9.3

Explain the effects of the Mexican-American War on the United States. Trace the causes and effects of the California Gold Rush. Describe the political impact of California’s application for statehood.

America Achieves Manifest Destiny The California Gold Rush Effects of the Gold Rush

Read section 9.3 Answer questions 5&6 on page 315.

In February 1848 the defeated Mexicans made peace with the Americans. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forced Mexico to give up the northern third of their country and added 1.2 million square miles of territory to the United States. Later we purchased more land from Mexico called the Gadsden Purchase of This gave the United States another 29,640 square miles in southern Arizona and New Mexico.

Close to the end of the Mexican-American War the government saw that there was an opportunity to gain more land. (this troubled the Whigs) In 1846 the Whig congressman David Wilmot had proposed a law known as the Wilmot Proviso; this would ban slavery in any lands won from Mexico.

The Wilmot Proviso passed the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate, and this happened for the next 15 years. The Proviso brought the issue of slavery to the forefront of Congress and this began to further divide the nation.

In early 1848 workers at John Sutter’s sawmill found flecks of gold in the American River east of Sacramento California. The word spread and in a mass migration known as the California Gold Rush some 80,000 fortune seekers headed for California in search for easy riches. These people who moved for gold were called forty- niners.

California had a major spike in population starting at a mere 14,000 in 1847 to a huge 225,000 in At first the miners used cheap metal pan, picks, and shovels to harvest gold flecks from the sand along the banks and bottoms of rivers. This was known as placer mining. Methods of mining changed, many began damming or diverting rivers to expose their beds or using hydraulic mining by sending jets of water along hillsides to erode them in to lines of sluice boxes.

White miners often made life very difficult on Native American, Mexican, and Chinese miners. They would often impose high taxes on them and harass and kill them. The new California wanted quickly to organize a state and enter the Union. This caused another issue on whether California should enter as a slave state or a free state and the tensions from this will lead to the Civil War.