which admitted California with the free labor which her people desired, but left the matter of slavery an open question in the remainder of the territory purchased from Mexico, settled the disputed Texas boundary, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and enacted a drastic fugitive-slave law. It seems probable that, had the constitution also contained the section prohibiting free negroes from entering the state, it would have been rejected, as such a section might have antagonized the more radical defenders of the rights of the negro, who worked hardest to secure the admission of California as a free state.

The long delays in admission, occasioned by the discussion of the slavery question, seem to have given the subject a different significance in California. Her lawmakers became a little more cautious about legislation on this topic, and those who secretly desired slavery began to hope that, with this evidence of strong support from other sections of the country, the matter was not an entirely closed issue in California.

EFFORTS TO EXCLUDE FREE NEGROES.

P. H. Burnett, the first governor of the state, was thoroughly committed to the policy of excluding negroes from the Pacific Coast states. While a member of the Oregon legislative committee, he introduced a measure which provided that any free negro or mulatto who did not leave the state within the time prescribed by the law, should be arrested and flogged at intervals of six months until he left. To the credit of Burnett it must be added that a few months after the passage of this barbarous measure he introduced an amendment providing a more humane method of ridding the state of this unfortunate class of citizens. They were to be arrested and hired to persons who, for the shortest term of service, would undertake to remove them from the state.

In his inaugural message in December, 1849,23 and again in 1851,24 Governor Burnett urged legislation to prevent the bringing of indentured negroes to California. He believed that the

23 Journals of the California Legislature, 1850, pp. 38-9.

24 Ibid., 1851, pp. 19-21.

time was approaching when the natural increase of the population in the states east of the Rocky Mountains would render slave labor of little value, and thought that negroes under contract to work a few years in return for their freedom, would be brought to the Coast in great numbers. He pointed out that, since the laws of the state treated them as an inferior race, denying all the rights of citizenship, they would have no incentives to improve their characters. He thought that the negroes should either be admitted to all the privileges guaranteed in the constitution, or altogether excluded. Attempts were made in the 1850 and 1851 sessions of the legislature to carry out the recommendations of the governor; the bill of 1850 passed the assembly, only to be indefinitely postponed in the senate,25 while that of 1851 seems to have died in the assembly committee to which it was referred.26 Thus the bills "to prevent the emigration of free negroes and persons of color" never became laws.

INCREASE OF THE NEGRO POPULATION.

While negroes were not brought to the state in such large numbers as had been predicted by members of the constitutional convention, it is evident that there was a sufficient number of such cases to keep alive the fears of those who had advocated legislative restriction. Governor Burnett, in his message of 1851, says, "As was anticipated, numbers of this race have been manumitted in the slave states by their owners and brought to California, bound to service for a limited period as hirelings. We have thus, in numerous instances, practical slavery in our midst. That this class is rapidly increasing in our state is very certain.

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The San Francisco papers noticed the coming of these socalled "servants." The steamer Isthmus, arriving April 15, 1852, is reported to have "brought up several gentlemen with a number of servants-one with twelve, another eight, another

25 Assembly Journal, 1850, pp. 723, 729, 873, 1223, 1232. Senate Journal, 337, 338, 347.

26 Assembly Journal, 1851, pp. 1315, 1440.

27 Ibid., 1851, p. 21.

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seven, another five, and so on. The Pacific quotes this notice from the Herald and adds, "We also learn that many of these 'servants, and under our present constitution they are nothing more, have lately arrived in various steamers with their masters, and been distributed through the interior."29 Both papers. quote from the Charleston Courier a statement that one steamer had, on her last two trips, taken out seventy-four slaves belonging to passengers bound for the gold diggings. The article adds. that the reports from the mines continue favorable, and that a large number of negroes will be taken out on the next trip.

ATTEMPTS TO SECURE CONCESSIONS TO SLAVERY.

