CONSTITUTION ADOPTED ADMISSION AS A STATE. 



373 



In such a state of society, men were naturally anxious to know 

 their relations to the Federal Government whose Congress adjourn- 

 ed two sessions after the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo withoul 

 legislating for the ceded territories. It might almost have been 

 pardoned, had California, feeling her power, position and self- 

 reliant resources, asserted her independence after so much neglect. 

 Yet, in the midst of all these temptations, and in spite of our peo- 

 ple's abhorrence of a military government, there never was a more 

 beautiful demonstration of national loyalty and affinity than in the 

 regular assemblage, in that remote quarter of the world, of citizens 

 from all our States, and of all classes, characters, tempers, professions 

 and avocations, to form a republican constitution which would en- 

 sure admission into our Union. Their military governor, it is true, 

 had set the example of submission to the civil power, by directing 

 the election of delegates; but the people asserted their inherent 

 right, independently of the military authority; and, although they 

 acted in harmony with their estimable ruler, the constitution was 

 emphatically the result of popular impulse and judgment alone. 

 The convention, thus assembled, met at Monterey on the 1st of 

 September, 1849, and closed its work on the 13th of October by 

 submitting an excellent constitution to the people for their adoption. 

 The document was forthwith disseminated in Spanish and English, 

 and no attempt was made to mislead or control public opinion in 

 relation to it. The people gave it their sanction by an overwhelm- 

 ing majority, and the legislature which was elected under it, as- 

 sembled at San Jose, the capital of the State, on the 15th of Decem- 

 ber, 1849. Peter H. Burnett, who had been chosen first governor 

 of the Pacific Empire State, was duly inaugurated, and on the 20th 

 of the same month, the military governor, General Riley, resigned 

 his power into the hands of the civil agents of the organized State. 

 After a warm and embittered discussion in Congress at Washing- 

 ton, California, with all her sovereign rights, was finally admitted 

 into the North American Union, on the 9th day of September, 

 1850. 



The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by the transfer of Upper Cali- 

 fornia as it existed and was bounded in May 1848, conferred a 

 magnificent domain upon the United States. This, however, has 

 been subdivided by the action of Congress and the California Con- 

 vention, and the new Territory or Utah formed out of a portion of it. 

 The original grant comprises the region between the parallels 

 of 32° 50' and 40° of north latitude, and 106° and 124° west 

 longitude, containing an area of four hundred and forty-eight 

 2v 



