THE SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL VOL. XVI* QUARTERLY JANUARY, 1913 No. The publication committee and the editors disclaim responsibility for views expressed by contributors to THE QUARTERLY. THE QUESTION OF THE EASTERN BOUNDARY OF CALIFORNIA IN THE CONVENTION OF 1849 CARDINAL GOODWIN 1. The Boundary under Spain and Mexico California apparently had no established eastern boundary under the Spanish government. The explorations of Garcés through southern Nevada as shown on Padre Font's map of 1777,2 and of Domínguez and Escalante through Utah and southeastern Nevada had doubtless given the Spanish officials a vague notion of the interior basin of upper California, as it was called, and the decrees of the viceroys, according to Halleck, included that region in the judicial district of the California territory.* Even when Mexico became independent of Spain, the boundaries of her northern provinces, California and New Mexico, were not established with any great degree of precision. There were, for instance, two maps of Upper California published in 1837. Rosa's map, published by order of the Mexican Congress, shows the south-. *Volumes I-XV published as THE QUARTERLY of the Texas State Historical Association. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico, 345, says: "California, however, while no boundary was ever fixed officially, was not generally considered to extend east of the Rio Colorado." Bancroft, History of Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming, 28 et seq. 'Browne, Report of the Debates in the Convention of California, 1849. 451-452. ern boundary by a line running south of west from the mouth of the Gila river to the vicinity of latitude thirty degrees and thirty minutes on the Pacific coast. The eastern boundary begins at the mouth of the Gila river and runs northeast, joining the 42d parallel at the 108th meridian. The Dufour map, of the same year, indicates no boundary between Upper and Lower California. The eastern boundary, beginning near the 33d parallel, runs northward between 112 and 113 degrees of longitude west from Greenwich, to the vicinity of the 36th parallel of latitude, then turns west of north and joins the 42d degree of north latitude on longitude 116 west. The northern boundary of Upper California, according to Rosa's map, extends from longitude 108, west from Greenwich, westward along the 42d parallel to the Pacific, while on Dufour's, the same boundary includes only the territory along the 42d parallel between 116 degrees west longitude and the Pacific ocean. Tanner's Map of the United States of Mexico, published in 1846, and Mitchell's Map of Mexico including Yucatan and Upper California, published in the same year, give California similar eastern boundaries but boundaries which differ considerably from the maps published in 1837. The eastern line runs rather irregularly between 30 degrees and 31 degrees 30 minutes of longitude west from Washington from about the 32d to the 42d parallels of latitude. Another map drawn by Charles Preuss from the surveys of John C. Frémont and other authorities (Washington, 1848)—the one which seems to have been used more frequently than any other by the California Convention of 1849,-indicates stil! different boundaries. The southern line, beginning on the Pacific coast, about one marine league south of San Diego2, runs almost directly east and west to the Gila river, and along that stream to the vicinity of the present Tempe, Arizona, near the 112th degree of longitude west from Greenwich. The eastern line extends northward through Utah, just west of Bear Lake, to the 42d parallel north latitude. The map used by the United States and Mexico in establishing the boundaries in 1848 was Disturnell's Mapa de los Estados Unidos de Mejico (California, New York, 1847). The edition of this map used by the writer, which seems to have indicated the same boundaries for California as the one just cited, was 'For this map see California Message and Correspondence (1850). Compilation of Treaties in Force (Washington, 1904). published in 1850. On it the eastern line begins near latitude 32 degrees 30 minutes north, and longitude 31 degrees west from Washington, and extends northward, at one place coming near longitude 33 degrees, finally joining the 42d parallel near longitude 31 degrees west from Washington. The map accompanying the President's Message to the two Houses of Congress, December 5, 1848, is very similar to the Disturnell map, except that the former follows the Suanca branch of the Gila river instead of the middle branch, thus including in California more territory in the southeast than the latter. The Disturnell map also extends the northwestern boundary of New Mexico slightly more than does the map accompanying the President's message. These maps published at different periods all agree in making the 42d parallel the northern boundary of California,-the line established by United States and Spain in the treaty of 1819-but that is about all they have in common. As we have seen, they show the eastern boundary at the north touching the 42d parallel anywhere between longitude 116 west from Greenwich as indicated on Dufour's map, and 108' as shown by Rosa. 2. Boundaries proposed in the Convention General Riley's proclamation calling a constitutional convention was issued on the third of June, 1849. The eastern boundary of the ten districts into which California was divided by that document was described as formed by the Colorado river and the "Coast" and Sierra Nevada ranges of mountains. Among a majority of the delegates, however, there was a general feeling that the state which they were forming need not be confined to these limits. The Convention, therefore, on September 12, authorized the President to appoint a committee whose duty it should be to propose satisfactory boundaries for the new commonwealth. The members chosen were men supposed to be familiar with the geography of 'Historians have generally asserted that the management of the convention was in the hands of the southern minority (see Bancroft, History of California, VI, 286; Royce, California, 262 et seq.). A recent writer goes a step farther and asserts that "more than half the delegates had originated in States below the Mason and Dixon line." (Coman, Economic Beginnings of the Far West, II, 248.) An examination of the table of delegates as given in Browne, Debates, 478-79, will show that only 15. out of 48 were from southern states. California as it existed under Mexico. They were Hastings and Sutter of Sacramento, Rodríguez of Monterey, La Guerra of Santa Barbara, and Reid of Los Angeles.1 On Tuesday, September 18, Hastings submitted for the committee the following report: Your Committee are of the opinion that the present boundary of California comprehends a tract of country entirely too extensive for one state and that there are various other forcible reasons why that boundary should not be adopted by this Convention. The area of the tract of country included within the present boundary is estimated to be four hundred and forty-eight thousand, six hundred and ninety-one (448,691) square miles, which is nearly equal to that of all the non-slaveholding states of the Union, and which, deducting the area of Iowa, is greater than that of the residue of the non-slaveholding states. Your Committee are of the opinion that a country like this, extending along the coast nearly a thousand miles and more than twelve hundred miles into the interior, cannot be conveniently or fairly represented in a state legislature here, especially as a greater part of the interior is entirely cut off from the country on the coast by the Sierra Nevada, a continuous chain of lofty mountains, which is covered with snow, and is wholly impassable nearly nine months in the year. Your Committee are also of the opinion that the country included within the boundaries of this territory as now established, must ultimately be divided and sub-divided into several different states, which divisions and sub-divisions (should the present boundary be adopted) would be very likely to divest the state of California of a valuable portion of her sea coast. Your Committee are therefore of the opinion that a boundary should now be fixed upon which will entirely preclude the possibility of such a result in the future. Another important reason which has aided very much in producing the conclusion to which your Committee has arrived, is predicated upon the fact that there is already a vast settlement [the Mormons in Utah] in a remote portion of this territory, the population of which is variously estimated to be from fifteen to thirty thousand human souls, who are not represented in this Convention, and who, perhaps, do not desire to be represented here. The religious peculiarities of these people, and the very fact of their having selected that remote and isolated region as a permanent home, would seem to warrant a conclusion that they desire no direct political connection with us, and it is possible, and 'Browne, Debates, 54. |