The United States did not set up a Territorial government in California at once, but put military governors over it, who continued the old laws of Mexico in force. What these were, only the native people could know. They had not yet been translated into English. Many, indeed, derided the idea of being governed by laws made for Spaniards. Instead, then, of being clothed with power to enact laws suited to the new and strange conditions growing out of the gold discovery, with society unformed, or breaking to pieces about them, the people of California found themselves living almost without law, except such as imperative need compelled them to make and enforce for themselves. This state of things could have but one result among a people hastily thrown together from all parts of the earth, most of whom were law-abiding, but many the outcasts of society. It led to confusion, lawlessness, and crime. In the annals of the State it is usually called the interregnum, from the Latin word signifying a suspension of the regular functions of government.
Therefore, as the actual laws remained either mostly unknown, or were held in little esteem, the people conformed to them only so far as to give the officers or courts they chose among themselves Spanish names. They everywhere took the law into their own hands, establishing such local laws, or usages having the force of laws, as their situation would seem to give warrant for.
Thus, the miners determined for themselves how much room each man should have to dig in; and they established in their camps rude codes of justice by which the worst crimes usually met with prompt punishment. If, for instance, a man committed murder, he would be tried on the spot by a miners' court, hastily summoned for the purpose. Trials of this sort were generally conducted in an orderly manner, and seldom failed of doing justice, but they were always felt to be a departure from the usages of civilized people, and in so far a going-back toward barbarism.
Much disorder brings with it much order. Informed of all the evils to which this state of affairs gave rise, Governor Riley, in 1849, called the people to meet in convention for the forming of a State government. The delegates accordingly assembled in September at Monterey. They framed a constitution, on the plan of the free States, prohibiting slavery; for as labor was to be the corner-stone of the State, the men of 1849 would not degrade free labor by competition with slave-labor. In November the constitution was ratified by the people; and in December the officers elected under it met at San José to fully organize the State government.
The petition of California to be a free State was strongly resisted by the Southern men in Congress, who had hoped it would come in as a slave State. Once again it brought up the whole subject of slavery extension. Eventually the struggle gave rise to another compromise by which California came in as a free State (1850), the slave-trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, and the Fugitive Slave Law passed, mainly by the efforts of Henry Clay. The execution of the last-named law roused the indignation of the North as nothing had ever yet done. Resistance to slavery extension was now become the dominant question there in politics, in literature, and in the pulpit. The doctrine that the people of a territory alone should have the right to decide whether they would have slavery or not had been urged with much force by Senator Douglas in the case of California; and thus popular sovereignty, as it was called, now first brought together the moderate partisans of slavery, those indifferent to its extension, and those who believed such a settlement as Mr. Douglas proposed would lift the question out of party agitation, and so put a stop to the threats of secession, which was the bugbear of all who loved the Union.