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

OF CALIFORNIA 45
living, without character to borrow, soliciting loans and that in vain at three per cent a
month. If she were a State of the Union. Wall Street would relieve her of her bonds.
But being as she is without acknowledged legal existence, the capitalist eschews her and
this young State, rich in ipherent resources, and sitting upon gold, is driven to the resource
of State bonds and a paper medium, which nobody will touch. All her operations are carried
on at disadvantage, for want of a fixed legal character***Want of a branch mint and
before that could be gotten ready an assayer to fix the value of gold in a lump is another
want of California, neglected because she is not a State: The laborer loses largely on
all his diggings for the want of this test of value. All the gold that is used in the country
is used at a great loss of two dollars in the ounce, as I have been told, equal to twelve per
cent on the amount dug. That is an enormous tax upon labor, such as no country ever
beheld. Yet it has to be endured until the State is admitted, and even after that until
Congress legislates for her. Those are some of the reasons for the speedy admission of
California. They are great and many remain untold. But great as they are. dishonorable
admission is worse than these. ***Let us vote upon the measure before us beginning with
the admission of California. Let us vote her in. Let us vote after four months' talk.
The people who have gone there have done honor to the American, name. '
The extract from the speech just quoted clearly explains the different objections offered
by the Southern Senators in au effort to keep California out of the Union.
Mr. Benton in his address spoke of California's insecure banking or credit system
due to lack of recognition as a State. I would that I could give the reader a few instances
of the wild financial deals in pioneer times in California. But my history is concerning the
Negro in California, hence will have to confine the subject to the effect upon the Negro
and his interest. Speaking of banking in pioneer days in California recalls a remark made
by the daughter of a colored pioneer who said that when, the rumor that the banking firm
of Page & Bacon, of San Francisco, had failed or was about to fail, her father, who was
a depositor, immediately withdrew his deposit. He filled a champagne basket with the
gold he drew from the bank, loaded the basket on a wheelbarrow and carted it home. She
said that some time afterward the bank did fail. The name of this colored pioneer was
Samuel Shelton, a fair representative of the class of colored people living at the time in
California. Such could not be either a menace or a burden to society.
We will proceed with the address in favor of the admission of California into the
Union, delivered by Senator Seward, in which he said:
''Let, then, those who distrust the Union make compromises to save it. I shall not
impeach their wisdom as I certainly cannot their patriotism. But indulging in no such
apprehension myself, I shall vote for the admission of California directly without conditions,
without qualifications, and without compromise. For the vindication of that vote, I
look not at the verdict of the passing hour, disturbed as the public mind now is by conflicting
interest and passion, but to that period happily not far distant when the vast
region over which we are now legislating shall have received their destined inhabitants,
wfiile looking forward to that day its countless generations seem to me to be rising up
and passing in dim and shadowy review before me and a voice comes forth from their
serried ranks saying: 'Waste your treasures and your armies, if you will; raze your fortifications
to the ground; sink your na\'y into the sea; transmit to us even a dishonored
name if you must, but the soil you hold in trust for us give it to us free. You found it
free and conquered it to extend a better and surer freedom over it. Whatever choice you
have made for yourselves, let us have no partial freedom. Let us all be free; let the reversion
of your broad domain descend to us unincumbered and free from the calamities and
sorrows of human bondage.'
"It is the part of the eternal conflict between mind and physical forces, the conflict
of man against the obstacles which oppose his way to an ultimate and glorious destiny.
It will go on until you shall terminate it by yielding in your own way and in your own
manner indeed, but nevertheless yielding, to the progress of 'Emancipation.' You will
do this sooner or later, whatever may be your opinion now, because nations which were
prudent, and human, and wise, as you are, have done so already."
This address was the most effectual one delivered in Congress in behalf of the admission
of California into the Union. The reader will agree that it is grand, human and so
much like a prophecy. A vote was taken in the Senate, and California was admitted to
the Union.
Almost immediately after its admission a protest was framed and signed by ten
southern Senators, members of the United States Congress. They protested against the
admission of California as a Free State. There was considerable debate as to whether the
secretary should read the protest, and then a lot more talk as to the advisability of it being