Released and Now Available: Treasure and Empire in the Civil War

Neil P. Chatelain is happy to announce the release of his latest book, Treasure and Empire in the Civil War: The Panama Route, the West and the Campaigns to Control America’s Mineral Wealth, published by McFarland & Company.

Here is a brief description of the work:

Across North America’s periphery, unknown and overlooked Civil War campaigns were waged over whether the United States or Confederacy would dominate lands, mines, and seaborne transportation networks of North America’s mineral wealth. The U.S. needed this wealth to stabilize their wartime economy while the Confederacy sought to expand their own treasury. Confederate armies advanced to seize the West and its gold and silver reserves, while warships steamed to intercept Panamá route ships transporting bullion from California to Panamá to New York. United States forces responded by expelling Confederate incursions and solidified territorial control by combating Indigenous populations and enacting laws encouraging frontier settlement. The U.S. Navy patrolled key ports, convoyed treasure ships, and integrated continent-wide intelligence networks in the ultimate game of cat and mouse.

This book examines the campaigns to control North America’s mineral wealth, linking the Civil War’s military, naval, political, diplomatic, and economic elements. Included are the hemispheric land and sea adventures involving tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, admiral and explorer Charles Wilkes, renowned sea captain Raphael Semmes, General Henry Sibley, cowboy and mountain man Kit Carson, Indigenous leaders Mangas Coloradas and Geronimo, writer and miner Mark Twain, and Mormon leader Brigham Young.

Emerging Civil War readers may find some of these topics familiar, as Neil has been slowly putting related pieces of his research on the ECW site over the years. Among those inclusions are:

• Cap-Haïtien: Lincoln’s Forgotten Forward Operating Naval Base, February 2024.
• Civil War Encounters Touring the West: Part Three – Rebel Prisoners on Alcatraz Island, September 2023.
• Civil War Encounters Touring the West: Part Two – Confederate Army Activity in Nevada?, September 2023.
• Civil War Encounters Touring the West: Part One – Utah’s Civil War Monument, September 2023.
• Civil War Surprises: Santiago Vidaurri’s Tempting Offer, April 2023.
• The US Marine Corps’ Greatest Defeat … and Greatest Defiant Act in the Civil War, December 2022.
• Unexpected Challenges of California Officers Going East by Sea in 1861, August, 2021.
• A Most Peculiar Target of Naval Gunnery, July, 2020.
• Tracking the Lost Silver of the Benjamin F. Hoxie, September 2019.
• Sailors, Diplomats, Tycoons and the Campaign to Control California’s Gold in the Civil War, August 2017. (Neil’s second-ever guest post for ECW!)

As a bonus to the book, Neil has added to his personal website a massive 48-page digital appendix that documents every single steamer carrying gold from San Francisco to Panamá to New York. It includes a listing of ships, dates of travel, ports visited, amount of bullion carried, unexpected encounters, and any convoy or protection offered by United States naval forces. Additionally, every trip contains an extensive footnote documenting where all information came from. Also available on that site are videos and podcasts about the topic.