[Illustration: CATHEDRAL, MEXICO.]
Then followed in quick succession the victory at Contreras (kôn-trâ'ras), the storming of the heights of Churubusco, the victory at Molino del Rey (mô-lee'no del râ') the storming of the castle of Chapultepec' perched on a lofty rock, and the triumphal entry into Mexico (September 14). [8]
THE TERMS OF PEACE (1848).—The republic of Mexico was now a conquered nation and might have been added to our domain; but the victors were content to retain Upper California and New Mexico—the region from the Rio Grande to the Pacific, and from the Gila River to Oregon (compare maps, pp. 318, 330). For this great territory we paid Mexico $15,000,000, and in addition paid some $3,500,000 of claims our citizens had against her for injury to their persons or property. [9]
[Illustration: MONUMENT ON MEXICAN BOUNDARY.]
SHALL THE NEWLY ACQUIRED TERRITORY BE SLAVE SOIL OR FREE?—The treaty with Mexico having been ratified and the territory acquired, it became the duty of Congress to provide the people with some American form of government. There needed to be American governors, courts, legislatures, customhouses, revenue laws, in short a complete change from the Mexican way of governing. To do this would have been easy if it had not been for the fact that (in 1827) Mexico had abolished slavery. All the territory acquired was therefore free soil; but the South wished to make it slave soil. The question of the hour thus became, Shall New Mexico and California be slave soil or free soil? [10]
THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1848.—So troublesome was the issue that the two great parties tried to keep it out of politics. The Democrats in their platform in 1848 said nothing about slavery in the new territory, and the Whigs made no platform. This action of the two parties so displeased the antislavery Whigs and Wilmot Proviso Democrats that they held a convention, formed the Free-soil party, [11] nominated Martin Van Buren for President, and drew away so many New York Democrats from their party that the Whigs carried the state and won the presidential election. [12] On March 5, 1849 (March 4 was Sunday), Taylor [13] and Fillmore [14] were inaugurated.
[Illustration: DEMOCRATIC CARTOON IN CAMPAIGN OF 1848]
GOLD IN CALIFORNIA.—By this time the question of slavery in the new territory was still more complicated by the discovery of gold in California. Many years before this time a Swiss settler named J. A. Sutter had obtained a grant of land in California, where the city of Sacramento now stands. In 1848 James W. Marshall, while building a sawmill for Sutter at Coloma, some fifty miles away from Sutter's Fort, discovered gold in the mill race. Both Sutter and Marshall attempted to keep the fact secret, but their strange actions attracted the attention of a laborer, who also found gold. Then the news spread fast, and people came by hundreds and by thousands to the gold fields. [15] Later in the year the news reached the East, and when Polk in his annual message confirmed the rumors, the rush for California began. Some went by vessel around Cape Horn. Others took ships to the Isthmus of Panama, crossed it on foot, and sailed to San Francisco. Still others hurried to the Missouri to make the overland journey across the plains. [16] By August, 1849, some eighty thousand gold hunters, "forty-niners," as they came to be called, had reached the mines. [17]
[Illustration: A ROCKER.]
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA.—As Congress had provided no government, and as scarcely any could be said to exist, the people held a convention, made a free-state constitution, and applied for admission into the Union as a state.