That was a curious exordium of “Uncle Peter Mehan,” when he made his first stump-speech at Sonora:  “Fellow-citizens, I was born an orphin at a very early period of my life.”  He was a candidate for supervisor, and the good-natured miners elected him triumphantly.  He made a good supervisor, which is another proof that book-learning and elegant rhetoric are not essential where there are integrity and native good sense.  Uncle Peter never stole any thing, and he was usually on the right side of all questions that claimed the attention of the county-fathers of Tuolumne.

In the early days, the Virginians, New Yorkers, and Tennesseans, led in politics.  Trained to the stump at home, the Virginians and Tennesseans were ready on all occasions to run a primary-meeting, a convention, or a canvass.  There was scarcely a mining-camp in the State in which there was not a leading local politician from one or both of these States.  The New Yorker understood all the inside management of party organization, and was up to all the smart tactics developed in the lively struggles of parties in the times when Whiggery and Democracy fiercely fought for rule in the Empire State.  Broderick was a New Yorker, trained by Tammany in its palmy days.  He was a chief, who rose from the ranks, and ruled by force of will.  Thick-set, strong-limbed, full-chested, with immense driving-power in his back-head, he was an athlete whose stalwart physique was of more value to him than the gift of eloquence, or even the power of money.  The sharpest lawyers and the richest money-kings alike went down before this uncultured and moneyless man, who dominated the clans of San Francisco simply by right of his manhood.  He was not without a sort of eloquence of his own.  He spoke right to the point, and his words fell like the thud of a shillalah; or rang like the clash of steel.  He dealt with the rough elements of politics in an exciting and turbulent period of California politics, and was more of a border chief than an Ivanhoe in his modes of warfare.  He reached the United States Senate, and in his first speech in that august body he honored his manhood by an allusion to his father, a stone mason, whose hands, said Broderick, had helped to erect the very walls of the chamber in which he spoke.  When a man gets as high as the United States Senate, there is less tax upon his magnanimity in acknowledging his humble origin than while he is lower down the ladder.  You seldom hear a man boast how low he began until he is far up toward the summit of his ambition.  Ninety-nine out of every hundred self-made men are at first more or less sensitive concerning their low birth; the hundredth man who is not is a man indeed.

Broderick’s great rival was Gwin.  The men were antipodes in every thing except that they belonged to the same party.  Gwin still lives, the most colossal figure in the history of California.  He looks the man he is.  Of immense frame, ruddy complexion, deep-blue eyes that almost blaze when he is excited, rugged yet expressive features, a massive bead crowned with a heavy suit of silver-white hair, he is marked by Nature for leadership.  Common men seem dwarfed in his presence.  After he had dropped out of California politics for awhile, a Sacramento hotel-keeper expressed what many felt during a legislative session:  “I find myself looking around for Gwin.  I miss the chief.”