It is the wish and design of the United States to provide for California, with the least possible delay, a free government, similar to those in her other territories, and the people will soon be called upon to exercise their rights as freemen in electing their own representatives to make such laws as may be deemed best for their interest and welfare. But, until this can be done, the laws now in existence, and not in conflict with the constitution of the United States, will be continued until changed by competent authority; and those persons who hold office will continue in the same for the present, provided they swear to support the constitution and to faithfully perform their duty.

The undersigned hereby absolves all the inhabitants of California from any further allegiance to the Republic of Mexico, and will consider them as citizens of the United States. Those who remain quiet and peaceable will be respected in their rights and protected in them. Should any take up arms against or oppose the government of this territory, or instigate others to do so, they will be considered as enemies and treated accordingly.

When Mexico forced war upon the United States, time did not permit the latter to invite the Californians as friends to join her standard, but compelled her to take possession of the country to prevent any European power from seizing upon it, and, in doing so, some excesses and unauthorized acts were no doubt committed by persons employed in the service of the United States, by which a few of the inhabitants have met with a loss of property. Such losses will be duly investigated, and those entitled to remuneration will receive it.

California has for many years suffered greatly from domestic troubles. Civil wars have been the poison fountains which have sent forth trouble and pestilence over her beautiful land. Now those fountains are dried up, the star-spangled banner floats over California, and as long as the sun continues to shine upon her, so long will it float there, over the natives of the land as well as others who have found a home in her bosom; and, under it, agriculture must improve, and the arts and sciences flourish, as seed in a rich and fertile soil.

The Americans and Californians are now but one people. Let us cherish one wish, one hope, and let that be for the peace and quiet of our country. Let us, as a band of brothers, unite and emulate each other in our exertions to benefit and improve this beautiful, and, which soon must be, our happy and prosperous home.

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Done at Monterey, capital of California, this first day of March, A. D. 1847, and in the seventyyear of independence of the United States. S. W. KEARNY,

Brigadier-General U. S. A. and Governor of California.

Lient. E. Bryant records that "The proclamation of General Kearny gave great satisfaction to the native as well as the immigrant population of the country." That was probably true as regarded the immigrants and some of the natives, but as to a majority of Californians it was not correct. They had been forced to surrender upon agreed conditions, signed at Couenga, and those conditions had been ignored. It was a breach of faith, and they were justified in doubting the integrity of those into whose hands they had fallen.

On the eleventh of March, orders reached Fremont that satisfied him of the intention on the part of the home government to sustain neither Commodore Stockton nor himself. He received orders to either disband the California battalion or muster it into the United States service; and that force refused to be mustered, and asked for their pay. Fremont immediately visited Kearny at Monterey, to see if his men could be paid, and was ordered to return and ship by water such of his command to Monterey as would not muster, and to follow it by land.

Upon Fremont's return to Los Angeles, he found that Col. P. St. George Cook, of the Mormon battalion, had arrived during his absence and demanded possession of his artillery, the demand not hav ing been complied with. Col. R. B. Mason (afterwards governor) visited Los Angeles with the intention of mustering out or into the United States service the battalion. He was followed early in May by General Kearny, when Fremont yielded to the pressure, and on May 31, 1847, started with General Kearny overland for the east, a prisoner. He was tried at Fortress Monroe, and convicted by a military court-martial of having been guilty of mutiny, disobedience and disorderly conduct, and was sentenced to forfeit his commission in the army. The president approved the finding of the court, but ordered him on duty again. This he declined, and abandoned the military service. A few years later he narrowly escaped being made president of the United States, because of the opinion that had become rooted in the minds of the people, that he had through jealousy been made a victim by his superiors in rank, because of his justly-earned fame in the acquisition of California. At present (1881) he is governor of Arizona.

With Fremont's departure dissentions ceased, and Col. R. B. Mason, of the first United States dragoons, assumed the duties of governor, with W. T. Sherman (now one of the world's great captains), as his adjutant-general, and H. W. Halleck (the late commanding general of the United States army), as secretary of state. Colonel Mason died of cholera in St. Louis, in 1849, and his widow married Gen. D. C. Buell, and is now living in Kentucky.

The administration of Governor Mason commenced May 31, 1847, and ended April 13, 1849. It was, therefore, during his administration that gold was discovered at Coloma, on the nineteenth of January, 1848. Fourteen days later, a treaty was made between the United States and Mexico, that gave to the former the territory of California and New Mexico, for which the United States government paid that country $15,000,000, besides assuming an indemnity debt of $3,500,000, which Mexico owed citizens of our republic; neither of the contracting parties knowing, at the time, of the discovery of gold, for the particulars of which the reader is referred to another chapter devoted to that subject.

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When the people on this coast began to realize that the royal metal lay hidden away in the foothills and along the mountain streams of the Sierra, a change, sudden and absolute, came o'er the spirit of their dream," leaving the desire for sudden wealth as the only predominent impulse that moved the masses and controlled their acts. Those who had come to California intent upon making in this country their permanent homes, suddenly lost sight of that fact, and became possessed of an irresistible desire to abandon them that they might dig wealth from nature's secret places, and then return to enjoy the fruits of their brief labors. During 1848, those only were benefited by the gold discovery who were residents of the country, or upon the coast. But the herald had gone forth into the highways and by-places of earth to summon the adventuresome of all countries to the El Dorado of the world.

