Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/489

Rh plan was unanimously adopted by the diputacion, and being submitted on motion of Castro to the leaders of the pronunciados, was by them also approved, without much opposition, it may be supposed, since those leaders were Castro and Alvarado. Next day President Castro issued the first of a series of decrees emanating from the diputacion in its new capacity, in which the people are duly informed "that the said supreme legislative body has decreed as follows: 'The constituent congress of the free and sovereign state of Alta California is hereby declared legitimately installed.'" On the 13th, as 'commander of the vanguard of the division of operations,' Castro issued a printed proclamation to the people, congratulating then on their escape from tyranny, exhorting them not to falter in the good work, reminding them that death was preferable to servitude, and that federalism must become the system of the nation. "Viva la federacion! Viva la libertad! Viva el estado libre y soberano de Alta California!"

The next record carries us forward to the time when Vallejo, having arrived from Sonoma, assumed the military command, tendered him, as we have seen, by the diputacion on the 7th. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo was a young man of about thirty years, who had recently received a lieutenant's commission in the Mexican army, and was comandante of the northern