Audience regaled with tales of city founder and state icon

Once California no longer was controlled by Mexico, it quickly looked to join the growing United States of America, Diablo Valley College history professor Greg Tilles told an audience Thursday.

Unlike many states, California deliberately bypassed first becoming a territory, Tilles said — in fact, it began acting like a state even before it was admitted to the Union.

A key figure in that transition was one of Benicia’s main founding fathers, Robert Semple, Tilles said during a talk organized by the Benicia Historical Society, of which he is a member and historian.

Despite being so frail that he missed a few of its latter sessions, Semple was chosen to preside over the California Constitutional Convention in Monterey in 1849, Tilles told the audience at the Camellia Tea Room.

Many in the United States in the 1840s had their eyes on establishing a coast-to-coast empire, the “Manifest Destiny” that was spoken of even before gold was found on John Sutter’s Northern California property, Tilles said.

But that discovery of gold, he said, and the resulting population growth, meant that the area known as “California” had enough people to “avoid the probationary territorial status,” according to the rules of America’s Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

And those living in Northern California, not wanting to proceed with “the normal transition,” urged statehood.

Southern Californians, primarily the native Californios who feared land taxes would hit their large rancheros hard, hoped in vain for a more gradual route to statehood, Tilles said, because more votes were available in the more heavily populated area of the Gold Rush.

The convention had many weighty controversies to resolve as it crafted its constitution and prepared to apply for statehood, and it had to examine how the decisions would play in Congress, which kept deadlocking on many issues of the era, Tilles said.

One issue was slavery, a complex issue itself. Many who lived in California were “Free Soilers,” opposed to the expansion of slavery. But opposing slavery’s expansion didn’t necessarily mean a person opposed slavery itself or favored abolition, Tilles explained.

And while California chose to be a “Free Soil” state because the Southern plantation style of agriculture didn’t work in the West Coast climate, another motivation was less than complimentary, Tilles said.

He recounted how a Texan had come to gold country, bringing enough slaves to help him stake out and work claims. White miners objected because they didn’t like to see their work considered on par with that of slaves.

While miners’ interests influenced some of the ways the convention’s 48 delegates voted, “none identified as gold miners,” Tilles said.

Most said they were lawyers and merchants. Another eight were native Californios, such as Gen. Mariano Vallejo, who identified himself as an “agriculturalist.”

Semple, who had many interests and careers, including dentistry, said he was a printer.

The northern portion of California sent 37 delegates, and only 11 came from the south, Tilles said.

The convention opened Sept. 1, 1849, and by Sept. 4 delegates had elected Semple their president over his rival, William Gwin. No recording of the vote was made.

Semple was escorted to his position of leadership by both Sutter and Vallejo.

He modestly addressed the assembly, asking them to work collaboratively and fairly as they tackled the upcoming weighty issues.

“There was plenty of debate and some rancor,” Tilles said. “But they agreed on the fundamentally important features.”

Under Semple’s guidance, they hammered out a constitution in six weeks, meeting in morning, afternoon and evening sessions to wrestle through deeply dividing issues, Tilles said.

Slavery was just one of those issues. Another was how big California should be and where its boundaries would be drawn.

Some of the Californios wanted the state divided into north and south. Others suggested “California” should be enormous, taking in land that now is part of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and other states.

The Utah area was rejected so California wouldn’t have to deal with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Tilles said.

Ultimately, the boundary was set pretty much at the present state’s lines in hopes of presenting a straightforward, “clean” application that the argumentative Congress might find appealing, he said.

Another matter was voting rights. At the time, states could decide who could cast votes. Usually the electorate was limited to white men, though property ownership sometimes was a factor.

However, many of the white men at the delegation had lived in California just a few years, compared to the Californios who, as Vallejo wrote, had lived in the area “all my life.”

The Californios would be allowed to vote if two-thirds of both houses of the Legislature approved, the convention decided. That meant the ballot still was denied most of them, Tilles said.

However, the convention decided its documents would be published in both English and Spanish.

The delegates decided other matters as well, designing the state seal to include 31 stars to indicate its intent to be the 31st state, and reducing the size of a bear in deference to Vallejo, who saw it as an allusion to the Bear Flag Revolt. Despite Vallejo’s endorsement of eventual annexation of California by the United States, he had been captured and imprisoned at Sutter’s Fort during that revolt.

Semple’s name on a Benicia elementary school is no coincidence, Tilles said. He was a longtime advocate for education.

At the convention, he pushed for statewide public education underwritten by an equitable distribution of funds, and when he met with resistance he argued that education should be a founding value for California, even hoping to found a state university system. (One wasn’t established until 1868.)

Their work done, the delegates concluded the convention Oct. 13, 1849, and put the constitution out to a ratification vote Nov. 13.

“The turnout was low,” Tilles said, citing bad weather. But of the 13,000 votes cast, 12,000 favored ratification. At the same time, Peter Hardeman Burnett was elected the first governor of California.

Semple’s delegation rival, Gwin, and John Fremont were chosen California’s first U.S. senators, even though they had to wait to serve until congressional approval and President Millard Fillmore’s signature Sept. 9, 1850, that made California a state.

But during the months leading to admission into the Union, California operated as a de facto state, Tilles said.

Semple’s health, compromised by malaria, continued to decline. And while he was praised for guiding the Constitutional Convention to success, “he was clearly a leader, not a politician,” Tilles said.

He failed to be elected to state or national office, though he returned to Benicia to become a member of its Council. He later retired to a ranch near Sacramento, where he died from complications from a fall from a horse, in 1854, at 48 years old.

Semple had moved from Kentucky to the West Coast in 1845, participated in the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt, and partnered in the first published California newspaper, the “Californian,” based in Monterey. In 1847, he and Thomas Larkin received a land grant from Vallejo that he hoped to turn into a city named “Francesca” for Vallejo’s wife. When San Francisco changed its name from Yerba Buena, the new city adopted another of her names — Benicia — as its own.