The Mining Act of 1872 established American citizens' right to stake mineral claims on the public domain - something that had previously been ambiguous-to-illegal on the federal level despite a few decades' worth of gold rushes in the West. Recently I've come across suggestions in a few sources that Eastern politicians were unhappy with the proposal at first. This was partially because of how heavily Southerners were represented in the goldfields but mostly because it was seen as theft from the government at a time of heavy federal debt; both Radical Republican George W. Julian and notorious copperhead Fernando Wood apparently suggested seizing gold mines as government property.
The only sources I've been able to find so far, though, are blogs that cite books I don't have access to at the moment. Was this really an idea in common circulation? Could it have succeeded (probably not; afaik the Mining Act passed comfortably)? If so, what would the results be? Given the ferocity of gold lust and frontier life in general, I could see a federal occupation of the goldfields resulting in something akin to guerrilla warfare - and at a time when a lot of the army is still tied up Reconstructing the South...
The only sources I've been able to find so far, though, are blogs that cite books I don't have access to at the moment. Was this really an idea in common circulation? Could it have succeeded (probably not; afaik the Mining Act passed comfortably)? If so, what would the results be? Given the ferocity of gold lust and frontier life in general, I could see a federal occupation of the goldfields resulting in something akin to guerrilla warfare - and at a time when a lot of the army is still tied up Reconstructing the South...