CHAPTER XIX
A CONTENTED ARCADIA
A remote Mexican province became a great American commonwealth. With characteristic American haste and expedition, a state constitution was adopted, members of Congress chosen, a state legislature
elected
and
convened,
a
code
of
state laws enacted, and United States Senators selected and their credentials presented at Washington, all before our national Congress had admitted California into the Union, or even provided a territorial form of government. Indeed, so urgent and insistent were California’s impetuous pioneers that on September 9, 1850, without territorial probation, the new Eldorado was en-
dowed by Congressional authority with all the powers and privileges of a sovereign state. The Argonauts of *49 found some twenty thousand contented Californians enjoying the delightful tranquil182
