CHAP. old, but lack their long, strange chapter of adventures.

XIX.

1850.

1849- This heterogeneous mixture of men was either without law, or were the makers and executors of their own law. Most of the companies that left the East together quarrelled and dissolved partnership, but they had very little litigation about it. Generally equity ruled in the division, for all men claimed equality, and public sentiment was sharp for the right. Theft was a crime little known, but, when discovered, the penalty was as swift as it was terrible. Lynchlaw was substantially the criminal code of the mines. Its severity held crime in check, but some frightful mistakes were made as to the objects of its stern sentences.

As to civil law, the country was utterly at sea. It had a governor in the person of the commandant of the military district it belonged to, but no government. The authority by which the governor held his power was doubtful and anomalous. While the war lasted, California, as a conquered province, expected to be governed by military officers, who, by virtue of their command of the Department, bore sway over all the territory that their Department embraced. But after peace had come, and the suc cession of military governors was not abated, a people who had been in the habit of governing themselves under the same flag and the

ANOMALOUS CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

247

XIX.

same constitution, chafed that a simple change CHAP. of longitude should deprive them of their inalienable rights.

General Persifer F. Smith, who assumed command on arriving by the California, the first steamship that reached San Francisco (February 28th, 1849), and General Riley, who succeeded him (April 13th, 1849), would have been acceptable governors enough, if the people could have discovered anywhere in the Constitution. that the President had power to govern a territory by a simple order to the commandant of a military department. The power was obvious. in time of war, but in peace it was unprecedented. Left entirely to themselves, the people could have organized a squatter sovereignty, as Oregon had done, and the way into the sisterhood of States was clear.

They felt that they had cause for complaint, but in truth they were quite too busy to nurse their grievance and make much of it. To some extent they formed local governments, and had unimportant collisions with the military. But busy as they were, and expecting to return home soon, they humored their contempt for politics, and left public matters to be shaped at Washington. Nor was that so unwise a course under the circumstances, for the thing that had hindered Congress from giving them a legitimate constitutional government was the ever

1849

1850.

CHAP. present snag in the current of American polit XIX. ical history, the author of most of our woes, 1849- the great mother of mischief on the Western continent-Slavery.

1850.

CALIFORNIAN AFFAIRS AT WASHINGTON.

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CHAPTER XX.

CONGRESS FAILS TO PROVIDE A GOVERNMENT.

XX.

PRESIDENT POLK had asked the Twenty-ninth CHAP. Congress to place at his disposal three millions of dollars to be used in negotiating for a boun- 1846. dary which would give to the United States additional territory. To a bill granting him a portion of that sum, David Wilmot moved his famous "proviso," that no part of the territory to be acquired should be open to the introduc tion of slavery. The proviso was adopted in the House, and that killed the bill itself in the Senate. Giddings said, "We sought to extend and perpetuate slavery in a peaceful manner by the annexation of Texas; now we are about to effect that object by war and conquest." They said Giddings could see slavery where nobody else dreamed of it, but none were so blind as not to see that the slavery question was the substance and spirit of the whole controversy about acquiring California and other territory from Mexico.

At the next session (1847), the three mil lions were appropriated. Thomas Corwin noti

ΧΧ.

CHAP. fied the Senate that they were paying dear for California. If the war terminated in any thing 1847. short of a mere wanton waste of blood and money, it must end in the acquisition of territory to which the slavery controversy must attach. "Should we prosecute this war another moment, or expend one dollar in the purchase or conquest of a single acre of Mexican land, the North and the South would be brought into collision on a point where neither would yield."

Calhoun attempted to meet the case with a new dogma. He moved resolutions declaring in effect that Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in a territory, and that the exercise of such a power was a breach of the Constitution leading to the subversion of the Union. “Your dogma admitted," said Colonel Benton, "the Free Soilers have nothing to fear, and the Slave Soilers nothing to fear from the admission of California. By a fundamental law of the Mexican Republic slavery is prohibited throughout its political jurisdiction. The prohibition was proclaimed by President Guerrero in 1829. An act of the Mexican Congress declared slavery abolished in 1837, and in 1844 the Constitution forbade it forever. Then if you take California for a part of your territory, you take her free, and if Congress, as you say, has no power to legislate upon slavery in the terri