The Discovery of Gold.—­As if to clinch the hold on California already secured by the friends of free soil, there came in 1848 the sudden discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in the Sacramento Valley.  When this exciting news reached the East, a mighty rush began to California, over the trails, across the Isthmus of Panama, and around Cape Horn.  Before two years had passed, it is estimated that a hundred thousand people, in search of fortunes, had arrived in California—­mechanics, teachers, doctors, lawyers, farmers, miners, and laborers from the four corners of the earth.

[Illustration:  From an old print

SAN FRANCISCO IN 1849]

California a Free State.—­With this increase in population there naturally resulted the usual demand for admission to the union.  Instead of waiting for authority from Washington, the Californians held a convention in 1849 and framed their constitution.  With impatience, the delegates brushed aside the plea that “the balance of power between the North and South” required the admission of their state as a slave commonwealth.  Without a dissenting voice, they voted in favor of freedom and boldly made their request for inclusion among the United States.  President Taylor, though a Southern man, advised Congress to admit the applicant.  Robert Toombs of Georgia vowed to God that he preferred secession.  Henry Clay, the great compromiser, came to the rescue and in 1850 California was admitted as a free state.

=Utah.=—­On the long road to California, in the midst of forbidding and barren wastes, a religious sect, the Mormons, had planted a colony destined to a stormy career.  Founded in 1830 under the leadership of Joseph Smith of New York, the sect had suffered from many cruel buffets of fortune.  From Ohio they had migrated into Missouri where they were set upon and beaten.  Some of them were murdered by indignant neighbors.  Harried out of Missouri, they went into Illinois only to see their director and prophet, Smith, first imprisoned by the authorities and then shot by a mob.  Having raised up a cloud of enemies on account of both their religious faith and their practice of allowing a man to have more than one wife, they fell in heartily with the suggestion of a new leader, Brigham Young, that they go into the Far West beyond the plains of Kansas—­into the forlorn desert where the wicked would cease from troubling and the weary could be at rest, as they read in the Bible.  In 1847, Young, with a company of picked men, searched far and wide until he found a suitable spot overlooking the Salt Lake Valley.  Returning to Illinois, he gathered up his followers, now numbering several thousand, and in one mighty wagon caravan they all went to their distant haven.