best of all points of attack, is California,” he reasoned. “Somebody is sure to fall heir to a professorship in California that will put him in control of the great mass of material that Bancroft collected.” He did not know if anyone else had “preempted” a position at California, but he wanted a shot at it. “I know that whenever such a position opens up in California you will be quite certain to know about it and to be consulted.”⁵⁷ Turner promptly wrote to Stephens and suggested that Bolton contact the Berkeley department head. “I have not yet screwed up the nerve to write to Professor Stephens,” Bolton confessed, “but I may come to it soon.”⁵⁸

Evidently Bolton was reluctant to write Stephens because his first meeting with him at the 1903 AHA meeting in New Orleans had not been encouraging. As they sat side by side on a round settee in a hotel lobby, Bolton said that he was using Stephens's Revolutionary Europe as a text.⁵⁹ “'Tisn't worth a damn!” Stephens snorted, and that was the end of the conversation. Bolton felt that this was how the “great man” told a young professor that he did not know how to select a proper textbook.⁶⁰ So Bolton hesitated to contact Stephens even after Turner had smoothed the way.

Then a reconfiguration of the California planets changed the orbits of Bolton and Turner. “You have probably heard that Farrand is going to Yale,” Eugene Barker gossiped from his desk in Cambridge. “Stanford would be right in your field, wouldn't it?”⁶¹ Perhaps it would, but Stanford now had another gardener in mind. Everything but the church had been restored to its pre-earthquake appearance, President Jordan told Turner. Could Turner suggest anyone to replace Farrand? The Jewel Fund had been established and was “devoted exclusively to buying books” at the rate of about $25,000 per year. A fine library was within reach. Perhaps Turner was too. “And are there any terms on which we could ‘do business’ with you?” Jordan asked?⁶²

As usual, Turner left the question of his availability open while he considered his options, but he made some recommendations.⁶³ Evidently Bolton was on Turner's list of candidates, because Stanford sent an offer of a temporary appointment that reached him in San Luis Potosi, probably in July. Bolton rejected a temporary job out of hand, but was willing to entertain a permanent position. Even so, Bolton was not certain about leaving Texas, where he expected “to hold the whip” himself soon, he told Fred. In August, Ephraim Adams, the new department chair, informed Bolton that there were two permanent positions to be filled, one in political and constitutional history (Farrand's courses) and the other covering “aspects of western history.” Adams invited Bolton to explain “the type and character of work in which you are interested.”⁶⁴

In the minds of Jordan and Adams, the alluring Turner was still the leading candidate for the western position. Turner's semester on—semester off for research arrangement did not look good to some Wisconsin regents, and he feared they might raise the issue again.⁶⁵ This was more than enough to convince Adams and Jordan that Turner could be had and that the time might be right. And if Stanford hired Turner, they surely would not hire Bolton. So, as Bolton composed his letter to Adams, he had no way of knowing that his chief competition was Frederick Jackson Turner.

One week after encouraging Bolton to apply for the western position, Adams made a strong appeal to Turner. After consulting with President Van Hise at Wisconsin, Turner once again turned down Stanford in the middle of October.⁶⁶ Adams did not waste time mourning. “I want to get your opinion of Professor Bolton of Texas,” he asked Turner. Adams was already favorably impressed with him.⁶⁷ “He seems to have cut out a rather new and important field in Spanish- Mexican-American history,” Adams thought. Evidently Turner thought so too.⁶⁸

Adams immediately offered Bolton an associate professorship at $3,000. Perhaps as important as salary to Bolton was Adams's assurance that “each man in the Department above the rank of Instructor, is absolutely equal in all Departmental matters, and is absolutely independent.” The majority ruled in department meetings, but as far as each professor's work was concerned, he was “totally independent.” After years of working under the imperious garrison, Bolton could imagine the shackles falling from his ankles. At Stanford Bolton could teach and publish whatever he wanted. In addition to scholarly freedom, Adams promised financial support for Bolton's Mexican research. The Stanford library was “rather unusually equipped in the general field of Western History in the line originated by Professor Turner,” Adams explained, although not in Spanish-American history.⁶⁹ Over time the proceeds from the Jewel Fund would ameliorate the deficiency. But Bolton was interested in a nearby library. Would “the Bancroft collection…be opened with good will to a Stanford man specializing in the Southwest and West?” he asked Adams.⁷⁰ Adams assured him that it would be.⁷¹

