Part 31 (1/2)
Jose Figueroa made an able governor, but he died in 1835, and a period of conflict, during which Los Angeles, as the capital of the South, was arrayed against the North, followed. Alvarado, who had declared California a sovereign state, entered the town in 1837 and subdued the Mexican sympathizers. Two years later Alvarado divided Alta California into two districts, making Los Angeles the capital of the South, with Santiago Arguello as prefect.
Great efforts were at this time made to beautify the city, and there were gay scenes in these days in the old pueblo. The owners of the great ranches entertained largely, visiting from house to house, dressing gayly, and engaging in all sorts of equestrian sports. The men lived in their saddles; the women were the gayest and sweetest of hostesses, while they were yet domestic, and brought up large families easily in the free, open-air life which the conditions of fine climate and rich soil made possible. When Micheltorena in 1842 made his capital in Los Angeles, the gayeties reached their height; he was received with enthusiasm by the Ayuntamiento; there were speeches, salutes, and illuminations; b.a.l.l.s and sports alternated with juntas and revolutions. Yet Los Angeles was glad to be rid of Micheltorena when he removed to Monterey, and its citizens were foremost in a revolt against him in 1845, and fought him without the city in a battle where there was much cannonading and no bloodshed. Pio Pico was head of the Commission which met in Los Angeles and banished Micheltorena.
The city remained the capital of the department of the South, and Pio Pico was Governor while Jose Castro acted as General. Castro again went to the North and soon joined Carrillo against Pico in a new quarrel of North and South.
It was in 1846, when California was rent with the controversy between Castro, representing the military, and Pico, the civil power, and the March a.s.sembly was in session at Los Angeles, that the approach of the forces of the United States, under Stockton and Fremont, forced the contending commanders to unite at Los Angeles in opposition to a common foe.
Abel Stearns, the confidential agent of the United States in the South, owned a warehouse in San Pedro. John Forster was made, in 1843, captain of the port; in 1845 Commodore Jones landed here to make his apologies to Micheltorena for his premature raising of the Stars and Stripes at Monterey. Here Micheltorena embarked for exile; and here, in 1846, Commodore Stockton disembarked with his sailors for the capture of Los Angeles, having already raised the American flag at Monterey. Refusing all the attempts at conciliation offered by Pico and Castro, Stockton united his forces with those of the California battalion under Fremont, who had landed at San Diego, entered Los Angeles, and raised the American flag at 4 P.M. of August 13, 1846.
Pico and Castro had left the city to escape the dishonor of surrender, and the frightened inhabitants had fled to the neighboring ranchos, but returned to their homes before night, attracted by the irresistible strains of a bra.s.s band, and a.s.sured that they would be left unharmed.
[Ill.u.s.tration JOHN C. FReMONT.]
Stockton ordered the election of new alcaldes, and appointed Fremont military commander of the district. When both commanders returned to the North, Gillespie, with a garrison of fifty men, was left in charge of Los Angeles. He seems to have interfered with the amus.e.m.e.nts of the people, and to have made himself needlessly unpopular. A revolt was organized, and Flores, one of Castro's generals, appeared, with three hundred men at his back, and summoned the garrison to surrender. This Gillespie did, after bravely holding Fort Hill for a time. The Americans took s.h.i.+p from San Pedro on October 4th.
The reconquest of Los Angeles took place on January 18th. General Kearny, with Kit Carson as guide, had succeeded in joining Stockton at San Diego, and the united forces, after a two-hours' engagement at San Gabriel and another brief skirmish without the city, entered Los Angeles, while the leaders of the revolt fled to Cahuenga, and surrendered to Fremont, who made generous terms of capitulation with Andres Pico, Flores, and Manuel.
This clemency endeared him to the Californians. It became his boast that he could ride unharmed alone from one end of the conquered country to the other. Stockton made him Governor of Los Angeles while the controversy between Kearny and Stockton, as to which was the chief authority in the conduct of affairs in the new country, was in progress. Fremont chose to obey Stockton, with whom he had worked in unison during the Northern conquests and before the arrival of Kearny. Kearny was technically in the right in demanding the submission of Fremont, as the court-martial of the latter (in Was.h.i.+ngton, at a later day) made evident; but under the circ.u.mstances of the quarrel of the two leaders at Los Angeles, Fremont's allegiance to Stockton seems to have been his only manly course.
