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Amos P. Catlin – Sacramento

Amos P. Catlin Portrait Illustration

Amos P. Catlin is a forgotten California pioneer who had a major role in putting Sacramento on the map. His legacy goes far beyond just sponsoring and fighting for his Senate bill in 1854 to permanently move California’s capitol to Sacramento.

Before he was even elected to the legislature, Catlin, as an 1849 gold miner, organized companies that would build the Natoma Canal and the North Fork Ditch along the south and north forks of the American River. These two water works projects, originally intended for mining and agricultural purposes, have helped shape and grow the surrounding communities of Folsom, Orangevale, Citrus Heights, and south Placer County.

A. P. Catlin: ’49er, Gold Miner, Lawyer, Judge

As a lawyer, Catlin would become a well-respected legal mind and ultimately be elected a Superior Court Judge in Sacramento County. He was often hired by both the City of Sacramento and Sacramento County for legal consultation and to represent them in different law suits.

Mr. Catlin had claims upon the party that should not be over looked. Amos P. Catlin is an up-right, high-minded man — one who, as a lawyer had some equals and few superiors, and should have been upon the bench years ago. In Legislature at Benicia, in 1854, Mr. Catlin labored for the bill locating the State Capitol in this city, and its passage was largely due to his labors.


Attorney George Blanchard seconding the nomination of Catlin for Superior Court Judge at the Sacramento County Republican Convention, 1890. (1890 Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 79, Number 130, 25 July 1890)

While doing research for my biography of Benjamin Bugbey, Catlin’s name popped up again and again with respect to water canals, railroads, the Leidesdorff land grant, and the politics of Sacramento County. Additional research on Catlin has revealed a fascinating man who called Sacramento home. Even though he is largely lost to history, his legal finger prints were all over the development of Sacramento City and County in the 19th century.

To the Honorable Board of the Trustees of the City of Sacramento: ln response to your request for my opinion as to the constitutional validity and binding force of the anti-Chinese ordinance proposed on the 11th instant, for your consideration by a committee of an anti-Chinese association, I have to say : That said ordinance is a self-manifest and palpable violation of the Federal Constitution, in that it is aimed to excluded from the city of Sacramento all persons of a certain nationality; that is to say, all Chinese, without regard to age, sex, occupation, or other condition. To some minds this does not perhaps appear so apparent. But to the same minds, if an ordinance were framed, with a whereas even more verbose and extended than this in recitation of supposed evils, followed by a section making it a misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment for any Italian, Mexican, or Portuguese to reside in or remain within the limits of the city after a specific time, it would at once become perfectly clear that the Federal Constitution (State Constitution and laws to the contrary notwithstanding) does not tolerate, but forbids such class legislation.

Letter to Sacramento City Trustees in 1886 from A. P. Catlin (1886 Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 54, Number 126, 18 January 1886)

The timeline of his life below only begins to scratch the surface of Catlin’s life. He is the subject of my next book. Because he was prominent a public figure, there are many newspaper stories written about his activities in the Sacramento region. Some of his papers and correspondence are at the Bancroft Library and California State Archives that I will be reviewing. If you have any information about Amos P. Catlin – photos, letters, legal documents, etc. – please contact me as I would eager to review them.

The book: Amos P. Catlin, The Whig Who Put Sacramento On The Map

Amos P. Catlin Timeline

Catlin was a political editor for the Sacramento Daily Union from September 1864 to April 1865. Even after he left the newspapers employment, he wrote other pieces for them. It is often mentioned that Catlin is the author of the July 6, 1867 article titled End of a Tyrant about the execution of Maximilian I in Mexico. Because there is no attribution in the paper or the author, I must take the others attributing the story to Catlin as fact. The succinct editorial was supposedly reproduced through many parts of Latin America. Below is the text of the article.

Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 33, Number 5077, 6 July 1867

THE END OF A TRYANT.

There seems to be no question of the authenticity of the intelligence which reached us a few days ago, announcing the tragic end of the tyrant who, for about four years, has lorded over Mexico. He fell into the hands of the republican forces at the surrender of Queretaro, and, after summary trial by a Court-martial, was sentenced to death, and by the orders of Juarez was shot on the I0th of June. He shared the fate which so many of his class deserve and which not a few of them have received.

