The characteristics of the Argonauts as a body were these: First, they were mostly men, with a few low-caste women, and their moral sense was not therefore quickened by the presence and needs of family life; though families and reputable women were by no means so utterly absent as the exaggerated myths of the old-timers would make it appear. Second, few intended to remain longer than was needed to acquire a fortune and return East. This did not make their settlement in the least less enduring or desirable, but with the paucity of family life, it prevented them for some time from feeling a proper respon sibility for public order and the creation of solid institutions, and spasms of illegal violence were expected to do the work of steady legality. Third, they were from all sections of the country, at a time when North and South were daily becoming hostile races. Though the free-State people were largely in the ascendant, the Southerners were the political leaders and the State was steadily Democratic. Yet the former class had no idea of letting sectional politics rule their general action; home issues were too pressing and national ones too aca demic; and while California as a free State sympathized with and furnished splendid help to the Union, her politics have never been affected by the issues either of slavery or of re construction. Fourth, along with men of char acter and ability, since prominent as business and professional men, State officials, editors, etc., there were of course great numbers of
blacklegs, desperadoes, and refugees from jus tice. These not only defied all law in their re lations with each other, but frequently out raged, plundered and murdered the native Spanish inhabitants, and required an amount of time and effort to keep them in order, which the decent element — who were in a great majority— were unwilling to give. Hence society again and again seemed on the verge of being dominated wholly by its criminal classes, and the fear of an occasional uprising of the orderly element did not countervail its being only occasional and the chance of escap ing it (see VIGILANCE Cordidirrus). But the best praise which can be given to the essential soundness of the Argonauts is that in a remark ably short time they rose to the same sense of their responsibilities as older commonwealths, and the California of 1860 was not inferior to any of its companions. Consult Audubon, Journal' (Cleveland 1906) ; Bret Harte, of the Argonauts' (Boston 1875) ; Royce, (History of California' (1891) ; Bancroft, H. H., (History of California' (4 vols., San Francisco 1884-90) ; id., inter Pocula> (San Francisco 1888) ; Shinn, 'Mining Camps' (1885) ; Taylor, Bayard, (New York 1862) ; Burnett, of an Old Pioneer' (1880); Mcllhany, of a Forty-Niner) (Kansas City 1908) ; Stillman, the Golden Fleece' (San Francisco 1877).