Because the battles which marked its establishment were really only
skirmishes, in which but an insignificant number of lives were lost, and
because it boasted less than a thousand citizens all told, certain of
our historians have been so undiscerning as to assert that the Bear Flag
Republic was nothing but a travesty and a farce. Therein they are wrong.
Though it is doubtless true that the handful of frontiersmen who raised
their home-made flag, with its emblem of a grizzly bear, over the
Californian presidio of Sonoma on that July morning in 1846 took
themselves much more seriously than the circumstances warranted, it is
equally true that their action averted the seizure of California by
England, and by forcing the hand of the administration at Washington was
primarily responsible for adding what is now California, Nevada,
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more than half of Wyoming and Colorado to
the Union. The series of intrigues and affrays and insurrections which
resulted in the Pacific coast becoming American instead of European
form a picturesque, exciting, and virtually unwritten chapter in our
national history, a chapter in which furtive secret agents and haughty
_caballeros_, pioneers in fringed buckskin, and naval officers in
gold-laced uniforms all played their greater or their lesser parts.
To fully understand the conditions which led up to the "Bear Flag War,"
as it has been called, it is necessary to go back for a moment to the
first quarter of the last century, when the territory of the United
States ended at the Rocky Mountains and the red-white-and-green flag of
Mexico floated over the whole of that vast, rich region which lay
beyond. Under the Mexican regime the territory lying west of the Sierra
Nevadas was divided into the provinces of Alta (or Upper) and Baja (or
Lower) California, the population of the two provinces about 1845
totalling not more than fifteen thousand souls, nine-tenths of whom were
Mexicans, Spaniards, and Indians, the rest American and European
settlers. The foreigners, among whom Americans greatly predominated,
soon became influential out of all proportion to their numbers. This was
particularly true of the Americans, who, solidified by common interests,
common dangers, and common ambitions, obtained large grants of land,
built houses which in certain cases were little short of forts,
frequently married into the most aristocratic of the Californian
families, and before long practically controlled the commerce of the
entire territory.
It was only to be expected, therefore, that the Mexicans should become
more and more apprehensive of American ambitions. Nor did President
Jackson's offer, in 1835, to buy Southern California--an offer which was
promptly refused--serve to do other than strengthen these apprehensions.
And to make matters worse, if such a thing were possible, Commodore T.
ApCatesby Jones, having heard a rumor that war had broken out between
the United States and Mexico, and having reason to believe that a
British force was preparing to seize California, landed a force of
bluejackets and marines, and on October 21, 1842, raised the American
flag over the presidio at Monterey. Although Commodore Jones, finding he
had acted upon misinformation, lowered the flag next day and tendered an
apology to the provincial officials, the incident did not tend to
relieve the tension which existed between the Mexicans and the
Americans, for it emphasized the ease with which the country could be
seized, and hinted with unmistakable plainness at the ultimate
intentions of the United States. That our government intended to annex
the Californias at the first opportunity that offered the Mexicans were
perfectly aware, for, aroused by the descriptions of the unbelievable
beauty and fertility of the country as sent back by those daring souls
who had made their way across the ranges, the hearts of our people were
set upon its acquisition. The great Bay of San Francisco, large enough
to shelter the navies of the world and the gateway to the Orient, the
fruitful, sun-kissed land beyond the Sierras, the political domination
of America, and the commercial domination of the Pacific--such were the
visions which inspired our people and the motives which animated our
leaders, and which were intensified by the fear of England's designs
upon this western land.
As the numbers of the American settlers gradually increased, the
jealousy and suspicion of the Mexican officials became more pronounced.
As early as 1826 they had driven Captain Jedediah Smith, the first
American to make his way to California by the overland route, back into
the mountains, in the midst of winter, without companions and without
provisions, to be killed by the Indians. In 1840 more than one hundred
American settlers were suddenly arrested by the Mexican authorities on
a trumped-up charge of having plotted against the government, marched
under military guard to Monterey, and confined in the prison there under
circumstances of the most barbarous cruelty, some fifty of them being
eventually deported to Mexico in chains. Thomas O. Larkin, the American
consul at Monterey, upon visiting the prisoners in the local jail where
they were confined, found that the cells had no floors, and that the
poor fellows stood in mud and water to their ankles. Sixty of the
prisoners he found crowded into a single room, twenty feet long and
eighteen wide, in which they were so tightly packed that they could not
all sit at the same time, much less lie down. The room being without
windows or other means of ventilation, the air quickly became so fetid
that they were able to live only by dividing themselves into platoons
which took turns in standing at the door and getting a few breaths of
air through the bars. These men, whose only crime was that they were
Americans, were confined in this hell-hole, without food except such as
their friends were able to smuggle in to them by bribing the sentries,
for eight days. And this treatment was accorded them, remember, not
because they were conspirators--for no one knew better than the Mexican
authorities that they were not--but because it seemed the easiest means
of driving them out of the country. Throughout the half-dozen years that
ensued American settlers were subjected to a systematic campaign of
annoyance, persecution, and imprisonment on innumerable frivolous
pretexts, being released only on their promise to leave California
immediately. By 1845, therefore, the harassed Americans, in sheer
desperation, were ready to grasp the first opportunity which presented
itself to end this intolerable tyranny for good and all.
