 Chapter 11. A History of California, the American Period, by Robert Class Cleveland. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11. Jackson, Tyler, and California. In previous chapters, an effort has been made to show how the people of the United States became interested in California. How, year after year, the hide and tellowships sailed from New England ports to ply up and down 500 miles of California coast. How the fur traders, coming and going with the seasons, opened up the overland approaches to the Pacific and brought back tales of a richly endowed, ample but undeveloped land. How, on horseback, an ox wagon, or on foot, the Western pioneer with wife and children forced his slow way across the continent until he found a permanent home beside the Western Sea. It is now necessary to go back and take up the awakening interest of the United States government in California, and the various attempts made to purchase the province in the decade prior to the Mexican War. Although the Russian advance caused the American government grave concern over the fate of the Oregon Territory in California, no other official interest appears to have been taken in the affairs of the latter province until twelve years after the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine. In the meantime Andrew Jackson had come to the presidency and placed Anthony Butler in charge of the American legation in Mexico. The appointment of Butler to the position was one of those unfortunate mistakes for which American diplomacy has acquired an unenviable reputation. For Butler's character and qualifications eminently unfitted him for carrying out any commission of trust or responsibility. And the devious course of his career in Mexico constitutes a curious and unsavory episode in the history of American-Mexican relations. The chief object with which Butler concerned himself while in Mexico was the acquisition of Texas. From the outset his communications to the State Department began to hint at bribery as the best means of accomplishing his purpose, and soon he was urgently writing the Secretary of State to resort to bribery and corruption, or presence if the term is more appropriate, to bring the negotiations to a successful close. When Jackson refused to sanction Butler's unethical proposals, the latter obtained permission to return to the United States to lay before the President a more extensive plan for the acquisition of Mexican territory. This, in brief, centered around the possibility of obtaining Santa Ana's consent to the proposed session by the secret use of a large sum of money. As intermediary in the transaction, a priest named Hernandez, who stood very close to the Mexican dictator, had already been selected. Hernandez, according to Butler, had agreed to bring about the desired results if $500,000 were placed at his disposal to be judiciously applied. In urging this project upon Forsythe, who was then Secretary of State, Butler asserted that the plan offered an assured method of extending the sovereignty of the United States. Not only over Texas, but also over the whole of that tract of territory, known as New Mexico, and higher and lower California, an empire in itself, a paradise and climate, rich in minerals and affording a water route to the Pacific through the Arkansas and Colorado rivers. Though Butler's geography and his diplomatic methods were alike unreliable, and though Jackson refused to countenance his scheme of bribery, the president, unfortunately, did allow him to return to Mexico to continue his feudal negotiations and bring further discredit upon himself and his government in the eyes of the Mexican people. Meanwhile, however, Jackson himself had become imbued with the idea which Butler had suggested of acquiring higher California as part of the Texas program. His interest in the territory was further stimulated by a letter received from William A. Slackham, a purser in the United States Navy, whose praise of California was credited by John Quincy Adams with having kindled the passion of Andrew Jackson for the 37th line of latitude from the river Arkansas to the South Sea to include the river in the Bay of San Francisco. At any rate, from whatever source the impulse came, Jackson instructed Butler, when he returned to Mexico, to open negotiations for California as well as Texas, thus ushering in more than a decade of diplomatic maneuvering on the part of the United States to gain possession of the province by peaceful means. Butler's instructions, if carefully read, revealed a true nature of Jackson's interest in California. This did not arise as some historians once charged out of a desire to secure a new field for the expansion of slavery, but was primarily born of a desire to further the expansion of American commerce. The boundaries proposed did not include territory south of the well-established line of the Missouri Compromise, but embraced only the region's north of the 37th parallel. The great object was the Bay of San Francisco, which had been, quote, represented to the president as a most desirable place of resort for our numerous whaling vessels engaged in the whaling business in the Pacific, far superior to any of which they now have access, end quote. The mastery of the Pacific was thus, in fact, Jackson's aim, not, quote, a bigger pen to cram with slaves, unquote. The price which the United States would be willing to pay for the desired region was not specified in Butler's instructions, but rumor later fixed it at $500,000. For various reasons the bargain was never consummated, if indeed it was ever brought to the attention of the Mexican government. Butler was soon recalled and a better man sent to take his place. For six long years, however, as John Quincy Adams wrote, he had mystified Jackson with a positive assurance that he was within a hair's breath of his object and sure of success, while Jackson was all the time wriggling along and snapping at the bait like a mackerel after a red flag, end quote. The conception of Andrew Jackson wriggling along and snapping at the bait like a mackerel after a red flag would not likely occur to any other than Adams's sarcastic imagination. But even Jackson at last came to understand the character of the diplomat he had sent to Mexico, and at a later date with his usual directness of speech, he branded Butler a liar in whom there was neither truth, justice, nor gratitude. After Butler's withdrawal from Mexico, Jackson made a further effort to secure the session of California in connection with the independence of Texas. In the Jackson papers preserved in the Library of Congress, one may see the rough draft of a proposal Jackson drew up to submit to Santa Ana when that illustrious general was in Washington seeking to arrange for the mediation of the United States between Mexico and Texas after his disastrous defeat and capture in the Battle of San Jacinto. The memorandum is unsigned, but the writing, like the spelling, is Andrew Jackson's. It reads as follows, quote, If Mexico will extend the line of the United States to the Rio Grande, up that stream to latitude 38 North, and then to the Pacific, including North California, we might instruct our minister to give them three millions and a half of dollars, and deal then as it respected Texas as a magnanimous nation ought, to wit, in the treaty with Mexico secure the Texans in all their just and legal rights, and stipulate to admit them into the United States as one of the Union, end quote. At the time that Jackson was making this proposal to Santa Ana, he was also urging upon W. H. Horton, the Texas minister at Washington, the necessity of including California within the limits of Texas, in order to reconcile the commercial interests of the North and East annexation by giving them a harbor on the Pacific. He is very earnest and anxious on this point of claiming the California's, wrote Horton Tarrasque in reporting Jackson's suggestion, and says we must not consent to less. This is in strict confidence, glory to God in the highest. Though none of Jackson's efforts to secure California met with the least shadow of success, his program was taken up by a later administration with considerable zeal. Van Buren, harassed beyond measure by financial matters, had little energy to devote to foreign issues, but when Tyler succeeded Harrison, the California project became once more the subject of serious concern. Daniel Webster at that time was Secretary of State, and Wadi Thompson, United States minister to Mexico. The enthusiasm of the latter over California's possibilities bordered on the extravagant, and his efforts to secure the province's annexation to the United States were unceasing. Indeed, no man of his generation had a truer conception of the importance of the acquisition of California in the development of American greatness than Wadi Thompson. In his first dispatches from Mexico, Thompson urged upon President Tyler the advisability of securing California. He spoke of it as the richest, most beautiful, and healthiest country in the world, and described the Bay of San Francisco as being capacious enough to receive the navies of all the world, and so strategically situated as to dominate the entire coast. The control of this bay, and of the harbors of San Diego and Monterey, he went on, would give to the United States not only badly needed ports for her whaling vessels, but also a potential monopoly of the trade of India and the whole Pacific Ocean. For Thompson, however, California had many attractions besides those of a commercial nature. Its forests were large enough to build all the ships of all the world's navies, and its agricultural possibilities were so great that one day it would become the granary of the Pacific. Since slavery was not likely to flourish in the province, he urged the north and the south to compromise any difficulties that might arise on that score, and acquire the territory as soon as possible, especially because France and England both had their eyes on it. I am profoundly satisfied, he concluded, after warning Webster against the designs of European nations upon the territory, that in its bearing upon all the interests of our country, agricultural, political, manufacturing, commercial, and fishing, the importance of the acquisition of California cannot be overestimated. If I could mingle any selfish feelings with interests to my country so vast, I would desire no higher honor than to be an instrument in securing it. Ten days after he had written this dispatch to the Secretary of State, Thompson sent one of like-tenor to the President. Since my dispatch to Mr. Webster, he began, I have had an interview with General Santa Anna, and although I did not broach to him directly the subject of our correspondence, I have but little doubt that I shall be able to accomplish your wishes and to add also the acquisition of Upper California. The latter, I believe, will be by far the most important event that has occurred in our country. I should be most happy to illustrate your administration and my own name by an acquisition of such lasting benefit to my own country. Upon this subject I beg your special instructions, both as to moving on the matter and the extent to which I am to go in the negotiations and the amount to be paid. The acquisition of Upper California will reconcile the Northern people as they have large fishing and commercial interests in the Pacific, and we have literally no port there. Be pleased also to have me pretty strongly instructed on the subject of our claims or leave the responsibility to me. Procrastination, the policy of all weak governments, is particularly so with this, and they are very poor and will never pay us one farthing unless pretty strong measures are taken. Both Webster and Tyler were evidently in strong sympathy with the views expressed in this and other official communications from their representative in Mexico. Thompson was given permission to open negotiations for the purchase of San Francisco and as much more of the province as seemed wise. At this time there were a large number of outstanding claims held against Mexico by citizens of the United States. Most of these were long overdue and as Mexico had no money in sight to meet them it was suggested that these might be satisfied by a session of the desired territory in lieu of cash. While Thompson was seeking to open direct negotiations