Bolton was a rising star that Texas did not want to lose. President Sidney E. Mezes offered Bolton a full professorship at $3,000, freedom from teaching medieval and elementary history courses, and funds for his Mexican archives work.⁷² It was not enough. After further negotiation Bolton accepted a full professorship at Stanford with a salary of $3,500 and the understanding that the university would support his Mexican research. He would teach undergraduate courses on westward expansion and Spain in America. His graduate seminars would cover the Anglo- American West and Southwest.⁷³

In June Bolton bid a fond farewell to President Mezes and the University of Texas. He was grateful for the opportunity to work in Texas, but the Stanford offer and the chance to research in the Bancroft was too good to pass up. “I believe that the University of Texas has a bright future,” he concluded, “which I shall watch with a warm personal interest and sympathy.”⁷⁴

Turner congratulated Bolton on his Stanford appointment. “I think you are right in going to the coast,” Turner wrote. “You probably have a better opportunity, particularly if the Bancroft Library is accessible, to continue your studies of Spanish American relations, and Stanford is an exceedingly attractive place.”⁷⁵ Turner's enthusiasm for the Bancroft was genuine. He surveyed the collections when he taught in the 1908 summer school. He promised to return to Cal and write a new book based on what he had learned.⁷⁶

So, it would seem, the die was cast. Bolton would go to Stanford with the expectation that he could use the Bancroft Library across the bay. His desire to join the Berkeley faculty had to be put away because the two university presidents had an understanding that they would not recruit faculty from each other.⁷⁷ Such were Bolton's expectations when he and his family arrived in Palo Alto in the fall of 1909, but unexpected shifts in the professional firmament would influence his placement once again.

As Bolton prepared to move to Stanford, Turner once again became the pivot around which Bolton's professional life rotated. “Here I am out in the redwoods,” Morse Stephens wrote Turner from his camp in bohemian grove, “and thinking of you.”⁷⁸ Stephens had a serious heart problem and was planning a leave in the spring of 1910 in order to relieve the strain of university work while gathering documents for the Bancroft in Spain. Would Turner pinch-hit for Stephens in the spring? Stephens had thoughtfully delegated the administrative work to Frederick J. Teggart, so Turner would be relatively free to research in the Bancroft. The offer of a temporary appointment was only the leading edge of a much broader proposal. President Wheeler wanted to hire Turner permanently at $5,000 per year, $1,000 more than he was getting in Madison. “And the Bancroft Library!” Stephens exclaimed as he warmed to his task. “Here we give you a field to work on and materials to burn.” Stephens painted a dreamy scene for Turner: “Here in my tent among the redwoods, I think of you; I think of California, which needs you; I think of the u. of C. with its certainty of being a great historical school owing to its Dr. Turner and the Bancroft Library.” It was a hard sales pitch and Stephens left nothing out. “You and I could always work together, for we love each other.” Stephens's love was of the courtly variety, and he was ardently courting Turner. “Now I cannot argue well on rotten paper in a tent,” Stephens complained, but urged Turner to come to California in the spring to resolve all doubts.⁷⁹

California had propositioned Turner at the right moment. Some Wisconsin regents had become unsympathetic to Turner's special teaching arrangement.⁸⁰ So Turner, the reluctant (but experienced) maiden, responded with serious flirtation. The Bancroft was the chief dower that Stephens offered Turner. “The purchase of the Bancroft Library shows the trend of the University towards historical productions, and the Academy of Pacific Coast History will be our own publishing mechanism.”⁸¹ The regents had founded the academy in 1907 to fund acquisitions and publications.⁸² Its publishing function was important because the University of California did not yet have a scholarly press as such, but maintained a small printing plant for syllabi and other campus publications. The academy council included President Wheeler, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, James K. Moffitt, and other representatives of San Francisco fortunes. These well-heeled donors, Stephens hoped, would support the work of the Bancroft Library as well as scholarly publication.⁸³ With a great library and a mechanism for publishing in place, Turner might as well face the facts and accept his fate. “Now, my dear boy,” Stephens proposed, “I wish you could see President Wheeler,” who would be in Chicago the following month.⁸⁴

When Wheeler made his offer in writing, he insisted that Turner begin his permanent appointment in January 1910. “I think you know us pretty well already, and can estimate reasonably the factors to be considered in making a decision” without having to look over the university during the spring. “I should rather you would decide the matter at once,” Wheeler insisted.⁸⁵ Turner agreed to meet Wheeler in Chicago on September 16.