The enormity of the crime thus expiated will scarcely be comprehended by the present generation of men, either in Europe or America — in the former, because there was too much complicity there in the crime itself; and in the latter, because the public sense has been blunted by a nearer contemplation of other enormities equally repulsive and shocking. History, moreover, views great events from an eminence, and through the medium of a clearer light than is vouchsafed to the actors in the stirring and confused scenes which time and philosophic truthfulness resolve into consistency and order.

Upon the historic page the career of Maximilian will make a striking episode. No parallel to it will be found in the record of any usurper that ever risked his head to wear a crown. The most selfish, the most brutal, the most sanguinary have had their apologists and defenders; some claim, growing out of unrepaired wrongs, or some semblance of inheritable right exhumed from the dusty records of the past, could be found with which to supply a motive more or less defensible. But Maximilian’s case stands upon the naked ground of an invader, without the shadow of a justifying or excusable cause. He had not even the robber’s plea, that might makes right.

He had neither men nor money of his own to carry on the wicked enterprise, but used the mercenaries furnished him by a brother in the cause of spoliation and robbery. An antipode and an alien in the most extended sense to Mexico, its form of government and its traditions, no conceivable motive can be ascribed to him but the lust of power — the hankering after a crown. He assumed the airs of a philanthropist, and professed that the social order which a despotism enforced were better for the Mexican people than the republican confusion in which they were involved; and in order to give effect to these favorite dogmas of kingcraft and priestcraft, he deluged hail a continent in blood and confiscated the estates of all who opposed him.

He came as a royal missionary to introduce European civilization where it was falsely alleged a semi-barbarism existed ; and his instruments were the bayonets of a band of trained African savages, and an army of French soldiers employed without mercy upon the common people, while the halter and the scourge were relied upon to subdue men and women of distinction.

His armies devastated the fairest fields in Mexico, and his rule of warfare against the inhabitants who resisted was such as our Government does not feel authorized to practice against the merciless savages. His edicts denied to the patriots who bore arms against him the privileges of honorable warfare, and thereby turned his prisoners over to indiscriminate slaughter. In this mad career he persisted after his allies had deserted him, and was only stopped when his own blood sank into the soil saturated with that of thousands of his victims.

The wisdom of the act of Juarez in permitting the ax of justice to fall upon the neck of so illustrious a subject has been questioned by some who, we apprehend, do not sufficiently appreciate the importance of always maintaining an erect and resolute front against the pretensions of royalty. The contest in Mexico is yet between republicanism and imperialism. The weight of this royal name, the odor of sanctity which surrounds the person of a Caesar, the divinity which doth hedge a king, were so many forces marshalled against Juarez in his struggle.

To have spared Maximilian because he was the brother of the Emperor of Austria and protege of Napoleon would have been to acknowledge a principle always active hostility to republicanism in Mexico. But more practical reasons than these not only justify the act, but make it clear that Juarez would have shown himself unequal to bis position if he had faltered in so plain a duty. The public voice of Mexico demanded it, and a refusal on his part would have weakened his own authority, now so needful in reconstructing a shattered Government.

Besides, it was a necessary blow, in order to destroy the Imperial party. With Maximilian retired to Europe, a sew plot to establish an empire in Mexico could be worked out at leisure. While the hope of restoration existed there would be enough material in the Mexican element for it to work upon, and traitors would be found in the bosom of the republic as long as a banished Emperor lived to nourish them.

Juarez has proved himself a statesman in his past career, and has not acted in this important affair without a full consideration of the subject in all its probable bearings. There are none in Europe that will care to resent the death of Maximilian except Napoleon and Francis Joseph, and neither of these can afford to undertake a war against Mexico for such a cause. Juarez has but vindicated the Monroe doctrine, and that, is a principle for which the United States can now afford to fight. When that question again comes up for diplomatic discussion, our Government will not have the Southern Confederacy at its throat choking its utterance, but it will be free handed, and willing to defend itself, and its neighbor it needful, against the next effort at Imperial propagandism on this continent.

Catlin helped organize the American River Water and Mining Company in 1853 that built the North Fork Ditch.
In 1854 Amos Catlin sponsored legislation that permanently moved California’s capitol to Sacramento from Benicia.
Amos Catlin owned lots in 22 different blocks of Folsom. He owned all the lots of several blocks around town in 1861.
Illustration of A. P. Catlin from The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. 8, 1898, page 87.
Image of Amos P. Catlin that ran in the San Francisco Call announcing his death on November 5, 1900.
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