with Mexico, Webster and Tyler were at work upon another proposition in which the acquisition of California was combined not only with other phases of the Mexican question but also with a growing difficulty between the United States and Great Britain over the Oregon boundary. The plan which bore the name of the tripartite agreement aimed to make Mexico, Great Britain and the United States parties to a common arrangement for the settlement of all three questions. As outlined by Webster the tripartite agreement involved the following proposals. One, Mexico to cede upper California to the United States. Two, the United States to pay blank millions of dollars for the session. Three, of this sum blank millions should be paid to American climates against Mexico. Four, the remainder to be paid to English creditors or bondholders of Mexico. Five, the Oregon boundary to be settled on the line of the Columbia. Both Webster and Tyler felt that this arrangement would not only solve most of the difficulties of the administration in foreign matters but would also allay much of the domestic friction which the proposed annexation of Texas had brought out. At the same time it would make the boundary of the Columbia acceptable to the extreme expansionists of the West. Texas, wrote the President, might not stand alone nor the line proposed for Oregon. Texans would reconcile all to the line while California would reconcile or pacify all to Oregon. The plan was therefore pushed vigorously for a time by the administration. Additional impetus was given to it by Webster's deep-rooted desire to secure a harbor on the California coast for the development of the New England's whale fisheries and her Chinese train. It was even proposed that he should head a special mission to Great Britain to carry through the program. But this plan never materialized and for a time also direct negotiations with Mexico were rendered useless because of the seizure of Monterey by Commodore Jones of the United States Navy. When the excitement created by Jones Act had somewhat abated in Mexico, Thompson made one or two tentative efforts to bring forward the California project. But in these he saw a little chance of success unless Santa Ana, then filling his usual role as dictator, should become involved in war with England and cede California to the United States to keep it from falling into British hands. Thompson returned to the United States in the early part of 1844. About the same time Webster resigned his position as Secretary of State, an Able P. Upshore came in to take his place. The latter, in turn, after only a few months of service, was killed by an explosion on the USS Princeton, leaving John C. Calhoun to manage the affairs of State. By this time the administration was so thoroughly involved in the Texas issue that it had little opportunity for other matters of foreign concern. And where the acquisition of California is mentioned at all in the diplomatic correspondence of the period, it is generally linked with the subject to the annexation of Texas. So far as Mexico was concerned, moreover in whatever negotiations were carried on, there was one insurmountable barrier in the way of the sale of California. The difficulty was clearly stated by Duff Green, one of Calhoun's special agents charged with the negotiating for Mexican territory. I am convinced, he wrote the Secretary, that it is impossible to obtain the consent of the government through the accession to the United States of Texas, California, or any part of the public domain of Mexico, whatever. In the midst of a civil conflict where each party is seeking pretenses to murder and confiscate the property of their opponents, and where the principle is maintained that it is treason to sell any part of the public domain to the United States, it is worse than folly to suppose that either party can alienate any part of Texas or California. Green was plainly right in his diagnosis of the situation, but most Americans eager for territory and cognizant of Mexico's need of funds and the easy virtue of her officials were slow to grasp the simple fact that any administration, even so much as suspected of a willingness to sell Mexican territory to the United States, was inviting certain overthrow and probable execution at the hands of rival factions backed by an outraged and excited people. This was the barrier the Butler could not surmount in his attempts to purchase California. Similarly, it wrecked the hopes of Thompson, Green, Shannon, and every other American representative sent to Mexico before Polk overthrew it by the stern recourse of war. While Tyler was vainly but hopefully seeking to purchase California, the interests of our government in the province was being shown in other ways. One of these was the seizure of Monterey by Commodore Jones to which references already been made. The details of this affair, which andedated the performance of Slote and Stockton by five years, were briefly as follows. Toward the close of 1841, Abel P. Upsher, then Secretary of the Navy, having received a request from American residents in California for some form of naval protection along the coast, had increased the size of the Pacific Squadron and placed it under command of Thomas F. Catespie Jones. The relations of Mexico and the United States at that time were quite normal, that is to say, they were strained almost to the breaking point. Early in September 1842, Jones, then in the harbor of Callao, Peru, received a dispatch from John Parrot, American consulate Mazatlot, on the west coast of Mexico, which led him to believe that war had actually broken out between the two nations. Having been without advice from Washington for nine months, and of course lacking an opportunity to communicate with his home government, the American commander, after consulting with the United States' Charger at Lima and the higher officers of his fleet, acted upon his own responsibility in the crisis. There appeared, moreover, to be a need of imperative haste if an English fleet under Admiral Thomas was to be forestalled in the seizure of California, for rumor had it that Mexico, having declared war upon the United States, was about to cede the province to Great Britain for safekeeping. Alarmed by these reports, Jones made all speed from Callao to Monterey, entering that port on October 19th with the frigate United States and the sloop Cyan. Here he found neither the British fleet nor sign of war-like preparation. Most of the garrison were off at work in the fields. Fort and guns were in their usual state of decay, and the ammunition was about gone. Everything, indeed, was quiet, peaceful, and normally dilapidated. Jones immediately summoned the authorities to surrender, a demand which naturally excited a good deal of surprise and consternation, since no one on shore had heard of any breach between Mexico and the United States. Monterey, however, was so completely at the mercy of the invader that Juan B. Alvarado, acting governor, and Mariano Silvia, military commandant, did not even avail themselves of the 18 hours allowed by Jones for capitulation, but almost immediately yielded up the port to the American commander. The latter took possession of the city, raised the American flag, cautioned his men against any outrageous upon the inhabitants, issued a proclamation inviting the Californians to accept peaceably the sovereignty of the United States, and then began to investigate the report of war between the two countries upon which he had acted. The next day, becoming convinced that the United States and Mexico were still at peace, and that his seizure of Monterey was premature to say the least, Jones restored the city to its former rulers, lowered the American flag, and made formal apology for his unintentional offense against international law. So far as the Montereyans were concerned, this opera bouff affair called forth little, if any, old feeling against the United States or American residents of California. Indeed, Jones and his command seemed to have met with unusual hospitality at the hands of the supposed enemies after the town had been restored to Mexican control. In other quarters, however, the floodgates of indignation and oratory were loosened in a way that Mexican officials alone understand. When news of Jones's act reached Governor Miquel Torrena, recently arrived from Mexico, and even then two days March from Los Angeles on an inspection tour of the northern part of the province, the latter's patriotic fervor immediately rose to the occasion. To the Secretary of War and Marine, he thus described his conduct in the face of such an outrage. Quote, I wished myself a thunderbolt to fly and annihilate the invaders, but 110 leagues intervened between them and me and my forces were all infantry. On the following day, the 26th, I began my march with my troops, of whose enthusiasm I cannot say too much. North and south of my headquarters, everything was in motion, and the fever of patriotism which I excited with energetic heat beat quickly as you will see by document nine. With us marched for two hours, during which my soul was wrapped in ecstasies at the flattering prospect of a speedy and certain victory. Quote, At this juncture, rudely breaking into Miquel Torrena's ecstatic dream, a courier arrived for the news that Jones had restored Monterey and retired to his vessel. This sudden change of front, if we may believe Miquel Torrena's official statement, was not altogether pleasing to the governor, who gave it a far different explanation from that offered by Jones. So, as excellency Mr. Blank did not choose to await our arrival as a hostile force, wrote Miquel Torrena. And the feelings of my heart, which were then transmitted to those of all the officers, soldiers, and inhabitants of the country, were at once of grief and joy of regret and pleasure, of contentment and disappointment. But Providence has so willed it, therefore it is for the best, and we have only to respect and bow to its decrees. In conclusion, Miquel Torrena modestly pointed out that had it not been for the activity, foresight, and energy of four men enforcing Jones out of Monterey, the whole of California would inevitably have been lost to Mexico. The illustrious four were the Benemarito President, General Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, General Don Jose Maria Tornel, Minister of War in Mexico, Don Gabriel Valencia, Chief of Staff, and Manuel Miquel Torrena. The services of the latter especially were dwelt upon as worthy of President Santa Anna's approbation. From Miquel Torrena's military ability, as elsewhere exhibited, one may fairly say that his genius expressed itself far better with a pen than with a sword, and Jones could have kept Monterey with little fear of being molested had the United States and Mexico actually been at war. In Mexico, also, the seizure of Monterey naturally called forth indignant protest. The affair was a subject of very vehement correspondence on the part of the government, which demanded not only the punishment of Jones, but much other satisfaction for its injured feelings as well. The United States replied by recalling Jones and offering formal apologies for his hasty action. Beyond this, however, both Webster and Tyler refused to go. One, indeed in spite of official denial, halfway suspects that Jones had received instructions before sailing for the Pacific that led him to believe the administration would be much more tolerant with overzealousness and seizing California ports than with a timid and unwise delay. A curious aftermath of Miquel Torrena's activities against the invaders appears in the demand he addressed Jones for the payment of an indemnity. This included satisfaction for 1,500 complete infantry uniforms, which the governor claimed had been ruined by the Mexican forces on the march to Monterey. $15,000 to reimburse the Mexican treasury for expenses incurred to meet the invasion, and, finally, a complete set of military musical instruments to replace those ruined on this occasion. If the first item on the list was a fair criterion of the validity of the entire claim, then Miquel Torrena was certainly gifted with a glorious imagination. His force could not have numbered more than 300 troops at any one time, and not one of these had probably ever had a complete infantry uniform in all his life. End of Chapter 11, Chapter 