News that Turner might be available spread quickly. Adams made another pitch from Palo Alto, which Turner quickly rejected.⁸⁶ Bolton must have known about Stanford's approach to Turner and probably had heard of California's offer.

So Wheeler went to Chicago, and the world waited on Turner's decision. No one waited with more anticipation than Morse Stephens, who stewed in Berkeley on the day Turner and Wheeler met. “The result of that interview means so much to the Pacific Coast, to California, to the u. of C., and—oh! selfish that I am—to me. I think my cup of happiness would run over, if you were to be my colleague here.” Everything was in readiness for Turner if only he would come. If only. Perhaps Stephens's nervousness sprang from his intuitive understanding of Turner. Turner intended to leave Wisconsin, but this did not mean that the great prize was in California's hands; it meant that the great prize was truly up for grabs.

When Turner and Wheeler met in Chicago, Turner was almost certain that he would cast his lot with Berkeley, but he wanted to give his alma mater the courtesy of one more opportunity to hold him in Wisconsin. Wheeler gave Turner some time to think it over.⁸⁷ Turner had a second reason for stalling Wheeler in Chicago. Haskins had learned of the meeting with Wheeler and sent a telegram directly to the meeting place. “Can't you delay decision?” it read. “If you leave should like to see what can be done elsewhere.”⁸⁸ Elsewhere, of course, meant Harvard. Turner was an expert delayer, so he easily acceded to Haskins's wish. Luckily for Haskins's cause, Turner was slated to receive an honorary doctorate from Harvard on October 5 as part of the inauguration of President A. Lawrence Lowell. It was a grand occasion with many university presidents and prominent academics in attendance, including Wheeler and Stephens. In Cambridge Turner finally made up his mind. Seeing the sickly Stephens convinced Turner that he might soon die or retire. Then the responsibility for building the history department would fall entirely on Turner's shoulders, a prospect decidedly repugnant to him. Turner would go to Harvard.

When the announcement of Turner's move to Harvard finally came, congratulations flooded in to him. In acknowledging Bolton's letter, Turner responded: “Needless to say, I shall watch your conquest of the Pacific coast and southwestern history with keen interest. Let me know what you are doing.”⁸⁹ Turner's decision to go to Harvard had left Morse Stephens in the lurch. “Poor Morse,” Turner wrote his wife, was “badly cut up. And it hurts me too.”⁹⁰ Stephens's wounds stemmed from a practical problem as well as emotional distress. He had a great library and no one of great stature to work in it. The development of graduate studies in history was one of the reasons for the acquisition of the library, but there was no nationally recognized specialist in American history at Berkeley. He wanted a big name, but if not Turner, who? Bolton was a rising star. His experience in the Mexican archives, his spectacular discovery of the Pike papers, his publications, and his research interests made him the most obvious candidate for the Berkeley position, but now the gentlemen's agreement between Jordan and Wheeler prevented Stephens from directly approaching Bolton. With Turner finally out of reach and no plausible alternative in sight, Stephens departed for Europe.

