An American history . eld the balance of power. It was plain that any propositionrelating to the West or to slavery would be fought over withgreat bitterness. 526. Gold. Between the election of this Congress in 1848and its meeting in 1849, a new factor was added to the problem,already so distressingly complex. All of a sudden the people iThe Liberty party was effaced politically by the Free-Soil party. Ex-treme abolitionists continued hostile to the principles of this new party, butthey ceased nominating candidates for President. 372 AMERICAN HISTORY of California organized a state government,
An American history . eld the balance of power. It was plain that any propositionrelating to the West or to slavery would be fought over withgreat bitterness. 526. Gold. Between the election of this Congress in 1848and its meeting in 1849, a new factor was added to the problem,already so distressingly complex. All of a sudden the people iThe Liberty party was effaced politically by the Free-Soil party. Ex-treme abolitionists continued hostile to the principles of this new party, butthey ceased nominating candidates for President. 372 AMERICAN HISTORY of California organized a state government, and demandedadmission to the Union.^ This sudden popular upheaval wasa result of the discovery of gold. In January, 1848, some bitsof gold were washed out of the earth at Sutters discovery had a magical effect. From the coast settle-ments of California almost every one rushed into the the East, also, the news caused wild excitement. Thou-sands of the most adventurous men of the East packed up and. SUTTERS FORT started for California — some by the long voyage round CapeHorn, some overland. Many perished of hardship on the way,but great numbers, in the course of the next year, reached theirgoal. These were the now famous Forty-niners of Cali-fornia. In that one year the American population of Cali-fornia increased from a few hundred to more than a hundredthousand. 527. Californian Government. There was no machineryof government with which to control this great number of In this bold move they had the encouragement of Taylor. THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE SECTIONS 373 hardy and often reckless men. Therefore, they took mattersinto their own hands. They had in them the instinctive senseof free representative government inherited from many genera-tions of self-governing Americans. This instinct was expressedin a convention which assembled September i, 1849, a-t Mon-terey. Three important things were done by this drew up a plan of government; it forbad
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