3pp.+ stampless address leaf. To his brother, Virginia state legislator Allen Caperton.
The 32 year-old New Orleans and Texas lawyer was about to start on a dangerous trek with his friend Hays, then US Indian Agent for the Gila River country, pioneering a shortcut from El Paso to the coast. “I am only this far on my way to Calafornia [sic] having met with repeated delays… The trip I am about to start on is a long end hard one. Sometimes I feel discouraged when I think of it but If I only am healthy I can stand as much as any man..."
The wagon train led by Hays had been awaiting a convoy of US Army troops, who had been “threatening to move for two months and have not started." Caperton had just met Army Colonel Joseph Johnston (later a Confederate General), “a splendid fellow’ who was doing railroad engineering work and wanted to accompany the Hays train on their trek north, but could not yet get the consent of his commanding officer. “I am off tomorrow or next day with a small party by a different route from the one which will be pursued by the troops, to El Passo. Hays conducts us and we will be accompanied by some friendly Comanches. I think we will reach El Passo some time before the troops. My health continues good although a great deal exposed to Cholera. I have doubtless heard of the unprecedented mortality here. They continue to die all the time. No one feels secure. If I can only get on our journey ten or twenty days I shall then feel relief. Uncle Mike had some cases of Cholera among his negroes but cured them.” If he arrived safe and sound, Caperton had plans: Through his in-law, Secretary of the Navy Preston, he had already received a commission as “Inspector” of the Port of San Francisco, a minor job as “a kind of wharf rat”, though he hoped Preston and his brother could get him the “sinecure” of the Port’s Navy Agent. He had other California “adventures” in mind, hoping to make “a big pile” in California and then return to Virginia to live the life of a gentleman farmer. In fact, when he at last reached San Francisco six months later, Hays was elected the city’s first Sheriff, with Caperton as his deputy during the Vigilante years. Hays went on to become Surveyor General of California, laying out the boundaries of the new city of Oakland. During the Civil War, he turned down offers of command from both North and South, choosing to remain in the new state. Caperton did return Virginia, where his brother became wartime Confederate Senator, but, marrying the daughter of a pro-Union Secretary of the Treasury, he settled in Kentucky as “capitalist” and planter.