12, A History of California, the American Period, by Robert Glass-Cleland. This Slibrivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 12, Anarchy and Confusion With the United States government taking more than casual interest in Pacific Coast happenings, with the overland routes becoming more clearly defined each year, and with a steady increase of immigration across the Sierras, conditions in California were fast approaching a crisis by the beginning of 1845. American activities, however, constituted only one element of danger in the situation, equally alarming from the standpoint to the loyal Californian, were the unhappy relations of the province with Mexico, and the domestic discord and military weakness which he saw everywhere around him. This phase of California history, somewhat endowed with local interest as well as an essential background to the Mexican War, is discussed in the ensuing chapter. The historian of the Spanish Period has described the relations of California and Mexico when Spanish authorities still lived in the New World. Even at best, as he has so well shown, the control of New Spain over a territory so distant and difficult of access as California was never satisfactory, and the economic and military assistance so sparingly dealt out by the central government was wholly inadequate to support the colony or to defend it against an enemy's invasion. With the overthrow of Spanish sovereignty the situation became materially worse. Mexico, torn continually by internal revolution, financially exhausted, striving desperately to maintain her own autonomy, and helpless, as in the case of the Texas Revolution, to preserve herself from dismemberment, had little energy to devote to California, and neither money nor troops to send there in case of need. Officials for California, it is true, Mexico had and to spare, but for the most part these were only presidential favorites sent to Monterey or to Los Angeles to pay an embarrassing political debt, or to be got away from the capital as far as possible. Men of low motives and inferior talent supposed to recruit their fortunes as best they could from the revenues of the province. For these evidences of maternal affection on Mexico's part the people of California showed a total lack of respect and even a rude dislike, which frequently vetted itself in successful revolution, almost as frequently indeed as a Mexican governor had the temerity to venture into the province. To go into the details of all such revoles would require much more space than their importance justifies. Two, however, may be described as typical of the rest. About mid-summer of 1836, Mariano Chico, Governor of California, for a few brief weeks, quit the territory for the latter's good, leaving behind him an unsavory reputation and a disputed question of succession. His place was taken by Nicholas Gutierrez, already filling the position of military commandant, who had come from Mexico some years before to make his political fortune in California. The native leaders naturally viewed this new arrangement with little favor. Personal ambitions and resentment against Mexico alike made them hostile to the new administration. This combination, coupled with the instinctive Hispanic American tendency to revolt at more or less regular intervals, with or without provocation, led shortly to the outbreak of civil war. The leaders in the movement, which ostensibly broke out over questions of revenue and official etiquette, where one be Alvarado, Inspector of the Customs House, and a member of the Provincial Depotación, a man of considerable ability and wide popularity, and Jose Castro, a former Governor of California, and also Jose Antonio de la Guerra. Alvarado's uncle, Mariano Viejo, at that time the dominant figure in provincial affairs north of Monterey, was also urged to join the revolt. He could not be persuaded to play an active part in the rebellion, but landed some measure of passive support and profited by its success. From the standpoint of numbers, the force which Castro and his companions were able to muster was insignificant, but it had three things in its favor. It outnumbered the fifty men Gutierrez had at his command by more than two to one. Its members, temporarily at least, were ardently patriotic, while the enemy were inspired only by a desire to live and be at peace. And most effective of all, in its ranks was a motley troop of foreigners. Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, trappers and sailors, rough fellows for the most part, eager for excitement and much more skillful in the use of arms than the Californians of either side. The leader of the supporting force was a Tennessean named Isaac Graham, a man of doubtful morals but considerable force of character who had entered California with one of the trapping parties of the early thirties and afterwards set up a crude distillery near Santa Cruz. With his subsequent career, California history had somewhat more to do. Aided by these factors, the success of the revolution was never seriously in doubt. Gutierrez shut up in Monterey with a handful of men, part of whom were hastily armed convicts, had little choice but to surrender. Yet, after the manner of Mexican commanders, he sought to uphold his dignity so long as the conflict was confined to wordy negotiations. When, however, a cannonball, the only shot of the revolution, came rumbling down from the heights above the town, making his headquarters untenable and giving a business-like tone to the demands of the insurgents, Gutierrez bowed to the inevitable and surrendered both the town and the governorship. The ladder was filled, through an ad interim appointment, as it were, by José Castro, but was eventually taken over by Alvarado, the real instigator of the revolution. Gutierrez was sent home with little ceremony, and for some years the Californians conducted their political affairs unmolested by meddlesome Mexican officials. The revolution of 1836, bloodless and triumphant like most affairs of its kind in California, possessed at least two distinctive features. One of these was the part played by foreigners in its outcome, the other was a program of separating the province entirely from Mexican control. The idea of independence, it is true, received only superficial support from Castro and Alvarado, but it had a great attraction for Graham and his followers, as well as for many other foreign residents. The plan never went farther than a provisional declaration of independence, the preparation of a lone star flag, and vague proposals on the part of the Americans to repeat in California what Houston's forces had just accomplished in Texas. After the affair of 1836, the next revolt against Mexican authority serious enough to warrant consideration was that of 1844. The eight years of comparative harmony between the two revolutions were due not to any increase of loyalty on the part of the Californians toward Mexico, but merely to the fact that the mother country left her distant colonists pretty much to their own devices during the interval. In January 1842, however, Santa Ana returned to the old plan of sending a governor direct from Mexico. This honor, or misfortune, filled to Manuel Miquel Torrena, a brigadier general who had won some distinction and a claim for reward by suppressing an incipient revolt in Mexico City. Miquel Torrena arrived at San Diego in August. With him he brought several high-sounding titles and ample authority on paper to make himself supreme in both the Californias. As a practical means to this end, as well as to render the coast immune to foreign aggression, the Mexican government had placed at his command one of the choicest armies the province had ever known. This consisted of two or three hundred gallon soles for the most part picked from the jails of Mexico, a motley collection of rascals and beggars, not one of whom, according to an eyewitness, possessed a jacket or pantalons when the battalion arrived in California. Instead, each soldier trusted to a miserable ragged blanket to cover his filth and nakedness. Long before this aggregation reached California, rumor had preceded them, causing as near a panic among the philosophic Californians as they were capable of experiencing. Yet, bad as this advanced reputation was, Miquel Torrena's troops in the main lived up to it. They stole intimidated peaceful citizens and made themselves generally obnoxious. Many years before a despairing California governor had written to the viceroy regarding certain newly arrived immigrants from Mexico that their absence from the colony for a couple of centuries at a distance of a million leagues would prove beneficial to the province and redound to the service of God and the glory of the King. No words could better have expressed the sentiment of the Californians toward Miquel Torrena's precious vagabonds. Nearly two years elapsed, however, before armed resistance was made to the new governor's rule. But in the meanwhile Castro and Alvarado, with a few others, busied themselves in preparation for revolt. In November 1844 a number of these conspirators openly proclaimed against the usurper from Mexico. The first phase of the revolution was an immediate triumph for the Californians. On December 1st Miquel Torrena, either realizing his helpless situation or seeking merely to gain time, signed an agreement to ship his undesirable followers back to Mexico within the next three months. But it soon became apparent that the governor had no intention of keeping his pledge to the Californians. In various ways he set about strengthening his position and finally enlisted the aid of nearly a hundred foreign riflemen under John A. Sutter and Isaac Graham. Whatever may have been the motives of these two leaders in supporting Miquel Torrena, the most of their followers did so because they feared, for some reason or other, that the success of the revolutionists would result in more stringent regulations against American settlers in California. With this formidable body of foreigners augmented by as many Indians from Sutter's ranch, Miquel Torrena was at first more than a match for the Californians. Alvarado and Castro, however, abandoning the northern part of the province, retired to the south where, in Los Angeles, after defeating Miquel Torrena's adherents in the severest skirmish of the revolt, they succeeded in stirring up an enthusiastic opposition to the governor's cause. Like the latter, they too enlisted a number of American residents among their forces. The leaders of this foreign contingent were James McKinley and William Workman, and nearly all the other respectable Americans in the south lent the movement their support. The pursuit of the revolutionists, as they retreated southward, had been carried on by Miquel Torrena without the slightest evidence of haste. Among his foreign supporters, such a program naturally bred impatience and disgust. This in turn was fed by a number of the riflemen themselves who had joined Miquel Torrena solely for the purpose of creating dissatisfaction within the foreign battalion. At Santa Barbara, a delegation from Los Angeles sought to effect a compromise between Miquel Torrena and the revolutionists, but the governor was unwilling to make the necessary concessions. Accordingly, the city authorities of Los Angeles, now thoroughly under the influence of Castro and Alvarado, issued a proclamation deposing Miquel Torrena and appointed Pulpico Governor Ad Indram in his stead. At the same time, all able-bodied citizens were commanded to take arms against the approaching enemy. Near Ventura there were some minor skirmishes between the Miquel Torrena forces and an advanced guard under Castro, but the latter, without having either inflicted or suffered much injury, retired before superior numbers to the revolutionary headquarters in Los Angeles. With the advance of Miquel Torrena to the upper part of the San Fernando Valley, Castro and Alvarado, in command of nearly 300 men, marched out through the Coengapast meeting. Later they were reinforced by Pulpico with perhaps a hundred additional troops. The battle was joined on the banks of the Los Angeles River about noon, February 20th, 1845. It was an artillery engagement at comparatively long range and was carried on very briskly until sundown by the five small cannon which constituted the ordnance equipment of the two