At the time of Marshall’s discovery, the United States was still at war with Mexico, its sovereignty over the soil of California not being recognized by the latter.  The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was not signed until February 2d, and the ratified copies thereof not exchanged at Queretaro till May 30, 1848.  On the 12th of February, 1848, ten days after the signing of the treaty of peace and about three weeks after the discovery of gold at Coloma, Colonel Mason did the pioneers a signal service by issuing, as Governor, the proclamation concerning the mines, which at the time was taken as a finality and certainty as to the status of mining titles in their international aspect.  “From and after this date,” the proclamation read, “the Mexican laws and customs now prevailing in California relative to the denouncement of mines are hereby abolished.”  Although, as the law was fourteen years afterwards expounded by the United States Supreme Court, the act was unnecessary as a precautionary measure[3] still the practical result of the timeliness of the proclamation was to prevent attempts to found private titles to the new discovery of gold on any customs or laws of Mexico.

Meantime, California was governed by military authority, — was treated as if it were merely a military outpost, away out somewhere west of the “Great American Desert.”  Except an act to provide for the deliveries and taking of mails at certain points on the coast, and a resolution authorizing the furnishing of arms and ammunition to certain immigrants, no Federal act was passed with reference to California in any relation; in no act of Congress was California even mentioned after its annexation, until the act of March 3, 1849, extending the revenue laws of the United States “over the territory and waters of Upper California, and to create certain collection districts therein.”  This act of March 3, 1849, not only did not extend the general laws of the United States over California, but did not even create a local tribunal for its enforcement, providing that the District Court of Louisiana and the Supreme Court of Oregon should be courts of original jurisdiction to take cognizance of all violations of its provisions.  Not even the act of September 9, 1850, admitting California into the Union, extended the general laws of the United States over the State by express provision.  Not until the act of September 26, 1850, establishing a District Court in the State, was it enacted by Congress “that all the laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the same force and effect within the said State of California as elsewhere in the United States[4].”