Herbert Eugene Bolton. Albert L. Hurtado

“but my preference is for Texas.” Bolton did not reveal the identity of the university that had made the offer, but it must have been Berkeley, though Stephens claimed that Bolton was on his way to Texas before he recruited him.⁹⁵

      Mezes offered Bolton the position but not a raise in salary.⁹⁶ Within days of Bolton's receipt of Mezes's offer Stephens invited him to Berkeley, where he met Stephens and Wheeler. The three men reached an understanding. Bolton would be Stephens's “second-in-command with entire charge of…everything pertaining to American history.” If Berkeley could not have Turner, “let us have Turner's most promising pupil.” The Berkeley chairman was punctilious about having Bolton's assurances that he had intended to leave Stanford for Texas before Stephens contacted him.⁹⁷

      Stephens recommended Bolton for a full professorship at $4,000. “It is clearly understood,” Stephens added, “that you will have resigned from Stanford to accept the call from the University of Texas, before any call can come from the University of California.”⁹⁸ Bolton had not “resigned from Stanford” to go to Texas, as Stephens directed Bolton to acknowledge. He could not bring himself to tell such a bald-faced lie and would only say that he was “on the point of resigning” when the California position was offered.⁹⁹ This sophistry was meant to justify Wheeler, Stephens, and Bolton in the eyes of Stanford critics while accomplishing the objective of pulling Bolton over to Berkeley.

      Would Bolton have gone to Texas if Cal had not hired him? Possibly, but barker's letters to Bolton reveal that an inside game was being played in Texas as well as in California. “Just once more: you can't come for 1910—1911.” As barker had artfully put it, “They won't take another man so long as you dicker with them—couldn't get one before next winter, if then; uncertainty may help me to get out of the rank of Adj. [assistant] Prof. into Asso. class; so if my logic seems good to you hang on without giving a definite answer.” He added a note asking Bolton to delay his decision until the September meeting of the Texas regents. Otherwise, barker wrote, “I would be merely what I am—nothing.” Bolton hung on through most of September, and barker was made acting chair of the history department.¹⁰⁰

      “I have decided to cast my lot with you,” he informed the worried Stephens on September 21. “Now that the decision has been made,” he wrote, “I am all for California, and I shall not look back.”¹⁰¹

      Bolton's decision hinged in part on Stephens's assurance that the university would purchase some of his Mexican transcripts for $1,000.¹⁰² Wheeler agreed to this arrangement and Stephens asked Phoebe Apperson Hearst to provide the money. Hiring Bolton was California's victory, but Texas gained too. The Texas regents soon made barker's chairmanship permanent. He held the position for decades, constructively guiding the development of the history program, the library, and the university.¹⁰³

      Bolton got a nice raise by going to Berkeley, and he needed it. The Bolton family now included six daughters. The Bolton's new baby, Jane, was born in 1910. “I of all the ‘boys,’” Herbert wrote his bother, “most resemble our father in exemplifying the proverb, ‘a rich man for luck and a poor man for babies.’”¹⁰⁴ Money had more than practical significance for a family man who was strapped for cash. At Berkeley Bolton was going to pull down the same salary that Turner had commanded at Wisconsin.¹⁰⁵ Bolton's new salary declared that he was on his way to the top of the history profession.

      Negotiations with Stanford, Texas, and California had not prevented Bolton from finishing his guide to the Mexican archives, but the manuscript still sat on his desk. “I hate to ‘turn it loose,’ to use a Texanism,” he explained to Fred.¹⁰⁶ Three days after telling Stephens that he was “all for California,” Bolton sent the manuscript to Jameson. “I submit it to your tender mercy, with no comment as to what I think of it.” Bolton had worked on it for so long that he “could scarcely work on it any more—I was paralyzed in sight of it,” he confessed.¹⁰⁷

      Once the manuscript was off of his desk, Bolton began to anticipate his move to Berkeley and the peerless resources of the Bancroft. “I shall be very glad indeed to have my work and office across the hall from the great Bancroft Collection,” he wrote Jameson.¹⁰⁸ Much to his satisfaction, Bolton's new teaching responsibilities would consist mostly of graduate work. “You probably know that I am going to the University of California next year,” he reported to Turner. “The Bancroft Collection is a magnificent one and I could not have collected it better myself from the standpoint of my own purposes.” Bolton hoped to build a strong department in western and Spanish-American history at Berkeley. “My own interests lie on the border between the two and I expect plenty of help on the two flanks.”¹⁰⁹

      Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a better situation for Bolton. He would be assistant department head with entire responsibility for building the program in American history. Through hiring professors and training graduate students, Bolton could shape the Berkeley history program, the field of Spanish-American history, and the profession. He could continue his own march to scholarly prominence with the finest library in his field literally at his fingertips. Hard work would make it so, but Bolton's success in California would not come without opposition or conflict. Frederick J. Teggart would see to that. In the summer of 1911 the regents made Teggart associate professor of Pacific Coast history in recognition of “the invaluable services…rendered without charge” in moving the Bancroft to Berkeley.¹¹⁰ Now slated to teach American history, Teggart would fall under Bolton's purview.¹¹¹ Stephens appointed Bolton assistant curator of the Bancroft under Teggart, creating dual arrangements that would inevitably cause friction.