with her a
slave girl named Juana, fourteen years of age, from Lima to San
Francisco. He doubted even that this was the first slave in California
for the lady expressed her intention to avail herself of the first
opportunity to leave.[19]

Spain did not especially bother about Negro slavery in her Pacific
coast territory for nearly two hundred years before the coming of the
Americans. She promised by the treaty of September 30, 1817, to
abolish the slave trade October 31, 1820, in all Spanish territory. In
1821, however, certain of the northern colonies of Spain in America
established their independence as the United States of Mexico.[5]
Three years later the importation of slaves from foreign countries was
prohibited and children of slave parents were declared free.
Notwithstanding this there set in considerable emigration from the
Southern States followed by an agitation for the acquisition of Texas.
In 1827, therefore, Coahuila and Texas were organized as a State with
a law prohibiting slavery. As this, however, did not check the
immigration, President Guerro issued a decree[20] in 1829 abolishing
slavery in Mexico on the occasion of the celebration of the
independence of Mexico and in 1830 ordered a military occupation of
the State to enforce the anti-slavery measure.[4] But the aggressive
southerner ever endeavoring to extend the territory of slavery had all
but won the day in Texas. In 1836 Texas declared itself a republic
with a constitution permitting the introduction of slavery and
forbidding the residence of free Negroes without the consent of its
Congress. Then came the Mexican War resulting in the defeat of Mexico
and the cession to the United States of a vast territory of which
California was the most valuable part.

It is clear, therefore, that at the time the United States government
acquired the territory of California from Mexico, slavery had been
abolished there nearly twenty years. The pro-slavery party, however,
did not consider this action of Mexico a finality in the settlement of
the slavery question in the new possessions. When a bill providing for
the purchase of this territory was laid before the house, David
Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, after consultation with other northern
democrats, offered the following amendment:

"Provided that an express and fundamental condition to the
acquisition of any territory from the republic of Mexico by the
United States, by virtue of any treaty