 CHAPTER 17 THE GOLD RUSH The Treaty of Walla Lupa Hidalgo, by which California formally became a part of the United States, was signed February 2, 1848. Two weeks before, in one of the innumerable canyons of the Sierra Nevada, a man named James W. Marshall chanced upon some littering particles in the tail-race of a sawmill belonging to his employer, John A. Sutter. Before the ink was scarcely dry on the treaty, the news of Marshall's discovery had begun to set an eager world in ferment and changed the whole course of California history. Footnote Marshall's discovery occurred January 24. The following extract from the diary of Azariah Smith, one of the laborers at Sutter's Mill, gives this interesting contemporary account to the event. Quote, Sunday, January 30th, Mr. Marshall, having arrived, we got liberty of him and built a small house down by the mill, and last Sunday we moved into it in order to get rid of the brawling's partial mistress and cook for ourselves. This week Mr. Marshall found some pieces of, as we all suppose, gold, and he has gone to the fork for the purpose of finding out. It is found in the raceway and small pieces. Some have been found that would weigh five dollars, in quote, in footnote. Gold had been found in California long before Marshall gathered it out of the tail-race of the mill on the south fork of the American River. Seven years before, in the Santa Feliciana Canyon of the San Fernando Hills, back of Los Angeles, Francisco Lopez, a native Californian, came upon traces of the metal as he was digging up wild onions in the shade of an oak tree under which he had stopped to rest. This discovery led to much excitement in the southern part of the province, and even brought a considerable number of prospectors from Sonora, Mexico, to the newly open field. In spite of lack of water, these San Fernando deposits were worked successfully for a number of years, yielding some four or five thousand dollars annually in gold dust and small nuggets. Mines of other metals, notably the exceptionally rich quicksilver deposits of New Almedin, where the mercury was first obtained by heating the ore in gun barrels, were also in operation before 1848. But until Marshall's accidental discovery, the great treasure of the California mountains remained unsuspected by foreign visitor and native resident alike. Considering all the circumstances, this is one of the strangest facts in California history. The Spaniards who conquered Mexico were among the most indefatigable miners the world has ever seen. For more than two centuries after the landing of Cortez, the history of New Spain was largely the history of men interested in the saving of precious souls or of men interested in the discovery of precious metals. From Mexico City, northward to Nuevo León in Chihuahua, westward to the Pacific, northward to Sonora, New Mexico and Arizona, the conquistadores and their descendants prospected for gold and silver, joined in the hectic excitement of one mining rush after another, and exploited a thousand rich deposits discovered by their industry and their never-failing zeal. Why these same people, so successful and zealous as miners in Mexico, fail to find the vast treasures of the Sierra Nevada which nature made almost no attempt to conceal, will always remain a curious problem. The effect of the discovery of gold upon California's destiny, if this had happened under Spanish or Mexican rule, has already been pointed out by one of the most authoritative of the state's historians. Assuredly it was the whim of fate, or the hand of a guiding providence that delayed this discovery until the territory had come into the possession of the United States. When Marshall and Sutter became convinced that the bits of yellow metal which remained in the tail-race were actually gold, they agreed together to keep the matter secret. Not so much, apparently, because they wished to pre-empt the deposit, as because they feared the mining craze might carry off the needed laborers from Sutter's wheat fields, mills and numerous other undertakings. To cover up such a discovery for any length of time was difficult, yet for nearly six weeks few people outside those at the mill knew of its event. Inevitably, however, the secret at last became public. Teamsters coming in from the outside heard of the find and carried the news back to the coast. Mormon immigrants, many of whom worked for Sutter, spread the report among their co-religionists, and Sutter's own agent sent to Monterey to obtain a grant or patent to the mining rights, told nearly everything he knew about the discovery. At Monterey on May 29, Walter Colton, the American al-Kaldi, made this entry in his diary. Our town was startled out of its quiet dreams today by the announcement that gold had been discovered on the American fork. The men wondered and talked, and the women too, but neither believed. The symbols were less skeptical. They said that the moon had, for several nights, appeared not more than a cable's length from the earth, that a white ram had been seeing playing with an infant, and that an owl had wrung the church bells. On June 20, after several other reports had been received and the al-Kaldi himself had dispatched a special investigator to the gold region, this entry was made in the same diary showing how great in effect the excitement was already having upon the normal life of Monterey. My messenger has returned with specimens of gold. He dismounted in a sea of upturned faces. As he drew forth the yellow lumps from his pockets and passed them around among the eager crowd, the doubts, which had lingered till now, fled. The excitement produced was intense, and many were soon busy in their hasty preparations for a departure to the mines. The family, who had kept house from me, caught the moving infection. Women and wife were both packing up. The blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter is playing, the mason is trowel, the farmer is sickle, the baker is loaf, and the tapster his bottle. All were off for the mines. Some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter. An American woman, who had recently established a boarding-house here, pulled up stakes, and went off before her lodgers had even time to pay their bills. Others ran, of course. I have only a community of women left and a gang of prisoners with here and there a soldier who will give his captain the slip at the first chance." On June 28 Thomas O. Larkin, still serving in his consular capacity, wrote to Buchanan, quote, three-fourths of the houses in the town on the Bay of San Francisco are deserted. Houses are sold at the price of building lots. The effects are this week showing themselves in Monterey. Almost every house I had hired out is given up. Every blacksmith, carpenter, and lawyer is leaving. Brickyards, sawmills, ranches are left perfectly alone. A large number of the volunteers at San Francisco and Sonoma have deserted. Public and private vessels are losing their crews. Both of our newspapers are discontinued from want of workmen and the loss of their agencies. The alcoholities have left San Francisco and, I believe, Sonoma likewise. The former place has not a justice of the peace left, end quote. Governor Mason, who made a tour of the mines about the time Larkin's letter was written, along the whole route found mills lying idle, houses deserted, fields of standing wheat turned open to cattle, and farms left uncultivated. Ships were deserted as fast as they arrived on the coast. Soldiers left their garrisons and men closed their shops. So, without serious exaggeration, one rider could say, quote, the whole country is now moving on to the mines. Monterey, San Francisco, Sonoma, San Jose, and Santa Cruz are empty to their male population. Every bold tray, warming pan, and pigeon is gone to the mines. Everything in short that has a scoop in it that will hold sand and water. All the iron has been worked up into crowbars, pickaxes, and spades, end quote. This wholesale stampede from the coast to the mining regions is not to be wondered at. In those first exciting days, especially before the great influx of 1849, gold awaited every comer, stream beds, hillsides, and rock crevices, all alike yielded treasure. Two men in seven days obtained seventeen thousand dollars from a trench a few feet wide and a hundred feet long. A soldier on twenty days furlough, who spent half his time going to and from the mines, made fifteen hundred dollars in ten days of actual mining. Seven Americans, with the aid of fifty Indians, whom they paid presumably in cheap merchandise, took out two hundred and seventy-five pounds of gold in a little more than six weeks. Ten men made fifteen hundred dollars each in ten days. A single miner obtained two pounds and a half of gold in fifteen minutes. A group of Mexicans were seen gambling with a hundred pounds of gold dust and nuggets serving as the bank. In less than half an hour, a man picked up between five and six ounces of gold out of an open hole in the rock, as fast as one can pick the kernels out of a lot of well-cracked shell-barks. A rancher named Sinclair, employing Indians as helpers, cleaned up fourteen pounds, avered bois, not Troy, in a week's time. On a tour of the mines, the editor of the Californian, which had recently been established at Monterey, averaged a hundred dollars a day using only a shovel, pick, and pan. The striking thing about the mining industry, as it was carried on for the first few