When Stephens went to Spain in 1910, he made Teggart acting department head even though he did not have a regular appointment and only held a bachelor's degree. This proved to be a revealing mistake. Teggart took it upon himself to openly accuse his department brethren “of wholesale bad teaching.” At his urging, the department met weekly rather than monthly, a schedule that would carry into the summer too, if the interim chair had anything to say about it. Teggart was concerned that the doctoral program was not up to snuff. Consequently, the department named a committee of three to consider changes in the graduate program. When the committee presented its report, Teggart offered an alternative that the department adopted instead of the committee's. In short, Teggart's new rules required that students be examined in fields determined by the faculty before being advanced to doctoral candidacy, which seemed reasonable enough. However, Teggart decided to apply the new regulations by requiring a student who was already advanced to candidacy to stand for a snap examination. The poor chap failed, as Teggart suspected he would. Teggart claimed that the man was studying for reexamination, “was entirely satisfied with the treatment accorded,” and regretted only that he had “not been held up last year,” a comment that must have been read as a rebuke of the student's unnamed advisor. The upshot of all of this meddling, Teggart claimed, was a “remarkable bond of unity.” The faculty were resolved to maintain “the new spirit that has been developed this year,” a remark that implicitly criticized Stephens's leadership of the department.⁹¹

Stephens must have gone slack-jawed when he read Teggart's letter. It was as if Teggart had set out to destroy departmental harmony while undermining Stephens's authority. His sheer effrontery was mind-boggling. A lecturer by annual appointment with comparatively little classroom experience had taken it upon himself to condemn the teaching of the entire department. Without a PhD himself, Teggart believed he should determine standards and procedures for the degree instead of professors who had earned the doctorate. Having never been a doctoral student, Teggart decided to terrorize graduate students in the name of standards he had never had to meet himself. The department went along with him, but that only speaks to the power that a department chair in those days had over his colleagues, if only temporarily in Teggart's case. They could wait for Stephens to return and put things right, but their docility may also speak to the considerable power of Teggart's personality and intellect. If Stephens had not recognized that Teggart was a loose cannon, he certainly knew it after reading the interim chair's letter.

When Stephens returned to Berkeley, he faced the problem of appointing a respected scholar to the Berkeley history department, a need that Teggart reinforced with his high-handed behavior. But Wheeler and Stephens could do nothing to actively recruit Bolton away from Stanford without risking a controversy between the two universities. And then came the gift. On July 3, 1910, George Pierce Garrison suddenly died.⁹² Bolton still had strong personal ties to the University of Texas, so on July 30 he sent a telegram to President Mezes indicating his interest in Garrison's old job. “From the very first I have been very desirous of returning to Texas,” Bolton explained. He was interested in the entire Southwest, but “Texas is the center,” and because of the “sympathetic atmosphere,” Bolton's work could “be done better there than elsewhere.” He liked Stanford, but Bolton felt that “local patriotism” would force him “into the study of Pacific Coast problems” instead of Texas and the Southwest, which he preferred.⁹³

Bolton looked forward to building a “really distinctive and distinguished School of History” in Texas. For the next twenty-five years, Bolton believed, Spanish- American and western history would be the most promising fields in American history. Three universities would lead the way. Wisconsin covered the Old Northwest and Mississippi Valley, the University of Texas naturally commanded southwestern history, and the University of California dominated the study of “the Far West and the Pacific Coast” because of the Bancroft collection. With a “proper organization…nothing” could stop Texas's ascendance in the field of history. To all of these reasons Bolton added his “real fondness” for Texas.⁹⁴ “A larger institution” had asked him to consider a place, “but my preference is for Texas.” Bolton did not reveal the identity of the university that had made the offer, but it must have been Berkeley, though Stephens claimed that Bolton was on his way to Texas before he recruited him.⁹⁵

Mezes offered Bolton the position but not a raise in salary.⁹⁶ Within days of Bolton's receipt of Mezes's offer Stephens invited him to Berkeley, where he met Stephens and Wheeler. The three men reached an understanding. Bolton would be Stephens's “second-in-command with entire charge of…everything pertaining to American history.” If Berkeley could not have Turner, “let us have Turner's most promising pupil.” The Berkeley chairman was punctilious about having Bolton's assurances that he had intended to leave Stanford for Texas before Stephens contacted him.⁹⁷

Stephens recommended Bolton for a full professorship at $4,000. “It is clearly understood,” Stephens added, “that you will have resigned from Stanford to accept the call from the University of Texas, before any call can come from the University of California.”⁹⁸ Bolton had not “resigned from Stanford” to go to Texas, as Stephens directed Bolton to acknowledge. He could not bring himself to tell such a bald-faced lie and would only say that he was “on the point of resigning” when the California position was offered.⁹⁹ This sophistry was meant to justify Wheeler, Stephens, and Bolton in the eyes of Stanford critics while accomplishing the objective of pulling Bolton over to Berkeley.