armies. In this fighting the foreign contingent of neither faction took part, and when the casualties were accounted for after the half-days bombardment it was found they consisted of two horses killed on one side and the Miquel wounded on the other. After this sanguinary encounter which was followed the next morning by a brief and bloodless skirmish near the Verdugo Ranch, Miquel Torrena was ready to capitulate. The next month he left California with most of his ragged followers. The grievances of the native inhabitants against Mexico, however, were only temporary alleviated by the governor's withdrawal. Relations with the parent government still continued unsatisfactory and full of friction. One of the difficulties partially responsible for this condition was the lack of adequate means of communication between the colony and the mother country. Only three routes between California and Mexico were available, and all of these were inconceivably tedious and full of hardship. The voyage from Samblas or Mazatlán to Monterey required many weeks and was nearly always attended by storm and sickness. Mexican vessels were scarce, and the foreign traders commonly lengthened the voyage by running from the west coast of Mexico to the sandwich islands before touching at a California port. Travel by the overland routes was even more dangerous and fatiguing than by the sea. The oldest line of communication between Mexico and California was that opened by Garces and Anza in the first days of California settlement. It ran from Mexico City by way of Sinaloa and Sonora to the Gila River which it followed to the Colorado. Thence the trail crossed the sandy wastes of the present Imperial Valley and emerged from the desert to the coastal region through one of the passes in the San Jacinto Mountains. Lack of grass and water, together with the difficulty of travel through miles of heavy sand, made this journey at best a difficult and problematical venture. When to these adverse elements there was added the destructive hostility of various Indian tribes such as the Yumas and Apaches, the route was rendered virtually impassable. So rarely was it used, indeed, in the early years of the century that JJ Warner, who came over it in 1831, found it virtually unknown to the Mexicans of Arizona and Sonora. There could not be found in either Tucson or Altar, he wrote, although they were both military posts in towns of considerable population, any man who had ever been over the route from those towns to California by way of the Colorado River, or even to that river, to serve as a guide, or from whom any information concerning the route could be obtained, and the trail from Tucson to the Gila River at the Pima villages was too little used and obscured to be easily followed, and from those villages down the Gila River to the Colorado River, and from thence to within less than a hundred miles of San Diego, there was no trail, not even an Indian path. The third route, from Mexico to California, was the old trail from San Gabriel to Santa Fe. Originally explored by the Dominguez Escalante expedition late in the 18th century, this route was not used again until the American trapping and trading parties of the early 30s followed it from New Mexico to California. From that time on, it became an important line of communication between the two most outlying provinces of Mexico, and over it a very considerable and picturesque commerce was carried on. Travel, however, on the Santa Fe Los Angeles trail, as on the Gila route, was attended by great probation and constant dangers. Transportation was entirely by pack train, and so perilous was the undertaking that the New Mexicans and Californians resorted to the practice of forwarding goods by annual caravans under heavy guard. Then, too, Santa Fe itself lay a long way from Mexico City, the seat of the central government. From Santa Fe southward by the old Chihuahua Road, travel was also beset with difficulties and Indian menace. So that, whether by sea or by land, by the Anzarut or the newer Spanish trail, communication between California and Mexico was exceedingly irregular and uncertain. As a result of these conditions, the colony inevitably drifted away from the parent country. Mutual sympathy and understanding were impossible. The Mexican government knew little of current happenings in California and received official dispatches from Monterey or Los Angeles only once or twice a year. The California deputy and the National Congress heard from the province with even less regularity and, of course, had only the vaguest notions of what was going on among his constituents. Another deep-seated grievance of the Californians, which alienated still further their affections from Mexico, was the inadequate military protection afforded to the province by the central government. This condition of affairs was almost as old as the colony itself. At the beginning of the century, William Schaler, the New England fur trader, found the fortifications of the seaport towns from San Francisco to San Diego so fallen into decay that they could present only a sorry defense against even the smallest naval vessel. As for the rest of the province, he said, its conquest would be absolutely nothing. It would fall without an effort to the most inconsiderable force. The conditions noted by Schaler in 1803 showed no improvement after the lapse of a generation. When Lieutenant Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition visited San Francisco in 1841, he found the precedeo deserted, the walls fallen in ruins, and the guns dismantled. The garrison consisted of one officer and a single barefooted private, neither of whom could be found when Wilkes arrived. A year or so later the English traveler, Sir George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company, discovered much the same condition at Monterey, the commercial and political sitter of the colony. At the time of his visit, however, the guns of the fortress were able to return the salute at the English vessel. A courtesy the garrison was not always able to offer without borrowing the necessary powder from the ship they wished to salute. When Jones took possession of this port, he found a garrison of 29 regular soldiers with 25 untrained militia from the interior. There were 11 pieces of cannon, most of which were dismounted. The rest were practically useless because of a scarcity of ammunition. There were also about 150 muskets and a few carbines with less than 3,000 rounds of ammunition. The fortifications, according to the California officer in command, were of no consequence, as everybody knows. The regular army, entrusted with the defense of California from Sacramento to San Diego, a distance of some 600 miles, consisted of less than 600 men. More than half of these were Mexican troops, much feared and hated by the Californians. A native militia was also supposed to be available in time of war, but while this theoretically was composed of about a thousand men, scarcely one tenth of that number could actually be counted on in case of need. The effectiveness of even this small force was reduced by half since it was divided between the northern part of the province and the south. From the naval standpoint, the protection afforded California by Mexico was even more ridiculous. The single vessel maintained by the government on the coast, a mere apology for a coasting cruiser, was described as an old cranky craft not mounting a single gun and so badly manned that she was unable to make any progress when beating against the wind. This utter lack of protection for their interests and the apparent indifference on the part of the Mexican government for the welfare of the province led to bitterness of feeling and a steadily growing policy of independence among the Californians. With almost no regard for the home government, they made their own laws, collected and spent their own revenues, chose their own officials, and obeyed Mexican regulations only as their fancy chose. Unfortunately, as this breach between Mexico and her colony widened, friction also developed among the Californians themselves. Even at that early date, the north and south were jealous of each other, nor had these relations been improved by the removal of the capital from Monterey to Los Angeles. The former still kept the customs house and treasury and remained the military headquarters as well as the center of social life. Los Angeles, however, became the seat of the civil government, which was thus separated by nearly 400 miles from the fiscal and military headquarters. Between the northern and southern leaders, there was also much of personal dislike. Pio Pico, who was the dominant figure of Los Angeles, had been elected governor to succeed Miquel Torrena, while José Castro, one of the northern representatives, was chosen military commander. Bad blood soon developed between these two. Charges and countercharges in keeping with the Mexican custom flew thick and fast. Each official, summoning his partisans to aid, set out to save the Republic by overthrowing his opponent. And in the meantime, the government almost ceased to function. Just as was no longer administered, the finances became utterly demoralized and the army, such as it was, degenerated still further into an undisciplined, unpaid, unequipped rabble. The confusion and uncertainty in the political affairs of the province, which almost amounted to anarchy, coupled with a lack of protection to life and property and the feebleness of Mexican control, changed very radically the middle attitude of the more conservative Californians. Most of them came to realize the hopelessness of the situation, and gradually prepared themselves for an inevitable change. What this change should be, there was as yet no common agreement. Some favored independence, some a protectorate under France or England, and some advocated annexation to the United States. The foreigners in the province, on their part, were united in a desire to separate from Mexico. Most of them favored union with the United States. A few stood out for independence and the English inhabitants naturally advocated the establishment of British sovereignty. The merchants and long-established foreign residents generally favored the separation movement because of the danger for property rights and the uncertain business conditions under Mexican rule. The newly arrived and more wreathless American immigrants saw in the situation an opportunity to hasten manifest destiny along the proper road. Incidentally, they perhaps expected to derive some excitement and a little personal profit from the process. Such in the main was the internal situation of California when James K. Polk, disciple of Andrew Jackson, Scotch Presbyterian, and a vowed expansionist came to sit in the president's chair. To him we owe the Mexican War and the annexation of California. By what strange irony of fate has history ranked this man among the minor presidents? End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 A History of California, the American Period by Robert Glass-Cleeland This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 13 Plans for Annexation When Polk was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1845, the California situation was ripe for some form of settlement. No one, at all familiar with the conditions in the province, looked for a continuation of the existing state. A change was inevitable, and before he assumed office, Polk had determined what that change should be. So far as he was concerned, the issue was already settled. California was to be annexed to the United States. Polk soon announced this purpose to the cabinet. To carry out the program of annexation, there were several possible methods. The simplest of these was acquisition by purchase, a plan which Jackson and Tyler had already tried, but without success. If this should fail again, there was next the ever-growing spirit of revolt among the Californians against Mexican rule, an attitude which might be used to great advantage by the United States. Or if the Californians themselves could not be relied upon to bring about the desired object, there was still a sufficient body of Americans in the province, eager for adventure, restless under native rule, contemptuous, it must be confessed, of Mexican authority, holding to manifest destiny creed in its most exaggerated