It was not only the outrageous treatment to which they were subjected,
however, nor the weakness and instability of the government under which
they were living, nor even the insecurity of their lives and property
and the discouragements to industry, which led the American settlers to
decide to end Mexican rule in the Californias. Texas had recently been
annexed by the United States against the protests of Mexico, an American
army of invasion was massed along the Rio Grande, and war was certain.
It required no extraordinary degree of intelligence, then, to foresee
that the coming hostilities would almost inevitably result in Mexico
losing her Californian provinces. Now it was a matter of common
knowledge that the Mexican Government was seriously considering the
advisability of ceding the Californias to Great Britain, and thus
accomplishing the threefold purpose of wiping out the large Mexican debt
due to British bankers, of winning the friendship and possibly the
active assistance of England in the approaching war with the United
States, and of preventing the Californias from falling into American
hands. The danger was, therefore, that England would step in before us.
Nor was the danger any imaginary one. Her ships were watching our ships
on the Mexican coast, and her secret agents who infested the country
were keeping their fingers constantly on the pulse of public opinion.
Though it remains to this day a matter of conjecture as to just how far
England was prepared to go to obtain this territory, there is little
doubt that she had laid her plans for its acquisition in one way or
another. If California was to be added to the Union, therefore, it must
be by a sudden and daring stroke.
Meanwhile the authorities at Washington had not been idle. Though Larkin
was ostensibly the American consul at Monterey and nothing more, in
reality he was clothed with far greater powers, having been hurried from
Washington to California for the express purpose of secretly encouraging
an insurrectionary movement among the American settlers, and of keeping
our government informed of the plans of the Mexicans and British.
Receiving information that a powerful British fleet--the largest, in
fact, which had ever been seen in Pacific waters--was about to sail for
the coast of California, the administration promptly issued orders for a
squadron of war-ships under Commodore John Drake Sloat to proceed at
full speed to the Pacific coast, the commander being given secret
instructions to back up Consul Larkin in any action which he might take,
and upon receiving word that the United States had declared war against
Mexico to immediately occupy the Californian ports. Then ensued one of
the most momentous races in history, over a course extending half-way
round the world, the contestants being the war-fleets of the two most
powerful maritime nations, and the prize seven hundred thousand square
miles of immensely rich territory and the mastery of the Pacific.
Commodore Sloat laid his course around the Horn, while the English
commander, Admiral Trowbridge, chose the route through the Indian Ocean.
The first thing he saw as he entered the Bay of Monterey was the
American squadron lying at anchor in the harbor.
Never was there a better example of that form of territorial expansion
which has come to be known as "pacific penetration" than the American
conquest of California; never were the real designs of a nation and the
schemes of its secret agents more successfully hidden. Consul Larkin, as
I have already said, was quietly working, under confidential
instructions from the State Department, to bring about a revolution in
California without overt aid from the United States; the Californian
coast towns lay under the guns of American war-ships, whose commanders
likewise had secret instructions to land marines and take possession of
the country at the first opportunity that presented itself; and, as
though to complete the chain of American emissaries, early in 1846 there
came riding down from the Sierran passes, at the head of what pretended
to be an exploring and scientific expedition, the man who was to set the
machinery of conquest actually in motion.
The commander of the expedition was a young captain of engineers, named
John Charles Fremont, who, as the result of two former journeys of
exploration into the wilderness beyond the Rockies, had already won the
sobriquet of "The Pathfinder." Born in Savannah, of a French father and
a Virginian mother, he was a strange combination of aristocrat and
frontiersman. Dashing, debonair, fearless, reckless, a magnificent
horseman, a dead-shot, a hardy and intrepid explorer, equally at home
at a White House ball or at an Indian powwow, he was probably the most
picturesque and romantic figure in the United States. These
characteristics, combined with extreme good looks, a gallant manner, and
the great public reputation he had won by the vivid and interesting
accounts he had published of his two earlier journeys, had completely
captured the popular imagination, so that the young explorer had become
a national idol. In the spring of 1845 he was despatched by the National
Government on a third expedition, which had as its ostensible object the
discovery of a practicable route from the Rocky Mountains to the mouth
of the Columbia River, but which was really to lend encouragement to the
American settlers in California in any secession movement which they
might be planning and to afford them active assistance should war be
declared. Just how far the government had instructed Fremont to go in
fomenting a revolution will probably never be known, but there is every
reason to believe that his father-in-law, United States Senator Benton,
had advised him to seize California if an opportunity presented itself,
and to trust to luck (and the senator's influence) that the government
would approve rather than repudiate his action.
[Illustration: The Sacramento Valley in 1845.