John Mason needs to get a life, and I'm just the man to give him one.
* * *
John Mason was the owner of a cotton plantation in eastern
Jefferson, near the old Spanish town of Nacogdoches.
He had inherited the land from his father, another John Mason, who had
immigrated from the Southern Confederation in 1801. The elder Mason had purchased
the land from the Jeffersonian government and built the plantation, which he
named Elsinore. Elsinore was relatively modest
by the standards of the Jefferson cotton
barons, and John Mason was well off, but not wealthy. His neighbor, James
Rutledge, was wealthy, and for some
years he had been trying to persuade Mason to sell out to him. The fall in the
price of cotton since the Panic of 1836 had not ended Rutledge’s offers for Elsinore, though it had reduced the price he was offering
Mason. Mason’s own profits from his plantation had fallen to the point where he
was beginning to seriously consider Rutledge’s offer.
Then, in May 1838, had come word of the gold discovery at Santo Tomás, California,
and John Mason knew that it was time to leave Jefferson.
Mason sold Elsinore to Rutledge for $800 cash, and set out for California with six men
in his employ – a mining engineer, a cook, and four armed guards. Traveling via
the isthmus of Panama, Mason’s party reached the gold fields in August, one of
the first groups to arrive from the Atlantic coast. With great foresight, Mason
was able to lay claim to a twenty-mile stretch of the Jackson River
that proved to be particularly rich in gold deposits. By the end of the year,
Mason and his men had gained the enormous sum of $100,000 from their prospecting. With his new-found
wealth, Mason became one of the most influential men in California. His contributions to the state
Continentalist Party made him a major political player at a unique moment in
the party’s history. [1]
President Jackson’s
health had been deteriorating since he suffered a bout with typhoid fever in
1837. Jackson
had held the Continentalist Party together for twenty years by sheer force of
personality. Now, as Jackson
declined, so did his party. Rivalries that he had kept under control now flared
up and threatened to tear the party apart. Cabinet meetings degenerated into
shouting matches, and at once point a brawl broke out between Secretary of
Agriculture Homer Brown and Secretary for Religions Anastasio Bustamante. [2] By
the time the Continentalist caucus met in July 1839 to choose Jackson’s successor, the party had fragmented
into half a dozen mutually hostile factions. The only man who could have
imposed unity was Jackson himself, but by this time he was practically an
invalid. Mason’s sudden rise to prominence in the party was now a virtue; since
he had had no time to make any enemies, he was an ideal compromise candidate.
Senator Hernán Montoya of Chiapas
would later write, “In a party as full of old grudges as the Anglo party, only
a man with no past could gain the nomination. That man was Mason, and so the
nomination was his.” [3]
Unfortunately for
Mason, the blank slate that had been a virtue at the caucus meeting became a
liability on the campaign trail. The Libertarians, as expected, had nominated
Senator Huddleston, who had spent the previous six years building a reputation
as a reformer, and as a bridge between Mexico’s Anglo and Hispano
populations. Mason now found himself regarded as an unfamiliar face with
nothing to offer Mexican voters. Mason attempted to appeal to the growing
Mexicano vote by distancing himself from his Jeffersonian roots, calling
himself “A Californian, by God, and proud of it!” The attempt failed, and only
served to alienate the Jeffersonian planters who were the closest thing Mason
had to an electoral base. In desperation, Mason sought to co-opt Huddleston’s
reform program, calling for less reliance on French loans and investments, and greater
assistance to the impoverished Mexicano peasants of the south. Even a
Continentalist candidate with an established reputation would have had a
difficult time persuading the voters of his sincerity; for the “man with no
past,” it was an exercise in futility.
The result was a
complete route for the Continentalists. The Libertarians gained control of five
of the six state legislatures, allowing them to replace eight incumbent
Continentalist Senators with their own candidates, and giving them control of
the Senate for the first time. When the newly-elected Senate met on September
5, the seventeen Libertarian members voted in unison for Huddleston, who was
inaugurated the next day as the second President of the U.S.M. [4]
1. Lorenzo Baker. The Man With No Past: The Life of John Mason
(San Francisco,
2009), pp. 130-44.
2. Pablo Cruz. The Long Twilight: The Decline of Andrew
Jackson (Mexico City, 1974), p 367.
3. Hernán Montoya. Strange Places and Strong Men (Mexico
City, 1857), p. 73.
4. Martin York. The Election of 1839 (Mexico City,
1970), pp 488-506. Mason’s poor showing in the elections left him disillusioned
with politics, and he embarked on a career in business. A series of bad
investments left him virtually penniless by 1846, when he volunteered for the
California Brigades. He was killed at the Battle of San Fernando on July 6,
1850. Baker. The Man With No Past.
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