Nevada's Famous Virginia and Truckee Railway
Document Courtesy Nevada Historical Society as part of Train Arts' Living Steam project image courtesy Nevada Historical Society |
 |
Popular Nevada and V&T Myths: Comstock Silver and the Civil War, Nevada State Seal
 Image Courtesy Nevada Historical Society |
Nevada State
Archivist Guy Rocha wrote an excellent series of articles on the
State's
Myth a Month website. Here I will summarize some of the mythology
surrounding the
State
of Nevada's entry to the Union, the (lack of) relationship between Comstock
Silver and Civil War financing, and
the
artwork on the original state seal.
ONE STATE SEAL MYTH -- VIRGINIA & TRUCKEE RAILWAY ON THE STATE SEAL Virginia and Truckee, A Story of Virginia City and Comstock Times is a book by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg... (cont below) |
(continued from above ...) In this book, Beebe and Clegg write, "... if anyone should doubt the heroic proportions of the V & T's importance in the history of Nevada, he has but to look upon the Great Seal of the commonwealth, where a V & T locomotive crossing the Crown Point trestle above the hoists of the Yellow Jacket Mine is the heraldic emblem of the state.(1)" While this phraseology would win the Stegner award, it's total bunk! As Guy Rocha points out on his Myth a Month #8 page, "...after all, when the viaduct was first depicted in the seal, there were no steam-powered railroads at all in Nevada." The Nevada State Seal was developed between 1863 and 1866, two years before the V&T was born and the CP ran the Transcontinental Railroad through Nevada. Further, the seal shows a stone viaduct, not a wooden trestle! As Rocha says, this was a leap of faith on the part of Nevada's lawmakers, not a depiction of an existing railroad. I agree with Rocha, the truth is a better story than the myth! BLOWING SMOKE -- ART CRITICS AND THE NEVADA STATE SEAL Guy Rocha did such a great job on this Myth, so I'll just let you read the details on his Myth #81 page. Basically, the original seal showed an imaginary locomotive on that imaginary viaduct. It also shows a foundry or mill. The smoke from the train blows one way, the mill smoke blows another way. Let me just say that smoke nearly always flows toward the rear of a steam train in forward motion. It was totally appropriate to show the smoke blowing to the left, regardless of which way the mill/foundry smoke blew. 'Nuff said! NEVADA ADDED AS A STATE TO SAVE THE UNION -- MYTH Guy Rocha's Myth #12 deals with the mistaken idea that Nevada was singled out for statehood to save the Union. While Guy does a great job saying that Comstock silver wasn't the reason for statehood, he doesn't get into the detail that the Comstock silver didn't even pay for the war while Nevada was a Territory. Rocha does mention that because of its status as a free (non-slave) territory, Nevada was desirable. Rocha really gets into the details about why Nevada's Republican orientation made it a likely candidate to become a state under Lincoln, head of the new anti-slavery Republican Party. VIRGINIA CITY STREETS PAVED WITH SILVER? NOT! Before we dive into the detailed subject of US economic history, let's look at something more light-hearted. According to Guy Rocha, Nevada State Archivist, a textbook from the early 1990's taught children that Virginia City's streets were once paved with silver. In any great legend, there is often a kernel of truth. Indeed, mine tailings may have been used to pave Virginia City streets. At the same time, giving children the false impression that pure silver was used is a disservice to all. Read Guy Rocha's Myth a Month #48 to get the whole story. COMSTOCK LODE SILVER FINANCED THE CIVIL WAR? Did Nevada's Comstock Lode silver contribute significantly to the Civil War? It would be romantic to think the answer is yes, and the claim is often made. Unfortunately it's much easier to claim a fact than to disprove it. You know the old saying, "it's hard to prove a negative." Here I will try to do just that. If you are bored by economics or history, you will be really bored by economic history, a subject unto itself. If that's the case, just go look at the Living Steam Virginia and Truckee videos at YouTube. Still reading? Good. You're one of the hard-core history fans. To figure this out, I was lucky enough to find sources that go back in time. Civil War economics is a hazy subject, so I don't claim to have the final answer. Two of my sources are available at Google Books; regardless of whether you believe my claims, if you've read this far, go take a direct look at Bolles' Financial History of the United States - 1861-1865 and Dewey's Financial History of the United States. Specific page references are in the bibliography below. While Gilbert Kneiss is a great source because he generally writes scholarly work, in one book he writes what I believe to be an error. When talking about ex-president Hoover's ride to Virginia City on the Virginia and Truckee Railway, Kneiss writes, "... for back in 1879 she (#11 the Reno) had pulled General Grant in his private car "California" up to Virginia City to inspect the mines which had financed his campaigns."