Monday, September 26, 2011
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Lewis Granger: Foe of Slavery, Proponent of Chopping the State Into Two Parts
By ROGER M. GRACE
148th in a Series
LEWIS GRANGER, the second district attorney of Los Angeles County, was an opponent of slavery.
By December of 1849, when Granger arrived in California on a wagon train, slavery had been outlawed here. A proposed constitution, drafted at a convention in Monterey, and ratified by voters on Nov. 13, 1849, includes this provision:
“Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment of crimes, shall ever be tolerated in this State.”
California would not actually become a state for another year…but it play-acted being one in the interim.
Notwithstanding the absolute prohibition on slavery, the iniquitous practice did persist here. Some of the settlers from southern states who had brought their slaves with them—most of them coming consequent to the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill on Jan. 24, 1848, precipitating the “Gold Rush”—neither relinquished possession of their human chattel nor exited California.
Granger’s opposition to slavery is reflected in this passage in a letter he sent on April 8, 1850, to his father back east (the original being at the Huntington Library):
You are aware that a Constitution has been formed and adopted by the people of California. It meets almost universal approbation. It was passed unanimously at the Convention by the Representatives, the men from the Slave States, as well as those from the free States voting for it. Those Representatives, who were in the Convention, having been born and educated in Slave States went further in favor of the anti-slavery clause, than those who hailed from the other parts of the Union. They even insisted that this clause should be passed unanimously and not referred to the people. Such also was the advice of Mr. [Thomas Butler] King [President Zachary Taylor’s “special agent” to California], as it comes to me from a Representative. Slavery can never exist in this State.
There is a movement in this place to have the Southern part of the territory set apart from that of the proposed State, in order to make this the capitol of another State. Such a petition has been sent to Congress, signed by most of the citizens native and immigrant. I did not sign it, and many others did not, fearing its object or its consequences. “Tuneo Danaos, et dona ferentes!” [“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”] I saw the few slave-holders in this town from the States too actively engaged in it. Had the natives and older American settlers suspected the object of the petition, it would never have been sent. So great is the opposition and so universal against slavery, that no one dare publicly advocate its institution here.
While it’s true that the anti-slavery provision passed unanimously, there had earlier been maneuvering at the convention to bring about the creation of two states, with the objective of establishing slavery in the one to the south.
Delilah L. Beasley, in the Jan. 1, 1918 edition of The Journal of Negro History, explains:
“The pro-slavery faction in the convention was determined to have slavery somewhere and had managed to have the eastern boundary of California so designated that it extended as far as the Rocky Mountains. This would have resulted in rejection by Congress, or a division of the territory into a Northern and a Southern California, giving the pro-slavery element a new State. The unwieldy boundary, however, was discovered in time to have it changed, but not until after much debate, which almost wrecked the constitution.”
What Granger spotted—that underlying some of the sentiment in favor of a separate state was a desire to establish slavery there—was more widely appreciated than he supposed…even back east.
The May 20, 1850 edition of the Milwaukee Sentinel expresses wariness as to the motives of two former residents of Wisconsin who favored creation of two states. They were Thomas Sutherland, identified in the article as alcalde of San Diego, and “his friend, Count Haraszthy.” Actually, Sutherland was, by then, city attorney and county attorney, and his half-brother, Agoston Haraszthy, was sheriff. Sutherland, the subject of past columns, was to serve as the second district attorney for Los Angeles and San Diego counties.
The editorial declares:
“[W]e are not at all particular as to how many States are carved out of California, provided only that they are free, and in fair proportion, as to size and population, to the States on the Atlantic slope of the Union. But if Messrs. Haraszthy & Sutherland, forgetting what was expected of them as Badgers and forswearing the principles they used to profess here, are hand and glove with…the Slavery propagandists in this notable plan to organize a Slave State in California, their enterprize will meet with anything but good wishes among their former fellow-citizens in Wisconsin.”
As it turned out, an undivided California—which in its 1849 Constitution forever barred slavery—was admitted to the Union on Sept. 9, 1850, as the 31st state.
Notwithstanding that Granger was against slavery, he was involved in the post-statehood movement to excise California’s southern counties from the newly admitted state, with them forming a new territory. This plan was seen by some as a ploy to legalize slavery here.
But was it? There appears to have been some legitimacy to the grievances expressed by denizens of the south—such as Haraszthy’s protest, in an article appearing in the San Diego Herald on July 21, 1851, that “almost every law passed by the late legislature has different provisions for the southern part of the State, than those of the northern part.”
The Sept. 25, 1851, issue of the Alta California tells of a public meeting in Los Angeles six days earlier. Granger and another were chosen as secretaries of the ad hoc group. The article reports:
“[T]he meeting was addressed by L. Granger, Esq., who made some extended remarks upon the present condition of the State, the burthen resting upon the agricultural interests of the south, the necessity of a Territorial government to relieve this portion of the state, and that it would work no evil to the people in the North, but incalculable benefit to us at the South.”
A resolution was passed, its key provision being this: “That we, the citizens of Los Angeles county, will use every effort to produce a separation of the Southern portion of the State from the Northern, and the establishment of a separate and distinct territorial Government.”
Granger was appointed to a committee of seven, all lawyers, to prepare a public statement. They did, and it was printed in a circular distributed throughout California. On the committee with him were Los Angeles County Court Judge Agustin Olvera; Pio Pico, the last civil governor of Alta California under Mexican rule; Benjamin Hayes, who would become the District Court judge in 1853; Joseph Lancaster Brent, defender of the Lugo Boys and later a member of the state Assembly; John O. Wheeler, later clerk of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California; and José Antonio Carrillo, a three-time alcalde of the pueblo under Mexican rule and a delegate from Los Angeles to the 1849 constitutional convention (and great uncle of 1950s actor/television personality Leo Carrillo).