months, however, was not the lucky finds of a few, but the assured profit for practically everyone who engaged in it. The average return was from ten dollars to fifty dollars a day, and by August it was reliably estimated that six hundred thousand dollars had been secured from the various Diggins. Authoritative news of the phenomenal discovery reached the states in time for President Polk to comment upon it in his December message to Congress. But sometime before this official announcement, the Eastern newspapers were full of rumors and reports about the California gold fields, which the public generally accepted with tolerant incredulity. When at last, however, people ceased to doubt and began to believe, such excitement followed as a nation had never known before or will ever know of its kind again. By the close of 1848, every city, large or small, from the frontiers of Missouri to the Atlantic seaboard was affected by the California fever. Men were selling out of their business, families were breaking up their homes, officials were resigning their positions, and professional men were getting rid of their practice. Literally scores of companies and associations were being formed by persons planning to make the trip to California. Many of these were organized on a cooperative basis, each member contributing a certain share to the common expense and enjoying equal rights with his fellow members. Other companies were financed by persons themselves unable to make the journey, but who wished to share in the fabulous wealth that every letter and return traveler reported from the California fields. Thus, there was the SAG Harbor California Mining Association, the Boston and California Mining and Trading Joint Stock Company with Edward Everett as its patron, the New York Yellow Fever Mining Company, the Manhattan California Overland Association, the Congress and California Mutual Protective Association, and no one knows how many other companies of the same kind. Yet few, if any of these innumerable associations were able to stand the strain of the passage to California or of the new environment their members found in the mining camps. Too often friendships or mutual agreements formed in an atmosphere where social and business relations followed a well-defined code, were rinsed apart and hopelessly broken by the new conditions of life in California. Naturally enough, the newspaper seized upon the gold excitement with the greatest avidity. Letters, reports, and rumors from California were eagerly sought after and given first place in the news columns. Fortunately, no matter how great the exaggeration in these articles, the actual production of the fields in nearly every case surpassed the imagination of the writer, and fiction again lagged after truth. The reports from California that appeared in the newspapers were also supplemented by many by-products of the craze. Footnone About this time, Mrs. Elizabeth Farnham, widow of the well-known author-traveller Thomas Jefferson Farnham, who had died in San Francisco in 1848, was seeking to organize a party of 130 women in New York to go to the coast, in company with six or eight respectable married men and their families, to become the wives of bachelor-miners. None of the party were to be under twenty-five years of age, and each was to furnish $250 as expense money for the trip. In Footnone There were advertisements of businesses for sale, because the owners were leaving to search for gold. There were descriptions of the various overland routes to California, and lists of stout and trustworthy vessels about to sale for San Francisco. Notices of gold dust receipts at Atlantic ports stood side by side with accounts of villains who had abandoned wives and families for the mines. A single issue of the New York Herald contained over forty advertisements designed to interest buyers about to leave for California. Among the articles advertised were an acid and test-stone appliance for detecting gold, Hunt's patent gold-extracting engine, Ruse's Hydro-Sentrifugal Chrysolite or California Gold Finder, and other essentials of similar character. Lamps guaranteed against upsetting were advertised on the same page with books for pleasant reading on ship-board. Mining treatises, Spanish grammars, and guidebooks for the route were almost as numerous as one of its the rifles, pistol-belts, and holsters. Who is for California? A company in the process of organization challenged, and in the next column a physician offered his services to a party bound for the Pacific Coast. The New York Washing and Mining Association advertised for recruits, and another enterprising company sought a housekeeper for its California hotel. Reserve meats, soups, spiced oysters, and sauerkraut put up in canisters and warranted for twenty-one years. Saddles, guns, tents, assaying outfits, blankets, India rubber goods, Dana's system of mineralogy, and California overcoats were all brought to the attention of the prospective miner. He was implored to buy a copy of the Crom thermal system of medicine, since fully half the miners of California were down with fever, and to have his daguerreotype taken as a farewell remembrance for the dear ones who remained behind. About the only items submitted from the list were coffins and nursing bottles. There is no way of determining, even with a fair degree of accuracy, how many persons came to California from the rest of the United States in the years immediately following the discovery of gold. The migration, however, was so stupendous as to outrank in point of numbers anything of its kind in the nation's history, and to stand on an equal footing with some of the great world movements of population. The whole country, at scene, was singing the doggerel verse of one of the Argonauts, and thousands upon thousands were actually putting it into practice. Quote, O California, that's the land for me. I'm bound for the Sacramento with a washbowl on my knee." Throughout the winter the overland routes were closed to travel, so the earliest influx came by sea. During the first week of February, 1849, fifty vessels sailed from American ports for San Francisco. By the middle of March, seventeen thousand persons had taken passage from cities on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and before the year closed, two hundred and thirty American vessels reached California harbors. The overland migration, when it began, was even larger than that which came by sea. Within three weeks, during the spring of 1849, nearly eighteen thousand persons crossed the Missouri River for California. A single observer counted eleven hundred wagons on the prairies beyond independence. From the Missouri frontier to Fort Laramie the procession of immigrants passed in an unbroken stream for more than two months toward the west. By day this long train of wagons and other vehicles, for they were of all types and descriptions, the herds of animals and the crowds of men, women and children gave the impression of a whole nation on the move. At night the glow of innumerable campfires on the prairies shone like the lights of populous cities. Fully thirty five thousand people took part in this great overland movement of 1849, a year that rightly occupies a unique place in California and national annals. The chief sea routes to California were by way of Cape Horn and the Isthmus of Panama. The former, made as it was at first chiefly by sailing vessels for steam navigation was still in its infancy, required from six to nine months, a much longer time than impatient gold seekers could afford to give, and was characterized by no little danger and hardship. Just before the gold rush began, however, William H. Aspinol had organized the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and started the construction of three small steamers of about a thousand tons each to run from New York to San Francisco. The first of these, the California, left New York on October 6, 1848, shortly before Marshall's discovery became known. When the vessel reached Panama on January 30, 1849, hundreds of gold seekers who had come by sea to the Isthmus and crossed overland to the Pacific were waiting almost in a frenzy for passage to San Francisco. Some four hundred of these were taken on board to find accommodations as best they could in a vessel designed for only a hundred passengers. Many of these paid as high as a thousand dollars for a steerage ticket from Panama to California. The California reached San Francisco on February 28, the first of a long line of transports laden to the waters edge with New World Argonauts. Those who reached California by the Panama route had much to try physical endurance and test their patience. The voyage from New York to Chagres on the Caribbean side of the Isthmus required about two weeks' time and cost from $80 to $150. If the passage could be obtained in a satisfactory ship, this portion of the trip might well prove delightful. But as the number of seaworthy vessels was wholly inadequate to supply the demand, every sort of sailing-craft was pressed into service, and even if the vessel escaped foundering in mid-ocean, the passengers were sure to suffer every form of discomfort and annoyance to which travelers are heir. From Chagres, the first stage of the journey across the Isthmus was made by native canoe to the head of the Chagres River and thence by pack-train to the Pacific. The canoes were twenty or twenty-five feet long, carried ten or twelve