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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