form, and inspired by the easy success of the Texas Revolution. To rest California from its Mexican rulers and place it under the protection of the United States. If none of these measures should succeed, or if they proved too slow to meet the emergency, there was always the last resort of war. Polk's first move in the California issue was a direct offer to purchase the province from Mexico. One cannot understand the negotiations by which he sought to accomplish this purpose without some knowledge of the existing political situation across the border. Revolution was then the normal condition of Mexico. At least seventeen such movements had taken place in less than a quarter of a century. Presidents held their position in a purely tentative fashion, never sure from one sunrise to the next whether the night would see them still at office or exiles from the country. Under such conditions, when hostile factions were ever waiting an opportunity to stir up an inflammable people to overthrow the existing administration, a Mexican president's first care was to stay in office and give his enemies as little material for revolutionary propaganda as possible. His decisions on public questions and matters of policy were necessarily based on this primary consideration. Another difficulty, however, confronted every Mexican president and one always of pressing necessity. This was to find sufficient funds with which to run the government, or to speak more plainly, sufficient funds with which to hold his followers in line and keep them from going over to the opposition. The two considerations just mentioned had always to be taken into account when the United States sought to negotiate for California. A desperate need of money, the hopelessness of making Mexican rule effective in California, and perhaps the desire to establish more cordial relations with the American government, prompted more than one president to dispose of the province. On the other hand, something of national pride, the ill-concealed opposition of European governments to American control of California, a traditional antipathy to the United States, and above all, the perfect realization that any session of territory, no matter what the circumstances, would lead to popular retribution for such an act of sacrilege, compelled the repudiation of every offer. Common sense and an eager desire for ready cash were thus both alike outweighed by the fear of revolution. This dilemma, which confronted every Mexican president with whom negotiations for California were undertaken, was not appreciated by the Washington government. American officials with a fixed determination to acquire the territory, knowing how little it actually benefited the Mexican government, aware of the chronic bankruptcy of the latter's treasury, and somewhat acquainted with the devious course of Mexican politics, could not understand why their oft-repeated offers to purchase the province were so consistently declined. When Polk opened his negotiations, the situation in Mexico was normally unsettled. In December 1844 a revolution had deposed Santa Ana for various high crimes and misdemeanors and placed General Herrera in the presidency. In June of the next year Santa Ana was banished from the country and took up his residence at Havana. From this point of vantage he kept a watchful eye on the political situation in Mexico and, when conditions favored, entered into those secret negotiations with the United States, which resulted in his return to power after the outbreak of the Mexican war. In the meanwhile, President Herrera was encountering a few perplexities of his own. A dangerous rival had arisen in the person of General Paredes, while a dozen lesser opponents were also in the field. The national treasury was bare of funds in the army without pay. Congress was daily becoming more hostile and the press noisily denounced the administration for its Texas policy. Various bills were passed to remedy the economic and military situation, but as these were accompanied by prohibitions on the sale of national territory, the only source of revenue available, they served to intensify rather than to relieve Herrera's troubles. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico had been broken off with the annexation of Texas, but Herrera was suspected of seeking to restore them and also the willingness to recede from the position the Mexican Congress had taken with regard to the lost province across the Rio Grande. Paredes, skillfully playing upon the popular mine and also undermining the President's control of the army, was only waiting a favorable opportunity to unseat his rival and assume control of the government himself. Such were the internal conditions of Mexico and the impossible position occupied by Herrera when Polk brought forward his program of purchasing California. The first step in this plan was, of course, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the Mexican government. This in itself was a difficult undertaking because of the embarrassing effect it was sure to have upon the tottering Herrera administration. But Polk had reason to believe, through information received from William S. Parrot, an American dentist resident in Mexico who had been appointed confidential agent of the United States government, that Herrera was willing to take the risk of receiving an American diplomat. In this opinion, Diamond and Black United States consuls at Vetter Cruz and Mexico City respectively concurred. Accordingly, with the consent of his cabinet, Polk appointed John Slidel of New Orleans, a man familiar with Mexican conditions and acquainted with the Spanish language, to undertake the negotiations. Quote, one great object of this mission, as stated by the President, wrote Polk in the never-failing journal in which he daily recorded the like, the significant and trivial events of his administration, would be to adjust a permanent boundary between Mexico and the United States, and that in doing this the minister would be instructed to purchase for a pecuniary consideration upper California and New Mexico. He said that a better boundary would be the del Norte from its mouth to the Paso, in latitude about 32 degrees north, and thence west of the Pacific Ocean, Mexico ceding to the United States, all the country east and north of these lines. The President said that for such a boundary the amount of pecuniary consideration to be paid would be of small importance. He supposed it might be had for 15 or 20 millions, but he was ready to pay 40 millions for it if it could not be had for less. In these views, the cabinet agreed with the President unanimously. If the report that Jackson had offered only 500,000 for the better part of the same territory only 10 years before were true, it is apparent that California real estate was rapidly rising in value. It was intended that Slidell's mission should be kept a profound secret. This was highly desirable both to protect the Herrera administration and also to prevent Great Britain and France from delaying or defeating the negotiations. In spite of every precaution, however, the news of Slidell's coming preceded him to Mexico, and with it went the sinister rumor that he had at his command a million dollars with which to bribe President Herrera. The latter, therefore, was an asari predicament when the American minister landed at Vera Cruz. To receive him and open negotiations meant a direct bid for revolution. To reject him not only meant the loss of a great financial opportunity, but also an affront to the United States that might easily lead to war. In this dilemma Herrera chose the latter course. Slidell was refused recognition on purely technical grounds for which there was no other justification than Herrera's fear of being overthrown. Slidell's rejection, however, while it defeated the chance of any support Herrera might have gained from the United States, did not win for him the popular favor he sought to obtain. The plan of San Luis Potosí had already been drafted by the followers of Paredes, and before Slidell left Mexico City Herrera had gone out of power on the heels of a bloodless revolution. Leaving the palace, as one writer humorously said, with the entire body of his loyal officers and officials, his mild face and his respectable side whiskers in one hired cab. Slidell's attempt to open negotiations with the new government met with no more cordial reception than it had obtained from the old. His request to be received as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, a request made from Alapa where Slidell had gone after leaving the city of Mexico, was refused with little courtesy and much emphasis by Castillo, Secretary of Foreign Relations in the Paredes cabinet. The American envoy would stand no more. Against the wishes of President Polk, as it afterward proved, he immediately demanded his passport and left for the United States, disgusted with a tortuous course of Mexican diplomacy and thoroughly convinced that no government could be established in that country stable enough to carry out a consistent foreign policy. In this temper he came back to Washington to lay his report before a president already impatient to the breaking point with a sorry condition of Mexican affairs. The failure of Herrera and Paredes to reopen negotiations with the United States destroyed Polk's first hope of securing California. As already pointed out, however, there were still three other possibilities of accomplishing the desired end. To one of these, indeed, Polk had already turned even before the failure of Slidell's mission became known. Among the American residents of California was the New England merchant Thomas O. Larkin, whose activities as a publicity agent for California have already been spoken of. Larkin had come to Monterey in 1832 and rapidly built up a prosperous business. Incidentally, too, he had won for himself a favorable reputation among the leading Californians as well as among his own countrymen. In 1843 he had been appointed United States Consul to California, the only person who ever held that office, and in this capacity found it possible to furnish his home government with very valuable information. In Larkin's despatches, affairs of commerce and trade, the ordinary consular concerns, were subordinated to matters of larger import. The political and military strength of the province, its relations to Mexico, the feeling of the native Californians toward the United States, the arrival and reception of American immigrants, the influence and ambition of European nations in California questions, such were the topics most dwelt upon in the American Consul's communications to Washington. In turn, the government encouraged him to report every item that might be made to serve the nation's interests. It was natural that Polk, cognizant of Larkin's high standing with the leading Californians and aware of his knowledge of California affairs, should have entrusted to him the chief responsibility of carrying out the president's second plan of acquiring the territory. The plan itself was definitely outlined to Larkin by Polk's secretary of state, James Buchanan, in a despatch dated October 17th, 1845. This communication, unfortunately too long to be quoted here in full, contained three suggestions for Larkin's guidance. These in brief were as follows. One, though the United States would not foment a revolution in California, Larkin might assure the Californians that his government would play the role of protector in case they sought to separate from Mexico. Two, should any attempt be made to transfer California to a European power, the United States would prevent the session. Three, to carry out the plans of the administration more effectually, win the friendship of the Californians for the United States and thwart the activities of European nations, Larkin was appointed the president's confidential agent and virtually instructed to use his own discretion in handling the situation. Two copies of this despatch were forwarded to Larkin. One went by sea and reached California early in 1846. The other was entrusted to Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie, a confidential agent of the United States government, who traveled across Mexico in the disguise of an invalid merchant seeking help. Fearing capture at the hands of the Mexicans, Gillespie destroyed his copy of the document