he end of
a third, in March 1849, the only progress made toward creating a
government for the territory was that the national revenue laws had been
extended over it and San Francisco had been made a port of entry.
Meanwhile conditions grew intolerable for the inhabitants. Before the
end of the war Mexican laws not incompatible with United States laws
were by international law supposed to be in force; but nobody knew what
they were, and the uncertainties of vague and variable alcalde
jurisdictions were increased when Americans began to be alcaldes and
grafted English common-law principles, like the jury, on Californian
practice. Never was a population more in need of clear laws than the
motley Californian people of 1848-1849, yet they had none when, with
peace, military rule and Mexican law technically ended. There was a
curious extra-legal fusion of laws, a half-breed legal system, and no
definite basis for either law or government. Even the acts and theories
of the officials were very inconsistent. Early in 1849 temporary local
governments were set up in various towns, and in September a convention
framed a free-state constitution and applied for admission to the Union.
On the 7th of September 1850 a bill finally passed Congress admitting
California as a free state. This was one of the bargains in the
"Compromise Measures of 1850" that were intended to dispose of the
question of slavery in the Territories. Meanwhile the gold discoveries
culminated and surpassed "three centuries of wild talk about gold in
California." For three months there was little excitement, then a wild
rush. Settlements were completely deserted; homes, farms and stores
abandoned. Ships deserted by their sailors crowded the bay at San
Francisco--there were 500 of them in July 1850; soldiers deserted
wholesale, churches were emptied, town councils ceased to sit,
merchants, clerks, lawyers and judges and criminals, everybody, flocked
to the foothills. Soon, from Hawaii, Oregon and Sonora, from the Eastern
states, the South Seas, Australia, South America and China came an
extraordinary flow of the hopeful and adventurous. In the winter of '48
the rush began from the states to Panama, and in the spring across the
plains. It is estimated that 80,000 men reached the coast in 1849, about
half of them coming overland; three-fourths were Americans. Rapid
settlement, excessive prices, reckless waste of money, and wild
commercial ventures that glutted San Fran