Sacramento Sacramento California United States
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California, its population having swollen from fourteen thousand to one hundred thousand in two years, is admitted to the Union on September 9 as the thirty-first state, with John C. Frémont as one of its two senators, under the Compromise of 1850.
The state’s constitution prohibits slavery.
Political parties remain divided, however, according to whether they believe that California should be a free or a slave state, and one movement, led by the backers of California senator William M. Gwin, seeks to divide California into two states, one slave and one free.
California’s population stands at about two hundred and fifty thousand by late 1852.
California’s population in 1860 stands at about 380,000, most of them immigrants from the United States but over 117,000 of them Chinese laborers.
The Chinese labor force feeds an opium traffic into the U.S. of an estimated 285,000 pounds annually.
The other three associates are Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Collis P. Huntington.
Leland Stanford succeeds John Gately Downey as Governor of California, on January 10, 1862.
After being admitted to the bar in 1848, Stanford had moved with many other settlers to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where he began law practice with Wesley Pierce.
His father presented him with a law library said to be the finest north of Milwaukee.
In 1850, Stanford was nominated by the Whig Party as Washington County, Wisconsin district attorney.
On September 30, 1850, Stanford married Jane Elizabeth Lathrop in Albany, New York. She was the daughter of Dyer Lathrop, a merchant of that city, and Jane Anne (Shields) Lathrop.
The couple will not have any children for years, until their only child, a son, Leland DeWitt Stanford, is born in 1868 when his father is forty-four.
In 1852, having lost his law library and other property to a fire, Stanford followed his five brothers to California during the California Gold Rush.
His wife, Jane, returned temporarily to Albany and her family.
He went into business with his brothers and became the keeper of a general store for miners at Michigan City, California, later the name changed to Michigan Bluff in Placer County; later he had a wholesale house.
He served as a justice of the peace and helped organize the Sacramento Library Association, which later became the Sacramento Public Library
In 1855, he returned to Albany to join his wife but found the pace of Eastern life too slow after the excitement of developing California.
In 1856, he and Jane moved to Sacramento, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits on a large scale.
The California State Capitol, located in Sacramento, is completed between 1861 and 1874.
The Neoclassical structure is based on the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
The west facade ends in projecting bays, and a portico projects from the center of the building.
At the base of the portico, seven granite archways brace and support the porch above.
Eight fluted Corinthian columns line the portico.
A cornice supports the pediment above depicting Minerva surrounded by Education, Justice, and Mining.
Above the flat roof with balustrade are two drums supporting a dome.
The first drum consists of a colonnade of Corinthian columns; the second, Corinthian pilasters.
Large arched windows line the drum walls.
The dome is sixty-four meters (two hundred and ten feet) high, and supports a lantern with a smaller dome capped with a gold-leafed orbed finial.