passengers, besides the five or six Indians who polled them, and made about a mile an hour when the natives bestirred themselves. Tropical storms, heat, bad drinking water, and voracious insects added to the pleasure of the voyage. But while these things, coupled even with the delay and squalor of the native huts where the immigrants were often forced to lodge, could be endured, there were two grim enemies that brought death instead of mere discomfort. These were Asiatic cholera and the Chagres fever. When the coast was reached, another long wait was in store for the Californians. Frequently weeks passed before a passage could be secured to San Francisco. The old city of Panama, witness of so much tragedy and heroic undertaking from the time of Balboa onward, surely never saw stranger sites than in those bustling days of forty-nine, when the Americans poured down from the crest of the mountains on foot or on muleback to wait the arrival of some long-expected vessel to carry them on to the land of El Dorado. For two years the newcomers virtually took possession of the city. Some of the more enterprising set up hotels and open shops to cater to the needs of their companions. Footnote. One of the most successful of these immigrant merchants was Collis B. Huntington of later railroad fame. Others of different taste even started a newspaper which outlasted the mushroom community that gave it birth. Many of the more impatient immigrants chartered small sailboats and bravely set out for California without waiting for the larger vessels. And it is even said that some companies, more adventurous or ignorant than the rest, probably sought to make the five-thousand-mile journey from Panama to San Francisco in log canoes. With the adventures, hardships and tragedies of these irregular expeditions there is no space to deal. But what fine gold still remains in the tailings of California history. Besides the way around South America and across Panama or Nicaragua, there were half-a-dozen combination routes to California involving both an overland journey and an ocean voyage. Many of the immigrants sailed from New York or New Orleans to Vera Cruz, traveling thence by way of Mexico City and Guadalajara to take ship on the Pacific at Acapulco or Somblas. Others landed at Tempico and made the trip across Mexico by way of a more northern route to the harbors of Mazatlán and Huimas on the Gulf. Still others crossed the isthmus of Tawantapec, hoping to find a vessel at Selena Cruz to carry them on to California. At least one thing was common to all these various routes. Whichever he chose, the gold seeker was sure to encounter hardships in numerous and terrifying forms. Sometimes disease carried off his companions one after another around him. Sometimes an accidental gunshot or willful murder threw the shadow of death over a little camp. Again, Briggins might strip the company of all its ready money and supplies. Or, failing these misfortunes, there were always cold, flood, thirst, desert heat, and scarcity of food to be reckoned with on the overland portion of the expedition. And on the sea, danger from storm, failure of the ship's stores, shortage of water, and sudden attack of the black plague cholera. A few companies were entirely blotted out by some unknown catastrophe and never heard from again. Others escaped similar disaster by grim perseverance or merely the whim of a kindlier fate. In addition to the various sea or sea and land routes to California, there were also several principal overland trails supplemented by many cut-offs or diversions from the main routes. The most traveled of these overland routes was the old historic path of the fur trader and the early immigrant, along the Platte, up to Sweetwater, through the south pass to Bear River and Fort Hall. Thence most of the caravans turned south to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake, entering California by way of the Humboldt and Truckee Rivers. Others took the trail to Oregon, reaching the Sacramento by the Willamette and Shasta route. Still others, after reaching the Sierra, followed along the eastern slope through the Owens Valley till Walker Pass, or perhaps to Hatchopee, furnished a gateway to the San Joaquin. From Salt Lake, others took the recently opened Mormon trail to San Bernardino, a route the Los Angeles Salt Lake branch of the Union Pacific now closely parallels. Another main highway of the gold seekers reached California by way of Santa Fe. From Missouri to New Mexico, this route had long been known through the agency of the St. Louis Santa Fe trade. From Santa Fe westward, there was a choice of two routes. One, the old Pate Trail, ran through Socorro and along the Heelet to the Colorado, thence crossing to the coast by way of Warner's Ranch. The second, following Wolf's skills path at the early thirties and the route of the old Santa Fe Los Angeles caravans, reached the Colorado by way of the Grand, Green, Severe and Virgin Rivers. From the Colorado the trail continued on to Southern California by way of the Cajon. Or east of the Cajon turned northward to the San Joaquin by either the Tahatchopee or Tejon Pass. Still another route from Santa Fe ran directly south to Chihuahua and Old Mexico. Thence one of the long used Spanish trails carried the emigrant across the mountains into Sonora and eventually brought him by way of Altar and Puvac to the regular Heeler River trail over which he traveled to the Colorado. The magnitude of the migrations over these various overland routes cannot adequately be described. Men, women and children took part in it, for the movement at least from the frontier states was not merely the rush of men excited by tales of wealth to a land where they expected to make but a temporary residence. It was the transplanting of a population, the migration of families to find a new and permanent home. Much of the so-called great migration was indeed merely a new phase of that overland movement that had begun in 1841 with the arrival of the Midwell Party and had already assumed very considerable proportions a number of years before the discovery of gold. Many parties, of course, even from western communities, were made up entirely of men. But in the typical overland company the unit was the family rather than the individual. Nearly every wagon carried furniture and household goods for the new home on the Pacific. The westerner who started, let us say from independence in the spring of 1849 for the gold fields of California looked upon the undertaking as nothing unusual except perhaps for the distance involved. His whole previous life had been spent in just such migrations on a smaller scale. Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and finally Missouri each in turn had witnessed the erection of his crude log cabin, evidence of the sure approach of civilization, and had claimed him for a temporary citizen. By 1849 this nomadic settler was ready for the final move to California. The ordinary means of travel employed by the emigrants was the familiar prairie schooner, probably first made use of in the Santa Fe trade. These were usually drawn by three or four yoke of oxen, though sometimes horses or mules were used instead. Generally a number of cows were also driven along to furnish a reserve supply of food or to serve as substitutes for broken down or lost oxen. While this was the typical equipment, many of the emigrants had vehicles of other types or employed pack animals alone. Some, indeed, were foolish enough to attempt the journey with wheel-barrels and push carts. Besides supplies of food, coffee, sugar, bacon, dried apples, and the like, every well-to-do company took with it a large amount of bedding, many cooking utensils, guns, axes, and even heavy household furniture such as bedsteads, tables, and bureaus, or equally heavy farming implements and mining tools. The organization of most companies was similar to that adopted by the earlier emigrants of the Bidwell Donner type, and their method of travel in no material way differed from that of their predecessors. The large number of animals passing over well-established routes furnished a more serious problem in the matter of forage, however, than the pre-49ers had been forced to meet, and this often compelled companies to seek less-frequented trails where grass was more abundant. Indian difficulties were few during the first years of the Gold Rush, but every other trouble was met with in abundance. Collar ravaged many of the trains, in some cases wiping out entire families. Other diseases such as scurvy likewise took heavy toll, and death by accident was also a frequent occurrence. Often a company's animals gave out, or ran off, and in crossing rivers wagons, animals, and men alike were sometimes swept away by flood or sucked down by quicksand. Crime, even at the basis sort, was not unknown, but more commonly where violence was done it was due to some outburst of sudden anger or resulted from nerves frayed beyond the breaking point by long-continued anxiety and strain. On the northern route the most difficult part of the journey lay beyond Fort Hall. Between Salt Lake and the Sierra the line of travel was marked more plainly than ever a modern boulevard was posted by enterprising automobile clubs with broken-down wagons, abandoned equipment, dead animals, and bleaching bones. A single entry in the diary of James Abbey, himself one of the 49ers, shows better than all the second-hand descriptions that have ever