[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 159 (Thursday, November 11, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2350-E2351]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     THE SESQUICENTENNIAL OF CALIFORNIA'S FIRST STATE CONSTITUTION

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                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 10, 1999

   Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, this year marks the 150th anniversary--the 
sesquicentennial--of the defining period in the founding of the

[[Page E2351]]

State of California. November 13 of this week will mark the anniversary 
of the adoption by the citizens of California of the first constitution 
of our state and the selection of the state's first democratically 
elected governor. This constitution expressed California's desire to be 
admitted to the United States, a request that was granted on September 
9, 1850, when President Millard Fillmore signed legislation making 
California our country's thirty-first state. Mr. Speaker, the path to 
California statehood began when the conflict with Mexico ceased in 
California in 1847. A number of United States citizens had already 
emigrated to the Golden State even before the war with Mexico, but with 
the end of hostilities, the number of emigrants increased. The 
discovery of gold at Coloma in January 1848 became the catalyst which 
rapidly transformed our state. Word of the discovery of gold spread 
slowly at first, until President James K. Polk in his State of the 
Union message to Congress on December 5, 1848, officially confirmed the 
discovery. An influx of ``Forty-Niners'' invaded California, and the 
Gold Rush began.
  During 1849 some 100,000 people went to California from the United 
States, Europe, and other countries around the globe. The trip from the 
eastern states was long and difficult--either a perilous 17,000 mile 
journey from New York around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South 
America and then to San Francisco or a two-thousand-mile overland trip 
from the American Mid-West across roadless and uninhabited territory. 
The sudden population explosion made it clear that government 
institutions needed to be established in the new United States 
territory.
  Mr. Speaker, the Congress was unable to act effectively to set up 
government institutions for California from the other end of the 
continent because transcontinental telegraph lines did not exist and 
the Pony Express had not yet been established. As a result, 
Californians took matters into their own hands. In September of 1849, 
forty-eight delegates elected by their fellow citizens in California 
met in Monterey to draw up a state constitution. The document was 
modeled after the state constitutions of Iowa and New York, states from 
which several of the delegates hailed. It established state government 
institutions and declared California to be a free state, one from which 
slavery was to be excluded. Californians ratified that constitution on 
November 13, 1849, and in that same election they chose a governor and 
other state officials.
  Mr. Speaker, this week as we mark the sesquicentennial of the 
historic vote of the people of California adopting the first 
constitution of our state, I invite my colleagues in the Congress to 
join me in honoring this important milestone in the history of 
California which set our state firmly on the path of statehood and a 
representative democratic government.

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