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How California Came to be Admitted!.

by Rockwell D!. Hunt, Ph!. D

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The question of slavery extension made California an integral part of the territory of the United States; the birth, a half-century ago, of the free State of California, inflicted a mortal wound upon the enemy of human freedom!.

It had long been an admitted principle in American politics that free states could be admitted only when accompanied by slave states!. Thus, from almost the beginning of the century, there had been maintained in the National Senate an equality of state representation between North and South!. After the admission of Texas in 1845 there were twenty-eight states, in fifteen of which slavery existed, but the admission of Iowa in 1846 and Wisconsin in 1848 restored the numerical equality between free and slave states!. In the meantime California was rapidly developing, and, complaining at the absence of civil organization, she clamored more and more loudly for organized government!. What disposition was to be made of California was a question that possessed an absorbing interest!. The acquisition of the vast province of California was a chief act in the drama of our war with Mexico, an act whose national and political import was fraught with profound significance!. The Mexican war, far from being the result of a sudden movement, had been more or less distinctly anticipated, at least since the declaration of independence of Texas in 1836!. California, toward which the United States had cast many a covetous glance since the days of the Lewis and Clark expedition, came early to be definitely considered on of the richest prizes to be won by the conflict with Mexico, as evidenced by Commodore Jones’ premature conquest of Monterey in 1842, by the Frémont expeditions, which were largely the result of Senator [Thomas] Benton’s interest in the West, and by General Kearny’s expedition to New Mexico and California!.

The friends of slavery extension viewed with real alarm the rapidly growing population and the marvelously expanding industry of their North!. Their alarm was fast being transformed into desperation as it became clearer and clearer from a mere glance at the map that the vast Louisiana purchase and the Oregon country offered indefinite fields for freedom, but furnished scanty hope for slavery!. Besides, the Missouri compromise looked most forbidding!. The Southern leaders felt, and felt deeply, that something drastic must be done, for they never would admit the predominance of the North!. “What, acknowledge inferiority!” At all hazards, therefore, the South, perceiving the North rapidly outstripping her in population, yet trained for generations to a feeling of superiority and accustomed to a habit of command, determined to see slavery not only protected where already existing, but to perpetuate it as a living, growing power!. How tremendous a mistake it was to identify the development of the South with the presence of human slavery and to suppose her very existence bound up with the extension of the “peculiar institution” is just coming to be perceived, but cannot be fully understood until another half century of freedom and reconstruction shall have left its benign influences of progress and light!.

The world knows how the actuating causes in California’s conquest by the United States became the rock of offense upon which our Union well nigh split!. By virtue of the abolition of slavery throughout the republic of Mexico in 1829 the province of California fell into the possession of the United States with no taint of that institution, and the express prohibitive law was an inherent obstacle at the very threshold of the desire of the South!. Moreover, grave difficulties must need to be settled before slavery could be introduced into California!. If the Missouri compromise were to be made applicable to the newly acquired territory the spoils of the Mexican war must at least be divided on the parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes!.

While the national issue was yet seeking clear definition the question of slavery in California settled itself with astonishing rapidity by sheer force of local conditions that were wholly without precedent!. It was observed that neither the soil, nor the climate, nor the products of any portion of California were adapted to slave labor, and that property in slaves would be utterly insecure here!. The contemporaneous press reflects the views of the more intelligent Americans in California!. The Californian of March 15, 1848, says:

“We entertain several reasons why slavery should not be introduced here!. First, it is wrong for it to exist anywhere!. Second, not a single instance of precedence exists at present in the shape of physical bondage of our fellow men!. Third, there is no excuse whatever for its introduction into this country (by virtue of climate or physical conditions)!. Fourth, Negroes have equal rights to life, liberty, health and happiness with the whites!. Fifth, it is every individual’s duty, to self and to society, to be occupied in useful employment sufficient to gain self-support!. Sixth, it would be the greatest calamity that the power of the United States could inflict upon California!. Seventh, we desire only a white population in California!. Eighth, we left the slave states because we did not like to bring up a family in a miserable, can’t-help-one’s-self condition!. Ninth, in conclusion we dearly love the ‘Union,’ but declare our positive preference for an independent condition of California to the establishment of any degree of slavery, or even the importation of free blacks!.”