been written what the toll was paid on this portion of the route west of the Humboldt Sink. Quote, August 2nd, started out by four o'clock this morning, at six, stopped to cook our breakfast and lighten our wagons by throwing away the heavier portions of our clothing and such other articles as we can best spare. We pushed on to-day with as much speed as possible to get through the desert, but our cattle gave such evident signs of exhaustion that we were compelled to stop. The desert through which we are passing is strewn with dead cattle, mules, and horses. I counted in a distance of fifteen miles three hundred and fifty dead horses, two hundred and eighty oxen, one hundred and twenty mules, and hundreds of others are left behind, unable to keep up. A ten yard or slaughterhouse is a flower garden in comparison. A train from Missouri have today shot twenty oxen. Vast amounts of valuable property have been abandoned and thrown away in this desert. Leather trunks, clothing, wagons, etc., to the value of at least a hundred thousand dollars in about twenty miles. I have counted in the last ten miles three hundred and sixty-two wagons, which in the states cost about a hundred and twenty dollars apiece." With Abbey's description as a background, one's imagination can picture something of the distress and suffering endured by the immigrants who came the northern route. Yet those who took the Gila Trail were equally unfortunate. John W. Audubon, son of the famous ornithologist and a naturalist of no mean ability himself, found the road east of Colorado, garnished almost every league with dead cattle, horses, or oxen. Every camping place was littered with wagons, implements, and personal effects thrown away by the passing trains. The worst stretch of this route, however, lay through the Colorado Desert west of the Yuma villages. Here, at the so-called Lagoons, Audubon, who had traveled by the route across northern Mexico, came upon a scene of desolation more fearful than anything he had previously seen in Ola's arduous journey. He describes it thus, Quote, Broken wagons, dead, shriveled up cattle, horses and mules as well lay baking in the sun, around the dried up wells that had been opened in the hopes of getting water. Not a blade of grass or green thing of any kind relieved the monotony of the parched ash-colored earth, and the most melancholy scene presented itself that I had ever seen since I left the Rio Grande. Quote, Gravel, even over the well-established routes to California, was thus beset with hardship during the period of the Gold Rush. But where parties turned off to seek new trails, fate dealt with them even more relentlessly. The most tragic of such cases occurred in that grim region lying east of Owens River, which ever since has borne the name of Death Valley. Two companies, at least, were caught in this waste of sand and desolation during the migration of 1849, and the valley dealt with them in pitiless fashion. The story of the first of these parties has been left us by William Louis Manley, one of its members. His company, having reached Green River by way of the South Pass, surrounded the impossible feat of going down the Colorado in an old ferry boat. They succeeded in getting somewhat beyond the spot where Ashley had painted his name on the canyon walls in 1824, but at last were compelled to abandon the river and strike out on foot toward the west. Without serious difficulty they reached the regular Salt Lake, Los Angeles Trail, where they found a large number of wagons bound for California. Manley and his associates joined this company of immigrants, but instead of following the regular route to the Mojave villages, a part of the train led by Captain Smith turned off near Mountain Meadows intending to travel directly west to the San Joaquin. Manley and a friend of his named Bennett, who was in command of several wagons, together with one of the Green River adventurers known as Rogers, followed Smith's party. Before the desert was reached several of the company turned back to the regular Los Angeles Trail. The rest split into two divisions. One of these, calling themselves the Jayhawkers and composed almost entirely of unmarried men, set off ahead, leaving the men with women and children to get on as best they could. Before this main company had proceeded very far, the outlook became alarming and when they at last entered the sandy wastes of Death Valley, it was seen that help must be secured or the entire party would perish. Manley and Rogers volunteered to go for aid and with such provisions as could be spared set out for the California settlements. Of the provisions experienced by Manley and Rogers on this trip, or of the sufferings endured by the thirteen grown persons and seven children who remained behind, the writer is not competent to speak. It is enough to say that the two messengers, after conquering starvation, sand, fatigue, and thirst, at last reached the little town of San Fernando, a few miles north of Los Angeles, where they obtained supplies and a few pack animals and then sent out again for the Valley of Death to rescue their companions. When the two came again within sight of the camp, which they had left twenty-six days before, some of the wagons were missing and there was no sign of life about. A few miles back they had already passed one member of the company, dead on the sand, with his arms extended wide and his little canteen made of two powder flasks lying by his side. It was doubtful whether any of the company, which they had risked so much to rescue, had survived. Manley fired off his gun. A man came out from under a wagon, looked all around without seeing anyone. Quote, then, to use Manley's words, he threw up his arms high over his head and shouted, The boys have come, the boys have come. The great suspense was over and our hearts were first in our mouths and then the blood all went away and left us almost fainting as we stood and tried to step it. Bennett and Arkane caught us in their arms and embraced us with all their strength, and Mrs. Bennett, when she came, fell down on her knees and clung to me like a maniac in the great emotion that came to her and not a word was spoken, unquote. The story of the final escape of the party, though certainly not the least heroic in the annals of the westward movement, cannot be given here. Once out of Death Valley, the route lay along the eastern slope of the Sierra, past Walker's Pass, through Red Rock Canyon, across the Mojave, through Soledad Canyon, and on to San Fernando. The Salt Lake Trail near Mountain Meadows was left on November 4, 1849. The survivors reached the plenty and safety of the California settlements March 7, 1850. As for the Jayhawkers and the few other members on the train who had separated from the Bennett-Manley Party, their story is also one of tragedy and suffering. Small groups became detached from the main company and sought to make their own way across the valley. One of these parties, consisting of eleven members, remained unheard of for many years. Two of its number were afterwards found working in the gold mines of Northern California, and in 1856 a prospecting expedition in Death Valley came upon an abandoned camp around which were the skeletons of nine men. In addition to these victims, at least two more of the Jayhawkers died in the valley, and once accumbed while crossing the Mojave Desert. Travelling sometimes with and sometimes apart from the Jayhawkers was a clergyman named Breyer, his wife, and three small children, the oldest of whom was nine. Like the noble women of the Donner Party, Mrs. Breyer proved a constant source of inspiration and courage to her companions. And in the many stories of California heroism, none deserves a higher place than hers. Many years after the expedition she was induced to tell something of her experiences. The following brief extract is taken from that narrative. Quote, The valley ended in a canyon with great walls rising up almost as high as we could see. There seemed no way out, for it ended almost in a straight wall. Father Fish died that night. I made coffee for him, but he was all worn out. Ishim died that night, too. It was always the same. Hunger and thirst in an awful silence. In the morning the men returned with the same story. No water. Even the stoutest heart sank then, for nothing but sagebrush and dagger-trees greeted the eye. My husband tied Little Kirk to his back and staggered ahead. The child would murmur occasionally, Oh, Father, where's the water? His pitiful, delirious wails were worse to hear than the killing thirst. It was terrible. I seemed to see it all over again. I staggered and struggled wearily behind our other two boys in the oxen. The little fellows bore up bravely and hardly complained, though they could barely talk, so dry and swollen were their lips and tongue. John would try to cheer up his brother Kirk by telling him of the wonderful water we would find and all the good things we would get to eat. Every step I expected to sink down and die. I could hardly see." That any of the California immigrants who entered Death Valley in 1849 emerged from it alive was due to the cooler weather of the winter months and the kindness of fate. Not even the latter could have saved them if they had sought to cross in the heat of mid-summer. Such miracles are not performed when the thermometer stands at 140 degrees in a valley below the level of the sea, where all but one percent of the moisture has