The Negro trail blazers of California [microform] : a ... - Homestead

OF CALIFORNIA 35
of his class, and is proud of having served in the Union Army. In Rose MeKedzie Wood's
book, "Tourist California," is given an account of the large tract of land Vallejo gave
to the United States Government in California.
Returning to the Bear Flag Party and Captain Fremont, it has been proven that he
was not present at the launching into history of that memorable party, but that he came
afterward and claimed the Territory of California in the interest of the United States
Government for fear the English would seize the territory. His fears were well sustained
by future events. A few months afterward Commodore Sloate raised the Stars and Stripes
at Monterey, claiming the Territory in the name of the United States Government. He
afterward told how an English vessel raced him up the coast from Mexico, but Commodore
Sloate 's boat being the faster, he reached Monterey first and the Stars and Stripes
were waving over the land when the Englishmen landed. Mrs. Nuttall has just published
a book covering years of research work in which she tells that Sir Francis Drake had
sailed up the Pacific Coast and had drawn a map of all the harbors of the western coast
in the interest of the English Crown.
Senator Benton had inspired Captain Fremont, but the task was too great to be successful
in any other way than the right way, the way that Commodore Sloate used by raising
the Stars and Stripes, the emblem of a government able to sustain its position on any
coast in any land. If the revolters at Sonoma had raised the American Flag instead^ of
the Bear Flag, they would have registered their names among the immortals of America,
but what they did, while noble and perhaps inspiring to those then in California, still the
United States Government never recognized the Bear Flag Party.
Father Zephelian Engelhardt, of Santa Barbara Franciscan Mission, in delivering an
address before the American Historian Society at their annual meeting in Berkeley, 1915,
among other things said: "Bishop Nichols remarked after the fire of 1906, that there
should be erected a statue of Saint Francis at the Golden Gate, the same as the entrance
to New York Harbor, and to act as a beacon light representing 'Union with God.' The
Franciscan missionaries came to California to possess nothing, but to convert the Indians,
and had the American Flag been raised in California fifteen years before it was it would
have been the best for aU concerned."