A Loose Cannon
A "loose cannon" is someone whose actions often are unrestrained and impulsive. Lieutenant John C. Frémont, an officer in the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, fit this definition perfectly. He arrived in Mexican California in 1846 with sixty armed men, all expert marksmen.
Mexican officials ordered Frémont and his armed force out of California. Frémont at first defied the order, but then relented and moved slowly northward to Oregon--"slowly and growlingly" as he later put it. After receiving dispatches from a Marine Corps courier, Frémont returned to California and helped instigate what came to be called the Bear Flag Revolt.
Encouraged by Frémont's return, a party of Anglo-American settlers in northern California seized Colonel Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and other Mexican citizens in Sonoma on June 14, 1846. The Bear Flaggers declared California to be an independent republic. Frémont later assumed command of the insurgents and joined his forces with them in what he called the "California Battalion."
Frémont was a rash, unstable, and high-spirited young man. There is no evidence that he received any official authorization for military operations in Mexican California. His own ambitions and impulses appear to have had free rein. He was, indeed, a loose cannon.
The California state flag commemorates an event that occurred in the little town of Sonoma on Sunday morning, June 14, 1846.
A band of some thirty rough-hewn American settlers seized Colonel Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and informed him that he was a prisoner of war. The Americans proudly proclaimed that theirs was a war for the independence of California. In front of Vallejo's casa grande, the rebels hoisted a flag emblazoned with a crude drawing of a bear, a lone star, and the words "CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC."
The original bear flag was made by William Todd, nephew of an up-and-coming Illinois attorney named Abraham Lincoln. Todd used a three-by-five piece of white cotton cloth. Along the bottom he sewed several strips of red flannel taken from either a man's shirt of a woman's petticoat. He then painted a five-pointed red star in the upper left-hand corner and drew a picture of a California grizzly bear. But William Todd clearly was no artist. His grizzly looked more like a pig than a bear.
Shortly after the arrival of United States naval forces along the California coast, the Stars and Stripes replaced the Bear Flag over Sonoma. The life of the "California Republic" thus ended on July 9, less than a month after it had begun. The main result of the Bear Flag Revolt--an event that would later be fantastically romanticized--was an unnecessary embitterment of feelings between Anglo-Americans and the Spanish-speaking Californios.
Following the outbreak of the Mexican American War in 1846, military forces from the United States invaded Mexico. Naval forces landed along the coast of California in July and proclaimed that "henceforward California will be a portion of the United States."
California's Mexican leaders denounced the invasion and mobilized their forces against the Americans. On August 9, 1846, Colonel José Castro called upon his fellow Californios "to give to the entire world an example of loyalty and firmness, maintaining in your breasts the unfailing love of liberty, and eternal hatred toward your invaders! Long live the Mexican Republic! Death to the invaders!"
The Californios scored an impressive victory against a force of American dragoons under the command of General Stephen Watts Kearny. The engagement took place near the Indian village of San Pascual, northeast of San Diego, on the morning of December 6, 1846. The Californios, led by Andrés Pico, lured the Americans into pursuit until they were widely strung out, then suddenly turned to attack. The American sabers were hopelessly ineffective against the Californian's long lances. Practically all the casualties were on the American side--twenty-two killed, including several officers, and sixteen wounded, including Kearny himself.
Fighting in California during the Mexican American War ended with the surrender of Andrés Pico to John C. Frémont on January 13, 1847, at Cahuenga Pass in present-day Los Angeles County. The meeting was arranged by Bernarda Ruiz, a woman in Santa Barbara who was saddened by all the bloodshed in her country. Fighting elsewhere in Mexico continued for another year.
The war formally ended on February 2, 1848, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In the treaty, the United States agreed to pay Mexico $15 million and to assume unpaid claims against Mexico. For its part, Mexico agreed to transfer to the United States more than 525,000 square miles of land. From this vast area would come the future states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.
The Mexican American War was a great tragedy for Mexico. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico transferred half of its land to the United States. For the American people, the war was a great victory. Many Americans believed that their nation at last had achieved its Manifest Destiny.