been sucked from the atmosphere, and where men go insane if deprived of water for so much as an hour. The Death Valley tragedy occupies a unique place in the annals of the 49ers because of the horrors connected with it. Yet a fate scarcely less terrible but of a different nature was narrowly averted in the case of thousands of immigrants who left Salt Lake toward the close of summer or early in the fall, intending to cross the Sierra before snow closed the passes. These late comers found the grass along the route almost used up by earlier trains. Water was scarce and so unfit to drink that beasts and men alike were made sick by it. In places the road was so cut up by constant use that clouds of alkali dust enveloped every wagon, making travel difficult and slow. Cholera and scurvy attacked many of the companies and exhaustion from the long journey and lack of food reduced others to a condition of despair. The chief danger, however, was the coming of winter. If this should set in before the worn-out immigrants were safely through the mountains, the tragedies of Donner Lake and Death Valley would be multiplied a hundredfold. Fortunately, as early as August, this danger was realized by General Persefort H. Smith, who had recently arrived by way of Panama to take charge of the United States forces in California, and in conjunction with Governor Riley he despatched a few relief trains across the Sierra to aid the stragglers to get through. As the season grew later, reports reached the cities and mining communities of California that thousands of immigrants still east of the mountains were in desperate straits and unless help were sent would perish before they could reach a place of safety. Lack of food had driven many of them with disastrous results to eat the putrefying flesh of oxen or mules that had died along the way. Others had lost all their animals from disease or at the hands of the Indians who were now becoming much more troublesome and were striving to make their way across the mountains on foot. To add to the danger snow had commenced to fall much earlier than usual in the high Sierra, making the passes more difficult every day and threatening a complete blockade before the immigrants could get through. The emergency, great as it was, was met successfully by the organization of relief trains and the transportation of large quantities of supplies across the mountains. The work was largely in the hands of United States Army officers with major rucker in command. In the face of great difficulties he succeeded in bringing the last of the immigrant trains of 1849 through the snows before the route became impassable, though some of the parties had already been three days without food when the government supplies arrived. Many of the companies which reached Salt Lake late in the summer of 1849, instead of completing their journey that year, remained until spring in the Mormon City. Much has been written of the treatment received by the gold seekers from Brigham Young's followers during this period. But the testimony is too nearly divided between good and ill for an authoritative conclusion to be reached. The Mormons certainly took advantage of the immigrants' needs to charge high prices, 75 cents a pound for meat, 50 cents a gallon for milk, $500 for a wagon were the prevailing rates. But later on when the gold seekers reached the Sierra, they found their fellow Gentiles at least as skillful at profiteering as the Mormons. The story of the migration of 1850, except in detail, differs little from that of the preceding year. The spring months saw thousands of wagons filled with men, women, and children, household goods, food, and treasured possessions of every kind taking the westward way. Along the route the drama of 1849 was re-enacted. Cholera, scurvy, dysentery, accident, thirst, hunger, fatigue, Indian attack, quarrels, discouragement, and every other ill attack the trains. Against these foes were set hope, ambition, steady determination, patience, humor, and the fighting spirit of the frontier. Here a train pauses in its slow progress toward the Pacific to bury one of its members. Another within sight stops a few brief hours while a woman gives birth to a child. Day is a busy travel with abundance of food, grass for the animals, light heartedness, music, and good cheer around the evening camp, alternate with days of tragedy and unspeakable hardships. Again in 1850, as in 1849, disaster threatened many of the immigrants who attempted to cross the Sierra late in the season. In September the humble route was crowded with trains, most of them in desperate straits because of loss of animals, sickness, or lack of food, while farther north along the Pitt River were other immigrants equally destitute and subject in addition to Indian depredations. Once more, relief parties were formed and supplies sent to the sufferers. Voluntary organizations in Stockton, San Francisco, Marysville, and other communities collected money with which to purchase food and dispatched packed trains across the mountains. Newspapers and individuals spread the appeal for funds, and money soon poured in from mining settlements and ranches as well as from the cities. The heart of all California was touched with that sympathy and liberality which have since become the proverbial heritage of the state. Perhaps the chiefest of the good Samaritans of this early day was William Waldo, a member of the Relief Committee of Sacramento. No man was more untiring in his efforts to rescue the threatened immigrants or so quick in his sympathies for their sufferings. Early in September he dispatched a letter from his camp on the Humboldt where he had gone with supplies to the Relief Committee at Sacramento. An extract from this despatch will show, better than any other description, something of Waldo's generosity and the desperate need he found among the trains. "'Should your committee,' wrote Waldo, "'still be unable to collect funds, I then ask that the committee, city council or some other body of men, advance to the amount of eight or ten thousand dollars, and forward the amount in flour and little articles for the sick to this point, and to the summit, for which I pledge my honor if I live to return where it can be legally done to set over all my right, title and interest to real estate in Sacramento City that has cost me ten thousand dollars. This sum will send between twenty and twenty-five thousand pounds of flour to the summit. This, in connection with the beef, horses, mules, and dead stock that can be jerked before it putrefies, will save ten thousand human beings from starvation. A man can live very well upon half a pound of beef and a quarter of a pound of flour per day. I again repeat that these people must be relieved or they must die in that by starvation. Can you believe that the destitution is so general that during an absence of six days from this station I found but two trains of which I could procure a piece of bread and a cup of coffee? I have known a cup of soup containing not more than one spoonful of flour to sell for one dollar, and the buyer considered himself fortunate to get it on those terms. Thanks to the efforts of Waldo, Colonel Rawlson, Major Sherman, and others of like kind, and the generous response of the people of California, disaster was averted in 1850 as it had been in 1849. Aid was given not only to those on the central and northern roots, but also to the equally unfortunate caravans coming by way of the Gila. One cannot picture the outcome if this help had been denied. Even so it has said fifteen hundred graves were counted between Salt Lake and Sacramento along the Truckee Route alone. Of such magnitude was the toll paid in the Great Migration. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 A History of California, The American Period by Robert Glass-Cleland. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 18, Statehood While the immigration spoken of in the previous chapter was in progress, California was face to face with a serious problem of establishing a government adequate to meet the new conditions. The American conquest in fact had ushered in an era of political transition. During the first three years of American possession, from 1846 to 1849, the newly acquired territory enjoyed almost as many rulers as in the old days of Mexican control, when frequently the province was blessed with two governors at a time and once with triplets. Sloat, who assumed command of California in his proclamation of July 7th, 1846, gave place to Stockton before the month was out. Stockton, despite the claims of General Kearney, remained in control until shortly after the middle of January, 1847. He then passed over the governorship to Fremont, who in turn was superseded by Kearney early in March. Within sixty days Kearney was succeeded by Mason and Mason resigned in favor of Riley on April 12th, 1849. During much of this period, particularly after the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Dalgo, the political status the newly acquired territory was in a state of curious uncertainty. The government during this year has been described as, quote, part military and part civil and part no government at all. The laws were mostly variant and variously conceived. The civil law, the Pike County Code, the New York Code, the Common Law, Maritime Law, the Law of the Plains, Military Law, and the Minors Law were all jumbled up together, and the courts were as unique as