The San Jose Mercury and the Civil War
By Benjamin Bronston Beales
I. GENERAL BACKGROUND
THE pueblo of San Jose was established in 1777 by Felipe de Neve, first Spanish governor of California: sixty-six persons were sent from San Francisco under the leadership of Jose Moraga. They were charged with the task of providing grain for the military garrisons of Monterey and San Francisco. It was not long before the settlers in and around the little town were producing grain, leather, and tallow for export. These found a ready market on Russian and American ships which occasionally called at San Francisco in the course of trade along the coast. Fresh meat and vegetables also were sold to American whaling vessels when they made port in San Francisco.
San Jose remained under Spanish jurisdiction until Mexico won its independence in 1821; and it remained in Mexican hands until 1848, when California was ceded to the United States.
The town grew steadily until by 1851 the population numbered over five hundred. An act of the first California legislature incorporated San Jose as a city on March 27, 1850. Included in the population were such diverse nationalities as Mexicans, Peruvians, Chileans, Californians, Indians and some Americans. As in most California towns of the day, the homicide rate was high, although a genuine effort to remedy this condition was made by the various mayors and city councils. Population growth was steady. By 1860 there were over three thousand inhabitants in the city.
At the outbreak of the Civil War there were two newspapers in San Jose. The oldest, the San Jose Mercury, under a variety of names had been published regularly for a period of about ten years. It began publication as the Weekly Visitor. Politically it was first Whig, but later in the same year it became Democratic. In 1852 its name was changed to the Register. The next year it became the Telegraph, and in 1861 it was sold to James Jerome Owen and Benjamin H. Cottle.
Owen, according to Eugene Sawyer, was "a man among men . . . broadminded and scrupulously honest."^ He was born in Onondaga County, New York on July 22, 1827, the second son of a family of seven sons and two daughters. His father died when James was twelve, and young Owen soon left home to make his own way. He became an apprentice printer in Auburn, New York, and when he was eighteen received his journeyman's rating. No doubt it was here that he began to develop his taste for journalism. The young man spent much of his spare time in home study in order to fill in the