Ten days later the other local journal, The California Star, said editorially:
“While we sincerely entertain these views, and value the union with the United States as highly as we should, the simple recognition of slavery here would be looked upon as a greater misfortune to the territory than though California had remained in its former state, or were at the present crisis, abandoned to its fate!. * * We believe, though slavery could not be generally introduced, that its recognition would blast the prospects of the country!. It would make it disreputable for the white man to labor for his bread, and it would thus drive off to other homes the only class of emigrants California wishes to see, the sober and industrious middle-class of society!. We would, therefore, on the part of 90 per cent of the population of this country, most solemnly protest against the introducing of this blight upon the prosperity of the home of our adoption!. We should look upon it as an unnecessary moral, intellectual and social curse to ourselves and posterity!.”

As soon as the effect of the discovery of gold began to be felt, when citizens of all ranks became diggers for the yellow metal, the introduction of slaves would have been even more vigorously opposed, and in truth, would have been plainly intolerable!. The editor of the Alta California, February 22, 1849, thus states the case:

“The majority—four-fifths, we believe—of the inhabitants of California are opposed to slavery!. They believe it to be an evil and a wrong * * and while they would rigidly and faithfully protect the vested rights of the South, they deem it a high moral duty to prevent its extension and aid its extinction by every honorable means!.”

Walter Colton had a clear perception of the exact situation when, in the Constitutional Convention at Monterey, he affirmed:
“The causes which exclude slavery from California lie within a nutshell!. All there are diggers, and free white diggers won’t dig with slaves!. They know they must dig themselves; they have come out here for that purpose, and they won’t degrade their calling by associating it with slave labor!. Self-preservation is the first law of nature!. They have nothing to do with slavery in the abstract or as it exists in other communities * * they must themselves swing the pick, and they won’t swing it by the side of ***** slaves!. That is the upshot of the whole business!.”

Alexander Buchner, in his Le Conquerant de la Californie, without hesitation affirms: “It was the gold of California that gave the fatal blow to the institution of slavery in the United States!.”

But the representatives of the South in national councils were by no means so ready to accept the inevitable and thereby to see their prize snatched from their hands, only to be used against themselves!. The military rule of Commodore Stockton and of General Kearny was unwelcome to the Californians, who were not slow to express their desire for organized government!. But Congress had been busy with the concerns of war, while the famous Wilmot proviso was crystallizing the forces of North and South!. At that early stage, while war was yet in progress, mature plans for the permanent territorial organization of California could hardly be expected!. Congress adjourned March 3, 1847, having made no provision for the new possession!. This first failure was in no sense remarkable; but that our National Legislature should for a second and third time absolutely fail to meet the exigencies of the case, while the Californians, under Mason’s and Riley’s rule, were reiterating their demands for civil organization, growling ominously meanwhile, is an indication, not that California was being ignored, but that she had become a stupendous issue, a mighty problem, the though of whose solution struck terror to the heart of the South!.

The war had ended, peace had been proclaimed, some solution must be reached!. There was but one!. The Constitutional Convention, which met at Monterey at the call of Acting Governor Riley, unanimously adopted the resolution that: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, unless for punishment of crimes, shall ever be tolerated in this State!.” While the unanimous vote for a free stateWww@QuestionHome@Com

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If you can't find anything on the internet on this major topic, you're not looking very hard!. California was part of the territory 'acquired' from Mexico in the Mexican-American War, and it was quickly proven to be the most valuable part when gold was discovered in 1848!. The Gold Rush of 1849 (thus, the 49ers) produced, astonishingly and unexpectedly, enough population for the territory to request admission to the Union!. This was problematic, as the constitution of the proposed state outlawed slavery (largely because of racism towards blacks on the part of the miners, who feared slaveowners using slaves to get more of the gold than their own solitary efforts) -- and if the state was admitted, it would violate the Missouri Compromise, which placed no slavery above the southern boundary of Missouri (and California was so big, it cut across that line)!. California's entry would also violate the Missouri Compromise's principle of paired admission -- one slave, one free!. Look up the resulting Compromise of 1850 to see how that was resolved (try wikipedia, if google doesn't serve)!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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