and when California finally entered the Union, it came in as the sixteenth free State, forever destroyed the equilibrium between the North and the South, and made the Civil War practically inevitable.  The debate was a battle of giants.  Webster, Clay and Calhoun all took part in it.  Calhoun had arisen from his death-bed to fight the admission of California, and, upon reaching his seat in the Senate, found himself so overcome with weakness and pain that he had Mason of Virginia read the speech he had prepared in writing.  Webster atoned for his hostility to the Pacific Coast before the Mexican War by answering Calhoun.  “I do not hesitate to avow in the presence of the living God that if you seek to drive us from California . . .  I am for disunion,” declared Robert Toombs, of Georgia, to an applauding House.  “The unity of our empire hangs upon the decision of this day,” answered Seward in the Senate.  National history was being made with a vengeance, and California was the theme.  The contest was an inspiring one, and a reading of the Congressional Record covering the period makes a Californian’s blood tingle with the intensity of it all[6].

The struggle had been so prolonged, however, that the people upon this coast, far removed from the scene of it, and feeling more than all else that they were entitled to be protected by a system of laws, had grown impatient.  They had finally proceeded in a characteristically Californian way.  They had met in legislative assembly and proclaimed:  “It is the duty of the Government of the United States to give us laws; and when that duty is not performed, one of the clearest rights we have left is to govern ourselves.”

The first provisional government meeting was held in the pueblo of San Jose, December 11, 1848, and unanimously recommended that a general convention be held at the pueblo of San Jose on the second Monday of January following.  At San Francisco a similar provisional meeting was held, though the date of the proposed convention was fixed for the first Monday in March, 1849, and afterward changed to the first Monday in August.

The various assemblies which had placed other conditions and fixed other dates and places for holding the same gave way, and a general election was finally held under the provisions of a proclamation issued by General Bennet Riley, the United States General commanding, a proclamation for the issuance of which there was no legislative warrant whatever.  While the Legislative Assembly of San Francisco recognized his military authority, in which capacity he was not formidable, it did not recognize his civil power.  General Riley, however, with that rare diplomacy which seems to have attached to all Federal military people when acting on the Pacific Coast, realizing that any organized government that proceeded from an orderly concourse of the people was preferable to the exasperating condition in which the community was left to face its increasing problem under Congressional inaction, himself issued the proclamation for a general convention, which is itself a gem.  The delegates met in Monterey, at Colton Hall, on the 1st of September, and organized on the 3d of September, 1849.