discord. He introduced into that body a concurrent resolution condemning the election of Nathaniel P. Banks to the speakership of the house of representatives in congress on the ground that Banks was to be considered as an exponent of sectional feelings and principles diametrically opposed to the spirit of the constitution of the United States. The resolution was adopted by the assembly; but in the senate it did not meet with the same success. In that body John D. Cosby of Trinity county defeated it by moving a substitute that California should decline to express any opinion on the subject; that it should adhere to the policy of non-intervention; that it should oppose all propositions of a sectional character from whatever quarter of the Union they might come, and that it should maintain a conservative position and take no action through the legislature which could tend to destroy its conservative influence in congress.'

About the same time, however, Cosby introduced into the senate a proposition, which was calculated, if it had had any chance of success, to occasion much more political rancor than Farley's firebrand. This was a bill to create three states out of California. There had from very early days been talk of dividing the state-some of the advocates evidently contemplating the making of a slave state out of the southern portion, while others thought the result would be two free states instead of one. The first project of making three states, a north, south and middle, seems to have been that of David F. Douglass of San Joaquin, who in 1855 introduced a bill to that effect into the assembly. It never came up for passage; nor did Cosby's in 1856, though it was favorably reported on. On the other hand, several remarkable moves were made in reference to the eastern section of the state. One was an application to the senate of 1856, by persons living on Carson river east of Lake Tahoe, asking that their valley might be included in the state of California. Another was an attempt of residents of the Honey Lake section of country east of the Sierra Nevada to take themselves out of the state and form a new territory to be called Nataqua, a name which, as they explained it, meant woman. The chief mover in

1

Assembly Journal, 1856, 399-403; Senate Journal, 1856, 456.

2 Senate Journal, 1856, 390, 571; Assembly Journal, 1855, 460. 3 Senate Journal, 1856, 448-452.

this scheme of gallantry was the old pioneer Peter Lassen, for whom Lassen's peak and Lassen county were named, who had moved from the Sacramento valley to Honey Lake a few years previously, and an individual named Isaac Roop, who had been postmaster at Shasta. Lassen had gone thither seemingly because he had become very unpopular in the Sacramento valley on account of his having induced overland immigrants in 1849 to leave the ordinary and accustomed emigrant roads and take a long and difficult way around, so as to pass by his rancho, greatly to their loss, discomfort and danger; and Roop had apparently followed suit for the purpose of finding a career for his enterprising energy and his ambition to make a figure in the world. Whatever may have been their intentions and objects, they certainly carried on business with a high hand. On April 26, 1856, they and eighteen others met at what was known as the Roop House; elected Lassen president and Roop secretary and thereupon proceeded to declare Honey Lake valley not within the limits of California, and to erect it and a very large tract of country in addition into the territory of Nataqua. The meeting adopted laws and regulations, giving each settler a right to six hundred and forty acres of land; requiring every claim to be surveyed and recorded; appointing Lassen surveyor and Roop recorder; laying out a town in which every one, who would build a house, was to have a lot and the lots not so taken to belong to Roop, and establishing certain public roads of the magnificent width of one hundred feet as far as they ran.1

It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that both the Carson valley and Nataqua schemes were impracticable. In 1852 a bill had passed the California legislature for the erection and organization of a new county to be called Pa-Utah, including Pyramid Lake, Carson Lake, Walker Lake and all the northwestern part of the present state of Nevada, provided congress would cede the territory to California; but it never did so; and the act was therefore ineffective and afterwards repealed." Carson valley, unless ceded, could no more be made a part of California than 'Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen and Sierra Counties, San Francisco, 1882, 344-346.

2 Stats. 1852, 193; 1859, 186.

Pa-Utah; and cession was never seriously thought of. As to Nataqua, the whole scheme was based upon ignorance of the boundary line of California. The originators, however, were evidently not disposed to be confined within narrow limits. They proposed reaching out for their new territory as far as the one hundred and seventeenth meridian of longitude so as to include about fifty thousand square miles. But it was as difficult to take away from California as to add to it; and neither succeeded. The projectors were as unfortunate as their schemes. Lassen, whom ill-will followed into the Honey Lake country, was murdered there a couple of years subsequently; and as for Roop, after he had been laughed at for some time on account of the Nataqua business, he assisted in a still more ridiculous project for getting up, with a handful of men, a pretended territory of Nevada, of which he was to be the governor.1

