Jameson's response was unequivocal. He had engaged Bolton for the preparation of “one comprehensive guide to the materials for United State history” in the Mexican archives. Turning to Garrison's long-standing hope that the Carnegie Institution would help him get documents from the Mexican archives, Jameson planned to aid in “the more elaborate exploitation” of foreign archives “that would do the greatest good for the greatest number,” but these projects lay “so much in the future that I have not considered them carefully.”89 Jameson hoped that Texas and other state governments would be moved to fund projects of the sort that Garrison proposed. Garrison was out in the cold.
Everything seemed to be set. Barker would finish his degree, return to Texas in June, and Bolton would leave for Mexico. Then came Garrison's letter to Jameson. “I regret greatly the little hitch that seems likely in the matter of Dr. Bolton's leave of absence.” Barker was going to Harvard on a one-year fellowship. Garrison proposed to put off Bolton's leave for a year. Garrison insisted that he had no desire to interfere with Jameson's plans. “This is said in the frankest and most cordial spirit.”90 There was a limit to Jameson's patience and it had been reached. Delaying Bolton's leave would cause much “difficulty and regret,” he informed Garrison.91 Just when was Barker expected to finish his degree, and when would Bolton's leave finally be decided? the irritated Jameson asked. Bolton solved the problem by going directly to the university president, who approved the leave.92 Houston also promised Bolton a promotion to associate professor with a good salary raise when he returned.93
President Houston realized that Bolton's work had practical applications as well as scholarly merit. In May Houston referred several “Dallas capitalists” to Bolton for information about the long-lost Los Almagres silver mine.94 Discovered in the eighteenth century, the mine was located somewhere north of San Antonio, Texas. Comanches had driven out the miners, and the mine's exact location had been forgotten. Anglo Texans learned of the place, assumed that the mine was fabulously rich, and fruitlessly searched for it. In 1904 Bolton had found an official account of the mine together with precise information about its location. After hearing from Houston's acquaintances, he sent to Mexico for the records and met with the Dallas men, who made him one of nine partners in the venture. Then he and one of his partners found the mine “exactly where the papers directed us…with startling precision.” Iron deposits as well as silver might make money for the partnership. “But, thunder,” he exclaimed, “I never expect anything except in return for a day's work, and in the form of wages.”95 The mine proved not to be a moneymaker but was still useful to Bolton because it connected him with Texans who appreciated his knowledge of Spanish land records.96 And from Houston's perspective Bolton's work demonstrated the utilitarian value of historical research in the university.
Six years in Texas had made a big change in Bolton's professional fortunes. He had carved out a field of his own and established the beginning of a national reputation. Hungry for professional recognition and advancement, Bolton now felt sure enough of his future to turn down tempting offers when they came. He was also secure enough to risk the wrath of Garrison by taking over the Mexican project that his department chair had pioneered and wished to dominate. Bolton established a legitimate claim to the field by virtue of hard work and significant publications. But he made his claim stick by adroitly outmaneuvering Garrison at every turn. President Houston supported Bolton because he recognized the value of his work to the university. Garrison wanted to do the work, but Bolton was actually doing it.
Bolton had established a substantial scholarly reputation in Texas, but he had had a lot of help. Jameson, Turner, Haskins, and perhaps others behind the scenes promoted his career. Nor should Garrison be forgotten. Without a Garrison, there could not have been a Bolton. By founding the state historical association and its journal, he created an organizational structure that promoted and published southwestern research. He was the first historian to foresee that the systematic exploitation of the Mexican archives by Texas faculty and students could elevate the scholarly reputation of the University of Texas. And he knew that the historian who opened those archives would become a very big man in the historical profession. By the time Bolton left for his year in Mexico, Garrison no doubt understood that he would not realize his dream of being that big man. But in a very real sense Garrison had founded his Texas school of southwestern history through Bolton, and there was no other way he could have done it. Garrison would die of a heart attack in 1910, just about the time he promised Jameson that he would be free to get back to Mexico.
When Bolton stepped onto the train to Mexico in the summer of 1907, he knew that his career had entered a new phase. He was looking at a big future. Texas would not be able to hold Bolton.
F O U R · Many Roads to California
While Bolton negotiated the terms of his work in Mexico, Frederick Jackson Turner was engaged in high-level professional discussions of his own. From 1904 until 1909 Stanford University and the University of California avidly competed for Turner's services. Bolton would be the ultimate beneficiary of Turner's long courtships on the Pacific Coast.
In 1902 Turner had called Max Farrand to Madison to teach a summer seminar in American constitutional history, “to the delight” of the students, Turner noted. “I am finding him a most companionable friend,” he explained to Professor Henry Morse Stephens. Farrand was head of the history department at Stanford, and Stephens had just moved from Cornell to the University of California. “I am very confident that your removal to the coast is full of significance to the development of historical study in the country,” he added.1 This was the beginning of a delicate, three-sided courtship between Turner, Stanford, and Berkeley.
Turner's friendship with Farrand lasted all of their lives. A few years younger than Turner, Farrand had earned his PhD at Princeton University, where he had studied with Woodrow Wilson, Turner's friend and teacher from his Hopkins days.2 Turner and Farrand had much in common intellectually, and they were both avid anglers who spent summer weeks fly-fishing.3 Farrand, of course, saw much more than a fishing buddy in Turner. Adding Turner to the Stanford faculty would immeasurably enhance that young institution's intellectual reputation. He discussed the matter with university president David Starr Jordan, who enthusiastically agreed to recruit Turner.4
Selling Stanford to Turner would be tough. The institution had opened in 1891 as a memorial to Leland Stanford Jr., the son of railroad baron and California U.S. senator Leland Stanford. After their son died at age fifteen, Stanford and his wife, Jane, invested millions in the creation of the university, which they conceived as a gift to the people of California as well as a lasting memorial to their son. When her husband suddenly died in 1893, Jane Stanford carried on the work of building the university, but it still lacked a significant library, a shortcoming that hindered faculty research as well as graduate training.5
Farrand and Jordan recognized that Stanford needed a better library in order to attract Turner. It so happened that two major private libraries were available in California, the Bancroft and the Sutro. The former was named for Hubert Howe Bancroft, a wealthy San Francisco stationer and bookseller who wrote a multivolume history of California and the West.6 He scoured the world for manuscripts and books pertaining to his subject, acquiring copies when the originals could not be had. The Bancroft Library's special strengths were in the Spanish and Mexican periods of California and the Southwest. Bancroft erected a special building for his library in San Francisco and hired a staff of librarians and writers. In 1883 the first of thirty-nine volumes of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft issued from the press. Once The Works were completed, Bancroft was faced with the question of what to do with his vast private library and archive. The city of Sacramento, the University of Chicago, and the Library of Congress all were rumored to have been offered the library for prices