the government and the laws. They were American, Mexican, military, civil, and with a good degree of the vigilante, end quote. Presumably under international law, the laws and institutions of Mexico already existing in California should have remained in effect until definitely superseded by congressional legislation. As a matter of fact, however, the Mexican form of government was so ill-suited to American tastes in the needs of the country that this theory, except in occasional instances, was wholly abandoned, and then the successive governors found themselves compelled to work out a more practical program of their own. The most striking instance of the few attempts to maintain institutions of Mexican origin was in the case of the Alcalde appointments made by Commodore Stockton. One of the Americans who sat in this seat of old-time Spanish authority was a Reverend Walter Colton chosen by Stockton to serve as Alcalde at Monterey. For three years Colton filled his office, the duties of which he thus described, quote, by the laws and usages of the country, the judicial functions of the Alcalde of Monterey extend to all cases, civil and criminal arising within the Middle Department of California. He is also the guardian of the public peace, and is charged with the maintenance of law and order whenever and wherever threatened or violated. He must arrest, fine, imprisoned, or sentenced to the public works, the lawless and refractory, and he must enforce through his executive powers the decisions and sentences which he has pronounced in his judicial capacity. His prerogatives and official duties extend over all the multiplied interests and concerns of his department, and reach to every grievance and crime from the jar that trembles around the domestic hearth to the guilt which throws its gloom of the gallows in the grave, end quote. Colton's apt description shows plainly enough why the American population of California, trained as it was to cherish the jury system and the constitutional limitation of authority, vigorously criticized the arbitrary powers lodged in the hands of the Alcaldies, and did not willingly accept any other institutions of Spanish origin. As a result of this attitude, except in those communities like Monterey where the newcomers formed a comparatively small element of the population, the Mexican laws were never applied, or, having been put into effect, were speedily rendered ineffectual by the strong opposition that developed against them. So it came about that in most of the distinctively American settlements, such as Sacramento or the mining communities, whatever government existed was almost wholly of local origin. In San Francisco, where the government for a time was lodged in the hands of an Alcalde and Allunto Miento, or town council, the settlers finally took matters into their own hands following a period in which two rival councils each claimed to be legally elected, and established a body new both to American and Spanish law, known as the Legislative Assembly. This assembly, consisting of fifteen members chosen by popular vote, sought to abolish the former Allunto Miento and Alcalde, and with three justices of the peace, exercise all the functions of the city government. The members of the two rival councils resigned, but the Alcalde, Thaddeus M. Leavenworth, refused to recognize the authority of the assembly and appealed to General Persephone F. Smith, military commander, and Governor Riley, who held his office under federal appointment for support. Both Smith and Riley pronounced the assembly an illegal body and advised Leavenworth to maintain his office. The result was a temporary deadlock in San Francisco politics that brought to a head one of the most perplexing questions both from a legal and practical standpoint that the United States government has ever faced in its dealings with new territory. In the technical sense of the term California was plainly neither a state nor a territory, and yet after the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe de Algo it was scarcely possible, in any constitutional sense, for the federal authorities to hold her people under military rule. But this latter form of government, however unconstitutional it might be, was the only alternative to anarchy, and with good Anglo-Saxon common sense the President prolonged it until the people of California themselves made its continuance no longer necessary. Naturally there was opposition to a form of government which owed its existence to circumstances rather than to law, and many of the California immigrants by 1849 were advocating a kind of squatter sovereignty under which the settlers themselves should set up a government to supersede the authority exercised by the federal officials. Locally, as in San Francisco, this popular assumption of authority developed into a conflict with the government already in existence. As the months went by and Congress deadlocked by the slavery issue failed to set up a territorial form of government or meet the situation in any other way, California faced a dubious future. Military authority was fast outliving its usefulness and there seemed no prospect of having it displaced by a regularly organized territorial government. To save themselves from anarchy in this emergency the people were compelled to act upon their own responsibility. As early as December 11, 1848 the citizens of San Jose came together to consider the propriety of establishing a provisional territorial government for the protection of life and property. San Francisco, Sacramento, and Sonoma from time to time held similar meetings and by the spring of 1849 only the expectation that the national congress then in session would fulfill the promises of the federal government and establish a territorial organization restrained the people from framing a government of their own. When this hope failed with the adjournment of Congress in March, California so long sans law, sans order, sans government definitely set about organizing her own government and making an end of a situation that had always been anomalous and was now fast becoming desperate because of the turbulent restless hordes the gold migration was daily bringing within her borders. With unexpected and not entirely welcome suddenness the leadership in this new movement was taken by Governor Riley who issued a proclamation for the election of delegates to a general constitutional convention. At the same time the governor condemned the settlers organization in San Francisco as an illegal body. This resulted in an immediate conflict between Riley and the leaders of the squatter sovereignty program and for a time it looked as though the whole movement would end in failure. Fortunately however the settlers were more interested in securing order and settled government than in maintaining a technical right and when common sense had gotten the better of local pride they prepared to carry out the plan proposed by Riley. The election of delegates to the convention was set for August 1st and on the same day the people were instructed to choose the local officials known to Mexican law to serve until the state government should formally be established. The territory was divided into 10 districts from which a total of 37 delegates were to be returned. Of these 37 Monterey, San Jose and San Francisco were each to send five delegates, Sacramento, Sanova, San Joaquin and Los Angeles four each and San Diego, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo two each. When the convention finally met however it was found that the number of delegates specified in the governor's proclamation had been disregarded by many of the districts and a total of 48 representatives had been returned instead of 37. As most of these additional delegates came from northern districts the final apportionment in the convention gave the north 38 members and the south only 10. As a whole the convention was typical of the people who made up California in the fifties. Its membership included eight native Californians, among whom the most conspicuous were Mariana Guadalupe Vallejo of Sonoma, Jose Antonio Carrillo of Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara's sole delegate Pablo de la Guerra. All of these were excellent representatives of the Mexican regime. Tomasol Larkin and Don Able Stearns of Los Angeles belonged to the older foreign residents who had come to the coast long before the conquest and had acquired something of a common interest and a common outlook with the Californians. Most of the delegates, however, were typical of the new day and the new order ushered in by American occupation. They were nearly all young men of serious purpose, not exceptionally well versed in political affairs but practical enough to frame a constitution suited to the needs of the time and little influence by peculiar hobbies or personal political ambitions. From the standpoint of occupations, lawyers, ranchers, and merchants predominated, but nearly every other profession or business was also represented. For in its composition the convention was a true cross-section of the entire population. In accordance with the date set by Riley's proclamation, a few of the delegates met at Monterey on September 1st, but it was not until the following Tuesday the 4th that the convention was formally organized. Dr. Robert Semple, of tall stature and bare-flag fame, was elected president and Captain William G. Marcy of the Stevenson Regiment was