the Union.

The brilliant audacity of California's method of admission into the
Union stands without parallel in the history of the nation. Outside of
the original thirteen colonies, she was the only State carved out of the
national domain which was admitted into the Union without a previous
enabling act or territorial apprenticeship. What was called the State of
Deseret tried it and failed, and the annexation of Texas was the
annexation of a foreign republic. The so-called State of Transylvania
and State of Franklin had been attempted secessions of western counties
of the original states of Virginia and North Carolina, respectively, and
their abortive attempts at admission addressed to the Continental
Congress, and not to the Congress of the United States. With full right,
then, did California, by express resolution spreading the explanation
upon the minutes of her constitutional convention[7], avowedly place
upon her great seal her Minerva--her "robed goddess-in-arms"--not as
the goddess of wisdom, not as the goddess of war, but to signify that as
Minerva was not born, but sprang full-armed from the brain of Jupiter,
so California, without territorial childhood, sprang full-grown into the
sisterhood of states.

When it is remembered that California was not admitted into the Union
till September 9, 1850, and yet that the first session of its State
Legislature had met, legislated, and adjourned by April 22, 1850, some
appreciation may be had of the speed limit--if there was a limit. The
record of the naive self-sufficiency of that Legislature is little short
of amazing.

On February 9, 1850, seven months before the admission of the State, it
coolly passed the following resolution: "That the Governor be, and he is
hereby authorized and requested, to cause to be procured, and prepared
in the manner prescribed by the Washington Monument Association, a block
of California marble, cinnabar, gold quartz or granite of suitable
dimensions, with the word 'California' chiseled on its face, and that he
cause the same to be forwarded to the managers of the Washington
Monument Association, in the city of Washington, District of Columbia,
to constitute a portion of the monument now being erected in that city
to the memory of George Washington." California did not intend to be
absent from any feast, or left out of any procession--not if she knew
it. Looking back now, our belief is that the only reason she required
the word "Califor