( fn. 2 ) I'm pretty sure Kneiss wasn't talking about political campaigns -- he was saying that the Comstock Lode silver financed Grant's Union campaigns during the Civil War. A KERNEL OF TRUTH? IF ONE SILVER DOLLAR WAS SPENT ON A BULLET... In the Civil War times, it is possible that silver from the Comstock Lode was taken to the US mint in San Francisco and coined. Private parties could take their precious metals to the US Mints to be converted into coins. During the Civil War Comstock Silver would NOT have gone to the Carson City Mint, because construction of the Carson City Mint was not started until 1866.( fn. 3 ) The Nevada State Museum at Carson City is now in the Carson City Mint Building. So in the interest of admitting that a kernel of truth may lie at the heart of this myth, perhaps a coin minted at the San Francisco Mint from Comstock silver made it's way to General Grant's troops, and maybe a soldier bought a bullet with that coin. We can see this kernel would be very small, because a bullet does not make a "campaign." COMPARING CIVIL WAR COSTS TO COMSTOCK PRODUCTION While vast fortunes were taken from the Comstock Lode, the years from 1861 to 1865 only produced approx. 50 million dollars of the 3-400 million dollars produced to 1880 ( fn. 4 ) by the Comstock mines. As we shall see, even if all that money went directly to the United States Treasury (which it didn't), fifty million dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to what the US government spent on the Civil War. Just to get it out up front, Bolles estimates the total cost of the Civil War to be over SIX BILLION DOLLARS! (fn. 5) So, again, fifty million is a drop in the bucket compared to six billion. I could stop right here and say, "Comstock Silver did not significantly finance the Civil War" but I won't. For true economic history fans, there more fun ahead! THE MYTH IS DEBUNKED BUT WERE NOT DONE IP To see that Comstock Silver didn't affect the Civil War financing significantly, let's take a quick look at how the Civil War was financed. The first thing to understand is that no Federal or State government entity owned any mines. Money did not flow directly from the Comstock to the Federal Treasury. Silver DID flow to the Mints to be coined into currency. Based on these simple facts, any financial support the Comstock lent to the Union effort would have been through taxes on the surrounding economic activity and expansion of the money supply. TAXATION ON COMSTOCK ECONOMIC ACTIVITY WAS A SMALL FACTOR President Lincoln's Union government raised revenue through bond issues, taxes and tariffs. The South created a fiat currency not based on any metallic backing. The South DID print money to finance their end of the war, and the South saw massive inflation and a total debasement of their currency by the end of the war. As I show in the Living Steam HD video, many businesses across the nation were suppliers to the Virginia and Truckee. The $50 million figure was the total value of the ore taken from the Comstock. From that number must be deducted the costs of mining, processing and transportation. Let make a wild assumption that Comstock Mines made a 100% return on their costs. Having considered all that, a fair estimate might be that the Comstock Lode put $25,000,000 into the money supply and $10,000,000 directly into the Union Treasury. Again, this is a pittance compared to the real costs of the Civil War. Just the 150,000,000 bond float would dwarf the Comstock Silver. (this article will evolve with more detail as I research the subject) Research Notes ( Italicized titles are books I found in print, Underlined linked titles are from Google Books. (1) Beebe, Lucius, and Charles Clegg. Virginia and Truckee: a Story of Virginia City and Comstock Times. 1st ed. Oakland, CA: Grahame H. Hardy, 1949. p54. (at Nevada Historical Society, Reno, NV) (2) Kneiss, Gilbert H. Bonanza Railroads. Stanford University, CA: Stanford UP, 1941. p76. (at Nevada Historical Society, Reno, NV) (3) Uncle, Sam. "Carson City Mint - US Mint Buildings Across the Nation." Treasury Department. United States. 07 Jan. 2008 (4) Church, John A. E.m. Ph.d. The Comstock: Its Formation and History. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1879. p4. (5) Bolles, Albert S. The Financial History of the United States - 1861 to 1885. 2nd ed. New York, NY: D. Appelton & Company, 1894. 241-244. (6) Dewey, Davis Rich Ph.d. Financial History of the United States. New York, NY: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907. p267. |