California History back issues from January 2003:
Preface.
Jan 01, 2003 ... As much as today's state legislators, officials, and bureaucrats are criticized in California--sometimes with just cause--the first generation of political and governmental leaders was even more vilified in its own day. Many of them, it turned out, were--like their fellow ...
Taming the elephant: an introduction to California's statehood and constitutional era.
Jan 01, 2003; ... The phrase "seeing the elephant" was frequently used during the California Gold Rush by western sojourners to describe their encounters with strange and alien situations or exotic and enlivening experiences--something as unique as actually seeing an elephant was at that time. The reality ...
A violent birth: disorder, crime, and law enforcement, 1849-1890.(bandit Joaquin Murieta and others)
Jan 01, 2003; ... On the winter morning of February 20, 1853, more than a hundred Chinese miners were working their claims near Rich Gulch. Without warning, five mounted and gun-brandishing bandidos swept down upon them. Taken by surprise and without arms themselves, the Chinese could do little but comply ...
The courts, the legal profession, and the development of law in early California.
Jan 01, 2003; ... The Gold Rush flooded California with people seeking riches and expecting the institutions of the law to protect their interests. To create those institutions, delegates went to Monterey in 1849 for the first state constitutional convention. The delegates assembling in Monterey in 1849 had ...
"We feel the want of protection": The politics of law and race in California, 1848-1878.
Jan 01, 2003; ... California's history has been entangled in romanticized accounts of the daring Spanish conquest of savage but pliant Indians, of tradition-bound California stewards, and of hard-driving, entrepreneurial Yankee Argonauts. (1) These fictions were promulgated and abetted by influential early ...
Capturing California.
Jan 01, 2003; ... Late in the evening of May 3, 1851, as San Francisco was once again easing from boisterous Saturday night to quiescent Sunday morning, a fire started somewhere among the hotels, gambling houses, and saloons of its crowded downtown plaza. The flames spread quickly through the city, licking ...
"Officialdom": California state government, 1849-1879.
Jan 01, 2003; ... An overview of California government in the three decades between the first and second constitutional conventions reveals clear patterns of change. At the outset (including the first two legislative sessions), government was creative and generally responsible; relationships between the ...
"None could deny the eloquence of this lady": women, law, and government in California, 1850-1890.
Jan 01, 2003; ... Although women played no direct role in California law and politics until 1870, both their interest in law reform and their later entry into the political arena can be traced in part to two sections of the constitution that went into effect at statehood in 1850, one excluding women from ...
The beginnings of Anglo-American local government in California.
Jan 01, 2003; ... California local government in the Anglo-American period did not get off to a particularly auspicious start. For a short time during the United States military occupation and thereafter, some of the Hispanic institutions, especially the office of alcalde, a position that existed in many ...
An uncertain influence: the role of the federal government in California, 1846-1880.
Jan 01, 2003; ... Did rugged individualists tame the West, or did pioneers merely arrive at a well-ordered colony of the federal government? Popular myth enshrines the first view. In 1991, however, "New" Western historian Richard White, building on more than a half century of research, argued that "The West ...