The uneasy treaty between abolitionists and slave-owners was short-lived, however. The slavery compromise was nullified in 1854 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, permitted voters (at the time, only white men of age could vote) to decide for themselves whether or not slavery would be legal in their states. In 1857, the repealed law was further made unconstitutional with the Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sanford. Scott, a slave, had been brought to a free state by his owner but was still kept under enforced servitude. Scott tried to sue for his freedom, but the Court declared that Black Americans regardless of whether they were slaves or free were not citizens and had no legal standing. Not until the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868 was this overturned. By the 1860s, both Nebraska and Kansas were admitted as free states.
In California, the push to become a state meant a battle between Northern abolitionists in San Francisco and Southern slaveholders in Southern California and the gold mines. As H. H. Bancroft put it,
“The news that California had formed for herself a free state government was ill received by southern men, who called it a northern measure, and felt themselves wronged…It was an affront to the pride of the south that the outside world did not look with approval upon her pet institution, and it was a wound to the moral sensibility of the north that the whole nation shared in the reproach. The rebuke received from both northern and southern men, and foreigners, in the exclusion of slavery from California, was extremely irritating to the former. To admit California at all under the circumstances would be a humiliation. But the great point was the admission of two senators from a free state to destroy the balance of power. Once gone, it might never be restored. On the other hand, the north felt the perilous position it would be in should the south in its recently revealed temper ever again have control of the national councils.”[1]
The first capital was located in San Jose, but after an unseasonably rainy winter, the location was deemed unsuitable. General Mariano Vallejo donated some land in what would soon become the city of Vallejo for the new capital, but the state legislature only met there for a week in 1852 and a month in 1853. The capital was relocated a second time, this time to Benicia (also from land formerly held by Gen. Vallejo and named for his wife). The statehouse was built of brick with a white cupola, but the site was deemed too small and unsuitable once more. Finally in 1854 Sacramento was selected as the permanent location for the state capital.[3]
Below is an article from the Napa Daily Journal, September 10, 1900, on the local celebrations:
[1] Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. VI: 1848-1859 (San Francisco: History Company, Publishers, 1888), 340-341.
[2] Richard Dillon, Napa Valley Heyday, (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 2004), 91.
[3] California Department of Parks and Recreation, “California Admission Day September 9, 1850,” CA.gov, http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=23856.