ON THIS DAY ·
California Gold Rush
24 Jan 1848 — In the channel below Sutter’s sawmill, James Marshall finds gold. The discovery comes nine days before the peace treaty is signed. By the end of 1849, California’s non-Native population has risen from about 14,000 to about 100,000; that autumn, its convention bans slavery.
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The moment in context
In the 1840s, Americans traveled west in growing numbers, and expansionists expected the government to secure the lands they entered. They called their cause Manifest Destiny: Providence, or God’s plan, had supposedly assigned the continent to the United States. This promise of national greatness carried a racial assumption that white Americans should rule. President James K. Polk made expansion a policy. Texas, a slaveholding republic since its break from Mexico in 1836, entered the Union in 1845 by a joint resolution of both houses, after the Senate rejected an annexation treaty. Britain and the United States divided Oregon at the 49th parallel, now the Canadian border; its hatching disappears from the map in June 1846.
From Mexican–American War, chapter 1 of The American Civil War, 1840–1877 (JUL 1848).
The place: California Gold Rush — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — Land hunger and an ideology of destiny. The brown arrow follows the Oregon Trail, traveled by thousands in the 1840s. As settlers moved west, they looked to Washington to secure the land…
- The turn — The Wilmot Proviso, 8 August 1846. David Wilmot was a first-term Pennsylvania congressman when, on the night of 8 August 1846, he added a sentence to a bill granting Polk $2 million…
- What it changed — Free soil becomes a party. Opposition to slavery’s expansion could unite Northerners who were not prepared to challenge slavery where it already existed. Their cause was free…
Then ask the room: Was the Mexican War a war for slavery? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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