In 1845 Fremont, who had now won the name of “Pathfinder,” was sent out a third time, and crossing what are now Nebraska and Utah, reached the vicinity of Monterey in California.  The Mexican authorities ordered him out of the country.  But he spent the winter in the mountains, and in the spring was on his way to Oregon, when a messenger from Washington overtook him, and he returned to Sutter’s Fort.

%370.  The Bear State Republic.%—­This was in June, 1846.  Rumors of war between Mexico and the United States were then flying thick and fast, and the American settlers in California, fearing they would be attacked, revolted, and raising a flag on which an image of a grizzly bear was colored in red paint, proclaimed California an independent republic.  These Bear State republicans were protected and aided by Fremont and Commodore Stockton, who was on the California coast with a fleet, and together they held California till Kearny arrived.

[Illustration:  %TERRITORY CEDED BY MEXICO 1818 and 1853%]

%371.  Terms of Peace.%—­Thus when the time came to make peace, our armies were in military possession of vast stretches of Mexican territory which Polk refused to give up.  Mexico, of course, was forced to yield, and in February, 1848, at a little place near the city of Mexico, called Guadalupe Hidalgo, a treaty was signed by which Mexico gave up the land and received in return $15,000,000.  The United States was also to pay claims our citizens had against Mexico to the amount of $3,500,000.  This added 522,568 square miles to the public domain.[1]

[Footnote 1:  This new territory included not only the present California and New Mexico, but also Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.]

%372.  The Gadsden Purchase.%—­When the attempt was made to run the boundary line from the Rio Grande to the Gila River, so many difficulties occurred that in 1853 a new treaty was made with Mexico, and the present boundary established from the Rio Grande to the Gulf of California.  The line then agreed on was far south of the Gila River, and for this new tract of land, 45,535 square miles, the United States paid Mexico $10,000,000.  It is generally called the Gadsden Purchase, after James Gadsden, who negotiated it.

Much of this territory acquired in 1848, especially New Mexico and California, had long been settled by the Spaniards.  But the acquisition of it by the United States at once put an end to the old Mexican government, and made it necessary for Congress to provide new governments.  There must be American governors, American courts, American judges, customhouses, revenue laws; in a word, there must be a complete change from the Mexican way of governing to the American way.  To do this ought not to have been a hard thing; but Mexico had abolished slavery in all this territory in 1827.  It was free soil, and such the anti-extension-of-slavery people of the North insisted on keeping it.  The proslavery people of the South, on the other hand, insisted that it should be open to slavery, and that any slaveholder should be allowed to emigrate to the new territory with his slaves and not have them set free.  The political question of the time thus became, Shall, or shall not, slavery exist in New Mexico and California?