chosen secretary. The meetings of the convention were held in a schoolhouse newly erected by the American Alcalde through the labors of convicts, the taxes on rum, and the banks of the gamblers. In honor of its builder it was known as Colton Hall. The convention met in the upper story which consisted of a single room, some 60 feet long by 25 feet wide. The following paragraph, from a contemporary description, gives a picture of the convention and its meeting place. Quote, Arrailing, running across the middle of the hall, divided the members from the spectators. The former was seated at four long tables, the president occupying a rostrum at the further end, over which were suspended two American flags and an extraordinary picture of Washington, evidently the work of a native artist. The appearance of the whole body was exceedingly dignified and intellectual, and parliamentary decorum was strictly observed." The most skillful member of the convention in the art of political manipulation, and in many respects the most capable statesman as well, was William M. Gwynne of Tennessee, whose future for ten years was to be inseparably connected with the history of the state he was then helping to create. Through Gwynne's foresight, copies of the recently drafted Iowa Constitution were printed for the use of the convention, and the document thus became a sort of working model for the guidance of the delegates. Other state constitutions were also made use of, notably that of New York. But for some of the peculiar needs of the new Commonwealth there was no pattern. To meet these the delegates were forced back upon their own ingenuity and common sense. It is scarcely necessary here to attempt a further description of the Constitution of 1849. Drafted under peculiar conditions by men little used to politics, and designed to meet an emergency the document was naturally defective in many particulars, and nearly thirty years later had to be abandoned for a new instrument. Nevertheless it met the needs of the time with a fair measure of satisfaction, and was not an unworthy product of the earnest and conscientious, if not brilliant, men who framed it. On most matters the convention worked without friction, but an occasional hotly debated issue broke the otherwise harmonious sessions. One of these disturbing questions was that of the eastern limits of the state. To the west the Pacific Ocean settled the boundary beyond dispute. The northern boundary had been definitely fixed along the 42nd parallel by the Treaty of 1819 with Spain. Similarly the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had determined the international line to the south. But on the east there was an empire of uncertain extent, vaguely known to the Spaniards as part of their province of Alta California. Whether the territory to be included in the new state should follow these old boundaries to the Rocky Mountains, or stop at the Sierra Nevada was the vital question before the convention. Two parties soon formed over this issue. The one led by Gwynn, Halleck, Sherwood, and a few others might properly be called the large state party from their advocacy of the Rocky Mountains as the eastern limit. The second group sought just as vigorously to confine the state between the Pacific and the Sierra. After prolonged debate, by a vote of 32 to 7, a compromise line was chosen, fixing the boundary as we have it now. The motives behind this division of the convention into large and small state parties were not particularly complex. Those who advocated the wider boundary believed that it more nearly approximated the historical limits of California under Spanish rule, a view entirely correct, and that the larger state could eventually bear the expenses of a government more easily than one of smaller size. There was also an immediate need for courts in the enforcement of law in the region beyond the Sierra through which the immigrants were coming into California. Finally, the members of this party believed that Congress would more readily admit the state if the convention set its eastern boundary at the Rockies instead of at the Sierra Nevada. The small state advocates, curiously enough, argued from the same premises to a directly opposite conclusion. It would be impossible, they said, for a state located on the Pacific to administer a government for the vast semi-desert region across the Sierra. Nor did they believe that the people of California had any right to extend their boundaries so far as to include the Mormon inhabitants of Utah who were already seeking to establish their own state of desert. Furthermore, it would be utterly preposterous for the convention to expect Congress to admit California to the Union with the larger boundaries proposed, and the attempt to secure congressional sanction for the Constitution under such circumstances would only result in a complete rejection of the plea for statehood. It should be remarked, also, that the older historical writers commonly ascribed to the party advocating the larger boundaries a sort of Machiavellian shrewdness by which, through subsequent division of the enormous state, they helped to provide for the extension of slavery to the coast. This tradition, which never had much foundation, in fact, of late years, has been so thoroughly disproven as to require little comment here. The truth is, the people who emigrated to California from the Eastern States, whatever may have been their views in the older communities from which they came, realized clearly enough that slavery had no place in the new environment and never supported it in any way as a local institution. The unanimous vote of the Constitutional Convention in favor of the clause which read, quote, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment for crimes, shall ever be tolerated in this state, unquote, ought to be clear enough evidence of the attitude in California toward this question. And one feels free to dismiss the whole subject without further consideration. Amid the firing of salutes and an impromptu celebration, the members of the Convention completed their work and signed the Constitution on Saturday afternoon, October 13, 1849. Bayard Taylor, who was present at the scene, paid tribute to the framers of the document in the following words, quote, The questions they had to settle were often perplexing from the remarkable position of the country in the absence of all precedent. Besides, many of them were men unused to legislation. Some had for years past known no other life than that of the camp. Others had nearly forgotten all the law and the wildlife of the mountains. Others, again, were familiar only with that practiced under the rule of a different race. Yet the courtesies of debate have never been wantonly violated, and the result of every conflict of opinion has been a quiet acquiescence on the part of the minority. Now at the conclusion the only feeling is that of general joy and congratulation, end quote. November 13, a Tuesday, was fixed as a date for submitting the Constitution to the people for ratification. At the same election, state officials, including a governor and member of the legislature, were to be chosen and also the two federal congressmen to which the state, according to its population, was entitled. The first legislature provided the Constitution carried was to meet at San Jose, the capital on December 15, 1849. Rain, apathy, difficulty in reaching the polling centers, and various other causes reduced the vote on election day to an unsatisfactory minimum. From a population of approximately 100,000, most of whom were men of voting age, only 12,875 ballots were returned. The lightness of the vote, however, was much more than counterbalanced by the percentage in favor of the Constitution. Only 811 votes were cast against it, while the total affirmative vote was 12,064. From among a number of candidates, Peter H. Burnett, a former Oregon pioneer, was chosen governor, and Gilbert and Wright were elected to Congress. From all accounts the election was conducted with reasonable honesty, but circumstances and public sentiment alike threw embarrassing legal regulations to the wind. Some of the candidates spent both money and energy in their campaigns, and in addition, Governor Riley, Halleck, and President Tyler's personal representative, Thomas Butler King, waged a very vigorous fight to ensure the ratification of the Constitution. In the mining sections, which then contained the bulk of the state's population, the event was regarded with that semi-humorous attitude typical of the Western pioneer toward most political questions. The choosing of candidates from lists, nearly all of whom were entirely unknown, was very amusing, wrote Bayard Taylor. Names, in many instances, were made to stand for principles. Accordingly, a Mr. Fair got many votes. One of the candidates who had been on the river a few days previous, wearing a high crown silk hat with a narrow brim, lost about twenty votes on that account. Some went no farther than to vote for those who they actually knew. One who took the opposite extreme justified himself in this wise. When I left home, said he, I was determined to go it blind. I went it blind in coming to California and I'm not going to stop now. I voted for the Constitution and I've never seen the Constitution. I voted for all the candidates and I don't know a damn one of them." The ratification of the Constitution and the election of state officials by no means