As independent members, Sutter, General Vallejo, Thomas O. Larkin, Dr. Semple, Wright, Hastings, Brown, McCarver, Rodman S. Price, Snyder, and others lend their aid. From the first day the advocates of slavery and freedom battle in oratorical storm. The forensic conflict rages for days; first on the matter of freedom, finally on that of boundary.
Freedom's hosts receive a glorious reinforcement in the arrival of John C. Fremont.
After bitter struggles the convention casts the die for freedom. The Constitution of the State is so adopted. While the publicists, led by Fremont and Gwin, seek to raise the fabric of state, the traders and adventurers, the hosts of miners springing to life under the chance touch of James W. Marshall's finger, on January 24, 1848, are delving or trading for gold.
Poor, ill-starred Marshall! He wanders luckless among the golden fields. He gains no wealth. He toils as yet, unthinking of his days of old age and lonely poverty. He does not look forward to being poor at seventy-three years, and dying in 1885 alone. The bronze monument over his later grave attests no fruition of his hopes. It only can show the warm-hearted gratitude of children yet unborn, the Native Sons of the Golden West. Cool old borderers like Peter Lassen, John Bidwell, P. B. Redding, Jacob P. Leese, Wm. B. Ide, Captain Richardson, and others are grasping broad lands as fair as the banks of Yarrow. They permit the ill-assorted delegates to lay down rules for the present and laws for the future. The State can take care of itself. Property-holders appear and aid. Hensley, Henley, Bartlett, and others are cool and able. While the Dons are solemnly complimented in the convention, their rights are gracefully ignored.
The military governor, General Bennett Riley, stands back. He justly does not throw his sword into the scales. Around him are rising men yet to be heroes on a grander field of action than the mud floors of a Monterey adobe. William T. Sherman, the only Northern American strategist, is a lieutenant of artillery. Halleck, destined to be commander-in-chief of a million men, is only a captain of engineers and acting Secretary of State. Graceful, unfortunate, accomplished Charles P. Stone is a staff officer. Ball's Bluff and Fort Lafayette are far in the misty unknown.
The convention adjourns SINE DIE in October 13, 1849. It has settled the great point of freedom on the Pacific Coast. It throws out the granite Sierras as an eternal bulwark against advancing slavery. The black shame is doomed never to cross the Rockies, and yet the great struggle for the born nobility of manhood has been led by Shannon, an alien Irishman. The proudest American blood followed Dr. Gwin's pro-slavery leading. The two senators named are Gwin and the hitherto unrewarded Fremont. Wright and Gilbert are the two congressmen. Honest Peter H. Burnett, on November 13, is elected the first governor of California. He is chosen by the people, and destined to live to see nearly fifty years of peaceful prosperity on the golden coast.
While this struggle is being waged on the Pacific, at Washington the giant statesmen of those famous ante-bellum days close in bitter strife. The political future of the great West, now known to be so rich, is undecided. It is the desperate desire of the South to keep California out of the Union, unless the part falling under the Wilmot proviso act south of 36 deg 30 min is given to slavery.
The national funds to pay for the "Gadsden purchase" will be withheld unless slavery can be extended. The great struggle brings out all the olden heroes of the political arena. Benton, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Davis, King, Sam Houston, Foote, Seward, John Bell, and Douglas, are given a golden prize to tourney for. In that press of good knights, many a hard blow is struck. The victor and vanquished stand to-day, looming gigantic on the dim horizon of the past. It is the dark before the dawn of the War of the Rebellion.
It was before these days of degenerated citizenship, when the rising tide of gold floats the corrupt millionnaire and syndicate's agent into the Senate. The senator's toga then wrapped the shoulders of our greatest men. No bonanza agents—huge moral deformities of heaped-up gold—were made senatorial hunchbacks by their accidental millions.
No vulgar clowns dallied with the country's interests in those old days when Greek met Greek. It was a gigantic duel of six leaders: Webster, Seward, and Clay, pitted against Calhoun, Davis, and Foote. Pausing to refresh their strength for the final struggle, the noise of battle rolled away until the early days of 1850. California was kept out.