Meanwhile the legislature of 1856, the first during Johnson's administration, drew to its close and finally adjourned on April 21, only about three weeks before the general bad condition of affairs led to that extraordinary uprising of the people, known as the San Francisco vigilance committee of 1856, with which Johnson proved unable to cope and upon and against which his prospects and reputation were wrecked. It is not likely that anybody saw what was coming; but Farley, the speaker of the assembly, upon declaring his house adjourned sine die, took occasion to make a series of remarks, which, though perhaps not in very good taste, were very significant of the evil pass to which things in general and legislators in particular had come. "How many of us," he exclaimed, "have remembered that, before we were permitted to enter upon our duties, we solemnly pledged our honor and recorded our oaths to the effect that in all our official conduct we would act only for those whom we represent and not for ourselves? Have we all fulfilled these obligations or have some of us been willing to sink our honor, our oaths and our most sacred offices to increase our own transitory fortunes? What indeed is the fortune, the fame or even the life of an individual, when compared with the fortune, the welfare and honor of a whole people? But, gentlemen, we are not responsible to

1

1 Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen and Sierra Counties, 333, 347, 355.

each other for our official conduct"-and so on to considerable length.1

The next legislature met at Sacramento on January 5, 1857. One-half its senators and all its assemblymen were elected at the same time and in the midst of the same political turbulence and strife, chiefly in regard to the slavery question, which accompanied the choice of James Buchanan as president of the United States. In California the struggle, though not so bitter as in some other sections, was marked with much excitement. The Know Nothing party met in convention at Sacramento in November, 1855; the Democrats at the same place in March, and the Republicans, for the first time, in April, 1856. The last named, as a new party and particularly as an anti-slavery party, was subjected to many outrages. It was denounced on nearly every side as an "abolition" party; and that name alone produced the effect of flaunting the red flag in a bull ring. Their meetings were often disturbed and broken up and in some cases their speakers and prominent men were maltreated. Nevertheless they persisted and showed a bold front, disclaiming any intention of in any manner interfering with slavery in the slave states; but demanding and insisting that it should not be permitted in any of the territories. Edwin B. Crocker, one of the first and most prominent Republicans, wanted to go further and resolve that the repeal of the Missouri compromise had utterly destroyed all compromises respecting slavery not embraced in the federal constitution, and that no more slave states should upon any pretense be admitted into the Union. But other members of the party regarded this doctrine as too radical for the times; and Crocker's proposition was withdrawn. The Know Nothings, or American party as it called itself, indorsed Millard Fillmore and Andrew J. Donelson for president and vice-president of the United States; the Democratic party, James Buchanan and John C. Breckenridge, and the Republican party, John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton. The election resulted in favor of the Democrats the state vote for Buchanan being very nearly fifty-two thousand, that for Fillmore a little over thirty-five thousand, and that for Fremont a little over thirty thousand. The Democrats 1Assembly Journal, 1856, 864.

13 VOL. IV.

Charles L. Scott and Joseph C. McKibben were elected to congress.1

Whatever prestige the Know Nothings had gained and enjoyed in 1855, they entirely lost in 1856; so that, when Governor Johnson met the legislature of 1857, he found it completely Democratic. He therefore had very few political friends in the body upon whom he could rely for support. He was, so to speak, a political leader without a following. But there was one circumstance that gave him a certain influence and power with both houses and especially with the members who were favorable to the aspirations of David C. Broderick for the United States senate; and this was a mutual hatred of the vigilance committee. That organization, besides seriously interfering with the objectionable methods of conducting elections in San Francisco, of which Broderick had on various occasions availed himself, and besides throttling one or two and exiling a number of Broderick's henchmen, had gone so far as to make some unpleasant inquiries of Broderick himself and called him before it as a witness. had attended and given his testimony, but apparently did not enjoy the contact. At any rate, he soon afterwards left San Francisco and spent a considerable time in traveling around the country and, in a quiet but very effective way, organizing a campaign for Broderick Democracy in nearly every important section of the state. His plan was very appropriately called a "still-hunt,” and resulted not only in a very heavy vote for Buchanan but also in a decided majority for Broderick.

He

It is doubtful whether Broderick himself had any great personal hatred for the San Francisco vigilance committee. There is reason to believe that he admired its pluck and determination to reform abuses; and it is not unlikely that he was rather grateful than otherwise for its ridding him of some of his too obsequious friends. At any rate he did not denounce it with the vigorous vituperation of which he was capable and which he was ever ready to express when he felt very angry. But be this as it may, most of his supporters and friends that were elected to the legislature of 1857 had no love for the vigilance committee and, if not ready and anxious to speak against it themselves, 1 1 Davis' Political Conventions, 50–74.