solved California's problem of statehood. The great difficulty was to secure the sanction of Congress for an act which no congressional statute had authorized and for which no precedent could anywhere be found. The chief obstacle, however, in the way of California's admission to the union, was slavery, the same barrier that had prevented Congress from establishing a territorial form of government for the province, and which now, for a number of weary and dangerous months, threatened the state with a chaos bordering upon revolution. It was once pretty generally believed that the annexation of California was due to the sinister influence of the South, which, forever reaching out for more slave territory, finally brought about the Mexican War in order to obtain California as a slave state. This view, which neither facts nor logic ever justified, has been elsewhere effectually disproved. But while slavery did not figure as a motive for the acquisition of California, it undeniably did figure in the heated conflict over the disposition of the territory once it had come into the possession of the United States. Little thought seems to have been given to the establishment of slavery in California, even by the most radical Southern members of Congress, until David Wilmot to Pennsylvania introduced his famous amendment to the appropriation bill, which President Polk had requested from Congress to enable him to open confidential negotiations with Mexico. The Wilmot proviso, first brought forward in August 1846, aimed at the exclusion of slavery from all territory which the United States might secure from Mexico as a result of the war. The Southern representatives were at first strangely apathetic regarding this amendment, a measure which assuredly would have caused an immediate storm of opposition had any Southerner at that time attached much importance to California as a slave holding state, and the House voted favorably upon it. Its passage through the Senate also seemed assured until, in the closing minutes of a very crowded session, one of its own supporters, honest but locations John Davis of Massachusetts, talked it to an unexpected death. In the next session of Congress, the pro-slavery element were in a very different temper regarding the Mexican session, without much hope that slavery would flourish on a large scale in New Mexico or California because of the natural obstacles in its path. The South was almost a unit in demanding the right to share at least nominally in the fruits of the conquest. The practical question as to whether Negroes could be carried to California and profitably used there was wholly lost sight of in the determination to maintain the equality of slave states with free. The fight over California in the acquisition of which the South was much less interested than New England in the West thus became an intense bitter struggle over a principle that involved far more than the status of the territory in question. By 1850 the question whether California should be free or nominally slave had brought the Union face to face with one of the few real crises in its history. Three parties were definitely in the field. Following the earlier lead of Polk who believed that slavery in any part of California could never be more than an abstract question, a very large group of moderates wished to extend the line of the Missouri Compromise 36 degrees 30 minutes to the Pacific. A radical Southern element however was demanding the whole area for slavery and advancing the new doctrine that Congress had no authority to legislate against slavery in any of the national territory. Finally a decidedly vigorous party in the North was insisting that the principle of the Wilmot proviso should be adopted and that the whole of the seeded region must be kept free. For at least once in the course of history the force of circumstance aided the cause of right. Following international law since California had been free under Mexican rule it was difficult to see how slavery could exist in the territory after its acquisition by the United States unless Congress specifically imposed it there. Such positive laws the anti-slavery majority in the House would not pass under any consideration. Furthermore the action of the people of California indefinitely excluding slavery by their constitution made it doubly certain that Congress would never force the system upon the state. The South however was too thoroughly antagonized to yield even before these odds. Threats of secession were freely made and thus strangely enough the Union faced disruption as a consequence of the great territorial gains of the Mexican war. With the country as a whole hotly divided over the slave or free state issue and the situation in California demanding a speedy settlement to prevent grave consequences among that impatient population Congress came together again on December 1849. Among the members of that body however was a spirit of antagonism and discord augured ill for the immediate admission of the state. During this session President Taylor whose special agent had done so much to encourage the adoption of the Constitution repeatedly urged upon Congress the necessity of admitting California and denied the right of that body to interfere with the free choice of the people of the prospective state whether they favored or opposed slavery. His plan called for the settlement of the California question on its own merits divorced from other troublesome issues connected with slavery which were then agitating the country. But Taylor was not to succeed in his plan. Intent not only upon solving the California problem but also upon settling the other questions in which slavery was concerned Henry Clay the great Compromiser insisted upon an inclusive program that embraced nearly all of the critical issues then before the nation. Linked thus with some half a dozen other questions the admission of California experienced a prolonged delay. The debate on Clay's compromise continued month after month. In the Senate the great triumvirate of Webster Clay and Calhoun the country's foremost statesman for half a century met in battle array for the last time. Calhoun died before the session closed. Webster marred a reputation and undeservedly lost political favor by his seventh of March speech. Clay an old man worn out by sickness and anxiety labored incessantly to affect the compromises through which alone he believed the union could be preserved. Before the summer was well begun President Taylor who had consistently adhered to the admission of California divorced from all other issues was taken suddenly ill and died. Fillmore his successor favored the plan of finding a common solution for all of the slavery problems. But even with the support of the executive the compromise measures proposed by Clay could not be passed. The admission of California the chief stumbling block in Clay's plan was opposed on the ground that the people there had no shadow of authority to frame a constitution. That the boundaries of the proposed state were too large and could be fixed only by congressional action. That the election at which the constitution was adopted was both irregular and unlawfully conducted. And finally that the president had brought improper influence to bear upon the drafting and adoption of the constitution. For some weeks longer the deadlock continued until at last the compromise measure in which Clay alone saw hope of adjusting the nation's difficulties began to fall apart. Depressed in spirit and almost ready for death the old Kentucky and left Washington for the seacoast where he hoped to regain a little measure of his fast ebbing strength. In the meanwhile the internal situation in California had become acute. For two years the people had waited in vain for Congress to establish a territorial form of government. Another year had almost passed since the drafting of their constitution and statehood seemed as far as ever from realization. It was during these months of debate and delay in Congress while a problem of law and order and settled government was daily becoming more critical around them that the people of the state talked openly of declaring their independence and of setting up a separate republic on the Pacific. Thus bringing to pass the old idea of Langsford W. Hastings and of other empire dreamers in the days before the Mexican War. But the measures Clay failed to carry in combination were finally voted favorably upon when presented separately. One by one the items of his compromise were embodied in separate bills and passed by Congress. The admission of California was finally carried in the Senate on August 13th, 1850 by a vote of 38 to 14. On the seventh of the next month it was ratified in the House by a vote of 150 to 56. Two days later, September 9th, 1850 the bill was signed by Fillmore and California had become a state. To California this of course meant the dawn of a new and glorious era and to the nation also it met ultimately more than ever men dreamed of at that time. But with this lasting blessing came a temporary curse for out of the admission of California grew that dark sequence of slavery and free soil issues the Kansas Nebraska bill the question of squatter sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision which led up to the election of 1860 and the Civil War. The local significance of California's admission was thus for a decade actually secondary to its national importance. End of Chapter 18