after memorizing its contents. A third copy of the despatch was sent to Slidel to guide him in his negotiations with the Herrera administration. The whole tenor of Buchanan's letter convinced Larkin that the president expected him to prepare the way for the peaceful annexation of California by the United States. He accordingly began systematically to carry out his mission. In the province at that time there were a number of Americans who had married California women and become Mexican citizens. To several of the most influential of these, been like Don Abel Stearns of Los Angeles, John Warner of San Diego, and Jacob Lease of Sonoma, he wrote confidentially of his new position, urging them to aid him in his program of winning over the Californians. Stearns, the dominant foreigner in the south, he appointed his secret assistant to manage the business in and around Los Angeles. To a number of the native leaders in the north, with whom he stood on intimate terms, Larkin also revealed a general character of Polk's instructions. As these men were already weary of Mexican rule it was not difficult to secure some measure of support for the idea of independence, especially as Larkin held before them the promise of substantial reward from his own government. The real difficulty was not their affection for Mexico, but the inclination on the part of some to look to Great Britain instead of to the United States for aid. Those known definitely to favor the American program were urged by Larkin to attend the various juntas which were then being held to meet the existing crisis in California affairs and to bring their influence to bear upon the decisions of those bodies. These efforts of the American consul gave promise of success. Several of the principal Californians came over definitely to Larkin's position, and one of these, General Castro, as influential as any man in the province, even went so far as to draw up a short history of his plans for declaring California independent in 1847 or 1948 as soon as a sufficient number of foreigners should arrive. Equally encouraging reports were received from the South, and it seemed only the matter of a year or two before California would renounce her allegiance to Mexico and voluntarily seek annexation to the United States. Two things, however, broke in upon this plan of peaceful acquisition and ended the movement which Larkin had begun President Polk's request. One of these was the uprising of the American settlers in California known as the Bear Flag Revolt. The other was the Mexican War. Before taking up the first of these movements in detail, it is well to point out that an independent California under Anglo-Saxon control was a subject of considerable speculation long before the Bear Flag movement in its own way sought to carry out the idea. In the years before 1846, this plan of independence found expression in three forms, a Union of Oregon and California into an autonomous state, a Union of California with a newly established Republic of Texas, and the erection of California by itself into an independent nation. The first of these, the Union of Oregon and California, was suggested by Thomas Jefferson, the father of Trans-Mississippi expansion as far back as 1812, when he expressed the hope that the descendants of Aster's colonists on the Columbia would one day occupy the whole Pacific Coast, covering it with free and independent Americans, unconnected with us but by the ties of blood and interest and employing, like us, the rights of self-government. In the early 40s this idea obtained considerable prominence and commended itself to a number of careful observers. For example, Wilkes, the commander of the United States Exploring Expedition, wrote, quote, the situation in California will cause its separation from Mexico before many years. It is very probable that the country will become united with Oregon, with which it will, perhaps, form a state that is designed to control the destiny of the Pacific, end quote. A year or two later, Wadi Thompson, United States minister to Mexico, was told of a definite plot to separate California from Mexico and asked if his government would be willing to surrender title to Oregon so that California might unite with the latter to form a great republic. Among the American residents of both territories the plan was frequently discussed, and it was prophesied that if the Union should ever be accomplished, a new empire would arise on the Pacific, whose capital, at least as one writer predicted, located on the Bay of San Francisco, possibly on the side occupied by the miserable village of Yerba-Uena, would become, within the century, one of the great commercial centers of the world. One man, indeed, Langsford W. Hastings, whose activities as an immigrant guide have already been spoken of, had in mind the definite purpose of making himself president of the new republic. A second proposal put forward between 1836 and 1845 was the Union of Texas and California. The Texas Congress, in fact, at one time proposed to extend their national boundaries to embrace California, but the idea was given up because the territory was too large and sparsely populated to be governed by a young republic. Jackson also, as has been noted, urged the same plan upon the Texas Minister in 1837, but to no better purpose. After 1840, however, the activities of Hastings and other potential filibusters gave new impetus to the proposed Union of Texas and California. The movement was also stimulated by the demoralized condition existing in the latter province. So strong was the idea, by 1844, that the American chargé at Mexico City warned Calhoun, then as Secretary of State, actively interested in the annexation of Texas, that his plans would be completely thwarted if Texas and California should ever be united. In such case, said Calhoun's informant, Oregon and the disaffected provinces of northern Mexico would join the movement. Texas would then no longer seek admission to the United States, but as head of the new Confederation would prove a dangerous rival both to the cotton interests of the south and the manufacturers of the north. A little later, Sam Houston, either to frighten the delitory United States Congress into favorable action on Texas annexation, or with a dream of an empire before his eyes, brought forward the plan of uniting Texas, California and Oregon with Chihuahua and Sonora to form a great republic which would not be less than a rival power to any of the nation's now in existence. Had the United States failed to annex Texas, unquestionably, Houston would have attempted to carry out his plan of uniting the latter with California, thus giving the enlarged republic a dominant position on the Pacific and assuring for it a great commercial future. With the annexation of Texas by the United States, the proposed union of Texas and California automatically fell to earth. This, however, did not mean the end of the movement for the independence of California by the American residents of the province. A program distinctly different from that undertaken by Larkin, as sketched in the preceding pages, and tacitly approved by the administration. The former plan looked to foreigners for its impetus and direction. The Polk-Larkin plan relied upon native leadership and initiative for its success. With careful handling, there was no reason why those two movements should prove antagonistic to each other. But too great haste by the Americans, the most of whom, of course, were ignorant of the program Larkin had set on foot, or disregard on their part for the feelings of the Californians, would certainly drive the latter back into the arms of Mexico, defeat the project of a peaceful separation from the home government, and bring about civil war. Not between California and Mexico, but between Americans and Californians. CHAPTER 14 California, Great Britain and the United States In the preceding chapter, the course of California events was brought down to the outbreak of the Bear Flag Revolt. It is now necessary to consider the rumored designs of Great Britain to annex the province, and the influence these exerted upon Polk's policy of annexation. As already pointed out, it is almost a truism to say that nearly every acquisition of territory by the United States has been hastened by the reported designs of some European nation upon that territory. Jefferson saw grave menace in the French control of Louisiana. Jackson was even more concerned over the British activities in Texas. Polk professed to be alarmed at the English designs on California. Fremont and the Bear Flag Insurgents asserted that their uprising alone saved that territory from British hands. How far were these fears regarding British designs on California justified by actual conditions or based on reasonable grounds? One of the earliest indications of English interest in California appeared in 1839 with the publication of Alexander Forbes's History of California. Forbes, who was British Vice Consulate Tepec, had never been in California but was pretty thoroughly informed as to conditions there and knew also of the demoralization existing in the Mexican government. His book, which had a wide circulation in the United States as well as England, contained much historical information, but its real purpose, as Forbes frankly stated, was to encourage the colonization of California by British subjects. The author went even so far as to outline in considerable detail a plan for the session of the province as a means of satisfying a debt of fifty million dollars represented by Mexican bonds in the hands of English investors. These creditors were to be organized into a company to take over California and exercise in it much the same powers of sovereignty that the British East India Company enjoyed in India. Forbes's History, coming at a time when American suspicions of Great Britain were already aroused, created a popular impression that what the author advocated had actually been begun. The Baltimore American, for example, expressed this general sentiment in the following words, quote, the vast indebtedness of Mexico to Great Britain is well known. As a convenient mode of cancelling her obligations, nothing is more probable than that the former would willingly part with a territory which she cannot occupy and to which, in the course of things, she could not long extend even a nominal claim. The policy of the British government looks toward nothing more favorably than to the acquisition of territory in different parts of the world. The possession of California would strengthen her in carrying out her pretensions to the Oregon country, which she not only claims, but already occupies by the agency of trading companies. The whole coast of the Pacific would thus be in the grasp of a powerful nation, a nation that never lets slip an occasion of extending the limits of her domains. To make the Rocky Mountains the boundary of the United States on the West, to hold the spacious valley between the ridge and the ocean running down to the bottom of the peninsula of California, thus possessing the seaboard, by means of which the commerce with China and East India would be secured to British interests, this would be an attainment worthy of no small effort on the part of Great Britain." Within the next few years, such warnings as that issued by the Baltimore American against British designs on California appeared in many other magazines and newspapers, without geographic distinction throughout the United States. As the tension between the two countries increased during Tyler's administration and the public mind became more and more inflamed with anti-British feeling, these warnings grew both in number and intensity, until in January 1846, even the American Whig Review, one of the most thoughtful journals of its day, frankly declared that the purpose of England and California was so inconsistent with the interests and safety of the United States that this country could not permit its accomplishment under any circumstance. Much more significant than the popular fear of English domination in California during these early years was the genuine anxiety prevalent in government circles lest British officials should defeat the American plans for annexation and set up some form of British control that would shut the United States away from the Pacific and fix the Rocky Mountains as the westward