5.5: Summary

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Page ID: 126967

Robert W. Cherny, Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, & Richard Griswold del Castillo
San Francisco State University, Saint Mary's College of California, & San Diego State University via Self Published

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California’s application for statehood produced the Compromise of 1850, by which congressional leaders sought to stave off sectional crisis. Sectional issues affected California politics in the 1850s, however, as transplanted southerners struggled with transplanted northerners to control California’s two Senate seats. In California, as in the eastern states, the growing sectional crisis precipitated the emergence of a new political party, the Republicans. At the same time that national politics was rupturing over the issue of slavery, California experienced a crisis of political legitimacy with the rise of vigilantism, reaching its apogee when vigilantes overthrew the city government of San Francisco.

The federal government was slow to create reservations for California Indians, many of whom fell victim to violence. Californios who held Spanish or Mexican land grants found it expensive and time-consuming to prove title to their land, and many lost their lands. Throughout the 1850s, the full meaning of the state constitution’s ban on slavery had to be determined through court actions, most initiated by abolitionists, black and white.

With the presidential victory of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the nation plunged into civil war. Far from the scene of battle, the war nonetheless affected California in important ways. Some Californians participated in the war itself, and others raised funds for the Union cause. Reconstruction, and especially the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, altered the meaning of citizenship, and California law was amended to remove many of the laws that discriminated against African Americans and others.

The economy grew and diversified in the 1850s and 1860s, with growth fueled by the continued development of mining. Throughout the 1850s, California remained remote from the eastern United States because of poor transportation. With the victory of the Republicans, however, came federal subsidies for construction of a railroad to tie California to the North.

With the continued growth of population, sex ratios in California began to move toward a more normal distribution. At the same time, partly through the prompting of women, new social institutions began to emerge. Catholics and Jews in California experienced less religious discrimination than their counterparts in the eastern United States. California, and especially San Francisco, acquired a reputation as a literary center.