Of the seven, there was only one with pro-slavery sentiments: Brent, who would join the Confederate Army and, in 1864, become a brigadier general.
The 1851 circular the committee composed is a declaration of independence, of sorts, saying, in part:
[I]t is plain truth, that, whatever of good the experiment of a State government may have otherwise led to in California, for us of the Southern counties it has proved only a splendid failure. The bitter fruits of it no county has felt more keenly than Los Angeles. With all her immense and varied natural resources, her political, social and pecuniary condition at this moment is deplorable in the extreme—her industry paralyzed under the insupportable burden of taxation; her port almost forsaken by commerce; her surplus products of no value, on account of the enormous price of freights; her capital flying to other climes; a sense of the utter insecurity of property pervading all classes; and everything tending to increase and fasten upon her, in the guise of legislation, a state of actual oppression which will soon exhaust the energies of a population that deserve a better fate.
As with Los Angeles, so is it, in various degrees, with our sister counties—she the greatest sufferer, only because she has more to be despoiled of. What our section wants for its prosperity, is Military Protection, a simple and cheap Government, equal laws adapted to the character of the people. A prey to incessant Indian depredations from without, and destitute of internal protection for our lives and property under laws applicable to our wants and the character of the population, and withal a continued ruinous taxation impending over us, our future is gloomy indeed, as a community, if we shall fail in this appeal to our brethren of that North for the only redress consonant with our mutual interests—a separation, friendly and peaceable, but still complete, leaving the North and the South respectively to fulfil their grand destinies, under systems of laws suited to each.
Was establishment of slavery here an additional objective? It was not alluded to, as such, by proponents of a split-up, but was assumed to be a goal by wary observers.
Newspapers from the Atlantic seaboard came in by clipper boats. An editorial in the Nov. 25, 1851 edition of the Daily Alta California notes those newspapers reflected an awareness of (though not much interest in) the movement to divide California. The editorial says:
“[W]e could not fail to be struck by one peculiarity of all the comments that have met our eye, which was that of deprecation of the indicated movement, on the ground that it would tend directly and necessarily to open the slavery question.”
Correspondence from Sacramento City, dated Oct. 30, 1851, appears in the Dec. 12 edition of the New York Daily-Times. It includes this:
“[I]t could not be concealed that in California there were two great undertakings in process of development. The one was the modification of our Constitution so as to repudiate the present repugnant inhibition to slavery, and the other was to secure the division of the State and a future element for the formation of another slave State.”
Some historians later reflected that sentiment in favor of establishing a slave state here had been exaggerated.
Robert Glass Cleland, in his 1922 book “A History of California: the American period,” comments that in addition to the articulated rationales for succession, “[s]ome southern residents may also have cherished the faint hope of establishing a pro-slave territory if the state should be divided, but the force of this motive was of minor significance, if, indeed, it ever had any real existence.”
“A Self-Governing Dominion, California, 1849-1860” by William Henry Ellison, published in 1978, insists: “Now and then, slavery discussion became an incident in the movement, but at no time did the slavery propaganda appear as a determining factor. On the basis of the evidence it is more nearly correct to say that slavery discussion was occasionally injected into the movement to divide the state, than to say that the division movement grew out of plans for the extension of slavery.”
Granger, it is clear, harbored no pro-slavery sentiments.
When an anti-slavery party came into existence in California, he joined it. The Aug. 29, 1856 edition of the Sacramento Daily Union reports that at the Republican state convention, Granger was appointed as one of seven members of the State Central Committee.
He left that party to join an anti-slavery splinter group, the Anti-Lecompton Democratic Party. The issue of the Sacramento Daily Union on July 28, 1859, says he had been nominated as its candidate for state senator, representing Butte and Plumas counties.
(He wasn’t elected, but his party fared well in California. Its candidate for governor, Milton Latham, won, and was sworn in Jan. 9, 1860. He served all of five days in office before resigning to take his seat in the United States Senate, having been elected on Jan. 11 to fill a vacancy. The Lecompton Democratic lieutenant governor, John G. Downey, took over.)
POSTSCRIPT: Efforts to split the state continued.
The April 20, 1859 edition of the Sacramento Daily Union contains the text of “AN ACT Granting the consent of the Legislature to the Formation of a Different Government for the Southern Counties of this State.” The Legislature gives the green light to succession by “the counties of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino, and a part of Buena Vista.” Voters in the affected counties would vote at the next general election “For a Territory” or “Against a Territory,” and if the secretary of state certified that there was a two-thirds vote in favor, the governor would apprise the president and California’s congressional delegation of the fact.
There was one small problem with the legislation. No County of Buena Vista existed. There had merely been a long-lingering proposal to create such a county, carved out of Tulare. So, in the September general election, voters in Tulare cast ballots, along with those in the other affected counties. The combined vote was 2,477 in favor and 828 against (more than two-thirds), with only San Luis Obispo being opposed.
The split was subject to congressional approval. However, Congress, consumed with matters relating to the impending succession of the southern states, did not act on the matter.
Various other ill-starred attempts to chop the state in two have been made at various other points. I recall talk during the governorship of Pat Brown about omitting the eight counties south of the Tehachapis.
Just last July, a Riverside County supervisor, apparently in seriousness, proposed creation of the “State of Southern California,” to be comprised of 13 counties but leaving out the most liberal in the south, Los Angeles.
Copyright 2011, Metropolitan News Company