limit of her development. The suspicion of British designs served as the background for much of American policy toward California and Mexico for some years prior to 1846. Its influence appears certainly as early as 1842 when Commodore Jones over zealous for the interests of the United States seized the Port of Monterey. As described in a previous chapter, this action was due to the erroneous belief that war between Mexico and the United States had actually broken out. The haste with which Jones moved, however, was not so much to forestall Mexico as to checkmate the secret plans of England. In explaining his intended course, the American commander, while on his way to Monterey, wrote the Secretary of Navy as follows, quote, the Creole affair, the question of the right of search, the mission of Lord Ashburton, the well-founded rumor of a session of the California's, and lastly the secret movement of the English naval force in this quarter, have all occurred since the date of your last despatch. Consequently I am without instructions upon what I consider a vital question to the United States, namely the occupation of California by Great Britain under a secret treaty with Mexico, end quote. Jones was by no means the only one in government circles who looked to scans at the California plans of European nations. From Mexico City, Wadi Thompson, the American minister, insistently called the attention of the State Department to the menace of British and French aggression in California, and urged this as an additional necessity for the annexation of the province by the United States. In fact, nearly every letter Thompson set, whether to Webster or to President Tyler, carried this note of warning, quote, I have information on which I can rely, he wrote under date of July 30th, 1842, that an agent of this government is now in England negotiating for the sale, or what is precisely the same things, the mortgage of Upper California for the loan of 15 millions. In my first despatch I glanced at the advantages which would result to our country from the acquisition. Great as these advantages would be, they sink in comparison with the evils to our commerce and other interests even more important from the session of that country to England, end quote. A later despatch of January 30th, 1843 had this to say of the situation, quote, I know that England has designs on California and has actually made a treaty with Mexico securing to British creditors the right to lands there and payment of their debts and that England will interpose this treaty in the way of a session of California and that in 10 years she will own the country, end quote. Thompson's successors in charge of the American legation in Mexico, without exception, emphasized as he had done the danger of British control in California. For example, in October 1844, Duff Green, Calhoun's confidential agent in Mexico, wrote to his superior in the following vein, quote, permit me to call your attention to the mortgage on the California's. In a previous paragraph, Green fixed the amount of this mortgage at 26 million. I am told that it contains the condition that if the money is not paid in 1847, the creditor shall take possession of the country. The British Consul General here is agent of the creditors. I have endeavored to obtain a copy of the deed, but cannot do it without paying 1500 or $2,000 for it. Permit me to say that it is important that you should obtain this through our minister here or in London, as the possession of California will necessarily command the settlements on the Columbia, end quote. Soon after this, rumor of a new plan proceeding California to Great Britain through secret negotiations between Santa Ana and the English minister reached Calhoun from Shannon, who was then in charge of American interests in Mexico. Santa Ana had just experienced one of his numerous reverses, a revolutionary party after overturning the government had seized his person and taken from him a number of compromising documents. The new administration had published certain parts of these documents to discredit Santa Ana with the Mexican people, and laid the rest in secret session before Congress. Quote, From a portion of this correspondence, wrote Shannon, the fact has been disclosed that a negotiation was going on between President Santa Ana and the English minister for the sale and purchase of the two Californias. The English minister has no doubt in this manner acted under instructions from his government. It may therefore be assumed that it is the settled policy of the English government to acquire the two Californias. You are aware that the English creditors have now a mortgage on them for 26 millions, end quote. The reports of English ambitions which reached Washington and the American public from Mexico were amply supplemented by direct information from the Pacific Coast. The upshot of the situation is not difficult to understand. By 1845 there were few Americans either in their own country or in California who were not honestly convinced that the fate of the Trans Rocky Mountain West lay in the balance between the United States and Great Britain. The same conviction prevailed in official circles and grew stronger as the months passed on. Two questions next demanded answer. To what extent were these reports of British purpose based on substantial fact and how far were they believed and acted upon by President Polk in his California policy? The first question can be answered with a fair degree of definiteness. At the time the California situation was approaching a crisis, the government of Great Britain for once in its long history had become temporarily satiated with colonial possessions and was not keenly enough interested in California to engage in an active campaign for annexation. This did not mean, however, that the persistent rumors of British plans were mere products of the American imagination manufactured as annexation propaganda or the result of national hysteria. For as a matter of fact every report of this kind of any consequence had behind it sufficient truth to justify its acceptance by the American public. The warning so frequently voiced that Mexico planned a session of California to England to cancel or guarantee her debt to British creditors rested upon an official agreement entered into in 1837. Under the terms of this arrangement English holders of Mexican bonds instead of being paid in cash a commodity with which Mexico lived in chronic want were to be given land of which Mexico had an infinite supply for colonization purposes. In speaking of this plan the British minister to Mexico, Sir Richard Pachenham, after calling attention to the impossibility of colonizing other portions of Mexico, wrote as follows in the summer of 1841, quote, I believe there is no part of the world offering greater natural advantages for the establishment of an English colony than the province of Upper California. While its commanding position on the Pacific, its fine harbors, its forests of excellent timber for shipbuilding, as well as for every other purpose, appear to me to render it by all means desirable from a political point of view that California, once ceasing to belong to Mexico, should not fall into the hands of any power but England, and the present debilitated condition of Mexico and the gradual increase of foreign population in California render it probable that its separation from Mexico will be affected at no distant period, end quote. The project urged by Pachenham from Mexico City, as previously stated, was one of the chief grounds of American anxiety. Another was the presence of the Hudson's Bay Company in the province. This company was not only sending trapping parties down from Oregon, but had recently established a regular trading post at San Francisco and was seeking large grants of land from California government. While its employees were cultivating farms, building mills, and otherwise showing their intention of making the company's occupation permanent, that this interest in the political future of California was not a mere figment of the American imagination is clearly seen in the following extract from a letter written by Sir George Simpson, the powerful head of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was then on tour around the world. Incidentally, the letter was designed for the eyes of the British cabinet. It was written from Honolulu in March, 1842, after Simpson's visit to the San Francisco station. In it he said of California, quote, the country from its natural advantages possessing, as it does, the finest harbor in the northern Pacific in the Bay of San Francisco, and capable, as it is, of maintaining a population of some millions of agriculturalists, might become invaluable to Great Britain as an outlet to her surplus population, as a stronghold and protection to her commerce and interests in these seas, and as a market for her manufacturers. And as the principal people in the country, and indeed the whole population seem anxious to be released from the Republic of Mexico, I have reason to believe they would require very little encouragement to declare their independence of Mexico and place themselves under the protection of Great Britain. Indeed, it has been communicated to me, confidentially, and I feel authorized to say, that the presence of a British cruiser on the coast with a private assurance of protection from Great Britain, and appointments being given to the present higher authorities and officials, which would not involve a larger sum than a few thousand pounds per annum, would be sufficient inducement to declare themselves independent of Mexico, and claim the protection of Great Britain, end quote. This sympathetic attitude of many of the California leaders towards Great Britain, to which Simpson referred, was another disturbing element to the American peace of mind. The activities of such British officials as the English minister, Pakenham, in Mexico City, of Barron, Council at Tepec, and of Admiral Seymour in command of a British squadron in the Pacific, also furnished a substantial foundation for the common belief that England had designs upon California. Whatever may be said, as to the indifferent attitude of the British government itself toward the province during this period, it is nevertheless certain that most British officials, both in Mexico and in California, were actively engaged either with outright plans for annexation, or with measures to defeat the ambitions of the United States. Under these conditions it would seem both natural and excusable for Americans, who had no means of penetrating these secrets of the British cabinet, to accept the attitude of the English agents as a correct index of the purpose of the British government, especially as the peculiar tradition of that government was a tradition of colonial expansion. Nor was the British government itself even in the brief period from 1842 to 1846 when she seems to have fallen away temporarily from her settled imperial policy, entirely indifferent to the annexation of California. On December 31st, 1844, Lord Aberdeen, who then held a foreign office, wrote Bankhead at Mexico City in Baron Tepec in a tone very similar to that employed by Buchanan in his letter to Larkin of October 17th, 1845. Though his government would not aid a movement for independence, wrote Aberdeen in these dispatches, nor promise, even after successful revolt to protect it for California which Baron had previously urged, yet it was none of the business of the British government to discourage such a rebellion, nor of British officials to warn Mexico of the likelihood of its occurrence. Bankhead, indeed, was cautioned specifically against giving any information about California affairs to Mexican officials, and Baron was instructed to make the Californians understand that Great Britain would view with much dissatisfaction the establishment of a protectoral power over California by any other foreign state. With this sketch of the manifestations of English interest in California before Polk came into office for a background, it is pertinent to ask how far the latter's policy was influenced by the possibility, or rather probability, of British designs conflicting with his own plans of annexation. The answer to this question cannot be as definite as the answer to a mathematical problem, but enough evidence is at hand