This increase of "servants" whose masters were strongly interested in retaining their control brought about a more open advocacy of concessions to slavery. One southerner, writing to the Pacific in its favor, presented the somewhat novel argument that negro labor was necessary because the prevalence of poison oak made it impossible for white men to develop the agricultural resources of the state 30 A member of the legislature, born in Virginia, wrote to an eastern correspondent that the gold mines could be worked more profitably by slaves than in any other way, and that the legislature would probably pass a measure admitting them. James Gadsden and other prominent southerners became interested in a plan to bring out a colony which should include two thousand negro slaves. This plan must have been widely discussed, for, though it seems to have originated in South Carolina, it was criticized in the papers of Louisville, Kentucky.31 A letter from Gadsden published at Shreveport, Louisiana, proposed to build a great highway to the Pacific, which should later become the route of the overland. railroad. He wanted the people of that place to apply to the Government for the survey of the road, military protection, and possibly subsistence. He said that, should this request be granted

28 San Francisco Herald, April 16, 1852.

29 The Pacific, April 23, 1852.

30 Ibid., March 12, 1852.

31 Ibid., April 23, 1852.

and the California legislature respond favorably to the memorial of the proposed colony, "you will see us with some five hundred to eight hundred domestics, and two or three hundred axes opening the highway to the cultivation and civilization of the shores of the Pacific."

"Mr. Peachy presented a most extraordinary Memorial to the House this morning," wrote a San Francisco newspaper correspondent two months later, "a Memorial of twelve hundred and eighteen citizens of South Carolina and Florida, asking the Legislature of California to grant them, as an essential benefit to this State, the privilege of becoming citizens, of identifying themselves permanently with our interests, and emigrating to our rural districts with a valuable and governable population in the relation of property, by whose peculiar labor alone our valuable soils may be rendered productive and our wilderness may be made to blossom as the rose. They ask permission to colonize a rural district with a population of not less than two thousand slaves. Upon the reading of this petition, as you will readily conceive, a highly exciting discussion occurred. A multitude of motions were made respecting it, but a motion to send it to the Committee on Federal Relations finally prevailed.” As the legislature had no power to grant such a request the matter went no further. 32

MOVEMENT FOR A DIVISION OF THE STATE.

Those wishing to obtain concessions permitting slavery must do so either by an amendment to the constitution or by a division of the state. The latter course would have permitted the organization of the southern part of the state as a territory, which, by the provisions of the Compromise of 1850, would have been open to slavery. The efforts to bring about a division of the state began in the summer of 1851;33 its immediate cause being the disproportionate amount of taxation borne by the southern counties, and the discontent due to their neglect in the distribution of political patronage. A convention was held in August,

32 Daily Evening Picayune, February 11, 1852. Assembly Journal, 1852, p. 159.

33 Daily Evening Picayune, August 2, 1851.

1851, at Santa Barbara for the consideration of the subject. The opportunity for the introduction of slavery offered by such a movement was quickly realized. During the next six years bills for the calling of a constitutional convention came before every session of the legislature, and the charge was freely made that the desire to introduce slavery was the real motive behind these persistent efforts. The alarm was sounded with the introduction of the first of these measures in 1852. The Pacific, a paper strongly opposed to slavery, asserted that, "It is now too well known to need repeating that the principal object had in view by those who advocate the proposed convention is that our Constitution may be so amended as to permit slavery, which it now prohibits. "'34 The article declared that the class of gentlemen from the South, "who had bound themselves, by fair means or by foul, according to law, or in contempt of it, to open California to slavery, seems to be remarkably represented in our present legislature.'

This pro-slavery membership made possible the fugitive-slave law of 1852, but failed to secure the passage of the bill providing for the constitutional convention. This measure became the chief issue of the next session of the legislature, to which the members came prepared for a vigorous contest. The Free-Soil Democrats had effected a somewhat tardy organization in October, 1852. They made no nominations, but elected a state central committee, whose chief function seems to have been the pointing out of the danger of choosing members to the legislature who would promote the plans to introduce slavery by means of a revision of the constitution. The governor's mes

sage to the legislature of 1853 recommended a number of changes in the constitution, and much time was given to the discussion of bills for carrying out his suggestions. A particularly objectionable measure which would have allowed the people no opportunity to reject the work of the convention almost became a law 30 The efforts to secure the revision of the constitution were

34 The Pacific, March 19, 1852.

35 Ibid., October 22, 1852. Davis, Political Conventions of California, p. 23.

36 Appendix to Senate Journal, Doc. 16, 17.