Would Bolton have gone to Texas if Cal had not hired him? Possibly, but barker's letters to Bolton reveal that an inside game was being played in Texas as well as in California. “Just once more: you can't come for 1910—1911.” As barker had artfully put it, “They won't take another man so long as you dicker with them—couldn't get one before next winter, if then; uncertainty may help me to get out of the rank of Adj. [assistant] Prof. into Asso. class; so if my logic seems good to you hang on without giving a definite answer.” He added a note asking Bolton to delay his decision until the September meeting of the Texas regents. Otherwise, barker wrote, “I would be merely what I am—nothing.” Bolton hung on through most of September, and barker was made acting chair of the history department.¹⁰⁰

“I have decided to cast my lot with you,” he informed the worried Stephens on September 21. “Now that the decision has been made,” he wrote, “I am all for California, and I shall not look back.”¹⁰¹

Bolton's decision hinged in part on Stephens's assurance that the university would purchase some of his Mexican transcripts for $1,000.¹⁰² Wheeler agreed to this arrangement and Stephens asked Phoebe Apperson Hearst to provide the money. Hiring Bolton was California's victory, but Texas gained too. The Texas regents soon made barker's chairmanship permanent. He held the position for decades, constructively guiding the development of the history program, the library, and the university.¹⁰³

Bolton got a nice raise by going to Berkeley, and he needed it. The Bolton family now included six daughters. The Bolton's new baby, Jane, was born in 1910. “I of all the ‘boys,’” Herbert wrote his bother, “most resemble our father in exemplifying the proverb, ‘a rich man for luck and a poor man for babies.’”¹⁰⁴ Money had more than practical significance for a family man who was strapped for cash. At Berkeley Bolton was going to pull down the same salary that Turner had commanded at Wisconsin.¹⁰⁵ Bolton's new salary declared that he was on his way to the top of the history profession.

Negotiations with Stanford, Texas, and California had not prevented Bolton from finishing his guide to the Mexican archives, but the manuscript still sat on his desk. “I hate to ‘turn it loose,’ to use a Texanism,” he explained to Fred.¹⁰⁶ Three days after telling Stephens that he was “all for California,” Bolton sent the manuscript to Jameson. “I submit it to your tender mercy, with no comment as to what I think of it.” Bolton had worked on it for so long that he “could scarcely work on it any more—I was paralyzed in sight of it,” he confessed.¹⁰⁷

Once the manuscript was off of his desk, Bolton began to anticipate his move to Berkeley and the peerless resources of the Bancroft. “I shall be very glad indeed to have my work and office across the hall from the great Bancroft Collection,” he wrote Jameson.¹⁰⁸ Much to his satisfaction, Bolton's new teaching responsibilities would consist mostly of graduate work. “You probably know that I am going to the University of California next year,” he reported to Turner. “The Bancroft Collection is a magnificent one and I could not have collected it better myself from the standpoint of my own purposes.” Bolton hoped to build a strong department in western and Spanish-American history at Berkeley. “My own interests lie on the border between the two and I expect plenty of help on the two flanks.”¹⁰⁹

Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a better situation for Bolton. He would be assistant department head with entire responsibility for building the program in American history. Through hiring professors and training graduate students, Bolton could shape the Berkeley history program, the field of Spanish-American history, and the profession. He could continue his own march to scholarly prominence with the finest library in his field literally at his fingertips. Hard work would make it so, but Bolton's success in California would not come without opposition or conflict. Frederick J. Teggart would see to that. In the summer of 1911 the regents made Teggart associate professor of Pacific Coast history in recognition of “the invaluable services…rendered without charge” in moving the Bancroft to Berkeley.¹¹⁰ Now slated to teach American history, Teggart would fall under Bolton's purview.¹¹¹ Stephens appointed Bolton assistant curator of the Bancroft under Teggart, creating dual arrangements that would inevitably cause friction.