to show that nearly every movement Polk made with regard to California was, in some measure, based upon the English situation. In the first place, entirely apart from the California issue, Polk's suspicions of Great Britain were fed by many springs, the Oregon controversy had not bred a spirit of friendliness between the two countries, and for more than two years the press on either side of the Atlantic had been carrying on a mutual campaign of criticism and vituperation. British influence had also appeared here, there, and everywhere in the critical issue of Texas annexation. Besides these more definite and concrete factors, there was the bitter anti-British feeling so prevalent in the southwest of Andrew Jackson's day. Polk, protégé, friend, and political disciple of the hero of New Orleans, was certainly not likely to be overly charitable in his judgments of English policy. Polk's plans for annexation were not fully matured before reports of British designs on California, similar to those which had come to Tyler, began to reach Washington. The administration's agent, William S. Parrott, wrote from Mexico on May 13, 1845, quote, Great Britain has greatly increased her naval forces in the Pacific, the object of which, as stated, is to take possession of and hold Upper California in case of a war between the United States and Mexico, end quote. A little later, Parrott also called Polk's attention to a plan by which a young Irish priest by the name of McNamara hoped to colonize California with immigrants from his own country. Late in 1844 the details of this plan, which afterwards received considerable fame as the cause of Fremont's activities in connection with the settler's revolt, were laid before Bankhead, who had taken Packingham's place as British minister to Mexico. Bankhead apparently took only an indifferent interest in them, but McNamara pressed the idea so successfully before the Mexican government that he was permitted to go to California to carry out his dream. On July 4, 1846, so Polk was told, the California Assembly voted the young Irishmen a grant of 3,000 leagues for colonizing purposes. This act, said Larkin, the president's informant, constituted a new feature in English policy and a new method of obtaining California. Other despatches from Mexico in the late summer and fall of 1845 brought additional reports of British activities in California. But the most vigorous warning on the subject was contained in the communication to the State Department from Larkin at Monterey. This despatch, dated July 10, 1845, was received at Washington early in October. Its influence upon the administration was strikingly shown in much of the correspondence the State Department subsequently had with its agents both in Mexico and in England. In his letter Larkin pointed out three definite instances of British activities in California. The first of these was the part played by the Hudson's Bay Company in the Miquel Torrena Revolution. The second was the financial aid supplied to the Mexican government by two British houses in Mexico for sending an expedition to put down any revolution that Americans might organize in the province. And the third was the appointment of a British agent, who ostensibly serving in a consular capacity was really set to carry out some secret plans against the interests of the United States in California. The British agent to whom Larkin referred in this communication was James Alexander Forbes, a resident of California for many years. This Forbes was not the author of the history of California previously referred to. His interest in extending English control over the province may be judged from the following extract from a letter he addressed to Baron at Tepec on September 4th, 1844, quote, I feel myself in duty bound to prevent this fine country from falling into the hands of any other foreign power than that of England. I repeat that it is impossible for Mexico to hold California for a much longer period, and if the government of Great Britain can, with honor to itself and without giving umbrage to Mexico, extend its protection to California, I should presume that it would be impolitech to allow any other nation to avail itself of the present critical situation in California for obtaining a foothold in this country, end quote. Forbes afterwards showed his zeal on England's behalf by organizing junta's favorable to British interests among the Californians, and by protesting against Fremont's presence in the province at the time of the Hawks Peak Affair. About this time, also, reports came to the administration of another movement, the success of which would quite certainly defeat American ambitions on the Pacific. This was the plan of establishing a monarchy in Mexico, and calling in a European prince to occupy the newly created throne. John Black, United States consul in Mexico City, first drew Polk's attention to the movement in a despatch day to December 30th, 1845. According to the report, a revolution had already been started to carry out the monarchist program which France, Spain, and England were pledged to support. As a matter of fact, both Bankhead, the British Minister, and Aberdeen were well disposed toward the movement, and as corroboration of Black's report, word came from the American Ambassador in London, Louis H. McLean, that the leading powers of Europe were planning to compose the Mexican trouble by giving her a monarchial form of government and supplying the monarch from one of their own family. It was afterwards rumored that the new sovereign would be the Spanish prince, Henry, the rejected suitor of Queen Isabella. What McLean and Black had written was further confirmed by despatches from Diamond, American consul at Veracruz, and later by reports from John Slidel. The chief object in setting up this monarchy, according to semi-official information, was to defeat the Texas and California programs of the United States by European intervention. While these various reports were reaching Washington and the British agents in Mexico were vigorously urging the importance of the California situation upon their home government, the Mexican representatives in London were anxiously seeking English aid to defeat the program of the United States. The British cabinet, by this time bravely over its indifference to the fate of California, was almost as eager as Mexico to find some course of action which, while not involving war, would effectively block American expansion on the Pacific. The Mexican representative in London, who bore the interesting name of Murphy, believed that if the Oregon question were once adjusted and England could secure the slightest cooperation from France, she would not bulk even at the use of force to prevent California from falling into American hands. Various plans were brought forward by the British and Mexican diplomats under which England, while remaining nominally at peace, might be made the custodian of California, especially in case of war between Mexico and the United States. One of these called for the session of 50 million acres of land in the province to a British company. Another proposed by Lord Aberdeen involved the establishment of an independent government in California, which should be recognized by Mexico and guaranteed by England and France. In California also, affairs were progressing in a way to give increasing reason for uneasiness to the American government. Could they have been fully known? Here the leaders in the British cause were James Forbes, Vice-Consul, and Admiral Seymour of the English fleet. Seymour especially was anxious to secure the consent of his superiors for active measures in the California issue. But owing to the nature of his instructions, he had to content himself with sending one of his vessels, the Juno under Captain Blake, the California waters to counteract, so far as possible, the growing peril of American intrigue. Blake carried out his orders, with the aid of Forbes, to the best of his ability, working especially to influence Bialpico and other Southern leaders against the idea of an American protectorate. About this time, also, a call was issued by the California officials for a meeting at Santa Barbara on June 15, 1846, of a Concejo-Henorale to deal with a desperate situation which the province faced. It was commonly believed that this assembly would declare California independent and seek the protection of some outside power, England, France, or the United States. The French government, like the British and the American, cherished its own ambitions to acquire California. It contented itself, however, aside from diplomatic maneuvering in Mexico, was sending an occasional representative to investigate conditions in the province. The most important of these, after the close of the Spanish regime, were Pettithours and Duflo de Moffra, the former in command of the frigate Venus, in which he was making a voyage around the world for scientific purposes, touched on the California coast in 1837. Moffra came direct from Mexico on a quasi-official mission in 1841. Both Moffra and Pettithours afterward published interesting accounts of their observations and experiences in California. In footnote. Learning of this, Admiral Seymour himself sailed from Samblas to California to make, if possible, a last stand for the British cause. The die, however, had already been cast. When Seymour reached Monterey, he found Commodore Slote securely in possession and the American flag floating over the quiet town. Enough has already been said to show that President Polk had ample reason for believing that England was determined to possess California, while there is no direct evidence to show that he deliberately brought on the Mexican war as a means of defeating this contingency. By hastening American occupation of the province, there is at least sufficient grounds to make such reasoning wholly logical. And whether one is warranted and going quite so far as to say that the report of British activities in California led the administration to turn from a waiting policy, which gave every evidence of eventual success had the English factor been removed, to one of immediate conquest, there at least runs through all the diplomatic correspondence of the time, an insistent note of alarm over this threatened danger. In Buchanan's dispatch of October 17th, 1845, appointing Larkin, Polk's confidential agent, great emphasis is laid upon British interests in California. Larkin is repeatedly warned to exert the greatest vigilance and to prevent a European nation from acquiring possession of the province, and assured in the most definite language that the President could not view within difference the transfer of California to Great Britain or any other European power. Similarly, McLean, the American Ambassador at London, was told that a great fling would be kindled throughout the Union should Great Britain obtain a session of California from Mexico or attempt to take possession of that province. Slidel, having been informed that the United States would use every means to prevent California from falling into European hands, was instructed to ascertain whether Mexico had any intention of ceding it to France or England, and to exert all its energies to prevent an act which, if consummated, would be fraught with danger to the best interests of the United States. In Polk's public utterances, also, this fear of English advance into the province found a foremost place. Indeed, it became the distinct motive for his reaffirmation in enlargement of the Monroe Doctrine, one of the first steps, incidentally, by which that famous policy has grown to its present significant position. And certainly, there was no trace of hypocrisy in Polk's words when he thus wrote, at the close of the Mexican War, regarding the acquisition of California, quote, the immense value of the ceded territory does not consist alone in the amount of money for which the public lands may be sold. The fact that it has become a part of the Union and cannot be subject to a European power constitutes ample indemnity for the past, end quote. One wonders, indeed, what might have been the effect upon the destiny of the United States if, during those critical months preceding the Mexican War, a more imperialistic cabinet had come into power in England and the less resolute man had been president of the United States. End of chapter 14