In such a state of society, men were naturally anxious to know their relations to the Federal Government whose Congress adjourned two sessions after the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo without legislating for the ceded territories. It might almost have been pardoned, had California, feeling her power, position and self-reliant resources, asserted her independence after so much neglect. Yet, in the midst of all these temptations, and in spite of our people's abhorrence of a military government, there never was a more beautiful demonstration of national loyalty and affinity than in the regular assemblage, in that remote quarter of the world, of citizens from all our States, and of all classes, characters, tempers, professions and avocations, to form a republican constitution which would ensure admission into our Union. Their military governor, it is true, had set the example of submission to the civil power, by directing the election of delegates; but the people asserted their inherent right, independently of the military authority; and, although they acted in harmony with their estimable ruler, the constitution was emphatically the result of popular impulse and judgment alone. The convention, thus assembled, met at Monterey on the 1st of September, 1849, and closed its work on the 13th of October by submitting an excellent constitution to the people for their adoption. The document was forthwith disseminated in Spanish and English, and no attempt was made to mislead or control public opinion in relation to it. The people gave it their sanction by an overwhelming majority, and the legislature which was elected under it, assembled at San José, the capital of the State, on the 15th of December, 1849. Peter H. Burnett, who had been chosen first governor of the Pacific Empire State, was duly inaugurated, and on the 20th of the same month, the military governor. General Riley, resigned his power into the hands of the civil agents of the organized State. After a warm and embittered discussion in Congress at Washington, California, with all her sovereign rights, was finally admitted into the North American Union, on the 9th day of September, 1850.
The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by the transfer of Upper California as it existed and was bounded in May 1848, conferred a magnificent domain upon the United States. This, however, has been subdivided by the action of Congress and the California Convention, and the new Territory or Utah formed out of a portion of it. The original grant comprises the region between the parallels of 32° 50' and 40° of north latitude, and 106° and 124° west longitude, containing an area of four hundred and forty-eight