This was an era in which Los Angeles grew from an easy-going Spanish pueblo into a progressive American city. Nowhere have Americans stood more completely in the position of conquerors in a new land. Called upon to improvise hastily a government for a large body of strangers, these citizens showed, together with carelessness and over-hastiness--and an indifference to the rights of strangers, both Indians and Spaniards, of which we cannot be proud--some of our best national traits. From the first, the pioneers were courageous and teachable, and succeeded, after many mistakes, in building up a permanent, well-organized, and progressive munic.i.p.ality. General Fremont was undoubtedly most popular among the Spanish people. His youth enabled him to enter in a large degree into their sports; his clemency in pardoning Flores and the other generals of the rebellion won their applause.
It was from his gubernatorial residence, the old two-story adobe at the corner of Aliso and Los Angeles Streets, that Fremont set forth with Jesus Pico and Jacob Dodson for his famous mustang ride to Monterey. The feat, with its object--to defend his position as Governor against Kearny--was such as to appeal to the imagination of the people of Los Angeles, both Mexican rancheros and American trappers and sailors. Over desert and mountain the three riders flew, leaving on the morning of March 22d and reaching Monterey, five hundred miles away, on the afternoon of the fourth day. The return was accomplished with equal speed, so that the trip of one thousand miles was made in a little over eight days. Fremont did great service in the Senate of the United States, where he pleaded for the land rights of Indian and Spanish residents, and in later years, when his influence aided in the exclusion of slavery from the new State of California. The town council was re-established in 1847, Don Jose Salazar and Don Enrique Abila being alcaldes; but in 1848 Governor Mason dissolved the council and installed Stephen G. Foster as alcalde. A semi-military rule was kept up under Colonel Stevenson until May, 1849, when a new ayuntamiento was established.
The cattle trade was at its best from 1850 to 1860, when in one year one hundred thousand hides at $15 apiece were s.h.i.+pped from San Pedro, but the business was injured by the drouth of 1863 and 1864. The town grew slowly, increasing in orchards and vineyards, its ranchos--many new ones having been granted by Pico in 1846--sheltered in the bend of the Los Angeles River, which, by ancient decree, is, from the mountains down, the property of the city. In 1851 Los Angeles grapes brought in San Francisco 20 cts. a pound; at the mines, $1. The city escaped the excitement of the gold fever, although the yellow metal was first discovered near Los Angeles in 1835.
Among the noted Spanish families at the time of the conquest were the Lugos, the Sepulvedas, the Bandinis, the Estudillos, the Oliveros, the Picos, and the Coronels. Prominent among the pioneers of old Los Angeles were the Workmans, Temples, and Wolfskills, David W. Alexander, Colonel Couts, and Governor Downey, Judge J.R. Scott and Benjamin D. Wilson, Robert S. Baker and Hugo Reid. Hon. H.C. Foster, one of the early mayors of Los Angeles, became a resident of the city in 1847. Governor Pio Pico, who had fled at the approach of Stockton to save the ”honor” of Mexico, returned and became a conspicuous private citizen. He lived to a great age, duly performing his duty as a registered voter.
[Ill.u.s.tration OLD ADOBE. FReMONT'S HEADQUARTERS.]
It was Don Antonio Coronel, dead but a decade, who most picturesquely and honorably represented to the new Los Angeles the old regime. He was of ”courtly presence, ripe experience, high integrity, and great personal fascination,” and was to his latest days ”a quenchless patriot, white-haired, clear-eyed, and supple,” the life of any circle he might be persuaded to adorn. His father, Don Ignacio Coronel, came to the town with the Hijar Colony. He was a man of note and opened in 1839 a school--much needed, if the fact be true that there were then in the pueblo but fifty-four men who could read and write. Antonio was in 1843 Visitador del Sud under the Mexican, and in 1853 Mayor of Los Angeles under the American, Government. He was a warm friend of Helen Hunt Jackson, who thoroughly identified herself with the interests of the older peoples of Los Angeles and its environs.
[Ill.u.s.tration FIRST STAGE IN THE ASCENT OF MT. LOWE, CONNECTING WITH ELECTRIC ROAD ON ECHO MOUNTAIN.]
Up to 1852 the houses in Los Angeles were of adobe,--the sun-baked brick of the country,--and these were comfortable indeed, cool in summer and warm in winter. It was in one of these ample residences--that of Colonel J.G.
Nichols--that the Rev. J.W. Brier, of the M. E. Church, held the first regular Protestant service, and in another that the Rev. Dr. Wicks, a Presbyterian, opened the first English-speaking school. These events were in 1850, so that church and school were ready to receive the first American child (Gregg Nichols, who was born in April, 1851).