The news of the discovery of gold in 1848 did not reach Oregon until the last of August, when it was brought by a vessel that sailed into the Columbia from the Sandwich Islands. Immediately there was great excitement, and a company with twenty wagons started overland to California, while as many as could get passage on the few vessels that were accessible went to San Francisco by sea. Others passed down the old trail through Shasta valley. The wagons turned off in the Rogue River valley and followed up the emigrant road to Pit river, where they came upon the wagon trail made by Peter Lassen and a party of emigrants a few weeks before. This they followed, and overtook them near Lassen's Peak, at the head of Feather river, out of provisions and unable to move. By the aid of the Oregonians the party reached the valley, being the first company to enter California by the Lassen road, and the Oregonians being the first to take wagons from Oregon to California.

The estimated population of California on the first of January, 1849, was :

Early in the spring the first vessel came laden with gold-seekers, who were followed in rapid succession by others. This was the premonition of the tidal-wave that swept this shore that and the ensuing year from the outside world. Between the twelfth of April, 1849, and the twenty-eighth of February, 1850, there arrived in San Francisco 43,824 passengers, of whom 31,725 were American men, 951 American women, 10,394 foreign men, 754 foreign women.

At the same time that the high seas were bringing this throng of humanity to our shores, a steady stream of immigration was pouring over the mountains from the plains. The experience of Lassen's party in 1848 was repeated the next year, when a large emigration came over that route, and became snowed in and out of provisions on the head-waters of the Feather river. When word of their precarious situation reached the valley, the people of San Francisco, Stockton and Sacramento, who remembered the sad fate of the Donner party, made a great effort in their behalf. Their condition was represented to Gen. Percifer F. Smith, who, with the consent of Gen. Bennett Riley, the military governor, placed one hundred thousand dollars in the hands of Major Rucker, United States quartermaster, to purchase animals and supplies for their relief. The military authorities were the more moved to this act of humanity because General Wilson, United States Indian agent, was among the sufferers. John H. Peoples, who was afterwards drowned in one of the Trinidad expeditions, was selected to lead the relief party. About the first of October, Mr. Peoples started with twenty-four pack-animals, three wagons, and fifty-six beef-cattle, having twenty-five men in his party. He found the emigrants in the snow on Pit river, out of food and suffering with the scurvy. On the first of December he brought in fifty families to Lassen's ranch, including General Wilson's, the last thirty miles being traversed through a blinding snow-storm. The majority of the emigrants settled in the head of Sacramento valley, or went to the Trinity mines in the early spring.

It needs but a glance at this table to see the necessity that existed of some acceptable form of government for this territory, which was receiving those tens of thousands, coming from the pulpit (but few), the college, the bar, the factory, the shop, the farm, the dens of vice, the prison-ships and penal colonies of the world.

Gold was discovered January 19; the treaty of peace was signed February 2; the United States ratified that treaty March 10; Mexico ratified it May 24; official news of the gold discovery was sent to Washington August 17, and the official news of peace was received by Governor Mason in September; all in 1848.

From the seventh of July, 1846, when Sloat hoisted the flag at Monterey, until the news was received officially in September, 1848, that peace was declared, a military governor was the proper head of the government here. From that time forward there was no law existing, under which the military branch of the United States government could, yet it did, continue to control the country. Gen. Bennett Riley superceded R. B. Mason as governor April 13, 1849, and upon going into office, found that a spirit of discontent pervaded the people, because of the uncertainty that seemed to exist in regard to what laws were operative in the territory. They were given to understand that those existing at the time of its conquest remained in force within its limits, provided that they were not contrary to the constitution of the United States, and would continue to do so until changed by competent authority. This fact was not a popular one with the incoming inhabitants, especially the American portion of it, and the result was that but little respect was paid to any law except that of the revolver.

With such a state of affairs, General Riley, under advice of the president, deemed it advisable to set on foot a territorial organization, although not authorized by law to do so. Consequently, June 3, 1849, he issued a call for an election of delegates to take place on the first day of the coming August, at which time alcaldes (justices of the peace) and judges of the courts of the first instance were also to be elected in places entitled to such officers. The election occurred in accordance with the call, and the delegates assembled at Monterey, September 1, when they commenced the organization of a territorial government by framing a constitution, and, completing their labors, adjourned October 13, 1849. The constitution was submitted to the people on the thirteenth of the next month (November), at which time a general election of state officers occurred. The vote was almost solid in its favor, twelve thousand and sixty-four having been cast for, and only eight hundred and eleven against its adoption. At the election the votes cast for governor were :—

John McDougall was elected lieutenant-governor, and Edward Gilbert and George W. Wright were chosen to represent the territory in congress. The light vote, where a few weeks later a population of 107,069 was claimed, proves conclusively that the miners cared but little for politics.

On the fifteenth of December the legislature met at San José, and on the twentieth of the same month General Riley turned over the governmental control of affairs to the care of the newly-elected territorial officials, and the machinery of state was set in motion. "The legislature of a thousand drinks" immediately inaugurated business, and on the sixth day went into a joint convention for the election of two United States senators to represent the state at Washington as soon as she became such by being admitted into the Union. The balloting resulted in the choice of John C. Fremont and William M. Gwin, who afterwards served for a few days in the capacity for which they were elected. Those gentlemen, our first senatorial representatives, witnessed that fierce contest of the Titans as they struggled against each other in congress over the question of slavery, a firebrand the California constitution had hurled into their midst, igniting a flame quenched only by the shock of the legions that melted away under Grant and Lee around Richmond.

The people on the Pacific coast had said in their organic law that slavery should not be tolerated